The Street by Dorothy Baker – #1951Club

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1951 ClubYou might well know the name Dorothy Baker. A few of us read Young Man With a Horn for the 1938 Club, and Cassandra at the Wedding is another well-known book by her. And, when I saw The Street in 2011, it was Baker’s name that rang a bell – though, at that point, I hadn’t read her.

Here’s the curious thing. I think I’d suspected this before, but without confirming it – this Dorothy Baker is a different Dorothy Baker. While the famous one wrote about quirky things in America, The Street is about the working classes in the Black Country. I’ve dug around but not managed to find out much about this Dorothy Baker – except that she is, according to a library catalogue, connected with the BBC. Very mysterious, and something I’d forgotten to investigate until after I’d put it in my pile for the 1951 Club.

So, having read four extremely good books for the 1951 Club (one to be reviewed tomorrow), it’s about right that this one should only be OK. It’s certainly not a dud – but it’s very novel-by-numbers.

It’s all about Dora – a kind, anxious, emotional young girl living with her grandparents, having been more or less deposited on them by feckless (but slightly glamorous) parents. They’ve kept her three siblings, who never emerge from the shadows of the novel, but this unusual situation is never really alluded to – instead, Dora’s parents exist as occasional threats that she might be torn away from her life on the street.

While the novel is called The Street, we don’t see all that much outside of Dora’s grandparents’ house, and her school. And I think Baker fondly believes she has captured a snapshot of working-class life – which I absolutely can’t believe she has. There is the occasional moment of drunkenness thrown in to show ‘real life’, and poverty which demonstrates itself only in the miserly whinging of various passing uncles, but the characters mostly speak in the anonymous tones of middle-class stock characters. It could very easily have been a provincial house party.

The writing certainly isn’t bad – each scene is engaging, if a little earnest at times – but what holds The Street back from being a very good novel is the lack of momentum in it. There is something of a plot, mostly around the deaths and marriages of Dora’s relatives and her own (rather naive) budding into early adulthood, but not much pulls the reader through the novel. It wasn’t a chore to read by any means, but I would also quite happily have given up at any juncture without any real curiosity about what happened next.

We need light and shade, don’t we? It’s just as well that I didn’t get too exaggerated a view of 1951’s merits – consider this a slight lull before, tomorrow, I finish the week with my favourite of all five.

Darkness and Day by Ivy Compton-Burnett – #1951Club

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Darkness and DayWhen we chose 1951, I was mostly excited that I could finally read an Ivy Compton-Burnett novel for a club outing. I’ve mostly been reading authors and books that I’ve long meant to get around to (which has been lovely), but I also treated myself to what I think is my 10th Ivy Compton-Burnett novel. I’ve got to the stage where I can’t remember which I’ve read and which I haven’t – because all the titles are the same. You’ll see what I mean when you see a sample of the ones I’ve read: Parents and Children, Mother and Son, Elders and Betters, A House and Its Head, A Heritage and Its History. Have I read A Father and His Fate? A God and His Gifts? I don’t know.

Her 1951 novel is Darkness and Day, which is the last of her novels that I bought (I have them all, except her first novel, Dolores – which I thought was impossible to find, but apparently the 1971 reprint is widely available). It starts off with a much smaller cast than I’d anticipated – just Sir Ransom Chance (what a name!), his daughters Anne and Emma, the servant Mrs Jennet, and the housekeeper/companion/dogsbody Miss Hallam. Anne and Emma could be considered the darkness and day of the title (though this later has myriad interpretations): the older sister is cynical and selfish; the younger is selfless and kind. The scene is a deliciously odd debate between servant and master as to whose place in life is better:

“I envy you, Jennet,” said Sir Ransom. “Because it is the proper thing to envy people placed as you are. Not because I really do.”

“Well, I shouldn’t expect it.”

“Do you envy me? That is not the proper thing. But tell me if you do.”

“Not on every count, Sir Ransom.”

