1920s

50 Books: The Love Child by Edith Olivier

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I bet you never expected to read the words ‘love child’ on Stuck-in-a-Book… well, if you’ve been paying careful attention, you’ll have seen them a couple of times already. Edith Olivier’s novel The Love Child came in at no.3 on my favourite books read last year. I’ve just realised that I’ve been referring to Olivier as Oliver for a long while, and thus may have misled people… I must go back and alter.

This novel has had mixed reception – I’ve only ‘tried it out’ on a couple of other people; one liked it and one wasn’t so sure. I know Lisa at Bluestalking would love it and am waiting for her to clear space in her schedule to read it! (That is, unless she already has, and kept quiet about not liking it…)

Agatha Bodenham, at 32, finds herself alone for the first time, after the death of her mother. She has been kept quietly at home, and has no real friends or chance of marriage. She turns her attention instead to an imaginary friend of her youth, Clarissa – who then appears, ‘gathering substance in the warmth of Agatha’s obsessive love until it seems that others too can see her’, to quote the blurb. Though a great joy to Agatha’s lonely life, as Clarissa begins to explore the more exotic features of 1920s life (tennis, dances, boys) something of a power struggle develops, and it is unclear who possesses whom…

There are similarities to one of my favourite books, Miss Hargreaves, though Baker’s novel was funnier and less affecting. The Love Child (1927) is a touching portrait with edges of surrealism and heartache. A very slim novel, it contains many intriguing ideas about love and possession and neediness – I also found the writing to flow beautifully. I’d love to discover other fables of this ilk – where Miss Hargreaves and Lady Into Fox also fit.

My Virago copy (bought on a whim for 75p in an Oxford charity shop) has an introduction by Hermione Lee which is illuminating. And, like so many other authors, Edith Olivier was related to a clergyman. Daughter, in this case. She spent nearly all her life in her native Wiltshire, except for some time at Oxford University on a scholarship – and The Love Child, where it does not wander into fantasy, appears to be influenced by autobiography.

Like all the other books so far in my 50 Books… I really recommend that you seek this novel out – it may well become a treasure you’ll remember for a while.

Haunting

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Didn’t think we’d have anyone call out “I know that book!” from yesterday’s post.

I’ll put you out of your misery – the latest addition to my 50 Books is David Lindsay’s The Haunted Woman. It’s one of the books which came to my mind first when planning the list, and one of those which I still have in my mind over three years since reading it. I’ll warn you, though, reactions have been rather widespread – just within the blogging world, Lisa at BlueStalking and Elaine at Random Jottings thought almost exactly the opposite. Lisa put it in her top ten reads of 2004, whilst Elaine thought it was silly and pretty poor – all the more fun when opinion is disparate, isn’t it?! (On a completely unrelated note, did you know that the correct term for ‘?!’ is an interrobang?) The Haunted Woman is another of those novels I love, where life is normal except for one fantastical element. In this case it is a staircase, which gets me interested immediately. Think this might be a rather specialist interest, but I love staircases in literature – was musing the other day whether there was scope for a thesis there, but might be too esoteric even for Oxford. Plus the only other one I can think of which has any particular relevance is Mrs. Sparsit’s metaphorical staircase in Hard Times. If you can think of any others, do let me know…
I’ll quote the blurb from my copy of The Haunted Woman: Engaged to a decent but unexceptional man, Isbel Loment leads an empty life, moving with her aunt from hotel to hotel. She is perverse and prickly with untapped resources of character and sensibility. They explore by chance a strange house and there Isbel meets Judge, its owner; a profoundly disturbing relationship develops and it is from this that the drama unfolds.
They obviously don’t want to give the staircase bit away, but I shall – there is a staircase which offers three doors at the top. Isbel takes one of them, which leads to a room, where she meets Judge again. When they return to the main house, neither remember what has taken place in the room. And so it goes on, with parallel existences and relationships. All the way throughout the novel there is the mystery of what remains behind the other doors…
David Lindsay’s writing is sometimes criticised for not being very fluid or well styled, but I just found it took a little getting used to – sure, he’s not Virginia Woolf, but I didn’t find it stood out as awful. And, for me, the plot and intrigue and characters more than make up for this. I sometimes love books for language, regardless of plot (e.g. Tove Jansson’s writing) but equally sometimes plot takes precedence over language. And Lindsay manages to combine the two in a way which leads to a beautiful surrealism by the end, and produces a novel which is quite unlike anything else I’ve ever read. Give it a try.

