The Barefoot Woman – Scholastique Mukasonga (2008)

Translated from the French by Jordan Stump

My first review for #DiverseDecember is The Barefoot Woman by Scholastique Mukasonga it is the story of the author’s mother, Stefania; a Tutsi woman – telling the story of how she raised her children and protected her family during the Rwandan genocide. It is a poignant gentle memoir.

There are times when a book comes in our way, and we think I cannot read that now – it will be too hard, too harrowing, too sad etc. I admit that was something like my reaction when I first received The Barefoot Woman with my Asymptote book subscription (which I have let lapse but may go back to). There is clearly a privilege in being able to choose to look away – while not overwhelming ourselves with things we are not in the right place for. So, I am very glad I held on to this – and I need not have feared the story would overwhelm me either – because it does not. It is very clear – poignantly so – early on what happened to the author’s mother and other members of her family: –   

“Mama, I wasn’t there to cover your body, and all I have left is words – words in a language you didn’t understand – to do as you asked. And I’m all alone with my feeble words, and on the pages of my notebook, over and over, my sentences weave a shroud for your missing body.”

Yet the majority of the book – does not concern itself with violence and horror – although we know they are not far away. Instead this is a story of memory, of love – bringing back to life a woman who did all she possibly could to keep her family safe. This story is a testament of a mother’s love and determination – a very personal memorial to a woman whose story stands for so many others, who despite everything, through this book cannot be erased from history.

Stefania’s family – like so many other Tutsi families spent several years living in exile – in villages away from the majority Hutu population. For the author and her siblings as they grew up, this place was more of a home than it ever could be for their mother who felt her displacement intensely. Mukasonga recalls the constant fear they all lived with, of the soldiers who might suddenly come through the door – and her mother’s ingenious ways of creating escape routes and hiding places for her children.

“But we had to be ready for anything: sometimes the soldiers were too quick even for my mother’s sharp ear. And so, for those times when we wouldn’t be able to reach the brush, she left armloads of wild grass in the middle of the field, mounds just big enough for her three little girls to slip into when the alarm was sounded. She kept a mental catalogue of what she thought would be the safest hiding places in the bush. She discovered the deep burrows dug by the anteaters. She was convinced we could slither into them, and so with Antoine’s help she widened the tunnels and camouflaged the entrances under piles of grasses and branches.”

However, this is also – and mainly – a book about a way of life, a childhood. It is the story of the sorghum harvest, the ceremony involved in the planting, harvesting, and eating of sorghum – the hope for rain at just the right time. Mukasonga recalls in some detail the rites and traditions of a Rwandan village – which knowing so little about Rwanda (aside from the news headlines) I found particularly fascinating. It is a warm, affectionate portrait of a village in exile – where the village ‘doctor’ a former nurse only has two medicines he can prescribe – cough syrup and aspirin – but Stefania created her own botanical pharmacy with which to treat her children and others. Marriages are arranged for local women and the author’s brother – in which Stefania plays her part. Rwandan ideas of beauty are fixed and hard to live up to – but how does a young woman know what she might look like to others living in a village with no mirrors?

“If you wanted to be elegant and refined, you had only to follow Mama’s advice and example: imitate the village ladies’ lazy, swaying walk (with every step they took they seemed to be standing in place), let a slightly vacant gaze drift over the people around you, and above all, when someone speaks to you, always keep your eyes lowered…”

This novella sized memoir published by Archipelago books is a beautifully lyrical tribute, revealing and personal telling an important story from recent history. Scholastique Mukasonga has written another memoir and a novel both published in English which also portray childhood and schooling in Rwanda in the years before the genocide of the Tutsi people. I am keen to read them both.

November in review

November has whizzed by for me – perhaps because I have been working from home, it has become so hard to tell one day from the next.

November is a month of reading challenges, there are a good number around to join in with – and I did fairly well with #MARM and Novellas in November and even got one in for Nonfiction November. Ten books read – which would have been more if I had stuck to my plan of just reading novellas – but of course I didn’t.

I started the month with the first of three books by Margaret Atwood. Surfacing was a re-read for me, though I remembered nothing about it.  This is a novel about human behaviour, identity, personal and national, grief, loss and memory. I’m convinced that I appreciated this one so much more this time around.

The progress of a Crime by Julian Symons – a fireworks crime story sent to me by the British Library. I read it during the week of Fireworks night. There is little work for the armchair detective to do – but in the atmosphere of the early 1960s the conflict between different generations and its portrayal of police methods The Progress of a Crime paints a vivid picture.

My nod to Non-fiction November came in the shape of Popcorn by Cornelia Otis Skinner – a collection of autobiographical essays from the American actress and writer written during the Second Word War. A really enjoyable collection.

My first of two novellas in translation was A Girl Returned by Donatella Di Pietrantonio translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein, a novel that is both heart-rending and brilliantly compelling at the same time. It is a novel about mothers and daughters, family secrets and the nature of belonging.

Turnpike books kindly sent me copies of the two Barbara Comyns books they have brought out. The House of Dolls – a more minor Comyns perhaps but I loved it. The setting is a small boarding house in Kensington, the house is run by Amy Doll – who lives in the basement of the house with her daughter Hetty. Upstairs reside four middle aged or elderly ladies who between them and under the direction of two; Berti and Evelyn have established an eccentric kind of bordello for elderly gentlemen – finding a little prostitution on the side really helps to pay the rent.

