1930s

A Child in the Theatre by Rachel Ferguson – #NovNov Day 1

StuckinaBook All , , 11 Comments

It’s time for Novellas in November – run by Cathy and Rebecca – and I have rather unwisely decided to try and read one every day in November. It seemed like a great idea a while ago. I’ve done my 25 Books in 25 Days a couple of times, and it’s not many more – so here’s hoping it’ll be a fun time.

There are a couple of caveats – I’m going to chat and do a book a day, not necessarily a novella, so expect some non-fiction and perhaps some short story collections, and other rule-breaking things. The other caveat is that my eyes/head haven’t fully recovered from the mystery illness I had last year – usually all is fine now, but sometimes I get periods when I’m dizzy or have sore eyes, and neither make reading very easy. If that happens, I might have to quietly give up or postpone the project.

ANYWAY that’s a lot of intro when really I should be writing a quick review of A Child in the Theatre by Rachel Ferguson. It was published in 1933 and I bought it in 2009. It has been one of those books I’m really keen to read, and kept wanting to save it for a special occasion – eventually, after more than a decade, I decided I should stop waiting and just read it. Coming in at 191 pages, it fits my loose definition of a novella that it should be under 200pp.

The title is a bit misleading – it is all very connected with the theatre, but the child of the title is arguably not the main character, and nor is she a child for very long. She is Amy Bowker, later known as Amy Ida, who had her big break after being spotted as an angelic infant – swept onto the stage, quickly falling into a world that her working-class, naive, mildly neglectful parents don’t truly understand. Her carefully learned morals no longer make sense in this new environment. Everything becomes about her ascendancy through the stage – an ascendancy that is very up and down, teetering in the right direction. Ferguson depicts it with dry humour and clear-eyed reality. ‘Reality’ isn’t a word one would usually associate with Ferguson. A Child in the Theatre is certainly more grounded than her more famous novels. While Ferguson will never write about the grimness of the gutter – she satirises that sort of outlook in a play in A Child in the Theatre, called ‘High Tea’ – she has also peopled this book with characters who don’t wander into fantastical realms, in the way her characters often would.

I said that Amy isn’t really the central character of the novel – that title must belong to Vivian Garson, later Vyvyan Garson. She is introduced as Amy’s schoolteacher – one with very unconventional views, particularly for the first decade of the 20th century…

And then it began: the rumour, staff-circulated with shocked, apologetic titter, that Miss Garson had explained, upon inquiry, what a mistress was to the elder girls. Yes. Nell Gwyn… or Mrs Fitzherbert.

Miss Langham took the splendid line that the rumour was incredible – and invited Miss Garson alone to tea to cheer herself.

‘Miss Langham! They’ve a right to know. I mean, they’ll be wives and probably mothers themselves one day, and what is the real difference between being a wife or mistress, when you get down to brass tacks?’

Miss Langham closed her eyes. She was never herself among brass tacks.

Vivian Garson is eventually fired after being seen having a port with someone in the theatre, where she has been to support Amy’s first professional role. She can’t find another teaching job – but she has become almost obsessed with the prodigious Amy, and decides to get a role herself in the theatre. While she doesn’t end up going where Amy is, as she intends, she does become swept up in the theatrical world. As Vyvyan, a more glamorous name, she becomes part of the chorus. And then becomes a bigger and bigger name.

Vyvyan and Amy have interlocked lives, but Ferguson cleverly keeps them apart in the book. Their careers overtake and imitate each other. It’s not a case of one having success and the other languishing – at times, one is feted and the other struggles. Then it will reverse. Vyvyan never stops thinking about Amy, seeing a deep bond between them; Amy, on the other hand, seems wilfully ignorant of her erstwhile teacher and well-wisher.

Ferguson’s novels are often delightfully unhinged. A Child in the Theatre is something different. It has a recognisable Ferguson style, but is much more about the intensity of a relationship between two women, even if they seldom meet or correspond. There are so many places where the story could have played out differently, but Ferguson never gives into the predictable. She hardly ever even states the unbreakable tie that shadows both of the women. She plays out their two careers, and the bond is invisibly in the background.

