Project Names

Marriage of Harlequin by Pamela Frankau

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Look, I try not to be the envious type. But when I discovered that Pamela Frankau had oublished 20 novels before her thirtieth birthday, I confess I was rather incensed. Checking the maths, I had zero novels published by the time I was 30. Or, indeed, subsequently.

I’d only read one of her novels – A Wreath for the Enemy, published quite late in her career. It’s brilliant. Are all her books brilliant? I decided to rewind by almost three decades, and read her very first novel, Marriage of Harlequin (1927). So, over the course of a few lunch times sat in the Bodleian, I read it.

Well, I really enjoyed it, but it does feel like an entirely different writer. I suppose that isn’t hugely surprising, since she was only 19 when she wrote Marriage of Harlequin, and didn’t have the nuanced and wry look at life that charactertised the later novel. In Marriage of Harlequin, instead, we are thrown into the whirlpool of a first love – along with a heavy dose of 1920s gaudy cynicism.

Sydney is the heroine, and we first meet her as a teenager at school. She is queen of her circle, and expecting much from life. Part of this expectation is met when she inherits a large fortune – making her quite the eligible match on the marital market. At the same time, she is writing a novel. This is where things doubtless get a bit autobiographical, and it was fun to read about this ingenue writing a novel that is snapped up by publishers – at the hands of a writer about to experience the same thing. Her novel is a big success, making her still the more eligible. In the background is her protective cousin Gerard – in her foreground, though, is a cynical 30-something man who works for the publisher. He is tired of life, has disappointed his father, and badly needs money to cover his debts. His name is Lionel de Vitrand, but he is also the Harlequin of the title. He proposes to her, and is accepted.

“I’m not going to be polite, de Vitrand. I’m warning you – I can’t stop my cousin marrying you if she wants to, but the very second you behave badly I’ll come round to your house and knock your head off.”

“How crude.”

“Are you in love with her?”

“That’s my business.”

“It’s mine too.”

Lionel yawned behind his hand. “My unworthy father’s port must be stronger than I’d imagined.”

“You’d better be careful.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

Silence. Lionel stepped from the fender on to the hearthrug, and bowed elaborately. “Well, have I your permission to retire?”

“No, you haven’t,” said Gerard bluntly. “You’re marrying Sydney for her money, and you don’t intend to be faithful to her. You couldn’t even if you did intend to, because you aren’t that sort. I’ve done all I can do to stop this business -“

He paused. Lionel said, still unmoved: “I don’t want to hit you in my house but I’m afraid I shall have to if you don’t shut up.”

“Come on, then. Hit me.”

“Unfortunately, I have a few manners. They linger, an expiring force, in uncongenial surroundings. What else have you to say?”

“Only what I’ve said before.”

You get a sense of the style, I suspect. It’s on the tightrope between melodrama and Wildean callousness. Nobody has ever spoken quite like this, but it is controlled so well that it feels deliberately stylised rather than poorly judged. Some of the weaker passages are when we are supposed to feel genuine sympathy for Sydney (because the truth, of course, comes out – though you can doubtless anticipate what happens after that). She is a bit too flimsy to warrant empathy, but certainly sturdy enough to be the heroine of a frothy, mildly melodramatic novel.

Taken on that level, Marriage of Harlequin is very fun, amusingly and skilfully written, and quite an astonishing achievement for a 19 year old. By the 1950s, she was writing much more complex, subtle novels – so I do wonder what the trajectory of her writing career was like in between.

Mr Pye by Mervyn Peake

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My friend Clare bought me Mr Pye (1953) by Mervyn Peake, and I added it to my wishlist after I saw it being compared to my beloved Miss Hargreaves – a comparison I will look into more thoroughly later in this post. Project Names seemed like a good opportunity to pick it up – and what an intriguing world and character Peake creates

I only really knew Peake’s name in connection with the Titus Groan books, which I have not read, and had assumed he was exclusively a fantasy writer. While this novel incorporates elements of the fantastic, it is set firmly in the real world – specifically Sark, one of the Channel Islands. Here’s the opening of the novel:

“Sark.”