Foxy Lady

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Today I’m going to multi-task, and address a new entry on ’50 Books You Must Read But May Not Have Heard About’, while chatting about one of the books I read on holiday. Smooth, no?

UPDATE: a longer and better review has been done by Simon S here!

The first, to become no.13 on the list of books you should read, is Lady Into Fox by David Garnett, published in 1922. Don’t really know how renowned this novel is already, but I didn’t know anything about Garnett when my piano teacher mentioned Lady Into Fox. This is the lady who recommended Miss Hargreaves, so I was confident that the novel would find favour. The fact that Garnett was Virginia Woolf’s nephew-in-law could only be a bonus.

Lady Into Fox – can you guess the plot? Sylvia (clever name) suddenly turns into a fox – the novel follows Mr Tebrick, her husband, as he witnesses Sylvia increasingly lose her human nature, and degenerate into vixenhood. What could be quite an absurd narrative is dealt with cleverly, and the fantasy never takes over. Instead, Garnett delivers a gentle tale with strong and genuine emotions, which becomes an admirable story of pathos.

Sylva (which presumely sounds like the precious metal, and makes referring to the novel audibly rather tricky) was written in 1962 as a response to Lady Into Fox, though I didn’t know that when I bought the book. Interestingly, I bought it because I’d just read Garnett’s novel. Gosh. Anyway, this novel is actually a French one, by ‘Vercors’ (Jean Bruller), though of course I have a translation. It acts as ‘Fox Into Lady’, if you will, reversing the central conceit of Garnett’s work, and making it all a little grittier. Drug abuse is thrown in along the way, but Vercors’ novel is mostly interesting as a study of development and psychology – Sylva’s progress is intended to resemble that of mankind, but the centuries are condensed into weeks. A few too many ponderous expostulations, but enough charisma in the characterisation to make up for it. Both fun novels, but with thoughtful backgrounds and premises, and it’s always interesting to read books in a pair like this. Who’d have thought foxes could be so entertaining?

50 Books…

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2. The Provincial Lady

Now, this is probably the book which will best guide you in an understanding of my literary tastes. Perhaps even whispering the word ‘Persephone‘ would do that for many of you? Early twentieth-century domestic fiction doesn’t come better than today’s entry.

Next to be presented for inclusion in ’50 books…’ is The Provincial Lady, possibly well known to a lot of you out there. If it’s not, then BUY IT! Yes, it is not often that I shall wander into the forceful, but I cannot see any valid reason why this book is not in every household. Possibly several times. For backing up on this, may I direct you to the enthused ear of Random Jottings, one of my oldest (by which I mean, of course, longest-standing) e-friends. We bonded over EM Delafield about three years ago, and have sent a flurry of her books back and forth – is there a better basis for friendship than sharing a cherished author? Can’t think of many.

For those who don’t know, this is a fictional diary, based heavily on Delafield’s own life and family. Not a great deal happens, but as we meander through the struggles of middle-class village life, the heroine’s resigned, deadpan approach to everything becomes utterly irresistible. The book you see in the photo contains all four in the series – The Diary of a Provincial Lady; The Provincial Lady Goes Further (my favourite); The Provincial Lady in America; The Provincial Lady in Wartime. For stateside readers, the fourth of those is ‘…in London’. Don’t be fooled by The Provincial Lady in Russia. This was initially published as Straw Without Bricks, and is an account of Delafield’s time in a Soviet collective (!!), and only later did publishers see the potential profit in labelling it one of the series.

Alongside the book is the cassette. Dramatised, with Imelda Staunton as PL, and rather wonderful – do try and track it down if you can.

And once you’ve read Provincial Lady… well, I love As Others Hear Us, Faster! Faster!, Mrs. Harter… I do hope Random Jottings will comment and give us further info, for she is the true mine of knowledge on all things EMD. As is this website – it includes extracts, which should lure you in.

In other news, today was the Grand National. The Clan have an annual habit of picking a horse each, based entirely upon name and colours. This year, failing to notice one was called Simon, I plumped for Silver Birch – on the basis that Richmal Crompton wrote a book of short stories with the title. And it won! Shame our bets are of the imaginary kind…