Virago

I’m back! / Mockingbirds and Cousins

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Hurray! The internet has arrived at Marlborough Road!

For those of you thinking “That’s not news, you blogged on Saturday”, I have to say – that wasn’t me. Well, in a way it was, but it was a phantom post – I tried to link to the video on Youtube a couple of weeks ago, and failed. Obviously it was hanging around in the ether, waiting for someone to authorise it or something, and suddenly it appeared at the weekend. Strange.

I’m afraid my return to the blogosphere will be short-lived, since I’m away on holiday on Friday, and back on 29th August – so more then. I do hope some people are still here, even with all the disruptions of late… blame the world of technology which eludes me. Thankfully one of my housemates has a very savvy boyfriend, who kindly tip-tip-tapped away at the keyboard and got everything sorted out. I am living proof that young + male doesn’t necessarily = good at internetty things. In fact, if you use the word ‘internetty’, then you probably don’t qualify. Though I once plugged an ethernet cable in upside down (no easy task), so I’m in a league of my own.

In the time I’ve been away from blogging, I’ve had quite a build-up of books to talk about, so that will probably take us up til I head off to Northern Ireland. Today I’m going to write about the last two book group books I’ve read in recent weeks, both classics of the twentieth century.

My Cousin Rachel is the third novel I’ve read by Daphne du Maurier – I wrote about The Flight of the Falcon here, having not been overwhelmed, but Rebecca is one of my favourite novels. My Cousin Rachel probably fell between the two. (There are some spoilers here, but not too many…) It tells the story of Ambrose and Philip Ashley, cousins who are more or less father and son, living in Cornish rural simplicity, away from women and contentedly reliant upon one another. Ambrose is taken off to Italy, and it is here that he meets and marries Rachel – and dies. Rachel comes to see Philip in England, and he is prepared to hate her – but their relationship becomes increasingly complicated, as does the readers’ thoughts about Rachel’s potential culpability.

The novel has a lot in common with Rebecca – and not just the setting. The same intrigue, power, and issues about what is left unspoken in relationships. Though not as successful as Rebecca – I found the first 80 pages dragged a little, in fact until Rachel arrived – My Cousin Rachel is brilliantly successful in the sense that I have never left a novel so uncertain as to a character’s guilt or lack of it – and either interpretation seems quite valid. Brilliantly done. There are such sophisticated themes of obsession and attracting obsession without being aware of it, the cyclical nature of the men’s experiences… The group discussing the novel were divided from absolute loathing to absolute loving, and thus an ‘interesting’ meeting was held!

My other book group were rather more agreed on To Kill A Mockingbird. This is one The Carbon Copy has been telling me to read for years, and I’ve continually meant to, so was glad when someone recommended it for book group and spurred me on. What a great book. I don’t think there’s any point in me giving a synopsis, since almost everyone has read this novel before me, but having seen the film I was surprised that so little of the book was concerned with the trial of Tom Robinson. To Kill A Mockingbird is much more a depiction of Southern life for the Finch family, and a portrait of a daughter’s relationship with her father – and a beautiful portrait at that. When I did the Booking Through Thursday about heroes, Colin put forward Atticus Finch, and I have to agree. The man is incredible – a very worthy father, a moralistic lawyer and a humble citizen, a combination which is tricky to write without seeming unrealistic or irritating. Atticus, though, remains wholly admirable and likeable throughout, and is one of the great male characters in literature, I’d say. I could eulogise about him, and this novel, for ages – but I won’t. I want to hear what you think.

There, written about two books without quoting from either of them. Tsk. Here’s one I like: “If I didn’t take this case (Scout) then I wouldn’t be able to hold my head up, I wouldn’t be about to tell anyone what to do, not even you and Jem.” Or this:

“I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system – that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up. I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty.”

EnhpaD

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My ‘Backwards With Daphne’ project hasn’t been roaring along, has it? I told you all about my great intentions back in this post, in early April, and only now have I finished the first one – The Flight of the Falcon. It’s not Daphne du Maurier’s last novel, but it’s the last one which came in my boxset – and the plan was to start at the end and work backwards, as it were.

