A couple more #ABookADayInMay books (Sylvia Townsend Warner + Marjorie Stewart)

We’re nearly there, everyone! The end is in sight, and it looks HOPEFUL that I’m going to make it. I’m not gonna lie, it’s been harder this year for various reasons – but we can save those thoughts for another day. Today, let’s look quickly at my choices for Day 27 and Day 28.

A Garland of Straw (1943) by Sylvia Townsend Warner

I bought most of Warner’s short story collections in one fell swoop in 2011, and since then I’ve been rationing myself – and I have hardly any left. This collection was published in 1943 and most of the stories are war-centred, and chiefly set in the UK. Because they were published in the New Yorker rather than at home, she doesn’t assume too much knowledge about the home front in England – which means they can be accessed easily by the 21st-century reader.

Some of the best stories in here are very much wartime experiences. I loved ‘From Above’, about a woman evacuating her home because a time-bomb has been discovered nearby. ‘Noah’s Ark’ – about child evacuees in the countryside, and their disdain for rural animals in comparison to the city zoo – is brilliant on the spitefulness that can lie deep in adults. There is a sly horror in a story about a woman returning to her ancestral home, which was requisitioned for soldiers to be stationed there, and finding it so badly damaged that people think it’s been bombed. She’s excellent on the bland, friendly truisms that cannot forge any emotional comfort in a crisis, however kindly meant. Another strong story, very Warner, is on a political firebrand who cannot stop himself getting Jane Austen novels out of the library.

At their best, the stories have Warner’s inimicable airy sharpness. She can so incisive about people without any malice – a searing description with the objectivity of a photographer and the subjectivity of a gossip. This isn’t quite an example of that, but it is a very Warner opening (to ‘Out of My Happy past’):

When I was young there were two thigns that I lived for. One was music and the other was advice. In the matter of music I was fairly eclectic; I liked listening to it, performing it, transcribing it, and composing it. In the matter of advice my tastes were purer; I only liked giving it and, to itnerest me, it had to be uncontaminatedly my own.

The stories in A Garland of Straw seem shorter than most of her work (though I’d have to flick through some others to check that) – and it is a little to their detriment. Some short story writers really thrive on the incredibly brief story (Marjorie Barnard was great at that), while others make full use of 40-50 pages (Alice Munro, anyone). I think Warner is best at about 20-25 pages, and most of the stories in A Garland of Straw are under 10 pages. It doesn’t quite give her enough room to breathe, in some cases. She doesn’t really do stories that rely on shock or the striking moment. Rather, her stories are representative pieces of lives.

Some of the stories in A Gardland of Straw are a bit forgettable, and others don’t have time to flourish to their potential. And then there are some that are brilliant. It’s a bit of a mixed bag, and not a collection which shows her at her absolute best – for that, I’d recommend Swan on a Autumn River (published in the US as A Stranger With A Bag). But middling Warner short stories are still a good read, and there’s a lot to admire.

I Will Hold My House (1950) by Marjorie Stewart

I Will Hold My House is one of those novels that could be brilliant if it had been rather less ambitious. Or maybe the issue is with my memory. There are just SO many characters that it’s impossible to keep track of them all.

The novel is about a series of houses along the coast in Sussex, each with occupants facing their own crises and triumphs and regrets and hopes. I counted 26 major characters. We go in and out of the houses for the first chapter or two, and I made copious notes on the inside cover of what the houses were called, who lived in them, which was next to which. Often we learn these things in several stages…

There are so many that, each time Stewart cycles through them, they barely have time to do more than express a single motion before the whole whirl starts again. Gradually, some stood out more than others – but I can’t say I particularly cared about any of them. The writing was good enough – a better-than-average domestic novel, but without any bite or sharpness to set it apart. I enjoyed it enough to finish it, but I don’t think I’d recommend it to anyone.