“Yes, sir,” said the man in the little quayside hut. “A return fare. Six shillings.”

“A single, my friend,” said Mr Harold Pye.

The man in the little hut looked up and frowned at the unfamiliar face.

“Did you say a ‘single‘, sir?”

“I believe so.”

The man in the hut frowned again as though he were still not satisfied. Why should this fat little stranger be so sure he wanted a ‘single’? He was obviously only a visitor. A return ticket would last him for three months and would save him two shillings. Some people, he reflected, were beyond hope.

“Very well,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.

“And very well to you, my friend,” said Mr Pye. “Very well indeed -” and with a smile both dazzling and abstracted at the same time he placed some silver coins upon the table and with a small, plump, and beautifully manicured forefinger he jockey’d them into a straight line.

Mr Pye is extremely warm and friendly with everyone, almost disconcertingly so. He doesn’t seem to quite understand the rules governing social interaction, as his slightly uptight landlady Miss Dredger soon discovers. He bustles into her life, keen to improve her through cheerfulness and advice from God – whom he refers to as the ‘Great Pal’. It’s rather endearing, and yet we understand how Miss Dredger might feel rather unsettled by the whole thing.

A mainstay in Miss Dredger’s life is her enmity with another local – Miss George. There is a very funny scene when they squabble over who will use the island’s transport to get down the steep hill – where Mr Pye’s luggage is waiting to be collected. His attempts to find a compromise do not go down well, but his personality is so forceful that they find themselves doing as he says. And then he invites Miss George to move in with them…

But while Mr Pye is having a dramatic effect on the island, there is also an effect happening to him. I shan’t say what it is, but a physical metamorphosis starts to cause him great alarm – and fans of Miss Hargreaves will notice a definite similarity at this point. Birds of a feather, and all that.

And are they birds of a feather? I can see many things they novels have in common – chiefly that an extraordinary being appears and disrupts a community, unaware that they are quite as unusual as they are. But the tone feels quite different at times, and I really liked Mr Pye where I love Miss Hargreaves.

Peake does have a great way of creating a strange dynamic and seeing what will happen next. His illustrations are also delightful, enhancing the novel’s quirkiness and charm. I can’t quite put my finger on what stopped this being an absolutely-loved-it read, because all the ingredients are certainly there. While it probably won’t be on my Best Books of 2019 list, it’s certainly a great example of imaginative character creation, a Bensonian community of genteel feuders, and exactly the right splash of the fantastic.

Noah’s Ark by Barbara Trapido

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Ten years ago, Bloomsbury sent me a set of Barbara Trapido books for review. Ten years ago! And, yes, I read and reviewed (and really liked) Brother of the More Famous Jack back then, but it has taken me a decade to read my second Trapido – Noah’s Ark (1984). And I’m still rather unsure what I thought about it.

My first thought, as I read the opening, was how good the writing was. Here is most of the first paragraph, which I’m going to quote at length because I think she does such a good job of throwing you into an intriguing and unconventional world:

Ali Glazer was stitching up her husband’s trouser hems, but had paused to glance up at the kitchen pin board in some fascination. The photograph of a man, bearing a disconcerting resemblance to Thomas Adderley, had been torn from a Sunday magazine advertisement and pinned there by Ali’s older daughter Camilla. The girl herself had had no awareness of that resemblance which now so forcibly struck her mother and had fixed the picture there merely because she liked the man’s collarless Edwardian shirt. The man – in keeping with the clichés of capitalist realism – was manoeuvring a white stallion through a dappled glade of redwood trees and was advertising cigarettes. Ali noticed that Camilla had fixed him rather high on the pin board where he beamed out, as from a higher plane, above the two postcards pinned side by side below him. This hierarchical arrangement struck her as altogether suitable given that she had always elevated and revered Thomas, while the postcards had come from people to whom she felt predominantly antipathetic. 

