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Stuck in a Book’s Weekend Miscellany

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I’m kicking off the weekend with brunch AND lunch. Don’t believe anybody who says that brunch should replace lunch. And then hopefully a bit of reading, and probably quite a lot of sleeping. I hope you’ve got a good weekend lined up – and here’s the usual book, blog post, and link to help you get it started.

1.) The book – I don’t think I’ve mentioned yet that a new Helen Oyeyemi novel is coming out soon. Have I read all the ones I already have? No. Do I still really want this? Of course. Find out more about Gingerbread. (And isn’t it a lovely cover?)

2.) The link – want to know how many cows you could have bought with a certain number of pounds in 1600? More seriously, this currency converter from the National Archives will help out anybody reading historical fiction – if you’re trying to work out the wealth of various folk in the book you’re reading.

3.) The blog post – do check out JacquiWine’s excellent review of the extraordinary memoir More Was Lost by Eleanor Perenyi. Warning – you’ll want to buy the book.

Dancing With Mrs Dalloway by Celia Blue Johnson

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I always wonder at the wisdom of including specific books/authors/characters in the titles of books about books. In case you’re thinking “Simon, surely that doesn’t happen very often”, I can think of a few other examples – Tolstoy and the Purple Chair by Nina Sankovitch, Dear Farenheit 451 by Annie Spence, Nabokov’s Butterfly by Rick Gekoksi. I have actually read all of those, and particularly loved Sankovitch’s book, but I did have to get over the barrier that I’m not particularly interested in Tolstoy. As it turns out, he only gets a brief mention – the book is really about reading a book a day for a year, to process grief. Anybody who read it because they love Tolstoy would probably be disappointed.

Why do people keep doing these titles? I don’t know. But Celia Blue Johnson’s book Dancing With Mrs Dalloway (2011) is another example – the subtitle, ‘stories of the inspiration behind great works of literature’, is a far more accurate representation of what’s in the book. Mrs Dalloway is just one of the 50 books that Johnson discusses, in short chapters that look at the genesis of the works in question.

It’s a fascinating premise for a collection, and there has obviously been an awful lot of research – or at least an awful lot of opening an author’s biography and paraphrasing a section from it. She has divided them into fairly meaningless categories (“in the telling”, “catch me if you can”, etc.), but basically it’s a random order. They range significantly, from authors who fictionalised people they knew to those who ‘saw’ the story in a dream. The prosaic truth is that most authors just have an idea and then slog away at it, but Johnson does an excellent job at making the book really interesting, even from the less promising accounts. I think it’s probably because the sections are short – we don’t have time to get bored.

The selection of books is a good range of classics, and a who’s who of books I should probably have already read (I’ve only read 20 of the 50). It maybe leans a little towards American literature, but there is a good international showing – I suspect nobody would feel short-changed about what’s included. And if any of the tid-bits particularly catch your eye, then there are further reading suggestions at the end. Basically, what’s not to like?

 

Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House by Eric Hodgins

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I really should start making better note of where I get my book recommendations, because I do like to acknowledge them properly. All I know is that Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House by Eric Hodgins (1946) had been on my Amazon wishlist for quite a few years when I bought a copy in the US in 2015. And what a nice copy it is – or was; it rather fell apart as I read it, sadly. Though perhaps appropriately. Anyway, many thanks to whoever suggested it!

Project Names brought this one to the fore. Indeed, when I was thinking about reading books with names in the title, as a loose project, it was this novel that came to mind first. I didn’t know anything about it. I haven’t seen the 1948 Cary Grant film, though I’d be keen to, and I kept getting it mixed up with V.S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr Biswas (which I haven’t read, but I imagine is very different). I love books about houses, I love books from the ’40s, and I was excited to start it. And, you know what? It’s great fun.

The sweet old farmhouse burrowed into the upward slope of the land so deeply that you could enter either its bottom or middle floor at ground level. Its window trim was delicate and the lights in its sash were a bubbly amethyst. Its rooftree seemed to sway a little against the sky, and the massive chimney that rose out of it tilted a fraction to the south. Where the white paint was flecking off on the siding, there showed beneath it the faint blush of what must once have been a rich, dense red.

