1950s

Remember, You Must Die

StuckinaBook All , 10 Comments

It’s been so long since I wrote a proper review that I’m wondering whether or not I can still do it… I don’t know about other bloggers (I would be interested to know, actually) but it usually takes me an hour or more to write a full-length book review on here. And whilst I love doing it, I do seem to come to my laptop most evenings too tired to do anything that complex! So, if this turns into a series of zzzzzzzz somewhere in the middle, you’ll know why. Still, I am always amazed, flattered, and delighted that anybody would want to read my musings on the books I read – so thank you in advance!

In fact, that’s as much as I managed to write last week, before getting too sleepy and going to bed. I didn’t even get as far as writing the title of the novel – which is Muriel Spark’s Memento Mori (1959). Congratulations to Terri for correctly working out the book from my clues.

Giving Muriel Spark a second chance is one of the best results of blog-reading, for me. The enthusiasm of Simon S and Claire led me back to Spark, after finding a couple of her novels a bit underwhelming six or so years ago – and, as regular readers will know, I now adore her. Over the past couple of years I’ve read The Driver’s Seat, Loitering With Intent, and Not to Disturb – and I have plenty on my tbr piles. I fancied seeing what my book group in Oxford would think of Muriel Spark, and so picked one almost at random because I liked the title. Memento Mori it was.

Despite coming quite early in her career, when Spark was only just over 40 years old, the novel concerns almost exclusively old people. Many of these live on a ward, where their different classes and personalities are swept away into being termed ‘Granny Duncan’, ‘Granny Barnacle’, ‘Granny Trotsky’ etc. But others amongst the sizable cast of characters still live in their homes – notably Dame Lettie Colston, her philandering brother Godfrey, and his wife Charmian, once a famed novelist and now suffering Alzheimer’s. These three are all heading towards their three-score-and-ten. In the first few pages, Lettie is visiting her sister-in-law, and their choppy dialogue reveals both the extent of Charmian’s declining faculties, and the irreverent but grounded approach Spark takes.

“Did you have a nice evening at the pictures, Taylor?” said Charmian.

“I am not Taylor,” said Dame Lettie, “and in any case, you always called Taylor Jean during her last twenty or so years in your service.”

Mrs. Anthony, their daily housekeeper, brought in the milky coffee and placed it on the breakfast table.

“Did you have a nice evening at the pictures, Taylor?” Charmian asked her.

“Yes, thanks, Mrs. Colston,” said the housekeeper.

“Mrs. Anthony is not Taylor,” said Lettie. “There is no one by the name of Taylor here. And anyway you used to call her Jean latterly. It was only when you were a girl that you called Taylor Taylor. And, in any event, Mrs. Anthony is not Taylor.”

Godfrey came in. He kissed Charmian. She said, “Good morning, Eric.”

“He is not Eric,” said Dame Lettie.

What makes me love Spark – and, indeed, what made me underestimate her six years ago – is her style. It is understated, so that a fast read through reveals little of its richness – Spark can even feel a bit bland at that pace. But once I’d stopped and begun to appreciate her writing, I realised how brilliant it was. Unsentimental, a little discordant, wry, ironic, and ever so slightly surreal. The first words of chapter five illustrated what I mean: ‘Mrs. Anthony knew instinctively that Mrs. Pettigrew was a kindly woman. Her instinct was wrong.’ Spark keeps the reader of his/her toes – conventional emotions or responses are dangled before the reader’s eyes, then turned on their head. We had an interesting discussion at book group about whether or not Spark’s style was funny. I suppose it isn’t. Certainly not in the way that Wodehouse is, or Stella Gibbons is, or Austen can be. But it’s an experience – a tone which diverts and engages and draws me in.

But I have yet to address the central momentum of the novel. On the opening page, Dame Lettie receives an anonymous phone call; a voice simply saying ‘Remember you must die.’ In fact, it is the ninth time she has had this call. But she is not the only victim – increasing numbers of people get the same phone call, with the same words (even if they cannot agree on the voice). Everyone from Charmian to the Inspector investigating the case receives the same message – each responding to it in different ways. Some are scared, some indignant. Mrs. Pettigrew (involved in a very Spark-ian blackmail plot) simply wipes it from her mind. Charmian gives the best response: “Oh, as to that, for the past thirty years and more I have thought of it from time to time. My memory is failing in certain respects. I am gone eighty-six. But somehow I do not forget my death, whenever that will be.” The response of the anonymous caller? “Delighted to hear it. Goodbye for now.”

If this were an Agatha Christie novel, then the Inspector would gradually eliminate characters from suspicion, and we’d witness an elaborate denouement, discovering that the least likely person had actually done it because they were the twin sister of someone who everyone thought had died decades ago, etc. etc. Whilst I love Dame Agatha, I’ve now enough experience with Dame Muriel to suspect it wouldn’t work quite like that. I shan’t spoil the surprise, but suffice to say that the outcome is unmistakably Spark-like.

There are any number of subplots in this slim novel, and dozens of characters. Memento Mori, whilst excellent, isn’t quite as accomplished as some of the other, later books I’ve read by Spark – and I agree with the original New York Times reviewer that she could have achieved more had she included less. Occasionally I had to flick through the pages to work out which character was which. But there are a central few (the ones I have already mentioned) who are striking and memorable – with starkly human qualities coming through the veneer of quirkiness.

I don’t think I’d recommend Memento Mori as a starting point for somebody wanting to try Spark – it might just be a bit overwhelming. Having said that, several people at my book group were reading Spark for the first time, and wanted to read more. I’d still put Loitering With Intent into the hands of anyone eager to sample Dame Muriel – but Memento Mori, for the Spark fan, is a wonderful slice of the bizarre and acerbic. It is not quite unsettling, but it certainly isn’t cosy. There is humour, but mostly there is the delight of being carried along by an author who is entirely in control of her tone, with never a misplaced word or errant sentence. Perhaps, were I fifty years older, I would also embrace Spark’s profundity – but, for now, I’m going to place it back on the shelf, anticipating picking it up again in a few decades’ time. I rather suspect it will have changed a lot.

