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Canada: the books I bought, and why

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I am now back from two jam-packed, sunny, lovely weeks in Canada. Naturally I did not see all of Canada in that time, but my brother and I spent a week in Vancouver and a week in Toronto – both of which have plenty of bookshops that were eager to send a British man back over the Atlantic with luggage full to the brim of Canadian literature.

I didn’t buy entirely Canadian authors, but I did focus on books that aren’t as easy to find here in the UK – and I think I bought entirely North American authors. One of the things I did discover is how loose and broad the definition of ‘Canadian’ is to literary circles. Born in Canada and spent most of your life somewhere else? Canadian. Born somewhere else and then moved to Canada? Canadian. Passed through Canada among many other countries? Canadian. Authors I’d always considered other nationalities – who turn out to be Canadian – included Brian Moore, Michael Ondaatje, and Ned Beauman, though I think the last of those must have simply been mis-shelving?

My wishlist wasn’t extensive, but I had two books I was particularly intending to buy: A Bird in the House by Margaret Laurence and Road Ends by Mary Lawson, both of which I found on the first day! As you’ll see, there was no limit to the amount of Margaret Laurence I was willing to buy.

Anyway, here is a break down of what I got – I’d love to know your thoughts on any and all of them:

A Bird in the House by Margaret Laurence
This Side Jordan by Margaret Laurence
The Tomorrow-Tamer by Margaret Laurence
The Prophet’s Camel Bell by Margaret Laurence
Heart of a Stranger by Margaret Laurence
The Manawaka World of Margaret Laurence by Clara Thomas
Margaret Laurence: A Spiritual Biography by Noelle Boughton
And would you believe there are still some Laurence books I didn’t find? I do have all her fiction now – I went looking for A Bird in the House, the only one of the Manawaka Sequence that I didn’t have, but was pleased to scoop up any number of other ones. I somehow don’t seem to have included Heart of a Stranger in the picture – her essays, which I was reading on the plane.

My Financial Career and other follies by Stephen Leacock
Model Memoirs by Stephen Leacock
Leacock is one of my other most-loved Canadian authors – I’m not entirely sure if these are new collections to me, or if they are simply gathered from other existing collections, but I took a risk.

Road Ends by Mary Lawson
The only Mary Lawson novel I didn’t already have – she has only written four, sadly – and it’s not that hard to find in the UK, but it felt right to get it in Canada. And it was there, for two dollars, in a sale at the Vancouver Public Library! If you’re ever in Vancouver, head up to their rooftop garden – it’s lovely. I read Road Ends on the four-hour flight from Vancouver to Toronto and definitely recommend something this captivating and wonderful for a plane journey.

Bellevue Square by Michael Redhill
One evening, I had the fun of meeting up with Debra – a listener to the Tea or Books? podcast who got in touch when she saw I was coming to her hometown. She recommended lots of Canadian authors as we browsed a BMV Books – by this point in the holiday I had bought SO many books that I was trying to restrict myself a bit, but I couldn’t resist her recommendation of this novel about discovering a doppelganger. Debra said she read it three times! And the cover is beautiful.

Brother by David Chariandy
This was the other book I bought on Debra’s recommendation – I forget exactly why now, but she must have sold it well!

The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
And this book was a kind gift from Debra – one of those authors I have long intended to read, and now I have one of her books on my shelf ready to go.

Show Boat by Edna Ferber
When Claire/Captive Reader made a guest appearance on a recent podcast episode, she mentioned how much she was enjoyed Edna Ferber – and this lovely edition of Show Boat had to come home with me.

Barometer Rising by Hugh MacLennan
Stories from the Vinyl Café by Stuart McLean
Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay
Speaking of Claire, while in Vancouver I had a lovely evening going book shopping with her, then having some dinner. What fun to hang out on her home turf! These three books are ones I bought because she mentioned they were good’uns.

Love and Salt Water by Ethel Wilson
Having enjoyed a couple of Wilsons, I was pleased to find her final novel – and it’s one of the books I read while I was there.

One of Ours by Willa Cather
I hadn’t heard of this Cather – and, no, I probably didn’t need more unread Cather books on my shelves, but it is a lovely edition. I’m such a sucker for the floop of a North American paperback.