It’s not often that the title of a novel sums up the whole plot, but it pretty much does here. It’s unusual for a novel to have a single arc of action, uninterrupted by subplots or a broader scope, but Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House is that book. It’s very impressive. Whenever I’m trying to write, I find sustaining the interest – and sufficient words – for a full scene is often quite tricky. In this novel, Hodgins starts with Mr and Mrs Blandings house-hunting, and steadily takes us through every moment of the process of finding and buying the house, changing their mind about what to do next, hiring an architect, constructing a property, and getting the fittings in. More impressively, it is very funny and very engaging.

I particularly love reading about every step of house buying/building/decorating when I’m not having to do it myself. And thank goodness I didn’t read this while I was buying my own flat, because every stage of the process goes wrong. Not in a Laurel and Hardy broad comedy way, but through a very believable series of mishaps and poor decisions. Whether it is the estate agent’s bluster, or the architect’s lack of realism, or the difficulty of finding a water source, everything adds a complication. Mr and Mrs Blandings blunder on, squabbling and occasionally remorseful, but keeping their vision of a completed home in mind.

The most remarkable thing about Hogdins’ writing is its even pace, and the way that it is clearly unhurried while still keeping the reader hooked. Ultimately we know that nothing particularly momentous is likely to happen, and the humour is kept up so we never feel too much like we’re witnessing a tragedy. My only major quibble with this edition (and, I believe, most other editions) is the illustrator. William Steig is well regarded, but his cartoons lean heavily towards the broad and fantastical, and are (to my mind) completely out of keeping with the tone of the book. It’s a shame, because he would definitely enhance a different type of book, but I found myself rather dreading them appearing. It spoiled the effect of the restrained, human prose.

But yes, what a fun, clever, well written book. Nothing showy or over the top, and the perfect thing to read if you are well settled in a house you don’t want to sell, renovate, or decorate.

Stuck in a Book’s Weekend Miscellany

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Hard to believe it was snowing recently, given how sunny it is as I write this! I’m spending my weekend watching ‘Can You Ever Forgive Me?’ at the cinema, playing board games, and (of course) reading. Hopefully recording another episode of ‘Tea or Books?’ if I manage to finish the enormouslyyyy long book Rachel chose.

I hope you’re having a great weekend – and here’s a book, a link, and a blog post to help you along.

1.) The book – is a reprint of What Not by Rose Macaulay. I’ve had it for years but have yet to read it – must rectify – and now you can get a lovely edition from Handheld Classics. Well, nearly now – it’s coming out at the end of March. (Fun fact: I apparently own more Macaulay books than anybody else on LibraryThing, at 24, though I’ve only read half of those.

2.) The link – British or Irish and want to find out if the NY Times can work out where exactly you’re from? Give it a go!

3.) The blog post – I love Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Lolly Willowes – for an interesting and more ambivalent review, check out George’s at Reading 1900-1950.

Stuck in a Book’s Weekend Miscellany

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What a difference a week makes! No more snow here, and Cornwall already feels a lifetime ago. What a lovely weekend we had there, though. And today I’m off to London to watch a couple of plays – I’ve not done a matinee and an evening performance in the same day before, so hopefully it’ll be fab rather than too much of a good thing.

I hope you’re really well, and I’ll warm those February blues with a book, a link, and a blog post…

1.) The link – I love reading about cover design and the creative process – and this New Yorker article provides.

2.) The book – I don’t buy a lot of cookery books (though I have lots for baking), but I sort of need this halloumi cookbook. Man, I love halloumi.

3.) The blog post – Ali is great on Barbara Comyns in her recent review of Mr Fox – it’ll make you want to read it, I guarantee.