Laura, who joined my book group this month, later emailed a link to a really good article by David Lodge on Memento Mori, which I recommend you read – here it is. If I haven’t convinced you, then I think Lodge might.

Well, I guess I don’t have much choice.

StuckinaBook All , , 2 Comments

I bought Nicolas Bentley’s book How Can You Bear to be Human? for its excellent title, and because I had seen some of his artwork elsewhere, and quite liked it. I’ve got to say, the title is probably the best thing about this book – but it passed an entertaining hour.


I don’t know the provenance of the book, but it must be collected from somewhere. It consists of brief, humorous pieces and cartoons – but often the cartoon doesn’t seem to bear any relation to the writing. Which is quite confusing, to say the least.

Bentley’s strength is definitely in his drawing, rather than his writing, but that is to be expected. His sketches aren’t ornately detailed, but with exaggeration which is not too exaggerated, he manages to convey exactly what he wishes – and is rather more subtle in his artwork than his prose. The prose is rather a mixed bag – it starts well, but the editor (perhaps Bentley himself?) probably decided to put the best things at the beginning.


My favourite piece was ‘Strange Interlude’, which is Provincial Ladyesque in its dealings with an awkward social occasion, including this exchange between the narrator and an offensive approaching couple:

“Well, my deahr?”

To which, in tones somewhat lower than his, she flashed the riposte: “Well?”

Again silence fell between them and they stood smiling mutely at each other.

“You have tried the punch?” she said at last.

Unable to block my ears in time, I caught his shrill response.

“I have indeed and I pronounce it capital.”

He grinned at me shyly with teeth that were rather too far apart. I noticed his hand had been surreptitiously exploring his pocket, and I guessed what for. He lent towards me and said sotto voce, with a look that appealed for my support and failed utterly:

“Do you suppose our hostess would permit a pipe?”

“I don’t smoke, so I wouldn’t know,” I said, lapsing through sheer nerves into the affectation of the conditional. He peered about him with a look of wildly exaggerated consternation and then, in order, I suppose, to keep up the conspiratorial pretence, tiptoed away.

Most of the pieces in How Can You Bear to be Human? are structured as humorous essays, rather than scenes like this – the essays being on topics from Hockey to Ballet to Hats Suitable For Dictators. Quite.

It’s all good fun, and the sort of Penguin book you could easily give someone as a present, or keep in the smallest room of the house. I had rather hoped for a flash of genius, which there was not, but it’s a nice glance into the humour of the 1950s.


Oh, and I have to finish by sharing this quick excerpt, for my brother (and Wolves fan) Colin:

[…] simple though I may be compared to, say, Professor Bronowski, compared to the man who delights more in Wolverhampton Wanderers than in Wordsworth, I am a creature of infinite complexity.

Life Among the Savages – Shirley Jackson

StuckinaBook All , 9 Comments

I already knew that I loved Shirley Jackson – I did from the time I was about a chapter into We Have Always Lived in the Castle back in 2006, courtesy of Lisa – but now I love her for a whole new reason. Whilst at home in Somerset I indulged by reading her ‘memoir’ part numero uno Life Among The Savages and fell completely in love with it. Think Provincial Lady transferred to America (Vermont, I think) in the mid-1950s, with no servants. It’s havoc, but it’s brilliant.

I had Shirley Jackson in a box. Not literally, that would be creepy – but it isn’t too far away from the sort of thing I’d expect from Jackson territory. The three novels I’ve read by her (We Have Always Lived in the Castle; The Haunting of Hill House; The Bird’s Nest) and the odd short story (very odd short story) had led me to expect Gothicky, creepy, interesting angle on mental illness sort of stories from Jackson. When I started Life Among The Savages, in which Jackson wittily documents the day-to-day life of a wife and mother, I had to adjust how I responded to her. It’s odd that certain paragraphs can go either way… this one, for example, is wry and whimsical in context. But read it with your Jackson-in-horror-mode hat on, and it feels rather different…
There was a door to an attic that preferred to stay latched and would latch itself no matter who was inside; there was another door which hung by custom slightly ajar, although it would close good-humouredly for a time when some special reason required it. We had five attics, we discovered, built into and upon and next to one another; one of them kept bats and we shut that one up completely; another, light and cheerful in spite of its one small window, liked to be a place of traffic and became, without any decision of ours, a place to store things temporarily, things that were moved regularly, like sledges and snow shovels and garden rakes and hammocks. The basement had an old clothes-line hung across it, and after the line I put up in the backyard had fallen down for the third time I resigned myself and put up a new line in the basement, and clothes dried there quickly and freshly.
Anyone who has read The Haunting of Hill House will know how easily Jackson could have turned this into something terrifying – but there is nothing remotely creepy about this book. The narrator – a version of Shirley Jackson, no doubt, but only a version – evinces none of Jackson’s neuroses or agoraphobia; instead she is a housewife and mother in the self-deprecating, amused mould of the Provincial Lady.

She starts off the book with two children, Laurie and Jannie. About halfway through the book Sally comes along:
Sentimental people keep insisting that women go on to have a third baby because they love babies, and cynical people seem to maintain that a woman with two healthy, active children around the house will do anything for ten quiet days in the hospital; my own position is somewhat between the two, but I acknowledge that it leans towards the latter.
Obviously I don’t have children, and very few of my friends have reached that stage of their lives, so I’m new to the world of child-anecdotes. Maybe I wouldn’t have loved this so much if I’d spent ten years hearing people recount the adorable things their children do, but I’ve got to say I laughed out loud a lot whilst reading Life Among the Savages. More at the narrator’s reaction to things, to be honest – like taking children to see a Santa Claus who promises rather too much to Laurie and Jannie; learning to drive with an instructor who is ‘undisguisedly amused at meeting anyone who could not drive a car’; coping with the influence of a teacher who tells Jannie that more or less everything is either ‘vulgar’ or ‘unwomanly’. And her husband is there all the time too, loving and affectionate and just as inept as his wife. Having said that, what comes off the page is as happy a family as I’ve encountered in fact or fiction – and her husband is rather more helpful and on-board than the Provincial Lady’s Robert.

