ReadingPresently

How The Heather Looks

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This delightful book was part of my Reading Presently project, where I read books I’ve been given as presents, but… nobody knows who gave this to me!  I was sure it was my friend Clare, but she denies all knowledge… I know it was *somebody*, because it appears in my birthday present post here… so, if it was you, let me know!  Because I’ve read it now, and I love it.

The full title, which does the job of summarising the book for me, is How The Heather Looks: A Joyous Journey to the British Sources of Children’s Books (1965) by Joan Bodger.  Even if the book had nothing else going for it, I was sold by the inclusion of ‘joyous’ in a subtitle.  Well done, Joan Bodger, you win my approval – and, when we look at the words surrounding it, thinks just keep improving. The title itself is taken from a poem by Emily Dickinson:

I never saw a moor,
I never saw the sea;
Yet I know how the heather looks,
And what a wave must be.

I never spoke with God,
Nor visited in heaven;
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the chart was given.
What Bodger (excellent name) means by this is that, although she and her family have not visited the sites of these children’s books, they are already deeply familiar with them through reading and re-reading, and loving, books steeped in the British countryside. And the book documents how they do visit them, coming all the way from America to do so.

How The Heather Looks, really, rests on a false premise: that the settings, houses, and landscapes of children’s books must be based on actual places.  I’m a big advocate of the fiction-is-fiction line of thought, and feel rather disappointed if I find that an author has not been as inventive as I’d hoped – particularly with characters-based-on-people.  I’m much more willing to allow a building or tree copied from life, but I don’t expect it in the way that Bodger and her family do.

Luckily for them, they’re satisfied without conclusive proof – or, indeed, much more than fanciful detail.  A stray cat is, they’re sure, the model for a decades-old children’s book; a certain patch of river cannot be other than Ratty’s favourite place to mess around in boats (there is, actually, a lovely story attached to that expression in How The Heather Looks, which I will leave it for you to discover.)  I suppose, if one has not seen much of the British countryside, then any of it will provide an illuminating backdrop for British rural literature.  And it is almost entirely rural, from Beatrix Potter to C.S. Lewis – via (for Joan Bodger is not averse to the odd nostalgic moment for adult literature) Daphne du Maurier:

Hour after hour we drove through mist or rain under lowering skies.  The children were too tired even for crankiness.  I remember the green hills giving way to great brown sweeps of moor and long stretches of roadside, where we saw almost no evidence of human habitation and only a few sheep, as wild as mountain goats.  Once in a while, when the rain lifted, I would see a high crag or tor in the distance, and sometimes, in the hollows, the gray glint of a tarn.  We were pleased to discover how easily a lifetime of reading ables one to fit the right words to the landscape.  We had climbed to what must have been almost the highest point on the road when I saw an inn, a large, low, rambling building with beetling roof and a board that creaked in the wind.  Glancing back, my heart missed a beat when I read the sign: Jamaica Inn.  The day before we might have stopped, but now we flew past as though a pack of smugglers were at our heels.  At least, I thought, we could not be far from the sea.
Notice how she does not tell you that it’s connected with Daphne du Maurier – she trusts you to know.  That’s a theme of How The Heather Looks, actually; not a lot of background info is explained, because Bodger takes it for granted that we all love and cherish the same books.  This rather threw me in the first chapter, on the unknown-to-me Randolph Caldecott, but after that I think I was fine.  Even her son Ian, 8 years old, seems to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of British children’s literature, and a photographic memory for it too.

I haven’t mentioned the Bodger family properly, have I?  They’re pretty fab – ‘our family is incapable of passing even a shelf of books without pausing to take a look’.  (My family all enjoy reading, but wouldn’t it be nice to have a whole family of unashamed biblioaddicts!)  There is Ian, who loves soldiers and adventure, and befriends children wherever they go; Lucy, aged 2, who seems (her mother suggests) to believe they have simply hopped into the landscape of one of her stories, and fully expects to meet Mrs. Tiggywinkle – and then there’s husband John, a researcher, who is surprisingly absent from the page.  (This becomes less surprising when you realise that their marriage was ending while Joan Bodger wrote the book; only the tip of the ice-berg for a horrendous period of Bodger’s life, with which I shan’t colour this review.)

For there is nothing tragic about How The Heather Looks.  It truly is joyous.  The Thomas family once had a literary holiday, travelling along the South Coast to see various sites of literary importance (including Jane Austen’s house and the area which inspired Winnie the Pooh) and it was, as I recall, an entirely splendid holiday.  We don’t have the Americans’ scorn of distance, willing to drive from Edinburgh to Cornwall to get a pint of milk, but we managed to cover a fair distance nonetheless – and see some wonderful sites, which stay with me.  I still have the photograph of A.A. Milne’s house on my wall – it was taken illicitly, running down the driveway of a private residence… Not so, the Bodgers.  In (unsurprisingly) my favourite part of the book, they do for tea with Daphne Milne – A.A. Milne’s widow – in his house.  So casually, she throws in that they wrote ahead and got the reply: “I am always happy to meet friends of dear Pooh.”  Can you imagine that happening today?  In the same way, she finds out from affable locals where Arthur Ransome lives, and (although he foreswears interviews) charms him into submission!

