In short, like all interesting people she was a mass of contradictions.
To many people who knew her in the last years of her life the overwhelming i
In short, like all interesting people she was a mass of contradictions.
To many people who knew her in the last years of her life the overwhelming impression she gave was one of serenity and gentleness, but her serenity has hard won and her gentleness was tempered in private by a pleasing acerbity. She never lost the astringent quality which informs and inspires 'that book'.
That book was Cold Comfort Farm: a 20th century British classic, described by Reggie Oliver as a book which "will be read and enjoyed for as long as the English language and the English sense of humour last.". Reggie Oliver is Stella Gibbons' nephew, and when he wrote this biography (1998), nearly all of Gibbons' 32 books were out of print - the exception being Cold Comfort Farm. I believe that Oliver worried that his aunt would be remembered as a sort of literary "one hit wonder", but the case is quite different as I am writing in 2022. In 2011, Vintage Classics brought 14 of her novels back into print - and since then, there have been more - including her two last books, which weren't published in her lifetime. When I visited the Waterstones at Gower Street this week there were no less than 7 of her books available on the shelf. (I bought Nightingale Wood.) This October, the Daunt Books in Belsize Park (London) devoted an entire window to her highly autobiographical novel Enbury Heath - a story set in the Vale of Health and chronicling the year that a sister and her two brothers set up house together following their parents' deaths. It was that book, purchased chiefly because I was attracted to the Hampstead setting, which set me down the path of my Stella Gibbons reading binge.
Although she ended up writing two sequels to her great bestseller, in many respects Cold Comfort Farm is quite different from her other books. The literary qualities which unite all of her books, though, are the vivid characterisation and strong sense of the absurd. Also, there is a consistently strong sense of place - and many of the books are set in the Hampstead/Highgate area of north London where she lived for all of her long life. Much of my fascination with her writing has to do with that setting. I fell in love with Hampstead when I was 21 and have lived in this part of north London for the past 4 years. It's an ongoing pleasure to compare the 21st Hampstead I know with the 1930s-50s version that Gibbons so ably describes.
No writer has ever evoked this part of London better or more comprehensively than Stella in some of her finest novels, ranging from Enbury Heath in 1935 to her last published novel, The Woods in Winter, of 1970. She covered its wide social spectrum, its grand houses and mean streets, and she captured the melancholy charm of the Heath where she loved to walk.
Being related to one's subject is a mixed blessing, I think. On one hand, Reggie Oliver had a first-hand knowledge of his aunt and can give the sort of specific details which bring a person to life. For instance, late in life she started smoking Gauloise cigarettes again after many years of being a nonsmoker. He also recalls her describing herself as "not shy, but unsociable", although he goes into some detail about the 'at home' parties she gave for many years on the first Saturday of the month. A detail which I particularly relished was his mention that she was particularly prone to odd cleaners, and then he goes on to describe several of them, including a Buddhist, pulse-eating, would be novelist male cleaner. As I have read several of her books which contained decidedly 'odd cleaners', it made me wonder which inclination came first.
The downside to Reggie Oliver's relationship with his aunt is that he really only knew her as an old woman. Even when late middle-aged, she seemed to have adopted some of the habits and mental tendencies of an older person. I felt like the younger Stella was not so real to him, and thus to me as the reader of this biography. Also, I think there is a naturally protective constraint when delving into the life of a fellow member. The most glaringly obvious example of this, for me, has to do with Stella's relationship with her husband. Although Oliver touches on the fact that Alan had lots of affairs and flirtations - he was an actor from about 22 until his early 40s, and later ran a secondhand bookshop - there is little mention (and no analysis, really) of how this affected Stella. She is described throughout as a devoted and loving wife.
Although I am primarily interested in Stella Gibbons as a novelist, Reggie Oliver also goes into some detail about her work as a journalist and even more so as a poet. Several of Stella's altar egos in the novels write poetry - or read lots of it - and she also gave her characters her own preferences in poets (Keats and Shelley, for example). I found it difficult to judge her poetry from the excerpts provided, but it didn't appeal to me very much and I found myself skimming over it.
Another feature of the biography is that it gives summaries of many of her novels and also includes the biographer's opinion of each novel's strong points and literary merits. Many Gibbons enthusiasts (like me) will enjoy his insights into which bits of the novels borrowed from life. Some of his observations are really incisive, but he can be quite unnecessarily opinionated. An observation which did amuse me was his description of The Swiss Summer, which has been reissued by the Furrowed Middlebrow imprint of Dean Street Press. A friend of mine has recently ranked it in the 'top ten' novels of the year for 2021. Oliver describes it thus:
One might recommend it to a convalescent, much as doctors used to recommend milk puddings and other bland but nourishing forms of sustenance.
