Mystery at Geneva by Rose Macaulay #ABookADayInMay No.5

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Today’s book is a curio by a relatively well-known writer. Lots of us love Rose Macaulay’s novels, whether that be her famous Towers of Trebizond or the delightfully funny, wry books she wrote in the 1920s – Crewe Train, Dangerous Ages, Keeping Up Appearances, Potterism and so forth. Not so much talked about is Mystery at Geneva (1922)

It starts with an author note that we certainly shouldn’t take at all seriously:

Note: As I have observed among readers and critics, a tendency to discern satire when none is intended, I should like to say that this book is simply a straightforward mystery story, devoid of irony, moral or meaning. It has for its setting an imaginary session of the League of Nations’ Assembly, but it is in no sense a study of, still less a skit on actual conditions at Geneva of which indeed I know little. The only connection I have ever had with the League being membership of its Union.

Let’s be clear – this is not at all true. Macaulay is at her most satirical in this novel – a satire of detective novels, to an extent, but particularly a satire of the League of Nations. The hero is Henry Beechtree, a journalist for The British Bolshevist – and he has been sent to Geneva to cover a meeting of the League (which, at the time Macaulay’s novel was published, was still very much in its infancy.)

Along the way, Macaulay has a great time poking fun at newspaper men and the rivalries between them, as well as the mutual hysteria of journalists who cling to the far-left or far-right of the political spectrum. Macaulay is always wonderful when she is at her driest, and if the characters are very exaggerated then that doesn’t stop the prose being very funny.

Similarly broadly drawn are the delegates from different nations. Macaulay mostly manages to avoid anything that would feel uncomfortably racist today – the divisions are drawn chiefly along political lines (Irish Republicans vs Loyalists, for instance) and the good-humoured rivalry of adjoining European countries.

All is going more or less dully, and Henry is sending back sarcastic reports to the Bolshevist, when the mystery kicks in. The President of the assembly goes missing.

And then, over the next few days, more and more of the delegates disappear. We often see their final moments before disappearance – coaxed away by appealing to their particular weakness, whether that be wanting to help the poor, or getting involved in a political discussion, or finding a rare copy of their own book for sale. Rumours start to circulate that the whole thing is being done to undermine the League itself.

For what would be the use of getting rid of one man only, however prominent? The Assembly, after the first shock, would proceed with its doings. But what if man after man were to disappear? What if the whole fabric of Assembly Council and Committees should be disintegrated, till no one could have thoughts for anything but the mysterious disappearances and how to solve the riddle, and how, still more, to preserve each one himself from a like fate? Could any work be continued in such circumstances, in such an atmosphere? No. The Assembly would become merely a collection of bewildered and nervous individuals turning themselves into amateur detectives and, incidentally, the laughing-stock of the world. 

It should be noted that nobody is trying very hard to preserve themselves, as they do continually wander off into places where they are likely to be abducted. And there are so many characters, many of whom disappear before we know very much about them, that it is certainly more comic than tragic when they vanish.

Henry muses about the motives and perpetrators, but there isn’t really a sense that the reader is being given clues to disentangle. There is a solution, but ultimately it doesn’t really matter. This is first and foremost a satire on political and national grounds. The teasing of detective fiction is less successful because detective fiction was routinely so outlandish in the period that it’s almost impossible to satirise the lengths to which a plot can go. Of course, with most of the satire resting at a point in time in 1922, it is hardly a novel for all the ages. Some elements are recognisable, but others feel very much of a moment.

Something that does feel quite perennial is Macaulay’s (/Henry’s) comment on the way that magazines and newspapers write about women. It’s a theme she returns to often in her fiction and non-fiction, often in near-identical phrasing – but I love it every time, particularly the frustration that seethes beneath the surface humour:

All sorts of articles and letters appear in the papers about women. Profound questions are raised concerning them. Should they smoke? Should they work? Vote? Take Orders? Marry? Exist? Are not their skirts too short, or their sleeves? Have they a sense of humour, of honour, of direction? Are spinsters superfluous? But how seldom similar inquiries are propounded about men. How few persons discuss superfluous bachelors, or whether the male arm or leg is an immodest sight, or whether men should vote. For men are not news.