I can’t really quote any of the choicest bits because the anecdotes tend to blend into one another, taking up many pages – they’re built up so that the family becomes recognisable, rather than a series of one-liners. Apparently it was all published separately before, but you can’t see the joins. Having said that, the first section of the book is my favourite, perhaps because it includes their hilarious attempts to rent a house (everyone is determined that they should buy instead) – a similar section was my favourite part of D.E. Stevenson’s comparable Mrs. Tim of the Regiment, so perhaps this betrays my adoration of people looking at properties – yes, Kirstie and Phil are basically my surrogate parents. Or would be, if I knew them.

Oh, and if you’re not sold on the book yet, there’s a delightfully contemptuous and pitying cat called Ninki. Loved her.

While I haven’t read anything in this line of books which is as good as the Provincial Lady, Life Among the Savages is certainly one of the closest runners-up. I thought it was incredibly funny as well as being quite sweet. I’m not sure it quite deserves to be called a memoir, as Jackson is incredibly selective about which side of her personality gets filtered into the book, but that’s her prerogative, and the result sure beats any number of angsty misery memoirs. It’s sunny, funny, and… er, runny. In that it’s made me run off to buy Jackson’s other memoir, Raising Demons.

Books to get Stuck into:

Mrs. Tim of the Regiment – D.E. Stevenson: the first half of this book is brilliant, and owes a huge amount to the Provincial Lady. The second half is fun, but not as good… however, it’s worth it for the first half alone.

Provincial Daughter – R.M. Dashwood: although Provincial Lady is the better book, this sequel by E.M. Delafield’s real-life daughter is much closer to Jackson’s book in date of publication, and it’s delightful to hear from ‘Vicky’ all grown up.

Everybody wants to be a cat…

StuckinaBook All , 12 Comments

When I was grabbing a book for the train down to Somerset, I decided upon Jennie by Paul Gallico. I bought it nearly three years ago, and have had numerous recommendations for it – especially from the appropriately nicknamed Dark Puss. After recently loving Love of Seven Dolls (more here) it seemed sensible to try more Gallico – with the bonus that Jennie would fit into the themes of my doctoral research even if, published in 1950, it’s a little too late for my period of study.

And I decided, since I was at home, it would be nice for Sherpa to pose sitting alongside my copy of Jennie. Sherpa had other ideas… as documented through this post.


There is a very simple story behind Jennie – an eight years-old boy called Peter suddenly discovers that he has turned into a cat. As you do. Unlike metamorphosis tales like Lady Into Fox, the novel isn’t focalised through those who witness the change – nor do we witness Peter trying to live alongside his family as a cat. They are quickly left behind, as Nanny throws him into the street (“Drat the child! He’s dragged in another stray off the street! Shoo! Scat! Get out!”) Peter dashes through the streets, is beaten unconscious by a territorial cat who doesn’t want to share his shelter, and by the time Peter comes to, he is in the company of Jennie.
Peter rolled over and behled the speaker squatted down comfortably beside him, her legs tucked under her, tail nicely wrapped around. She was a thin tabby with a part white face and throat that gave her a most sweet and gentle aspect heightened by the lively and kind expression in her luminous eyes that were grey-green, flecked with gold.
Jennie gives him a bath and a mouse (‘To his intense surprise, it was simply delicious’) and sets about teaching Peter how to be a cat – as, after a little hesitation, she believes his account of how he became a cat.


It is this vein of Jennie which gives it both its charm and somehow rescues it from being too fey or whimsical. Gallico captures the behaviour of cats so exactly (the first rule, at all times: WASH). If he’d kept an eye on the human observers, laughing at how cats misunderstood such-and-such, or inventing witty reasons for cats behaving so-and-so, then Jennie might well have been unbearable. Instead, it is… well, ‘realistic’ is hardly the word, but Gallico shows Jennie in as workmanlike a manner as possible under the circumstances. Her explanations of how strays must loiter in every doorway when exiting, to check the street for safety, make sense. The way she uses humans, and doesn’t trust them, chimes in with many of the timid cats one sees on the streets. I didn’t love the idea of cats greeting one another with faux-18th century decorum, nor the idea of some sort of feline telepathy, but in general Gallico didn’t overstep the mark.

Sylvia Townsend Warner, who wrote her own fantasy in the form of Lolly Willowes, said this in a 1929 lecture:
Since [the fantasist’s] main thesis surprises by itself, he must deny himself further surprises…. The novelist not only may niggle away with small licences all the time, he is a dull dog if he doesn’t. But the fantasist, having taken his initial liberty, must mind his Ps and Qs for the rest of his adventure…. The fantasist who has begun by asking for one vast initial credit must do on that credit to the end.Well said, Sylvia. And Gallico is almost always content to let the turning-into-a-cat liberty be the main one. True, there are some unlikely dramatic incidences as they board a ship to Glasgow, and Gallico sprinkles coincidences through the novel like nobody’s business, but…


When I wrote about Love of Seven Dolls I mentioned that it had something of the atmosphere of a fairy-tale – which didn’t hinder the pathos, but rather made the evil streak of the novel less striking. Jennie is even more like a fairy-tale – in fact, at times it felt like a Disney film. The characters are drawn with surprising reality, but the events are not. Easily the most interesting chapters were those where Peter was learning how to be a cat, or contemplating the relationship between owner and pet. I was less interested when merry escapades took over, and there is one spectacularly superfluous chapter about Lulu – an excitable, flirty, irreverent cat with whom Peter is briefly smitten. I think Gallico perhaps felt his initial conceit was flagging a bit, and so introduced this little ball of fire – but Lulu sticks out so obviously as a distraction to enliven proceedings that I feel she should either have arrived much earlier, or not been introduced at all.

