1920s

David Golder

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As I mentioned yesterday, amongst the hmphing, the trip to London gave me the opportunity to read Irene Nemirovsky’s David Golder (1930), her second novel and the one which propelled her to fame in France. More importantly, given that I had about two hours of travel in which to read it, it’s fairly short. Which is always a plus here at Stuck-in-a-Book. I read Suite Francaise (along with most of the country, it seems) about 18 months ago for my book group, and wrote about it here. About the only things that David Golder has in common with that novel are a) the influence of Nemirovsky’s Jewish heritage, and b) her great writing.

As Patrick Marnham points out in his introduction, David Golder is actually vulnerable to accusations of anti-Semitism – at least it would be if it were published now, in its use of something of a stereotypical central figure. David Golder is ‘an enormous man in his late sixties’, obsessed with accruing money. His ruthless lust for money – which drives a former business partner to suicide in the opening pages of the novel – make uncomfortable reading when one bears in mind the sort of anti-Semitic propaganda was shortly to be used. Since Nemirovsky was herself Jewish, it is less awkward – although (again, as the introduction points out), she was keenly pro-assimilation and considered herself French at least as much as she considered herself Jewish.

But Nemirovsky is cleverer than any initial conclusions about David Golder suggest, of course. We soon learn that Golder is in fact the least mercenary of his family once his wife Gloria and grown-up daughter Joyce are introduced. In one of Nemirovsky’s brilliant little passages, Golder ‘pictured his own wife quickly hiding her chequebook whenever he came into the room, as if it were a packet of love letters.’ Both Gloria and Joyce are forever asking Golder for money, buying expensive jewellery, and all the while declaring that he does nothing for them. And, it appears, even believing it. Gloria happily spends 800,000 francs on a necklace, but begrudges the money he gives his daughter; who, in turn, throws a tantrum when he won’t buy her a car.

David Golder sees the protagonist facing several crises. His businesses aren’t doing well; he realises the disrespect and lack of love his wife and daughter show him; he has a heart attack. All of these are devastating to him, and come to a head when he discovers that he has not much time to live – the novel then follows his final months (as he sees them). Will he forgive his family and try and build a life with them? Will he exact revenge upon them and leave them penniless? Will other avenues open up, other priorities?

Nemirovsky’s portrait is – belying the opening feeling I had – subtle and even wise. She has no heavy-handed point to make, but rather a fascinating individual to delineate. Golder and his family feel real, and his actions feel like real actions, motivated by his realisations and emotions rather than plot direction or authorial intervention. In short, David Golder is a very good piece of writing, and encouragement to me to read more widely in Nemirovsky’s work. Perhaps Suite Francaise did so well because of the true story attached to it – Nemirvosky’s death in Auschwitz and the subsequent discovery of the manuscript over fifty years later. But as Nemirovsky’s daughter Denise, and translator Sandra Smith, stressed at the talk I (almost) attended – we can decide to view Irene Nemirovsky either as a victim or a writer. They – quite rightly, and strongly – believe she should be seen as a writer.

Keeping Up Appearances by Rose Macaulay

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It’s always nice to feel oneself in like-minded company, so I was pleased (and not entirely surprised) to see that a lot of you felt the same way that I do about Catcher in the Rye. I rather think today’s book will be more up your street…

Although I read Keeping Up Appearances (1928) by Rose Macaulay back in December (around the time I reviewed Crewe Train) I’ve recently been using it as part of an essay, so hopefully it’ll be fresh in my mind… Those of you familiar with a certain BBC sitcom of the same name may recognise the reference in today’s subject title – but while Hyacinth doesn’t make an appearance, Macaulay’s novel has similar ideas of class and how pretending to be above one’s station will only end in complications…

