Opus 7 – Sylvia Townsend Warner

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I’m reading around my next DPhil chapter, on Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Lolly Willowes, and thus there might well be a little spate of Warner related posts coming up here over the next few weeks.  I have an inkling that this might be one of those reviews which is very specialist, and might not attract much interest (1930s narrative poem, anyone?) but I shall plough ahead and see what happens!

I read Opus 7 (1931) by Warner mostly as a counterpoint to Lolly Willowes, but it is also interesting on its own account.  It’s a narrative poem, about fifty pages long, about Rebecca Random – an unsociable woman who lives in an idyllic cottage, ‘lives on bread and lives for gin’, and has an almost uncanny ability to grow flowers:

Some skill she had, and, more than skill, a touch
that prospered all she set, as though there were
a chemical affinity ‘twixt her
stuff and the stuff of plants.

Indeed, the most obvious connections between Opus 7 and Lolly Willowes are the countryside, and this almost witchlike ability that Rebecca has.  Flowers spring up almost overnight, and make Rebecca and her garden something of a spectacle for the villagers.
But the topic is really just a way of exploring the dynamics of village life, especially the darker side.  Rebecca starts to sell her flowers – but only because she needs money for drink.  The villagers buy her flowers for their mantelpieces, parties, and funerals – but do not accept her; she engages in these exchanges, but does not talk to the people next to her in the pub, nor buy them the drinks they anticipate.  In a really interesting aside, Warner leaves the stance of anecdote-reteller and dips into the author’s voice – comparing her addiction to writing and rewriting with Rebecca’s reliance on alcohol:

And down what leagues of darkness must I yet
trudge, stumble, reel, in the wrought mind’s retreat ;
then wake, remember, doubt, and with the day
that work which in the darkness shone survey,
and find it neither better nor much worse
than any other twentieth-century verse.
Oh, must I needs be disillusioned, there’s
no need to wait for spring!  Each day declares
yesterday’s currency a few dead leaves ;
and through all the sly nets poor technique weaves
the wind blows on, whilst I – new nets design,
a sister-soul to my slut heroine,
she to her dram enslaved, and I to mine.
I rarely read poetry, as you know, so perhaps I am not the best judge of quality.  I recently wrote a little bit about Warner’s collection Time Importuned, which I didn’t really like or dislike.  I felt I got a lot more out of Opus 7 – perhaps because it had a sustained narrative, and everything which comes along with that, particularly the foregrounding of character.  Once I had that all set in my mind, I could sit back and enjoy Warner’s writing.  It was occasionally a little forced, and I didn’t approve of all her attempts to create end-rhymes.  This was rather inexcusable:

But now Rebecca, wont to chatter ding-
dong with the merriest, and when drunk to sing

But in general I found it rather beautiful – her use of metaphor is quite striking, for instance.  This excerpt isn’t to do with Rebecca, but concerns the aftermath of village life after the first world war – looking back to the war with quite a chilling, effective image.  Even with all the writing about the trenches which I have read (which we have all read, I imagine) this made an impact on me:

I knew a time when Europe feasted well :
bodies were munched in thousands, vintage blood
so blithely flowed that even the dull mud
grew greedy, and ate men ; and lest the gust
should flag, quick flesh no daintier taste than dust,
spirit was ransacked for whatever might
sharpen a sauce to drive on appetite.
I can’t imagine any publisher willing to publish Opus 7 now, simply because of its form and length.  It’s not long enough to be considered a novel in verse, but it is obviously too long to be merely a poem.  However I am glad that Chatto and Windus decided it was worth issuing back in 1931, in their lovely Dolphin Books series (which I collect when I stumble across them) – it’s not my favourite book by Warner, but it is rather powerful and striking.  And, for a poetry ignoramus, rather an accessible way to enjoy the form, without forfeiting the qualities which make me primarily a lover of prose.

