1940s

Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali

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Madonna-in-a-fur-coatMy first Turkish book, I believe! This is one I read for Shiny New Books last issue (which reminds me, I should really start organising books for the next edition… if anybody knows of any reprints coming out soon, let me know!) Read the whole review, or here’s the beginning…

Madonna in a Fur Coat, translated by Maureen Freely and Alexander Dawe, was first published in Turkish in 1943. This translation is the first time this Turkish classic has been available in English, so the book cannot strictly be called a reprint – but we are bound by the restrictions of WordPress (only 4 categories allowed for the menu!) and the fact that new translations make up only a tiny percentage of new titles. We hope Freely and Dawe – and Ali – will forgive us; this is certainly a glimpse back into the Turkey of the 1940s, whichever way we look at it.

 

Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty

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Delta WeddingAnother book from Shiny New Books Issue 10 – Delta Wedding (1945) by Eudora Welty. Truth be told, I came away not knowing quite what to make of it. I certainly prefer her novel The Optimist’s Daughter, but I think Delta Wedding is a tour de force of a different variety.

See how I battled to make sense of it over at Shiny New Books…

Delta Wedding might win the award for the most beautiful book I’ve read for this issue of Shiny New Books – as an object, I mean, though the term can also apply to the writing. Along with the other new reprints from Apollo (an imprint of Head of Zeus), the paper quality, choice of image, and interesting directional lines on the cover, come together to make a thing of beauty and a joy forever. Luckily the inside of the book lives up to the exterior.

More Was Lost by Eleanor Perenyi

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More Was LostYou know that I love an NYRB Classic, and lament how often their beautiful editions aren’t available this side of the pond – so it was lovely to get a review copy of More Was Lost by Eleanor Perenyi. It’s a poignant, warm, captivating memoir. But read the introduction last. Promise me you’ll read the introduction later.

Here’s the start of my review; read the rest over at Shiny New Books.

If you’re anything like me, you might be unfamiliar with the political dynamics of Hungary and Czechoslovakia in the years leading up to the Second World War. They form the backdrop to this involving and poignant memoir that manages to combine the personal and the global in an extraordinary way: More Was Lost, published in 1946 and now clothed in the loveliness of a NYRB Classics edition.

Fair Stood the Wind for France by H.E. Bates

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H.E. Bates was first introduced to me as the author of The Darling Buds of May, which I used to love on the TV, but I have never actually read anything by him. Fair Stood the Wind for France (1944) has been on my shelf for almost five years – indeed, I bought it one week after reading Lyn’s review at I Prefer Reading. Indeed, you can see my comment saying that I intended to keep an eye out for it.

Fair Stood

It joined those books I took to Edinburgh with me – and, in fact, I think I read all of this one on the train journey. It certainly begins dramatically. John Franklin is forced to crash-land while in a bomber plane over France, along with his fellow pilots. That happens in the first few pages, and was my introduction to the excellence of Bates’ writing:

The ground was too soft and the moon for a few seconds jolted wildly about the sky. The Wellington did a group loop, about three-quarters circle, and Franklin could not hold it. He was aware of being thrown violently forward and of his sickness knotting in his stomach and then rising and bursting and breaking acidly, with the smell of fuel and oil, in his mouth. He was aware of all the sound of the world smashing forward towards him, exploding his brain, and of his arms striking violently upward, free of the controls. For a moment he seemed to black-out entirely and then the moon, hurling towards him, full force smashed itself against his eyes and woke him brutally to a moment of crazy terror. In that moment he put up his hands. He felt his left arm strike something sharp, with sickening force, and then the moon break again in his face with bloody and glassy splinters in a moment beyond which there was no remembering.

Now, I usually prefer the crux of a novel to be about somebody forgetting to return a library book (for instance), but I thought that was really rather good – and the domestic reader is not ostracised at any point by war jargon or jingoism.

For some reason they are very keen to be in Occupied France rather than Unoccupied France. I couldn’t work out why that was (anybody?) – being around Nazis seems like a bad idea to me, but I’m sure there are reasons.