Mystery at Geneva is an odd, slightly silly and ultimately rather enjoyable book. I should think it would entertain anybody with an interest in 20th-century political history, particularly the way the League of Nations was considered by the everyman/woman. It’s not up there with Macaulay’s most accomplished and satisfying novels, but it does feel intended to be a jeu d’esprit rather than a substantial work. On its own terms, it’s a lot of fun.

This Census-Taker by China Miéville #ABookADayInMay No.4

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A boy ran down a hill path screaming. The boy was I. He held his hands up and out in front of him as if he’d dipped them in paint and was coming to make a picture, to press them down to paper, but all there was on him was dirt. There was no blood on his palms.

So opens This Census-Taker (2016) by China Miéville, a strange little novella set in an uncertain place and uncertain time. Those first couple of short sentences are representative of what the narrator does throughout – sometimes he is in the first person, sometimes the third person when he wants to distance himself from the memory, and sometimes even the second person. It’s all part of what makes This Census-Taker unsettling and unsure. You never know where you are, literally and metaphorically.

As he runs down the hill, he has a message to shout to people who live at the bottom of the hill. They are technically in the same town, but they are worlds apart. The people at the bottom of the hill think of those further up as savages living in some sort of wilderness, peopled by monsters. And the boy’s shout is unlikely to dispel that idea – “My mother killed my father!”

But as soon as he says this, he is unsure. Is that what he saw? Or did he see someone else being killed? Or was nobody killed at all? Nothing is clear or still.

The novella has a lot of moments of death. The boy’s father is given to killing – a stray dog, a goat, anything that gets him into the silent, taut rage that sometimes comes across his face. He throws the bodies into a seemingly bottomless pit in a cave. The boy believes that there are some humans in there too. But is he right?

The actual census taker of the title doesn’t turn up to take a census until p.110 of 138 pages, and it is a sort of climax that doesn’t do a lot to make things less ambiguous. The whole novella swirls in menace and mystery, and there’s never really a sense that anything will resolve.

I did find This Census-Taker compelling and interesting, though preferred the much-longer The City and the City, which has an equally strange premise though more resolution. In this novella, I thought Miéville was brilliant at moments of high tension, but that his sentences were a bit meandering and overwritten at other times. It’s certainly a successful exercise in creating an atmosphere, but I’m not sure exactly what else I’m meant to take from the book.

The Portrait by Willem Jan Otten #ABookADayInMay No.3

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I bought The Portrait (2005) by Willem Jan Otten because of that beautiful cover, which is blending in well with my throw. I also fancied reading something translated from Dutch – in this instance, by David Colmer. And it’s a strange, rather good little book.

I’m coming to a tragic end; that seems almost certain now. The sliding doors are open. I can hear fire raging; it crackles. The wind is blowing directly from the north and into the studio. Sparks shoot towards me, turn to ash, and drift in like flakes of snow. I am on the easel and can only expect the worst.

That’s the opening paragraph. By the end of it we realise who are narrator is – it is the portrait of the title. It’ll take a while before we discover who the portrait is of…

First, the narrator thinks back to a time they can’t really recall – just part of a long roll of canvas, buried somewhere in the middle. Life really begins when an artist comes to the shop and buys a stretch of material to turn into a specific canvas.

If I had the gift of speech, I would now describe what it feels like to finally be a canvas, a canvas with dimensions, a piece of linen that has been measured out, cut with the most razorish Stanley knife and irrevocably stretched tight around a sturdy frame with six-centimetre stretchers no less than three-point-six thick, with wedges and a cross at the back.

A kite that is being flown for the first time might feel more majestic, a kettledrum about to start its premiere performance of Beethoven’s Fifth might feel mightier, a newly raised mainsail filling with wind while its ship heels beneath it might feel more ecstatic – but we, the unpainted, silent and as white as chalk, enter a world that promises us more than kite, drum, or sail. Who could be more on edge with curiosity? More willing? More receptive?