Killing Yourself To Live by Chuck Klosterman
Chuck Klosterman IV
I hadn’t particularly thought to look out for Klosterman, but turns out his books are much easier to find in Canada than here in the UK. He’s an American author I’ve mentioned a few times – I haven’t tried his fiction, but his non-fiction is brilliant at bringing together links and connections between pop cultural moments that many commentators would consider too trivial.

Good-bye and Amen by Beth Gutcheon
I only know Gutcheon her Persephone title Still Missing, but this one looked really interesting.

Frequently Asked White Questions by Ajay Parasram and Alex Khasnabish
This one was just among some books on someone’s lawn in Toronto. The Annex neighbourhood is a lovely leafy suburb with lots of independent shops, and the sort of place where people might have ‘little free libraries’ and the like. Indeed, I left one of my holiday reads – Tin Man by Sarah Winman – in one of those little libraries. (I enjoyed it, but the absence of speech marks meant it wasn’t going to be a keeper.)

May Sinclair by H.D. Zegger
This American series of critical works seems to have largely been about lesser-discussed British writers – I have the books on E.M. Delafield and A.A. Milne from the series, and was pleased to find the May Sinclair one.

Wow, No Thank You by Samantha Irby
I haven’t actually read the Irby essay collection I was given a few years ago, but that’s not the sort of thing that need impede me buying another.

Nocturne by Helen Humphreys
Humphreys was one of the Canadian authors I’d seen recommended by a few people. I did come across some of her fiction, but almost all of it was set in the UK – and I wanted to have the proper Canadian experience of reading Canadian authors writing about Canada. So I bought her memoir about her brother dying – and read it on the plane. Beautifully written and, of course, very sad.

Something I’ve Been Meaning To Tell You by Alice Munro
Who Do You Think You Are? by Alice Munro
Well, you can’t go book shopping in Canada and come back without any Alice Munro, can you?

It’s not a weekend, but here’s a miscellany…

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I’m going to take a blogging break while I go on holiday (again, burglars, someone is looking after my cat so it’s no good trying to break in) – before I go, I’ll leave you with a few bits and pieces:

  • Thanks to everyone who was praying for my sermon – I was particularly anxious because I got Covid that week too, but thankfully was recovered in time to share the talk on John 9. And if you’d like to watch it, you can on my church’s website!
  • It’s #SpinsterSeptember! Nora aka pear.jelly is hosting this month-long celebration of spinsters in fiction and non-fiction. The idea really seems to have taken off – I’m starting with Mary Olivier by May Sinclair, but I would also recommend The Love-Child by Edith Olivier, Sally on the Rocks by Winifred Boggs, Father by Elizabeth von Arnim, War Among Ladies by Eleanor Scott, Life and Death of Harriett Frean by May Sinclair, Matty and the Dearingroydes by Richmal Crompton, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore, May Sinclair’s journals, Patricia Brent, Spinster by Herbert Jenkins… so many wonderful options.
  • A trio of reviews of One Year’s Time by Angela Milne: Liz, Katrina, and Lil

Happy reading – see you in a bit!

All Roads Lead To Austen by Amy Elizabeth Smart

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I can’t remember where I first heard about All Roads Lead To Austen (2012) by Amy Elizabeth Smart – but it certainly ended up on my wishlist at some point, and my parents kindly gave it to me for Christmas a couple of years ago. What a treat it is. In the apparently unending world of books about Jane Austen, I will always have time for unusual memoirs relating to her books – and this one, in which Smith tours various Latin American countries teaching Austen’s novels, is exactly the sort of hook that reels me in.

What is it about Jane Austen that makes us talk about the characters as if they’re real people? People we recognise in our own lives, two centuries after Austen created them? When my first development leave from the university rolled around, I decided it was time for me to try my own Austen project, just like my students do. Something creative, something fun. So I got to wondering: the special connection that people feel with Austen’s world, this Austen magic – would it happen with people in another country, reading Austen in translation?