It is the plotting and tone which made Jennie a bit of a disappointment to me. The characters of Jennie and Peter are great – and, as I’ve said, Gallico has really closely observed cat behaviour. But the tone is too sprightly, even with the sad aspects of the story. What I loved in Love of Seven Dolls was the dark, subversive tone intertwining with the whimsical. If Jennie doesn’t become too whimsical, it also never wanders into darker territory – it felt a lot like a children’s tale which wouldn’t stray too far from an accessible storytime-voice.

It is a really fun novel to read, and I’m sure a similar idea has been done much worse. But Lady Into Fox demonstrates how subtle and moving the metamorphosis novel can be; Love of Seven Dolls shows Gallico is capable of more – Jennie just didn’t live up to the hopeful expectations it had accumulated after three years on my bookshelf. But do give it a go – it might be just the novel you’re after.

Love of Seven Dolls

StuckinaBook All , 12 Comments

Well, I didn’t finish any other books on my second day of novella reading. It was quite a busy day, what with church and a talk by Henrietta Garnett (more on that soon) and I also fell asleep at 9pm, in the middle of Saki’s The Unbearable Bassington. Then I woke up at half midnight… and went to sleep again at 5am. Not best pleased with my head and its ideas about sleep cycles, but I’m hoping to be back to normal tonight.

Paul Gallico’s Love of Seven Dolls seemed to raise the most interest, of the novellas I have mentioned, and I also said I’d lend it to Verity tomorrow – so I’ll get writing about it right away!


35. Love of Seven Dolls – Paul Gallico

As I mentioned at the weekend, I haven’t read anything else by Gallico – so this might be a case of me later wishing I’d chosen something else by him – but I’m going to go out on a limb and put Love of Seven Dolls on my 50 Books You Must Read But May Not Have Heard About. I suppose it’s one that doesn’t get mentioned much in the blogosphere. Jane (aka Fleur Fisher) has written a lovely, compelling review of it here, but I must confess I hadn’t remembered her review when I picked up Love of Seven Dolls in Oxfam a few weeks ago. (Indeed, I’d forgotten that I’d read Jane’s review until I read my comment on it just now! So many blogs read does addle my brain somewhat…)

Right, let’s kick off. We’re in Paris, and Marelle (known as Mouche – ‘fly’) is off to drown herself in the Seine. Orphaned, she came from Brittany to make it as a singer, dancer, or (if that failed) rely on more worldly assets. But she has met with no success at any of these pursuits (‘Mouche excited pity rather than desire’) and – terribly hungry, sad, and alone – she decides to end it all.

Not the cheeriest start for a story, but you’ll be pleased to know that she is interrupted – by a doll in a puppet booth. Carrot Top gets into conversation with her, steering her away from the Seine. He, supposedly, manages the others – and is caring and wry. He is only the first of the dolls to make Mouche’s acquaintance – there are six others, each beguiling in the extreme. There’s Ali the gentle, rather stupid, giant; vain Gigi; pompous Dr. Duclos the penguin; maternal Madame Muscat; Monsieur Nicholas the mender of toys, and listener to woes. And then there’s my favourite of all – crafty, wily Reynardo – who is, of course, a fox.

In her naivety, without truly believing the puppets to be real, Mouche talks with them. Her ingenuous nature – for her conversations are not forced or false – soon draws passers-by, and she becomes part of the puppeteer’s act. But, lest this sound too whimsical for your tastes, let me assure you it is nothing of the kind. For here is the puppeteer:
It was like a chill hand laid upon her heart, for there was no warmth or kindliness in the figure lounging against the pole, his fists pressed deeply into the pockets of his jacket. The shine of his eyes was hostile and the droop of the cigarette from his lips contemptuous.

Mouche, in her marrow, knew that this was the puppet-master, the man who had animated the little creatures who had laid such an enchantment upon her, yet she was filled with dread. For a moment even she hoped that somehow this was not he, the master of the dolls, but some other, a pitch-man, a labourer, or lounger from a neighbouring concession.
How can this man be the voices of such endearing puppets? Well, it seems he is not entirely sure himself:

For in spite of the fact that it was he who sat behind the one-way curtain in the booth, animated them, and supplied their seven voices, the puppets frequently acted as strangely and determinedly as individuals over whom he had no control. Michel never had bothered to reflect greatly over this phenomenon but had simply accepted it as something that was so and which, far from interfering with the kind of life he was accustomed to living, brought him a curious kind of satisfaction.

Once Mouche has joined the troupe, a pattern sets in. Michel is increasingly cruel and violent, desperate to remove her innocence through any means possible; the puppets are kind and restorative. Gallico creates a kind of mad cacophony – the magical enchantment of endearing puppets; the bitterness of a cruel man; the emotions of a girl who is experiencing both the greatest loneliness and the greatest friendships of her life. There is never the suggestion that Mouche is mad, and the reader accepts unquestioned her relationship with Reynardo, Carrot Top and the others. At the same time, somehow, Michel’s cruelties – though sad – are not deeply unsettling, nor even as shocking as they should be. Is it the fairy-talesque tones which thread throughout the narrative? I think it must be. Gallico, after all, draws from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, and Beauty and the Beast. The evil stepmother’s behaviour, in the former tale, does not shock us in the way that it would in a modern novel. Love of Seven Dolls is not a fairy-tale, but it borrows some of the atmosphere of them.

The story is bizarre, but it is not bewildering. Gallico weaves together the dark and light so skillfully that they do not jar – nor does either take precedence. We aren’t permitted to rest upon either, and are pulled along for the strange, captivating experience.


All the while, reading this novella, I thought that it would make a brilliant film – perhaps one with Tim Burton at the helm. Only after I’d finished did I investigate the history of Love of Seven Dolls. Gallico wrote a story called ‘The Man Who Hated People’ (1950), which was adapted into the film Lili (1953). Only then did Gallico complete the circle, after the success of the film: rewriting and extending the story to become the novella I have in my hands.