The artist is Felix Vincent, usually referred to as Creator by the narrator. At first he clearly doesn’t know what to do with the canvas, and it (he?) lies against the wall. It is larger and better quality than most of the other canvases in the room, and can’t be thrown away on just any commission. Vincent is a portrait painter of growing renown, though still has to fulfil commissions from people who are willing to pay him. From the narrator’s admittedly inexperienced point of view, Vincent seems to be waiting for something more special, personal for this canvas. He is waiting for his masterpiece.

And the opportunity finally comes when Valery Specht comes to the studio.

Your work is fascinating, Specht continued. You have a rare skill. You can bring someone to life.

(Yes, the novella doesn’t have speech marks – it just about worked, partly because there is very little dialogue and partly because it is, after all, from the point of view of a painting.) Specht, it turns out, wants Vincent to paint Specht’s son. And his son is dead.

I shan’t spoil more about the plot, but it’s impressive how many surprises and turns Willem Jan Otten can get into 185 pages. And I found it quite beautiful and intriguing, though one of the most memorable moments feels a bit at odds with the tone of the rest of The Portrait.

And that narrator? Once you get past the curiosity, it works well. It’s really a fly-on-the-wall point of view, I suppose, with a few novelties – like describing the feeling of a fine paintbrush across one’s surface. I also enjoyed that it can ‘see’ everyone else but not itself. It’s best not to demand too much logic from the choice (why does the portrait understand the news on the radio without context but has never seen a ‘thumbs up’ before?) but just to enjoy the strange depth of reality created by having a painting narrate a book about a painting.

And novella length is perfect for this sort of conceit, so the novelty doesn’t outstay its welcome. I really enjoyed the simple beauty of Otten’s writing (in Colmer’s translation) and spreading out the horizons of my European reading a little more.

Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe #ABookADayInMay No.2

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Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty: Amazon.co.uk: Keefe, Patrick Radden: 9781529062489: Books

Day two of this project will reveal two things that I had previously left unstated. My aim is to finish a book each day in May, but that doesn’t mean that I have also started that book. I did not read all 560 pages of Empire of Pain (2021) by Patrick Radden Keefe in one day. In fact, I didn’t actually read any pages at all – I listen to the audiobook, and finished the final hour of it today.

When I downloaded the book, I thought it was about the opioid crisis in America and the court cases surrounding it. And it sort of is about that, but opioids don’t even exist until we’re a considerable way through the book. While a large chunk of the end of the book is about attempts to address the terrible cost of opioid addiction through the courts, Keefe takes us decades and generations back in the first half of the book. He is documenting the Sackler family’s rise from nobodies to billionaires right from the beginning.

As I’m writing this quite late in the day, and it’s an enormous book, I’m not going to detail all that much of it. But Empire of Pain is certainly a book of two halves. The first is about Arthur, Mortimer and Raymond Sackler and their humble origins – and how Arthur Sackler’s genius for advertising led to him being the first to advertise medication directly to doctors. He was, indeed, the first in many fields of advertising – he basically appears to have invented the idea of medical advertising, which still has such a stranglehold on the American healthcare system.

This half of the book documents every rung of the brothers’ steps to success, as well as all their feuding and pride. Their various marriages, dalliances, children and personal tragedies. Arthur’s obsession with art collections is dealt with in astonishing detail. Everything is dealt with in astonishing detail.

In the second half of the book, the Sackler family and their in-fighting gets a little sidelined as Purdue takes centre stage. This company developed research into opioids which would then turn into Oxycodone – and Keefe shows us, again in rigorous detail, how the marketing of the drug in a completely ruthless way led, incrementally (Keefe argues), to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people – and how the company sought to tarnish those who were lost as wilful addicts rather than victims of their determination to prescribe higher doses for longer to as many people as possible. The end of the book looks at how the untouchable family start to become hate figures, as the truth about their tactics and deceit becomes wider known. It also shows how they’ll probably get away with everything.

