While the summer lasted, the beauty was stronger than the sadness, because the sun blessed everything - the ruins, the tired faces of the people, t
While the summer lasted, the beauty was stronger than the sadness, because the sun blessed everything - the ruins, the tired faces of the people, the tall wild flowers and the dark stagnant water - and, during those months of calm, London in ruin was beautiful as a city in a dream.
"I've just an unhappy nature, I think. I take everything so seriously, and I mind it so much when things are ugly, and I worry about the mess the world's in, and the war."
Westwood is the coming-of-age story of 23 year old Margaret Steggles - rather too appropriately called 'Struggles' by one of the other characters - during the last year of World War II. When the story begins, Margaret is exploring Hampstead Heath and the village of Highgate on a romantically atmospheric summer evening before segueing to her torch-lit inspection of a small house with falling-down bits of plaster. Margaret's family is preparing to move to London after some years in a dull and provincial Bedfordshire town, and Margaret is beginning her first job as a teacher at the Anna Bonner School for Girls.
Margaret's sensitivity to natural beauty immediately impresses itself on the reader; and in a conversation with Hilda, an old school friend, we learn that Margaret is also passionately fond of poetry and music. Despite being plain, and having a rather stolid, serious nature, Margaret is seriously susceptible to beauty and this tendency towards romanticism will clash with the more sensible and pragmatic side of her nature throughout this book. Hilda proves to be an excellent foil for Margaret, both in looks and temperament. Although Hilda has the delicate and pretty blondness that makes her a favourite with men, she is remarkably down-to-earth and completely dismissive of any excess of emotion or poetic sensibility. Hilda gets nearly all of the comic lines in the book, and although I suspect that Stella Gibbons may have slightly more of the 'Margaret' in her, she is well aware that there is a fine line between being alive to the beauties of the world and a necessary pragmatism and stringent honesty about the true nature of things. The entirely unsentimental accuracy of Gibbon's characterisations makes it clear that she reserves her romanticism for the landscape.
Early in the story, through the device of a lost ration card, Margaret is drawn into the lives of an alluring and artistic family. The elder branch of the family - Gerald Challis, a distinguished playwright, and his wife Seraphina - live in a rather grand house called Westwood in the village of Highgate, very near to Margaret's new home. The younger branch - artist Alex Niland, his wife Hebe (daughter to the Challises) and their three children - are the means through which Margaret becomes attached to her fantasy crush on Gerald Challis. Margaret's own home life is unhappy, and when she falls in love with Mr. Challis she has really fallen for the whole set-up: not least, the gracious house itself.
It was interesting to read a book in which World War II is the backdrop but not really the 'story' itself. Although many aspects of the war colour the plot, and nearly all of the male characters are involved in the war in some way - whether by working in the Ministry, or being engaged in active duty, or having been invalided out - the story is really about how ordinary people are living their lives despite the war. There are many references to blackout curtains, sweet rations, and even the occasional bomb, and yet the war - after more than 5 years - has become a commonplace to the characters. Even the character of Zita - a German Jewish refugee who works in the Challis home and becomes friends with Margaret - has a life made up of concert going and boyfriends, not to mention domestic work, despite occasional hints of the tragedy she has left behind in Germany.
In many ways, this is a story of innocence and experience - a theme which always resonates with me. One of my favourite scenes in the novel takes place when Margaret and Mr. Challis are thrown together in a journey through the countryside. She admires the simple beauty of the meadows, awash in buttercups, while he has nothing but a dismissive contempt for the view. Finally, she is bold enough to challenge his beliefs and values:
'No one should accept a second-best in beauty.' "But some people have to, Mr Challis!' He only shook his head, studying her flushed cheeks and over-bright eyes. 'Never, my child.' 'Then if one cannot have the very best, shouldn't one have anything at all? she asked, in a tone so despairing that it amused him and he gave a quite good-natured laugh, but all the same he answered firmly: 'No - nothing. In beauty, in art, in love, in spiritual integrity - the highest and best - or nothing!' 'That makes it very hard for some people,' she said at last in a low tone.'
Love and romance are leitmotifs throughout the book, but if anything this story has a highly unromantic view of love - and particularly of marriage. One of my favourite descriptions of the disappointment of marriage is this sketch of the Challis union:
Mr Challis, who had been married for twenty-five years, was again silent. He was fond of his wife, though he had long ago decided that her nymph's face had led him up a garden path where the flowers were not spiritual enough for his taste, and he deplored her frivolity.
Being the 'high-minded' sort, Mr Challis creates the perfect tragic heroines for his plays and has a series of affairs with much younger women. Happily for them, the women in his life are under no illusion about the defects in his nature and only the innocent Margaret really idolises him in any way.
In a sense, there is some pressure on Margaret to think about marriage; women like Margaret's mother can see no alternative for women, even though her own marriage is lonely and disappointing. At several points in the book, Margaret thinks a man might be interested in her but it all comes to nothing. Yet even in her keenest disappointments, Margaret is self-aware enough to realise that her heart has not been truly touched.
It was only when I finished the book that I noticed it had a subtitle: The Gentle Powers. At the very end of the book, a wise older woman advises Margaret that she has a character which will always crave "the gentle powers" (defined as Beauty, and Time, and the Past and Pity. Laughter, too). So many of the incidents in the book, taken from a year in Margaret's life, emphasise one of those powers. It's a wonderful summing-up, and it also explains why I felt a particular kinship with this book. Like Margaret, and author Stella Gibbons, I am also extremely susceptible to the beauties of Hampstead and Highgate.
Each village upon its hill is marked by a church spire, and both are landmarks for miles. Both villages are romantic and charming, with narrow hilly streets and little two-hundred-year-old houses, and here and there a great mansion of William and Mary's or James the First's reign, such as Fenton House in Hampstead and Cromwell House in Highgate; but their chief charm dwells in their cold air, which seems perpetually scented with April, and in the glimpses at the end of their steep alleys of some massive elm or oak, with beyond its branches that abrupt drop into the complex smoky pattern (formed by a thousand shades of grey in winter and of delicate cream and smoke-blue in summer) of London.
I feel compelled to write an unashamedly personal review for this book. Usually I conform to the 'no spoilers' rule, but i**spoiler alert** 3.75 stars
I feel compelled to write an unashamedly personal review for this book. Usually I conform to the 'no spoilers' rule, but in this case, I don't want to be bothered to be coy about the book's content. I should think the majority of readers are well-aware that Sylvia Plath's only novel has many semi-autobiographical details and shadows her own suicide attempt and stay in a mental hospital. But assuming that some readers do come to this novel fresh and innocent of its content, I will signpost that spoilers are ahead.
Like many young women, I first read this book when I was 17 or 18. Although I did not identify with the protagonist's depression or subsequent suicide, I certainly did identify with her anxieties about the future and her compulsion towards over-achievement. Although this book does take the reader off the deep edge of mental health, it is in many respects a classic 'coming of age' story. Some of the pressures on young women are different, it being set in the 1950s, but certain themes will be resonant for every generation.
The story begins in the summer before Esther's senior year at Smith. (Is Smith actually named in the book? I can't recall now, but Smith College was certainly the famously academic 'Seven Sisters' Ivy League school that Plath herself attended.) Along with 11 other young women, Esther Greenwood has won a month-long internship at a women's magazine in New York City. This is one of the many autobiographical details in the novel, and in Plath's case, the magazine was Mademoiselle and the hotel she was staying at was the Barbizon. In this book, it is called the 'Amazon' - a nice play on the original word, which of course also takes in the Ancient Greek meaning of a race of strong, warrior-like women. One of the things I particularly like about this novel is the atmosphere of 1950s New York City and the culture which offers opportunities to women with one hand while limiting and undermining them with the other.
