1930s

Friends and Relations by Elizabeth Bowen (Novella a Day in May #24)

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I was inspired by the latest Backlisted episode to pick up a Bowen – specifically the one they covered, Death of the Heart, but it turns out that I don’t own it – so I substituted a novella of 151 pages, Friends and Relations (1931). It’s not one I see people talk about all that much, but I thought it on par with her others – the usual hallmarks of exceptionally beautiful and perceptive writing, and a plot that is never quite obvious.

The story opens at the wedding of Laurel Studdart and James Tilney. It is a very proper, slightly passionless affair. I loved this exchange, showing Bowen’s talent for dialogue that does a lot more than is evident on the surface.

‘You might hold your lilies,’ said Mrs Studdart, who had discovered the sheaf on a hall table specially cleared for the top-hats.

‘Oh, Mother, I can’t; they’re heavy.’

‘But don’t you think it would be nice, Edward, if she were to hold her lilies?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Edward. ‘Do people generally?’

‘They’d be such a strain on one arm all the time. You see I can’t change them; I must keep my right arm for shaking hands.’

‘And shake hands lightly,’ said Mrs Studdart, ‘don’t grip.’

‘Did I look …?’

‘Lovely, lovely,’ said Mrs Studdart. She was looking round distractedly for a vase and soon found one, a kind of Italian urn in which she arranged the lilies beside the bride.

It’s not long before Laurel’s sister Janet gets married – though this is rather more of a surprise to the family, as Janet was not expected to do anything so fortunate and conventional. What’s a little less conventional is that she is marrying the nephew of the man who had an adulterous affair with Edward’s mother. If that sentence is a little confusing, fear not, it’s clear in the book – essentially the dark horses in the family tree of both sisters’ new husbands are tangled together.

I found Laurel and Janet both rather unknowable. I’d be hard pressed to describe their personalities, and perhaps that reflects the rather controlled conversations they have with each other – appropriately sisterly to appearances, but without giving too much away.

On the other hand there is Theodora, easily my favourite character in Friends and Relations, and the most vivid. We see her first as a 15 year old at the wedding, pressing ice creams on unwilling guests and believing herself to be doing a great kindness, loudly berating her parents for huddling together, and evading speaking to the bride by walking outside and round the building to get to the food. She dominates her parents, finding them deeply embarrassing and forever correcting things that only a child would notice. It is a pitch perfect portrait, and funny too.

We move forward ten years into the past – both marriages have children, Theodora is still around, and the dark horses of the past are still having their effect on the future. There is a turning point in this section, but also the sense that the past lingers long over future generations.

I found I didn’t always know exactly what was going on, partly because Bowen’s writing is too complex to rush-read in a novella-a-day challenge, and partly because everybody prevaricates. The dialogue is never there for exposition; it is more realistic, and gives a rich sense of the relationships between people, rather than the details of the plot. I had to go back and re-read bits to try and piece things together. But it didn’t stop me enjoying Bowen’s striking writing. So many lovely sentences – I noted down one about a cat, of course: “The Siamese, reappearing like a malign sun over the cushions, looked at his mistress with penetration, without sympathy.”

Ultimately, I might land more on admiring Bowen than loving her – but there is so much to admire that that is no weak praise.

Novella a Day in May: Days 18 and 19

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Day 18: The Nymph and the Nobleman (1932) by Margery Sharp

When I was in Hay-on-Wye last year, I stumbled across The Nymph and the Nobleman, one of Margery Sharp’s first books. And – gasp – signed by Margery Sharp! And all for £5. Of course, I snapped it up straight away.

It’s a very slight work, only 75 pages – and quite a few of those are full-page illustrations by Anna Zinkeisen. The story is of a bashful member of the English aristocracy, Sir George Blount, who falls in love at first sight with a beautiful dancer he encounters in Paris. He speaks little French and she speaks little English – but she is ready enough to assent to an assignation that will take place over several days. It’s quite a coup to rush off to England with a gentleman, and she will have stories to tell when she returns to her fellow dancers. What she doesn’t realise is that Sir George is extremely honourable, and he has asked her to be his wife…

She was not used to it. She was used to the scramble of dressing, the bustle of rehearsal, the crowning excitement of the evening’s performance. She was used to fifteen companions of her own age, each with a lover or two, and a maitre-de-ballet who never stopped swearing. It saddened her, on rising, to find that no one had got up earlier and borrowed her stockings. Even a shoe out of place would be something to look for, but the new maid shut them all into a wooden press: her character had been approved by the dowager, and she never saw anything on the floor without immediately picking it up.