Love of Seven Dolls exemplifies many of the reasons I cherish novellas over longer works. There is no need for extemporaneous matter when a writer can create such a powerful and complex work in under a hundred pages. It really is an extraordinary little book, written so cleverly and compellingly. Do seek it out, if you possibly can – and Gallico has also been favoured with many beautiful covers. The top one is my copy; the other images I’ve tracked down online – aren’t they great?

From the mouths of babes…

StuckinaBook All , 15 Comments

My book group met tonight to discuss Bonjour Tristesse (1954) by Francoise Sagan (as usual, imagine the cedilla), translated from French by Irene Ash. I hadn’t heard of it, or the author (whom I’d wrongly assumed was a man) and so I went away to the internet to find a copy… and when the images came on the screen, I realised that I already owned it. Bonjour Tristesse was one of the 20 short books collected in my Penguin Great Loves boxset – hurrah! Each one comes with its own tagline ‘Love can be —-‘ on the back; this one has ‘Love can be complicated’.


Sagan (not her real name, but we’ll roll with it) was only 18 when Bonjour Tristesse was published, which is rather sickening for those of us who are only just coming to terms with the fact that we won’t ever be infant prodigies. It concerns 17 year old Cecile (imagine the accent) and I must confess my heart sank at this point. I had a horror of it being a female version of The Catcher in the Rye, a novel I thought hugely irritating and very overrated. If I had to sit through the meanderings of a lovesick, self-indulgent teenage girl… well… I’ll read the first paragraph, anyway:

A strange melancholy pervades me to which I hesitate to give the grave and beautiful name of sadness. In the past the idea of sadness always appealed to me, now I am almost ashamed of its complete egoism. I had known boredom, regret, and at times remorse, but never sadness. Today something envelops me like a silken web, enervating and soft, which isolates me.
This was actually quite promising. True, it is dominated by the introspection so beloved and teenagers (and probably everyone else too, only we learn to mask it better once we pass 19… although I was only 21 when I started this blog, so…) but there is a beauty to the expression of worn sentiments; ‘what oft was thought but ne’er so well expressed’ as Pope said of ‘wit’, fulfilling his own criterion.

Sagan continues in similar style throughout. Her constant introspection, and detailed observation of everyone around her, never irked me because the prose was often so beautiful, and the thoughts so striking. But perhaps I should mention the plot, and that complicated love.

Cecile lives with her young widower father Raymond, a hedonistic man with a revolving door of mistresses. They are on a holiday in the South of France with Raymond’s latest mistress, a rather stupid young woman called Elsa; they are all enjoying frivolity and (in Cecile’s case) the throes of a first love – when Anne turns up on the scene. Easily the most skillfully drawn character of the novel, Anne is a friend of Cecile’s late mother, the same sort of age as Raymond, and gently, elegantly insinuates herself into their lives.
When exactly did my father begin to treat Anne with a new familiarity? Was it the day he reproached her for her indifference, while pretending to laugh at it? Or the time he grimly compared her subtlety with Elsa’s semi-imbecility? My peace of mind was based on the stupid idea that they had known each other for fifteen years, and that if they had been going to fall in love, they would have done so earlier. And I thought also that if it had to happen, the affair would last at the most three months, and Anne would be left with her memories and perhaps a slight feeling of humiliation. Yet all the time I knew in my heart that Anne was not a woman who could be lightly abandoned.Cecile doesn’t like the way things are going, and hatches a plot to remove Anne from her life and that of her father. Anne is far from an archetypal wicked stepmother, but Cecile sees her as destroying their extant way of life, and unsettling the equilibrium of a superficial but contented life. Anne is, in fact, a determined, kind, ever-so-very-slightly desperate character; in polished control of herself, but aware that it will not be many years before her chances of settling down dwindle away.


As the narrative continues – how much is packed in! – Cecile gradually has a change of heart, and has to choose between derailing her plan or watching it carry itself out. Sagan’s cleverness is in her unreliable narrator. One starts reading the novel assuming that Cecile’s perspective is accurate, or at least the one that a young author wants us to accept. It becomes clear, however, that Sagan is fully aware of Cecile’s blind-spots and limitations; Raymond, Elsa and especially Anne become distinctive characters outside of the peripheries of Cecile’s flawed judgement. Even while we continue to see events through Cecile’s eyes, the reader can look back upon Cecile and discover her deficiencies and incomplete self-awareness. If Sagan isn’t quite so successful with the male characters (Cecile’s beau Cyril is a one-dimensional besotted fool; Raymond has few hidden depths) then that should not diminish from the clever and sophisticated characters she has created in Cecile and Anne.

Ultimately, this summer is a coming-of-age (how I loathe that phrase, but I can think of no other) for more than just Cecile. Anne and Raymond also change over the course of the summer’s events. Elsa might. Cyril probably does, off-stage, as it were. They all have glimpses of futures they could have, and futures they want to avoid; whether or not they succeed in altering their courses – that’s the path we take with them. Bonjour Tristesse is a rich novella which would bear future re-reading. It would be an impressive work for any author, not simply an eighteen year old – but it is especially sickening that an eighteen year old should achieve it.

Books to get Stuck into:

I Capture the Castle – Dodie Smith: I’ve mentioned it in this section for another review, but it really is the coming-of-age novel par excellence. A lot of similarities with Bonjour Tristesse, albeit rather more amusing and less philosophical.

Brother of the More Famous Jack – Barbara Trapido: another bright young girl, growing up amongst unconventional types, this novel extends the scope beyond a dizzying summer to many years of after-effects.

Just Kidding

StuckinaBook All , , 8 Comments

It’s no secret that I love the Bloomsbury Group reprints – many of which are crowded eagerly on my tbrvvs (to be read very, very soon) shelf – but today I’m going to talk about the only one I hadn’t previously read from the first batch of six. All my reviews of Bloomsbury Group reprints can be read here, and the latest to add to the fold is Wolf Mankowitz’s A Kid For Two Farthings. (Fact fans: Mankowitz was born on the same day I was, albeit sixty-one years earlier.)