I don't think this is a great biography, by any means, but I would certainly recommend it to anyone especially interested in its subject or in 20th century British female writers. I don't think there has been any other biography of her life, although Rachel Cooke wrote an excellent article about her for The Guardian on Sunday 7 August 2011. On the other hand, this study of her life did confirm how much of Stella Gibbons you can find within the pages of her own novels....more
Having first checked all of my local second-hand bookshops and struck out, I visited Daunt Books on Marylebone (London) because I was sure they would Having first checked all of my local second-hand bookshops and struck out, I visited Daunt Books on Marylebone (London) because I was sure they would have a copy of this classic book. I made the mistake of looking for it under Australia, though, and it turns out that they file it under Malaya. I was confused because I had assumed that the book took place in Alice Springs, Australia. It's a bit misleading, for sure - as 'Alice' only appears briefly in the book. That Outback town, an oasis amongst a desert wilderness, is meant to represent potential: the possibilities in a raw, rugged land for those with grit and imagination.
Really, this is a book of three locations: England, Malaya (the former British Malaya which is now known as Malaysia) and Australia. The Malayan storyline hardly accounts for more than a third of the book, but it is by far the most compelling third. The 1956 filmmakers clearly agreed with me because they cut the other bits out and focused their film entirely on heroine Jean Paget and the Australian soldier whose path she crosses whilst leading a group of women and children prisoners on a trek across the Malaysian countryside during the Japanese occupation.
This is a gripping book - a proper adventure story - and even the modern readers who winces at the racist language (typical of its time) and undeniable British hegemony will be carried along in the swift stream of the storyline. By the last third of the book, though, the Empire-building aspect of it really started to dawn on me. Published in 1950, the book's narration begins several years after the end of the war. England, as represented by the novel's narrator - Noel Strachan, an estate lawyer in his 70s - is grey and played-out. It's not the end of the British Empire yet, but the war has changed things irrevocably. Jean Paget represents the future: someone who can navigate the language and customs of other countries, but can improve them, too, with her estimable British grit, bravery, ingenuity and vision. In the last third of the book, Jean takes on the inhospitable Australian Outback and works some (fairly improbable) miracles there.
It's not a perfect book, and it certainly bogs down a bit at the end, but it was a darn good read. The author doesn't give the main characters much interiority - and having a fairly minor character act as narrator means that there is a degree of detachment in the most emotional moments of the storyline - but it was a bold choice to make a young woman the heroine of his story. ...more
This collection of short writings - all of them taken from previously published works - is my first taste of Gladys Taber's writing. It's lov3.5 stars
This collection of short writings - all of them taken from previously published works - is my first taste of Gladys Taber's writing. It's lovely in its way, but it feels unsatisfying in the way that an abridged work is nearly always unsatisfying. Too brief; too undeveloped.
I did get a sense of some of Taber's concerns and tastes, though; and a suggestion of what comprises her moral universe (and by that I mean the values that she esteems, and writes about).
All of these pieces are rooted in the seasons and routines of her 1600s farmhouse in Connecticut named Stillmeadow. I'm deeply attracted to writing about the seasons, and as long as I can remember it has been the particular sharp contrast of American seasons - as exemplified by New England's natural calendar - which I find most romantic and appealing.
The color of winter is pure and lovely: the long, darkly blue shadows, the purple stalks of the briery bushes, the glistening white of clean snow, the pale amber of shell ice where the little brooks walk in summer. The meadow is latticed now with the pattern of dark branches and the great timeless trees lift intricate patterns against a still sky.
Walking to the mailbox in the snow, I reflected that one has to know the change of the seasons to believe in spring when it is January. This also, I thought, is true of the heart. The heart can endure its own winter, provided there is faith in spring.
Her writing - or perhaps it is her subject matter - brings May Sarton to mind, but I cannot tell if she has the complicated depths of that other writer, her contemporary and New England neighbour. Taber's writing is homely and wholesome and tending towards homilies, but I wonder if this collection gives that sense more than is actually the case.
* Thank you to Gina House, who gifted me with this book *...more
"Think, Ivy - it's a cottage of your very own, in the country!" Suddenly, there swept along the landscape ruled by her mind's eye the majestic visi
"Think, Ivy - it's a cottage of your very own, in the country!" Suddenly, there swept along the landscape ruled by her mind's eye the majestic vision of the Nethersham beeches; towers and castles of rustling green; benign father-gods of the woods, filled with their gently-stirring life in the blue air of summer or roaring slowly in winter's gales. "Just think, Ivy. It's beautiful country there. I . . . know it quite well."
