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The Spectre of Alexander Wolf by Gaito Gazdanov

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I was staying in Edinburgh when I came across the Pushkin Press edition of The Spectre of Alexander Wolf by Gaito Gazdanov, published in 1948 in Russian and translated by Bryan Karetnyk. I’m always drawn to these lovely little editions, but what got this book from the shelf and into my bag – having, naturally, paid – was this blurb on the inside flap:

A man comes across a short story which recounts in minute detail his killing of a soldier, long ago – from the victim’s point of view. It’s a story that should not exist, and whose author can only be a dead man.

Intriguing, no? And then we have this opening line…

Of all my memories, of all my life’s innumerable sensations, the most onerous was that of the single murder I had committed.

I’ve kind of given the game away on that line – because, yes, the murder was committed during the Russian Civil War. The unnamed narrator was shot at and his horse killed, and fired in return at his assailant – leaning over him to make the final shot. And then, hearing more people from the opposing side in the distance, took the dead man’s horse and fled. He was only sixteen, and the event has haunted him since.

Many years later, he picks up a collection of three short stories – two of which are well written tales of love and mischance, but the third unmistakably relates the events that happened to him. He decides he must track down the author, Alexander Wolf, and discover how this Englishman knows anything about what happened.

I shan’t give away any plot details, but it is a brilliant premise that is handled well – largely because Gazdanov is so good at maintaining the emotional and character-led responses to the ultimate explanation, rather than because it is necessarily the most believable in terms of plot. The psychological intensity and reality of the novel is unwavering, and the narrator is such a well realised character, with the same shifting and nuanced morality that actual people have.

The only complaint I have about the structure is that it dives away from the central mystery into a seemingly irrelevant plot about boxing and a budding romance that the narrator explores. I don’t really mind the inevitable coincidence that links it back to the main plot, but the sudden shift to introduce it – during which the narrator apparently forgets the drive he initially had to unearth Wolf – doesn’t quite make sense.

I’ve read very few Russian authors, being largely put off by the evident length of the books and the probable misery within them. This one is fewer than 200 pages (hurrah!) and emotionally complex. It’s a brilliant idea that is sustained and manipulated in a sophisticated way.

Ann and Her Mother by O. Douglas

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Image result for ann and her mother o douglasAlongside a few others, I picked up an O. Douglas novel in homage to a friend called Sarah – I’ve written a little bit about her, and why, at the bottom of this post. Like the other Douglas novel I read this year, this one was kindly given to me by my friend Emily’s mum, and it came from her mother’s library.

I chose Ann and Her Mother (1922) because it fit Project Names, and it turns out to be a little different from the other two I’ve read – Pink Sugar and The Proper Place. Both of those novels have quite a lot of plot and movement – whereas Ann and Her Mother takes place entirely across a handful of days, in conversation between Ann and – you guessed it – her mother. Ann is in her late 20s and her mother is what the 1920s considered old. Certainly she is old enough that Ann thinks it’s appropriate to write down an account of her life. The novel does acknowledge that there wouldn’t be a wide public for the ghostwritten memoir of a minister’s widow, and does so with a nod and a wink – because this is exactly what is written.

Another review I’ve read points out that it’s very autobiographical, but I don’t know enough about O. Douglas’s life to notice the similarities – other than that she was really called Anna Buchan, sister of the famous novelist John. In the novel, at least, the mother’s life has been dominated by the death of four people – recently, her husband; longer ago, two sons in war and a daughter in infancy. Douglas manages to write about the death of this young innocent in a way that sidesteps the mawkish because it is so heartfelt and genuine.

The loss of these four aside, there is much to amuse in their reminiscences of being respectively a minister’s wife and a minister’s daughter. Ann is a little quicker to see the ridiculous than her mother, and is occasionally reprimanded for not depicting the locals kindly. And she writes very well about growing up in the manse – having grown up in a vicarage myself, this rang SO true:

“I do so agree,” said Ann; “‘a bright, interested expression’ is far too often demanded of ministers’ wives and families. What a joy to scowl and look listless at a time. You know, Mums, a manse is a regular school for diplomatists. It is a splendid training. One learns to talk to and understand all sorts of people—just think what an advantage that gives one over people who have only known intimately their own class! And you haven’t time to think about yourself; you are so on the alert to avoid hurting anyone’s feelings. You have to try and remember the affairs of each different member, how many children they possess, and all about them, and be careful to ask at the right moment for the welfare of each.”