The central characters of the novel are half-sisters Daisy and Daphne, who are worlds apart in character. Daphne is 25, a cultured intellectual who is never put-off by any situations, and moves through high society with ease and grace. Daisy, 30, is plagued by self-doubt and comes from rather commoner stock. Though she tries to engage in the same social circles as Daphne, and is far more snobbish and class-conscious, she has none of Daphne’s confidence, bravery, and charm. She also lives in constant fear that her secret life as popular novelist Marjorie Wynne will be unearthed by the highbrows and intellectuals amongst whom she moves. But she realises that this isn’t likely, as (when she tests the water) they seem completely unaware of Marjorie Wynne’s existence. Macaulay uses these bits to satirise her own position as popular novelist (though one read by middlebrow and highbrow alike, I believe). In fact, throughout Macaulay’s writings (including the novel of hers I’ve recently started, Staying With Relations) she is very teasing of novelists, and quite amusingly so. This, for instance, is in a collection of her essays called A Casual Commentary:

Novels are among the queerest things in a queer world. Chunks out of the imagined life of a set of imagined persons, set down for others to read. For this is what you have to produce if you are a novelist. You will find it quite easy. Anyone can write novels, and most people, at one time or another, do so. One novel is much like another, so you need not worry very much about what kind of novel to write.[…] The great advantage of writing novels is that some people read novels. They are not, on the whole, very clever people, so yours need not be clever novels, and, indeed, had better not be.

I read the Keeping Up Appearances as part of my research about the development of the concept of ‘middlebrow’, and it is a very interesting look at the interaction of different social strata, especially when it comes to literary circles and their inability to understand each other. It’s also a lot about perspective – for example, Daisy considers her role from two different vantages:

Mother’s clever girl, earning her living by writing for the London papers, writing such bright, clever pieces, that people always liked to read. One of those vulgar little journalists who write popular feminine chit-chat in that kind of paper that caters for mob taste. Oh, what matter? She was either, according to her environment. Go to East Sheen, be Mother’s clever girl, petted and admired; go to the newspaper office, be one of the smart young women journalists, writing good live articles; move along Folyots and highbrows, and be as one not realised by nice highbrows, and only recognised by less nice highbrows as a target for unkindly jests.

Though Keeping Up Appearances isn’t as funny as Crewe Train, nor quite as memorable, it does present a clever idea. Because, dear reader, I haven’t told you the central concept which surprises the reader and twists the interpretation completely, which comes about halfway through the novel. And I’m not going to, you’ll have to read it yourself (carefully avoiding reading the blurb on the inside, if you have my edition – which is that pictured above. I don’t know about you, but it reminded me of Picasso’s The Three Dancers).

Without giving that away, I can say little more – except that Rose Macaulay deserves a wider audience. Capuchin Classics have recently republished one of her novels, I believe, and perhaps other publishers will take up the baton. But there are plenty of secondhand copies available of Keeping Up Appearances and Crewe Train, and I daresay that libraries will have them – for a funny, clever, and well-written view of 1920s class issues and literary society, you can do no better.

 

Pastors and Masters

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So far, bought nothing in 2010… but to be honest I haven’t had any temptation, since I’ve spent most of the New Year in bed so far, while my research work stares at me from across the room. Still, not feeling too awful right now, and hopefully I’ll be back on my feet before long. In fact, I feel well enough to try and catch up on reviewing some of the books I read in December…

First up is Pastors and Masters by Ivy Compton-Burnett, which Hesperus Press very kindly sent me. As you’ll have spotted in my recent purchases, I have enough ICB to last me a while – but I had to support Hesperus as they’re the only people keeping ICB in print in the UK. (Having said that, the New York Review of Books Classics series does have two in print, and they’re stocked in some bookshops in England – like the Persephone Bookshop off Notting Hill Gate, for example). Pastors and Masters is ICB’s first ‘proper’ novel, from 1925, and unlike the others I’ve read, doesn’t take place in a big, sprawling family. Instead, we are in a boys’ school, witnessing the interactions of teachers up and down a slightly bizarre hierarchy. Though there are also a lot of boys, they don’t get much dialogue, and hence not much of the novel concerns them – for even in her first novel, ICB privileged dialogue over description, though not to the same extent as in her later works.

