I haven’t felt much like writing book reviews recently, but my pile of books to review keeps piling up – so I’ll do another couple of mini round-ups. For some reason, I feel like I have to review all 2020-read books in 2020, but I suppose there’s no intrinsic necessity for that…
Mr Kronion by Susan Alice Kerby
This novel from 1949, isn’t very easy to get hold of – but I went on a Kerby spree after loving Miss Carter and the Ifrit, republished by Dean Street Press under their Furrowed Middlebrow series. Well, I can see why they chose that one. Mr Kronion is about a Greek deity coming to live in a house in England – the title relies on you knowing that Kronion is another name for Zeus, which I did not, and indeed only just learned by googling it.
There is some fun to be had in his fantastic appearance, not least in the interactions with the professor who is acting as something of a guardian for him, but Kerby doesn’t make the most of it. Instead, there are all sorts of secondary characters and romantic subplot that take up too much of the novel’s space. This one ended up being rather a baggy disappointment.
The Picnic and other stories by Walter de la Mare
I’ve had this for many years, but picked it up when I read praise of his story ‘Miss Duveen’ somewhere. I forget where. Thankfully, the story is indeed in this collection, which is something of a ‘best of’ – and it’s a rather moving story about a young boy’s encounter with an eccentric local lady, and the waxing and waning of their friendship. Many of the stories in The Picnic are poignant – from the title story, of a woman whose one big romantic experience was a picnic where she was stood up, to stories of failing marriages against the backdrop of a childhood illness.
De la Mare is best remembered for his poetry – perhaps entirely for ‘The Listeners’ – but his short stories are good. He doesn’t have the piercing brevity of, say, Katherine Mansfield – but they manage to stay the right side of sentiment, often showing the strange and saddening moments in ‘uneventful’ lives.
This Other Eden by E.V. Knox
E.V. Knox, once known as ‘Evoe’ in Punch, shows that he is quite similar to many other comically grumbling essayists of the early 20th century, and that’s no bad thing. In this collection from 1929, he turns his attention to such commonly-used topics as golf, ‘modern woman’, motoring, and a spoof of the detective novel:
Mr Ponderby-Wilkins was a man so rich, so ugly, so cross, and so old, that even the stupidest reader could not expect him to survive any longer than Chapter 1. Vulpine in his secretiveness, he was porcine in his habits, saturnine in his appearance, and ovine in his unconsciousness of doom. He was the kind of man who might easily perish as early as paragraph two.
The only drawback to read This Other Eden almost a century after it was published is that nothing seems as frighteningly new as Knox believed. He is anxious about the idea of ‘talkies’, wonders how the world will adapt to the motorcar, and writes about women’s independence in a way that probably seemed progressive in the 20s, but certainly doesn’t anymore. I suppose they fulfilled the purpose of the time, and I still enjoyed reading them, but perhaps the key to longevity with the essay is making sure you don’t consider your own period to be the last word in futurism?
These all look interesting. I think finding copies will be the biggest challenge. Yes, de la Mère is someone I think of as a poet from my childhood. I didn’t know he wrote stories too.
I remember memorising The Listeners at school! I did try reading Memoirs of a M****t a while ago – a word we wouldn’t use now – and gave up after a while.
I have felt like doing absolutely nothing lately, including write reviews. Why does anyone ever do things when it’s so much better and easier to not do things? But I respect you for writing these mini-reviews. I’m sorry to hear that you went to the trouble of tracking down the Kerby book only to not like it that much BUT this has reminded me that I do want to get ahold of more of the Furrowed Middlebrow books to see how they are.
Isn’t doing nothing just so much better than doing things?? Yes, amen!
Well, I love that Knox quote – I know the book may have dated, but I may need to read it just for the detective spoof!!
That is definitely a highlight! If you can get hold of Adrian Alington’s The Vanishing Celebrities, that’s a novel-length spoof which is great fun.
Thanks for alerting me to This Other Eden, as I didn’t realise Evoe’s essays were collected! (Not using google enough). I had been scouring charity shops (in the ‘before-time’) for old copies of Punch. My great interest is because he was the father of my favourite novelist, Penelope Fitzgerald.
Oh yes, why didn’t I join the dots there – I knew her dad was Knox and wrote for Punch, but somehow didn’t put those things together.
When I was a PhD student in London, the flat I rented had a number of bound copies of Punch circa 1900. I spent a little time reading some of the content and looking at the cartoons and I must say that I never even cracked a smile. A lot of humour, if overtly contemporaneous, does not travel well. I shall not be seeking out “This other Eden”, your quote convinces me that I would not get very far with it.
As you know, I still love AAM’s pieces from Punch – but the other Punch writers I’ve read haven’t lived up to that. Then again, I am baffled that anyone finds anything interesting in today’s Private Eye issues.
Nice to learn that de la Mare wrote short stories that are worth checking out. I still enjoy some of his poetry, so I may well check this out.
The quote from Knox was hilarious but on the whole Eden sounds like too much of a period piece for me.
Yes, that essay should be published as a little pamphlet – I think it has dated the best.
The short stories sound really interesting. I, too, have review build up and also feel I have to review the year’s books in that year – so watch out for some round-ups here, too, I fear!