Month: May 2012

National Flash Fiction Day

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As the clock has just ticked past midnight, I’m afraid you’ve just missed National Flash Fiction Day…

If case you don’t know, flash fiction is, essentially, very short fiction.  There’s no accepted definition or stated length, but usually it’s fewer than 1000 words.  And it’s something the internet gets on board with!

My friend and housemate Mel co-runs a British flash fiction site called The Pygmy Giant, and they’ve had a competition in honour of the day, inviting flash fiction with the theme ‘flash’ – and today announced a very worthy winner.  See it here.

I went for the less competitive The Write-In, where every contribution was published.  They had set aside 11am-3pm for people to write flash fiction, inspired by one of the 200 words and phrases which they’d created as prompts.  More info about that here.

The two I chose (and clicking on the prompt takes you to my piece of flash fiction) were ‘The Sun Is Not Our Friend‘ and, for a bit of light relief, ‘The Smell of Warm Bread‘.  It was fun – and, of course, quick!

Do you read any flash fiction?  By virtue of reading my blog post, I’m going to assume that you’re (a) interested in fiction, and (b) not averse to reading things online – but I don’t see flash fiction mentioned much in the literary blogosphere.  I hardly ever read it myself – perhaps because I steer fairly clear of modern fiction altogether, but maybe there are other reasons too.  Over to you – do you write it or read it?  What is your opinion of it all?  Or had you simply never heard of it before?

The Outsider – Albert Camus

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Somehow, through some sort of mental osmosis, I find that most avid readers know the broad outline of classics long before they’ve read them.  I certainly found this with Rebecca, To Kill A Mockingbird, Jane Eyre etc.  The simple explanation, of course, is that conversations, articles, blog posts and films have, over the years, given us this foreknowledge.  So it is something of a rare joy to read a classic without any prior understanding of the contents.  That was the experience I had with Albert Camus’s The Outsider (1942), translated by Joseph Laredo.  (Laredo, apparently, opted to translate L’Etranger as The Outsider rather than The Stranger, under which title the first English translation appeared.)  My striking copy was kindly given to me by the Folio Society.

My experience with French literature – always in translation – has been mixed.  I have found some of it rather too philosophical for my liking, and there is always the spectre of ghastly French theorists I have tried, and failed, to understand.  The title didn’t encourage me – I thought it might be very existentialist or, worse, in the whiney and disaffected Holden Caulfield school of writing.  It was thus rather a delight to find The Outsider more in the mould of the detached, straightforward English novelists I love – Spark, Comyns – but perhaps most of all like my beloved Scandinavian writer Tove Jansson.  A lot of that style is due to the protagonist – Meursault – and the first-person presentation of his life.  Meursault sees the world through a haze of emotionless indifference.  He is not cruel or unkind, he is simply emotionless.  Actually, that’s not quite true.  He feels things to a moderate amount – the novel opens with his mother’s death, and the most he can muster up is that  he would rather it hadn’t happened.  His honesty is unintentionally brutal…

That evening, Marie came round for me and asked me if I wanted to marry her.  I said I didn’t mind and we could do it if she wanted to.  She then wanted to know if I loved her.  I replied as I had done once already, that it didn’t mean anything but that I probably didn’t.  “Why marry me then?” she said.  I explained to her that it really didn’t matter and that if she wanted to, we could get married.  Anyway, she was the one who was asking me and I was simply saying yes.  She then remarked that marriage was a serious matter.  I said, “No.”  She didn’t say anything for a moment and looked at me in silence.  Then she spoke.  She just wanted to know if I’d have accepted the same proposal if it had come from another woman, with whom I had a similar friendship.  I said, “Naturally.”
When I thought that The Outsider would be simply a very well-written character portrait – an unusual and unsettling pair of eyes through which to view the world – things become more complicated.  In case others of you have the same lack of foreknowledge I had, I won’t give away the details – but the second half of the novel (novella? It’s only 100pp.) concerns a court case…

Albert Camus writes in his Afterword that the defining characteristic of Meursault (which is obvious early in the story) is that ‘he refuses to lie.  Lying is not only saying what isn’t true.  It is also, in fact especially, saying more than is true and, in the case of the human heart, saying more than one feels.’  Meursault cannot lie; he cannot exaggerate the emotions he feels – and he feels them to a lesser degree than most.  The fallout from this honesty is slightly surreal, but at the same time entirely possible within the narrative.  It’s a brilliant piece of writing, and a brilliant outworking of an idea.  So, perhaps, like many of the French novels I couldn’t quite enjoy, Camus’s is concerned with ideas and philosophies – but he prioritises the execution of a believable, complex, and consistent character, and that is the triumph of this exceptional book.

