Mostly Persephone Books

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The exciting life of Simon continues apace, as tomorrow I am off to Bath to look round the University library – and, since it is a mere stone’s throw from Bristol (if you can throw a stone several miles, of course) I shall be visiting The Carbon Copy for the weekend. All go, here. In fact, my next lie-in looks to be sometime in 2009…

So I thought I’d flag up an exciting event for next week – on Tuesday night I shall be going to hear Nicola Beauman speak at Mostly Books, about Persephone Books. I’ve met Nicola quite a few times now, and it’s always lovely to see her, and hear her eloquent and passionate explanation of the independent publishing house she set up. And it was at Mostly Books a while ago that I met Angela Young and Mary Cavanagh for the first time, and had a jolly nice time all in all. See this link for my report on it… If you can be in the vicinity of Abingdon next Tuesday, follow this link and come along (I hope tickets are left!) If you’re already going, let me know….

A lot of people who read this blog have an obsession with Persephone which is akin to mine. Reprinting unjustly neglected books (often novels by women) from the first half of the twentieth century, they also produce the most beautiful objects. Uniform dove grey covers, concealing individually chosen endpapers appropriate to the book. I did some quick sums earlier, and I’ve read 23 of their books – which is about a third, so I have a long way to go!

Which is your favourite Persephone, oh Persphone readers? Mine would have to be the one which led me to them – Richmal Crompton’s Family Roundabout. And then EM Delafield’s Consequences, Dorothy Whipple’s Someone at a Distance, Elizabeth Cambridge’s Hostages to Fortune… oh, there are so many gems.

Half of Two

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Lots of time to enter BAFAB – it always surprises me that over a hundred people popped by today, and not all of them want a free book! Do head over to Jenny’s BAFAB draw, too. Oh, free books. Gotta love ’em! If you can’t use the comments thing on Blogger, email me at simondavidthomas@yahoo.co.uk, and I’ll put your name in that way.

As promised, going to chat about Identical Strangers today. I bought it in Kensington on Saturday, and it leapt right to the top of my tbr pile. I love it when a book comes along which is impossible to resist…

Identical Strangers is non-fiction, by and about Elyse Schein and Paula Bernstein. They were both adopted from Louise Wise Services, but it wasn’t until Elyse was 35 and contacted the adoption service for nonidentifying information about her birth mother that she discovered… she is an identical twin. Paula was equally astonished when she got a ‘phone call : “I’ve got some news for you. I hate to dump this on you, but you’ve got a twin.” Paula tries to ‘phone back the director of post-adoption services… and accidentally calls the number for her twin sister. They speak for the first time at 35.

I, as you may know, am absolutely fascinated by twins – in fact and fiction. And I am a twin myself, which accelerates my interest. Even without this predilection for twin literature, I think anyone would be intrigued, moved and compelled by Identical Strangers. Paula and Elyse tell their narratives in distinct paragraphs, alternately headed by their names, and it helps that both have been or are professional film reviewers, and are talented writers. They talk us through the experience of discovering that they are twins, and the first times they speak, and meet. This would be really interesting in fiction, but in non-fiction it is enthralling and honest. Paula is married with a child, and unsure that she wants to add to her family – Elyse, who is single and started the search, can’t understand why Paula isn’t as excited as she is herself. All sorts of issues about identity and self are reared – they both find it difficult to see their own mannerisms in the other (and think them exaggerated), and begin to feel possessive about their characteristics.

Alongside their journey, they’ve done some impressive research, and present it well. There are other examples of separated twins; theories on nature/nurture; how twins differ from ‘normal’ siblings. I lap all this stuff up – though, as usual, as a dizygotic /non-identical/fraternal twin, I’m rather sidelined. We’re always seen as something rather insignificant in comparison to identical twins… Colin aka The Carbon Copy isn’t a carbon copy really, you see, though we look similar enough that people still mix us up. Being a twin, I can understand their anger at being separated – and I can’t imagine how any child psychologists believed it was the accurate choice to make. Apparently some people believed being a twin was a “burden to the child and parents”… seething doesn’t begin to cover it. What would my life be like without having grown up with Col? I don’t want to think.

