My friend Lloyd introduced me to the band Lake Street Dive this week, and the song of theirs that I have had on repeat ever since is this beauty: ‘Better Than’. Enjoy!
StuckinaBook’s Weekend Miscellany
Howdy y’all – hope you’re all having lovely weekends. It’s beautifully sunny here in Oxford, but in a few hours I’ll be hopping on a plane for a very short trip to Glasgow (no time to find any bookshops, boo) – I’ll let you know all about that afterwards. For now, here’s a book, a blog post, and a link…
1.) The book – I heard on the Reading the End podcast that Helen Oyeyemi was having a collection of short stories out later this year, and while searching for that (FYI, it’s What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours and is out in April in the UK, possibly earlier in the US) I came across an NYRB she’d written an introduction for. It’s a collection of short stories called Thus Were Their Faces by Silvina Ocampo, and sounds darkly, weirdly fascinating. Does anybody know anything about it?
2.) The blog post – it’s got to be the link round-up post for Margery Sharp Day over at Beyond Eden Rock.
3a.) The link – thanks to Biana the publicist for sending me this link, to a video of the highlights from the Costa Book Awards, which seems like a fun thing to embed:
3b.) The sneaky second link – can you match the grammar abilities expected of 7 year olds under the new curriculum? I’m sad to say I got 10/11 – I feel like by now I should be able to ace a test for 7 year olds…
Shiny New Books: Issue 8
As usual, I’ll tell you more about individual posts – but Shiny New Books Issue 8 is now live!
Writing in haste… but do go and have an explore. It’s the usual mix of great fiction, non-fiction, reprints, and BookBuzz features – slimmer than usual as we’ve been particularly keen to include only our favourites. Many thanks to my wonderful co-editors Annabel, Harriet, and Victoria!
The Eye of Love by Margery Sharp
I’m rather astonished that I’m managing to join in with the Margery Sharp celebrations at Beyond Eden Rock (organised by Jane) – chiefly because I only managed to start The Eye of Love (1957) on Saturday, and have had a very busy weekend. Indeed, it’s been a busy old year so far, which is the reason I must give for not having published as many blog posts as I’d intended so far. But the combination of fierce determination and (more importantly) Sharp’s excellent writing have made me finish just in time.
The Eye of Love is the third Sharp novel I’ve read so far, and it’s been on my shelves for many years. The reason I chose this one is because it turns out it’s the only one I have in Oxford (I had intended to go with Britannia Mews) – but it is rather lovely, and (sorry, but the connection is irresistible) sharp.
This is Sharp’s quirky take on a romance novel, her motif being that the ‘eye of love’ sees things that other eyes cannot; basically, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. In this case, the beholders are a middle-aged couple, one of whom (born Dorothy Hogg, but choosing instead the name Dolores Diver) fancies herself a Spanish Rose type, comb in hair and shawl around her shoulders, but is known by laughers in the street as Old Madrid. Her inamorata is Mr Gibson, a portly man who has made his money in retail. As the novel opens, they are deciding that they can no longer be a couple. They have been in love, and lovers, for a decade – but both decide, unspoken, that people of their disparate stations do not marry. Instead, Mr Gibson must marry a Miss Joyce, solely for business reasons.
They are both rather distraught, but Sharp’s masterstroke is adding a third element: the young girl Martha. She is Dolores’ niece by marriage, orphaned and living with Dolores, and a more convincingly stolid and dispassionate child never existed in fiction. She is not mean or intentionally rude, she is simply completely uninterested in the emotional lives of the adults around her. Where Dolores hopes she will be a shoulder to cry on, or even some sort of go-between, she naively and honestly makes no indication that she misses him at all. Martha adds wonderful comedy to the novel, and Sharp draws her beautifully. Oh, and she’s also something of an artistic genius, unbeknownst to everyone (including herself).
Martha is not the only element of comedy. The narrative is always undermining the characters’ emotional effusions or deceits. When Miss Joyce accepts Mr Gibson’s proposal, with supposed surprise, Sharp adds:
As she moved impulsively to accept his embrace, she impulsively pressed a bell; the maid who brought in the champagne must have been very handy.
That repeated ‘impulsively’ works wonders. It is a very amusing book, and that – as in Cluny Brown, which I failed to finish in time for Margery Sharp Day 2015 – is due chiefly to this way Sharp has as a narrator. The most ordinary events are lent a spin of dry humour, but, vitally, Sharp remains intensely affectionate about her characters – and so does the reader. That is the keynote of the novel, that has various twists and turns and interlacing events: Dolores and Mr Gibson may appear ridiculous to many, but Sharp ably makes it so that the reader, like the characters, sees them instead through the eye of love.