Please Don’t Eat The Daisies – Jean Kerr

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After I read Shirley Jackson’s Raising Demons, I went on a little Google spree to see what others had said about it.  Well, turns out, not an awful lot.  But I did find another name mentioned alongside hers once or twice – and that was Jean Kerr.  She might well be very famous, but I’d not heard of her before… but I was looking for more in that amusing-tales-of-wife-and-motherhood line, of which E.M. Delafield’s Provincial Lady will always be the doyenne, and so read Kerr’s Please Don’t Eat The Daisies (1957).

It’s very fun.  It isn’t as good as Delafield or Jackson, in my opinion – perhaps because there is less attempt at an overall structure.  Although all three authors were initially serialised, it’s most obvious with Kerr – and her book is really one-note: the exasperated wife and mother.  This sort of thing: ‘You take Christopher – and you may; he’s a slightly used eight-year-old.’  That is more or less what I was looking for, of course, and she is rather brilliant on that one-note – it’s just not going to enter my pantheon of greats.  It was turned into a 1960 film with Doris Day, and later a TV series with Pat Crowley, although I can’t imagine how.

Oh, I forgot, there was one piece which slid onto a very different topic – ‘Touours tristesse’ was a rather amusing pastiche of Francoise Sagan.

I’ll leave you with an example.  I realise I’ve been very brief about Please Don’t Eat The Daisies, but, to be honest, I’m pretty sure you’ll know whether or not you’ll want to read this based on the title and concept alone…   (Oh, and bear in mind, when you read the word ‘pants’, that this is an American book.)

Another distressing aspect of disciplining young children is that somehow you are always left with the flat end of the dialogue – a straight man forever.  It’s not just that you feel idiotic.  The real menace in dealing with a five-year-old is that in no time at all you begin to sound like a five-year-old.  Let’s say you hear a loud, horrifying crash from the bedroom, so you shout up:
“In heaven’s name, what was that?”
“What?”
“That awful noise.”
“What noise?”
“You didn’t hear that noise?”
“No.  Did you?”
“Of course I did – I just told you.”
“What did it sound like?”
“Never mind what it sounded like.  Just stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“Whatever you’re doing.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“Stop it anyway.”
“I’m brushing my teeth.  Shall I stop that?”
Obviously this way madness lies.  Personally, I knew I had to win this battle of dialectics or seek psychiatric care.  I don’t promise that my solution will work equally well in all cases, but it does do nicely around here.  Nowadays when I hear that crash I merely call up, clearly and firmly, “Hey you, pick up your pants.”

I am, of course, operating on the absolute certainty that whoever it is will have at least one pair of pants on the floor.  And the mere motion of picking them up will distract him, temporarily at least, from whatever mayhem he was involved in.  As far as that crash is concerned, I never really wanted to know what it was.  I just wanted it to stop.

Raising Demons – Shirley Jackson

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Raising Demons is the 1957 sequel to Shirley Jackson’s hilariously wonderful memoir/novel about being a wife and mother, Life Among the Savages (1953).  I paid a steepish amount for a hideous paperback (pictured), and thus managed to secure Raising Demons, saving it for a treat – and I read it whilst recently beleaguered with a cold.  It is an absurd indictment of the publishing industry that these books are so difficult to find, especially on this side of the ocean.  They are brilliant, and deserve to be classics (please, some publisher or other, please!)  I don’t often laugh out loud while reading, but with Raising Demons (as with Life Among the Savages before it) I sat in the corner giggling away to myself, getting curious and worried glances from my housemates.

I went back and read what I wrote about Life Among the Savages (you can do the same thing if you click here) and basically everything I said for that book is true of this one.  Funny, warm, happy, funny, clever, and did I mention funny?  But I shan’t be lazy; I shall write a new review for this book, and not just send you back to that review…

Despite my enthusiasm for Life Among the Savages, I’m well aware that Shirley Jackson is much more likely to make you think of Gothic, creepy, psychological novels – like the excellent We Have Always Lived in the Castle.  She does that sort of thing incredibly well.  But she also excels at this sort of gentle, family-orientated, self-deprecating writing – a genre which many would dismiss, I’m sure, but which I (and many of you) adore.

