Jane of Lantern Hill - L. M. Montgomery

Probably along with most women of my age I had the Anne of Green Gables books when I was a child, liked them very much and essentially forgot all about them as I grew up. I had no idea that L. M. Montgomery had been anything like as prolific as she clearly was, and even after reading 'The Blue Castle' a couple of years ago didn't think much more about her. 'The Blue Castle' is ostensibly an adult title, it's a pleasant book to while away a wet afternoon with, but the only difference I can really see between it and Montgomery's children's books is the age of the heroine, it didn't excite me in the way the Emily books did or 'Jane of Lantern Hill' has.

Unlike Emily and Anne, Jane isn't an orphan but her parents have separated, Jane lives with her mother and grandmother in Toronto under the impression that her mother is a widow, but actually her father is alive and well albeit a thousand miles across the country on Prince Edward Island. Jane's life is fairly bleak at the beginning of the book, her mother is beautiful and loving but far to week to stand up to the much stronger personality that is her own mother and Mrs Kennedy hates Jane. Jane is an awkward child and an unhappy one, an atmosphere of disapproval and thinly veiled hostility coupled with her grandmother's determination to control every aspect of her and her mother's life destroys any self confidence she has and makes a prison of the family home and then suddenly a letter arrives from her father demanding she be sent to him for the summer...

Initially Jane is unwilling, she doesn't want to be separated from the mother she adores and isn't keen to meet the father who seemingly abandoned her but she's bundled off anyway to make the best of it, when she does arrive she finds an aunt who she immediately distrusts and a father who's nothing like she feared. Father and daughter set off together, buy a house, and start to get to know each other. For Jane it's a revelation, she finally has a home, things to do, friends, acceptance, and almost total freedom - predictably she blossoms but it doesn't make everybody happy and this is the genius of Montgomery.

Jane is an eleven year old girl in a difficult but not unusual position, her parents may love her but to the dominant women on both sides of her family her existence is something of a nuisance - daughters can be like that. To grandmother Kennedy she's a reminder of the man who tried to take her beloved daughter away and more, in a really horrible confrontation grandmother tells granddaughter "Leave her alone. She is my daughter... no outsider shall ever come between us again... neither Andrew Stuart nor you nor anyone. And you will be good enough to remember that." Mrs Kennedy treats her daughter as a possession, choosing her cloths as she might dress a doll, reading her letters, and directing her social life in such a way as to limit contact between her and Jane. Jane, one feels, occupies the same sort of position a barely tolerated pet might in this household.

On the other side aunt Irene is an equally implacable enemy. ten years older than Jane's father she has been in the habit if regarding him as her own particular property. She didn't approve of his marriage having another girl in mind for her brother and Jane is a threat to the status quo. Father and daughter are a complete unit, Jane takes on the role of housekeeper and becomes a sort of little wife. A stepmother would be most unwelcome to Jane because a stepmother almost certainly wouldn't want her around - all her new found happiness and purpose would disappear, and it's a far harder job for Irene to persuade Andrew he might need a wife when his domestic needs are being looked after by a capable daughter who is both uncritical and undemanding.

Families are complicated things especially when they start to disintegrate, it's easy for a child to fall between the gaps in the dynamics of adult relationships and interesting to read a book written from a child's point of view that acknowledges the antipathy that can exist towards them in this sort of situation. I can believe in Jane and her family, the women all ring true - her father perhaps less so, but then it's not necessarily such an interesting relationship to explore. I believe in Jane's domesticity too, I think it's a natural (and feminine) reaction from a child who's always had a place to live but never really had a home. Montgomery nails a lot of the insecurities that a child - specifically a daughter - feels when their parents separate how ambiguous their position can become and how vulnerable they are. The ending is interesting too, it's a happy one but also practical - Jane's parents are reunited but not to run off to Prince Edward Island to live the carefree summer life Jane and her father have shared. Instead they will be living mostly in Toronto where he's found a job - it's a compromise that amongst other things acknowledges Jane's mothers life and the responsibilities.

An Episode of Sparrows - Rumer Godden

'An Episode of Sparrows' is the second of the current Rumer Godden's that Virago have released as part of their children's fiction series. It was originally published on an adult list but it makes sense as a children's book. It makes me think of 'The Secret Garden' but the way I remember it as a child where it was very much Mary's story rather than as I found it more recently - very much Colin's story.

In this case the lost child is Lovejoy Mason, her mother, a singer of questionable morals and with no noticeable sense of responsibility has fallen on hard times and basically dumped Lovejoy with her landlady, no money, and no forwarding address. The landlady is kind enough but she has her own concerns, a child, especially one as strangely adult as Lovejoy can be is more than she really feels she can cope with. For Lovejoy there's nothing, she has nothing of her own to speak of, no family, and only the kindness, or otherwise, of those around her to rely on.

It's post war London, and whilst the streets are still punctuated by bomb sights I think rationing has ended so I'm guessing the book is set when it was written around 1955. Lovejoy lives on a slightly slumy street that is attached to one of those swish London squares complete with an enclosed central garden. The residents of either are worlds apart rather than yards, though for the residents of the square it's a world of disintegrating privilege.

Everything is sparked off by a fallen packet of cornflower seeds. A very small boy (Sparky) finds the packet but makes the mistake of examining it in plain view - it's promptly grabbed by Lovejoy who becomes obsessed with the idea of growing them, she casts around for a suitable spot to make a garden finally finding a place in an old bomb site. She steals odd seeds from packets in Woolworth's to plant, and steals from the church candle box to buy a trowel and fork. Sparky gets his revenge on Lovejoy - who hates with a passion - when he tells the 13 year old Tip Malone and his gang of feral boys that Lovejoy is appropriating their patch. They may be children but it's dangerous, boys and girls don't much mix and when they do it's very much the worse for the girls. Within minutes the embryo garden is destroyed. For Tip however there is remorse, and so he helps Lovejoy create another garden and that in turn leads to all sorts of problems - and then solutions.

A garden, the joy of watching living things grow, a trio of children who need each other to make sense of an often unfriendly adult world, and a certain amount of faith - these are the things that remind me of 'The Secret Garden' but Godden is a very different sort of writer and what she brings to this is quite distinct from Burnett, in some ways it's more truthful, but it's also a redemptive story with a much wider scope and the result works for adults and children alike. In her preface Godden says the germ of the story came from an actual incident which happened to her not long after she moved back to England in 1945, it took ten years to grow into this novel - it was worth waiting for.

On Holiday

After what feels like an eternity but has in fact only been 4 months it's time for me to go on holiday again. The Scottish Borders are calling, and I am packing. So far I've packed marmalade, champagne, pearls, plenty of books, a large bottle of gin, a warm jumper, rhubarb, some wellies (which auto correct is determined to turn into willies - which is not what I mean to say at all) and enough clean underwear to see me through - though I may have broken the golden rule and packed more books than knickers. Whatever the weather does I'm confident I'm going to enjoy myself, though I do wonder what will happen of Scotland ever gets border control. Is rhubarb likely to be a prohibited item? Do I really need to take it on holiday with me anyway? And perhaps most vitally what have I forgotten to pack which I might really need when I was thinking waste not want not over the rhubarb.

