Patch stepped forward to help me with this draw, as usual, and he excelled himself – not only a very deserving winner of Janni Visman’s Yellow, but one which doesn’t even require me to use postage.
Lucy worked with me in the Bodleian library last year, and since we’re both still in Oxford, she’ll be given the book in person. Hopefully I’ll get her to report back…
I’m away in Liverpool until Thursday, so no Stuck-in-a-Booking for a few days!
I’m afraid I haven’t taken the draw for Yellow yet, and so there’s another day to enter the draw.
Good guesses, guys, but nobody got the novel I’m going to talk about – it’s The House of Dolls by Ba
rbara Comyns, author of 50 Books… entry Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead. (By the way, I always refer to the list as my 50 Books, but the 26 you see listed are the only ones I’ve added to it so far… it’s ongoing, and suggestions always welcome!)
The House of Dolls has, in the very vaguest way, similarites with The Enchanted April – that is, both are about four women living in a building together. And that’s probably where the similarities end. In Comyns’ novel the women are middle-aged prostitutes – but ones which didn’t enter the oldest profession in the world until they were middle-aged, in response to their rent prices going. They live in the upper portions of a house belonging to long-suffering Amy Doll and her young daughter Hester. The four women upstairs are, like The Enchanted April, distinct – well, Berti and Evelyn are slightly similar: catty, brash, sarcastic and, deep down, desperately needing each other. Evelyn is described as ‘inclined to be a poor man’s edition of Berti’, and doesn’t have her brilliant red hair. Spanish Augustina – known as The Senora – is the most successful of the women, and the least emotional. Finally their is my favourite, shy Ivy Rope, who invites a mild dentist to their rooms, and hasn’t the heart to reveal her occupation when he believes it to be a date.
Before Our Vicar’s Wife throws up her hands in horror at the salacious material I’ve been reading, this isn’t salacious. Despite their lifestyle, absolutely nothing finds its way to the page, and this was from the pen of eighty year old Barbara Comyns whose humour is quirky rather than rude. I’ve commented with Comyns before that all her books seem to be very different – The House of Dolls is, stylistically, not wholly unlike The Juniper Tree (reviewed here) – but that was a Grimm fairytale updated, and had that air of myth and allegory. The House of Dolls doesn’t have the wonderful, frenetic surrealism of Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead, but does hint in that direction with daughter of the house Hester, who bunks off school to make china mosaics with a slightly mad man in an abadoned house – a lovely, entirely innocent, subplot of the novel.
Despite all Barbara Comyns’ novels being different from each other, the one thing they have in common is my appreciation. And (hurrah!) they’re pretty short. I don’t think is her best by any means, but anything from her oeuvre is worth reading – next up for me is her first novel, Sisters By A River. This slightly bizarre author is too underrated, and if her novels are not all great, they are certainly very good.
A while ago I asked about books which just fitted the environment in which they were read, and wanted something which would fit a meadow in spri
ng. Danielle, Susan D. and IslandSparrow all suggested Elizabeth von Arnim’s The Enchanted April, and since I was at home in lovely rural Somerset in April, it seemed the perfect book to try.
E von A is mentioned a lot in an online book group I’m in, especially a few years ago, and in fact I’d bought The Enchanted April in 2004 or 2005, but not got around to reading it. No real reason for its being on the backburned – though perhaps the 1980s TV shot chosen by Virago for my edition didn’t do it any favours. Well, now I’ve read it, and the novel is possibly my favourite read of 2009 so far.
For those who don’t know the premise – shy, awkward and quirky Lottie Wilkins wishes to escape a lacklustre husband who thinks she is unintelligent; she meets Rose Arbuthnot who is best summed-up by this reaction to the idea of a holiday in Italy:
No doubt a trip to Italy would be extraordinarily delightful, but there were many delightful things one would like to do, and what was strength given to one for except to help one not to do them?