As you can see, if you know and love Sharp like I do, the slightly dry writing is certainly recognisable. This is a fable, of sorts, and the tone softens what might otherwise be a slightly saccharine story. But Sharp can’t put a foot wrong. This is a minor work, but an enjoyable one to spend an hour so with.

Day 19: The House (1938) by William McElwee

I love any story where a house is prominent, and the cover of this is a pretty accurate representation of the sort of house at the centre of the book.

The first impression made by the house on a sensitive visitor was one of happiness. It had charm and, in certain aspects, even beauty. But the charm and the beauty were of the kind which grows with more intimate knowledge. They did not assault the senses with an insistent demand for admiration, but waited quietly to be discovered. Everything about it was essentially unpretentious. Nobody had lavished on external appearances that constant attention which can make a house as tiresome and boring to live with as a society beauty. The gardens were care for, but not too well; they suggested the haphazard efforts of generations rather than the carefully laid design of one landscape gardener. Certain flowers grew in particular beds not because they could be the most effective where they were, but because they always had been planted there; and most of the trees stood where they did because, at some time or other, they had contrived to grow unnoticed to such a size that it had seemed a shame to cut them down.

That’s the opening paragraph, and exactly the sort of opening I want from a novel(la). Domestic, the slightest amount of whimsy, and plenty of down-to-earthness alongside. There are a few more pages setting up this lovely home. And into this scene comes the unnamed protagonist – a tramp, looking for any opportunity for food or some paid work. He is nearing 50, and came from a middle-class background but has steadily had bad luck for so long that he has hit rock bottom. But is firmly moral, and is determined never to end up at a police station, or do anything that could warrant police attention.

But he does end up going through a window into the house – because, gloriously, a cat turns up and expects to be let in and fed. I’m biased, but I always want plots to be propelled by a cat. He/she was great, and I’m sad that we didn’t see that much of him/her.

Having once got in, the man goes through a series of decisions that end up with him staying in the house and eating food from the larder. As he spends more time there, he learns about the family from their portraits and belongings. He becomes to want to know more and more about them.

I thought this was all brilliant. The second half of the novella worked a little less well for me – when he becomes obsessed with the son of the family, a man who looks (from pictures) to be in his early 20s, and a poet. McElwee creates many sonnets for this young man, and the tramp learns about his emotional trajectory through them. The poetry is mercifully good, and I certainly didn’t mind reading this, but I’m not sure it’s the direction I’d have taken the story – it felt less compelling then just seeing the tramp gradually change as he lived in the house. As it is, I was really impressed by how vital McElwee could make a book which, for almost all of it’s 191 pages, the tramp is the only human in the story.

Gentleman Overboard by Herbert Clyde Lewis (Novella a Day in May #12)

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Gentleman Overboard eBook : Lewis, Herbert Clyde, Bigelow, Brad, Szirtes, George: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle StoreWhen Brad of Neglected Books started recommending titles for a new series of reprints, from Boiler House Press, I knew we would be in for something special. Few people know more about overlooked literature than Brad, and he has a wide and varying taste. So I knew I’d have to read whatever output came – and first was a slim book from 1937, Gentleman Overboard by Herbert Clyde Lewis. I ordered a copy in December and it came last month, so… be careful where you order it!

Henry Standish is onboard the Arabella, sailing home from a period spent away from home. He has left his wife and young children behind in something that isn’t called a nervous breakdown, and perhaps isn’t that extreme, but certainly some mental instability has led to him wanting to get away from everything for a while. He is a successful businessman, sensible except when it comes to worrying about appearances, kind and private. (The ‘kindness’ we are told more than we see, but let’s give him the benefit of the doubt.)

As you may have guessed from the title – early one morning, walking the deck, he slips and falls overboard.

Standish’s thoughts during these seconds were strangely enough more concerned with shame than with fear. Men of Henry Preston Standish’s class did not go around falling off ships in the middle of the ocean; it was just not done, that was all. It was a stupid, childish, unmannerly thing to do, and if there had been anybody’s pardon to beg, Standish would have begged it.

The rest of the novella concerns the hours afterwards. Much of it is spent with Standish and his thoughts as he floats in the ocean – but we also go back to the Arabella and see the actions and responses of crew and passengers (curiously few passengers, helpfully for narrative purposes).