“You mean you have longer to live. Why do people always think of age? Or why do they ever think of anything else? I often wonder why I do. Perhaps I don’t.”

“Well, I have the advantage of thirty years there.”

“Jennet, we do not talk of our advantage over people.”

“It is not a thing I can often do. I am not in danger of the habit.”

But we end up seeing surprisingly little of them – the cast gets much wider when we move to another house.

Like all Compton-Burnett’s novels, this one is set in late Victorian opulence. The families live in enormous houses, usually with a big household staff – and the house down the road is one such. The second son of the house is returning home, bringing his wife Bridget and two young daughters, Viola and Rose. They bring with them a secret; one that led to them leaving, and which has blighted their lives.

Some people say that nothing happens in Compton-Burnett’s novels. Well, I defy any novel to match this one for plot and twists – which I shan’t spoil here – and it ties together many different characters in an unlikely but satisfying way. What makes ICB’s novel so unusual is that it takes you a while to work out what the bombshell is. In a swirl of people correcting each other and talking about the inconsequential, the bomb is dropped, almost in passing. And several characters see their world in a whole new light – the darkness and day here represent ignorance and enlightenment, as is made (sort-of) explicit in the text.

What can I say about Compton-Burnett’s writing that I haven’t said before? This novel has the same unique, love-it-or-hate-it style of all her others. It’s mostly dialogue, there is a lot of pernickety arguing, and it is (if you like it) very funny indeed. The keynote of a Compton-Burnett novel, I realise, is that there is no such thing as an acknowledged truth. Whether it is a maxim or an attitude or what, no character will allow an assumption to stand unchecked – instead, it is passed around the characters until it is unrecognisable.

This is true (as always with ICB) with characters of any age or strata. The servants, the masters, and the children will all debate and analyse in the most highbrow words imaginable, and my favourite sections were when Miss Hallam attempts to be a governess to Viola and Rose. She approaches the task with affected good humour and gentleness; they meet it with stony independence and a refusal to take anything at face value. It is very, very funny.

“Are you painting?” she said, in a tone of pleasant interest.

“Well, you can see we are,” said Rose.

“Yes, I can. It was a useless question, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, it was.”

“But I am afraid painting is not lessons.”

“Of course it is not, or we shouldn’t have been doing it before you came.”

“Well, you don’t want to do it now I am here.”

“We do want to,” said Viola.

“I mean that I cannot let you do it.”

“You did not say what you meant.”

“How can you prevent us?” said Rose, continuing her work.

“I am not going to prevent you. I am going to ask you to put away your painting things, and I am sure you will.”

This confidence was not justified and the minutes passed.

How did this stack up against other ICB novels? Well, besides the slightly uneven apportioning of time spent with characters – it felt odd to kick off with several characters that we barely saw again until much later in the novel – I thought that Darkness and Day was fantastic. It’s not worth especially tracking this one down, though, because all her novels are pretty much the same – which does make me feel a bit of a fraud for including it in the 1951 Club. Yes, it was published in 1951, but Ivy Compton-Burnett paid absolutely zero heed to the changing fashions of writing, and continued writing in exactly the same way for forty years. Sorry for cheating – but I couldn’t resist.

Other books from 1951 for the #1951club

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I will be catching up with rounding up reviews soon – sorry I’ve had rather a hectic week! – but I also wanted to do a post about other books I’ve read 1951. Where there are links, they lead to review, but I haven’t written about all of them. (Still three more reviews to come from me this week, hopefully!)

1951 Club

My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier

Quite a few people are reading this one, and I think it’s brilliant – you can hear Rachel and me talk about it in an episode of Tea or Books? that is, I should warn you, rather spoilery.

The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

His books are all so different – well, that’s true of the four I’ve read – but this story about an affair and the person observing it is heartbreaking and brilliant.

Here’s How by Virginia Graham

I love both Say Please and Here’s How by Virginia Graham – this is a faux instruction manual for everything under the sun, from how to play the piano to how to plumb. Follow that link for some hilarious examples!

