All

The Unspeakable Skipton by Pamela Hansford Johnson (25 Books in 25 Days: #6)

StuckinaBook All , , , 6 Comments

I think I bought Pamela Hansford Johnson’s The Unspeakable Skipton (1959) partly because of the similarity of the title to Saki’s The Unbearable Bassington – but I had also read a couple of PHJ’s other novels. I thought one was great (The Honours Board) and didn’t like another (An Error of Judgement), so where would Skipton sit on the spectrum?

She is certainly a varied author – this one isn’t like either of those, but it is very good. It’s principally a character piece. Daniel Skipton is a writer living hand-to-mouth in Belgium – he has had a critically successful novel followed by a critically unsuccessful one, and neither have made him much money. What he certainly doesn’t lack is self-confidence, as we see in the opening pages as he writes a bragging and insulting letter to his publisher, Utterson. While not writing, he endeavours to make money by convincing tourists to spend too much money on fake art, prostitutes, and a nude version of Leda (which the tourists who take up much of the book find hilarious).

Having had his lunch and rinsed out a pair of socks (he had only two pairs and kept one always in the wash), he took his manuscript from the table drawer, ranged before him his three pens, one with black ink, one with green, and one with red, and sat down to the hypnotic delight of polishing. The first draft of this book had been completed a year ago. Since then he had worked upon it every day, using the black pen for the correction of simple verbal or grammatical slips, the green pen for the burnishing of style, the red for marginal comment and suggestions for additional matter. He knew well enough that the cur Utterson would like to get his hands on it. It was not only a great book, it was the greatest novel in the English language, it would make his reputation all over the world and keep him in comfort, more than comfort, for the rest of his life.

Skipton reminded me quite a lot of Ignatius J Reilly, though The Unspeakable Skipton is nothing like A Confederacy of Dunces. It’s as though a character with Reilly’s monstrous nature was transposed to a much less heightened novel – and we see glimpses of Skipton’s genuine loneliness and desperation amongst the comedy of the situations Johnson creates.

Skipton is a wonderful creation, but I also enjoyed the band whom he encounters – from light-hearted Duncan to innocent Matthew to the intellectual snob Dorothy and her passive husband Cosmo. Dorothy apparently appears in another couple of novels in this sort-of series, and I would happily read more about her. She doesn’t have Skipton’s ruthless selfishness, but her sense of self-importance is not far behind – there is a wonderful scene where she gives a literary talk to an assembly of uninterested people.

So, The Unspeakable Skipton wasn’t really what I expected – but it is a character piece done with brio, and an unusual and confident novel.

Proust’s Overcoat by Lorenza Foschini (25 Books in 25 Days: #5)

StuckinaBook All , , , , 8 Comments

I’m a sucker for any book that deals with the writer’s fascination with another writer, and I imagine that’s why I picked up Proust’s Overcoat in 2015. It was published in Italian in 2008, and translated into English by Eric Karpeles in 2010, and is (of course) about a Frenchman, so it has been round the geographic houses. And I read it on the train, on the way to meet up with a Canadian – specifically Clare from The Captive Reader.

In the case of Proust’s Overcoat, it is not Foschini who’s obsessed with Proust, though she is certainly beguiled by learning more about him. Rather, her tale is largely about Jacques Guérin and his obsession with Proust. Guérin was the inheritor and manager of a very successful perfume manufacturer, but his private life was spent in gathering what he could of Proust’s papers and possessions.

Foshcini winds together the outline of Proust’s life, chiefly looking at his relationship with his doctor brother Adrian, with the account of Guérin – who knew Adrian, and used this tentative connection to get access to what was left of Proust’s possession after A. Proust’s widow burned them. It could have made a much longer book, so it’s interesting that she chose to make it such a short one. I almost never want a short book to be longer, even when I’m not doing 25 Books in 25 Days, and I was happy for this one to be a snapshot – almost a curio. And threaded throughout is that fur-lined overcoat – from which Proust was apparently inseparable, summer or winter. Foschini’s book opens with her seeing it, and closes with mention of it in the discussion of Proust’s legacy.

That legacy is broad and interesting, and Foschini’s little book forms an intriguing, unusual, and oddly charming corner of it.

Cynthia’s Way by Mrs Alfred Sidgwick (25 Books in 25 Days: #4)

StuckinaBook All , , , 8 Comments

My little Nelson’s Library edition of E.F. Benson’s Daisy’s Aunt (which I wrote about in 2016) has a section at the back where they advertise other titles that they publish. And that’s where I read the following description of Cynthia’s Way (1901):

Mrs Sidgwick has won a reputation as a writer of ingenious comedies. The heroine in this tale is an English girl of great wealth, who to amuse herself goes to Germany and masquerades as a poor governess. These studies of German home life are accurately observed and done with much humour and art, and in the background there is a charming love story.