I say ‘unconventional’, but I suppose Ali’s world is rigorously conventional. It is only her outlook, or the perspective that Trapido gives us, that makes it feel quirky and unusual. I was completely beguiled by that writing, and keen to immerse myself in whatever came after the first few pages – would Ali reconnect with Thomas? What would this mean for her marriage to the benevolently controlling Noah, who obviously doesn’t think that Ali is capable of very much, and mistakes her imaginative eccentricity for something inferior to his rational good sense?

Then Trapido did the thing that so many novelists do, and which always puts me off. We go back into the past. That was one scene in the present, to set a stage that we will work our way too. I never know why this is such a common trope, as I always find it deadens a novel. Oh well, I suppose I’ll put up with it.

We skate back to Ali’s past – between marriages. She has split up with her obnoxious ex-husband Mervyn, and is trying to work out how best to live life as a single mother – when Noah walks into her life, besotted and determined to sort out the disordered way in which Ali has allowed herself to become a doormat. Having seen how Noah treats her in the present day, we do get some benefit of hindsight, as it were, but it also removes some of the tension of wondering what will happen.

And the novel continues to be eccentric. We jump forward in time, or across continents, with very little warning. Trapido’s own eccentric authorial gaze refuses to let us get settled. Her writing style is never unduly odd, and certainly never breaks with the conventions of grammar etc., but the things she chooses to highlight often keep the reader on his/her toes. We spend more time being shown how different characters react to the prospect of head lice than we do to major life events. Everything is slightly off kilter. And I think that’s good?

I have to admit that I was a bit thrown by the novel. That started when one adult character starts lusting after an 11 year old Camilla, openly and in front of others, and nobody says anything. The hints of paedophilia are infrequent and never followed up in any way, but elsewhere, Trapido writes about sex in a jarring way, with sudden and momentary explicitness. And then I found the disconcerting way she puts together sentences and scenes was building together into something I couldn’t quite grasp. Much of the time I really admired it, but it made it difficult to identify the centre of the novel – to have anything concrete to hold onto.

Perhaps it’s a case of needing to be in the right mood for Trapido. I was definitely in that mood when I started the novel, and was loving it. The writing was really wonderful. By the time I finished it, the mood was faltering. Had I read it at a different time, I suspect I’d be writing an unadulteratedly glowing review of Noah’s Ark. I still think she is a richly inventive and unusual writer, but I’m going to be selective about when I start reading her again.

Madame Claire by Susan Ertz

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I first heard about Susan Ertz from one of the Persephone Quarterlies, when they put a list of titles they were vaguely considering publishing. (I should dig out that PQ for further reading suggestions, thinking about it.) I can’t remember which book they recommended, but the name was distinctive enough that I’ve kept an eye out for her over the years – and have three on my shelves. Madame Claire (1923) is the first one I’ve read.

Who is Madame Claire, you ask? She is the matriarch of a several-generation family, 78 years old and living in a hotel. As the novel opens, she has reconnected with a close friend – Stephen – whom she has not seen for nearly two decades, as he disappeared from her life when she (as a recent widow) turned down his proposal for marriage. They have begun writing again. And it is an elegant conceit for her to bring him up to speed on her extended family…

These cover some favoured tropes of 1920s domestic novels. One of her children, Eric, is in a loveless marriage (or, rather, one where the love has become buried beneath resentment and bitterness); another, Connie, has abandoned her husband and is living with a man who doesn’t truly care for her. Her grandchildren (from yet another children) are young and feckless – and the granddaughter Judy is in danger (!) of settling into a spinster lifestyle. Luckily, she hits an affable young man with her car, and they can get to know each other over his sickbed. And Claire and Stephen continue to write back and forth; her letters are a delight.