They Came To Baghdad by Agatha Christie

I never hate an Agatha, but I will say that They Came To Baghdad is pretty far down my list… it’s one of her novels where she doesn’t concentrate on a domestic scene, and it all gets a bit overblown and silly for my liking.

Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson

Her second novel, and perhaps her oddest – not really in terms of what happened, but in her rather disjointed prose style. It makes for very interesting reading, particularly if aligned with her biography, but I wouldn’t recommend it as a good place to start!

A Game of Hide and Seek by Elizabeth Taylor

My review is very short, and suffers from the odd quotation formatting that all my old reviews got when I moved to WordPress – but I remember struggling with the first half of this novel, then getting it, and then being wildly impressed by the writing.

My Turn To Make The Tea by Monica Dickens

The third in her autobiographical series – she is a journalist, and she is funny about it, but it doesn’t live up to One Pair of Hands or One Pair of Feet, where she writes about her time as a cook and a nurse respectively.

The Letters of Elizabeth Myers

Elizabeth Myers was married to one of the Powys brothers, and I really loved this collection of letters that I picked up as a whim. She died young – in her 40s, I think – and the book is organised by correspondent, so you have to keep coming up against her death. It’s oddly poignant.

* * *

It turns out I own more than thirty books from 1951, and I’ve quite a few unread – but, from the ones I have read and am reading, it turns out it’s a rather intriguing year with plenty of gems. And the 1951 Club keeps bringing up more!

Opening Night by Ngaio Marsh – #1951Club

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Opening NightNgaio Marsh is one of those authors I’ve been meaning to read for many years – and I don’t think I’ve actually read anything by her, though I wouldn’t swear to it. Anybody who loves Agatha Christie has probably at least thought about trying her contemporaries – and, in my time, I have given Margery Allingham and Dorothy L Sayers attempts (liking one and rather disliking the other). Well, Marsh is probably my favourite of that trio of anti-Christies, based on Opening Night – but I am a sucker for anything set in the theatre. This one falls in the middle of her writing career – though the heyday of the Golden Age of Detection was surely coming to an end.

Martyn Tarne (are any women actually called Martyn?) has come from New Zealand to England with the ambition of becoming an actress. Indeed, she has done this a little in NZ – but London is calling her, and she has come to the weary end of auditions (and also to the end of her money) when she arrives at the final theatre on her list. It’s The Vulcan (the novel was called Night at the Vulcan in the US) – notorious as the site of a murder in the dressing rooms some years earlier, but now re-established as a respectable theatre. Only there’s no part going.

But… Ella Hamilton needs a dresser. Martyn is in the right place at the right time. She becomes Ella Hamilton’s dresser.

From this moment, we are thrown into a wonderfully-realised world of 1950s theatre – cattiness, competition, camaraderie and all. Ella Hamilton is married to Bennington, but having an affair with Poole. A nervous young actress, called Gay Gainsford, is unsuccessfully trying to play a part that Martyn would love to play. The cantankerous author of the play wanders around, telling people they’re appalling and quoting Shakespeare at them. A friendly Frenchman comforts everybody and does their work for them. It’s a fantastic ensemble, and I adored being in this melee of rehearsals and reprisals. Marsh is rather a witty writer – I enjoyed this description of the play:

Martyn tried to find out from Cringle what the play was about. He was not very illuminating. “It’s ’igh-brow,” he said. “Intellectually, it’s clarse. ‘A Modern Morality’ he calls it, the Doctor does. It’s all about whether you’re brought up right makes any difference to what your old pot ’ands on to you. ‘ ’Eredity versus enviroment’ they call it. The Guv’nor’s enviroment, and all the rest of ’em’s ’eredity. And like it always is in clarse plays, the answer’s a lemon. Well, I must go on me way rejoicing.”

But I was beginning to wonder if it was a murder mystery at all. I knew Marsh was a detective novelist, and this edition was published by The Crime Club, but page after page was going by without a hint of a death. Well, fear not – eventually it comes, although not until halfway through. Opening Night is clearly far more about the wonderful setting and characters, rather than a drawn-out detection process.

