The Only Way Is (Mary) Essex

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Sue, Ann, and Erika were all intrigued by the opening to Tea Is So Intoxicating by Mary Essex, which I posted the other day, and asked if I would say a bit more about her.  Here are those lines again:

It is highly probable that the tea shop would never have started at all if Commander David Tompkins hadn’t fancied himself at being something of a dab-hand at cooking.

Well, never let it be said that I ignore the cries of my people.  I do misinterpret them a bit – because I don’t remember all that much about Tea Is So Intoxicating, I decided to read one of the other Mary Essex novels I have on my shelf – the equally wonderfully titled The Amorous Bicycle.

You see, I read Tea Is So Intoxicating almost a decade ago, and I read it immediately after finished Moby Dick.  Anything would have been refreshing right then – and, while I knew I loved the novel, which is about the struggles of setting up a provincial tea-room, I didn’t know how much this depended on comparison.  Whom could I ask?  Nobody else knew anything about her.  I’m the only person to own any Mary Essex novels on LibraryThing (since Geranium Cat very kindly gave me her copy of Six Fools and a Fairy.)  And I bought Tea Is So Intoxicating on a whim, because it had a brilliant title and only cost 10p. 

Turns out, I knew more about Mary Essex than I realised.  But I’d nearly finished the novel before I discovered that, so I’m going to make you wait until the end of the review to unveil the surprise…

The Amorous Bicycle (1944) takes place in Queen Catharine’s Court, an ‘ultra-modern, ultra-select block of flats situated in South London, not too south of course, because that would not have had a desirable district number for notepaper, but fairly south.’  There is a huge cast of characters (which isn’t the only thing which reminded me of Richmal Crompton’s novels) and not really any principals – although the first we meet is Mr. Vyle, the resident manager of the building.  He’s a bit of a coward, and unduly proud of his position, but basically a good egg.

I was going to go through the lot, but it might get a bit bewildering.  Suffice to say, they do all become fully-formed – it just takes quite a few pages.  Some are closer to stereotype than others – the retired Colonel and his ex-comrade cook are in the ‘closer’ category, not to mention the temperamental French chef for the building’s restaurant.  There’s also the James family – a long-suffering mother who is more than willing to share her sufferings, her actressy daughter and casual son, and her estranged husband (preposterously called Henry James) who is ditched by the mistress he absconded with, and tries to go back to the family he hasn’t seen for a decade.  There’s a coquettish young woman; a coquettish older woman; a browbeaten decorator determined to paint every flat ‘pile blew’; a lascivious doctor; a self-important, plagiarising novelist… the list goes ever delightfully on.

It all sounds a bit like a soap opera, doesn’t it?  Well, it’s closer, as I said, to Richmal Cromptons novels – a useful comparison only, of course, if you’ve read any of them.  Gossip and intrigue sustain the residents of the building, all of whom seem to be contemplating romantic alliances to greater or lesser extents.

I am no great fan of romantic novelists.  If that is all they bring to the table, I must confess myself bored – but you probably know how greatly I prize good writing and Essex’s is certainly not bad.  It would, admittedly, be infinitely better if she had never discovered the use of the exclamation mark.  I think it can be used to great aplomb in dialogue (c.f. The Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton, still my forerunner for Read of 2011) but is nigh-on unforgivable in narrative.  It always looks amateurish.

BUT – Essex’s writing is funny.  Of course humour is subjective, but I think a lot of you might enjoy her humour too – it reminded me of E.M. Delafield, in that wry, observational style which occasionally does a little twist in the middle of a sentence.  Her unexpected turns made me smile – she is especially good, I thought, at introducing characters with quick, witty sketches.  Which is a mercy, given how many of them there are.  Here are three examples:

He was under forty, and good-looking in a rugged, rather ugly way.

The next one hit a bit close to home…

Professor Tyrrell, unmarried, and completely self-contained, lived in Number Ninety-one.  He was pedantic, he was finicky, he spoke repulsively correct English, in fact it was so correct that it was wrong.

And, self-deprecatingly, this was my favourite:

He was a vegetarian, and looked it.
Only the other day, when reviewing Edith Olivier’s Night Thoughts of a Country Landlady, I lamented that she hadn’t availed herself of the many opportunities to laugh at the absurdities of wartime.  Well, Essex barely comments on the more serious aspects of war (all but one person seem miraculously unaffected by any actual fighting) but is rather wonderful on the deprivations suffered by economising housewives and frustrated customers.

