The Book Trailer to go with today’s book review.
Who is Florence Wolfson?
What do you really expect to find when looking through a skip?
Probably not the inspiration for a book, unless that book happens to be “Travels With My Refuse” or “Binbags I Have Known”. Lily Koppel, a young journalist at the New York Times, did rather better – on 6th October 2003, all sorts of old trunks were thrown away from where they’d been languishing in unclaimed storage. Spotting an opportunity… no, wait. “I felt a pang of longing. I was seized by the impulse that at this moment, nothing mattered but seeing what lay inside the trunks.” Well, what lay inside one of them was an old red leather diary. A Milestone Five Year diary, 1929-1934. The property of one Florence Wolfson, given to her on her fourteenth birthday.
Every single day had an entry. These ranged from the trivial – ‘Played piano for Mother this evening & enjoyed myself enormously’ – to the deeply emotive: ‘It’s really pitiful that I love George so much – I’m absolutely nothing in his hands’ and more or less everything in between. Most significantly, it was true. Even if Florence’s was the most mundane of lives (and it was not), its detailed preservation for so many decades makes it a significant social document.
What is it which moves Florence’s diary to a higher level? Perhaps it is mostly that Florence is still alive. A nonagenarian, married for 67 years to a boy she met in her diary days, she was tracked down by Lily Koppel, and writes in the Foreword that “a forgotten chunk of my life, full of adolescent angst and passion, is handed to me… my striving, feeling, immature self [seen] through my now elderly eyes”. (I’ve changed the second person to the first person – the original is perhaps symptomatic of this disconnection Florence Wolfson, now Howitt, must feel after so many years distance).
The Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Journal is certainly not simply the publication of Florence’s childhood journal. Lily uses the diary as a basis, and, having also spoken at length to Florence and surviving family & friends, constructs a third person narrative of the years 1929-34. Florence did, after all, only write a sentence or two per day. Koppel favours quite an arty prose – people say things with ‘wide gray eyes void of emotion’; things don’t happen immediately, rather ‘she didn’t have time to take a sip before they pulled up at the canopy of the forty-one-story white granite Hotel Pierre looking down on the Plaza’. Difficult to demonstrate Koppel’s writing style without artificially isolating it, but hopefully you get the picture. Alongside this, Florence’s diary entries (which are cited between paragraphs, an ongoing thread of the primary material) are starkly factual and unadornedly expressive: ‘Planning a play on Wordsworth – possibilities are infinite’. These two styles intertwine, and play out against each other to mutual benefit, I think. It is Florence’s voice I cherish in The Red Leather Diary, yet her distinctive day-to-day accounts are too sparse to exist without Koppel’s elaboration.
For me, the idea behind the book was enough to make me want to read it.
A rediscovered journal; an encounter between young journalist and nonagenarian (which, to my mind, is the most interesting section of an interesting book). These are events to be treasured, and worth a book, whatever the youthful Florence was like. What makes her journal, her biography, her narrative so compelling is her character. Not always likeable, she is nonetheless a creative spirit – writing, painting, loving. She presents mature philosophical reflections even while she declares every crush to be a great love affair and bewails the strictures imposed by her parents. The Red Leather Diary is an honest portrayal of teenagerdom in an evolving world, but by showing Florence approaching the end of her life too, it is a true narrative of reflection and change. You couldn’t make it up.
Year One Book Reviews
As promised, the first year of book reviews is posted below! From now on there will be a link in the left-hand column. Thanks so much, Ber, for asking whether sketches would be treated with a similar post – I hadn’t thought of it, but will get onto it soon…
Speaking of sketches, thought I’d give away a very little birthday present – I’ll pop the ‘Book Reviews Made Easy’ sketch in the post to someone, as a souvenir. If you’d like it, just comment in the comments – shall we say a couple of days to enter? It’s only, as Elaine at Random Jottings would say, a Bijou Prizerette.
