Shaving Through The Blitz

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I believe, when I told you about my purchases in Hay-on-Wye, I advertised Shaving Through the Blitz (1943) by G.W. Stonier as being akin to ‘Mr. Miniver’, had that book ever existed. Which probably got quite a few of you interested.


Well, it isn’t anything like that, really. About all is has in common is that is was evidently once columns in a paper. But it’s still really good. Keep reading…

I was expecting whimsy and cosiness and a general determination to ignore the more brutal aspects of war in favour of bottling pears and entering flower shows – that sort of thing. And I was prepared to devour it in the same spirit. But Stonier’s book – and his narrator Mr. Fanfarlo – is of a rather different temperament. It’s quite lyrical, in a semi-experimental manner, moving through the sights, sounds, and feelings of wartime London, rather than narrating them in a straightforward manner. Fanfarlo is also proudly aesthetic, and is given to this sort of moral dilemma:

Suppose during an air raid I held Botticelli’s Venus under one arm and an old woman unknown to me under the other, with the chance of saving one but not both, which should I choose? Immortal painting or crumbling flesh and blood? The first! As an artist, I claim that right.

I say moral dilemma, but he is not unduly given to morals. Shaving Through the Blitz was surprisingly ‘progressive’ – Fanfarlo lives with a woman called Lizzie, who would quite like him to propose, but doesn’t intend to force the matter. He works, in a fairly dispassionate way, at the Ministry to ‘provide slogans that shall be breezy and full of dare-and-do’. There were definite overtones of Evelyn Waugh’s Put Out More Flags. Which is a hint that Stonier can be very funny at times, even while being aesthetic and high-falutin’. I particularly liked a little conversation about a young man writing for the Mass Observation project. A lady comments:

“That’s bad. Can’t you break him of it? My little nephew was a terrible mass-observer, too, before he got married.”

That puts Nella Last et al in their place, doesn’t it?

As always, it is deeply interesting to read about the war from those who experienced it. I feel like I have a fairly informed awareness of the (upper)middle-class housewife’s view of war, from various contemporary novels, but Stonier provides a viewpoint I hadn’t really encountered before. All the pieces slotting together is satisfying, to create a portrait of how wartime Britain would have felt. And this (lengthy) excerpt, below, made the book worth finding, all by itself. I think it a really moving, unusual angle upon the way the war changed, and how people at home changed their responses to it. I’m going to finish off this post with it, and encourage you to track down a copy of Shaving Through The Blitz if you can. Not the most whimsical of wartime books, but perhaps one of the more unusual.

How it has changed in the last eighteen months! Do you (who does not?) remember the carefree evenings when we all used to go for strolls in the new-found dark? It was a spree then, to walk to a theatre, or merely to walk, to stumble over sandbags and cross the road by others’ lights. “Sandbags!” we would exclaim as we picked ourselves up and went on to discover lamp-posts. Friendliness displayed itself in many ways, in a noisy jostling, in such illumination as was allowed. Torches stared at one another, cigarettes flickered a dialogue on street corners. Along Tottenham Court Road gaiety had lost nothing with the lights down, and a bubbling trail of voices down each pavement drew whisperers out of side-streets and brought even the sedentary to their doors. A gross amiability, the adolescent pleasure of being heard but not seen, infected every one who was being nudged, shoved, swept along and held back by the stream. A match would flare nearby, thrillingly, in the darkness, to reveal a face lit from below: a girl’s sucked-in cheeks over a cigarette, a beaming negro, perhaps, delighted with hours when others were as black and easily tickled as himself.

All that has disappeared – the lingering, the voices, the cigarette dream; and now with darkness falls the hush. Emptiness, but with every cranny filled. London has been given over to a monstrous drama, an act of darkness from which ordinary people, you and I as individuals, shut ourselves away. Earth and sky contract to form the arena; the city puts up its searchlights, a beetle laid on its back and helplessly wavering its legs, while the hornet drones overheard; night after night the assailant returns, the victim quivers with upturned belly. “A very bad night,” says Mrs. Greenbaum, heaving over in the morning to probe her fatness with an indignant finger, “an awful bad time it was last night, sure.” The rest of us, having shared the same delirium, with the same hornet boring down to a point in our bellies, nod stoically and blink at our silly nightlight.

Inscriptions

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Do keep your blog nominations coming on yesterday’s post. One thing Book Blogger Appreciation Week is showing me is how many new blogs there are! The old faithfuls – the blogs I’ve been reading for three or four years – feel to me a bit like we’re a huddle of parents at the schoolgates. Proud parents, of course. I just hope Stuck-in-a-Book can keep up, despite steadfastly refusing to have too drastic a face-lift! I’m always a little wary asking for feedback on the general direction of my blog, because I’m so overly-sensitive about creative things, but… well, I’m not going to make this a navel-gazing post!