A century and more after it was written, this marketing copy still worked its wonders on me, and I tracked down a copy of Cynthia’s Way. People masquerading as other people is always something I enjoy in a novel, especially in a good-natured comedy – and this novel is exactly that. Cynthia combines the whimsy of somebody who would find this deception amusing, with the straightforwardness of a heroine who has to deal with the household she enters. Here she finds a welcoming mother (who is an excellent cook), some slightly naughty young boys, and – most amusingly – Wanda. She has recently turned 18, and talks constantly of poetry and love and how she’d willingly kneel at the feet of a statue of Goethe all day. (When asked if she would do the same for any great poet’s statue, Cynthia replies simply “Certainly not”.)

Cynthia’s Way reminded me a lot of early Elizabeth von Arnim, and not just because of the period and the German setting. I could imagine her embracing this tone completely, particularly when no-nonsense Cynthia starts trying to sort out Wanda’s complicated love life. All while maintaining her innocent but complex deception, and starting to fall for the older son of the family, recently returned… Cynthia is not unused to proposals, but Adrian is something rather different.

It is all very diverting and very Edwardian, if you know what I mean. Cynthia’s disguise is not penetrated by anybody, and Sidgwick doesn’t introduce any of the detailed or unlikely plot twists that E.F. Benson would have done with this premise. Instead, it is simply used to set up the novel. After this, Sidgwick relies on her cast of characters to tell a story that is largely a portrait of a time, place, and class. It’s all gently amusing and easily swallowed whole in a day, if one can spare four or five hours of reading. Which, thankfully, today I could!

 

Stuck in a Book’s Weekend Miscellany

StuckinaBook All 5 Comments

Happy weekend! Apparently it’s going to be very warm here in the UK, though hopefully not too warm to be sitting on a train to London, which I’ll be doing at some point. I’ll feed back on that in due course. For now, a book, a blog post, a link!

1.) The blog post – is Sheree’s very interesting discussion about what makes a book a classic. This is the perennial question, of course, but I really like how she goes about exploring it.

2.) The link – is another interesting discussion, this time from the Hay festival. Deborah Moggach was in conversation with Tracey Chevalier about having their novels adapted into films and Moggach has some very intriguing things to say.

3.) The book – there keep being new “Oliver Sack’s last ever book”, which can feel a little callous – but I know that I’ll need to get my hands on Everything In Its Place, which is a collection of essays that have appeared in various places online and in periodicals. Let’s face it, I can never get enough Sacks.

Have a lovely weekend, everyone – back late today with whatever I’m reading for 25 Books in 25 Days!

 

The Silence of Colonel Bramble by Andre Maurois (25 Books in 25 Days #3)

StuckinaBook All , , , , 2 Comments

I read and enjoyed The Thought Reading Machine by Andre Maurois during my DPhil, and when I came across The Silence of Colonel Bramble last year, that fact and the title were enough for me to pick it up. It was published in French in 1918, and in English the following year – translated by Thurfrida Wake (great name), with the occasional verses translated by Wilfred Jackson. My appendix has the original French poetry, and my bad French is good enough to know that his translations were very approximate.

Published just after the First World War, this novella is based on Maurois’s experiences of spending the war with a British contingent of the army. Bramble was a composite character he created, and the silence of the title refers to the archetypal British colonel’s reticence – that Maurois believes contains eloquent multitudes.

This was an enjoyable and interesting view of a certain subsection of soldiers at a very significant period of time, though it doesn’t really qualify as a novel or even a novella. While there is a plot of sorts, it’s pretty much a series of vignettes and aphorisms, tied to characters.

“We are a curious nation,” said Major Parker. “To interest a Frenchman in a boxing match you must tell him that his national honour is at stake. To interest an Englishman in a war you need only suggest that it is a kind of a boxing match. Tell us that the Hun is a barbarian, we agree politely, but tell us that he is a bad sportsman and you rouse the British Empire.”

(The poetry is incidental and rather pointless.) It’s always fun to see one’s nation’s stereotypes held up to the light by somebody from another country, though in the case of Bramble et al, I hope they’re antiquated by now. All the nonsense about honour and sportsmanship has hopefully died out, though I wouldn’t be so sure. And I do wonder what the differences are about reading this as a Frenchman in French as opposed to an Englishman in English. But it is very good-natured and affectionate, filled with the comradeship of having just ‘won’ a war together – and enough amusing and down-to-eath in amongst the jingoism to still make for good reading.