The Flight of the Falcon is set in Italy, a long way from Cornwall and the only du Mauriers I’d previously encountered – our hero is Armino Fabbio, a tour guide who accidentally becomes involved in the murder of an old peasant woman in Rome. He leaves his tour group, and travels back to his home town Ruffiano, which he hasn’t visited in two decades. In the same city, five hundred years previously, cruel Duke Claudio – known as The Falcon – had terrorised the people of Ruffiano with his meglomania and brutality. Has anything really changed in Ruffiano, or are events mysteriously repeating themselves?

That – like the synopsis of Rebecca, I suppose – sounds rather more melodramatic than Daphne du Maurier’s writing allows it to be. Having said that, Backwards With Daphne almost drew to a halt, as The Flight of the Falcon didn’t work for me at all. I could appreciate why she was writing it – an interesting idea, with a host of familial issues to untangle at the centre – but I didn’t much care what went on. Do students of different departments really hate each other that much? I’d be bored stiff studying a Science subject, not to mention completely incapable, but I didn’t want to burn any of the students at stake…

My other main problem, I’m afraid, was names. I can’t remember names at the best of times, and when they all end in ‘-io’, I had no chance. Daphne du Maurier couldn’t do much else, in Italy, but I spent much of my time hopelessly baffled.

I think I’m painting a worse picture than it was – The Flight of the Falcon isn’t a bad book, at all, but when you know the same pen had already produced Rebecca (oops, supposed to be reading backwards, this should be a blank canvas for me… sorry) – just goes to show the flaws in this intriguing reading project. If this were my first Daphne du Maurier novel, I probably wouldn’t bother with any others… BUT, I had the fun experience of reading the same book as a library colleague sat opposite me at teabreak, and we could chat about it.

Anyone else read it? Any thoughts? Our Vicar’s Wife? Karen, my co-Daphne reader, have you got this far yet?

Speak of an Angel…

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…and you shall hear the fluttering of its wings. I think that’s what the expression used to be, before the Great British cynicism and dark sense of humour altered it…

Before I start talking about another book I read in Northern Ireland, I must point you in the direction of the Carbon Copy’s blog for today… have a look here… it’s usually plain blue background etc., so quite witty what he’s done today, and made me double-take…

Elizabeth Taylor is a name which has been on my horizons for a few years now – and no, I don’t mean Mrs. Burton, the actress, but the novelist of the same name. She’s often mentioned on dovegreybooks, the online book discussion list I’m in, to the extent that I have four of her novels on my shelves, all unread. It seemed time to rectify this, so I took Angel away with me, devoured and loved it.

Well, I say loved. It was an incredibly sad novel.

Angel Deverell starts as a humourless young girl, intent on making her way out of her working class background, by fantasy if not by any other means. She finds a potential route out when she starts writing a novel in an exercise book – writing becomes compulsive, and before long she has finished her first romance. Elizabeth Taylor based Angel on similar contemporary romance novelists – Marie Correlli, Ethel M. Dell and so forth; all the people Q. D. Leavis so despised. Like them, Angel’s style and scenarios are over the top and exaggerated, with minimal verisimilitude. Somehow, she is accepted by Gilbright & Brace publishers – Brace finds her absurd, but Theo Gilbright has an unavoidable fondness for Angel, despite her complete lack of humour, her unwarranted self-confidence, arrogance and fierce opposition to criticism:

(Theo:) ‘I daresay I know more about the reading public than you, and you will take my word that I have an idea as to what will pass among the weakest of them. We publish for them, alas, ‘the bread-and-milk brigade’ my partner calls them. They decide. They bring the storms about our ears. For them we veil what is stark and tone down what is colourful and discard a lot that – for ourselves – we would rather keep. So will you take away your manuscript for a while and see what you can do for us?’
‘No,’ said Angel.