Incidentally… my copy is The Popular Book Club, eventually a subscription book-of-the-month type club, and my copy still had the original brochure tucked in it (at around p.20, suggesting that they didn’t get very far). It features a little bit about the author…
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
It’s the spinning blurry woman again! I’m over at Vulpes Libris talking about Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, which I wasn’t super stoked to read, but which I actually ended up loving (spoilers!)
I usually choose to review books there that don’t necessarily feel like perfect fits for StuckinaBook – i.e. you’ll never find me reviewing a witty novel about spinsters opening a cafe over there – but this is a novel that I think everyone will value. And, let’s face it, I’m probably last to the party on this one anyway.
Tea or Books? #10: Reading Resolutions, yes or no? and Barbara Pym vs Elizabeth Taylor
‘Tea or Books?’ is back for the new year – and it starts pretty shambolically, as we can’t remember the episode number. Once that is sorted out, we discuss whether or not we set New Year’s Reading Resolutions, and then debate the relative merits of beloved authors Barbara Pym and Elizabeth Taylor. It’s definitely one of those times that I’m delighted that I can keep both authors on my shelves, but it’s fun to challenge ourselves with the prospect of having to lose one of them.
As always, we’re very keen to hear what you think – and any topics you’d like us to cover in future episodes. We’re so thrilled to be back for our second year (more or less)! Here, as usual, are the books we discuss in this episode… Download via your podcast app of choice, or at our iTunes page.
The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
Curiosity by Alberto Manguel
A Reader on Reading by Alberto Manguel
The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel
The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann
The Mystery in White by J. Jefferson Farjeon
Colette
The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay
The Other Elizabeth Taylor by Nicola Beauman
A Game of Hide and Seek by Elizabeth Taylor
At Mrs Lippincote’s by Elizabeth Taylor
Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor
Angel by Elizabeth Taylor
The Soul of Kindness by Elizabeth Taylor
Excellent Women by Barbara Pym
Some Tame Gazelle by Barbara Pym
The Sweet Dove Died by Barbara Pym
Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Persuasion by Jane Austen
A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor
A Very Private Eye by Barbara Pym
An Academic Question by Barbara Pym
The Immortals by S.E. Lister
What’s the opposite of a time-traveller? I suppose it’s somebody who is stuck in one time – and that’s precisely the predicament of the Hyde family at the beginning of S.E. Lister’s novel The Immortals (published a few months ago – and indeed read a few months ago; I’ve been intending to review it for so long, but… Christmas got in the way). They have been living and re-living 1945 for many years, moving at the end of every year, and judging passing time by location rather than world events. This has been the decision of Rosa Hyde’s father, who – for some reason she doesn’t really understand – can’t bare the idea of leaving the year, or the ‘main event’ of going up to London for the declaration of peace.
I say ‘at the beginning’ of the novel, but in fact the novel opens with Rosa’s return – from where (or, more importantly, when) is not immediately clear. (And what an opening line it is! I love its intrigue.)
Rosa came home after seven years, in the same year she had left. It was the beginning of the wet spring she knew so well. She found their cottage on the edge of a village, the latest Hyde home in a string of many, tucked out of the way behind a disused cattle barn. There were sandbags stacked against the steps, blackout curtains in every window. Bindweed framed the doorway. Beyond the fields a church spire rose into the dusky sky, lashed by rain, its chimes silenced.
Lister has a knack for portraying a time and place quickly and effectively. This is an example, but there are plenty in the novel – because we then see all the times and places that Rosa has travelled. Once away from the 1945-dwelling of her father, she is able to travel much more widely. We rush through a maelstrom of places and periods, with local colour thrown in at just the right amount – on one page, afraid in a busy Victorian street; shortly after, made a near-deity in a bygone era. That section was rather lovely – seeing Rosa elevated in that way, after her years of 1945 tedium – but things become more complex when she meets Tommy Rust. He is a fellow Immortal (and believes in this immortality with his whole heart), and something of a suave, risky gent of the sort that is rather dashing in literature and might not be so much outside of it.
And then there is the soldier Harding, who makes things even more complicated – though I thing I was more affected by the brothers who travelled together as much as possible, and were distraught at the possibility of being separated. But, y’know, brothers always get me.