She proffered the menu.  It read Lunch 3s.6d. (and on the back Dinner 6s.).  Bread, one penny, Napkin, one penny, Coffee, sixpence.  Minerals and soda water.  On reading the menu, which on the face of it looked to be lengthy and extremely good, one’s mood changed, because most of it had a tendency to boil down to Spam.

Indeed, it is the rumour of a far-off fishmonger selling ‘dabs’ (whatever they might be) which compels Miss Hungerford-Hawkes to belie the dignity of her years and procure a bicycle.  This is the first, but by no means the last, mention of bicycles in The Amorous Bicycle.  Essex’s title derives from the well-known rhyme ‘Daisy, Daisy’ (read it here, if you don’t know it.)  For somehow, often quite tenuously, the advent of bicycles to Queen Catharine’s Court leads to all sorts of happenings, romantic and otherwise (and it is rather nice that Essex focuses on romances between those not in the first flush of youth – this is by no means a youthful romance-by-numbers novel.)

I did have to laugh at the following line – I know enough evangelical cyclists to understand.  (Guys, it’s just a mode of transport.  I don’t tell you at length how great walking down the street is.  Just saying.  Oh, and when I’m driving, please don’t cycle down the middle of the road, or jump red lights.  Ta.)

Really, Mrs. Plaistow decided, people with bicycles were very much like people with babies, they just couldn’t stop talking about them.

And not everybody has a fondness for this wartime economy:

Mr. Vyle didn’t think so much of a nice bike.  He found that biking made his ears cold, and he was fed to the teeth that he would probably have to give up his car because he couldn’t get the petrol for it and he knew that Mrs. Vyle would point out that other people had “ways.”  Mr. Vyle hadn’t any ways.  He was rather alarmed at the prospect of what might happen to him if he tried any tricks.  All the same he’d see this blasted war somewhere else before he bought himself a nice bike, as Tutton suggested.

Incidentally, when I worked in Rare Books in the Bodleian, I dealt with a lot of boys’ comics from the early twentieth-century.  Throughout the early 1940s the back cover held advertisements for a bike manufacturer (showing boys on bikes capturing Nazis; using their bike bells to win the war, etc.) but each said essentially “Sorry, bicycles not available during wartime, but keep an eye out once the fighting’s all over.”  The residents of Queen Catharine’s Court do, admittedly, have some trouble procuring their vehicles – but a fair few manage it in the end.

While I was reading, I wasn’t trying to decide whether or not Mary Essex was a great novelist.  She obviously isn’t.  My quandary was whether or not she was good – and, exclamation marks aside, I decided that she was.  I’d certainly read more by her, and have one more waiting on my bookshelf.  Her characters and plots don’t reinvent the wheel, but are diverting enough, and her style is pleasantly amusing.

So, that twist I promised you.  While hunting around on the internet, I discovered what I had already suspected – that Mary Essex was a pseudonym.  What I had not expected was that I had already heard of Mary Essex under her actual name – which is (drum roll)… Ursula Bloom.

I expect a lot of you have heard of her.  Perhaps you’ve seen her mentioned in the Guinness Book of Records.  Because Ursula Bloom wrote over 500 books, under various names.  In terms of quantity, she could look Barbara Cartland in the eye.

This discovery did leave me a bit shocked… how could someone so prolific actually write good books?  I know a lot of you will think “All that matters is that you enjoyed it.”  That’s partly true, but I’ve always been a believer that literary merit exists, and that books can’t be judged entirely subjectively, or on how pleasing they are to the reader.  Was my judgement wildly off?  There are so many books I have disparaged or discarded because of poor writing, yet I thought the writing in The Amorous Bicycle above average.

So… I am left puzzled.  Did Ursula Bloom put extra effort into her Mary Essex titles, or am I so enamoured by the 1940s that I’ll forgive a wartime novelist that which I’d condemn from a 21st century writer?  I don’t know… but I’d love any of you who’ve read any Mary Essex to comment, or if you’ve got one languishing on your shelves – grab it, read it, and get back to me.