How The Heather Looks feels a bit like a glorious dream.  Perhaps that is partly because Joan Bodger is looking with determinedly rose-tinted glasses at a halcyon summer from the vantage of a difficult period, but perhaps it is simply because she is a good writer, and the summer was halcyon.  I could call the book enchanted, I could call it a delight – but I think Joan Bodger picked the best description when she wrote her subtitle.  It really is, above all, joyous.

Now, if only I could remember who gave it to me…

Miranda Hart – Is It Just Me?

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Another quick this-book-has-been-on-my-To-Review-shelf-forever review, I’m afraid – my reading has been so shamefully little recently – but that means you get to hear about some fun books in short bursts.  And today’s is Miranda Hart’s bestselling book Is It Just Me?  Note that I don’t say ‘autobiography’ – we’ll come onto that later.

I suspect you know who Miranda Hart is, but indulge me for a moment.  She is a comedian (we’re not saying ‘comedienne’ anymore, are we, please?) who sprung to fame in an eponymous sitcom where she falls over things, embraces middle-aged activities a little early, and generally makes fun of herself.  I’m always drawn to female-driven sitcoms, so I’ve been watching since day one – but the third series, which finished here about a month ago, was the one which really saw Miranda pull in enormous audiences of over 9 million.  One in seven people in the UK were watching, which is extraordinary.

The sitcom has the occasional dud episode, but generally I love, love, love it.  How can I not feel affinity with a woman who, aghast at the idea of going out clubbing, says: “It’s 9 o’clock! Four words: Rush. Home. For. Poirot.”  For those who don’t ‘get’ it, Miranda is just childish and meandering – but I really admire how she has made slapstick amusing to those of us who normally don’t care for it.  I adore her friend Tilly and her ridiculous expressions (I was saying ‘McFact’ before it appeared on Miranda: McFact.) Stevie (with her ‘allure’) and Miranda have a wonderful friendship, which is all too rarely shown in comedy.  And then there’s her Mum.  It’s all great fun, and very watchable.  And very British.

Which brings me onto Is It Just Me?  Although it is by Miranda Hart, about Miranda Hart, it’s only really an autobiography to the extent that the sitcom is – it feels a lot like it’s been written ‘in character’.  Presumably all the events she described happened, at least in outline, but it’s certainly selective.  Her tales of dating, office life, holidays, weddings… they’re all written as though outlining  an idea for a sketch comedy.  Which is fine – it’s more than fine, it’s great – but it isn’t really an autobiography.  She spends a lot of the time in faux-conversation with her 17-year-old self, disillusioning her of the idea that she’ll grow up into a graceful gazelle-type.  (Since I talked to myself in my first Vulpes Libris column – see yesterday’s post – I don’t have a leg on which to stand.)

Of course, having languished on my To Review shelf for so long, I can’t remember any examples to give you.  I chuckled my way through Is It Just Me? without making any notes on it, for reviewing purposes.  So I’ll borrow this clip of Miranda reading an excerpt herself…

I haven’t mentioned yet, but this was a gift from my lovely friend Lucy, whom I love even though she went and LEFT Oxford last year, to move to big old London town.

So, yes, a giggle of a book which does no more and no less than you’d expect.  Lots of amusing, light-hearted moments, and a surprisingly moving moment when she tells her younger self that her secret ambition to go into comedy has happened, and that she’s even spoken to her heroines French & Saunders.  I guess it’s the perfect Christmas book, but since that’s been and gone… Mothering Sunday?

(By the by, if you have watched the sitcom, and enjoy Sally Phillips wonderful turn as Tilly, may I recommend you seek out her sitcom Parents…)

A Spy in the Bookshop

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I’ve been a bit worried about what will happen when I get to my first Reading Presently book which I haven’t hugely liked.  And the time has come.  Since it was given by a very dear friend (my ex-colleague Lucy) I don’t want to seem unappreciative – but I also, of course, don’t want to lie.  So I’m just going to give my honest review, with the caveat that I’m VERY grateful to Luce for giving it to me (and another addendum, that I’ve just read a really fun, great book which Lucy also gave me.)

