In A Perfect Gentle Knight acclaimed Canadian children’s author Kit Pearson wrote one of the finest, most beautiful and powerful books I know about thIn A Perfect Gentle Knight acclaimed Canadian children’s author Kit Pearson wrote one of the finest, most beautiful and powerful books I know about the impact of a mother’s death and suppressed grief on a family of creative, imaginative children. Her depiction of the breakdown of the eldest son is moving and absolutely pitch perfect. Because I was so impressed with that earlier novel for older children, I was eager to see how Pearson would handle a story about the childhood of Canada’s foremost West-Coast artist Emily Carr, who would later gain fame for her vibrant paintings of indigenous villages in British Columbia (as well as for her eccentricity). Carr kept a boarding house at one point—the subject of one of her many autobiographical works, and throughout her life had a special bond with animals—including a Javanese monkey called Woo.
In A Day of Signs and Wonders nine-and-a-half-year-old Emily and her eleven-year-old sister, Alice, have been sent across town (Victoria, British Columbia) to stay at the home of family friends, the Cranes, so that their elder sisters can attend without distraction to their ailing mother. Mrs. Carr, who has long been ill with tuberculosis, is now in a precarious state. It is possible she will die. Already full of anxiety about their mother, these young girls have to adjust to a new routine in the Crane home. Emily chafes against the rules and prescriptions of Mrs. Crane, who finds the child wild and incorrigible. Up before everyone one morning, a barefoot and not-fully-dressed Emily leaves the Crane house to enjoy the morning before facing yet another unhappy, Mrs. Crane-managed day. And so the adventure begins.
Though the sun is just rising, another girl, Kitty O’Reilly, 13 (who lives next door to the Cranes), has beaten Emily to her destination: a beach on a Pacific inlet. Kitty has her own consuming worries: her sister, “Pop” (Mary Augusta), died two years before, and Kitty has not been able to move forward. In fact, she increasingly fears leaving the family home. Today is Pop’s birthday, but no one in the family seems to remember this. The future does not look any brighter: Kitty’s well-to-do English parents are planning to send her and her younger brother to boarding school in Britain at the end of the summer.
Though polar opposites—Kitty is domestic and controlled; Emily, wild, brash, and unconventional—the two become friends for a day. Emily has already shown skill at drawing, but Kitty introduces her to watercolours, marvelling at the ambitiousness of Emily’s first sketch and frustrated by her defiance of the rules for painting with watercolours. Learning of Kitty’s despair over her dead sister, Emily suggests visiting a clairvoyant, a Mrs. Tolliver, in town. Emily’s older sister once consulted the woman for guidance about a potential marriage partner. Since Mr. O’Reilly is out of the country at present and Mrs. O’Reilly and Kitty’s brother are out visiting, it is not too much trouble for Kitty to get one of the servants to drive the girls into town. The visit to the clairvoyant doesn’t go quite as planned, however, and the girls’ friendship is tested before the day is out. By day’s end, however, both of the girls will have learned something important.
Pearson has based her book on actual facts from Emily Carr’s life. It is true that Carr and her sister were sent to stay with the Cranes when their mother had a health crisis. The O’Reilly family did live next to the Cranes—on the water. The meeting of Emily and Kitty (both actual people) is where the fiction begins. Pearson uses the contrast that Kitty provides to imaginatively explore what Carr may have been like as a child: willful and wild; already chafing against the rules about how girls are supposed to dress and behave; hot-tempered and brusque; but also deeply sensitive to animals (preferring them over humans) and possessing unconventional beliefs about God—i.e., that his spirit and energy infuse the world and the creatures in it . . . and can even be present in a beautiful painting.
Pearson’s Emily is mostly believable, though a tad precocious in philosophical matters. Even so, I found this a delightful book and a pleasure to read. It made me want to return to Carr’s own body of autobiographical works, some of which Pearson relied on to create this fine piece of children’s literature. ...more
"It’s because I’m all wrong that I have to find something right. And I found it here, in this room. We all did, didn’t we? We found something that alt"It’s because I’m all wrong that I have to find something right. And I found it here, in this room. We all did, didn’t we? We found something that alters the conditions of life. You write. You write yourself out of it, you write it out, you write it right.” ( p. 258)
Like many other readers, I suspect, I first read the books by the Brontes in young adulthood, and I’ve returned to them from time to time, with fresh eyes, over the years. While I’ve never read a formal biography of any of the sisters, I know a few basic details about each of them. Given their talent and the seemingly endless tragedies in their lives, including the fact that not one of the six Bronte children made it to the age of forty, I’m not surprised that a mythology has arisen around them, as it tends to do around gifted, heroic, or beautiful people who are cut down before their time. With the Brontes, you can't help but wonder: what if fate had been kinder?
In The Taste of Sorrow, Jude Morgan has written a moving biographical novel about this iconic, literary family. It is a sort of ensemble piece that begins with the harrowing death of their mother when the eldest of the six children is less than ten years of age; it follows their story (or stories, more precisely) through to the time of Charlotte’s marriage. Morgan writes in the present tense and flexibly shifts point of view between Charlotte, Emily, and Anne—mostly keeping to the third person, but sometimes relating characters' innermost thoughts using the first person point of view. Their brother, Branwell, and father, Patrick, figure prominently in the narrative, but they are always presented from the outside, through the eyes of one of the three sisters.
