The Indignant Spinsters by Winifred Boggs

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Last year, Sally on the Rocks by Winifred Boggs was one of my favourite reads, and I’ve made no secret about the fact that I’d love it to be a British Library Women Writers title at some point. But it wasn’t the first of her books that I read. The reason I got interested in Boggs in the first place was The Indignant Spinsters (1921). I figured I couldn’t help but love an author who would write a book with a title like that.

I love a slightly ridiculous premise, particularly if it involves convoluted lying and disguise, and that’s what The Indignant Spinsters provides in spades. The first section of the book tries to get the reader comfortable in what’s going on, and I’ll admit I had to re-read bits of it several times. The long and the short of it is that there are three unmarried sisters, the Miss Smiths – Kit, Doll, and the narrator whose name I can’t find. Maybe unnamed? They have lived oppressed lives with an uncle who, when he dies, leaves them with a fair chunk of money but not enough to live on forever.

How easy to be good on a few thousands a year! How difficult on a hundred or so! Oh, the daily grinding sordid things that threaten to make us sordid too! We may manage, a few of us, to afford a heart; we know we cannot afford a soul. We have got to ‘make two ends meet’ instead, perhaps spend fifty years at it – and fail at the last. I also told myself that there were few things I would not do to get a chance at the big things of life.

The Miss Smiths have some tangled connection with the housekeeper of a house where the son moved to Australia and cut ties with the Wanstead family – and had three daughters, all of whom died. As luck would have it, these three daughters are about the same age as the three Miss Smiths. They decide to announce themselves as the missing women, and move into the ancestral home.

The plan is concocted in order to find them eligible husbands, as they no longer wish to be indigent spinsters – or indignant, as is misheard, for such is the origin of the title. They know that wealthy women are far more likely to find men who want to marry them. Their plan is not cruel, as they don’t want to take anything away from the Wansteads. And there is no emotional manipulation at play, since nobody they’re meeting has any fondness for the absent son, or any personal knowledge of his three daughters. Boggs does a good job at keeping us on side, and sympathetic with them.

But – oh, of course – things go wrong. The missing women’s uncle John – also believed dead – turns up, and he is rather dubious about their claims. And that’s just the first of the obstacles that gets in their way, as they deal with their plan crumbling and their moral resolve following suit.

In all of this, there are a few delightful character-types – like straight-talking Aunt Susannah:

”I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. I was discussing spinsters. Be good enough not to interrupt and to speak when you’re spoken to, Miss Pert! I say spinsters are maligned. If half of them are ‘couldn’ts’, the other half are certainly ‘wouldn’ts’, and when one sees what some of their fellow women pick up and endure with complacency one hardly wonders or blames them. In the old days they had a regrettable taste in curates; now they prefer motor cars, and again I don’t blame ’em!”

So, it’s a ridiculously silly plot and it’s good fun to read. And it’s not an awful lot more than that, but sometimes that’s all one needs. There isn’t much emotional depth to the characters, and the stakes feel relatively low. Which is why I found it a surprise when I read Sally on the Rocks which is so much more impactful – a genuine feeling of the desperation of unmarried poverty, and characters who are so well drawn. I found a lot to enjoy for a few frivolous afternoons. It was only when I saw what else Boggs was capable of that I realised this wouldn’t be the one of hers that I would be pushing on everyone.

The BookTube Spin

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Look, I’m not on BookTube – where people talk about books on YouTube, for the uninitiated. Nobody needs to see my shoddy camera angles and poor editing technique. But I do enjoy watching a few of the channels, and taking their new and modern ideas to the olde worlde world of book blogging. Our words are written down! Fancy.