And that is exactly the project that Smith undertakes. She is an academic at an American university, so she is approaching the task with a great deal of knowledge – not simply the amateur’s enthusiasm. But along the way she will be mixing the two with the people she meets: some are people studying from a literary background, while others are juggling reading the book with three jobs or full-time childcare. Smith’s book assumes we are already familiar with the plots of all of Austen’s novels – but are ready to question our assumptions about them, and how believable we think the characters and plots could possibly be today.

In the course of Smith’s travels, she goes to Guatemala, Mexico, Ecuador, Chile, Paraguay, and Argentina. Since she is travelling on her own, this does mean we have to get used to a new cast of characters ever time she lands in a new country. She does a very good job at making us feel familiar with the most important people in each location, and I didn’t find that I was confusing the different groups of readers.

While Smith is an academic, this is a book for anyone – and I appreciated that as much time was given to logistics and personal hopes as we get in the actual discussions and reflections on Austen’s novels. That might mean panicking that nobody is going to join the group, or being frustrated that someone dominant has decided they’re going to read a different book altogether, or how to manage her own expectations when the local cultural norm is to accept every invitation even if you have no intention of going. Smith manages to maintain a clear respect for each different culture she visits, never suggesting the American way is superior, while also conveying how comfortable she does or doesn’t feel in each place.

Sometimes she is literally uncomfortable – along the way, Smith has a number of health incidents that are also documented (including her unfortunate experiences with some of the healthcare professionals along the way – and much better experiences with others).

But fear not – we are not short-changed when it comes to Austen chat. Many of the groups of readers want to talk about the characters (and some have only seen an adaptation), whereas other groups are more interested in literary technique. Smith records all the conversations, so is able to reproduce them. Here’s a little bit from Ecuador:

“I like him just the way he is,” Meli insisted, unintentionally echoing Darcy’s literary descendant Mark Darcy of Bridget Jones fame. “I like him from the first moment.”

“But not that Bingley, ugh!” Leti grimaced at the thought of Jane’s gentle suitor.

“He’s a big nothing,” Fernanda agreed.

Wow! I’d never heard Bingley so maligned. I was reminded of the harshness of the women’s judgements in Guatemala on men perceived to be weak.

“The one that’s really the worst,” offered Meli, “is that cousin, Collins.”

Leti rolled her eyes and groaned. “All of his pontificating, his tackiness! Horrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiible!“

A colourful list of insults followed. Collins is un tarado (a cretin), un blando (a coward), un fofo (a wimp) – in short, ridículo.

It’s all great fun to read. And in each country, Smith asks whether they think the events of the novels could happen today – and gets an intriguing range of answers. She also asks for any early women writers in each country, often getting told household names who aren’t well-known outside of the country in question. I certainly came away with a wide range of possible books to try.

Smith is such a likeable narrator and has clear affection and respect for everyone she meets. There is even a little romance along the way for Smith, which lends the book something unexpected and rather delightful to follow. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this Janeite – an unusual and fun idea for a book carried out beautifully. Jane would have enjoyed it, and you can’t give a greater compliment than that.

In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

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Sorry I’ve been quiet recently – I got Covid, and while it wasn’t a bad bout of it, I have been quite low on energy since and have spent my evenings watching TV rather than blogging.

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado | Waterstones

But I’m back with a review of an audiobook I listened to – and one of the best books I’ve read this year. Published in 2019, I’m rather late to the party – so perhaps you already know In The Dream House, a memoir by Carmen Maria Machado. But ‘memoir’ doesn’t do justice to the innovation that Machado brings to this patchwork world – quite unlike anything I’ve read before, though the nearest comparison I can think of is another unusual and brilliant memoir I’ve read this year, Joan Givner’s The Self-Portrait of a Literary Biographer, which follows a slightly similar fragmented style.

At the heart of In the Dream House is an abusive relationship had years earlier with a woman whom Machado calls solely ‘the woman in the dream house’. Queer abusive relationships are, as Machado explores, hardly ever written about – indeed, barely even recognised as possible by many people. Particularly when both partners are women, it goes beyond all the stereotypes of abusive relationships that people are familiar with from screen and page. It is all the more alienating.