Reading, as you can see, mostly sponsored by OWC

Emily's Quest - L. M. Montgomery

I read the first two books from the Emily series earlier this year (here and here) then with great self control managed to hold back on the last one until now. I really enjoyed the Anne of Green Gables series as a child and it's been a pleasure reacquainting myself with Montgomery again as an adult. I assume this series is meant for younger readers though my local waterstones and I are a little unsure, they have the books in both adult and children's sections - not that it matters, good books are universal.

On the down side, and probably something that wouldn't have bothered me in the least when I was 12, Montgomery is a little bit to ecstatic about nature - there are far to many references to sparkling fairy brews and enchanted anything's for my current taste so a little bit of effort was required to accommodate that. The effort is more than rewarded by the pleasure I got from the lush descriptions of Prince Edward Island, she makes me want to be there, and also feel like I am there. Montgomery has her characters discuss the idea of a specifically Canadian literature in both 'Emily Climbs' and a little bit here as well, she sees it through by keeping Emily at new Moon farm and on her island. I am a sucker for an island location, and all the things that people care about in life happen in small places as well as large.

'Emily Climbs' finished with Emily, Teddy, Ilse, and Perry finishing high school and setting off in different directions, Teddy and Ilse are headed for Montreal to carry on their studies, Perry is a clerk in a solicitors office and well on his way to a dazzling career. It's only Emily who has chosen to stay at home where she intends to pursue her dreams to be a writer. At first all goes well for her, she misses her friends but her stories are being accepted and she's beginning to make a reasonable living for herself. What remains unresolved are her feelings for Teddy Kent whose letters are becoming colder and more remote, still they are young, there are other distractions for Emily, and surely all the time in the world, meanwhile there are novels to be written.

Emily's first novel is the child of her heart and soul, but it's rejected by the first three publishers she sends it to, finally she hands it to her old friend Dean Priest who tells her it's no good, it's a turning point for Emily who burns her manuscript, suffers a horrible accident, and gives up on her dream. After her recuperation, cut off from her friends and her muse she finally agrees to marry Dean.

The relationship between Dean and Emily has been troubling me from the first book, Dean decided Emily was the girl for him when she was 12, 7 years later his patience pays off - his single-mindedness on the subject was hard to stomach whilst Emily was so young (though there's no hint of impropriety) but what's worrying now is his jealous nature. He has developed a habit of belittling Emily's writing because he resents the time and attention it takes from him. He lies when he tells her the book is no good, it's controlling behaviour that hints at the possibility of something more abusive in a time when marriage would be utterly binding.

In the end the marriage doesn't take place (forgive the spoiler) and we can hope again that Emily and Teddy sort out their differences because they're clearly meant to be together. I hope it's not to much of a spoiler to say that the book will end happily, because before that happens Montgomery throws in all sorts of obstacles, the path of true love won't run smoothly. For the adult reader this is a light and enjoyable book with something to say about the choices women have to make regarding career, love, and family life. Montgomery doesn't say you can't have it all but I think she's clear that compromises have to be made for relationships to work and that sometimes ambition isn't compatible with domestic bliss. For younger readers it's basically the same and that's the beauty of a really good book. I think this is a great series, in its way it's quietly subversive - really how often are girls told in fiction that a career might actually be enough by itself? Love is desirable but it's not the only thing.
 

Emily Climbs - L .M. Montgomery

Here in Leicestershire we've not by any means had the worst of the weather but it's still been grey, wet, and today really quite windy, along with cold - so basically unappealing verging on downright depressing. It's the kind of weather that demands a certain amount of comfort reading. Books that demand you retire to bed with a hot water bottle and a cup of tea and if they're a little bit nostalgic so much the better.

I was a little bit annoyed that I couldn't pick up the second two Emily books locally, my very small local Waterstones did have 'Emily of New Moon' in it's 9 -14 years old section but neither of the sequels. Having read 'Emily Climbs' I'm a little bit more sympathetic about it, it's a hard book to classify. It follows Emily from age 14 to 17, and I can't decide at all whether it's meant for children, adults, or even that mysterious (to me) classification of young adult. Depending on the reader anyone could enjoy it, there's certainly nothing unsuitable for younger readers and plenty to entertain adult reader, but I suspect for those in-between it might seem quite tame and old fashioned.

Emily's strict late Victorian childhood as outlined in 'Emily of New Moon' didn't seem as old fashioned or circumscribed as her Edwardian teenage years in a provincial Canadian town - which makes me profoundly grateful to have grown up in a more liberal age. 'Emily Climbs' follows our heroine through her high school years and her development from girl into young woman as well as her burgeoning writing career. In terms of plot she gets a bit older and the scene is set for what I'm guessing are going to be her love affairs in the final part of the trilogy but mostly the book is a series of vignettes, so much so that this could almost be a collection of short stories (I consider that to be a good thing).

In the first book there's an odd incident towards the end that hints at  Emily being psychic, this slightly supernatural element is picked up again with a couple of unexplainable by normal means episodes the first of which put me strongly in mind of Jane Eyre. It's at the beginning of the book and is one of the highlights. Emily has gone to a prayer meeting and managed to get herself locked in the church after she returns to search for an incriminating bit of paper just as a storm is about to break. It's bad enough being trapped alone in the church at night in a huge storm but then she feels something furry under her hand and lightening revels a huge black dog with glowing eyes - even the strongest spirit would quail. As the very worst of the storm abates though Emily realises there is someone else in the church - a mad old man desperately seeking his dead bride of years ago, it's the beginning of a truly nightmarish chase round the blacked out church, Emily is terrified of being caught by his blood red (birth marked) hand with which he's known to grip onto young girls whilst he strokes their hair imagining they're his lost love. In her panic she calls out to her friend Teddy who comes to rescue her just in time (from over a mile away, voice in a dream - pure Jane Eyre). Afterwards in the graveyard just when they're about to share a first kiss his mother turns up and has her own moment of melodrama over Emily stealing her son away from her. This quickly escalates as Emily gives her what foe in return and poor Teddy clearly just wants the ground to swallow him up.

There is also an interesting little section towards the end when Emily goes to her old teacher for advice - should she go off to America to pursue her dreams or should she stay in Canada, Montgomery has the teacher tell her she would be a fool not to go but also declare that he dreamed of her staying and contributing to a specifically Canadian literature. I don't know much about Canadian literature, a love of Robertson Davies and Rohan O'Grady's 'Let's Kill Uncle' doesn't amount to much and nor do a couple of Margaret Atwood's and a single volume of Alice Munro but the result of reading Montgomery is that I want to know more about her and how she fitted into the literary scene of her day, and by extension much more about Canadian lit generally.

Emily of New Moon - L M Montgomery

I loved the 'Anne of Green Gables' books as a child reading my way through the series a few times but until fairly recently was unaware that Montgomery had written anything else. I found a copy of 'The Blue Castle' last year though which was thoroughly enjoyable and now that her works are out of copyright it looks like there are going to be plenty more to discover. Virago released the 'Emily' trilogy late last year and have 'Jane of Lantern Hill' coming out in a few months and these being paper books from a beloved publisher are the ones I'm most interested in but it also looks like everything is available as ebooks.