We follow Paula and Elyse through a couple of years – the joy, the excitement, the bickering, the discovering of their extraordinary relationship. A driving force of this book is their quest to find answers to questions – why were they separated? Why weren’t their respective adoptive parents told that they were twins? Who idea was it, and what were the theories behind separation? And then they begin trying to locate their birth mother.

A fascinating topic, well told by engaging, honest people experiencing a rollercoaster of events. Do go and check it out.

BAFAB Week!

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I’d forgotten, until I headed over to Cornflower today, that it’s BAFAB week! For those uninitiated, that’s Buy A Friend A Book – so you all have until the end of the week to put your name in the comments here, and one lucky winner will be sent a fantastic book. Usually I’ve asked the winner to pick from my 50 Books You Must Read But May Not Have Heard About, but this time I have another trick up my sleeve…

Patch is currently in talks about resuming his role as name-picker. He is unavailable for comment, but early rumours suggest that he will be continuing in a role of some variety.

To make entering your name even more fun, and with a slight twist on Karen’s, and even with a theme – when commenting, please also say the best book you’ve ever been given as a present. You can say who gave it too, if you like. What’s mine, I wonder… I think mine will have to be Five Get Into Trouble by Enid Blyton, which was also the first book I ever read ‘by myself’ (I have my doubts as to how independent this was – I remember Our Vicar’s Wife reading a page, then me reading a page, then OVW reading three or four pages because we couldn’t wait to find out what happened… I daresay she’ll confirm or deny this!)

Well, there you are. Please pop your name in the hat, even if you’ve never been to this blog before! All welcome.

With a Twist

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Hello, hello. A nice (but busy) weekend in London – met up with blogging friend Angela, and with university friends Lorna and Phil, saw the Tate Modern and the locked outside of the British Library, bought some more Persephone books (Alas, Poor Lady by Rachel Ferguson; A Woman’s Place 1910-75 by Ruth Adam; A Very Great Profession by Nicola Beauman), and a non-fiction book called Identical Strangers which is by and about a pair of twins, separated at birth and reunited at age 35. As you might know, I’m fascinated by all things twin, and have already read most of this fascinating book – will be writing about it soon.

It feels a little mean to review a play which is only on in London at the moment, because getting to London isn’t feasible for many of my lovely readers, but you might derive vicarious interest – and some of you, like Stuck-in-a-Book’s favourite feline, Dark Puss, are City dwellers.

On The Rocks – at Hampstead Theatre until 26 July – is by Amy Rosenthal – if you recognise the name, it’s probably because her Dad is the late Jack Rosenthal, and mother is Maureen Lipman. She probably hates being introduced like that, but… well, I’m sure she’s proud of it too. Her play is a comedy about… actually, I’ll copy the blurb from the advertisement I picked up:

Spring 1916, DH Lawrence and his wife Frieda have found a new life for themselves in the remote Cornish village of Zennor. Rejuvenated by the wild beauty around them, they persuade close friends Katherine Mansfield and John Middleton Murry to join them in their Cornish idyll. But no sooner have Katherine and Jack arrived than long-simmering tensions bubble to the surface, and Lawrence’s dream of communal living starts unravelling before his eyes… Based on true events, this is the story of women, and men, in love. An uplifting and passionate comedy about four friends trying to live together, two marriages struggling for survival and a group of writers striving for creativity in the midst of war.

That doesn’t make me sound uber-highbrow, does it? On The Rocks has its philosophical moments, and is a thoughtful examination of disparate ways of life, but above and beyond that it is a comedy, and a very successful one. I urge anyone with the chance, do go and see it. Then read The Garden Party and Pencillings and Lady Chatterley’s Lover and… whatever Frieda Lawrence would have written.

Off for a bit

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I’m off to London for the weekend, so will just leave you with info about the play wot I’m seeing (to misquote Ernie Wise):

On The Rocks a new comedy by Amy Rosenthal A passionate new comedy about D H Lawrence, his wife Frieda, and their close friends John Middleton Murry and Katherine Mansfield, which runs at Hampstead from 26 June until
26 July. Set against the backdrop of the Cornish coast in the midst of World War I, this is the uplifting story of four friends trying to live together, two marriages struggling for survival and two writers striving desperately for creativity.
A comedy about Katherine Mansfield and DH Lawrence? The mind boggles – but I can’t wait.