At Mrs. Lippincote’s – Elizabeth Taylor

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I intended to read At Mrs. Lippincote’s (1945) back in January, in its rightful place for Elizabeth Taylor Centenary year, but somehow it didn’t happen… and then I went to a wonderful Celebration of Elizabeth Taylor in Reading, and one of the book groups was discussing this title.  I would have written about the day in Reading properly (where I got to meet lots of lovely ladies from the LibraryThing Virago group) but it happened just before Muriel Spark Reading Week, so I had other things to take blog prominence!

Well, better late than never – I’ll give you my thoughts on At Mrs. Lippincote’s.  The short review is that this is my favourite, of the five or six Elizabeth Taylor novels I’ve read.  My usual confusion over characters didn’t occur, and I didn’t even have that tiny this-feels-like-homework response I sometimes get with Taylor.  Instead, I just enjoyed her beautiful writing and intriguing characters, and only had one misgiving – which I’ll come to later.

The Mrs. Lippincote of the title has gone to a residency not unlike Mrs. Palfrey’s at the Claremont, and has let her house to Roddy Davenant (an RAF airman) and his wife Julia, for the duration of the war.  The idea of living in somebody else’s house is a very rich vein for a novelist, and it is mined (can one mine a vein?) beautifully by Taylor.  Mrs. Lippincote is very present through her absence, and the constant possibility of her visitation and judgement.  All her possessions are still in the house, and Julia makes her home amongst them, treading the line between running her family’s home and living in a stranger’s house.  She looks at an old photo of Mrs. Lippincote’s family at an elaborate wedding:

“And now it’s all finished,” Julia thought.  “They had that lovely day and the soup tureen and meat dishes, servants with frills and streamers, children.  They set out that day as if they were laying the foundations of something.  But it was only something which perished very quickly, the children scattered, the tureen draped with cobwebs, and now the widow, the bride, perhaps at this moment unfolding her napkin alone at a table in a small private hotel down the road.”
While Taylor is great at delving into characters and relationships over the course of a novel, she is also fantastic at painting complete portraits with a few imaginative details.  A bit like synedochal snapshots of people’s lives.

Roddy’s cousin Eleanor is also living with them, and anybody who has read Rebecca West’s excellent novella The Return of the Soldier will be familiar with the dynamic of the wife/husband/husband’s cousin.  (It is a cousin in The Return of the Soldier too, isn’t it?)  Eleanor, indeed, does think that she would make a better wife for Roddy – and she is probably right.  Roddy and Eleanor aren’t on the same wavelength – neither are the ‘bad guy’, but our sympathies are definitely with Julia, who is a wonderful character.

I would be confident that you’d all love Julia, or at least empathise with her, but I’ve just reminded myself of Claire’s review: ‘Julia is an odd character and certainly not a very likeable one.”  Re-reading her post, I’m starting to change my mind a bit… but I’ll stick to my guns and explain why I did love Julia.  She is intelligent and artistic, coping with the dissatisfactions of her life with stoicism and wit.  She hasn’t been handed the home or husband that she would ideally choose, but makes the best of the situation she is in – as well as being sensitive and thoughtful about the wider conditions of the country.  When talking to the Wing Commander (Roddy’s boss), she argues the point for education for his daughter Felicity:

“They will try to stuff her head with Virgil and Pliny and Greek Irregular Verbs.”

“All Greek verbs are irregular,” Julia murmured.

“I think it nonsense.  What use will it be to her when she leaves school?  Will it cook her husband’s dinner?”

