2000s

Hilly Region

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As you’ll have read, I’m rather a fan of Howards End is on the Landing – and it sent me off in pursuit of other Susan Hill books. I had read The Battle for Gullywith, which was ok, but nothing to set my reading pulse into overdrive… but now I want more and more. Spotting that The Beacon was just coming into paperback, I gave Vintage Press an email… well, they didn’t reply, and I gave up the idea, but then the book arrived so somebody must have read the email… thank you Mysterious Lovely Person at Vintage Press.

I’d had my eye on The Beacon for a while, mostly because of the stunning cover (Susan Hill does have some good fortune with these, does she not?) and because the premise sounds interesting. Essentially, it’s a response to the vogue for childhood misery memoirs. Made famous by David Pelzer and his A Child Called It, the genre has seemingly thousands of titles, all with more or less the same cover – a white background with a sepia-child on it. Three were written by people from a family who grew up in my village, in fact. Frankly, I haven’t the smallest idea why anybody publishes or reads these. I completely understand why people write them – it must be a great catharsis – but my only experience, with Pelzer’s first book, left me feeling voyeuristic. Many of them have been written, but I think Susan Hill’s novelistic response is unusual, maybe even unique.

The Prime family live in a small North Country village, in an old farmhouse called The Beacon. The narrative moves between two time frames – we see Colin, May, Frank, and Berenice as they grow up – and we see May, still living at The Beacon years later, dealing with the death of their mother. As one strand follows the children’s gradual maturing, moving away from home to marriage or college or the city, the other strand shows the same family on the other side of a life-changing event. Not the death of their mother Bertha – that is simply the catalyst for the novel’s action – but the book Frank published about their childhood. The Cupboard Under The Stairs tells of his childhood or neglect, torture, and misery – at the hands of his parents, and even his siblings.

Except none of it is true… or is it? Though the other children – now grown-up – come together in horror and denial, yet the doubt which spreads throughout their community is also planted in all of their minds. A very faint doubt, but doubt nonetheless. But for the most part, when the doubt does not assail them, they cannot understand the motives their brother had:

How can you grow up with someone from birth and know nothing about them, she thought, share parents and brother and sister with them, share a house, rooms, a table, holidays, play, illnesses, games and not know them?
The Beacon is a very clever, subtle novella. Like many short books, it packs a more powerful punch than a longer book could have done. The emotions of the characters are never over the top, but understated and quietly devastating. Hill wisely doesn’t ruin the effect by dwelling on Frank’s imagined torture – it is not that kind of book. Instead it is a novella driven by characters’ relationships with one another, and how much in them is unvoiced and unvoiceable. Hill also has the power to make the final few pages of a book – indeed, final few words – make you gasp out loud, and want to start the book all over again. Though I don’t love this book in the way that I love Howards End is on the Landing, that is because The Beacon is a book to be admired and appreciated, rather than loved – I’m definitely pleased I revisited Susan Hill, as I feel there’s a lot more for me to discover. Next up is In the Springtime of the Year.

Suggestions for more, please?

Howards End is on the Landing – Susan Hill

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29. Howards End is on the Landing – Susan Hill

I’ve teased you long enough, and now I am going to write about Howards End is on the Landing by Susan Hill. I’m not sure of the exact publication date, but apparently it’s already being shipped by some, er, depositories of books. So will be hitting shelves soon, if it’s not there already. As you can see, it’s gone straight into my list of 50 Books You Must Read But May Not Have Heard About – though I suspect *everyone* will have heard about it before long. It’s just too good not to put into the list.

To set the tone: this is my favourite book of the year so far. It’s everything bookish and literary that you could possibly ask for – basically, if you sigh happily when glancing at the cover (which Hill herself thinks is the best one she’s ever been given) then this is the book for you.

The premise is that Susan Hill will spend a year reading only books she has on her shelves. Not just unread books, but revisiting those from the past – much-read favourites alongside ones she’s always meant to read. As she beautifully writes: ‘a book which is left on a shelf is a dead thing but it is also a chrysalis, an inanimate object packed with the potential to burst into new life.’