As it happens, I didn’t especially dislike A Spy in the Bookshop (letters between Heywood Hill and John Saumarez Smith 1966-74), it just disappointed me a bit.  JSS (as I shall know him for the rest of this review) had previously edited the letters of Heywood Hill and Nancy Mitford, which I very much enjoyed – and was actually the first thing I read in the Mitford canon.  Obviously buoyed by success, JSS decided to publish his own correspondence with Heywood Hill…

Hill had just retired from the bookshop at 10, Curzon Street, and running the shop was a man with the extraordinary name Handasyde Buchanan (known as ‘Handy’).  His wife Mollie worked there too, as well as assistant Liz.  The letters JSS sends to Hill are, basically, 165 pages of them bitching about the Buchanans.  Forgive the terminology, but nothing else will quite fit.

You know when you’re on a bus, or in a shop, and overhear angry conversation between two people about an absent third – and you think “I bet it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other”?  Yes?  That is to say, the absent third person would probably have equally as compelling a case against the gossiping couple present?  That’s the feeling that I got from A Spy in the Bookshop (2006).  JSS writes off a letter saying “THIS is something awful Handy did today”; Hill replies “Gosh, that’s awful”; JSS writes “You think THAT’S awful?  What about THIS!”

I don’t blame JSS for writing these letters.  I imagine it was rather cathartic – and sometimes, as with the following example, rather amusing:

Instead, he took the chance when Mollie was away, “to smarten me up”: a process that I need hardly describe, consisting as it always does of a catalogue of his own virtues.
but it does rather pall.  Which makes it particularly galling when JSS does edit out excerpts which seem rather more interesting.  This editorial comment made me gnash my teeth, and pencil two exclamation marks in the margin:

[Some details followed about Rome and some of the people, including Muriel Spark, whom I’d met through my ex-uncle Ronald Bottrall.]
Oh, John!  Tell us about that, please!

There is enough about the everyday running of a bookshop to keep me reading, and anybody who can slip in anecdotes about Nancy Mitford is onto a winning thing with me, but I would have loved more.  Heywood Hill could also be witty when he wanted to be:

P.S. One of those real hopeless customer questions from a neighbour here.  A book about a man in California who kept wolves as Alsatians.  She had it in paperback but lost it, she found it such a help with her jackal.
But here again, I’m afraid I have a problem with their outlook.  I hate the idea of books being worth a lot of money if they’re first editions, and all that talk of ‘unclipped’, ‘neat copy’ etc.  The idea of books as collectible objects based on their appearance or scarcity rather sickens me, as an avid reader.  And commercial value, naturally for booksellers, is paramount in their mind.

Heywood Hill has proven to be a worthy correspondent, in the letters with Nancy Mitford, and I did get the sense that he was lowering himself rather for JSS’s petty missives.  I don’t doubt a genuine affection between them, but I do believe that Hill wasn’t bringing out his best letters for JSS.

It’s a fun enough collection, and the bookshop setting certainly helps, but it does scream afterthought, once the Nancy Mitford letters were successful.  Without either correspondent having her talent for letter-writing, and with such a repetitive, almost bitter, note sounding throughout, A Spy in the Bookshop is only fairly enjoyable – and there are certainly better places to look for this sort of collection.  But, once again, thank you to Lucy for being sweet enough to give me a copy!

House of Silence – Linda Gillard

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The aftermath of A Century of Books definitely seems to be a sudden dash towards 21st century books, particularly those I’ve had on hold for a while.  And few books have hovered more determinedly around my consciousness than Linda Gillard’s House of Silence (2011).  I’d read her first three novels, and enjoyed them all – one to this-is-incredibly-I-love-it standards. Although I’ve never met Linda Gillard, we used to be in the same book discussion list, and we’re friends on Facebook, so I’m putting this kind gift in Reading Presently.  Them’s my rules.  And it’s not even the first time she’s given me a copy of the book.

As many of you will know, Linda Gillard is a runaway Kindle bestseller – we’re talking 30,000 copies of House of Silence here, let alone her other Kindle titles – and has a devoted audience around the world.  And then, lolloping up behind them, wearing too many belts and clearly thinking the calculator in his hand is a mobile phone, comes me.  I don’t have a Kindle, or any of the other-ereaders-are-available.  I don’t want one even a tiny bit.  The only advantage they have, in fact – and this has quite genuinely appeared on my mental pros/cons list – is access to Linda Gillard’s novels.

Yes, yes, I know.  Kindle-for-PC.  I downloaded it; Linda kindly gave me a download of House of Silence.  I tried to read it.  I read the first page every now and then… and got no further.  It was like standing outside a bank vault and not having the combination – because, try as I might, I couldn’t bring myself to read an e-book.  It took me months to read the one my good friend had written, which even thanked me in it.

And then – praise be! – Linda published it as a POD paperback, and sent me a review copy of that.  Huzzah!  I read it, and, dear reader, it was good.  Which is just as well, after all that.