This sort of novel from this sort of time is so good at combining high emotion with high comedy, expecting the reader to feel sad on behalf of a tortured marriage while simultaneously laughing affectionately at witty, foolish young things falling in love. It is expected of the reader, and we deliver – or at least I did. A bit like soap operas today, we can adjust our emotions and responses to the scene in question. It helps, of course, that Ertz writes very well – only occasionally letting the melodrama get to her head with a few overwritten passages.

Above the fray, and helping everybody in the right direction, is Madame Claire herself. She is something of a benevolent dictator, loved by all and cloaking her dictatorship beneath good advice and expectant patience. Scott wrote an interesting blog post that is partly about manipulation in this novel, but I think I’m fine with it in a novel like this – which uses metonymy but never quite has the stakes of real life.

If you are a fan of Richmal Crompton, EM Delafield, or any number of Persephone authors – this will be up your street. Relaxing and fun, even when the characters are in high peril – but I think my favourite story was Judy and her hit-and-not-run victim. Maybe I’m a romantic at heart after all.

Mrs Christopher by Elizabeth Myers

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I first stumbled across Elizabeth Myers at a book fair in Sherborne. Mum and I had gone on a day out there, travelling by train, just to enjoy a mosey around. While there, we spotted a sign to a book fair – and, naturally, went to have a look. It turned out to be one of those places for book dealers and rich folk, rather than the ordinary reader. I’m not particularly interested in whether or not the book I want to read is a first edition, and I’m definitely not interested in valuable books of topography – which seemed to make up quite a chunk of the stock. After a bit of browsing, I came away with The Letters of Elizabeth Myers – which ended up being my favourite book I read that year. Though admittedly it was while I was at university as an undergraduate, and the amount of non-course reading I managed to do that year was extremely low.

I later realised that the book was probably stocked there because Myers was an author of local interest – she lived in Sherborne. In, it turned out, the house next door to a friend we visited in Sherborne (albeit many decades earlier). She was married to Littleton Powys, one of the Powys brothers – including T.F. Powys and John Cowper Powys. They share with me the honour of having been the son of the vicar of Montacute.

Myers died very young, aged only 34, but did have three novels published during her life. I’ve read the most well-known of those, A Well Full of Leaves, and I don’t remember anything about it except that I wasn’t super impressed. But #ProjectNames encouraged me to get Mrs Christopher (1946) off the shelves. The copy I have is a presentation copy signed by Myers and her husband – to somebody who was apparently trying to dramatise the novel, though I don’t think that ever happened. (I’m assuming this Nora Nicholson is not the same as the actress, but who knows.)

That’s a long build up to telling you about this book. It opens somewhat dramatically – Mrs Christopher shoots a man named Sine through the temple. He has been blackmailing her, and she has had enough. At the end of her tether, she reaches into her purse – which for some reason has a loaded pistol in it – and does the deed. But she is not alone: three other people are also in the room, all of whom have been blackmailed by Sine.

Mrs Christopher is not your typical murderess. She is a quiet and conscientious widow in her 60s, and she is keen that nobody else gets the blame for her actions – and so gives her name and address to the three strangers in the room. And then off they separately go. But Mrs Christopher knows that she will confess – and, opportunely, her son is at Scotland Yard. She goes to him and tells him what she has done.

In an effort to test the resolve of human nature (or, let’s be honest, to engineer the plot), she offers up £1500 that she has in savings to see if the three others in the room will inform against her, if a reward is offered. She thinks they won’t; her cynical son thinks they will. Either way, she has confessed and looks likely to hang – which she takes in her stride.

The remainder of the novel is divided into three distinct sections. In each one, we follow another of the blackmailed people as they leave the scene of the crime – back to their lives. Myers does an impressive job at creating each of these worlds, so that they feel complete and well developed for the 50 or so pages in which they appear. There is Edmund, determined to rescue a woman he knows from life as a prostitute; Veronica, who has run away from her husband and desperately wants a baby with the man she is living with; Giles, a doctor who does illegal abortions and has only ever been fond of his studious younger brother. Each is fully realised, with positive attributes being constantly offset by their weaknesses and hubrises. Each section leads towards the question: will they betray Mrs Christopher for the sake of £500 – which was, of course, a fortune in the 1940s.