My second read for this year’s MARM was Moral Disorder – a collection of linked short stories – which could almost be read as a novel. The stories are of one woman told in non-chronological order the ups and downs of family life – from childhood through to late middle age. Through these stories it feels like Atwood is recounting the stories of a generation – her generation.

MaddAddam is a very different novel to the first two Atwood books I read this month, showing what huge versatility she has as a writer. The third in the trilogy of the same name – its conclusion gave me reason to hope.

I have had A Month in the Country by J L Carr tbr for a ridiculously long time. Novella November provided me with the perfect occasion to read it. It is, of course every bit as lovely as everyone said – review to come.

I read the The Barefoot Woman by Scholastique Mukasonga translated from French by Jordan Stump for Novellas in November but also with #DiverseDecember in Mind (see below) – as I knew I wouldn’t have time to review it in November. I was very aware I had been skirting around this Rwandan novella for ages – having received it as part of the Asymptote book club when I was subscribing to that. There is a privilege in that choice to look away – which I am aware of – so decided to take a deep breath and get reading. It’s a poignant novel certainly, but nothing like as harrowing as I had feared. I hope to revie this later this week.

My second re-read of the month – The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, my book group’s December pick, and it’s been quite a while since I read it so read it again so I could talk about it. I am remined that there are quite a number of Edith Wharton books I haven’t even read for the first time.

So, that was November – a good month all in all.

Yet another reading challenge caught my eye last week. Naomi from The Writes of Womxn is hosting #DiverseDecember – and I probably had intended to read more diversely than I have managed this year so it struck a chord. As Naomi explains…

“#DiverseDecember is a month of reading and recommending books by Black, brown and indigenous writers. It is an opportunity to discover new books, to consider our reading habits and to make a permanent change in what we choose to read.”

Already this year I have encountered some wonderful books that would fit into the category above. Titles like The Vanishing Half, Queenie, Such a Fun Age, Quicksand & Passing, Brown Girl, Brownstones, Celestial Bodies and Dust Tracks on a Road – any of which I would recommend if you’re looking for #DiverseDecember inspiration. So, scanning my shelves (and my kindle) I realised I had quite a pile of really marvellous looking books – and quite a diverse group in themselves.

The problem I shall have is in choosing which to read – as I can’t possibly read them all. Here’s my pile (in addition my kindle contains The Distant Traveller by Attia Hosain, Mr Loverman by Bernadine Evaristo and The Enlightenment of the Greenage Tree by Shokoofeh Azar)

Do you have any recommendations from the pile?

As always I would love to know what you have been reading in November and what if any plans you have for December.

MaddAddam – Margaret Atwood (2013)

My third read for this year’s #MARM was MaddAddam the final book in the trilogy of the same name. I have spaced out the three volumes quite widely – so I was pleased to see a little rounding up of the main points of each of the first two books in the front of this. It helped to refresh my memory a bit – although I have to say Year of the Flood has really stayed with me and remains my favourite of the three books.

While the events in Oryx and Crake and Year of the Flood run parallel to each other – MaddAddam moves the story of characters like Jimmy, Toby and Zeb forward.

It’s really hard to review the final book in a trilogy that other people may not have read – as a whole it’s a trilogy that is extraordinary in its scope and imagination. Saying that though – in her acknowledgements Margaret Atwood states that…

“Although MaddAddam is a work of fiction, it does not include any technologies or biobeings that do not already exist, are not under construction, or are not possible in theory.”

I think that gives us much food for thought – Margaret Atwood is often lauded for her astute, keen eyed view of the world – she seems to have her finger on the pulse of the world and its myriad issues. In this trilogy – she shows us how we could end up – reminding us, should we need it – what destruction we have wrought on our planet.

The ‘waterless flood’ (a plague) has swept the earth – there are a few ragged human survivors – and the children of Crake – the perfect, innocent species he created to take the place of human beings. Jimmy (or Snowman) befriended the Crakers – telling them stories of Oryx and Crake. Meanwhile, Toby, Adam One and the God’s Gardeners who we met in The Year of the Flood were scattered by the plague – prey to the evil Painballers – who attack, abuse, kill and rape with impunity. The Year of the Flood ends with Amanda being rescued from the Painballers and Toby observing the Gardener forgiveness feast. This novel picks up exactly where that one ends.

The Children of Crake move toward the group of human survivors, singing their endless song. The Painballers are tied up, but Toby hesitates to kill – and they escape – to pretty much everyone’s dismay. For me Toby is a recognisable Atwood heroine – she cares for others, has a powerful connection to the natural world, feeling things deeply – she harbours a secret love for Zeb and is jealous of one of the younger women who she thinks might cast her eye at Zeb. As Toby and the MaddAddamites settle themselves into the cob-house enclave – the Children of Crake – settle themselves nearby. Jimmy-the-snowman is in a Coma and the Crakers await his recovery by finding a new hero in Zeb.

“There’s the story, then there’s the real story, then there’s the story of how the story came to be told. Then there’s what you leave out of the story. Which is part of the story too.”

Toby starts to tell stories – stories of the world before – the chaos – and stories that will help move this new world forward. The Crakers – are innocents – they love the stories Toby tells – they ask questions continually – like children – why, how – tell it again. One of the most attentive listeners is Blackbeard a young Craker – keen to learn it’s to him that Toby reveals the secret of writing when he catches her writing in her journal.