It is an unusual and very good book. I think the thing that makes Gentleman Overboard still feel vital is how timeless the idea is. Or, rather, being stuck alone in the ocean can have very few contemporary trappings. Back on board, there are some elements that remind us we are in the 1930s – but Standish, in the expanse of water, thinks thoughts that anybody in any decade or century might have thought there.

Lewis sustains the idea the perfect length – it is a short novella, and would have felt stretched if it were any longer. His writing is good – unshowy, with neat turns of phrase – but it is his psychological acumen that makes the novella work. And the subtlety with which he delivers it.

Certainly a premise unlike anything I’ve ever read, and a worthy start to a promising series.

British Library Women Writers 14: Strange Journey by Maud Cairnes

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Strange Journey by Maud Cairnes, Simon Thomas | Waterstones

When I originally wrote about Strange Journey by Maud Cairnes in 2020, I ended with ‘Strange Journey is not at all easy to find – but I am certainly mulling it over as British Library choice at some point…’ Thankfully they agreed with me that it should enter the series, and it’s now back in print. I particularly love when there’s the chance to bring back impossible-to-find books – saving people a lot of money and time spent refreshing ebay!

Below is what I wrote originally. When I was writing my afterword to the book, I looked at the class issues in the novel – which are obviously front and centre – but also a little about contemporary cinema, how much a Rolls Royce might cost you, and which circumstances mean you use Lady Elizabeth rather than Lady Forrester (Cairnes assumes her readers will know!)

As has become custom, here’s a video review from Lil too – I love how she reads the whole series!

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The body-swap comedy is one of those tropes that is often talked about as if there were millions of them about, but in truth I can only think of a handful. In the world of literature, I’m down to Vice Verse by F Anstey, Freaky Friday by Mary Rodgers, Turnabout by Thorne Smith, and, if you read it somewhat elastically, Asleep in the Sun by Adolfo Bioy Casares. Do let me know if there are others I’m missing. But I can now add to that number Strange Journey by Maud Cairnes.

If you’ve heard of it, it’ll be because of Brad’s review at the excellent Neglected Books blog, where he wrote about it in June. Brad is up there with Scott of Furrowed Middlebrow for his extraordinary knowledge of books nobody else on the internet has mentioned. And he certainly knows how to wipe the internet clean of the books he mentions – as soon as the reviews are out, the secondhand market is drained. The first copy of Strange Journey I ordered got me a ‘sorry, this book has gone’ reply – the second, thankfully, came to my house. And with such a fab cover!

Given my love of the period (it was published in 1935) and my interest in fantastic novels, I couldn’t wait to get stuck in. When I say ‘fantastic’, I mean elements of fantasy happening in the real world. It had such a vogue in the ’20s and ’30s and so often commented on issues of the day. And in Strange Journey, the issue appears to be class.

Polly is a housewife in a middle-class (leaning towards lower-middle-class) household. Her family certainly aren’t poor, but they don’t have money to spare for luxuries. Even the basics can be a little bit of a struggle, and Polly feels rather run ragged. In 1935, it was still a novelty for some households to deal with only an occasional help, rather than a more regular maid or two. She is looking at from her front gate when she spots a woman in a Rolls Royce, clearly well-to-do.

Suddenly I felt a longing to change places with her, to get into that big, comfortable looking car, lean back in the soft cushions I felt sure that it contained, while the chauffeur made it glide away through the dusk to some pleasant house where there would be efficient servants and tea waiting, with a silver teapot, thin china, and perhaps hot scones, nice deep arm chairs to sit in, and magazines lying on the table.

I’ve quoted the same bit Brad did, but it is the key moment. Polly’s longing to exchange lives with this woman doesn’t happen instantly, but the seed is sown. A few days later, remembering that idle daydream, Polly suddenly feels dizzy – and discovers she is no longer in her own home.

Her dream seems to have come true. She is in a beautiful and enormous country house, with a team of servants and with no labour required of her. One of the first things she notices is her immaculate hands, which clearly have never had to be plunged into a bucket of soapy water.

Novels which use a fantastic device have to deal with the surprise of the protagonist. It’s the main difference between a fantastic novel and magic realism – this bizarre turn of events, and the character’s reactions, must be taken into account. Cairnes handles Polly’s disorientation very well. Her attempts to work out who the people around her are, and how they relate to her. Her frequent faux pas, as she tries to take on the tone of Lady Elizabeth (for such she is). And perhaps chiefly, trying to behave in a convincing manner to her new husband, Gerald (Major Forrester), without betraying her real husband, Tom. As it is, any affection from her seems to baffle Gerald.