Success greets her – a mixture of unquestioning loyalty from the uneducated, and amused delight from the over-educated. When she can afford to leave Volunteer Street, her working-class birthplace, however, she does not enter the sublime world she’d envisaged…

Angel takes us to the end of Angel’s life, and, though the novel is only about 250 pages long, Elizabeth Taylor packs so much in that it really feels like a saga – a compulsive one. Some of the most moving passages concern Angel’s mother, as she moves with Angel to a ‘better’ neighbourhood, and loses all her lifelong friends:

‘Either they put out their best china and thought twice before they said anything, or they were defiantly informal – “You’ll have to take us as you find us” – and would persist in making remarks like “I don’t suppose you ever have bloaters up at Alderhurst” or “Pardon the apron, but there’s no servants here to polish the grate.” In each case, they were watching her for signs of grandeur or condescension. She fell into little traps they laid and then they were able to report to the neighbours. “It hasn’t taken her long to start putting on side.” She had to be especially careful to recognise everyone she met, and walked up the street with an expression of anxiety which was misinterpreted as disdain.’

Angel Deverell is never a likeable character; quite the reverse. Even so, Elizabeth Taylor creates in her a character of pathos, and it is difficult to take any pleasure in her downfalls, however deserved. It is testament to Taylor’s talent that such an unpleasant protagonist can inhabit a thoroughly compelling novel. I shall certainly be making sure I read the other Elizabeth Taylor novels I have, though if they’re all this sad, I’ll be pacing them out.

The Yellow Wallpaper

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Two of the least successful advertising campaigns imaginable, there…

Sorry, starting in a frivolous mood. It shan’t persist, promise.
I’ve got this bug that’s going round (isn’t there always one going round?) and spent much of the day in bed – what better, thought I, than The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman? When I mentioned it the other day, there was quite a response from you guys telling me to drop everything and read it (including Angela, who writes about the book here). I’m nothing if not obedient…

Wow. I don’t know whether to call The Yellow Wallpaper a novel or a short story, probably the latter, but whatever it is: wow. What an effect, and what writing.

Sorry, I appear to be dissolving into cheerleaderdom – but sometimes a work is written so excellently that no other response is possible.

An unnamed woman is suffering from a nervous complaint (“nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression”) and sent to rest in a rented house, while her own (and her physician husband’s) is being repaired. She is given the large old nursery, at the top of the house, which has windows on all sides and is covered in patterned, yellow wallpaper. Her reaction to this wallpaper is measured and aesthetically based, at first:
‘I never saw a worse paper in my life. One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin. It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide – plunge off at outrageous angles, destory themselves in unheard of contractions. The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight.’

There are already hints of extremity – the suicide metaphor; the intense description of the colour. As the story continues, the heroine becomes increasingly obsessed by the wallpaper – trying to understand the pattern, and whatever may be secreted behind it.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman subtly portrays the woman’s plight through a naive and confused first person voice, and sublimation of her depression into obsession with the wallpaper. Many now think the story depicts post-natal depression (‘Such a dear baby! And yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous.’) and it does so extremely sensitively. Deservedly a classic, The Yellow Wallpaper makes subtle mastery seem easy – but was almost certainly far from it.

It’s great to have this story in one of those beautiful Virago Modern Classics editions, but sadly it comes with an appalling afterword by Elaine R. Hedges. Hedges takes what is a poignant and deep example of sensitive feminist writing, and tries to turn it into the most militant variety. The sort which throws around terms like “marriage institution” and claims that no woman has ever voluntarily entered marriage, and all men seek to control and destroy women. She crushes all the beauty of Perkins Gilman’s story, and I found the whole Afterword belittled post-natal depression and insulted those who suffer from it, as though it were not significant enough an issue to which to devote a narrative. Tsk.

But – to end on a positive note – what a story. Thank you for pushing it to the top of tbr pile, folks.

50 Books: The Love Child by Edith Olivier

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I bet you never expected to read the words ‘love child’ on Stuck-in-a-Book… well, if you’ve been paying careful attention, you’ll have seen them a couple of times already. Edith Olivier’s novel The Love Child came in at no.3 on my favourite books read last year. I’ve just realised that I’ve been referring to Olivier as Oliver for a long while, and thus may have misled people… I must go back and alter.