I’ve skimmed the surface of this book. It really is researched to an astonishing degree. It will leave you furious about the total lack of ethics behind this company, and the granular way in which Keefe unpacks their lies and manipulations, and the way that good lawyers will let you get away with everything, will certainly infuriate most listeners. Even if, like me, you thankfully don’t have any connection to the opioid crisis. (It is worth noting, though this comes late in the book, that Purdue weren’t the only company to market opioids aggressively – apparently they never had more than about a third of the market – so Purdue and the Sackler family are certainly huge in this arena, but not lone wolves.)

Is all the detail necessary? I will say that, like almost any book over 500 pages, it would have been better if it were shorter. In the first half, where the level of granular detail has no bearing on showing injustices, I’d say that two out of every three sentences is extraneous. We hear about the lighting that someone chose to hang above their artwork. We hear about the graffiti on an archaeological item that Sackler paid to ship to the US. There is seemingly nothing that Keefe learns that he doesn’t include.

In the second half these details feel more like they are building a court case – and, in this half, Keefe leans a little towards repetition. We hear the same lines repeated over and over again – for instance, that Purdue marketed Oxycodone as giving pain relief for 12 hours even though their own studies had shown it wore off after eight. That fact must have been in the book at least six times.

It’s hard to fault somebody who has done years and years of research, and risked the notoriously litigious Sackler family, so I will say that this overlongness doesn’t lessen from Empire of Pain being a masterful and extraordinary work. It doesn’t make for fun reading – but, since opioid addiction is now the leading cause of preventable deaths in the US, it fees like essential reading.

The Self-Portrait of a Literary Biographer by Joan Givner #ABookADayInMay No.1

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I was really hoping that Madame Bibi Lophile would do her A Novella a Day in May challenge again, and lo and behold the first post has gone live. I’ve joined in the past couple of years – I’m going to start this year too, though won’t make promises of completing. (My eyes are so, so, so much better than they were in December/January, when the thought of being able to read a book a day would have been completely impossible.) I’ve decided to call mine A Book a Day in May because they won’t all be novellas – for instance, the first book I’ve chosen is non-fiction.

I hadn’t heard of Joan Givner when I picked up The Self-Portrait of a Literary Biographer (1993) in Hay-on-Wye a couple of years ago. I haven’t even read anything by either of the authors that Givner wrote biographies of – Katherine Anne Porter and Mazo de la Roche. But I’m so glad I read this memoir, because it is brilliant.

It’s very unconventional, in a way that intrigued me enough to buy it in Richard Booths’ bookshop. The portrait is told through 381 numbered short sections – rather like 381 different note cards. Indeed, it sounds like that’s exactly what they are. Often there is a short series of sections which connect and tell more or less the same story, but equally the next one might splinter off to a different theme, different country, different time. They aren’t in chronological order by any means, and we follow Givner at various times through a childhood in northern England, through an unsuccessful first marriage in America, through the research and publication of her biographies, and through their reception.

Though the title tells us this is a self-portrait of a literary biographer, Givner’s work isn’t given priority over her experiences as a wife, a mother, a teacher, a colleague – and perhaps most of all, a daughter. With unflinching honesty – and it does seem honest, even while it is deeply subjective – Givner portrays her parents’ keenness for respectability, their pride in her getting into grammar school, their bewilderment at many of her life choices (including her divorce). And most vivid of all is the portrait of her mother in the present – given to slightly foolish sweeping statements, or contradicting her past self. It is a fascinating depiction of a mother/daughter relationship throughout the decades that is neither close nor estranged, but inescapable even with an ocean between them. Givner looks at family, and her place in it, with the same remorseless quest for precision that she apparently had as a biographer:

When I went to the U.S. I spent the summer with my first husband’s family. It was my first experience of a peaceable, harmonious family in which members went their own ways uninterfering, and uninterfered with, treating each other with a kind of friendly respect.

In my own home, relations were combative, adversarial. Every act – even the simplest one of eating a meal, choosing a helping of this over that – was subjected to criticism, moral disapproval, and ultimately, strident quarreling. Granted, this sometimes – not by any means frequently – dissolved into laughter.

I think I had always suspected that my family life was more unpleasant than most and something to escape from. I did escape and yet was crippled by it, still.