Nevertheless, she too has a situation she wishes to escape, and is intrigued by the idea of a castle for hire in Italy. Upon investigating, Lottie and Rose realise they’ll need another couple people to share the rent. Step forward Mrs. Fisher, an older lady whose life is spent remembering the wise words of Victorian writers whom she probably met in her youth – and Lady Caroline Dester, a stunning beauty who is tired of everyone ‘grabbing’ onto her, and wants to get away from being the centre of society. They all head off to Italy, including an amusing journey in which Lottie and Rose become convinced that they’ve been kidnapped, as all their Italian is ‘San Salvatore’, the name of the castle – which they repeat at intervals, to be met with empassioned nodding and agreement from the Italians travelling with them.
The castle is described beautifully, and especially the garden – attention drawn often to the wistaria, which happens to be my favourite plant. Everywhere is brightly sunny, airy, thick with the scent of flowers and bursting with nature
. It could have been horribly overdone, but E von A strikes just the right note – and thank you to those who recommended it, reading the novel with equally beautiful (but rather different) countryside around me was perfect. Though it might work also as a distraction to city life where trammelled nature does anything but burst.
All four holiday-makers arrive unhappy, and all have some faults – especially the very selfish Mrs. Fisher and Lady Caroline. From the start, though, Lottie is certain that the castle will have a positive, almost magical, effect upon anyone staying there. And she is, of course, right. I don’t want to spoil all the events of the novel, but suffice to say each character is altered by the surroundings, friendships develop and faults evaporate. What prevents The Enchanted April from being too fairy talesque or saccharine is a wittiness and honesty which somehow make the changes in everyone seem not only realistic but inevitable, and still thoroughly heart-warming.
How the cousin of Katherine Mansfield and sister-in-law of Bertrand Russell wrote such a happy, warm novel is anybody’s guess – but I do encourage you to seek out The Enchanted April is you haven’t yet done so. It’s a beautiful novel which is also extremely well written – the style flows by, perspicacious but unassuming, and the four central characters are incredibly well drawn. Not at all stereotypes, yet definitely distinct and memorable, they seem real, with real traits and feelings and failings, and must have been very difficult to create. Simply brilliant.
And soon I’ll be writing about the next novel I read, also about four women living together in a house. It’s written by one of the authors in my 50 Books list, and was published in 1989. A prize to anyone who can guess the book…
Do keep entering the draw for Yellow by Janni Visman! It’ll be up til Sunday. And thank you for all your lovely comments – especially Jennifer Dee, how nice to have you visit everyday!Yellow was, coincidentally, published by Bloomsbury – who also sent me some information today about a venture that they’ve got coming up – the info they’ve sent is below:
Bloomsbury is set to transform the relationship between publishers and libraries, and between libraries and readers, with an innovative development in public lending: The Bloomsbury Library Online.
At a time when the British library system is under pressure to reach larger audiences with tighter budgets, and when the reading public is feeling the pinch, Bloomsbury is launching a unique, affordable and user-friendly online initiative.
In association with www.exacteditions.com and using existing technology in libraries across the country, Bloomsbury is rolling out a groundbreaking e-lending strategy which will allow readers to read collections of bestselling books at local library terminals or with the use of a library card on home computers and internet enabled devices. The Bloomsbury Library Online will consist of a number of themed shelves: children’s books, sports titles, international fiction, Shakespeare plays, reference books and more. They will launch with a shelf of Book Group titles including Galaxy Book of the Year, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, by Kate Summerscale, Orange Prize longlisted Burnt Shadows, by Kamila Shamsie, word-of-mouth phenomenon The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer, and international bestseller The Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri. Embracing the advantages of the online format, users will be able to read the book, search the text, access author interviews, reviews, press features, and links to specially commissioned reading group guides.
How will it work? • The Bloomsbury Library Online will be sold on subscription – libraries will subscribe to a bookshelf for a year at a time and will pay according to the size of population served. • New titles will be added on a continuous basis – free of charge within the subscription year. • Users will click through from the Library terminals or through an online portal accessible via any web browser (including those found on iPhone and Blackberry) anytime, anywhere in the UK. • Text accessible through screen readers and therefore available to blind and partially-sighted users. Bloomsbury Executive Director Richard Charkin said “Libraries are hugely important to readers, communities and authors and are under severe financial constraints. While never forgetting the importance of books themselves, they’re also being pressured to adapt to the demands of the 21st century: bridging the digital divide, serving multicultural communities, attracting new users and reaching into homes. The Bloomsbury Library Online serves to fill that hole and will hopefully blaze a trail for similar developments in the library system.” Kate Summerscale added: “I’m delighted that The Suspicions of Mr Whicher will be part of The Bloomsbury Library Online – it sounds a great scheme, especially for book groups.”