Ferguson obviously has a great time writing about the theatre, and presumably draws on her own experience as a stage actress in the years before the First World War. I found it very illuminating and convincing, and there are other fascinating period moments – such as brief sections on suffragette. And it is, of course, often very funny. I did enjoy this paragraph, which feels like it came from life:

Miss Anderson came of a local family whose trade beginnings success was swamping, and whose care for the deletion of the Howdlie accent was a religion. The Andersons did not say ‘By gum,’ but by-gummery was in their blood and outlook, and to Vyvyan her struggles to imitate a lady imitating an actress imitating a mill-hand were a feast for eye and ear.

Overall, I can see why this hasn’t had the wide audience of Ferguson’s tour de force novels. It is a quieter, subtler, more sedate book in some ways. It is, of course, also quite short. But I think it is no less an achievement than many of her delightfully histrionic books. A Child in the Theatre is Ferguson in a different mode, and one I think is certainly worth seeking out.

Love in the Sun by Leo Walmsley

StuckinaBook All , , 5 Comments

If you look at Jane’s 2010 review of Love in the Sun (1939) by Leo Walmsley, you’ll see a comment from me saying that I’d like to read it. And, indeed, I bought a copy in 2012, still remembering Jane’s enthusiasm and how wonderful the novel sounded. Recently for my book group, I read The Village News by Tom Fort – there’s a chapter that mentions Walmsley a lot, and so 2021 finally became the year when he got his moment in the sun(!) Now read Love in the Sun, I can report that it is just as wonderful as Jane says.

I’ve done a bit of background reading online now, and haven’t quite worked out how autobiographical Love in the Sun is, nor how it relates to Walmsley’s earlier novels – but all of that can be put to one side to enjoy what this is: the story of a couple who’ve fled a financial crisis in Yorkshire, arriving in Cornwall with almost no money.

St Jude is a seaport in South Cornwall. It lies near the mouth of a small river, the Pol, whose estuary, shut in on all sides by high land, affords a safe, deep-water anchorage to ships of considerable size. The town itself, while small, straggles along a mile and a half of waterfront, its main street widening out here and there into wharves and jetties. This street continues through the old town into a residential area of hotels, boarding-houses and modern villas, becomes a parade, and ends near the sea in public pleasure gardens, with a golf course extending along the coastline.

[…]

It was the afternoon of a Christmas day that I, a Yorkshireman and a stranger, arrived on foot in St Jude, and, from one of those quays that break its straggling main street, had my first view of its harbour. That view was not specifically attractive. It did not encourage the hope that I was near the end of my peculiar quest: least of all did it suggest the beginning of a great adventure.

And perhaps it isn’t a great adventure, in the literary sense of the word. The plot of the novel is steady and simple, and all the more immersive for that. The narrator and his partner (they are not married because he still has a wife, but this is an incidental strand of the novel) fend for themselves by setting up home in a cheaply-rented old hut. Rain pours through the roof on the first night, when a storm seems almost to remove any possibility of staying. But gradually, resourcefully they make the hut into a home – they start growing vegetables, they adopt a visiting cat. In their quiet cove, they have idyllic beauty in front of them – and anxiety alongside, since they don’t know how they will survive with almost no income.

The solution is for the narrator to write a book, and it was fascinating to follow this process – aggravating at first, because he seemed so certain of its success. And, indeed, he is ultimately published – but the feelings he goes through after his first emotionless rejection are feelings that I recognise 70 years later! The development of his manuscript is perhaps the closest this novel comes to adventure. Unless you count some cat drama, which (thinking about it) gave me more tension than most tales of humans in peril.

