“I ransack public libraries, and find them full of sunk treasure.” (Virginia Woolf)

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When I was searching for quotes about libraries I really liked this quote by Libba Bray but it was too long to use for a title:

“The library card is a passport to wonders and miracles, glimpses into other lives, religions, experiences, the hopes and dreams and strivings of ALL human beings, and it is this passport that opens our eyes and hearts to the world beyond our front doors, that is one of our best hopes against tyranny, xenophobia, hopelessness, despair, anarchy, and ignorance.”

This week’s theme is libraries, because one of the unforeseen benefits of my 2018 book buying ban is that I have rediscovered the joy of the library. You may well be wondering what kind of moron I am not to foresee this, but I really didn’t. The purpose of the book-buying ban is to get through the piles of unread books I own. It’s working, but not quite as well as I hoped because I’ve realised my library has novels. Up until this point I’d mainly used it for non-fiction books. It’s taken the ban for me to realise I can get in the library queue for new releases and get hold of rare books I’ll never be able to afford. Libraries are amazing!

Firstly, I finally reached the top of the queue for Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor, which was published before my book buying ban last year, but I hadn’t got a copy. McGregor is one of my favourite authors and I didn’t want to wait another year before reading this, so I got on a long waiting list at the library.

Disclaimer: McGregor is never going to get anything but gushing reviews from me. I’ve loved his writing since his first novel If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things and as far as I’m concerned he can do no wrong. I understand this novel has divided people and I think its because the premise sets up certain expectations. A 13 year old girl, Becky Shaw, disappears from a village where she and her parents are holidaying for new year. However, this isn’t a thriller. It isn’t about the search for the girl, or what happened to her, or who may have taken her. What it is about is a community, the people in it, how their stories touch on one another. If like me, you’re a fan of McGregor, this won’t greatly surprise you. Although the rural setting is unusual for him, the themes are not. But if you come to it expecting a missing person puzzle to be solved, you’ll be sorely disappointed.

There are many recurring phrases and details in the book. Becky is 13, the village has 13 reservoirs, the story is set over 13 years and divided into 13 chapters. The chapters begin “At midnight when the year turned…” At intervals we are reminded “The missing girl’s name was Rebecca, or Becky, or Bex”. The effect is to show how things move on within the familiar; village lives continue but they also change. Meanwhile, Rebecca/Becky/Bex is held in a stasis, forever 13, the questions around what happened to her left hanging.

I associate McGregor with urban settings, but he writes beautifully of rural life. Old traditions are dying out: only one of the residents bothers collecting nettles for tea or elderflowers for cordial. The butchers – like so many local shops – closes due to lack of demand. Yet the seasons in their distinct beauty are there:

“On Bonfire Night there was a heavy fog, thick with woodsmoke, the fireworks seen briefly like camera flashes overhead. In the beech wood the foxes prepared their dens. The vixens dug down into old earths and reclaimed them, lining them out with grasses and leaves. In the eaves of the church the bats settled plumply into hibernation. By the river the willows shook off the last of their leaves. At night the freight trains came more often a single white leading and the wagons shadowing heavily behind. The widower asked Clive for advice over pruning his fruit trees and Clive was surprised to see the state things were in.”

McGregor does this throughout the novel, going straight from describing the natural world into a detail about the lives of one of the villagers without a paragraph break. In doing so he weaves the lives into the world that surrounds them and shows how one cannot be understood without the other.

I thought Reservoir 13 was absolutely stunning. It reminded me of Virginia Woolf in the use of repeated phrases and the focus small but significant details. In his usual unshowy style, McGregor captures the beauty and fragility of everyday life.

After I finished Reservoir 13 I went straight to the library to see if they had a copy of Reservoir Tapes, the sequel of sorts, and I didn’t even have to put my name in the queue for it. Reservoir Tapes is a series of short stories connected to Reservoir 13, originally broadcast on the radio. You can listen to them here.

Secondly, I found my library had a copy of Rhododendron Pie, Margery Sharp’s first novel from 1930, which is practically impossible to find and which you pay hundreds of pounds for online. There was a copy just sitting there – I couldn’t believe I hadn’t checked before.

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Image from here

Rhododendron Pie tells the story of Ann Laventie, whose natural leanings towards conservatism mark her out as different from the rest of her family. Her sister Elizabeth begins the birthday tradition of inedible floral birthday pies of the title, while little Ann would prefer an apple pie.

“It had once been said of Mr Laventie that he was a traditionalist in wine and a revolutionary in morals; and indeed, this capacity for making the best of both worlds was an outstanding characteristic of the family. They combined the extremes of old-world elegance and modern freedom, tempering a belief in free verse and free love with an equal feeling for societal decorum.”

As the children grow up, Elizabeth becomes an intellectual forever having essays published in journals while her brother Dick becomes a sculptor. Ann is at a bit of a loss. She is good at admiring what the others do and she is well-liked, but she flounders in working out what she wants and where she fits in. Sharp captures how society is changing for the interwar generation; one of Ann’s friends is perfectly open about the men she lives with on occasion. While there is discussion around this which seems remarkably forward-thinking and would sit well with readers today, Ann does not want a bohemian lifestyle.

“ ‘What I want,’ continued Ann recklessly, ‘is a nice wedding in the village church, with a white frock and orange blossom and lots of flowers and ‘The Voice that Breathed’ and two bridesmaids in cyclamen pink and rose petals afterwards  and a reception in the drawing-room with a string quartet playing selections from Gilbert and Sullivan. In June. And a honeymoon in the Italian Lakes.

‘Where does Gilbert come in?’

‘He doesn’t. And I want to live in a house, not a flat, even if it’s only a little one in a suburb where there’s no-one amusing, with a back garden to dig in. And have bird pattern chintzes in the drawing-room and cold supper on Sundays because the maid’s out. I shall probably,’ finished Ann defiantly, ‘take a stall at the church bazaar.’”

Ann doesn’t come across as remotely priggish or boring though. She is authentic and truthful, and struggles with her knowing, arch, ironic family

“ ‘One of your family methods. Every now and then you do something deliberately ordinary, but in inverted commas so to speak, just to see what it feels like.”

What Rhododendron Pie is about is working out who you are and what you want from the world, and how tricky this can be when you seem to be at odds with your family and the section of society you live within. Without any didacticism, Sharp captures how this is especially hard for women. New freedoms are opening up, but women are still judged more harshly by society and have their actions further circumscribed by law.

“These were the things they understood, patient hope and quiet brave endurance: these were the woman’s part.”

Rhododendron Pie is remarkably accomplished for a first novel. Sharp would hone her skills further in future novels – particularly characterisation, which is a bit weak here – but her wit is here, her warmth, and her wisdom.

 “‘That’s what you clever people never understand. You talk about life as though it were something rare and surprising that one had to be careful of. It’s nothing of the sort. It’s ordinary. And it’s only when you’ve accepted it as ordinary that you begin to see the wonder of it. That a swallow or a green field should be beautiful is nothing, but that they should be common as dirt is a miracle. I am continually amazed…at the casual beauty of things.’”

To end, a woman whose name helpfully rhymes with her profession, and an annoying man who won’t shut up and let people read in peace:

“We’ll have to put a stop to this bookworming. No future in that.” (Molly Keane, Good Behaviour)

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This is my final contribution to Reading Ireland Month 2018, hosted by Cathy at 746 Books and Raging Fluff. Do check out the posts from the month, it’s been great 😊

I had 2 Molly Keane novels in my substantial TBR, so this seemed a perfect opportunity to get to know an author so many seem to enjoy. I began with her first novel, the wonderfully titled The Knight of Cheerful Countenance (1926). Unbelievably, she wrote this at the age of 17 to supplement her dress allowance (!) and chose the pseudonym MJ Farrell to hide what she was doing from her friends, who were all huntin’ shootin’ fishin’ types. Molly Keane wrote the introduction to my Virago edition and it’s well worth a read, to hear tales of friends with uncles called Major Hyacinth Devereaux and the butler shrouding the parrot before morning prayers. I’d love to know if she ever met the Mitfords.