Morgan’s fine writing (which does not adhere strictly to 19th-century style, rhythm, or idiom) and considerable descriptive powers transport the reader back in time. Because this is a fairly big book, which I read over several days, I had a sense of being with the characters, knowing them in a way I hadn’t before, and even of grieving with and for them.
Since I haven't read any scholarly biographies of the Brontes, I am unable to comment on the liberties Morgan may have taken with the biographical material. His characterization of the three sisters--the serious, self-conscious, approval-seeking Charlotte; the taciturn, fierce, elemental Emily; and the gentle, temperate, slightly bland Anne--is fairly consistent with my previously formed impressions of them. Even though there were no particular surprises in the book (aside from some information about Charlotte's husband), reading it was a rewarding experience, both intellectually and emotionally.
Many thanks to my Goodreads friend, Mandy, for bringing this wonderful novel to my attention....more
In WINTER, Christopher Nicholson explores a brief period in author Thomas Hardy's 85th year, when he was infatuated with the young Dorset woman, GertrIn WINTER, Christopher Nicholson explores a brief period in author Thomas Hardy's 85th year, when he was infatuated with the young Dorset woman, Gertrude Bugler, who had played Tess in the local Hardy players' dramatic version of the famous writer's favourite novel. As Nicholson's book opens, Hardy is offering Gertrude the role of Tess in the London Haymarket Theatre production of the play. Nicholson also gives us scenes of Hardy reflecting--on his life, his approaching death, his first marriage, and the natural world. WINTER, however, is less an exploration of Hardy himself than it is a study of his claustrophobic and unhappy second marriage. There are as many chapters devoted to Florence--Hardy's second wife, who at age 45 is 40 years Hardy's junior--as there are to Hardy.
Florence is apparently unwell, having recently had surgery on her neck to remove what she (fancifully) believes is cancer caused by spores from the oppressive trees that crowd Max Gate (their house in Dorchester). Hardy refers to Florence's "neuritis" but we would probably call it "neurosis." Not being familiar with the actual details of Hardy's second marriage nor with his second wife's health complaints, it sounded to me as though Florence was plagued by hypothyroidism, which, untreated, makes one feel depressed, cold, and tired. This is not to say that Florence's sense of being unloved, unappreciated, intensely insecure and jealous of her husband's preoccupation with a young woman sixty years his junior were not very real and even justified. Even so, reading page after page of a rejected wife's complaints and dissatisfaction become tiresome after a while.
WINTER is otherwise a beautifully written, melancholy work of biographical fiction. It will most appeal to readers who have some familiarity with Hardy's novels and poetry. Not having read Hardy in many years, the book made me want to revisit his novels. However, Nicholson's novel also made me realize that though Florence is not a character that the reader particularly warms to (her chapters are a litany of complaints and cries of being unloved, unfulfilled, and having missed out) it cannot have been easy living with the great writer.
Rating 3.5 out of five. I have rounded down to 3 stars,...more
This novel, in the form of journal entries, train tickets, telegrams, and post cards is written largely from the point of view of Vanessa Bell, VirginThis novel, in the form of journal entries, train tickets, telegrams, and post cards is written largely from the point of view of Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf's less famous artist sister. It focuses on the activities of the Bloomsbury group, their seemingly endless and shifting sexual affairs with each other, their petty (and sometimes not so petty) bickering, and their betrayals of each other. Given its subject matter, the novel is for a rather select readership: those who are interested in the personalities who surrounded Woolf.
Parmar provides sympathetic insight into what it might have been like to be Woolf's sister: not easy. Parmar makes clear (and I recall from my reading of biographies of Woolf that this is well supported) that, as well as being plagued by episodes of madness, Woolf was jealously obsessed with her sister, manipulative, and destructive. The central event in the book is Woolf's non-sexual affair with Vanessa's husband, Clive Bell. While it is hard to disagree with Lytton Strachey, a flamboyant homosexual and biographer, that Clive was indeed a "pig", Virginia's insidious flirtatious scheming certainly played a significant role in the failure of the marriage. In Parmar's story, Clive is not unlike Virginia in his jealousy over his wife's attention to their children, Julian and Quentin.
One tends to look back on the Bloomsbury group as a wild, and rather amoral collection of creative, self-centered individuals. Parmar does a service to Vanessa in explaining why she made some of the choices she did. Additionally, the reader feels some sympathy for the many challenges in having Virginia as a sister.
The novel focuses on a rather brief period in the two sisters' lives: from the time the adult Stephen children (Vanessa, Thoby, Virginia, and Adrian) moved from the family home into the then rather unfashionable Bloomsbury district of London to the time of Vanessa's marriage to Clive Bell and her early motherhood. VANESSSA AND HER SISTER ends with Virginia's marriage to Leonard Woolf, which the novel suggests was largely orchestrated by Lytton Strachey, and Vanessa's love affair with Roger Fry. No doubt Parmar thought this period was the critical one in Vanessa's life--the years in which her more conventional attitudes to marriage and motherhood were trampled by her traitorous husband and difficult sister.
VANESSA AND HER SISTER interested rather than charmed or moved me. I read out of intellectual curiosity to find out what Parmar was going to do with Vanessa's story. I felt the work suffered somewhat in depicting Virginia so much from the outside. Parmar's Virginia is deeply unsympathetic. We were told repeatedly, through many characters, how beautiful and brilliant she is, but we can never quite believe it because for Vanessa (whose perspective is the dominant one here) she seems a painful and ongoing trial.
Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with ARC of this book....more
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