Nerina Pallot was very big for about a minute quite a few years ago, and the other day I thought I’d see what else she’d done more recently. And I really enjoyed ‘Man Didn’t Walk on the Moon’ – hope you enjoy it too!
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Diana Tempest by Mary Cholmondeley
I’ve mentioned before how great Simon Evers’ narration is at Librivox – the free audiobook site where out of copyright books are read by members of the public. Understandably, it’s a mixed bag – but Simon Evers is brilliant, so I’ve been downloading whatever he reads. And the latest was Diana Tempest (1893) by Mary Cholmondeley.
This wasn’t completely at random. I have previously read Cholmondeley’s Red Pottage, and thought it was brilliant. Diana Tempest does something similar – mixing sensation fiction with the sort of observational comedy of manners that we expect from a Jane Austen or Anthony Trollope. It feels like it shouldn’t work, but it does, and I found Diana Tempest very funny and often nail-bitingly intriguing.
We don’t meet either Diana for a while – for there are two of them. One is Colonel Tempest’s wife, who died in childbirth. The other is his daughter. She, Colonel Tempest, and his son Archie are all left without a fortune when Colonel Tempest’s brother dies. The money, instead, goes to his brother’s son, John – whom everybody knows is illegitimate. Everybody except the infant John, of course, and it is a fact he is not told.
Colonel Tempest is a very unpleasant character – greedy, unfeeling, and with the sense that the world is very hard on him. It’s unclear what the dead Diana saw in him, because she is described as rather wonderful – not only that, she was engaged to his brother before he whisked her away. You can see why there’s no love lost.
And Colonel Tempest gets carried away, saying that he’ll give £10,000 (about £850,000 is today’s money, according to the National Archives calculator – or 1031 cows) to anybody who can redirect the fortune to him. In effect, he has put a bounty on John’s life.
Fast forward a few years, and daughter Diana has grown up. She is a charming, witty, wise, and rather delightful heroine – in the mould of Lizzie Bennett. Like Lizzie, she despises the idea of marrying for money alone, and has a friend who is clearly doing this. And like Lizzie, she finds herself admired in several quarters.
One of these quarters is John – who has grown up to be a rather serious, moral man. He tries to keep his cousin Archie is check, but is usually paying off his debts. Oh, and he keeps having brushes with death – whether that be almost burning to death, nearly being shot, etc. etc. It seems that the people who are trying to win that £10,000 aren’t super good at their job.
I loved listening to this. Cholmondeley has such a witty, ironic turn of phrase. Of course, because it was audio I have no examples – but imagine Austen’s way of exposing the ridiculousness of society in general and hypocrites in particular. On the one hand, we wait to see if she and John will discover that the other has fallen in love – on the other, we follow Colonel Tempest as he tries to track down the would-be assassins and undo his command. Will the relationship succeed, or will the killers get their target?
My only criticism is that, like many Victorian writers, Cholmondeley is never in a hurry. Chapters often begin with several minutes (/pages) of general thoughts about mankind, ambling through enjoyable aphorisms before we get to the crux of the matter. It all added to the enjoyment of the style, but sometimes I did wish she’d just get on with it, and curtail the flourishes a little.
I’m sure it would be fun to read – and it’s definitely a delight to listen to. Much recommended!
Three more crimes
Specifically, three more British Library Crime Classics! Thanks to the British Library for sending these to me – I am keen to dive in, but I thought I’d give you all a quick intro to them before I choose which one to read. These tasters are all taken from the British Library website. Let me know which of these appeals the most!
Surfeit of Suspects by George Bellairs
“At 8 o’clock in the evening on the 8th November, there was a terrific explosion in Green Lane, Evingden.”
The offices of Excelsior Joinery Company are no more; the 3 directors are killed and the peace of a quiet town in Surrey lies in ruins. When the supposed cause of ignited gas leak is dismissed and the presence of dynamite revealed, Superintendent Littlejohn of Scotland Yard is summoned to the scene.