There is a detective on the scene – Inspector Alleyn. I believe he is a regular in Marsh’s novels, as perhaps his assistant Fox is, but they weren’t particularly distinctive in Opening Night. Alleyn is wry and wise, and a little paternal to Fox – but they don’t seem very vivid against the backdrop of the theatrical characters Marsh has created. I’m sure they would, after reading several in their series.

Marsh obviously has a fondness for the theatre, and there are some nice references. I enjoyed this one, having enjoyed the first two plays mentioned – though I have no idea what Sleeping Partners is or who wrote it:

“Tell me, Mike,” Alleyn said, “are many young women of your generation like that?”
“Well, no, sir. She’s what one might call a composite picture, don’t you think?”
“I do, indeed. And I fancy she’s got her genres a bit confused.”
“She tells me she’s been playing in Private Lives, The Second Mrs. Tanqueray, and Sleeping Partners in the provinces.”
“That may account for it,” said Alleyn.

Nobody will ever topple Christie in detective fiction stakes (as I probably say with dulling regularity when I mentioned detective novels), but I loved reading Marsh – Opening Night was a real 1951 delight. Indeed, the year is shaping up to be pretty special.

School For Love by Olivia Manning – #1951Club

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School For LoveI wish I could remember who bought me School For Love by Olivia Manning… I know that I’ve had two copies at different times, and currently have one, but other than that its history is clouded in the vagaries of my terrible memory. Anyway, it’s been on my tbr for a while – as has Manning more broadly, though I have shied away from the Balkan Trilogy because anything that comes in a trilogy seems like too big a commitment to make to the uninitiated.

I started School For Love with absolutely no knowledge of what it was about (having not read the blurb or the introduction). It came as something of a surprise that it was set in Jerusalem, and that there wasn’t a school in sight. Instead, recently orphaned Felix has arrived at the house of a distant sort-of-relative, where he is being offered a place as a paying guest. Felix is young, devoted to his late mother, and rather lost in this confusing 1945 world. Miss Bohun seems like a Godsend, and he is grateful for the place in her household – which also has eccentric Mr Jewel in the attic, a maid, a sort-of servant (Frau Leszno), and that servant’s son – Nikky, who is almost always described as handsome whenever he is mentioned. Later, a Mrs Ellis also joins the house – a glamorous woman (in Felix’s eyes), unconcerned with the mores and opinions of the house.

Oh, and a Siamese cat called Faro. (Incidentally – this NYRB Classics cover is so perfect that it’s almost unbelievable.) That’s also not the last time you’ll hear about Siamese cats in the 1951 Club…

Manning creates an astonishing character in Miss Bohum – because she is in many ways bad, but it is also impossible to view her actions too severely. She is a miser, clearly taking as much money as she can from her houseguests, while also pretending to be self-sacrificing and motivated entirely by kindness – indeed (and this makes her less wicked than she could be), she seems genuinely to believe these are her motivations. She can imagine slights and unkindnesses in those around her – while we also learn that she has subtly forced people out of the house, taking it over as her own when this was never the original intention.

The nuance of Manning’s depiction of characters also comes in showing them to us through Felix’s perspective. Not directly – the novel is in the third person – but his views colour all our understanding of them. And he spends much of the novel being in loyal agreement with Miss Bohun – unthinkingly, because she should be right about things. He feels cross on her behalf when she talks of people’s ingratitude; he accepts her edicts as gospel. Only as the novel continues does he – conflicted – begin to feel the scales fall.

I haven’t even mention Miss Bohun’s cult, the ‘Ever-Readies’. What a great choice on Manning’s part. I would have loved to see a little more about them, as she wrote very entertainingly about them, but I suppose it is part of the effect to keep them a bit cloaked and mysterious.

