A Woman of my Age – Nina Bawden (1967)

Last month, Karen of Kaggsysbookishramblings and Simon of Stuck in a book had a read-a-long of Nina Bawden’s A Woman of my Age. I wanted to join in, and then a fellow librarything member sent me a copy of the book, but I have only just got around to reading it.
Nina Bawden’s Carrie’s War was one of my all-time favourite children’s books and I really enjoyed the couple of Bawden’s adult books I read last year. I find Bawden’s writing very engaging, her characters strong and believable their lives are fully explored and often portrayed with sharp humour – after reading The Devil by the Sea and A Grain of Truth I wanted to read all of Bawden’s novels for adults. I enjoyed ‘A woman of my age’ very much – although not quite as much as those two books I just mentioned, for me there were a few little odd things which jarred slightly.

“When I look in the mirror – not to see if the grey roots are beginning to show before the next tinting, but in the same way I used to look at myself when I was seventeen, at what, whom and why – I remain, as I did then, cloudy, fading, sadly out of focus. I do not know myself, only my own situation: I am Elizabeth Jourdelay, married to Richard, the mother of his two sons. I am, I am middle aged. This is an embarrassment that has come upon me suddenly, taking me by surprise so that I don’t really believe it. Looking in the mirror I see the wrinkles, but perhaps tomorrow they will be gone and my skin will be smooth again. Though wrinkles are not important. The important thing is that I am in the middle of my life and I feel as I did when I was adolescent, that I do not know where to go from here.
What of the time between? What have I done – become – during twenty long battling years? Is there no answer, no key?”

In ‘A Woman of my Age’ we meet Elizabeth – a woman of about 37 – who having been married for around eighteen years is no longer very interested in her husband and considers herself middle aged. Travelling in Morocco with her husband Richard, allows Elizabeth time to look back over her life, how is it she has ended up where she is? Brought up by two aunts who had worked for the suffrage movement and taught her to engage in politics, Elizabeth left university without taking her degree in order to marry Richard. Richard is a handsome, charming man, quite persuasive and prone to bursts of temper he is happiest with Elizabeth undertaking the traditional wife and mother role. There were times in her younger years when Elizabeth was frustrated by her life, yearning for a chance to work – however humbly – within the political arena – yet she finds herself sacrificing her ambitions for her family. Elizabeth’s view of herself and her relationship will surprise – maybe shock many modern readers,  shrugging off her husband hitting her during a particularly bad row.

In the searing heat of the Moroccan desert – Elizabeth and Richard meet two other couples. Flora is an old friend – particularly of Richard’s – Elizabeth hasn’t seen her for a number of years. Flora a woman of around 40 is travelling with her young lover Adam. The other couple are the Hobbs – a couple in their 60’s, Mrs Hobbs is good hearted friendly woman, very large and rather unwell, she and her husband are devoted to one another. Initially the Hobbs’ are a couple that Elizabeth and Richard smile at behind their backs, finding them slightly ridiculous – but Elizabeth quickly becomes genuinely fond of them. Sexually uninterested in her husband, resisting his advances when she can, Elizabeth is amazed to find herself an object of attraction to both Adam and Mr Hobbs – she is further surprised by her own reaction to them. As the group continue their journey across the desert –the sexual tensions that have built up have life changing consequences for almost everyone.
There is quite a twist in the ending of this novel- not something I saw coming, and certainly it wasn’t the ending that I would have chosen. I don’t want to give away too much – in case anyone else is thinking of reading it soon – but I suspect it is an ending which dismays many readers. However – while it is not the ending I would have chosen – it did make a sort of peculiar sense for me. Throughout the novel, Elizabeth indulges in a good deal of introspective navel gazing – she’s a little bit whiney I suppose. Her life is dull – she is disappointed by how it has turned out – but she never really does much about it –the reader sees how there were times when she nearly had – but just never quite managed it. Even in Morocco there is a moment when the reader thinks Elizabeth is going to strike out on her own – but here again she goes back to what is easy – it is as if Elizabeth is simply unable to go the whole hog – she’s good at talking about it – ruminating on her lot – but she just slips back into the old routine. Elizabeth emerges as a woman repeating the mistakes of her youth in middle age – destined to live out the same life again. Nina Bawden allows her readers to really know her characters – and while we all may interpret their motivations slightly differently – we have these complex not always likeable people set out before us – and in just 200 pages or so, we have their whole lives laid bare.