This hotel - the Amazon - was for women only, and they were mostly girls my age with wealthy parents who wanted to be sure their daughters would be living where men couldn't get at them and deceive them; and they were all going to posh secretarial schools like Katy Gibbs, where they had to wear hats and stockings and gloves to class, or they had just graduated from places like Katy Gibbs and were secretaries to executives and junior executives and simply hanging around in New York waiting to get married to some career man or other.
Esther is in thrall to Doreen, one of the other girls who has decided to bunk off from her responsibilities and grab every other kind of experience that New York City has to offer. (This mostly consists of going out with older men and drinking and smoking too much.) Her other 'friend' is Betsy, a bouncy and wholesome Midwesterner who appeals to the more dutiful aspect of Esther's nature. In the first chapter of the book this dichotomy is set up: Esther doesn't know who or what to be, and she wants simultaneously to be all things. She wants to gorge herself on everything that life has to be offer, but she's just becoming aware that she might not be up to it.
I'm not sure when the term 'Imposter Syndrome' entered the modern lexicon, but I'm fairly certain that most switched-on 21 year old women are aware of it. My daughters (23 and 27) and all of their friends speak the language of mental health very proficiently. It occurred to me, rereading this book, that part of what Esther is suffering from is Imposter Syndrome. For years she has been the classic over-achiever that has not failed at anything; now she is crushingly aware of all of her 'dreadful inadequacies' and more than anything she is afraid of being found out.
The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn't thought of it. The one thing I was good at was winning scholarships and prizes, and that era was coming to an end.
The book really divides into two halves, with each half depicting a different mental state and a somewhat different writing style. In the first half of the book, when Esther is in New York City, her tone reminds me of other writers from the era - Jack Kerouac, for example.
I lay in that tub on the seventeenths floor of this hotel for-women-only, high up over the jazz and push of New York, for near on to an hour, and I felt myself growing pure again. I don't believe in baptism or the waters of Jordan or anything like that, but I guess I feel about a hot bath the way those religious people feel about holy water.
In the second half of the novel, this jauntier tone becomes more muffled and flatter - appropriately so, as for the most part Esther is in a mental asylum. I think that Esther's emotions and fears are still real and relevant enough, but this novel definitely reads like a 'period piece' when it comes to the mental health treatment. Esther is given electroshock treatment and insulin shots; although she does have psychiatrists, the 'talking therapy' seems to be banal and utterly unhelpful. She gradually gets 'better' - I hesitate to use the term 'recovers' - but says of herself: "all I could see were question marks". Of course, few readers will be able to read Esther's story without being all too aware of the ending of Sylvia Plath's story. Esther doesn't die, but another character named Joan does. Like Esther, Joan is high-achieving 'big wheel' at Smith. She seems to copy-cat Sylvia's suicide attempt, and then later at the asylum they are almost in competition as to who moves more quickly through the reward system for 'getting better'. Esther finds her inimical, though; there is no empathy or real sisterhood between them. It did make me wonder if Joan is meant to be Esther's shadow self in some way.
I would definitely classify this as one of those books that is more rewarding to discuss than to actually read. It's still an important book, I think - still a canonical text for women on the cusp of adulthood - but I'm not sure it translates well for the middle-aged reader. It depicts an intensity of self-awareness that is, perhaps, particularly adolescent; some people may never grow out of it, but for most of us that intensity diminishes as we grow older and spread our worries onto a far larger canvas than ourselves.
Harriet's river was a great slowly flowing mile-wide river between banks of mud and white sand, with fields flat to the horizon, jute fields and ri
Harriet's river was a great slowly flowing mile-wide river between banks of mud and white sand, with fields flat to the horizon, jute fields and rice fields under a blue weight of sky. 'If there is any space in me,' Harriet said, when she was grown up, 'it is from that sky.'
'How beautiful it is,' said Harriet. Its beauty penetrated into the heat and the ache of the hollowness inside her. It had a quiet unhurriedness, a time beat that was infinitely soothing to Harriet. 'You can't stop days or rivers,' not stop them, and not hurry them. Her cheeks grew cool and the ferment in her heart grew quieter too, more slow.
This short novel, hardly more than a novella really, is intensely atmospheric - almost more like a rich fever-dream. Some of that has to do with the author's powers of description. Flowers, trees, animals, insects, the sounds and sights of the river, the sky: colour, scent, sound.
They lived in a the Big House in a big garden on the river with the tall flowering cork tree by their front steps. It was their world, complete. Up to this winter it had been completely happy.
The narrator is Harriet, the 2nd of four children - dreamy yet observant, a girl on the cusp of adolescence. Harriet already knows herself to be a writer, and she is both the centre of this story and a spinner of her own stories. (From what I've read of Rumer Godden's life, I suspect she drew on her own childhood experiences to create both the setting and the character of Harriet.)
It's a coming-of-age story in the sense that a tragedy will force Harriet to pass from her childish innocence to a more self-aware stage of experience. Just as in literal birth, which also takes place in the novel, change is accompanied by pain.
At the beginning of the book, Harriet and her older sister Bea are practising their Latin: the declension and conjunction of 'love' and 'war'. It's very much a foreshadowing of the events of the novel. The setting is Dhaka, Bangladesh; although Harriet knows no other home, the reader will be keenly aware that this colonial 'idyll' will not last much longer. Although the year is never explicitly stated, a young man named Captain John is recovering at their home from years of being a prisoner-of-war. It's obviously somewhere near the tail end of World War II and the colonial age of Britain's rule over the Indian sub-continent. Harriet's father is something high up at 'The Works' - a huge jute processing factory which is on the river, just adjacent to their own 'Big House'. His work is part of the sounds and the traffic of the river.
'Puff-wait-puff' sounded the escape steam from the Works, and the water ran calmly in the river.
I was completely immersed in the hypnotic rhythms of this story. It's a beautifully philosophical novel, full of symbols and metaphors, but gracefully so. 4.5 stars...more
You know, Daddy, I think that the most necessary quality for any person to have is imagination. It makes people able to put themselves in other peo
You know, Daddy, I think that the most necessary quality for any person to have is imagination. It makes people able to put themselves in other people's places. It makes them kind and sympathetic and understanding. It ought to be cultivated in children.
I am baffled that I have managed to reach middle-age without ever having read this classic 'coming-of-age' novel. I really cannot account for it, although I do seem to have a vague recall of the 1955 film starring Fred Astaire and Leslie Caron. Fred Astaire was never my idea of a romantic hero, and then there was the icky age difference. I can only suppose that was what put me off. (Note: in the book, Daddy Long-Legs is only 14 years older than Judy, although she assumes he is much older.)
I've come to it fresh, now - and I have to say, that although I did have some qualms about it halfway through - I've ended up thoroughly enjoying this book. It's meant to be a children's classic, and my own edition is a Puffin Classic, but I think that it really should be thought of a young adult book. The protagonist of the novel - orphan Jerusha 'Judy' Abbott - spans the ages of 18 to 22 in the novel. It's really a story about her education, and not just because the storyline covers the span of four years that she attends a women's college. (The author was an alumnus of Vassar College, and I think we can assume she drew heavily on her own experiences.) It's also very much a story about emotional and social development and an exploration of independence.
The plot is simple enough: 18 year old Jerusha Abbott has grown up in the John Grier orphanage, and in the last two years her role has evolved to include taking care of the younger inmates. When one of her essays - titled 'Blue Wednesday' - is shared with one of the orphanage's trustees, he decides to become her anonymous benefactor and fund her further education. He has only one condition: that Jerusha (who later renames herself Judy) should write him a monthly letter detailing her progress.
The phenomenally successful Anne of Green Gables was published in 1908, four years before this book (1912). There are some marked similarities between this heroine and Anne. Both of them are exuberant, curious, thirsty for knowledge - and hungry for love, too. They both aspire to be writers, as well, although Anne does not fix on that goal until much later in the series. However, despite a certain similarity in terms of personality, there are also many differences in the books - not least because Judy is older, and part of her education involves being exposed to ideas and people who belong to the more Edith Whartonesque high society of New York City.
This is an epistolary novel and the entire storyline is communicated from a one-sided correspondence between Jerusha/Judy and her anonymous benefactor whom she names 'Daddy Long-Legs'. The letters describe what Judy is learning at college, but they also share many of her feelings about the new world she is discovering. Several college friends play a role in the story, as do the male characters of Jimmie McBride (older brother to her best friend Sallie) and Jervis 'Uncle Jervie' Pendleton, who is the rich uncle of her roommate Julia Pendleton. As the correspondence develops, Jerusha begins to think of Daddy Long-Legs as her beloved family, but throughout the novel he refuses to write her back or to make himself known to her. Mostly she accepts this, but there are moments when she feels the loneliness of her position and rails against it. Most readers will guess the secret of Daddy Long-Legs long before Judy does, but the denouement of the novel does still manage a pretty thrilling emotional punch.
Even accounting for enormous changes in social mores - and the careful reader will note that this book takes place before women's suffrage - there is something uncomfortable about a relationship in which the young and poor Judy has so little power compared to her older and richer (and male) benefactor. There are a few occasions when she has to bend to his will, and they will (and should) grate on the reader, just as they do on Judy. Happily, as Judy gets older and more confident she does begin to oppose her benefactor's wishes and insist on her own right to independence.
One of the really interesting things about the novel is the development of Judy's social conscience and the way she attributes that to her own impoverished beginnings. Her benefactor also has a social conscience, although his has evolved as a response to a very privileged background. As an adult reader, I particularly enjoyed those moments when the social ferment of the time period peeks through.
Some of my favourite passages from the book:
I hope he'll come soon; I am longing for someone to talk to. Mrs Semple, to tell you the truth, gets sort of monotonous. She never lets ideas interrupt the easy flow of her conversation. It's a funny thing about the people here. Their world is just this single hilltop. They are not a bit universal, if you know what I mean.
It is the most perfect house for children to be brought up in; with shadowy nooks for hide and seek, and open fireplaces for popcorn, and an attic to romp in on rainy days, and slippery banisters with a comfortable flat knob at the bottom, and a great big sunny kitchen, and a nice, fat, sunny cook, who has lived in the family thirteen years and always saves out a piece of dough for the children to bake. Just the sight of such a house makes you to be a child all over again. (The middle-class home of Sallie McBride and her family.)
Did you ever heard of such a discouraging series of events? It isn't the big troubles in life that require character. Anybody can rise to a crisis and face a crushing tragedy with courage, but to meet the petty hazards of the day with a laugh - I really think that requires spirit.
Whatever the drawbacks of my bringing up, there was at least no pretence about it. I know now what people mean when they say they are weighted down by things. The material atmosphere of that house was crushing; I didn't draw a deep breath until I was on an express train coming back. Daddy, I never heard one word of real talk from the time we arrived until we left. I don't think an idea ever entered the front door. (The fashionable New York City home of Julia Pendleton.)
He and I always think the same things are funny, and that is such a lot; it's dreadful when two people's senses of humour are antagonistic. I don't believe there's any bridging that gulf!
It isn't the great big pleasures that count the most; it's making a great deal out of the little ones - I've discovered the true secret of happiness, Daddy, and that is to live in the now. Not to be forever regretting the past, or anticipating the future; but to get the most that you can out of this very instant.
But I could not be myself, and that seemed to me important, as it still does.
There is something about this book that reminds me of Jane Eyre and n
But I could not be myself, and that seemed to me important, as it still does.
There is something about this book that reminds me of Jane Eyre and not just because there are some similarities in terms of setting and plot elements. (There are some key differences, too, so I won't waste my time with a compare and contrast.) The really important thing is the quality of the protagonist - her intensity as a character, and the intensity of the relationship that the reader develops with her. It's that intensity which casts its spell on the reader. The writing is vivid, too, and Smith has a particular gift for conveying a sense of place and atmosphere. Her descriptions of nature, and Ruan's responses to it, are particularly memorable.
Ruan Ashley is the protagonist of this story, and when the story begins she is 7 years old - the middle child between a beautiful older sister and a toddler brother. The heroine is not a beauty, in fact she knows herself to be stocky and plain, but she has a keen intellect and a thirst to learn. Even more importantly, she has a vivid imagination that in many ways allows her to transcend the circumstances of her life. Early on, her father - a Nonconformist preacher - warns her of the danger of too much imagination:
Imagination is a wonderful gift from God and it should be used wisely. Control it, and it will be your friend, Give it rein and it will destroy you. Like fire, it is a good servant and a bad master.
The book opens into a domestic setting of stability, albeit a shaky one. Ruan's parents are a mismatch, both in terms of class and temperament. Being an emotionally sensitive child, Ruan is attuned to the atmosphere of her home ('The Manse') and the unhappy people in it. The first third of the book moves at an especially fast clip, though, and the changes come pretty thick and fast. Ruan suffers many losses, but there is always something indomitable about her.
Although Ruan is a highly individual character, with a strong sense of self - and this is what reminds me so much of Jane Eyre - she is not as friendless or solitary as that character. Indeed, she becomes attached to a variety of people throughout the novel. Age, station in life, even skin colour are not as important as authenticity and most of Ruan's friends are much older than she is. (Although Ruan can be childlike in her behaviour and interests, she tends to seem wise beyond her years.). As with most coming-of-age stories, there are several scenes at school - and Ruan experiences the contrast of not only attending a 'free' school, where she mixes with all of the children in the town, but also an exclusive boarding school for girls. In both cases, she most definitely does not belong. From the first she understands that conformity will require her to 'give up her soul', and also that the sacrifice of her own individuality and independence is something she is not prepared to make.
This book was published in 1943, but it is set in some indeterminate time before both world wars. The idea of a world war is introduced just once, and it's like a shadow on the novel - and probably would have been even more so for the book's contemporary readers. The book feels late Victorian; one of Ruan's adopted homes is owned by the town's most successful industrialist, while her mother's family home is a faded remnant of an already lost agricultural golden age, characterised by drunken squires and the hunt.
Throughout the book Ruan has a strong friendship and a puppy love for David - the ward of her friends Joshua Day and his daughter Rosie. This friendship is one of the recurring 'constants' in Ruan's life and it is also a touchstone for her. If I did have any niggles with the book, it was with the ending. Although Ruan gains confidence from the idea that David will always be there for her, the rest of the narrative seems to suggest that the lessons of Ruan's life have mostly been ones of self-reliance.
4.5 stars I debated giving this book 5 stars, but there is something unsatisfying and abrupt about the ending which made me hold back from that rare rating. Still, I absolutely adored this book and will definitely reread it someday....more
In the biography Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, author Ruth Franklin describes Hangsamanas:
"a weird, rich brew of autobiography an
In the biography Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, author Ruth Franklin describes Hangsamanas:
"a weird, rich brew of autobiography and fantasy, combining elements of Jackson's unhappy years at the University of Rochester, the social culture of Bennington College, her marriage to Hyman, and literary allusions ranging from Alice in Wonderland to Victorian pornography; even Emma's crack-up went into the mix."
It's both obvious, and not obvious at all, what is going on in this story. Simply, it is about 17 year old Natalie Haines and her first semester at an exclusive and experimental girls' college in New England. (Natalie's college is obviously, albeit satirically, based on Bennington College in Vermont - where Jackson's husband Stanley Hyman taught for many years.) Natalie struggles to make friends, and her loneliness becomes more and more pronounced as the story develops. A not atypical 'freshman' experience. What is atypical, though, is the very cracked lens that Natalie is looking through. This novel is not told in the first-person, but we experience Natalie's 'story' as she experiences it. We have no information, or context, other than Natalie's frame-of-mind. Natalie does not seem to have a firm grasp on reality, and thus neither does the reader. There are several key scenes, and even one important character, that may or may not be real. There are hints that Natalie is far beyond what might typically be described as an 'unreliable narrator', and yet the book is an oddly intimate glimpse into a fragile mind that is in the process of fragmenting.
From the beginning of the novel, Natalie has an alternative 'script' running through her head. In the emotionally claustrophobic but highly charged atmosphere of her family home, Natalie responds to her parents with the bare minimum of language; but meanwhile, she has a dialogue going on in her head as if she is being constantly interrogated by a detective. Natalie's father is an academic, an English professor, and a man who is in love with the sound of his voice. He is schooling Natalie to be a writer, and we do not know to what extent she shares that ambition for herself. We do know, though, that Natalie is always enacting a drama in her mind - one that is far more real to her than her engagement with others. There is detachment and splitting from the beginning, and the alienation she experiences at her college only exacerbates what is clearly already there.
Natalie heard the back of her mind gibbering obscenities, and thought for a mad moment that she might be saying them aloud and not realising.
This novel was published in 1951, and like the drama series Mad Men, Jackson's writing is having none of the nostalgic 'Happy Days' pastel coloration of the 1950s in America. This a dark, post-war America marked by paranoia, the pressure of conformity, sexism and the constant escapist appeal of martinis and cigarettes. Natalie's first experience with alcohol results in a suggested sexual tryst - not so much described as darkly hinted at. Her second experience with alcohol occurs with a run-in with a faculty wife, 21 year old Elizabeth Langford, who has dropped out of college to marry her professor. These two outcasts form a very tentative friendship, but neither can be a lifeboat for the other. They speak of death together, but how much adolescent drama, how much boredom and ennui, how much anger is mixed up in their solipsistic sharing?
Elizabeth: I want to die. Natalie: We all want to die, I suppose, from the minute that we're born.
Franklin notes that the most typical criticism of the book was it was 'simply too obscure'. I think that any reader will grasp the main point of it, but some of the more symbolic passages or references are more easily understood if one understands the meaning of the language she uses - whether it is personal, or something to do with mythology or Tarot cards. (Tarot cards play an important role in the final 'act' of the novel). Franklin explains that 'The Hanged Man' tarot card is 'the most mystical of all the cards' and symbolises a 'life in suspension'. At the end of the novel, Natalie will cross a bridge - and I think the journey she takes can be interpreted as either the progress from innocence to experience or even (perhaps also) from madness to lucidity. I hesitate, when it comes to Shirley Jackson's writing, to insist on what is delusion and what is reality. Her very original interpretations of the world always walk a fine line between the two.
3.5 stars A compromise between the quality of the writing and the very mixed pleasure of the experience...more
I felt the old pull of the earth, the solemn magic that comes out of those fields at nightfall. I wished I could be a little boy again, and that my
I felt the old pull of the earth, the solemn magic that comes out of those fields at nightfall. I wished I could be a little boy again, and that my way could end there.
On the title page of this book, Willa Cather includes this Latin phrase from Virgil: Optima dies . . . prima fugit. Later, her narrator James ‘Jim’ Burden defines it as meaning “in the lives of mortals, the best days are the first to flee.” It’s an apt phrase for this book, which is more than anything an exercise in nostalgia for not just a childhood - but the landscape of one’s childhood. The book is set in the fictional Nebraska town of Black Hawk, but was understood to be the town of Red Cloud (named for a famous leader of the Oglala Lakota tribe). Willa Cather lived in Red Cloud during the formative years of her late childhood and adolescence, and although she gives this book a male narrator, it is so suffused with romantic melancholy that one feels the author put much of her own longing and nostalgia into it.
Like the narrator Jim Burden, Willa Cather was born in Virginia and moved to Nebraska in 1883 when she was 9 years old. Although Cather names no dates in the book, that exact timeline seems to fit the story. Red Cloud/Black Hawk was opened to homesteaders in 1870, and the first chapter of the book covers the time period when the first wave of farmers settled into the hard work of converting the prairie grass into farm land. After the death of his parents, Jim arrives by train from Virginia to live with his grandparents on their farm. On his journey, he learns that the Shimerda family - from Bohemia - are bound for the same destination. The Shimerdas have a daughter, Antonia, who is a few years older than Jim and she becomes his favourite childhood companion. They learn the prairie together and have adventures which never leave his imagination.
Antonia had always been one to leave images in the mind that did not fade - that grew stronger with time. In my memory there was a succession of such pictures, fixed there like the old woodcuts of one’s first primer: Antonia kicking her bare legs against the sides of my pony when we came home in triumph with our snake; Antonia in her black shawl and fur cap, as she stood by her father’s grave in the snowstorm; Antonia coming in with her work-team along the evening sky-line. She lent herself to immemorial human attitudes which we recognise by instinct as universal and true.
Although Cather chooses to narrate her story from a male perspective - perhaps to make it more palatable to the general reading audience of 1918; perhaps so she can filter romantic longings through a conventional outlet - this is a book that glorifies women and their role in shaping and ‘civilising’ the Great Plains landscape. Antonia is the most beloved, the most representative, of a group of immigrant girls who come to America with nothing and manage - through their hard work, vitality and good sense - to transform their family fortunes in a generation.
Cather’s writing is at its most beautiful in this book and she brings the prairie landscape and its inhabitants vividly to life. It’s an idealised vision, I suspect, but then she does admit to its being so. ...more
It is unusual for me to read a memoir without knowing much at all of either the author or her work. Sutcliff is a beloved author for many; a Carnegie It is unusual for me to read a memoir without knowing much at all of either the author or her work. Sutcliff is a beloved author for many; a Carnegie award winner, and the writer of many historical novels for children. But for some reason, I never came across her writing when I was a child, and nor have I managed to discover her during my adult years in England. I have managed to fill in many gaps in my childhood reading, but not this one. Occasionally, reading a memoir can be the springboard for exploring an author’s life and work - and I think that will definitely be the case for Sutcliff, as I adored the ‘voice’ of her writing.
This memoir is both chronological and coming-of-age: it begins with Sutcliff’s earliest memories (early indeed) and ends with those two major life events, falling in love for the first time, and discovering her true vocation. In one sense, it couldn’t have been predicted that Sutcliff would become a writer. According to her own self-assessment, she was not much of a student and she left school at 14. Art was her ‘one’ talent, and she pursued an art degree between the ages of 14 and 17. But in another sense, perhaps this solitary career was not so unexpected. Her mother, whose colourful presence looms large in the book, was a natural dramatist and storyteller; she also gave Sutcliff a passionate interest in history. The other important strand of her life history was the juvenile arthritis (Still’s disease) which meant that she spent most of her childhood in a wheelchair or nursing home. As an only child, she was nearly always in the company of adults. And by late childhood, her family had moved to a remote part of North Devon. In other words, she must have lived largely in her own imagination. She clearly was a close observer. As she says of herself, “Looking back I think that I was happy with pathetically little.”
I read this memoir during the Coronavirus Quarantine, and like any book set during World War II - Sutcliff was an adolescent during that time - it reminds the present-day reader that we really don’t know much about isolation and privation. Sutcliff is no Pollyanna, and as she gets older she certainly becomes aware of much loneliness plagues her. But she has all of the qualities more common to her generation: humour, stoicism, lack of self-pity and amazing bravery.
It’s a gem of a memoir.
He must have been one of those very special people, beloved of the gods, for whom time is elastic and can always be stretched out to play with a child.
Generally speaking, I do not think that one should ever take another person’s advice in the things of life that really matter, but follow the dictates of the still small something in one’s innermost self.
There are times when life seems to fall into complete patterns, with all the loose ends neatly darned in. It could be chance, or it could be that Fate has a sense of pattern, or it could be God taking an interest.
Life is an endless recruiting of witnesses. It seems we need to be observed in our postures of extravagance or shame, we need attention paid to us.
Life is an endless recruiting of witnesses. It seems we need to be observed in our postures of extravagance or shame, we need attention paid to us. Our own memory is altogether too cherishing, which is the kindest thing I can say for it. Other accounts are required; other perspectives, but even so our most important ceremonies - birth, love and death - are secured by whomever and whatever is available. What chance, what caprice!
In this chronicle of a woman’s life, the complete ‘birth to death’ account of Daisy Goodwill Hoad Flett, author Carol Shields uses all of the biographer’s tools to build up her character. She delves into the lives of Daisy’s parents, she offers up the ‘evidence’ of facts, of lists and photos and details; she includes her sources - the letters and newspaper clippings, the speeches from important moments - and she takes into account the views of first-hand witnesses. Occasionally, she even ventures into the interior monologues of her subject. Occasionally, the first-person voice of Daisy peeks out and the object (of the novel’s attention) becomes subject. Even so, the reader is left with the impression that she doesn’t really know Daisy Goodwill very well at all. I would even suggest that Daisy does not know herself very well. “She has a talent for self-obliteration.” “Daisy’s own thoughts on her marriage are not recorded.” “She just let her life happen to her.”
The structure of this novel takes a straightforward chronology of a life and turns it into something so originally wonderful and strange. The stages of Daisy’s life, (or the lives of other characters, for that matter) seem entirely unconnected. “Things begin, things end.” Daisy is the epitome of an unremarkable 20th century life, and yet one is left with the impression of how eccentric people are - how unknowable - how mysterious.
I first read this book in 1994 or 1995, when it was newly published. I was a young mother, with the feeling that the best part of my life was all in front of me. To reread it in 2020 was a kind of ‘deja vu’ of familiarity, without any memory of what would come next. I remembered mainly that I had loved it. I still love it, although Daisy herself remains elusive.
And the question arises: what is the story of a life? A chronicle of fact or a skilfully wrought impression? The bringing together of what she fears? Or the adding up of what has been off-handedly revealed, those tiny allotted increments of knowledge? She needs a quiet place in which to think about this immensity. And she needs someone - anyone - to listen.
Never mind, it means nothing; it’s only Mrs. Flett going through the motions of being Mrs. Flett.
Stone is how she finally sees herself, her living cells replaced by the insentience of mineral deposition.
The idea of recreating food that one has drooled over in books is not completely ‘novel’, but Kate Young takes this very appealing concept and makes iThe idea of recreating food that one has drooled over in books is not completely ‘novel’, but Kate Young takes this very appealing concept and makes it her own in The Little Library Cookbook. Although each recipe is inspired by a reference in a beloved book - and Young’s personal library takes in everything from children’s classics (Paddington’s marmalade, Mary Lennox’s porridge) to contemporary and international novels (Adichie’s Jollof Rice and Banana Yoshimoto’s ramen) - this is a work of memoir, too. Young liberally mixes in food memories from her childhood in Australia and her coming-of-age years in London and other cities. There is a direct line between reading for comfort and cooking and eating for comfort, and all three are totally bound up in the author’s identity and sense of her own ‘story’. Nostalgia, and the idea of home and home-making, reappear throughout the text, but are most beautifully described in the recipe for ‘Bread, Butter & Honey’ inspired by one of Young’s (and my) comfort reads: I Capture the Castle. In her words: Bread and butter, in my most homesick moments, ground me and remind me that I have made my own home.
Although I’ve read the book from cover to cover I must admit that I’ve never cooked anything from it - and so lack that ‘proof’ that can only be found in the pudding. I’m a pretty experienced cook and baker myself, and some of Young’s methods and flavour combinations are unusual (ie, suspicious) to me. I should probably revise or at least add to this review after I have tried out at least a half dozen of them. The truth is, though, that this is very much the kind of cookbook (I would even describe it as a food memoir) that can (and probably will) be just as often enjoyed as a good read....more
Atwood begins this novel with a meditation on time:
But I began then to think of time as having a shape, something you could see, like a series of l
Atwood begins this novel with a meditation on time:
But I began then to think of time as having a shape, something you could see, like a series of liquid transparencies, one laid on top of another. You don’t look back along time but down through it, like water. Sometimes this comes to the surface, sometimes that, sometimes nothing. Nothing goes away.
This story is very much about how events/people in the past continue to haunt us as much as they have shaped us. I reread this book after first reading it in the spring of 1989 - the year I graduated from college. Margaret Atwood came to my university in Texas for a lecture/reading and I met her at a reception. She was aloof, intimidating - petite, but with a hawk-like profile. She signed my First Edition: “For Beth - Best wishes, Margaret Atwood” and my name made her say, “Ah, like Beth in Little Women, and I felt a bit ashamed to be associated with the weakling character who dies. I remember, vividly, all of these things. For the next 30 years I have said, many times, that this is my favourite Margaret Atwood book. And I suppose in some sense it still is, although I have not read all of her work - especially some of the more recent forays into dystopia. It’s also a painful, troubling book to read - and while I know exactly why I identified with it at age 22, I realise that my feelings about female friendship have changed and gradually grown more positive over time. The pained feelings of adolescence have softened and my memories have dulled; at least I think that is the case. The novel argues otherwise.
This is a ‘realistic’ work of fiction - so detailed, so visceral, so believable that it is tempting to think the author is writing from her own experience. And yet there is more than a hint of the dystopic in the atmosphere of the book, much more so than I remembered. The narrator of the book is Elaine, a woman on the cusp of 50. Having first read this book at the age of 22, it’s strange to realise that I’m now older than this mid-life narrator. As with many ‘contemporary’ books, the sections of the book set in the 1980s now feel a bit dated, while the parts which were always historical feel less altered by the passage of time that I’ve experienced as a reader.
As a child, Elaine and her family traipsed around the northern wilds of Ontario, while the Second World War was going on elsewhere, so her scientist father could do research on caterpillars and other insect life. This detail feels significant in several ways. Despite the emotional freight of this novel, there is also an odd, almost clinical, detachment. Elaine has been raised with the scientific method. She can draw the exoskeleton of an insect in precise detail, but for her the world of emotions, of arbitrary human behaviour, is mysterious and treacherous. As an adult, she ‘traps’ and pins down the memories which haunt her and turns them into symbolic art. When the war ends, her family ‘settles’ in Toronto and her father goes to work at the university there. Throughout Elaine’s childhood, her father is the matter-of-fact voice of environmental doom and gloom - predicting not just decline, but inevitable destruction of the world. Dinner conversation invariably touches on the relentless destruction of the environment. Despite the seeming stability of her nuclear family of four (an older brother called Stephen rounds things out), the 1950s post-war world of Elaine’s childhood isn’t cosy at all. It’s shabby and judgmental; it’s full of discomforts; the season always seems to be winter.
As an adult, Elaine returns to her hometown of Toronto for a major show of her work. When Elaine tells the reader that she hates the city of Toronto - “I’ve hated it so long I can hardly remember feeling any other way about it” - it sets off alarm bells. A shiver of apprehension. She is loudly signalling, not just hinting, that something very damaging happened in Toronto.
This book is about the lasting damage that childhood bullying can do; there is nothing innocent or innocuous about it. But Atwood isn’t interested in boxing her characters into the neat categories of ‘bully’ and ‘victim’. Instead, she analyses the complex metamorphosis that both the bully and victim undergo - each absorbing the other. While I didn’t ‘enjoy’ it in the way I remembered, it remained a reading experience of incredible power. ...more
At the end of My Brilliant Friend, the first book in this series, the 16 year old Lina (‘Lila’ to her best friend Elena) has become Signora Carrucci. At the end of My Brilliant Friend, the first book in this series, the 16 year old Lina (‘Lila’ to her best friend Elena) has become Signora Carrucci. Wed to Stefano, the grocer - the son of the murdered Don Achille - Lila has cause to regret her marriage before she even leaves for her honeymoon. Her ‘new name’ is one she despises, and for most of the book she attempts to regain the autonomy she once had.
This novel covers a time period in the girls’ lives between the ages of 16 and 22. For Elena, these years are mostly concerned with the effort to get an education. She eventually ends up at the university in Pisa, and her social education develops in tandem with her formal one. She moves farther and farther away from Lila and the old neighbourhood, but constantly questions her ability to eradicate those formative influences. For Lila, this time period is consumed with trying on different roles: wife, lover, mother, boss, outcast.
Again, Elena narrates events from the sidelines. There is the sense that while Lila is ‘living’ life, she herself is only observing it. The narrative device of Lila’s notebooks are just another way Elena responds to the dramatic events of Lila’s life at a secondhand remove.
An important break in their friendship comes early in the storyline. Nino, the boy who Elena has loved and admired for many years, becomes infatuated by Lila. Like so many emotions and entanglements in this book, his feelings go back to their earliest childhood and he confesses to Elena that as a child he had thought be engaging himself to Elena he could also ally himself with Lila. ”I thought we would become engaged and we would all three be together forever, you, me and your friend.” The way that Elena responds to Lila’s co-option of Nino is representative of the many confused feelings and loyalties in the girls’ friendship. In Elena’s words:
”What was that deception but another of her fantastic moves, which were always full of risks. The two of us, allied with each other, in the struggle against all.”
This is a dramatic book in many ways, and at times Lila’s life resembles a telenovela in its big emotions (veering into melodrama) and reversals of fortune. But neither Elena nor the reader can second-guess Lila’s actions or dismiss her bravery. The final chapter is a dramatic break with childhood - one girl’s dreams seem to be realised, while the other’s are destroyed - but I don’t doubt there is a phoenix rising out of these ashes. The second novel just sucked me into the story even more and I feel totally compelled to find out what happens to these memorable characters.
”I liked to discover connections like that, especially if they concerned Lila. I traced lines between moments and events distant from one another,
”I liked to discover connections like that, especially if they concerned Lila. I traced lines between moments and events distant from one another, I established convergences and divergences. In that period it became a daily exercise: the better off I had been in Ischia, the worse off Lila had been in the desolation of the neighbourhood; the more I had suffered upon leaving the island, the happier she had become. It was as if, because of an evil spell, the joy or sorrow of one required the sorrow or joy of the other; even our physical aspect, is seemed to me, shared in that swing.”
As children in a poor neighbourhood in Naples, Elena (Lenu) and Rafaela (Lina, or Lila) form a bond which will go on to shape both of their lives. Born in August 1944, a year after Mussolini had been deposed and the Allies had occupied Italy, the girls are born into a time and place dominated by violence, poverty and fear. ”Our world was like that, full of words that killed: croup, tetanus, typhus, gas, war, lathe, rubble work, bombardment, bomb, tuberculosis, infection. With these words and those years I bring back the many fears that accompanied me all my life.”
This story is narrated by Elena, and there is nearly always the sense that she feels herself to be the lesser in the relationship: less brave, less intelligent, less bold, less beautiful. Occasionally the narrative suggests - most often through another person’s opinion - that Elena judges herself too harshly, but her insecurity dogs her even when her accomplishments seem most assured. As the quotation I opened my review with indicates, the girls are in tandem - and at some points one of them seems to lead while the other follows, but the positions are constantly changing. Although Lila seems the most “brilliant” in elementary school, her father makes the decision that she cannot continue her formal education after the 5th grade. Elena, whose eagerness to learn had been inspired by Lila’s enthusiasm and ambition, carries on with education while Lila’s fate is the traditional one for the neighbourhood: early marriage. Lila is admired, feared and disliked, while Elena learns how win people over with words - or “con” them, in Lila’s description.
Although the narrative is primarily about the two girls, and the shape of their friendship - sometimes nurturing, sometimes damaging - it is very much embedded in their Neapolitan neighbourhood. There is a large cast of characters and the Index of Characters provided at the beginning of the book had to be consulted on a number of occasions. Although the mothers in the neighbourhood play a role in the storyline, usually a cautionary one, it is the men - fathers, brothers, friends, boyfriends and lovers - who tend to have the upper hand. Elena tends to prefer evasive action, while Lila is willing to oppose or challenge the men head-on - but violence towards women is a constant in these girls’ lives as they grow into women. Having said that, neither Elena or Lila are willing to capitulate to the men in their lives. Both are dubious about love, although they pursue relationships for the reasons of wealth and security. Although the girls have dreams for their futures, this book is anti-romance in every sense of that word.
Lila is in many ways the “heroine” of this book and the reader cannot help but be as fascinated and beguiled by her as Elena is, even at the moments when she wants to cut all of the emotional ties which bind them. ”I soon had to admit that what I did by myself couldn’t excite me, only what Lila touched seemed important.” The book ends on a cliffhanger - a pivotal point for relationships in the community - and by that point I was completely sucked into this story of nuanced and competitive friendship. ...more
I read this novel when it was first published (2011) and I remember loving it - and pressing it into the hands of anyone who would listen to my ravingI read this novel when it was first published (2011) and I remember loving it - and pressing it into the hands of anyone who would listen to my ravings about it. In the past two weeks I have read the author’s follow-up Circe - also wonderful - and Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls, which examines the story of Achilles and Patroclus from the point-of-view of their slave/friend/lover Briseis. Barker’s very different depiction of Achilles made me want to reread this book - for contrast, but also to see if I still admired and enjoyed it as much.
The answer is YES. Yes, I did. I don’t know how she does it, but the way Miller unfolds and reveals the love story between Achilles and Patroclus is just mesmerising. Also very sensual, but tastefully and never embarrassingly so - which isn’t easy to pull off.
Patroclus is the protagonist of this one, and it is very much his coming-of-age story, and a love story (as mentioned), but it’s also a story about what it means to be hero. The book begins in Patroclus’s early childhood. Despite being the son of a King, Patroclus’s birth is inauspicious. His mother is ‘simple’ and despite the wealth she has brought to her husband, he regards their marriage as a trick that has besmirched his honour and his reputation. Patroclus, small for his age and lacking in noticeable talents and intelligence, is a disappointment to his father from the first. When he accidentally kills another young boy, Patroclus is exiled from his own father’s kingdom and sent to be fostered by King Peleus, the father of Achilles.
Achilles - whose mother is the sea-goddess Thetis - was born to be the age’s greatest warrior, but his life is shadowed by a dark prophecy. Miller sets the stage for the epic Trojan War from the first chapters of the novel, and even as the two boys grow up together - and move from friendship to love - their fates become entwined with that decade-long war made eternally famous by Homer.
Miller’s writing style balances gracefully between the poetic and spare. She uses none of the tricks of the thriller, and yet this novel is quite unputdownable in its own way, with not a moment of boredom for the reader. She is very skilled at characterisation as well, and even secondary characters like Briseis and Odysseus are vivid and distinctive. She breathes life into these legendary characters and in the process writes a very moving love story. An all-around satisfying reading experience. Highly recommended. ...more
There are many wonderful elements to this book, but somehow they didn’t all add up for me. What was meant to be a dramatic climax felt somewh3.5 stars
There are many wonderful elements to this book, but somehow they didn’t all add up for me. What was meant to be a dramatic climax felt somewhat limp and anticlimactic- and I don’t know if that was a fault in the storyline, or due to the fact that I had been primed for somewhat more. Let me explain: before beginning this book, I heard the author Melissa Harrison discuss it an event at the Owl Bookshop in London. The interlocutor focused rather too much on the plot, and not only did she give away many aspects of it, but even worse she hinted at drama which turned out to be not so dramatic. Harrison was very eloquent when it came to discussing her own work, but she raised my expectations a bit too high.
The premise is particularly interesting to me. It takes place during 1933, in a small farming community in Suffolk. The losses of World War I are still unhealed wounds in the community, and there is a sense that the old ways of farming are being lost, spoilt or proved inefficient. Markets are becoming international, rather than local, and that pressure has lowered prices. Yields are down, too. Drought in the previous farming season has brought the Mather family farm to the brink of ruin, and the father (George Mather) is gambling everything on a tricky barley crop. In the midst of this, a charismatic Londoner (Constance FitzAllen) comes to the community in order to capture the ‘old ways’ for a series of nostalgic and exalting pieces she is writing for a journal associated with the emerging British Fascist movement.
The novel is narrated from the first-person point of view of 14 year old Edith, the youngest daughter of the Mather family. Edith is on the cusp in many ways; she has just left school, but she has no idea of what the future might hold for her. Too young to marry, nevertheless she is being ‘courted’ by a local young man named Alfie Rose. His intentions are approved by her family, but his sly interactions with her are unwanted and invasive. Edith is lonely and isolated in many ways, and there is definitely the sense that the farm (which she loves) cannot provide any positive future for her. Constance becomes her friend, but she is an inappropriate influence in many ways, and her attentions are ultimately superficial.
The nature writing in this book is often very moving - particularly in the first half. We can ‘see’ the land through both Edith’s and Constance’s eyes - one of them deeply knowledgeable, the other misty-eyed with romantic notions about unspoiled Englishness, but both of them appreciative of the beauty of the landscape and the changing seasons. Harrison’s research into farming methods in the 1930s gives a rich texture to the storyline, and that aspect of the story is believable. What doesn’t entirely work, though, is how the author touches on local folklore and superstitions. Edith forms some erroneous conclusions, and acts upon them, but that part of the story didn’t quite ring true or seem built up enough.
The ending of the novel is surprising in many ways, but it felt rushed and inconclusive to me. It was an enjoyable book in many ways, and the author has a pleasing style, but it didn’t stir my emotions as much as I felt it should have done. ...more
The first Athill memoir I read was Somewhere Towards the End - written when Diana Athill had already reached an advanced age, and had long been a GranThe first Athill memoir I read was Somewhere Towards the End - written when Diana Athill had already reached an advanced age, and had long been a Grande Dame of the publishing industry. As it turned out, she was nowhere near the end and published quite a few more books before her death in January 2019. I suppose you could describe Athill as an ‘über late bloomer’ because this book, first of her memoirs, was written in the 40s and describes her surprise and delight at becoming fully engaged with life again after a sort of dormant half-life (in her own description) for twenty years. It’s difficult to imagine Athill being anything other than a formidable woman of letters, but one gets the sense - in this book, written at a sort of midway point of her life - that her life unfolded in a way that was both surprising and occasionally mystifying to her.
According to her own description, she was born into an upper-middle class world and absorbed an attitude of ‘smug, matter-of-fact assumption of superiority’. Although she was intelligent and academic enough to attend Oxford University in the late 1930s, she could imagine no life for herself other than becoming a wife and mother. An early intense romance with a family friend named Paul led to a young engagement at 21; but after a long separation, the war and Paul’s own fickle nature meant that she was jilted and left without emotional closure for many years. Although she describes, in honest and exacting detail, how Paul’s defection caused her to emotionally shut down for many years, and just drift from one trivial job to another, she must have been more efficient and formidable in the eyes of others than in her own estimation.
Athill is surprisingly straightforward and frank in this memoir. She is unsparing in criticisms of her own character, and despite all the evidence to the contrary, describes herself as chronically lazy. She is always quick to point out any good fortune that came her away, and although she loved her childhood at her grandmother’s Norfolk estate (which she calls Beckton), she also emphasises how fortunate she was to break free of its ‘smothering folds’ - not only of luxury and comfort, but more importantly of its particular narrow mindset.
She’s at all times an interesting subject, and her writing style is wonderfully evocative. Her life encompassed nearly all of the 20th century, with all of its turbulence and social changes, and although she is in no way an average or typical person, she manages to make her own story ‘read’ in a surprisingly warm and relatable way....more
Last October I decided to read the entire ‘Anne of Green Gable’ series in order, but I ran out of steam by the time I reached this final book - not acLast October I decided to read the entire ‘Anne of Green Gable’ series in order, but I ran out of steam by the time I reached this final book - not actually the final one that Montgomery wrote for the series, but in terms of the chronology of the Blythe family, it was the final one. I remember reading the first chapter and thinking: nah. It started with a comic bit about the Blythes’ housekeeper/cook Susan and a demonic cat Jekyl/Hyde and I just wasn’t in the mood for it. My interest in the ‘Anne’ series was rekindled in the last few weeks as I’ve been reading a biography of Lucy Maud Montgomery by Mary Henley Rubio subtitled ‘The Gift of Wings’. I mention this specifically to acknowledge that what I was learning about Montgomery’s life certainly did impact my reading of this book.
This is a book about the Canadian homefront’s experience with World War I, and I was not surprised when my book friend Nora - who lives in Kingston, Ontario - told me that a Canadian lecturer had mentioned that Rilla of Ingleside was a very accurate depiction. That first chapter of the book, which didn’t capture my interest on first reading, struck me differently when I next read it. When Susan says, upon reading the local news and looking for the bits which directly interest the Blythe family: “I never take much interest in foreign parts. Who is this Archduke man who has been murdered?”, it is a wonderful bit of foreshadowing for the rest of the novel. For not only will Susan become intensely interested in ‘foreign parts’, but so will the rest of the family - not least the three Blythe boys who will all go off to fight in the war.
The ‘heroine’ of the story is Rilla, the youngest child in the Blythe family. At the beginning of the book, Rilla is portrayed as pretty and a bit vain and spoiled. Unlike the rest of her siblings, she lacks goals and directions and just wants to have lots of fun. She wants to be grown up, at almost 15, but only so she can attend dances and attract young men. A young reader may not guess it, but adult readers will immediately grasp that the war is going to force Rilla to grow up - and although her ‘character’ (in the sense of her moral character) will be improved by the experience, her adolescence will be marked by worry and loss rather than the ‘fun’ that she had hoped for.
There is a bit of romance in the book for Rilla, but I felt that Montgomery included it only to appease readers who expected it as form. Rilla’s crush on Kenneth Ford becomes a book-end for both the beginning and ending of the book, but is otherwise mostly irrelevant. What does matter is how Rilla grows in sensitivity and responsibility, and alongside with the running commentary of the war (battles won and lost, various leaders coming and going), these ‘coming of age’ milestones make up the storyline of the book.
There are all sorts of secondary characters in this book, the most important of which are Gertrude Oliver (the hyper-sensitive young teacher who lives with the Blythe family), the ‘war-baby’ that Rilla adopts, Susan (the family housekeeper) and Cousin Sophia (Susan’s cousin, and a persistent voice of gloom and doom). Much of the humour of the book is provided by Susan, who becomes the chief chronicler of the war and the Kaiser’s chief critic. According to the biography, Maud and her husband Ewan were absolutely obsessed by the war - and this is reflected in the extensive information about the war which is threaded through the local Prince Edward Island storyline. I learned a few things!
One thing that I learned from reading the biography is that L M Montgomery did not want to be pigeon-holed as a writer for young girls; rather, her books were intended for a ‘general audience’. In her later books, which would include this one, she very deliberately slanted her storyline upwards - and in many respects I would agree that this is not really a children’s book, although the book cover markets it in that direction. One of her strengths as a writer is characterisation, and her comic characters are definitely better appreciated by adults. Having said that, though, this novel is very much of its time - and suffers for that in a way that a book like ‘Anne of Green Gables’ does not. The view of the war is very much one of noble sacrifice. Germany is portrayed as an Evil nation of baby killers and freedom/democracy haters which must be fought against at any cost. The intensely unquestioning nationalism and patriotism strike an odd and discomfiting note for the modern reader. But Montgomery can be undeniably effective, even when you know she is blatantly pulling every heart-string. When Jem Blythe comes home, and is ‘greeted’ by his loyal dog, I was in tears . . . and I suspect most readers will be, too.