Oops… I forgot my own blog birthday. On 10th April I got to my second year of blogging – how time does fly.
To celebrate, I’ll be giving away a copy of a book I loved last year – Yellow by Janni Visman. It was in my top reads of 2008, and I first chatted about it here.
Stella is agoraphobic and neurotic and jealous – Yellow is a sparse, taut narrative which is psychologically clever without being scary (why does ‘psychological’ always come with ‘thriller’? Not in this case, really). And there’s a cat. Ideal. For a more lucid discussion of the book, see that first review.
Pop your name in the hat, as it were, and I’ll do a draw on Sunday.
oom With A View, but failed to be overwhelmed by them, I’d also placed Mr. Waugh on the backburner. Which, I discovered as I read Put Out More Flags on the train journey down to Somerset, was a mistake. The writers have more or less nothing in common, and whilst I could read Forster for months without any danger of laughter lines, Waugh is really rather funny.
, and she’ll be playing Miss Bates. I saw her play Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing at the RSC in London a while ago, and it was both the funniest and the best Shakespeare performance I’ve seen (she won the Olivier too). You might know her from sitcoms like Black Books and Green Wing, or perhaps as Debbie Archer on The Archers. She was also in the recent, very good, Anne Frank series on BBC. Who else… Michael Gambon, fresh from brevity but successful brevity in Cranford will be Mr. Woodhouse, and Jonny Lee Miller is becoming Jane Austen’s creepiest hero (in my opinion) Mr. Knightley. I’d vaguely heard of JLM, and a quick trip to IMDB.com tells me that not only was he Edmund Bertram in 1999 Mansfield Park, but Charles Price in 1983 Mansfield Park. What credentials.
I always have a collection of the letters on the go, usually several, and the other day I finished Love Letters: Leonard Woolf and Trekkie Ritchie Parsons 1941-1968, edited by Judith Adamson. (Which, incidentally, was on my list of books I intended to read soon, back in April 2007. After two years I’ve read… 12 out of 17, having started and given up on another one. Not bad.) It was catapaulted to the top of my reading pile when my friend Phoebe gave me a second copy of it.
My interest in all things Bloomsbury, especially all things Virginia Woolf, presents something of a quandry – yes, I want to find out more about their lives, but reading Leonard professing love for someone who isn’t Ginny – ‘To know you and to love you has been the best thing in my life’ – is a little disconcerting. True, this started a while after Virginia’s death – but not that long.
Leonard’s met Ian Parsons through publishing, they were colleagues somewhere or other, and through Ian met his wife Trekkie, a painter. And they fell in love. Being the wacky world of Bloomsbury, none of the three seemed to think it particularly odd to carry on as they were – eventually Leonard moved in next door to the Parsons, and Trekkie would spend some holidays with Ian, some with Leonard – basically living two separate, but close, lives.
These letters, then, made slightly odd reading. By the second half they were the sweet, attached letters of two people who loved each other going about everyday life (with Ian usually quietly not mentioned) but the first half was quite awkward – Leonard professing his love in flowery, lengthy descriptions and Trekkie replying about her vegetable patch or latest clothing purchase. Really quite embarrassing how ardent he was and how cool she is in comparison – but obviously he wore her down.
They do make a slightly odd pair, and one with some connection with Two People – Leonard being both older and more intelligent than Trekkie – though she was an independently creative person, which Sylvia was not. She doesn’t come across as being remotely like Virginia, which is probably why Leonard’s relationship with Trekkie worked and Virginia is so seldom mentioned in these letters – but, for me, her absence spoke volumes over the entire, ahem, volume. Though interesting, this collection of letters really demonstrated to me how central Virginia Woolf is to my interest in Bloomsbury, and how bizarre I found the idea that it all carried on without her.