By the time Raising Demons starts there are six in the family, plus attendant animals, and they have outgrown the house which was so amusingly bought at the beginning of Life Among the Savages – and so they start hunting for a new house.  Or, rather, everyone tells them which house they should choose – the one with the wonky gatepost, converted into four self-contained flats.  Despite insisting that they don’t want to move, nor rent their house, they find themselves sending all their belongings into storage, and converting the flats into one house.  It is here that they live out their ordinary, hilarious lives.

Jackson has a talent for two types of humour at once: the knowing grin we grant to the recognisable, and laughter at the bizarre and unexpected.  These initially seem like opposite sides of the coin; that authors would have to pick one or the other – but Jackson manages both at once, by taking the everyday, identifiable dynamics of the family home… and exaggerating them.  And then putting them in a pattern, so that events pile on events, creating a surreal outcome.  Yet one which seems entirely possible – had, perhaps, happened to Jackson herself.

Having written about illustrative quotations yesterday, I should provide excellently evocative ones today, shouldn’t I?  I liked this one, about the mother preparing her son for his first Little League game – obviously rather more nervous than he is:

As a matter of fact, the night before the double-header which was to open the Little League, I distinctly recall that I told Laurie it was only a game.  “It’s only a game, fella,” I said.  “Don’t try to go to sleep; read or something if you’re nervous.  Would you like some aspirin?”

“I forgot to tell you,” Laurie said, yawning.  “He’s pitching Georgie tomorrow.  Not me.”

“What?”  I thought, and then said heartily, “I mean, he’s the manager, after all.  I know you’ll play your best in any position.”

“I could go to sleep now if you’d just turn out the light,” Laurie said patiently.  “I’m really quite tired.”

I called Dot later, about twelve o’clock, because I was pretty sure she’d still be awake, and of course she was, although Billy had gone right off about nine o’clock.  She said she wasn’t the least bit nervous, because of course it didn’t really matter except for the kids’ sake, and she hoped the best team would win.  I said that that was just what I had been telling my husband, and she said her husband had suggested that perhaps she had better not go to the game at all because if the Braves lost she ought to be home with a hot bath ready for Billy and perhaps a steak dinner or something.  I said that even if Laurie wasn’t pitching I was sure the Braves would win, and of course I wasn’t one of those people who always wanted their own children right out in the centre of things all the time but if the Braves lost it would be my opinion that their lineup ought to be revised and Georgie put back into right field where he belonged.  She said she thought Laurie was a better pitcher, and I suggested that she and her husband and Billy come over for lunch and we could all go to the game together.

That also gives an example of my favourite technique in the book.  It’s simple, but I find it endlessly amusing: it is what Jackson doesn’t write.  So much of Raising Demons is left to the reader’s imagination.  Not much is needed, to be honest – any reader is likely to deduce that the mother is distrait, and the son calm.  Jackson isn’t trying to be super-subtle with that point.  But I love that it is never quite spelt out – and that other characters thus often miss what is so obvious to the amused reader.  Here’s an example in that vein:

By the Saturday before Labor Day a decided atmosphere of cool restraint had taken over our house, because on Thursday my husband had received a letter from an old school friend of his named Sylvia, saying that she and another girl were driving through New England on a vacation and would just adore stopping by for the weekend to renew old friendships.  My husband gave me the letter to read, and I held it very carefully by the edges and said that it was positively touching, the way he kept up with his old friends, and did Sylvia always use pale lavender paper with this kind of rosy ink and what was that I smelled – perfume?  My husband said Sylvia was a grand girl.  I said I was sure of it.  My husband said Sylvia had always been one of the nicest people he knew.  I said I hadn’t a doubt.  My husband said that he was positive that I was going to love Sylvia on sight.  I opened my mouth to speak but stopped myself in time.

My husband laughed self-consciously.  “I remember,” he said, and then his voice trailed off and he laughed again.

“Yes?” I asked politely.

