Bloomsbury Baby

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I wasn’t sure whether or not to introduce this book to my 50 Books You Must Read But May Not Have Heard About, but the longer it is since I read it, the better it seems in my mind… so, step forward Deceived with Kindness by Angelica Garnett. In the end, I’ve included it because it’s such a useful and captivating book about the Bloomsbury Group, whether or not you know anything about it before.

It’s been months since I read it and, like The Brontes Went to Woolworths, I’ve been promising to review the book on here for simply ages… so forgive me if I repeat all the things I’ve already mentioned about it over the past weeks.

Deceived with Kindness is the seventh non-fiction book in the 50 Books, but like most of the others listed there, it is literary in nature – Angelica Garnett was the daughter of Vanessa Bell, and thus the niece of Virginia Woolf. She was also Duncan Grant’s daughter, believed Clive Bell was her father for many years, and later married David Garnett (author of 50 Books entrant Lady Into Fox) – so she is well qualified to give her autobiography the subtitle A Bloomsbury Childhood. In fact, her book is less an autobiography than a focalised biography of the group – how could it be anything else with such fascinating people around her? They’re all here – as well as those mentioned above are Leonard Woolf, Roger Fry, Lytton Strachey, John Maynard Keynes…

I’ve read a few books about the people Angelica writes about, especially Virginia Woolf , but though others might put years into research and erudition, Angelica Garnett doesn’t have to do all this because the material is right in front of her. Which means she can treat the topic without a scholarly reverence or a postmodern desire to re-evaluate the concept of being or anything like that – instead, there is an intriguing meld of affectionate childhood memoir and biography of the renowned. She sees them as her family and family friends, but also recognising their importance in literary history. We see her childhood relationship with Vanessa and Clive Bell, and later some moving chapters on discovering that Duncan Grant was her actual biological father. Before this, she reaches back into her mother’s upbringing, and provides brief but well-drawn biography, imbued with filial feeling. Her encounters with ‘The Woolves’ were of particular interest to me – and the relationship between Virginia and Vanessa is viewed with understanding and compassion: ‘Of Vanessa’s love for Virginia there was no question: she simply wished that it could have been taken for granted.’

I’m not sure I’ve given an accurate impression of Deceived with Kindness – the greatest quality of Garnett’s book is an intimacy which gives the reader greater access to the Bloomsbury group than any other biography I’ve read. For an introduction to the group, or something to add to your extant knowledge, this book is invaluable – and definitely one to read before starting Susan Sellers’ excellent novel Vanessa and Virginia.

Brontes and Woolies

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I’ve been meaning to write a post about The Brontes Went To Woolworths by Rachel Ferguson for quite a long time, and somehow it never quite happened – perhaps it’s the prospect of having to write ‘Brontes’ so often, without the necessary accents. I know *how* to find them, but to do it everytime… it’s probably best just to pretend they don’t exist.

Anyway, it’s now been so long since I read the novel that I can’t remember all that much about it. What’s more, most of the blogosphere appear to have been read it this year – Danielle’s review; Lady Bug’s Books’; Cornflower’s; dovegreyreader’s. Sorry if I’ve missed some people out, and I’m sure I have, but those are the ones I could lay my hands on – in the unlikely event that anyone hasn’t heard about this book, I advise clicking on one those links for a proper summary of the book! Mine will be brief…

“How I loathe that kind of novel which is about a lot of sisters”, is how this novel about sisters begins. They’re all rather mad, and I can’t remember any of their names, but their important characteristic is that they create fantasy personalities, which cluster around them. Not their own personalities, nor other fantasy people – but rather they choose people (sometimes a doll, sometimes – centrally – a judge they’ve encountered only in the newspaper) and have conversations about and with these people. Which all becomes rather complicated when the judge in question becomes an acquaintance, and has to learn how to act the part he has already been given.

And it’s all rather dizzying. But in a quite brilliant way. As reviews of Edward Carey’s Alva & Irva recently, and Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead by Barbara Comyns a while ago (see the 50 Books…) demonstrate, I’m rather a fan of the quirky and surreal, and Rachel Ferguson dishes this up with abandon. So I can only add further endorsement to the recommendations others have already given – The Brontes Went To Woolworths is charming and zany and I can remember the feeling of reading it, even if all the other details escape me.