Love in the Sun is lovely because it is authentic and beautifully realised, in all its day-by-day details. Walmsley is also wonderful at depicting this corner of Cornwall, making me ache to visit it. But the novel certainly isn’t a sweet tale of escaping somewhere beautiful. Even if it weren’t for the financial difficulties, the community are pretty lukewarm to the new residents – partly because they are new, but also because they are unmarried and eccentric. The narrator and his wife don’t seem unduly concerned about their reception, and it isn’t a dark thread of the book – rather, this is a story of solitary struggles and progress, not a saccharine story. Having said that, there is an unlikely friendship along the way, which is rather touchingly done.

The narrator, whom I think is unnamed but could be misremembering, is certainly the dominant character – but I think Walmsley’s portrayal of the partner is good too. She does have a name – Dain. Dain shares the same vision, capable work ethic and determination of the narrator, with just enough differences to make them work well together – she has a touch more romance, a little more optimism, a bit more willingness to see the best in people. If it is autobiographical, it is an affectionate portrait that still feels honest and accurate.

This novel is relatively long, but it felt even longer – in a good way. Like when I read L.P. Hartley’s brilliant novel The Boat, it’s the slow and steady pace of the novel that helps make it a beautiful reading experience. One to luxuriate in, even if it took me more than a decade to get to it after reading Jane’s review. And, you know… there are two sequels…

Two final #1936Club titles

StuckinaBook All , , , 8 Comments

I’ve never read more books for a club year – for the first time, I’ve read more than there are days in the club week. (Or, indeed, in any week.) So I’m going to double up with a couple of reads that I don’t really have that much to say about… sorry to end on an anti-climax, but do check out the links round up for lots more suggestions. My favourites from my reading week were Miss Linsey and Pa by Stella Gibbons and Laughing Gas by P.G. Wodehouse. I won’t be blogging for a week, but will update with any links I missed when I’m back – and have scheduled a post for tomorrow saying what the next club year will be!

Anyway, onto my final two reads…

Houses as Friends by Dorothy Pym

I didn’t know much about Dorothy Pym – no relation of Barbara – but I bought this in a little bookshop in Fowey because the title intrigued me. I thought it might be about houses in fiction, or houses in general, but it is basically Pym’s autobiography through the different houses she lived in. Edwin Lutyens even wrote the introduction.

The houses are all rather grand and wonderful, and she was certainly brought up in privilege, married someone equally rich, and lived bountifully. I ended up knowing quite a lot of anecdotes, but still didn’t know a lot about who she was in essentials. And all the anecdotes were told rather plainly, without the sprinkle of magic that brings them alive, or makes them sound more exciting than they truly are. All in all, I enjoyed it as a period piece, but I found it lent a little too close to dullness. And I don’t really remember anything in it, already. Not one to rush to.

No Place Like Home by Beverley Nichols

I adore Bev, though have been a bit up and down with his non-fiction. The ups are VERY up, and I love the Merry Hall series to distraction, but others – like his investigation into spiritualism – didn’t really work for me. I’d assumed No Place Like Home would be one of his books about his house, but it turned out to be the opposite: it’s travel literature. Specifically of one long trip through Eastern Europe, to Egypt, to Israel, to Turkey and Greece. Not in that order. Rather than write a full review, I’ve come up with some pros and cons. And please head to Karen’s 1936 Club review of it for more detail – and also less uncertain enthusiasm for it!

Pros

  • Beverley is always pretty funny – depending, of course, on what you find funny. I really enjoyed his grumpy take on the Pyramids and the Sphinx.
  • It’s a great snapshot of 1936 across Europe, at least from one man’s perspective – he makes reference to Hitler that show his views were no secret at the time, though Nichols doesn’t seem to realise it’s the last time for a while that this sort of trip would be possible
  • His perspective on being in the Holy Land is very moving, and he does experience genuine connection with Jesus by seeing the places that He went (and railing against those areas that haven’t been upheld)
  • His vehemence against animal cruelty is welcome to me, and some of his views were probably very ahead of their time

Cons

  • …and some of his views weren’t. He is rather xenophobic at times. He is very against antisemitism, and then is antisemitic himself a few pages later… in general, the people of other countries are not as good as the Brits, in his eyes, and it made for some uneasy reading
  • The ‘Irate Reader’ he introduces to have a duologue with every now and then didn’t really work for me. In another mood it might have done, but I found it a little irritating
  • I just don’t love travel writing that much! I find it often leans towards the visual, which I find hard to translate in my head, and I also prefer people writing about their own countries and times – to give a deeper authenticity and grounding to their writing.