And so the year begins. Hill avoids spending much time on the internet – explaining the sudden disappearance of her blog – since it can ‘have a pernicious influence on reading because it is full of book-related gossip and chatter on which it is fatally easy to waste time that should be spent actually paying close, careful attention to the books themselves.’ I find this chatter wonderful, of course (for what is Stuck-in-a-Book but book-related chatter?) and a great resource for finding more books – but I think Hill’s decision is a dream a lot of us have. Wouldn’t it be lovely to retreat into our bookshelves, finally tackling those tbr piles, having everything spontaneous and undecided?

In truth, most of Howards End is on the Landing is speculative, wondering which books might be read, and remembering her experiences with them, rather than reappraisals of the re-reads and newly reads. Is this an autobiography through reading? In a way, perhaps. But it is much more embracing than that – personal anecdotes, yes (her meeting with Iris Murdoch is quietly heart-breaking), but also chapters on how books can be shelved, whether or not to write in them, what constitutes a funny book… It’s a bit like a very well-edited, and selective, blog. And I mean that as a compliment. Individual authors treated to their own chapter include Virginia Woolf, Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming, WG Sebald, Penelope Fitzgerald, Anthony Trollope… a huge range, for Susan Hill is no book snob. How cheering to hear her say:

Adults may say what they like – parents, teachers and other know-alls. Enid Blyton excited us, took us into worlds of mystery, magic, adventure and fun. Yes, her prose is bland, yes, the vocabulary is not particularly stretching. But Blyton had the secret, the knack.There are sections on diaries, e-readers (not a fan), detective fiction, and how she doesn’t like Jane Austen (intake of breath, but she keeps trying to see what’s what with Jane, and at least she’s honest…) Oh, and lots more.

Towards the end, Hill tries to decide upon the 40 books she’d read for the rest of her life, if she could have no others. I shan’t spoil her list, for the book builds up to it, but it’s a great idea for a gradual, contemplative exercise.

Above all – and I am aware that I haven’t done justice to Howards End is on the Landing, for it is impossible to put across her tone – Susan Hill has written something delightfully, wisely, enchantingly bookish. I feel I have been around her old farmhouse, with its rooms full of bookcases – I feel her surprise when she happens upon an unexpected old friend on her uncategorised shelves. Mostly, I have fallen even more deeply in love with my own books – with those which have lingered for years unread; with my own personal library as a whole.

She picks and chooses, yet is also somehow comprehensive. She writes subjectively, but – whether or not I agree with her – it feels like the last word has been spoken; the whole spectrum of opinion addressed. And Hill can be sweeping (‘Girls read more than boys, always have, always will. That’s a known fact.’) and naive (‘if [some listed Elizabethan plays] were any good we would have heard of them’) but that doesn’t seem to matter a jot. Perhaps it is her sheer love of books that make her the everywoman – or at least everyreader – even whilst having a determined set of views.

There are some books which are read reluctantly; others so addictive that they are read walking down the street. Then there are those – and this is a rare, wonderful category – that are laid aside often, because the thought of finishing them, of having no more to read, is awful. Howards End is on the Landing is in this category – what higher praise can I offer? This might only truly delight those of us who have hundreds of unread books, lists everywhere of books we intend to read. For us (and if you’ve read this far, that includes you) this is a treasure, from the pen of a like-minded friend, to which we will often, happily, joyfully, return.

Suspicious

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I’ve been meaning to write about The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher for so long, that I’ve forgotten absolutely everything I was going to say… but I wanted to hear your thoughts, so this will be a very brief thought about the book, and a wider question about the genre.

For those who don’t know, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale – which was hugely popular, won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction, and is still in the bestselling list on Bloomsbury’s website – blurs the boundaries between non-fiction and fiction. That is to say, doubtless Summerscale’s research is impeccable – but the pace and style of the book borrow much from fiction. It tells the story of an 1860 murder in a country house, ‘perhaps the most disturbing murder of its time[…] For the country as a whole, the murder at Road Hill became a kind of myth – a dark fable about the Victorian family and the dangers of detection.’

For it was this murder that kicked off the idea of the detective, which has spawned a whole, beloved genre of fiction. Mr. Whicher was his name, and Summerscale’s book is as much about his history, and the genesis of the detective, as it is about the gruesome murder of a young boy. Like the archetypal detective novel, the murder must have committed by someone in the house, one of the supposedly grieving family.