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A Particular Place – Mary Hocking (1989)

“Mary Hocking is confirmed as the successor to Elizabeth Taylor and Barbara Pym”

So says the back cover of my 1990 Virago edition of A Particular Place. That is quite an accolade. This is the first Mary Hocking I have read, and on the evidence so far I would agree. Although I am not sure that there is quite the genius for the minutiae of everyday life and the depth of character that I find in Elizabeth Taylor’s work. That should not been seen as any major criticism, as I think Elizabeth Taylor to be almost unparalleled. With themes of marriage and unfaithfulness, and a clergyman his wife and the congregation of an Anglican church in a small West Country town – there are certainly plenty of similarities to both Elizabeth Taylor and Barbara Pym, and although Mary Hocking is neither of those writers, she is undoubtedly a worthy successor to them. Like Taylor and Pym I think Mary Hocking a keen observer of human beings – their expectations and disappointments in life portrayed with both poignancy and humour.

“Norah Kendall seemed to him to epitomize the irrelevance of his profession. Of course, it was a sin to think like this. He sat opposite her, aware that of the two he was the greater sinner and in no way drawn to her by this knowledge.
She raised her head and looked at him, immediately noting the lines of pain around the narrowed eyes. ‘How you must curse people who come on a Saturday afternoon.’ She spoke with wry concern, but the statement was too near the truth of his present condition for him to accept it with good humour. ‘I am always available, I hope.’ He was not given to pompous utterances and disliked himself the more.
‘Of course’ Something trembled in her face which could have been laughter. She looked out of the window while she composed herself and the afternoon sun caught a glint of red in the pale hair. She was at her best now. He had noticed before that in her moments of stillness this woman had that especial gravity which one sees in the faces of people who are listening intently to music, its harmonies reflected in their ordered features. Seen in this light she looked like a woman in whom one would place trust, eminently more suited to the job of counselling than was he.”

New vicar Michael Hoath with a penchant for candlelit processions finds his enthusiasm for challenge somewhat curtailed by the traditionalism of some of his parishioners. He clings resolutely to his faith, but sometimes finds himself patronised or misunderstood by others. Unknown to those around him, Michael has his own quiet struggles and disappointments. His wife Valentine – a keen gardener and amateur dramatist finding herself cast as Hedda Gabler in a forthcoming production, is perhaps not a natural clergy wife, although she seems able to the play the part of one when she needs to. When Michael falls in love with a member of his congregation, a woman “no longer young nor beautiful” Valentine is possibly more surprised than shattered.
Hester – a writer who happens to be Michael‘s aunt, find herself cast unwilling as confidant to Valentine, while Norah – another disappointed wife – turns to Michael. Norah the recent second wife of Hesketh Kendall – is finding it hard enough to adjust to her new life, when Hesketh’s daughter who openly loathes her new stepmother decides to visit – Norah knows she can’t cope. Hesketh is disappointed in his wife, finding she is not the saint his first wife was, that her domestic capabilities are not as seamless – poor Norah unable to simply produce beautiful meals as if by magic. Good natured, practical, Shirley Treglowan is a single mother – whose husband left her for a man – with an eighteen year old son bent on anthropology who slopes around the place acting the part of Neanderthal man.

Mary Hocking presents these excellent characters and their disappointments with wry humour and sympathy, her writing is very good indeed, the sentiments are not over blown and there is real understanding behind them. I think I am already a fan of Mary Hocking’s writing, I thoroughly enjoyed ‘A Particular Place’ and I will be looking out for more of her novels – especially her family trilogy Good Daughters, Indifferent Heroes and Welcome Strangers which looks right up my alley.