The bare bones of her story are these: that she met a woman who was in an open relationship with another woman, and became another partner. Eventually, they decide to become exclusive – and it is Machado’s first relationship with a woman. They have deep intimacy and some wonderful experiences. But The Woman in the Dream House has a dark side that erupts now and then. The abuse is seldom physical – but there is constant controlling, and anger that is unpredictable and unappeasable. The Woman in the Dream House accuses Machado of sleeping with any man or woman she mentions. She screams the most appalling abuse at her and then claims not to remember. Some of the most chilling moments are when the anger comes with a terrifying calmness – like her whispering that Machado is the most selfish, terrible person she’s ever met when she makes an innocuous comment, or when she refuses to let Machado share the driving on a long car journey even when The Woman is so tired that Machado fears they will crash. The Woman deliberately drives dangerously fast when she sees Machado is scared.

Abusers do not need to be, and rarely are, cackling maniacs. They just need to want something and not care how they get it.

Machado shows us the silencing terror at the heart of this sort of abusive relationship so brilliantly. It is not the sort of memoir that lingers on horrible details, but it does make you feel breathless with fear nonetheless. Because the relationship seems so inescapable. To outsiders, there is little to suspect. The Woman is usually on good behaviour with others – and has, of course, used the usual ploy of separating Machado from her friends and her safety network.

Machado could have written a straight-forward memoir of this time and it would have been very compelling. But what makes In The Dream House even more brilliant is the unconventional way in which she tells us – as I hinted at in that comparison with Givner’s book. Each chapter is titled ‘Dream House as’ something – a dizzying array of things, from the simple (‘Dream House as Confession’, ‘Dream House as Romance Novel’) to the more unexpected (‘Dream House as Hypochondria’, ‘Dream House as Thanks, Obama’). Many of them are genres or literary styles – though the chapters are not told in these styles, necessarily. The title is often very loose, but frames a new bit of the puzzle. Machado shares memories or stories out of chronology – and many of the chapters are reflections on literature or philosophy or history that weave in and out of personal recollection. A lot is about queer history and reception. For instance…

I think a lot about queer villains, the problem and pleasure and audacity of them. I know I should have a very specific political response to them. I know, for example, I should be offended by Disney’s line-up of vain, effete ne’er-do-wells (Scar, Jafar), sinister drag queens (Ursula, Cruella de Vil), and constipated, man-hating power dykes (Lady Tremaine, Maleficent). I should be furious at Downton Abbey’s scheming gay butler and Girlfriend’s controlling, lunatic lesbian, and I should be indignant about Rebecca and Strangers on a Train and Laura and The Terror and All About Eve, and every other classic and contemporary foppish, conniving, sissy, cruel, humorless, depraved, evil, insane homosexual on the large and small screen. And yet, while I recognize the problem intellectually—the system of coding, the way villainy and queerness became a kind of shorthand for each other—I cannot help but love these fictional queer villains. I love them for all of their aesthetic lushness and theatrical glee, their fabulousness, their ruthlessness, their power. They’re always by far the most interesting characters on the screen. After all, they live in a world that hates them. They’ve adapted; they’ve learned to conceal themselves. They’ve survived.

At first, when I saw that In the Dream House had this fragmented, multidisciplinary approach, I was a bit nervous. The words of the prologue didn’t encourage me – it felt a bit overwritten, a bit self-consciously literary. But that impression disappeared quickly. Machado takes an experimental, innovative approach and makes it as compelling as a thriller. She finds the perfect balance between literary writing and searingly honest storytelling. And it is a fine balance, extremely difficult to achieve with the assured success that Machado shows.

I was wary about going into In the Dream House for various reasons – would I find it too scary, would I find it too opaquely written – but I am so glad I gave it a chance. It’s an extraordinary book, and one of the best memoirs I’ve ever read.

Join me at an online Sally on the Rocks event (Tues 29th)

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Throughout the year, Brad at Neglected Books has been running a series of (free) online events highlighting neglected books that have been reprinted by various different reprint publishers. I’m delighted to say that the turn of the British Library Women Writers series comes on Tuesday 29 August – and I’d love you to come and join!

When Brad asked which book I wanted to highlight for this event, I did toy with my favourite from the series (O, The Brave Music by Dorothy Evelyn Smith) but I’ve already appeared on the wonderful Lost Ladies of Lit podcast to discuss that – and I wanted to choose a book that has, if possible, been even more neglected. I deeply love this novel and its heroine, and would love more people to read it and meet her.