Summerscale’s book has the excitement of a detective novel combined with the historical interest of a true, important story – she can use real newspaper articles alongside pacy accounts of the events. It is a brilliant formula, which only occasionally flounders… because it is a true story, there can only be twists as ingenious as actually happened. The ending (for the murderer is unveiled) would doubtless be a dozen times more fiendishly plotted in an author’s imagination. But it would be churlish to complain – the idea for the book is very clever; the execution impressive, and Whicher’s legacy fascinating.

As far as I know, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher is the first book to recreate a true murder in quite this way. And, unusually for such a successful book, I haven’t come across any copycat writers trying to reproduce the idea. So I’m asking you – do you know of anything in a similar vein, where fact and fiction blur? I can only think of books like Author, Author by David Lodge, where a true story is openly fictionalised – none where a true story is simply lent the narrative structure of fiction.

And, of course, your thoughts on The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher? A book group favourite, I suspect huge swathes of Stuck-in-a-Book readers have read this, and I’m intrigued to know what you thought… Did you find Summerscale’s approach worked? And what on earth is she going to write next?

Seriously Useful

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I’ve had A Seriously Useful Author’s Guide to Marketing and Publicising Books for ages – I meant to write about it weeks and months ago, but it hid on the shelf, and somehow it never happened… I have the acclaim of *almost* being included in this book, written by my friend and fellow-Oxfordshire-resident Mary Cavanagh. I wrote a bit about blogging and marketing books, which was nearly included… but the cut at the last minute. Still in the acknowledgments, though! But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Mary Cavanagh’s first novel was The Crowded Bed, which I wrote about here, and she knows a thing or two about marketing and publicising. More or less single-handedly, she managed to sell a significant number of this novel – published by the apparently erstwhile Transita. She’s turned her knowledge to good effect in this Seriously Useful guide.

I’m not an author (not yet!) so I’ve skim read through this book, but should I ever have a manuscript under my belt, I’ll definitely return to Cavanagh’s book. She starts off from pre-publication – ideas about the book cover, editing, and generally about the book industry. Then Cavanagh comprehensively looks at all the areas authors can use to promote their books – book launches, using the television, radio, newspaper, literary festivals, superstores, and the internet. Here’s where the book bloggers come in – Cornflower, Random Jottings, Dovegreyreader, Vulpes Libris, and Bookwitch have all contributed bits talking about the interaction between bloggers and writers. Certainly, a blogger is far more likely to accept, read, and write about a first-time low-budget author than a national newspaper is, so I think Cavanagh has got the focus just right there.

Though Mary Cavanagh’s book will be Seriously Useful to more or less any author, if they don’t have a six figure budget for publicity, it is especially handy for self-publishing authors – Cavanagh has published through both an independent publishers and off her own bat, so she knows what she’s talking about.

I know most Stuck-in-a-Book visitors are primarily readers, but there might well be a writer or two out there who could use this guide… though, if you’re reading this, you’ve got the blog-reading bit down to a tee already!

Katherine Mansfield – Selected Stories

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Thanks so much for your response yesterday, everyone, that was really interesting – and lovely to have comments from new people. I have to check these things sometimes – doing an English degree tends to make one a bit blinkered, in terms of which authors are well-known and which aren’t. I usually ask Colin – he knows rather more about literature than most, but isn’t as obsessed, and he assured me that nobody at his office would have heard of Katherine Mansfield. I knew the literary-blog-reading-and-writing world would be rather more keyed up, but wasn’t sure where our Kath featured on the scale of things. So, whilst more or less all of you have heard of Katherine Mansfield, she remains an untapped mine for many – and so I shall put her into my ongoing list of 50 Books You Must Read etc. etc….


27. Katherine Mansfield – Selected Stories

Katherine Mansfield only wrote for a few years, in the 1910s and ’20s. She was on the outskirts of the Bloomsbury Group, in an ambivalent friendship with Virginia Woolf. Born in New Zealand, her stories are set in both NZ and England, but also often an indeterminate mixture of the two. I wrote about Claire Tomalin’s biography of KM a couple of years ago, if you’re interested… but onto her writing.

Though you can read anything by KM – I recommend buying her collections as they were published, especially The Garden Party and Bliss, as well as various others – the Selected Stories is an excellent place to start. Plus Oxford University Press just sent me their latest World’s Classics edition of it, and it’s rather beautiful – as well as including nearly all of my favourite stories. But – and this might be make or break in terms of appreciating KM – don’t start at the beginning. This Selected Stories, perhaps unsurprisingly, lists her stories chronologically. KM’s writing got better and better, most of her best work appearing in the two years before she died, age 34, of TB. Who knows what she’d have gone onto achieve had she lived – or perhaps it was facing her death which drew such genius out of her?

If you do get this collection, which I’d encourage – or indeed any collection – then start with something from The Garden Party. ‘The Garden Party’, for example. Other favourites from around this period include ‘Miss Brill’; ‘Bliss’; ‘The Daughters of the Colonel’; ‘Her First Ball’; ‘A Cup of Tea’. All of these are included in the OUP selection. Others prefer her longer stories, ‘Prelude’ and ‘At the Bay’, but I think her craft and talent are shown best in the short, short stories.

What is it that makes KM so very, very good? It is this ability to demonstrate so much in such short works – to capture entire lives in mere sentences. Even if you don’t usually like short stories, I can’t imagine anybody not appreciating these. They manage to show everyday events, which at the same time completely turn people’s lives upside down. They are about people dealing with grief, or change, or power shifts, or the strange. ‘The Garden Party’ is all about class, on one level, but also a girl’s first encounter with death. And her writing – it is absolutely sublime. Virginia Woolf said ‘I was jealous of her writing. The only writing I was ever jealous of.’ It transports you to another world when you’re reading it – everything delicate and observant without being cloying or obtrusive. A quiet modernist, her stories owe as much to Chekhov as to any later writers.

I don’t want to give away the plots of these stories, because quite often only one significant event happens, and it is the stunning crux of the story. Like ‘Bliss’ – incredible story – to give away the ending would be treason! But when the pivots take place, they are not sensational – they are life, and KM’s talent is in sensitively showing how people respond to events which are externally almost insignificant, but of huge personal enormity. And, because it’s impossible to judge a writing style without evidence, here’s a link to ‘The Garden Party’, and here is one to ‘Bliss’ (note the significance of the first word, in conjunction with the title). Do go and read them, slowly, and see if you wouldn’t like to read more. I do hope you’ll give KM a try, if you haven’t before – and if you’ve not read her for years, why not get a copy and read one story a night for a few weeks? Just remember, contrary to everything we learnt in The Sound of Music, don’t start at the beginning, it’s not a very good place to start.

Kisses on a Postcard

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As promised, tonight I’m going to chat about Terence Frisby’s Kisses on a Postcard, and there isn’t really a better way to begin than the way in which Elaine started her review – ‘Gosh what a lovely lovely book.’ (She also has a draw to win copies, do go and enter). But I’m going to start by mentioning how Terence Frisby had arrived on my horizons before – in the revue with Prunella Scales, Tim West, and Sam West, which I saw back in July. They performed an excerpt from It’s All Right If I Do It which was hilarious, and I’ve requested a copy of the play to the Bodleian to read.

But back to Kisses on a Postcard. This is an autobiographical book about Frisby’s years as a ‘vackie’, evacuee to you and me, sent to Cornwall with his older brother Jack in 1940. This tale has previously made appearances as a play, Just Remember Two Things: It’s Not Fair and Don’t Be Late, and then as a stage musical from that play. The musical hopefully being staged in London at some point… watch this space. Frisby warns in his Foreword ‘What memoir of childhood could be entirely true?’ Kisses on a Postcard combines all the facts of his experiences with the elaborations playwriting brought, as well as being seen through the wrong end of the telescope. But no matter – this book is true, in spirit if not in dialogue.

Like Emma Smith’s wonderful The Great Western Beach, Frisby’s book is an antidote to those misery memoirs which crop up everywhere. With MisMems (as they are apparently called – what you do learn at a book launch) I always say: I understand why people write them, but not why people read them. Thankfully Frisby, and Smith, take situations which could have been horrific, and write lively, joyful, invigorating books about them. Kisses on a Postcard even opens ‘I was the luckiest of children: I had two childhoods’. What a wonderful way to see a potentially heartbreaking event.

The beginning of the book looks at his first childhood, at home in London – his tough-but-sensitive father, his loving, well-educated mother who had perhaps come down in the world a little. Her background of suffragettes and society became one of marriage to a railway man – but a contentedly proud one. The Frisby neighbourhood and friendships sets the tone for a cheerful, resilient upbringing.

And then, of course, September 3rd 1939 arrived. And, more significantly for Terry and Jack Frisby, June 13th 1940 – when they were sent off to Cornwall. Mrs. Frisby devised the code from which the title comes – a number of ‘x’ kisses on their first postcard home, dependent upon how much they liked their evacuation home – three kisses if they were very happy; two if it was ok; one kiss and she would come straight there to collect them. What a remarkable woman. The parents who had to say goodbye to their children, knowing it could be forever – they are the unsung heroes of the war.

I don’t remember seeing any tears on that platform [when Terry and Jack left for Cornwall] but there must have been plenty. Jack and I stood at a window, waving and shouting at Mum, who stood in a crowd of waving, smiling mums. She mouthed, ‘Don’t forget the code,’ as though we could have. She told me years later that she went home and sobbed. Like all the other mums, I expect. I still cannot think of her inventiveness and bravery, even now nearly seventy years later, without my eyes filling.
You and me both, Terry. You can mark Kisses on a Postcard by the places it makes you cry – this was Tears No.1 for me, with plenty more to come. But thankfully, Terry and Jack were very fortunate with their host and hostess – known as Uncle Jack and Auntie Rose by everyone, regardless of generation, they lived in a tiny terraced cottage by the railway. Of all the lovely, lively characters in this book, it is Auntie Rose whom I shall remember most. Endlessly kind, honest, and selfless, she makes the boys welcome – acts as wise disciplinarian when needed, but never tries to replace their absent mother. It was a great privilege that Rose and Jack’s granddaughter was at the launch yesterday – now she will have to share fond memories of Auntie Rose with thousands of others now.

Terence Frisby relates so many things in this book that it would be impossible to list them all – we see a village community undergoing great changes, but also keeping true to a village spirit which with wider travel, communication, and resources has now all but disappeared. Kisses on a Postcard is a paean to rural life, to all the discoveries an urban child had to make – it makes me grieve for the generations since, including my own, who know so little about the natural world. (I blame electricity!) There are so many vivid characters portrayed – I was left feeling desperately sorry for Miss Polmanor, an ardent Methodist, but lonely lady, to whom Uncle Jack was often unkind. She could be interfering, perhaps, but… These were the only bits of the book which left me a little uncomfortable – Uncle Jack’s fairly constant, strident bellows of atheism, and his consequent unkindness to the attendants of Church and Chapel. But he had been through trench warfare, and was inevitably damaged by his experiences, despite being able to overcome this most of the time.

And on the tears front… when you’ve read Kisses on a Postcard, simply the names ‘Teddy Camberwall’ and ‘Gwyn’ will be enough to make you blink furiously, and pretend you’ve got an eyelash in your eye.

Perhaps Kisses on a Postcard is open to accusations of cosiness or even (a word I can never understand, or view as censure) tweeness. Well, it ought not be thought ‘cosy’ to commemorate acts of great human kindness, nor twee to rejoice in the possibilities of happiness amongst widespread sadness and turmoil. What Terence Frisby has done so excellently is write an honest account, with moments of desperation, which avoids misery without being falsely cheerful.

Sadly there cannot be many more decades of first-hand experiences of WW2, and those which we get now must be from the child’s viewpoint. All the more reason to treasure something as special as Kisses on a Postcard – I predict a classic, and one which can be enjoyed with joyfulness, thankfully, and not solely sympathy.

Checkout

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To move onto something very light, probably not for the annals of literature, but an amusing read nonetheless.

Gallic Books, who print ‘the best of French in English’, sent me a copy of Checkout: A Life on the Tills by Anna Sam. This was originally published as Les tribulations d’une caissiere, and stems from a blog Anna Sam kept about her eight years working in a supermarket. You can tell it was a blog – lots of little snippets, anecdotes from her working day, the traits of customers who come really early or really late, those who ignore her, etc. etc. It’s mostly in the second person (is this more common in French?) in the style of a how-to guide to anybody considering becoming une caissiere.

I shan’t type out vast reams, partly because The Independent has done it for me – click here to read quite a few extracts from the book. It’s very silly, quite diverting, and I found it perfect after a stream of heavier books. Took less than an hour for me to read it, but it might make a fun present for someone.

Only after reading an old article about the French version of Sam’s book did I suspect that Morag Young’s translation may have dumbed down the book… The Telegraph had done their own translation on a bit of the text, before Gallic’s publication: it described the till as ‘one of the most desirable vantage points from which to enjoy the full panoply of human idiocy.’ The sentence has a nice balance, good rhythm, rich words, and well-phrased wit. What do we get in this English version? ‘You are in a perfect position to witness the entire range of human stupidity.’

Perhaps I should learn French…

Beg, Borrow, Steal

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It’s always nice when a book arrives which isn’t at all my usual kind of thing, and it blows me away. Michael Greenberg’s book Beg, Borrow, Steal: A Writer’s Life sounded like my cup of tea – I have his memoir of his daughter’s mental illness, Hurry Down Sunshine, as yet unread. I thought Beg, Borrow, Steal might be about writer’s block, the publishing process, amusing anecdotes of book signings, seeing your book on the shelf for the first time… well, for the last few chapters it was. But before that there are nearly 40 chapters of an aspiring author talking about nearly everything except writing.

I say chapters. These were all previously columns in the Times Literary Supplement, between 2003 and 2009. And Greenberg writes about everything and anything – this is a writer’s life in one sense: all of his experiences are ignited by a desire to gather stories, create a viewpoint on the world – or rather, New York City. He has had almost every imaginable job – he’s sold fake make-up kits under a bridge; interpreted Spanish in a law court; driven a taxi until he was car-jacked; been a hopeless waiter; even played the stock market. Seemingly able to blend into any scenario, he writes of each with disarming simplicity, always engaging, however unpalatable the topic might be in the abstract.

His life in New York is as a struggling dreamer – one familiar with, and even fond of, the darker, grimier, desperate side of the city. Whereas I get anxious walking down a dim footpath in Oxford. Despite being so different from my usual choice of domestic literature of the interwar years, I was utterly captivated, and it never felt that Greenberg was bragging about his urban experiences – simply documenting them with a writer’s eye. And occasionally this was jolted against his experiences as a father – spending his first two weeks alone with his young son, for example.

Along the way, he garners some writing experience. He never mentions having the TLS column in the columns, but recalls his times keeping a log of his subway journeys; writing for unsuccessful films; being told by an editor that “This manuscript represents everything I hate in fiction.” An example of this book’s humour is seen when Greenberg writes the voiceover for a television programme about golf in America. ‘”Golf. Simple. Majestic. Timeless,” I begin.’

I complete the script and send it off to Zebra. A week later he ‘phones. An executive at the network has complimented my “intimate feeling for the game.” Would I be available to play a round with him at the Westchester Country Club next Thursday? I confess to Zebra that I have never played golf, except for a few holes of miniature golf on Kings Highway in Brooklyn when I was a boy.

“We’ll tell him you’re sick,” says Zebra without skipping a beat. “Something highly contagious.”
Who’d have thought that a book with topics so disparate as beheading chickens, waiting in the dark to see owls, and recording a Talking Book, could make such addictive, coherent reading. All is linked by Greenberg’s distinctive, but unobtrusive, voice.

Sadly for UK readers, this book won’t be published here (by Bloomsbury) until early 2010 – but it is out from Other Press in the US next week. See it here, on their website. The fact that Greenberg’s style and viewpoint are so different from my usual fare makes it easier for me to recognise a writer of great, but unassuming, talent. His clarity, honesty, and simple style reminded me of Homage to Catalonia, and I think it is possible that Greenberg is, stylistically, as quietly brilliant as George Orwell.

Persephone Week 2: Minnie’s Room

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Still on track so far… today I read the second collection of Mollie Panter-Downes’ short stories published by Persephone Books – Minnie’s Room: The Peacetime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes. It’s infernally difficult to write about a collection of short stories, for so many themes are explored, so many characters introduced, that summaries would rival the collection itself for length. Instead you must try and find some sort of cohesion, in vision or style… which is equally difficult. I’ll set the tone for my thoughts on Minnie’s Room, though – Panter-Downes is very, very good.


I was equally blessed and cursed that the first short stories I read were by Katherine Mansfield. Starting with the best does mean that all subsequent short story perusals have felt slightly sub-standard. Mansfield makes the art look so effortless – and every other short story writer doesn’t quite make the grade. Panter-Downes is no different, but she comes perhaps closer than anyone else yet.