(Incidentally, isn’t the cover gorgeous?  Unlike most self-published authors, Linda Gillard goes the extra mile with design and aesthetic, paying a designer for this beautiful look.  What a shame that easily her best novel, A Lifetime Burning, should also have easily her worst cover… but the new cover for the Kindle edition is beautiful.)

House of Silence has been advertised as Rebecca meets Cold Comfort Farm – both traits I could identify, and which can definitely be no bad thing – but, more than that, it felt reliably Gillard to me.  In terms of period, event, and even genre Linda is versatile – but certain ingredients stand out as characteristic.  The most dominant of these is the feel of the book and the characters, vague as that sounds – with Linda Gillard’s novels, you know you’re going to get strong emotions and passionate people, trammeled by everyday experience, but refusing to lie entirely dormant…

Guinevere (known as Gwen) works alongside actors, in the wardrobe department.  Already, I’m sold – you might know how I love books which feature actors, and Gillard uses Gwen’s knowledge of fabrics to ingenious effect as the novel progresses.  It is in this role that she first meets Alfie, who is having some issues with his breeches… one thing leads to another, and they end up dating.  Which, in turn, leads to her spending Christmas with him and his family, at beautiful old Creake Hall in Norfolk.  He’s a little reluctant for her to join him, but eventually is persuaded.

And what a group of eccentrics they find!  Chief amongst them – although appearing very little on the scene – is Alfie’s mother Rae.  Her mind is wandering, and her grasp of time and people is never strong, but she is still regularly producing her series of children’s books about Tom Dickon Harry.  This little chap has made her famous – and is based on Alfie himself, who (in turn) rose to notoriety after appearing in a documentary about the books when he was eighteen.  The irony is, Alfie explains, that he actually grew up with his father, who divorced Rae – and now he only sees his sister and half-sisters once a year, at Christmas.

Those sisters include loveable, scatty Hattie – who is forever making quilts, and babbling away without any real sense of boundaries.  Viv is less open, but still welcomes Gwen into the family.  Throw in two visiting sisters, in varying states of life-collapse, and things are bound to be interesting.  And Creake Hall is a wonderful setting.  Who doesn’t love an Elizabethan manor for a mysterious, slightly unsettling novel?  What makes it most unsettling is that the reader shares with Gwen the feeling that Alfie isn’t telling us everything… why was he so reluctant for her to stay?  What secrets does he hide?  What secrets are hidden by the house of silence?

Gwen is rather younger than Linda Gillard’s previous heroines – she is in her mid-twenties, in fact.  At no point does she come across as that young, though – which I thought might be a failing on Gillard’s part, until I got to the part where she asked Marek to guess her age:

“Older than you look.  Younger than you sound.”
One of the main aspects of Gwen’s personality is that she has had to be old before her years.  I suppose that’s what happens when you lose your entire family during adolescence – to drugs, alcohol, and AIDS – including finding your mother, dead, on Christmas.  Yup, Gwen has had it tough.

Oh, and Marek, you ask?  He is the gardener, known as Tyler to everyone (because every gardener has been known as that) and is warm, a good listener – he used to be a psychiatrist – and generally a safe place for Gwen to retreat.  He’s also (I quote Lyn’s review) ‘gorgeous, sexy, and irresistible.’  I have mental blocks for big age gaps with fictional couples – even Emma and Mr. Knightley is a combination which makes me wince a bit – so I’ll sidestep any potential entanglements here, and leave those quandaries to your imagination.  I will say that Marek reminds me a lot of Gavin from Gillard’s Emotional Geology, that he lives in a windmill (far from the only thing which reminded me of Jonathan Creek), and plays the cello – which led me in the direction of this beautiful piece.  It’s Rachmaninov’s Sonata in G Minor, Opus 17 No.3, Andante.  (Sorry, I have no idea how one is supposed to phrase the titles to music.)

I refuse to give any more of the plot away.  I’ve left it all deliberately vague, because it’s the sort of novel where the plot does matter.  One of the reasons it reminded me of an episode of Jonathan Creek, in the best possible way, is that you’re desperate to find out what happens – and twist upon twist come, so that everything is plausible but unguessable.  The ‘reveals’ are entirely consistent with people’s behaviour throughout the novel; character is never sacrificed to plot – indeed, the explanation of what has happened is also an explanation of why the members of this family are the way they are.