Stuck-in-a-Book’s Weekend Miscellany

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Morning everyone!  I usually try and write my Weekend Miscellanies in advance, so that they appear on the dot of midnight, but I was at a friend’s house yesterday evening and too zonked to write anything when I got back.  And, prepare yourself, today’s post is quite self-indulgent… I was going to be bashful and modest, but… no, I’ll try that next year instead.

1.) Spangle very kindly asked me to participate in a series on her blog called Chapters In My Life.  As with the My Life in Books series I ran in March/April, we were both inspired by the My Life in Books TV programme.  I chose five books which were important during my life, and which have led to my current reading tastes.  I also tried to steer clear of my normal answers to such things, so there is nary a mention of Miss Hargreaves!  You can read it here, and see the others in Spangle’s series here. As a sneak peak, my first choice is Enid Blyton’s Five Get Into Trouble, but I now have a suspicion that I chose the wrong book… Our Vicar? Our Vicar’s Wife?

2.) A teensy bit of trumpet-blowing, but trumpet-blowing occasioned by surprise and delight – according to Wikio, I am now top of their ranking of UK literary blogs!  I know these things are only a bit of fun, and I’ll probably have dropped to no.93 by next month, but I couldn’t help being rather pleased.

3.) A now a bit of fun – a great quiz I happened upon called Shakespeare or Batman?  Not as easy as it sounds… I got 20/30, which is the worst score of anybody I know.  Great.

4.) Slightly Foxed‘s beautiful little limited edition hardbacks have proved so popular that they’re going to reprint their bestselling titles in paperback form.  More info here; the first will be Mr. Tibbits’s Catholic School by Ysenda Maxtone Graham.  Anybody read it?

5.) To most of us, Elizabeth von Arnim is far from being a neglected author (she appears on my 50 Books list, for goodness’ sake – what greater acclaim IS there??) but a mention in Downton Abbey a few weeks ago has apparently created something of a resurgence of interest.  A lovely little article here.  And a confession from me that I’m three episodes behind with Downton…

Night Thoughts of a Country Landlady by Edith Olivier

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Those of you who eagerly await my ‘hilarious’ pun-nomenal post titles may have noted that, of late, I’ve gone for simple titles when doing book reviews.  This is partly so I can tell what I was reviewing when I look at archives, and partly to make the search engine work better… but I do miss trying to think of laboured ways to pun, of an evening.

Which isn’t really relevant to anything at all, only I felt I could have had a field day with Edith Olivier’s Night Thoughts of a Country Landlady (1940).  Nothing springs to mind right now, of course… (Landlady Olivier… no. Holding The Thoughts… no.  Night to See You, To See You… Night!  Ok, stop Simon.)  Shall we get on with the show?

It’s no secret that I love Olivier’s novel The Love-Child.  I’m currently writing a chapter of my thesis which centres around it, and it’s probably in my top ten favourite books.  So far my other encounters with Olivier have been somewhat less impressive (unless you count the genuine excitement of reading her actual diary, in Wiltshire Record Office) but I am abundantly hopeful – and thus, when I saw Night Thoughts of a Country Landlady in Taunton, I grabbed it.  (And, y’know, paid for it and everything.)

Being specific, this book is (purportedly) ‘presented by’ Edith Olivier.  It takes the form of edited diaries from the pen of Miss Emma Nightingale.  Olivier’s preface indicates that she compiled Miss Nightingale’s war diaries, deposited with her the night before Miss N died: ‘All the sentences I have printed here are hers, though I have rearranged them in order to bring them into chapters.’  Now, Jane, in her lovely review, took Olivier at her word.  I’m more cynical.  I’m pretty sure she’s lying.  Remember when Margaret Forster wrote Diary of an Ordinary Woman and there was a small kerfuffle because it turned out the ‘ordinary woman’ was entirely made up?  Well, I expect Olivier’s kerfuffle was even smaller, but… it does seem as though Miss Nightingale is a creature of Olivier’s imagination.  There’s her name, for starters (‘night thoughts’ of Miss Nightingale? A little coincidental.)  Also the fact that the book doesn’t even slightly resemble a diary – for instance, she often writes looking back over several years, retrospectively.  And finally, the style is very much Olivier’s own.  It often reads exactly like her own autobiography, Without Knowing Mr. Walkley, which I have yet to review here.