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Image from here

The plot of The Knight of Cheerful Countenance is slight: Allan comes to visit his Irish cousins, falls in love with one who loves another, while his other cousin falls in love with him. It’s full of horses and slightly less full of bloodsports, thankfully. There were about 2 passages I skipped because I just really don’t want to read about such things. And yet despite these unpromising qualities, I thoroughly enjoyed the novel.

In her introduction Keane fully acknowledges that the incredibly privileged, oblivious existence of her childhood and young adulthood is gone forever. The novel makes passing reference to the political situation of the time, but Allan and his cousins Ann and Sybil are walled up on an estate away from it all:

“Deeds of unbelievable foulness and treachery were still – judging by the newspapers – of almost daily occurrence in the land, but they seemed to leave untouched the district of Bungarvin. Yet wrecked police barracks and courthouses, country houses standing empty, and the charred walls of what had once been country houses, all went to show how little of a myth was the state of civil war in Ireland.”

As the title suggests, the novel is a romance and there is most certainly an escapist quality to it (the first publishers were Mills & Boon, although I think they published a wider range then than they do now).

“Dennys St Lawrence presented as good a picture of young manhood as one could wish to see on any glorious summer morning. With his bare dark head and his grey eyes, his handsome horse, and his easy seat in the saddle, he belonged to this Irish morning with complete entirety.”

This isn’t straight romance though. Keane views the events and the people with a fond, humorous eye:

“Silence, however, never reigned for long when Allan was anywhere about.

‘Jolly little successful what-not, what?’ he observed affably, by way of starting the conversation.”

The Knight of Cheerful Countenance is a short novel (272 pages) and so it doesn’t flag, and I would never have guessed it was written by a 17 year old. It’s not the most accomplished piece, but it’s not juvenilia either. I don’t really feel I’ve done it justice here. It’s very readable and good fun, and it certainly made me want to read more by Molly Keane.

Which is exactly what I did. Loving Without Tears (1951) was Keane’s tenth novel and she was also a successful dramatist by this time, so it is a much more sophisticated novel than her first. It is much darker than The Knight of Cheerful Countenance, centring around a wholly manipulative matriarch, the inappropriately monikered Angel, who bends her children, niece and faithful retainers to her will.

“Each worshipped her and each lamp should have its due portion of oil to feed that flame of worship, and from each she would obtain the maximum of that slave labour which is the expression of such a love.”

She is an absolute tyrant, all the more despicable because her tyranny is couched in expressions of maternal love and concern. But things are about to change. Her son Julian has returned from the war with a fiancée who is (shock!) American, and a woman of the world. She sees through Angel and will not be manipulated, unlike Angel’s daughter Slaney, who is oblivious to her mother trying to split her up from the man she loves:

“As a gardener tends nectarines, so did Angel minister anxiously to skin and hair and health of body. As well, she disciplined the beautiful body towards an excellence in the sports best calculated for its exhibition – a garlanded, shampooed young heifer, her looks a miracle, her thoughts unknown, Angel led her daughter by a ribbon towards the supreme sacrifice and glory of the right marriage.”

There’s also a niece, Tiddley, who Angel abuses despicably, bribing her to help with her plans to disrupt her children’s lives. The nanny Birdie, sees things as they are:

 “the love she’s pinching out from each of us, same as I’d disbud a rose”

Yet the brilliance of Keane’s writing means that while I desperately wanted everyone to wake-up to what Angel was up to, and for her to get her comeuppance, I didn’t want her punished too badly. Loving Without Tears is an astute psychological study of a woman who behaves appallingly, but it is done without heavy judgement and you are left to fill in some gaps as to why Angel behaves as she does. To some extent it is a comedy of manners; if only everyone can cast aside convention and have an honest conversation, everything will work out. So it is funny, but with a cynical undertone running through it which stops it being fluffy. I enjoyed watching it all play out pretty much as I expected (not a criticism, I enjoy Austen for the same reason) and the ending was entirely satisfying.

To end, a song about another famous Irish Molly:

“I only take a drink on two occasions – when I’m thirsty and when I’m not.” (Brendan Behan)

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This is my second contribution to Reading Ireland Month 2018, hosted by Cathy at 746 Books and Raging Fluff. Do join in!

As with my previous Reading Ireland 2018 post, I picked two books at random from the TBR, but they turned out to be thematically linked. They are both about the impact of alcohol dependency on families, and both achieve the difficult balance of not being depressing yet not shying away from the damage alcohol can cause. Orange juices all round everyone – or maybe a cup of tea?

Firstly, Paula Spencer by Roddy Doyle (2006), a sequel to his 1996 novel, The Woman Who Walked Into Doors. I thought TWWWID was brilliantly written, and I was looking forward to catching up with Paula again and finding out what she’d made of her life beyond her abusive husband. At the start of the novel Paula is 4 months sober.

“She’s tired at night and that’s the way it should be. A hard day’s work and that. She likes being tired. Tired and sober – it’s different. The sleep is different – it’s sleep. Although she doesn’t always sleep. But it’s grand; it’s fine. She’s not complaining.

Who’d listen?

She brushes her teeth. The important ones are there. The ones at the front. The missing ones aren’t seen, unless she smiles too wide. Then the gaps appear.”

We don’t learn what prompted Paula to commit to sobriety this time but she’s sticking with it. She’s worried about her kids: Nicola has grown up too quickly, caring for Paula and her siblings; John Paul has given up drugs but is in a relationship with a woman Paula’s not keen on; Jack is fine, but Leanne seems to be following in her mother’s footsteps:

“What does an alcoholic mother say to her alcoholic daughter? It’s shocking. It’s terrible. But Paula’s not falling down on the ground. She’s not running away or pretending it’s not there, or screaming and making it worse, All the things she’s done before and will probably do again.

I am an alcoholic.

She’s facing it.

She drinks her tea standing up. She needs the energy that standing up gives her, the alertness.”

Paula facing it was what I really liked about the characterisation in this novel. She feels guilty about the past, but she doesn’t beat herself up over it – if anyone’s had enough beatings it’s Paula. She allows that she’s human, and she never pities herself. She’s a remarkable woman, a strong woman, although she doesn’t see it.

“Maybe it’s the way the brain works to protect itself. It invents a new woman who can look back and wonder, instead of look back and howl. Maybe it happens to everyone. But it’s definitely the drink, or life without it. It’s a different world. She’s not sure she likes it that much. But she’s a new-old woman, learning how to live.”

This is the problem for addicts: often by the time they’re ready to be sober, there’s very little to be sober for. But Paula takes the life she has, her problematic relationship with her kids, her low-paid, hard-graft job and she gets on with it. This isn’t bleak or depressing, it’s actually a believable and life-affirming story of human endurance and resilience.

“She sits back and it sits beside her. The need, the thirst – it’s there, here.”

As with TWWWID, I was absolutely rooting for Paula. It’s her story and as it was in TWWWID her voice is crystal clear and so real. But it’s also a story of modern Ireland: the Celtic Tiger, being part of the EU – Paula is the only Irish cleaner at her work – and contemporary music that Paula takes joy in, learning what came after Thin Lizzy. It’s about redemption, personal and national (the IRA disarm towards the end), but a redemption that carries the past with it:

“All of Paula’s past is in her back. It’s there, ready, breathing. One last kick from a man who died twelve years ago.”