EnhpaD

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My ‘Backwards With Daphne’ project hasn’t been roaring along, has it? I told you all about my great intentions back in this post, in early April, and only now have I finished the first one – The Flight of the Falcon. It’s not Daphne du Maurier’s last novel, but it’s the last one which came in my boxset – and the plan was to start at the end and work backwards, as it were.

The Flight of the Falcon is set in Italy, a long way from Cornwall and the only du Mauriers I’d previously encountered – our hero is Armino Fabbio, a tour guide who accidentally becomes involved in the murder of an old peasant woman in Rome. He leaves his tour group, and travels back to his home town Ruffiano, which he hasn’t visited in two decades. In the same city, five hundred years previously, cruel Duke Claudio – known as The Falcon – had terrorised the people of Ruffiano with his meglomania and brutality. Has anything really changed in Ruffiano, or are events mysteriously repeating themselves?

That – like the synopsis of Rebecca, I suppose – sounds rather more melodramatic than Daphne du Maurier’s writing allows it to be. Having said that, Backwards With Daphne almost drew to a halt, as The Flight of the Falcon didn’t work for me at all. I could appreciate why she was writing it – an interesting idea, with a host of familial issues to untangle at the centre – but I didn’t much care what went on. Do students of different departments really hate each other that much? I’d be bored stiff studying a Science subject, not to mention completely incapable, but I didn’t want to burn any of the students at stake…

My other main problem, I’m afraid, was names. I can’t remember names at the best of times, and when they all end in ‘-io’, I had no chance. Daphne du Maurier couldn’t do much else, in Italy, but I spent much of my time hopelessly baffled.

I think I’m painting a worse picture than it was – The Flight of the Falcon isn’t a bad book, at all, but when you know the same pen had already produced Rebecca (oops, supposed to be reading backwards, this should be a blank canvas for me… sorry) – just goes to show the flaws in this intriguing reading project. If this were my first Daphne du Maurier novel, I probably wouldn’t bother with any others… BUT, I had the fun experience of reading the same book as a library colleague sat opposite me at teabreak, and we could chat about it.

Anyone else read it? Any thoughts? Our Vicar’s Wife? Karen, my co-Daphne reader, have you got this far yet?

Barthes sneezing?

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One of the fun things which a blog-hits counter like www.statcounter.com (the one I use) can do is track keyword searches. That way, along with seeing the routes people take from other blogs, I can see the Google searches which landed the web surfer on the Stuck-in-a-Book doorstop. And, for the past year or so, I’ve been making a note of the ones which amuse me the most…

Quite a few people, naturally, get here on a literary quest. Mentioning Crow Lake by Mary Lawson, The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence and The Summer Book by Tove Jansson have all proved advantageous – I suspect at least the first two appear on high school syllabi, since the searches are often prefixed by “summary of chapter 6 of” or ‘central characters in’. All well and good. Less understandable are bookish hunts such as ‘Why does Scrooge go to the lighthouse?’ (see sketch), or ‘value of book signed by Maria von Trapp’. I don’t think Stuck-in-a-Book has ever provided answers to these most valuable questions. Nor ‘Books with Wednesday in the title’. ‘Blogs with books on nuclear instrumentation’ baffled, and rather worried, me.

Some rather more hit the mark, though. ‘must read book overindulgence’ is perhaps my favourite, ‘bricks for bookcases’ is also quite fun, though how ‘why is work so dull’ got here, I can’t imagine. ‘I shan’t worry about that today, I’ll worry about that tomorrow’ might find themselves right at home.

