Onions in the Stew by Betty MacDonald

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The final of the Betty MacDonald audiobooks from Post-Hypnotic Press is 1955’s Onions in the Stew – the fourth of her four autobiographical books. And it’s just as enjoyable as the others, even if Anybody Can Do Anything remains my favourite of the series.

No chicken farms or TB wards in this one – rather, it documents MacDonald moving to Vashon Island with her new husband, Donald MacDonald. As always (always!) MacDonald meanders around vagaries connected with the topic before getting into the topic proper – but ultimately they decide that they can’t live in Seattle or the surrounding suburbs, but could make a home for themselves on one of the islands,

MacDonald does seem to make a rod for her own back. She describes her difficulties and obstacles extremely amusingly, but moving to an island that is often inaccessible, and to a house that doesn’t have a road leading to it, is hardly conducive to ease.

As in all the other books, MacDonald encounters any number of odd characters. There is a feeling of unity on the island, but the odd fly in the ointment – such as the woman who palms off her (many) children on anybody who’ll house and feed them, then makes out later that she has been horribly offended and abused by said person. In MacDonald’s writing, though, the incident is funny rather than traumatic – with just that dark edge to it to set it off. The most appalling character seems to be her angry and bellicose dog Tudor.

MacDonald does self-deprecation so well. It’s so fun, for instance, to read about her family’s attempts to manoeuvre a washing machine by boat. Her daughters make a proper appearance here, having been mysteriously absent from her previous memoir, and join in the family’s amiability and ineptitude.

As for Vashon Island – I was rather surprised to learn, from Wikipedia, that the population is over 10,000. I don’t know what it was in the mid-century, but I rather got the impression from the book that it was a few hundred. I suppose 10,000 is still a smallish place, but I live in a village of about 150 people, so everything’s relative.

I’m sad to have got to the end of MacDonald’s oeuvre, and enjoyed hearing Heather Henderson narrate them so well. But I do have all the books on my shelves, so next time around I can read them the old-fashioned way.

On re-reading The L-Shaped Room

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One of my ongoing, unsuccessful (and, to be fair, fairly inactive) battles is to convince Rachel that we should read The L-Shaped Room (1960) on the Tea or Books? podcast. It’s one of my favourite books, and I’ve read it a fair few times – and it’s not often I’ll re-read a book at all, let alone more than once. In the end, I decided just to re-read it (again) myself. And, rather than write another review of it, I’ll take you through the experience I had…

Taking the book off the shelf

As someone pointed out in an Instagram comment, my copy is definitely falling apart. The spine went a long time ago, there are tears in some pages, and the whole thing might just crumble into dust at this point. It was in pretty bad condition when I paid 10p for it in a charity shop in Pershore, Worcestershire, buying it on the strength of having loved The Farthest-Away Mountain and The Indian in the Cupboard as a child.

But I can’t get rid of this copy. Maybe one day I’ll have to buy another, if this one gets too fragile to hold, but I love it too much to throw or give it away. Not because of the design or feel, but because it has been with me for so long, and was one of the first adult novels I loved.

Starting the book

There wasn’t much to be said for the place, really, but it had a roof over it and a door which locked from the inside, which was all I cared about just then. I didn’t even bother to take in the details – they were pretty sordid, but I didn’t notice them so they didn’t depress me; perhaps because I was already at rock-bottom. I just threw my one suitcase on to the bed, took my few belongings out of it and shut them all into one drawer of the three-legged chest of drawers. Then there didn’t seem to be anything else I ought to do so I sat in the arm-chair and stared out of the window.

This is the first paragraph and I’m instantly so happy. This description of a room isn’t exactly paradisiacal – it’s meant to be the opposite – but I feel like I’m coming home. No, my home isn’t remotely like this – but the world of the novel is one I love so much that it feels like coming to home to be back in that block of flats, and back in the L-shaped room.