SO there you go. Neither of these are my favourite reads for the 1936 Club, but this club has been my favourite one, I think. So many interesting titles, so much going on in the world, and a brilliant cross-section shared from across the blogging community. Thanks, as ever, for reading, reviewing, commenting and sharing in the fun!

Begin Again by Ursula Orange – #1936Club

StuckinaBook All , , , , 19 Comments

Of all the authors Scott at Furrowed Middlebrow has talked about over the years, Ursula Orange is the one who appealed most. So it was very exciting when he got three of her novels reprinted through his Dean Street Press series – and Begin Again is the third of those I’ve read. Orange is a wonderfully witty writer, and this novel is no different.

The novel opens with Leslie (early 20s) explaining to her mother why she feels she must move to London, where her schoolfriends Jane and Florence are living a lifestyle that Leslie considers ideal. Leslie wants to spend all the money she has on an art school – though it will not cover tuition and expenses for all that long – and also thinks she should probably have her own little studio, to be taken seriously. Whatever happens, she has to get away from the privileged and calm life she is currently living with her parents:

She knew, not only from Jane and Florence’s conversation (it had been some time since she had had a really good talk with them) but also from the pages of modern novels exactly the way in which young people living their own lives in London talk together – an attractive mixture of an extreme intensity and a quite remarkable casualness. “Henri says Marcovitch’s new poems are the finest things he’s ever read – will certainly found a school of their own. By the way – hand me the marmalade – Elissa is living with Henri now. He says he needs her for his work at present.” Clearly the sort of person who talked like this lived a much freer, a much wider, a much better life than the sort of person who merely said, “Good morning, mummy. Did you sleep well? When Alice brought my tea this morning she said a tree was blown down in the orchard last night.”

One of the things I like a lot about Orange is that she doesn’t have any throwaway characters. While four young women are at the centre of this novel, the secondary characters are not simply there to serve them. I loved the sardonic dryness of Leslie’s mother – which Leslie totally misses, since she expects her mother to be humourless. The reader is quite like Leslie’s mum – we have a definite affection for all the women at the heart of Begin Again, but also recognise they are young and silly.

The others are the aforementioned Jane and Florence, who work in offices and just about earn enough to pay for their unorthodox food and tiny flat – and Sylvia, who still lives in her parents’ grand home, thinking herself very modern with her thoughts on sexual and social liberation. All the women are very earnest, and their problems are real problems inasmuch as they genuinely feel anxiety about them, but Orange is also very funny about them. It’s also a joy to read about arguments over who used the hot water when you no longer have to house-share.

My favourite story of the four was Florence’s – who works as a typist, despite being pretty bad at it, and longs to be recognised as something more valuable. The other typist has fewer ambitions and class hang-ups, and is also much better at her job. The whole set-up of the office was believably unnerving for Florence, while also a joy to read about. That joy continues when the whole bunch travel over to Sylvia’s house for a party, and things get more dramatic and just as absurd.

This was a delightful 1936 read – enough genuine angst to make you take it seriously, and good-heartedness not to mind laughing at the characters. I’m not sure why Furrowed Middlebrow stopped after reprinting three of her novels, but I have my fingers crossed that they bring out the other three at some point…

Little G by E.M. Channon – #1936Club

StuckinaBook All , , , 10 Comments

Little G is a terrible title but rather a lovely book. It is a 1936 title from E.M. Channon who is apparently well-known as a children’s writer and a detective novelist – this was one of her few adult non-detective novels, or possibly her only one, and was reprinted by Greyladies in 2012. It found its way onto my shelves in 2014, and the 1936 Club has been a great opportunity to finally read it.