Polly doesn’t stay there. Before too long, she is whisked back to her normal life – and it becomes clear that Lady Elizabeth has been there in her guise, telling Scottish folklore stories to Polly’s two children.

One of the less convincing elements of the book, albeit essential for the plot, is that Polly decides not to confide in her husband, or anyone. As the months go by, she keeps finding herself having dizzy spells that land her in Lady Elizabeth’s world. Cairnes has good fun with the humorous side of things, as Polly reveals Lady Elizabeth to be a secret bridge player, or as she gets confused with titles of nobles. At the heart of it is a lovable and empathetic character, making the most of the strange world she has found herself in, throwing in some matchmaking on the side. As the reader, I longed for Polly and Lady Elizabeth to meet… and, thankfully, they eventually do.

I loved Strange Journey. The novel sustains the initial idea wonderfully, and Cairnes is obviously an adept, if fairly light, writer. She appears to have only written one other novel, The Disappearing Duchess, and this costs $300 online…

Brad’s detective work add another fun twist to the tale. Maud Cairnes was a pseudonym – for Lady Maud Kathleen Cairns Plantagenet Hastings Curzon-Herrick (!!), known as Lady Kathleen. Head over to his piece for a bit about her extraordinary milieu; it’s safe to safe she was more familiar with Lady Elizabeth’s world than with Polly’s, so it is to her credit that she makes both equally believable.

Strange Journey is not at all easy to find – but I am certainly mulling it over as British Library choice at some point…

British Library Women Writers 13: A Pin To See The Peepshow by F. Tennyson Jesse

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I think A Pin To See The Peepshow (1934) is probably the British Library Women Writers title that was best-known before being republished. It wasn’t a household name, of course, but a lot of people have come across it for various reasons – the 1980s Virago reprint, a couple of TV adaptations, or the fact that Sarah Waters cited it as helping inspire her novel The Paying Guests.

We were really lucky to get it for the British Library Women Writers series. Or, rather, the people at the British Library who are in charge of such things are very talented – I think it was complicated to sort out the rights (since the copyright holder from the 1980s has since died). But they did it, and this much-sought-after book is once again easy to get hold of!

If you’re new to the novel, it is heavily based on the 1920s Thompson/Bywaters murder case. To quote the opening paragraphs of my afterword…

Like many novels, A Pin to See the Peepshow starts with a disclaimer: ‘Every character in this book is entirely fictitious, and no reference whatever is intended to any living person.’ The note is more disingenuous than such notes usually are, but one part is true: neither of the two main characters on whom the novel is based were any longer ‘living persons’. Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters had both been killed by hanging 11 years before the novel was published.

Not all the details of their lives match those of Julia and Leo. Edith had a sister, and her father outlived her, for instance, and Tennyson Jesse slightly closes the age gap between the lovers. But the gist of the case was the same: a husband was murdered by a jealous man in the throes of an adulterous affair – and a jury determined that both halves of the affair were responsible, and should be hanged. The trial was a cause célèbre that everyone was talking about and everyone had an opinion on.

It is clear that Jesse is very sympathetic to Julia/Edith. Julia is an intelligent, articulate woman who suffers from a poor background, unsympathetic family, and unpleasant husband. When she starts an affair with Leo, it feels taboo but also like an escape from the drudgery that she has been unfairly condemned to. When the murder case starts – surprisingly late in the novel, and it would feel like more of a spoiler if the novel weren’t so closely based on fact – we remain on Julia’s side. But Jesse doesn’t paint a simple black and white case. Julia may be ultimately an innocent, but she is a complex, flawed one. She’s very good on class – and the fact that Julia’s precise place in the class pecking order condemned her fate:

If only she had been higher or lower in the world! In the class above hers the idea of divorce would not have shocked, and a private income would even have allowed her and Carr to live together without divorce, and no one would have been unduly outraged. Had their walk in life been the lowest, had they been tramps or part of the floating population of the docks down London River, they could have set up in one room together, and no one thought twice about it.

I think A Pin To See The Peepshow is an astonishing work – it might not be my favourite of the titles in the series, but I think there’s a strong argument that it’s the best.

In writing my afterword, I enjoyed delving into the details of the original case more – seeing which bits Jesse chose to leave out, or amplify. Comparing Julia’s prose and Edith’s actual love letters was particularly illuminating. I found it quite complex to write the afterword while keeping reality and fiction separate, but hopefully it all made sense and it was certainly easy to choose which topic to write about. (Incidentally – the episode of ‘Tea or Books?’ that I’m proudest of is episode 34, where Rachel and I compared Jesse’s book with E.M. Delafield’s novel about the same case, Messalina of the Suburbs.)

