1954club

Four more #1954Club books I read

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Let’s rattle through some other books I read for the 1954 Club which possibly don’t warrant full reviews… they range from ok to bad, so come on a journey with me.

Doctor’s Children by Josephine Elder

Let’s start with the good-in-parts. This novel was reprinted by Greyladies, who bring back forgotten women writers in very limited print runs, so they sadly become forgotten again almost instantly. It’s both by and about a female doctor – not a new concept in the 1950s, but still not a commonplace, and Barbara (the heroine) faces quite a lot of disparagement and underestimation.

At the outset of the novel, Barbara’s artist husband has deserted her and their four children (aged between 19 and five). She needs income, she needs occupation, and she is trying not to think too much about her disastrous marriage. She manages to get a job as a GP in a job interview that is probably shamefully accurate about recruitment in the 1950s – i.e. she mentions that her uncle is renowned doctor Alderman Fisher, and that is all the panel need to hear to give her a job.

It is very interesting to see life as female doctor at the dawn of the NHS, and the subplot about her husband painting a picture that starts London gossiping is quite fun. Some of Elder’s observations on being a working single mother, and learning to deal with her children growing up and opposing her worldview, are engaging and show how little may have changed in 70 years.

The downsides… it is quite often an unsubtle polemic about aspects of the NHS, particularly about private GP practices being nationalised. A lot of the talk, inexpertly put into dialogue between various figures who exist only to discuss the topic, is focused on what this will be like for the doctors. There isn’t much about the patients’ point of view, or the inhumanity of refusing healthcare to those who can’t pay.

And – well, sadly Elder isn’t a very good writer. It’s not appalling, but it’s quite clunky and unconvincing at times. I never felt like I was reading the words of a gifted novelist, or even an averagely talented one – more that I was reading a doctor playing at being a writer.

 

Dishonoured Bones by John Trench

1954 is an interesting year for Golden Age crime, because the era was on its wane. Three decades had passed since the peak of detective fiction, and yet authors like John Trench seem to have stayed firmly in the mould that had been around for a long time.

This is the middle of three novels featuring archaeologist Martin Cotterill, though I’m not sure I’d have known he was the lead if it weren’t for that. When an old man is found dead at an excavation site, he is quickly identified as Lord Garnish – who, of course, is widely disliked. Murder victims in the early pages of these novels always are.

It’s not long before there’s another victim, and there are all manner of entanglements between local families that give us clues and red herrings along the way. I’ve said that this is in the mould of Golden Age crime, but in truth it oscillates between that and an adventure novel. There is an improbable scene of falling from a cliff and almost drowning, some rather silly chasing around subterranean darkness, and that sort of thing.

The eventual solution is ok, and could equally well have been almost anything else. Trench is good at drawing the more ridiculous characters, and there is one gossipy and flamboyant side character that I enjoyed and who got most of the best lines – but ultimately it was all rather flimsy. But good fun, as long as you know what you’re going in for.

 

The Cretan Counterfeit by Katharine Farrer

Somehow another one about archaeology! And, like Dishonoured Bones, it’s apparently the middle of three novels featuring the same detective – actually a legitimate policeman – Richard Ringwood, whose wife Claire pops up a bit and presumably plays a bigger role in other Farrer novels? Anyway, one morning they are reading the paper and see a very snarky obituary about an archaeologist, Alban Worrall, who has died. It is anonymous, but seems to be from a disgruntled colleague. The next day, a defence is written in the letter column by Janet, an unmarried woman who clearly admired him unrequitedly. And then she is attacked with a knife and left for dead.

There are some things to enjoy in this novel. The writing is fair, and I enjoyed the dynamic of Richard and Claire (albeit briefly). But overall it was difficult to care what happened, not to mention heavy doses of racism, antisemitism, and sexism. And Farrer either knows a lot about Cretan archaeological finds or went and did some research, and isn’t afraid to dump it on the page. I think any detective novel should rely on knowledge that any reader could be expected to have – it’s so much more irritating when all sorts of other knowledge is needed, or introduced in an expositionary way. There were a few Poirot-esque red herrings in the final gather-round-so-I-can-tell-you-who-did-it, though the answer is pretty offensive. One to miss. But not as bad as the last of these four…

 

Beside the Pearly Water by Stella Gibbons

We all know that, at her best, Stella Gibbons is wonderful. There’s a reason that nobody has reprinted Beside the Pearly Water, which is Gibbons at her absolute worst. It’s actually only the first 83 pages of this book, the rest filled with short stories of varying merit.