“Nothing,” he said.
Lovely!  I really can’t recommend this book, and Life Among the Savages, enough.  It’s such a shame they’re so difficult to find – but I promise they are worth the hunt to anybody who likes Provincial Lady-esque books.  (Hopefully you’ll find a nicer copy than mine – I quite like the other image featured, yours for $500.)  Like the PL et al, I know I’ll be returning to this family time and again.  I’m rather bereft that only two were written… and on the hunt for other, potentially similar, books.  And more on that before too long…

A little about When God Was A Rabbit, but not really.

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I’ve mentioned it before – I’m always fascinated by the behind-the-scenes of blogging.  I know when, how, and where I write my own blog posts, but I’m aware that each blogger does these things slightly (or, indeed, very) differently.  I’ve recently finished When God Was A Rabbit by Sarah Winman, which I’m going to talk about a tiny amount, because my musing on it headed me off in a different direction – about how we structure blog posts.  Yep, it’s going to be a meta-post, if you will (stolen joke alert: I’m so meta, even this acronym.)

How do you start?  (Sorry, non-bloggers, these questions won’t mean much to you.)  How do you structure your posts?  I have realised that, increasingly, I start from one or two key quotations, noted in the book (in pencil, naturally) and one or two key bullet points, in my head.  Without those (especially given the gap in time between reading and reviewing) I am rather lost.

But how do I go about finding those quotations?  The short answer is, I don’t know.  I think my blog reviews are a little more reliant on supportive quotations than many bloggers, but I know there are some of you who also quote a lot – how do you choose?  Studying English literature, especially when at undergraduate level, I was well trained in the art of reading a novel without knowing how I would write about it – usually, then, without having a predetermined essay question – so I’d just be reading, say Fanny Burney’s Evelina and hoping to find a good essay topic in the midst of reading.  (In Evelina‘s case, I wrote about laughter… did you know that she half-laughs and almost-laughs and thought-of-laughing a huge amount, after the embarrassing laughter scene at the ball, but doesn’t actually laugh again until she is engaged?  Truedat.)

Gosh, I am easily sidetracked.

So, how do I (how do you) choose these excerpts?  I tend to have a pencil at the ready, to note down any particularly amusing or poignant sections – or, preferably, a paragraph or two which seem to me to encapsulate the feel of the book.  Which is quite a nebulous and ill-defined brief, but perhaps you do the same, and thus can understand?  I certainly have almost no hope of finding a useful quotation once I’ve finished reading the book.  Once I’ve got that, I can expand outwards – my summary and response of the book needs that central few examples to circle out from.  If I didn’t make a note of the page number whilst I was reading, then… those are the posts which don’t have any excerpts.

Which brings me onto Sarah Winman’s When God Was A Rabbit (2011), which I read recently for book group.  I quite liked it; I thought the writing was good and the structuring not very good.  There was just far too much in it – a bit like a soap opera.  I think Winman will either go on to write increasingly good novels, or she will stop now, having put everything she could think of into When God Was A Rabbit.

But the main reason I’m not going to write a full-length review of the novel is because I got to the end of it without having noted down any excerpts.  There wasn’t a single passage which struck me as being especially noteworthy – for whatever reason.  Of course, you could simply say that this makes Winman very consistent; there weren’t any pages I noted down for being awful, either.  But it does make it more or less impossible for me to begin to structure a post about the book.  Or, rather, it would end up like one of the reviews I wrote when I started my blog – very short and very hazy!

So, there you have it.  If a novel doesn’t present two or three of these excerpts whilst I’m reading, I’m all lost at sea.  How about you?  Do you flick back for quotations after you’ve finished, or make notes as you go along?  And are there any books you’ve just felt incapable of writing about – for different reasons than those discussed in relation to In Cold Blood last week!   Just because you don’t know where to start, or how to frame it.

Gosh, Stuck-in-a-Book is just becoming a place where I discuss why I’m not reviewing books, isn’t it?!