I’m not much of a one for time-travel novels in general, but I certainly am for novels about family dynamics – so I liked The Immortals best when Rosa was dealing with abandoning her family, and coping with missing many years of her younger sister’s life, and that sort of thing – all of which was handled nicely. The climax of the day peace was declared in 1945 – a day on which Rosa’s father always goes to London to join in the celebrations, trying to avoid other iterations of himself in the crowd – was very moving, and an excellent peak. Indeed, it seems rather as though the non-sci-fi sections of The Immortals were my favourites… and perhaps that was inevitable. But more skill is required to make quotidian events and relationships captivating than is needed to pick a selection of intriguing years and write about them – so kudos for Lister there, and it will be intriguing to see what she could turn her hand to in a more earth-bound genre, if she ever chooses to give that a whirl.
Thanks, Sophie, for sending me a copy of this book.
Don’t look at me: or, spinning women on book covers
I’ve just finished Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – and, indeed, have just had book group discussing it. A full review will come soon, but first, it inspired me to put together something quickly on book covers. Something entirely unoriginal, but… well, I’ve not done it here before, so it’s original for StuckinaBook.
This is the cover of the copy I read, which I borrowed from the library:
And it’s a really weird blurry turning woman. What is it with blurry turning women? It reminded me of the covers to Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and the eerily similar The Spare Room by Helen Garner:
Who decides that blurry women and spinning women are what people want on covers? We hear a lot about headless women on covers – and some blurry women can be headless too, it seems – but what is with this spinning? It’s so niche. I don’t recall Ifemelu doing any spinning to speak of.
Of course, I now can’t find any other examples. HAVE I launched into an exposé of something that doesn’t actually happen? Well, possibly. I’m relying on you all to find more examples for me…
A pilgrimage to the Bookbarn
I’m back in Oxford now, and took the opportunity to go via the Bookbarn in North Somerset – where I have been many times before, and have written about here on several occasions. Every book is £1, though all the best books are siphoned off into the internet-only section of the barn complex (which wasn’t always the case – those halcyon days when all the books were browsable!) Truth be told, their fiction section is quite poor now, and I got very little there, but I got an awful lot of non-fiction. As you will see…
Lydia & Maynard: the letters of Lydia Lopokova and John Maynard Keynes
Ballerinas and economists aren’t top of my list of interests, but the Bloomsbury Group certainly are up there – and I love collections of letters, so here’s a corner of that group that I can add to my collection.
The Hare With the Amber Eyes by Edmund De Waal
So, LibraryThing tells me that I already have this. Oops. Lucky charity shop in Oxford!
Letters to Louise: Theodore Dreiser’s Letters to Louise Campbell
I haven’t read a word by Dresier, but couldn’t resist more letters – particularly since they promise to cover his writing process and drafts, which is fascinating to me. And I bought a novel by him over a decade ago, so maybe it will inspire me to read that.
Hassan by James Elroy Flecker
If you’re following those books in the photo above, this was a tiny Penguin slipped between two bigger hardbacks. I bought this entirely because he gets a bewildered mention by the Provincial Lady.
Unforgettable, Unforgotten by Anna Buchan (O Douglas)
I didn’t realise that Anna B had written an autobiography – this looks fab.
Brensham Village by John Moore
The sequel to a book I have yet to read… but do own. Fingers crossed I like it!
Woman Alive by Susan Ertz
I haven’t read Ertz yet, but she gets a glowing mention in Nicola Beauman’s A Very Great Profession, and this hardback is lovely.
Two Worlds by David Daiches
All I know about Daiches is some literary criticism I read years ago – which seemed a good enough reason to grab his autobiography about growing up Jewish in Edinburgh.
Evelyn Waugh by Frances Donaldson
If there’s something I love even more than biographies, it’s memoirs by people who knew famous people in a non-famous context. Niche, I know, but Waugh’s self-proclaimed ‘country neighbour’ should be fun.
Talking Heads 2 by Alan Bennett
Writing Home by Alan Bennett
National Treasure.
The Spirit of Tolerance by Katharine Moore
I’ve read a couple of things by Moore, and also read about her editing this collection in her letters with Joyce Grenfell.
Mild and Bitter by A.P. Herbert
I can’t remember if I’ve ever actually read anything by APH, but I read quite a lot about him – and anything collected from Punch in the 1930s is going to be fabs,
My Apprenticeships by Colette
This is the year I’ll read some Colette, promise, Peter.