Throughout her writing, Gibbons is brilliant at oddballs and unlikely housing situations. She is very bad at romances, and also indefatigable at including them. In Beside the Pearly Water, the famous and beautiful Julia Lanier pays a visit to a remote part of the Scottish Highlands. She went there many years earlier, and there is a young woman (a girl, on Julia’s previous visit) who has held a grudge ever since. She devises a romance between Julia and a local man with a secret…

Somehow the two fall in love instantly, and we are meant to believe that they plan to spend the rest of their lives together on the basis of a half hour conversation. The final denouement is absurd and bad – and though tied to a 1950s concern, that I won’t spoil, is so histrionic that it a schoolgirl would be embarrassed to plot it. Gibbons really dropped the ball on this one.

The stories are a mixture of strong and weak. I think the best was ‘Listen to the magnolias’, about a nervous older lady waiting the arrival of various American soldiers who are being stationed in her house. (I am a bit confused if the fact they all turn out to be African-American is meant to be a twist or not… hopefully this story isn’t racist.) It’s thoughtfully and movingly described, and I felt like I was in her house as she waited.

The oddest opening to a story is ‘Madonna of the Crossings’, with “In the early summer of that year, the figures for road accidents soared, as usual, and as usual very many of those hurt or killed were young children.” There’s an attempt at a story in historical dialect that I skipped. And others are fine… but the aftertaste of Beside the Pearly Water lingered.

 

The Native Heath by Elizabeth Fair – #1954Club

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My friend Barbara bought me a whole pile of Furrowed Middlebrow books a while ago, and one of them was The Native Heath by Elizabeth Fair – my third novel by Fair, and one with the most beautiful cover. I am assuming it is from the original edition, because otherwise it is unbelievably apt for one of the opening scenes: two busybody ladies in the village of Goatstock are peering through the railings at a house that has just been inherited by Julia. One of them gets caught in the railings, presumably moments after this illustration.

Julia Dunstan is a widow in middle age, or a little later, who is relatively merry and pretty well off. She reminded me a bit of Julia in Margery Sharp’s The Nutmeg Tree, though several notches less exuberant. She has the same witty outlook on life, unbowed by the various difficulties she has faced. As the novel opens – before the railings incident – she is talking with her old nanny about some childhood memory of the house she has inherited.

But this explanation conflicted with Nanny’s memories, which were sometimes tactlessly different from Julia’s. She laid the stocking down and gave her employer what she called ‘a straight look’. This preliminary, and the little grunt that accompanied it, warned Julia that they were about to begin an argument; and although she did not doubt that she would triumph (Nanny was so old and her memory was not what it had been) she did not wish to be in the middle of an argument when Dora arrived. Arguments took time, and also a lot of tact and sympathy and loving remarks so that she and Nanny should finish up good friends. It wasn’t – it simply could not be – the right moment for starting one.

You get the measure of Julia! Dora is her cousin, less merry, who moves in as her companion. They were both nieces of the man who left the house to Julia, and there is no obvious reason why she has been left as the sole beneficiary. It is partly guilt, partly kindness and, one assumes, partly curiosity that leads Julia to invite Dora into her new adventure in Goatstock.

I would happily have read a whole novel about the dynamics between Julia and Dora. But that isn’t really what The Native Heath is – Elizabeth Fair likes giving a wide cast of villagers, and she doesn’t stint here. I got a bit confused between a few of the older ladies, but there is also some young people and some in between. A down-on-her-luck Lady with an interest in organic food. A love triangle of sorts, including a young woman engaged to a missionary in a far-flung country. A vicar and his sister, who fears that he will marry and she will have to leave their home. A village produce and flower show. Etc. etc. Over it all hangs the threat – very 1950s – that the village will become a New Town, absorbed into a mass building project.

Because there is so much going on, each element taking centre stage for a period, your enjoyment of any particular section of the novel will depend on how invested you are in that story or person. The structure ended up feeling quite episodic. I really enjoyed an unsuccessful picnic, which was where Fair went to town with humour and character assassination. There were other sections that I found less interesting, and I think The Native Heath would have benefited from a ruthless cutting down to a smaller group of people and storylines.

I still really enjoyed spending my time there, but I think there was an even better, more incisive and interesting novel hidden within the crowds of people and plots. Still, for something perhaps more Miss Read than Margery Sharp, this is a delightful 1954 book to spend some relaxing time with.

Lease of Life by Frank Baker #1954Club

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Few things in life represent the triumph of hope over experience as much as my continued attempts to find an equal to Miss Hargreaves among Frank Baker’s other output. My attempts have ranged from actually-quite-good to extremely-forgettable, usually settling somewhere around mediocre – with Miss Hargreaves appearing as an extravagant anomaly.

But the 1954 Club is another great opportunity for me to take another chance – and this time with Lease of Life, a novel that I’ve had for the best part of 20 years. Here is the opening paragraph:

On a winter afternoon the last light of a dying sun fell slowly through the great west window of Gilchester Cathedral. Far away, from the world beyond the choir screen, the organist was playing the introduction to Purcell’s anthem, ‘Rejoice in the Lord’. As the descending C major scale passage dropped, then rose again, so did the light fall lower down the window, revealing the glory of its colours. Seeing the falling light, hearing the falling music, a middle-aged man who was the solitary occupant of the darkening nave, was curiously moved. The light must go, the music must end: this was inevitable. He was not saddened by the thought; it was like a new experience, like falling in love again and remembering from the passage of many years the heart’s elation when a girl smiled at you. Lawrence Hearne smiled now when he thought of this; he was fifty-two, far enough away from youth to begin to revalue it. So, he thought, I am in love. And what am I in love with? There was only one word which could answer the question. He was in love with life.

Lawrence Hearne is a vicar who has never come to much notice outside of his family – loving wife and daughter, the latter of whom shares his love for music, and may be a talented pianist. As the novel opens, this love of life is particularly painful. Because he is told by a doctor that he has not long to live – the sort of illness that will go unnoticed by those around him, but which will take him suddenly in the next few months. He decides not to tell his wife and daughter or, indeed, anybody else.

Meanwhile, there is a funny scene where discussion is under way for a new Dean. The role comes with more money, privilege, and notice. And Rev. Lawrence is identified as a possible candidate – so long as he does well at a sermon he is giving for schoolboys at the cathedral soon. Hearne himself has no idea that he is even in the running, or that the sermon is going to have any undue attention.

Here is a little snippet of Robert Donat delivering part of that sermon, in a film adaptation that was released in the same year the novel was published, 1954, with a screenplay apparently written by none other than Eric Ambler.

I really enjoyed Lease of Life, mostly because of Lawrence Hearne. He reminded me rather of Anthony Trollope’s Septimus Harding, and not just because of his profession. While he will never be in the same league as dear Septimus, one of the greatest creations of literature in my opinion, he has the same gentleness, humility, and determination to seek and do the right thing.

In Lease of Life, this coalesces around his sermon – which veers from an interpretation of Scripture to being something a little more avant-garde. I suspect the views expressed are Baker’s own, and they would be considered mild in 2022, but apparently rather disruptive in 1954. I did have some trouble believing that, even in 1954, anybody’s sermon would grab popular attention and scandal in quite the way that Hearne’s does. Particularly since it seems inoffensive, if a little flighty.

It is typical of Baker’s non-Miss-Hargreaves novels that the ideas are required to carry more weight than perhaps they can. By which I mean, he puts ideas down in place in plot, and the novel is more about examining and discussing them then it is about narrative and characters. Ironically, the reason that Lease of Life works better than most of his writing is that the characters still feel vital and enjoyable (albeit least of all when they are required to discuss those Ideas). If he’d just made Lease of Life about a vicar, his wife, and their daughter – maybe dealing with his diagnosis, maybe pursuing their own aims in ignorance of his fate – then I think it would have been a much more successful novel. Certainly more likely to have lasting affection, and welcome re-reads, then a novel in which Baker tries to form his own form of theology.

So, if I were ranking Baker’s novels, this would be quite high up the list. But perhaps not for the reasons Baker hoped. I wish he had been less philosophically ambitious in his writing, and happier to use his undeniable gift for character and dialogue in a simpler manner.

Swamp Angel by Ethel Wilson #1954Club

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When I was in Toronto in 2017, I was keen to buy books that wouldn’t be so easily available back home – and it made sense to pick up Canadian authors, where possible. It was also during another Project 24, so I couldn’t go wild with the number of books I bought – I restricted myself largely to Stephen Leacock, Margaret Laurence, and Ethel Wilson.

The only Ethel Wilson I’d read was Hetty Dorval, in the Persephone edition, and I remember liking it but none of the details. Now I’ve read this beautiful edition of the unprepossessingly-titled Swamp Angel, and I can see why she is so beloved by many Canadians.

We open in Vancouver. Maggie Vardoe is living with her second husband, having been widowed in her first marriage. And, on page one, we get this sentence:

Mrs Vardoe had become attached to, even absorbed into the sight from the front-room window of inlet and forest and mountains. She had come to love it, to dislike it, to hate it, and at seven-fifteen this evening she proposed to leave and not to return. Everything was, she thought, in order.

As well as a vital plot point, it’s a great indication of Wilson’s writing in this novel. She blends the beautiful with the plain. Throughout the book, we are always aware of the surroundings – views and environments and nature are as crucial as anything happening in the foreground. But Wilson is not sentimental about the natural world; she is in awe of it, and she values the vantages people have of it.

Maggie leaves the house, having cooked enough meat for her husband to eat cold for a few days. We don’t learn a lot about Mr Vardoe, except that he is irascible, unkind, demanding and unsatisfactory. It’s no mystery why Maggie wants to leave. What is less clear is where she might go, and why.

Swamp Angel follows Maggie as she becomes independent. At various places in those forests and mountains she could see from her window, Maggie learns how to live in a way that gives her autonomy, and respects the people and places around her. She is pretty good at it from the outset, so this isn’t a case of seeing a suburban housewife gradually learn to adapt to a new way of life. It is as though this way of life has always been waiting for her, and she only has to dive into it.

Maggie isn’t alone in this experience, nor is it idyllic. A large part of the novel sees her working at some remote cabins, and the difficulties this causes with the married couple who own it. She also invites a young Chinese boy to work with her, based on a brief meeting. There is little maternal in the relationship she has with him, or his brother. What I found interesting about Wilson’s writing is how often it resists comfortable emotional conclusions. People remain self-contained, or have outbursts that they regret. There is a beauty in the restraint that the characters are permitted.

In between the character interactions, Wilson allows herself leisurely envelopments in the natural world that are the novel’s most beautiful moments. I particularly loved this description of the northern lights, and how Maggie is swept into it:

One night she saw, north of the lake, a pale glow invade the sky. Maggie got up and pulled a blanket round her. The pale glow was greenish, no, a hot colour rose up and quickly took possession. The colour changed. The vast sky moved as with banners. The sky was an intimation of something still vaster, and spiritual. For two hours Maggie watched enraptured the great folding, playing, flapping of these draperies of light in heaven, transient, unrepeated, sliding up and down the sky. After declaiming lavishly, the great Northern Lights faded with indifference as one who is bored and – deploring display – says I may come back but only if I choose; I do as I wish; I am powerful; I am gone but I am here. The orthodox stars, which had been washed away, returned palely. Night was resumed, and Maggie slept.

I’ve missed quite substantial parts of Swamp Angel that take place back in Vancouver, with Maggie’s friends and husband, and haven’t even mentioned that the Swamp Angel is in fact a gun. But hopefully I’ve said enough to tempt you to the quiet tumult of this novel.