I wasn't entirely sure how much I'd enjoy 'Emily of New Moon' - beloved children's authors don't always stand up to adult reading. 'The Blue Castle' was fun but specifically billed as an adult book whereas 'Emily' sounded more like something meant for children, I added it to my Christmas wish list anyway and was more than happy when mum obliged with a copy. Initially it seemed my worst fears would be realised - Emily is an annoyingly winsome child living with her adoring father in a dream of poor-but-happy domestic bliss, fortunately for the reader though he's in the final stages of consumption and soon dies leaving Emily orphaned, penniless, and in the hands of her mother's estranged family. They make her draw lots to see who will take her on which is how she ends up at New Moon farm with aunts Elizabeth and Laura and Cousin Jimmy.

When the book opens Emily is around 11 years old and the first half is mostly taken up with how she settles into her new life, makes friends, and survives all the pitfalls of childhood. Emily isn't a precisely beautiful child but she has a great deal of charm and personality as well as a burning desire to write and the imagination to go along with that. Her school teacher and aunt Elizabeth might find her exasperating but most the other people who come into contact with her are instantly and deeply charmed. I managed to be charmed too - Montgomery is good at showing the injustices that can make up a child's life - the callous way her fate is decided, run ins with her horrible teacher, the minefield that adolescent friendships are made up of - are all done brilliantly.

The second half of the book deals with more complex and increasingly adult issues. One thing I didn't much enjoy from the first half is the way that Montgomery has Emily narrate through a series of letters to her dead father complete with spelling mistakes, these slowly disappear which is a relief. In there place are a number of relationships; there is Ilse, a tempestuous and neglected child with whom Emily has a stormy friendship with just an occasionally competitive edge to it, Perry the houseboy with ability and ambitions who falls in love with Emily almost at first sight, and Teddy Kent who seems to be the boy that Emily prefers. Teddy's mother is the curious thing here, she's obsessive in her love for her son going as far as poisoning his cats when she feels he's become to fond of them. There is also Dean Priest, a sort of cousin in his 30's who rescues Emily after she's fallen down a cliff and is so enchanted with her that he decides to wait for her to grow up.

For a modern reader Dean is quite unsettling in a way I don't think Montgomery intended. He too, it seems, falls in love with something in Emily at first sight but she's only 12 at this point and it turns out that he was a friend of her fathers. They develop a friendship of their own which is all quite proper except for the lurking suspicion that Dean is waiting for something more and this is how the book ends. Emily is 13, she's leaving childhood behind, there's a consensus that she has some talent as a writer with the possibility of a career ahead of her, and there are all the makings of a few love triangles and tragedies ahead. I have ordered the rest of the trilogy so guess I'll find out what happens next soon enough.

Christmas at High Rising - Angela Thirkell

It had occurred to me to save this book as a Christmas eve treat but I've never been very good at waiting for treats so I just read it. 'Christmas at High Rising' is a collection of 8 short stories originally published in a variety of places (but mostly Harper's Bazaar and Cornhill Magazine) between 1928 and 1942 and is most definitely a treat for Thirkell fans though it might be a bit baffling for anyone completely unfamiliar with her Barsetshire novels. 

That said I think the stand out story is 'Shakespeare Did Not Dine Out' (worth the price for this alone) which is basically a catalogue of all the horrible diner parties in Shakespeare's plays along with the suggestion that it might have been nice for him if he'd gotten out more, particularly to reasonably well regulated households with well trained servants. Thirkell makes it considerably funnier than I describe it. After that I'm rather a fan of Tony Moreland, especially when he's a hideously confidant child. Happily for me he features in several of the stories her. I wonder who his original was (surely there was a real Tony?), he reminds me somewhat of my brother at a similar age (thoroughly irritating with occasional glimpses of charm). 

The joy of the Tony stories is that they'll bear plenty of re-reads, especially the ones that have George Knox in as well - a single read isn't enough to unravel all the details, but it is enough to give a sense of the fun that Thirkell seems to be having with these stories and for me as the reader it's been fun too. I am more enthusiastic than ever about Thirkell - so here's hoping for plenty more Virago reprints. 

Pomfret Towers - Angela Thirkell

Some books (like this one) finish far to soon. I'm having a definite pre Christmas wobble (will I have the energy, patience, and enough sticking plasters to get through the next 5 weeks in something approaching one piece?) so it was wonderfully calming to spend Sunday immersed in Thirkell's pre war house party world, I wouldn't have complained if it had been twice as long.

I don't know if I started with some ropey Angela Thirkell titles, or if it helps to have read a few more to have a feel for the Barchester she creates, or if it's that her books really do get better and better (I haven't read any of the late ones which I hear really aren't as good), or if it's my taste that's shifted slightly. Whatever the reason my opinion of her goes up with every book I read. On reflection I don't think that the number of her books read makes too much difference because 'Pomfret Towers' works very well as a stand alone book, and perhaps it helps that since reading Trollope's Barchester books I understand a few of the references and jokes she makes that would have been lost on me before.

Alice Barton is the very shy daughter of a successful local architect and his equally successful authoress wife, she was a sickly child so has always lived at home which makes her first grown up invitation to the house party of an elderly and irascible earl utterly terrifying but her parents are determined she should get out in the world and so she duly heads off. Also on the guest list are her brother Guy, and her great friends Sally and Roddy Wicklow, another brother and sister, Roddy is also the earls junior land agent. The cast of young people is completed by Julian and Phoebe Rivers (also brother and sister) relatives of the earl, and Gillie - heir to the title. The Countess has an eye out for a wife for Gillie and a fondness for Alice's mother, Hermoine Rivers a successful but trying novelist wants Gillie for her daughter Phoebe. Phoebe wants someone to get her away from her family, but not Gillie much as she likes him. Julian is far to selfish to think of anybody but himself, Roddy wants Alice, though Alice becomes rather smitten with Julian, and Guy is very taken with Phoebe. Gillie seems to like both Alice and Sally, Sally likes dogs and horses. How will it all work out?

This being Thirkell the reader can take it for granted that there will be happy couples by the end of the book - it's one of the reasons it's such a good winters afternoon read. What you can't take for granted in a book this age is political correctness, but on this occasion I didn't notice any of the casually anti-Semitic remarks that can be so distracting however much you tell yourself to judge by the value of the times - but that was very much an after thought.

What makes 'Pomfret Towers' interesting beyond it's entertainment value is primarily the description of a fairly grand country house party from the days when people still talked of Saturday to Mondays rather than weekends, that it was published in 1938 when that world really was on it's last legs adds an extra pathos. There's the sort of service that will be familiar to anyone who watches Downton Abbey along with Alice's worries about how (and how much) precisely one is meant to tip the housemaid and if will she despise your nightdress. In fact even without the changes war made that Thirkell couldn't have known about there are indications that this way of life is coming to an end including the presence of the Bartons and the Wicklows which suggests a relaxing of social hierarchies.