Stuck-in-a-Book’s Weekend Miscellany

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Hope you’re having a good weekend!  I’ll be off on one of my trips to villages with odd names – this time it’s the turn of Ready Token.  Brilliant, no?  I’ll leave you with a book, a link (or two), and a blog post.


1.) The links – I started writing a post last November on book covers (and by ‘started writing’, I mean I copied out two links and wrote ‘COVERS’ as the post title) but I’ve realised that it’s not going to come to fruition for a while. So instead I’ll just give you the links.  The first is to an excellent Caustic Cover Critic  interview with designer Alison Forner, which includes many examples of her beautiful work – one of which is above.  The second is a sort of review of the best covers of 2011 (which sadly too few illustrations), from the Guardian.  JUST what you wanted in the middle of March, no?

2.) The book – fans of the Mapp and Lucia series by E.F. Benson will be pleased to know that another sequel has been written by Guy Fraser-Sampson (also known as Pursewarden).  His Major Benjy really caught the spirit of the original series (my thoughts here) and, if we can’t have Benson writing new books, then Guy Fraser-Sampson is second best.  And although these things shouldn’t matter, I’m glad that he’s been given a lovely cover this time around – for Lucia on Holiday.  If you’re quick, you might be able to hear Guy talk about it about on Radio 4’s Open Book.  Lucia on Holiday is published on 29th March.

3.) The blog link –  is Trevor’s fantastic review of Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book, on his site The Mookse and the Gripes.  If you’ve yet to be convinced to try it out, I think he might just do the trick.

Dear Octopus – Dodie Smith

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When I was reading Dodie Smith’s first volume of autobiography, Look Back With Love, the title which cropped up most (and most intrigued me) was her play Dear Octopus (1938).  She didn’t write much about its creation or production, since obviously she didn’t write the play during her first eleven years, but she makes allusions now and then.  My attention was grabbed by the mention of family reunions, John Gielguid, and that curious title.  Actually, I’ll instantly put you out of your misery, lest you think this is a play set in an aquarium.  The title derives from the speech Nicholas gives at his parents’ Golden Wedding Anniversary:

“To the family – that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor, in our inmost hearts, ever quite wish to.”

Despite being an only child, Dodie Smith seems very able at portraying sibling relationships within large families.  (Indeed, one character claims to be ‘crazy about large families’, and their husband caustically remarks ‘That’s because you’re an only child.’)  Rose and Cassandra always seemed very believable in I Capture the Castle (albeit Thomas rather less so) and Dear Octopus is no different.  The size of the cast, and the various familial and marital relationships, was rather dizzying – but, of course, it would have been rather easier to identify everyone when seeing it on the stage, rather than reading the play.  We discussed reading plays a couple of years ago, and it seems that I am in a minority – although it has to be said that I do prefer reading plays with small casts, rather than the mammoth ensemble of Dear Octopus.

The situation is a tried and tested catalyst for all manner of action: a family reunion.  I don’t think there’s much point in me going into specifics, but it involves all the expected angles.  A daughter returns after a seven year absence, holding a secret; a sister-in-law holds resentment about a long-ago rejection; siblings compete and misunderstand each other; children try to understand the adult world; the gathering draws further attention to one family member who has recently died.  And, naturally, there is a romance plot threaded through – which culminates rather too neatly, perhaps, but everyone likes a bit of feel-good theatre.

There is plenty in Dear Octopus which does remind one of the insouciance of much of I Capture the Castle – and, indeed, Cassandra’s faux-sophistication.  Like this, for example:

MARGERY: Ken’ll carry on with anyone who crooks their little finger at him.
HILDA: Don’t you mind?
MARGERY: Not in the least.  It’s a safety valve.

Young love and young marriages are treated quite flippantly at times, although elsewhere the oncoming war (they must have known it was oncoming?) does crash through this flippancy:

LAUREL: Your father’s picture.  He was exactly your age when he was killed. (Suddenly.)  Oh, darling, darling–
HUGH: What?
LAUREL: Sometimes I wish we were quite middle-aged.
HUGH: Good lord, why?
LAUREL: So that you wouldn’t have to go if there’s another war.
HUGH: It’ll take a damn good cause to get me to war.
LAUREL: Oh, you all say that.