The other thing I can bring to the party is a different picture, since my copy is an old hardback. What an odd cover. More intriguing, Rachel Ferguson (known to many of us as author of Persephone Books title Alas, Poor Lady) is also ‘”Rachel” of Punch’ – hmm, wonder what she wrote there… might have to get a copy up in the Bodleian and have an investigation…

Humble Pie

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I mentioned briefly, in that Booking Through Thursday quiz, that I’d bought Nicola Humble’s The Feminine Middlebrow Novel 1920s to 1950s but I couldn’t just leave it at that, could I? I’ll warn you now, it’s not cheap (paperback about £28, hardback much more) so get onto your local library… because for those whose reading tastes are most aligned with mine, or at least overlap significantly, that book title must sound like manna from Heaven – and, figuratively, it is. Literally, it’s just a book title… Ahem.

I read Humble’s book when writing my thesis on the topic as an undergraduate, and got rather peeved because she’d said all sorts of things I was hoping were original to me – but don’t hold that against her. She writes about all sorts of authors close to the Stuck-in-a-Book heart: EF Benson, Elizabeth Bowen, Agatha Christie, Ivy Compton-Burnett, EM Delafield, Monica Dickens, Rachel Ferguson, Stella Gibbons, Rosamund Lehmann, Rose Macaulay, Nancy Mitford, Dodie Smith, Elizabeth Taylor, Angela Thirkell, Virginia Woolf. What a list. Even if you haven’t read all those authors (I’ll confess, there are two listed whom I’ve not read), you’ll probably still be interested in their spheres and their ethos. Do see what Danielle had to say about it on her blog.

The chapter headings are:
1. ‘Books Do Furnish A Room’: Readers and Reading
2. ‘Not Our Sort’: The Re-Formation of Middle-Class Identities
3. Imagining the Home
4. The Eccentric Family
5. A Crisis of Gender?

All such fascinating topics – and Humble writes with a style and verve which makes everything completely accessible without ‘dumbing down’. All rather middlebrow, now I come to think of it. EM Delafield would be proud to be included, and I can think of no higher, nor more apposite, praise than that.

The Good Life

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As promised, another book to add to my (in no order) 50 Books You Must Read But May Not Have Heard About – and the sixth non-fiction book to make the list. White Cargo by Felicity Kendal was a book I picked up 20p in a local charity shop years ago, on the strength of loving her performance in The Good Life. For those who don’t know it (the programme was called Good Neighbors in the US) it was a 1970s sitcom about self-sufficiency in Suburbia. Felicity Kendal and Richard Briers kept chickens and a goat in their suburban back garden, much to the displeasure of their decidedly upper-class (and hilarious) neighbours, played by Penelope Keith and Paul Eddington.

So, I assumed Felicity Kendal’s autobiography might focus on this sitcom, and the British acting scene of the 1970s. I couldn’t have been much further from the truth. What I didn’t know about Felicity Kendal was that she was born and brought up in India, as part of an acting troupe led by her father Geoffrey Kendal – they toured from place to place, performing everything from (lots of) Shakespeare to (hurray!) A. A. Milne. These recollections are leant poignancy by the fact that Kendal writes her autobiography at the bedside of father Geoffrey, who is in a coma and slowly dying. It would be mawkish in fiction, but in non-fiction it is courageous and moving and gives Felicity Kendal a real drive to write her history.

And a compelling history it is. Having her father so near death doesn’t affect the honesty of her narrative – the loving/warring relationship between the two is represented with great truthfulness, and comes to a head when she decides to move to England to pursue her acting career. Before that decision is made, she describes a childhood surrounded by hand-to-mouth actors with a love of their trade – as well as a firsthand guide to living in India in ‘the long twilight of the British Empire’, as the Evening Standard described it.

Utterly fascinating, moving, witty and with a writerly skill which makes one wonder if the stage’s gain was the book’s loss. Certainly the best autobiography I’ve read by someone whose profession isn’t writing. Even if you’ve never heard of Felicity Kendal, this is a captivating account of an experience both extraordinary, and representative of a type of acting group whose story is seldom told, and which doesn’t seem to exist anymore.