Instead, let’s gaze at title-pages, and endpapers, and all those bits of a book which a previous owner might have scrawled on. Oddly enough, although I could never bring myself to write in a book (except in pencil) I love buying secondhand books with these inscriptions. Now and then I have vague intentions to collate all the inscriptions I have found in various books, but, of course, I haven’t done anything of the kind. And most of them simply say ‘To Margaret, love Elspeth’ or similar – a lovely memento of an unknown friendship, but perhaps not worth noting down at length.

But I couldn’t help sharing this one with you all. It’s in Llewelyn Powys’ A Baker’s Dozen, which I read and enjoyed recently, and will write more on later. That review may well descend (or, indeed, ascend) into a paean to the countryside. For now, we won’t go past the first page – on which, on the 15th July 1941, Peter (I think) wrote this:


“Sun! Sun! Sun! Oh Summer
dancing Sun! Sink slowly down into
the West. Let the hours
of happy freedom be long and longer.”

To Swithin on his 26th birthday, from Peter

15.7.41

I assumed it was a quotation, but Google brings up no results. So, unless any of you can tell me differently, I think I must assume this was Peter’s own, rather lovely, little verse for the enchantingly-named Swithin. As my housemate Mel pointed out – his birthday is St. Swithin’s Day. Nickname or were his parents opportunists? And was he off fighting the war?

I’ve found lots of inscriptions in books before, but I think this one might just be my favourite. Any wonderful examples you’d got to share?

Book Bloggers Appreciation Week

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I’ve spotted a few bloggers celebrating Book Bloggers Appreciation Week, which has rather taken me unawares this year. I wasn’t sure how I would celebrate it – I hope that Stuck-in-a-Book is a fairly frequent supporter of other bloggers, old and new, since the community aspect of blogging is one of my very favourite things.

So, I could pick out some of my favourite blogs and bloggers this week… but, instead, I’m going to ask you to do it. And it comes with a prize. Whilst I was at lunch with my friend Andrea today, I spotted two lovely 1931 copies of Helen Thomas’ wonderful biography As It Was. She was the wife of poet Edward Thomas, but you don’t have to know anything about him to enjoy this book and its sequel World Without End (which sadly wasn’t in the shop) – I certainly didn’t know anything about him before reading this. Anybody with an interest in early twentieth century Britain will love this memoir. For a full review of the book, which is on my list of 50 Books You Must Read, click here. To find out how to win a copy, keep reading…


I had thought about simply having a draw and offering two copies – but I’ve decided to do things a bit differently. I’d like you to tell me about a blogger you love. They can be one you’ve been following for years, or only discovered this week. Perhaps they’re simply somebody you think would appreciate the book. The winning entry will secure a copy of As It Was for you, and for the blogger you nominated! And it’s open worldwide.

If you to participate but don’t fancy the book, that’s fine, of course – just say so in your comment. Let’s spread the blogging appreciation, everyone!

Early Young

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One of the best books I’ve read this year was William by E.H. Young – a few of us did a joint read back in February, and I became a confirmed fan of Emily Hilda’s, after having previously enjoyed Miss Mole. In a manner not unknown to me, I had stockpiled EHY novels long before I knew whether or not I would like her, and so when I saw that someone at the conference I’m attending this week would be discussing The Misses Mallett (1922), I was able to prepare.

My received understanding about EH Young, from various reviews and from Virago’s judicious selection of novels to reprint in the 1980s and 1990s, was that her first three novels were rather mediocre and that The Misses Mallett (also published as The Bridge Dividing) was something of a momentous turning point. After that (so I understood) she wrote nothing but gems. After all, nothing separates those early rural novels from the sophistication of William except one novel: yes, The Misses Mallett.

I had great expectations. And, I’m sorry to say, they rather faltered. The topic showed such promise, especially given my predisposition towards spinster novels of the 1920s. And there are plenty of spinsters around – let me hand you over to my favourite one, Caroline:
“The Malletts don’t marry, Henrietta. Look at us, as happy as the day is long, with all the fun and none of the trouble. We’ve been terrible flirts, Sophia and I. Rose is different, but at least she hasn’t married. The three Miss Malletts of Nelson Lodge! Now there are four of us, and you must keep up our reputation.”Caroline, Sophia, and Rose are sisters, Rose being rather younger than the first two – who are drawn rather two-dimensionally, if amusingly. Caroline is fairly feisty, and spends her autumnal years reliving imagined conquests of her youth, and alluding to improprieties which she, in fact, has never had the opportunity to commit. Sophia is mousy and quiet and traipses after Caroline, excusing, correcting, and loving her. They have their own touching dynamic, even if their characters aren’t hugely evolved. It is with Rose, and later their feckless brother’s daughter Henrietta, that the reader is supposed to sympathise. They are from the same mould – affected intensely by their emotions, but compelled by society to quash their wilder affections, etc. etc. And they’re both tangled up with love for the (to my mind) wholly unattractive Francis Sales. He’s off the market anyway, married to an invalid wife of the variety who alternates catty remarks with lunges after her smelling salts.