But beneath the sleepy veneer of Evingden lies a hotbed of deep-seated grievances. Confounding Littlejohn’s investigation is an impressive cast of suspicious persons, each concealing their own axe to grind.
Bellairs’ novel of small-town grudges with calamitous consequences revels in the abundant possible solutions to the central crime as a masterpiece of misdirection.
Deep Waters ed. by Martin Edwards
From picturesque canals to the swirling currents of the ocean, a world of secrets lies buried beneath the surface of the water. Dubious vessels crawl along riverbeds, while the murky depths conceal more than one gruesome murder.
The stories in this collection will dredge up delight in crime fiction fans, as watery graves claim unintended dwellers and disembodied whispers penetrate the sleeping quarters of a ship’s captain. How might a thief plot their escape from a floating crime scene? And what is to follow when murder victims, lost to the ocean floor, inevitably resurface?
This British Library anthology uncovers the best mysteries set below the surface, including stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, William Hope Hodgson and R. Austin Freeman.
Murder in the Mill-Race by E.C.R. Lorac
“Never make trouble in the village” is an unspoken law, but it’s a binding law. You may know about your neighbours’ sins and shortcomings, but you must never name them aloud. It’d make trouble, and small societies want to avoid trouble.
When Dr Raymond Ferens moves to a practice at Milham in the Moor in North Devon, he and his wife are enchanted with the beautiful hilltop village lying so close to moor and sky. At first they see only its charm, but soon they begin to uncover its secrets – envy, hatred and malice.
Everyone says that Sister Monica, warden of a children’s home, is a saint – but is she? A few months after the Ferens’ arrival her body is found drowned in the mill-race. Chief Inspector Macdonald faces one of his most difficult cases in a village determined not to betray its dark secrets to a stranger.
Stuck in a Book’s Weekend Miscellany
It’s sunny! I don’t have a cold! All the ingredients for a nice weekend are there. I hope your weekend is looking similarly nice, and that you have a nice pile of books ready to go. I’m finishing off a doorstopper for book group (note: set up a page limit for book club). Here’s your usual weekend miscellany trio:
1.) The book – The Remarkable Life of the Skin by Monty Lyman has just come out – it looks like a really interesting and accessible look at all the scientific and sociological implications of our skin. And, sidenote, Monty is a friend of mine. I’m gearing myself up to read it and hope that it isn’t too much for my squeamish soul.
2.) The link – is a month old now, but it’s a fun and encouraging look at the booksellers who are refusing to be beaten by Amazon.
3.) The blog post – is a follow up to a previous one – a round up of Sylvia Townsend Warner Reading Week. Lots of great links to reviews to hunt out!
The Shoreless Sea by Mollie Panter-Downes
There’s a corner of the blogosphere that is very familiar with Mollie Panter-Downes’ brilliant novel One Fine Day – about a woman experiencing her life and village on one day just after the Second World War. And this corner (yes, it’s the one I’m in, of course) has probably also read some of the Panter-Downes short stories that Persephone have reprinted – and hopefully London War Notes too, non-fiction reporting on WW2. We might even have read some of her later non-fiction. But it’s not often that her earlier fiction is mentioned.
One good reason for that is that it’s nigh-on impossible to get hold of. One of her novels wasn’t even mentioned in her bibliography on Wikipedia until I added it recently – but, yes, she wrote four novels before One Fine Day. They are My Husband Simon, The Chase, Storm Bird – and this one, The Shoreless Sea (1923), published when she was only 17. It was apparently a bestseller, and certainly seems to have gone into many editions quite quickly. So why are there no copies around? What happened to them all?
Well, what happened to mine, mysteriously, is that somebody tore the board cover off. Even more mysterious, the dustjacket survived. Unless it was taken from one copy and put on another? Who knows. But it’s rather lovely to have this pretty dustjacket intact – and The Shoreless Sea has been waiting on my shelves since 2004. It was about time I read it, if only because there are so few copies about that it shouldn’t be left languishing on mine.