I’m always wary of suggesting too many books for the series that have previously been reprinted, and there are three or four that were Virago Modern Classics at some point – so those ones have to really justify their place in this series. A Pin To See The Peepshow inarguably does that. I really hope that, now it is back in print, it stays there.

Others who got Stuck into this Book:

“A Pin to see the Peepshow is a memorable and sometimes chilling work which gets under the skin; and it’s also a brilliantly written and constructed novel, which is compelling reading.” – Karen, Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings

“The most remarkable thing about this book though is the sustained insight it offers into a woman’s life and way of thinking, and how convincing the portrait of Julia is.” – Hayley, Desperate Reader

British Library Women Writers 12: Which Way? by Theodora Benson

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Two new British Library Women Writers titles have just been published, and I’m quite behind with keeping up to date with my posts about the previous ones. The new ones will turn up here before too long but, before that, let’s talk about the others!

Which Way? by Theodora Benson is the first book in the series where I didn’t have a copy previously. I read it many years ago in the Bodleian, and re-read it as a photocopy that the kind people at the British Library arranged, but it was impossible to get hold of otherwise. Which makes it feel all the more exciting to have rescued it.

I think I first read it after seeing a publisher’s advert – the premise intrigued me. I still think it’s a brilliant idea. Fans of the film Sliding Doors will recognise the idea – what if a small moment had been different? Something seemingly inconsequential could make a huge change in the way a life pans out.

For Claudia Heseltine in Which Way?, it’s choosing which invitation to accept. We get to know Claudia in the opening section of the novel, and it ends with her walking into a room with two letters and a phone call about to be answered. It’s a scene that is repeated a few times in the book – and each time she accepts a different invitation for the weekend.

There was a fire in the room, very comforting and gay. It threw a lovely sheet of orange on the big armchairs on each side of it….An antique clock marked time in a hushed monotone. Only the fire was alive, consuming its life – for what? Then the door opened and as Claudia came with hurried steps into the fire’s glow, two open letters in her hand, the telephone began ringing. She shut the door and turned up the lights.

What I particularly liked about Which Way? is that, though initially set up as a choice between three men, the different outcomes aren’t really about them. Yes, different paths lead Claudia to marriage or relationships or singleness, but what they really draw out of her are different ways to be a woman in the 1930s. Facets of her personality, occupations (domestic or otherwise), friendship groups, even taste in popular culture – all of these are influenced by the metaphorical door she chooses.

The main reason I wanted Which Way? to be part of the series is the innovation. There is nothing strictly fantastic here – Claudia doesn’t jump between timelines; she isn’t aware of the multiverse she inhabits – but it’s such a clever way to look at how circumstances can bring out latent aspects of a person.

Others who got Stuck into this Book:

“I read this book around two weeks ago, and it’s still hovering heavily in my thoughts. I highly, highly recommend it to anyone interested in women’s fiction or social history.” – Asha, A Cat, A Book, A Cup of Tea

“An excellent plot idea, then, and carried out impressively. But there’s more to enjoy here. It’s hard not to feel a sort of fascinated horror at the complete emptiness of Claudia’s life, or lives.” – Harriet, Shiny New Books

The Murder of My Aunt by Richard Hull

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The Murder of My Aunt (British Library Crime Classics): 54: Amazon.co.uk: Richard Hull: 9780712352802: BooksI had a little blogging absence because I had a nasty cold – which I presumed might be Covid, given how everyone seems to have it at the moment, but a zillion tests turned out negative. Just a normal cold! Back to normal winter life!

Anyway, if you’re anything like me then feeling under the weather means you turn to very easy reading. I didn’t have the energy for books where fine writing or depth of character were the focus. So I turned to murder mysteries.

That’s probably unfair, because murder mysteries can certainly have great writing and characters, but it felt like a safe bet for an enjoyable, pacy plot. And the first one up was The Murder of My Aunt (1934) by Richard Hull, which I think I got as a review copy from the British Library in 2018. I was picking more or less at random from my piles of yet-to-be-read British Library Crime Classics, though I do also dimly recall someone recommending this one. If that were you, many thanks.

