1970s

The Bookshop

StuckinaBook All , 8 Comments

I’m SO glad that Enid Blyton provoked such a joyous reaction in you all; not even one derogatory comment. She obviously helped us all become obsessive readers. Though I’m on a St. Clare’s binge at the moment, my favourites are either Famous Five or The Naughtiest Girl in the School or the Six Cousins… tricky. Our Vicar’s Wife, and probably Our Vicar too, organised a Famous Five party for us once. Brilliant.

Now (and watch closely here, to see if you can spot the seams) Enid Blyton books could be bought in a bookshop, which brings me to The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald. Lynne Hatwell, aka dovegreyreader, very kindly gave this to me when we met earlier in the year, and it was just the right size to slip into my bag on the train today.

I tried a Penelope Fitzgerald novel last year, Human Voices, but not sure I got round to writing about it on here. It was one of those books which I finished before I quite felt that I’d got into it – the style was a little jabby and awkward, and somehow it didn’t click. And The Bookshop felt the same for the first thirty pages… but then, thank goodness, how wonderful, it all fell into place and hallelujah, I raced right to the end. From being a book I couldn’t get on with, it became one of my favourite reads this year.

Slim and simple, The Bookshop is about Florence Green setting up a bookshop in a small town called Hardborough, in 1959. The business meets genteel opposition from several quarters of the town, but also support from others. Christine, a stubborn and resilient young girl, comes to work as an assistant – and between Christine and Florence a rather touching, but unsentimental, friendship develops. If that sounds remotely mawkish, trust me, it isn’t. Penelope Fitzgerald doesn’t do mawkish. Her writing is spare, very spare, and there isn’t room for emotions – we simply see the people interact, and can quite easily understand the emotions they must be experiencing. How Florence faces opposition, how she accepts Christine’s characteristics and how she changes as a result of the bookshop.

The denouement is subtle and devastating – it involves neighbours acting as they would in a Mapp & Lucia book, where it would be a gentle comedy. Here it is understated tragedy. The Bookshop is a triumph of a novel, and I’m so glad Lynne gave it to me, and that *something* clicked whilst I was reading it.

Thrown To The Woolfs

StuckinaBook All , 5 Comments

Today’s Woolf-pun wasn’t my own invention, though a trawl through past posts on Woolf will reveal quite a medley of ’em – as does today’s sketch, which is once more recycled. What can I say, I’m fond of it. And I’m also fond of Virginia Woolf, always on the look out for other things to read by and about her.

Can’t remember where I first saw Thrown To The Woolfs by John Lehnmann, but I have a feeling it was mentioned in Hermione Lee’s exhaustive biography Virginia Woolf – it appealed immediately; an account by Lehmann of being manager and later partner of Hogarth Press. He worked there between 1931 and 1946, with a sizeable gap in the middle – both chunks of time there, totalling almost eight years, ended in a rift with Leonard Woolf.

Although it is Woolf, V. who sold this title to me, Woolf, L. takes more central stage. Not in Lehmann’s opinion, certainly, but rather in the length of time spent together and consequent impact on Lehmann’s life. Like almost everyone else who has documented meeting Virginia, Lehmann was entirely bewitched by her, both as a person and a writer. He describes reading her final novel, Between The Acts, in manuscript: ‘It was a thrilling experience, and I was deeply moved. It seemed to me to have an unparalleled imaginative power, to be filled with a poetry more disturbing than anything she had written before, reaching at times the extreme limits of the communicable’. She herself died believing it to be “too silly and trivial”, but in her mental state also called To The Lighthouse ‘inconceivably bad’. It is a further tragedy that one of the century’s greatest writers died believing her work to be awful.

So, though Virginia was undoubtedly Lehmann’s preferred Woolf, it was Leonard who dominated the running of the Hogarth Press. The Press was important to both Woolfs – Lehmann describes it being treated ‘as if it were the child their marriage had never produced’ – but Leonard was far more concerned with the managerial side. He was notoriously parsimonious, going into a rage if a halfpenny could not be accounted for in, er, accounts. Thrown To The Woolfs, as the title suggests, does not tell a wholly happy tale, and it was (Lehmann suggests) Leonard’s over-bearing attitude, especially regards vetoing authors Lehmann wished to publish, which led to the eventual break up of their partnership. Much of the third section of this book is taken up with settling scores – quoting from Leonard’s autobiography and then refuting and repudiating. Though the final paragraph begins ‘it is absurd, and deleterious, in one’s later ages, to harbour enduring resentments about the struggles and tribulations of one’s younger career’ – but this feels a little like lip service to good nature. The tone becomes a trifle bitter, with light coming only in references to Virginia and other authors about whom he is passionate.

Despite these unresolved squabbles, Thrown To The Woolfs is a well-written and interesting account of a unique viewpoint on the Woolfs, and as such is well worth seeking out. Just don’t expect Happy Families all round.

By the by, I’m off to Snowdonia for a few days – see you when I get back!

Critically speaking…

StuckinaBook All , 0 Comment

Mencken, apparently, said that “Criticism is prejudice made plausible”.

I always think erudite blog entries should begin with a relevant quotation, so there you go – and useful things, quotations are. What is it about them which makes argument futile?

Before I wander off into unknown territory, I’ll make the point of today’s entry obvious. In my bid to become a Well Rounded Member of the University, I write sporadically for the student newspaper (enterprisingly labelled The Oxford Student). I wrote a couple of book reviews – you can see why this might be my area of choice – but then they shunted me over to drama. In fact, the previous drama editor was unceremoniously sacked, for giving his own plays large and positive reviews, and the rest of the staff went on strike. I was the calm after the storm, and asked to be drama editor for the dubious merit of knowing very little about drama. On the page, fine. On the stage, it was a learning curve.

Anyway, that was all a while ago – I did a couple of terms, and now am just part of the Writing Team. And today I was sent off to review a student production of Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party. The press previews show 45mins-1 hour of the production, in various stages of costume and prop preparation, and with the occasional prompt. Bribery varies, from nothing, to wine and sweets. I’ve done a LOT, from Educating Rita to Berkoff’s dreadful Decadence, to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, to The Threepenny Opera, with obligatory stops at Shakespeare, Coward and Marber. It’s always great fun, though I hate writing anything too cruel. On the other hand, it’s a lot easier to be funny when being critical – my ‘favourite’ in this line was when, in Coward’s Design For Living, one actor “paraded his over-enunciated consonants through a stage-school portrayal of anxiety”. Or “One feels it is only a matter of time before the audience is informed that there is a Hero Inside Every One of Us, or at least witness cameos from the surviving cast of Watership Down.”

Enough of me. I wanted to say how much I LOVED Abigail’s Party. I have seen it before, but this production didn’t disappoint – Mike Leigh’s script is a masterclass in incidental inanity made captivating. The character satires are faultless, though remain pleasingly gentle, and it’s simply the funniest thing I’ve seen in ages. If you don’t know the plot – Beverley and Lawrence hold a drinks party for new neighbours Angela (Ange) and monosyllabic Tony (Tone). Slightly awkward, classier neighbour Susan (Sue) comes a little later, to be out of the house when the eponymous Abigail has her party. Not a lot else happens – until the twist, that is – but while they bicker, discuss make-up application, debate the merits and demerits of olives, the unknown happened: we poker-faced reviewers started loudly guffawing. So much for keeping them guessing until newspaper publication date.

One of the downsides to reviewing, though, is that I’ve seen almost all of the play – I don’t fancy paying to watch the rest next week. So I’ll order the DVD instead…

50 Books You Must Read But May Not Have Heard About

StuckinaBook All , 10 Comments

1. The Summer Book – Tove Jansson
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I don’t think I’ll be causing too much of a literary storm if I suggest that Chaucer and Tove Jansson are odd bedfellows. But, nevertheless, they share the dubious acclaim of being the first authors to be heralded. And Tove is kicking off something I hope to continue intermitently for quite a while: 50 Books You Must Read But May Not Have Heard About.

Hopefully I’ll be able to bring a few to people’s attention, which they wouldn’t discover on the 3 for 2 tables, and of course I welcome recommendations – which will be ingested, and perhaps appear in this countdown (which is, I hasten to add, in no particular order) in the future. I played around with HTML for a while yesterday, but failed in adding a third column – so a list will be kept of the 50 Reads, down there somewhere on the far left.

I’m easing you in with The Summer Book, which I think has already done the rounds of blogs – certainly spotted it on Cornflower. Translated from the Swedish, and by the author of the Moomin Books, this falls between being a collection of short stories, and a fragmented-but-continuous narrative of the relationship between Sophia and her grandmother. More than anything else, it is a mesmerically beautiful evocation of Summer. Maybe it’s because it was originally written in another language, but there is an atmosphere of ethereality and airiness throughout this work. Finding it difficult to put my finger on why this book is so evocative, but I’m going to give up and just say: it is! Rarely have I left a novel, especially one not especially comedic, loving the characters so much, and appreciating the style of an author more.

Here’s the first line, to entice you:
‘It was an early, very warm morning in July, and it had rained during the night. The bare granite steamed, the moss and crevices were drenched with moisture, and all the colours everywhere had deepened. Below the veranda, all the vegetation in the morning shade was like a rainforest of lush, evil leaves and flowers, which she had to be careful not to break as she searched. She held one hand in front of her mouth and was constantly afraid of losing her balance.
“What are you doing?” asked little Sophia’
…

Do read on. And it’s a beautiful book to look at, which can’t be a bad thing. That’s right, folks, two days in and I’m already judging a book by its cover.

Anyone read it? Or The Winter Book, the sequel currently sitting on my shelf?
Countdown begins…