And I enjoy no book channel more than Rick’s. He’s come up with The BookTube Spin, which is very similar to the Classics Spin, but open to any sort of book. Essentially, pick and number 20 books – he’ll spin a wheel and a choose a number on 31 January, then we have two months to read the book. I’ll let him explain in greater detail…

It’s a fun way to get someone else to help sort through your tbr pile! I decided to plough my own furrow a little, and pick alphabetically – skipping Q and so ending at U. Where possible, I also chose book titles beginning with the same letter, though that wasn’t always doable from my tbr shelves.

I’ve tried to pick books that I’m not racing towards (though I’m pretty sure I’ll read Butterfly Lampshade soon whether or not it comes up), so as to find something unexpected from my tbr.

1.) After the Funeral – Diana Athill
2.) Butterfly Lampshade – Aimee Bender
3.) Chedsy Place – Richmal Crompton
4.) Dombey and Son – Charles Dickens
5.) Every Eye – Isobel English
6.) Faces in the Water – Janet Frame
7.) Go She Must – David Garnett
8.) Hangover Square – Patrick Hamilton
9.) Lions and Shadows – Christopher Isherwood
10.) Woman in a Lampshade – Elizabeth Jolley
11.) Suddenly, a Knock at the Door – Etgar Keret
12.) The Limit – Ada Leverson
13.) The Magician – W. Somerset Maugham
14.) News of England – Beverley Nichols
15.) The Opposite House – Helen Oyeyemi
16.) Pax – Sara Pennypacker
17.) Reaching Down the Rabbit Hole – Allan Ropper
18.) The Small Room by May Sarton
19.) Temples of Delight by Barbara Trapido
20.) Rabbit, Run by John Updike

Have you read any of these? Fancy making your own Spin? Let me (and Rick) know if you join in!

Seven Kinds of People You Find in Bookshops by Shaun Bythell

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I imagine you’ve probably read Shaun Bythell’s very funny accounts of running a secondhand bookshop in Wigtown, Scotland – Diary of a Bookseller and Confessions of a Bookseller. I love them and I’m hoping they go on and on. While we wait for another diary, though, there is Seven Kinds of People You Find in Bookshop – published last year, probably with an eye on being a stocking filler. It’s 137 pages and a pocket-sized book, so only takes an hour or so to whip through – but it’s a delightful hour.

As the title suggests, Bythell divides up his usual clientele into seven categories – though each of these has several sub-sections. For example, here is the genus Expert, species Bore:

This type of person often considers him- or herself to be a polymath, and will inveterately share their thoughts with you on any subject you choose to mention, or accidentally mention, once you are aware of their proclivity. It is best to maintain complete silence in their presence, as the slightest thing can trigger a lengthy tirade on the most unexpected of subjects, although often you don’t discover that customers fall into this taxonomic category until it’s far, far too late. They are not averse to listening in on conversations between other customers and interjecting with their (often wildly offensive) opinions, and on many occasions I have had to apologise to innocent bystanders who – having been quietly discussing something – have subsequently been subject to an unsolicited (and possibly racist) rant from a complete stranger who happened to be within earshot.

Bythell is always wonderful at spearing people who have no self-awareness about how difficult they make life for others – though he breaks his curmudgeonly persona every now and then to talk about kinds of people who are very welcome in the shop. He treads the line between wittily grumpy and mean with expertise, never falling on the wrong side of it – but these moments of appreciation are still like the sun bursting through clouds.

Naturally, as a frequenter of bookshops, I read nervously – trying to identify myself. The nearest I came was the posh old lady from the city, with whom I have little in common except for her taste: ‘She would never dream of taking the dog for a walk, and her interests, when she comes into the bookshop and wafts dreamily around, are a light touch of Bloomsbury (particularly Virginia Woolf) with a smattering of the Mitford sisters.’ Ouch!

I will read anything Bythell writes about bookshops and, though this isn’t a proper instalment in the series, it’s enough to keep us going for a while. If it wasn’t in your stocking at Christmas, then treat yourself to a copy to make January a bit more fun.