None of which, naturally, prevents it being a very enjoyable book.  It’s quite an odd, roundabout concept – but whether or not Miss Nightingale ever existed, the wartime thoughts are interesting, engaging reading for any of us interested in the home front of the war years.  Which is quite a lot of us, no?

The plot (as it were) of the book is quite unextraordinary.  Ordinary, if you will.  Essentially it narrates the experience of a fairly old woman, living in a small village during wartime, and offering up her home to lodgers.  These range from military men to a famous actress – each of which Miss Nightingale welcomes happily, and observes shrewdly.  For the most part, I enjoyed and respected the calm, kind manner in which Miss Nightingale coped with the uncertainties and upheavals of conflict.
I have found that the happiest way to carry on in the war is, not to worry about any immediate effect of what we are actually doing, but to do it as well as we can, and then to look away and watch nature all around, slowly reaching her effortless and sure fruition.  That is the complete change of air and scene which we so often think we must have.  There is no repose like the realisation that one’s little daily drudgery is already part of something beyond itself.I am endlessly interested in home-front perspectives on war, but what I really love is the good old British if-you-can’t-laugh-what-can-you-do attitude to anything and everything.  One need look no further than E.M. Delafield’s The Provincial Lady in Wartime to realise that the most unsettling of circumstances can be dealt with humorously – and that was what I found most lacking in The Night Thoughts of a Country Landlady.  It’s very rarely funny.  It isn’t unduly earnest, but does lapse into the prosaic on occasion.  Some situations had inherent humour, and those came across well, but I felt Olivier/Nightingale could have made this a more engaging narrative if she had allowed herself to be a bit wittier.  The humour, when it comes, is subtle…
One complication was that a party of mothers and “expectant mothers”, whose children were sent here, had been themselves evacuated to another place beginning with the same letter.  The authorities had imagined that this alphabetical proximity naturally carried with it a geographical one, but unfortunately this was not the case, and the other village was about twelve miles off.  For some days this caused a ferment.  First of all, one of the mothers (who further happened to be “expectant”) having been located in this remote spot, arrived at our school screaming for her children who had been sent here.  She and her two children made a terrific scene, yelling and shrieking in the school yard, while I tried to explain that as the two places were in different rural districts the exchange must be arranged by the two councils.  I promised that this would be done as soon as possible.  No good.  The yells grew louder.  The Chief Billeting Officer, being a stickler for law-abiding, refused to let me take the matter into my own hands.  I therefore conveyed the party to his office, where I pointed out to him that, unless we made an exception in this case, the “expectant mother” would soon be “expectant” no longer, and that the alteration in her status might take place in his very office.  This changed his opinion, and he delightedly consented to our sending the whole family, as quickly as possible, at least twelve miles away.(Incidentally, for two rather different angles on WW2 evacuees, see Evelyn Waugh’s spiky, rather cruel novel Put Out More Flags or Terence Frisby’s touching memoir Kisses on a Postcard.)

The final two paragraphs of the book reflect what is deep within my own heart too, and which couldn’t be understood by people who haven’t lived in a village.  It’s made me want to write a post dedicated to villages, to see if I can offer up an alternative to Rachel’s paeans to New York and London, places (sorry!) I would loathe to live.  I might well write that soon, but for now I’ll hand over to Olivier/Miss Nightingale (the quotation at the end, by the way, is apparently from George Borrow):
That is the happiness of living in this place, and indeed in any country place in England to-day.  We are not cut off from the life-and-death struggle of our country, for has not this bee called “a war of little groups”, in which the Home Guards and the housewives take their place behind the aircraft and the tanks?  Yet we still live on in our own homes, and if other homes are like mine (s I am sure they are) it s still possible for a visitor to say, as he enters our doors, “Here, one can hardly realise the war”.  And that is perhaps the best thing we can ever give to the strangers within our gates.
So the colour of the trees still matters to us, and also to our lodgers.  It has mattered to us – spring, summer, autumn, and winter – all through the past three years; and, as for the winters, it must be admitted that the war ones have been very hard.  They really might have been planned by Hitler.  Yet, in spite of that, now they have taken their place among the visual memories of a lifetime, what rare effects of beauty some of them are found to recall!  There was that marvellous Sunday morning when the rain froze as it fell, and the trees were suddenly hung with tinkling icicles, chiming with little ghost-like echoes of the church bells which had long been silent.  There are no icicles to-night, and there are no bells; but “there’s night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon and stars, brother, all sweet things; there’s likewise the wind on the heath.  Life is very sweet, brother.”Night Thoughts of a Country Landlady is a very slim volume, under a hundred pages, and doesn’t really have the quality of Nella Last’s War or the magnitude of Vere Hodgson’s Few Eggs and No Oranges – but there is plenty of room for many voices, and this is a quieter angle, from an older perspective, and still makes for interesting reading.  Olivier still hasn’t equalled The Love Child here, but of course it is a very different kettle of fish.  For anybody interested in wartime England – I’d recommend picking this up if you stumble across it, and further recommend that you go and read Jane’s enchanting review.