The stories in Minnie’s Room appeared in the New Yorker and publication ranges from 1947 to 1965. I haven’t read her wartime stories, published by Persephone in Good Evening, Mrs. Craven, so I can’t comment on whether peacetime changed Panter-Downes’ tone, but it is fairly consistent across these two decades. Like the best short story writers, she is concerned with the minutiae of life, examining ostensibly insignificant events and the interplay of human relationships. With these she is never heavy-handed; there is a much-needed lightness of touch in the revelations falling upon her characters. My favourite story of the collection is ‘What are the Wild Waves Saying?’ which is framed through a woman’s recollections of a childhood holiday, seeing a young married couple being nothing like she expected. The denouement, in other hands, wouldn’t have worked – but Panter-Downes’ pen is gentle enough to make it memorable rather than mawkish.

Another story, ‘The Willoughbys’, relates well to yesterday’s Persephone, Princes in the Land: here the situation is reversed, with upper-class girl falling in love with lower-class man (and not remotely like Lady Chatterley, of course). Only a writer of Panter-Downes’ subtlety could reveal how little both families appreciate the union, and the complicated feelings of indignant surprise and confliction which the four parents have on discussing the match.

Nicola Beauman has often held Mollie Panter-Downes up as an example of great writing, both in her Persephone volumes and in the classic post-war novel One Fine Day (which is published by Virago). It is easy to see why Panter-Downes is held in such esteem. I especially liked her use of observant details or revealing similes:

Norah, who had determined to keep the house going at any cost, visited employment agencies and explained the Sotherns’ need to unimpressed women presiding over dog-eared ledgers that had a disconcerting look of being theatrical props, full of false names.

(‘Minnie’s Room’)

London seemed wrapped from end to end in fog. The city was as mottled and dun-coloured as the board covers of some dirty old volume that opened here and there to disclose a thrilling illustration

(‘Intimations of Morality’)

In terms of themes, the publishers’ introduction notes that many of the stories have middle-class characters striving to live their pre-war life. Another strand I noticed was the idea of faces revealing truth: The woman murmured something, and her head rolled over on the pillow so that her eyes stared into mine, and deep in the sockets I saw a flicker of something resembling a smile, like the dim light of a house one had thought was empty. I was too awed to smile back.

(‘Intimations of Mortality’)

Time and time again faces and eyes suddenly disclose traits or truths previously hidden – and that is, perhaps, as apt a metaphor as any for what Panter-Downes does with the short story. In amongst narratives of ordinary people, often conducting ordinary lives, we suddenly find ourselves face-to-face with a character and, cleverly, subtly, Panter-Downes unveils a previously unsuspected angle to the story – and, often, to the world.

The Other Elizabeth Taylor

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Nicola Beauman, of Persephone Books, very kindly sent me a copy of her book The Other Elizabeth Taylor months and months ago, and I’ve been reading it gradually for most of that time. I finished it quite a while ago now, and have been meaning to write about it for a long time – but I wanted to ponder it, and give the book a proper response. As Persephone Reading Week kicks off on Monday, it seemed a good way to whet appetites. I shouldn’t think there will be much confusion on this site, but I’ll make clear from the start: we’re talking about Elizabeth Taylor the novelist (who wrote books I’ve chatted about such as Angel and Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont) rather than Elizabeth Taylor the actress, who has – as far as I’m aware – warranted no mention yet at Stuck-in-a-Book.
The Other Elizabeth Taylor is the first (and maybe last?) Persephone Life, a biography which Beauman wrote over the course of fifteen years. As one might expect of a biography, it runs from 3rd July 1912 when Betty Coles was born, to 19th November 1975 when Elizabeth Taylor died – but the focus of the biography is largely twofold. Her writing and her relationships. If, like me, you find an author’s writing life of paramount significance, there is plenty in this biography to satisfy. Though writing from 1940s – 1970s, there is a sense in which Elizabeth Taylor’s novels fit with the spirit of the 1920s and ’30s. To quote Jocelyn Brooke, cited in The Other Elizabeth Taylor, Taylor is

in the best sense old-fashioned; that is to say, she writes an elegant, witty prose, has a decent respect for the Queen’s English, and is not obsessed by crime, violence, madness or homosexuality.

As well as looking at the situations and inspirations for Elizabeth Taylor’s novels, the biography has a great deal of information about her short stories – both the ones published and those which weren’t. This does lead to quite a lot of little plot summaries, but I appreciate the effort of a biography to be comprehensive – and the practical process of writing is always the most fascinating part of an author’s biography, to me. These sections also furthered my interest in William Maxwell, the novelist Cornflower introduced me to, in his capacity of New Yorker editor. Their relationship is fascinating – Maxwell was capable of being both friend and professional. He recognised her talent, spoke of ‘the excitement, the bliss, of reading’ one of her stories, but continued to turn down some of her stories throughout the rest of her writing career. How strong their bond must have been to survive that – especially to a woman who took criticism so much to heart.