Waiting for Carrot Cake

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Karen at Cornflower, when she does her Cornflower Book Group, always tries to bake something appropriate for the book in question. Inadvertently (or was it?) I did the same thing today – I spent the evening reading Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot… and then I made Carrot Cake Muffins. Those with good memories will recall that carrots feature in Waiting for Godot, along with turnips and radishes. I decided not to put turnips or radishes into the muffins…

My housemate has a rather exciting looking recipe book, which has 50 different muffin recipes (it’s called 1 Mix, 50 Muffins). She’s made Jam Doughnut Muffins, and I thought I’d give these a whirl – in fact, most of the recipes in the book look wonderful. Think I’ll give Crispy Bacon Muffins a miss, and will definitely avoid Crunchy Peanut Butter Muffins (yeuch) but plenty of other exciting ones to try.

The Carrot Cake Muffins came out very nicely, since you ask, but I’m not so sure about the icing – I followed their directions of 75g cream cheese, 40g butter, 35g icing sugar… but it still tastes rather like I just spread cheese on them. Hmm… how to improve?

Oh, and Waiting for Godot? Utterly baffling, of course, but not in an irritating way. Even as I read it and realise I understand nothing and have to give a presentation on it, still I get a feeling for the feeling of the play, as it were. Something pretty special there, and a sacred cow which I will leave happily grazing in the field.

Lady Into Fox Into Hesperus

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A quick post for those who think of little other than my 50 Books You Must Read But May Not Have Heard About… well, look out for another title to be added soon, but more excitingly one of the titles (completely coincidentally, I must say) has been reprinted by one of my favourite reprint publishers – Hesperus Press. You might remember Hesperus Week taking place here a while ago, which was rather fun (you could do a search through the Year One: Book Reviews, if you like, for the titles featured that week – Simonetta Perkins by L. P. Hartely, Cousin Phillis by Elizabeth Gaskell, and The Eternal Husband by Fyodor Dosteovsky).

The book which Hesperus have recently issued is, as today’s post title suggests, Lady Into Fox by David Garnett – a link to my review can be found at no.13 in the not-in-any-particular-order list of 50 Books (22 so far, actually) on the left. Or go and buy it at the Hesperus website – www.hesperuspress.com, currently under construction but hopefully fully operable soon! Or, indeed, read it on Project Gutenberg, if you can – but the Hesperus edition is beautiful.

Alva & Irva

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There were two books I bought as a result of working in the Bodleian and happening upon them – one was Yellow by Janni Visman (which I reviewed earlier in the year), and the other was Alva & Irva by Edward Carey. The former drew me by its cover; the latter by its concept and the fact that it is about twins. Tonight my book group met up to discuss Alva & Irva, as I thought I probably wouldn’t get around to reading it unless I suggested it there.

Alva & Irva is a deliciously quirky novel – it takes the form of a (fake) travel guide/history to the city Entralla (fictional city, I should say) and the autobiographical writings of Alva Dapps. She describes her upbringing and closeness to Irva – and later her longings for separation and exploration. At the same time, Irva becomes more and more withdrawn, quiet and reclusive. (I’d quote some of this to you, but I let someone else borrow my copy.) As Irva refuses to leave the house, and Alva wishes both to explore and to tempt her away, they start a joint project: Alva walks through all the streets of Entralla taking measurements, photos, drawings – from which Irva makes a plasticine model of the city.

It all sounds faintly ridiculous, I daresay, but somehow the book really works – it is a novel filled with grotesque characters (in the sense of exaggerated and strange) – the father who is obsessed with stamps, for example. The novel is actually, in many ways, about obsession – whether with objects or people or tasks. Obsession and exaggeration – the events I’ve described are amongst the more normal. Wait til you find out what Alva gets tattooed on herself.

In amongst all the glorious absurdity, I discovered a very moving narrative. Perhaps my love of twin-lit made me read a little too much into it, but I found the breaking of Alva and Irva’s close bond incredibly touching, as Alva sought others and Irva couldn’t understand why, and their responses to this.

It’s so difficult to suggest which readers might like Alva & Irva because Carey’s novel is so utterly unlike anything else I’ve read. Sometimes the black humour is a little Saki-esque, and the cover quotation claims it has similarities with Kafka, but I’ve not read any. Anyone who enjoys the quirky and unusual, and of course anyone with my love of twin-lit, would enjoy a wander into Carey’s world. It’s not a journey you’ll take anywhere else.