If you’re free 7-8pm BST on Tuesday 29 August, please do come along to this online event – it’s free, and I’m sure it’ll be a lot of fun.

Neglected Books Publisher Spotlight: Sally on the Rocks (British Library)

StuckinaBook’s Weekend Miscellany

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Happy weekend, everyone! I’ve spent much of this week championing Tove Jansson in an online poll of NYRB Classics authors, and I’m delighted to say that she won the overall competition – even if it did mean losing favourites like Barbara Comyns, Elizabeth Taylor, and Sylvia Townsend Warner along the way. She also got her fair share of people (mostly men) dismissing her as a children’s writer – it reminded me of a recent podcast episode where Rachel and I discussed how female writers are often expected to write for children too, and then critically diminished for doing so.

ANYWAY, on with the usual miscellany. I hope you’re having a fantastic weekend.

Catching Fire — Charco Press

1.) The book – I hadn’t heard of Catching Fire by Daniel Hahn until Emily commented on a blog post. She wrote “Also has anyone read the book Catching Fire by Daniel Hahn? It is a memoir, the subtitle says a translation diary, about when the author translated the book Never Did the Fire by Diamela Eltit.” Emily also mentioned that she hadn’t read it yet, but that description was enough to send me straight to buy a copy (directly from the publisher) – and it is now waiting on my coffee table.

2.) The blog post – I enjoyed Sheree’s take on some of most reviewed books on GoodReads – or, as she puts it, Daddy GR :D

3.) The link – Charleston House (the country residence of major members of the Bloomsbury Group) is a marvellous, inspiring, enveloping place – and I enjoyed the Guardian’s take on its role in fashion history.

One Year’s Time by Angela Milne (British Library Women Writers)

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I’m delighted that One Year’s Time by Angela Milne has been out for a month now, and I realise I’ve mentioned it a few times but haven’t ever actually written a review of it. I’ve only seen one or two online so far, so I want to spread word more about this marvellous book.

And, gosh, it so nearly didn’t happen! I may have told this story before, but it bears repeating. It was all lined up a couple of years ago, and I think it was even in the catalogue, but it was proving impossible to track down the family. The British Library are brilliant at finding estates and negotiating publications, so it did feel like a lost cause. With the thought ‘well, it can’t hurt’, rather than any real expectations, I put a plea out here. And it turned out that one of Angela Milne’s nephews had once commented on Claire’s blog, so she got in touch with him – and he was able to connect us with Angela Milne’s children. How wonderful! The blogging world stepped in where every other attempt had failed – and the result is that One Year’s Time is back in print.

This was Angela Milne’s only novel, published in 1942 but set in the 1930s – the exact year isn’t clear, but war is clearly on the horizon. It tells of a year in the life of Liza, particularly her romantic entanglements with a young man called Walter (!), and of her work in an office. It’s rare to get the career angle of a woman’s life in a novel from this period, and I particularly enjoyed that.

As the book opens, Liza is painting the floor – rather unsuccessfully. She surveys her flat, and feels a bit sad about being single.

There was a scrubby patch on the carpet where she had washed the ink out; and two cushions hardly counted as heaping a divan, and chintz curtains weren’t necessarily chintzy, and they weren’t gay, they were just curtains hanging up. She thought, oh, all these things the newspaper say about what they call Bachelor Girls.

‘Bachelor Girls’ is a term that recurs throughout the novel. Liza feels some disdain for women who are unmarried, particularly those who have settled into lifelong friendships with other women (and one does wonder how much she might be missing about lesbians…) But she also stands up to Walter when he mentions the same topic:

“You have to wear a collar and tie and have square legs to be a bachelor girl.”

“It’s awfully unfair that they don’t call men spinster boys. I mean, men who aren’t married. Why do you think they don’t?”

“I suppose they aren’t a new enough invention,” said Walter.