”’People always think that happiness is a faraway thing, thought Francie, ‘something complicated and hard to get. Yet, what little things can make it ”’People always think that happiness is a faraway thing, thought Francie, ‘something complicated and hard to get. Yet, what little things can make it up; a place of shelter when it rains - a cup of strong hot coffee when you’re blue; for a man, a cigarette for contentment; a book to read when you’re alone - just to be with someone you love. Those things make happiness.’”
A Tree of Heaven grows in the mossy yard of Francie Nolan’s tenement house in Brooklyn. On the very first page of this novel, Francie describes the experience of reading in the shelter of this tree on a “serene” Saturday. Her tree is a hardy and determined variety: “it grew in boarded up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps and it was the only tree that grew out of the cement.” If it’s not obvious at first, it will be obvious by the end of this story: that tree, a thing of beauty growing in such unpromising circumstances, is a metaphor for Francie herself.
This is one of the truly great American “coming of age” stories, and Francie Nolan is an unforgettable protagonist. Born in unpromising circumstances - her Irish father is a singing waiter, but mostly a drunk; and her Austrian mother is a scrub woman - Francie and her little brother Neeley live in abject poverty. Most of the novel takes place in the years when Francie is transitioning from a child of 11 to a young woman of 16. Brooklyn before World War I is a neighbourhood full of immigrants: with the Irish, Germans, Italians and Jews living cheek by jowl. It’s a wonderful slice of social history at a time when America was rapidly changing, and the details are so precise and vivid that it reads more like living history than dead. Childhood was different then, and Francie and Neeley are self-reliant in a way that it hard to imagine in this more pampered and protected age. They run the errands, bargain with the butcher, sell rubbish for pennies, and mind themselves. At 14, Francie has left school and is pretending to be 16 whilst working full-time as the main economic support of the family.
The characterisations are one of the main pleasures of the novel, and strong women dominate the narrative (and Francie’s life). Her maternal grandmother is an illiterate immigrant, yet she endows her daughters and granddaughter with her own “thin invisible steel.” Katie Rommely, and her sisters Sissy and Evy, are “slender, frail creatures with wondering eyes and soft fluttery voices” but they are all indomitable in their own ways. Following her mother’s advice, Katie raises her children with thrift and discipline, pride and an appreciation of beauty. From their babyhood, she reads them a page of the Bible and a page of Shakespeare every day until they can read for themselves. It is understood in the older generation that an education can make all of the difference and lift the next generation. However, “book smarts” aren’t all that matters. Aunt Sissy - illiterate, and first married at 14 - is full of streets smarts, cunning, savvy, and importantly, great kindness. She is truly one of the most memorable characters in the novel.
Although the Nolan children experience hunger, humiliation and at least one great sadness in their young lives, I found this novel more uplifting than melancholy. There are some painful scenes in which Francie is shamed because of her ignorance and poverty - the incident when she is vaccinated against smallpox comes to mind - but Francie’s love of life is a transcendent quality which she shares with the reader. Her small triumphs are greater than her losses, and self-pity doesn’t make a showing on these pages.
The profile of American immigrants may have changed in the last 100 years, but this novel is still a powerful exercise in developing empathy in the reader. The intensity of the family’s struggle for survival gives the story its corresponding emotional intensity. It rings with truth, but truth that has been shaped by a master storyteller. I read this book many years ago, but if anything, I loved it more on this rereading. ...more
In the second of the Claudine novels, 17 year old Claudine is transplanted (rather unwillingly) from her country home in Montigny to a “dark flat” in In the second of the Claudine novels, 17 year old Claudine is transplanted (rather unwillingly) from her country home in Montigny to a “dark flat” in the “dismal, shabby Rue Jacob” in Paris. Having left school and her country home, the beginning of Claudine’s transformation to a young woman in Paris begins with a long illness which leaves her thin and weak. Her long hair has been chopped off into a rough curly mop, but her initial opinion of this unfortunate event - “transformed into a boy!” - changes when she realised that this more gamine style suits her face and character. Claudine is a rather self-possessed character from the beginning, quite sure of her opinions and tastes, but this book is a sort of turning-point from the schoolgirl world of her crushes to a broader canvas: the city, and men. Much older men.
There is a noticeably sensual tone to this book, and although Claudine is innocent in some ways - still a virgin, and a “good girl” in her own mind - the storyline is all about testing her powers in the world of attraction/seduction. She practises on her cousin Marcel - a very pretty boy her age who is attracted to other boys. She amuses and titillates him with confidences from her own past with Luce - the young country girl she teases and dominates. (Luce makes a rather disturbing appearance in this book - both a victim and an opportunist in the game of sex/love.) Claudine’s white cat Fanchette and her earthy maid Melie are also in the background, both of them encouraging Claudine on in their various ways. Melie, who “dreamily cups her uncorseted breasts” urges Claudine to find a young man. Not only does Fanchette seem like the “spirit animal” of her owner, but her feline exploits are very much a part of the atmosphere of the book. Like Fanchette, Claudine is in heat and testing her claws. Claudine’s academic father - very much the absent-minded scientist - allows his young daughter a lot of latitude, and she takes full advantage of it. Despite all of Claudine’s strength of mind, and her sometimes outrageous sauciness, the story was very much of its time in the sense that no one (not even Claudine herself) could imagine a life beyond beau-conquering and marriage proposals.
The writing is often lovely, and the story does have a certain charm - although it often felt mannered and superficial to me. I can see why it caused quite a sensation for its time, though. Claudine’s emotions seemed truest when describing - not her infatuations with men - but rather, her longing for the countryside of her childhood.
”Alas, my mind kept going back to Montigny. Oh, to clasp armfuls of tall, cool grass, to fall asleep, exhausted, on a low wall hot from the sun, to drink out of nasturtium leaves, where the rain rolls like quicksilver, to ransack the water’s edge for forget-me-nots for the pleasure of letting them fade on a table, and lick the sticky sap from a peeled willow-wand; to make flutes of hollow grass-stalks, to steal tit’s eggs and rub the scented leaves of wild currants; to kiss, to kiss all those things I love!”...more
The adolescent years have a strange mystique, long after they’ve become only distant memories looked at through the wrong end of the telescope. In thiThe adolescent years have a strange mystique, long after they’ve become only distant memories looked at through the wrong end of the telescope. In this masterly novel, with its unique point of view, Eugenides manages to capture all of the confusion, mystery and romance of the growing-up years. Adult ‘reason’ is brought to bear on adolescent curiousity and longing, but still the past remains both alluring and elusive. It acquires, has acquired, the shimmer of legend and the elasticity of myth.
Set in an affluent Michigan town in the 1970s, Eugenides depicts a world undergoing change, rot and decline. Allusions to economic contractions, the slump of the automobile industry and a diseased natural environment, provide the background for a story about stunted adolescence: the five Lisbon girls, who will never grow up. The five Lisbon girls - objects of intense interest to the neighbourhood boys - become fixed in time, strangely unalterable, after they all commit suicide one fateful year. Their deaths are enigmatic, as were their lives. The narrative voice manages to both startlingly intimate and yet also anonymous. It attempts to piece together a story as if it were an unsolved crime - and it uses the language “exhibit” and “testimony” - in the style of a detective story. Details are revealed, scenes are replayed, theories are recounted and constructed, but the Lisbon girls can still not be brought back to life - although they do continue to live, paradoxically, in both the mind of the narrative voice and the readers.
Eugenides’ writing is incredibly supple, clever and vivid. He writes about ghosts, but he invests them with such earthy, physical properties. There is a fleshly creep in the descriptions that can be quite startling and even repugnant. It’s partly forensic, partly adolescent male. The narrator is understood to be collective (all of the neighbourhood boys), but it coheres into one voice and consciousness.
All together, it’s a unique and unforgettable book. In a different reading mood, I might have ranked it as a five star book - but there was something about it that didn’t quite engross me. ...more
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