Secondly, Tatty by Christine Dwyer Hickey (2004). In Paula Spencer, the question is posed: “Alcoholics can stop drinking but what is there for the children of alcoholics? Is it always too late? Probably. She doesn’t know.” and this is what Tatty is concerned with. It follows Tatty over 10 years as the child of at least one alcoholic, possibly two. Hickey manages a remarkable feat in capturing both a child’s point of view and writing in the second person in a way that isn’t annoying:

“And you can feel your face wobbling like jelly when the car goes out of town and over the cobblestones, and you can see all the dark houses on all the dark roads; then you can lie down and look at the orange street lights, pulling you home on a long orange string.”

Tatty is an observant, confused, conflicted child. She lives in a world where men and women live clearly delineated lives, separate from one another. Tatty adores her roguish father and this adds to her isolation from her mother:

“They stay in the kitchen; they sit at the table and smoke cigarettes and drink tea and give out stink about men and that’s a bit mean because the men never give out about them. The men never say anything about them at all.”

Tatty is a bright child and she finds solace and companionship in books:

“They’re nearly as good as real friends anyway, because she can go places with them and talk to them and they talk back and include her in. Sometimes they’re even better than real friends, because you just don’t just know what they look like and where they live; you know as well what they’re thinking and how they feel about things. A real friend mightn’t tell you something like that.”

Hickey brilliantly captures the pain of childhood even when it is barely acknowledged by the child. Tatty and her siblings have markers of difference that are picked up on by the other children. Her sister ditches her milk on the way to school because it’s in a whiskey bottle. The fact that the family have little money and the children are neglected is perfectly obvious to the other children at school:

“Sometimes you can match the girls to their lunches. The best lunches belong to the same sort of girls. Girls with lace socks and black patent shoes. Girls like Geraldine Draper. She gets a Club Milk and a bottle of Coca-Cola that she opens with her own proper opener, She gets triangle sandwiches packed into her lunch box and King crisps her Dad buys in a shop near his work…She has bouncy ringlets squirting all over her head and a different ribbon for every day of the year…She has lovely plastic covers on her schoolbooks; her pencil case is always packed.”

Tatty is offered an escape when she goes away to boarding school. We don’t know why she is going because Tatty doesn’t know, but it may be because she is her father’s favourite and the brightest. She finds the separation from family not remotely traumatic:

“Tatty tries to think what homesick means and why it makes you cry. When Mam goes mental she might start shouting, I’m sick of this bloody house! I’m sick of it! Sick of it!

But she knows that can’t be the same thing.”

Tatty is a subtle novel. We can see the damage being caused by the parents but it is never hammered home, because Tatty herself is not aware of it. It stops the novel from being unrelenting bleak, but it doesn’t obscure the damage that is being done to a family by the alcohol dependency. The final image in the novel is truly heart-breaking and it left me reeling.

To end, another clip from Father Ted, and a reminder that reading Roddy Doyle can have side effects:

“The light of the day is followed by night, as a shadow follows a body.” (Aristotle)

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We’ve arrived at the equinox where day and night are of equal length. In the northern hemisphere it’s the Spring Equinox and I’d love to say that winter finally seems far behind us but it’s still bloomin’ freezing.

Still, I’m hopeful that the weather will soon rectify my plummeting levels of vitamin D, and to celebrate I’ve chosen one novel set over a single day, and one set over a single night.

Firstly, daytime with The Pigeon by Patrick Suskind (1987, trans. John E Woods), which is a novella of just 77 pages in my edition, and yet feels entirely complete. It tells of a day in the life of Jonathan Noel, a bank security guard whose ordered, circumscribed life suits him perfectly. He lives in one room, goes to work, comes home and follows a routine whereby he tries to draw as little attention to himself as possible. Then one morning he opens his front door to find a pigeon sat there. The pigeon has also fouled the communal hallway.

“no human being can go on living in the same house with a pigeon, a pigeon is the epitome of chaos and anarchy, a pigeon that whizzes around unpredictably, that sets its claws in you, picks at your eyes, a pigeon that never stops soiling and spreading the filth and havoc of bacteria and meningitis virus, that doesn’t just stay alone, one pigeon lures other pigeons…”

As a Londoner that passage definitely spoke to me.

Jonathan manages to leave his room and get himself to work, but the presence of the pigeon has entirely destabilised him.

“But today everything was different. Today Jonathan was having no success whatever at achieving his sphinx-like calm. After only a few minutes he could feel the burden of his body as a painful pressure”

As we follow Jonathan through his day, a day beset by small catastrophes, Suskind shows “how quickly the solidly laid foundation of one’s existence could crumble.” Why Jonathan is so utterly discombobulated by the pigeon is never fully explained, but the tale is entirely believable. Jonathan is lonely and frustrated and the pigeon exposes the fissures in his careful façade.

“He had a mighty urge to pull out his pistol and let loose in every direction […] into the hot sky, into the horrible, oppressive, vaporous, pigeon blue-grey sky, bursting it, sending the leaden lid crashing with one shot, smashing down and pulverising everything and burying it all”

The Pigeon was Suskind’s follow-up to the massively successful Perfume. This is a very different tale  but an equally memorable piece of writing. Determinedly grounded in banal everyday detail, The Pigeon highlights the extraordinary inner lives that could be taking place beneath the most ordinary of outer lives.

 

Secondly, into night with After Dark by Haruki Murakami (2004, trans. Jay Rubin) which follows a group of characters from just before midnight to just before dawn in Tokyo. A young girl, Mari, is reading in a nearly empty diner, when she encounters Takahasi, a musician who knows her and her beautiful model sister Eri. He’s chatty and seemingly unperturbed by Eri’s self-contained reticence. The difficulty of communication between people is a recurring theme:

“ ‘Finally, no matter what I say, it doesn’t reach her. This layer, like some kind of transparent sponge kind of thing, stands there between Eri Asai and me, and the words that come out of my mouth have to pass through it, and when that happens, The sponge sucks almost all the nutrients right out of them.’ ”

This idea of permeable surfaces also recurs, bring a surreal element to the story. Eri is asleep, watched by a masked man through an unplugged television set. At one point, Eri is dragged into the scene within the television. Meanwhile, Mari walks away from a mirror she has been gazing into:

“A closer look reveals that Mari’s image is still reflected in the mirror over the sink. The Mari in the mirror is looking from her side into this side. Her sombre gaze seems to be expecting some kind of occurrence. But there is no one on this side. Only her image is left in the Skylark’s restroom mirror.”

This surreal quality mixes with the viscerally real – a Chinese prostitute is beaten up and Mari is asked by the ex-wrestler manager of a love hotel to come and translate for her; characters search for and consume food; Shirakawa, the attacker, works late in his office and does sit-ups. The matter-of-fact narration is highly effective in grounding the story in a recognisable reality but also emphasising the unsettling, eerie quality of the tale. It is precisely because Tokyo and its inhabitants are so recognisable that the unpredictable, nocturnal elements are so unnerving. From this background, there is the possibility that Mari and Takahasi may begin a tentative romance:

“ ‘Wanna walk a little?’ Mari says.

‘Sure, let’s walk. Walking is good for you. Walk slowly, drink lots of water.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘It’s my motto for life. ‘Walk slowly; drink lots of water.’

Mari looks at him. Weird motto. She does not comment on it however, or ask him about it. She gets out of the swing and starts walking. He follows her.”

I read After Dark in a wonderfully apt setting: a weirdly empty night bus (at only 201 pages I was able to finish it on the journey). I felt Murakami perfectly captured a sense of night, of the unknown, and of possibility.  He uses the night to heighten his portrayal of transgressed boundaries and of what is hidden, both knowingly and unknowingly, from others and from ourselves.