In the opening chapter, Furnival is being told that he needs to rest by a doctor. He is a maths lecturer at Cambridge, and the doctor is worried that he is stressed and unhealthy – and prescribes him some relaxation in a little village. Furnival is very keen not to see any women there, as he is horrified by any company that isn’t adult male, child, or animal – and the doctor assures him that the village is bereft of adult women. This, of course, turns out not to be the case.

In case you’re starting to rather dislike Furnival, Channon lays on heavily his good attributes. Installed in his new cottage, he befriends three young siblings who live next door – offering them cakes and goodies that their aunt doesn’t believe they should eat. Holding even more sway with me, he likes cats – and is given one when he passes a house and is concerned for its welfare. Here he is, having slipped it in his coat pocket:

The kitten, though of tender age, had claws like steel hooks, a voice like a bat’s and enough determination for ten full-grown Toms. He objected strongly to imprisonment, and fought with determination to work his way out. Furnival had to keep a tight hand on him, making personal discovery that the needle-like teeth matched the claws for sharpness; but he cared little for that. The warm, fierce, furry little body, wriggling ragefully under his fingers, gave him a pleasant thrill of affection and ownership, such as he had not felt since the acquisition of his first guinea pig, more years ago than he cared to count. He quickened his steps: not half so much for the sake of getting rid of a troublesome pocketful, as because he wanted to take out his purchase and play with it.

The kitten, true to its feline nature, finding that its new owner cared not a jot for all its fury, gave up the unequal contest, curled itself up in a concise ball, and slumbered profoundly. The pocket was warm. Struggling was, obviously, a useless waste of energy; and there is no more profound philosopher in the animal kingdom than Felis Domestica.

Sadly, for me, we don’t see anywhere near enough of the kitten again. But that might be a relief if kittens aren’t your thing. Instead, we see Furnival interact with various villagers – his gardener, the vicar, the women who do turn out to exist, and particularly the three children. He softens over time, but he wasn’t really that un-soft in the first place. The stakes are low, but Channon stays decidedly on the right side of charming – the only part I thought was a little fey was when Furnival starts enthralling the children with stories about gravity, calling it Little G. But it is not the only Little G who turns up…

All in all, this novel was always a delight to read, and is exactly the right sort of book for many occasions when you need something fun, sweet, and very 1930s.

Laughing Gas by P.G. Wodehouse – #1936Club

StuckinaBook All , , , 15 Comments

When I wrote about Strange Journey by Maud Cairnes, a body-swap comedy, I was wondering which others there were. Malie and Constance both mentioned Laughing Gas by P.G. Wodehouse which, as luck would have it, turns out to be have been published in 1936. I have zillions of unread Wodehouses, but I decided to add another – or, rather, to listen to the audiobook read by Jonathan Cecil. And what a wonderful book it is.

The narrator is Reggie Swithin, the third Earl of Havershot. He is 28, has a face that he often compares to a gorilla, and has been sent off to Hollywood by an aunt to rescue his cousin Eggy from getting engaged to a gold-digger. This is all just a way of getting an earl to America, and specifically to Hollywood. Wodehouse himself worked on Hollywood scripts a good deal, I believe, and comes to the movie plot with a great amount of good-natured cynicism. Reggie is the sort of affable and daft hero of almost any of Wodehouse characters – indeed, as he introduces himself, he is ‘just one of those chaps’.

Eggy is engaged, as it turns out, not to the gold-digger but to Ann Bannister – who was previously engaged to Reggie. And Reggie, in turn, falls in love instantly on the train on the way to Hollywood – with April June, the wonderfully named and very beautiful film actress. He is in love devotedly almost before they’ve spoken, but Wodehouse fans know to distrust the sort Wodehouse woman who speaks affectedly of how she is only ever happy in the company of books and flowers, and thinks nothing of money.

Anyway, all of Reggie’s plans are put on hold by bad toothache, and he goes to a dentist. In the waiting room, he meets Joey Cooley – a golden-haired child who is considered the idol of American motherhood. Michigan mothers are en route to lavish praise on him as they speak.