I have seldom read a less urgent novel. It is not one to keep you up late reading to find out what happens. There is almost no pace. But that is deliberate, and it perfectly suits a certain reading mood. I enjoyed easing myself into it in an evening, letting the gentleness wash over me. However painful the topics covered, this is not a painful book to read. The affection the two have for each other, and their optimism and faith, makes it an ideal novel to soak in.

Douglas does anticipate the inevitable criticism of the novel, as not being edgy enough, by having Ann send the unfinished manuscript of her mother’s Life to a friend…

“Here’s a nice state of things,” said Ann.

“Is anything wrong?” asked her mother.

“Well, I don’t know whether you would call it wrong or right. Mr. Philip Scott sends me back my MS., with his criticism of it. I agree with most of the things he says: my language is too incorrigibly noble, my quotations are very frequent——”

“But if they’re good quotations,” Mrs. Douglas interrupted.

“Oh, they’re good quotations. ‘It was the best butter,’ as the poor March Hare said. But what he objects to most is the sweetness of it. He says, ‘Put more acid into it.'”

Reader, she does not put more acid into it. This novel is entirely absent of acid. Perhaps it would feel too saccharine in some moods, and I did tend to pick it up only when it was exactly the sort of thing I wanted to read – but, at those times, it could scarcely be bettered. And is mercifully light on the Scottish dialect, impenetrable to non-Scots like myself!

And here’s a bit about Sarah, and how I came to pick up the novel.

It’s odd to mourn a friend that you’ve never met. I’ve been in an online book group since 2005, and it has settled into the same handful of like-minded readers for about the past ten years. We don’t all read the same books, but we have similar taste – and it is a lovely place to share reading tastes and recommendations. And, of course, other aspects of life come alongside. We’ve all become friends – and those of us in the UK meet up once a year. I’ve met a couple of the readers from the US. But I never met Sarah.

She was a very active member of the group, often starting and continuing conversations. She was encouraging, kind, and funny, and the group relished having her. Earlier this year she died, and I miss her contributions deeply – despite not even really knowing what she looked like. But I knew more important things, like her love for her husband and family, her infectious love of reading, and her favourite authors. Among them was O. Douglas, and several of us in the group used reading an O. Douglas novel as a way of saying thank you and farewell to Sarah.

The Wells of St Mary’s by R.C. Sherriff

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I was a little late in the day to R.C. Sherriff, but have now read and loved all three of his novels that Persephone publish – with Greengates being my favourite, I think. And naturally it made me want to read more of his. Bello have republished a few as ebooks and POD, but I got this quirky little paperback online relatively cheaply – and, while on holiday, read The Wells of St Mary’s (1962). It’s a few decades later than the Persephone novels, but every bit as good.

Our narrator is Peter Joyce, who lives in a large house on the outskirts of a village called St Mary’s. He is a magistrate and retired colonel. The Joyces have lived there for many years, but being landed gentry doesn’t bring the same riches it once did. Joyce is rather down on his luck financially, at least compared to his family’s former wealth – he does still have a butler – and its made him a bit cautious to invite old friends to stay. But one old friend does come – Lord Colindale (whom he also calls Colin – is his name Colin Colindale??) They haven’t been in touch for a while, and when Lord Colindale arrives, Joyce sees why – Colindale was renowned for being a powerful man of politics, journalism, and public life, and now he can’t move more than a few feet without the use of crutches. His vitality has been taken by rheumatism.

Don’t stop reading, if you think a novel about rheumatism doesn’t sound very gripping! I should also mention that, very early on, Joyce says that the account he is writing is connected with a murder. We don’t know who will be murdered, and we are constantly watching out for developments in the novel, to see who the victim and perpetrator will be, and why.