 “ ‘It’s not as if our lives are divided simply into light and dark. There’s a shadowy middle ground. Recognising and understanding the shadows is what a healthy intelligence does.’”

To end, a classy song choice for once 😉

“Our mothers always remain the strangest, craziest people we’ve ever met.” (Marguerite Duras)

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It’s Mother’s Day today here in the UK and in Ireland, Nigeria, Jersey, Guernsey & the Isle of Man. The shops have never been so awash with pastel bouquets; trying to find a non-twee arrangement for a woman who would think I had lost my mind if I presented her with such has proved an epic quest.

Sometimes I worry my mother and I have a weird relationship (we definitely do). The run up to today has also been a cause of tension, as its my birthday, and we both think the other person should be the focus of the celebration* (I mean, 41 years old, who cares?) There’s nothing like reading about dysfunctional relationships to make you feel comparatively better about your own, so here are 2 short novels that expertly portray difficult, strange but loving mother/daughter relationships.

Firstly, Hot Milk by Deborah Levy (2016). Sofia and her mother Rose are in the south of Spain, desperately hoping (at least, Sofia is) that the unconventional approach of Dr Gomez will cure Rose of her various and variable health problems. The two of them have a claustrophobically co-dependent relationship, and while Sofia admits “I want a bigger life.” she is unable to tear herself away from her mother, physically and emotionally:

“I dared not move to a less painful position because I knew that she was scared and that I had to pretend not to be. She had no God to plead to for mercy or luck. It would be true to say she depended instead on human kindness and painkillers.”

Dr Gomez’s approach is psychological as well as physical, and he orders Sofia to spend time away from her mother. As the sun beats down, Sofia has time to think. Back in London, she works in a coffee shop and sleeps in what basically amounts to a cupboard on the premises. She has given up her PhD in social anthropology, but still thinks like a social anthropologist, such as when considering a woman she is interested in:

“Who is Ingrid Bauer? What are her beliefs and sacred ceremonies? Does she have economic autonomy? What are her rituals with menstrual blood? How does she react to the winter season? What is her attitude to beggars? Does she believe she has a soul? If she does, is it embodied by anything else? A bird or a tiger? Does she have an app for Uber on her smartphone? Her lips are so soft.”

We are entirely inside Sofia’s head and it is a suffocating, fascinating place to be. She is a mixture of insight and naivety, self-knowledge and self-delusion, but she starts to peel back a few layers of her life.

 “Anything covered is always interesting. There is never nothing beneath something that is covered.”

The relationship between Sofia and Rose is as suffocating as the heat that surrounds them, but Levy builds this up in small, telling details.

 “Sometimes, I find myself limping. It’s as if my body remembers the way I walk with my mother. Memory is not always reliable. It is not the whole truth. Even I know that.”

This idea of subjective truth permeates the novel. If Rose is a hypochondriac, or if she is deliberately manipulating or daughter, or if she is truly unwell, the result is the same. The truth of Rose, of Sofia, of their individual identities and relationship together will shift and change constantly. There is understanding but they don’t necessarily know one another, or themselves.

 “I have more of an ear for the language of symptoms and side effects, because that is my mother’s language. Perhaps it is my mother tongue.”

Levy is not interested in making Sofia or Rose likeable, yet both are sympathetic. They are both floundering, and this is described in beautiful precise prose.

“She had catalogued over a billion words but she could not find words for how her own wishes for herself had been dispersed in the winds and storms of a world not arranged to her advantage.”

Hot Milk has stayed with me long after I finished it. It is not a novel that ties things up neatly, because Levy would never be so trite, but that does not mean it is not satisfying. It’s a brilliant, disturbing story that creates an oppressive atmosphere and believable characters. A fully realised story in a small space: my favourite kind of writing.

Secondly, My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout (2016). I haven’t read Olive Kitteridge, which won Strout the Pulitzer Prize, but I definitely will now because the writing in Lucy Barton was perfection. Like Hot Milk, it’s a short tale (thanks to terrible London traffic I read the whole thing on an arduous journey to work one morning) but fully realised.

Lucy is looking back on when she was hospitalised with appendicitis. In a time before mobile phones and other digital communication (sometime in the 1980s) she feels isolated and so her husband asks her mother to visit her. Her mother has never been on a plane but she is a determined character and gets herself from the fields of Illinois to the concrete jungle of New York, to ask her daughter questions like:

“‘Wizzle, how can you live with no sky?’”

They haven’t seen each other in many years yet Lucy is happy to see her. The estrangement has emerged rather than been absolutely decided upon, but estrangement it most certainly is. Lucy’s childhood was not a happy one  and we gradually learn this through her recollections – most certainly not through any open discussion with her mother.

“There are times now, and my life has changed so completely, that I think back on the early years and I find myself thinking: It was not that bad. Perhaps it was not. But there are times too – unexpected – when walking down a sunny sidewalk, or watching the top of a tree bend in the wind, or seeing a November sky close down over the East River, I am suddenly filled with the knowledge of darkness so deep that a sound might escape my mouth, and I will step into the nearest clothing store to talk with a stranger about the shape of sweaters newly arrived.”

Lucy’s family was also incredibly poor, and yet it is this that has made her a college graduate and a writer, escaping her home town, something her brother and sister have not managed.

“There are elements that determine paths taken, and we can seldom find them or point to them accurately, but I have sometimes thought how I would stay late at school, where it was warm, just to be warm.”

Her mother regales her with anecdotes about families in their home town, but they never address the issues in their own family. It is never fully articulated exactly what went on, but it seems Lucy’s father had PTSD following the war, and was given to violent fits of temper.

“I took Vicky away in the fields until it was dark and we became more afraid of the dark than our own home, I still am not sure it’s a true memory, except I do know it, I think. I mean: It is true. Ask anyone who knew us.”

Not explicitly explaining what happened is a master stroke by Strout. The idea of unreliable memory is a recurring one and she effectively captures how family history is a mix of shared differing memories, understanding, bafflement, conflict and love. We rarely sit down and objectively explain our families and who we are to ourselves at length; it’s too close to see and insights come in flashes rather than long interior monologues. Lucy understands as best she can, and she accepts what she can.

“ ‘Lucy comes from nothing.’ I took no offense, and really, I take none now. But I think: No one in this world comes from nothing.”

Strout is a wonderful writer. She is interested in people and in presenting them in their unfinished state – there is a feeling her characters can surprise you, as we surprise each other and ourselves, because no-one is wholly consistent or coherent all of the time. She writes simply but beautifully.

“Lonely was the first flavour I had tasted in my life, and it was always there, hidden in the crevices of my mouth, reminding me.”

To end, my mother combines her mothering of me with that of my brother, who was a big Mr T fan when we were wee. But that’s really no justification for what follows:

*pub lunch

“I feel more and more the time wasted that is not spent in Ireland.” (Lady Gregory)

/ madamebibilophile / 19 Comments

Here’s a contribution to Reading Ireland Month 2018, hosted by Cathy at 746 Books and Raging Fluff. I hope to get a couple more in before the month is out 😊 Do join in!

These first 2 choices I picked pretty much at random, but they actually have a lot in common. Both published in the last few years and both set in the 1990s, documenting a young woman’s time at university. This was the era when I went away to uni for the first time (embarassingly there have been many times since, I am the eternal student) and both absolutely captured that period spot on. To help take us back, here’s a 1990s ad break – Levi adverts were huuuuge in the 90s and this was my favourite, probably because I like being in water:

On with books. Firstly, Tender by Belinda McKeon (2015) which I read after being convinced by Cathy’s excellent review. Told from the point of view of Catherine, Tender details her relationship with James, a funny, delightful man who bowls her over from the start:

“Everything about him was so lit up by this brilliant, glinting comedy”

Their friendship becomes very intense, very quickly. Catherine has arrived in Dublin having led a sheltered life where her every move is reported back to her parents by neighbours. James has just returned from Berlin, whereas Catherine has never been on a plane.

