Dolly Parton is one of those singers who is so prolific that it’s a bit daunting to know where to start. Yes, we all know and love ‘9 to 5’, ‘Jolene’, etc. – but there are albums and albums that I know very little about. But I was going through some of them on Spotify recently, and fell in love with ‘Jesus and Gravity’ – so that’s my Song for a Sunday today.
Another very busy weekend for me, off to Bristol and then playing the organ in our local church again on Sunday (despite, yes, not really knowing how to play the organ properly) – but I can leave you with a book, a link, and a blog post.
1.) The link – is not an easy read, but as the first anniversary of the fascist rally and murder in Charlottesville comes around, this oral history from the BBC is worth reading.
2.) The blog post – Darlene has written about the letters of Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West so winningly that I *really* hope I have them somewhere, as I suspect I do. I would hardly be me if I did not.
3.) The book – did you know that a novelisation of Shirley Jackson’s life existed? Or, rather, a made-up event using her real life as the surrounding, I think… It’s soon to be turned into a film, but the original 2014 book is Shirley by Susan Scarf Merrell and I’m very intrigued… anybody read it?
I’ve seen the Six Degrees of Separation meme going around a bit, and have been waiting until I spotted it starting with a book I’ve read. If you’re not familiar with it, there are guidelines over at Books Are My Favourite And Best – but, essentially, you start with one book and keep linking to another and see where you end up!
Atonement by Ian McEwan
I read this novel in about 2003 – my first McEwan, and one of my first “modern novels”. Still not a category I know an awful lot about, but I was struck years later by how similar the tale of a childhood action causing a person lasting confusion and regret was to…
Virginia by Jens Christian Grondahl
This short novel is about how a man fears he may have accidentally betrayed someone to the Nazis in his youth, and how haunted he continues to be about it. It’s brilliant. It’s one of the few Virginia books on my shelves that has nothing to do with Woolf, but… well, it obviously made me think of Woolf. But rather than go to one of her novels, let’s look at one which subtly puts her in the title…
Vanessa and Her Sister by Priya Parmar
Vanessa is Vanessa Bell and ‘Her Sister’ is Virginia Woolf. Framed through imagined recollections and letters, Parmar portrays the Bloomsbury Group rather well in her novel that puts the lesser-known sister in centre stage. I do rather love novels about closeness between two women – such as…
One of her quieter novels, this looks at two women who share a remote island – closely based on Jansson and her partner. It has Jansson’s trademark insightfulness and subtle poignancy – even more subtle than other of her books. And she writes rather wonderfully about the character of the sea too. And while we’re at the seaside, let’s take a trip to…
A Fortnight in September by R.C. Sherriff
This Persephone novel about a family holiday to the seaside somehow has all the ingredients of the perfect Persephone novel – extremely readable and relatable, but also funny, moving, unexpected. It’s a joy with a rough edge. And, as a novel about a holiday with a month in the title, it naturally led me to…
The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim
Her most charm-full novel, this depicts a group of women who try to escape their lives and unhappinesses by going away for a month to Italy, sharing a beautiful house and garden. At first, they don’t get on – but soon Italy and the atmosphere starts to work its magic…
That was fun! I look forward to joining in further months of this meme.
It’s #InternationalCatDay! Some of us would say that every day is cat day, but apparently they get one in particular to celebrate themselves. And it reminded me about Five From the Archive, which I did a lot in 2012, once in 2015, and never again. Until now! It’s a fun way to delve through the blog review archives and find links between books. You can see all the previous books I wrote about in the index – and, now that I’ve remember it, it might become a regular feature again. And you’ll have to forgive where the quote formatting of old reviews went awry…
Usually I only tried to include books I really love, but it turns out I haven’t read that many books about cats – so some of these aren’t my faves, but consider it an opportunity for you to tell me better ones to try!
(And do feel free to use the Five From the Archive idea and image for anything at all you fancy, if you like.)