The Golden Waterwheel by Leo Walmsley – #1954Club

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One of the books I loved last year was Leo Walmsley’s Love in the Sun, a very autobiographical novel about living and loving in poverty beside the sea in Cornwall. You can read my earlier review, and it will leave you unsurprised that I was keen to read more from Walmsley. And so I was really pleased to see that the first sequel, The Golden Waterwheel, was published in 1954 – quite a long time after 1939’s Love in the Sun, but picking up where it finished.

The narrator (basically Walmsley himself) and his wife Dain have made the difficult decision to leave Cornwall behind and go back up north, to Yorkshire, where they had come from. They want to set up a home with plenty of land, still near the sea, and raise their young family. Having coped with very little in Cornwall, they know they are capable of making do – but the narrator also has a new source of income, in the form of his successful writing. In Love in the Sun, his first book was accepted – in The Golden Waterwheel, he is writing what would become Love in the Sun. It’s all very meta.

The slow, steady pace and the guileless tone of the first book are replicated here. Each step is given equal weight, and we see the couple find various sites they’d like to live in, before finally getting a plot further from the sea than they’d wished but with views and plenty of potential. And they set about creating their dream home – within the remit of modest, achievable dreams. I always love reading about house-hunting, house-building or anything to do with devising a home, and so I loved all of this. Again, it is a gradual development, told in a straightforward way. Walmsley doesn’t mine it for humour, and there is nothing either self-deprecating or self-aggrandising. Anything that is amusing comes from incident, not from the framing of it.

And it is beautiful. Walmsley is a deep appreciator of the natural world, and he conveys it without metaphor or ornament. He sees that it is beautiful, and he describes it as it is. Here is a walk on the nearby moor:

It was lovely. The real heather was a long way from being in full bloom. Enough of it was out to give a blush of tender purple to the dark green and browns of the moor. The sea wind had packed the sky with cloud, too even in its structure, too pale and too low to portend rain, and although there would be no visible sunset, the light was strong and the lower air so clear that every detail of the moorland landscape for miles around was optically sharp. The lone pines, the odd groups of sheep, a shepherd’s hut, the low hills each surmounted by one or several of the conical mounds that marked the burial place of an ancient Briton. The salty wind was cool but invigorating, and the sun-dried springy turf extended a warmth. There was a steady droning of bees and you could almost taste honey in the smell of the heather blooms they were plundering.

I loved this book as much as its predecessor, and I’m looking forward to The Happy Ending, the final in the trilogy. It is set on the cusp on the Second World War, so is not really representative of 1954 life – but does hark back to a halcyon time. The waterwheel of the title is never built; it is a dream that doesn’t quite come true, and perhaps that is why it remains golden. But, even without out, there is something golden about the whole period.

#1954Club: post your reviews

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The 1954 Club has started! Karen and I are asking everyone to read one or more books published in 1954 – in any language, format, or place – and share your reviews. Together, we’ll put together an overview of the year. I think it’s our 14th club year, which is incredible.

Pop a link to your review in the comments, and I’ll put together an overview of all the links. It can go to blog, social media, GoodReads, wherever – if you have nowhere to post a review, feel free to put it in the comments.

Excited to see how everyone found 1954!

Lease of Life by Frank Baker
Stuck in a Book

Go Tell It On The Mountain by James Baldwin
What Me Read

Good Work, Secret Seven by Enid Blyton
Literary Potpourri

Death Going Down by María Angélica Bosco
Words and Peace

The Children of Green Knowe by L.M. Boston
Staircase Wit

Death Likes It Hot by Edgar Box
Bitter Tea and Mystery

The Cuckoo in Spring by Elizabeth Cadell
Staircase Wit

The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet by Eleanor Cameron
Staircase Wit

Destination Unknown by Agatha Christie
Veronique on GoodReads
What Me Read

Because of Sam by Molly Clavering
Read Warbler

Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead by Barbara Comyns
Harriet Devine
Karen’s Books and Chocolate
Madame Bibi Lophile

The Last Train by Bernard Cronin
Whispering Gums

The Wheel on the School by Meindert DeJong
Literary Potpourri

Mary Ann by Daphne du Maurier
Hopewell’s Public Library of Life
Pining for the West