The two very different authoresses are interesting too, Mrs Rivers writes a succession of very successful novels about women of a certain age (her age) who go off somewhere exotic, almost have an affair with a younger man and then reconcile with newly aware husbands. Her publishers refer to her as the Baedeker bitch for her habit of writing like a guidebook and generally being an unpleasant person to deal with. Mrs Barton writes extremely learned novels about the more obscure papal bastards from the 15th and 16th centuries, a time she's apt to loose herself in. Although she's generally much liked there are hints that her absorption in her work, though fully supported by her husband puts something of a strain on their marriage. His solace is their house, an architectural gem which is his pride and joy. It's leased from the earl, Mr Barton's satisfaction at the end of the book that the lease will see him out left me wondering just what would have happened to a house like his post war. (I think it looks bleak myself.)

I've been delighted that Virago are reprinting Thirkell purely because I enjoy her books and they aren't always easy to find cheaply (luscious covers for this series too) this is the first one that I hadn't read before and it's been a real treat. I can't wait for the next lot coming out in May next year.      

A Thirkell!

It's been a very busy week, so much so that I'm currently slumped on the sofa fighting to stay conscious - the only thing energising me at all is a desire to share the news that I found another Angela Thirkell this week. I went over to Uppingham with my friend R on Wednesday afternoon where the highlight was a browse around The Rutland Bookshop. It's impossible to describe how tiny, dusty, cobwebby, and crammed with books this place is. There are some pictures from a previous visit here (along with an excellent recipe for Rowan jelly) but they really need somebody in them to give a sense of scale. Unfortunately it's hard to get far enough away from a second person in the shop to get all them in the picture to really give that sense of scale. the place is a treasure trove (neither very cheap or terrifyingly expensive, it has a wonderful collection of middle brow fiction, hunting shooting and fishing books, and Victorian children's books). 

My treasure this time was an old Penguin paperback edition of Angela Thirkell's 'The Headmistress' in not bad condition and reasonably priced at £2. There where a few hard back Thirkell's as well but they were more than I could afford (more than £2) and take up to much space on the shelf to be really attractive to me. I struggle to find affordable second hand Thirkell and when I do come across her books it's almost always 'The Brandons' or 'Wild Strawberries' (why is it that there are so many second hand copies of specific titles around and so few of others? It's a rare charity or second hand shop that doesn't have 'Precious Bane' and 'The Well of Loneliness' knocking about for example) so I'm delighted with this find. I've not had much time to read more than a few pages yet but was really pleased to find a little recap of a couple of Trollope's Barchester chronicles (mostly Doctor Thorne) relayed as gossip.

On the Thirkell front there's more good news - a quick search on amazon reveals that Virago are reprinting 'Summer Half', 'August Folly' (which I think is my favourite so far) and the ubiquitous 'The Brandons' in May 2014. I'm more excited by November's release of 'Pomfret Towers' and 'Christmas at High Rising' (apparently an exclusive, never before collected set of short stories) as both will be entirely new to me but overall the portents seem good for an extensive re-print of her back catalogue and that's excellent news.  

Tin Toys Trilogy - Ursula Holden

I found 'Tin Toys' whilst browsing in my much missed old branch of Waterstones, (closed for 2 weeks now

and I can't bring myself to walk past it - which is inconvenient as it's basically on my way home) picked it up for the Virago apple on the spine and bought it on the strength of the Molly Keane quote on the cover. Molly Keane thought it "extraordinarily good in its penetration into a child's happiness and unhappiness" I think she was likely referring to a single part of the trilogy, but it's an accurate description of all 3 books.

'Tin Toys' is the first of the trilogy followed by 'Unicorn Sisters', and 'A Bubble Garden', they originally came out through the 1980's. As a single volume this only just tips over 400 pages so it makes sense to publish and read them all together but, and I've found this before reading trilogy's in this way, it does feel like you've spent a long time with the characters - I sometimes wonder if reading over a week what took the author almost five years to work out in stages is quite the best way to approach a set of books.

The action follows three young sisters and is told from a child's point of view - but these are by no means children's books; there is a lot of death and sex, and the sex is inevitably quite disturbing given that it's being witnessed by children. Set just before, during, and just after the war each book is told from the point of view of a different sister, first up is Ula, the youngest at 7 years, she has 2 older sisters; Bonnie and Tor who inhabit have graduated from nursery to schoolroom, they are entirely self sufficient with each other and their elderly governess for company. Ula's place as baby of the family has been upset by the death of her father and the arrival of a baby brother, but the family disruptions haven't stopped there. The children's mother has left them behind in the country and escaped to London, the household consists of a distant relation who acts as a nanny the the baby and Ula, Maggie the Irish kitchen maid, and the older girls governess who doesn't live in.

For Ula it's a lonely existence as only Maggie has time for her and more tragedy isn't far behind. Baby Bruno falls ill and dies fragmenting the family even further. Ula is sent with Maggie back to Ireland but finds herself in a nightmarish slum world, unwelcome and unable to understand the currents of emotion surrounding her. Miraculously it seems like she's going to be rescued and then tragedy strikes again. 'Tin Toys' is narrated by an older Ula recalling the events, right at the end she speculates that some of it might be exaggeration - it seems feasible that it would be and is perhaps the most unsettling thing about a very unsettling book.

'Unicorn Sisters' is told from Bonnie's point of view and makes it clear that Ula's recollections are more or less accurate. In an effort to be rid of responsibilities that she never wanted the girl's mother has sent them to a boarding school. She's so anxious to be rid of them that they find themselves abandoned without any clear idea of where she will be, they're not kitted out properly, and are generally ill equipped in every way for the life ahead of them. The school is a shambles, more so when it's invaded by a group of evacuees who bring a disturbing element of adult sexuality with them. 

In 'A Bubble Garden' the sisters are back in Ireland, now with another brother - 7 year old Boris, they are reaching adulthood but there is a clear sense that more tragedy is inevitable - and it comes. These books are dark but brilliant. As Keane says Holden is tremendously good at getting to grips with children's unhappiness, and how they can also be happy in the most unpromising circumstances. She also creates a monstrous mother in 'Babs' who is part of a fine tradition of terrible mothers - Molly Keane rather specialises in them and Noel Streatfeild does a fine example in 'Saplings' as does Marghanita Laski in 'To Bed With Grand Music'. Holden has a certain amount of empathy for Babs who never really wanted children, and is so utterly selfish she should obviously never have had them. The empathy comes with an acknowledgement that Babs' husbands have wanted children and that she's expected to provide them. 

There are enough examples of mothers more interested in sex than children in twentieth century fiction to make me believe they must have been a recognisable type which I think raises some interesting questions. They aren't kindly treated in the fiction I've read, Holden writing in the 1980's about the 1940's is as close as I've seen to any point of sympathy - she makes the point that children can be irksome, dull, often unlovable, and once you've married it's rather expected that you have them.  

Lisa Allardice's introduction says that Holden is delighted that her books are back in print, I'm delighted to have discovered her. This is an often disturbing read but it's also brilliant. 

Excellent Women - Barbara Pym

I had plans for this week - mostly involving rather more reading and blogging about Barbara Pym but a series of minor frustrations and discomforts - everything ranging from the under wire on my bra snapping at a most inopportune moment and stabbing me hours before I could get home to dispose of the dratted thing to my email account being hacked - long term it's the email which has caused more pain. I cannot regain access to it despite spending what turned into hours of trying, which was followed by more hours of setting up a new account and changing passwords on everything else, eventually I'll have to track down some lost addresses as well and there were a few outstanding things for work. Otherwise I'm hoping that's an end to it and it is at least nice to no longer open my inbox to find nothing but spam and mailing list bumph.