We don’t see very much of 1945 Jerusalem, so School For Love isn’t much of a case history of a time and place – instead, it is a character study, and a depiction of how a young, uninformed boy feels when transplanted from all he knows. It’s a little bit like The Go-Between, in the sense of an innocent seeing a world he doesn’t quite understand – more affected it than anybody could quite realise. The plot is really that: his gradual comprehension of the people around him, and the fall of the idol of Miss Bohun – but in a measured, quiet way. It is all rather beautiful and poignant, and vividly real.

My only real quibble with the book is its title – which does very little to evoke the content of the novel, and might well make somebody think they were going to read a rather different sort of story. It is explained, fairly late in the book – Mrs Ellis quotes part of a Blake poem:

Look on the rising sun: there God does live
And gives his light, and gives his heat away.
And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
Comfort in morning joy in the noonday.

And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love

And that is why she thinks of life as a school for love. It is one of many things that Felix learns, though not in the way that Blake describes. And what I learned is what a good novelist Olivia Manning is. The 1951 Club got off to a great start with me – I hope it’s also going great for you!

Welcome to The 1951 Club! (And my blog birthday)

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1951 ClubIt’s here! Welcome to The 1951 Club – this post will be where I round up everybody’s reviews of books published in 1951, whether fiction, non-fiction, or anything in between. Just pop a link in the comments.

It’s also (though this was not deliberate) the 10th birthday for Stuck in a Book. That’s right – 10 April 2007 saw me take a break from revising for my undergraduate finals and decide to start a book blog. It’s been rather strange and wonderful since then, and has led to far more than I could have dreamt of – but it’s also rooted in the shared love of books and online community that something like the 1951 Club embodies.

When I picked these dates out of the air last October, I hadn’t appreciated that it would be Easter this week… that means it might be rather busy for me; I’m still hoping to do lots of reading and reviewing, and gathering up reviews, but I don’t think I’ll have time to do links for older posts. But please do still do your own posts, rounding up all the 1951 reviews you’ve already had on your blog!

Happy reading!

Project 24: Books 3 and 4

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project-24

I’ve actually bought six books so far this year – making me precisely on track for the end of March – but only four of them have arrived as of yet. To keep track, books 3 and 4 are… A Winter Away by Elizabeth Fair – which I bought for the latest episode of Tea or Books?, and which I really liked – and Norman Douglas by H.M. Tomlinson.

Norman Douglas

I bought this while in London, on Charing Cross Road, and it led to a little conversation with the bookseller about Norman Douglas. He, in fact, was reading a book by Norman Douglas right then. But I… well, I’ve never read a book by Norman Douglas. Or H.M. Tomlinson, come to that. And I always seem to get Norman Douglas mixed up with Norman Collins.

BUT I love the Dolphin Books series. There such lovely objects, and a really interesting range of non-fiction titles. They’re also pretty hard to stumble across, for the most part, so I couldn’t resist it when I found it. And that’s reason enough to add it to my Project 24 list, isn’t it?

Tea or Books? #36: audiobooks (yes or no?) and two Furrowed Middlebrow novels

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Ursula Orange, Elizabeth Fair, and audiobooks – it’s fair to say that people probably won’t know that much about the authors today, but they are both among the Furrowed Middlebrow reprint series published by Dean Street Press. Any fan of middlebrow novels should certainly hunt out this series.

 

Tea or Books logoFor the first half of the episode, we’re talking audiobooks – in a fairly uninformed way, it turns out, so do let us know if you have any suggestions for narrators or audiobooks that we should try. And suggestions for future topics, of course – we’ve had a few come in, and that’s exciting, and I keep meaning to write them all down in one place…

Head over to our iTunes page, should you so wish – we love the reviews we’ve been getting in (thanks!), which you can do through podcast apps or whatnot.