I find myself fascinated by who Mary Hocking was – I can find out virtually nothing about her even by googling. She was born in 1921 – so theoretically could still be alive – her books seem to have been published between 1961 and the mid 1990’s. Several of her books were published by Virago in the 1980’s and 90’s, although I suspect they are harder to find now. If anyone knows anything further please share it with me I am madly curious – and delighted to have discovered a new (to me at least) author. I wonder if Mary Hocking isn’t a writer we should all be reading and shouting about – getting her re-issued for everyone to enjoy.

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Farewell Leicester Square – Betty Miller (1941)

This was the book selected for me by the Classic club spin.

Betty Miller wrote ‘Farewell Leicester Square’ in 1935 but it was rejected at first no doubt due to the sensitive subject matter of anti-Semitism and the sense of disappointment which pervades the novel. The book finally appeared in 1941. Betty Miller was a young wife and mother when she wrote ‘Farewell Leicester Square’ but she must have been aware on some level at least of what was happening in Germany at this time, and this novel must have been her response to the Jewish experience as she saw it in England.
In Farewell Leicester Square we meet Alec Berman, who succeeds in his ambitions to make it in the British film industry. The novel opens on premier night of Berman’s film ‘Farewell Leicester Square’ – a film which epitomises his work, and comes to be his greatest success. The story then returns briefly to Alec’s teenage years in Brighton, one of three siblings in a Jewish family that expects him to join his father in the family business. Alec’s father is disparaging of his ambitions – ultimately throwing down an ultimatum that results in Alec leaving Brighton for London – and not seeing his family for seventeen years.
Alec is ambitious and as a sixteen year old he contrives to meet Richard Nicolls owner of the Ladywell film company at the Nicolls home in Rottingdean. Their home and the life he glimpses there seems to represent for him the world from which he feels excluded, but which he longs to be a part of.

“Their gaze passed him over, up and down, idly; without interest or curiosity. Then they continued on their way as though nothing were. Walking together without speaking: at one in their natural intimacy. Moving with unconscious assurance of young animals under the sun. Alec looking after them as they went, felt down to the roots of his being the contrast which emerged between himself and them: and it was at that precise moment, for the first time, that something new, the sense of racial distinctness, awoke in him …. A sudden knowledge of the difference between these two, who could tread with careless assurance a land which was in every sense theirs; and himself, who was destined to live always on the fringe to exist only in virtue of the toleration of others, with no birthright but that of toleration.”

Fourteen years later Alec is a success, and he finds himself married to Catherine, the daughter of Richard Nicolls. The marriage is over shadowed however by Alec’s over awareness of himself – he constantly examines other people’s attitude to him and his Jewishness – he suspects even his wife of looking down on him. Viewing himself continually as an outsider impacts upon Alec’s whole life, and his relationships. Alec’s preoccupation with how he is perceived begins to look a little like paranoia – as he begins to push away the only people who really don’t have any issue with his race.
This is the sort of novel which has people crying ..”but nothing much happens” – well nothing much does happen – the novel is an extremely good examination of middle class English life, ambition and the small almost invisible acts of anti-Semitism that exist there. There are some large gaps in the story of Alec and his career as a film maker – but in a sense that doesn’t matter – the story is much more about Alec Berman’s view of himself, and the way that in striving to make the sort of life for himself that he has always wanted, he does in fact lose something of himself. Alec is not a character I always felt able to sympathise with, in a way he pushes the reader away in the same way he pushes his wife away.
Miller’s writing is excellent. She slyly exposes petty everyday racism that is of course in fact far from petty, it’s destructive; in Alec it breeds a kind of paranoia – which blights his life. Miller’s portrayal of both middle class English life and the suffocating limits of Alec’s family home in Brighton is brilliantly done.

“There are some things, he thought, which one would remember always. The smell of those rooms in Landsdowne Road. Coming in out of an unbounded night – the sea, hedged between green-sleeked breakwaters, surging with prolonged thunder upon the empty clattering stones; and the lights all along the front, blown, winking before the breathless night-riding winds – to find this immured warmth: solid, motionless. To stand, eyes dazzled, flesh still ringing from the exterior cold, before this quiet room, warm with the accumulated fires of winter and the intimate life and breath of human bodies, with gaze as bright and alien as that of some animal come momentarily out of another existence. And conscious of course, of his own voluntary isolation; of this new priggish desire of his to rupture the dull bondage of flesh making him one with these people.”