“She had never heard a boy talk so sincerely, so emotionally, before. She had actually squirmed, listening to him. If he had been joking, if he had been being ironic, that would have been one thing, but this was not irony, this was strange, unafraid openness.”

However, James is not quite as open as he first appears. While Catherine comes out of her shell at uni, having sex, drinking, having fun, she gradually realises that glittering James has a secret. It’s unlikely that any reader will be as naïve and inexperienced as Catherine, so I don’t think its much of a spoiler to say James is gay, and he eventually comes out to her. McKeon brilliantly captures how this announcement causes Catherine-as-she-used-to-be to hit against Catherine-as-she-is-becoming:

“Widen her eyes; force them full of brightness. Show none of the riot going on inside; the bafflement, the confusion with all its stupid roars and plumettings, the astonishment, the weird temptation to stare….Nothing was more urgent now than to keep all of this out, to keep her face soft with calm and with intelligence and with openness, the face of someone wiser, someone better, the face of someone that she wanted, so badly, to be.”

James’ struggles may have (thankfully) dated, but his hurt and pain are fresh:

“I watch everyone Catherine, I watch them live their lives, and I watch them meet the people they can love, and I watch them go on their dates, and take over sitting rooms to have sex with them, and I – what am I supposed to do?”

The real strength of the novel is how McKeon captures the vulnerability, confusion and intensity of young adult lives without losing older, cynical readers like me. Catherine is immature, selfish and behaves appallingly at one point. And yet I really felt for her. However misguided, however possessive and unreasonable she is, she’s a young woman struggling to find her way:

“She wanted the brilliant, funny, vibrant James, lit up with enjoyment, teeming with it, and she wanted him to be only her friend. She did not want him to love the others this much, to take such unbridled pleasure in their presence.”

Tender brilliantly captures a specific time in the 1990s – all the pop culture references brought it flooding back to me – and a time in people’s lives that transcends the specific circumstances. McKeon’s psychological observations are acute but the novel never falters under the weight of this. The characters with all their flaws, their brilliance and their mundanities, have really stayed with me. Tender is a  moving novel, recognisable and touching.

Secondly, The Lesser Bohemians by Eimear McBride (2016). McBride’s first novel, A Girl is a Half Formed Thing, used stream of consciousness and struggled for years to find a publisher as it was seen as non-commercial. It went on to have gratifyingly huge success. This, her second novel, also breaks down language and syntax, but I thought it was a bit less deconstructed than her first, possibly more approachable. Eily arrives at drama school in London from Ireland, terrified and excited:

“Remember people are blind to under your skin or. Under my skin now.”

“All the speculative friendships I, jealous, observe. It’s just space but I have so much distance to make and this seems a wistful world.”

McBride’s style perfectly suits the overwhelming confusion of feelings that come with being young, in a new city and reeling from all the new experiences and opportunities that are landing at your feet.

“Sun of the morning. London day. The banjaxed exhuming themselves from doorways. Buses and music. Spivs and Goths. New Age Travellers and leather coats and too-tight jeans and diamond whites. Everywhere heaves of fighting in the streets. This is the finest city I think and, no matter how awkward or bloodily I am in it now.”

She meets Stephen, an actor 20 years her senior, and the two of them begin a relationship. It is a long time before it is articulated as such, and in the meantime there are misunderstandings, jealousies and horrible sex with other people. Eily and Stephen are both deeply damaged and McBride picks apart their individual pain and the loving, difficult relationship they create together with perfectly paced plotting and telling detail. It is a heavy-going story at times without doubt, but there is humour there too, such as Eily’s speculation as to Stephen’s dating life:

“They’ll speak interestingly of the Royal Court at some elegant restaurant where he’ll footsie her up. Then go back to her flat. Pet her Siamese cat and spend the night inside because he’s the type who knows what’s good for him – women who give men what they want. Not me, with a band-aid in the hook of my bra, unable even to fake it and no idea.”

The Lesser Bohemians is a love story, but absolutely not romanticised in any way. Eily and Stephen come from deeply disturbed backgrounds and they both keep messing up, frequently. They are also both likeable, and so much more than their pasts. They are trying to move forward into rewarding, fulfilling lives individually and together. They have found each other and they love each other.

“I’ve pushed my fingers right through his skin, caught hold of his ribs and must now fall with him.”

McBride is a stunning writer and she can craft sentences of breathtaking beauty. Anything by her is a must-read.

To end, when I first went to uni I only had a few CDs (yes kids, my music was stored on discs!), one of which was Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? by Limerick band The Cranberries, featuring the beautiful voice of lead singer Dolores O’Riordan, who sadly died this year:

“STELLA! STELLA!” (Stanley Kowalski, A Streetcar Named Desire)

/ madamebibilophile / 45 Comments

I’m not a big follower of book prizes although I like the Bailey’s Prize and usually try & read the Booker winner. However, the annual Stella Prize, which started in 2013 and awards outstanding Australian women’s writing, has lists which always look fascinating and wide-ranging. Currently the 2018 long list has been announced and the shortlist will be revealed on International Women’s Day, 8 March. I hadn’t read any of the winners and obviously this enormous oversight needed correcting. Also, Kate at Booksaremyfavouriteandbest’s wonderful reviews of the last two winners convinced me I needed to rectify this sooner rather than later.

The 2017 winner was The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose. You can read Kate’s review here. It is an extraordinary novel, centred around the real-life event of The Artist is Present by Marina Abramovic, a 2010 performance art installation at MoMA in New York, which you can read about here.

Arky Levin is a film score composer, estranged from his wife and devoted to the city:

“When he moved to New York… and found the stars in their gaping darkness were nowhere to be seen, eclipsed by SoHo apartments and Midtown high-rises, Chinatown neons and flashy Fifth Avenue commercial buildings…he felt he had won. That humanity had won. New York was brighter than the universe bearing down on them. For this alone he had decided that he could live here forever and entirely expected to.”

Arky attends the installation for each of the 75 days it is in situ, and during this time he witnesses the profound effect the installation has on people. Marina sits one side of a table, and the public volunteers sit opposite her one at a time, gazing into her eyes. They can stay for as little or as long as they want, but they must make eye contact.

“Here in New York, where time was everyone’s currency, and to gaze deeply into the face of another was possibly a sign of madness, people were flocking to sit with Marina Abramovic. She wasn’t so much stealing hearts, he thought, as awakening them. The light that came into their eyes. Their intelligence, their sadness, all of it tumbled out as people sat.”

Such a simple but incredibly powerful idea, and the installation was a smash hit. Similarly, Rose uses a simple writing style to explore massive themes: love in many guises, loss, art, the desperate need for meaning in life and how we locate it. Arky learns about other and himself simply by sitting and watching the installation.

“Art will wake you up. Art will break your heart. There will be glorious days. If you want eternity, you must be fearless.”

The Museum of Modern Love, as the title suggests, is a love story, but not in the traditional sense. It is not a romance between two people. Instead it is a love story about people and all they can give to one another, as lovers, friends, relatives, artist and spectator. It is life-affirming without being sentimental. Rose acknowledges there is pain for people, but suggests that we have to get out there anyway, engage in acts of love in a myriad of ways, find connection and transcend.

