Going Postal

StuckinaBook All , 5 Comments

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

StuckinaBook All , 7 Comments


‘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.’

Eyes, Exams and Excellence

StuckinaBook All 3 Comments

I’ve managed to misplace my glasses this evening, so am currently looking blearily at the computer screen and hoping that I don’t get a headache… throughout my life I’ve had quite a talent for losing things in small spaces, and though I know the glasses must be in quite a limited area, they are proving good hiders.

In more exciting news – Colin aka The Carbon Copy has passed the first lot of actuarial exams! Told him he would. They’re quite tricky to pass (and ‘pass’ is the best you can do), so well done to him. I *almost* understand what he does now…

Oo, since writing the above, my glasses have turned up under a pile of things on my desk; a pile I’m sure I looked through at least twice.

It’s Thursday, so I’m going to do Booking Through Thursday, but haven’t much to say to a very difficult question:

Think about your favorite authors, your favorite books . . . what is it about them that makes you love them above all the other authors you’ve read? The stories? The characters? The way they appear to relish the taste of words on the tongue? The way they’re unafraid to show the nitty-gritty of life? How they sweep you off to a new, distant place? What is it about those books and authors that makes them resonate with you in ways that other, perfectly good books and authors do not?

Well! For a start, my favourite authors and books… what can tie together Miss Hargreaves and The Diary of a Provincial Lady and Mrs. Dalloway and Sense and Sensibility? Even having a look through the 50 Books (or how many I’ve got to so far) in the left-hand column… no, not a lot they have in common. They share a few absences – none of my favourites are Issue-led books, or gritty. They’re about characters, and a good/witty/evocative/beautiful use of language. Characters and language. That’s all I can come up with. Hmm. Maybe you’ll have better luck?

First Things First

StuckinaBook All 8 Comments

Something on Susan Hill’s blog the other day led me to think about the ‘right’ order to read an author’s novels… obviously there is no single correct way to read an author (note my continuing, slowly, project Backwards With Daphne), but there might be methods more conducive to enjoyment and appreciation…

More specifically: should you read the best book first?

This makes an assumption, of course, that an author has a ‘best’ book. Perhaps it would just as well be replaced with the word ‘favourite’, because the dilemma is just the same. My initial response, on Susan’s blog, was that reading the best/favourite novel first would lead to all subsequent reads being a disappointment – Lynne pointed out, in the same comments, that one might just give up after an average read. If you read an excellent novel, you’ll continue with that author, even if there are a few duds or mediocre reads along the way.

Let me think. I’ve done this both ways. Barbara Comyns, for example – Our Spoons Came From Woolworths was enjoyable, but I much preferred Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead, which was on my shelf for years before I read it. Luckily Our Spoons was good enough for me to keep looking for more Comyns, though without any urgency – had it been a shade less enjoyable, I might not have bothered. On the other hand, as always, is Miss Hargreaves by Frank Baker. I’ve only read one other novel by him – Before I Go Hence – which was likeable enough, but nothing compared to Miss Hargreaves. If I’d read Before I Go Hence first, I probably wouldn’t have bothered seeking out Miss Hargreaves – which might well be my favourite novel; certainly top five.

What to do! More importantly, what to recommend? If someone asks me about an author, should I send them towards the Pride and Prejudices or the Mansfield Parks? (Now, there’s a cat among the pigeons!)

Star Gazing

StuckinaBook All , 3 Comments

I get sent quite a few ‘first novels’, so it’s a pleasant change to receive a novel which is the third from an author’s pen. Of course, I love seeing the first-offs too – but when Star Gazing by Linda Gillard arrived, I had the experiences of Emotional Geology and A Lifetime Burning to which to compare it. Plus, Linda has been an e-friend for a few years now, and it’s always lovely to hear from her.