The Best of Stephen Leacock 1
I suspect I’ve got all these selections in other books, but I’m not the sort of guy who leaves Stephen Leacock on the shelf.
Pomp & Circumstance by Noel Coward
This has been on my keep-an-eye-out-for list for so many years that I can no longer quite way – other than the fact that Noel Coward is a legend.
The Picnic and Suchlike Pandemonium by Gerald Durrell
Birds, Beasts, and Relatives by Gerald Durrell
The Garden of the Gods by Gerald Durrell
The Drunken Forest by Gerald Durrell
There were SO many books by Gerald Durrell and Laurence Durrell there – I was particularly pleased to find the second and third books in the My Family and other Animals trilogy.
Selected Essays by Hilaire Belloc
Since I use the word belloc to mean ‘hilarious’ – yes, I know – so I should read some essays by him, right?
Where I’m Reading From by Tim Parks
You may be getting tired of me reviewing books about books – well, there are more to come, and I can’t get enough of them! Recommendations always heartily welcomed. I can’t remember where I first heard of Where I’m Reading From (2014) by Tim Parks, but I have an inkling that it might have been in the ‘You May Also Be Interested In’ section on Amazon. I do know how I got it – it was a birthday present from my friends Sarah and Paul, along with Michael Dirda’s Browsings which I’ll also be writing about soon.
Tim Parks (a name I did not know before, once I realised that I’d been getting him mixed up with Tim Pears) is a British novelist, translator, and professor who lives in Milan. As such, he is well placed to write about all manner of literary topics, from the nuances of copyright to the different ways to translate isolated sentences from D.H. Lawrence. His pieces, which previously all appeared in the New York Review of Books, are certainly engaging and thought-provoking. They are also maddeningly repetitive.
The same points come up over and over and over again – that writers outside of English aim for an international style rather than one linked to their own particular contexts; that translators have to choose between content and tone; that academic criticism is too engaged with the text and not with the author’s life. This last suggests Park hasn’t read any English Literature academic writing for about forty years, but the other two would be extremely interesting points if they didn’t each come up a dozen times. And it did begin to feel, at one point, as though D.H. Lawrence were the only novelist Parks had ever read. True, these articles/essays came out at intervals over a four year period, but he could still have gone in for a bit more variety. Michael Dirda did; that’s all I’m sayin’.
BUT I should add that, those recurrences forgiven, Where I’m Reading From is fascinating and offers much food for thought. Even acknowledging how much repetition is in the book (and now, it seems, in my blog post about it), the topics covered are many and various, and often unusually interesting. To pick one, ‘Why Readers Disagree’:
Enthusiasm or disappointment may be confirmed or attenuated, but only exceptionally reversed [by criticism]. We say: James Wood/Colm Toibin/Michiko Kakutani admires the book and has given convincing reasons for doing so, but I still feel it is the worst kind of crowd-pleaser.
Let me offer a possible explanation that has been developing in my mind for a decade and more. It’s a central tenet of systemic psychology that each personality develops in the force field of a community of origin, usually a family, seeking his or her own position in a pre-existing group, or ‘system’, most likely made up of mother, father, brothers and sisters, then aunts, uncles, grandparents, and so on. The leading Italian psychologist, Valeria Ugazio further suggests that this family ‘system’ also has ‘semantic content’; that is, as conversations in the family establish criteria for praise and criticism of family members and non-members, one particular theme or issue will dominate.
These might be bravery vs cowardice, moral vs immoral, success vs failure etc. – and these are, he argues, reflected in the qualities we look for in novels or characters. I.e. we may judge books on entirely different scales from one another. At one point Parks makes what he considers an exhaustive list, which is bizarrely brief, but it’s a very intriguing notion nonetheless.
I could either write thousands of words about the different angles and authors considered or end here – and I think it will have to be the latter. Parks doesn’t write with the eager enthusiasm of the avid reader, but rather the mildly detached intellect of the professional man of books – yet those of us who are avid readers first and foremost will find much to interest. This he certainly did – most so in articles on translation, where he resisted quoting examples that only the polylingual would understand, for which I am grateful. Perhaps one does not warm to Parks as a friendly voice (and his treatment of his parents in these articles does little to enamour me, I will confess) but he is not setting out to be a chatty companion so much as a muser. As that, he is very admirable. But he is not Dirda. More on him anon…