Mansfield and Me by Sarah Laing

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One of the books I got for my birthday in 2017, and read quite a while ago but have somehow neglected to write about, was a graphic novel called Mansfield and Me by Sarah Laing. I mentioned it in one of my weekend miscellanies, believing that it wasn’t possible to get in this country. Luckily I was wrong, and my friend Barbara kindly selected it – though was a bit surprised when it turned out to be a graphic memoir. I suppose I hadn’t mentioned my recent interest in graphic fiction and non-fiction!

Much like Mrs Gaskell & Me, that I wrote about more recently, this book takes the form of two parallel narratives – one of which looks at the author’s life, one of which looks at… well, the author’s life, but this time the author is not the one writing the book. Both titles put it much more clearly than I’m seeming able to describe! And so one follows Kathleen Beauchamp as she leaves New Zealand and becomes Katherine Mansfield; one follows Sarah Laing as she discovers a love of Mansfield, and how this informs many things in her own life.

As with any graphic book, a lot of the success of the book depends on the artwork. I really responded to Laing’s style, and each page is given suitable care and detail. I’ve read some graphic novels which are clearly done rather hastily, with proper attention only occasionally given – this is absolutely not the case here. It’s a beautiful book. You can see more examples in an interview with her.

And if the parallels between their lives isn’t as illuminating and beautiful as All The Lives We Ever Lived by Katharine Smyth (now my benchmark for pairings that work wonderfully), it does fulfill all that Laing claims for it. She knows they are not the same people, or experiencing the same things – rather, she sees how Mansfield has inspired and changed her, and depicts this delightfully. I’d definitely recommend to any Mansfield fan – and perhaps anybody who’d like to become a Mansfield fan.

 

All The Lives We Ever Lived by Katharine Smyth

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Do you ever read a book that is so perfect for you that you wonder if anybody else will want to read it? While away in Cornwall, I read my review copy of Katharine Smyth’s memoir All The Lives We Ever Lived (2019) – the subtitle of which is ‘Seeking Solace in Virginia Woolf’. I’ve used the word ‘memoir’, but it covers more categories than that – biography, philosophy, literary criticism – and it is extraordinarily good. But it does, perhaps, require a love of a Virginia Woolf and a familiarity with To The Lighthouse.

Luckily I have both those things. I’ve read To The Lighthouse three times (far fewer times than Smyth has read it, I should add) and believe it to be one of the greatest books ever written – and quite a few of the books to which I would give that accolade are by Woolf. To me, she is easily the best writer of the 20th century. To Smyth, she is that and more. The solace she is seeking (in that subtitle) relates to the death of her father – a man she idolised – and she uses To The Lighthouse to better understand the role of a parent, and the impact of filial love, and any manner of other things that she draws out of Woolf’s writing.

Much of this book is a portrait of her father. One of the impressive things Smyth achieves is conveying how deeply she loved this man who was evidently, openly flawed. For much of her life, he was an alcoholic – and her descriptions of his glassy-eyed appearances at dinners, his mood swings, his melancholy are vivid and uncomfortable. Despite a few stays in rehab facilities, he refused to go to AA meetings; Smyth’s parents had multiple times where they announced their separation, but stayed together. Smyth not only draws unlikely parallels between this troubled man and the almost saint-like Mrs Ramsay of To The Lighthouse, but makes the reader believe them. She is also keen to point out that her mother is not akin to the frustrating, unthinking cruel Mr Ramsay – but we see the dual portraits: this suffering, patient mother, and the mother that Smyth could not love in the way she loved her father.

People sometimes ask me if I’m angry with my father. When I say I’m not, they think I’m lying to myself. I don’t think I am. When I look back on his worst acts, I can remember my wrath and hatred, certainly – so violent, so complete, so inexorable, I thought at times that I could barely stand to be in my own skin. But I can also remember the way in which, within a week or two, such vehemence had faded to nothing; how that brutish stranger was again and again vanquished by that other, most gentle and lovable being: my father. And the truth us that neither memory – neither the loathing nor the absolution – feels especially familiar now. They feel like stories attached to someone else.