Whole Days in the Trees by Marguerite Duras
1st Reading

Doctor’s Children by Josephine Elder
Stuck in a Book

The Native Heath by Elizabeth Fair
Adventures in Reading, Running and Working From Home
Stuck in a Book
Staircase Wit

The Cretan Counterfeit by Katharine Farrer
Stuck in a Book

Jill Enjoys Her Ponies by Ruby Ferguson
Scones and Chaises Longues

The Case of the Restless Redhead by Erle Stanley Gardner
Literary Potpurri

Beside the Pearly Waters by Stella Gibbons
Stuck in a Book

Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Reading Envy

The Desperate Hours by Joseph Hayes
A Hot Cup of Pleasure

Tintin Goes to the Moon by Hergé
Finding Time To Write

The Toll Gate by Georgette Heyer
Desperate Reader
She Reads Novels
Wicked Witch’s Blog

The Secret Diary of Harold L. Ickes
Neglected Books

The Bird’s Nest by Shirley Jackson
What Me Read

Moominsummer Madness by Tove Jansson
Bookish Beck

Pictures from an Institution by Randall Jarrell
Bookish Beck

The Tortoise and the Hare by Elizabeth Jenkins
JacquiWine
Brona’s Books

Death in Rome by Wolfgang Koeppen
1streading’s Blog

The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis
Annabookbel
Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings
Calmgrove
Entering the Enchanted Castle
Staircase Wit

Mio, My Son by Astrid Lingren
Becky’s Book Reviews

Shroud of Darkness by E.C.R. Lorac
Literary Potpourri

The Refuge by Kenneth Mackenzie
Reading Matters

Confessions of Felix Krull by Thomas Mann
Lizzy’s Literary Life

Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya
What Me Read
Mad Cap Hat

I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
Mr Kaggsy

Faintley Speaking by Gladys Mitchell
Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings

Madame de Pompadour by Nancy Mitford
The Captive Reader
Literary Potpourri

Contempt by Alberto Moravia
Winstonsdad’s Blog

Under the Net by Iris Murdoch
Kinship of all Species
Book Word

Go, Lovely Rose by Jean Potts
Bitter Tea and Mystery

Story of O by Pauline Réage
Reading and Watching the World

Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan
Reading and Watching the World

Katherine by Anya Seton
Becky’s Book Reviews
What Me Read

The Gypsy in the Parlour by Margery Sharp
HeavenAli
Madame Bibi Lophile

Maigret Goes to School by Georges Simenon
Harriet Devine

Maigret and the Minister by Georges Simenon
Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings

The New Men by C.P. Snow
Winston’s Dad

Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck
Winstonsdad’s Blog

Charlotte Fairlie by D.E. Stevenson
HeavenAli
Bag Full of Books

The Black Mountain by Rex Stout
My Reader’s Block

The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff
Staircase Wit
She Reads Novels

Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas
Let’s Read
Bookish Beck

The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook by Alice B. Toklas
Scones and Chaises Longues
Madame Bibi Lophile

The Fellowship of the Ring by JRR Tolkien
Calmgrove
Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings

The Two Towers by JRR Tolkein
Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings

Legions of the Eagle by Henry Treece
Pining for the West

Dishonoured Bones by John Trench
Stuck in a Book

Banner in the Sky by James Ramsey Ullman
The Captive Reader

Messiah by Gore Vidal
746 Books

The Golden Waterwheel by Leo Walmsley
Stuck in a Book

The Untidy Pilgrim by Eugene Walter
ANZ Litlover’s Litblog

Highland Rebel by Sally Watson
Staircase Wit

The Ponder Heart by Eudora Welty
Expendable Mudge Muses Aloud

Beyond the Glass by Antonia White
Madame Bibi Lophile

Swamp Angel by Ethel Wilson
Stuck in a Book

Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit by P.G. Wodehouse
Karen’s Books and Chocolate
Old Geezer Re-reading
Literary Potpourri

Overview of 1954 in books
Whispering Gums
Brona’s Books
Gallimaufry Book Studio