But the focal point is not budding romance – it is the security and trust of a fifty-year long marriage.  There is a lovely sense through that the anniversary couple in question (Charles and Dora) can cope with the antics of their family because of the depth of their bond.  For a young(ish) unmarried woman, Smith conveys this very well, and very calmly.

Dear Octopus doesn’t reinvent the wheel.  There are a lot of plays in a similar mould, and even with a similar tone, but Smith’s construction and balance throughout is so well done that this seems like an exemplar within its crowded genre.  Perhaps it won’t overly excite the reader, or transform any lives, but it does its job rather well.  I don’t know how often the play is revived now, but you do get a chance to see it, grab the opportunity.  Otherwise, I recommend you track down a copy, and have an entertaining afternoon…

Short non-review today…

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For the sake of A Century of Books, I must record that I have read Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (1966) – but I have no desire to write about it.  I hated reading it.  The writing was good.  But it is a horrible book, about a horrible murder committed by horrible people.  People will, I daresay, suggest that I am shying away from ‘real life’, but unpleasant actions are no more real than pleasant ones.  The usual, indeed, is rather more real than unusual.  There is a greater amount of reality in the Provincial Lady books than within the pages of In Cold Blood.  I cannot understand why anybody wants to read crime books, let alone true crime books: one half of the world does not understand the pleasures of the other.  Reading In Cold Blood could never be a pleasure for me, and the amount of displeasure it caused me wholly obscured any admiration I should feel towards Capote for his writing ability or his experimentation with genre.  I wish I had never read it.

Any books for which you feel like this?

One Fine Day – Mollie Panter-Downes

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Back to normal now, folks!  You’d think I’d have taken the opportunity to write lots of reviews, ready to post… but… I didn’t.  Although I hope you were suitably intrigued by the little clues I gave yesterday… the first one up is the brilliant re-read.  So brilliant, in fact, that it’s leaping onto my 50 Books You Must Read But May Not Have Heard About…

39. One Fine Day – Mollie Panter-Downes

I do more re-reading now than I used to, but I tend towards books I already know I’ll love.  So there are some novels I’ll read every two years or so, and some that I don’t remember much about, but knew I loved ten years ago, say.  What I seldom do (understandably, perhaps) is re-read books that I didn’t love – those that I disliked, or thought only quite good.

Thank goodness I decided to re-read Mollie Panter-Downes’ One Fine Day.

I first read it back in 2004, and thanks to never emptying my inbox (currently at 76,992 emails – all read, don’t worry) I can tell you that I reported thus to my online book group: “I did enjoy this, but not as much as I was expecting given Nicola’s love love love of it.  I was expecting E.M. Delafield and it landed more Virginia Woolf than I thought it would??  Memorable, though.”  The Nicola in question is Nicola Beauman, doyenne of Persephone Books, who has often held up One Fine Day as an almost perfect novel.  Indeed, it was she who rediscovered the book for Virago’s Modern Classics series.

Well, turns out Nicola was right, of course.  I had initially thought One Fine Day only fairly good, whereas now I believe it is an absolutely excellent – and, indeed, important – novel.

My early comparison with Virginia Woolf is one that I stick by, although why I would have thought that was a bad thing, I can’t imagine.  But I am aware that a lot of you will be turned off by the mention of Woolf – let me encourage you not to be!  One of the reasons that I think One Fine Day is an important novel is that it is something of a bridge between the middlebrow and the modernist.  It is Panter-Downes’ style which makes the novel so exquisite, and yet it has none of the inaccessibility of which Woolf can be accused.  She has all the fluidity and ingenuity of the great prose/poetry stylist, combined with the keen and sensible observation of the domestic novelist.  Time for me to hand over to Mollie Panter-Downes for a fairly long excerpt:

The bus was full of women, sighing, sweating gently under the arms of their cotton dresses as they held on to their baskets and their slippery, fretful children.  A tiny boy screamed like an angry jay, drumming his fists on the glass.  He wa-anted it, he wa-anted it!  Bless the child, wanted what?  It, it, ow-w-w! he wept with fury at adult stupidity already frustrating his simple world.  A spaniel on the floor at somebody’s feet shifted cautiously, lifting a red-cornered eye towards his owner, hoping and trusting that no one would tread on his paw.  Human uneasiness and irritability seemed to fill the bus with hot cottonwool, choking, getting up the nostrils.  If it did not start in a moment, it might burst with pressure from its prickling cargo.  Only a young man, a hiker, seemed to sit aloof and happy in the heat.  He wore a blue shirt and drill shorts; on his knees was a knapsack.  His neck was a dull red, so was the brow of his cheerful, ordinary face.  Perhaps he had only just come out of the Army or the Air Force, thought Laura, watching him study his map with such happy concentration.  Ow, ow, ow-w-w, wept the tiny boy, unable to escape and go striding off amongst the bracken, still handcuffed to childhood.  I’ll smack you proper if you don’t stop, threatened his mother.  The young man studied his map, reading England with rapture.  The driver, who had descended to cool his legs and have a word with a crony outside the Bull, swung himself up into his seat.  An angry throbbing seized the bus, the hot bodies of the passengers quivered like jelly, the jaws of an old woman by the door seemed to click and chatter.  With a lurch, they started.  The tiny boy’s tears stopped as though within his tow-coloured head someone had turned a tap.  His brimming eyes stared out at the streets as he sat quietly on his mother’s lap, clutching a little wooden horse.

I think that’s brilliant, just beautiful.  Mollie Panter-Downes also has a great way with metaphors and similes, offering unexpected images which somehow don’t jar, and convey much more than a simple statement could.  I’m not going to be able to resist quoting MPD (if you will) quite a bit, by the way, so here’s an example: ‘Now that he was home, he could not abide the thought of other people’s bath water running out, meeting on the stairs with forced joviality, someone else’s life pressed up against one in a too small space like a stranger’s overcoat against one’s mouth in a crowd.’

It’s unusual for me to talk about the style of a novel before I address the rudiments of the plot, but I do think it’s MPD’s style which sets her apart from her contemporaries.  In terms of plot, nothing really happens.  One Fine Day, as the title suggests, is all set during one day.  The war is over, and people are beginning to get back to their old lives – only, of course, nothing can ever really be the same.  Laura (the central character, through whose eyes we see most of the novel) goes shopping, visits a family in the village, tries to retrieve her dog from a gipsy encampment, and walks up a beautiful hill.  The events of the day are, in fact, uneventful.  It is this ordinariness, in contrast to the uncertain and unkind days of war, which resonates throughout One Fine Day.  Laura’s observations and reflections are not dramatic or life-changing – but that is their beauty.  What a relief it must have been to read about the pursuit of a gardener, or the view from a hill, rather than menacing newspaper headlines and the constant worry about loved ones.  The novel relaxes into this peacefulness and freedom – but with a continuous backward glance.  The war has changed Laura.  She is

a bit thinner over the cheekbones, perhaps, the hair completely grey in front, though the back was still fair and crisply curling, like rear-line soldiers who do not know that defeat has bleakly overtaken their forward comrades.

There is an undercurrent throughout One Fine Day of changed times – not just the working-class villagers who no longer want jobs in domestic service, or need to pay strict adherence to codes of class civility.  Laura has been separated from her husband Stephen for years; he has not watched their daughter Victoria grow up.  The family is not destroyed by this, nor is it even unhappy – but it is strained, and it is tired, but resilient.  Mollie P-D conveys so perfectly the triumph and relief of this weary, determined little family unit, who do not fully understand one another, but who stand together, grateful for all they have managed to keep.