It is these sections of the biography which Beauman really brings to life: Elizabeth Taylor’s relationship with other authors. Though the biography often remarks with surprise that Taylor chose a middle-class, almost provincial life, instead of the hustle and bustle of London (whereas I can never understand why anybody would choose London over the countryside – the former seems so much more isolated than the latter!) she had several significant literary friendships. The most influential seems to have been with Elizabeth Bowen, who was not shy of offering praise: ‘This is a case of the genius which I do know you have’. The most interesting to me is Ivy Compton-Burnett, and I have already gone and bought Robert Liddell’s Elizabeth and Ivy based on Beauman’s mentions of it.

I said the biography had dual focuses; the big discovery in Beauman’s research, and the main reason the book was delayed until after Taylor’s husband’s death, was the relationship between Taylor and Ray Russell. Hundreds of his letters have emerged, and Beauman interviewed Russell. Though Taylor’s marriage seems more or less undisrupted by this ongoing relationship, which lost any mutual romance quite early on, it remains something to shake the image of Elizabeth Taylor as a model middle-class wife. Though perhaps the biographer’s biggest claim to breaking new territory, it was this section of the book which interested me least. It might alter her reputation and character – but I didn’t know anything about her extant reputation or character before I started reading the biography. It was enough to earn Beauman the antagonism of Taylor’s children, though. I would be unable to write this review without mentioning the striking footnote which every review has mentioned: ‘Elizabeth Taylor’s daughter has commented [concerning a section on David Blakeley]: “Most of what Nicola has written is untrue and the rest hurtful to many people”‘. The Acknowledgements add that they are ‘alas “very angry and distressed” about the book and have asked to be disassociated from it.’ I don’t know how to respond to either their fierce rejection of the book (one can only imagine how hurtful that has been to its author) nor the very honest publication of their opinion – the ethics of biography is a whole other topic, one which Elaine touches on interestingly in her review of The Other Elizabeth Taylor.

I think the key to appreciating The Other Elizabeth Taylor and Nicola Beauman’s writing is to recognise that she approaches biography predominantly as a reader, rather than a writer. That is not to say that her research is not impeccable – the heart Beauman brings to the project means the research is likely to be all the more scrupulous. But the book is not scholarly in the way that, say Hermione Lee’s biographies are scholarly – opinion is permitted, informalities allowed. Discussions of books will lead into a more personal point – indeed, the writing is almost always personal. In discussing a situation in Taylor’s life which is reflected in her novel Blaming, Beauman writes:

Whether she was as much to blame as she believed no one can say; we have all written letters saying ‘I am sorry’, failed our friends when they needed us. If she was to blame for her small lapse – then we are to blame, everyday, for similar failures.

It is an approach I like, it is one which fits in with the ethos of Persephone. In the pen of another biographer there might have been fewer evaluative comments; fewer emotive responses, but perhaps that is not the brand of biographer appropriate for Elizabeth Taylor. This is an appreciation as much as a biography. Like any reader, Beauman isn’t always sure how to esteem the writer. Alongside Elizabeth Bowen, Beauman uses the word ‘genius’, but elsewhere debates why Taylor is not a ‘great’ writer. The Other Elizabeth Taylor is, subtly, probably unintentionally, also an exploration of Nicola Beauman’s decades-long relationship with the writer through her books. Accepted on this level, Beauman has pushed the boundaries of biography, and written a book which should be recognised as – in its own way – experimental rather than simply informal. I do not believe Beauman set out to challenge the perimeters of biography – but I do think there is a case for suggesting that she has done so.

Perhaps one can see why Taylor’s children complained. I dare say any book about one’s own parents must cause offence somehow – especially about someone so ardently private as Elizabeth Taylor. The vitriol of Taylors Junior can’t really have poured oil on troubled waters, though, and they have done Beauman a huge disservice in their assessment of the biography. The Other Elizabeth Taylor is a warm, original, caring portrait of the middle-class literary highflier; the wealthy socialist; the domestic career woman; the determinedly private woman whose life is so very interesting, despite her contest protestations that it was not.