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Stuck in a Book’s Weekend Miscellany

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It’s that time of year when I don’t really have a clue what day of the week it is… but my phone reliably assures me that it’s Saturday today. I’m back in Oxfordshire, after a nice long time at home, but not back to work until 2nd January – so plenty of time to dedicate to even more reading. And finishing my final A Century of Books title! Before that – the usual miscellany.

1.) The link – for UK readers only, I think, I’m afraid. I’ve just watched The Bishop’s Wife on iPlayer (you can too at this link for the next three weeks) – hopefully the film is accessible elsewhere if you’re out of the UK. It’s adapted from a 1928 novel by Robert Nathan (a writer I love), and was made in 1947 with Cary Grant, Loretta Young, and David Niven – all about an angel who comes to solve some problems (though not the problems the bishop expects).

2.) The blog post – I love the end of the year in the book blogging world, because I love reading Best of The Year lists (mine to come soon), and I love seeing what reading resolutions people have. I don’t think I have any for 2019, at least not yet, but enjoy Thomas’s.

3.) The book – I don’t think I’ve mentioned that the latest Furrowed Middlebrow books are coming out soon – including all three sequels to Mrs Tim of the Regiment by D.E. Stevenson! They’re coming out in January, I think, and I have review copies I’m excited about diving into soon. More here.

Two Margery Sharp novels

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I’ve been on a bit of a mini Margery Sharp spree this year, having bought up books by her for quite a few years. I’ve read three this year, bringing my total to six – and first bought and read her around 2004, on the advice of P.G. Wodehouse. (By this I mean that he mentions how much he liked The Foolish Gentlewoman in his letters, and I bought a copy after that.) Then there was a gap of about ten years, but I’m making up for lost time.

I wrote about my favourite of this year’s three in August, The Gipsy in the Parlour, and I’ll write about the other two here – Britannia Mews (1946) and Lise Lillywhite (1951).

It’s interesting that she chose the name Britannia Mews rather than Adelaide or similar, because the novel follows Adelaide Culver from childhood to the end of her long life – spent, for the most part, in a house on Britannia Mews. The first few years of her life are in a more reputable street in the mid-nineteenth century, near which Britannia Mews is a slum they scrupulously avoid. Adelaide is brought up strictly and properly by her respectable family, and she is mostly happy with her gilded cage – until she falls in love with her drawing master. One thing leads to another, they elope, and can only afford to live in that self-same Britannia Mews.

I’m reluctant to spoil any of the other things that happen in this excellent novel, as Adelaide finds herself tied to the mews – seeing its fashion change over the years, and her own circle and identity moulded with it. She is isolated from her extended family (though the reader does occasionally pop over to Surbiton to see their honourable lives), and undergoes significant hardship. Characters often don’t change a lot in long novels, as though they are fully-formed from the outset; Sharp shows us exactly what impact these hardships have on the once-naive character of Adelaide. It is far from a miserable novel, but it is a realist one. Some of the characters are lively and witty, but the novel is not itself witty – nothing like Sharp can be in, say, Cluny Brown. But it is very immersive and well-written, and I’ve yet to find a mode of Sharp’s writing that I don’t admire and relish.

Over to Lise Lillywhite – where, curiously, she does get the title despite having relatively little narrative drive. Rather, the novel is about what people think of her and how they treat her – starting off with her being escorted to the family seat in Somerset, having been brought up in France. Her protective – not to say domineering – aunt Amelie controls the parameters of her life, and seeks to control the whole household.

Her relationship with the Somerset Lillywhites is not so familial to prevent one of the family, Martin (the principal narrator) taking a shine to her – and she ends up in a love triangle between him and an exiled Polish count known as Stan. Her own views of them are kept relatively hidden – she remains the object of their affections, in every sense of the word ‘object’. She gets rather less compliant in the second half of the novel, in a very well handled moment where we enter her mind and get sudden access to her long-withheld views. It is very effectively done, and a brave technique to withhold for so long.

The love triangle is one thing – it is engaging, and unexpected – but I also really liked this novel for its portrait of postwar England trying to piece itself together. For the relentless pursuit of nylons, if nothing else.