While taking his friend on a short tour of the village, they come across St Mary’s Well. It is on Joyce’s land, and still manned by an old man who has worked for the family since Joyce’s grandfather’s time – if ‘worked’ is the word, since he is often drunk and very few people come to the wells. It has been used since Roman times, and there is a building around the well, but the locals wouldn’t dream of going – and the number of tourists fighting their way down the overgrown path to the well is dwindling. But it has supposedly miraculous health-restoring qualities, and Colindale decides to take a drink.

And – yes! He finds the next morning that he doesn’t need his crutches. He is miraculously cured by the water of the well!

From here, things in the village start to change. Colindale uses his public position to tell the world about the well – and the next day the roads are jammed with cars getting there. The village puts together a committee to decide how they will make the most of this potential windfall, and most of the villagers sink their savings into shares. After all these highs, obviously not all will go well… but that’s all I’m going to say. And it’s obvious from early on, because Sherriff ends an awful lot of chapters with things like ‘but that was before the worst day of our lives’ etc.

I love fantastic fiction, and the premise of this novel puts it in that category. But more than that, I love Sherriff’s writing. In all of his novels, he is so, so good at unshowy writing that just drags you in and keeps you captivated, while being constantly gentle and character-led. It’s a real gift, and the sort of talent that doesn’t come around all that often. Whatever his genre or his idea, he gets us right in the midst of the community – he can sell any premise without the reader blinking an eye, and there is as much nuanced humanity in his sci-fi post-apocalypse as in the tale of a retired couple buying a house as there is in this novel about a miraculous well.

I was a bit worried that there wouldn’t be enough fiction on my end-of-year list, but this would be a worthy addition. And now I need to track down the rest of his novels, evidently…

StuckinaBook’s Weekend Miscellany

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Happy weekend! Even happier for me, because I’m off work for a week – and off on holiday with my brother. We tend to go away this time of year, because it’s coming up to our birthday, so we always get to enjoy places that are cold and wet. Hurrah! A couple years ago we went to Canada, last year was Northern Ireland, and this year it’s Yorkshire. If there are any bookshops near Harrogate that I mustn’t miss, let me know.

Luckily Hargreaves isn’t being abandoned – Mum is coming up to look after him, with Dad popping in occasionally. They were known as Our Vicar and Our Vicar’s Wife here for many years – and those of you who’ve just read The Diary of a Provincial Lady for the 1930 Club will now know why – but since they’re retired now, what should their nicknames be??

I’m going to be taking a blogging break while I’m away, but I’ll leave you with a book, a link (or two), and a blog post.

1.) The link – I read an interesting take on that Booker prize and its rule-breaking double win, from one of the judges – and then I read an even more interesting take from one of the not-super-pleased publishers with a novel on the shortlist. I have to say, I ended up #TeamPublisher.

2.) The book – Of the making of books about books there is no end, and thank goodness say I. The Secret Life of Books by Tom Mole came through my letterbox recently, and you can colour me intrigued.

3.) The blog post – Scott is running a ‘Possibly Furrowed Middlebrow?‘ event – a virtual one, anyone. Are there books that you’d long to see back in print? There are a few other criteria but that’s the main one.

 

 

The next club is announced!

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Thanks to everyone who put forward suggestions for the next club year, following #1930Club! Karen and I looked through everyone’s ideas, and two decades were definitely standing out – the 1920s and the 1950s.

In the end, we decided upon the #1920Club – first suggested by Paula. It’s right at the beginning of the period we do club years in, and it’ll be the centenary next year – which feels very appropriate. Maybe we’ll turn to the 1950s next time?

Here’s the badge, and as you can see it’ll be next April. Plenty of warning so get hunting for what you might read!

By the way, for those asking why we don’t do earlier or later years, and who haven’t seen the explanation before – the reason we decided to stop at 1980 was basically personal taste! The reason we don’t go earlier than 1920 is because cheap printing and a wider reading public around that time led to a great deal more books being published – and, in practice, it would be harder to get the same diverse range of books (particularly if we want them widely accessible) if we went earlier. Hope that clears that up!