The novel is told by Edward Powell, a grown man who lives with his Aunt Mildred on the outskirts of a tiny town in Wales. It sounds idyllic, to be honest, but Edward is not a man who appreciates the countryside – still less does he appreciate having his freedoms curtailed by his aunt’s watchful eye, and his finances falling far short of his dreams for himself. Towards the beginning of the novel, they are in a battle over whether or not he will drive into town – which involves his aunt cutting off his petrol supply, and Edward concocting a lie about how he successfully got there nonetheless.

There is something of the Ealing Comedy about this – the stakes are high, but it is all affably ridiculous enough that they don’t seem high. Early on, Edward has decided he should kill his aunt – and the reader goes along for the ride. Murder feels like it’s rather playful here.

And does the aunt deserve it? Well, here’s an example of what annoys Edward so much:

My aunt, after studying the ordnance map with great care, tells me that you have to go up just on six hundred feet, and apparently it is a good deal. I can well believe her, but these figures mean little to me. It is, however, typical of my aunt that she not only possesses many maps showing this revolting country-side in the greatest detail for miles round, but that she can apparently find some pleasure in staring at them for hours on end, ‘reading’ them as she is pleased to say, and producing from memory figures as to the height of every hillock near by.

Frankly, as someone who loathes maps and being forced to look at them, I was fully on Edward’s side at this point.

From here on, he develops various ruses for offing his aunt, and shares them in the novel – which is really a diary of his attempts. Keeping a diary of your murder attempts probably isn’t the wisest move, but we’ll forgive it. As you can tell by the plural ‘attempts’, he isn’t very good at achieving his goal. I shan’t spoil whether or not he was successful, but I will say that The Murder of My Aunt was a delight throughout. Edward reminded me a bit of Ignatius J. Reilly in A Confederacy of Dunces, in that he considers himself vastly superior to the people around him – and reveals himself, through his own self-portrait, to be rather more ridiculous than he would like.

It’s not the sort of murder mystery where you are desperate to find out whodunnit – indeed, there is no mystery at all. But it’s a great reading experience, and Hull’s dry touch is perfect.

Enbury Heath by Stella Gibbons

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I usually get at least a few books for Christmas, and I like to start one of them immediately – there is something lovely about starting a brand new book on Christmas Day. Particularly if it is as good as Enbury Heath (1935) by Stella Gibbons, which my parents got for me.

Yes, there are quite a few Gibbons novels waiting on my shelves, but a few Gibbons aficionados had said that this one was particularly good – so I was, of course, keen to read it. This is the seventh of her novels that I’ve read, and follows the pattern of her earliest books being the ones I most like – because this is wonderful. Just as wonderful as that cover illustration, by Kerry Hyndman, would have you hoping.

Siblings Sophia, Harry and Francis Garden aren’t much upset when their father dies. He has been angry, unpredictable, alcoholic, and unkind. Only six months earlier, their much-loved and much-suffering mother had died, and Sophia had chosen not to see her father in that time. But there is a wide cast of aunts and uncles who want to see the right thing done. The Garden trio aren’t fond of many of these relatives, and openly loathe some of them, but get bustled through decorum and keeping up appearances – while secreting away anecdotes and quotes to share and laugh at together later. They have the casual unkindness of people in their late teens and early 20s when considering nuisance relatives, though it isn’t really cruel because the relatives are completely unmoved by it.

While there isn’t much money left, the inheritance that the three get is enough to rent a tiny cottage on ‘Enbury Heath’ – a stand in for Hampstead Heath. The descriptions seem to vary a little – at one point it seems to be a two-up-two-down squeezed in between larger buildings, but it also has a dining table big enough for a dozen or so, and seating for large parties, so perhaps Gibbons’ definition of tiny isn’t the same as mine (I have to limit dinner parties to three guests, especially since I put in another bookcase that means I can no longer use the leaf to extend my dining room table.)

Gibbons’ pacing is often a little erratic, and nearly a third of the book is over before the three move into the cottage. This was my favourite part of Enbury Heath – as they set up home together, and deal with arranging domestic help, embryonic careers, visiting dogs etc. Gibbons is particularly funny about dogs, actually, and I only wish she’d turned her attention to cats at similar length. It’s almost ninety years old, but some things about running a home haven’t changed. We might not get coal and laundry deliveries, but these sorts of messages are not uncommon…

The coal, for example. The firm which sold the coal simply could not be brought to believe that there existed a cottage in the Vale where no one was at home from a quarter to nine in the morning to half past six at night. It was nonsense; it was a try-on; whoever it was doing it on purpose, and the coal firm knew better than to give way to such caprices.