“No, it won’t do that, but it will help her to endure doing it, perhaps.  If she is to cook while she is at school, then there will be that thing less for her to learn when she’s grown-up: but, if she isn’t to learn Greek at school, then she will never learn it afterwards.  And learning Greek at school is like storing honey against the winter.”

“But what use is it?” he persisted.

“Men can be educated; women must be trained,” she said sorrowfully.
A little heavy-handed perhaps, but a point worth making – and, incidentally, a battle subsequently won (although neither girls nor boys are likely to study Greek irregular verbs now… at least not at the sort of school I attended.)  The Wing Commander is another really intriguing character.  He has all the firmness and professionalism you’d expect of a Wing Commander, but also a literary side which baffles Roddy.  He’s a bit awkward with children, but manages to engage Oliver Davenant in a discussion about the Brontes – a theme which runs throughout the novel, potential mad-woman-in-the-attic and everything.  Oh, I’ve not mentioned Oliver before, have I?  He is Julia’s ten year old son, and which of us could fail to greet a fellow bibliophile?

Oliver Davenant did not merely read books.  He snuffed them up, took breaths of them into his lungs, filled his eyes with the sight of the print and his head with the sound of words.  Some emanation from the book itself poured into his bones, as if he were absorbing steady sunshine.  The pages had personality.  He was of the kind who cannot have a horrifying book in the room at night.  He would, in fine weather, lay it upon an outside sill and close the window.  Often Julia would see a book lying on his doormat.
He is incredibly sensitive and fairly weak, in a determined-invalid sort of way, but his friendship with Felicity is more or less the only straightforward one in the novel.  Which brings me onto my sticking point with At Mrs. Lippincote’s – the ending, which I shan’t spoil, is a crisis between two characters which comes rather out of the blue, and doesn’t feel very consistent with the rest of the narrative.  At Mrs. Lippincote’s, like all the Taylor novels I’ve read, is more concerned with characters than plot – nothing hugely unbalancing occurs, and the focus is upon the way people live together and communicate.  Until the end, which feels a bit as though Taylor wasn’t sure how to conclude a novel, and decided, unfortunately, to end with a bang.

I shall take a leaf out of her book (not literally, that would be vandalism) and end in a manner which I usually do not – with a quotation.  At Mrs. Lippincote’s is thoughtful, clever, and perceptive, but it’s also often very witty – and I’ll finish with a quotation which amused me.

Eleanor, whom he [Oliver] did not really like, set sums for him every morning and corrected them when she came home for tea.  Occasionally, he had a right answer, in much the same manner as when one backs horses a great deal, now and the one of them comes in for a place.
(See all the Elizabeth Taylor Centenary Celebration reviews for this title here.)

Song for a Sunday

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I re-watched the film Nine a couple of days ago.  It got middling-to-poor reviews, and it’s true that the storytelling isn’t great, but the cast certainly is.  Unbelievably, in a film starring two of my favourites – Dame Judi Dench (showing how great she looks with a flapper bob) and Nicole Kidman – it was Marion Cotillard who stole the show.  That woman is simply brilliant.  And she sings what is easily my favourite song from the film: My Husband Makes Movies.  I love it so much that I can cope with the word ‘movie’ for once.  Here she is:

Two competitions…

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I’ve turned over the Weekend Miscellany to competitions – one of which could win you all sorts of bookish goodies from Glasses Direct, and the other of which could see you choosing Hesperus Press‘s next reprint.  On with the show…

I’m copying and pasting the Glasses Direct competition:

1.) To celebrate Glasses Direct’s new blog, the online prescription glasses retailer has launched the GD Book Worm Club, an online competition that encourages book readers, whether avid or occasional, to post their reviews so that others can read up on their recommendations on a plethora of reads. Whether it be a good old paperback, a Kindle or Kobo, Glasses Direct want glasses wearers to join the GD Book Worm Club.
Each month, GD Book Worms can submit their reviews on a book they’ve read, which will then be posted onto the Glasses Direct blog. Whichever review gets the most happy comments wins that months star review.