To be honest, much of this plot reminded me of the most unlikely excesses of Thomas Hardy. People fall in love from distances of a hundred metres, flash their eyes all over the place, and emote wildly through woodland and over moors. Here’s an excerpt:
She did not love him – how could she? – but he belonged to her; and now, if this piece of gossip turned out to be true, she must share him with another. Jealousy, in its usual sense, she had none as yet, but she forged a chain she was to find herself unable to break. It was her pride to consider herself a hard young person, without spirituality, without sentiment, yet all her personal relationships were to be of the fantastic kind she now experienced, all her obligations such as others would have ignored.I haven’t read anything by Mary Webb et al, but this has to be the sort of thing Stella Gibbons was parodying in Cold Comfort Farm, no? (Which reminds me – review of Stella Gibbons’ Westwood coming soon, promise.) I’m being a little cruel to EHY here, perhaps, but only because her later novels are so brilliant. It’s somewhat reassuring that she wasn’t born with inherent subtlety and style.

I’m skimming over the plot rather, because it’s a bit predictable. I’ve watched enough corny films to know that the Rugged Hero will eventually be passed over for the Male Best Friend. In Henrietta’s case, the latter appears in the wonderful character of Charles. He is like a lump of real gold amidst fool’s gold – when EH Young went on to write better, much better, novels, she need not have been ashamed of creating Charles. He is a wonderful mixture of the aesthetic and inept. He lives for beauty in music, much in the way that characters in EM Forster might, but he also lacks confidence and is unnervingly self-aware.
Charles blinked, his sign of agitation, but Henrietta did not see. “He’s good to look at,” Charles muttered. “He knows how to wear his clothes.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

Charles heaved a sigh. “One never knows what matters.”As a hero he defies cliche, and thus is a nod towards the sort of complex characters which Young would later form. It’s just a shame that the Misses Mallett themselves, inoffensive though they might be, never really reveal any inspiration on Young’s part. A novel about 1920s spinster sisters living together could have been deliciously fun or painfully poignant, or even both, but there are only brief moments when The Misses Mallett could be said to be either. A serviceable novel, certainly, and good enough to pass the time – but unworthy of the pen which would later create William and Miss Mole, and goodness knows whatever other sparkling or clever works.

I’m very glad that this wasn’t my first encounter with EH Young, as it might well have also been my last. Instead, I shall chalk this up to experience – and go foraging for one of her later novels next time. Can anybody at all step forward to defend Young and, equally importantly, those Misses Mallett?

Song for a Sunday

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Somehow the 10th anniversary of September 11th feels more poignant than other anniversaries, and today comes with extremely sad memories for a lot of you, I’m sure, whether or not you knew people directly affected.

I had thought about putting up something sombre for today’s song, but – I do believe that joy and light are the most effective ways to combat violence and darkness. And so I’ve taken the recommendation of Tom, and chosen an infectious and happy song called Hey Mama by Mat Kearney. I hope you don’t mind – and that this puts a smile on everyone’s face.

If the title fits…

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Firstly, I am told that Better World Books are celebrating International Literacy Day by having 20% off three-or-more books. Time differences confuse me, but I think, if you spot this soon after I post it, some of that day is left in America.

Secondly, a meme. I love this meme, which I’ve been stealing from other sources for the past couple of years – this year Jane reminded me of it here. Basically, answer a set of questions from the titles of books you’ve read so far in 2011. I should probably wait until December to do it, but can never resist once I’ve spotted that the blogosphere has started on it. Oh, and I’ve anglicised it here and there.

Do join in – on your own blogs, or in the comments.