Mr. Merry, the central schoolmaster, is prone to the deliciously and infuriatingly sarcastic speechs which ICB scatters throughout her books: ‘And get to your seats without upsetting everything on your way, will you please? Oh, who would be a schoolmaster? I should not be doing my duty to you all, if I did not warn you all against it. And I suppose it is a good thing to have the east wind from an east window blowing in upon forty people, thirty-nine of them growing boys, before their breakfast on a March morning? And… one, two, three, four, five, six, seven… it takes eleven boys to shut a window, does it? And I suppose I cannot make a few remarks, without having you all fidgeting and gaping and behaving like a set of clodhoppers instead of gentlemen? Get to your work at once, and don’t look up again before the gong.’ Though he feels himself in charge, there are also junior masters and those who own the school and their wives and governors and parents and… I must confess I got a little confused as to who was whom (or whom was who, or something). ICB’s character delineation matured in her later novels, I think. The plot running through this novel, aside from the everyday activities of the school, is that two of the teachers have written books, and intend to publish. I shan’t spoil the storyline, but it is rather more cloak and dagger than some of ICB’s later novels, and involves more Agatha Christie-esque guess-work – but alongside this, ICB’s style is unmistakable, though not wholly developed. I would describe Pastors and Masters as ICB-lite, if you will. Recognisable enough to please the ICB fanatic, but also sufficiently like a more ‘normal’ novel for those who find her style affected. It’s short, funny, and – though by no means her best work – I would recommend it to those who want to give ICB a go, and don’t feel up to one of her longer novels. If you like this, there’s a lot more to explore – if you don’t, at least it has one of Hesperus’ beautiful covers!

Oh, Mr. Porter…

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Rose Macaulay first hoved onto my horizons when I read Nicola Beauman’s wonderful book A Very Great Profession (which I discover, rather to my horror, I’ve never blogged about – it’s essential reading for anyone remotely interested in Persephone books or any interwar domestic novels). On the strength of that, I bought Told By An Idiot in Pershore market, and… I still haven’t read it. This is the story of so many of my books, of course, but Told By An Idiot (like, for some reason, Rosamund Lehmann’s Dusty Answer) has been close to the top of the tbr pile on numerous occasions. It’s come away on holiday with me, been placed by the bed, somehow never quite been read…

And I still haven’t read it – but I have read a Rose Macaulay novel. While researching my middlebrow stuff, Crewe Train by RM was mentioned a lot, especially in an interesting and newish book by Wendy Gan called Women, Privacy, and Modernity in Early Twentieth-Century British Writing. My curiosity piqued, I got hold of the novel and read it, and isn’t it good? I don’t know if I’m last to the party on Rose Macaulay. I had read some of her letters, but that was it, so forgive me if everyone else has read everything she ever wrote. Those whom I’ve asked seem to have been almost universally put off by The Towers of Trebizond…

Crewe Train (1926) takes its name from the popular rhyme:
Oh, Mr. Porter, whatever shall I do?
I want to go to Birmingham, but they’ve sent me on to Crewe!and is about Denham, who has got onto the wrong path in life. Brought up by her clergyman father in Andorra, she has instincts and a lifestyle which are fairly primitive. Or so they seem when her father dies, and she must move to live with relatives in London, the Greshams, who live in high society and all write or publish or at least read books. That sort. In Denham’s view: Books were mostly dull enough, but criticisms of books were quite unreadable. The Greshams all read them, but then they appeared to be so constituted as to be able to read anything. It was nearly a disease with them.Imagine! Denham is mystified by most of their activities, which seem to her to make no sense – the solemn dancing, the table manners, most of all the need to visit each other and hold conversation all the time. She is at a loss to either initiate or join the sorts of conversations that her relatives’ circle expects of her – the only successful topic she lands upon is puddings – and she believes that people should stay in their own home, and not bother each other all the time.

But nothing is simple, of course, and Denham finds herself in love with (thankfully distant) relative Arnold – and they marry. The tidal wave of first love is enough to get them through a lot, but then the differences start to spring up. She is desperate not to live in London, and he can think of nowhere else to live. She never reads anything but maps, he writes stream-of-consciousness novels (one, Lone Jane, is a cruelly funny pastiche of Joyce et al, to which comes the response: “I suppose,” said Denham doubtfully, “Jane did think like that. I suppose she was a little queer in the head.”) Though never openly antagonistic, their marriage becomes a struggle – whose lifestyle and wishes will be sacrificed for the other, or will they reach an unhappy compromise?