The Land by Vita Sackville-West [or a bit of it]

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File:Victoria-mary-sackville-west-vita.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

I am trying to be the sort of person who likes poetry, and picking some of the poems off my bookshelves. If I’m honest, it hasn’t been an enormous success yet – though I did enjoy some of the Yeats I read, and felt pretty unenthusiastic about quite a lot of it.

One of the poems I’ve been keen to try is The Land by Sackville-West – a book-length poem from 1926. It is perhaps best remembered now, at least to the non-poetry read fraternity, for Virginia Woolf’s teasing of it in Orlando. In that novel, published a couple of years later and inspired by Vita Sackville-West, Orlando spends years writing a long poem called The Oak Tree that is later lampooned by a noted Elizabethan critic.

So that is quite a starting point for trying The Land! And I can see why it might be lampooned. It’s essentially a rustic and atavistic take on nature, filled with farmers doing ancient things with scythes etc. etc. I’m going to be honest, most of it didn’t really work for me. That ‘poetic shepherd’ genre always feels a bit improbable and fey to me. BUT I am glad I read it for this small section alone, which I really liked.

Long story short – I don’t think I’m the right audience for The Land, but I love two particular pages. So, if you’re like me – here, I’m saving you some time and just sharing this bit, on comparing poets and artisans.

The poet like the artisan
Works lonely with his tools; picks up each one,
Blunt mallet knowing, and the quick thin blade,
And plane that travels when the hewing’s done;
Rejects, and chooses; scores a fresh faint line;
Sharpens, intent upon his chiselling;
Bends lower to examine his design,
If it be truly made,
And brings perfection to so slight a thing.
But in the shadows of his working-place,
Dust-moted, dim,
Among the chips and lumber of his trade,
Lifts never his bowed head, a breathing-space
To look upon the world beyond the sill,
The world framed small, in distance, for to him
The world and all its weight are in his will.
Yet in the ecstasy of his rapt mood
There’s no retreat his spirit cannot fill,
No distant leagues, no present, and no past,
No essence that his need may not distil,
All pressed into his service, but he knows
Only the immediate care, if that be good;
The little focus that his words enclose;
As the poor joiner, working at his wood,
Knew not the tree from which the planks were taken,
Knew not the glade from which the trunk was brought,
Knew not the soil in which the roots were fast,
Nor by what centuries of gales the boughs were shaken,
But holds them all beneath his hands at last.

For All We Know by G.B. Stern

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What a curious novel, which has left rather an impression on me, even though I find it a little complex to untangle. I bought For All We Know [1955] in 2011, based on having enjoyed her books on Jane Austen that she co-wrote with Sheila Kaye-Smith. She’s also one of those names you see a lot if you’re interested in women writers in the early/mid twentieth century – and years ago I did read her novel Ten Days of Christmas. But somehow it still felt like I was a Stern fiction newbie. Do Christmas novels feel substantially different? Like you haven’t really heard a singer if you’ve only listened to their Christmas album?

Anyway, I decided to see what was going on with For All We Know – the sort of title that isn’t really giving anything away. What I think of as an Alan Ayckbourn-esque title – trips off the tongue and doesn’t really mean anything.

I was daunted by a family tree in the opening pages. For me, a family tree in a book is a tacit way of admitting that they haven’t done a good job delineating characters. But onwards – the first section, of five, is a family group discussing Gillian’s recent biography of the whole dynasty. She has been working on it for years, and it has been a total critical and commercial flop. Gillian is a biographer of some note, and the family is well known in theatrical circles, so why has it not been a success? Well, because Gillian has ignored the noted Bettina, and devoted significant sections to Bettina’s son Rendal, who is of no public note.

This family gathering and sotto voce discussions over, we jump back a few decades – to an infant Gillian, encountering Bettina’s side of the family for the first time. Bettina is Gillian’s grandfather’s sister’s daughter, whatever that translates into in terms of cousins and removes. That side of the family has a whole range of siblings and cousins and whatnot, and you quickly work out why the family tree is needed. All you need to know is that Gillian’s grandfather is the head of the side of the family that isn’t famous, and Bettina’s mother is the head of the side that is.