This all sets up the main section of the novel. Franklin is badly injured, but they have no choice but to get away from the wreck of their aircraft. Warily, he approaches a woman at a farmhouse. At the first one, she is terrified but asks him to leave. At the second, the woman is completely calm, and welcomes him and the others in for food and somewhere to rest. She and her family selflessly offer them somewhere to stay for as long as is needed – though it would mean they would certainly all be killed if it were discovered.

‘Calm’ is the word that is used over and over to describe Francoise, and it is very fitting. She is softly-spoken, unflappable, and sensible. Even when she and Franklin travel into the nearest town because his arm badly needs the attention of a doctor, Francoise refuses to panic or even (it seems) worry. She has a wisdom that can only be gained by implacably facing the unfaceable. (And a good line in simple bribery: ‘She smiled. “With a chicken you can do most things,” she said.”With two chickens you can do anything.”‘)

Lyn uses the word ‘understated’ in her review to describe Fair Stood the Wind For France, and it is very apt – and Francoise sets the tone. Her manner seeps into the novel. Terrifying and terrible things are happening, but Bates does not inject the novel with undue drama; instead, we witness these events in a kind of a quiet horror and share the simple humanity of the characters. Because, of course, Francoise and Franklin begin to fall in love. And they do that in a very understated way too. There are no overblown statements, but simply a meeting of minds and a shared understanding.

It’s a lovely novel, which combines the simple and the extraordinary beautifully. Thank you, Lyn, for bringing it to my attention – and this proves that books can wait a while on the shelf before they’re finally enjoyed!

An unusual Vita and books for the train

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A quick note that I’m over at Vulpes Libris today, writing about a novel by Vita Sackville-West that you might not have heard about… Grand Canyon is quite unlike anything else I’ve read by VSW.

Sorry for the lack of book reviews actually on SIAB for a while. Holidays and RSI and busyness have all collided, it seems, though my pile of books ready to review is steadily growing. And next week I’m off to Edinburgh, with a pile of paperbacks to read on the train… I thought these would be small and light enough to leave plenty of room for buying more!

books for Edin train

 

Let’s see how many I manage read on the long train journey…

The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin

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Moving ToyshopIf you’ve listened to the latest episode of ‘Tea or Books?’ then you’ll have heard that I’ve been reading The Moving Toyshop (1946) by Edmund Crispin. It’s always nice to read something that’s been on my shelves for a while, and the note inside the front tells me that I bought it in Edinburgh on 23 September 2009. Eventually somebody chose it for my book group (I don’t even think it was me) so I finally got around to it.

The Moving Toyshop is, in short, a very good novel and a rather poor murder mystery. And I don’t even think this is my usual comparing-things-to-Agatha foible. But more on that anon… The premise is undeniably fab. Richard Cadogan has wandered to Oxford, and somehow finds himself in a toyshop in the middle of the night on ‘Iffley Road’ (which he has put where Cowley Road is, according to the map in the front – yessir, I have local knowledge, since I live off Iffley Road). In said toyshop there is, it turns out, a murdered woman – but before Cadogan can do much about it, he is knocked on the head and put in a cupboard. (That becomes something of a motif in the novel, incidentally; people are forever being knocked on the head and put in cupboards.) He escapes in the morning, but when he returns later… the toyshop has gone.

It’s a brilliant idea, and it’s something of a pity that the resulting plot doesn’t live up to it. Ultimately (I think) this doesn’t stop The Moving Toyshop being a brilliant book – but it is a pity nonetheless. Cadogan enlists the help of reckless Gervase Fen, a witty Professor of English Language and Literature who jets about in his car, flirting and slighting left, right, and centre, and between them they try to unearth the culprit.

Things quickly become far more complicated, and we get into a quagmire of tracking down various legatees to a will, poetic code names and all, where coincidences abound and solutions are seldom interrogated too closely. The characters even talk about how often coincidences happen in real life, and that we never comment on them there… well, that’s as maybe, but even so I wouldn’t be certain that (when needing to find a woman with a spotty dog) that the first woman with a spotty dog that I saw was definitely the one I needed. And the ultimate solution to the moving toyshop is riddled with improbabilities.