It’s Sharp in yet another mode – she seems to be endlessly surprising herself, even while all the variant tones she has tried in the novels I’ve read are recognisably from the same pen. There are still plenty of her novels on my shelves yet to read, and I’m looking forward to finding out still more about her.

How unpleasant is too unpleasant?

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(An alternative title for this post could be “how can I write about one of my final A Century of Books titles when I don’t want to write a review of it”.)

Back in October, Lizzy’s Literary Life ran an NYRB Classics fortnight – and I started reading Raymond Kennedy’s Ride a Cockhorse (1991), which I bought in America a few years ago. Naturally, I didn’t finish it in time – and, indeed, finished somewhere in the middle of December. And that was grudgingly, in order to finish a 1991 book for A Century of Books – because I rather hated it.

It started off promisingly, albeit bizarrely – in the sudden change of Mrs Frankie Fitzgibbons. Having been a mild-mannered bank employee for many years, she has a sudden lust for power and vitality and, well, lust. Specifically with the teenage member of a marching band, who is the first victim (though a willing one) of her personality transformation. Having sated herself with him, we don’t hear from him again – Frankie turns her attention to the bank.

And then most of the book sees her meteoric and ruthless rise to power at the bank – firing loyal employees, threatening turncoats, and wilfully destroying the lives of anybody who says a word against her. It is all rather grandiose and over the top, but had a thread of believability at the centre – that is, if somebody did turn this monstrously ambitious, would anybody be able to stand in their way? (The NYRB Classics edition’s claim that it presages the rise of Sarah Palin is rather a stretch…)

I could see what Kennedy was doing, I think. It was supposed to be black humour, as well (perhaps) as showing how women are treated differently from men when it comes to ruthlessness or ambition. And I recognise that Frankie isn’t supposed to be likeable. But… I hated it.

One of the things I really can’t stand (in books or in real life) is selfishness that is wildly out of balance. I can just about understand the motivation of a character who ruins another’s life for enormous gain, even if wouldn’t be pleasant to read – but those who do it on a whim make me sad and angry. Not a scholarly response, but I’ll put it on the list of traits that blackball a book for me…

So, I did make it to the end of Ride a Cockhorse, but I rather wish I hadn’t and my copy has already gone to the charity shop.

Are there traits that have the same effect for you? Is there anything that’s a long way below murder etc that still puts a character beyond the pale for you? Join my ire!

(The remaining two books for my A Century of Books are much more up my street.)

 

Merry Christmas!

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Yea Lord, we greet thee
Born this happy morning
Jesus, to you be glory given
Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing,
O come let us adore him!

A very happy Christmas to you all – I hope you find books under the tree and joy in the season.

Book Postscript 2018 meme

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Rick keeps putting out memes/tags, and I keep copying ’em! This one came originally from a vlog called Memento Mori, which is a slightly ominous origin for an end-of-year tag – but let’s run with it. And it’s only the 21st December as I write this, so there’s definitely some more books to come – but I’m saving up the last few days of 2018 for my Best Books of the Year list, and the run-down of stats I do every year. (I’ve skipped the last question of this, because it’s reflecting on my year as a blogger, and that might come later.)

1) What’s the longest book I read this year and the book that took me the longest to finish?

I think the longest book I read might be Edward Carey’s Little, at around 550 pages. Some of the other longer books were Dorothy Whipple’s The Priory and Stuart Turton’s The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle – as you know, I don’t read super long books all that often.

As for the one it took me longest to finish – I started When Heaven is Silent by Ron Dunn in around 2010 and finally finished it this year, so I think eight years has got to be my 2018 record.

2) What book did I read in 2018 that was outside of my comfort zone?

The most successful one I read outside my comfort zone was Kamchatka by Marcelo Figueras – for my book group. It’s about the Argentinian civil war and it’s really good – in fact, it might be the only book group book from 2018 that I enjoyed, besides the ones I suggested.

3) How many books did I re-read in 2018?

So far, it’s eleven. And eight of those were for episodes of ‘Tea or Books?’, while my umpteenth re-read of The L-Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks was done in an (ultimately unsuccessful) bid to persuade Rachel to let us do it on the podcast.