So they sent coal (it was only two hundredweight, to add insult to injury, for this was all that the cottage’s cellar would hold), for three days running at eleven in the morning, disregarding Sophia’s frantic telephone messages, and the would send it no more.

The same difficulty occurred with the laundry, which, like some puckish sprite, some coy elf of the dells, could never say exactly at what time it would call, but preferred to pop in winsomely whenever ‘the boy was down that way,’ which might be at any time during the day.

In the final third of the novel, Gibbons throws in a host of other characters – a girl called Mae who catches Francis’s eye, and an old school rival called Juan who gets involved with the family. It breaks all sorts of novelistic rules to have the cast disrupted at this late stage, and I don’t think they were particularly needed – but somehow it works. I was nervous when Mae arrived on the scene, because I recall Bassett and how brilliantly funny the first half of that novel was, and how tedious once it became about a love triangle. It’s certainly not that bad in Enbury Heath, though I confess I would have loved the novel more if Gibbons had stuck to the siblings in their cottage.

Apparently Enbury Heath is semi-autobiographical. For the sake of Gibbons’ actual aunts and uncles, I hope that it is very semi, but knowing that there is some basis in fact explains why the novel never feels like a fairy tale, even with a fairy tale opening. There is a grounding of reality throughout that tethers the narrative. It’s a wonderful novel, and another perfect Christmassy read.

The Invisible Host by Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning – #NovNov Day 22

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I was sent The Invisible Host (1930) by husband-and-wife authors Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning the other day, a review copy from Dean Street Press. It isn’t actually released until 6 December, but I couldn’t resist tearing into it straight away – and read all 186 pages at a breakneck speed today, stopping only, reluctantly, for work.

And what made me so furiously keen to read it? Well, that enigmatic line on the cover: ‘Was it the inspiration for Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None?’

It’s kept as a question because there’s no way of knowing if Christie knew the novel, or the play and film that were adapted from it before And Then There Were None was penned. But there are certainly extremely striking similarities.

In the opening chapter, eight people receive the same mysterious telegram:

CONGRATULATIONS STOP PLANS AFOOT FOR SMALL SURPRISE PARTY IN YOUR HONOR BIENVILLE PENTHOUSE NEXT SATURDAY EIGHT O’CLOCK STOP ALL SUB ROSA BIG SURPRISE STOP MAINTAIN SECRECY STOP PROMISE YOU MOST ORIGINAL PARTY EVER STAGED IN NEW ORLEANS – YOUR HOST

Each has their own suspicions about who might have arranged the party – and each of these other people also happens to be a guest. There is a famed actress, a noted doctor, a dodgy lawyer, a society hostess, a clubman, a writer – so on and so on. Each has a reason to despise one of the others there. Each doesn’t question that a party would be held in their honour.

But – much like And Then There Were None – they are in for a nasty surprise. Once they arrive in the penthouse, the exit is sealed and a radio soon starts playing. Their invisible host has a message for them:

”Ladies and gentlemen, you must be tired of gatherings at which you hear only the soft bubbling of elegant effervescence. The ideal entertainment would be at once a diversion and a creative challenge. It is absurd that one should have to assume the mental attitude of a grocery clerk before he can be entertained. One has a right to look with critical curiosity at the entertainment offered him. So to-night, my friends, I invite you to play a game with me, to pit your combined abilities against mine for suitable stakes. I warn you, however, it has long been my conviction that I should be able to outplay the most powerful intellects in our city, and to-night I shall work hard to prove myself – and you. For to-night, ladies and gentlemen, you are commanded to play an absorbing game  a game with death.”

As this is a New Orleans penthouse, rather than Christie’s inaccessible island, there is a bit more explanation needed about how the door is electrified and the walls are unscalable etc etc. Manning and Bristow successfully seal off all possible exits, leaving us to the enjoyment of watching eight people deal with the prospect of their entrapment and death. For, the host tells them, one of them will die each hour until there is nobody left. But if they manage to outwit him in any of the specially chosen fates, then he will let them live and will die in their place.

And – yes, reader, the characters start dying.

I shan’t spoil anymore, except to say this novel is a delicious, fast-paced, very satisfying read. I loved every moment. Some of the mechanisms involved are a little more elaborate than Christie would have allowed herself, but nothing is too outlandish. And the revelation of the murderer is guessable, if you spot the details along the way – which, of course, I didn’t. I never do.