It’s the shortest one so far, I think, coming in at 128pp. of fairly big type, and it’s not set in the 1930s domestic world which perhaps defines the series in my mind. Instead, this is 1950s and the East End of London. We see this world through the eyes of Joe, age six. Rather than Lady B., china tea cups, and bring-and-buy sales, we see a boxer desperate to afford an engagement ring for his girl; a poor mother longing to join her husband in Africa; and this sort of scene, picked more or less at random to give a glimpse of Joe’s surroundings:
Near Alf’s stall there was a jellied-eel stand with a big enamel bowl of grey jellied eels, small bowls for portions, a large pile of lumps of bread, and three bottles of vinegar. There was also orange-and-black winkles in little tubs, and large pink whelks. People stood around shaking vinegar on to their eels and scooping them up with bread. A ltitle thin man in a white muffler served them and sometimes dropped a large piece of eel on the ground. Behind the stand a very fat man with a striped apron and an Anthony Eden hat waved a ladle in his hand and shouted, “Best eels, fresh jellied; buy ’em and try ’em.” Over the stand a red, white and blue banner flapped. “The Eel King,” it said. The King himself never served.
What is so wonderful about the setting Mankowitz creates is that it doesn’t fall into one of two familiar traps. It’s not salt-of-the-earth, honest-‘umble-poor (thank you Mr. Dickens and Mrs. Gaskell) nor is it aiming to shock with its gritty realism and the gratuitously unpleasant (thank you Irving Welsh et al). I have never lived in the East End of London in the 1950s, but Mankowitz has – and was born in Spitalfields in 1924. (Incidentally, for a great and incredibly varied blog on Spitalfields, see Spitalfields Life). As such, his portrait in A Kid For Two Farthings is certainly fond, but not saccharine.

And ‘saccharine’ might be a word on the tip of your tongue when you read the first sentence: ‘It was thanks to Mr. Kandinsky that Joe knew a unicorn when he saw one.’ For Joe spots one at the market, and persuades Mr. Kandinsky to help him buy it. What nobody tells Joe, of course, is that his unicorn is simply a slightly deformed kid (i.e. young goat). He’s a six year old, and they don’t disillusion him – which makes him all the more certain that the unicorn’s horn will magically grant his wishes, and those of the people around him. His wishes – naturally – tie in with the everyday romantic troubles, professional anxieties, and recreational competitions that his mother and his neighbours undergo. Gradually everything falls into place…

So there are definitely fairy-tale elements to A Kid For Two Farthings, but it is Mankowitz’s observational humour – always kind, mind, never mocking – and his refusal to deny his characters their flaws, that stop the novella being too sweet. The lives of the characters are too ordinary and empathetic for that. Instead, it is affectionate and affecting – something of a treasure, and one to re-read. It may not have the instant appeal that Joyce Dennys’ Henrietta books had for me, but I can still recognise a gem that I am delighted Bloomsbury chose to reprint.

Books to get Stuck into:

The Harp in the South – Ruth Park : my favourite Australian novel, and one I read before the days of blogging, we’re in 1948 and in a slum on the other side of the world, but again amongst a flawed, realistic, and affecting family and their neighbours. Sometimes humourous, sometimes sad, always captivating.

Speaking of Jane

StuckinaBook All , , 11 Comments

The book I’m talking about tonight is one of those lovely books which just doesn’t seem to be written anymore. I bought it in Colchester as one of my first books under Project 24, and it’s as lovely as it looks and sounds: More Talk of Jane Austen (1950) by Sheila Kaye-Smith and G.B. Stern.

Now, of course, I’ve done things in slightly the wrong order, because I’ve not read Speaking of Jane Austen, the volume preceding this one. Nor, in fact, have I read anything by Kaye-Smith or Stern, though Stern’s A Name to Conjure With has been on my bookshelf for about a decade. But no matter – for anyone who has read Austen’s novels (and it is important that you’ve read all six before opening this book) More Talk of Jane Austen is delicious, self-indulgent fun.

The first chapter is called ‘What is it about Jane Austen?’ I don’t know if the scenario is real or imagined, but the question is posed by Barbara (age 17 and a half) to G.B. Stern, as Barbara’s beloved is mad on Austen: ‘”It’s his thing.” And Barbara added, being a tolerant girl: “Nobody can help their thing.”‘ Of course, the same misconceptions Barbara has are those which fly about nowadays – that she’s for ‘maiden aunts in drawing-rooms’ and so forth. And naturally Stern disabuses her – excuse the lengthy passage, but it’s too lovely not to quote in full. “She’s neither bitty nor boisterous about her people; instead, she has irony, tenderness, clear vision, and most of all a gorgeous sense of their absurdity which is never really exaggerated into more than life-size. You’re absurd, I’m absurd, and so in some way or other are most of the people we meet. She does not have to distort or magnify what they’re like; she just recognises them, delights in them herself, and then re-creates them for our benefit without illusion or grandiloquence, and without any array of special circumstance, of drama, for instance, or horror, or even topical events of the day; luckily for her and for us, to leave them out was natural and not forced for her period, unless you were a gentleman actively involved in war and politics and religion and the struggle for existence; at her period you could be one of an isolated group living in the same country neighbourhood in England, without in any way meriting the reproach of escapism. Escape need have no ‘ism’ when we escape into Jane Austen; and when we have to return there’s no wrench, no jolt, no descent from the aeroplane, no bump back to life with a shock, no subsequent daze and resentment; it’s escape from our reality into her reality, and we can fuse our world with hers which is curiously and essentially ‘unrubbishy’. So there they are, her characters, concentrated for our benefit into a small circle of time and space, deliciously giving themselves away not only in action but by the smallest working of their motives and pre-occupations; absolutely unaware, of course, that anyone is catching them out at it. It’s no crime to be a lover of Jane Austen; but if you aren’t, you can’t understand why we find her so restful, because you’re much too inclined to translate ‘restful’ into ‘soporific’; if we just wanted an author who would send us nicely to sleep, we should not go to Jane Austen; she’s restful from exactly the opposite reason: we’re alert all the time when we’re reading and re-reading and re-re-reading Jane, otherwise we might miss something, some tiny exquisite detail, an almost imperceptible movement in the mind of her characters. Her poise is unassailable; you can trust it, and that’s restful in itself. The same with her judgments; you can trust them, and relax; mind you, to be able to relax wit an author isn’t the same thing again as to say she’s relaxing; the air of Bath is relaxing, but the air of Jane Austen isn’t; she’s pungent, she’s bracing; you’re breathing good air while you read Jane, and so you feel well. Apart from her gorgeous sense of humour, her vision is so fairly and evenly adjusted that you don’t have to get distracted all the time by the author’s own prejudices and neuroses subconsciously creeping in to distort the whole thing, and having to make allowances for environment —“