One time on holiday: The Caravaners (Elizabeth von Arnim)

Weekends at my house are: The Element of Lavishness (William Maxwell & Sylvia Townsend Warner)

My neighbour is: Not To Disturb (Muriel Spark)

My boss is: At Large and at Small (Anne Fadiman)

My superhero secret identity is: A Kind Man (Susan Hill)

You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry because: Bonjour Tristesse (Francoise Sagan)

I’d win a gold medal in: Exercises in Style (Raymond Queneau)

I’d pay good money for: A House in the Country (Jocelyn Playfair)

If I were Prime Minister I would: Live Alone and Like It (Marjorie Hillis)

When I don’t have good books, I: am The Perfect Pest (Adrian Porter)

Loud talkers at the cinema should be: People Who Say Goodbye (P.Y. Betts)

Still – William

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Everytime I revisit Richmal Crompton’s William series, I have a nudging fear that they won’t be as good as I remembered, that what seemed screamingly funny to me when I was eight will have palled…

…and everytime I realise I needn’t have worried. (Photo credit, btw.) If you’ve never read one of the books, you’re in for a treat. Think how PG Wodehouse might have written about an eleven year old boy, if PGW tempered his exaggeration a little and developed an intimate knowledge with the minutiae of village life. Here’s one of the passing characters, for instance: ‘He was extraordinarily conceited and not overburdened by any superfluity of intellect.’

This isn’t a fully-fledged review or anything, it’s just a little overflow of joyfulness at revisiting William – in this case, Still William. Richmal Crompton wrote over thirty William books between 1922 and 1970, this being the fifth – each is a collection of stories about the well-intentioned mishaps of William Brown, who is eternally eleven. They’re hilarious, and warming. Although everything almost always goes lamentably wrong, and William ends up being hounded by his relatives and neighborus, there isn’t a malicious bone in his body. If anything, most of his misfortune comes from an irrepressible desire to help. In Still William he proposes on behalf of his brother, and later on behalf of his sister. He determines to be truthful on Christmas Day, with disastrous results. He determines to live a life of ‘self-denial and service’ with (you guessed it) disastrous results. He has only marginally more success when attempting to put on a show of ‘natives’, or teaching a visiting French boy idiomatic English.

I suspect most of us have read some William books at some point – but perhaps you’ve neglected them for a while, or somehow have never read one. Get one now. And get one with Thomas Henry’s excellent illustrations, not the more modern, awful ones. Richmal Crompton also wrote lots of wonderful novels (and some less wonderful ones) but, although she deserves wider fame for those, equally she deserves the immortality she has secured through William Brown.

In case you’re still not convinced, here is an excerpt between William and his uncaring older sister:William’s mother was out to lunch and Ethel was her most objectionable and objecting. She objected to William’s hair and to William’s hands and to William’s face.

“Well, I’ve washed ’em and I’ve brushed it,” said William firmly. “I don’ see what you can do more with faces an’ hair than wash ’em an’ brush it. ‘F you don’ like the colour they wash an’ brush to I can’t help that. It’s the colour they was born with. It’s their nat’ral colour. I can’t do more than wash ’em an’ brush it.”

“Yes, you can,” said Ethel unfeelingly. “You can go and wash them and brush it again.”

Under the stern eye of his father who had lowered his paper for the express purpose of displaying his stern eye William had no alternative but to obey.

“Some people,” he remarked bitterly to the stair carpet as he went upstairs, “don’ care how often they make other people go up an’ downstairs, tirin’ themselves out. I shun’t be suprised ‘f I die a good lot sooner than I would have done with all this walkin’ up an’ downstairs tirin’ myself out – an’ all because my face an’ hands an’ hair’s nat’rally a colour she doesn’t like!”

Ethel was one of William’s permanent grievances against Life.

The Earth Hums in B Flat

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A long time ago (17th July 2009, to be precise) I got a copy of Mari Strachan’s The Earth Hums in B Flat through the Amazon Vine reviewers programme. Subsequently I sat next to Strachan’s editor somewhere, I believe, and was able to say “Oh, I already have a copy, thanks” – but it has taken me over two years to actually read the novel, having persuaded my book group to read it along with me after my housemate Mel loved it. I finished the book approximately five minutes before book group started, and I’ve just come home from the discussion.

It’s times like this that I wonder how many hidden gems are lurking on my bookshelves already – because The Earth Hums in B Flat is really, really good.