But, as I say, this scarcely matters. What makes this novel such a delight is how funny it is. Neither Cadogan nor Fen are particularly sympathetic characters, but before have a great way with words and aren’t afraid of sarcasm. Their teasing of each other, somewhere between affectionate and barbed, is also echoed by the narrative. Crispin throws in lots of description wonders, such as this:

The ‘Mace and Sceptre’ is a large and quite hideous hotel which stands in the very centre of Oxford and which embodies, without apparent shame, almost every architectural style devised since the times of primitive man.

I’m not sure which actual hotel this was referring to, if any, but I do hope it was The Mitre, where my book group meets. That would be wonderfully appropriate.

I didn’t write down many instances, but this sort of thing recurs throughout the book, making it a patchwork of gleeful sentences that more than excuse the plot. Some of the most fun came when Cadogan was talking about poetry or Fen was talking about academic English. I particularly loved Crispin’s riff on a lecture that Fen gave, and the undergraduates’ longing for opportunities for wild conjecture. Oh, and the policeman who always wants to ask Fen about Measure for Measure! It’s all such fun, particularly for anybody who has studied English literature – though a late speech in the novel is quite moving about the creation of literature, somehow without feeling out of place.

Also, speaking personally, it’s such fun to read a novel about the city where I live. I’ve actually read surprisingly few novels set in Oxford, given how many there are out there, and certainly not many where a knowledge of the layout of streets is useful. Plus it meant we got lines like this:

Oxford is the one place in Europe where a man may do anything, however eccentric, and arouse no interest or emotion at all.

I can’t speak for all of Europe, but this is certainly still true in Oxford. I long ago learned, particularly, that people could wear anything at all on the street – from ball gown to horse costume – without anybody turning a hair. Oxford’s acceptance of eccentricity and general live-and-let-live attitude is one of the reasons I’ve found it impossible to leave yet.

Apparently all of Crispin’s novels were detective novels – though detection is rather a kind word for what Fen does. I would rather he had written a different sort of novel, where he could concentrate on the comedy and forget about plot, but perhaps others of his are more watertight in this respect. Either way, this was a complete delight, and I’m glad it came off my shelf after 5.5 years.

 

Mr Whittle and the Morning Star by Robert Nathan

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Mr Whittle and the Morning StarRobert Nathan was one of the authors I was keen to keep an eye out for when I went to Washington DC earlier in 2015. On my previous trip, I’d found Portrait of Jennie by Nathan in a bookshop nearer the Folger Shakespeare Institute – a book I’d read about during my DPhil research but hadn’t been able to track down – and found it very enjoyable (and subsequently also enjoyed the film). He’s not at all easy to find in the UK, and much more common in the US, but often found around the mass market paperbacks and the second-class hardbacks…

Anyway, after scouring the shelves I managed to bring back two: The Enchanted Voyage and Mr Whittle and the Morning Star. My weekend away in Shropshire was an ideal time to treat myself to reading one of them – Nathan struck me as that sort of indulgent, probably not-very-high-quality, eminently-readable author. Either would have done, but it was Mr Whittle and his morning star that accompanied me to the house.

Well, both Robert Nathan novels I’ve read have taken me less than a day. Granted, both were short – but they are also both novels with the perfect balance of lightness and wit. They’re not great literature, but they’re also not trash; Nathan has a turn of phrase that puts him above the dross, even if it doesn’t get him into the greats.

So, what is the premise for Mr Whittle and the Morning Star? It’s the sort of quirky thing that I like: Mr Whittle is sure that the world is about to end. Not from any spotting of the four horsemen of the apocalypse or anything like that, but because of the threat of nuclear war. He tries to warn his students (he is a university professor), his wife, his 12 year old daughter – but none of them are particularly perturbed. Much like Shirley Jackson’s brilliant novel The Sundial, his announcements are met without drama, and it makes for very amusing reading. While Whittle is musing on the end times, his wife replies with anxiety about buying a new dress for their daughter.

