It is well documented that I want to own every single one of the Furrowed Middlebrow titles from Dean Street Press, and I’m doing my best to achieve that goal. I bought Spam Tomorrow by Verily Anderson last year, having coveted it when Scott first blogged about it. It’s a war memoir – and it’s always interesting to see the tone these have in the post-1945 club years. I get the impression that things went a bit quiet on the war memoir front immediately after the war, but 10+ years later people were ready to look back on that bizarre time.
First off, yes her name was Verily. And here’s why:
One of my father’s interests is words. He devised a system for naming his five children. Each name had to have six letters; and, because his and my mother’s names contain an R and an L, each of ours had to too – plus some peculiarity not shared by others. Merlin (n), Rhalou (h), Erroll (doubles), Verily, (v) – not so much a name as an adverb – and finally, to fall in with the system, he had to invent Lorema.
Spam Tomorrow starts off with Verily going briefly AWOL as a F.A.N.Y. (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry) so that she can marry Donald, which they do hastily and illicitly – illicit because she didn’t have leave, rather than because they couldn’t be married.
She then jumps back a bit to joining the F.A.N.Y. – before which she had found a job that used her artistic talents to some extent, in that she designed the wrappers for toffees. It is an example of the slightly eccentric and bohemian spirit that is key to understanding Anderson’s character and writing – a detail that might seem too niche and absurd in a novel, but just happens to be true.
Anderson doesn’t work for the nursing yeomanry for a very long time, and is quite open about how poorly suited she was to such a regimented life. There is a very funny and odd scene early on where she is arrested and threatened with court-martialling for crashing a government vehicle into a gatepost.
A few minutes later, while I was getting ready for lunch, two F.A.N.Y.s of the quiet, useful, obedient type came into the bedroom which I shared with four others (including one whose claim to fame was that her husband had been fallen on by Queen Mary in her recent motor accident). The two F.A.N.Y.s stood in a waiting attitude, one each side of me.
“Want to borrow a comb?” I asked affably.
“You’re under arrest,” said one.
“I’m what?” I asked.
“Under arrest. We’ve had orders to close in on you and march you to the orderly room without your cap or belt.”
She never quite works out what is going on, but ultimately receives a reprieve. It’s an insight into the daftness that always comes with a militaristic attitude to life.
The bulk of Spam Tomorrow is taken up with her married life and particularly her domestic life. Some of the most dramatic pages, unsurprisingly, are when she goes into labour during an air raid. Apparently this left her quite ill for a long time, and the only cure was to have another child – which rather baffled me, but it seemed to work.
I loved everything about her looking for housing, and it was fascinating to read about the precarious nature of homes in London in a period when they could easily be bombed at any moment. And then there is the section where she starts taking house guests in a larger place in the countryside, and discovering how inept she is at it. Which gives plenty of opportunity for being scathing about some of the worst paying guests – particularly those who come from an artists’ colony and have extremely demanding tastes. It reminded me quite a lot of the latter stages in another Furrowed Middlebrow title, Ruth Adam’s wonderful A House in the Country.
Basically, the whole book was very funny and enjoyable, without ever shying away from the perils and privations of the home front. I’ve read far more home front memoirs than those of active soldiers, and I can’t imagine that trend will change, and Anderson’s is a worthy addition to the genre – because of her experiences, but mostly because of her frank, eccentric, and indomitable character.
I have to ask, is the word “Spam” in the title because they had to eat Spam during the war. I had Spam when I was a child, and I thought it was an American food.
I am with you on the Furrowed Middlebrow books. I am in love with the covers. And this one sounds very very good.
Yes, it’s not really mentioned in the book, but it was popular wartime food. And in a Monty Python sketch a few decades later, that led to the modern definition of email spam!
LOL I’d say ubiquitous rather than popular. It was a cheap and nourishing foodstuff under rationing when there was very little choice about what you could have.
I’ve had Spam… just once.
Ah yes, I meant more in the sense of widespread than everyone’s favourite! I ate it many times before I became vegetarian. It was even mentioned in Gogglebox yesterday, as something somebody loved, so still very much around in the UK!
Lucky you. It was a regular feature of British school dinners in the 1950s and 60s … in the form of fritters. Ugh.
That was the only form in which I could choke them down!
Sounds like a real treat, Simon – and good look on your ambition to own all the FM books!
I will get there one day!
I only own about 10 of the Furrowed Middlebrow books, but I am working on it! This one sounds good.
Scott’s choices are so, so wonderful.
This sounds like my sort of book. Thanks.
Hope you enjoy!
This sounds a good read – and sadly, not available in my local library – I don’t think it quite makes the ‘must buy’ pile.
Ah, shame- if your library takes requests…?
This is such a good book, and I love her eccentric voice, too!
It definitely makes me want to read other things by her about anything.
This was the first book I read for the 1956 Club and was such a great and cheerful way to kick it off. Anderson’s pre-war life does sound almost too quirky to belong to a real person and I’d love to hear more about it. I’m certainly intrigued to try more of her books after reading this.
Yes, loved your review, Claire! I wonder what else she wrote.
Verily was my mother and she really was like that. She managed to turn everything into a funny story and was easily bored so constantly thinking up unusual ways to entertain herself and anyone else who’d join in.
Thanks so much for commenting, Alexandra!
This sounds good, but not as good as A House in the Country (the review for which will be on my blog next week)!
Yes, that is a difficult book to beat.
This does sound remarkably fun for a war memoir. She sounds very engaging!
Yes! I can see the same events being described much more miserably, but somehow all this trauma is a very funny book.
This sounds a hoot. I love the explanation for her name. It’s as inventive as a lot of the names I hear parents call out in the supermarket these days. I look at these tiny creatures and feel desperately sorry for them to be burdened with such awful names…….
Yes, it told me an awful lot about her dad without knowing anything else about him!
Love the sound of this. At first, I thought FANY might be a fictional term invented for comic effect, but it does seem to have a grounding in reality. What larks! Anyway, between your review and Claire’s, I think the #1956Club has sold me on this!
Yes, I’d never heard of them before, and then I came across FANY in a different book a week later!
I haven’t heard of the Furrowed Middlebrow books before. Given my love of Angela Thirkell, they sound like something I’d enjoy too.
Oh I’m sure you would, Brona. A really wonderful selection.