Both go into their respective dentists for their respective operations, apparently of the sort that require being knocked out by gas. And, while under gas… they swap bodies.

The first Reggie knows of it is when he comes to, and his chair is surrounded by eager journalists. And so set in motion his life as a child star – with a strictly controlled routine, domineering protectors, and (most chillingly) diet of prunes for almost every meal.

We don’t see much as Joey-as-Reggie for the rest of Laughing Gas, but follow Reggie-as-Joey. Being Wodehouse, the stakes are hilariously low. He takes the metaphysical anomaly pretty well, and doesn’t waste too much time philosophising. Instead, he is chiefly anxious about having to kiss someone at the unveiling of a statue, and where he can procure some substantial food (leading to perhaps my favourite line – ‘I had had a rotten lunch, at which the spinach motif had been almost farcically stressed’).

Then, of course, there are various love entanglements – he has the opportunity to see April June in a less flattering light, and may just fall in someone else along the way…

Wodehouse is always wonderful, but some novels are better than others. For my money, this is one of the best I’ve read. He is so consistently brilliant in turn of phrase – the sort of thing he does that nobody else can do; a brilliant mix of hyperbole, litotes, inversion, and all manner of other linguistic tricks that somehow never get old. He was a comic genius.

It’s hard to remember exact quotes from an audiobook, but here are three that bat about online a lot:

  • If Eggy wanted to get spliced, let him, was the way I looked at it. Marriage might improve him. It was difficult to think of anything that wouldn’t.
  • I shuddered from stem to stern, as stout barks do when buffeted by the waves.
  • It was a harsh, rasping voice, in its timbre not unlike a sawmill.

One I liked was along the lines of ‘It would have been alright if things were other than they were, but that is just what they, in fact, weren’t’. But line after line are brilliant, and I laughed my way through this. The plot is really just decoration for his unparalleled turn of phrase, and I’m delighted that the 1936 club has given me the opportunity to read another of his masterpieces.

The Enchanted Voyage by Robert Nathan – #1936Club

StuckinaBook All , , , 20 Comments

Reading Robert Nathan is one of the relatively rare times when I know what it must be like to be an Anglophile-bibliophile outside of the UK. His books are pretty easy to stumble across in the US and pretty tricky to find here – but on both my visits to Washington DC, I managed to come away with a couple of his books. I bought The Enchanted Voyage in 2015 and, as luck would have it, it’s a 1936 title.

Nathan’s novels are always pretty short and whimsical, and The Enchanted Voyage is no different. The font is enormous and even so it’s something under 200 pages – telling the story of Mr Pecket, a carpenter who is disliked by his wife and cheated by his neighbours. Or perhaps ‘cheated’ isn’t the right word, since he walks open-eyed into situations where he will build shelving (say) and be hectored into being paid rather less than the value of the wood.

But, as the opening lines tell us, Mr Pecket has one eccentric passion:

Mr Hector Pecket had a boat. He had built it himself; it stood squarely on the ground in the yard of his little home in the Bronx, very far from the water. But it would scarcely have floated anywhere else, for Mr Pecket had neglected to  caulk it, and it had no keel. Nevertheless inland and to the eye, it was a boat; a little like an ark, but with a mast for sailing, an anchor, a windlass, belaying pins, a cabin, and a cockpit. It was named the Sarah Pecket, after his wife.

Mrs Sarah Pecket is not sensible of having received a compliment. Rather, she would live to have some household income – and sells the boat to a neighbour to run as a restaurant. She puts wheels on it, to transport it round the corner. In another sort of novel, we would have a lot of sympathy for Mrs Pecket. But in the fanciful and carefree world of Robert Nathan’s heroes, this is a crime – and we cheer Mr Pecket on when, in the middle of the night, he commandeers the boat and sails – no, rolls – away. The wheels move him on the ground, and the sail determines his direction.