“It had helped to keep her sane, that writing. Then, when time had begun again and real people had entered it, she’d abandoned it here. Now it’s a whisper from the past.”

Through Toby’s stories – we finally learn about Zeb and Adam and how they came to the God’s Gardeners. Zeb tells the stories to Toby and Toby relates them to the Crakers in a way they can understand. Atwood has always been a wonderful weaver of tales – stories within stories.

However, this new world is a difficult often hostile place. As the clever, wild pigoons attack the precious garden that Toby and the others tend with care – and with the lingering threat of the Painballers return – it’s clear that this small band of survivors will need much more than mere stories.

“Glenn used to say the reason you can’t really imagine yourself being dead was that as soon as you say, “I’ll be dead,” you’ve said the word I, and so you’re still alive inside the sentence. And that’s how people got the idea of immortality of the soul – it was a consequence of grammar. And so was God, because as soon as there’s a past tense, there has to be a past before the past, and you keep going back in time until you get to I don’t know, and that’s what God is. It’s what you don’t know – the dark, the hidden, the underside of the visible, and all because we have grammar …”

I hope it isn’t too much of a spoiler to say that there isn’t a big cymbals crashing kind of finale to this book – which I found especially fitting. There is a sense of things carrying on in this new world that humans have created – which for me was a little more comforting than a big drama. That said – there is a poignancy to the ending too for those of us who have followed certain characters through three instalments. There is also hope – which as a species we are clearly in need of.  

Black Narcissus – Rumer Godden (1939)

With thanks to Virago for this stunning review copy.

I don’t often re-post old (slightly edited) reviews – but I felt compelled to do so when Virago sent me this simply delicious new hardback edition of Black Narcissus. This sumptuous new edition is released to coincide with the new BBC adaptation. I read it a little too recently to re-read it just yet – plus you know – too many books! However, I do love Rumer Godden’s writing and this one is rightly judged to be a classic. This new edition comes with a lovely new introduction by Amanda Coe – which I really enjoyed reading. Coe’s introduction sets Godden’s novel in context – exploring the complexities in it. She reveals how when she was adapting the novel for the new BBC miniseries she was able to be more faithful to the context of the book than that classic 1947 film.

“Godden’s wonderful book sets out a complex vision of the variety, necessity and danger of desire, rendered into a story that is completely pleasurable. I envy anyone reading for the first time.”

(Amanda Coe – Introduction)

The film of Black Narcissus was released in 1947 in Technicolor, which not all films were in those days. It was quite the melodrama starring Deborah Kerr and Jean Simmons and was directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.

This is a novel of unsettling passions that have been repressed set against an extraordinary landscape.

The novel opens as Sister Clodagh prepares to leave her religious community in Darjeeling for Mopu in the Himalayan mountains to the north. Here Sister Clodagh will take on the role of Sister Superior to a small group of nuns who will be helping to set up a convent school community in an abandoned palace. The palace was once known as ‘the House of Women’ built for a harem of the General who leased the land from the British rulers. Now the General’s son, another General has given the palace to the Sisters of Mary – believing a school and hospital just what the poor local people need. Before they leave, Mother Dorothea lets Sister Clodagh know that she has some reservations about Clodagh’s readiness for this responsibility. Clodagh is certain she is ready for the challenge, and leads her fellow sisters; Sister Ruth, Sister Briony, Sister Honey and Sister Philippa – confidently towards a new adventure.

The group of sisters begin the long trek up the hills to their new home, a palace wreathed in scandal, set against a breathtakingly beautiful landscape. Mopu is home to tea growers, snow-capped mountain peaks and the glorious flora and fauna one associates with India. As always Rumer Godden portrays the landscape and people of India, beautifully and with obvious affection.

“It was strange how little you noticed the valley or the River where the green snow water streaked the jelly whiteness of the stream. You noticed the gulf where the birds flew level with the lawn; across it was the forest rising to bare and bony ridges, and behind them and above them, the Himalayan snows where the ice wind blew.

Sometimes they were like turrets of icing sugar, pretty and harmless; on some days they seemed as if they might come crashing down on a hill. On others they were hidden behind drifts of cloud and a spray floated from one to another; but however they looked, there was always the wind to remind you of what they were. The wind was always the same.”

 The sisters have a lot of work to do to make the old palace ready to use as a school and dispensary, and they set to work as soon as they arrive. An elderly Chinese woman Angu Ayah has had caretaking responsibilities at the palace and she stays on to help the sisters in their duties. One of the first people the sisters meet is local British agent Mr Dean – who they have been told will be on hand to help the sisters should they need it. Mr Dean is an informally dressed whisky drinker who rather shocks the sisters with his relaxed laid-back attitude and teasing humour. Mr Dean exudes a strength the nuns will have need of in the months ahead, and later, as they come to know him better they discover in him an ability to great sympathy and understanding.

The General’s nephew and heir, the young General Dilip Rai comes to the sisters to learn French, and a beautiful young girl Kanchi – who the locals have gossiped about wildly – has been placed with the sisters at the request of her uncle. Kanchi is soon surreptitiously keeping a close eye on the handsome young General – who, himself has an unusual effect on Sister Clodagh. Something in the character of the young General reminds her of her ill-fated romance with a neighbouring boy; Con – back in Ireland before she took holy orders.