Meanwhile I have been slowly working my way through 'Excellent Women' again, which was the first Pym I ever read. Although I still have a few to read for the first time (I have, but haven't read, 'Quartet in Autumn' and 'Civil to Strangers', don't have, and haven't read 'The Sweet Dove Died' or 'A Few Green Leaves') I was really in the mood for 1950's Pym where if she's not at her best (though I suspect she is) I'm certainly most comfortable with her. 

The first thing that struck me about 'Excellent Women' was that it's much better than I remembered, I mean I remember it being good, but second time around it felt much more than that. I see a lot of my own life in this book; I live alone, am increasingly set in my ways (as is my partner, if we ever do live together it will have to be in a very big house, or a house with a very big shed) and know my share of excellent women. There is also Mildred's preoccupation with food, something I particularly associate with Pym's writing.  'Excellent Women' mentions a lunch she throws together of lettuce dressed with olive oil, some Camembert, and fresh bread which I assume is at least partly a reference to Elizabeth David's writing as well as the influence of her own time in Naples, she also has a Chinese cookbook on her shelf amongst the religious texts one might expect from a vicars daughter. 

I doubt that I picked up on the food references as much first time round, but they point to the romantic element of Mildred's character, suggesting a passion that's well disguised behind sensible fawn skirts, brown hats, and  the obligatory cups of tea. It also makes me question how reliable a narrator she is when it comes to her own affairs, especially her relationship with Everard Bone...

I have noticed that a few people reviewing Pym books this week have mentioned how they like rather than love her (this includes me) and I wonder if this is partly because plot plays a secondary role to character. I've undoubtedly enjoyed 'Excellent Women' more this time because knowing the plot, such as it is, has left me free to enjoy the detail and appreciate the sly wit behind her observations. Mildred's life, though it has it's pleasures, clearly lacks - there are humiliating references to her spinsterhood and yet she's also clear eyed about the downside of marriage. 

When I say I think a book has aged well or stood the test of time, rather than being of it's time, I mean that what I notice are the things which haven't changed, this is why the best of Pym has stood the test of time. When I read about Mildred the 60 years since 'Excellent Women' was first published fall away, the odd detail may indicate the books vintage but in essence everything, and everybody, is recognisable so thank you for Pym reading week and the nudge to re-assess her work.

No One But A Woman Knows - Margaret Llewelyn Davies

This was my bargain buy from the bank holiday, it did indeed turn out to be a harrowing read but almost a hundred years after it's first publication it's still an important and depressingly relevant book. Margaret Llewelyn Davies was general secretary of the Women's Co-Operative guild from 1889 to 1921. In 1914 she  initiated the sending of letters asking about direct experience of childbirth and rearing and some of those replies make up this book. 

The bare statistics are worth considering from the very beginning 348 mothers had experienced 1396 pregnancies that ended in live births although 122 of those children died within a year, there were 83 still births and 218 miscarriages, 2  of the women had experienced 10 miscarriages each, 1 had 5 still births. In total those 348 women had 1697  pregnancies. Household income ranged from as little as 9 shillings a week to as much as 5 pounds - which roughly equates to £45 going up to about £500, the average seems to be around 25 shillings or £100 - £125 pounds. Even the top end isn't much to raise a family of several children on, and the women who took part in this survey were at the better off end of the spectrum of working class families. 

Without a national health system a doctor was often unaffordable, and certainly not someone you could call on lightly. Getting in help when the baby was born to deal with heavy housework (imagine a world without washing machines) and other young children was another considerable expense. Some of the women describe being almost continuously pregnant for years on end, one tells of a neighbour who's had children 10 months and 14 days apart, another of a woman having 4 children within 2 and a half years (1 set of twins). 

Poverty means not enough food so expectant mothers are often malnourished which in turn leads to sickly children. Lack of knowledge and not being able to afford decent medical care leads to a litany of horrible sounding ailments - it comes as no surprise to read that a pregnancy was the cause of fear rather than joy. It isn't all doom and gloom though, there are a few women who understand birth control, some who have had easy pregnancies, and where there is enough money to make sure that the family is decently fed better health is assured. 

Minimum wage in 2013 means someone over 21 working a full time (39 hours a week) earns just over £240 pounds a week before tax and national insurance. Employers at the lower, unskilled, end of the job market increasingly favour part time workers. Women are no longer the property of their husbands in this country, marital rape has been recognised as a crime since the 1990's, the pill has been available on the NHS since 1961, and abortion has been legal since 1967. Illegal doesn't mean it doesn't happen, and abortion remains a contentious issue. 

This book is relevant because it reminds us why the women's movement was so desperately necessary in the first place, and why it's still so important. Sitting here in comfort with more than enough to eat, the security of knowing if I become ill I'll basically be looked after for free, and having made an educated choice not to have children just as so many of my friends have made the educated choice to have the children they want and can afford, what really strikes me is not how far we've come in the last century but how close we still are to the lives of these women. Yes, things have generally improved for families but 'No One But A Woman Knows' is also a warning not to be complacent. It doesn't surprise me to see that it and it's sister volume 'Life As We Have Known It' were some of the first books that Virago published back in the 1970's, it's fantastic that they're back in print - 'No One But A Woman Knows' feels like a really important book. 

A Weekend With Claude - Beryl Bainbridge

I left town this weekend to spend in the countryside, my weekend has been rather quieter than the one Bainbridge gives us here. Highlights for me have been transplanting things around the garden, picking the first of my rhubarb (I've waited two years for it to be ready so this first crop has been hotly anticipated, here's hoping it makes the best crumble ever - unlikely, I know I've overdone the crumble bit) , and that's about it, so all very calm and relaxing. 

This was my second outing with Bainbridge, picked to counterbalance 'Miss Buncle Married' and 'The Blue Castle' which I assumed (rightly) would be light and charming, I also assumed (rightly) that Bainbridge would be altogether darker and spikier, so a good foil. The book hangs around Lily but is narrated by four different characters. Lily herself, Norman, Shebah, and to some extent Claude. Lily has bought Norman, Shebah, and Edward to spend a night with Claude and his mistress Julia amongst their treasures in the country. Norman, Shebah, Lily, and Claude are old friends with lives they've allowed to become overly involved and interdependent. Edward has been chosen by Lily to be a father for the possible child she might be carrying and to this end he has to be made to believe he might be the father. She has asked her friends to tell Edward nice things about her in the hope that he'll propose and all will end happily.

This seems an unlikely out come, Lily is slutish in her domestic habits, free with her affections, too dependant on her friends, and far too dependant on her own emotional chaos to settle down into a happy or effective marriage. Second book in and clear themes and motifs are also emerging, Bainbridge alludes to the same sort of childhood as she did in 'A Quiet Life' and I assume that there is a good pinch of autobiography here. 