The l-shaped room

Speaking of – once we’ve seen a bit of Jane’s background (in the theatre, then in a café, then being forced to leave home because she’s got pregnant – rattling through the premise, sorry) we’re in the room. And I realise that I have never paid any lasting attention to the description of the layout that Lynne Reid Banks gives. I’ve blogged before about how I can’t visualise descriptions in books – and it’s definitely true of layout. Try as I might, I can’t put those pieces together in my mind. So, for me, her room is laid out exactly as it is on the book cover.

The discriminatory language… 

When I first read the novel, in 2002 or thereabouts, I wasn’t happy about the racism and discriminatory language used about gay people. I’m still not happy about it, of course – even if it’s largely put in the mouths of characters we’re not supposed to agree with. Jane herself is rather racist as the novel starts, though perhaps because I know she’ll change her mind later in the book, I can get through these pages. But there are some sentences that are really tough to read.

Toby and Jane

It is very, very rare that I care about a will-they-won’t-they couple in a book. Reading about romance tends to bore me rather, and I’m much more interested in reading about a couple who’ve been married for thirty years than by young suitors. But Toby and Jane might be that couple. Even though I can’t actually remember whether or not they end up together – either at the end of the book or at the end of the trilogy. Despite all those re-readings, and my love of them, that detail has disappeared. But Toby is great. He comes along, rattling away about his writing and his life, and Jane wants nothing to do with anyone. But you know from the first moment that he’ll wear her down, and they’ll become friends and comrades if nothing else. As her friend Dottie says, “First of all I thought he was just some
little fledgling that had fallen out of its nest, but I very soon realised there was more to him than that.”

What did I remember?

My terrible memory is bad for many things, but good for re-reading. While the atmosphere of a book stays with me, the details usually flit from my mind pretty quickly – and, even after four reads, I’d forgotten pretty much everything that takes place at Jane’s workplace. It’s not as prominent as the block of flats, but there is quite a fun dynamic with her brash but friendly boss. She does the PR for a hotel, and there is an extended scene of her trying to manage a staged meeting between a comedian and a diva, and it’s very amusing. As I read it, it all came back to me – but if you’d asked me before I started this re-read what Jane did for a living, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you.

Was it as good as I remembered?

Of course. This many times in, I know it’s a reliable joy. Seeing Jane grow to love the people she is surrounded with, and deal with the enormous life changes facing her, was as wonderful as always. Perhaps this novel wouldn’t have captivated me in the same way if I’d read it a few years later, but I know it’s now down as one of my all-time favourites and will never be dislodged from there.

Will I read the sequels next?

As always, I ended the novel bereft that I was leaving their company – leaving the l-shaped room and the house and the experience of reading the book. And it’s very tempting to go onto The Backward Shadow and Two Is Lonely, that continue Jane’s story. This time, I probably won’t. They’re both good, but they leave the flat behind – and I miss the flat terribly when I’m reading those books. So I’d certainly recommend them, and I’ve read them three times each, but I only give in to the urge to read them (and feel slightly disappointed) every other time I read The L-Shaped Room.

Stuck in a Book’s Weekend Miscellany

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A very happy weekend to you all – I will be enjoying it by running a stall at the village fete. I’m fully immersed in village life now, donchaknow. If you can’t make it along to my stand (bowling, at the time of writing) then perhaps this book, blog post, and link(s!) will do instead…

1.) The book – I loved Edward Carey’s strange and fascinating novel Alva & Irva, and also enjoyed Observatory Mansions, so I’m pleased to see he has another novel out soon – Little, about the life of Madame Tussaud. Find out more…

2.) The link – there are two this week, because they’re both interesting in different ways. The first – has Instagram changed how book covers are designed? And the second – oddly mesmeric photographs of abandoned mansions across Europe.

3.) The blog post – fans of D.E. Stevenson, you’ll be pleased to hear about the new reprints coming from Furrowed Middlebrow and Dean Street Press. Discover which titles in Scott’s announcement post.