Each monthly winner will receive a star prize, as well as a pair of glasses. For April, the winner will receive a Kindle Touch, a pair of Element or London Retro frames with their prescription and one of the Spring Summer 2012 goody bags* from the glasses e-tailer’s press event, held at The Soho Hotel this April.
Email your entries to: gdwin(at)glassesdirect(dot)com
And don’t forget to include a picture of yourself with the book! (If you’re camera shy, just the book will do but we’d rather see your lovely faces)

*Goody Bag Contents:
1 pair of designer sunglasses (Chloe, Serengeti, Marc Jacobs, Armani etc)
Handmade speccy cookie from Love Birds
A gift voucher for a pair of Element or London Retro specs.
Spectacle necklace
Retro sweets (no reason, but who doesn’t love sweets?)
Eco-concious cotton lunch bag
London Retro/Element USB stick.

2.) I spotted a great post on Lyn’s blog, giving the opportunity for readers to choose the next Hesperus Press classic title.  I hadn’t seen or heard anything from Hesperus for years, and was rather worried that they’d disappeared, but I’m delighted that that isn’t the case.  Before themed blog weeks really existed, I ran an I Love Hesperus week – gosh, years and years ago – what fun it was!

To celebrate their 10th anniversary, they’re looking for 500 word submissions suggesting out of print classics (usually pretty short – 100-200 pages) that they could reprint, and why.  The deadline is 1st June, and the book would come out in September – more info here.  The 500 words will form the introduction for the winning book.

Their books are always so beautifully produced, as well as having great contents.  You can read all my Hesperus reviews here, and start wracking your brains!

Books I Borrowed…

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There are a few books I’ve borrowed from friends and libraries which have now been returned, and so I’m going to give each one a paragraph or two, instead of a proper review.  Partly so I can include them on my Century of Books list, but partly because it’s fun to do things differently sometimes.  Of course, it’s entirely possible that I’ll get carried away, and write far too much… well, here are the four books, in date order.  Apologies for the accidental misquotation in the sketch today… I only noticed afterwards!

Canon in Residence – V.L. Whitechurch (1904)
This was surprisingly brilliant. Rev. John Smith on a continental holiday encounters a stranger who tells him that he’d see more of human life if he adopted layman’s clothes.  Smith thinks the advice somewhat silly, but has no choice – as, during the night, the stranger swaps their outfits.  Smith goes through the rest of his holiday in somewhat garish clothing, meeting one of those ebullient, witty girls with which Edwardian novels abound.  A letter arrives telling him that he has been made canon of a cathedral town – where this girl also lives (of course!)  He makes good his escape, and hopes she won’t recognise him…

Once in his position as canon, Smith’s new outlook on life leads to a somewhat socialist theology – improving housing for the poor, and other similar principles which are definitely Biblical, but not approved of by the gossiping, snobbish inhabitants of the Cathedral Close.  As a Christian and the son of a vicar, I found this novel fascinating (you can tell that Whitechurch was himself a vicar) but I don’t think one would need to have faith to love this.  It’s very funny as well as sensitive and thoughtful; John Smith is a very endearing hero.  It all felt very relevant for 2012.  And there’s even a bit of a criminal court case towards the end.

Three Marriages – E.M. Delafield (1939)
Delafield collects together three novellas, each telling the tale of a courtship and marriage, showing how things change across years: they are set in 1857, 1897, and 1937.  Each deals with people who fall in love too late, once they (or their loved one) has already got married to somebody else.  The surrounding issues are all pertinent to their respective periods.  In 1897, and ‘Girl-of-the-Period’, Violet Cumberledge believes herself to be a New Woman who is entirely above anything so sentimental as emotional attachments – and, of course, realises too late that she is wrnog.  In 1937 (‘We Meant To Be Happy’) Cathleen Christmas marries the first man who asks, because she fears becoming one of so many ‘surplus women’ – only later she falls in love with the doctor.  But the most interesting story is the first – ‘The Marriage of Rose Barlow’.  It’s rather brilliant, and completely unexpected from the pen of Delafield.  Rose Barlow is very young when she is betrothed to her much older cousin – the opening line of the novel is, to paraphrase without a copy to hand, ‘The night before her wedding, Rose Barlow put her dolls to bed as she always had done.’  Once married, they go off to India together.   If you know a lot more about the history of India than I do, then the date 1857 might have alerted you to the main event of the novella – the Sepoy Rebellion.  A fairly calm tale of unequal marriage becomes a very dramatic, even gory, narrative about trying to escape a massacre.  A million miles from what I’d expect from Delafield – but incredibly well written and compelling.