“As he walked he kicked the stones away from him and slashed at the bushes; he looked pretty and naughty as a child, though he was nearly a full man; tall and beautifully built, not like a hill man but like a young Rajpit.

He slashed with his cane at the bushes, and she was suddenly back, walking down the Wishing Lane at home with Con; the green damp lane that led from the House gates past Skinners Farm to the lake, and Con was slashing at the hedge to show his temper.”

Mr Dean’s promise that the sisters will fail in their mission look set to come true as the nuns show time and again a lack of understanding for the people they are living among. The people have their own traditions and long held superstitions – and these are soon at odds with the inflexible attitudes of the sisters. Other troubles, passions and little jealousies play a part in causing the community difficulties as one of the sisters starts to show signs of mental illness. The magical landscape seems to beguile each of the sisters – distracting them from their purpose and allowing them, at times, to dream. Throughout the novel there is an air of forbidden passions rising to the surface, which Godden explores with wonderful subtlety.

Despite the drama and tragedy towards the end, the novel is much quieter than that old film, which I remember as being quite melodramatic.

I am looking forward to the new adaptation – which I believe airs next month. Will you be watching?

The House of Dolls – Barbara Comyns (1989)

With thanks to the publisher for the review copy

My love for Barbara Comyns never seems to diminish – and her books are all ones I know I will re-read. In fact, I am planning on re-reading …Spoons.. one day soon, because it’s so long since I read it. So, when Turnpike books announced they were bringing out two Comyns novels I was delighted. They were kind enough to send me both – The House of Dolls and Mr Fox. I read Mr Fox in an old edition – toward the beginning of last year, probably too recently to re-read it. I loved it though and you can read my review here.

I was glad to have a new edition of The House of Dolls however as my old 1970s paperback has quite small print, and it was the last of the (more easily) available Comyns novels that I had left to read. There are two more Comyns novels which seem impossible to find – and a couple of the others were hard enough to find. (I shall never completely give up looking)

My expectations of this one weren’t high I don’t think, as I had seen it described as being a more minor Comyns – however I thoroughly enjoyed it – and while it may not be quite up there with the likes of The Vet’s Daughter et al – it is still well worth reading. Here we still have Comyns unique voice, her sharp wit and while her world here is less strange than in some of her earlier novels her characters are deliciously peculiar in their own way. Always there is a stream of something a little darker which exists beneath the surface – the knowledge that her characters act the way they do because of poverty, tragedy or plain bad luck in their past.

The setting is a small boarding house in Kensington, the house is run by Amy Doll – who lives in the basement of the house with her daughter Hetty. Upstairs reside four middle aged or elderly ladies who between them and under the direction of two; Berti and Evelyn have established an eccentric kind of bordello for elderly gentlemen – finding a little prostitution on the side really helps to pay the rent.

“‘Amy Doll, are you telling me that all those old girls upstairs are tarts?’

‘Well, not tarts exactly tarts, Doris, but they have gentlemen friends who pay them, you know. It’s not very nice, but they say they couldn’t manage the rent otherwise. I simply had to put it up, with the expenses rising all the time. …’”

Amy is rather concerned at finding herself almost in the position of an unwilling madam – dreading the police will come knocking at the door one day.

Her tenants Evelyn and Berti are both really quite elderly and don’t get along well at all they wear tight trousers, have tightly cropped hair and rather like their drink. Their squabbles are petty, spiteful and all too frequent. The Senora (aka Augustina Puig) – originally from Spain; inhabits the best room and was first to encourage Evelyn and Berti to follow her example of financial management. Ivy Rope is a little younger than the other women and only has one gentleman to make ends meet – she is also in love with a dentist – who she hopes will marry her and take her away from Amy Doll’s house. Berti – who needs to know everything is desperate to find out about the dentist – and takes steps to do so – to poor Ivy’s terror.

The women host little parties in their living room – from which Amy Doll ensures her daughter is barred by locking the door from their part of the house to the upstairs. Hetty is growing up and resents her mother accompanying her to school – and is rather fond of the peculiar old dears in the upstairs part of the house. While Amy is worrying about what to do about her troublesome tenants Hetty plays truant and with the help of a local misfit she calls Glover is making a mosaic in the garden of a derelict house. One day a policeman does knock on Amy’s door – though not for the reasons she fears – and soon he is making himself useful around the garden.

“The policeman looked at the closed little face and smiled. ‘Sorry to disturb you again, but you mentioned you were on your own and I wondered if you’d like any help in the garden. It happens that I’ve been given a few bulbs and rose-bushes and, having no garden myself, I was wondering what to do with them. It’s my free day tomorrow and it’s be a kindness if you’d let me put in a few hours here.’

Amy gave him a quick look, then lowered her lids while she considered his proposition. ‘If he wants to spy on us,’ She thought ‘nothing will stop him, so he might as well make himself useful while he’s about it. I could get him to take down those rusty bells for a start and the lino in the scullery wants re-laying.’ She smiled.”

With The Senora talking about leaving and Ivy maybe getting married Berti and Evelyn are concerned about what they will do. Existing on their small family annuities and their gentlemen callers is hard enough. Now one of their regular gentlemen suddenly dies and Amy is making signs of asking them to vacate their rooms. Berti – hopelessly impractical and a stranger to an oven decides she will sign on at an agency and become a daily cook – asking Amy to help her learn. The results are about what you might expect and beautifully portrayed by Comyns with her perfectly balanced savage wit.