If this sounds bleak, then it’s only really bleak for the characters. The author and the reader are mostly having a whale of a time – Rose Macaulay has that affectionate, ironic voice which is so characteristic of the time, able to expose the ridiculous aspects of her characters without making them wholly ridiculous people. She uses the extremes of society to comment wryly on all of it, and uses Denham’s unusual perspective on good manners and protocol for good comic effect. For example, when Denham’s mother-in-law is instructing her on good house-management:

“It’s the only way of getting everything done in order. Monday morning clean the silver, Tuesday the knives, Wednesday, the paint, Thursday, the taps – and so on through the week. No day without something cleaned. And one room thoroughly turned out each day, too – that’s most important.” “Turned out…” Denham repeated it vaguely. “Yes, turned out. The things all taken out of the room and put back again, you know.” What for, Denham silently wondered. The same result would surely be achieved, with less effort, by leaving the things where they were. But the maids would not then have done a morning’s work; that was of course important.All in all, as well as being useful for my research, I found this a really fun novel, and I’ll definitely be reading more. In fact, I like Keeping Up Appearances even more so far, it’s very clever. If you haven’t read any RM yet, do give Crewe Train a go. Of course, it’s not in print… but there are plenty of 1p copies available on Amazon. And, who knows, Rose Macaulay might make a last minute addition to my Best Books of 2009, which I drafted the other day….

Life and Death of Harriett Frean

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Today we’re headed to more Stuck-in-a-Book familiar territory – good old Virago Modern Classics.

I’ve heard quite a bit about May Sinclair (she first used the phrase ‘stream of consciousness’, doncha know) but not read anything by her – in Thame I came across Life and Death of Harriett Frean, and, being so short, it leapt immediately to the top of my tbr pile. And I read it in a morning – it’s got 184 pages but there’s so little text on each one that it’s more like 90 pages of an average book. And somehow, in this tiny amount of space, May Sinclair manages to include an entire, long life.

There aren’t many incidents in Harriett Frean’s life, at least not significant ones. She lives her life as a spinster, in the benevolent shadow of her parents – to the end of her days, she proudly and frequently announces ‘I’m Hilton Frean’s daughter’. The one event of note is a tangled love triangle (doesn’t that sound very like Hollyoaks? Obviously it’s nothing of the sort.) Her close friend Priscilla always protests that she will never be married, and forces Harriett to pledge the same vow… when Robin comes along, both their resolves are tested. The novel becomes a ‘what might have been’ – questioning whether moral choices are black and white, and what happens to those who choose the path not labelled ‘happy ever after.’

The thread I found most interesting (and one familiar from other Virago Modern Classics such as The Love Child by Edith Olivier, and The Third Miss Symons by F. M. Mayor, as well as Persephone Books’ Alas, Poor Lady by Rachel Ferguson which I must write about soon) is the life of a spinster with her mother. Or, more importantly, the life of a spinster once her mother has died. These paragraphs are subtly rather clever:

Next spring, a year after her mother’s death, she felt the vague stirring of her individual soul. She was free to choose her own vicar; she left her mother’s Dr. Braithwaite who was broad and twice married, and went to Canon Wrench, who was unmarried and high. There was something stimulating in the short, happy service, the rich music, the incense, and the processions. She made new covers for the drawing-room, in cretonne, a gay pattern of pomegranate and blue-green leaves. And as she had always had the cutlets broiled plain because her mother liked them that way, now she had them breaded.