Such writing – in my opinion – deserves recognition, and I am glad Persephone books saw fit to re-issue it. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel – and although it won’t be my favourite Persephone novel – it is one I am very glad to have read and it certainly makes me want to read more of Betty Miller’s work.

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Locked Rooms – Laurie R King (2005)

Sherlock Holmes is a character that who seems to continue to fascinate. Conan Doyle’s character having taken on almost mythical proportions has been responsible for the wide ranging Holmes pastiche that has grown up since Conan Doyle finished writing his Holmes stories. There are many writers out there who have continued to write Sherlock Holmes stories. For instance, there is ‘The young Sherlock Holmes’ series for children by Andrew Lane, a book called The Last Sherlock Holmes story by well-known crime writer Michael Dibdin, a quick look on Amazon revealed books by authors David Wilson, Richard Dinnick and Nigel Scott, and many others – none of which I have read or even heard of, if I’m honest. I did read a good collection of Holmes stories called The Remains of Sherlock Holmes by Paul W Nash – though I think the book is out of print now. I also really enjoyed Anthony Horrowitz’s The House of Silk.

However the series that continues to delight me is the Mary Russell series by Laurie R King. In the first book – The Beekeeper’s Apprentice – Mary Russell is a fifteen year old Anglo/American orphan living in Sussex with an aunt – she meets and becomes apprenticed to an ageing Sherlock Holmes – who has retired to the Sussex downs to study bees. Needless to say Holmes doesn’t stay retired for long, and is frequently called upon to undertake secret missions by his brother Mycroft. As the years pass Russell and Holmes’s partnership/friendship leads to marriage. Russell is a tough bluestocking, fiercely intelligent and independent; she is not a typical early twentieth century wife – who could imagine Holmes married to a traditional wife anyway? I love the way Laurie R King has resurrected Holmes in these novels, he is still very familiar – he is older and mellower no longer a drug addict – and still taken care of by Mrs Hudson, corresponds with Watson – and still a master of disguise.

Locked Rooms is the eighth Mary Russell novel, it is 1924, ten years since the accident that robbed Mary of her parents and younger brother. Returning from Bombay where they had been involved in the case detailed in the seventh novel The Game, Russell and Holmes sail for San Francisco to settle some business with Mary’s family estate. However as the ship gets closer to San Francisco, Mary starts to experience some very unsettling dreams, and Holmes notices his wife’s behaviour begin to change. In 1906 the city where Mary’s family had lived had been devastated by an earthquake, Mary believes that she hadn’t been there at the time; Holmes is convinced that she must have been. Still haunted by the accident which killed her family but which she survived; Mary Russell has a lot to face up to upon her return. She is sure that she can cope with the memories, with revisiting her old home, and is irritated by any show of concern from Holmes. Once in San Francisco Russell starts to uncover the secrets of her own past. A series of deaths that appear to be connected to her family and a bizarre codicil to her father’s will – lead Holmes and Russell to the busy streets of China town.
Locked Rooms is possibly my favourite of the series so far – although I remember The Moor as being pretty fantastic too. This novel is a little different as the story – and the mysteries are more personal to Mary – so much more of Russell is revealed. Throughout the series so far, Russell had been almost as enigmatic as the man she married. I do love a bit of Holmes escapism – my curl up in a ball cosy reading. This series is well written, tautly plotted – with plenty of those familiar Holmes ingredients that we love. For anyone not familiar with this series who like the sound of it – I would always recommend starting with The Beekeeper’s Apprentice – and reading the books in order. Thankfully I already have the next one TBR.

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A Very Private Eye: an autobiography in letters and diaries – Barbara Pym, Hazel Holt & Hilary Pym (1984)

At the risk of repeating myself – I’m really rather bad at reading non-fiction. I have to admit that even when reading a non-fiction book I am really enjoying that there are moments I long for fiction. The fault is all mine, my mind wanders and I get, what I can only call the readers equivalent to the fidgets.