The books and authors we mention this episode (mostly in passing, as usual) are:

Arthur and Sherlock by Michael Sims
The Story of Charlotte’s Web by Michael Sims
Letters From England by Mollie Panter-Downes
London War Notes by Mollie Panter-Downes
The Pleasures of Reading: A Booklover’s Alphabet by Catherine Sheldrick Ross
Lives For Sale ed. by Mark Bostridge
Hillary Spurling
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Hermione Lee
Claire Tomalin
Ann Thwaite
School For Love by Olivia Manning
The Balkan Trilogy by Olivia Manning
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
Cogheart by Peter Bunzl
John Green
To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Agatha Christie
The Return of Alfred by Herbert Jenkins
The Provincial Lady Goes Further by E.M. Delafield
The Egg and I by Betty Macdonald
Chelbury Abbey by Denis Mackail
The Majestic Mystery by Denis Mackail
Tom Tiddler’s Ground by Ursula Orange
A Winter Away by Elizabeth Fair
Miss Read
Richmal Crompton
Barbara Pym
Angela Thirkell
To The North by Elizabeth Bowen
Put Out More Flags by Evelyn Waugh
Dorothy Whipple
A Wreath For the Enemy by Pamela Frankau
Mr Fortune’s Maggot by Sylvia Townsend Warner
The Lark by E. Nesbit
Rachel Ferguson
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee

Theatre review: 42nd Street

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42nd street

I was in London for a two day conference on International Development (which reminds me that I never got around to telling those who asked more about the last International Development thing I went to – one of these days I’ll write properly about what I’m doing in my new job). I decided the best way to spend the evening would be at the theatre – and so scrolled through the list of things on. My eye was caught by 42nd Street – since I’d intended to see the film a few years ago (and failed), and owned the screenplay (which I haven’t read). A couple of clicks, and some scouring of theatremonkey.com, and I’d picked my seat.

Before I describe the musical: an anecdote. Off I sauntered, from the place I was staying – the Youth Hostel off Oxford Street, since you ask, and since I’m all glamour all the time – to the Harold Pinter Theatre. It was only about 15 minutes’ walk. I got there a good ten minutes before the musical was due to start… and saw the posters for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. It dawned on me, with horror, that I’d gone to the wrong theatre (I’m seeing that play tomorrow). One quick check of Google Maps later, and I realised I was 15 minutes’ walk from the correct theatre (Theatre Royal, Drury Lane)… and only ten minutes before it started. Reader, I ran. I ran all the way, following Google Maps as I ran – and got there with 3 minutes to spare. And – sorry people either side of me – coughed all the way through the first half because I’m so unfit.

But thank goodness I did! Because 42nd Street is an absolute delight. I loved every moment – infectious, unashamed delight.

The plot is wafer thin. Apparently it’s based on a novel by Bradford Ropes – I can only imagine that the novel is terrible, because the whole plot is basically ‘ingénue comes to Broadway; becomes star’. But that is all you need in a musical. It’s plenty. Throw in an older lead who is reluctant to hand on the baton (played, to my surprise, by Sheena Easton), and it’s all there. Oh, and it’s set in the 1930s, so what’s not to like?

From beginning to end, 42nd Street is a whirlwind of tap dance, big voices, glittery costumes, and pizzazz. There are so many excellent sets and set changes – my favourite being one where various windows are lit up in sequence as the people leaning out of them sing – and the finale is out of this world. While Sheena Easton is the big name, it’s Clare Halse as Peggy Sawyer (the ingénue) who really takes one’s breath away.

The songs? Well, the only ones I knew were ‘We’re in the Money’ and ‘Keep Young and Beautiful’. There is the issue that, since the characters are rehearsing or performing a separate musical throughout most of the performances, the songs illustrate a plot that we never learn – but if you aren’t hoping that the songs progress the plot, then you can sit back and enjoy how fun they are.

I was there for one of the previews, I believe, but it was already slick and brilliant. I’ve not been to many productions which received standing ovations, but this was one of them – perhaps only the 4th or 5th I’ve been part of. Fully deserved – in these fraught times, this is pure, delightful escapism. If you can – go.