“She was watching Marina Abramovic in her white dress on this final day of her enduring love. For hadn’t it been that for Abramovic? An act of love that said, This is all I have been, this is what I have become in travelling the places of my soul and my nation, my family and my ancestral blood. This is what I have learned. It is all about connection. If we do it with the merest amount of intention and candour and fearlessness, this is the biggest love we can feel. It’s more than love but we don’t have a bigger word.”

And here she is, on the last day, in the white dress:

In 2016 the winner was The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood. You can read Kate’s review here. I wish I’d read The Museum of Modern Love after this, as it would have been a good aid to recovery. The Natural Way of Things is brutal, shocking, urgent and without doubt one of the most powerful books I’ve read in recent years. It has absolutely stayed with me.

A group of young women are kidnapped and held hostage in a large, bleak piece of land in the outback, surrounded by an electric fence. There is no escape, and gradually they realise no-one is coming for them.

“Nobody knows. They have been here almost a week. Nobody has come, nothing has happened but waiting and labour and dog kennels and DIGNITY & RESPECT and beatings and fear and a piece of concrete guttering, and now perhaps infection is coming too.”

Gradually it emerges that all the women have a sex scandal in their past. These are never fully explained but enough information is given for the reader to realise that in each case, the power lay with the men involved, and in each case, the women are the vilified parties. Possibly they have been taken by a moral fanatic, who we never see. Their heads are shaved, their clothes taken and replaced with basic garments, including Handmaid’s Tale style bonnets, which come to represent both a coping mechanism and gradual institutionalisation for some of the captives:

“they depend on them for the snug containment of their heads, covering their ears, the obscured vision. Verla can understand it, though only from a distance. She used to hold them in contempt for keeping the bonnets; not anymore. But still, for her herself, that limp, stinking thing felt more like a prison than this whole place.”

As food supplies dwindle and illness threatens, the women fight for survival in their various ways. Their jailers are pathetic and inept, but also men and they hold the power.

“He frowns down and Verla knows he is thinking ugh at the two filthy girls, that he is freshly fearful of the lice eggs in their matted hair, of Verla stretched white with illness, of Yolanda and her rusted weaponry. He fears their thin feral bodies, their animal disease and power.”

The Natural Way of Things is about how society figures men and women, where power lies, how that is wielded and how predator and prey lies barely concealed in human relationships. It is beautifully written, perfectly paced, and absolutely terrifying.

To end, what else?

“Nature is commonplace. Imitation is more interesting.” (Gertrude Stein)

/ madamebibilophile / 22 Comments

Last month Kaggsy wrote about enjoying Pistache by Sebastian Faulks. It sounded good fun, do head over to her Bookish Ramblings & read Kaggsy’s excellent review. In this year of my book buying ban (still in effect & being adhered to, much to my utter amazement) I’ve put my name on the waiting list for Pistache at the library, and managed to hunt down two pastiche novels in my TBR mountain.

When I was doing my English degree, there was much talk of post-structuralism, post-modernism, post-lots of things I didn’t really grasp (which I would mention in essays hoping my tutors didn’t question me too closely on them – a flawed strategy as it turned out). How I wish I had read Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy then, because he takes notions of post-whatever, such as the instability of meaning, the non-specificity of language, the fragmented self, and uses them to weave a fascinating pastiche of the hard-boiled detective novel. I realise I’m not doing him any favours in this summary but trust me, it does work.  It’s done in a humorous way, and there’s enough of a narrative to pull you along, although at times my brain hurt trying to think through all that Auster was discussing.

In the first story, City of Glass, Auster begins by questioning his role as author:

“ ‘Is this Paul Auster?’ asked the voice. ‘I would like to speak to Mr Paul Auster.’

‘There’s no-one here by that name.’

‘Paul Auster. Of the Auster detective agency.’

… ‘There’s nothing I can do for you,’ said Quinn. ‘There’s no Paul Auster here.’”

There is of course a ‘Paul Auster here’ – his name is on the cover – but exactly where is a matter of debate. Quinn, the writer in City of Glass, is mistaken for Paul Auster and finds himself impersonating a private eye:

“Private eye. The term held a triple meaning for Quinn. Not only was it the letter ‘i’, standing for investigator, it was ‘I’ in the upper case, the tiny life-bud buried in the body of the breathing self. At the same time, it was the physical eye of the writer, the eye of the man who looks out from himself into the world and demands that the world reveal itself to him. For five years now, Quinn had been living in the grip of this pun.”

So, multiple identities, multiple meanings, utter confusion. Quinn locates the man he has been asked to find, someone who spends his days wandering the streets, picking up junk and re-naming things:

“I have come to New York because it is the most forlorn of places, the most abject. The brokenness is everywhere, the disarray is universal. You only have to open your eyes to see it. The broken people, the broken things, the broken thoughts….I find the streets an endless source of material, an inexhaustible storehouse of shattered things”

Throughout this and the two stories that follow, Ghosts and The Locked Room, Auster explores how people are ‘shattered things’, how easily identity and the language used to construct it fall apart. For him, unsurprisingly, this is all bound up in the storyteller’s art:

“We all want to be told stories, and we listen to them in the same way we did when we were young. We imagine the real story inside the words, and to do this we substitute ourselves for the person inside the story, pretending that we can understand him because we understand ourselves. This is a deception. We exist for ourselves, perhaps, and at times we even have a glimmer of who we are, but in the end we can never be sure, and as our lives go on, we become more and more opaque to ourselves, more and more aware of our own incoherence. No one can cross the boundary into another – for the simple reason that no one can gain access to himself.”

The trilogy was originally released separately but I think it works best read together. The stories interweave and reflect each other, and so build on the sense of a ‘fractured whole’ being reflected in the structure of the book we hold in our hands. It may be that “these three stories are finally the same story”, but they are different enough to enrich each other and at no time did I feel my attention wavering. It’s a great achievement: stories that deconstruct the very thing they are made out of – language – and yet still hold together.

“Each sentence erased the sentence before it, each paragraph made the next paragraph impossible. It is odd then, that the feeling that survives from this notebook is one of great lucidity.”

Secondly, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon (2007), an alternative history detective novel. Chabon takes the idea that a settlement for Jewish refugees is provided in Alaska during the Second World War (an idea was proposed but rejected in 1940) and this has developed into the metropolis of Sitka. Policing this city is Meyer Landsman:

“According to doctors, therapists, and his ex-wife, Landsman drinks to medicate himself, tuning the tubes and crystals of his moods with a crude hammer of hundred-proof plum brandy. But the truth is that Landsman has only two moods: working and dead.”

The first of those two moods is under threat: Sitka is going to become part of the USA again and no-one is sure what will happen when it does but they’re fairly sure it won’t be good (reading this in post-Brexit Britain, it took on a whole new resonance):

“On the first of January, sovereignty over the whole Federal District of Sitka, a crooked parenthesis of rocky shoreline running along the western edges of Baranof and Chichagof islands, with revert to Alaska. The District Police, to which Landsman has devoted his hide, head, and soul for twenty years, will be dissolved. It is far from clear that Landsman or Berko Shemets or anybody else will be keeping his job. Nothing is clear about the upcoming Reversion and that is why these are strange times to be a Jew.”

“Strange times to be a Jew” is a recurring refrain throughout the novel. Landsman lives in a seedy hotel and is investigating the murder of fellow resident Mendel Shpilman. Spilman was a drug addict and also the son of the most powerful organised crime boss and local rebbe, from whom he was estranged. As he undertakes the investigation Landsman manages to annoy absolutely everyone, from the powerful crimelords to his ex-wife and boss, Bina. Chabon has fun with the form, but doesn’t go overboard on the pastiche of hardboiled crime. He employs colourful turns of phrase:

“The space recently occupied by his mind hisses like the fog in his ears, hums like a bank of fluorescent tubes. He feels he suffers from tinnitus of the soul.”