Two Lives by Janet Malcolm

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What an extraordinary little book. A while ago I read Blood on the Dining Room Floor by Gertrude Stein and found it more or less unreadable – the sort of High Modernism that renders every sequence of words gibberish – but I wanted to read more about her life. So when I saw a copy of Two Lives (2007) by Janet Malcolm, about Stein and her partner Alice B. Toklas, I bought it – and thank goodness I did, because I have been introduced to a rather wonderful writer. And that writer is Malcolm, not Stein.

It’s quite an odd start. We are thrown immediately into comparing three different accounts of Stein and Toklas trying to rent a house that belonged to a lieutenant in France in World War Two. It’s a bit dizzying, this in media res, where we are exploring the details of competing versions of the story – two from different autobiographies Stein wrote; one from Toklas – before we’ve been told anything about them and their lives. And, indeed, Malcolm never writes about the women’s childhoods or lives apart from one another, nor do we see how and when they met, or anything that you might expect in a normal biography. This is not a normal biography.

For a long time I put off reading The Making of Americans. Every time I picked up the book, I put it down again. It was too heavy and too thick and the type was too small and dense. I finally solved the problem of the book’s weight and bulk by taking a kitchen knife and cutting it into six sections. The book thus became portable and (so to speak) readable. As I read, I realised that in carving up the book I had unwittingly made a physical fact of its stylistic and thematic inchoateness. It is a book that is actually a number of books. It is called a novel, but in reality it is a series of long meditations on, among other things, the author’s refusal (and inability) to write a novel.

Indeed, it’s not really a biography at all. It has elements of that, alongside literary criticism, literary history, investigative reporting, and all shades in between. I found it beguiling and exciting. We would dart from Stein publishing a 900+ page novel that nobody could understand (and which Malcolm writes about brilliantly) to Malcolm’s own reluctance to read it, and then to notes on the discovery of manuscripts to the chequered history of interviews with Toklas. In between is much on the way Stein has been posthumously treated by critics, academics, and publishers – shown alongside conversations Malcolm has with other Stein enthusiasts.

If I loved Stein and wanted to know all about her life, it might have been frustrating. As it was, it was a wonderful experience – Malcolm is such an intriguing companion to walk alongside. Her thoughts are original and vivid, and her voice is so distinct. I immediately went to see what else she wrote, and ordered four more of her books – on Freudianism, journalism, and writers and artists.

It made me think of Julia Blackburn’s quirky and wonderful book about John Craske, and is in that category of non-fiction where all the usual tenets of biography are thrown out the window – or, rather, stirred and rearranged and made clear and new. It was a wonderful reading experience – and, while I still don’t know many details about the lives of Stein and Toklas, I feel as though I know their characters and personalities well and brightly. I’m really looking forward to reading more by Malcolm.

Tea or Books? #63: First Edition vs Worst Edition and Parnassus on Wheels vs The Education of Harriet Hatfield

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Women opening bookshops, and how we feel about the physical book.

 

In the first half of this episode, we look at first edition vs worst edition – in a fairly sprawling discussion about whether we care about first editions, how the physical condition and appearance of the book affects us, and all that sort of thing. In the second half, we look at two novels about women starting selling books – from opposite ends of the 20th century. Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley was published in the 1910s and The Education of Harriet Hatfield was published in the 1980s – but which would we prefer?

You can support the podcast at Patreon and you can visit the iTunes page. Do let us know if you have any suggestions for books or topics for future episodes – we always love to hear from you!