The novel is about Deirdre. As the novel opens she is a teenager, and the chief passions in her life are a fondness for all things romantic and a distaste for her mother. Her mother certainly seems quite selfish, and views her children only as a constant reminder of her age. Her escape is into romanticism – including wandering through the woods at the end of their grounds. It’s here that she meets Guy.
This is a real meeting of minds. They are breathlessly poetic with each other, while also realising that they are kindred spirits. It’s essentially love at first sight, though one propelled by not having met a sympathetic mind before. They agree to meet again – but, when Deirdre returns, Guy is not there…
We fast forward a bit, and Deirdre has agreed to marry a jolly sort called Terence. He is kind, fun, a little stupid, and not at all her kindred spirit. But circumstances have led her to this marriage, and she wishes to make the most of it. A couple of years into their marriage (while she is still about 20), and Guy turns up again…
Deirdre laughed a little.
“Wasn’t it Swinburne who wrote ‘Fate is a sea without shore’? That;s exactly what I feel – as if I’m battling all alone in a stormy sea, and that any minute I may sink. Dahlia, if Guy doesn’t go away soon I – I, the last wave of all will swamp me.
That’s where the title comes from if, like me, you aren’t up to speed with your Swinburne. I thought it might be a misquotation from Coleridge, fool that I am.
It was fun to see what Panter-Downes was like as a teenager – and she certainly has the gift for compelling storytelling right from the start. There is a lot less subtlety in this book than in her later work, and it’s very evidently written by somebody whose only experience of romantic love came from reading about it – but, at the same time, there are plenty of novels published in the 1920s by older authors which have much the same feeling. I suppose each period has its variety of dialogue that sounds right in a book but not in real life, and the 1920s lent towards stoical hysteria. An oxymoron of sorts, perhaps, but one that sums up the 1920s for me.
Is this her best book? No – but it’s great fun, not completely predictable, and with some moments of beauty that peek through the heightened saga and give promise of what was to come.
Yes, I bought some more books
Maybe I need to return to the ban on book buying, because I’ve been on a bit of a spree recently. But I also made space for a new bookcase (bookcase still to be bought), so maybe it’s all fine? Anywhere, here’s a bunch of books I bought recently…
I was in Portsmouth last week for a training course, and I had time after it finished to pop to a nearby bookshop. It was very crowded and very reasonably priced. Curiously most of their older fiction seemed to be in ‘pocket sized’ editions, albeit for people with enormous pockets. And I bought a small handful of interesting looking books.
Proud Heaven by Ethel Mannin
Anybody who’s read much about middlebrow novels in the interwar period has probably seen Mannin’s name pop up, but I have very little idea about what her novels are actually like. This is the second of hers on my shelves, so I must give her a proper go sometime soon.
Thin Ice by Compton Mackenzie
OK, I won’t buy any more Mackenzie until I read some of the ones I have. He says.
My Favourite Books by Robert Blatchford
I couldn’t resist a book about books, even if this one is published so early in the century that it’s unlikely to coincide with my favourite books.
The Lack of the Fairfaxes by Katharine Tynan
I’m sure I’ve seen Tynan’s name around. I can’t remember where, but this looked fun – and has a name in the title, so I might even read it under Project Names.
Just those four in Portsmouth – but I was meeting a friend in Woodstock for lunch today, and there’s a lovely little independent bookshop there. So I had a browse, and bought a couple of things that have on my wishlist for a long time, because I like to support independent bookshops. I’m altruistic like that. The third of these came from a charity bookshop in Woodstock.
The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr
This has been getting great reviews, and anything that can make me a better writer can’t hurt. Though, having recently finished writing a novel, I’m hoping this won’t make me have massive re-thinks about structure…
Ghosting by Jennie Erdal
Slightly Foxed often send me their lovely Editions as review copies, so I thought I’d offset that by buying one for myself – which is a memoir of ghostwriting. Fascinating, no?