But The Yiddish Policeman’s Union is always its own story and not a gimmick-laden creative writing exercise. Chabon is exploring ideas of identity, home, belonging and justice alongside an appreciation for Raymond Chandler.

“For the first time the traditional complaint, tantamount to a creed or philosophy, of the Sitka Jew – Nobody gives a damn about us, stuck up here between Hoonah and Hotzeplotz – strikes Landsman as having been a blessing these past sixty years, and not the affliction they had all, in their backwater of geography and history, supposed.”

I don’t rate this quite as highly as other novels by Chabon that I’ve read – it was a bit overlong and I think it could have been 100 pages lighter, but still an ambitious and interesting work and I’m glad to have novelists like Chabon are around, attempting to do something different.

To end, trying to come up with a pastiche song that’s bearable was a tough call. In the end I chose The Divine Comedy, who offer pastiche of several things all at once. I opted for Something for the Weekend as I think it references Cold Comfort Farm with the repeated reference to ‘something in the woodshed’ and so is the obvious choice for a book blog:

“Live fully, live passionately, live disastrously. Let’s live, you and I, as none have ever lived before.” (Violet Trefusis to Vita Sackville-West, 1918)

/ madamebibilophile / 23 Comments

Happy Valentine’s Day! And for those who are single (such as myself), console yourself that we don’t have to go to an overpriced, overcrowded restaurant to have our meal interrupted by tired-looking pushers of sad hothouse roses in buckets whilst couples around us try and hide their mutual disdain for one another as their relationships teeter on the brink of collapse under the pressure of meeting the impossible standards of commercially appropriated romantic love 😉

As I said, Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!

*fans self*

For Valentine’s Day I thought I’d look at two novels concerned with romantic love. A brief foray through my TBR and I struggled to find anything that showed it in a positive light, which says much about my reading tastes. I quickly abandoned that idea and instead I’ve picked 2 novels written by a famous couple, Violet Trefusis and Vita Sackville-West. They met when Violet was ten and Vita was twelve; four years later Violet confessed her love, but life events separated them. They both went on to marry men but continued their relationship, although they did eventually split up. They stayed in touch and remained warm towards each other. Violet is ‘Sasha’ in Orlando, Woolf’s love letter to Vita.

Vita Sackville-West
Violet Trefusis

 

Firstly, Hunt the Slipper by Violet Trefusis (1937).

Violet Trefusis by Jacques-Emile Blanche

Nigel lives with his sensible horticulturist sister Molly in their lovely home in Bath. He likes the finer things in life and prides himself on his good taste. Trying to get out of a visit to meet Caroline, the new wife of a neighbour, he gives Molly the following reason regarding Caroline’s family:

“You can’t imagine what they’ve done to their Elizabethan home. I once lunched there years ago; it looked as if Christabel Pankhurst and d’Annunzio had set up house together. Tea-cups and tracts battled for supremacy with peacocks feathers and leopard skins. It was so alarming that I fled.”

However, he goes, and the meeting is not a success. Caroline is miserable in her marriage to Anthony, a man who:

“never tired of dressing her up in the family jewels, of draping her in old-fashioned stuffs. She was his favourite recreation, his most valued asset. He did not particularly care about women, except as part of a decorative scheme.”

She is offhand to Nigel, who is used to women falling for his middle-aged charms, and he is distinctly unimpressed.  However, when they meet in Paris, Caroline has changed. She is in love with someone nearer her own age, Melo. Her taste in men is pretty questionable:

“Melo was a martyr to snobbishness, as a nursemaid is martyr to corns. Apart from physical attraction, Caroline led to the Royal Enclosure, stalking in Scotland, Noel Coward first-nights. In short, to the negligently luxurious life of the British aristocracy.”

Needless to say, this cad breaks her heart, and she turns to Nigel for solace. At this point he falls in love with her, but Caroline remains indifferent.

“He did not suspect that by one of Love’s infallible ricochets she was behaving to him as Melo had behaved to her. Her cruelty was Melo’s legacy, her indifference to him was out of revenge for Melo’s indifference to her. Love passed from one to the other, furtive, unseizable, like the slipper in ‘Hunt the Slipper.’”

There follows a period whereby they both travel, narrowly missing each other in various European destinations, Nigel writing effusive, desperate letters and Caroline sending intermittent, controlled replies. However, slowly, Caroline’s feeling change.

“You’re a terrible hoarder, aren’t you? Is possessiveness quite the same thing as jealousy, I wonder? Funny I should have fallen prey to two ‘collectors’. A[nthony] respects his possessions, whereas you love and tyrannize yours.”

Hunt the Slipper is a slim novel (180 pages) and the short length works well – Caroline and Nigel are both quite selfish. I didn’t wholly dislike them, but nor did I have a great deal of sympathy for them beyond that of realising we’re all flawed human beings and we all need love. Also the hunting of the slipper – love being always just out of reach – could have got tedious but as it is the plotting remains tight. Hunt the Slipper is a witty, sparky novel which gently mocks British insularity, snobbery in all forms, and self-delusion. Trefusis doesn’t judge her characters harshly and so neither do we. She dramatizes in the most ordinary way the conflicts of a cosy routine life against one of passion and unpredictability and doesn’t offer any trite answers as to which will bring most happiness.

Secondly, Family History by Vita Sackville-West (1932).

Vita Sackville-West by William Strang

Beautiful widow Evelyn Jarrold lives an undemanding life, financially well-off with her own flat in London and her son heir to her late husband’s industrial family fortune.

“Evelyn Jarrold was not a woman who questioned the established order of the civilised world. She was not stupid, but, in such matters, simply acquiescent.”

However, she meets Miles Vane-Merrick – also rich, part of the landowning classes, but (shock!) left-leaning – and he turns everything upside down.

“The total absence of ideas amongst the younger Jarrolds, their perpetual heavy banter which passed for wit, the limitations of their interests, their intolerance, their narrow-mindedness, all appeared insufferable to her now in contrast with Miles’ alertness and gaiety.”

He is fifteen years younger than she, and Sackville-West uses their passionate affair to highlight the enormous changes happening in interwar Britain. Evelyn is only 39 but compared to 25 year old Miles she is from a different era. Her friends dress for dinner, the women don’t work, the men snooze through Lords debates before supporting the Tories. Miles and his friends are concerned with new world order, welfare of workers, the women earn money and they talk late into the night.

“Would she ever turn round on the whole of her acquaintance, and in a moment of harshness send them all packing? She knew that the necessary harshness lurked somewhere within her; in fact, she was rather frightened of it.”

The difficulty is, then what would she do? Evelyn is jealous and possessive, but this may not just be temperament, it may be because she has little else to occupy her mind. Miles carries on at his work (politics, running his estate, writing his book) and loves her around this. She does nothing but wait for him to find time for her.

“Love and the woman were insufficient for an active mind, Love and the man, however, were all-too-sufficient for a starved heart and unoccupied mind, Miles learnt it, to his cost; Evelyn never learnt it, to hers.”

Sackville-West does not shy away from the weakness in her characters. Evelyn can be controlling, vain, and overly concerned regarding middle-class mores. While Miles may protest “Instinct makes me reactionary, reason makes me progressive.”, the fact that he’s also given to statements such as “I like women to be idle and decorative.” means he’s not that progressive. He’s self-centred and doesn’t ever seem to take an action that doesn’t suit him entirely. Despite the fact that people constantly refer to him as brilliant and the great hope for the country, I found him weak. One of Evelyn’s relatives is pithily described by Sackville-West thus:

 “She had not preserved her virginity for forty-five years without revealing the fact in every phrase and gesture. A practising Christian, she was packed with a virtuous complaisance and not one ounce of charity.”