Birthday Presents!

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As promised, today I’m going to show off my birthday presents!  Dark Puss requested that I show you all my non-bookish presents alongside my more literary gifts… here’s the whole kid and kaboodle.

These can mostly explain themselves, but I want to draw your attention to a few awesome items.  Firstly, check out the iron(y) T-shirt.  How cool?  (Well, not especially cool, but very me.)  And the Scrabble mug.  And the Fiendish word game (the family Thomas had fun with that.) 

A few of the items may need a bit of explaining to some – the cellophaned pack at the back is a walking survival kit, given by Our Vicar’s Wife after she was horrified at tales of Col and I climbing Snowdon unprepared… The ‘What’s Occurrin’?’ T-shirt and ‘Oh, Doris, Where’s The Salad?’ mug (complete with tea that I was drinking while I prepared the shot) are references to the excellent TV show Gavin & Stacey – if you haven’t seen it, do.

The DVDs almost explain themselves – two are 80s ‘classics’ that my friend believes I should watch… Miranda and Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day are tried and true gems.

Before I go on to the books bit – huge thanks to Mum, Dad, Colin, Lorna, Mel, Debs, Cath, Sarah, Paul, Dave, Ellie, Phoebe, Verity, Clare, Helen, Adrian, and Margaret for these lovely gifts!

Onto books!  This is Stuck-in-a-Book, after all.

The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel – this, from my bro, is the only book I openly *asked* for – can’t wait to start dipping into this one.

Return to the Hundred Acre Wood by David Benedictus – Verity spotted this on my Amazon wishlist, had a copy, and very kindly gave it to me!

Moominpappa at Sea by Tove Jansson – I was so touched to receive this from Margaret S, a reader of this blog, who knew that I wanted to try Tove’s children’s books.

Excellent Women by Barbara Pym – and in one of the beautiful new Virago editions!

How The Heather Looks: A Joyous Journey to the British Source of Children’s Books by Joan Bodger – chosen by a friend who knows me well!  Does what it says on the tin, I suspect…

Bluestockings by Jane Robinson – a friend from university posted this down from Scotland – I’m clearly not shy about letting my literary tastes be known, and it is all to the good!

The Second Puffin Quiz Book – from a member of my pub quiz team, obviously hoping I’ll swot up a bit(!)

The Great British Bake-Off Book – couldn’t want this more!  It’s gorgeous, and will extend my repetoire of cakes etc.

The Complete Miss Marple Short Stories by Agatha Christie – isn’t this Folio edition absolutely gorgeous?  I had admired it online somewhere, and so was delighted by it.

Aren’t I a lucky boy with my gifts??

On an entirely unrelated note – a few of you asked about Mary Essex, after my first lines game the other day – I will get onto replying, and indeed, to that end, have started reading one of her books!

The Clan!

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Sorry for radio silence – will be back in the flow of things soon (still haven’t unpacked from the weekend!) but thought I’d share the self-timed photo we took of the family, because I don’t think I’ve ever posted Colin, Our Vicar’s Wife, Our Vicar, and me, altogether.  Here we are, in that order!

I’ll be back to books tomorrow – with a display of those which were given to me for my birthday!  Have a good Wednesday, everyone.

Home home home

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Quick post to say that I’m at home with Colin and my parents and Sherpa at the moment – so posts might slow down for a few days.