Along the way, he picks up a disaffected waitress and a curious dentist – sure, why not – and they continue to trundle along with the aim of getting to Florida. But the real aim is just to get away from everyday life – the humdrum, the unkind, and the unimaginative. This isn’t an escape from reality – their boat is slowly wheeling along the roads, not floating off into the sky – but it is an escape nonetheless. There is a sort of Peter Pan esque tone to the whole thing. Emotions are broad and simple things in Nathan’s work, but there is something touching about seeing them so close to the surface.

This reading club year is really interesting, because by 1936 it seems to have been rather an open secret that a major conflict was coming. While plenty of politicians were famously trying to avert it, you get the sense from reading books of the period that the general population would not have been enormously surprised to have found themselves in the middle of a world war a few years later – at the very least, the prospect of it was a dominating conversation. So how would the topic find its way into the novels we’re looking at this year?

This is the nearest that The Enchanted Voyage gets to contemporary commentary:

Mr Pecket walked down the street, carrying his shelves and his tools. He looked into the faces of men and women, and what he saw made him feel anxious and sad. It seemed to him that a new feeling had come into the world since he was young; that people no longer felt kindly disposed toward one another. Now that the bad times were over, and it was possible to work again, they seemed to be looking for someone to blame for everything.

You – you have a sharp look, you dress too well. Doubtless it was you who made all the trouble in the world. Well, just keep out of my way after this.

And you, over there – you have no money and no work. To the devil with you. Perhaps you are a communist.

Interestingly, he is seeing this is as a period when the Great Depression is largely over – but senses that there are difficult things on the horizon too. In context, it hammers home Mr P’s dissatisfaction with the world, but it’s still very much of its time. Those are the sorts of details I love discovering in these club years.

Is Robert Nathan great literature? No, not really – but he is reliably diverting, with a joyful imagination and I love spending time in his eccentric and sweet worlds.

Thirteen Guests by J. Jefferson Farjeon – #1936Club

StuckinaBook All , , 28 Comments

There are a whole bunch of British Library Crime Classics from 1936, and I have quite a few of them on my shelves. Which to choose? Murder in Piccadilly, The Sussex Downs Murder, and The Santa Klaus Murder were options, but I chose Thirteen Guests because I’ve enjoyed other J. Jefferson Farjeon novels.

It starts really promisingly. A jovial young man arrives at a country station, and leaps from the carriage – in so doing, he injures himself quite badly, because the train was in motion. A witty young woman takes pity on him – John and Nadine, for such are their names, at a delightful pair. Farjeon is great at fun dialogue that doesn’t feel forced, and I’d have loved a rom-com where they overcome their obstacles – e.g. Nadine is very funny about the fact that she is ten years older than John. That’s not what this novel is, of course.

John is persuaded to take shelter at a house where Nadine is staying – and he is the thirteenth guest. That means that, as well as the hosts, there are 13 more characters. Among them are a famous painter, a famous actress, a man who manufactures sausages, a gossip columnist, a trashy novelist, an MP…  goodness, there are so many of them.

And guess what guys? The first body that turns up is NONE of them!

I won’t write too much about this one because I’m going to put it in the ‘disappointment’ pile of British Library Crime Classics – because the writing is so good at the start, and I was so into the world he created. And I suppose the writing continues to be good, but before long I stopped noticing that because I was so confused. There are SO many characters, and the police who get involved – while very amusing – are the sort who like to list timings and places and variables over and over.

Anyway, if you have a mind for this sorts of complex detective novels than I do, then you might well love it. Perhaps very slow reading with a notebook and pen would be rewarding? But, for me, I’m afraid this one left me still have no idea who, what, why, where, or when even when I turned the final page.

Miss Linsey and Pa by Stella Gibbons – #1936club

StuckinaBook All , , , 28 Comments

Lots of Stella Gibbons’ novels have come back into print in recent years – from Vintage and from Dean Street Press – but Miss Linsey and Pa (1936) has been notably missing from their lists. Having read it for the 1936 Club, I can sadly see why it wouldn’t fit into 21st-century publishing. And yet it’s my favourite of her non-Cold-Comfort-Farm novels that I’ve read so far.