The fall and rise of a bookshop (a book haul)

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A couple of weekends ago I went to the Bookbarn in Somerset. I’ve been many times, ever since I stumbled across it by accident while getting lost. It used to be an absolutely enormous barn of books – as the name applies – and you could only really look at a tiny section each time. I’d go just looking at authors A-D, say. It was extraordinary.

Then they put most of it into an internet-only section, leaving a smaller, newer ‘barn’ where all the books were £1 each. Smaller but still big. And with lots of unsorted shelves where you could find gems – and a cafe, which was good for long-suffering relatives who didn’t want to look at books for hours at a time.

And then I went a couple of weeks ago…

My first thought was disappointment. And my second thought, and my third. They’d closed off two-thirds of the smaller barn. The cafe was bigger, but there was no unsorted section. There were shelves and shelves of cheap, rubbishy paperbacks. And the books weren’t £1 each anymore. The rubbishy paperbacks were, but anything from before about 1960 was in a ‘vintage’ section, where everything was £4. And I’m talking anything. Out-of-date algebra textbooks. Cheap editions of Milton’s poetry. The sort of thing you’d pay 20p for at a church fete.

But… things got better. I made the conscious decision not to compare it to previous trips to the Bookbarn. I would look carefully at the paperbacks. I didn’t find anything I wanted worth £4 in the ‘vintage’ section (and I did hear one old lady say to a staff member “They’re not vintage; they’re just old”), but did get a lot of the paperbacks.

And then I remembered that you could search their warehouse inventory, fill out slips, and get them to bring books out for you. Obviously that did mean no serendipitous finds – but did mean a handful of books I was very pleased to get my mitts on! And, oddly, at very reasonable prices – some rather less than the £4 they’d slapped on unsellable tat in the front of the shop.

Anyway – a rather long intro to the books I did buy! The last five are the ones I ferried from the warehouse catalogue, and the others are the cheapy paperbacks.

The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
One of those books – or, rather, three of those books – that I’ve intended to read for a while. I don’t remember where I’ve heard good things about it, other than… everywhere, I guess?

The 27th Kingdom by Alice Thomas Ellis
I’ve still only read one Alice Thomas Ellis novel, Unexplained Laughter, but happy to add another to the shelves – particularly one as intriguing as this.

Chapman’s Odyssey by Paul Bailey
As above – read one novel, the brilliant At The Jerusalem, but at one quid I can definitely add another Bailey to the pile.

Nice Work by David Lodge
I haven’t read any Lodge novels yet, but this is on the list for my book group next year.

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
It’s on brand for me to read a book years after everyone was talking about it. Rachel mentioned we could do this one for ‘Tea or Books?’ and then stopped replying to messages, as per.

Linger Awhile by Russell Hoban
This one looks quite trashy and odd, but I loved his Turtle Diary (which was odd but not at all trashy) so will give it a go. Someone falls in love with an actress long after she dies? Something like that?

Thornyhold by Mary Stewart
I’ve never read any Stewart but my friend Kirsty, who was one of the people I went with, had recently read and loved this one and pressed it into my hands.

Behold, Here’s Poison by Georgette Heyer
Perhaps more surprisingly, I’ve never read any Heyer. Whenever someone writes a blog post about her, I say that I intend to try her – and have never even bought any before. Now I have one of her detective novels – hopefully a good’un?

The Color of Evening by Robert Nathan
Nathan is one of those authors I really, really enjoy but don’t remember ever seeing mentioned in the blogosphere (though I have seen The Bishop’s Wife mentioned, a lovely film adapted from his novel of that name). His books are harder to find here than in the US, so was pleased to get this one.

The Bridge by Pamela Frankau
Road Through the Woods by Pamela Frankau
One of the authors I looked up on the warehouse catalogue was Frankau, hoping to find one of her rare, early novels. They didn’t have any of those, but I was also pleased to add these late novels to my Frankau shelves.

Sheaves by E.F. Benson
Paul by E.F. Benson
They did have quite a few scarcer E.F. Benson novels – some out of my budget, but these two were priced relatively low. I was particularly pleased to find Paul, which has intrigued me for a while – and might sneak into Project Names. And onto my overcrowded shelves of unread Bensons.