I was in a position of knowledge when it came to Linda’s second novel, A Lifetime Burning. I wrote about it last year, and though there were obvious aspects of the book which I hadn’t experienced (shan’t spoil it for you, but let’s just say I might have a criminal record if I had experienced them) I am a twin and in a vicar’s family, and so could understand those. I’ve never been so impressed by any literary portrayal of being a twin – Linda understood it so well. I can only assume she has found a similar level of empathy and recognition with blindness. Marianne, the central character of Star Gazing, is blind.

Blind, but not a victim. Bolshy, is our Marianne – “crabbit”, to quote Keir. Keir is the man in the novel – an oil rigger who spends his time away from work living on Skye, he’s a heady mixture of shy and sensitive and rugged and… does he exist? Linda has said that she was intrigued by the idea of writing a hero who might not exist – since Marianne has to rely on her other senses, she can’t be sure that Keir isn’t a projection of her imagination, and the reader spends quite a few chapters equally unsure.

But I haven’t said much about Marianne, yet. She’s middle-aged, and has been blind since birth. A widower, she lives with her vampire-romantic-novel writing sister Louisa (sisters Marianne and Louisa… the influence of Jane Austen hovering somewhere, perhaps?) and is a very determined woman. I always have a little trouble with people who are desperate to be independent – the sort of person who complains that people are being ‘patronising’ to them – but perhaps that’s because I function best in a unit (back to the twin thing, mayhap). With Marianne, she has enough endearing features that I rarely wanted to throttle her. I can’t be cross with a woman who says “Pure Enid Blyton – a much maligned author, in my opinion.” My only criticism is that she so often mentions that she is blind. Her prerogative, I suppose, but I’m sure most visually impaired people can let the expression “You see what I mean” pass, without pointing out that they can’t…

Star Gazing uses three narrative focalisations – Marianne, Louisa, and a third person narrative. Linda uses this skilfully, as she has done before, and the transition from Marianne’s internal view to an external perspective highlights the smallness of Marianne’s world – as she says, her experience of it stretches only as far as she can hear, smell or touch. The success of Star Gazing must ultimately hinge on the story, and the portrayal of blindness. As I said, I can’t judge from my own experience – I’d love to hear from someone who can – but I was fairly convinced. It must be such a difficult task: how to describe the absence of sight from the perspective of one who doesn’t know what she hasn’t got? There is a strong theme of music throughout – I hardly knew any of the references, but visual things, especially scenery and natural phenomena, are often described to Marianne by their musical equivalent. The beautiful intricacy of a cobweb, for instance – which Marianne has only experienced as sticky and unpleasant – is compared to The Well-Tempered Clavier.

Star Gazing is not as ambitious or controversial as A Lifetime Burning – and consequently, where A Lifetime Burning was a great novel, Star Gazing is a good one. A very good one. It would be surprising if an author had two novels of A Lifetime Burning’s power in them, let alone consecutively. Star Gazing, though, demonstrates Linda Gillard’s continuing power as a storyteller, a creator of vivid and unusual characters, and a novelist who will hopefully soon get the recognition she deserves. I’m delighted that a fourth novel has already been written – can’t wait.

Happy Fathers Day!

StuckinaBook All 8 Comments

For the apostrophe-minded, Fathers Day is a minefield. As you see, I have decided for an apostropheless celebration – I think it’s a day of fathers, rather than belonging to one (Father’s) or many (Fathers’)…

Anyway – for Our Vicar, and all the other fathers reading, have a great day!

To celebrate the occasion – whom do you think is the best father in literature? I don’t really mean the one I enjoy reading about the most, but rather the character who is the best father to his child/ren. If it were the former, I’d plump for Mr. Woodhouse from Emma, but he couldn’t be described as a good parent… nor, indeed, could many of Austen’s literary parents.

So, have a think. I’m going to ponder on it, and see what I think…

Or just comment on fathers in literature as you wish!