It was Timothy, her cousin, who had casually referred to Gillian’s grandfather and her Uncle Conrad as the ‘failure branch’ of the family tree. Dear, dear Timothy! Happily able to say even worse than that, not to tease nor to be cruel but because he could not for the life of him see why she need mind, as it was true. Timothy had a thick blank spot, and though only twelve years old when he came forth with this chubby definition of Gillian’s immediate family as compared with his own, indisputably the ‘celebrity branch’, he would be just as capable of saying it to-day when he was sixteen, because the thick blank spot had not grown more delicately assailable and nor had he; just one of those get-away-with-murder-boys, every year handsomer, and brilliant at everything he undertook.

Gillian is a few years younger, and in awe of this daunting family – though also enamoured by them, and desperate for them to show her attention and affection. The strength of For All We Know is the Stern’s understanding of the power of embarrassing or upsetting moments. She is so good at children and the way they feel so strongly in the moment. There are a couple of incidents where young Gillian feels she is being laughed at by the family – and, even more powerfully, one moment of triumph that is later forgotten by the people she thought she’d impressed. In a biography, these moments wouldn’t even warrant a footnote – but in Gillian’s young mind, they are seismic. She decides that she will one day write the biography of the family, and begins to fill notebooks with observations and eavesdroppings.

The novel has a further three parts, jumping forward in time, seeing how Gillian’s life becomes more embroiled with the family. Timothy fulfils his early promise and becomes a big-name actor in Hollywood; Rendal has fulfilled the prediction that he will have a much less illustrious career. Gillian has grown in confidence, though still clearly in awe of what Bettina thinks, and capable of strong emotional reactions.

One of the interesting things about For All We Know is that, jumping in stages through this family’s history, Stern doesn’t land in the most significant places. We hear about marriages that have happened between sections, and of moments of success and fame. The chapters of narrative seem almost random, in terms of a timeline, but perhaps they are the places of biggest emotional impact – not the places that Gillian’s biography would highlight. Stern is more interested in the ways that relationships within the family change. And particularly between Gillian and Bettina. There is no big surprise twist or gotcha moment – I did wonder if Bettina would turn out to be Gillian’s mother or something, but there’s nothing like that. But there are times when their relationship shifts dramatically – largely because what they want and expect from it is so different.

Getting to the end of For All We Know, I was left with a really strong impression of the emotional weight of the narrative – and, yes, slightly disconcerted by the curious structure and the events that aren’t covered. I can see why Stern chose to pick the moments she did – and yet I feel a bit like Gillian in the early chapters. That I’ve been watching a family from the outside, not quite privy to their most significant memories. I like a novel to leave me thinking, and I’m not quite sure yet whether I’ll remember this novel as a brilliant success or as something a little off-kilter. Or perhaps both?

Nothing is Black by Deirdre Madden

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I absolutely loved Molly Fox’s Birthday a year or so ago, and so over Christmas I thought I’d treat myself to one of the other Deirdre Madden novels that I’d since been stockpiling. I went on Twitter for advice, but nobody seemed to have read the ones I had – so I picked the shortest one: Nothing is Black from 1994.

Claire lives in a remote coastal area of County Donegal. I have to admit that, until now, I hadn’t realised that Ireland had a north coast – but turns out that Northern Ireland is really only the north-east of the island. You probably all knew that. She lives in a stark and sparsely populated area, living an almost perversely minimalist lifestyle – only the barest, most functional furniture; few local friends; few efforts to stay connected with her past. She’s an artist, and practices each morning by making a quick watercolour sketch of the ever-changing landscape outside the window of her ugly, practical house.

Rather reluctantly, she lets her cousin Nuala come to stay. She lives in Dublin, but it might as well be a thousand miles away. This is the idea of Nuala’s husband. Neither of them are particularly enthusiastic about the idea – which Nuala combats with talking, and Claire with silence.