Have just made a coconut cake, which can be considered a birthday cake…
Year One Book Reviews
Baker, Frank – Miss Hargreaves
Bennett, Alan – The Uncommon Reader
Brittney, Lynn – Christine Kringle
Carr, J. L. – A Month In The Country
Chatto, Beth and Christopher Lloyd – Dear Friend and Gardener
Comyns, Barbara – Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead
Delafield, E. M. – The Provincial Lady
Dickens, Monica – One Pair of Feet
Dostoevsky, Fyodor – The Eternal Husband
Fowler, Karen Joy – The Jane Austen Book Club
Gaarder, Jostein – The Christmas Mystery
Gaskell, Elizabeth – Cousin Phillis
Gillard, Linda – A Lifetime Burning
Gordon-Cumming, Jane – A Proper Family Christmas
Hartley, Jenny – Reading Groups
Hartley, L. P. – Simonetta Perkins
Hosseini, Khaled – The Kite Runner
Jansson, Tove – The Summer Book
Jerome, Jerome K. – Three Men in a Boat
Milne, A. A. – It’s Too Late Now
Mitford, Nancy – The Pursuit of Love
Myers, Elizabeth – A Well Full of Leaves
Olivier, Edith – The Love Child
Penney, Stef – The Tenderness of Wolves
Rowling, J. K. – The Harry Potter series
Sackville-West, Vita – All Passion Spent
Thorton, Rosy – Hearts and Minds
Tomalin, Claire – Katherine Mansfield : A Secret Life
Wigfall, Clare – The Loudest Sound and Nothing
Happy Birthday to me!
It was on April 10th a year ago, in the throes of Finals revision, that I impulsively decided to start writing a literary blog. I was immersed in Middle English (through no choice of my own) and needed a window into kinder literature; books on which I would not be tested. Though I did have some people to share book loves with, I knew there must be even more out there. And perhaps even some people who might want to know my 50 Books You Must Read But May Not Have Heard About…
That was the sketch from my very first entry – and it is more appropriate than ever.
It’s been such a joy to have you all come by here over the past year. I don’t think Stuck-in-a-Book will ever bring in thousands (I’ve trotted along at more or less the same, very nice, number of visitors for the past six months or so) but I’ve made so many friends amongst you. I shan’t name you, but you know who you all are, I hope.
It’s been a fun year, one of much change in my life – here’s to Year Two!
As a birthday present to you all, and to myself, I’ve collected all the posts which are specifically book reviews, so that they can be found easily… rather than clutter up the column at the side, I shall instead place a link under the ‘Home…’ bit. That will link to a post which, in turn, links to all the reviews. Look out for it in the next couple of days!
More Cold Comfort Farm
I’m just back from a very enjoyable meet-up in London with some bookish people, more on that in the near future. Today, I just couldn’t leave you mystified as to my opinions concerning Ms. Gibbons and her Farm of Cold Comfort. So inte
resting to read the views of others before I throw my own out there, must try that again some time.
And what an interesting disparity there is amongst you! Some love; some loathe; some fairly indifferent. Well, it’s time to nail my colours to the mast – I love, love, love Cold Comfort Farm and think it’s in the top ten funniest books I’ve ever read. Quite a bold statement to make, and knowing that lots of you have already read it, I probaly have to justify my position… I’ll do my best. But I think humour in a book is the most difficult thing to define, encapsulate or explain. Why do I find something funny? Goodness knows. And trying to work out why something is funny kills the humour. Oh well. I’ll do my best…
I read Cold Comfort Farm in January 2004, and re-read it last week for Book Group – what had been enjoyed at 18 was delighted in at 22. Perhaps my pleasure will go up in four-yearly increments, leaving me in delirium by the time I’m 98. What made the most difference, I think, is that I have read some Lawrence, some Hardy, some interwar psychoanalytical novels in the interrim. For Cold Comfort Farm is pastiche on every page – mostly, apparently, of Mary Webb, whom I have not read – and not a word is intended to be taken seriously.