So bearing that in mind, I did enjoy this autobiography in diaries and letters, but there were moments when I enjoyed it more than at others. That is no criticism of the work – I must stress that – it’s my insatiable fiction brain; I do despair of my non-fiction attention span. I do think that reading about somebody through their own words – originally not written with publication in mind, is wonderfully illuminating. I read Hazel Holt’s biography of Barbara Pym a few years ago, and so there was a little bit of going over old ground I suppose – although I had forgotten a lot of it – but this was a richer reading experience because reading Barbara’s words was naturally much more intimate.

Each section of the book contains some brief biographical contextualising by Hazel Holt and a short section recalling their early life by Barbara’s sister Hilary Pym.
Part 1 takes us back to Barbara Pym’s years in Oxford, her friendships and heartbreaks – especially her long almost obsessional love for Henry Harvey – are recounted mainly through the diary entries she kept at this time.

“13th March (1934) Oswestry. My photos of Lorenzo (HH) lying in the punt came and I am so pleased with them – they are awfully good and like him too. I felt quite happy in the evening – I wish I could be certain that it would last. What a perilous thing happiness is!”

There is plenty of evidence of Pym’s recognisable wit even in her own diary entries, she clearly loved her time at Oxford, and kept in touch with many of the friends she had then. It was around this time – just after leaving Oxford, of course that Barbara began writing. She began writing ‘Some Tame Gazelle’ about herself, her sister and some of their friends as they might be in thirty years. It was to be however a long time before the book was to be published – thankfully Barbara Pym never gave up.
The second section of the books recounts Barbara Pym’s war; she joined the Wrens and eventually ended up in Italy. She seemed to find the idea of herself as a wren a bit ludicrous and speaks of soon being found out as an imposter. This section of the book is told through diary entries and letters from Barbara to her friends Henry and Elsie Harvey and Bob Smith. These letters are often hilarious – and demonstrate her brilliant sense of humour and ability to poke gentle fun.
The third section – entitled the novelist celebrates the years in which Barbara Pym enjoyed her best success. After 1948 Barbara Pym kept notebooks – in which she recorded in surprising detail her observations, ideas for novels and other day to day things. She was also still writing letters. Barbara didn’t write full time however – she did in fact work for many years at the International African Institute in London, undertaking similar work as so many of her characters. However Barbara Pym’s publishing success came to an abrupt halt in 1963.

“24 March 1963 To receive a bitter blow on an early Spring evening (such as that Cape don’t want to publish An Unsuitable Attachment –but it might be that someone doesn’t love you anymore) – is it worse than on an Autumn or Winter evening? Smell of bonfire (the burning of rose prunings etc), a last hyacinth in the house, forsythia about to burst, a black and white cat on the sofa, a small fire burning in the grate, books and Sunday papers and the remains of tea.”

During these years Barbara kept writing – she sometimes lost heart – but she never gave up – there’s a message in that for us all I am sure. Also during these years she struck up a wonderful epistolary friendship with poet Philip Larkin. In January 1977 the Times Literary Supplement published a list of under-rated writers, chosen by other literary figures. Both Lord David Cecil and Philip Larkin named Barbara Pym (there was apparently no collusion) – almost overnight Barbara found her novels to be back in vogue. Thank goodness for Philip Larkin and Lord David Cecil – but so sad that this final recognition came so late in her life.

Reading this autobiography during Barbara Pym reading week seemed very fitting, and I am glad I did. I certainly feel as if I know Barbara Pym a little better, and I feel sure I would have liked her too. I thoroughly enjoyed the sections of the book that dealt with Barbara Pym at Oxford and her experiences during the war. However I did get a bit bogged down in some of the letters to her friends – despite they being so well written – there were maybe a few too many – all saying very similar things.