They drove out along the coast road. Claire would have admitted that the place where she had chosen to live was bleak, but she thought that it had its own magnificence too. It certainly didn’t have the lushness and prettiness people often expected to find in the countryside. To appreciate this area properly required a certain way of seeing things. Because of the wind coming in off the Atlantic, it was never static. Claire liked that about it, and she liked the colours, not bright, but often vivid, with the contrasts of the low, soft plants against stone.

This isn’t an ‘Enchanted April’ type of novel, where unlikely companions become firm friends. But Madden expertly takes us through the paths and wounds that have led to these two women’s unhappy circumstances. Nuala has started shoplifting. Claire has deliberately isolated herself. But these are only the outer signs of much deeper matters – and, even in a very short novel, Madden finds space to gently develop them.

Do you ever get that ‘difficult second novel’ feeling with an author you love, even if isn’t actually their second novel? This was Madden’s fourth, and actually written fourteen years before Molly Fox’s Birthday – but I suppose I was no longer surprised that she was such a wonderfully perceptive writer. Which is to say, Nothing is Black is beautifully, poetically, sensitively written – but at this point I’d have been surprised if it weren’t.

Throughout, Claire’s painterly mindset influences the narrative. Just as the playwright in Molly Fox’s Birthday was always thinking of words and staging, even if this only came through to the surface of the narrative in the subtlest ways, so colour and form threads through everything in Nothing is Black. It’s done so cleverly and naturally – it matches the world and characters that Madden has created, and their preoccupations and concerns. Unusually for me, I think this could have been longer. I suppose, because she has created fully realised people and is showing us their existence, rather than a particular set of plot points they go through, there is no end to the interesting things she can tell us about them.

Tea or Books? #91: Familiar or Unfamiliar Settings? and Two Elizabeth von Arnim novels

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Elizabeth von Arnim and settings of novels – welcome to episode 91!

In the first half of the novel, we look at the settings of novels, and ask whether we prefer familiar or unfamiliar settings. In the second half, we compare two recently reprinted novels by Elizabeth von Arnim – Father and Expiation.

You can listen above, on Spotify, via Apple Podcasts, or any podcast app. You can support the podcast at Patreon, or get in touch at teaorbooks@gmail.com.

The books and authors we mention in this episode:

O, The Brave Music by Dorothy Evelyn Smith
A Jane Austen Education by William Deresiewicz
Emma by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Passing On by Penelope Lively
According to Mark by Penelope Lively
Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively
Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner
Dorothy L Sayers
E. M. Delafield
Charles Dickens
Winifred Holtby
Vera Brittain
Illyrian Spring by Ann Bridge
Maria Edgeworth
Brensham Village by John Moore
The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin
Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm
Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers
The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi
Elizabeth Taylor
Elizabeth Bowen
Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The Behaviour of Moths by Poppy Adams
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
Westwood by Stella Gibbons
The Matchmaker by Stella Gibbons
Bassett by Stella Gibbons
Here Be Dragons by Stella Gibbons
Nightingale Wood by Stella Gibbons
Barbara Pym
Alas, Poor Lady by Rachel Ferguson
Dangerous Ages by Rose Macaulay
Keeping Up Appearances by Rose Macaulay
Crewe Train by Rose Macaulay
Potterism by Rose Macaulay
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo
Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

2020: Some Reading Stats

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Hopefully you’ve already seen my Top Books of 2020 – and now its time to do one of those fun reading stats posts, that delight other bloggers and blog readers and probably totally baffle normal people. Along the way, I’ll be comparing with my stats from 2019.

Number of books read
I read 147 books in 2020 – up from 133 last year, though down from 153 in 2018. The telling thing there, though, is that in 2018 and 2019 I did ’25 Books in 25 Days’ projects, which bolstered the total. 2020 was still a bumper reading year for me – thanks to the pandemic.