I  enjoyed 'A Quiet Life' more, but mostly because it was completely new to me, reading 'A Weekend With Claude' only a few weeks after meant that some of the shared details between the books felt repetitive in a way that wouldn't occur after the year or two that normally comes between books as they're published - it's something I'm going to bear in mind for reading the other two Bainbridge's I have waiting. What I lacked in enjoyment however was more than made up for in insight. Bainbridge is merciless in her portraits, brilliant too. 

Peking Picnic - Ann Bridge

'Peking Picnic' was written at much the same time as 'Heat Lightning' and both are in some way concerned with finding a code for living and loving by (both have also had glowing reviews from Book Snob)  but otherwise I found them very different books - 'Peking Picnic' troubles me which is not what I expected at all.

I've been part of a postal book group for the last four years - it's a nice old fashioned idea whereby a circle of readers send books to one another with a notebook - when the circle is complete you get both back with a whole lot of comments. 'Peking Picnic' is the last book for me in this round so I can see from the notebook that plenty of others like it very much indeed. I however have two issues with it, one is pacing - very little happens for 180 pages and then all of a sudden there is hostage episode with some murderous brigands, some surprising gymnastic feats, love affairs are started, and an unexpected death - it made the book feel very unbalanced to me and raised questions about how genuine some of the characters emotions could be.

The second issue is the heroine and her philosophy. Laura Leroy is the wife of a British diplomat and at the centre of the diplomatic community in Peking. She reminds me of Vita Sackville-West as a young woman, but is more likely a version of Ann Bridge herself. She's cool and wise, physically active, capable in a crisis, attractive and intelligent, but all this is mixed with a streak of self indulgence that I find problematical. Laura loves China (the description of Peking and it's surrounding countryside is a wonderful snapshot of life there in 1931 and the book's worth reading for that alone) seems reasonably happy with her life and husband, although she misses her children back at school in England, and yet there's something amiss.

I've long cherished a theory that in a society where divorce is a major scandal, adultery is likely to be tacitly accepted as long as it's discreet (it's probably not a theory that bears much examination but this book seems to bear it out). Laura's theory is that love is never a waste, she has had 3 loves in her life and by the end of the book is contemplating a 4th. Not for the sex - that's something she considers agreeable but only a small part of loving - but for the whole spectrum of emotions that go with love. Her husband is 1 of the 3 loves, she won't leave him, won't do anything that jeopardises access to her children, but won't be faithful to him either which sits at odds with her apparent integrity. When another character asks if her husband knows about the infidelity she's just confessed too she explains how cruel that would be - she doesn't mention that it might be inconvenient as well - and that's my problem. I feel that when you prod Laura's philosophy it doesn't hold together, my overall impression is of someone who has her cake and eats it too.

After finishing the book I read a bit more about Bridge who was apparently annoyed by her own diplomat husbands philandering which has made me wonder if this - her first novel - was partly meant to let him know it could work both ways, or maybe just a hint not to take his wife for granted (either way it made me warm to Laura Leroy a little). It's a book I found more interesting than enjoyable, and though I wouldn't rule out reading more Bridge if it comes my way I'm not sure I'll go looking for her. 

Breakfast With The Nikolides - Rumer Godden

My reading life generally follows a path - I'll pick up a book, and it will lead onto another, and then another,  until either it feels like I've come to the end of that particular road, or something comes along that I drop everything to read which heads me off on a new path. Occasionally though there will be a pile of books which all look so good that my reading doesn't fall into a pattern but jumps around all over the place. This is how it is at the moment and it's making me realise how much the last book I read influences how I think about the one I'm reading now. My understanding of Amy Sackville's 'Orkney' owed a lot to 'The Phantom of the Opera' and 'Breakfast With The Nikolides' was partly informed by my reaction to 'The Mussel Feast' (actually on reflection it seems that all unwittingly I've read a pile of books about unhappy domestic situations and controlling relationships this year). 

I've seen 'Breakfast With The Nikolides' referred to somewhere as a coming of age story but that's not at all how I saw it - to me it'a a book about rape. Really it's both these things and more, 'Breakfast With The Nikolides' is beautiful, perceptive, moving - essentially far to good a book to fit into one little box, but on this reading this is what I made of it...

The book opens with Emily Pool's dog escaping from the house and behaving quite erratically, before it skips back to reveal the Pool family. Charles Pool has been living alone in a Bengali back water for the last 8 years in a house that's beautiful and cared for but oddly damaged - everything has been broken at some point in the past. War has broken out in Europe and is driving his estranged wife back to him along with their two daughters - Emily and Binnie. This is not a happy family, Charles and Louise seem to hate one another and Emily's relationship with her mother is exceptionally strained. Charles doesn't know the name of his 8 year old daughter and Louise's reaction to the house she hasn't seen before is one of shocked familiarity.

India is hot and tense, there with a definite threat of violence in the air. Charles gives Emily a puppy, and it's his odd behaviour that triggers one set of events. Louise decides he's rabid and has him destroyed but tells Emily he dies in a fight with another dog whilst the children where having breakfast with the Nikolides family down the river. It's a breaking point in their already strained relationship with neither Louise or Emily capable of controlling themselves or the consequences of their actions. For Emily one part of childhood is over (so yes I guess it is a coming of age story).

Meanwhile Charles and Louise's past is slowly unravelled. Louise is a beauty but she's by no means a pleasant woman; towards the end of the book Charles tells her that she was not "reasonable, you did not want something - you wanted everything. You wanted to spend all your money and be rich, you wanted to have a child and have no worry and pain, you wanted to marry and not be married; and when it naturally didn't fall out like that you made an outcry and a moan. You wanted to be trusted and have the fun of being untrustworthy - and you did have fun, didn't you Louise? And you wanted me to be jealous - without being inconvenient." she knows, and we know it's true, her replies that he was bestial are clearly meant to lack much conviction, but Godden also makes it clear that the marriage breaks up after Charles rapes her one night.

On the one hand the reader is clearly meant to side with Charles; after 3 years of Louise's games he snaps, at some point in the encounter she submits to him - seemingly what she can't forgive about the night is that she responded to him: her revenge is to take their child and cut off all contact whilst refusing to divorce him, she keeps the (as a result) children from him whilst living in Paris where there have been lovers, and after it all she still wants him. Charles has spent the intervening years living like a monk in a re-creation of the house they shared believing himself to be as hateful as she told him he was, and yet still he wants her. I could just about have gone along with the possibility that this is Louise getting the passion she wants from her husband without having to admit to her desires but for Godden making it quite a violent rape. Charles starts by taking an axe from the wall and smashing everything in the house before dragging his wife to bed. The servants are banished, the baby screaming, the entire house desecrated - I don't believe this is a rape fantasy, which is a concept I understand but which makes me profoundly uncomfortable, it's retribution and that too is an uncomfortable idea.

On the other hand this revelation towards the end of the novel made me re-assess Louise and her actions; it's clear she hates India as much as her husband and daughters love it; her extreme reaction to the dog's suspected rabies is in part an attempt to find a reason to leave, Charles accuses Louise of smashing the house - of 'making' him do it and it's quite possible to believe that she engineered a crisis sufficient to smash up her marriage. It's another violent event that brings the couple back together, it's not a healthy relationship and neither party is blameless or without sympathy.