His mind strayed into dreamy speculation. How hard it was to imagine nothingness – to realize, for instance, that no one would ever remember anything that had happened. To think that music and the alphabet and noodle soup would simply disappear into thin air, never to be mentioned anywhere again – and after such a short existence, geologically speaking. All man’s knowledge, from the wheel to penicillin…

This element of the novel was handled beautifully; Nathan apparently has quite a way with the eccentric and unusual (as I discovered in the fantastic-themed Portrait of Jennie). Sadly – for my reading enjoyment, at least – there is another element of the novel which somewhat takes over. Forty-something Whittle becomes infatuated with one of his students, the beautiful Penelope Andrews. Mrs Whittle, meanwhile, develops something of a brief relationship with one of the couple’s friends. It’s all very naive and old-fashioned (so far as affair storylines go) but also not particularly interesting – and rather distracts from Nathan’s more innovative plot.

And (spoilers) the ending is frankly bizarre – God turns up in the clouds and has a chat with Mr Whittle. Nathan more or less has enough charm to carry it off. Indeed, it is the charm of his writing that keeps me hooked throughout. I’m already excited about reading my next Robert Nathan novel, and sad that so few of them are readily available in book form (though plenty of them can be found as ebooks, some of you will be pleased to know).

Has anybody read Robert Nathan? Is anybody tempted? He was very prolific, but there isn’t that much info out there about him or his work…

 

Mistress Masham’s Repose by T.H. White

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Mistress Masham's ReposeI had dimly heard of Mistress Masham’s Repose (1946) before somebody lent it to me, and I think that must have come through reading about Sylvia Townsend Warner and David Garnett, both of whom were good friends with old T.H. Indeed, he dedicates this novel to Garnett’s daughter Amaryllis, to whom it is supposedly being read. White has been in the news recently, featuring in Helen Macdonald’s extremely successful H is for Hawk (which I have yet to read), but I don’t think many people have been talking about Mistress Masham’s Repose. Like me, you may have assumed it was a historical novel. Turns out, it isn’t – but it is a sequel to Gulliver’s Travels. Intrigued?

I have never read Gulliver’s Travels, to my shame, but I am (of course) aware of the Lilliputian characters – and that is pretty much all you need to be able to enjoy the context to this book. The repose of the title is a small, overgrown island in the middle of a lake in the grounds of Malplaquet, the estate where ten-year-old Maria lives. Though her governess Miss Brown, and the local vicar Mr Hater, torment and defraud her, she has enough freedom to wander around the grounds – which is how she discovers that the descendants of the Lilliputians are still living, and living on her lake, no less.

At first, she treats them as playthings – kidnapping a mother and daughter for her personal toys. White writes quite movingly about the mother/daughter relationship of these tiny people, viewed from the vantage of a not-especially tall child: we get something of her surprise at their humanity. Quickly, she realises she has gone about things the wrong way, replaces the child, and speaks with the schoolteacher of the group – who knows and speaks 18th-century English, having had it passed down through the generations from the Lilliputians who learnt it from Gulliver himself. (Gloriously, later, he speaks with the professor – Maria’s only human ally – in Latin, as being the correct way to address an educated man.)

Maria’s involvement with the Lilliputians sometimes goes well (they love making clothes from her fabric offerings) and sometimes disastrously (as you will find out if you read it) – but things take a turn for the worse when Miss Brown and Mr Hater get wind of the Lilliputians’ existence, and want to exploit them for money. Then the novel turns into a fairly conventional story of good vs evil, as Maria and her small friends try to outwit their rather cartoonishly evil nemeses.

That was a little less interesting for me – though perfectly right and proper for what is (I think?) a children’s book (so uncertain about that now). Luckily, this section also comes with some of the book’s funniest passages. There is light humour throughout, and White has a deft hand with it, but the introduction of the Lord Lieutenant is his comic masterstroke. The Professor goes to him for assistance, and the Lord Lieutenant is the epitome of absent-mindedness and loquacity…

“My dear old boy, look here, be advised by me. You drop the whole thing. You’ve got it muddled up. Perfectly natural, of course; no criticism intended. Anybody could get muddled on a thing like that, I should have done it myself. But when you’ve been a Lord Lieutenant as long as I have, or a Chief Constable, or whatever I am, you’ll know that the first thing a Lord Lieutenant has to get hold of is a motive. Can’t have a crime without you. I assure you, it’s an absolute fact. First thing a criminal must do is get a motive. It’s in a book I read. Printed. Now what motive could Miss What-you-may-call-it possibly have for wanting to handcuff young Thingummy in the what’s-it?”