(My own mystery illness meant I couldn’t read for a bit, but thankfully my eyes have largely been ok since the summer. Other symptoms ongoing, and hoping for a diagnosis in 2021. Thanks for your thoughts and prayers.)

Male/female writers
92 of my 147 books were by women, with 53 by men and 2 by women and men. That’s 62.5% of my books by women – it’s usually about 55%. The difference is probably explained by all the reading I’ve been doing to find new titles for the British Library Women Writers series.

Fiction/Non-fiction
I read 97 fiction books (69 by women, 28 by men) and 50 non-fiction (23 by women, 25 by men, 2 by both). All of those stats are pretty similar to 2019’s. It’s funny how these things work out.

Books in translation
2019 was my all-time high for reading books in translation, at 11 – 2020 took a hit, at only five. They’re from Greek/Hebrew (guess that book!), German, and three from French.

Most-read author
Three authors tied for first, with me reading four books by them – E.M. Delafield, Beverley Nichols, and Marilynne Robinson. All big favourites of mine – though only two Robinsons and one Delafield were first-time reads.

Re-reads
Speaking of, I re-read 15 books in 2020, which is much more than usual. A few were pandemic-propelled comfort reads (Austen), some were Marilynne Robinsons because of Jack coming out, but almost all were connected with British Library Women Writers series.

New-to-me authors
I usually read about half new-to-me authors, but this year only 63 of the books I read fall into this category – 43%. Not my lowest ever, but apparently I needed some reliables this year.

Number of audiobooks
I thought all those government-mandated walks would have amped up my audiobook total, but I only read eight books that way. Some of them were very chunky though.

Shortest book title
A few four-letter titles: Home and Jack by Marilynne Robinson, Emma by Jane Austen, and Them by Jon Ronson.

Strangest author name
It’s not a strange name in itself, but reading Love, Interrupted by Simon Thomas was quite a surreal experience – glancing down to see my own name repeatedly.

Most disappointing book
I think Mr Kronion by Susan Alice Kerby. I’d loved Miss Carter and the Ifrit so much, but this one wasn’t in the same league at all.

Worst book I read
This wasn’t really a disappointment, because I was expecting it to be rubbish and it was: Self-Leadership and the One-Minute Manager by Ian Blanchard, that I read for work. Management books are not at all my cup of tea anyway, and they never will be if they’re all as appallingly written as this one.

Word that came up a lot unexpectedly
Three of the novels I read this year had the word ‘Citadel’ in the title – The Citadel by A.J. Cronin, Proud Citadel by Dorothy Evelyn Smith, and Citadel of Ice by my mum, Anne Thomas (you can order it here!)

Persephones
Last year I said I wanted to read more Persephones from my shelf, after reading three in 2019. Last year I read… one. Patience by John Coates, which was very good.

Names in book titles
After I read 72 books with names in the title for Project Names in 2019, I thought it would be interesting to see how many I managed when I wasn’t trying – well, it clearly made a difference, as I only read 20 in 2020.

Animals in book titles
Only three in 2019, which is lower than usual. In 2020, there were The Scapegoat by Daphne du Maurier, All the Dogs of My Life by Elizabeth von Arnim, The Birds of the Air by Alice Thomas Ellie, Nightingale Wood by Stella Gibbons, A Summer Bird Cage by Margaret Drabble. Apparently I was mostly drawn to birds last year.

Strange things that happened in books this year
A stepping stone tested chastity, two women swapped bodies, a husband and wife swapped bodies, three women stole identities, a serial killer tried to win a title, someone pretended to write a biography of Byron, a husband disappeared, two cities inhabited the same space, patients woke from comas, a man hunted the devil in Cornwall, someone gave birth in the Blitz, a body was found in a sealed tunnel, chairs were made of human skin, a shark crashed through a roof, and a borrowed overcoat led to abduction.