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The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore

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I don’t remember who originally told me about The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1955) by Brian Moore, but that recommendation was enough for me to buy it in 2012. A few people read it for the 1955 Club a little while ago, and I’d read so many positive reviews that I finally read it. Yes, it’s rather brilliant! (By the way, I’ve included a copy of the NYRB Classics edition because it’s beautiful; mine was a film tie-in, with Maggie Smith on the cover, and it was made me want to seek out the film…)

Here are the first couple of paragraphs, to whet your appetite:

The first thing Miss Judith Hearne unpacked in her new lodgings was the silver-framed photograph of her aunt. The place for her aunt, ever since the sad day of the funeral, was on the mantelpiece of whatever bed-sitting-room Miss Hearne happened to be living in. And as she put her up now, the photograph eyes were stern and questioning, sharing Miss Hearne’s own misgivings about the condition of the bed-springs, the shabbiness of the furniture and the run-down part of Belfast in which the room was situated.

After she had arranged the photograph so that her dear aunt could look at her from the exact centre of the mantelpiece, Miss Hearne unwrapped the white tissue paper which covered the coloured oleograph of the Sacred Heart. His place was at the head of the bed, His fingers raised in benediction. His eyes kindly yet accusing. He was old and the painted halo around His head was beginning to show little cracks. He had looked down on Miss Hearne for a long time, almost half her lifetime.

Judith Hearne is settling into a boarding house, uncertain about how she will be perceived and how she will fit in. These two pictures sum up her life – a devoted Catholic faith, and a longing for any sort of family. But she has her pride, and – on a quest for a hammer, to put in a nail for her oleograph – she is reluctant to jump straight into a friendship with her talkative landlady and the landlady’s overgrown, ugly adult son. But she is rather taken by the landlady’s brother, James Madden – an Irishman who has recently returned from many decades in the US, possibly returning wealthy.

The other friendships she has outside the house are with Moira and her various children – all of whom mock her behind her back, and see the weekly cup of tea as a chore that they can take in turns. These scenes encapsulate what Moore does so very well – showing us the pain that comes not only from Judith Hearne’s loneliness but from her self-awareness. She knows that the family are tired of her, and she notices when they exchange glances at her comments. With James Madden, she has immediate, desperate visions of them falling in love and marrying – but she is no fantasist. She knows her visions are fake, and can’t happen. There is no escape for her in fantasy.

I’ll read more or less anything set in a boarding house, and Moore is brilliant at the enclosure of it – the proximity of strangers and the factions that develop between them. This proximity is even the reason for a rape scene that is very troubling, and I don’t think would be written in quite the same way today – it is written as a terrible crime, but there is little aftermath.

What Moore is best at is developing the portrait of Judith Hearne – her desperation, her melancholy, her stupidity, her hopes and the ways in which she protects them from the eyes of others. Her crisis of faith is dealt with sensitively and without the sneer of the cynic. She is a complete and miserable character, whose life could have been far more complete – but who, one suspects, would always have managed to spoil things, or to let the fly in the ointment overwhelm and destroy her. It is impossible not to feel for her; it is impossible not to realise that she is her own worst enemy.

All this Moore achieves through superlative writing. It reminded me a lot of Patrick Hamilton in its vitality, though perhaps without the dry wit – here is more the humour of hysteria, albeit subdued hysteria. I’m so glad I finally read it – and I hope his other novels are as good.

Looking for Enid by Duncan McLaren

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I love books where the writer discusses how authors have shaped them, or where they find parallels between their lives and the books they’ve read. Lucy Mangan’s Bookworm was fab; Katharine Smyth’s All The Lives We Ever Lived is likely to be on my best books of 2019. So I’ve been quietly keen to read Duncan McLaren’s Looking for Enid (2007) ever since I bought it in 2011 – and Project Names finally elevated it to the top of the pile. Well, colour me disappointed. If you don’t like reading negative reviews, then stop reading now.

Enid Blyton (which other Enid could it be?) was one of the founding authors of my childhood. She was practically the founding author – I was obsessed with her, and read almost nothing else for a handful of years. So a book following her life, and relating the author’s own memories of reading Blyton, was really promising.

We do get some of that. As McLaren takes his friend/maybe more than friend Kate on travels around the country, we learn about Blyton’s marriages and how she behaved as a mother. We marvel at her prodigious output. Much of this is openly taken from Barbara Stoney’s biography, but that’s fine. It’s quite entertaining to see McLaren pop up at Blyton meet-ups, join internet forums, and hunt for Blyton books in charity shops. Much of the format of the book could have worked (with some notable exceptions that I’ll get to).

My main and overriding problem with Looking for Enid is that McLaren is not a very good writer. That doesn’t usually matter as much in non-fiction as it does in fiction, because the interest of the topic can support workmanlike prose, but McLaren’s sentences are flat and awkward. The tone aims at informal and just ends up sounding like notes for a draft. Here’s a representative paragraph:

Well, no, I shouldn’t read it aloud! The librarian would be sure to think I was taking the mickey. The tiny little knock comes from a fairy, of course, and the second and third verses tell how the fairy stays for a glass of milk but is the scared off by the crying of the baby. Charming. I wish I did have the guts to read it aloud. Or perhaps I should read aloud the first verse of the facing poem: ‘Lonely’. In this, the poet goes out into the garden, as lonely as can be, and finds a fairy sitting beneath a chestnut tree. Would that have been the chestnut tree at Elfin Cottage? Anyway, tears were rolling down the fairy’s cheeks because he was lonely too. So the poet played bat and ball with him and they had a lovely time together. Eventually the poet’s healthy appetite meant that she had to go in for tea. She walked indoors, conscious that the fairy at the bottom of the garden was much happier now that he had got a friend like her. Charming, once again!

I made it to the end of the book, but it really is mediocre. And that’s even before we talk about the more unusual additions that profit neither man nor beast. The most obvious is that he ends each chapter with lengthy sections in the style of the Five Find-Outer series, which are mercifully marked out with small pictures in the margin, so I could skip them after a bit. A similar technique sneaks more insidiously into the rest of the book, as he often imagines conversations between Enid and others – usually in the style of her characters’ exchanges – and will flit in and out of these. Then there are images reproduced from the books which he has labelled ‘This is her…’ where the ‘…’ is replaced with different names – such as Bets, George, Father. I didn’t have a clue what that was meant to achieve. Some of his conclusions are bizarrely wrongheaded – like the seemingly genuine belief that Theophilus Goon is an intentional anagram of ‘O Hugh spoilt one’…

He mentions along the way that Looking for Enid is intended to be about her relationships with the different men in her life, but that doesn’t feel an especially dominant theme. And when he gets prurient about Enid’s sex life (and wildly oversharing about his own), I despaired. I was going to quote some of it, but, honestly, why would I put you through that? Besides being present for his sexual self-revelations, Kate – presumably a real person – is only there to say “Oh, do go on” as he puts all sorts of ramblings about Enid into extremely unlikely long-form dialogue. I hope, for her sake, that their conversations didn’t quite go like that.

I chiefly find it a shame that potential was so wasted. And it’s unlikely that anybody else will feel they can write anything similar anytime soon, because McLaren has taken this corner of the market. Frankly, don’t bother – seek out Barbara Stoney’s biography instead.

The next club is announced!

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Thanks so much for all your wonderful contributions to the 1965 Club! Any latecomers welcome – I’ll add any remaining reviews to the list, though it might be a bit delayed. And thanks as always to my wonderful co-host Karen!

Karen and I had a chat about to do for the next club, in October, and we’ve plumped for 1930. We haven’t done any beginning-of-a-decade years yet, and there are quite a few big hitters you can turn to if needed. And I’ll almost certainly be re-reading Diary of a Provincial Lady by E.M. Delafield for the zillionth time…

You have six months to think about it, of course. We look forward to seeing all the contributions then – the new badge we’ll be using is to the right.

Stoner by John Williams #1965Club

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Everybody was reading Stoner by John Williams about seven years ago, largely because Vintage Books sent a review copy to pretty much everyone in the known universe. According to Kim’s review for the 1965 club, it was also the toast of the book blogging world around 2005, but that was before I joined it. Well, better late than never, I’ve finally read it – and isn’t it brilliant?

I had put it off for ages because all I knew about it was (a) it was set in a university, and (b) it was called Stoner. So perhaps naturally, I’d assumed it was about drug-taking. Mais non – Stoner is, rather, the lead character in this novel that looks at his life from studenthood and though the following decades.

Stoner has left a farming family for the bright lights of university – leaving the agriculture course for the English literature course, once he discovers his deep love for that subject. At the same time, he thinks he may have fallen in love with the beautiful, distant Edith. She gives him little encouragement, but he is beguiled, and they marry.

It is not a successful marriage – but it does produce a daughter, Grace, to whom Stoner is patiently devoted, and whom he almost single-handedly looks after in her infancy.

The trials of an impetuous marriage are one strand of the novel; the other is Stoner’s career as an English lecturer. He is, at first, competent but little more. I loved reading about his transformation into an inspiring teacher:

When he lectured, he now and then found himself so lost in his subject that he became forgetful of his inadequacy, of himself, and even of the students before him. Now and then he became so caught by his enthusiasm that he stuttered, gesticulated, and ignored the lecture notes that usually guided his talks. At first he was disturbed by his outbursts, as if he presumed too familiarly upon his subject, and he apologised to his students; but when they began coming up to him after class, and when in their papers they began to show hints of imagination and the revelation of a tentative love, he was encouraged to do what he had never been taught to do. The love of literature, language, of the mystery of the mind and heart showing themselves in the minute, strange, and unexpected combinations of letters and words, in the blackest and coldest print – the love which he had hidden as if it were illicit and dangerous, he began to display, tentatively at first, and then boldly, and then proudly.

I suspect Williams shared Stoner’s love of literature and of studying it – or, if not, is very good at conveying it. It reminded me of the most glorious moments of revelation I felt while studying. Any writer who can manage to put across the wonder of literature is doing something great in my book.

But things are not so simple here, either. He has friends in the department, but he also makes an enemy – one with long-lasting effects on his personal and professional lives.

Those lives are distinct throughout much of Stoner, not least because his wife has very limited interest in his career. I wondered if this was a fault of the novel, but I suppose it rings true. Many of his find that the traits we have in the workplace do not quite translate outside of it, and perhaps it is accurate that Stoner’s determined enthusiasm in the classroom finds its opposite in his passivity within marriage. He is certainly a rounded and convincing character – so sympathetic, and yet often frustrating.

Above all, Stoner is stunningly written. The prose is somehow beautiful and poetic without ever seeming to stray from everyday language. It is an amazing combination, and I don’t know how he achieves – nor how he makes this gradually unwinding portrait of a man and his environment so compelling to read.

The only significant criticism I have it is that Edith, his wife, is less well drawn. Her character is always a little undeveloped, and her nature changes so often and so violently that she often seems only a foil for the next stage of Stoner’s life. The psychology behind her actions is often explained, but never quite as convincing as the totally believable motivations (good or bad) behind everything Stoner says and does.

But, yes, I can see why this was such a success when reprinted – and I’m thrilled that the 1965 Club meant I finally read it.

I. Compton-Burnett by Charles Burkhart – #1965Club

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Ivy Compton-Burnett didn’t publish a book in 1965 – indeed, she didn’t publish one after 1963, except posthumously – but that’s no reason why I can’t find a way to sneak her into the 1965 Club. Because thankfully Charles Burkhart published a book all about her in that year. He seems to have written several books about ICB, and who can blame him, but this one is stridently called I. Compton-Burnett. (Incidentally, he is not the musicologist, so far as I can tell.)

This book is low on pages (about 130), but each is jam-packed with text, so it’s not quite as short as it initially seems. In it, Burkhart attempts an overview of all of ICB’s writing, identifying the main characteristics of it and, fairly often, defending her against prevailing opinion. His expertise in her work is quite dizzying, and it makes for a very satisfying inquiry – even if I did have to skim past quite a bit, having still got nine of her books to read,

The opening is of especial interest for the 1965 Club, as it attempts to set the literary scene. While asking why she is so well-reviewed and so little read, Burkhart also makes a few comments about the state of 1965:

Advertising is one of the typical arts of our age; and since it is a noisy age, there is a sustained shout of superlatives for every new product, whether of the literary imagination or the soap manufacturer. On the dust jackets of their books, all writers are praised; because the ‘soft sell’ has not yet reached the publishing world, the same tired troop (“remarkable”, “powerful”, “stirring”, and so on) are deployed for every first novel about sensitive adolescence, every raw and wriggling specimen of neo-romantic neo-brutalism. The babble of adjectives is sustained at such intensity, especially in America, that it tends to move right out of the range of human hearing. It is charity to suppose that this was the intention.

Every age considers itself frighteningly modern, of course, and these censures have only increased. But what is interesting is his identification of her novels as portraying the ‘eccentric family’, and doing so eccentrically – and seeing how eccentricity is considered by the critics and the masses. It is a very intelligent and well-judged exploration that makes no assumptions.

He goes on to consider the archetypal plots of ICB novels – tyrants, secrets, secrets being revealed, neighbours prying etc. – but is quick to say that they are not all the same, and nor are all the characters or their dialogue amorphous. I have been guilty of saying that her novels are all alike, but Burkhart is correct. Compton-Burnett’s signature is always clear, but the characters are almost always fully-formed, and the dialogue filled with individual traits. They perhaps all have the same unworldly register, but retain their own idiolects nonetheless. As he points out, in disputing the idea that her characters are characterless, the reader is never in any doubt about what any one character thinks about any other. Considering her households are always filled with many people (often around 20), this is extremely impressive. He also quotes Frank Kermode, who describe how conversations progress in ICB’s novels perfectly: “by exploiting in each remark unobvious logical and syntactical implications in the previous one”.

After looking at various themes (religion, ethos, money etc.), the final chapter looks at each novel in turn – assessing their quality, highlighting their successes, and reminding me of which I have or haven’t read.

I. Compton-Burnett is certainly not an introduction to that author – it only really works if you’ve read a substantial number of her novels already, and perhaps is only truly for the person who has read everything ICB wrote. But I loved it. Such an indulgence to read somebody who appreciates ICB as much as I do, and knows her work far more intimately. How I agree with him when he says “in comparison with her writing[,] most other modern writing seems unfinished, its aim diffuse and its style impure”. I’m not sure he answers the question that you might be able to make out in the photo above – Burkhart makes no grand conclusions about ICB’s greatness or the likelihood of her longevity. Judging by the fact that she is completely out of print in the UK (I think), it’s not looking good for her posterity in 2065 – but she has her devoted audience still, and this book would be a welcome addition to any of their libraries.

The Mandelbaum Gate by Muriel Spark #1965Club

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I hadn’t realised I was quite so close to the end of Muriel Spark’s prolific output – having read The Mandelbaum Gate for the 1965 Club, I’ve now read 19 of her 22 novels. Yep, I like Spark a lot. And one of the things I tend to like about her is how much she packs into a short work. Many of her books are around 200 pages or fewer – whereas The Mandelbaum Gate is just a few pages shy of 400. How would I feel about one of her longest books?

Sometimes, instead of a letter to thank his hostess, Freddy Hamilton would compose a set of formal verses – rondeaux, redoubles, villanelles, rondels, or Sicilian octaves – to express his thanks neatly. It was part of his modest nature to do this. He always felt he had perhaps been boring during his stay, and it was one’s duty in life to be agreeable. Not so much at the time as afterwards, he felt it keenly on his conscience that he had said no word between the soup and the fish when the bright talk began; he felt at fault in retrospect of the cocktail hours when he had contributed nothing but the smile for which he had been renowned in his pram and, in the following fifty years, elsewhere.

That’s the opening paragraph, and we are immediately in Spark territory. Who else would have written that final bit? And who else would start off a novel with a quirky, irrelevant meandering about different forms of poetry. Freddy has something like diplomatic immunity, and crosses back and forth between Israel and Jordan – through the Mandelbaum gate – through which many others cannot pass. (By the way, the gate was named after a man who owned a nearby house, and so it sneaks into #ProjectNames by stealth.)

One of the people who probably should be more cautious about passing through the gate is Barbara Vaughan, a ‘half-Jewish Catholic’ who has followed her archaeologist fiancé out to the Holy Land. As a character points out, you can’t be half-Jewish – as her mother was Jewish, so was she – but Barbara is a keen Catholic who is awaiting confirmation about whether or not her fiancé’s first marriage can be annulled by the church.

And, indeed, something happens to her. In true Spark style, the moment is thrown into conversation casually, sometime after it has happened – before we dart back and forth in time and location. To add to the confusion, Freddy suffers temporary memory loss (perhaps because of sunstroke; perhaps because of something more sinister), and so when he is the ‘future’ section, he can’t remember what we have yet to learn in the ‘past’ section.

If you’ve read much Spark, you’ll be familiar with how she plays fast and loose with narrative conventions, and particularly the idea that things should be relayed in chronological order. In most of her novels, the narrator will throw in prolepsis that reveals, in a darting moment, something that might have been the denouement in the hands of another writer. Well, if she does that in a 200 page novel, she does it doubly so in a 400 page novel. I’m not going to lie – I was often quite confused, but I went with it.

Because what made The Mandelbaum Gate enjoyable is what makes most of her novels enjoyable – the peculiar characters, never quite behaving how you expect. The wry narrative voice that doesn’t trouble to make things too easy for the reader. And delightful turns of phrase. Always expect the unexpected.

It did feel to read something set in Israel and Jordan, and it is very concretely set in a particular time – 1961, to be precise, during the trial of Adolf Eichmann, which makes occasional appearances in the background. The cast of characters goes far beyond Freddy and Barbara, and I was particularly fond of Alexandros, a shopkeeper who has befriended Freddy.

As I said, I didn’t always know what was going on, and the disorientation is at least partly deliberate. And I don’t think The Mandelbaum Gate is quite the same success that her shorter novels can be – but I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I might. I thought Spark’s powers and peculiarities might be spread far too thinly over a longer book – but she sustained them in an admirable, if not quite as perfect, a way.

 

-time

The #1965Club is here!

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Six months rolls around quickly, doesn’t it? The #1965club has arrived! This week, Karen and I are asking everybody to read and review books published in 1965. Put your reviews on your blogs, GoodReads, LibraryThing, YouTube, in the comments here, or wherever you like! Pop the link in the comments, and I’ll do a round-up. Together, we can put together a picture of the year.

To whet the appetite, you can hear me talking about the club years on The Book Club Review Podcast – it was lovely to be invited along. Listen here, or via your podcast app of choice.

The Drought by J.G. Ballard

Annabookbel

A Season in the Life of Emmanuel by Marie-Claire Blais

Buried in Print

I. Compton-Burnett by Charles Burkhart

Stuck in a Book

At Bertram’s Hotel by Agatha Christie

Booked For Life

Sofia Petrovna by Lydia Chukovskaya

ANZ LitLovers LitBlog
Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings

Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper

Staircase Wit
She Reads Novels

Helen Keller’s Teacher by Margaret Davidson

Staircase Wit

The Millstone by Margaret Drabble

Book Jotter

The Flight of the Falcon by Daphne du Maurier

Lizzy’s Literary Life

Georgy Girl by Margaret Forster

Finding Time To Write

The Magus by John Fowles

Booked For Life
Typings

Hotel by Arthur Hailey

Dolce Belleza

Dune by Frank Herbert

Becky’s Book Reviews

Frederica by Georgette Heyer

What Me Read

The Young Spaniard by Mary Hocking

HeavenAli

After Julius by Elizabeth Jane Howard

JacquiWine

Closely Watched Trains by Bohumil Hrabal

A Fiction Habit
Shoshi’s Book Blog

Trixie Belden and the Mystery of the Mississippi by Kathryn Kenny

My Reader’s Block

Garden, Ashes by Danilo Kiš

Winstonsdad’s Blog

The Looking-Glass War by John le Carre

Pining for the West

The Lady and the Little Fox Fur by Violette Leduc

Bag Full of Books

A Spaniard in the Works by John Lennon

Briefer than Literal Statement

Acts of Worship by Yukio Mishima

Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings

The Lie by Albert Moravio

1st Readings

Accident by Nicholas Mosley

Mr Kaggsy

The River Between by James Ngugi

Typings

Modesty Blaise by Peter O’Donnell

Annabookbel

Lost Empires by J.B. Priestley

Pining for the West

The Blue Flowers by Raymond Queneau

1st Reading’s Blog

Astragal by Albertine Sarrazin

Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings

God Bless You, Mr Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut

Booked For Life

Roseanna by Maj Sjowall and Per Walloo

Harriet Devine
Lizzy’s Literary Life

The Town in Bloom by Dodie Smith

Karen’s Books and Chocolate

The Mandelbaum Gate by Muriel Spark

Stuck in a Book
HeavenAli

Airs Above the Ground by Mary Stewart

Staircase Wit

Monday Starts on Saturday by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