I’ve read a fair bit of vintage crime, including Joanna Cannan’s excellent Murder Included earlier in Novellas in November – but this one might well be the most fun and best non-Christie murder mystery that I’ve ever read. A total delight from beginning to end. I’d heartily recommend that you preorder it today. And did Christie read or watch it and decide that imitation was the sincerest form of flattery? Perhaps that is the best unsolvable mystery about the whole thing…

Father Malachy’s Miracle by Bruce Marshall – #NovNov Day 19

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What a delightful novel. I bought Father Malachy’s Miracle (1931) early last year because the premise sounded so interesting, and because I had previously read Marshall’s novel High Brows as part of my DPhil research. And the book was really fun, as well as funny, and has made me keen to seek out more of Marshall’s work.

Father Malachy is a monk who is visiting a Catholic church in Glasgow, there to instruct the priests on chanting liturgy. Father Malachy reminded me of Trollope’s Septimus Harding – in that he is simple, kind, faith-filled, and a little shocked and saddened by the wantonness of the world.

In conversation with a local priest of a different denomination, the topic of miracles comes up. Father Malachy believes that God is still capable of doing miracles, and will still perform them if there is good reason. The Protestant minister doesn’t believe this (incidentally, this is not a universally held Protestant viewpoint, by any means. I suppose I am Protestant, inasmuch as I am not Catholic, and I certainly believe God still performs miracles). And so Father Malachy asks God to work a miracle, to bring faith back to an increasingly faithless Scotland.

And which miracle? Well, in the spirit of moving mountains into the sea, Father Malachy asks for the Garden of Eden to be moved to a Scottish island. What is the Garden of Eden? In this instance, it is a dance hall that is near the Catholic church, and believed by some of the priests there to be a hotbed of sin – though Father Malachy himself is rather more charitable towards them. Anyway, the Protestant minister is incredulous:

”Do you honestly mean to stand there and tell me that, in this twentieth century and in this metropolis of learning, God could perform the miracle of transporting this home of light and healthy amusement through the ether? Mr dear Father, please reflect upon what you are saying.”

This is exactly what he means. The day and time is set. And… the dance hall lifts up into the air, and lands on the distant island.

One of the things I loved about Father Malachy’s Miracle is that Marshall restrains himself from putting all the drama into this miraculous event. We don’t see anything from the perspective of the people being supernaturally transitioned. We don’t even visit the Garden of Eden after it has landed. Rather, the novel is about Father Malachy – about the drama he has unleashed and its consequences; about his reflections on the wisdom of the act, and reactions from other priests, journalists, laymen, and a canny film producer. Throughout, Marshall never sneers at faith. I only found out afterwards that he was Catholic himself, but it makes sense. So few novelists write well about faith, and Marshall is among them.

Which is not to say the novel is po-faced. Oh gosh, far from it. His tone reminded me of Compton Mackenzie when he’s being witty, or even E.F. Benson. I enjoy that he can take religious faith seriously while still indulging in a slightly bitchy tone. On the second page, he describes a woman ‘whose hat was one of those amorphous black affairs which would have been, at any moment, out of fashion in any country’ – and I knew I was sold. Actually, the page before that I had already noted how much I enjoyed this eyebrow-raised scene setting:

Outside, on the grey ribbon of platform which ran dismally along the side of the train, newsboys were pushing on wheels pyramids of the contemporary literature, gay magazines within whose covers female novelists split their infinitives and modern deans argued as to whether twin beds in matrimony were of the esse or merely of the bene esse of the sacrament. Outside, boys were selling sticky sweets and cigarettes, and porters were pushing luggage, and flabby, colourless people were jostling one another with impatience as though their departure for Falkirk or Edinburgh were important and as though the dreadful immorality of their souls shone out, for all to see, through the pigginess of their earthly faces. Outside, Queen Street Station, Glasgow, looked just as depressing as the Gare du Nord, Paris, and suggested, just as adequately, milk-cans, lavatories and eternal damnation.

It’s such a ’30s novel, which is certainly a good thing in my book. I loved the characters, the story, and the way that Marshall handled everything. The only thing I didn’t like was the blurb on the edition I read – which gives away so much plot that it includes something that happens on p189 of 191 pages. Tut tut!

Father Malachy’s Miracle is so up my street that I wonder if anybody else would enjoy it as much as I did. It might be hard to find out, as copies online do look a bit scarce and expensive. But if you speak German then you might have better luck tracking down Das Wunder des Malachias – or even watching the award-winning film from the 50s. If this review has sparked your interest, I’d recommend tracking the novel down one way or another.