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The Women’s Fiction Prize

I have never really been a huge reader of the prize formally known as the Orange Prize, currently called the Women’s Prize for fiction and apparently soon to be called the Baileys Women’s Prize for fiction. It’s ridiculous really as I have been fascinated by the Booker prize now for a number of years, that I haven’t consciously gone out to read the winner of the Women’s Prize in the same way. As far as the Booker prize is concerned I have reached a bit of a sticking point as I have something like eleven previous Booker winners to go – and although I have at least four of them TBR I don’t seem to be massively keen on reading them. However there are several books on the list of previous women’s prize winners which I would like to read – I actually have two or three TBR. I know lots of people make a point of reading the women’s prize winner – maybe I should be doing the same. Although I have to admit that despite the many excellent reviews of last year’s winner, The Song of Achilles, I wasn’t sure I fancied it much. Looking down the list of the seventeen previous women’s prize winners I was surprised to see I have definitely only read six of them, there’s another I really think I may have read, just can’t quite remember. I also haven’t read the novel which has just been announced as this year’s winner, May we Be Forgiven by A M Holmes. In fact I haven’t ever read anything by A M Holmes. To be honest – it doesn’t sound like a book I must read right now – unless someone can persuade me otherwise.

The six Women’s Prize novels I know that I have read are:

The idea of Perfection – Kate Grenville
Bel Canto – Ann Patchett
Small Island – Andrea Levy
We Need to talk about Kevin – Lionel Shriver
On Beauty – Zadie Smith
Half of a Yellow Sun – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
And I may have read – A Crime in the neighbourhood by Suzanne Berne.
So come on persuade me – which other Women’s Prize winners should I be reading or at least adding to my wishlist?

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No Fond Return of Love – Barbara Pym (1961)

“There are various ways of mending a broken heart, but perhaps going to a learned conference is one of the more unusual.”

How could a novel with such an opening sentence not be anything but wonderful? I already had an idea that No Fond Return of Love, (along with Jane and Prudence) – was my favourite Pym, I’m now convinced of it.

Shortly after her engagement is broken off, Dulcie Mainwaring attends a conference at a girl’s boarding school in Derbyshire. Clustered together are a strange group of scholars, indexers and proof readers. Dulcie is given a room next to Viola Dace, who has been holding a bit of a torch for Aylwin Forbes, who will speaking during the weekend, and for whom she has previously done some indexing work. Aylwin becomes something of a fascinating figure for both women, but increasingly for Dulcie. Once the conference is over, and everyone back home, Aylwin a handsome scholar separated from his wife becomes the focus for Dulcie’s fantasies and fairly thorough investigations. Dulcie is living alone in a large house she once shared with her parents, she is soon joined by her eighteen year old niece Laurel, and not long after that, Viola Dace – in need of a temporary home also moves in. Dulcie begins to indulge in what today we would not hesitate to call fairly intensive stalking. With the help of various directories and who’s who – Dulcie tracks down, Aylwin’s mother-in-law, and Anglican priest brother. Viola rather aids and abets Dulcie – the two of them discussing the Forbes family at length, neither of them thinking it in the least odd for Dulcie to visit her Aunt and Uncle so that she has an excuse to go home via Aylwin’s brother’s church.
Meanwhile Dulcie’s niece Laurel has started a tentative relationship with the boy next door – while longing to move out of Dulcie’s house and into a bedsitter – where she can lead a bachelor girl kind of life and eat in coffee bars. It is while she is in the midst of this transition that she first comes to the notice of Aylwin Forbes himself, despite his being older than her father. Thus the scene is set for a fabulous comedy of manners, and unrequited love.
Part of Barbara Pym’s genius lays in the minutely observed everyday situations of her upper middle class characters, we may never have lived their lives, yet somehow they are peculiarly recognisable. There is a delicious dry humour to Pym’s writing that is comforting and subtly profound. Her dialogue and interactions between characters is, as ever spot on, some of the scene just brilliantly acute. The awkwardness of a hotel dining room, the worry of whether a cauliflower cheese will stretch, avoiding someone at a station, Barbara Pym portrays all these curious little things with absolute perfection.

“Sitting aimlessly in bedrooms- often on the bed itself- is another characteristic feature of the English holidays. The meal was over and it was only twenty five past seven. ‘The evening stretches before us,’ Viola said gloomily.”

I love the way Pym manages to expose those wicked little thoughts we all have from time to time. I think many readers have found that there is very much more to Miss Pym than meets the eye.
Of course one of the things regular readers of Pym’s novel adore – is how she drops characters from other novels into the story, here we glimpse characters from A Glass of Blessings.

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May reads – and looking forward to June.

(Photo taken last week in Shrawley Woods – Worcestershire)

My reading for May has had a birthday theme, and I think this may become an annual event. My own birthday was on the 13th of May, a birth date I share with Daphne Du Maurier. So for almost the whole month I read books only by authors who were also born in May. This I called my birthday reading challenge – but really it wasn’t much of a challenge – as challenge suggests something that might be difficult – but in fact this was really quite a joy.

All my May babies books were really excellent but the standout books for the month would be The Pat Barker novels Life Class and Toby’s Room, and the Daphne Du Maurier books My Cousin Rachel and Jamaica Inn, another quiet little joy was William Trevor’s ‘Love and Summer’.
Having read ten books by May babies – I finished my month of birthday reading a few days early so I could read my next Hardy book and my librarything early reviewers book before June’s Pym reading week got under way. Which makes twelve book in all for May – all of them fiction – my non-fiction reading has been even worse than usual this year.

This then is the full list of May reading
47 The Sweet Shop Owner (1980) Graham Swift (F)
48 The Mystery of the Yellow Room (1908) Gaston Leroux (F)
49 A Backward Place (1965) Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (F)
50 Life Class (2007) Pat Barker (F)
51 My Cousin Rachel (1951) Daphne Du Maurier (F)
52 Jamaica Inn (1936) Daphne Du Maurier (F)
53 Toby’s Room (2012) Pat Barker (F)
54 The Sign of Four (1890) Arthur Conan Doyle (F)
55 Love and Summer (2009) William Trevor (F)
56 The Householder (1960) Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (F)
57 Wessex Tales (1888) Thomas Hardy (F)
58 Tango in Madeira (2013) Jim Williams (F)

I have some great things coming up in June. The Barbara Pym reading week is first on the agenda – and I am planning on reading ‘No Fond Return of Love’ and ‘A very Private Eye’ for that, moving on to A Quartet in Autumn later in the month. I also have my classic club spin book ‘Farewell Leicester Square’ to read, which I have heard good things off. Karen at Kaggysbookishramblings and Simon at Stuck in a book were reading ‘A Woman of My Age’ during May and I so wanted to join in, and fellow librarything member Elaine delighted me by sending me a copy – so although I’m a little late to the party I intend to read it this month. I also have a lovely proof copy of Rachel Joyce’s ‘Perfect’ to read – I’ll be reading and reviewing it at the end of the month – it’s published at the beginning of July. I’ve also added three books to my June pile that I have had TBR for ages, and another Virago book I have wanted to read for a while. All in all there’s a good pile there – and look, two non-fiction!

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Tango in Madeira – Jim Williams (2013)

Recently there has been a little bit of debate about the reviewing of books that have been received by bloggers for free in return for reviews. For me there is, and never has been any debate – if I like it –I’ll say so, if I don’t I’ll say so. I received Tango in Madeira as a free ebook from the Librarything early reviewers programme. Before I go any further, I should point out that I seem to be very much a lone voice – all the other reviews I have seen so far seem very positive. Maybe I missed something, or was in the wrong mood, but I basically hated this book. I was determined to finish it though, so having a day with nothing much going on, I gritted my teeth and quickly read to the end with rather bad grace.

There are things that are good about Tango in Madeira – the writing is pretty good, and the characters are great on the whole, but it took far too long to get going, and became utterly tedious. I actually quite enjoyed the first 20% or so (kindle reading) and expected it to really get going after that – only it didn’t – nothing much happened – and things got a bit confusing and a little pointless in places.