I suspect I’d have got more from this novel if I’d read Gulliver’s Travels – and I probably should have done, considering my English degree background – but I still heartily enjoyed it. A great deal more than I would have done (I imagine) had it been the historical novel I’d thought it was…

The Road Through The Wall by Shirley Jackson

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Road Through The WallI knew there was a reason that Shirley Jackson Reading Week included the 18th – because I have only just got around to finishing my choice (thanks to two book group books read earlier in the week): I read the only Shirley Jackson novel I hadn’t previously got around to, which is also her first novel, The Road Through The Wall (1948). It’s fitting that this was a gift from lovely Lisa/Bluestalking Reader – well, bought with an Amazon gift certificate she was sweet enough to send me after I finished my DPhil – as Lisa was the one who first introduced me to Shirley Jackson, back in about 2006, with We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

I approached The Road Through The Wall with some trepidation. How would a first novel, written even before ‘The Lottery’ was published and Jackson became a sensation, stack up against her later triumphs? I already knew that her second and third novels, though great, weren’t quite as wonderful as her final books. And yet, though The Road Through The Wall isn’t her best work, it is a fascinating look at how her style and modus operandi hit the road running. Indeed, it is pretty much a companion piece to ‘The Lottery’, in its depiction of small town America.

The novel focuses on the small community of Pepper Street, which is almost entirely made up of families with young children. Those are certainly the family units that interact the most, leaving maiden aunts and single men rather alienated. But alienation seems to be a key factor of almost all the other interactions on the street too, whether that be Tod Donald, ignored by his family and the other residents on the street, or the mothers and daughters of Pepper Street, in the wake of the novel’s first event: the girls have all been writing romantic letters to boys. This is unearthed when Harriet returns home to find her mother has looked through her desk.

Harriet went upstairs away from her mother’s sorry voice. Her desk was unlocked; instead of eating dinner, she and her mother had stood religiously by the furnace and put Harriet’s diaries and letters and notebooks into the fire one by one, while solid Harry Merriam sat eating lamb chops and boiled potatoes upstairs alone. “I don’t know what its all about,” he said to Harriet and his wife when they came upstairs. “Seems like a man ought to be able to come home after working all day and not hear people crying all the time. seems like a man has a right to have a quiet home.”

Alone in her room again Harriet sat down by the window. Outside,in the eucalyptus trees in the first rich darkness were quiet and infinitely delicate, a rare leaf moving softly against the others. Harriet was accustomed to thinking of them as lace against the night sky; on windy nights they were crazy, pulling like wild things against the earth. Tonight, in their patterned peacefulness, Harriet rested her head somehow against them and stopped thinking about her mother. Lovely, lovely things, she thought, and tried to imagine herself sinking into them far beyond the surface, so far away that nothing could ever bring her back.

That passage should show you Jackson’s skilful depiction of both family life and descriptive passages. And those are the two main strengths of The Road Through The Wall which, paragraph by paragraph, is extremely good. Jackson understands (and, what is more, can portray) feelings of anxiety, fear, loneliness, competition, isolation, and so on and so on. Nothing in this novel is glib or unconsidered, and the way she writes about both the claustrophobia and camaraderie of small town life is on par with anything she achieved later.

So, I can’t fault the writing or the tone. What didn’t work as well in this novel I think, is structure. Very little happens in The Road Through The Wall, which is fine, but novels which are just about daily life need to have perhaps even firmer a grasp on structure and balance than those that are plot-dominated. This one meandered a bit, and though there was definitely a sinister edge throughout which justified the sudden rush towards a dark denouement (to avoid spoilers, don’t read Penguin’s blurb), I don’t think she had complete control over the pacing of the novel. For instance, the road of the title makes a very late appearance, and I could never entirely work out why it was so significant. And there are also too many characters, not all of whom ever quite become distinct.