Uncommon Arrangements

StuckinaBook All 8 Comments

I had a book token…

As book-buying excuses go, that one is pretty good. I don’t understand how people can have a book token for more than about a week – it’s a free book, how can I withstand that temptation? Luckily I found a book I really wanted (always tricky… ahem) and so bought Uncommon Arrangements : Seven portraits of married life in London literary circles 1910-1939 by Katie Roiphe. With a title like that, how could I not? It’s the right period for me, it’s domestic, and it is about these couples:

Katherine Mansfield & John Middleton Murray
Vanessa & Clive Bell
Elizabeth von Arnim & John Francis Russell
Ottoline & Philip Morrell
H.G. & Jane Wells
Vera Brittain & George Gordon Catlin
Radclyffe Hall & Una Troubridge

I’ve arranged those in order of my own interest – but I was pleased to say I’d heard of most of them, including at least one of every pairing. In many ways, this book seems catered just for me – I long to know more about so many of these couples. When a book is that obviously Simon, it would be churlish to leave it on the shelf. And I had a book token (did I mention that?)

‘Each chapter is structured around a crisis in a marriage and how it is resolved or not resolved. In some cases the crisis is as large as life-threatening illness, and in others it is as small as a slightly drunken conversation over dinner that threatens the balance of carefully submerged emotions.’ So Katie Roiphe writes in the introduction, which is the only bit I’ve read so far. The introduction does seem a little too touchy-feely, and lots of rhetorical questions (I was reminded of the stereotypical first-year undergraduate essay) but hopefully this will lessen as the main section of the book emerges. Anyway, it would be hard for Roiphe to write about these people without being interesting to me… at the same time, I want her to do them justice.

I’ll report back when I’m done…

Booking Through Thursday

StuckinaBook All 3 Comments


Today’s question kind of answers itself, if you read through this week’s entries. At least part of it is answered, anyway…

Have you ever been a member of a book club? How did your group choose (or, if you haven’t been, what do you think is the best way to choose) the next book and who would lead discussion? Do you feel more or less likely to appreciate books if you are obliged to read them for book groups rather than choosing them of your own free will? Does knowing they are going to be read as part of a group affect the reading experience?
So, YES, I am a member of a book group! Two, in fact, which both met this week. I love book groups; they’re such a wonderful way of talking about literature without being scholarly (I also love academic English, but enjoy the divide between studying and reading groups.) One choose the books by compiling a shortlist of about four, and having an online poll (I’m currently rooting for My Cousin Rachel) while the other just decides six months at a time, from whatever people throw into the circle. My latest suggestion there was Edward Carey’s Alva & Irva, which I haven’t read, but looks fascinating.

To go onto the second part of the question, I don’t think it really alters how I read a book (except that I’ll probably be reading it very quickly, at the last minute!) – but it will affect the ways in which I reflect upon it. Except for writing about them on here, most books I read aren’t dwelt upon – I don’t forget them immediately, but I certainly don’t spend much time considering my opinion. To have an evening spent discussing it is invaluable, and has sometimes changed my mind about a book.

I heartily recommend Jenny Hartley’s book on the subject, Reading Groups, which was written up from questionnaires sent out to lots of book groups. Fascinating, and very well written. I wrote more about it here…

As always – over to you! Same questions as above.

En Suite

StuckinaBook All , 4 Comments


Sorry not to write anything yesterday – I was tearing through the book for tonight’s book group (metaphorically, you understand), having similarly dashed through one for Tuesday night’s book group. They’re not often on consecutive nights, so it was rather a challenge this time. Luckily both books were great – a re-read of Angela Young’s Speaking of Love (see 50 Books You Must Read….) and the book I’m going to chat about today – Irene Nemirovsky’s Suite Francaise. Both her name and the title are calculated to defeat Blogger’s attempts to locate accents and cidillas (sp?) etc, so I’m afraid I’m going to leave the lot out. Sorry…

Suite Francaise has had a lot of publicity, in Europe anyway, so I shan’t say that much about the plot of the book – a lot of others have done so better than I could, anyway. I should, actually, say books – these are the first two of a planned trilogy (potentially even more) which Nemirovsky was tragically unable to complete, because she was killed in Auschwitz in 1942. The two books are Storm in June, which documents the invasion of Paris and the fleeing of many from it; and Dolce, about a village under Nazi occupation. Some characters overlap, especially in peripheral mentions.