And then there are the ones which are simply fun:
‘The Happy Birthday song in Middle English’ (see sketch)
‘The Bentall Centre toilets’
‘Boxes of 100 fireworks’
‘How much is shortbread?’
‘Wot is siblings’
‘Don’t Break My Heart My Itsy Bitsy Heart’
‘Abominate’
‘My desk is stuck’
‘doo doo doo do do you are so wonderful’
‘dooby doo’
‘It is time again’
‘Barthes sneezing’
‘Congratulatory cats’
‘Sample family letters requesting pardon’
‘Most sympathetic animals’

What to say about them! I can only imagine they were disappointed…

Bits n’ Bobs

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One of those posts without any structure, just like we were told not to write essays. Lucky, this isn’t an essay, then, isn’t it?!

First off, I saw my house for next year – I’d already agreed to live there, since my friends had seen it, but nice to look round. Seems perfectly pleasant – a bit like my house at the moment, but smaller. And rather cheaper. The other side of Oxford, near the river (apparently the house itself doesn’t flood, but we might need a dinghy) – Marlborough Road, if anyone knows Oxford well. And even if they don’t…


Compare to my photo of my current house, posted nearly a year ago. Not overwhelmingly different!

Patrick Vickery sent me an email this week about rural ramblings etc. on a Scottish Rural Community Gateway website. Well, here at Stuck-in-a-Book we like rural and we like rambling, and we have a certain affection for Scotland (though would secretly like to live in Dorset, possibly in Thomas Hardy’s beautiful cottage) – so go along and see what Patrick has to say.

Finally, Two Ravens Press. You may remember I wrote about them here, and some of their books here and here. WELL, now they’ve gone and started a literary webmag – good for them! It’s called Corvaceous, and has contributions from people like Alasdair Gray and Alice Thompson. Lots of interesting stuff there, and they can be found here. (Not to mention their literary blog). Phew! What a lot of interesting stuff. I personally can’t wait for Vanessa and Virginia by Susan Sellers, which I’ll be reading soon – if you can’t guess who it’s about, I obviously haven’t been harping on enough…

Going Postal

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I’ve made cursory mention a few times about the postal book group I’m in – I send a book to someone, and receive a book from someone. Repeat every two months (always the same people), and at the end of 18 months or so, my book has been round a circle, and come back with comments from lots of people. Plus, I’ve had the chance to read and comment on a bunch of books, too.

A week or so ago I got my book back from the end of 2006, and was able to see what people thought – and so I thought I’d share the outcome with you all. I chose Ivy Compton-Burnett’s A House and Its Head. I chose it for a couple of reasons – first, I wanted an excuse to read another ICB after having really liked Mother and Son, and secondly, Ivy Compton-Burnett was sure to raise some reactions! She is very much a love-or-hate author (Our Vicar’s Wife hates her; I love her). I think the reason she causes such a divide is the play-like style of her novels i.e. they are almost completely dialogue. For me, this brings characters alive – and often dialogue is the site where authors can be the most amusing or their most poignant.


A House and Its Head follows the Edgeworth family, none of whom (except perhaps Nance) are particularly likeable – and some rather dramatic storylines, expressly the father’s unpopular remarriage. But it’s more about Ivy C-B’s writing style than the plot… so… what did the recipients of the book have to say?

“I C-B certainly has an individual style of writing. As I started reading I noticed that she would describe each character when they first appeared, in fair detail, incl. their age, and then just dialogues would follow. Actually this style didn’t bother me at all (at first I thought it might!) I found the novel quite austere and gloomy, nevertheless I enjoyed the experience of reading my first I C-B. I’m certain I would enjoy a second reading sometime & I’ll certainly sample some other I C-Bs.” – Angela

“I tried with it, I really did, Simon, but I must place myself in the ‘hate it’ category, which puts me in the same camp as your Mum. The style really grated on me – I found it difficult to follow the play-like dialogue, and the characters irritated me more than I can say. Yes, they are of their time, but so are the Provincial Lady’s, and I though hers – even the unpleasant people – were delightfully drawn.
Maybe it was the scene at the begiining when Duncan is cheerfully throwing a book he disapproves of INTO THE FIRE – and that is in a book published in 1935! I just could not forgive Ivy C-B for that.” – Rhona