So, unless someone decides to re-issue Birds in Tiny Cages and Out of the Red, Into the Blue – this was the last Comyns I had to read. In one way I am quite bereft – but thankfully I have acquired all the others so I have them to re-read. I envy anyone who has yet to discover the brilliance of Comyns. This was another gem, a little quieter than some of the others but really very good indeed for all that.

Moral Disorder – Margaret Atwood (2006)

So, this MARM I have found myself reading more Margaret Atwood than I thought I would manage – and as always it has been a joy. I am currently into the last seventy pages or so of MaddAddam – the third book in that trilogy of the same name. Last week I read Moral Disorder – and I absolutely loved it – a definite candidate for my book of the month. A collection of short stories – although that isn’t really an accurate description – as the stories though non-chronological feature the same character throughout. Moral Disorder can be read almost like a novel – in a similar way to Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge. I enjoy short stories a lot – and Atwood’s Stone Mattress had been my favourite of her collections until I read this one.

In these stories of the life of one woman – who is could easily be said, bears more than a passing resemblance to Atwood herself – the reader is taken on a journey across several decades. As well as not being entirely chronological – the tense changes too – many of the stories are told in the first person – others in the third person. While this might prevent us confusing Moral Disorder with being a novel – what does emerge is a wonderfully complete portrait of a woman’s life – the ups and downs of family life – from childhood through to late middle age. While we can see these stories as being very autobiographical – which I sense they are – the view is actually much broader – for me there was a sense of an entire generation represented through one woman, and her family.

The collection opens with Bad News in which a woman (who we come to know as Nell in subsequent stories) in late middle age reflects on age and what it means – how tenses define our lives – and this extract perfectly summing up how the rest of the book can be seen.

“These are the tenses that define us now: past tense, back then; future tense, not yet. We live in the small window between them, the space we’ve only recently come to think of as still, and really it’s no smaller than anyone else’s window.”

This view of past, present future is one I love in fiction as it highlights how connected everything is – how we as human beings are strongly connected to our pasts – and how the now we are in is so transitory.

In the second story The art of cooking and serving – we return to the summer when Nell was eleven – waiting anxiously for her mother to give birth to her new sibling. The anxiety come from the snatches of adult conversation that she has overheard – how her mother is getting a bit old for pregnancy – something might go wrong. Nell is knitting a layette for the baby to keep her busy – her father has made her responsible for looking after her mother while she is in this dangerous condition, the weight of responsibility is heavy – for the girl doesn’t really understand what it is that might happen. During the summer Nell and her mother go to the lakeside cabin where the family frequently holiday in summer – Nell’s father is away – and so the responsibility for her mother’s welfare rests on Nell’s young shoulders. They are a long way from a doctor – and Nell works out a plan for getting help should she need it.

The next story – The Headless Horseman – takes place about three years later – and now Nell is helping her mother look after her baby sister a lot. The child is a sensitive little thing, cries easily but adores her big sister following her around and wanting to be involved in everything she does. When Nell makes a headless horseman costume for Halloween – the result is a predictable scream fest – the toddler is terrified. What I loved in this story is how it switches between two time periods – the one in which the teenage Nell makes a Halloween costume that is less than successful – and one in which the adult siblings driving together to see their mother reminisce about the headless horseman costume. Anyone with a sibling must recognise that – those stories we keep and tell each other over and over – all those remember whens.

 In The Last Duchess – she recalls a high school teacher Miss Bessie – as Nell and her school friends edge nearer the possibility of ‘going on’ – ie university.

In The other Place – Nell is a young woman, having grown up in one time – the social landscape around her has changed considerably.

“At the time I’d set out, all women were expected to get married and many of my friends had already done so. But by the end of this period – it was only eight years, not so long after all – a wave had swept through, changing the landscape completely. Miniskirts and bell-bottoms had made a brief appearance, to be replaced immediately by sandals and tie-dyed T-shirts. Beards had sprouted, communes had sprung up, thin girls with long straight hair and no brassieres were everywhere. Sexual jealousy was like using the wrong fork, marriage was a joke, and those already married found their once-solid unions crumbling like defective stucco. You were supposed to hang loose, to collect experiences, to be a rolling stone.”

Through subsequent stories, like Monopoly, White Horse and the title story all told in the third person we watch Nell as she negotiates her relationship with Tig, the man she falls in love with. He is separated but still married with two boys – all of which her parents deeply disapprove. They live for a time on a farm, it’s not quite a rural idyll, there are difficulties to be negotiated and the locals think the barn is haunted. There are some chickens, then a few cows and an old white horse called Gladys and Nell’s sister comes to visit.

Moral Disorder is both touching and funny, keenly, and wisely observed – I’m surprised this collection isn’t talked about as much as some of Atwood’s other works. It really is a masterclass.

A Girl Returned – Donatella Di Pietrantonio (2017)

Translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein

This week is the novellas in translation week of novellas in November and A Girl Returned is a novel by an author I have read before during Novellas in November – I believe this is the third of her books to be translated into English.