The books and authors we mention in this episode are:

Two Lives by Janet Malcolm
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein
Blood on the Dining Room Floor by Gertrude Stein
Virginia Woolf
Howards End by E.M. Forster
Queen of the Tambourine by Jane Gardam
A Florence Diary by Diana Athill
Where the God of Love Hangs Out by Amy Bloom
Old Books, Rare Friends by Leona Rostenberg and Madeleine Stern
Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
The Other Day by Dorothy Whipple
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Muriel Spark
The American Way of Death by Jessica Mitford
E.V. Lucas
Rose Macaulay
Willa Cather
The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald
According to Mark by Penelope Lively
Possession by A.S. Byatt
Henry Thoreau
The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley
The Magnificent Spinster by May Sarton
As We Were by May Sarton
Joanna and Ulysses by May Sarton
A Woman of My Age by Nina Bawden
The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell
Sylvia Townsend Warner
Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead by Barbara Comyns
Safety Pins by Christopher Morley
Coronation by Paul Gallico
Love of Seven Dolls by Paul Gallico

The Gentlewomen by Laura Talbot

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It was only as I started writing this review that I noticed the title was The Gentlewomen and not The Gentlewoman – which certainly puts a different spin on this 1952 novel by Laura Talbot. When it was in the singular (in my head), it referred to Miss Bolby – in the plural, it tells us more about the world that Talbot has created.

Miss Bolby is a governess in the mid-1940s, and has recently accepted a new position with Lady Rushford. Miss Bolby is proud of her status as a gentlewoman, keen to tell everyone that her sister married a man with a title, and that she was born into a good family living in colonial India. The Indian bracelets she wears attest to this when her words do not.

But Miss Bolby finds herself in a world where such things are no longer valued as much as they used to be. She arrives at the railway station alongside Reenie, the kitchen maid, and they are treated fairly similarly. At the same time, the dignified family seem to be growing less dignified – no longer putting such an emphasis on the correct names and titles, or a strict hierarchy within the house. As the blurb of my Virago Modern Classic edition writes very well, ‘Miss Bolby needs her pretensions to gentility and, in a household where these are no longer of consequence, her identity begins to crumble’. And that plural title – it shows Miss Bolby striving to put herself on the same level of those above her – but also the threats from those below, as the term ‘gentlewoman’ loses its dignity.

I thought The Gentlewomen was very well written, in a style that didn’t quite fit with anything I’ve read before. There are hints of Ivy Compton-Burnett in the cool and proper ways characters address one another, but also the lightness of the middlebrow novelist – and, woven in between, the manners and mores of society-focused fiction. Miss Bolby is never a pleasant character, but nor does the reader wish her ill – even when she is petulantly using her power as a governess to take out her frustration on her infant charges.

Much of the novel looks at the dynamics between the different characters – but a couple of important plot points in the second half give a new momentum to the narrative, and Talbot skilfully pulls us through.

It’s an unusual and impressive book – looking not just at the world war atmosphere so familiar to us from novels and film, but seeing how one world order was beginning to disintegrate – and how that didn’t only affect and disorientate those at the top of the hierarchies.

Stuck in a Book’s Weekend Miscellany

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This feels like the first day in ages where I’ve had nothing to do, and I fully intend to spend it sleeping, reading, and lying about. I’ve seldom been more excited about a weekend’s activity. And, before I go, here’s a book, a link, and a blog post…

1.) The book – was sent as a review copy by Michael Walmer. You might know the novelist F Tennyson Jesse, but did you know her sister Stella wrote Eve in Egypt? I’m hoping to read it before too long – but find out more here.

2.) The blog post – thinking about Michael Walmer made me wish more of his Stella Benson reprints were available. I’m sure they’ll be coming, but in the meantime reading more about Stella Benson led me to this amazing and thorough (ten-year-old) blog post about Benson. The blogger compares her to Robin Hyde, whom I haven’t read but who has been republished by Persephone.

3.) The link – I used to link to my OxfordWords article quite regularly. What I write for Oxford Policy Management might be of more niche interest – but, anyway, here’s a piece I wrote on the status of development in Malawi.

A Century of Books: getting towards the pointy end

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I have rather failed on giving updates on how many Century of Books is going – though you can, of course, see what I’m updating in my list. I’ve been relatively good at keeping it up to date – there are 68 titles on there and, at the time of writing, I’ve read 71 books from my century.