However, by the time Miles announces that the best thing that could happen to this woman was for her to be raped, he’d lost me entirely.  Misogynistic pig.

So it says something for Sackville-West’s writing that the fact that I really couldn’t stand one of the characters did not put me off the novel at all. Family History is an intriguing way to explore and make personal the upheavals of the first part of the twentieth-century in Britain. Apparently it didn’t do well on release and was considered one of her lesser works, but I found it thought-provoking and entertaining. The ending genuinely moved me. But most of all, Sackville-West’s wit is an absolute delight. For this reason, I’ll finish with a few choice bon mots:

[On the British upper classes] “The standard of looks was amazing; they had the distinction and beauty of thoroughbred animals. The young men were as elegant as greyhounds, the young women coloured as a herbaceous border. What did it matter […]that those sleek heads contained no more brains than a greyhound’s?”

“Who ever went to Eton to be educated?”

“The icy wind, whipping, biting, brought a certain exhilaration. Discomforts that one need not necessarily endure, always do induce a certain exhilaration. Hence the perennial charm of picnics.”

To end, just to prove I’m not really an embittered cynic, here’s a sweet duet between a pioneering new wave icon and a banjo-playing frog:

“Courage calls to courage everywhere, and its voice cannot be denied.” (Millicent Fawcett)

/ madamebibilophile / 26 Comments

Today is the 100th anniversary of the 1918 Representation of the People Act in Britain receiving Royal Assent, which enabled all men and some women over the age of 30 to vote for the first time (it would be another 10 years before women got equal voting rights). There are lots of events going on this year to commemorate the centenary, but it’s also worth noting that the suffragettes argued for equal pay for equal work, and yet 100 years later (last week) Carrie Gracie has been giving evidence to MPs over pay discrimination at the BBC. This is just one example. The fight for equal rights worldwide is ongoing.

Suffragettes,_England,_1908

For this post I’ve picked one novel written by a suffragette and a short story from the twentieth-first century portraying suffragettes.

Firstly, No Surrender by Constance Maud (1911), who was a member of the Women Writers Suffrage League. I read a crusty copy from the library which had that pleasing old book smell, but Persephone have published it as one of their beautiful editions too, and if you’re on a book-buying ban like me, they also offer it as a free e-book.

Maud looks at suffrage primarily through the story of young cotton mill worker Jenny Clegg. Jenny Clegg’s father has all the power in their home while her mother does all the work:

“Her voice took on its usual apologetic tone with her lord and master. For Mrs Clegg was imbued with a spirit of such humility that she apologised not only for rising early and late taking rest, while fulfilling her manifold obligations towards her mate, such as bearing and raising his ten children, cooking, washing, mending, cleaning for the family, but even for her very existence up to the age of fifty-five in this strenuous service without pay.”

Mr Clegg squanders the money earned by the women in his family such as Jenny. He is selfish but supported by law and society in his behaviour:

“Mr Clegg regarded his daughter sternly, but without wrath. He answered her in measured tones, strong in his sense of his impregnable position, backed as he felt himself to be, not only by the law of the land, the tradition of generations, his own physical force and intrinsic superiority of sex, but by the innermost conviction and consent of all right-thinking womankind.”

Jenny’s political awareness is given direction when she encounters Mary O’Neil, a moneyed society girl who rebels against her class’ expectations of her and supports the suffragettes. There is humour in her mother’s friend Lady Walker’s attitudes towards her own gender:

“ ‘Can you suppose for one moment that a man like Horace Boulder, or even Penhaven, would have been attracted, had Helen or Cicely shown a tendency to independent interests and original thought?’ “

There were plenty of women against the suffragettes, and Lady Walker’s dismissal of them as “ ‘hysterical, unsexed creatures, with a mania against men.’” was not unusual. The character provides some much needed levity, but is never presented as ridiculous, as this internalised misogyny had a major impact on the lives of women at the time, helping maintain the limitations of their rights and freedoms.

Maud covers the main events of the movement up until that time, and uses various scenarios to get across the arguments of women’s suffrage: speeches from carriages, dinner party conversations, arguments between lovers. This is both the strength and weakness of the novel. No Surrender is an issue-lead novel, despite Maud placing a romance between Jenny and Joe Hopton, Labour party candidate, as the driving plot. As such, it sometimes falters under the weight of its intentions. Much as I dislike Dickens, he is an absolute master at dramatising his social commentary. Maud is not so gifted and sometimes No Surrender is overly didactic, with poorly realised characters and a sentimental tone. But I must stress that this is not all it is. It is also able to dramatise how:

“Courage, self-abnegation, forethought, invention, and a keen sense of humour marked the tactics of the militant movement.”

bringing a unique, personal perspective to balance the reportage (and lack thereof) regarding the movement. While at times I found the characterisation of the working classes a bit ‘gor blimey guv’nor’ (or perhaps I should say ‘ee by gum’ as its northern stereotypes) it’s still commendable that Maud roots the story in the working classes, and shifts the focus from the middle class suffragettes.

 “’there’s a good many ladies who’d be doin’ far more good in the world if they thought more about their womanhood and less about their ladyhood’”

So all in all, a flawed novel but a fascinating one, written contemporaneous to the movement by someone who was directly involved.

 

Secondly, A Mighty Horde of Women in Very Big Hats, Advancing, the final and longest story in the short story collection The Apple by Michel Faber (2006), in which he revisits the characters and setting of his hugely successful novel The Crimson Petal and the White. I’m going to ignore the links to TCPATW to avoid spoilers for those who haven’t read it (it’s great – you should definitely read it!)

The story is narrated by an elderly man in a nursing home in the 1990s, recalling his life when he was very young, with his artist father, bohemian mother, and Aunt Primrose (who dresses in men’s clothes and shares a bed with his mother, but the menage a tois arrangement is never explicitly stated).

“You know, because I was a child in what’s now called the Edwardian era, and because I was born the day Queen Victoria died, I always think of the Edwardians as children. Children who lost their mother, but were too young to realise she was gone, and therefore played on as before, only gradually noticing, out of the corners of their eyes, the flickering shadows outside their sunny nursery. Shadows of commotion, of unrest. Sounds of argument, of protest, of Mother’s things being tossed into boxes, of fixtures being forcibly unscrewed, of the whole house being dismantled.”

Amongst this change, there is a conflict between old and new which is obvious to the small child on a daily basis:

“Bureaucrats, tradesmen, doctors, postmen, parsons, waiters, porters, the whole pack of them; they ignored my mother and Aunt Primrose, and directed their remarks to my father.”

But he is a preoccupied artist and it is the women who drive the lives of the household, with energy, fun, and strong political convictions:

“She an Aunt Primrose worked as a kind of music hall duo, Mama getting by on charm and disarming honesty, while Aunt Primrose supplied the sardonic touch. My father was – if you’ll excuse what’s definitely not meant as a pun – the straight man.”

The story culminates on Women’s Sunday, the Hyde Park rally of 21 June 1908 which was the first major meeting organised by the WSPU. A Mighty Horde of Women in Very Big Hats, Advancing covers a great many themes in its 60-plus pages: being part of stories we can’t fully comprehend, the flawed nature of memory, how history is made, the need to attach a narrative to our lives looking back. Faber is a brilliant storyteller, able to cover all this within a driving plot, authentic voice and lightness of touch. He’s said he won’t write any more since publishing Undying in 2016 following the death of his wife, and I sincerely hope he changes his mind. All the stories in The Apple were highly readable, they worked individually, as a whole, and as a sort-of sequel to TCPATW. He’s a great writer.

To end, a silly portrait of a suffragette but not one I can dismiss because it was probably the first time I learnt what a suffragette was: