Bill the Conqueror by P.G. Wodehouse

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Somewhat surprisingly, given that it was all about children’s books, Lucy Mangan’s Bookworm had me heading straight to the bookshelf for a P.G. Wodehouse. She wrote a very convincing comparison of Richmal Crompton’s WIlliam books and P.G. Wodehouse’s novels – if you like one, you’ll almost certainly like the other – and I went to my many unread PWGs. The only one that fit an unclaimed ACOB year, though, was Bill the Conqueror (1924).

I don’t think this is one of Wodehouse’s better-known novels – it’s not part of the Jeeves and Wooster series, or the Blandings series, though apparently some of the characters in it do pop up in other books. And what a dizzying number of characters it has, spread over both sides of the Atlantic. It’s apparently a matter of comparative ease to pop from one side to the other, and I got rather confused about who was where. But let me give a try at working out who is who and what is what…

In England, Flick is engaged to Roderick, the weak son of a newspaper magnate, but she is still in love with Bill (who lives in the US, and once saved her life). He’s besotted with his friend Judson’s sister (Alice), and also has a brainwave to start earning his own living – which happens just as his uncle disinherits the family, as he’s just adopted an uninspiring child. Bill and Judson sail off to London so Bill can work for the family pulping firm, which is in the midst of fraud. I feel like there are other subplots too, but I can’t remember all of them – even for Wodehouse, there’s a lot going on. Potentially a bit too much. Usually he winds everything together brilliantly at the end – here, there was nothing left unresolved, but some of it felt a bit extraneous.

I don’t think anybody reads Wodehouse because they’re desperate for a couple to find love. Indeed, there is quite a contrast between Bertie Wooster (who is forever getting engaged by accident, and then trying to extricate himself) and the heroes of PGW’s stand-alone novels, who are usually starry-eyed lovers who’ve fallen in love at first sight. And, yes, I didn’t really care which woman’s heart Bill conquered – I’m here for Wodehouse’s hilarious writing.

And the writing is very good in Bill the Conqueror. It has Wodehouse’s usual winning combination of litotes and hyperbole – I particularly like it when he makes an unnecessary and over-the-top reference to Greek myth, making ordinary situations jolt into the extremely dramatic, but only for the span of a sentence. But there weren’t any so-amazingly-funny-I-have-to-write-them-down moments. And his humour was a bit more intermittent than when he’s on his finest form.

It was lovely to go back to Wodehouse after too long a break, and this was an engaging, funny delight. If it had been by any other author, I’d be shouting my discovery from the rooftops. But Wodehouse is SO brilliant that I think it’s worth starting somewhere else – probably one of the Jeeves books. And it’s good to know that there are any number of books where Wodehouse will provide reliable fun – plenty of them still on my shelves.

Some books for International Women’s Day

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It’s International Women’s Day, and a good opportunity to celebrate women’s achievements around the world, as well as highlighting the areas where women still face disproportionate risk, disadvantage, or discrimination. If I were a better reader, I’d be able to suggest lots of books on those themes [EDITED TO ADD: Claire has basically made that list] – but, to be honest, my reading is so Anglocentric and from-the-past that I can’t pull together that list. Nor is there really any significant point in me highlighting women authors, since most of the books I read are by women and I wouldn’t know where to start.

So – instead, I’ve put together a list of great books by women that have a woman’s name as the title. No other words – just the name. It’s a way of commemorating the day, I suppose, though I also encourage everyone to sign petitions, go on marches, donate to charities, challenge discrimination, and so forth! This list are mostly the ones that came to me first, so I’ll certainly have missed many great ones – which would you suggest, with these criteria?

I’ve tried to avoid the most obvious ones – so, yes, I love Emma, Rebecca, and Mrs Dalloway – but here are some you might not be as familiar with.

Cluny Brown by Margery Sharp

Cluny is a wonderful character – a girl who is plain but has Presence, and disconcerts her Uncle Arn to the extent that he bundles her away from London, off to Devon to be a maid. She then gets embroiled in the household there. Sharp is quite unlike any other writer I’ve read, and Cluny is a frenetic joy. (I wrote about it here.)

Miss Mole by E.H. Young

Another joy of a character – a talkative, inquisitive woman who is a burden to her snobbish relatives. She heads off to be a housekeeper (if memory serves) and, yes, also gets embroiled in various other people’s lives. Also surprising pathos in the novel.

Lila by Marilynne Robinson

I often talk about how much I love Gilead, but the whole trilogy is brilliant. The third book (though they can be read in any order) shows us Lila’s life – giving greater depth to the woman we have previously seen as wife and mother, seeing her as an disadvantaged child and as the young, desperate, quiet, confused woman she first was.

Mrs Harter by E.M. Delafield

Being honest, I remember very little about the novel – which I read about 15 years ago. But I always think of it as being rather like seeing heaps of crispy leaves on the ground in autumn. Make of that what you will.

Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Technically the character is called Laura, but some people call her Lolly, so I’m counting it. She is a neglected and burdened aunt, living in her brother’s house – but decides to escape and move to village isolation. It’s a truly excellent domestic novel – and then turns into something much stranger.

Angel by Elizabeth Taylor

Quite unlike any of Taylor’s other novels, this shows the ruthlessly selfish and egotistical Angel from girlhood to her huge success as a Marie-Corelli-esque novelist: terrible, but unaware of it, and selling in her thousands. It’s a very brave portrait for a novelist to create, and flawlessly carried out.

Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte

OK, this one is pretty well known – but I have to mention it, as it’s often neglected in comparison to the other Bronte sisters’ works. Agnes is a quiet, moral woman who gets a job as a governess with some terrible children – and then falls in love. It’s a simple but perfectly structured masterpiece.

Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers

If you’ve not read the book, please do. Travers’ character doesn’t have a lot in common with rosy-cheeked Julie Andrews. In the books, she is snippy, lies quite a lot, and stands no nonsense. And it’s all the better for it.

Mrs Miniver by Jan Struther

Speaking of characters who aren’t like the film – this Mrs Miniver is the quintessential British housewife of the 1930s, but the war hasn’t begun by the time the book ends. Light, observant, and a delight.

Comments and spam

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Just a quick note that I’m having some issues with comments and spam – I’ve just changed the anti-spam plugin I use, that will hopefully fix the problem. Please bear with me! I appreciate your comments SO much, and I’d hate for technical jibber-jabber to get in the way of that.

Bookworm by Lucy Mangan

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I heard about Bookworm (2018) by Lucy Mangan on Twitter, I think, or perhaps another blog – but as soon as I’d heard the subtitle (‘a memoir of childhood reading’) I knew that I had to read it. I think it was in a Weekend Miscellany. Thankfully Square Peg sent me a copy, and I wolfed it down – it’s very hard to imagine any bibliophile not loving this book. Though I also said that about Howards End is on the Landing, and look what happened there. No matter; I’m going to maintain full confidence with this one.

Mangan was a very bookish child – in the way that only those of us who were also very bookish children will understand. Books were her sanctuary, her new worlds, her adventure, her heartbreak. This total immersion, and self-definition as a bibliophile, is the keynote of Bookworm, and it will make every avid childhood reader thrill with recognition. We feel her pain when reading is socially unacceptable in the playground, and when her parents restrict her reading to certain rooms, to encourage her to be more sociable. (Yes, reading at the dinner table was – is? – banned in my home. And yes, like Lucy I turned to cereal packets or anything else I could read, when desperation hit.)

Through the chapters, Mangan takes us from her earliest reading memories until the end of childhood. To be honest, the tales of picture books interested but did not beguile me. I don’t remember which picture books I read – except the Mr Men, and I don’t think they got a single mention in Bookworm. Was Mangan born slightly too early for them? But once we got onto other books – well, firstly it was a nice surprise to discover that I have read more classic children’s literature than I’d supposed – but mostly, it’s wonderful to read how well Mangan describes the all-encompassing experiences these books were.

Enid Blyton gets a section (hurrah!) – without a doubt the defining author of my childhood. Narnia gets a section, as do Little Women, Roald Dahl, Richmal Crompton’s William books, and both books that Rachel and I are discussing in the next episode of the podcast – The Secret Garden and Tom’s Midnight Garden. Even Sweet Valley High, with which I was obsessed for a couple of years. Even if you haven’t read these books, the enthusiasm with which she remembers them is a delight, and mixes frothy enthusiasm with plenty of reflection and contemplation. Occasionally the tone becomes a little too self-consciously Caitlin Moranesque, and the odd sentence reads a little awkwardly – the bookish kid trying to fit in with the cool gang – but most of the time she isn’t trying stylistic tics; she’s just revelling in the absolute joy that books can be. (There are also one or two tedious moments against Christian faith, and one truly shocking anti-Catholic moment that should certainly have been cut, but I’ll tidy those under the rug for now.)

Along the way (because it is a memoir of sorts, after all) we learn about her character, her friends, her family. I loved the way her father would occasionally suggest a book, with a subtle gleam that acknowledges that this is a book he loved in his childhood. I loved the depiction of a slightly anxiously moralistic child, who definitely didn’t want to read anything anarchistic or rule-breaking in books (no thank you Fantastic Mr Fox). It reminded me of my own fastidiousness as a child, that made me unable to enjoy The Twits (the idea of the food in the beard still makes me gag).

And mostly I just loved with a wonderful nostalgic journey this. I love any book about reading, but one about the world-opening potential of reading to a child is rather lovely. And it’ll certainly lead you heading straight for the children’s section of the library, to relive all the classics that filled your world and expanded your imagination however many years ago.

Tea or Books? #53: Top of TBR vs Bottom of TBR, and The Bookshop vs According to Mark

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It’s the battle of the Penelopes – and which books we’re most likely to read first (top or bottom of the pile?)

 

Rachel is back (hurray!) – many thanks to Karen for taking her seat last time. And in this episode we’re doing a suggestion that a different Karen emailed in – do we read books as soon as we get them, or are we more likely to go for books at the bottom of the pile?

In the second half, we compare two literary Penelopes – Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Bookshop and Penelope Lively’s According to Mark. We don’t read anything by Penelope Mortimer, despite what Rachel thinks.

We have a Patreon page! You can get shout outs, cards, and even a book sent every month, plus access to any exclusive Patreon content. We also have an iTunes page, but I’ve never quite worked out what to do with that. Anyway… enjoy!

Oh, and listen out for a feline cameo…

The books and authors we mention in this episode are:

Penelope Mortimer
Bookworm by Lucy Mangan
Enid Blyton
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce
E. Nesbit
Allan Quatermain by H Rider Haggard
King Solomon’s Mines by H Rider Haggard
Child of Storm by H Rider Haggard
Beverley Nichols
Floater by Calvin Trillin
Tove Jansson
Helen Oyeyemi
Sphinx by David Lindsay
The Birds by Frank Baker
Random Commentary by Dorothy Whipple
Vera Brittain
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
George Eliot
The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson
The Greatcoat by Helen Dunmore
Possession by A.S. Byatt
Mapp and Lucia by E.F. Benson
Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner
Muriel Spark
Jane Bowles
Human Voices by Penelope Fitzgerald
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
Oleander, Jacaranda by Penelope Lively
Thomas Carlyle
The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald
Memoirs of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald
Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting by Penelope Mortimer
The Pumpkin Eater by Penelope Mortimer
Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Publishers are sneaky (or: my book group read The Reader on the 6.27)

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My book group recently read The Reader on the 6.27 (2014) by Jean-Paul Didierlaurent, translated from the French by Ros Schwartz. The novella (which the publishing house has made look more like a normal-length novel, with a huge font and not many words on each page – though that is not why they’re sneaky) is about Guylain Vignolles who pulps paper for a living. Every day on the 6.27 train, he reads one of the pages he has saved aloud to the passengers – who, somewhat surprisingly, largely seem to respond positively.

The novella went by so fast that it was hard to know whether or not I liked it, and it turned into rather an add romance – all while having the surreal tone of a dystopia, despite not really being one. I can’t quite see why it was such a bestseller, but it’s nice that more translated fiction is getting bestseller status. To be honest, I don’t have a lot to say about it – the writing was pretty good; it was all very engaging but not life-changing – but what I wanted to write about was the cover. Half the book group had this one:

While I (along with the other half of the group) had this one:

Spot the difference?

Yes – for some reason, half of us had snow and reindeer, and a gold font. And when I say ‘some reason’ I mean, of course, Christmas. Is there snow in the novella? No. Are there reindeer? If so, they keep very quiet about it. It’s a completely shameless attempt to make the book seem like an ideal Christmas present, despite the fact that the story isn’t even set in winter (with apologies to any readers in the southern hemisphere).

I don’t know how they landed on this one. Perhaps it was bubbling under as a very good seller, but could go the extra mile with a bit of marketing. Now, I’m certainly not against marketing – I work in it, after all. I don’t think PR is a bad thing (I have witnessed somebody call the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year campaign “a moronic piece of PR gimmickery”, unaware that I had worked on the campaign – which was, of course, PR and light fun. What did they expect? That a word had actually won some sort of real life battle?)  But I think there should be a bit more grounding than “we’d like to flog a few copies of this”.

So, yes. I love it when British Library Crime Classics get the Christmassy titles out, or even when there’s yet another edition of A Christmas Carol published. But why on earth did this novella get the treatment? And how many people were disappointed when they settled down on Boxing Day for some festive fun?

Oh, and here’s a translation quandary. The fact that Guylain Vignolles is a spoonerism for vilain guignol isn’t an immediate win in English.

Still Missing by Beth Gutcheon

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During the Persephone Readathon, I chose to read Still Missing by Beth Gutcheon – which is rather an anomaly for Persephone, in that it was published in 1981. AND the author is still alive! I can only think of a couple other Persephone authors in that category. So, why did Persephone Books step so far from their usual territory of interwar literature to a novel about the kidnap of a child?

For that is what Still Missing is about – it was later adapted into the film Without a Trace. And yet it’s worlds away from the sort of book that might be conjured up in your mind. There certainly seems to be a trend in modern crime fiction for depicting the worst possible things that can happen to children or women. Whether the authors are doing that gratuitously or to expose a troubling trend in the real world, they’re not books I want to read. Whereas Still Missing is far more about the psychology of a mother going through this appalling predicament, day by day by day.

That is the power of the novel. Nothing is rushed. We agonise alongside Susan, feeling as though we are deep in her mind, even though the novel is in the third person. As for her son, Alex, all we see is him leaving for school – and not getting there. He disappears from the novel as suddenly as he disappears from the neighbourhood.

It may be that one loss helps to prepare you for the next, at least in developing a certain rueful sense of humour about things you’re too old to cry about. There’s plenty of blather, some of it true, about turning pain into growth, using one blow to teach you resilience and to make you ready for the shock of the next one. But the greater truth is that life is not something you can go into training for. There was nothing in life that Susan Selky could have done to prepare for the breathtaking impact of losing her son.

I don’t know what would actually happen when a young boy goes missing, nor (more to the point) what would have happened in 1981 – but I’m willing to believe it would be rather what Gutcheon depicts. There is the initial flurry of media interest and police action – questioning her estranged husband, getting statements from everybody in the area, putting everybody at their disposal. Her friends are either too horrified to talk to her, too awkward to know how to help, or (a select few) an essential support. Gutcheon shows people’s reactions perfectly, and dryly explains how and why people react as they do.

“Are you sure there’s nothing… funny about her?” his wife asked.

“What do you mean?”

“She was so cool,” said Pat. Uh-huh, though Menetti. Now it starts. It can’t happen to me. It happened to her, she lost her kid, but if there’s something funny about her, then there’s a reason it could happen to her but it couldn’t happen to me. Now starts the drawing away, the pulling aside, the setting the Selkys apart.

Chief among the policemen is Menetti, in that conversation above. One of the reasons the novel is in the third person (I suspect) is so that we can jump into Menetti’s mind instead – he is an intensely sympathetic character, trying to help Susan as much as possible while also maintaining procedure. She begs him not to waste time following the lead of her ex-husband – she is adamant that it has nothing to do with him – but Menetti must follow the (fruitless) most likely option. And we see him when he goes home too, anxious and resigned, the impact on his own family life all too unavoidable.

Still Missing is very gripping, but not because it is full of event. It is full of tension, but it is mostly the tension of nothing happening – of friends and journalists gradually losing interest; of the leads drying up. And of Susan’s agony remaining just as painful and stark throughout – of her own measures to find Alex growing increasingly desperate. Gutcheon judges the pacing brilliantly almost all the time – I say ‘almost’ because there are a few clunky bits, thrown in for plot and red herrings, that don’t sit well with the rhythm of the rest of the narrative.

I’m still not sure it quite fits as a Persephone, and the 1980s still lies between nostalgia and modern in a slightly off-colour, dated interim state – but it’s certainly an involving and beautifully judged read. The premise has become worn through re-use, but Gutcheon takes it back to essentials, and the novel is the more powerful and personal because of it.

A little Alan Ayckbourn

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It was lovely to see quite a few bloggers take up the challenge of A Century of Books, and quite a few of them wanted to check the small print with me. The rules, they asked – is it year of publication or year of translation? Can I count books I’m halfway through? Is this small black cat technically a book?

“Make up your own rules!” I said. “Sure, maybe that cat IS a book! Read it! Read it as much as you like!”

And nowhere has this playing-with-rules become more evident in my own reading decisions than with Alan Ayckbourn. Because I’ve counted the audiobooks I’ve listened to of his plays (with different actors for different characters), where I wouldn’t count a play I saw on stage towards my century. Does it make sense? No, of course not. Are they my rules? Yep, and I’m sticking to them.

I listened to three Ayckbourn plays (well, technically five – more on that in a mo) and I gave up on Henchforward… which was some bizarre dystopian robot thing. Apparently Ayckbourn does dystopian plays now and then, but it’s not my cup of tea and I skipped onto a different play. Btw, I’m using the year of first performance as the date for each play. #MyOwnRules.

The Norman Conquests (1973)

This is actually three different plays, all first performed in 1973 – Table Manners, Living Together, and Round and Round the Garden. I think (?) they’re his most famous plays, and I’ve had a DVD of them since forever that I still haven’t watched. (Fun fact for Good Life fans: Penelope Keith and Felicity Kendal were in the original production. Fun fact for Ever Decreasing Circles fans: Penelope Wilton and Richard Briers are on the DVD, as is Penelope Keith.)

All the plays feature the same characters, and take place on the same evening – the clever conceit is that each play looks at what’s going on in one room/space during the evening – the kitchen, living room, and garden respectively. It’s not quite as clever as Ayckbourn’s Home and Garden, in that the plays can’t be played simultaneously, but it works very well nonetheless – you can see any one of them individually as a self-contained play (though I have my doubts that Round and Round the Garden would be very rewarding done thus), or you can watch all of them and put together the whole picture.

And the plot? Broadly, Norman had been planning to run away with his wife’s sister – for a dirty weekend in (ahem) East Grinstead. Over the course of the evening, the various couples – siblings and their spouses or would-be spouses – shout at each other, flirt with each other, and come to some sort of resolution. It’s all very entertaining, even if it’s rather a stretch to believe that anybody at all would want a relationship with Norman, since he’s selfish, unkind, arrogant, and frequently rather annoying. But the title is brilliant.

Just Between Ourselves (1976)

The play is set over four consecutive birthdays, and features two couples who meet when one of them is thinking about buying the car of the other – though even this is rather up for debate, as the quietly warring husband and wife who come to look at the car can’t even decide if they want a car at all.

This play is all very tautly told, but I can’t remember many specifics… which perhaps tells that the structure of Just Between Ourselves isn’t quite as good as Ayckbourn at his finest. The main male is just as annoying as Norman, though. What is it with Ayckbourn and annoying men who somehow captivate everybody around them?

Man of the Moment (1988)

This one is rather cleverer – it takes place around an episode of a series called ‘Their Paths Crossed’. In this case, the paths crossed 17 years earlier – between the TV personality Vic Parks and a rather hapless man named Doug. I’m not going to tell you how their paths crossed (don’t look at Wikipedia!) just in case you listen yourself, or go and see it performed, because I had a great time guessing until it was revealed.

From the reveal is quite a heartbreaking and heartwarming story about forgiveness, chance, fate, and… well a bit of drama thrown in. Guess what? Vic is another terrible person. A little too terrible at times – it would be a more nuanced story if he weren’t. It might not be a coincidence that my favourite Ayckbourn play so far is Relatively Speaking, in which everyone is (relatively) pleasant.

Stuck in a Book’s Weekend Miscellany

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I’m writing this a few days before the weekend, and I’m already feeling a little bit ropey… fingers crossed I don’t spend the actual weekend in bed, since I’m supposed to be visiting a friend of mine. Eek. But anyway, here’s a link, a blog post, and a book nonetheless…

1.) The link – is the most fascinating true story I’ve read in ages.

2.) The blog post – is Harriet’s review of Sylvia Townsend Warner’s brilliant collection of short stories, Swans on an Autumn River. I also loved this, but she writes about it way better.

3.) The book – I’ve still never read any Rose Tremain, though am intending to read The Gustav Sonata at some point (and have it waiting) – but I see her childhood memoir is coming out in April, and I feel sure some of you would want to know…

A Century of Books: some catch-up mini-reviews

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I’m actually doing rather better in A Century of Books than my tally has been looking, to date – and that’s because there are quite a few titles that I haven’t reviewed. And, for one reason or another, I don’t want to write full reviews of all of these – so, instead, I’ll do a quick round-up of some of the other books I’ve been reading… in date order. (And more reviews to come shortly!)

1925: The Human Machine by Arnold Bennett

This was an audiobook, and I think it might have been serialised much earlier, but Wikipedia says 1925 so I’m going to believe it. It’s a rather odd self help book, in which Bennett spends much of the time saying over and over that people don’t train their brain enough, or control their emotions enough, but doesn’t come up with much concrete advice other than ‘concentrate your mind for half an hour every day’. To be honest, I was listening more out of interest in social and literary history than to receive any self help advice, and for that it was an entertaining angle on Arnold Bennett. (Whenever I write about him, the Arnold Bennett Society pop up – so hello guys!)

1959: The Young Ones by Diana Tutton

I would do a full review of this, but I had to read it in the Bodleian (since secondhand copies are rarer than hen’s teeth) and I don’t feel like I can write a review without the book in front of me. It’s about a brother and sister and their adopted sister, and the various emotional tangles they get into – including the brother and adopted sister falling in love. But that is the least of the tangles… It’s written with the confident wit and ever-so-slight surrealism of Tutton – not as wonderful as Guard Your Daughters (and indeed what is?) but I think very deserving of being back in print nonetheless.

2013: Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala

I’ve read one previous memoir about the devastation of the 2004 tsunami, Simon Stephenson’s brilliant Let Not The Waves of the Sea – and Sonali Deraniyagala’s memoir tells of being in the midst of it, losing her husband, parents, and two children. What makes the book so powerful is that she doesn’t attempt to retrospectively explain the grieving process, but just tells us what she did – even when it’s as odd as terrorising the family who moved into her house. Stark and astonishing book.

2017: Scribbles in the Margins by Daniel Gray

I love a book about books, and one that’s inspired by J.B. Priestley’s Delight is likely to be, indeed, a delight. This is a fun look through the different things that readers love doing, and different reading habits, but it is very light on actual books. That means its potential audience is much wider – and I imagine it was rather a stocking filler last year – but it’s not got a huge amount to get your teeth into. A very enjoyably diverting read, of course – but expect it to be what it is!