Booking Through Thursday… sort of

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Yes, I know it’s not Thursday, but I saw this on Becca’s blog earlier in the week, and thought I’d wait until I couldn’t think of anything else to say… It’s been a while since I did a ‘Booking Through Thursday‘, and they’re always fun. Do feel extremely free to do this little quiz yourself on your own blog or in the comments here…
I’ve seen this series of questions floating around the ‘net the last few days, and thought it looked like a good one for us! What was the last book you bought? I bought two yesterday, which I’ll write about more soon… They are The Feminine Middlebrow Novel by Nicola Humble, and Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner.
Name a book you have read MORE than once Oo, lots. To make it more interesting, I’ll go for a book I’ve read four times, as it might be the only one – The Provincial Lady Goes Further.
Has a book ever fundamentally changed the way you see life? If yes, what was it? The Bible, of course, but aside from that… none spring to mind. Quite a few have changed the way I choose books and the type of books I read, but haven’t had fundamental effects beyond that.
How do you choose a book? eg. by cover design and summary, recommendations or reviews I usually, now, only read books I already own, or have been chosen by book groups I’m in, or if I know about the author already, or it’s linked in some way… Actually, thinking about it, most avenues of my reading started with AA Milne – after that, they’ve all somehow led from one to another and spread and spread. If I ever do a book on impulse, it will be because of the ‘feel’ of it – its age, cover, layout.
Do you prefer Fiction or Non-Fiction? Definitely fiction, but have been reading more non-fiction of late. I had a real hankering for some non-fiction when I finished my degree, and sometimes it’s just the right thing. Usually non-fiction associated with literature, though… Deceived with Kindness by Angelica Garnett springs to mind, which I STILL owe you a review of.
What’s more important in a novel – beautiful writing or a gripping plot? Has to be beautiful writing. Plot and character are great (The Time Traveler’s Wife got by on these two, for the most part) but for a novel to be truly loved by me, it has to have beautiful writing. I’ve re-read a little bit of Woolf today, and realised once more just how she’s head and shoulders above of everyone else I’ve read, for this quality.
Most loved/memorable character (character/book) Miss Hargreaves (from Miss Hargreaves by Frank Baker) always comes up here… but I do love her so. Eeyore is another. If I had to choose one to come to dinner it would be Jane Bingley.
Which book or books can be found on your nightstand at the moment? Let’s have a look… The Penguin Complete Saki (for my recent thoughts on Saki, see this post), What’s So Amazing About Grace? by Philip Yancey, and The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee (more here).
What was the last book you’ve read, and when was it? Orientalism by Edward Said, which I finished a couple of days ago. For class, I hasten to add… I hope to finish Alva & Irva by Edward Carey tomorrow – as book group is tomorrow evening!
Have you ever given up on a book half way in?A few times at university I had to stop because the essay was due in… aside from that, very rarely. Somehow I never got around to finishing The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy, so perhaps I should dig it out again…

End of an era

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Yesterday I attended the last ever service at St. Cross Church, Oxford. I say last ever – it may still be used for the occasional service, but it was more or less the last one to be held there. St. Cross was my church between 2004-6, and I’ve been back to visit a few times since then – it’s a beautiful old Anglican church (some parts 800 years old) which has a very villagesque feel to it, and a similarly rural-feeling graveyard and cemetery which (not to sound too morbid…) I quite often go and sit in. Had my lunch there today, actually. It’s one of my favourite places in Oxford.


Anyway – the area around St. Cross is now almost entirely offices and businesses, with very few residential properties, and the congregation for the church had shrunk to the point where double figures for a service was an achievement. But despite, or perhaps because, of this, it has the warmest welcome and friendliest congregation of any church I’ve ever been to – it was a very difficult decision when I moved to the larger, more student-orientated, much less attractive Oxford Community Church, but even with two years’ absence I welled up during the farewell service. It was lovely to see fifty people there, saying goodbye – and, as the vicar pointed out, the church is not a building, it is a group of people. Even so, as the small attendance numbers made the running of St. Cross unfeasible and expensive, it was sad to think that people have been meeting there to worship God for centuries, and that was coming to an end. Its next incarnation (if plans go ahead) will be as an archival space and reading room for Balliol College – who will restore the chancel and do much-needed work throughout the church.


As I sat there, I thought of all the people who had encountered Jesus and praised God in that room, some perhaps for the first time, some spending their whole lives attending St. Cross, and I was pleased that I could join them all in a long line of people who have loved St. Cross Church.