That's one part of a satisfyingly complex and nuanced exploration of family relationships - Louise and Emily would demand as much space again. I had thought 'Black Narcissus' would probably remain my favourite Godden but this is a real contender and generally the more I read her the more respect I have for her as a writer. 

A Fugue In Time - Rumer Godden

Of all the Rumer Godden titles Virago have just released this is the one I was most anticipating - it wasn't one I'd heard of before (though I suspect there are a good few more of those) but this one promised a brash young American turning up at her uncles house in war torn London, a history of the family including a mysterious orphan, and a love story or two which all sounded like fun. It also sounded quite a bit like 'China Court' (I thought I had blogged about 'China Court' but must have read it just before I started) which I remember as being gently enjoyable.

The first few pages went on to feel a lot like 'China Court' and I was momentarily disappointed - much as I had liked I didn't want to read essentially the same book over again - and then it developed into something much better than I was expecting, though now I've checked Godden's bibliography I see that 'A Fugue In Time' precedes 'China Court' by some 16 years (I don't know why this has surprised me but it has).  'A Fugue In Time' is also, and I didn't expect this either, a response to T. S. Elliot's East Coker, specifically this passage: Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
                    The world becomes stranger, the pattern more
                        complicated
                    Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
                     Isolated, with no before and after,
                     But a lifetime burning in every moment
                     And not the lifetime of one man only
                     But of old stones that cannot be deciphered,
                     There is a time for the evening under starlight,
                     A time for the evening under lamplight
                     (The evening with the photograph album).
                     Love is most nearly itself
                     When here and now cease to matter.
                     Old men ought to be explorers
                     Here or there does not matter
                     We must be still and still moving
                     Into another intensity
                     For a further union, a deeper communion...
                     ...In my end is my beginning.

It is the story of a home and a family that have lived in it for 99 years. An elderly and disgraced General, Rolls Dane, has retired into his family home to live - I would say with the past but that's not quite right. The house doesn't forget the people who have made their lives in it. John Ironmonger Dane who took the lease and made a home for his young wife Griselda, Selina their daughter who takes over the housekeeping when Griselda dies giving birth to Rolls, Lark Ingoldsby whom John brings home as a young orphan and delivers into Selina's resentful care, there is Rolls/Rollo/Rolly, There is Grizel the young American niece who will also have her future in the house, and then there is Mr Proutie, and Mrs Proutie, and Mrs Crabbe, and all the others who have made the house what it is above and below stairs. All their stories are told, or at least parts of them are, and they're all told at the same time.

Each story belongs to the house as much as the furniture, the china, or the glassware - much of which is described in glorious lists of inventory - a home is made by the people that live in it, but it is also made of things, all the things which are loved and cherished and invested with memories.

This is an extraordinary book - thinking about it makes me think it shouldn't work, but it does, it really does. Godden does so many things with it, of which for me the most interesting is how she explores women's lives through their relationship with the house, and again to me the most interesting is Griselda. Married at 17 Griselda is a stuffed into the role of the angel in the home which really doesn't fit her very well. She's desperate for a life beyond the walls of her home but she's trapped by convention and love. There are plenty of ways to illustrate the plight of a respectable upper middle class Victorian housewife, Godden  does it by pointing out that Griselda doesn't have a key to her own front door. She has the interior keys, excepting the cellar key which is the property of master and butler, but she can't come and go from her own house as she pleases, not without being observed and not without tacit permission. The implications of that are still bothering me.  

A Quiet Life - Beryl Bainbridge

I had until now successfully avoided reading any Beryl Bainbridge, or even being very aware of her; if I had noticed her books at all it was the later historical novels, and that's not a genre I'm very attracted too. Even Gaskella's 'Reading Beryl' week last year didn't have me paying as much attention as it should have (but it now makes a wonderful resource which is one of the brilliant things about blogs) but a couple of weeks ago I got an unexpected envelope from Virago with a couple of Bainbridge's in it (that's one of the brilliant things about blogging) and they looked quite tempting.

Partly that's the power of the Virago apple on a spine - it will always guarantee my interest, but these are also Bainbridge's early novels where she writes out her early life in a loose combination of autobiography and fiction. After I read 'A Quiet Life' I went back to read the introduction where it came as no real surprise to learn that Bainbridge became a  sort of protégé of Anna Haycraft (Alice Thomas Ellis); there is a darkness to  this book which dovetails neatly with Alice Thomas Ellis's dark humour. It's another reason for me to warm to Bainbridge.

'A Quiet Life' starts with a re-union between brother and sister, Alan is waiting for Madge in a cafe, they haven't seen each other for 15 years and he seems a fussy stuffy sort. Madge in contrast sounds vaguely bohemian with a dry sense of humour. She starts to describe Alan's childhood - he was lonely, musical, the favoured child who wasn't called upon to work around the house and who was shielded from the rows... Alan doesn't recognise himself, though neither does he really deny Madge's version of events, and then on his way home he falls back into his own memories.

Alan's version is rather different - Madge is a careless, manipulative, slut, their mother a domestic tyrant obsessed with appearances and their father a constant embarrassment - an entrepreneur who has fallen on hard times. There is clearly passion in their marriage but it's gone sour, love has been replaced by bitter fighting and antipathy. For Alan life is about avoiding confrontation and trying to maintain some sort of peace within the family, he too wants to maintain appearances. Madge has no interest in maintaining anything, she deals with their horrible home life by being brutally honest about it and by ignoring any parental authority. At barely 15 she's roaming the countryside with a German prisoner of war seemingly unconcerned about any consequences her actions might have.

It's a bleak little book - which is something I very often find cheering (I can't pretend my life is anything like this grim, which is nice) and so it it here. The home life described is appalling, but it seems that somehow both Alan and Madge have found their happy enough endings despite the damage - both, I imagine, quite different. And then Bainbridge looks for empathy, rather than sympathy or pity, for her characters which I found myself responding to far more than I expected. I'm enthusiastic to read the rest of the Virago re-prints now, and who knows, after that I might even put aside my prejudices and tackle some of the later books. 

It's a Library!

Ever since I was a child one of the things I wanted when I grew up was a library of my own (and doesn't every young girl) but I've never been quite sure what counts as a library - where's the tipping point when a collection of books take on that particular mantle? It was something on my mind back when I started blogging - I thought perhaps I was becoming more interested in books as objects instead of for what they contained and that the collector was overtaking the reader. I wouldn't be at all happy with the idea of everything being contained on an e-reader - the books own me just as much as I own them and I'm happy with it this way - although at the moment they've become rather unruly and in need of an organise. 

Last night though I made the definite discovery that I know own a library, albeit a small one. I will confess at this point that I have no idea how many books I have. I stopped counting sometime about 2000, I think there are probably about 3000 now and I should, along with imposing some sort of a system, catalogue them but it's a big enough job to seriously cut into my reading time which is unappealing at the moment. 

This momentous revelation came to me some time around midnight and partly courtesy of amazon. I've been reading Sara Maitland's 'Gossip From The Forest' (excellent, but I've had to have a dictionary to hand - my newly expanded vocabulary includes words like chthonic and deracinated, I particularly like deracinated). I'll enthuse wildly about this book soon but meanwhile the edition of Grimm's fairy tales she references is the Vintage 'Complete Fairy Tales' edited by Jack Zipes - happily the very copy I have which has been useful. I'd quite like to re-read Angela Carter's take on fairy tales when I'm finished, which will be easy because obviously I have her collected short stories as well as her version of Perrault's fairy stories, which I could compare with the Oxford World's Classics edition (if only I could find it, I know I have it somewhere, I was reading it not so long ago - maybe I shouldn't put off that re-shuffle). 