Smyth weaves together the various strands of All The Lives We Ever Lived beautifully, with extremely good judgement. Any time that I wondered why we hadn’t heard from To The Lighthouse for a while, it appeared in the next paragraph. The links she draws between the novel and her experiences are always thoughtful and illuminating, and never feel forced. It’s impact on her life and how she frames her understanding of life is so great that it is natural to take it as a guidebook to the intense experiences of loving and grieving. (Incidentally, having never grieved for anybody close to me, I am always reading books about grief as something of a tourist – fascinated but without truly understanding. I imagine this book would feel very different to somebody who has lost someone.)

I remember when I first started reading Virginia Woolf – Mrs Dalloway, mostly on the school bus. It was a revelation. Language had previously been something that sat around in piles, being clumped together to form books that were buildings of meaning – some architecturally elegant, some more workmanlike, but always simple enough constructions. And now this; now Woolf. She seems to disregard everything that language has previously had to do, and find new, beautiful, extraordinary ways of using it. Unlike other authors I had read, she was not finding words to match her meaning, but giving language new meaning, new vitality, through her ways of using it.

Her writing has not affected how I relate to the world in quite the way it did for Smyth, but I certainly share her admiration for Woolf’s astonishing ability. If I didn’t, or if I had not read To The Lighthouse, I do wonder what I’d have made of All The Lives We Ever Lived. I can’t answer that question. I know that reading this has made me want to pick up To The Lighthouse for the fourth time, and perhaps it would inspire Woolf newbies to do the same.

I’m still not sure why this book was published. Smyth hasn’t written any others, and its audience must be relatively niche. But I’m so, so glad it was. It is beautifully written, movingly thoughtful, and something I feel sure I will return to. Woolf fans – rush to it. For those who aren’t – I hope you find as much to value as I did.

Stuck in a Book’s Weekend Miscellany

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Happy weekend! I hope you’re not snowed in. I hope, frankly, that I’m not snowed in (since I’m writing this a few days in advance). But I’ve stocked up on cat food, and that’s the important thing. I can always survive on plain pasta, if needed. But man cannot live by pasta alone, so here is a blog post, a link, and a book to complement it.

1.) The blog post – I loved Karen’s parade of her Beverley Nichols books (and coveted a few, of course). Go and enjoy!

2.) The book – I can’t remember where I saw this recommended, but The Reading Promise: 3,218 nights of reading with my father by Alice Ozma is so up my street that I don’t know how I haven’t heard of it. It came out in 2012, and should, by rights, be right here in front of me. But it is not. Yet.

3.) The link – ever wanted to see a painting of a painting of a painting of a painting…? This is an unexpected delight, and proves that corners of the internet are surprisingly lovely.

Sometimes I watch movies

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Yes, I read quite a lot. I spend even more time than that watching television. But I also watch films occasionally, and I thought it would be fun to go through some of the ones I’ve watched in the past month or two, with brief reviews.

The Favourite

It’s been getting good press everywhere, and it’s certainly distinctive. This very odd take on Queen Anne (with the stellar and triple Oscar nominated cast of Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, and Rachel Weisz) dispenses with everything you expect from a historical drama. The humour is dark, though nowhere near as dark as the director’s previous, horrendous film The Lobster. Very strange, and worth seeing.

Mary, Queen of Scots

In contrast, this felt much more like a paint-by-numbers historical drama. Saoirse Ronan is predictably brilliant, but the script isn’t amazing and the score is very heavy-handed. Worth seeing for Ronan’s performance (and the great costumes and hair), but the film isn’t particularly special overall.

Love Per Square Foot

I love Bollywood, and this Netflix film is a delight. Two people need to pretend to be a couple to secure an apartment… guess what happens next?! The two leads are very lovable, and the whole thing is great fun. I’ve seen a few people complain at the length (2 hours 15 minutes) but it seemed very short for a Bollywood film!

Three Identical Strangers

This documentary looks at triplets who only discovered each other as adults, having been adopted by three different families. That’s strange enough, but the more the film goes on, the stranger it gets – as you find out how and why they were separated. I have never felt angrier in a cinema. The quality comes from the story rather than the documentary making, which is only really pedestrian, but the story is certainly interesting enough to survive that.

FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened

Much less worthy, this looks at the disaster (and criminal fraud) behind the FYRE Festival. I’d never heard of the festival, but it’s an eye-opening look at how the Instagram age can get carried away when nobody really knows how to organise a festival (and don’t mind stealing people’s money on false premises). This was the nicest aftermath of it.

Mary Poppins Returns

Watched this on Boxing Day, and it was absolutely wonderful. A very worthy follow up to the original film, and with much better songs than we could have hoped for. Emily Blunt puts on a posh English voice despite having a posh English voice already, and there is a brilliant cameo from the original Jane.

Source Code

I’m not usually one for thrillers, but Jack Gyllenhaal trying to find out who bombed a train – via some strange science thing that isn’t time travel, but feels like it – is done with the right level of humanity and pace. I like a high concept film that doesn’t linger over explaining that concept.

Tallulah

Another Netflix one, this indie comedy pairs Ellen Page and Allison Janney as they look after a kidnapped baby. Janney can do no wrong, and it’s great to see two such excellent and committed actresses get to some interesting, funny, moving material.

First Man

This is the only film I’ve ever walked out of at the cinema. Stunningly boring.

 

The Hand of Mary Constable by Paul Gallico

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As mentioned previously, when I’ve written about Paul Gallico, he is an extremely versatile novelist. And, indeed, a prolific one. This is great – but does mean you never quite know what you’re going to get if, like me, you try not to read blurbs before you start a book. So, when I picked up The Hand of Mary Constable (1964), I didn’t have much to go on. The cover is just wording, and so my preconceptions of the book were based largely on connotations of the title – and I had assumed it was a ghost story. (I also didn’t realise that it was a sequel to Too Many Ghosts, which I own and have not read, but it turns out that the stories are pretty separate.) And I guess it sort of is, but mostly isn’t.

Here’s the opening paragraph:

The sheet of paper clutched in the hand of a backward twisting arm was being jiggled in front of the face of Alexander Hero, investigator for the Society of Psychical Research of Great Britain, and roused him from the doze into which he had fallen. The air in the B.O.A.C. jet airliner had that stale smell of narrow confines, too long occupied by human beings engaged in eating, drinking and sleeping.

I wonder quite why Gallico thought that a good name for his hero was Hero – it feels a bit like a stopgap name – but here he is. He is handsome, intelligent, and (importantly) simultaneously open to ideas of psychical research and keen to crack down on frauds. I liked that touch. Having a hardened cynic would have been less interesting than somebody who is chiefly motivated by the wish to rule out false options, to discover if psychical contact is possible.

Hero has been called over to America, from England, to investigate something – though he doesn’t know what. When he arrives, and talks to various people in the FBI, he learns that Professor Constable has been inducted into a circle of spiritualists who claim that they have contact with his deceased ten-year-old daughter. Mary Constable – for ’tis she, of the title – has apparently been speaking through the Bessmers, and has left (as proof) a wax cast of her hand. This cast even has her fingerprints on it. Is it genuine contact, or is it connected with a slightly confusing plot line about how Constable has influence over a nuclear deal with the Russians?

The Hand of Mary Constable could probably be considered a literary thriller, and there are certainly bits that pretty thrillery. There are even bits that have a James Bond seduction element to them. Those aren’t genres that I usually rush towards, but the mix of that with Gallico’s intriguingly quirky look at spiritualism made me really enjoy reading this book. He brings the sense of the darkly fantastic that made me love his novel Love of Seven Dolls, and is certainly good at creating scenarios that combine the strange and the pacy.

I shan’t spoil the ending, but it did get a little too drawn out with all explanations – the novel would have been unsatisfying without proper explanations, but I wish he’d found a subtler or more concise way to include it all – but I still think #ProjectNames is off to a good start, and I continue to find Gallico an intriguing and unusual writer.