But wanted to put you out of your misery, for the little test.  I realised after I made it that it was basically impossible – I should have included more quotations, or synopses, or similar – but never mind! Hope you still had a bit of fun.  Here are the answers:

a.) Mary sometimes heard people say: “I can’t bear to be alone.”  She could never understand this.
1940: Mariana by Monica Dickens

b.) It was morning, and the new sun sparkled gold across the ripples of a gentle sea.
1970: Jonathan Livingstone Seagull by Richard Bach

c.) “Get away from here, you dirty swine,” she said.
“There’s a dirty swine in every man,” he said.
1960: The Ballad of Peckham Rye by Muriel Spark

d.) One may as well begin with Helen’s letters to her sister.
1910: Howards End by E.M. Forster

e.) On a March evening, at eight o’clock, Backhouse, the medium – a fast-rising star in the psychic world – was ushered into the study at ‘Proland,’ the Hampstead residence of Montague Faull.
1920: The Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay

f.) Jem was a joyful mystery to Alice.  She was something to give thanks for.
1990: Temples of Delight by Barbara Trapido

g.) I have noticed that when someone asks for you on the telephone and, finding you out, leaves a message begging you to call him up the moment you come in, as it’s important, the matter is more often important to him than to you.
1930: Cakes and Ale by W. Somerset Maugham

h.) A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head.
1980: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

i.) It is highly probable that the tea shop would never have started at all if Commander David Tompkins hadn’t fancied himself at being something of a dab-hand at cooking.
1950: Tea Is So Intoxicating by Mary Essex

j.) The opening chapter does not concern itself with Love—indeed that antagonist does not certainly appear until the third –
1900: Love and Mr. Lewisham by H.G. Wells

I do enjoy quoting opening lines, to see whether or not they capture people’s interest. Perhaps next time I’ll just give you some, and let you decide whether or not they sound worth pursuing…

Happy Weekend, one and all!

Can You Guess The Decade?

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You know that I like to make you work for your fun, right?
A while ago I responded to V.S. Naipaul’s obnoxious comments about female authors by asking if you could tell which opening lines were by men and which by women – nobody got full marks.  Have a go yourself, if you missed it back then (answers here).

This time, in further preparation for A Century of Books (for those not in the know, next year I plan to read a book from every year of the 20th century) I thought I’d test you on decades.

These are opening lines from ten novels, published in 1900, 1910, 1920… all the way to 1990.  I’ve scrambled them up – and I want you to have a go and see if you can work out which quotation belongs to which century.  Bonus marks if you can guess the author.

Obviously with a sample size this small, and all by different authors, this won’t prove anything conclusively.  Or even vaguely.  But it might be a bit of fun.  Give it a go!

And, of course, I want to know which you’re immediately keen to read…

a.) Mary sometimes heard people say: “I can’t bear to be alone.”  She could never understand this.

b.) It was morning, and the new sun sparkled gold across the ripples of a gentle sea.

c.) “Get away from here, you dirty swine,” she said.
“There’s a dirty swine in every man,” he said.

d.) One may as well begin with Helen’s letters to her sister.

e.) On a March evening, at eight o’clock, Backhouse, the medium – a fast-rising star in the psychic world – was ushered into the study at ‘Proland,’ the Hampstead residence of Montague Faull.

f.) Jem was a joyful mystery to Alice.  She was something to give thanks for.

g.) I have noticed that when someone asks for you on the telephone and, finding you out, leaves a message begging you to call him up the moment you come in, as it’s important, the matter is more often important to him than to you.

h.) A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head.

i.) It is highly probable that the tea shop would never have started at all if Commander David Tompkins hadn’t fancied himself at being something of a dab-hand at cooking.

j.) The opening chapter does not concern itself with Love—indeed that antagonist does not certainly appear until the third –

The Pearl by John Steinbeck

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Like many people my age, my first encounter with John Steinbeck was when studying Of Mice and Men during my GCSEs.  Unlike a lot of people, flogging out every detail of a novel (and then watching the video because we’d never quite finished reading the book) didn’t put me off reading for life – but neither was I desperate to read any more Steinbeck.

So, when my book group chose The Pearl (1947) for this month’s read, I was happy to give Steinbeck another go.  I hadn’t disliked Of Mice and Men, but I’m yet to click with any of the Great American Novels (on the list which left me cold at best: The Great Gatsby, The Catcher in the Rye, Moby Dick – although I did love To Kill A Mockingbird).  Well, there could scarcely be more different novels than Of Mice and Men and The Pearl – it’s difficult to believe they’re by the same author.  And whatever my feelings about the former work – The Pearl is captivatingly brilliant.