“Darling, do you think you could stop talking like a handbook on psycho-analysis? Because if it’s just to please me —“

“Dear little girl, I’d forgotten for the moment that you were there.”
That should be required reading for any Jane doubters. In truth, the rest of the book doesn’t really have this tone – it’s not done ‘in conversation with’ anyone. Stern and Kaye-Smith take alternate chapters, and address topics like letters, beauty, servants etc. etc. It is well-researched but not unduly scholarly – More Talk of Jane Austen can only be described as an appreciation. There isn’t a hint of objectivity, nor would I have there be: this is the unashamed indulgence of Janeites keen to delve into every detail of Austen’s novels. Not with the mad (and maddening) conspiracy theories or secret-subtext theories so beloved of Edward Said and his chums, but a simple gleaning of all the details Jane Austen actually put in the novels.

The book never feels over-zealous or superfluous – perhaps it would, were they examining any lesser writer than Austen. Or perhaps, as a Janeite, I cannot see clearly – for I revelled in this delight of a book, and only wonder why such things seem to be so out of fashion. Or, perhaps, they’ve just transferred to the blogosphere?

ETA: after posting this, I saw Rachel’s abundantly lovely Janeite post here – transferred to the blogosphere indeed!

Things to get Stuck into:

Howards End is on the Landing – Susan Hill: unquestionably my favourite book-about-books, even if Jane Austen gets short shrift within these pages (everyone has their faults).

Mrs. Darcy’s Dilemma – Diana Birchall: one must tread carefully when it comes to Austen sequels – but Diana Birchall’s witty and loving sequel is very respectful and an entire delight.

Watch out for The Sea, The Sea…

StuckinaBook All , 12 Comments

Ages ago I piled up a set of books to read on a week-off from studying, and (predictably enough) failed to finish all six. In fact, I’ve only recently finished the fourth of them, so let’s call it an ongoing project…

That book is The Sandcastle by Iris Murdoch, published in 1957 and Murdoch’s third novel. I’ve been meaning to read some Murdoch ever since I saw the phenomenal film Iris back in 2001 or 2002, and have accumulated a few different novels on my shelves – this one coming from the brilliant Amnesty bookshop in Bristol, always worth a trip. Why this one came off the shelf, I’m not quite sure, although my dear friend Lorna has it as one of her favourites on Facebook so perhaps that had stayed in my memory somehow.

For years I used to confuse Iris Murdoch and Ivy Compton-Burnett. Before I’d read either of them, that is – somehow, in my mind, they were similar authors. It was only later, after having read and adored ICB, that I realised the general view was that ICB was difficult to enjoy, and Iris Murdoch was very good but much more accessible. Well, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I wish to disagree. This reader found Iris Murdoch much less accessible than ICB, and – although I could see that The Sandcastle was a good novel, and found certain sections gripping and brilliantly observed, overall I must confess it was… a bit of a slog.

Before I go any further, I must concede practicalities – the font in my copy was tiny, and I did get a headache when reading the novel. Such things ought not fetter learned critics, naturally, but… I am not a learned critic, and I was fettered. Recently I read Images in a Mirror by Sigrid Undset (which I’ll hopefully write about at some point) which had such a large font that I found myself reading the novel far too quickly and not taking in the details – prosaic issues such as font can really affect a reading experience, don’t you think? Is that just me?

But back to the novel in question. The Sandcastle takes place in a boarding school. Mor has taught there for years, and lives on site with his wife Nan and their two children. Murdoch is masterful at the brief incidents or asides which sum up a relationship. Everything you need to know about Mor and Nan’s marriage is presented here: Liffy had been their dog, a golden retriever, who was killed two years ago on the main road. This animal had formed the bond between Mor and Nan which their children had been unable to form. Half unconsciously, whenever Mor wanted to placate his wife he said something about Liffey. To make matters worse, along comes a painter called Rain. Her task is to paint the retiring headmaster Demoyte – ‘As for morality, and such things, Demoyte took the view that if a boy could look after his Latin prose his character would look after itself.’ That sort of man. I love it when authors write about artists – so often they use this to explore the idea of artistic creation… and I find talented painters, especially portraitists, fascinating.
“When you go,” said Demoyte, “you will leave behind a picture of me, whereas what I shall be wanting is a picture of you.”

“Every portrait is a self-portrait,” said Rain. “In portraying you I portray myself.”

“Spiritual nonsense,” said Demoyte. “I want to see your flesh, not your soul.”But Rain’s role is not just as resident painter. As the cracks in Mor and Nan’s marriage become more evident, Mor falls in love with Rain…

And so The Sandcastle unfolds, with this evolving love affair and the various reactions to it. In fact, the novel’s not as sensational as that sounds – a lot of pages meander through emotions and everyday events, rather than drop-a-vase-on-the-floor shocks and surprises.