It’s all beautifully, addictively done.  I stayed up far later than I should, devouring the second half of the novel. I was unsure, in the beginning, whether it would match up to the compulsive quality of Gillard’s other novels, and the action doesn’t quite kick into gear until we’ve arrived at Creake Hall – but, after that, hold onto your hats.  It is a mark of Linda Gillard’s talent that her novels are both versatile and identifiable – no matter what genre she turns her hand to (and I believe her next was a paranormal romance), I would be able to recognise a Gillard at a hundred paces.  And, although she may be one of the new wave of successful Kindle authors, thank Heaven she’s found a way for the Kindless to enjoy the dizzying, thoughtful extravaganza that is House of Silence.



Others who got Stuck in this Book:


“House of Silence is a compulsively readable book. It’s a compelling story of family secrets & lies, set in a crumbling Elizabethan mansion at Christmas in the depths of a freezing Norfolk winter.” – Lyn, I Prefer Reading


“This is a book in which it is so easy to lose yourself, at once emotional and mysterious.” – Margaret, Books Please


“The book has romance, bubbling away underneath, it deals with mental health issues so effectively and considerately that you actually do not realise until reflecting back on the book.” – Jo, The Book Jotter

Lots of Provincial Ladies

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Be prepared for me to be pretty flexible in my Reading Presently project, folks.  I mostly won’t be including re-reads, but I will be more inclined to if I’m reading the gift for the first time – i.e. first time in that particular edition, but not first time overall.  And, in the first days of the new year, I re-read E.M. Delafield’s The Diary of a Provincial Lady for the umpteenth time, and loved it just as much as ever.  I’m amazed by how consistently wonderfully Delafield writes it, with almost every line making me smile or laugh.  Just flicking through a copy, here is an example, because I feel she should get to say something in this post:

Write letters.  Much interrupted by Helen Wills [the cat], wanting to be let out, kitten, wanting to be let in, and dear Robin, who climbs all over the furniture, apparently unconscious that he is doing so, and tells me at the same time, loudly and in full, the story of The Swiss Family Robinson.
As I say, I’ve read it many times – this is probably the eighth or ninth time in ten years – but this is the first time I’ve read the particular edition given to me by (drum roll, if you will)… Thomas at My Porch!  Yes, that adorable man knew that I had something of a collection of Provincial Lady editions, and sent me this beauty:

Isn’t it fab?  I was so grateful, especially since it’s an edition I’ve never seen on my bookshop travels in the UK.
Whilst we’re here, I thought you might fancy a little tour around my other editions, no?  If nothing else, it’ll make you feel better about your own book buying compulsions.  You’ll feel a model of restraint and good sense, by comparison.
This is the first ever edition that I bought, having read The Provincial Lady Goes Further from the local library (large print edition – the only E.M. Delafield book they held).  This is the edition I’ve read most often – in fact, it’s always on my bedside table – and the spine has fallen off.  It’s all four Provincial Lady books in one, with an introduction by Kate O’Brien.  It would have originally had a lovely dustjacket – like the one pictured in Christine’s post here – but mine came, instead, with a cup mark.
Over the years, I’ve bought up cheap editions of the various books in the series, when I’ve stumbled across them.  That accounts for this little pile – two copies of The Provincial Lady Goes Further, and one of The Diary of a Provincial Lady – which, interestingly, has a bunch of pages duplicated in the middle, and thus must be worth…. um, nothing.

One of the reasons I buy these, other than because they’re simply lovely, is for the fantastic Arthur Watt illustrations:

And then, of course, I have the Virago Modern Classics edition, with Nicola Beauman’s introduction.  I couldn’t not have that, could I?  But… I suppose I didn’t medically need to get this two separate editions of this omnibus, simply for the different covers… (second photo not mine, pinched from Christine’s site – because I forgot to take a photo of it, and it’s in Somerset.)
And, finally, when shopping in one of my favourite bookshops – Malvern Bookshop in Malvern, Worcestershire – I came across the Folio edition of the first book.  I don’t think the illustrator really interprets the book in the way I would, but Folio books are so beautifully produced that I couldn’t leave this one on the shelf now, could I?  No.  No, of course I could not.
Ok, dear reader, I know what you’re thinking… I don’t have the Cath Kidston edition which Virago published a year or two ago!  And you’re right, of course.  I imagine one day, when I find it cheaply, I’ll add it to my collection.  ‘Collection’ sounds better than hoard, doesn’t it?
Well, my name is Simon, and I am addicted to editions of the Provincial Lady.  Thomas is my enabler.  I’m well aware that I couldn’t stop any time I wanted to.  I’m not even trying to go clean.   Don’t LOOK at me, I’m SO ASHAMED.
(I’m not.  Not at all.)

What There Is To Say We Have Said: The Correspondence of Eudora Welty & William Maxwell

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The third Reading Presently book was a really lovely surprise gift from Heather, who reads my blog (but doesn’t, I’m pretty sure, have one herself.)  She saw how much I’d loved the letters of William Maxwell and Sylvia Townsend Warner, and decided (quite rightly) that I should also have the opportunity to read William Maxwell’s letters to another doyenne of the printed word – Eudora Welty.