Dear Austen by Nina Bawden (25 Books in 25 Days #2)

StuckinaBook All , , , 16 Comments

When I first picked this off the shelves at a lovely bookshop in Clevedon, I was thinking what you might be thinking – that Dear Austen (2005) is about Jane Austen. In fact, Austen was Bawden’s husband – who died in the Potter’s Bar railway accident in 2002. This short book takes the form of Bawden writing a letter to him, which is used as a device for explaining everything that happened in the aftermath of the crash. I suspect everybody in the UK will be familiar with it – to anybody not, I refer you to Wikipedia!

“So this is to be a personal letter about the events as I see them, telling you what has happened since that bloody accident on 10 May 2002 to all those who loved you and to some of the other stupidly trusting passengers whose lives were ended or destroyed. A year after they killed you, the contractor who was supposed to maintain that stretch of railway track declared a profit of sixty-seven million pounds.”

This is no ordinary book about grief, if such a thing exists. There certainly is grief, but there is also anger and frustration – at the maintainers of the railway who wouldn’t take responsibility; at the government that decided a court case wasn’t in the public interest; at previous governments who had privatised the railways and thus let upkeep slip.

It’s a moving and personal book, held tightly together with Bawden’s authorial control, her eloquence, and her ability to analyse her changing emotions with wisdom and insight. Not the most cheerful of books, of course, but well worth reading.

The Easter Parade by Richard Yates (25 Books in 25 Days #1)

StuckinaBook All , , 16 Comments

Last year I did a reading project – 25 Books in 25 Days (starting here), and I knew that I’d want to repeat it at some point in 2019. I kept looking at possible novellas to read (ideally ones with names in the title, of course), and finally decided: why am I putting it off?

And so I’ve taken the plunge today. The first of my 25 books has been read! And, as with last year, I have inspired by Madame Bibi Lophile‘s Novella A Day in May project, which is drawing to a close.

Every day, I’ll give a very quick intro to the book, where and why I got hold of it, and a quote. The posts won’t really be reviews, as they’ll almost certainly be too short for that – but let’s see how it goes!

*

Neither of the Grimes sisters would have a happy life, and looking back it always seemed that the trouble began with their parents’ divorce. That happened in 1930, when Sarah was nine years old and Emily five. Their mother, who encouraged both girls to call her ‘Pookie,’ took them out of New York to a rented house in Tenafly, New Jersey, where she thought the schools would be better and where she hoped to launch a career in suburban real estate. It didn’t work out – very few of her plans for independence ever did – and they left Tenafly after two years, but it was a memorable time for the girls.

That’s the opening paragraph of The Easter Parade, and those first words set you up for what is likely to be a melancholy read. And, yes, Emily and Sarah don’t have happy lives – but the way Yates writes the novel is so captivating that it doesn’t feel miserable. We watch as they grow up – Sarah settles into domesticity, while Emily is keen for education, career, and the right man. And she gets instead, of course, a series of wrong men – though each relationship is delineated so carefully and with such realism that we swoop through the hopes and disappointments with her each time. The Easter parade of the title is a snapshot taken at a moment when it looks like the future will be bright.

I read Revolutionary Road during my Masters and thought it was brilliant – I bought this in 2011, but had yet to read another Yates since 2009. Thank goodness I did – what a wonderful and observant writer. Perhaps it would have made more sense to read this one gradually, to join more steadily in these advancing and unfortunate lives, but it was such a page turner that I’m not sure I could have put it down for long anyway.

Off to a good start! And more on this one in the next episode of ‘Tea or Books?’

The Femina Prize

StuckinaBook All 21 Comments

One of the things I enjoy doing is looking back at past literary prizes. We’ve all heard of the Booker, but there are all manner of other prizes out there – and it’s not a new thing. While awards are getting increasingly niche (with specific demographics attached to the criteria) or controversially broader (the Booker allowing US entrants), there are a few with a history of being “the best book”.

One of my favourites is the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, which is (to my mind) a more reliable indicator of quality than the Booker. And today I properly explored the Femina – Vie Heureuse Prize. This isn’t to be confused with the Prix Femina, which you have heard of, though it is related.

The Prix Femina is a French literary prize that has been going for a century and more. The Femina – Vie Heureuse Prize (also known as the Femina Prize) was an offshoot for English literature that was set up in 1920. It only lasted until 1939, but – in doing so – covered my favourite two decades of writing. You have to dig around a bit to find a list of the winners, but thankfully they’re listed by the National Archives, of all places. And here they are!