Not up there with her finest work, then, but an astonishing first novel, and demonstrates what a talented prose writer Jackson was from the outset.

Popcorn by Cornelia Otis Skinner

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I read this one before the Cornelia Otis Skinner that ended up on my 50 Books You Must Read list, but somehow didn’t get around to reading it – but Popcorn (1943) is the book which started off my devotion. And it’s such a lovely copy, too. Even if I hadn’t already known the name Cornelia Otis Skinner, I think I’d have nabbed this book – the condition, the feel of the boards, and the lovely detail on the front basically sum up everything I love most in literature. As you can see in this photo which, lamentably, I’ve taken at dead of night instead of in the glorious sunshine.

Popcorn

Like Nuts in May, this is a series of comic episodes in the life of a hapless wife, mother, and actress. It’s a heightened version of C.O.S.’s own life, complete with the admirably silly illustrations of Alajalov and Soglow, whoever they might be. And it comes with a preface by F. Tennyson Jesse, no less.

The best way to show her is by quotation, of course, and here is a fun example of her visiting a parent of one of her son’s friends, and feeling completely out of her depth:

Once, harbouring the quaint notion that it might be a maternal duty to catch an inside glimpse of the houses to which my son has entrée, I committed the grim error of calling for him at a residence whose marble exterior and wrought-iron garage-door should have forewarned me of the exclusive nature of the juvenile goings-on within. A butler answered the bell. Butlers not only frighten, they have an over-refining effect on me, and I hear myself using the broad “a” on words like “hat”. I murmured my son’s name and the fact that I had come to fetch him. He took me for a governess and started in the direction of a waiting group of nursemaids when I managed to gasp out that I was the child’s mother. This overt confession shocked him considerably and for a moment I wondered if I should send home for my marriage licence. Reluctantly he led me up a staircase that can only be described as palatial and, opening a period door, thrust me into a room of complete darkness.

I love it so much! This collection has quite a lot on the perils and pitfalls of motherhood, but also looks at topics as varied as yoga, the telephone, being ‘the paintable type’ (it isn’t a compliment), sailing, and astrology. This last is not an activity she relishes (as in Nuts in May, many of the short accounts detail her incapabilities and inaptness for various undertakings), and the opening of it is an example of her particular: the amusing employment of simile.

Of the many varieties of bore, one of the worst I know is the person who wants to point out the stars and constellations. This is a form of midsummer pest which, like the sand-fly, tends to ruin beach parties.

And another from the same section…

Then too there is something about lying prone on the shore beside the type of creature who is generally a star-gazer that I find peculiarly distressing. It’s a little like dancing a tango with someone who is studying for the ministry.

It’s been a while since I read it, and any elaboration I would give would simply be repetitions of the same enthusiasm, but… if my previous excitement about Cornelia Otis Skinner didn’t make you dash out and get something by her then, this time, DO! Well, do if any of the quotations above amuse you, or if you find the Provincial Lady books amusing. Go on go on go on go on go on.

F. Tennyson Jesse’s preface starts off with an acknowledgement that ‘it may seem a strange time in which to publish such light-weight articles as go to make up this collection […] are we not all, including that vast country of which Miss Skinner is a citizen and which she has toured so often, engaged in a struggle for survival?’ The answer (of course) is yes – World War Two was waging, and America had entered it, but, like so many writers of the period, refuge was found in humour and an acknowledgement of the absurdity of everyday life at a time when it must have felt remote. ‘They stand, in their light-hearted way, for the very principle for which we are all fighting. There could not be a German Cornelia Otis Skinner – outside of a concentration camp.’ If this is not quite true, there certainly couldn’t have been a Nazi Cornelia Otis Skinner, and Popcorn certainly must have been not only a welcome diversion at the time, but a symbol of those who loved peace and longed for freedom. Today, whether for the same or different reasons, it is equally welcome.