Although no collection of letters is likely to compare to The Element of Lavishness in my mind, this is still a really wonderful book.  The dynamics are a little different – both are on the same side of the Atlantic (Maxwell can write to Welty ‘And warm though the British are, one needs to have them explained to one, and everything is through the looking glass’) ; both go more or less through the same stages of their careers – with Warner, Maxwell was always the young enthusiast, even when he was essentially her boss.  Here is more a meeting of equals, sharing some literary friends (especially Elizabeth Bowen) and loving and respecting each other without the need to impress (which brought out the very finest of Maxwell’s writing, to Warner.)

It was a delight to ‘meet’ Maxwell’s wife and children again, and to see the girls grow up once more – and fascinating to see how this is framed a little differently in the different books.  For her part, Welty’s relationship with her homeland (Jackson, Mississippi) is really interesting – a definitely conflicted relationship, cross with the attitudes of her neighbourhood, but loving home.  It’s pretty rare that ‘place’ makes an impact on me, let alone somebody’s engagement with their individual city, but this was certainly one of those occasions.

Just as Warner’s letters stood out more for me in The Element of Lavishness, it was Maxwell’s turn to take the foreground in What There Is To Say We Have Said (which is a lovely title, incidentally – a quotation from the penultimate letter Maxwell sent.)  So I jotted down a few Maxwell excerpts, but nothing from Welty – who, though wonderful, turned out to be less quoteworthy.  I love this from Maxwell, about wishing for a Virginia Woolf audiobook:

What wouldn’t you give for a recording of her reading “To the Lighthouse,” on one side and “The Waves” on the other.  It’s enough to unsettle my reason, just having imagined it.  I’ll try not think about it any more.
I mostly love how impassioned (and funny) he is – and I’m probably going to be peppering my conversation with ‘it’s enough to unsettle my reason’.  It rivals that immortal line from the TV adaptation of Cranford: “Put not another dainty to your lips, for you will choke when you hear what I have to say!”  (Note to Self: I must watch Cranford again…)

Maxwell is, of course, a great novelist on his own account – but I think one of his most significant contributions to literature is his panache as an appreciator.  Even when he was turning down Warner’s stories for the New Yorker, he managed to do so with admiration dripping from every penstroke of the rejection.  He so perfectly (and honestly) identifies what the author was hoping would be praised, and describes the raptures of an avid reader.  Here is his beautiful response to Eudora Welty’s The Golden Apples:

At one point I was aware that I was holding my breath, a thing I don’t ever remember doing before,  while reading, and what I was holding my breath for is lest I might disturb something in nature, a leaf that was about to move, a bird, a wasp, a blade of grass caught between other blades of grass and about to set itself free.  And then farther on I said to myself, this writing is corrective, meaning of course for myself and all other writers, and almost at the end I said reverently This is how one feels in the presence of a work of art, and finally, in the last paragraph, when the face came through, there was nothing to say.  You had gone as far as there is to go and then taken one step further.
Which author would not thrill to this letter?  Can a better response be imagined?  There is never any sense, in his praise to Welty or Warner, that he is exaggerating or being sycophantic – he simply expresses the joy he feels, unabashed, and the women he writes to are sensible enough to accept his praise without undue modesty.  Welty returns compliments on Maxwell’s writing more than Warner ever did – c.f. again the youthful admirer / fond sage dynamic which was going on there.

If this collection does not match up to The Element of Lavishness, it is because it does not have the magic of Warner’s letter writing.  But to criticise it for that would be like criticising chocolate cake because it wasn’t double chocolate cake.  This is a wonderful, decades-long account of a friendship between literary greats – and is equally marvellous for both the literary interest and the testament (if I may) of friendship.  Thank you, Heather, I’m so grateful for this joy of a book  it, and they, will stay with me for a while.  Now, did William Maxwell write to anyone else…

The Young Ardizzone

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As I mentioned before Christmas (in the post from which I swiped this photo) I got a lovely Slightly Foxed edition of Edward Ardizzone’s The Young Ardizzone (1970) from my Virago Secret Santa, and I took it away with me for my few days of indulgent reading at the end of 2012.  It was the first book I finished in 2013, and it amuses me that the year I found most elusive for A Century of Books was the first one I completed in 2013 – not that I’m doing that project this year.  BUT it is going on Reading Presently.  And what a lovely gift it was!  It is – but of course – wonderful.

There are lots of teenage girls out there who go mad for Justin Bieber, or young boys who idolise football players (I’m afraid I can’t name any who weren’t playing back in 1998).  In my own off-kilter way, I’m in danger of becoming a total fanboy for Slightly Foxed Editions.  They’re just all good.  There are other reprint publishers I love, as you know, but I think these are the most consistently wonderful offerings.  No duds.  Excuse me while I put a photo of the editorial team on my wall.  Ahem.