This novel has had mixed reception – I’ve only ‘tried it out’ on a couple of other people; one liked it and one wasn’t so sure. I know Lisa at Bluestalking would love it and am waiting for her to clear space in her schedule to read it! (That is, unless she already has, and kept quiet about not liking it…)

Agatha Bodenham, at 32, finds herself alone for the first time, after the death of her mother. She has been kept quietly at home, and has no real friends or chance of marriage. She turns her attention instead to an imaginary friend of her youth, Clarissa – who then appears, ‘gathering substance in the warmth of Agatha’s obsessive love until it seems that others too can see her’, to quote the blurb. Though a great joy to Agatha’s lonely life, as Clarissa begins to explore the more exotic features of 1920s life (tennis, dances, boys) something of a power struggle develops, and it is unclear who possesses whom…

There are similarities to one of my favourite books, Miss Hargreaves, though Baker’s novel was funnier and less affecting. The Love Child (1927) is a touching portrait with edges of surrealism and heartache. A very slim novel, it contains many intriguing ideas about love and possession and neediness – I also found the writing to flow beautifully. I’d love to discover other fables of this ilk – where Miss Hargreaves and Lady Into Fox also fit.

My Virago copy (bought on a whim for 75p in an Oxford charity shop) has an introduction by Hermione Lee which is illuminating. And, like so many other authors, Edith Olivier was related to a clergyman. Daughter, in this case. She spent nearly all her life in her native Wiltshire, except for some time at Oxford University on a scholarship – and The Love Child, where it does not wander into fantasy, appears to be influenced by autobiography.

Like all the other books so far in my 50 Books… I really recommend that you seek this novel out – it may well become a treasure you’ll remember for a while.

All Passion Spent

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I don’t know if any of you joined in on Cornflower’s first ever Book Group read, All Passion Spent, but here’s the link if you wanted to follow the animated conversation. Lots of strong opinions and lots of people contributing – can’t quite match the fun and furore of a real live book group, but comes a close second.

You may remember that I got All Passion Spent as my Secret Santa present – and I Woolfed it down. Yes, I know Woolf didn’t write the novel , but there wasn’t a great deal of punning potential in ‘Sackville-West’… unless some sort of badinage on ‘string-vest’…

I was a little surprised that not everyone loved the novel, but I must assure you that it is brilliant. I had 22 contenders for my top ten books (well, I read a great deal more than that, but there were 22 on my shortlist) and All Passion Spent came in about twelfth. It’s the tale of Lady Slane, a widow who decides to buck her troublesome family (which does include, however, the rather lovely dreamer Ethel) and live alone for the first time in her life. She quietly moves to a house she first saw thirty years previously, refuses to see her grandchildren and great-grandchildren (though, again, in a quiet and calm way) and reminisces about her childhood, courtship, and marriage. In many ways the old-woman-seeking-dependence plot is like The Stone Angel, which I wrote about here, but where Hagar was undeniably selfish and bitter, Lady Slane is dignified, sensible and kind throughout.

A background of great, slightly eccentric, characters such as Mr. Bucktrout and FitzGeorge complete this witty, calming, beautiful novel. Above all, the writing is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful – each sentence is constructed with care and humanity. Would make excellent Boxing Day reading.

50 Books…

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15. Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead – Barbara Comyns

The early stream of books to include in my 50 Books You Must Read But May Not Have Heard About has slowed to a gradual flow, and that was sort of deliberate. I suppose I didn’t want to overwhelm people. This site mentions a lot of books – as you might expect on a literary blog – and also suggest a great deal as being worth reading. I suppose I want to say “Even if you ignore everything else I mention, pay attention to this list.” Of course, you’re perfectly welcome to ignore the list too, but I’d like you to pay special attention to them if you so wish(!) They’re all there for a reason – because they’re touching or hilarious or brilliantly written or just very indicative of my taste, and I know that you’re unlikely to hear about them unless I mention them.