“The jury was out for a long time, as they say, but in the end, I’ll be adding my name to the ‘love’ camp. At first I was struck by the claustrophobia-inducing atmosphere – a house full of not particularly likeable people who have nowehre to go and nothing useful to do and so submit to the tyranny of its head. Ass to this the ever watchful and oh-so well-meaning neighbours, prepared to gossip about the slightest irregularity. But despite – or because of – it all, the book is hilarious. I kept waiting for each and every one of Dulcia’s appearances – inwardly cringing, of course, but unable to suppress a giggle.” – Susan

“For quite the first 100 pages this book irritated me beyond belief, but I decided that I had to stick with it and get it finished. Then it just ‘grew’ on me – I can’t say I loved it. I found it very hard going, but I was intrigued by the characters. [The rest of this comment has too many spoilers!] – Barbara

And a few people either didn’t have time or gave up!
Make of those responses what you will… I was quite pleased with them. And hopefully it’s convinced some of you to dip a toe into Ivy Compton-Burnett territory… if only because you have the back-out of solidarity if you hate it.

Oxford Revisited

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‘Oxford’, the word, is a powerful thing. It means so much to people; it means different things to different people. There are oceans of myth and speculation, assumption and history – almost anywhere in the world you’ll find someone enthralled by the idea of Oxford. Oxford University, I should say, but the two are so closely linked (especially in reputation) that extricating them is difficult and almost pointless.

I spent all my first year here pinching myself (metaphorically…) thinking “I’m at Oxford! Me!” – mostly, perhaps, because the myths are not reality. I had to keep reminding myself that this was Oxford, perhaps also because I’d never before lived somewhere significant in the eyes of the world. Is there anywhere else in England, excepting London, which holds such a place in people’s imagination? Sadly, this goes both ways. The long-dead ideas of privilege and idle rich boys are persistent, as are all sorts of unfairly derogatory things. One of things which saddens me most is that some of my closest friends detest my student life in Oxford – and thus, unwittingly, detest the way I choose to live. The city and the university are swirls of academic ativism, tradition and learning, fun and fantasies.

So I couldn’t resist when I was offered a review copy of Justin Cartwright’s This Secret Garden: Oxford Revisited. It’s a non-fiction account of novelist Cartwright returning to his alma mater decades after studenthood, wandering through the streets and colleges, reminiscing and presenting a history of this fabled city. But, oh, that someone else had written it. There is certainly enough of Oxford in this little book to engage me – interesting history, and occasionally a rather winning sympathy with natural and academic Oxford… but there is so much else. Cartwright can’t stay on topic for more than a few moments, and wanders off into his own, fairly irrelevant, thoughts and opinions. Like many of those who most fervently proclaim open-mindedness, Cartwright is as close-minded as they come – his rhetoric frequently strides between psychobabble and bland – but strident – atheism. (One of the things I love about Oxford University is that it was built to the glory of God – just look at the college names! Jesus, Trinity, Corpus Christi…) Cartwright labels a rather witty joke about evolution as indicative that someone may be a ‘religious bigot and sneering oaf’, and… oh, if I have to read Isaiah Berlin’s name again! Cartwright states, unnecessarily, at one point: ‘I have often thought of Berlin and Oxford as one’ – unnecessarily, because Berlin is mentioned on almost every page. I’m sure he’s an admirable chap, but he’s not the reason I was reading this book.

These irksome traits aside, This Secret Garden has its high points. The tutorial Cartwright takes with an English tutor (despite never, as far as I could tell, studying English as a student) is diverting, and the meandering through Oxford’s spots of beauty is touchingly told. I had a couple of serendipitous moments whilst reading the book – I’d got to a bit about the statue of Cecil Rhodes on the exterior wall of Oriel College, only to realise I was standing immediately beneath it (yes, I was reading whilst walking, again). And there are interviews with Clive Hurst, one of my colleagues in the New Bodleian, in the room where Justin Cartwright looked at a copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio.

In the end, like the temporary footprints each generation of undergraduates makes on the sturdy permanence of Oxford, the city and the university are able to outweigh their narrator. Cartwright’s opinions are overshadowed by the mystique of Oxford – and you could do worse than find it in these pages. If nothing else, it has offered the finest epithet for Oxford that I’ve found: ‘In Oxford you can read a book anywhere you like, without attracting attention.’