Messalina of the Suburbs by E.M. Delafield

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Messalina of the SuburbsRachel and I did a recent podcast episode on Messalina of the Suburbs (1924) by E.M. Delafield and A Pin To See the Peepshow (1934) by F. Tennyson Jesse – both based on the same real life murder – but I know that plenty of people don’t listen to podcasts, so I’ll review ’em both too. First up: the E.M. Delafield (which I actually read second of the pair).

Believe it or not, this it the 23rd book I’ve read by EMD, and I still have plenty of others on my shelf left to read. Thank Heaven, fasting, for a prolific favourite author! It’s not super easy to find in book-form, but the ebook is very cheaply available – and, while it’s not one of her absolute best, I certainly found it a really good novel.

As far as I know, this was her only novel written about real life events – and written very shortly after them; the Thompson/Bywaters trial had only recently finished while she was writing the novel. You’ll find plenty of detail about all of that on Wikipedia, but essentially a woman was in a love triangle with her husband and her lover – the lover killed the husband in a sudden attack, but the woman was also tried for the crime of complicity. Whether or not she was complicit is something by Delafield and Jesse consider – I shan’t say the outcome of the trial for now.

Delafield’s novel seems pretty faithful to the set up (though, like Jesse, she makes the husband much older than he actually was). And we start off seeing the early life of the woman she calls Elsie – the tone being set by the opening words “Elsie, I’ve told you before, I won’t have you going with boys”. (Indeed, it was set before you open the novel if you happen to know who Messalina was – which I did not. Another one for Wikipedia, if you’re interested.)

The woman speaking is Elsie’s mother, and Delafield paints a world of respectable poverty for Elsie and her sister and mother. Lots of “She’s a good gurl, my Elsie” style dialogue – which was very entertaining to read, for the most part (Delafield can’t help being funny, even in a serious novel) though I have no real idea how much people ever did talk in this way. Certainly the working-class characters talk in a mix of salt-of-the-earth cliches, but people do speak in cliches, don’t they? Is it patronising, or is more patronising to put eloquence into the mouths of characters who probably never had it? Hard to say.

After a brief stint as a sort of housekeeper, during which Elsie gets entangled with the father of the family and is ousted, she marries a pushy man called Horace. He becomes rather an ogre as soon as she has a ring on her finger – alienating her from her family, demanding that she does as she’s told, and so forth. It’s a little cartoonish, but the whole novel is a little heightened, even stagey, so it more or less works. It does, however, mean the reader isn’t terribly heartbroken when Elsie starts an affair with good-looking Leslie – or (skipping forward, because I’ve already spoiled the crisis) when a drunk and angry Leslie kills Horace…

Delafield often treads a path between romance novel and her usual sardonic eye. Those aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, of course, but it’s still a careful tightrope to walk – because her wit might undercut how seriously we might be meant to take the relationship between Elsie and Leslie. But she makes it work, because she’s fabs.

The love-affair of Elsie Williams and Leslie Morrison swept on its course, and in the early days of their madness neither of them paused for an instant to count its possible cost.

It seemed indeed, as though Fate were deliberately simplifying their way.

Horace Williams appeared unable to give his attention to anything beyond his newly-discovered digestive trouble, and remained constantly indoors through the hottest and finest of the summer days, experimenting upon himself with drugs, and studying tables of dietetic values.

Occasionally, the need to add in things that really happened – particularly letters that were sent, in which ‘Elsie’ suggests she is trying to poison her husband – mean that the narrative has a bit of a jolt. Delafield tidies away required moments in slightly clumsy asides, that make the reader feel that perhaps the real people weren’t quite like this. But they are small jolts, not earthquakes.

The novel ends during the trial – which came as rather a surprise to me, as the book was far from finished. It turns out there was a collection of short stories at the end, which were enjoyable enough (though mostly about how terrible women can be to women) – but made the ending feel more abrupt to me than it probably is. Still, the novel is definitely up to Delafield’s usual excellent calibre, and I recommend getting hold of a copy.

If you listened to the podcast, you’ll know that (much as I liked this novel) I preferred A Pin To See The Peepshow – so I hope I get around to writing about that one soon!