On track

So, yes, I’m on track. I only need to have read about 65 century books to be on track – so I’m even a little in hand. But it’s getting to the time of year when it stops being quite so serendipitous and easy to fill out titles in ACOB. For the first half of the year, at least, I can just read what I want to read – jotting down the titles and dates as I go. I don’t even have to think about it. By the time we enter the final third, it becomes a maddening discovery that everything I want to read was written in (somewhat to my surprise) 1987 or 1978. Huh.

Pencilling in

I’ve been pencilling in titles along the way, particularly when I start reading them (so I don’t accidentally double up), but also other books that I’ve got in the pipeline – for book group, say. It’s a balancing act, because I definitely don’t want to write them all out in advance. Nothing kills a reading project dead for me like setting out all the titles in advance. BUT I do have another five ACOB books on the go, and have pencilled in a further eight that I’m intending to read. That still leaves quite a few gaps to surprise me.

Reading from my shelves

I definitely have unread books for every year of ACOB, often quite a few, so I am spoiled for choice and should be able to read just from my tbr. And I guess I largely have? But, with re-reads and audio and whatnot, it turns out that 55 of my 68 books have come from my tbr shelves. Not bad… could be better? But at least I’m not in the position of scrabbling around for suggestions, because there are plenty there.

Other commitments

And then there’s book group and podcast reading (it’s hard enough to find things Rachel and I can both read in time, without limiting factor of years!), and occasionally review books and whatnot. It looks like I’m going to get more and more overlaps as the year comes to a close… not to mention whims, like deciding today that I had to start Joy Grant’s biography of Stella Benson, even though it’s (you guessed it) from 1987.

Reading a lot

The 25 Books in 25 Days certainly helped my 2018 reading total, but I do seem to be reading more than previous years. I’ve always been around the 100 mark, so ACOB is a bit of a tightrope walk, but I get the impression I’ll be comfortably over 100 this year. I haven’t added up how many I’m on so far, but hopefully I won’t have to do too much desperate reading on New Year’s Eve.

Anyway, this is a sort of scattergun update. I’m really enjoying it, and I think I’ll get there successfully if I continue at this rate – but I think I’m also looking forward to completely unfettered reading next year.

Five from the Archive (no.14): Books about Missing People

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I’m getting back into the swing of Five from the Archive posts, where I dig up five previous reviews on my blog with a connecting theme. You can see all the previous ones in the index.

I’m not at all the sort of person who wants to read books about missing people usually, and the market certainly seems to be flooded with them – but these ones do appeal. And they’re not disturbing or unpleasant – at least not gratuitously. (Apparently I never wrote about Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey, but that is also very good.) Please do let me know your own recommendations!

1.) The Runaway (2017) by Claire Wong

In short: 17-year-old Rhiannon runs away from her aunt and guardian, living in the thick woodland near her Welsh village. Storytelling and memory play a big role in the community’s reaction.

From the review: “One of the reasons I really liked The Runaway is because of what it says about small communities. Too often these are treated as places to escape – claustrophobic, nosey, and repressive to creativity. It’s ironic that a novel where somebody literally escapes this community doesn’t suggestion that small-town life is an evil.”

2.) Still Missing (1981) by Beth Gutcheon

In short: Often mentioned as one of the more unusual choices for Persephone, this follows the trajectory of a mother’s panic, grief, and search as her son is missing and the world reacts.

From the review: “The premise has become worn through re-use, but Gutcheon takes it back to essentials, and the novel is the more powerful and personal because of it.”

3.) This is the End (1917) by Stella Benson

In short: Jay Martin has run away and become a bus conductor. This strange, funny, bizarre novel follows her family as they fruitlessly search for her – and it’s never clear exactly what’s happening.

From the review: “I want to say that This Is The End is not supernatural, but any definite statement about a Benson novel feels like a trap waiting to happen; the reader never quite knows which genre they’re reading, or what sort of response is required. Except that laughter will always be involved somewhere.”