This is definitely not one of Gibbons' strongest novels, but I enjoyed it in a limited sort of way. Charm can be found in the atmosphere and characterisation, but it is rather short on plot. Set in the late 20s, or perhaps early 30s, it is full of single women - young, middle-aged and old - although some of them do get married off in the course of the novel. The first World War is touched on with the theme of a superfluity of women, and also the breakdown of the rigid class system. The majestic beeches of the Nethersham estate are threatened because the master can no longer afford his estate: he must choose to either repair his roof or sell his woods. I need not even mention this fact, though, because in fact it is not that important to the story's unwinding - or at least only in the sense that this is a nostalgia piece, written in 1970, when the 'progress' and development had already irrevocably changed both countryside and social order.
In a biography of Stella Gibbons written by her nephew Reggie Oliver, he mentions that the character of Helen Green is "perhaps Stella's fullest portrait of her younger self, complete with the raffish, artistic friends, a talent for poetry and a cottage in the Vale of Health." Helen peeks in and out of the novel, but really it is Ivy Gover - her charwoman - who is the novel's main character. I wouldn't go as far as to call Ivy a protagonist, though, as she's merely the most concentrated portrait in an ensemble of minor characters. Helen's observation (below) captures the kind of characterisation to be found in the novel: all running along the surface with very little revealed of the inner workings.
She was usually so interested in observing human beings, in a dreamy yet concentrated way, that it seldom occurred to her to wonder if they were unhappy or worried; she only studied them, taking them into her mind, and then enjoyably imagining what they were. When people were beautiful, she just watched them, without thinking about them at all, as if they were giraffe or deer.
At the beginning of the novel, the thrice-widowed Ivy inherits the cottage of an old uncle and thus she leaves London to go live in the countryside. There, Ivy exists peaceably with a variety of animals (domesticated and wild) and for a brief time, with a runaway boy with a talent for drawing. Ivy goes on lots of walks, she repels visitors and suitors - and these make up some of the best comic bits of the novel - and she lives how she pleases. She is described as both gipsy and witch, but really she is just a middle-aged woman who defers to no man (or woman) and lives with as little purpose as the birds and other animals that she feeds and takes pleasure in observing. Of course, living without due deference or purpose could be characterised as an interesting rebellion of its own.
The Woods in Winter was Gibbons' last published novel, and its a funny sort of coda to her long writing career. It manages to show off some of her talents as a writer while not really adding up to all that much. It reminded me of Lolly Willowes in lots of ways, but somehow all of those similar elements don't have the same kind of sharp-edged emphasis....more
My father was partial to all things fabricated with skill and effort: boots, books, bridges, cathedrals, and, especially, food. He preferred4.5 stars
My father was partial to all things fabricated with skill and effort: boots, books, bridges, cathedrals, and, especially, food. He preferred cheese to milk, pâté to liver, braised endive to salad.
Although she has written a biography of her father - Clifton Fadiman - the title of this book is characteristic of Anne Fadiman’s precision as a writer. Yes, her father is the book’s subject - but as filtered and shaped by her memories, her research and the construct (oenophile) she has chosen for him. Wine - the appreciation of it - is a touchstone of her father’s character, and a symbol of his journey from Jewish immigrant ‘meatball’ to the highly cultivated man of American letters he became.
I adore Fadiman’s writing and this book has the same voice as previous essays (Ex Libris, for example) - overly precious for some tastes, but warm, intelligent and wryly humorous to mine.
Although Fadiman has a deep love and respect for her subject, she never falls into the trap of writing hagiography. She aims for complexity - and so touches on the sour notes of her father’s character - even though this book is a tribute to him. It doesn’t aim to be an exhaustive biography, but it’s far more than a sketch. I felt like I imbibed a true flavour of such an interesting American life and was enriched for it.
What a delightfully ‘odd’ book this is; it reads like a period piece of the 1970s now, but it must have been daring and au courant for its 3.75 stars
What a delightfully ‘odd’ book this is; it reads like a period piece of the 1970s now, but it must have been daring and au courant for its time.
A ‘poor little rich girl’ goes to stay with her ex-stepbrother and his wife in order to recuperate from a recent abortion and escape from the clutches of her controlling mother. Having just wrecked one marriage, this young woman proceeds to seriously shake the foundations of another. Yet, we are enticed into a certain degree of empathy for this character.
The title begs the question of which one - wife or mistress - is the odd girl out, but really it’s the husband who seems most redundant in the situation. It’s a ménage a trois story with unexpected twists. And as always, the author’s writing is wonderfully precise. She draws upper-middle class English mid century life in knowing and intimate detail.
It’s a completely different kettle of fish from my beloved Cazalet Chronicles, but I thoroughly enjoyed it...more
I’m a huge fan of EJH’s writing but it has taken me years to get around to reading this book. It’s often described as her masterpiece, and as Hilary M I’m a huge fan of EJH’s writing but it has taken me years to get around to reading this book. It’s often described as her masterpiece, and as Hilary Mantel argues in her excellent introduction, it’s certainly a masterpiece of clever construction. It’s the story of a marriage told backwards: from the moment of irrevocable breakdown, scrolling back through the years to the circumstances which made the female protagonist Antonia susceptible to the overtures of the man destined to become her husband. I admired the concept of it and I’m certainly always interested in novels which explore the emotional intricacies of marriage.
However, the characters are mostly very brittle and opaque and not particularly likeable. It’s beautifully written, but it doesn’t have the warmth or psychological penetration of the author’s later work. Perhaps these characters could have existed in a time of utterly different behavioural codes and manners, but they felt so remote and unbelievable to this reader. I felt rather detached from it all and was relieved to get to the end. ...more
A friend shared this with me because it mostly takes place in Gascony. I have been renovating a house in this region of France, as does the 2.5 stars
A friend shared this with me because it mostly takes place in Gascony. I have been renovating a house in this region of France, as does the main character in the book. However, there weren’t enough references to French culture to make this book worthwhile. It’s really not a house makeover book and it’s only partly a life makeover book.
I found the plot tiresome. From the beginning the reader knows what the the main character doesn’t: that her partner is married to another woman and is attempting to have two families. It’s a potentially interesting conflict but it wasn’t interesting enough in this rather shallow book. I finished it only because I was in the middle of moving house and had little energy for reading. Meh ...more
But she'd been going to end up thinking about May: May stuck here for the rest of her life, in this awful red-brick fumed-oak stained-glass barrack
But she'd been going to end up thinking about May: May stuck here for the rest of her life, in this awful red-brick fumed-oak stained-glass barracks - every room looking like a Hall on Speech Day - even the garden filled with the worst things . . .
Aloud, she said, 'It's not just the house: it's him. 'Daddo?' She nodded. 'He gives me the creeps. He ought just to be poor and funny, but he isn't.' 'Well he is funny: he's a pompous old fool.' You're not a woman: you wouldn't understand.' There was enough mayonnaise; she seasoned it and began spreading it over the fish with a palette knife. 'If she's lonely enough, she might leave him. If you stay here, she never will.'
This novel begins with a wedding and a decidedly comic-grotesque tone. There are hideous pink bridesmaid dresses, a cat called Claude who grazes on the wedding salmon, a mean (both unkind and cheap) father of the bride, and worst of all, a deeply uneasy bride. It doesn't take a particularly perspicacious reader to pick up on the signs that this wedding is not exactly a love match - and nor is it going to lead to any version of married bliss.
Alice, inserting her arms into the tight, satin sleeves (it was rather like trying to put champagne bottles into their straw casings), mumbled something defensive about Claude and at once, without warning, her eyes filled with tears.
The themes of love and marriage feature prominently in this novel, and not just one - but three - marriages are under the author's gimlet-eyed inspection. You could hardly describe this as a romance novel, though; indeed, it's quite the opposite. If anything, it's a horror novel. Most of the men in the novel are monsters of selfishness (and even worse), and some of the secondary female characters are nearly as bad. Set in the early 1960s (and published in 1969), the entire book is incredibly uneasy about relations between the sexes. Even when it's the women who possess the money, the women are expected to cater to men - no matter how pompous, boring or completely useless those men happen to be.
The tone/atmosphere/setting - mostly middle-class London and the Home Counties - has little cosiness about it, and this is definitely not a 'cosy' read. It's the opposite: cold and chilling. Even the descriptions of food - something which EJH excels at - are mostly unappetising, artificial, frightening and even dangerous.
I could hardly put this book down, and I would definitely recommend it - but it might be a shock to readers who are only familiar with the author's Cazalet chronicles. This is definitely more in the Shirley Jackson or Daphne du Maurier territory and it's full of flesh-creeping surprises....more
This is the most seamless continuation of Lucy Barton's story - although her ex-husband William Gerhardt gets top billing. At 70, William's l4.5 stars
This is the most seamless continuation of Lucy Barton's story - although her ex-husband William Gerhardt gets top billing. At 70, William's life has been torpedoed by two drastic events - both of which undermine not only his sense of who he is, but also his sense of security and sureness about both the past and the future. Lucy is first-person narrator, still, and so everything that happens is filtered through her consciousness. She is still working through the themes of her first book - mothers are still very important, as is the damage suffered in childhood - but there is a different slant because of the way that Lucy and William have aged. They are not quite old, but on their way to that estate. There is more of life's journey to ruminate over than to look forward to. They have both lost spouses, other loves, and yet have found themselves still bound together in friendship and shared parenthood.
Lucy is still prone to fearfulness and a persistent feeling of being 'invisible' in the world, but she is the most endearing and lovable of characters (to my mind). A kind, thoughtful and sensitive soul. Strout's subject is emotional damage - mostly the very ordinary kind - but, and this is not a paradox, her books are filled with the joy and hopefulness of healing human connection....more
It was a double row of brown-brick houses, half of them bombed and boarded up, and not a whole window in one. At the end stood these two small stou
It was a double row of brown-brick houses, half of them bombed and boarded up, and not a whole window in one. At the end stood these two small stout cottages, painted white; thick little places, solid and secretive, with a bearded, coarsely-moulded face looking mockingly down the wall exactly where the two were joined. The Barnes sisters lived in the far one of the two. Surprisingly, it had a name; it was called Rose Cottage. The other, equally surprisingly, was Lily Cottage, and had been unoccupied for years; even in these times, it was in such bad repair as to be uninhabitable, and this street was not on the Camden Council's priority list for demolition.
Starlight was the third Gibbons book in a row I've read in as many weeks, and it's not entirely successful as a story - although it has some interesting elements to it. It takes place in an unspecified time after World War II - when London is shrouded in poisonous fog, and refugee German girls are household help. It's a ghost story, of sorts - but I don't know if the 'ghosts' are some of the elderly characters (who seem to belong to another time), or what is presented as a spectral possession. (A few of the characters seem to belong in another novel entirely.)
Gibbons is strong on characterisation but this book suffers from not having much of a central focus. The main character (it could be argued) is a garrulous cleaning lady by the name of Gladys Barnes, but she acts more as a witness to the story's events than anything else. Somehow it doesn't all hang together, although it's full of atmosphere and sense of place. Like the other two Gibbons books I've recently read - Enbury Heath and Westwood - it's set in the north London villages of Highgate and Hampstead. Stella Gibbons lived in this area nearly all of her life, and that aspect of the novel rings with authenticity. I'm just not sure what story she was trying to tell.
I would only recommend this one to the Gibbons enthusiast. ...more
'Happiness,' he said, 'always seems nothing. It is like water; one only realises it when it has run away.'
This book was difficult to warm to, at f
'Happiness,' he said, 'always seems nothing. It is like water; one only realises it when it has run away.'
This book was difficult to warm to, at first, but I ended up admiring its construction. The author builds up her story in a series of character sketches and much of it is conducted through dialogue. It has a cool tone and does little to deliberately attract the reader. I did eventually grasp the shape of it, though, and its subtle charms.
Elsa, a 27 year old Italian woman - still living, unwed, at home and at the mercy of her mother's tongue - is a protagonist of sorts, but that didn't really dawn on me until I was well-advanced into the story. If that seems strange it's because she speaks little, is described almost not at all, and is absent from the narrative for quite a while - not emerging again until somewhere near the middle. It's only as I reread the beginning again that I notice that Elsa's voice -that first-person "I"- launches the narrative. It's only as I reread it that I realise that what I thought of as an omniscient third-person narrator is possibly Elsa all along.
At first I was going to say that this book is about marriage, but it's also about family and village life and the expectations and assumptions of both. There is intense pressure to marry, but not a single relationship in the novel gives a good account of that state. There's not a romantic note in this book, but its 'realism' is coloured by World War II which acts as a disruptive background to the story.
A pair of parents - Old Balotta, who owns the cloth factory in town, and is the critical father of five children; and Elsa's mother, Mathilda, who can carry on a conversation with herself - provide much of the waspish humour of the novel. They do get all of the best lines. They want to see their children settled, but they aren't the sort of parents who can loosen the reins easily. The children who stay at home seem uneasy and unhappy, and still under the authority of their parents. The book is full of absences: those of all of the children who have died or moved away.
There is an emotional climax to the novel that carried an enormous emotional impact for me. It's like something that detonates underground even though it actually takes place, openly enough, as a conversation. Ginzburg's style feels too cool and detached to be truly grim, but I finished the book thinking she has a desperately dark world-view. ...more
'I said you had a lot to learn,' said Carbonel cooly. 'Sit still and I will try to explain. In the first place you thought you had bought a common wit'I said you had a lot to learn,' said Carbonel cooly. 'Sit still and I will try to explain. In the first place you thought you had bought a common witch's cat. Mind you, I'm not blaming you. A very natural mistake. You were not to know that I am a Royal Cat."
School has just broken up for the summer holidays and Rosemary Brown is 'fizzing' with a 'delightful party feeling,' even though she doesn't have much planned for the summer. Her widowed mother has to work, and there is not enough money for outings or treats. When Rosemary decides on a scheme to make some pocket money by house cleaning, she ends up buying a dusty old broom in the market. A cat gets thrown into the bargain. The cat is not a mongrel, though: it turns out to be Carbonel, a Royal Cat with a tart tongue and an imperious attitude. For seven years, Carbonel has been held by a binding spell, and it's up to Rosemary to set Carbonel free. All she has to do is unite the witch's hat and cauldron with her broom, and then figure out how to reverse the spell.
Rosemary is an appealing heroine - brave and resourceful, and polite. I wasn't a bit surprised to discover that this book was first published in 1955, because it definitely has a post-war atmosphere and vocabulary. The word 'jolly' features quite a lot, and there are plenty of splendid teas to punctuate the adventures. A sweet book - and a good choice for readers who fancy a bit of magic and/or enjoy the midcentury British flavour.
I have spent the majority of my life not knowing about Helen Garner, yet all of a sudden I see references to her everywhere. "One of Australia's most I have spent the majority of my life not knowing about Helen Garner, yet all of a sudden I see references to her everywhere. "One of Australia's most beloved writers." "Her writing is sublime."
This book of essays covers a span of 15 years and many topics. One gets a sense of the breadth of Garner's output: movie reviews, court reports, cultural and political commentary, and essays or diary fragments of a more personal, even deeply personal, nature. There is something very consistent about her voice no matter the topic, and she is a writer who is always recording her own emotions - her own 'take' on things. It's that voice, as much as the precision and at times delightedly surprising use of language, which makes her writing so distinctive. And yes, so "beloved." I get it now; I absolutely do.
I would guess, from reading this collection, that her forte is non-fiction writing, but several of my Australian friends have urged me to read her fictional book The Spare Room. So that one is next on my list, and I shall be expanding my Helen Garner repertoire. I have enjoyed this collection enough to regret the fact that her work is not more widely available in the second-hand bookshops in the UK which are my primary hunting ground. Perhaps those readers who own her books are loathe to part with them? ...more
We only ever see the second half of our parents' lives - the downhill part. The golden years we have to piece together. It's hard to think of our p
We only ever see the second half of our parents' lives - the downhill part. The golden years we have to piece together. It's hard to think of our parents as young - or maybe I mean young adults - when everything stretched out in front of them and was possible. The versions of them that we see and judge every day have been shaped by experiences they've had, but which we have never known: the times they were hurt; the days they won; the times they were compromised. For so much of it, we were simply not there.
Ben Watts prefaces this memoir of his parents, Romany and Tom, with this paragraph - and it's an excellent reminder, from the outset, of the limitations of a child's ability to ever completely know his parents. Watt seems to be reminding himself, and also his readers, that a memoir is ever only one's person's reconstruction or 'version' of a complicated story; and in this case, made more complicated because he is attempting to not only capture his parents, in their singularity, but also the dynamics of their long marriage.
His subjects are interesting people: they have both achieved distinction in their professional lives, and they have lived - if not at the centre, then certainly in something better than the margins - of the cultural world of post-war London. Tom Watt was a working-class Glaswegian and a precociously talented pianist and bandleader whose 'Tommy Watt Orchestra' enjoyed considerable success in the late 1950s and early 1960s - before rock and roll killed the jazz scene. Romany Bain was a RADA trained actress and then for 20 years a feature writer known for her 'showbusiness' interviews. Romany was descended from one of the most prominent British Romani clans, and her father, George Bramwell Evans, was famous for being one of the BBC's first wildlife programme presenters. Those are just the taglines, though of course they do add interest and lustre to the family story. I assume that most people who end up reading this book will also be aware of Ben Watt's fame - mostly because of being one half of the band Everything but the Girl.
Fame and ambition - and more importantly, their thwarted aspects - do play a role in the dynamics of this marriage, but the fact that both Romany and Tom had been married before, and left those marriages to be together, is also key to their particular marriage story. Ben is their one child together, and in many ways he both enjoyed and suffered from 'only child' status; but that role is certainly complicated by the fact that he has four older half-siblings from his mother's first marriage. (The younger three were triplets - such an unusual occurrence, that they were featured in various newspaper and magazine articles.) By the time Ben is old enough to be aware of his parents' marriage, he is aware of the tensions in it. His father's excessive drinking is part of the dynamic, and later becomes something that his parents do together. As his parents age, and begin suffering from bad health, their marriage seems like more of a claustrophobic cage than anything else. You sense that their son wants to understand a fuller picture of their marriage - to go back to its passionate and hopeful beginnings - just to find the missing piece that explains why the marriage has endured despite it all.
So far, the book's title and my review both imply that this book is about a marriage - and that's certainly true to a point. It's certainly about a son trying to understand his parents, and to uncover aspects of their lives together which had been obscured or hidden from him as he was growing up. But in a larger sense, this book is about a son coming to terms with his parents' old age and death. Much of the book is taken up with the awkward exchange of roles which occurs when a child is forced to take responsibility for his parents. Ben Watt details the frustration, pity, discomfort and inconvenience of 'looking after' - or organising other people to look after - ageing parents who can no longer take care of themselves. Although the narrative goes back and forth in time, it always returns to the present reality as its baseline: and that part of the story is really more about Ben than his parents. While Romany and Tom's story is specific to them, and to a cultural place and time, the overarching narrative of ageing parents and care-taking has a universal, albeit hugely melancholy, appeal.
I think that Ben Watt genuinely does want to honour his parents' lives - which were so much more than just the meagre sum of their later years - but clearly he also wrote this book for the therapeutic value of it. It can be grim subject matter at times, and although I believe that its natural audience is probably those who can most readily relate to it, the ability to relate will in fact make the book's painful aspects more acute. He is a wonderful writer, though - with a gift for precise description - and that certainly sweetens what is overall a painfully melancholy reading experience. ...more
Literature has always been and will forever be my only form of self-help. Jhumpa Lahiri
3.5 stars
The premise of this book - which is a compilation
Literature has always been and will forever be my only form of self-help. Jhumpa Lahiri
3.5 stars
The premise of this book - which is a compilation of a regular feature in The New York Times Book Review - is that readers are really interested in what other people (especially authors, who devote their life to reading/writing) read. Each author gets a number of standard questions: for instance, "When and Where do you like to read?" or "What book is on your night stand now?". They also get a few questions which relate more precisely to the kind of writer that they are. It's an interesting and sometimes surprising and amusing insight into well-known writers' reading lives. It's not exactly a "coffee table" book, but it's certainly a book that one can dip in and out of at one's leisure. Its mission statement is clear, and it offers up exactly the sort of "more about books" insights which will appeal to an undoubtedly self-selected and obvious audience.
Published in 2014. For the most part, it's not dated - but an awful lot of people are reading and praising Edward St Aubyn's Patrick Melrose series or Wolf Hall and offering suggestions for what President Obama might benefit from reading....more
Over the years, a wall of stone and beautiful ivy has grown up around me, and only family and wildlife are allowed in. Although shafts of light are
Over the years, a wall of stone and beautiful ivy has grown up around me, and only family and wildlife are allowed in. Although shafts of light are starting to get through all this, I am still wary and catch myself wondering how long it will last.
Unfortunately, for me, I'm different. Different from everyone in my class. Different from most people in my school. But at break time today I watched the pied wagtails fly in and out of the nest. How could I feel lonely when there are such things? Wildlife is my refuge. When I'm sitting and watching, grown-ups usually ask if I'm okay. Like it's not okay just to sit and process the world, to figure things out and watch other species go about their day. Wildlife never disappoints me like people can. Nature has a purity to me, unaffected.
As I read Dara McAnulty's diary of his 13-14th year, I frequently felt a sense of - well, awe. That's partly because of the quality of the writing and the observations, but it's also because of just how much this young teenage boy already knows about the natural world. I'm blown away by how much he has already committed to mind and heart.
This diary has three major strands to it: nature, autism and environmental activism. Actually, there is a fourth strand: Northern Ireland. McAnulty is Irish, and there is a strong flavour of the history, culture and flora and fauna of his native turf. He incorporates Celtic words and legends into his personal story, and I have learned more about the wild spaces of Ulster in this book than the sum total of all of my previous knowledge of the place.
McAnulty's family is exceptional in many ways and he is very conscious of the supportive web of family support around him. He, his mother and his two younger siblings are all autistic; their father is a scientist. The entire family is passionate about the natural world and they have been raised with a potent combination of intellectual curiosity and emotional concentration. Much of the diary highlights family trips to various kinds of nature preserves, walks in the forest and even bird feeding in their own back garden. He shares so many observations of the natural world around him - with some educating points for the reader. (This reader, at any rate.)
His nature writing is filled with joy and reverence, for the most part, but his insights into the emotional and social difficulties he suffers because of his autism can make for painful reading. There is a lot of anger in this book, some of it directed to a world that despises and fears difference - and some of it more to do with the indifference of the world that does not care for or value nature in the same way that he and his family do. McAnulty is both detailed and eloquent in his descriptions of how he copes with the world around him, and the toll that it can take on him.
In the course of the year chronicled in this diary, two years ago, McAnulty's role as a passionate young advocate for the environment was obviously expanding quite a bit. He touches on subjects like social media - which has connected him to a like-minded community (good), but has also heaped judgments and criticisms upon him at times (bad). He also describes public speaking events and protests that he has been involved in - always asking of himself, what more can he do. He has an exceptionally strong sense of personal mission, but he also has a keen awareness of both the upsides and downsides of being a 'voice' for his cause, and he's not unaware of his own ego.
Altogether, it's an illuminating read in more than one important area. I will be watching his progress with much interest. ...more
Oh lovely, lovely life that can toss us from horror to hilarity, without giving us time to take breath! No matter how dark it may be, yet,
4.5 stars
Oh lovely, lovely life that can toss us from horror to hilarity, without giving us time to take breath! No matter how dark it may be, yet, unfailingly, 'Cheerfulness breaks in.'
This particular (and characteristic) Miss Read observation sums up the contents of this book rather well. Village life in Fairacre is an all-sorts mixture, and through a middle-aged head teacher's point-of-view, we experience all of the seasons, rounds and rituals of a year. Village life in mid-century England is celebrated, warts and all: and every chapter mixes the profound and the prosaic, the comic and the pathetic. Many people think of Miss Read as a sentimental or nostalgic writer, but that's not really the case. To plagiarise myself, I find her as tart and wholesome as a crisp apple.
In this book, the second in the series, Miss Read has to cope with a new teacher: Miss Watson, fresh from teacher's college and bursting with the latest educational theories. She also has to manage the village's meddlesome matchmaking in the form of newcomer Mr Mawne. Recurring characters include the school's cleaner and handyman, Mrs Pringle and Mr Willet; Doctor Martin; the Partridges, the vicar and his wife; Miss Clare, a retired teacher; the feckless Coggs family; and Amy, the rich and opinionated friend from Miss Read's early teaching days.
This book was published in 1957 and it describes a world that is undergoing all sorts of social change. The old agricultural life is breaking up along with the big estates. Young people are abandoning the countryside for the village, and the newly established 'welfare state' is replacing the role of managing authority that had once been played by local squires and aristocrats. People fret a lot about this change and the older ones long for the 'good old days'. There are worries about fuel, education, health care, old age pensions, affordable local housing and getting and retaining good help. In other words, people worry about many of the same things we are worrying about today - 70 years later.
Miss Read is a great advocate for countryside village living, but she is not unaware of its hardships and drawbacks. As with all of her books, there is a good deal of nature writing - for this closeness to the natural world is clearly one of the things she values most about this way of life. Descriptions of the weather and the seasons pepper every chapter of the book, which is divided (naturally!) into the months of the year, but she can also be more explicit about her high regard for living in tune with the natural world.
What a child may learn on his daily walk to school along a country lane will never be forgotten; and to know intimately the changes that come to plants and trees, to birds and insects, as the full cycle of the four seasons turns, is a source of joy and wonder to the child who is the father of the man.
Having read the Thrush Green series first, I wasn't sure if I would warm to the Fairacre series to the same degree. But now, I think this book may well be my favourite. I do love the mixture of homely insights and human foibles.
Two other benisons are more generously bestowed in the country - solitude and handling earth. Not to be alone - ever - is one of my ideas of hell, and a day when I have had no solitude at all in which 'to catch up with myself' I find mentally, physically and spiritually exhausting.
When one is alone one is receptive - a ready vessel for the sights, the scents and sounds which pour in through relaxed and animated senses to refresh the inner man.
As for the healing that lies in the garden, let Mr Willet's wise words be heard. 'Proper swizzled up, I was after that row at the Parish Council. I went and earthed up my celery on my own. That sorted me out a treat!'
The Slightly Foxed publishers specialise in memoirs from distinguished writers, mostly British and mostly 20th century, although there are some exceptThe Slightly Foxed publishers specialise in memoirs from distinguished writers, mostly British and mostly 20th century, although there are some exceptions. Some of their books have also featured pen and ink illustrations, but this charming new offering for November 2021 is an entirely new format for them. The ‘Letters to Michael’ could certainly be described as memoir-ish, as it reveals much about a family’s life in the suburbs of Manchester in the years 1945-47. It’s also a fascinating historical document, a reading, writing and drawing primer, and most of all, a series of playful and informative love letters from a father to his young son. You could read it like a picture book to your children or grandchildren. You could read it in the spirit of nostalgia. You could read it just for the pure pleasure of admiring pictures which have personality in the same way that good writing has ‘voice’.
Each letter is neatly divided between text and illustration and the early letters also feature a ‘stamp’ - a bonus illustration usually related to the bigger picture. They start off in a prose style suited to a beginning reader, and then the subject matter and illustrations gradually become more sophisticated and detailed. Although there is a great deal of variety in the illustrations, together they form a fairly comprehensive picture of life in England during those years. There are historical events - like the VJ celebrations and the harsh winter of 1947 - but there are also all of the prosaic events which make up the world of work, family and leisure. Phillipson shares a lot of his own work routine with his son, and there are letters which feature his daily commute, the people he meets in his office, and really specific details of office life during these years. The range of subject matter also touches on sports and hobbies, musical concerts and childhood games, fantasy, whimsy and self-portraits. And of course, because this is England: plenty of weather and many cups of tea!
It’s a darling book - such a treat, both to look at and to read. ...more
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