Miss Bertie Linsey and her Pa move to London to be near Bertie’s uncle – Mr Petley – and his son Len, realising that they need family connections now that they are falling on harder times. They leave behind an idyllic countryside home that comes with plenty of beautiful trees and green spaces, but no source of income. They are emphatically not invited to live with Mr Petley and Len above their tobacconist’s shop, but Mr Petley goes as far as to find them accommodation at the nearby home of the Fells. Mr Petley doesn’t trust any accommodation outside of Radford Street, and thinks that Miss Linsey and Pa will manage to make do with the dingy, beetle-infested home run by Mrs Fell. Mr Fell, meanwhile, keeps birds in the upper rooms and seldom communicates with anybody at all.

Gibbons has given us a wonderful cast here, even if we got no more (and we get some great other people). Miss Linsey is resilient, managing to be both enthusiastic and rather sad. Pa is happier than she to get to know the Fells, but is also drawn to know the local pub. Mr Petley is quite hardened and wants little to do with his in-laws, and is affectionately controlling of his son – whose life, and love, was left in France in the First World War two decades earlier.

There is quite an emotional core to this novel, particularly in Len’s storyline of the woman he loves in France – I found a lot of it very moving. But there are also plenty of opportunities for Gibbons’ satirical streak, that I haven’t seen have such a delightful outing in any of the other non-Cold-Comfort-Farm novels. In Miss Linsey and Pa, she has her sights on spearing Bloomsbury – because Miss Linsey finds work first as a cook-housekeeper at the home of Dorothy Hoad and E.V. Lassiter, and later as a sort of governess for a household with very strict rules on not telling the child stories and always calling everything by its proper name. These were my favourite sections – here’s how we first meet Miss Hoad, coming into the tobacconist and meeting Miss Linsey:

She nodded and, turning her back, stared out into the street with her dark unhappy eyes. What would E.V. be doing? She looked down at her platinum watch, of so fiercely modernist a design that it suggested a short story by Ernest Hemingway. Half-past three. E.V. might be trying to write, with the wave of hair falling into her eyes.

She turned round again as the drab man came back into the shop with a smaller and even drabber woman. G*d, how awful it must be to be that kind of person and live that kind of life!

And here is one of the many very funny snapshots of Bloomsbury life:

The women friends of Dorothy and herself used frequently to announce that they must have a child.

They would plomp themselves on the sofa, fling up their feet and put their elbows behind their heads and stare at the ceiling. Then they would say abruptly ‘I must have a child.’

‘You ought to have a child,’ they would say bluntly, when one of their number complained of a headache or an inability to finish writing a novel. Sometimes they had the child (they never called it a baby), sometimes they got no further than plomping on the sofa and announcing that they ought to have one.

For quite a short novel, an awful lot goes on – perhaps because there are four central characters who get our attention and sympathy, and plenty of secondary ones who are equally interesting. The combination of satire and pathos works because we aren’t asked to combine those feelings for any particular individual – rather our laughter at Bloomsbury, say, is part of what makes Miss Linsey’s difficult life so moving. And the climactic moment of the novel succeeds in being dramatic and poignant in a way that feels honest to everything that has preceded – including layers to Mr Fell, who could easily have been a one-note character experiencing unspecified mental illness.

And why wouldn’t it be published now? Well, sadly Gibbons includes portraits of a Black character, a Jewish character, and a lesbian that are all inappropriate to differing degrees. Some in that well-intentioned ‘You won’t believe this character is from X minority and yet isn’t Y’ way that is hardly any more palatable than out and out racism. These elements are very much not the main thrust of the novel, though it would also be hard to neatly excise them.

There’s a conversation to be had about the moral responsibility of reprint publishing, and perhaps that’s a topic for another day – but no author is ‘owed’ reprinting, and any publisher is likely to decide this isn’t worth the fight. And it’s a shame that these parts pull Miss Linsey and Pa back, because it is otherwise a wonderful triumph of a novel – and, with those caveats, perhaps my favourite read of the year so far.

Strange Journey by Maud Cairnes

StuckinaBook All , , 21 Comments

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…