We chart the ups and downs of Liza and Walter’s relationship, and what I most enjoyed about it was the dialogue. It’s very hard to get flirtiness and wit onto the page, but I think Milne does it brilliantly. A lot of what they say is quite stagey, and reminded me of Noel Coward, so it gives the sense of what their relationship is like – rather than being actual conversations that real people would have. And that, to my mind, makes it much more entertaining.

As I wrote in my afterword to the new edition, two themes that dominate One Year’s Time, or at least preoccupy the characters, are sex and money. It is surprisingly frank for a 1942 novel, particularly one probably aimed at a wide audience rather than a small literary elite. Walter casually says that the thing he likes best in the world is sex, and Liza and Walter go speedily from meeting each other to ‘me in bed with nothing on, and him kneeling there with only socks’. They have no qualms about discussing their past sexual history with each other, and Walter even casually mentions having had an affair with a married woman. 

And then there’s money. Liza earns a living and has a small legacy from an uncle, but she is very conscious of not having quite enough to live the lifestyle she’d like. We get the details of her salary, her potential raises, her rent – even how much different food items are in shops, and her silent indignance when a friend spends more than others at a restaurant then splits the bill. Such things are perennial.

So much about this book feels fresh and modern. It’s also, of course, a snapshot of the late 1930s – in a way that helps us remember that human nature doesn’t changed very much, and we all have more or less the same concerns that our parents/grandparents/great-grandparents did. Most of all, I think it’s a very funny book with a memorable pair at the centre who are often frustrating but always compelling. I’m so pleased it’s back in print, and I finally have my own copy.

Cactus by Ethel Mannin

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After reading Rolling in the Dew, I was keen to read more of Ethel Mannin’s fiction  – particularly something in a non-satirical mode. I wondered if something she wrote could be suitable for the British Library Women Writers series, so hunted down one that was clearly about a woman’s life: Cactus (1935). Sadly my Penguin copy more or less fell apart as I read it, so I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to re-read it, but it was certainly an interesting experience.

Elspeth is the heroine of Cactus. The novel opens when she is a young girl, with family in the north of England and in Scotland – she doesn’t really fit in with her family and their expectations of her, and she doesn’t have friends her own age. They don’t understand her and she doesn’t understand them. Her greatest friend is her Uncle Andrew – an eccentric man who chooses to live alone rather than with the rest of the family. They tolerate him with bemused affection.

In these early sections of Cactus, he teaches Elspeth to be an independent thinker. He quietly reveals the dangers of group-think, whether that be jingoistic nationalism or the meek place of a woman in Edwardian middle-class life. They are lessons that she takes very much to heart. And, on a more tangible level, he introduces her to the beauty of cacti. Others wonder why she is train to something spikey and plain, but…

When a cactus came into flower, said Uncle Andy, it was the most wonderful flower you ever saw, and it lived on long after other flowers, which bloomed more readily, had died and been forgotten. It was worth waiting for, said Uncle Andy.

And if you’re thinking ‘hmm, I wonder if this will be a metaphor for Elspeth herself’ then, yes indeed, you are right. Throughout the novel, Mannin returns to this metaphor – it becomes a little unsubtle at times, and perhaps didn’t need to be quite so foregrounded, but it’s an interesting enough idea.

Elspeth grows older and moves to Germany in the late 1930s. She falls in love with a slightly tempestuous young man called Karl, defying convention on the one hand while remaining quite bound by it on the other. For instance, she is shocked when he wants to have sex before marriage – shocked a little, in fact, that this friendship has developed into love almost unawares. Mannin isn’t condemning her for this element of conventionality. Elspeth is no more an obedient disciple to modern, bohemian thinking than she is to old-fashioned morality. She forges her own path, with her own decisions and standards.

But even the most independent thinker cannot avoid being affected by war. As it becomes clear that Germany will soon be at war – and possible (though still, to the characters, unlikely) that Britain will also enter the war – Elspeth decides to leave Germany and return to her family home. It is, she hopes, a temporary absence. But she has also been chilled by the bellicosity she had never anticipated in Karl. It is equalled by the ‘Hun-hate’ (a common word in the novel) that she finds back home. In vain does she try to explain that she may disagree with Germany’s authorities while still liking, even loving, individual Germans. I was so impressed that Mannin would write about this in the mid-1930s, when anti-German rhetoric was clearly on the rise again in Britain. Her nuance in resisting mindless nationalism and hatred of other countries is done perfectly.