Finding Time To Write

The Mark of the Horse Lord by Rosemary Sutcliff

She Reads Novels
Pining for the West

The Belting Inheritance by Julian Symons

Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings

The Lunatics by Ion Vinea

Finding Time To Write

Stoner by John Williams

Reading Matters
Stuck in a Book

The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth by Roger Zelazny

Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings

Stuck in a Book’s Weekend Miscellany

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I hope you’re having a wonderful Easter weekend. It’s beautiful weather here as I write this, on Good Friday, and I’ve spent a happy hour or so reading The Hours while pulling out weeds. More exciting plans to follow during the rest of the weekend! For now, the usual miscellany.

1.) The link – is a wonderful article about Persephone Books in the New York Times magazine, including some really beautiful photographs of the shop. It probably won’t tell you anything you don’t already know, if you’re a Persephone devotee, but it’s lovely to read nonetheless. And, as a bonus, here’s a video for a pilot of ‘Fran’s Book Shop’, featuring bookish interviews in the Persephone shop.

2.) The blog post – another reading week opportunity! In the first week of July, Helen from A Gallimaufry will be running a Sylvia Townsend Warner reading week. I’ll certainly be joining in, probably with some more of STW’s exceptional short stories.

3.) The book – The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr. It’s another of those books I’ve seen mentioned on Twitter and can’t remember who by – but lots of people are saying that it’s already one of the best books about how to write. “If you want to write a novel, read this book,” say the Sunday Times, and reader, I do want to write a novel.

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

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I knew Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine (2017) by Gail Honeyman had been successful, but I’d no idea how successful until the book stats came out last year. This was a runaway bestseller, getting hundreds of thousands more purchases than the next novel in the list – at least according to the list I read. When my book group chose to do it, I was a little dubious. Other mammoth bestsellers of recent years have definitely been low on quality – i.e. The Da Vinci Code. Well, I was happy to be proved wrong. This is a case where I think the hype was pretty justified.

In case you’re one of those others who’ve yet to read it – the novel is from the perspective of Eleanor Oliphant, who works in finance administration and lives alone. She isn’t very at ease socially, largely because she doesn’t understand the ways that people choose to spend their time. She has very little popular culture knowledge, and tends to speak as a mix between an eighteenth-century novel and a computer manual. (Her dialogue – never using abbreviations; overly elaborate sentences – never quite made sense to me as a concept, but we’ll leave that be.)

It’s also clear that she is not completely fine.

Gradually we piece together that something traumatic happened to her as a child, and it has continued to affect the way she engages with other people. She also longs for a way out of the loneliness she experiences. It was an interesting coincidence that the epigraph was from Olivia Laing’s The Lonely City, which I’m reading at the moment. Living alone definitely doesn’t have to mean loneliness, but Eleanor feels isolated from the rest of humanity. And her attempts to cross this divide are usually frustrated by her inability to understand social codes – and often not particularly liking the range of options in front of her.

This changes when she sees a handsome young singer. She realises she is in love, and destined to be with him. He will be the solution to her problems.

Honeyman takes us on a compelling journey with Eleanor, as she tries to orchestrate ways to get closer to the singer. At the same time, she has made her first friend – Raymond, a colleague who can see past her off-putting traits. At the same time, we continue to learn more about her past. Honeyman gives us enough info to guess and make assumptions, and little enough that we’re desperate to get more answers. It’s really impressively judged. So often, this sort of bread-crumb-dropping is just annoying, whereas Honeyman knows exactly how much info to give, and when. And even when I thought I’d worked it out, I hadn’t.

It’s a relatively long book, but very compelling – I raced through it in a couple of days. As mentioned, I’m not sure all the verbal tics quite made sense, but I did like that Eleanor is an anomaly but not repellent. Plenty of people in the book think she’s being funny when she’s really just answering their questions differently from how they anticipated. Her colleagues find her hard to talk to, but warm to her when she tries different approaches.

Oh, and there is the most wonderful CAT!