One of the things I appreciated about it was how faith is woven in. Myers was a Christian herself, and many of the characters in Mrs Christopher are either people of faith or people seeking God. I see sympathetic or accurate depictions of faith so seldom in novels that it is always a welcome feature!

And this novel is certainly thoughtful. The writing is occasionally a like workmanlike, and there are moments that it leans towards the melodramatic, but a whole lot less than you’d imagine from a description of the opening scene. Indeed, Myers uses the premise pretty elegantly – and it’s impressive to have such distinct sections to a novel, almost a series of linked stories, without it feeling disjointed. All in all, I thought Mrs Christopher was a pretty good contribution to my names-in-titles reading project.

Alice by Elizabeth Eliot

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I’m sure you know about the exciting and excellent Furrowed Middlebrow series from Dean Street Press – if not, hurry to them – and today I’m going to share my post about Alice by Elizabeth Eliot. Below is the beginning of my review – you can read the rest over at Shiny New Books.

Hurrah to Dean Street Press and their continued Furrowed Middlebrow series, bringing back underrated women writers that most of us haven’t heard of before. Elizabeth Eliot certainly fits that category for me, but after reading Alice (1949), I’ll be keen to read more Eliot.

Despite being called Alice, the narrator is Margaret – she first encounters Alice when they are at boarding school together, in the late 1920s. It is immediately clear that Alice has left a significant effect on her schoolfriend, with Alice’s almost artless carefreeness showing options for a bohemian lifestyle that Margaret can’t quite aspire to.

The Book of William by Paul Collins

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It’s only February, but I’m pretty sure I’ve read one of my books of the year – The Book of William by Paul Collins, published in 2009. The subtitle is a little misleading, but it gives you the gist: ‘How Shakespeare’s First Folio Conquered the World’.

I bought it in 2013, when I was working for the Rare Books department at the Bodleian and had been commissioned to write a very short biography of Shakespeare (and accounts of various portraits, false portraits, etc.) to accompany a DVD of adaptations of his plays. I never found out if that text was used (though I do remember that my first draft of the biography was rejected for “having too many facts” and “not being swooning enough”). But it did reignite my interest in Shakespeare – I picked up this book and James Shapiro’s excellent Contested Will around this time.

Collins’ book looks at various stages in the First Folio’s history – starting, understandably, with its creation. Shakespeare died a few years before it was printed, and there wasn’t much precedent for printing plays on such a grand scale – but he had champions of his work who saw that it happened. I’d learned quite a lot of this section before, at university and in other books, but Collins puts it together excellently. My attention was already caught.

My favourite sections of The Book of William were the next few chapters – more or less the bulk of the book, I suppose – looking at the waxing and waning of Shakespeare’s popularity. And these ups and downs sometimes, but not always, coincided with the popularity of the First Folio in the secondhand market. Collins’ accounts of rival editors in the 18th century is brilliant. One of them was Alexander Pope, no less, and his hacking away of Shakespeare’s plays led to a bitter back and forth with an editor, Theobald, who had a much more rigorous respect for the original – and wasn’t above publishing a book which highlighted hundreds of Pope’s errors.

We dart all over the place, as the account moves on. There is the gentlemen in the middle of nowhere, who stopped being a successful businessman to launch an exhaustive project to discover all the differences between the remaining First Folios, and their ownership, in an enormous five-volume series. There is the Folger Library’s collection of folios, as well as the mirror machines they use to trace distinctions between them. It’s all worlds away from a man from Stratford writing out blank verse, and fascinating to see how many chance or unlikely steps in between that moment and the present have led to his reputation – and that of this first printed collection of his plays (albeit incomplete).