4) What’s my favourite re-read of 2018?

I don’t do huge amounts of re-reading, so they were all books that I really like – so it’s a toss up between The L-Shaped Room and Guard Your Daughters by Diana Tutton.

5) What book did I read for the first time in 2018 that I look forward to re-reading in the future?

I find it hard to predict which books I’m likely to re-read, though it becomes a lot more likely when it’s something delightful and fun. That being the case, I’ll pick perhaps the funniest novel I read this year – Buttercups and Daisies by Compton Mackenzie. But he wrote so much that I’ll probably read a lot of his other books before I turn to that.

6) What’s my favourite short story or novella that I read in 2018?

I read so many novellas this year – particularly for my 25 Books in 25 Days challenge – that I’ll go for short stories. I read very few of those, but I think the one that will stay with me is ‘Flypaper’ by Elizabeth Taylor. (For more on that, check out episode 66 of ‘Tea or Books?’)

7) Mass appeal: which book would I recommend to a wide variety of readers?

Simply because it doesn’t seem from the outset like it would have mass appeal, I’d choose The Little Art by Kate Briggs. And if you’re thinking that a book about translation would only appeal to a niche market, then go grab a copy – it’s wonderfully engaging and compelling, and one of the most unusual and unusually good books I’ve read this year.

8) Specialised appeal: which book did I like but would be hesitant to recommend to just anyone?

Probably my favourite book of the year, pending any last minute replacements, is The Sweet and Twenties by Beverley Nichols – but I probably would only recommend it to other people who were (a) interested in Beverley Nichols, or (b) firmly believed the 1920s to be the greatest ever decade. Or maybe to people interested in cultural history in general, but I think it would only be loved as it deserves by… well, me. (Has that reverse psychology worked well enough for you to go and get a copy??)

Bleaker House by Nell Stevens

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As soon as I finished Mrs Gaskell & Me by Nell Stevens (my review here), I bought a copy of Bleaker House (2017) – going on rather a wild goose chase through London bookshops in order to do so. It had been on my probably-read-one-day list for a long time, and I thought I should hasten on that time – and it’s really good; excellent pre-Christmas reading.

I wrote in my review of Mrs Gaskell & Me that I much preferred the sections where Stevens was writing about her own life to those about Mrs Gaskell’s – and so I was pleased to see that Bleaker House is all about Stevens’ own writing exploits. Specifically, the fellowship generously given to all students on her writing masters in Boston, whereby they can spend up to three months anywhere in the world. Many of her fellow students are going to Europe or Asia. She decides to go to… Bleaker.

Bleaker is a tiny island (population: 2), part of the Falklands. Off the coast of Argentina, the islands are an overseas British territory (cf the Falklands War) and about as isolated as you can get. The name is a corruption of ‘breaker’, because of the waves that break there, but it does seem an accurate description of the conditions there. Especially in winter, which is when Stevens decides to go. After a sojourn at the slightly-larger Stanley, she stays in one of two otherwise empty guests houses on Bleaker. The farming couple who divide their time between this and another island are there for the beginning and end of her three months, but otherwise she is alone – with her novel.

The idea was to get away from the world so that she’ll have to write her novel – about a man named Ollie who ends up travelling to Bleaker to track down the father he thought had died years earlier. We know, from the outset, that Bleaker House is a work of non-fiction, not a novel – so what went wrong? (Or, perhaps, right?)

This is a challenging read for any of us who are not doing very well at finishing novel, but an extremely engaging and well-written account of failing to write a book. And, of course, about the unusual experience she has foisted upon herself – not least the lack of food she brought, and dealing without the internet. This section is from her stay on Stanley, not noticeably more modernised than Bleaker:

I will spend the next month in this guest house on the outskirts of the town, presided over by Mauru, the housekeeper. Since it is the middle of winter, Maura explains, there will probably be no other guests. The owner of the hotel, Jane, is away in England. For the next few weeks, then, it will just be Mauru and me.

I ask her about the Internet. “Is there Wi-Fi here?” I know, as I ask, that I sound needy, a little obsessed. I am a little obsessed.

She squints.

“Wi-Fi?” I repeat. “The Internet?”

Mauru looks troubled. “The Internet?” Jane would know, she says. She leads me into the hall, and points at a bulky machine squatting on a table by the door. She looks doubtful as she says, “Is that it?”

“No,” I say, “no, that’s a printer.”

“The Internet?” Mauru repeats, again. She shrugs. “I’m sure it’s around here somewhere. I’m just not sure where.”

In both her books, Stevens goes for an interesting patchwork technique – putting together different stages of her life in a way that works really well (and presumably takes a great deal of thought to avoid feeling odd). So we see the relationship she has recently left, and experiences from writing classes, all intersected with the feelings of isolation and uncertainty on the island. In amongst these, perhaps less successfully, are excerpts from the work in progress – and a couple of short stories that aren’t related. Her writing in these is good, though with a little less vitality than her autobiographical writing, but it’s hard to see quite how they cohere with the rest of the book. I suppose it would be a lot shorter without them – and I’d have complained if we didn’t get any evidence of the work she was there to do. All things considered, the balance isn’t too off.

Stevens is an honest, interesting writer – managing the difficult feat of extended introspection without isolating the reader. Who knows how many more books she can write before she runs out of writerly life experiences to document, but I’m hoping there’s a least a few more to come.

The Last 10 Books Tag

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This is probably more of a vlog thing that a blog thing, because I’m taking it from Rick’s latest video at Another Book Vlog, but nobody needs to see more of my face – so here it is written down instead. The tag is all to do with ‘the last book you…’. Well, it’ll become pretty clear pretty soon. (Btw, Rick’s selection is really interesting, even if he is WRONG about David Sedaris, so do go check that video out.)

  1. The last book I gave up on

I don’t keep a list of these, so I’d have to rely on my memory… I do recall, during my 25 Books in 25 Days challenge, that I picked up At Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart, and knew that I couldn’t last more than a few pages. But it’s still on my shelf, so I’m sure I’ll come back to it.

2. The last book I re-read

I’m currently re-reading Edward Carey’s Alva & Irva for ‘Tea or Books?’ (which will probably be in the new year now) – but the last one I finished was in September, also for the podcast – Paul Gallico’s excellent and dark Love of Seven Dolls.

3. The last book I bought

I bought the book we’ll be reading in book group in January – Jose Saramago’s Baltasar and Blimunda. My first Saramago novel, and I’m tentatively intrigued…

4. The last book I said I read but actually didn’t

I’ve never seen the point of lying about books – because, honestly, why does anybody care what other people have read? If I haven’t read a much-vaunted book, it just means I have that experience ahead of me. Which just means we have to go back to my undergraduate degree, where I implicitly lied (in my essay about it)about having finished reading The Canterbury Tales…

5. The last book I wrote in the margins of

I don’t do this all that often – and when I do, it is always in pencil – but I did today! It’s in Nell Stevens’ Bleaker House, which I’m super enjoying, and it was because there’s a snippet of a novel she started in it where somebody is reading Ian Watt’s The Rise of the Novel in the Upper Reading Room of the Bodleian Library. Having worked as a librarian there for seven years (part time), I felt I had to make the pencilled note that Ian Watt’s book is ONLY available in the restricted section of the Lower Radcliffe Camera – because it’s so popular that we couldn’t risk it being lost. Important marginalia!

6. The last book I had signed

The novel my Mum wrote! A signature I have seen before once or twice, but nice to have in the book itself. (Before that… Sarah Waters a few years ago, I think?)

7. The last book I lost

Hmm, well I don’t think I ever notice when I’ve lost a book unless I happen to be seeking it out again, but I do know that Stephen Benatar’s Wish Her Safe at Home is no longer on my shelves. I assume I’ve lent it to somebody. Whenever I lend a book, it instantly goes from my memory… please don’t take advantage of this, people.

8. The last book I had to replace

I haven’t done it yet, but having really enjoyed Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver, I am regretting getting rid of a couple of her books when I moved house… They were long and I needed the shelf space! But, yeah, I’m pretty sure I’ll be re-buying those if I come across them in a charity shop.

9. The last book I argued over

Every time Colin and I see each other, we probably end having an argument about Virginia Woolf – and, since the only one he’s read is Orlando, I guess it’s that one. (These arguments are all in good fun, of course, and deep down Colin knows he’s wrong, and that Orlando is not “definitely the worst book he’s ever read”.) For the record, Orlando is far from my favourite Woolf novel, but it’s obviously still brilliant. (I think Jacob’s Room is my favourite, at least at the moment.)

10. The last book you couldn’t find

I had to go for the audiobook version in the end, but I couldn’t find a paper copy of Leigh Sales’ Any Ordinary Day (which I wrote about in October) because it seemed that it was only available in Australia. The audiobook version – read by Sales herself – turned out to be great, so that’s fine. Otherwise, I would love to have a copy of Diana Tutton’s The Young Ones, but that’s not available anywhere online. I read a copy in the Bodleian, but it’s not the same…

An Equal Music by Vikram Seth

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I had a credit to use on Audible a while ago, and was looking to fill either 1980 or 1999 in A Century of Books – but couldn’t find anything that appealed. So, naturally, I took to Twitter. Twitter has been a real help with the tricky years, and Gareth kindly stepped forward with a suggestion…

I’d already read William Maxwell’s So Long, See You Tomorrow – and the fact that I really liked it would have made me trust Gareth’s suggestion even if I didn’t already trust his taste (which I did). So I promptly downloaded An Equal Music (1999) by Vikram Seth and listened, without really checking what it was about.

Which is just as well. If I had looked up the plot or theme, I might not have bothered. Because it’s about ardent musicians, and I tend to find that difficult to read about. It’s the sort of novel where people non-ironically say “Oh, I’d love to study that score”, and spend years tracking down the perfect viola. I struggle whenever characters are snobs in any area of the arts, or have the attitude that being brilliant is more important than enjoying yourself. It’s why I really disliked Rebecca West’s The Fountain Overflows earlier this year (because the author seemed to share her characters’ views). And I would have been wary about it in Vikram Seth.

Well, it was certainly there, at least to an extent – and the main character (Michael) isn’t particularly likeable. He is obsessed with reconnecting with Julia, a woman he loved many years ago in Vienna – and has been trying to track her down, unsuccessfully, for some time. At the same time, he and his string quartet are preparing to perform… erm… some arrangement of some piece, I forget which. Or maybe it was something arranged for a quintet that is better known as a piano piece, or something like that. (Again, the problem of listening to an audiobook – I can’t go back and check!) Of course, he does find her – she is married, with a child, and there is a twist in the narrative that I shan’t spoil, but is done very satisfyingly and intelligently.

Lovers of classical music (and, dare I say it, music snobs) will get a lot out of this that I probably didn’t. I do also wonder how much one might miss if you don’t play the piano and violin – I play both, which helped me understand various discussion points and technical moments, though I don’t think any of them were particularly essential and could probably be skated through.

Why did I like it, when it had quite a few ingredients that turn me off? Partly it was the excellent reading by Alan Bates, who never tries to do “voices” (except where accents are needed for, say, the American characters) but manages to convey character entirely through tone. The audiobook also meant they could include sections of music when they were referred to as being played, which was rather lovely. But mostly it was Seth’s quality of writing. He is very good at detailed depictions of changing emotions and relationships, so that one is deeply interested even if not particularly sympathetic.

I don’t know if I’m ready for the doorstopper A Suitable Boy just yet, but I’m very glad Gareth suggested this one. And it’s a useful reminder that good writing can overcome all the prejudices I have in terms of topic and character. I suppose every theme has its variations.

The Silent Twins by Marjorie Wallace

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I was reading The Cross of Christ by John Stott for my 1986 entry in A Century of Books, but it’s a big book and felt too important a read to rush through for the sake of a reading challenge. And so I turned to the other 1986 books waiting on my shelves – it turns out I have a lot, and I was toying with Margaret Forster, Henrietta Garnett, Penelope Fitzgerald, Diana Athill, Quentin Bell, Barbara Pym… but settled, in the end, of The Silent Twins by Marjorie Wallace.

I don’t remember exactly the conversation that led to this, but Kim (of Reading Matters) kindly sent me her copy back in 2012 – I think perhaps the twins were mentioned in an Oliver Sacks book? – and it’s been waiting patiently until then. The edition is a 1998 reprint, including a new chapter, and is clearly marketed to fit into the post-David-Pelzer proliferation of misery memoirs. The tagline – ‘the harrowing true story of sisters locked in a shocking childhood pact’ – is nonsense that does the sensitive book a disservice.

June and Jennifer Gibbons are the twins of the title, born in Yemen and growing up in Haverfordwest in Wales (a pretty miserable town, I have to say, having gone there a few years ago). The Gibbons were a loving family, excited to add to their number – and, having moved to Wales, were dealing well with the tensions that came from being one the few black families in their 1960s community. But as the girls grew older, they were clearly different from their family and from local families. They were more or less elective mutes – speaking to each other in words so fast and curiously stressed that it sounded like another language, but never speaking to their parents or older siblings. Their younger sister was the exception to the rule.

Baffling teachers, June and Jennifer didn’t seem to match any evident diagnosis – and, indeed, Wallace doesn’t attempt to give them a diagnosis. Trapped in a world of their own, spending hours in their bedroom with their dolls and stories as they grew older, they were an enigma to the world at large. Limp and uncommunicative in public, they clearly had a ferociously active sororal relationship. They also wrote prolifically – fiction (which they furtively sent off to publishers, and eventually self-published) but also diaries. Wallace uses these diaries – which they wrote for years, covering enormous quantities of pages in tiny handwriting, to recreate their experiences. Often we see things from their perspective in the narrative, with the diaries silently referenced – most movingly when they deal with how much June and Jennifer love their family, even while never expressing it or communicating with them at all.

In their later teens, things changed. They start stalking some brothers. They lose their virginities with frantic determination. And they go on a spree of ill-concealed burglary and arson that will lead to them going to court – and, ultimately, Broadmoor. On a life sentence (of which they served eleven years), for crimes that usually warranted a few months’ sentence.

It is a fascinating tale, and Wallace does her best to show us the deeply complex relationship between June and Jennifer – drawing from the diaries, because of how little she or anybody else can see of it from the outside. And the power dynamics and repressions behind those silent exteriors were truly extraordinary.

Time and again the twins returned to this theme. They saw themselves as the ultimate unhappy couple, Jennifer as the quirky, irascible husband, June the victim wife, and although they switched roles in most of their other games, in this they remained consistent.

The ‘silent’ of the title isn’t quite true. As they got older, they spoke more – and seemed to have held relatively normal conversations with the teenagers they became involved with, as well as answering Wallace’s questions at least at times. But their twin relationship certainly plays into some of the stereotypes associated with twins in the popular consciousness – that we inhabit a world apart, unknowable to outsiders, and that the relationship might be unhealthy or dangerous. I can’t count the number of times people have asked me if Colin and I have a secret language, or if we can feel each other’s pain, or communicate psychically. Or, more generally, what it’s like to be a twin. Well, as I’ve said before, I can’t imagine what it’s like not to be a twin – but I also can’t imagine what it’s like to be in the closed and claustrophobic world June and Jennifer inhabited. My relationship with Colin is the most special in my life, and I don’t doubt that there are dynamics there that no other relationship could have, but it’s definitely not the curious mix of passionate hatred, obsessive love, and controlling fear that the Gibbons had. Theirs is truly a unique existence.

As for the writing – I think Wallace used the diaries well, and told their story without being unduly melodramatic. Indeed, I found the whole thing curiously sedated. It’s not bad writing by any means, but having discovered Janet Malcolm and Julie Salamon this year, I have new high standards for this variety of non-fiction. Wallace felt a bit unambitious in the way she wrote – though you could also argue that she was letting the extraordinary circumstances tell their own story. And they did do that, but I think I’d have valued the book even more if there was a little more to the writing.

I’m glad to have finally read it – thank you, Kim!