All in all, I came away with a pile that I was very pleased with – having thought for the first twenty minutes or so that I’d come away empty-handed. Goes to show that even bookshops that have got worse can hold gems, and the intrepid book-hunter shouldn’t be dismayed by initial appearances!

Which year shall we read next?

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What a fun week we’ve had with the 1930 Club! I’m always amazed by the number of people who get involved, and the diversity of books that we manage to read between us. This week we’ve had novels, poetry, essays, non-fiction, work in translation – all sorts. But, for once, no Simenon! Turns out he didn’t publish until 1931.

We’re already thinking about the next club, which will be sometime next April. And we’re turning over to suggestions – anything between 1920 and 1980 is up for grabs, if we haven’t done it already. So if you have any preference for a particular day, please let us know in the comments. Karen and I will draw out of a hat later – or could be won over by any especially persuasive rationale for a year…

Vulgarity in Literature by Aldous Huxley – #1930Club

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I’m sneaking into the final day of the 1930 Club with another 1930 read – albeit a very short one, at 59 pages. It’s one of the Dolphin Books series that I’ve written about before, and which I love. Beautiful little hardbacks covering a wide range of fiction and literary non-fiction. I haven’t been able to find out if they were specially commissioned or what, and I’m sure this essay of Huxley’s will have appeared in other forms, but it’s nice to read it in this original form.

I thought it might be about obscenity in literature, since that was such a raging battle of the period – not long after books like Lady Chatterley’s Lover and The Well of Loneliness had both been banned in the UK. But he quickly dispels this idea, and indeed stands up for writers being able to write about anything:

I myself have frequently been accused, by reviewers in public and by unprofessional readers in private correspondence, both of vulgarity and of wickedness—on the grounds, so far as I have ever been able to discover, that I reported my investigations into certain phenomena in plain English and in a novel. The fact that many people should be shocked by what he writes practically imposes it as a duty upon the writer to go on shocking them. For those who are shocked by truth are not only stupid, but morally reprehensible as well; the stupid should be educated, the wicked punished and reformed.

So, what does he mean by vulgarity? He dances around the topic but is never particularly clear on the point. It can be intellectual, emotional, or spiritual. It seems connected to insincerity or going too far, or misusing form, or… well, Huxley writes well and engagingly, and it is only when you get to the end that you realise it’s all been inconclusive. Fascinating, but inconclusive.

In terms of the ‘in literature’ bit of the title, he only talks in detail about Poe and Balzac, though with references to Dickens, Dostoevsky, and a handful of others. He doesn’t really consider contemporary literature at all, and thus can’t be said to comment on 1930 itself. But it was an enjoyable intellectual exercise, if not the sociological one that I was expecting when I picked it up.

The Secret of High Eldersham by Miles Burton – #1930Club

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The 1930 Club seemed like a great opportunity to take a look at my British Library Crime Classics shelves, which are overflowing with books I’ve not yet read. When they started republishing these intriguing detective novels in beautiful editions, I wanted to get them all. I still want to, if I’m honest, but they stepped up how many they were publishing and I realised it wasn’t very realistic. Still. Plenty there.

And one of them was The Secret of High Eldersham by Miles Burton, reprinted in 2016 and thus maybe one of the earlier reprints. Certainly Martin Edwards’ introduction makes it sound like one of the books he was keenest on getting out to a new public.

High Eldersham is a small and out-of-the-way village. The beautiful cover doesn’t strictly relate to any of the houses in the book, but there are a couple of larger ones – lived in respectively by a doctor and a landowner. Otherwise it’s mostly farm labourers and others that Burton doesn’t seem very interested in telling us about. And there’s a pub about a mile from the village proper, and not on the way to anywhere else. It hasn’t been very profitable for quite a while, because of its distance from anywhere, and the novel starts with the landlord Dunsford asking the brewery owner if he can be moved to a different pub nearby. Off Dunsford goes, with a warning that it might be difficult for the new landlord – not only because of the lack of profit, but because the villagers in High Eldersham are not very accepting of outsiders. Indeed, it almost seems as if ‘foreigners’ – those not born in the village – are cursed when they arrive…