Strachan’s novel is set in a small town in 1950s North Wales, where 12 year old Gwenni Morgan and her family live. The typical atmosphere of a close-knit community pervades – everybody knows everybody else, and there is no chance of keeping secrets for long, yet there is far greater intimacy and neighbourly care than would be possible in a city. If the reader isn’t always immediately ‘in on’ the whispered secrets, it’s because we see the world through the naive, slightly unworldly eyes of Gwenni herself. Here’s how she opens the novel:

I fly in my sleep every night. When I was little I could fly without being asleep; now I can’t, even though I practise and practise. And after what I saw last night I want more than ever to fly wide-awake. Mam always says: I want never gets. Is that true?Mari Strachan has said that her starting point for the novel was the image of a girl sitting in hair, struggling to fly. Gwenni’s flying isn’t the start of a fantasy novel, nor does it play a huge role – other than setting the tone. The reader doesn’t know whether to believe her or not – or how seriously she believes what she says. While she’s up there, flying, she sees the whole earth and can hear it humming – in, you guessed it, B flat. I like the title. The earth’s humming isn’t integral to the novel, but it gives the reader the right sense – of an ethereal girl, with a big imagination.

The events of the novel, through less hazy eyes, could border on gritty. Running like a thread through The Earth Hums in B Flat is a murder investigation – but this is nothing like Christie or Sayers or – Heaven forbid – Rankin, Brown, Larsson etc. The investigation lends momentum and a puzzle to the novel, but the more significant focus is upon the Morgan family – Gwenni, her irritable older sister Bethan, her tempestuous mother ‘Mam’ and incredibly patient father ‘Tada’ – not to mention an assortment of relatives and neighbours. This is definitely a novel about a community.

Gwenni’s mother is almost an ogress, but not quite – because she is believable. She openly favours Bethan over Gwenni, constantly treating the latter to sharp words and angry looks. She accepts her husband’s endlessly patient adoration without even seeming to notice it – and then shouting at him for some imagined misdemeanour. Her behaviour is gradually explained… but to understand is not always to forgive, and I found her a very difficult character to love. Which is presumably what I was intended to feel.

Gwenni, on the other hand, is easy to feel affection towards. She accepts everything at face value, even while believing herself to be a competent detective figure. She is somehow both dreamy and determined, unable to make sense of the people and events around her: the reader peers over her shoulder, detecting answers before Gwenni does, and wondering anxiously when she’ll catch up. Here’s a quick snippet of her thoughts, which constantly frame the narrative:

Alwenna says that Mr. Williams winds his wife up every morning; she says you can tell by the way Mrs. Williams talks more slowly in the afternoons and has nothing at all to say by evening. When I told Mam she said: Don’t be silly, Gwenni.

I’m a big believer that style is the most important part of a work of fiction, ahead of character and a long way ahead of plot. For a first novel, The Earth Hums in B Flat is remarkable on this front. Gwenni’s voice is utterly credible, and never irritating. It doesn’t feel as though an adult writer has ‘written down’ to a child’s perspective – it simply feels like a child’s perspective. Strachan doesn’t overwrite anything, but is subtle and consistent. There are plenty of plot twists along the way, but they are never jerky – things slowly dawn on Gwenni, or are even never quite vocalised. Strachan’s prose is deceptively simple – for this is actually a very complex novel, as we all gradually realised as the book group discussion unfolded. Just the sort of thing I love.

Oh, and I love the cover on my edition (pictured) with Bruno Ehrs’ photograph – much more than the more recent edition, which most people had at book group.



Dozens of other bloggers have already read The Earth Hums in B Flat, so there are reviews to read everywhere. Do make sure you head over to Lizzy Siddal’s blog, though, and read a wonderful live chat with Strachan – I just have, and it’s incredibly interesting. If you’ve already read The Earth Hums in B Flat, do tell me what you thought – and let me recommend that you immediately go onto Angela Young’s Speaking of Love. These wonderful novels are from the same stable, both with subtly excellent prose writers at their helm.

Beauty is in the Eye of the Bookholder

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Quick post today, since I’m supposedly going to spend the day getting to grips with the conference paper I need to present next week. (Incidentally – anybody going to the Popular Imagination and the Dawn of Modernism conference in London?) So, something shallow and frivolous to make up for that… have you ever bought a book solely, absolutely solely, because of how it looked?

I have.

I was in Eastgate Bookshop in Warwick (which is rather brilliant, by the way) and spotted a little shelf of King Penguins. They’re all beautiful on the outside, and a little drab on the inside. I couldn’t leave behind this:



Am I interested in the English Tradition in Design? Very slightly. Moreso than I am in Ballooning, which is the other King Penguin I toyed with buying. But above all other criteria, couldn’t resist that William Morris-esque cover, to say nothing of the beautiful feel of the book in my hands. So, thanks William Grimmond, who apparently designed the cover based on a design made by Eva Crofts for Donald Brothers, Dundee. 65 years after you created that cover, you indirectly helped me add an entirely unnecessary book to my library.

But, was it not William Morris himself who instructed us to have nothing in our house that we do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful? The same, dear readers, applies to books… doesn’t it?