After that I might actually tackle Marina Warner's 'From The Beast To The Blonde' for another slant on fairy tales - though I might also read Barbara Comyns 'The Juniper Tree' a retelling of another of the Grimm's tales - browsing amazon I realised I already had a copy, and was just sighing over the price of 'A Touch of Mistletoe' (also by Comyns and at £18.99 for a paperback and never mind the postage, now far to expensive for the likes of me) when I thought to check my own shelves - I had a copy. Also, and slightly to my disappointment because the new cover looks lovely I also have 'The Vet's Daughter'. 

Equally I could decide to read in another direction altogether, I've been saving Robert Macfarlane 'The Old Ways' but this may be it's moment, or a re read of 'The Wild Places' or maybe something else altogether. This is why I think I have a library now; I can follow a reading path without having to buy or borrow books (not having to isn't the same as not wanting to) - there are obviously gaps but nonetheless the books follow one another in an orderly way; I feel like I've got a treasure house of possibilities piled up around me and  it's just as good as I ever could have imagined  it would be.  

Wild Strawberries - Angela Thirkell

I read this one well before Christmas but have been procrastinating over writing about it - amongst all the delights of reading older fiction there is one recurring thorny issue politely referred to as 'opinions reflecting their time'. I had thought about trying to organise my ideas on this and using a particular passage in 'Wild Strawberries' as an illustration but so far so disorganised and it's a theme I'll have plenty of opportunity to return to.

Meanwhile back to 'Wild Strawberries' before my memory fades. It's not (in my opinion) quite as much fun as 'High Rising', it lacks a Tony Morland, and the eccentric Lady Emily is no substitute for Laura Morland either. Lady Emily is an immensely irritating woman who is always late, always losing things and always re-organising things that were working just fine before she interfered with them - I sensed that even Thirkell was fed up with her by the end of the book as she allows a certain amount of criticism to drift into the narrative. Annoying as she can be though Lady Emily is still a living breathing character you can believe in- the vicar who perhaps suffers most from her ability to disturb the peace is determined to speak stern words to her until he sees her touched by tragedy. The bitter sweet moments that Thirkell creates for Lady Emily and her husband are one of the strengths of this book - and one of the things that marks it out from being a standard read once and throw away romance.

Being Thirkell however there is plenty of romance - mostly for Mary Preston, Mary has been having a hard time at home looking after her mother and holding down a job. The job is fairly meaningless but the Preston's really aren't at all well off so Mary is grateful for an invitation to her relations country house for the summer - where she promptly falls in love with a glamorous sort of cousin who turns out to be as unreliable as he is attractive. Will she realise in time that her affections are being wasted on the playboy type and that there's a much more suitable alternative right under her nose? Of course she will, it wouldn't be a very satisfactory romance without a happy ending.

The joy of Angela Thirkell for me is partly that she makes for enjoyable light reading and so often that's just what I need at the end of the day, the other side of what she does is throw a light on a particular way of life in the 1930's. For someone who delighted first in P.G Wodehouse and later in Evelyn Waugh and Nancy Mitford anything from the 30's raises a bit of interest, but much as I love those writers they're not great for domestic detail. Thirkell's world feels more or less real and it's fascinating.

I still hope that Virago plan to publish lots more Thirkell's, so am delighted to see that 'Pomfret Towers' is coming out in November (shame about the long wait) especially as it's one that I haven't read and is prohibitively expensive second hand. With luck it will come out in a pair as 'Wild Strawberries' and 'High Rising' did but either way is set to be one of the highlights of my bookish year. 

High Rising - Angela Thirkell

The shine has worn off Christmas a bit for me now (I've had two months of it already and the milk of superhuman patience is drying up which is unlucky when I consider what the next three weeks has in store for me...) I'm also to tired to concentrate on anything overly complex so have picked up and re-shelved George Bernard Shaw's 'The Intelligent Woman's Guide', Ali Smith's 'Artful' went the same way, and I think it's probably better if Alexander Solzhenitsyn's 'Apricot Jam' waits until I'm in a more receptive mood too. For now my reading is mostly being sponsored by E.F. Benson's 'Night Terrors' and Angela Thirkell. Thank god for Thirkell and Virago.

I've hoped that somebody would start to reprint Thirkell for a long time now but must admit my money was on Vintage doing it - Thirkell fits much the same niche as Stella Gibbons and Vintage have a nice habit of doing the whole back catalogue even if it is only as print on demand. My knowledge of Thirkell is limited to the half dozen or so easy to find second hand copies here in the UK, and they are all from fairly early in her Barsetshire series, the later books are far to expensive to be attractive. I've heard that the quality of her work was somewhat variable and wonder if this is why the later books weren't as widely printed? Either way I'd be happy to see plenty more.

I realised when I started 'High Rising' that I'd read it before albeit a while ago, now so far I've thought of Thirkell books as a bit of fun but perhaps slightly throw away, a second read has made me reassess her. 'High Rising' centres around the novelist Laura Morland (mother of the irrepressible Tony) she's a widow who has turned to writing to support her four sons through school and into their various careers, Tony is the only one left but feels like quite enough boy to be going round. Laura, who is surely based on Thirkell, is a woman happy with her life and in her skin, and who for all her apparent absent mindedness has no intention of letting the comfortable balance of that life slip. She has an old friend - George - who's secretary is making eyes at him, and Laura is having none of it... So will George be rescued from the ambitious Miss Grey, will his daughter find love,will Laura manage to fend off inopportune proposals, and will Tony Ever Stop talking about trains?

Everything bounces along in a jolly enough way with plenty of snappy one liners, first time round I was probably caught up more by the story which is a little unevenly paced - everything happens in fits and starts, but this time it was the humour that drew me in and that, I think, works a lot better than the plot. Thirkell takes some time to explain Laura's approach to novels; she wants to write good bad novels, repeatedly making the point that her work is second rate but as good as second rate gets.

This is actually something I have quite a bit of respect for, too much high art gets a bit wearing, and Thirkell's gentle, well crafted, humour absolutely has it's place. I think in this book, and in Alexander McCall Smith's introduction there is perhaps too much apology for Thirkell's perceived shortcomings - she's good at what she does and books like this are the perfect antidote to stress filled winter days.

More problematical are some of Thirkell's prejudices, she makes casually racist observations in a way that absolutely reflects attitudes in the 1930's but which can be quite abrasive to modern sensibilities. In 'High Rising' it's some throw away comments about Jews - the context takes much of the sting out of it but it's those moments that show the books occasional shortcomings, although from a historical perspective it's also what makes it really interesting - it's another reason I'd like to read some of the later books in the series; to see if those attitudes change or are edited out. 

'High Rising' is a perfect winter read, and was a much bigger treat than I expected (the perfect stocking filler for any Virago lover) I have everything crossed that more Thirkell's will join the list.