Edward Ardizzone’s childhood seems to have been rather unusual, where parenting is concerned.  He was born in 1900, in Tonkin, Vietnam, but moved to Suffolk, England when only five.  His father, however, stayed behind, moving around Asia – visiting England at intervals, moving his family around the country (for he was certainly still married to Ardizzone’s mother, who spent four years out in Asia with him when Ardizzone was at boarding school) but playing minimal part in Ardizzone’s childhood.  The chief figure was his tempestuous grandmother – Ardizzone often describes her going ‘black in the face with rage’, but adds that she ‘was normally gay, witty and affectionate’.  More diverting relatives!  Lucky Ed.

I always love reading about people’s childhoods, but I loved Ardizzone’s more than most, because it   took place in East Bergholt.  I’d initially thought, flicking through the book, that only a chapter or two took place in East Bergholt – but he is, in fact, there for a few years.  It’s the village where my grandparents lived for about 40 years, and Our Vicar’s Wife was there for her final teenage years, so I know it pretty well.  I even recognise the house Ardizzone lived in from this little sketch.

A very lovely village it is too.  Here are some of his recollections:

Yet certain memories are with me still.  A particular picnic in a hayfield during haymaking; a fine summer afternoon in a cornfield when the stooks of corn became our wigwams.  A certain rutted lane with oak tree arching overhead and hedges so high that the lane looked like a green tunnel leading to the flats below.[…]Not far from the old parish church, with its strange bell cage planted down among the tombstones, was a round bounded on one side by a very high red brick wall.  Set in this wall was a small gothic door.  It was of wood and decorated with heavy iron studs.  Beside this door was a wrought-iron bell pull.
It’s all quite simply told, but works well with the simple pictures.  The name Ardizzone meant nothing to me when I received the book, but I did recognise his illustrations – although I don’t know where I encountered them – which are throughout the book as a delightful accompaniment.  I must confess, to my unlearned eyes his draughtsmanship is not the very finest, and the comparisons Huon Mallalieu’s Preface makes with E.H. Shepard and Beatrix Potter seem a trifle generous.  But, even with those reservations, his illustrations enhance the memoir no end.  It is almost all done with lines and crosshatching, just a dot or two to suggest facial expressions.

Ardizzone didn’t enjoy school greatly – there are some incidents of bullying which seem to me quite shocking, but he only really mentions them in passing, without any suggestion that they have scarred him for life.  And, indeed, his various school exploits take up most of the book – with plenty of cheerful moments, especially when describing respected schoolteachers.

I only wish Ardizzone hadn’t whipped quite so quickly through the final section of his autobiography – where he explains (in three or four pages) his progression from being shown by the London Group, favourably reviewed at the Bloomsbury Gallery, commissioned to illustrate a Le Fanu collection, and finally a successful children’s author/illustrator.  He rattles through it all at breakneck speed, which is a shame, as it sounds a fascinating period in his life.  So many autobiographers find their own childhood much more interesting than the rest of their life, and many of their readers would find everything interesting.  Oh well.  Mustn’t grumble; I’ll accept what Ardizzone has given us.  And what he is given us is rather lovely.

Caitlin Moran is basically Dickens.

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I’m going to start this review by getting all hipster – bear with me one moment while I put on my oversized specs and dig out some ironic vinyl records – and say that I loved Caitlin Moran before it was cool to love Caitlin Moran. Granted, I don’t buy a newspaper myself, or subscribe to The Times online, but my father and brother regard The Times as second only to Scripture and I flick through it when I visit either of them. More specifically, I have read Caitlin Moran’s columns for years. I don’t always agree with her, but I always find her brilliantly, ingeniously funny. The sort of funny that makes reading a newspaper actually fun.

Following on from the success of How To Be A Woman, which I have borrowed but have yet to read, a selection of her columns has been published under the title Moranthology. Geddit? Good. Her topics are widespread – a lot of celebrity-culture and arts & entertainment, but also just the world around her, from new dresses to Gregg’s pasties to tax (she’s pro.) Here’s how she glosses her inspirations in the introduction:

The motto I have Biro’d on my knuckles is that this is the best world we have – because it’s the only world we have. It’s the simplest maths ever. However many terrible, rankling, peeve-inducing things may occur, there are always libraries. And rain-falling-on-sea. And the Moon. And love. There is always something to look back on, with satisfaction, or forward to, with joy. There is always a moment when you boggle at the world – at yourself – at the whole, unlikely, precarious business of being alive – and then start laughing.