I can join the ranks of those who have held a First Folio. Again, the Bodleian – I was able to look through a copy, and was amused that a previous ownership had amended the list of plays, adding or removing them according to their own beliefs about canonicity. Most of the editions Collins looks at have been similarly desecrated by earlier owners, unaware of how sacred these books would become. And some of the most tantalising moments are those that come from a similar unawareness – plays lost to history, or First Folios that disappear. As Collins points out, it’s not a particularly rare book (as these things go), with over 200 known to still exist. I own books with shorter print runs than that. A combination of things – Shakespeare’s genius, lore about the book, and of course demand – make it so valuable.

I have to admit that the end of the book sort of petered out for me. We are taken to Japan, and left there. I suppose it would be difficult to resolve something that can never truly end – for the history of the First Folio will continue and continue. And any scholars will be frustrated using this book, because there are no footnotes or sourcing – all the statements are doubtless well researched, but have to be taken at Collins’ word.

The accounts would be interesting in any writer’s hand, but Collins brings something special to this book. I love anything which foregrounds the author’s own experience of researching the book – so he is always present as we journey with him around the world. His tone perfectly captures reverence, fascination, and amusement at the absurdity of many moments in the history he relays. It’s made me all the keener to read his book about Hay-on-Wye – and also to find more and more to read about Shakespeare’s legacy. A real treat.

Dancing With Mrs Dalloway by Celia Blue Johnson

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I always wonder at the wisdom of including specific books/authors/characters in the titles of books about books. In case you’re thinking “Simon, surely that doesn’t happen very often”, I can think of a few other examples – Tolstoy and the Purple Chair by Nina Sankovitch, Dear Farenheit 451 by Annie Spence, Nabokov’s Butterfly by Rick Gekoksi. I have actually read all of those, and particularly loved Sankovitch’s book, but I did have to get over the barrier that I’m not particularly interested in Tolstoy. As it turns out, he only gets a brief mention – the book is really about reading a book a day for a year, to process grief. Anybody who read it because they love Tolstoy would probably be disappointed.

Why do people keep doing these titles? I don’t know. But Celia Blue Johnson’s book Dancing With Mrs Dalloway (2011) is another example – the subtitle, ‘stories of the inspiration behind great works of literature’, is a far more accurate representation of what’s in the book. Mrs Dalloway is just one of the 50 books that Johnson discusses, in short chapters that look at the genesis of the works in question.

It’s a fascinating premise for a collection, and there has obviously been an awful lot of research – or at least an awful lot of opening an author’s biography and paraphrasing a section from it. She has divided them into fairly meaningless categories (“in the telling”, “catch me if you can”, etc.), but basically it’s a random order. They range significantly, from authors who fictionalised people they knew to those who ‘saw’ the story in a dream. The prosaic truth is that most authors just have an idea and then slog away at it, but Johnson does an excellent job at making the book really interesting, even from the less promising accounts. I think it’s probably because the sections are short – we don’t have time to get bored.

The selection of books is a good range of classics, and a who’s who of books I should probably have already read (I’ve only read 20 of the 50). It maybe leans a little towards American literature, but there is a good international showing – I suspect nobody would feel short-changed about what’s included. And if any of the tid-bits particularly catch your eye, then there are further reading suggestions at the end. Basically, what’s not to like?

 

Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House by Eric Hodgins

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I really should start making better note of where I get my book recommendations, because I do like to acknowledge them properly. All I know is that Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House by Eric Hodgins (1946) had been on my Amazon wishlist for quite a few years when I bought a copy in the US in 2015. And what a nice copy it is – or was; it rather fell apart as I read it, sadly. Though perhaps appropriately. Anyway, many thanks to whoever suggested it!

Project Names brought this one to the fore. Indeed, when I was thinking about reading books with names in the title, as a loose project, it was this novel that came to mind first. I didn’t know anything about it. I haven’t seen the 1948 Cary Grant film, though I’d be keen to, and I kept getting it mixed up with V.S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr Biswas (which I haven’t read, but I imagine is very different). I love books about houses, I love books from the ’40s, and I was excited to start it. And, you know what? It’s great fun.