1.) The Fur Person (1957) by May Sarton
In short: Tom ‘Terrible’ Jones is on the look out for a permanent house to live in, and tries various potential owners (or people to own) before he lands on the correct house. He is a very realistic depiction of a selfish, pragmatic, and entirely lovable cat.
From the review: “the movements of tail and paws, the stretching, the staring and waiting – everything it described with such precision and accuracy that any cat-lover (particularly those of us who love cats but don’t live with any) will thrill to the reading experience.”
2.) The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide (2001)
In short: A couple in their 30s find their lives and their relationship revitalised by the appearance of a visiting cat – though the novella is nowhere near as fey as that sounds!
From the review: “it is Hiraide’s writing that makes The Guest Cat the mini masterpiece that it undoubtedly is. You get the feeling that he could have turned his pen to any topic under the sun and achieved something equally poignant.”
3.) Jennie (1950) by Paul Gallico
In short: A little boy is transformed into a cat, and has to learn how to live as one by the teachings of Jennie – whose mantra is “if in doubt, wash”.
From the review: “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.”
4.) Merry Hall (1951) by Beverley Nichols
In short: Not really about cats, but One and Four are such well-described presences in this book about doing up a house and garden that I think it counts. (I have his cat-focused books waiting on my shelves.)
From the review: “One is Siamese and Four is a black cat, and he writes beautifully about their character and mannerisms, with every bit of the devotion that cats deserve. They weave in and out of the narrative, and won my heart completely.”
5.) Dewey: the small-town library cat who touched the world (2008) by Vicki Myron
In short: This non-fiction book is dreadful, but hilariously dreadful, about a cat who lives in a library.
From the review: “Chapters can generally be divided into two camps: those which relate incidents of no notable interest, and those which relate incidents which couldn’t possibly have happened.”
I’d seen a few friends (and strangers) on Twitter and Facebook talk about Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race (2017) by Reni Eddo-Lodge, and was very keen to read it myself. When it came out in paperback, I snapped up a copy and read it quickly – and it’s extremely good. I heartily recommend it – particularly to any white people who don’t think that white privilege is a thing. The main problem with this book, of course, is that the people who most need to read it almost certainly won’t. (Not that I didn’t need to read it – but I didn’t need convincing on most of what she wrote.)
The title comes from a blog post Eddo-Lodge wrote a few years ago – about why she was so sick of defensive white people refusing to listen to conversations about race, and how she was giving up on trying to help them understand. It’s an ironic title, of course, because this book is exactly her talking to white people about race – thank goodness. I had thought it might be more memoir-based, and there are certainly elements of her story, but what kicks us off is a chapter (‘Histories’) which is entirely objective. It’s about the history of racial oppression and the civil rights movement – in the UK. Even here, we hear a lot, lot more about the civil rights movement in the US, or South Africa, than we do about our own country. There is a common belief that class is the British inequality issue, and that race is broadly fine. Well, as Eddo-Lodge demonstrates thoroughly and yet concisely, this is not, and has never been, the case. She condenses enormous amounts of research very well, making this history section very accessible.
The rest of the book looks more at the lived experience of being a black person in the UK – and specifically a black woman – and explains how racism works in action. It is not, she writes, simply abuse shouted in the street or people consciously refusing to hire a black person (though it does include this); it is embedded in the systems that make up many facets of our society. White privilege (as she explains so patiently and well) is not saying that all white people are rich or have all opportunities dropped at their feet – it is an absence of the barriers and assumptions that people of other ethnicities face. As a white man, for instance, I have never had to worry if my race or gender will be held against me when I apply for a job, drive my car, go into a shop, or simply walk down the street. I have never had to feel that I am the de facto spokesperson for my race, or that I will be judged by what some other white man has said or done. I even have the privilege that I can decide when I want to engage in conversations and thoughts about racial equality. All of this is to say – it’s extremely easy to ignore or be ignorant of my white privilege, and it is only by engaging properly with books like Eddo-Lodge’s that I can fully recognise what it means. As a white person, my role here is to listen to other experiences and to listen to an explanation of the invisible frameworks of my life and my society – only visible if you are excluded from them.
Eddo-Lodge is an excellent writer and (praise be for popular non-fiction!) includes proper referencing – why is this so often absent? It leads one off in all sorts of other directions to explore. She also allows people with opposing views to have their say, even the bizarre and offensive Nick Griffin. I do wonder whether people like him need more air time, but she notes that the UK’s defamation laws could land her in hot water if she doesn’t give him a chance to air his thoughts.
Later chapters look specifically at feminism and class. The former I found particularly interesting – around the ways in which feminist movements have often been predominantly about white women, and how some white women have been reluctant to acknowledge that, though marginalised in one part of their identity (gender), they have privilege in another (race). She did lose points in my eyes by using the term “anti-choice” – nobody is ever anti-choice, or anti-life for that matter – and I would have liked a bit more interrogation around some more rational objections, like the abundance of theory-based rhetoric in what should be an accessible movement. But these are relatively small objections.
The afterword – a bonus of the paperback edition – looks at how people have responded to the book. Spoilers: people at book events tended to have a lot of opinions without having read the book.
I do realise the irony of saying how important it is that white people listen and try to understand while not quoting directly from the book at all. Sorry, Reni, I’m writing the review without a copy in front of me. But I heartily recommend this – it’s very readable, very informative, and has the potential to effect real change. If you’re scoffing at this review, I particularly encourage you to get hold of a copy. And if you’ve been nodding your head throughout, then you probably won’t have your life and perspective changed – but it’s definitely worth a read nonetheless.
Yes, my love of Beverley continues apace – and I decided recently to pick up the next of his Allways trilogy, A Thatched Roof (1933). I rushed through, and adored, the Merry Hall series last year – but stalled after the first of the earlier Allways trilogy, Down the Garden Path. Would I prefer this one?
In short, yes. I certainly enjoyed Down the Garden Path, but it didn’t live up to my love for Merry Hall et al. A Thatched Roof definitely felt like a step in the right direction – with more humour, more rounding of the eccentric neighbours, and, crucially, less about gardening. Because here he moves inside.
The low lintels of the cottage have many disadvantages, but they have one supreme advantage. They afford an immediate topic of conversation. They make things start, quite literally, with a bang.
And so starts Beverley. I enjoy reading about gardens and gardening when it doesn’t rely on expertise or references to visuals that don’t appear – but I found Down the Garden Path a bit too heavy on gardening and light on narrative. I don’t mind the ratio so much when he is talking about putting a window into his study, or knocking down a section of wall and finding a surprise alcove. I love reading about interiors and renovations. I also love reading Beverley get snobbish on the topic of other people’s taste, because it is delightfully catty, and the outrage he directs on this topic to the people who rent it from him for a while is quite vicious, in a harmless sort of way. Great fun.
The locals begin to come to life more. There is Mrs M., the local busybody and interferer; there is Undine, who swears by water diviners and thinks everything heavenly (as long as it doesn’t smack of modernity). There are a cast of lesser characters, including a wonderfully lazy and cross housekeeper – none of them shine as brightly as the fond antagonists of Merry Hall, but they offer their own entertainment.
Not least when the topic of electric light comes up. This takes up much of the final section of the book – as they debate whether or not it should come to the village (and then Beverley rebels and gets it all for himself, listing for us the wonders of illuminating statues and stairways). He doesn’t care at all that others can’t share his electricity – indeed, he is not always the most likeable of people, but he writes beautifully and we can charitably assume that a lot of what he writes is self-lampooning or exaggeration. Hopefully…
I bought this book way back in 2004, on the strength of the title and the age of the book (and perhaps, had I flicked through the first few pages, the reference to The Provincial Lady Goes Further). It’s good to have finally read it – and I’m sure I’ll move on to the third of the trilogy before too long. I don’t know if I’ll revisit the Allways books, but it certainly fitted the mood I was in at the time, and that sort of dependability is to be cherished. Now, if only I had an edition with Rex Whistler’s illustrations on the dustjacket…