But the title of the book isn’t lying. As it progresses, we see more and more about her experiences as a biographer. If I had read one of her biographies, or even knew a bit more about Katherine Anne Porter (who figures much larger than Mazo de la Roche) then maybe this would have been even richer, but I still loved it. There isn’t much about how she went about writing the biography, or what to include or exclude, but there is a lot about the research – about the people she meets and interviews, and often leaves feeling embittered or affronted. No less a figure than Eudora Welty writes to say that she is concerned that Givner’s motives are malice and busybodiness.

Givner does not spare herself in Self-Portrait. Though she may defend herself at times, she also includes negative reviews of her writing without comment. We get fascinating glimpses of a Katherine Anne Porter conference where she is berated from the stage by more than one speaker. Evidently she is a controversial figure in this world, and records the controversy.

Somehow, even with a format of those 381 different sections, Self-Portrait never feels disjointed. Givner expertly always gives us enough information to know where we are at all times, or at least to manage without knowing all the context. I suspected that I would find the book maddening or sublime, and it was the latter. More than that, it was a compelling page-turner. I was reminded of Kate Briggs’ excellent This Little Art about translation, which is written in a similar way, with vignettes following one another. In fact, I could see Self-Portrait fitting in well as a Fitzcarraldo reprint.

What an experience, and what a great start to A Book a Day in May!

Unnecessary Rankings! Elizabeth von Arnim

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I’m continuing my series on ranking all the books I’ve read by authors I like – I kicked off with Michael Cunningham, and now I’m onto the much more prolific Elizabeth von Arnim. With Cunningham, I’d read everything he wrote – with von Arnim, there is still quite a handful of her novels still sitting unread on my shelves. So if your favourite isn’t in the list, that’s why!

Ok, let’s go – from my least favourite to my most favourite.

14. Elizabeth and Her German Garden (1898)

Sacrilege! I actually like all fourteen of the Elizabeth von Arnim books I’ve read, but this one is in last place perhaps because I had such high expectations. It was such a big deal during her life, since she always appeared as ‘by the author of Elizabeth and Her German Garden’ or ‘Elizabeth’, but I found it didn’t have the spark of her best work.

13. Christine (1917)

Published under the pseudonym Alice Cholmondeley, it was initially marketed as genuine letters from a young English girl studying in Germany during 1914. It is fascinating, but one of her bleakest books.

12. Expiation (1929)

Opinions differ on this one, but I found this novel about adultery to lack the humour that is usually so characteristic of Elizabeth von Arnim. I found it a little wearingly earnest. But Persephone reprinted it and called it ‘laugh-out-loud hilarious’, so you may find that too!

11. Mr Skeffington (1940)

Elizabeth von Arnim’s final novel is about the once-beautiful Lady Skeffington trying to cling onto her appearance – and relive her youth by going to see the many men who have thrown themselves at her feet. I wrote in my review that I’d probably appreciate the book more in fifty years’ time. (Well, forty years now!)

10. In the Mountains (1920)

This is very much a novel of different parts – she starts with a nature-as-idyll description, but I much preferred the second, funnier half where two forceful English widows arrive at the narrator’s Swiss mountain home. In my review, I said: “It was a lovely, slim introduction to many of the things that make von Arnim charming, witty, and with an undercurrent of topical commentary that prevents the mixture being too sweet.”

9. The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rugen (1904)

There are quite a few sequels to Elizabeth and Her German Garden – this is the only one I’ve read, but I definitely preferred it to the original. It’s much funnier, particularly when Elizabeth is trying to avoid her burdensome Cousin Charlotte.

8. The Benefactress (1901)

The Benefactress might be higher if its story – a woman setting up home in Europe with three discontented women, and their gradual changes – hadn’t been done better by a novel we’ll find further up the list.

7. All the Dogs of My Life (1936)

Elizabeth von Arnim’s only autobiographical work is pretty cagey about the bigger upsets in her life, but I still enjoyed it a lot. She writes it through the lens of the different dogs she’s owned, and does rather expose herself as an appalling dog-owner.

6. Fraulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther (1907)

Told in letters from Fraulein Schmidt (and we have to imagine the replies from Mr Anstruther) von Arnim expertly shows how infatuation can turn to hurt pride and the whole rollercoaster along the way. We really can picture the absent Mr Anstruther and the sorts of letters he probably writes.

5. Introduction to Sally (1926)

An impossibly beautiful young working-class woman is married off to the first man who asks, in a desperate attempt by her anxious shopkeeper father to ‘protect her morals’ – but it turns out that he doesn’t like much else about her. A sort of Pygmalion story, it’s delightfully funny with (as so often with E von A) a searing undercurrent of deeper emotions. Coming from the British Library Women Writers series later in the year!

4. The Caravaners (1909)

Elizabeth von Arnim’s most satirical work is gloriously funny. It’s from the point of view of a German man who can’t see how cantankerous, selfish and unreasonable he is. A few years ahead of the First World War, von Arnim spears German/Anglo relations – it’s the comic sister of Christine.

3. The Enchanted April (1922)

Her best-known work is deservedly loved. Four women head to picturesque Italy, described so enticingly, and go from selfish disunity into something rather idyllic. Saved from the saccharine by von Arnim’s dry wit as a narrator.

2. Father (1931)

Jen is perhaps my favourite creation of von Arnim’s. She leaves her father’s home upon his second marriage, keen to avoid a life of service to him. The novel has a lot to say about the role of women in the 1930s, but Jen is so spirited and naive a character that the whole thing feels joyful even when confronting real issues. So glad we got to do this one as a British Library Women Writers edition.

1. Christopher and Columbus (1919)

Nineteen-year-old twins Anna-Rose and Anna-Felicitas von Twinkler are half-German/half-English are packed off to America by their horrid Uncle Arthur when war breaks out. On the boat, they enchant Mr Twist, inventor of Twist’s Non-Trickling Teapot. Once arrived in America, after a series of events, they open a tea room. I LOVE a tea room plot. The twins’ dialogue is so fun, always sparkling and strange, and von A’s ironic turns of phrase are at their best in Christopher and Columbus. I think it’s still just about in print from Virago, otherwise I’d have tried to snap it up for the British Library, and I’d love to see more people meeting this wonderful cast of characters.

That was fun! Which Elizabeth von Arnims would you put at the top of your list?

Some books from Suffolk (and elsewhere)

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When I was on holiday recently I took a trip to Treasure Chest Books in Felixstowe, Suffolk – one of my all-time favourite bookshops, though I’ve only been there three times, each time about ten years apart. It initially looks like one little room, and then it just goes on and on in a warren of increasingly exciting rooms. There’s a great range of stock, very reasonably priced – and even two shelves of Persephone Books! I had almost all of them already, of course, but came away with a couple. The first photo is the pile I bought there – the second photo is a smaller pile that came from various places.

Defy the Wilderness by Lynne Reid Banks
I do have a couple of unread books by Lynne Reid Banks on my shelves, but my abiding love for The L-Shaped Room trilogy means I will always pick up more by her. The books she set abroad haven’t dated brilliantly, but I’m happy to keep trying.

A Bookshop in Algiers by Kaouther Adimi
I should have mentioned this one during the recent Tea or Books? discussion of novels set in bookshops – because I bought this one entirely on the strength of the word ‘bookshop’ in the title.

The Fell by Sarah Moss
Summerwater by Sarah Moss
So many podcasters and bloggers and others have mentioned Sarah Moss as someone I should be reading. It was great to find these two cheaply, and maybe I can finally start disentangling the various literary Sarahs in my head.

Dance and Skylark by John Moore
I’ve read one or two of Moore’s autobiographies set around Bredon Hill (where I grew up), but haven’t read any of his fiction yet. I did mostly buy this one because of its beautiful dustjacket, but I’m also intrigued by the contents.

Paper Lives by Compton Mackenzie
I keep telling myself that I have to read more of the unread Mackenzies on my shelves before I buy more, and thus I keep lying to myself.