The story is told by Michael Pinfold – an unreliable narrator – who like several of the other characters is quite a fascinating creation. The novel opens with Michael on board the Kildonian Castle, on its way to Madeira. Michael, the son of a retired music hall artist, is a wine merchant of dubious morals. Michael is a thief, happy to sleep with the wives of men who call him their friend. While on board Michael meets the slightly ludicrous Pennyweight and the man who he is hoping to sell some of his suspect wine to. Also on board is a lady novelist by the name of Christie, and rumours abound that the Emperor Karl is in exile in Madeira in fear of his life, and that George Bernard Shaw is staying at the hotel Reid.
Soon after the ship docks, an Englishman, Robinson is found dead. Johnny, a rather mysterious friend of Pinfold’s, with whose wife he is having an affair, may or may not be part of the secret police. Johnny calls himself a diplomat, and is tasked with keeping the Emperor safe from Hungarian assassins. Some people seem to think that Pinfold may be involved, in Robinson’s death and no matter how many times he says he didn’t know Robinson, no one seems to want to believe him. Pinfold is drawn unwillingly into the investigation of Robinson’s death.
Meanwhile George Bernard Shaw is learning to tango, writing letters to various acquaintances (the point of this is only revealed at the end) and is also writing a one act play. Unfortunately the reader is presented with three scenes from this play – which feels utterly pointless, but seems to serve as some sort of metaphor for the poor forgotten Emperor. These scenes are unremittingly dull.
I should have liked this book, I really expected to. I was disappointed to find myself less than half way through it this morning and bored with it. Oh well – on to the next book.

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Wessex Tales – Thomas Hardy (1888)

By now I think I must have made it fairly obvious that I love Thomas Hardy, and so I was looking forward to my re-reading of this superb collection of Hardy shorter fiction for my on-going Hardy reading challenge.

Wessex Tales contains seven stories, the first two of them really very short – the others considerably longer. In this collection Hardy explored familiar themes of marriage and rural life that we see in his novels, but he also experiments rather in a supernatural tale, ‘The Withered Arm’, which I think I have read at least three times, as it crops up in various other short story collections. The Three Strangers is wonderfully atmospheric, with a delightful little twist, although short it is a perfectly crafted little story, a small isolated cottage, packed with local folk for a celebration, inclement weather and the unexpected arrival of three strangers. ‘The Withered Arm’ – for me at least – is right up there with the best of the gothic type ghost and supernatural stories. There’s a wronged woman, an illegitimate child, a pretty young wife, a curse and a wonderful twist – delicious.

Hardy doesn’t allow himself to be in anyway curtailed by the genre of the short story – he gives full reign to his imagination, and his characters are fully explored. Hardy presents us with men making foolish and rash decisions in the pursuit of marriage, the women they reject so obviously superior. Using irony, coincidence, comedy and tragedy, devices that are so familiar to readers of his novels, Hardy could quite easily have spun out several of these brilliantly constructed stories into novels. In ‘Fellow Townsmen’ and ‘Interlopers at the Knap’ the stories span many years – characters are made to regret the decisions of the past. While in ‘The Distracted Preacher’, a good man puts his principles to one side in order to help the woman he loves – in a wonderfully atmospheric and slightly comic tale of smugglers.
Hardy was very aware of the changing world in which he lived – and in the Wessex Tales it is a world that is presented to us with the great understanding and affection that he had for it. Born and brought up in a humble home Hardy understood the rural world that he wrote about, he understood the work of the furze cutter and the shepherd, he had an ear for the dialect of the region, which he reproduces in many minor characters, characters who no matter how minor they are manage to be completely real.

“Is it necessary to add that the echoes of many characteristic tales, dating from that picturesque time, still linger about here, in more or less fragmentary form to be caught by the attentive ear? Some of them I have repeated; most of them I have forgotten; one I have never repeated, and assuredly can never forget.”

Hardy even manages to lend some of his stories an air of traditional folklore – the story being re-told by a nameless narrator after a passage of time. I wonder if it these were the kind of stories that Hardy would have grown up hearing.
Although I do love Hardy’s pastoral novels best, I think his shorter fiction to be very well worth reading, and wonder if it doesn’t sometimes get overlooked a little. I actually think that The Wessex Tales wouldn’t be a bad place to start for those who have never read any Thomas Hardy.

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