These tensions become more palpable when two German prisoners of war are left at Elspeth’s family’s farm. One is a bit of a brute, but Elspeth instantly feels a connection with the other – Kurt. The similarity of his name to Karl’s is not a coincidence. While the two men are quite different, Elspeth explains that Kurt reminds her a lot of her lost love – a man she has to accept may well be dead now, given his keenness to fight. Her family won’t let the men in the house, and initially only give them food fit for the pigs – but Elspeth wears them down a little, and forges a connection with Kurt that is central to the second half of Cactus.

Mannin really doesn’t hold back in her visceral writing about war. Elspeth’s brother is working in an army hospital, but Kurt says he cannot really understand what front-line war is like. (Skip this quote if you are sensitive to graphic descriptions.)

“He doesn’t know what war is. No man who hasn’t been in the trenches does.”

“He sees every day what war does to men.”

“It’s not the same as having it happen to yourself. you can know all about building a trench parapet of human bodies and walking on human faces, and such things, but it doesn’t do anything to you unless you’ve experienced it for yourself. It’s not a case of being physically shocked compared with being intellectually shocked, it’s a case of knowing something in your bowels. In English you talk about having guts. Mind is an abstraction, but guts are damnably real. They get twisted round your bayonet. Round your pick when you’re digging. That’s the kind of knowing, when your own guts writhe with it.”

It’s hard to believe something like this is in a 1930s novel by a woman better known, I believe, for light-hearted comedies and romances. While Cactus never takes us to the front-line, the brutality of war seeps through its pages. She doesn’t address the impending war, which was becoming inevitable in many people’s eyes by the time Cactus was published, but it is a silent subtext to the reading experience.

Cactus isn’t a perfect novel. There are times when it loses a little of its subtlety and gets too close to melodrama. It is very earnest, and I would have appreciated more of the wit that played through its first chapter or two. But, for the most part, I found it an involving, passionate cry against unthinking conflict and herd mentality. I’m certainly keen to keep exploring Mannin’s fiction.

StuckinaBook’s Weekend Miscellany

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It’s the weekend, and I’ll be preparing for my first ever sermon/talk at my church – that I’m giving in a couple of weeks, on Jesus healing a blind man in John 9. I’ve done talks in other places, and contributed to talks at my church, but this is New Territory. Wish me luck, or something more spiritual!

I hope you have a good weekend lined up. As ever in the miscellany, I’ll send you on your way with a book, a link, and a blog post…

1.) The book – praise be for Michael Walmer, continuing to republish the wonderful Stella Benson. I’ve read the four they’ve already published, and now I’ve bought Pipers and a Dancer and am looking forward to getting started on that one. Order your own, or catch up on Benson’s quirky, funny, inimitable backlist, over at his website.

2.) The link – this New York Times article by Sophie Hughes on literary translation is fascinating, and brilliantly interactive in the way it’s laid out.

3.) The blog post – I enjoyed the overview of 2023 reading so far from You Might As Well Read – so many excellent choices, and some very tempting ones I haven’t read.

Mrs Hart’s Marriage Bureau by Sheena Wilkinson

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I mentioned Mrs Hart’s Marriage Bureau is a recent weekend miscellany, and I might have mentioned there that I tend to say no to offers of review copies nowadays. I realised years ago that I wanted to protect my reading time – making sure that I only read things I wanted to, rather than the hit-and-miss of review books. That’s particularly true when an author gets in touch themselves, because I’ve had a couple of not-so-nice experiences with that.

BUT rules are made to be broken – and when Sheena Wilkinson got in touch to ask if I would like a copy, I was very much tempted, and indeed said ‘yes please!’ It helped that she mentioned Dorothy Whipple in her email, and clearly knew my reading tastes well – unlike the press releases I get with ‘I love [your most recent post]; would you like an article about children’s playmats?’

I’m waffling. Let’s get onto the book. Mrs Hart’s Marriage Bureau is set in 1934 and the heroine is April McVey – she has come to England from Northern Ireland, intent on finding a career and not at all interested in marriage. She is a bundle of energy – and we first meet her when she is late for an interview to work at a marital bureau run by Martha Hart.