Still, a retired policeman called Whitehead becomes the landlord, and we fast forward a few years. Turns out newbies aren’t very lucky, because he gets stabbed to death. The local policeman feels very ill-equipped to deal with any of this, since he usually just sorts out drunk and disorderlies, and others are brought in. I got a bit confused with who all the police who came are, but the important one is Desmond Merrion – an amateur detective, but with close ties to one of the detectives. And, in turns out, a coincidental relationship with a villager – and a prospective relationship with another…

I spent a while trying to decide whether to include spoilers in this post, and have chosen not to. The thing I was going to write about happens relatively early in the book, and you spend the rest of the novel trying to determine whether or not it actually happened… it plays on themes that were quite big at the time, but also atavistic.

That’s all I’ll say on that, but it is the dominant thread of the novel – and one that makes it an interesting and unusual book to read, but also which separates it from the more down-to-earth books of the Golden Age. Merrion went on to appear in dozens and dozens of other books, and I’d be interested to see how he fares as a detective in more traditional mysteries.

As it is, this one relies heavily on coincidence, and the plotting and detection can be a bit clumsy – but I did read a review that said it was more like a thriller than a detective novel, and I think that’s a good point. What Burton lacks in terms of intricate plotting he makes up for in suspense and excitement – and some engaging distortion of a village idyll. It rattles along and is probably rather sillier than the author intended, but certainly good fun for this year’s club.

Cat’s Company by Michael Joseph – #1930Club

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Firstly, I don’t know who was more self-indulgent – Michael Joseph for writing Cat’s Company, or me for reading it.

This non-fiction book is essentially an ode to how wonderful cats are – both in general and, more specifically, some of Joseph’s favourites. If you’re thinking that this couldn’t fill a whole book then you clearly aren’t the felinophile that I and Joseph are.

(Before I go further, I must also confess that there is some discrepancy with the date, and qualifications for the 1930 Club. My suspicions were first roused when Joseph mentioned the Munich Crisis… it turns out that Cat’s Company was indeed published in 1930, but was edited and updated in 1946. It isn’t at all clear which bits were added – except when they refer to later events, of course.)

How did Michael Joseph get something so self-indulgent published, you might wonder? Well, the answer comes when you see the name of the publishing house… Michael Joseph. I’m very glad he did, because Cat’s Company is a total delight.

In the first chapter, he basically just talks about how great his cats are. Particularly one called Minna, but he has plenty to say in praise of her offspring and for any number of cats past and present – at the time he was writing, he had fourteen in residence.

Other chapters share many anecdotes told to him by friends and strangers about their cats, examine the cat’s intelligence – he puts in a very fine argument about how it is more intelligent to be independent than to be trainable – and famous cat lovers in history. Most controversially, he devotes a chapter to cat vs dog. Joseph is no dog hater, and his household even had one when the book was published, but he recognises the cat’s natural superiority. And adds that not only do cats also know they are superior, dogs seem aware of it too. This cat lover can’t dispute it. This section is from an earlier chapter, because I don’t want to alienate dog fans:

We all like to think our pets exceptionally devoted and intelligent. Every animal lover can tell you, and will tell you if you give him the least encouragement, stories which demonstrate beyond all doubt the sagacity of his animal friends. The innumerable stories told about the loyalty and understanding of the dog have of course overshadowed the claims of puss, who does not parade his qualities for public admiration, and whose wits are generally employed for his private benefit. Only those who have taken the trouble to cultivate and study the cat can realise what an extraordinarily intelligent and responsive creature he is.

In terms of looking at how much this is a portrait of 1930 – well, the cat has not changed. It is amusing when he tries to describe the ‘cat flap’ (a term that didn’t exist until the 50s, according to the OED) and neutering/spaying cats was clearly a lot less common, but otherwise cat behaviour is largely the same, unspoiled by human interaction. And I will always rush towards any writer who is good at writing accurately about cats, in fiction or non-fiction.

Is Joseph biased? Yes, absolutely. He admits basically no faults in cats. Is he right? Absolutely. Am I biased? What do you think… But, yes, any cat lover should get their paws on this one.