For a debut novel, it’s very impressive. I’m intrigued to see what comes next – and what the film will be like. It’s good to be a part of the zeitgeist sometimes!

The Overhaul #1

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One of my favourite varieties of blog post to write, or to read, is a book haul. It’s always interesting to see what sorts of books people select when many are on offer – and I love writing and receiving the comments that cheer on one of the books, or ask what a book is about.

But what happens next?

Well, I decided to start a series looking at previous book hauls, called ‘The Overhaul’. It’s a really clever pun if you don’t think about it for too long and discover that it’s kinda meaningless. In this intermittent series, I’ll be looking back at previous ‘haul’ blog posts, seeing what I have and haven’t read (and why), and generally chastising myself, I suspect. IS my brother correct that I should read the books I have on my shelves rather than buying more? All that to come. FUN.

Feel free to borrow the idea and the image, if you fancy doing anything similar. I’ll keep doing it if people like the idea and/or if I enjoy the retrospective.

The Overhaul #1

The original haul post is here.

Date of haul: July 2011

Location: Hay-on-Wye

Number of books bought: 19

Now let’s take a look at the books individually…

  • Jenny Wren by E.H. Young

I have yet to read this, though I have read a handful of other EHY books over the years since 2011.

 

  • The Vicar’s Daughter by E.H. Young

Er, see above. I should totally read some more E.H. Young. A couple have names in the title, so maybe they’ll come next.

 

  • Through a Glass Darkly: the life of Patrick Hamilton by Nigel Jones

Not only have I not read this, I haven’t even read another novel by Hamilton since 2011. C’mon, Si!

 

  • The Letters of Evelyn Waugh ed. Mark Amory

Erm, I’ve used it to rest my laptop on. Does that count?

 

  • The Corner That Held Them by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Hurrah! One I’ve read! Though sadly I hated it. Lots of people really rate this many-centuries look at a nunnery, but I’m afraid I found it really dull. I held onto it, because I want my STW collection to be in tact, but I’m not sure it’ll stay forever.

 

  • Jill by Philip Larkin

Ermmm ok, I might read this for Project Names.

 

  • The Second Mrs Tanqueray by Arthur Wing Pinero

OK, I’d actually read a library copy of this before I bought it, but I’m still putting it in the ‘read’ pile.

 

  • The Victorian Chaise-Longue by Marghanita Laski

I’d already read this too. This was a Penguin edition, which I have since discarded in favour of the Persephone edition.

 

  • The Swan in the Evening by Rosamond Lehmann

Not read it – but I have read two of her novels now, whereas I was accumulating her in 2011 and earlier without having read a word she’d written.

 

  • Safety Pins by Christopher Morley

I read this one, and in 2011 too! It’s delightful.

 

  • Shaving Through the Blitz by G.W. Stonier

AND I read this one in 2011 – observational essays from WW2, from a very unusual character.

 

  • The Ballad of Peckham Rye by Muriel Spark

I read this one in 2012, during the Muriel Spark Reading Week that Harriet and I held (maybe it’ll be time for another before too long?) It’s Spark on strong form, about a man who arrives in town and may or may not be the devil.

 

  • A Reckoning by May Sarton

I haven’t seen this for a while, but I’m going to assume it’s on my shelves somewhere… unread.

 

  • Messages From My Father by Calvin Trillin

I’ve read three books by Trillin since 2011, but this was not one of them.

 

  • A Baker’s Dozen by Llewelyn Powys

While I never got around to blogging about this, I did read and very much enjoy Powys’ reflections on life growing up as the son of a Montacute vicar.

 

  • The Shakespeare Wallah by Geoffrey Kendal

Unread. I did start watching the film and it was terrible.

 

  • The Island of the Colorblind by Oliver Sacks

There are plenty of unread Sacks books on my shelves, but I *have* read this one! Not my favourite of his, but very interesting nonetheless – looking at an island where a high percentage of the inhabitants are colourblind.

 

  • Gin & Ginger by Lady Kitty Vincent
  • Lipstick by Lady Kitty Vincent

I think I read these almost immediately, and they’re great fun. When a book starts “No, my dear, I cannot say that I really know the Bishop of Runnymede”, you know you’re in for a treat, don’t you?

 

Total bought: 19

Total still unread: 9

Total no longer owned: 1