1920 William an Englishman by Cicely Hamilton

1921 The Splendid Fairing by Constance Holmes

1922 Dangerous Ages by Rose Macaulay

1923 Gruach by Gordon Bottomley

1924 Roman Pictures by Percy Lubbock

1925 A Passage to India by E.M. Forster

1926 Precious Bane by Mary Webb

1927 Adam’s Breed by Radclyffe Hall

1928 To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

1929 Gallion’s Reach by H.M. Tomlinson

1930 Portrait in a Mirror by Charles Morgan

1931 A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes

1932 Tobit Transplanted by Stella Benson

1933 Small Town by Bradda Field

1934 Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

1935 Harriet by Elizabeth Jenkins

1936 The Root and the Flower by L.H. Myers

1937 Faith, Hope, no Charity by Margaret Lane

1938 The Porch by Richard Church

1939 Count Belisarius by Robert Graves

What an interesting list of titles! The first one might have reminded you why the Femina Prize rang a bell – the first winner of the prize was also the first Persephone title. It’s also one of only five books I’ve read here (along with Macaulay, Woolf, Forster, and Gibbons), though I’ve read other books by L.H. Myers, Elizabeth Jenkins, Stella Benson, Radclyffe Hall, and Charles Morgan.

And then there are names that, as far as I know, have disappeared from most readers’ memories altogether – has anybody read Gordon Bottomley, Bradda Field, or Percy Lubbock? Having said that, those are the only three names here that I didn’t recognise – so it’s a pretty impressive snapshot of the period. Until you have a moment to think about names that aren’t there, of course, and which you might expect to appear – D.H. Lawrence, Evelyn Waugh, Christopher Isherwood, Aldous Huxley. I’m quite pleased that they’re not. Not because I dislike them, but because it makes for a more interesting list – because they aren’t the names that a jury would choose today.

Have you read any of the list? Any you want to investigate? And do you have any other prizes to recommend?

Londoning

StuckinaBook All 16 Comments

I spent Friday evening and Saturday in London, which was not quite the original plan. I was intending to go on Saturday and spend the day there, culminating with my theatre ticket to All My Sons and then hopping on a late train home – but it turned out, when I checked my ticket, that I’d bought one for the Friday evening performance by mistake. Oops! Thank goodness I checked, because it was a sold out run and I don’t know if they’d have let me in. So I made hasty arrangements for someone to feed Hargreaves, asked if I could stay with my good friend Lorna, and went off after work.

Image result for all my sons the old vic

The best play I’ve ever seen was a production of All My Sons, starring David Suchet and Zoe Wanamaker, among other luminaries. For those who don’t know Arthur Miller’s play, it’s an American family drama set in the wake of the Second World War, and that’s all I’ll say, because I don’t want to give anything away. It was a bit of a gamble, going to see another version of a production I loved so much – but Sally Field was playing one of the leads, so I couldn’t resist.

Was it as good? Perhaps not, but it was pretty darn close. The play is brilliant, and it was wonderfully brought to life by this exceptional cast and by Max Jones’s excellent set design – that feels lived in, even while it is disconcerting. Interestingly, where the other production I saw had felt very much about Suchet’s Joe Keller, this one was all about Field’s Kate Keller. For me, it was an object lesson in how a director can change the message of a play. Anyway, it’s all very good, and do see it if you have a chance.

Image result for fashion and textile museum swinging 60s

The next morning I had a delicious homemade brunch with Lorna and Will, and then went off to meet my friend Lucy at the Fashion and Textile Museum near London Bridge. My first visit there was for their 1930s exhibition last year, and they currently have one on the 1960s. There were far fewer outfits involved in this one, but it was very interesting nonetheless – and a museum that will always be worth going to. Prepare yourself for a lot of Mary Quant!

Also worth going to is Comptoir Gourmand – a bakery just opposite, which sold me the most delicious white chocolate cookie I’ve ever had. And the most enormous! We sat in a park round the corner and ate our goodies, having a good old natter. Lucy was a library trainee with me at the Bodleian back in 2007/08 and, unlike me, has stayed in the profession. She’s an old and dear friend and it’s always lovely to catch up.

We share a weakness for bookshops, and I’ve decided that my book buying ban has essentially gone out of the window altogether now. Plus it feels wrong to go into an indie bookshop and not buy a book. Of course, one doesn’t have to go into a bookshop, but I hadn’t visited The Riverside Bookshop in Hay’s Galleria before, and it was an 8 minute walk away. What are two book nerds to do?

I went with purpose: I wanted to buy The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr. Well, there was a gap on the shelves where it had apparently been – but, as stated, I like to support independent bookshops, so took a mosey around seeing what else might appeal. In the end, I landed on Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost, which looks to be a book-length essay on loss and getting lost. The lady behind the counter told me it was very good, when I was buying it, which is always a good sign! Has anybody read it?

Book in hand, I headed back to Paddington, and am now at home with a cat on my lap.

My A to Z of Books

StuckinaBook All 7 Comments

On Twitter this week, I decided it would be fun to pick 26 great books – an author for every letter of the alphabet. And it WAS fun. You can see what I chose here – do let me know if you have a go at your own, either on Twitter or blog or wherever!