Something Murdoch does very well, on the strength of this novel anyway, is the big set pieces. The scenes which really stay in the memory. I can think of quite a few sections which are excellently structured, with appropriate climaxes and nuances; pathos and bathos, so on and so forth. A car is edging towards a river and falls in; a boy must be rescued from the tower; Nan finds out about her husband’s affair and can’t stop hiccoughing. These are all brilliant scenes, incredibly well written not simply sentence by sentence, but on a wider, structural level. But – oh yes, but – between the big set pieces, this novel rambles interminably. Perhaps, as I said above, it’s simply the fault of the font… but I found so much of The Sandcastle difficult to wade through. Not that it was badly written as such, indeed she writes conversations about love well (and that is difficult, judging by some books I’ve read) but there are so many pages which felt like a chore. Not much happening, on the level of plot or character. I don’t mind plotless sections – I welcome it – but only if there is something to captivate my attention.

I don’t know about you, but my opinions when reading (and consequently my reviews) are probably more generous to authors of whom I’ve heard nothing. So you might see quite enthusiastic reviews for writers I know won’t enter any sort of canon – doesn’t stop them being good reads, of course, but I lay no claim to them having lasting notoriety. Whereas with Iris Murdoch… I know before picking up the book that she has a great reputation, so I’m expecting more. If she was a complete unknown, I daresay I’d be bowled over by her prose at times, and definitely enthusiastic about those occasional scenes of brilliance. But, without doing down these attributes, I must confess I’d hoped for much more. I’d hoped I’d love Murdoch and rush out to read more – as it is, I’m not sure when I’ll return to Iris.

Do her later novels fulfil the promise which is undoubtedly here? Or does Murdoch always have great scenes with a lot of filler? Fulfil or full of filler – that’s what I need to know before I venture further…

Books to get Stuck into:

The Honours Board – Pamela Hansford Johnson : I haven’t blogged about this novel, but it’s good. Also set in a school, there is a cleverly drawn cast of teachers, assistants, and pupils in a boarding school keen to gain prestige.

Pastors and Masters – Ivy Compton-Burnett : another school setting, and ICB-lite, this novella is a great litmus test to see whether or not you’ll get on with Dame Ivy – as well as an adroit depiction of schoolmaster rivalries.

(P.S. Apologies for the big gap in the middle of this – are any other Blogger users having trouble with puttings pictures in the bottom half of posts?)

The Vet’s Daughter

StuckinaBook All , 9 Comments

Right, then – The Vet’s Daughter by Barbara Comyns. Hopefully you’ve managed to find yourself a copy, and maybe even read it. I’ve already seen one or two reviews cropping up around the blogosphere, but there’s still plenty of time to get involved – let me know if you’ve blogged about The Vet’s Daughter (or even another Comyns novel, if that’s what you could find) and I’ll do a round-up post on Friday or Saturday. Polly (Novel Insights) and Claire (Paperback Reader) are also heading up this informal readalong, so pop over to them this week too.

I’ll hang my colours to the mast from the off, and say that I am a big Comyns fan. You can see my thoughts on four other Comyns novels here, and The Vet’s Daughter is vying for top place at the moment. In a slim novel, an awful lot seems to happen. Alice is the vet’s daughter in question, and starts the novel living with her sickly, scared mother and her unpredictable, violent father. There is little happiness in this depiction of home life, but nor is it a portrait of Dickensian bleakness. Alice’s father refuses to see his wife while she is dying, sells off people’s pets to a vivisectionist instead of putting them down, and has bountiful meals while keeping his family on strict rations. But, though selfish and unkind, he is not barbaric. Comyns knows, despite her often surreal style, that to create a truly cruel character there must be no exaggeration. Alice’s father is not an ogre, and he is all the more evil for it.

The slow dying of Alice’s mother is drawn perfectly – as is her fear, to the last, of causing her husband any annoyance. Once she is gone, she is swiftly replaced by Rosa – a selfish, silly, and bawdy barmaid with plans to use Alice as bait wherever possible. Eventually Alice manages to leave, but the house she moves to (half burnt-out; run by cacklingly insolent servants and occupied by the melancholic mother of a locum vet) is no romanticised escape. Even when a potential suitor comes along, Comyns privileges her surreal version of reality over a fairy-tale ending.

And I haven’t even mentioned the most surreal aspect (though one which feels completely congruous when reading the novel): In the night I was awake and floating. As I went up, the blankets fell to the floor. I could feel nothing below me – and nothing above until I came near the ceiling and it was hard to breathe there. I thought “I mustn’t break the gas glove”. I felt it carefully with my hands, and something very light fell in them, and it was the broken mantle. I kept very still up there because I was afraid of breaking other things in that small crowded room; but quite soon, it seemed, I was gently coming down again. I folded my hands over my chest and kept very straight, and floated down to the couch where I’d been lying. I was not afraid, but very calm and peaceful. In the morning I knew it wasn’t a dream because the blankets were still on the floor and I saw the gas mantle was broken and the chalky powder was still on my hands.
As Barbara Trapido said at a talk I attended the other day, “Some people criticised me for having a character levitate in Juggling, but I just thought – yes, he would levitate.” Something about Barbaras, obviously.

As with all the novels from the first half of Comyns’ writing career (she wrote eight books between 1947-1967, and a further three in the 1980s) the words ‘matter-of-fact’ come to mind. The Vet’s Daughter is told in the first person, and Alice’s naive and ingenuous voice never over-elaborates the cruelties she and her mother suffer. ‘One morning a dreadful thing happened’, for example, is how she introduces the fact that her father has prematurely sent a coffin-maker to measure her mother. This style is a diluted version of the child’s-voice in Sisters By A River, but is still strikingly unlike most novels’ style, and a remarkable gift of Comyns’.

I’m keeping a close eye on my depleting stock of Comyns novels – it will be sad once I’ve reached the end of them – but I know I shall return to The Vet’s Daughter as well as Comyns’ other books. It is a truly remarkable book, and she is a truly remarkable writer. The surreal meets the domestic, and the result is quite extraordinary.