I For One by J.B. Priestley
A few years back, Priestley’s essay collection Delight was republished – and it was a delight. This collection of essays appears to be things that he wants to complain about – which could well end up being equally fun.
The Innocent and the Guilty by Sylvia Townsend Warner
When Helen announced Sylvia Townsend Warner Reading Week, I thought I’d pick up one of the volumes of short stories I have waiting. I bought lots in an impulsive moment during my DPhil, and am now slowly working my way through them. Little did I think that Helen would also be reading The Innocent and the Guilty (1971) – you can read her thoughts on her blog.
This was the last book of short stories that Warner published that wasn’t themed – the ones that followed were about elves or about childhood. And, indeed, innocence and guilt aren’t the dominating themes of this collection – I love Helen’s idea that they are linked by the concept of escape.
Certainly that is the keynote to the most arresting story of the collection – ‘But at the Stroke of Midnight’. It is in very much the same area as Lolly Willowes – her 1920s novel about an unmarried woman who decides to stop being dependent on her brother, moving to the middle of nowhere (and, er, other things happen that I won’t spoil). In this story, though, Lucy is married – and we initially see her disappearance from the vantage of her concerned, confused, slightly helpless husband. And then the story becomes about dual identities, as well as searching for self definition.
It’s interesting that, in the approximately five decades between Lolly Willowes being published and ‘But at the Stroke of Midnight’ appearing, Warner has turned an already ambiguous escape into something even more ambiguous. There are no definite emotions, let alone a conclusive ending.
And that lack of conclusion, or perhaps lack of clarity, permeates the collection. There’s a story about drinkers meeting, and the final moments suggest (half-suggest) that one of them has a very troubled life; there is a story about a devastating flood; there is one about a widow guarding her writer-husband’s legacy. In earlier collections, Warner might have shown us a moment where they changed. She is brilliant at those tiny moments that make lasting differences – or the tiny moments that illuminate whole lives. Here, I found the tiny moments didn’t really make anything illuminated. They happened (or perhaps didn’t); they confused the reader into an impressionistic sense of what the story felt like, rather than anything imprecise about what it actually was. This reader, at least. ‘The Green Torso’, for instance, has some wonderful moments about false friendships and pride – but they are in a whirl of other elements. I finished most of the stories feeling that they hadn’t quite coalesced into one radiant beam.
I think there are two outliers, in this. The final story, ‘Oxenhope’, is gentler and more lovely than the others. And ‘Bruno’ is more confusing, more unsatisfactory – to me, that is. I didn’t know what was going on or how the people were delineated.
Warner always writes great sentences. She is a delicious stylist, and often very funny. And these stories might be right up some readers’ streets. For me, having discovered what exceptionally striking, immersive, satisfying stories she could write, in the other collections I’ve read – The Museum of Cheats and Swan on an Autumn River – these ended up being the smallest bit disappointing. And I think that’s because those other two collections rank among my favourite ever short stories.
I set a tall order for Sylvia Townsend Warner Reading Week, and it couldn’t quite be met. If this is where you start with her stories, you’ll probably appreciate the many gems and insights, and so you should. But, let me tell you, there are greater delights in store!
Pen in Hand by Tim Parks
You KNOW I love a book about books/reading, and apparently Will from Alma Books has also caught wise on that front. He kindly emailed to offer me a review copy of Tim Parks’ Pen in Hand (2019), which is a collection of columns that Parks wrote for the New York Review of Books – subtitled ‘reading, re-reading, and other mysteries’, though there aren’t a huge heap of mysteries in there. I don’t need mysteries. He had me at ‘reading’.
The title comes from the idea that one should always read with a pen in the hand – ready to annotate, scribble, question, and respond to the book. Now, I don’t do this. I will occasionally make light, minuscule pencil markings in a book, but that’s as far as I’m willing to go. No matter, we can tolerate each other’s differences and move on together. And I was very happy to move on – I loved this collection.