Miss Plum and Miss Penny – Dorothy Evelyn Smith (1959)
Miss Penny, a genteel spinster living with her cook/companion Ada, encounters Miss Plum in the act of (supposedly) attempting suicide in a duckpond.  Miss Penny ‘rescues’ Miss Plum and invites her into her home. (Pronouns are tricky; I assume you can work out what I mean.)  It looks rather as though Miss Plum might have her own devious motives for these actions… but I found the characters very inconsistent, and the plot rather scattergun.  There are three men circling these women, whose intentions and affections vary a fair bit; there are some terribly cringe-worthy, unrealistic scenes of a vicar trying to get closer to his teenage son. It was a fun read, and not badly written, but Dorothy Evelyn Smith doesn’t seem to have put much effort into organising narrative arcs or creating any sort of continuity.  But diverting enough, and certainly worth an uncritical read.

The Shooting Party – Isabel Colegate (1980)
Oh dear.  Like a lot of people, I suspect, I rushed out to borrow a copy of The Shooting Party after reading Rachel’s incredibly enthusiastic review.  Go and check it out for details of the premise and plot.  I shall just say that, sadly, I found it rather ho-hum… perhaps even a little boring.  The characters all seemed too similar to me, and I didn’t much care what happened.  Even though it’s a short novel, it dragged for me, and the climax was, erm, anti-climactic.  Perhaps my expectations were too high, or perhaps my tolerance for historical novels (albeit looking back only sixty or seventy years) is too low.  Sorry, Rachel!

Somerset: The Books

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Whilst down here in Somerset, I have been mostly adoring the cat, but also jaunting off to various places – including, yesterday, sunny Lyme Regis…

…and whilst out and about I have, of course, been buying some books.  Being the gent that I am, I thought I’d share my spoils with you – asking the usual questions: have you read them, and what do you think?

Letters – Sylvia Townsend Warner
I had a copy out of the library, but I was pleased to find one myself, for the chapter of my thesis I’m currently writing.

Look Back With Gratitude – Dodie Smith
You might remember that I loved Dodie Smith’s first volume of autobiography, so I was excited to see another volume – and risked life and limb to rescue it from a teetering pile on top of a bookcase.

The White/Garnett Letters – David Garnett and T.H. White
And this will be useful for my final chapter, which includes sections on David Garnett’s Lady into Fox!  Our Vicar was pleased that some of my purchases could be considered work-related.

Love in the Sun – Leo Walmsley
Ever since Jane/Fleur Fisher raved about this, I’ve been hoping to stumble across a copy.  Thanks, Lyme Regis!

Journey to Paradise – Dorothy Richardson
I’m rather too scared to try Richardon’s endless Pilgrimage series, but I thought this collection of short stories and autobiographical pieces might be a good way in.

Gone To Earth – Mary Webb
I read somewhere that this helped inspire Lady into Fox, and have been hoping to find a copy.  This trip has unearthed (ahem) a lot of titles I’ve had on my mental wishlist!

Injury Time – Beryl Bainbridge
An Awfully Big Adventure – Beryl Bainbridge
I’m all ready for Beryl Bainbridge Reading Week, now!  Are you?

The Hand of Mary Constable  – Paul Gallico
This looks like Gallico in surreal/psychological mode, which is how I like him…

Somewhere Towards The End – Diana Athill
This brings my Athill autobiographical volumes to three, without having read any of them… but this is the one which appeals most.

Woman in a Lampshade – Elizabeth Jolley
Short stories by another author I’m stockpiling without yet reading!

Non-Combatants and Others -Rose Macaulay
Love me some Dame Rose, and didn’t have this title yet.

To Margaret, From Pat

This is something a bit different – probably valueless, but once I’d seen it, I couldn’t leave it behind.  It’s a handwritten collection of excerpts and poems, clearly given as a romantic gift from Pat to Margaret.  It’s not dated, but based on the poems included, it’s post-1940; based on the handwriting, I don’t think it’s much after.  How lovely!

More Women Than Men – Ivy Compton-Burnett

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When I wrote about Pamela Hansford Johnson’s pamphlet on Ivy Compton-Burnett, I mentioned that it had made me keen to read more of my beloved Dame Ivy’s work soon.  It didn’t take me long – at Easter I delved through my collection of Ivy Compton-Burnett novels to find one to fill a gap in A Century of Books, and opted (because I love its dryly prosaic title) for More Women Than Men (1933).

If I dared, I would try an Ivy Compton-Burnett Reading Week, but I don’t think it work – partly because people often seem intimidated by her, but also because it’s no secret that Ivy Compton-Burnett’s novels are all similar in tone and title.  It’s difficult to differentiate Mother and Son from Daughters and Sons; Parents and Children from Elders and Betters; A Family and a Fortune from A Father and his Fate, etc. etc.  The previous owner of my copy of More Women Than Men obviously had the same issues, for she has noted down a little list on the first page:

1933
Girls’ school
Mrs Napier
Felix Bacon.

Well, anonymous (and probably deceased) owner of my book, you have organised my thoughts for me.  More Women Than Men does, indeed, take place in a girls’ school – which is unusual for Ivy Compton-Burnett, who usually sets her novels in sprawling families with nine or so children.  I initially thought that she would just transfer this dynamic to the hierarchies and alliances of pupils and teachers, but in actual fact none of the girls say anything at all in the novel.  Rather, we watch the headmistress, Josephine Napier, rule over family and staff with a firmness which doesn’t repress the verbal dalliances of those around her, but which does render them powerless in the face of her unflappable logic.  People love to chop logic in Ivy Compton-Burnett’s novels – and I love reading them do it.  Truisms are interrogated; the polite shorthand tricks of conversation are exposed as evasions, and analysed to death.  None of it is very natural, it is definitely stylised – but deliciously so.

“I feel a little conscious of my appearance,” said Felix, coming up to the group.  “Perhaps it is being one of the few people who can wear formal clothes.”

His speech was met by incredulous mirth, his hearers keeping their eyes on his face, in case of further entertainment.

“Well, I hope that no one will be conscious of mine,” said Josephine.  “It is not my habit to be aware of it; but when I am oblivious, it may be hitting other people in the eye.  I got into the garment in time, but I admit it does not add to the occasion.”

“People always seem to think admission alter things,” said Helen, “when it really rather helps to establish them.”I’m running ahead of myself, as usual, since I haven’t explained who these people are.  

Apologies if the following run-through is confusing – there are always a lot of characters in Ivy Compton-Burnett’s novels, often with complex interrelations.  More Women Than Men starts with Josephine greeting her all-female staff back after the school holidays.  Helen is a new staff member, and the others are returning – none of these are pivotal to the plot, for the majority of the novel, but each is rather wonderful to read about.  Miss Munday is large, vapid, and doleful; Miss Luke is grateful and ignored; Mrs. Chattaway is one of the few who has been married (now widowed):

Mrs. Chattaway seldom referred to her wedded life, and her companions, in spite of their sincere deprecation of the married state, assigned her reticence to her sense of loss; whereas the truth was, as they might consistently have guessed, that the memory was uncongenial.

Josephine herself is married to Simon, who fades into the background – not so much browbeaten as so wholly in her shadow as to be rendered free of personality.  They have an adopted son, Gabriel, who is in fact Josephine’s nephew – he is in his early twenties, but still living at home, rather uselessly.  Josephine’s brother Jonathan (Gabriel’s father) taught pupils independently, until the last one stayed with him for 22 years.  This last one is Felix Bacon, who (joining together disparate groups) becomes the drawing master at Josephine’s school.  There are plenty of amusing conversations where Felix defends the idea of a man teaching girls to pupils’ fathers who think the job beneath him.  (I should add that More Women Than Men, like maybe of Dame Ivy’s novels, is set in a vaguely Edwardian period.)  And then there is the change of dynamic when a man is introduced to the all-female staff…

“You will find that not much gossip is done here,” said Josephine, smiling as if in spite of herself.

“I suppose it hardly could be in a common room.”

“Either there or elsewhere.”

“And in a community of women!  I am glad I am seeing life for myself, as all the theories about it are untrue.  Now I see that you are dismissing me with a look.  Of course you are one of those people whose glance is obeyed.”

Josephine initially appears to be the paragon of diligence and kindness – a rather dominant and detached paragon, one whose glance is indeed obeyed, but a paragon nonetheless.  It becomes apparent, however, that she is ruthlessly manipulative – and yet she is far more complex than those words suggest.  Her love for husband and adopted son is deeply genuine, but it is coupled with her immovable sense of justice, and the love she demands in return.  She puts up a great deal of resistance when Gabriel becomes engaged to Ruth, the daughter of Elizabeth, an old acquaintance of Josephine and Simon Napier whose reappearance causes quite a stir earlier in the novel.

“In that case you will be grateful to Ruth, Josephine,” said Gabriel, coming nearer with a stumble, to avoid lifting his head.  “She is giving me a happiness greater than I had conceived.”

“Then it must be on a generous scale indeed, indulged boy,” said Josephine, her tone out of accordance with the change in her eyes.  “Let us hear about it before I resume my labours.  Come to the point, and enunciate some demand of youth.”

“It is the demand that I was bound to make one day.  It is naturally often a demand of youth.  This breaking up of our life seemed to the best time to make it.  The lesser change must count less at the time of the greater.  I make the demand with confidence, having been taught, as you will say, to make demands.  I have said enough for you to understand me?”

“No,” said Josephine, in a quiet, conversational tone; “I don’t think so.  You have not said anything definite, have you?”

There are almost never histrionics in an Ivy Compton-Burnett novel.  Whatever their emotions may be, characters are far more likely to react by calmly picking apart their antagonist’s sentence than hysterically screaming in their face.  These verbal gymnastics are not true to life, but they raise tension far more effectively (and originally) than a few outbursts could achieve.
did you really think that Sherpa wouldn’t find her way into this post?

 

The interconnections, misalliances, grievances, dependencies and loyalties between characters in More Women Than Men would be impossible to explain in a mere blog post.  Although the dialogue is undeniably stylised, there are complex and believable relationships throughout the novel – an aspect of Ivy Compton-Burnett’s writing which is seldom applauded.  A discussion of whether or not her novels are realistic would be fascinating – because ‘realistic’ has so many facets and definitions.  Would people talk like this?  No, definitely not.  Would people act like this?  Probably no.   But would people feel like these characters feel?  Yes – absolutely – and it is Ivy Compton-Burnett’s genius that she can interweave the genuine and the bizarre.
It is not true, either, that nothing happens in Ivy Compton-Burnett novels.  In fact, More Women Than Men contains one of the most ingenious murders ever – done by exposing a ill person to a draught.  A spoiler, yes, but the reason that Compton-Burnett’s novels have the reputation of nothing happening is that the plot, as such, doesn’t really matter.  It’s the way things happen, and the way she writes.  Oh! the way she writes!  I adore it.  Settling down to her aphorisms and linguistic somersaults is a joy – because they are not simply clever, but hilarious.

 

Of the six Ivy Compton-Burnett novels I’ve now read, this is perhaps my favourite.  Others have had sections where they dragged, but this one never did.  It’s not the easiest of her novels to find, but definitely worth hunting down – I’m hoping that my enthusiasm will lead to one or two Ivy Compton-Burnett converts, or at least encourage some more readers to give her a go.  You’ll love or loathe – and, if you love, you’ll never look back.

Happy Birthday Sherpa!

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Continuing a theme of my time at home, somewhat, you can wish Sherpa a very Happy 2nd Birthday!  She’s marginally less silly than when she as a little kitten, and falls off things less, but it would still be a stretch to call her intelligent.  She is, however, very active – being athletic and stupid, she doesn’t fit in particularly with the family Thomas… but we love her to bits.  I can’t find her at the mo (she loves hiding) so here’s an old picture.

To drag this back to books, here’s a little game.  Can you subtly alter (with puns, please) book titles to make them feline friendly?  I’m thinking A Tail of Two Kitties, but wittier…  The best one gets Sherpa’s purr of approval.