And Mrs. Hancock wanted to know why Harriett has forsaken her dear mother’s church; and when Connie Pennefeather saw the covers she told Harriett she was lucky to be able to afford new cretonne. It was more than she could; she seemed to think Harriett had no business to afford it. As for the breaded cutlets, Hannah opened her eyes and said, ‘That was how the mistress always had them, ma’am, when you was away.’
Lives of mutual self-sacrifice have, in the end, benefited neither of them. Sometimes May Sinclair seems to be dragging her novel into polemic territory – not necessarily a bad thing, but I’d question some of Sinclair’s advertised morals on occasion – but that aside, Life and Death of Harriett Frean is a slight, sharp view of so many women’s situations in the early twentieth century. Not particularly cheerful, it must be said, but very powerful – the blurb compares it to Woolf, and others which I forget, but they’re right – if this novel doesn’t quite deserve to be considered a classic of Modernism, it’s not very far off. What’s more, it’s in print from Virago – though if I know you, and I think I do, you’ll be hunting for the proper green VMC edition…

Bowen Out

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Have you ever settled down to a new author, really confident that you’ll enjoy the book in front of you. You’ve heard great things about the author from those whose opinions you respect. You like all the authors to whom this author is compared. It’s the right period, right genre, right topic. And yet… somehow it doesn’t work at all.
That was my experience with Elizabeth Bowen’s The Last September.

I’ve read Bowen’s name so often in books about the period, heard it in conversation, always put her down as someone I’ll really enjoy, one day, and then… no. It’s not that I thought the book was *bad* – I could see that the writing was very good – but somehow it was a struggle. Despite being quite a short book, I lost track of who was who (or whom was who, or something) and what was going on. The novel, by the way, is ‘a comedy of manners set in the time of the Irish Troubles.’ It’s set in a big family house, where tennis-parties remain the focus, against the strife and riots. (By the way, the book cover shown isn’t the one I read, but it interested me because it’s the same cover image that Persephone used for their Persephone Classics version of Cheerful Weather For The Wedding by Julia Strachey, blogged about here, not Mariana by Monica Dickens as I wrote before…)

Sometimes I thought I was getting the hang of it. This paragraph is, I think, a great example of Bowen’s writing:

He listened, took off his trench-coat, stepped to the drawing-room door. The five tall windows stood open on rain and the sound of leaves, rain stuttered along the sills, the grey of the mirrors shivered. Polished tables were cold little lakes of light. The smell of sandalwood boxes, a kind of glaze on the air from all the chintzes numbed his earthy vitality, he became all ribs and uniform.

And so it goes on. These moments, I could see that the writing is beautiful… but then I’d get lost and listless again. Perhaps it’s because Bowen’s writing is so often visually descriptive? I can’t ‘see’ things when I read – visual description rarely works for me, unless I concentrate fiercely on it. Hmm.

I was talking to someone at lunch the other day who told me that The Heat of the Day is much better, and that I shouldn’t give up on Elizabeth Bowen yet… can anyone else convince me to persevere? Explain perhaps why I struggled? Or give examples of their own stumbling blocks in books or authors that they fully anticipated loving?

Indiscretions of Archie

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A brief blog today, as I still have to pack for the next week and a half…

I bought Indiscretions of Archie by PG Wodehouse in Winchester, because I liked the title and the age of the book, and you can never go wrong with Wodehouse. A quick scan of Amazon tells me that there are lots of different editions available, including one forthcoming in the brilliant Everyman series. Mine is from the 1920s, and has a wonderful mustiness to it.

Archie is an insouciant Englishman who travels to America with his new wife Lucille. He prefixes almost everything with ‘jolly old’, and is filled with bonhomie to bursting. His plan is to hit it off with father-in-law Daniel Brewster, hotel proprietor. Which, as you’ll have guessed if you’ve ever read Wodehouse, doesn’t go quite to plan. And then chaos ensues.

Only Wodehouse could get artist’s models, snakes, pie-eating contests, dietician experts, and someone who once gave someone a sausage in the war all into the same novel. There are some wonderfully funny scenes, and everything Wodehouse touches comes out hilarious. He has a brilliant mix of hyperbole and litotes, not to mention delightful similes – ‘Archie was one of those sympathetic souls in whom even strangers readily confide their most intimate troubles. He was to those in travail of spirit very much what cat-nip is to a cat.’ Indiscretions of Archie isn’t my favourite Wodehouse, and I discovered why after I’d finished. The novel was originally a series of short stories which Wodehouse then linked together, and it really does show. I should have guessed. His novels are usually characterised by their cohesion and crazy, but coherent, plots which all come together at the last minute. Indiscretions of Archie is much more disjointed – very funny, but rather more episodic than most of his novels are. Not the best place to start, but I always enjoy being reminded how brilliant Pelham Grenville was.