Moonraker by F. Tennyson Jesse
Unrelated to the Bond movie, this is a little story of pirates? I’m not sure if it’s for children or not, but always happy to stumble across more by the brilliant FTJ. I believe it was a Virago Modern Classic at some point, but not one I’ve ever seen in the wild.

A Lady and Her Husband by Amber Reeves
Emmeline by Judith Rossner
The two Persephones I didn’t have are both quite recently published ones, I think, though published initially about a hundred years apart. They’re also not Persephones that I’ve seen many people mention… anybody read these?

Next To Nature, Art by Penelope Lively
I probably don’t need more Livelys since I have several unread, but I couldn’t leave this one behind because it is signed by the author. When I got home, I also spotted that it is from the library of Jill Paton-Walsh, so maybe given to her by Lively?

And these books came online, from a charity shop, and from a remainder shop.

The Castle on the Hill by Elizabeth Goudge
After loving The Bird in the Tree, I’m keen to read more Goudge. She turns up in charity shops a lot, and that’s where I found this delightful edition. I’m told it’s a bit more grim than some of her other works…

Humiliation by Wayne Koestenbaum
Found and Lost by Alison Leslie Gold
A remainder shop in Bristol had quite a few Notting Hill Editions, and these were the two that really drew me in.

Ex-Wife by Ursula Parrott
I’m very excited by this reprint – the first McNally Editions book that I’ve bought from their eclectic list. Ursula Parrott is someone I’ve wanted to try for a long time but she’s not been easy to find – so thank goodness this one is now available. I’ll let their description tell you more.

When in French by Lauren Collins
As soon as I read Beth’s Instagram post about When in French, I had to have a copy – it sounds so very up my street. Click the link and you’ll see why!

I haven’t started any of these books yet, though would happily dive into any of them. Have you read any, and where would you start?

The next club… (and a minor podcast announcement)

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I’m realising that I haven’t mentioned the successor to the 1940 Club on here yet! Ooops. You might have seen it on Karen’s blog, or on my social media – in October we will be doing *drum roll* the 1962 Club!

And the minor podcast announcement truly is minor – just in case anybody is reading along, we have changed the John Dickson Carr novel we’re doing in the next episode. It’ll now be It Walks By Night (because that’s the one Rachel could find in a bookshop!), still vs Alan Melville’s Quick Curtain.

Tea or Books? #115: Do We Like Books About Bookshops? and Quartet in Autumn vs Journal of a Solitude

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Barbara Pym, May Sarton, and bookshops – welcome to episode 115!

In the first half of the episode, we take up Sally’s suggestion of topic – and discuss whether or not we like books set in bookshops and libraries. More suggestions for books in this category, please!

In the second half, we compare Barbara Pym’s Quartet in Autumn with May Sarton’s Journal of a Solitude and pick our favourite.

You can get in touch with suggestions etc at teaorbooks@gmail.com – get the episodes a few days early, and other bonuses, at Patreon.

The books and authors we mention in this episode are:

Quick Curtain by Alan Melville
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
Bewildering Cares by Winifred Peck
House-Bound by Winifred Peck
Dorothy Whipple
E.M. Delafield
The Last Bookshop in London by Madeline Martin
South Riding by Winifred Holtby
A Girl in Winter by Philip Larkin
Greenery Street by Denis Mackail
Mrs Miniver by Jan Struther
Matilda by Roald Dahl
Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell
The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald
84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell
Business As Usual by Jane Oliver and Ann Stafford
Riceyman Steps by Arnold Bennett
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley
The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley
Peter and Alice by Peter Shaffer
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Virginia Woolf
Barbara Cartland
Stephenie Meyer
E.L. James
Agatha Christie
Beryl Bainbridge
Margery Sharp
Muriel Spark
Miss Read
The House By The Sea by May Sarton
Castle Skull by John Dickson Carr

Eggs, Beans and Crumpets by P.G. Wodehouse – #1940Club

StuckinaBook All , , , 15 Comments

There are so many P.G. Wodehouse books in the world, and so many of them are sitting unread on my bookshelves, that I try not to buy more. But I think I must have been tempted by the intriguing title of Wodehouse’s Eggs, Beans and Crumpets, and I’m glad I did because it meant I could add it to the 1940 Club. It’s also one of his books that I’ve never seen anyone else mention, and that’s enough to make me wonder if I’ve stumbled across an overlooked gem among his vast canon.