At only ninety pages long, The Pearl is barely a novella – the blurb of my copy labels it a short story, but I think it is most fitting to call it a fable.  That is certainly reflective of its tone and atmosphere.  It tells of Kino, his wife Juana, and their baby Coyotito.  They are Mexican pearlers, living in La Paz in extreme poverty – but a close, kind community.  That is, those of their race (which I think is Mexican-Indian) care for one another – the rich townsfolk are selfish colonisers who refer to Kino and his people as ‘animals’.

What I loved most about the book was its style and tone, which felt authentically as though it were an inherited folk-tale, told through the generations.  I daresay there’s all sorts that could be said about an outsider imposing a fable on this community, ya-dah-ya-dah, but that’s not really the point – Steinbeck has crafted something which never feels forced or voyeuristic, but as though it were part of the lifeblood of people like Kino.  Folk-tales tend to present the world in an unexpected way – in The Pearl, the Mexican-Indians experience events through melodies.  Not simply singing about them, but sensing them – Kino can hear the Song of Evil approaching; he can hear the Song of Family.  He can hear many interweaving melodies, and trusts them.

Now, Kino’s people had sung of everything that happened or existed.  They had made songs to the fishes, to the sea in anger and to the sea in calm, to the light and the dark and the sun and the moon, and the songs were all in Kino and in his people – every song that had ever been made, even the ones forgotten.  And as he filled his basket the song was in Kino, and the beat of the song was his pounding heart as it ate the oxygen from his held breath, and the melody of the song was the grey-green water and the little scuttling animals and the clouds of fish that flitted by and were gone.  But in the song there was a secret little inner song, hardly perceptible, but always there, sweet and secret and clinging, almost hiding in the counter-melody, and this was the Song of the Peal That Might Be, for every shell thrown in the basket might contain a pearl.
It will come as no surprise that Kino finds a pearl – and it is enormous.  It is, he believes, The Pearl of the World.  What follows is akin to a parable – unsurprisingly the arrival of wealth does not bring happiness; rather, it brings complications and anguish.

I shan’t give you all the details.  Although they are somewhat predictable, as with all stories (and especially folk-tales) the importance lies in the way in which they are told.  I was very impressed by Steinbeck’s technique in mounting tension (a trait he also uses, of course, in Of Mice and Men) – he manages to make a very simple tale extremely gripping.  If I knew how he did, I’d be a great writer myself.

The Pearl isn’t simply a morality tale.  That wealth doesn’t equate happiness is both true and a truism.  Steinbeck’s use of a straightforward tale is much more sophisticated – an incredibly engaging, beautiful narrative.  It isn’t the sort of book I could love in a fond, intimate manner – in feeling like a folk-tale passed down through generations, it keeps the reader at a distance – but this story of Kino and his family is still captivating, and a masterpiece of simplicity and authorial economy.

Things to get Stuck into:


The Blue Fox by Sjon – this sparse Icelandic tale kept coming to my mind whilst I was reading – perhaps because Sjon, like Steinbeck, envelops the reader entirely in the atmosphere of his tale.


The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono – for another well-told fable, with beautiful woodcut illustrations, you could do no better.

Happy All Hallows!

StuckinaBook All 11 Comments

Happy All Saints’ Day!  Also known as All Hallows’ Day, you might have celebrated HallowE[v]en[ing], but that’s a bit like celebrating Christmas Eve without celebrating Christmas, in my opinion.

Gotta say, there are a lot of reasons I don’t like Hallowe’en – from its rather unpleasant origins to the decorations in *every* shop window which are not good for those of us who suffer from arachnophobia – so I’m pleased it’s out of the way and I can get behind a nicer day to celebrate!

Lots of people read spooky books for Hallowe’en (I don’t have a problem with the bookish part of the day!) but I’d like to read something which fits the theme of All Hallows’ Day – any suggestions?  Anything with a saint or a church or similar – but no ghost stories or Gothic graveyards!

Barbara Pym, perhaps?  Hmm… my mind is rather a blank…

A couple recommendations which I’ve already read, if you want to celebrate a saintly day – you could do a lot worse than Oliver Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield or Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead.

Over to you!