So many of the books in my house have been bought because I have seen other people online talking about how good they are. This novel is one of them, a novella I saw Claire from Word by Word talking about on Twitter, and as I had read two books by the same author previously I knew I wanted it immediately. I bought it in October so that I could read it during Novellas in November – it slips in just under the 200 page limit at 170 pages – and manages to be both heart-rending and brilliantly compelling at the same time. It is a novel about mothers and daughters, family secrets and the nature of belonging.

“There was no longer any reason to exist in the world. I softly repeated the word mamma a hundred times, until it lost all meaning and was only an exercise of the lips. I was an orphan with two living mothers. One had given me up with her milk still on my tongue, the other had given me back at the age of thirteen. I was a child of separations, false or unspoken kinships, distances. I no longer knew who I came from. In my heart I don’t know even now.”

As the novel opens a girl drags a large suitcase up the stairs to an apartment she has never been to before – the door is opened by her younger sister – the two girls have never met before. With no warning, and virtually no explanation a thirteen year old girl is taken from the people she has always believed to be her parents and sent to live with strangers. This is her birth family, mother, father, and siblings of whom she had no previous knowledge. They turn out to be relatives of her adoptive father – an arrangement had been made between the two families when she was a baby. Now she is thrust into a totally new world, where they even speak differently, in a town a long bus ride away from the coastal city where she had previously grown up, gone to school, and made friends. The woman she thinks of still as her mother having retreated from her in the weeks before her departure – had become something of a shadowy figure spending more and more time in bed. The girl numbed by shock hopes that when her mother is well, she will ask for her to go home.

“I was the Arminuta, the one who’d returned. I spoke another language and I no longer knew who I belonged to. I envied my classmates in the town, and even Adriana, for the certainty of their mothers.”

The household the girl arrives in is one utterly different to the one she left behind – where she was an only child growing up in sight of the beach, with her own room. Here there are a number of noisy, squabbling siblings, Adriana is a few years younger than her, they connect almost immediately – though the girl is shocked that she must share a bed with her sister – while her older, teenage brothers occupy the other side of the bedroom. Not all the siblings are kind and welcoming. Adriana wets the bed constantly – there is an awful lot to get used to straight away. There is a kind of loneliness here that is terrible, I’m sure most of us could imagine ourselves thrust into an unfamiliar environment like this – and know how destabilising that would feel.

She thinks of the woman who bore her as ‘the mother’ – unable to call her that by name – she finds ways around ever using the word. She stands out in the family, a curiosity to people from outside the family – and treated differently by those within it. Her eldest brother Vincenzo is drawn to her in a way that’s not altogether appropriate – all in all it is a time of readjustment and confusion. She doesn’t feel like someone who was wanted – she feels her return was forced upon this family who are clearly struggling financially.

“I wasn’t acquainted with hunger and I lived like a foreigner among the hungry. The privilege I bore from my earlier life distinguished me, isolated me in the family.”

She also stands out by virtue of her scholastic abilities – soon marked out by the teacher as someone who should go on to high school in the city she has just left. This possibility a beacon of hope on a shaky horizon – though as Adriana comes to rely on her new older sister’s presence, clinging to her and reacting with jealousy to anything she thinks might take her sister away, the girl has a new responsibility to consider for the first time. Adriana’s fierce love for her sister is one of the few joys for the girl – and while it has the potential to be a little destructive – the narrator is clearly looking back on it from a distance of years with a lot of affection.

As time goes on, the girl’s assumptions about the reason for her return are shaken – it is something she is keen to get to the bottom of.  Her sense of self having been so severely rocked is gradually re-built amid the tension and conflict of a new family.

Of the three novellas by Donatella Di Pietrantonio I have read to date, this is undoubtedly my favourite.

Happy birthday Margaret Atwood.

Sneaking in an extra little post this week in honour of Margaret Atwood’s birthday – and #MARM – hosted by Marcie from Buried in Print and Naomi from Consumed by Ink.

I have been enjoying some Margaret Atwood reading for #MARM – a re-read of Surfacing which I reviewed last week – and Moral Disorder – which I have just finished. Despite previously saying I would leave my read of MaddAddam for another time, I find myself sat here contemplating it in a way which probably means I will start reading it later. November was going to be the month of little, tiny books I said – oh well the best laid plans and all that.

I’ve been thinking about how long I have been reading Margaret Atwood books – admittedly with gaps as it’s so easy to be distracted by other books. I must have begun to read her in the late 1980s when those virago editions pictured above began to emerge. Those are the titles I want to re-read the most – because I remember so little – and I wonder now if I wasn’t a little too young to appreciate them fully. I do know The Handmaid’s Tale eclipsed all the others in my memory – it was a novel that stayed with me clearly for many years – until I got around to re-reading it with my book group a little over three years ago. For me that book is still an out and out classic. I continued to read her novels through The Blind Assassin, The Robber Bride and the Alias Grace years – though it was much, much later that I began to read her short stories.

There have been a couple of books which I liked rather less (but I won’t talk about those) so I hope that shows I can be objective – but as the years go on I have become an even bigger fan.

In middle age I suppose I have come to appreciate her in a different way, finding I connected with her wisdom and keen eyed view of the world in a way I may not have done in my late teens and early twenties. I found my way to her shorter fiction and her dystopian/sci-fi novels and Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood – and how I loved them! I watched those tv adaptations of The Handmaid’s Tale and Alias Grace breathlessly. I longed to meet her – well at least be in the same room while she spoke, perhaps queue up and get something signed – but it wasn’t to be – when Margaret Atwood was at Hay – I was too slow to try and get tickets – when she was in my home city of Birmingham – guess what? I was in Devon. Oh well, I suspect Margaret Atwood would be rather less thrilled to meet me than I would be to meet her – so perhaps it’s best I keep my fan girling to myself.

Here are some links to some of the Margaret Atwood I have read in the last couple of years.

Hag-seed – the story of a man’s obsession to stage The Tempest and take revenge on the people who ruined him, she in fact tells an updated story of The Tempest. The old story within a story thing, that both Shakespeare and Atwood have employed before. With practised skill Atwood weaves a story of greed, revenge, grief, and magic. 

The Year of the Flood – the second of the MaddAddam trilogy. The narrative of this book runs parallel to that of Oryx and Crake – in year twenty-five, a catastrophic event has effectively wiped out the vast majority of the population on earth. Strange, savage hybrid creatures wander the desolate landscape as an unforgiving sun beats down on the few fragile human beings left, and vultures hover overhead. Who, if anyone, is left alive?

Life Before Man –The novel’s three main characters are deftly explored, people trapped in damaging relationships, in thrall to their various love affairs. I found it immensely readable. The stories of these three people are told in alternate chapters with events told from each character’s perspective.

The Testaments – Not a book which requires an introduction I don’t think. The Testaments is not a continuation of The Handmaid’s Tale as such. Instead it is more of a re-examination of the Gilead we think we know, from Atwood’s 1985 classic. Set around fifteen years after the end of The Handmaid’s Tale, The Testaments offers us another view of the society of Gilead.

Anyway, it’s a big happy birthday to Margaret Atwood from me – if I had some cake I would eat some in her honour but the closest thing I have are gingernut biscuits. So, I will make a cup of tea break open the biscuits and carry on with my book.

Popcorn – Cornelia Otis Skinner (1943)

I managed to tick off two challenges with one book again with this read. A novella sized non-fiction book for non-fiction November and novellas in November. It was the non-fiction week for novellas in November last week – and while I am not keeping up with the schedule completely I’m not too far off.

Popcorn is a collection of autobiographical essays by Cornelia Otis Skinner – an American writer and actress whose memoir Their Hearts were Young and Gay I read a staggering five years ago. I bought Popcorn and Nuts in May by her around the same time and they have been lingering on the tbr ever since. I am finding it very hard to settle down to non-fiction these days – and have only read a couple this entire year – in 2020 I have needed to lose myself in fiction more than ever.

This collection however struck just the right note with Skinner’s sparkling humour and deliciously wry observations. This lovely old edition comes with a preface by F. Tennyson Jesse and quirky illustrations by Alajalov and Soglow (whoever they were).

The America that Skinner is writing about is not the America of 2020, that is immediately obvious. In fact, it was almost certainly the America of just a certain class – here is the reasonably well off America, the America of the stable family. It is also never serious – there is very little mention of the war at all – presumably, these pieces were meant as an escape from reality. The collection opens with ‘The Defense of Long Island’ in which she is compelled by patriotic neighbours to do her bit.  Even before we get to this first essay, F. Tennyson Jesse immediately dates this collection as she states in her preface how Skinner is making good natured fun of America – and claims that

“…they stand, in their light-hearted way, for the very principle for which we are all fighting. There could not be a German Cornelia Otis Skinner – outside of a concentration camp.”

(F Tennyson Jesse – Preface to Popcorn)

In pieces that may well resonate still with many women – Cornelia Otis Skinner regales us with the tortures she endured in the name of beauty. In ‘The Body Beautiful’ – and ‘The Skin Game’ – she encounters so called experts who regard her with a mixture of pity and dismay and shames her into spending a lot of money. We witness her attempts at learning to dance, ice skating, horse riding and flower arranging. She describes her triumphs and more usually pit falls with a tone reminiscent of our own beloved Provincial Lady. She is never less than a warm and amusing companion, self-deprecating and delightfully observant of the world around her.

American family life comes under some wry scrutiny in this collection too – although it is all pretty tongue in cheek of course. These pieces about her child and family life in general were the ones I liked the best. She highlights the pitfalls of parenting – and the social life of a New York child. Convinced that the children are all rather more understanding of the unwritten rules than their hapless parents. In ‘It’s a Wise Parent’ she goes on to describe a children’s party she gave in New York – after which her son retired to bed in a foul temper, a lolly pop stick is found jammed into the piano strings and a parent rings up to inform Cornelia that her daughters band (a brace for teeth) is missing and could she look for it. She describes it thus…

“A repellent contraption of wire and silver, it looked like a surrealist exhibit or some part of an alarm clock. I wrapped it tenderly in cotton and placed it in a box from Cartier’s. Cynthia lives on Park Avenue in a penthouse I shall never see (although my child informs me he has been there). I left the box with the doorman, requesting him to see that Cynthia’s mother got it immediately. I had it well timed and as I drove away I prayed with fervor that she’d open it at the table.”

She recounts shopping with her very reluctant young son for new clothes in Youth’s Furnishings – and it recalled to me, my own similar shopping trips in the 1970s and 80s. Each generation of child I am sure, lives through this particular loathed ritual

She also recounts the dreaded ‘Business Party’ – in which none of the attendees wish to be there – yet everyone is going through the motions all the same.