So, after that little preamble, step forward no. 15 on the list – Barbara Comyns’ Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead. Those of you who are more knowledgeable than I will have spotted that the title is from The Fire of Drift-Wood by Longfellow.

We spake of many a vanished scene,
Of what we once had thought and said,
Of what had been, and might have been,
And who was changed, and who was dead;

The only other Comyns I’ve read was Our Spoons Came From Woolworths, so she certainly has a way with titles. I bought Who Was Changed… a few years ago, partly because I’d quite enjoyed Our Spoons Came From Woolworths, partly because the mix of a Virago paperback and an interesting cover piqued my interest. Had I turned to the first sentence, I daresay I’d have read the novel much sooner: ‘The ducks swan through the drawing-room windows.’ How can you not want to read on?

The novel opens with a flood, and things get stranger and stranger. If I were to choose one word to describe this novel it would be “surreal” – but surreal in a very grounded manner. Exactly like the cover illustration, actually; part of ‘Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta: Dinner on the Hotel Lawn’ by Stanley Spencer. Throughout the events (which I don’t want to spoil for you) Comyns weaves a very real, earthy, witty portrait of a village – especially the Willoweed family. A cantankerous old lady who won’t step on land she doesn’t own, Grandmother Willoweed, rules over her docile son, Ebin, and his young children Emma, Hattie and Dennis. Grandmother W is a truly brilliant creation – without the slightest feeling for anybody around her, she is still amusing rather than demonic. For some reason this novel was banned in Ireland upon publication in 1954 – perhaps for the occasional unblenching descriptions, but these are easily skipped if you, like me, can be a bit squeamish.

Though quite a slim novel – my copy is 146 pages of large type – Comyns writes a book which lingers in the mind, one that is vivid and funny and absurd and a must read for anyone interested in off-the-wall literature with human nature at its heart.

And it’s cheap on Amazon.co.uk…

(please do go and read a rather better review on John Self’s Asylum blog here.)

50 Books…

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2. The Provincial Lady

Now, this is probably the book which will best guide you in an understanding of my literary tastes. Perhaps even whispering the word ‘Persephone‘ would do that for many of you? Early twentieth-century domestic fiction doesn’t come better than today’s entry.

Next to be presented for inclusion in ’50 books…’ is The Provincial Lady, possibly well known to a lot of you out there. If it’s not, then BUY IT! Yes, it is not often that I shall wander into the forceful, but I cannot see any valid reason why this book is not in every household. Possibly several times. For backing up on this, may I direct you to the enthused ear of Random Jottings, one of my oldest (by which I mean, of course, longest-standing) e-friends. We bonded over EM Delafield about three years ago, and have sent a flurry of her books back and forth – is there a better basis for friendship than sharing a cherished author? Can’t think of many.

For those who don’t know, this is a fictional diary, based heavily on Delafield’s own life and family. Not a great deal happens, but as we meander through the struggles of middle-class village life, the heroine’s resigned, deadpan approach to everything becomes utterly irresistible. The book you see in the photo contains all four in the series – The Diary of a Provincial Lady; The Provincial Lady Goes Further (my favourite); The Provincial Lady in America; The Provincial Lady in Wartime. For stateside readers, the fourth of those is ‘…in London’. Don’t be fooled by The Provincial Lady in Russia. This was initially published as Straw Without Bricks, and is an account of Delafield’s time in a Soviet collective (!!), and only later did publishers see the potential profit in labelling it one of the series.

Alongside the book is the cassette. Dramatised, with Imelda Staunton as PL, and rather wonderful – do try and track it down if you can.

And once you’ve read Provincial Lady… well, I love As Others Hear Us, Faster! Faster!, Mrs. Harter… I do hope Random Jottings will comment and give us further info, for she is the true mine of knowledge on all things EMD. As is this website – it includes extracts, which should lure you in.

In other news, today was the Grand National. The Clan have an annual habit of picking a horse each, based entirely upon name and colours. This year, failing to notice one was called Simon, I plumped for Silver Birch – on the basis that Richmal Crompton wrote a book of short stories with the title. And it won! Shame our bets are of the imaginary kind…