Alongside Panter-Downes’ beautiful writing, it is the character of Laura which is the novel’s triumph.  Perhaps the two cannot quite be separated, because she is built of this wonderful style – it is not quite stream of consciousness, it never leaves the third person, but it flits through thoughts and noticings and reflections as Laura does.  And she is such a wonderful character.  She reminds me a bit of Mrs. Miniver, but without her slight tweeness.  Laura loves beauty, especially beauty in nature; she is a little absent-minded and uncertain, but she is strong and caring and optimistic.  Laura is observant but not judgemental; intelligent but not an intellectual.  A line of poetry runs through her head, in relation to her everyday activity:

Who wrote that? Laura wondered absently.  She could not remember.  Her mind was a ragbag, in which scraps of forgotten brightness, odd bits of purple and gold, were hopelessly mixed up with laundry lists and recipes for doing something quick and unconvincingly delicious with dried egg.

Laura is a perfect heroine for the wave of feminism which re-evaluated the worth of domestic life.  Perhaps especially because she does not entirely idealise it herself; she describes her class and people as ‘all slaves of the turned-back fresh linen, the polished wood reflecting the civilised candlelight, the hot water running into the shining bath.’  But she is a willing slave – all grumbles and laments are covered in the sheer gratitude Laura feels for life and freedom.  I can’t convey quite what a wonderful character Laura is, nor quite how perfectly Panter-Downes understands and shapes her.  To create a character who is both realistic and lovable must be one of the most difficult authorial tasks.  She is as psychologically well-developed as Mrs. Dalloway or Laura Ramsay, but as delightful as Mrs. Miniver or the Provincial Lady.  It is an astonishing combination.

I wrote blandly, back in 2004, that One Fine Day was ‘memorable, though’, unappreciative wretch that I was!  Truth be told, I had not remembered much of the novel.  And I doubt I will remember which steps Laura took, which neighbours she encountered, nor which views she expressed.  This is the sort of novel which cannot be remembered for its contents; only for the impression it leaves.  And that I certainly shall not forget.  I’m so grateful that I returned to One Fine Day, and was given a second chance to appreciate properly the work of brilliance that it is.  I am only left wondering, of course, quite how many other novels I have underestimated in this manner…??

Others who got Stuck in this Book:

“An ordinary day, an ordinary family, ordinary lives, but an extraordinary novel.” – Margaret, BooksPlease

“The author’s love for this part of England absolutely sings through this little gem of a novel” – Geranium Cat’s Bookshelf

“But there were also fundamental changes in England’s social fabric, which this short novel portrays in exquisite and sometimes painful detail.” – Laura’s Musings

“It is a moving, elegiac novel about love, beauty, and most importantly, freedom” – Rachel, Book Snob

My Life in Books: Round-up!

StuckinaBook All 28 Comments

Well, I hope you enjoyed that, I certainly did.  Don’t forget to go back and comment on the posts this week (I always get overly protective when I feature other people!)  – and I’d love to know which recommended book you’re now most keen to read?

I thought I’d link to all thirty (thirty!) of the bloggers and blog-readers who have participated in My Life in Books in Series One and Series Two.  This is set up so that clicking on the person’s name takes you to their blog (if they have one) and clicking on the ‘Life in Books‘ bit takes you to the post where they were featured.

Tomorrow, back to normal – which I hope won’t be anti-climactic!  Coming up there will be a re-read that was much better the second time around, a brilliant sequel, and a book I really wish I hadn’t read.  Intriguing, no?

Series One

Karen and Susan’s Life in Books
Lyn and Our Vicar’s Wife/Anne’s Life in Books
Lisa and Victoria’s Life in Books
Darlene and Our Vicar/Peter’s Life in Books
Annabel  and Thomas’s Life in Books
David and Elaine’s Life in Books
Harriet and Nancy’s  Life in Books

Series Two

Rachel and Teresa’s Life in Books
Claire and Colin’s Life in Books
Hayley and Karyn’s Life in Books
Jenny and Kim’s Life in Books 
Danielle and Sakura’s Life in Books
Claire B and Nymeth/Ana’s Life in Books
Gav and Polly’s Life in Books
Eva and Simon S’s Life in Books