The sweet old farmhouse burrowed into the upward slope of the land so deeply that you could enter either its bottom or middle floor at ground level. Its window trim was delicate and the lights in its sash were a bubbly amethyst. Its rooftree seemed to sway a little against the sky, and the massive chimney that rose out of it tilted a fraction to the south. Where the white paint was flecking off on the siding, there showed beneath it the faint blush of what must once have been a rich, dense red.

It’s not often that the title of a novel sums up the whole plot, but it pretty much does here. It’s unusual for a novel to have a single arc of action, uninterrupted by subplots or a broader scope, but Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House is that book. It’s very impressive. Whenever I’m trying to write, I find sustaining the interest – and sufficient words – for a full scene is often quite tricky. In this novel, Hodgins starts with Mr and Mrs Blandings house-hunting, and steadily takes us through every moment of the process of finding and buying the house, changing their mind about what to do next, hiring an architect, constructing a property, and getting the fittings in. More impressively, it is very funny and very engaging.

I particularly love reading about every step of house buying/building/decorating when I’m not having to do it myself. And thank goodness I didn’t read this while I was buying my own flat, because every stage of the process goes wrong. Not in a Laurel and Hardy broad comedy way, but through a very believable series of mishaps and poor decisions. Whether it is the estate agent’s bluster, or the architect’s lack of realism, or the difficulty of finding a water source, everything adds a complication. Mr and Mrs Blandings blunder on, squabbling and occasionally remorseful, but keeping their vision of a completed home in mind.

The most remarkable thing about Hogdins’ writing is its even pace, and the way that it is clearly unhurried while still keeping the reader hooked. Ultimately we know that nothing particularly momentous is likely to happen, and the humour is kept up so we never feel too much like we’re witnessing a tragedy. My only major quibble with this edition (and, I believe, most other editions) is the illustrator. William Steig is well regarded, but his cartoons lean heavily towards the broad and fantastical, and are (to my mind) completely out of keeping with the tone of the book. It’s a shame, because he would definitely enhance a different type of book, but I found myself rather dreading them appearing. It spoiled the effect of the restrained, human prose.

But yes, what a fun, clever, well written book. Nothing showy or over the top, and the perfect thing to read if you are well settled in a house you don’t want to sell, renovate, or decorate.

Mansfield and Me by Sarah Laing

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One of the books I got for my birthday in 2017, and read quite a while ago but have somehow neglected to write about, was a graphic novel called Mansfield and Me by Sarah Laing. I mentioned it in one of my weekend miscellanies, believing that it wasn’t possible to get in this country. Luckily I was wrong, and my friend Barbara kindly selected it – though was a bit surprised when it turned out to be a graphic memoir. I suppose I hadn’t mentioned my recent interest in graphic fiction and non-fiction!

Much like Mrs Gaskell & Me, that I wrote about more recently, this book takes the form of two parallel narratives – one of which looks at the author’s life, one of which looks at… well, the author’s life, but this time the author is not the one writing the book. Both titles put it much more clearly than I’m seeming able to describe! And so one follows Kathleen Beauchamp as she leaves New Zealand and becomes Katherine Mansfield; one follows Sarah Laing as she discovers a love of Mansfield, and how this informs many things in her own life.

As with any graphic book, a lot of the success of the book depends on the artwork. I really responded to Laing’s style, and each page is given suitable care and detail. I’ve read some graphic novels which are clearly done rather hastily, with proper attention only occasionally given – this is absolutely not the case here. It’s a beautiful book. You can see more examples in an interview with her.

And if the parallels between their lives isn’t as illuminating and beautiful as All The Lives We Ever Lived by Katharine Smyth (now my benchmark for pairings that work wonderfully), it does fulfill all that Laing claims for it. She knows they are not the same people, or experiencing the same things – rather, she sees how Mansfield has inspired and changed her, and depicts this delightfully. I’d definitely recommend to any Mansfield fan – and perhaps anybody who’d like to become a Mansfield fan.