I had already decided that I liked Cornelia Otis Skinner when I read – Our Hearts… however she did let me down a little when she says..

“I am no feminist. I don’t for one second think woman is man’s equal and the mere idea of a brave new world in which we all work shoulder to shoulder, even cheek to cheek, with those admirable creatures fills me with boredom and dismay. I don’t want to do man’s work. I don’t even want the vote.”

In this piece called ‘Allow Me, Madame’ she goes on to complain that while she is happy for men to do most things she would rather like to be allowed to lay a fire or tune a radio by herself – despite men not believing she can manage either of these complex procedures. I know feminism was a dirty word in the 1940s – but still – really Cornelia I was disappointed.

Still, pushing that to one side this was a lovely little collection to spend time with – and I need to try and rad that third Skinner book that I have before another five years have elapsed.

The Progress of a Crime – Julian Symons(1960)

With thanks to the British Library for the review copy.

The progress of a Crime with its vibrant cover showing a bonfire against a pitch black background, seemed like it would be a perfect easy read in the run up to fireworks night. I tend to find I can hear fireworks where I live for most of the winter – and they have been particularly noisy the last few days – I suppose its one thing people can still do.

Julian Symons was a new name to me – yet he was an enormously prolific writer. As well as many crime fiction novels and a great many short stories Symons wrote books of political and military history, biography and poetry. This novel from 1960 won the Edgar award for best novel in 1960.  If I am being totally honest, I was expecting more of a mystery than I got with this novel. There is plenty to appreciate in the novel – but little for the armchair detective to get stuck into.  

The first thing fans of golden age/vintage crime etc should be aware of is that this is not really a mystery novel in the usual sense. Actually the title is in itself a big clue to the kind of story we get here – at first I had thought it might be a police procedural and it is up to a point – however this isn’t a mystery where someone must discover the culprit of a crime. Instead this is much more a novel that shows how the police bring their suspects to book and prepare for the court case. One of the things I liked the most, was what a strong sense of period there is throughout the book – from the treatment of suspects by the police – to the working class home of one particular character – it has a strong early 60s vibe. I couldn’t help but think what a good dramatisation it would make – most of what little tension there is comes from the people and their relationships rather than from the crime.

Symons also shows us how the crime is seen from the perspective of a group of journalists – a couple of local reporters and a London journalist who arrives to cover the case. This is an unusual angle, showing how involved the London press could get with a case – going as far as paying legal costs in return for interviews and photographs that would grace the pages of the paper for several days after the case is finished.

On bonfire night there is a fatal stabbing on the village green in the village of Far Wether – local reporter Hugh Bennett had driven the twelve miles from the (unnamed) city to find out about the village tradition of burning an effigy of the local squire – instead of Guy Fawkes – which has been going on for generations. While talking to the locals he hears about some trouble with a group of city Teddy Boys the previous week – and how they were sent off with a flee in the ear. Notes made – Hugh decides to stay and watch the spectacle for himself.  Things begin as they are meant to – the locals standing around watching – but soon the sound of motorcycles can be heard in the distance.

The group of teenage boys arrive – it’s dark and the air is full of bonfire smoke – it becomes difficult to be certain what exactly happened. A child is knocked to the ground, someone is heard calling ‘get him King’ a man is stabbed – but which one of the gang did the deed?

“There followed a cry, a long wailing animal cry. Dark figures ran over the green. There was the sound of motorcycles starting up and roaring away down the road. And after that, in spite of the fire’s crackle and the spit and bang of fireworks, there was what to Hugh Bennett, seemed very much like silence.”

Superintendent Langton is a stolid, cautious kind of man, who unfortunately does not have the full confidence of his Chief Constable – so the chief calls in Detective Superintendent Twicker from Scotland Yard to work with him on the Bonfire night stabbing. Langton has already identified the boys on the motorcycles – knows where they all work together – now they need to bring them in – separate them and try and break the story they will have cooked up between them. There is something of a cloud over Twicker too – something which went wrong a few years earlier – he’s a man who needs to prove himself. With Twicker comes Detective Sergeant Norman, a younger ambitious man. It becomes fairly obvious early on – which of the boys is likely to be the real culprit – and soon the police have two suspects who they are able to charge with the crime and bring to trial. The police’s methods of questioning a long way from what would be appropriate today – although possibly in real life they may have been even worse.

“This also was routine, something that had been done and said ten thousand times in a hundred police stations, and Twicker, as he looked at Norman’s fleshy face set in its mask of good humour, and at Garney’s, in which fear was beginning to replace arrogance, felt nothing at all. Lies and tricks, threats and promises, these were the methods that brought results.”

Hugh Bennett becomes drawn into the case in his role as a local reporter – although he is also a witness – which his horrible boss at the paper is rather glad about. The story gets sent out to the London papers – and soon enough a London reporter is working alongside Hugh. They set their sights on the family of one of the suspects – a family living in Peter Street – the name adopted by the gang. The sister is Jill – a young primary school teacher – who Hugh is clearly drawn to – and their father a local councillor and long time member of the Labour movement. The London paper offer to pay the legal costs in return for a series of interviews and photographs. It’s an offer that goes against everything the boy’s father believes in – but he needs to help his son.

As I said, there is little work for the armchair detective to do – but in the atmosphere of the early 1960s the conflict between different generations and its portrayal of police methods The Progress of a Crime paints a vivid picture.