April rushed on. “I know I’m late. I got lost. My Aunt Kathleen said the hotel was just by the station, she said you couldn’t miss it, only I went to the wrong station.” She sounded close to tears though she faced Martha with a jaunty chin.

“I can see that would be easily done,” Martha said. “But, my dear, you’re three hours late.”

“Och, I know. But when I got here and I worked out you were you, if you know what I mean, I could see you were busy and I didn’t like to interrupt, so I waited till you were done. I never knew I could make a pot of tea last that long. It’s great the way they bring you fresh water, isn’t it, but I didn’t like to ask more than twice. And” – she lowered her voice – “it’s awful dear. You could get dinner for a family of six for that in Lisnacashan.”

It isn’t the last time we’ll hear about Lisnacashan (a made-up town) – April seems able to connect anything she sees with an experience or relative back in her hometown. April won me over instantly by her choice of reading material while she waited: ‘the new E.M. Delafield’. Naturally I had to get into the details and find out what the new E.M. Delafield was in 1934, and her only book that year was The Provincial Lady in America, so I can imagine April was having a lovely time.

Martha (middle-aged for the 1930s – i.e. younger than me) is a bit uncertain at first about hiring April as her assistant, but she is won over. There is certainly something winning about this talkative, slightly indiscreet, very well-meaning young woman. She combines competence with her chaotic energy, and is ready to give her all to matchmaking. (April tends to consider herself more of a partner in the company, and gives herself different job titles when explaining the work to others – she is technically solely an administrative assistant, but watch this space.)

Mrs Hart’s Marital Bureau (curiously a slightly different name from the title of the novel) has been running for a decade. In an era long before dating apps, this was one of the ways that people tried to find prospective partners – a step more discreet and customisable than putting an advert in a lonely hearts column. As Wilkinson notes at the end of the book, the first marriage bureau in the UK wasn’t licensed until 1939, but we can certainly forgive that anachronism. It’s a very entertaining and intriguing premise for a book.

April is a little shocked by the dated nature of Martha’s marriage bureau. She says the name will be off-putting (suggesting True Minds instead), and points out that the people on their books tend to be a little old and often left unmatched for a long time. People are combined simply because there aren’t enormous numbers of locals who want the services of a marriage bureau, and there are far more women than men – partly, of course, because the legacy of the First World War meant there were more women than men in the general population. The bureau has had a fair amount of success, and Martha treasures the stories of couples who have tied the knot – but it needs some updating.

The two other key cast members are Fabian and Felicity – adult brother and sister. April meets widower Fabian when she thinks he is trying to steal her taxi, and remonstrates with him – she doesn’t recognise him when they meet again in the community. Felicity, meanwhile, is April’s landlady. She lives in a slightly insalubrious part of town, and is a delightfully bohemian, intellectual character – a writer who mystifies April with some of her secrets and the confusing comings-and-goings of her finances. Both Fabian and Felicity play important roles in April’s life, and both come with surprises.

In an article in the Belfast Telegraph, Wilkinson describes the book as feminist feel-good, and that’s exactly right. She says: “I wanted to write something uplifting, but I also wanted it to be smart, feminist and kind of politically engaged with it, with a small p.” Well, Mrs Hart’s Marriage Bureau is bang on the money. I found it really fun and funny, without being frothy. There are some more serious undertones that give the novel depth, and Wilkinson obviously has a deep appreciation and understanding of the 1930s.

I’m sometimes dubious about reading a novel set in the 1930s (as opposed to reading one written in the 1930s), but it pays off when the novelist is doing something a contemporary writer couldn’t have done – Wilkinson incorporates our knowledge of what would develop in the next few years, as well as the brilliant idea of the marriage bureau. There are other elements that a 1930s novelist wouldn’t have felt comfortable introducing, and which enhance the novel without pulling it too much from its context.

But most of all I enjoyed Mrs Hart’s Marriage Bureau because of April. Give me a spirited and garrulous heroine and I’m sold. I love the delightful chaos of a character who combines good intentions with putting her foot in it. It’s a real treat of a book, and I had a lovely time reading it.