Favourite Wodehouse novels? I find them so similar that it’s difficult to choose, but my first one was The Girl on the Boat, so it might be that one.

Foxed

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Someone at Oneworld Classics has been reading my dissertation notes, methinks… I mentioned them in a big everything-piled-in-together post a little while ago, and I was expecting them to send me a certain book… instead The Fox by D.H. Lawrence arrived in the post the other day. Did the good people at Oneworld know that I was writing on 1920s novels? And that one of them was David Garnett’s Lady Into Fox (more here) published in 1922, the year before Lawrence’s? Serendipity often crops up in my reading life, but rarely with such happy results that I can read something for pleasure, for reviewing, and for my dissertation all at the same time. Talk about multi-tasking.

The Fox is under seventy pages, but rather powerful. Nellie March and Jill Banford (usually known by their surnames) are in their late-twenties, and live together on a farm in Berkshire and try, with limited success, to make a profit out of poultry and a cow or two. This is DH Lawrence rather than Stella Gibbons, so the mishaps are irksome rather than something narsty in the woodshed. Worst among these problems is a fox, slyly and unabashedly diminishing their livelihood.

And then a young soldier arrives. And stays. So fixated is March upon the creature ruining their farm: ‘to March, he was the fox. Whether it was the thrusting forward of his head, or the glisten of fine whitish hairs of the ruddy cheekbones, or the bright, keen eyes, that can never be said – but the boy was to her the fox, and she could not see him otherwise.’

How foxlike (or, indeed, vulpine) is the boy? And what effects will his arrival have upon the pair? The Fox is an excellent narrative of jealousy and disruption and wrestling over self-control, as well as having some wonderful moments of imagination and clever imagery. In the hands of any other author I would describe the novella as a passionate one, but by Lawrence standards it’s postively matronly. Which has to be a good thing, to be honest. When Lawrence isn’t showing off what a tough, sexual brute he is, he can actually write very beautifully.

And why choose the Oneworld Classics edition? (Which you can do here) Other than the gorgeous cover (well, I love foxes) the edition has a very thorough chronological guide to Lawrence’s life and works, four pages of relevant photographs including some manuscript, and even a select bibliography. Highly, highly recommended.

Enchanting

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A while ago I asked about books which just fitted the environment in which they were read, and wanted something which would fit a meadow in spring. Danielle, Susan D. and IslandSparrow all suggested Elizabeth von Arnim’s The Enchanted April, and since I was at home in lovely rural Somerset in April, it seemed the perfect book to try.

E von A is mentioned a lot in an online book group I’m in, especially a few years ago, and in fact I’d bought The Enchanted April in 2004 or 2005, but not got around to reading it. No real reason for its being on the backburned – though perhaps the 1980s TV shot chosen by Virago for my edition didn’t do it any favours. Well, now I’ve read it, and the novel is possibly my favourite read of 2009 so far.

For those who don’t know the premise – shy, awkward and quirky Lottie Wilkins wishes to escape a lacklustre husband who thinks she is unintelligent; she meets Rose Arbuthnot who is best summed-up by this reaction to the idea of a holiday in Italy:
No doubt a trip to Italy would be extraordinarily delightful, but there were many delightful things one would like to do, and what was strength given to one for except to help one not to do them?

Nevertheless, she too has a situation she wishes to escape, and is intrigued by the idea of a castle for hire in Italy. Upon investigating, Lottie and Rose realise they’ll need another couple people to share the rent. Step forward Mrs. Fisher, an older lady whose life is spent remembering the wise words of Victorian writers whom she probably met in her youth – and Lady Caroline Dester, a stunning beauty who is tired of everyone ‘grabbing’ onto her, and wants to get away from being the centre of society. They all head off to Italy, including an amusing journey in which Lottie and Rose become convinced that they’ve been kidnapped, as all their Italian is ‘San Salvatore’, the name of the castle – which they repeat at intervals, to be met with empassioned nodding and agreement from the Italians travelling with them.