Ironically, Cold Comfort Farm is both pastiche and wholly unlike any other book in the world. It couldn’t be. Flora Poste, the chic London ‘heroine’, finds herself orphaned and decides to live with a relative. She tries several, including the Starkadders of Cold Comfort Farm, albeit reluctantly: ‘ “because highly sexed young men living on farms are always called Seth or Reuben, and it would be such a nuisance. And my cousin’s name, remember, is Judith. That in itself is most ominous. Her husband is almost certain to be called Amos; and if he is, it will be a typical farm, and you know what they are like.” ‘ It is this sense that Flora is walking into a cliche – which is evident even if one has never touched a rural novel of the type being satirised – which characterises the whole situation, and the rest of the novel. She breezes into Cold Comfort Farm, and encounters every type of absurd, farcical and outlandish character imaginable. And I loved every one of ’em.
90 year old Adam, who cares only for his cows Feckless, Aimless, Graceless and Pointless; over-sexed Seth who is perpetually undoing shirt buttons and believes women only want “yer blood and yer breath”; Mr. Mybug who sees Flora’s revulsion towards him as ‘inhibitions’ and claims Branwell Bronte wrote Wuthering Heights; preacher Amos who doesn’t plan his sermons but “I allus knows ’twill be summat about burnin’…”; most famously Aunt Ada Doom, confined to her room, who once “saw something nasty in the woodshed”. And a host of others, all of whom are keen to impress on Flora that “there have always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort”.
In response to Angela’s comment yesterday, I do think the characters are supposed to be cartoonish – or absurd, anyway. It is the clash of their melodramatic sayings and Flora’s unflustered sense which gave me the moments of greatest mirth. For example, this exchange between Flora and Cousin Judith:
…
Judith had sunk into a reverie.
‘Curtains?’ she asked, vacantly, lifting her magnificent head. ‘Child, child, it is many years since such trifles broke across the web of my solitude.’
‘I’m sure it is; but do you think I might have them washed, all the same?’
Flora’s tidy dismissal of the rural histrionics would be callous and arrogant in real life, but real life is not something which impinges on Cold Comfort Farm. Self-confidence propels Flora through solving all the Starkadder dilemmas, even the domineering matriach Ada Doom, whose only defence tactics are thwacking people with Cowkeepers’ Weekly Bulletin and Milk Producers’ Guide.
I find Cold Comfort Farm a hilarious romp from beginning to end, as well as an example of brilliantly measured and controlled writing, but I can quite see it’s a novel which is either hit or miss. Those who haven’t read it, do give it a go – if, after 40 pages, you don’t love it then you never will. If you do, you always will.
Cold Comfort Farm : Thoughts?
I am more exhausted than I can express – not sure I have fully recuperated – and have only energy for a sentence or two… I’ve just re-read Cold Comfort Farm and had Book Group on it, but before I tell you what I thought… what do you think??
Let me know, then I’ll see how we match up…
The Book Quiz
Back from a lovely time in Snowdonia, where it snowed and was unutterably beautiful. Reminded me of Psalm 95 – specifically: “In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. Come let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the LORD our Maker.”
Consequently I am rather sleepy – walking and playing and praying and travelling have taken it out of me. So I shall just point you in the direction of a great BBC quiz, and shall duck when those of you who aren’t from the UK realise that you can’t watch The Book Quiz. In an age when mass media is accused of dumbing down, often quite rightly, it is nice to see a literary quiz – and, what’s more, a very tricky one. See this week’s episode here, if you’re in the UK, and see if you can do better than me.
The rounds involve identifying opening lines of novels; poet’s r
eading their own poetry; picture clues for a book; quickfire questions, each interlinking; thirty seconds or so to name as many examples as possible of, say, George Eliot novels. The team got one for that – Middlemarch. Go on, how many can you get in thirty seconds? Shamefully, I managed three – and none of them were the one I’ve read. Pressure!
Good fun, very challenging, and covers an enormous range of literature. Well done, BBC.
In other culture news, I spent this evening pretending to be Doctor Who for a Social Sciences Library introductory video…
Thrown To The Woolfs
Today’s Woolf-pun wasn’t my own invention, though a trawl through past posts on Woolf will reveal quite a medley of ’em – as does today’s sketch, which is once more recycled. What can I say, I’m fond of it. And I’m a
lso fond of Virginia Woolf, always on the look out for other things to read by and about her.