And that’s usually when I make a cup of tea, and start typing.
Caitlin Moran and I are unlikely ever to be friends. This is largely – though not entirely – because all her friendships seem to be assessed on the willingness with which said friend will breakdance, drunk out of their minds, in seedy clubs at four in the morning – or how much they admire Ghostbusters, which I’ve never seen. But, should our paths ever cross – at, say, 7.30 am, as she is stumbling back from a faux-Victorian strip club with Lady Gaga, and I am blearily crawling to the corner shop to get milk for my morning tea, not wearing any glasses because for some reason that only feels like a viable option in a post-caffeine world – should we meet, perhaps we would bond a little. Bond about our love of books (she champions libraries wonderfully; ‘A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a life-raft, and a festival’) and our distrust of the Tory Party. Maybe even about how great Modern Family is, although that’s not mentioned here. But that might be it. I’ve never seen Sherlock, and I don’t much care for Doctor Who – these admissions are probably enough for Moran to cement-bag me to the bottom of the Thames, a la Mack the Knife. The columns where she reviews or goes behind the scenes of these shows are near-pathological in their adoration.

And, of course, there are plenty of other things we don’t agree about, or enthusiasms we don’t share. That’s beside the point. Moran could write about how much she likes dead-heading roses to make bonnets for foxes, and she’d make the hobby seem not only amusing, but rather bohemian and cool. Because Moran just is cool, without seeming to try at all. The sort of cool which entirely embraces self-deprecation and wears absurd foibles as badges of honour – and makes everything she writes seem adorable and awesome. (The only time I felt disappointed by Moran was when she referred to the ‘anti-choice’ movement. However strongly people may disagree over the issue of abortion, I’ve always deeply admired the almost-universal respectful use of ‘pro-life’ and ‘pro-choice’ by those who oppose either one. Because, Moran – as well you know – absolutely nobody takes an anti-life or an anti-choice stance. That is never their objective.) But, that aside, she doesn’t put a foot wrong. She can babble about Downton Abbey, declare her hatred of children’s book/TV character Lola, or opine on her holidays to Wales, and it’s all just brilliant. And it’s brilliant because she has her tone down pat – a way with simile that is always innovative and hilarious (she, for instance, describes X Factor alum Frankie Cocozza as having ‘a voice like a goose being kicked down a slide’) and a clever mix of high and low registers which is positively Dickensian – throwing slang in with perfect judgement. Because (see above) she’s so cool.

And that mention of Dickens isn’t careless. Caitlin Moran is basically a 21st-century Dickens, with crazy awesome hair. In amongst all the hilarious columns on the ugliness of fish names or how someone stole her hairstyle, Moran gets in some serious social politics. So, like Dickens, she is incredibly funny – but uses the humour to slip in social commentary; the difference being that Dickens would give us a plucky urchin at the mercy of Sir Starvethechild. It would be glorious, but his point would be rather lost in a thicket of the grotesque. Moran, give or take some emotive wording, just tells it as it is.

Moran grew up on a council estate with eight siblings and parents who were on disability benefits. As she says, ‘I’ve spent twenty years clawing my way out of a council house in Wolverhampton, to reach a point where I can now afford a Nigella Lawson breadbin.’ But she still knows what poverty was like firsthand, and writes movingly, sensibly, and brilliantly about various issues to do with cutting benefits or alienating the poor.

All through history, those who can’t earn money have had to rely on mercy: fearful, changeable mercy, that can dissolve overnight if circumstances change, or opinions alter. Parish handouts, workhouses, almshouses – ad-hoc, makeshift solutions that make the helpless constantly re-audition in front of their benefactors; exhaustingly trying to re-invoke pity for a lifetime of bread and cheese.

That’s why the invention of the Welfare State is one of the most glorious events in history: the moral equivalency of the Moon Landings. Something not fearful or changeable, like mercy, but certain and constant – a right. Correct and efficient: disability benefit fraud is just 0.5 per cent. A system that allows dignity and certainty to lives otherwise chaotic with poverty and illness.
Who but Moran could write about her hatred of creating party-bags, her love of David Attenborough and her friend with schizophrenia who has to move cities in order to retain state-given accommodation? Not in the same column, you understand, but I wouldn’t put it past her. Moran has won all sorts of awards, I believe, and I would say that she deserves them – but, quite frankly, she is the only columnist I ever read. I’ve been enjoying her columns for years (some in this book are, naturally, revisits for me) and I’m so delighted that they’re now available as a book. I’ve got my fingers crossed for another, since this can only represent a small percentage of her output. But I’ll count my blessings with this one (thanks Colin for giving it to me!) and urge you to seek it out. Like I said, Moran is basically Dickens. Hilariously funny, socially conscious, rocks some impressive sideburns. Well, two out of three ain’t bad.