The castle is described beautifully, and especially the garden – attention drawn often to the wistaria, which happens to be my favourite plant. Everywhere is brightly sunny, airy, thick with the scent of flowers and bursting with nature. It could have been horribly overdone, but E von A strikes just the right note – and thank you to those who recommended it, reading the novel with equally beautiful (but rather different) countryside around me was perfect. Though it might work also as a distraction to city life where trammelled nature does anything but burst.

All four holiday-makers arrive unhappy, and all have some faults – especially the very selfish Mrs. Fisher and Lady Caroline. From the start, though, Lottie is certain that the castle will have a positive, almost magical, effect upon anyone staying there. And she is, of course, right. I don’t want to spoil all the events of the novel, but suffice to say each character is altered by the surroundings, friendships develop and faults evaporate. What prevents The Enchanted April from being too fairy talesque or saccharine is a wittiness and honesty which somehow make the changes in everyone seem not only realistic but inevitable, and still thoroughly heart-warming.

How the cousin of Katherine Mansfield and sister-in-law of Bertrand Russell wrote such a happy, warm novel is anybody’s guess – but I do encourage you to seek out The Enchanted April is you haven’t yet done so. It’s a beautiful novel which is also extremely well written – the style flows by, perspicacious but unassuming, and the four central characters are incredibly well drawn. Not at all stereotypes, yet definitely distinct and memorable, they seem real, with real traits and feelings and failings, and must have been very difficult to create. Simply brilliant.

And soon I’ll be writing about the next novel I read, also about four women living together in a house. It’s written by one of the authors in my 50 Books list, and was published in 1989. A prize to anyone who can guess the book…

Sylvia Townsend Warner

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One of the books I mentioned the other day was Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner, which I’m using for my domestic-space-and-fantasy dissertation. STW is one of those writers whose been in my peripheral vision, as it were – ever since I bought British Women Writers 1900-1950 ed. Harold Bloom – but I hadn’t made the move to buying or reading any of her work until Lolly Willowes. Which Hermione Lee mentioned in her introduction to The Love Child by Edith Olivier (and now, to go full circle, she is my supervisor for these two books and more).

Enough background. Lolly Willowes is the story of a woman who sells her soul to the devil. Like Lethe, who commented on the post about these books, I approached this rather warily – but it actually only comes into the narrative quite late, and doesn’t seem to me to be the central focus of the novel. The central character, Laura Willowes (the narrative never actually refers to her as Lolly, that’s just the name others give to her) moves in with her married brother when her father dies – she is one of those spinsters of the period who were shunted from pillar to post because they had the audacity not to marry. She puts off her suitors, one by indulging in the imaginative and positing one as a were-wolf. She decides, spontaneously, to move to a village called Great Mop (well, you would, wouldn’t you?) and set up a life for herself there. This does later involve selling her soul to the devil, unfortunately, but before it gets to that point I found Lolly Willowes a really interesting and sympathetic novel about the entrapment of families and houses and the freedom of Nature… that sounds very hippie, whereas I actually love family houses, but for Laura it is an escape from being trammeled down. And celebrates open spaces, beautiful villages and Nature.

As usual, the quality I appreciated most was the writing – and that’s impossible to define. STW writes beautifully, but not in the way of Virginia Woolf and those for whom the writing is central and the focus – more like an experienced story-teller, who knows the best patterns of words to evoke character and pathos.

I’ve been on a Sylvia Townsend Warner library spree, with The True Heart, Summer Will Show and Mr. Fortune’s Maggot (which must be one of the least attractive title of which I’ve ever heard – apparently a maggot is ‘a whimsical or perverse fancy’) – anyone read these? Or any others by STW? I’m going to try and get through at least one of these next week – those in the know have told me that none match up to Lolly Willowes, but that was so very good that a second best could be enjoyable too.