Well, the title is fun, but completely irrelevant – it’s a collection of stories from a few different gentleman’s clubs, and Wodehouse has decided to delineate different anonymous members of the clubs by types of breakfast food. Is this a joke he did elsewhere? It’s never explained, and the different foods don’t seem to have any associated traits. Here, for instance, is the opening paragraph of the first story:

A Bean and a Crumpet were in the smoking-room of the Drones Club having a quick one before lunch, when an Egg who had been seated at the writing-table in the corner rose and approached them.

Perhaps he thought of the title first? Anyway, while these various figures are unnamed, most of the stories feature names that P.G. Wodehouse fans will recognise. The Drones Club, of course, appears in many collections of Wodehouse stories – and the first few stories in Eggs, Beans and Crumpets star one of their most prominent members, Bingo Little.

Bingo Little will also be familiar to readers of the Jeeves books. In those, he is perpetually falling in love with different women. By the time of Eggs, Beans and Crumpets he is happily married to a rich novelist. There is something sweet and unusual in Wodehouse about their genuinely affectionate love for one another – but the difficulty that inspires each of his stories is Rosie M. Banks’ (his wife) reluctance to give him any money. Bingo Little also needs money to pay debts, and his sure-fire way to earn it is to gamble on a horse so certain to win that it’s basically just collecting money. Except, of course, the horse always loses and Bingo Little gets himself into increasing difficulties – without, in these stories, Jeeves to save him.

Apparently other stories in Eggs, Beans and Crumpets will differ depending on whether you have the US or UK editions. In my UK edition, other familiar characters who appear in later stories are Ukridge and Mr Mulliner, and quite a few minor characters who recur in Ukridge stories. In some ways it doesn’t particularly matter who the story is about. These gentlemen do have different personalities, but the structure of each story is the same: they get themselves into some sort of fix, and then surprising coincidences help extricate them from it.

While I really enjoyed reading this for the 1940 Club, I think that is the reason I prefer Wodehouse at novel-length. Because there will only be one big denouement where all the pieces brilliantly fit into place, and the hero gets away with whatever risks and blunders they have found themselves in. In Eggs, Beans and Crumpets it was all very fun, but rather repetitive. The same patterns took place in every chapter, without long enough space for the plot to have got as brilliantly convoluted as Wodehouse does at his best.

But, while the plots felt hurried, the writing was as deliciously Wodehousian as ever. There is no equal for his mix of understatement, overstatement, and comic twists and turns of sentences. Even something like this is deliciously funny to me:

The Bean asked what the Bella Mae Jobson affair was, and the Crumpet, expressing surprise that he had not heard of it, said that it was the affair of Bella Mae Jobson.

I could type out the whole book, but here is just one more example – on the snobbery of ailments at a health spa:

The ancient Spartans, one gathers, were far from cordial towards their Helots, and the French aristocrat of pre-Revolution days tended to be a little stand-offish with his tenantry, but their attitude was almost back-slapping compared with that of – let us say – the man who has been out in Switzerland taking insulin for his diabetes towards one who is simply undergoing treatment from the village doc負or for an ingrowing toe-nail. And this was particularly so, of course, in those places where invalids collect in gangs – Baden-Baden, for example, or Hot Springs, Virginia, or, as in Sir Aylmer’s case, Droitgate Spa.

Wodehouse has never been equalled – he hasn’t even been imitated as much as you’d expect – and any time spent with him is reliably delightful. I doubt I’ll remember the details of Eggs, Beans and Crumpets and it isn’t a standout from his library of work – it certainly wouldn’t be one of the ones I’d recommend to a newcomer. But a mid-ranking Wodehouse is still a more entertaining experience than almost any other writer, and I enjoyed every moment.