I’d previously read and reviewed Parks’ Where I’m Reading From, which I understand to be essentially an earlier version of the same thing – columns from the New York Review of Books. I had certainly enjoyed it, but described it ‘maddeningly repetitive’. The same ideas and examples came up time and time again, and D.H. Lawrence was quoted so often that it felt a little absurd. Wonderfully, this has all changed in this collection. Lawrence barely gets a look in! And, more to the point, Parks manages to avoid repetition with a cat-like agility.
True, he comes back to the same authors a lot. Just as you always know that an Alberto Manguel book will talk about Borges, so it seems that Parks is never more than a few feet from a Beckett reference. But he has a fascinating range of topics that he discusses – gathered under the loose categories ‘How could you like that book?’, ‘Reading and writing’, ‘Malpractice’, and ‘Gained and lost in translations’.
The second of these is a coverall for anything literature-related that doesn’t fit in the other categories (samples: ‘Do Flashbacks Work in Literature?’, ‘How Best to Read Auto-Fiction’), and the others are relatively porous. An article about the pleasures of pessimism could have fitted anywhere. His thoughts on reading and forgetting are fascinating and, again, could have been anywhere in the book. And so forth – who cares about classification, it’s all an opportunity to get to know Parks’ readerly persona. Which is someone with a wide knowledge of literature in several languages, open to most different periods of literature, but unafraid to spike the balloon of an overly-inflated writer. His targets are not just E.L. James and her ilk (though they do get a mention), but people like Elena Ferrante, usually held protected from such things.
The final section of essays does justify its classification, as they are all about translation. Parks has lived in Italy for decades, and works as a translator – and has some pretty interesting things to say about translation. Unlike the superlatively involving and captivating This Little Art by Kate Briggs, though, Parks doesn’t have all that much to say about the theory of translation. Rather, he takes apart various different translations of Primo Levi – and it does feel a bit mean-spirited. How could it not, when he is pointing out how other translators have done the job badly, and suggests his own versions? I can’t comment on how accurate the translations are, though Parks’ versions did often read less elegantly and more ambiguously in English than the ones he was ‘correcting’. Nevertheless, I love reading about translation – and you certainly can’t accuse Parks of making his criticisms without examples.
All in all, this is a brilliant collection to dip in and out of – or to binge in one go, if you like. It’s a little more academic than the here’s-why-I-love-books-and-tea style book about reading, but certainly not to the level of alienating the general reader. I can certainly see myself reading and re-reading this – and who knows where or when the ‘mysteries’ will come into things?
Stuck in a Book’s Weekend Miscellany
Apologies for a very quiet week on the blog – consider it the reaction to 25 Books in 25 Days! It’s also because I’ve come down with a horrible cold. Which I also did last time I read 25 Books in 25 Days… coincidence?! So, despite the sunny weather forecast this weekend, I’ll probably be spending my time inside feeling sorry for myself. Though, tbh, that’s what I’d be doing during hot weather even if I didn’t have a cold. Hope you’re having a good one, though!
1.) The blog post – is really a reminder, that Sylvia Townsend Warner Reading Week is kicking off in a couple of days! At the time of writing, I haven’t quite picked what I’ll be reading. But I think it’s going to be one of her collections of short stories. More info here – let me and Helen know if you’ll be joining in!
2.) The book – my friend Claire is a fantastic writer, and I really liked her novel The Runaway. Her next novel, A Map of the Sky, isn’t out yet – but I’m excited for when it will be. There’s more info on her website.
3.) The link – I’m excited about the film Vita and Virginia coming out, and I’m even more excited after reading this interview with its two stars. And it turns out the director studied English at Oxford at the same time as me.
Song for a Sunday
Another great recommendation from my Spotify Discover list – ‘Light On’ by Maggie Rogers.