I’ll launch right into my praise – Nemirovsky is an incredibly gifted novelist. Had these been further edited; had the trilogy been complete, this could have been one of twentieth century’s most important works, I think. The people at Book Group agreed that her greatest talent was the delineation of character, and making people unique and fully formed. A comparison of Dolce with the film Went The Day Well? is illuminating and quite amusing. Though I love that film, it could hardly be considered to offer sympathy to the German troops – it is a bitter irony that Nemirovsky could see these soldiers are people, with all their virtues and vices, and yet would die under the Nazi regime. Had these novels been written now, the French might be innocent victims and the German soldiers all baddies – Nemirovsky, especially in Dolce, is able to see them as humans, first and foremost. Perhaps Storm in June has one too many unpleasant rich men, but perhaps Paris had too many of them at the time. A pervasive theme is that money could help one escape most things. She laments the way those with no control over the situation are those to bear the brunt of the anguish:

‘But why are we always the ones who have to suffer?’ she cried out in indignation. ‘Us and people like us? Ordinary people, the lower middle classes. If war is delcared or the franc devalues, if there’s unemployment or a revolution, or any sort of crisis, the others manage to get through all right. We’re always the ones who get trampled! Why? What did we do? We’re paying for everyone else’s mistakes.’

Neither novel has a straight-forward, linear plot, and often novels which avoid these are difficult to keep reading. They don’t grab you. But in Suite Francaise, despite the episodic and patchwork-like writing, I always wanted to read on. There are sharp points of drama amongst less shocking narratives; it is an experience rather than a plot. I did prefer Dolce, as I didn’t lose track of characters as I did in Storm in June, and the central story between Frenchwoman Lucile and German soldier Bruno is touching and sophisticatedly complex – but both novels are evidence that Nemirovsky was a writer who should have had a very glowing future. Authentic, beautiful, understanding.

Special Collections

StuckinaBook All 5 Comments


Thought I’d keep you updated as to my movements around the Bodleian. Those of you who have been following my sporadic library updates will by now have a fairly comprehensive understanding of the various departments – in fact, if you’ve been attentive, you’ll know more than most of the students in Oxford. More than I did, certainly.

Today I moved to Special Collections, which is awfully special – it more or less means manuscripts and rare books and nice old and exciting things. Back when I started in the Bodleian, I spent a week working underground in the stacks, and could peruse all sorts of interesting and odd things (a letter written by Jane Austen; Hitler’s marriage certificate; a copy of Wind in the Willows handwritten by Kenneth Grahame) – now I get to see some more! It went rather from the sublime to the ridiculous today. First I saw a Shakespeare First Folio (with some amusing marginalia from an early owner – ‘Beatrice and Benedict have much wit’ by the opening of Much Ado About Nothing for instance, and a rather fanciful handwritten list of plays which the owner considered Shakespeare to have penned). After that I spent quite a lot of time with a few hundred copies of Buffalo Bill Novels, from the 1910s onwards. Hilarious stuff, looks like a comic but novel-length prose, more or less. Classic.

My favourite section of the library revealed today, though, was the section hidden away behind a grille. An odd miscellany, which have in common one thing – they simply can’t be on the accessible shelves, for a number of reasons. For example: “page 32 of this book contains a serious libel” – ! That seemed to be the theme. These books allege all sorts of things which might still cause a legal kerfuffle. Since the Bodleian can’t let things leave the library once stamped, they are kept here. What fun.

All in all, I think my time in Special Collections is going to be good fun. I’ve certainly been looking forward to it all year – although I shan’t spend much time with the readers, I’ll be with the most interesting material held in the Bod.

Oh, and “hello!” to anyone from the Bod who was alerted to this post by a Google alert…