4.) The Return of Alfred (1922) by Herbert Jenkins

In short: When James Smith (not his real name) tries to shelter in a house while on the run from his domineering father, he is surprised to be mistaken for the mysterious missing Alfred.

From the review: “I found The Return of Alfred all rather improbable – but also another total delight.”

5.) Little Boy Lost (1949) by Marghanita Laski

In short: During war, Hilary is told that his son (whom he has only seen once) – and he travels to Paris to find him. Once found, how can Hilary know it is the right boy?

From the review: “Although the plot is fairly simple, its handling is beautifully subtle, especially as the novel progresses.”

The Gipsy in the Parlour by Margery Sharp

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After reading a lot of titles for A Century of Books during my 25 Books in 25 Days, I got too cocky and started reading quite a few that didn’t fit years. And my advantage slipped away. I tend to read about 100 books a year, so I can’t afford to get too distracted – so I went to my list of gaps and decided to pick one. It was 1954 and it was Margery Sharp – The Gipsy in the Parlour has been waiting on my shelves since 2011.

This is the fourth Sharp novel I’ve read – the first being back in about 2003 – and it is very different from those others. I really enjoyed the first three, but they were all comic novels, at least to some extent. The Gipsy in the Parlour is emphatically not a comic novel – but it is a wonderfully atmospheric and involving novel, and I think it’s absolutely wonderful. From the opening line onwards…

In the heat of a spacious August noon, in the heart of the great summer of 1870, the three famous Sylvester women waited in their parlour to receive and make welcome the fourth.

The novel is told from the perspective of a young girl (who, I only now suspect, might be unnamed) who is niece to the Sylvesters. She is a Londoner, but spends her summers in Devon with this family who all live together on a farm – the women are not related, but each has married a different Sylvester brother. The brothers are inconsequential in the novel and in life – essentially good-natured, easy-going, unexpressive men who work the land and let their wives run the house. The chief of these is Aunt Charlotte, who married the oldest son and is de facto leader of the household. It is she who has arranged for the other two wives to join the family.

But the youngest Sylvester brother, Stephen, has chosen his own wife – and Fanny arrives as the novel opens. She does not have the beauty of the other sisters – and she seems somehow wilder and less part of the domestic picture. Disconcertingly for the narrator, she sees Fanny wandering the garden at night, staring back at the house with an expression she cannot quite understand…

For the narrator, who is seven when the novel starts, this is a mysterious but halcyon world. She longs to return to the farm and to the security of her aunt’s plain speaking affection. (And, miracle of miracles for the reader, they speak in dialect but are neither unintelligible nor annoying.) She also longs to be at the wedding of Fanny and Stephen, but the timing is wrong for her start back to school – so she must leave shortly before it takes place, and waits to hear about it via letter in London. But the letter never comes.

On her next visit, the next summer, she discovers that Fanny is in a decline, of the sort common in the 1870s. She is weak, nervous, and spends all her time lying in bed or on the sofa – and tensions in the house grow steadily over the months and years, witnessed by the niece who sees all but does not understand all.

There are definite elements of The Go-Between in this novel. Sharp has drawn the child and her perspective so well – so she is never a dishonest narrator, but clearly cannot piece together all the different elements she witnesses. Her interpretations of characters are given to the reader, who must take a step back to try and understand the whole picture – it is all handled brilliantly, and with the feelings of rich nostalgia that a child would feel who can only return to a much-loved world once a year.

In fact, the whole of The Gipsy in the Parlour is pervaded with a wonderful atmosphere. I felt as though I were immersed in this 1870s farm, with the same limited scope and detailed canvas felt by those who seldom or never left the village. It is odd to read Sharp with so little levity, but her talent at this almost melancholic, elegiac domestic novel is quite something. It is not flawless, particularly in the later chapters, but it’s still an extraordinary achievement. If I had to pick between this and (say) Cluny Brown, I wouldn’t know quite which to choose – but I’m impressed that Sharp could do both so well, and delighted that I can read both.