Can’t remember where I first saw Thrown To The Woolfs by John Lehnmann, but I have a feeling it was mentioned in Hermione Lee’s exhaustive biography Virginia Woolf – it appealed immediately; an account by Lehmann of being manager and later partner of Hogarth Press. He worked there between 1931 and 1946, with a sizeable gap in the middle – both chunks of time there, totalling almost eight years, ended in a rift with Leonard Woolf.
Although it is Woolf, V. who sold this title to me, Woolf, L. takes more central stage. Not in Lehmann’s opinion, certainly, but rather in the length of time spent together and consequent impact on Lehmann’s life. Like almost everyone else who has documented meeting Virginia, Lehmann was entirely bewitched by her, both as a person and a writer. He describes reading her final novel, Between The Acts, in manuscript: ‘It was a thrilling experience, and I was deeply moved. It seemed to me to have an unparalleled imaginative power, to be filled with a poetry more disturbing than anything she had written before, reaching at times the extreme limits of the communicable’. She herself died believing it to be “too silly and trivial”, but in her mental state also called To The Lighthouse ‘inconceivably bad’. It is a further tragedy that one of the century’s greatest writers died believing her work to be awful.
So, though Virginia was undoubtedly Lehmann’s preferred Woolf, it was Leonard who dominated the running of the Hogarth Press. The Press was important to both Woolfs – Lehmann describes it being treated ‘as if it were the child their marriage had never produced’ – but Leonard was far more concerned with the managerial side. He was notoriously parsimonious, going into a rage if a halfpenny could not be accounted for in, er, accounts. Thrown To The Woolfs, as the title suggests, does not tell a wholly happy tale, and it was (Lehmann suggests) Leonard’s over-bearing attitude, especially regards vetoing authors Lehmann wished to publish, 
which led to the eventual break up of their partnership. Much of the third section of this book is taken up with settling scores – quoting from Leonard’s autobiography and then refuting and repudiating. Though the final paragraph begins ‘it is absurd, and deleterious, in one’s later ages, to harbour enduring resentments about the struggles and tribulations of one’s younger career’ – but this feels a little like lip service to good nature. The tone becomes a trifle bitter, with light coming only in references to Virginia and other authors about whom he is passionate.
Despite these unresolved squabbles, Thrown To The Woolfs is a well-written and interesting account of a unique viewpoint on the Woolfs, and as such is well worth seeking out. Just don’t expect Happy Families all round.
By the by, I’m off to Snowdonia for a few days – see you when I get back!
Reading Daphne Backwards
You may have noticed a few days ago on Karen’s blog that we have a little project planned together: Reading Daphne Backwards. Twyla Tharp, apparently, recommends reading an author’s work from their final offering, backwards to their first. I commented on Karen’s blog to say how interesting that sounded, and that I hadn’t read much Daphne du Maurier (just the exemplary Rebecca under my belt). Karen was also thinking du Maurier territory, and thus a project was born. I hesitate to say Challenge, because those always make me want to hide under the covers and read something else… so Reading Daphne Backwards is a lengthy project, which we aim to have finished by the end of 2008.
The idea is to see how a novelist progressed, but in reverse. What themes become stronger; which weaker? What were their basics of writing, to which the reverse read will draw? It may reveal nothing at all, but it should be fun nonetheless…
First thing to do, buy the books. Bless the The Book People – they had a boxset of ten Daphne novels for £9.99. Fancy a link to it? Here you are then. I don’t know how they do it, but I’m glad they do – and the boxset arrived this morning. It doesn’t include all the novels and stories, but I think I’m going to stick to the ones they do have there, for now. The Scapegoat is at home in Somerset somewhere… but I don’t think I’ll run out of Daphnes for a while.
The running order, then, is:
The Flight of the Falcon
Castle Dor
My Cousin Rachel
The Parasites
Frenchman’s Creek
Rebecca
Jamaica Inn
Julius
I’ll Never Be Young Again
and The Rendevous and Other Stories will have to slot in somewhere…
Do feel free to join in, or just watch as Karen and I compare notes on our blogs.