Ten books from the last twelve months.

Books of the year lists are a bit of a departure for me but I thought I’d give it a go, indeed I meant to do it for the first of December but didn’t get organised in time – which is why lists like this generally are a departure for me. However it’s the season to look back on things and having looked back at books it feels like it’s been useful – and slightly surprising. I’ve not perhaps read as much as I hoped I might this year but that’s par for the course (damn having to work for a living and its constant getting in the way of more entertaining things) but although there have been a lot of good books – this is after all the year that I finished Trollope’s Barchester chronicles, read my first Walter Scott, and worked through Mrs Oliphant’s Carlingford series – I don’t feel that it’s been a vintage year. It’s not a struggle to come up with ten books I’d happily recommend, anything I’ve written about I’ve been enthusiastic about, but it’s been quite hard to identify the ones that really stood out – the books which might make it to my fire shelf.

Somehow though I managed, and so in no particular order here they are – all read between December 1^st 2010 and December 1^st 2011. First up is Matthew Sweet’s ‘West End Front’ from a couple of weeks back. The more I think about it the more time I have for this book. It’s a lot of the dirtier side of war which we do well to remember, it’s also a lot of stories that deserve to be told, thoroughly entertaining, and at times desperately moving. All good.

Another recent read was Constance Maud’s ‘No Surrender’ from Persephone books. Not the best novel ever written but possibly a contender for the most passionately heartfelt. It has an enthusiasm for a cause that’s infectious. It’s also a book that makes you question how much things have changed, and how much has stayed the same. The answers aren’t entirely encouraging for anyone of a feminist persuasion and again these are things which should be thought about otherwise nothing will ever change for the better.

Mark Girouard’s ‘Enthusiasms’ also makes the list, partly because it’s a lovely thing in itself, partly because it’s entertaining, but mostly because it’s a showcase for the virtues of good scholarship – whatever they’re being applied to.

A.S Byatt’s ‘Ragnarok’ was easily my most anticipated title of the year, it didn’t disappoint. I read it months ago but there are still bits that run through my head. I think Byatt is at her best when she writes short stories and novellas; she’s pretty bloody good when she writes epic doorstops as well but I find her shorter books perfectly polished jewels – or something like that anyway. She’s just very, very, good.

Preparation/anticipation for ‘Ragnarok’ featured Kevin Crossley-Holland’s ‘The Penguin Book Of Norse Myths’ which I approached in the manner of a chore. It wasn’t, and good intentions to read far more saga’s feature for next year.

 John O’Hara’s ‘A Rage to Live’ was a great big messy compelling wonderful book – I love vintage for reprinting him (and so many others). He’s a slight departure from my normal middle brow women – rather less tea and a nice sit down with a scone, more dirty martinis and a few too many of them.   

Sticking with sleazy was Mae West’s ‘The Constant Sinner’ – not just an eye opener. I have more Mae West to read which is something to look forward to. She’s everything I hoped in the way of one liners and wisecracks but underneath that there’s a veracity that makes the heroine Babe Gordon stick with you.

I’m a big fan of Victorian literature and if I’d read Lady Audley this year she would be a shoe in, but I didn’t and I also really love Mrs Oliphant so I’m going with ‘Phoebe Junior’ the last of the Carlingford chronicles. I think it stands well alone, has a cracking good plot, and rips of Trollope with style. That’s virtually the perfect Victorian novel in my world.

The last two books on my list are both a little bit Noir. Vera Caspary’s ‘Bedelia’ which had a twist I didn’t see coming and which turned something run of the mill into something extraordinary. Dorothy B. Hughes ‘In a Lonely Place’ was even darker – and nothing like the film which is good, but an entirely different story. Dorothy B. Hughes was a Persephone find and since then I’ve come across a few of her other titles. Persephone’s ‘The Expendable Man’ is so far the best; ‘In A Lonely Place’ is a very close second.

Now I need to go and get a head start on next years list.  

Bedelia – Vera Caspary

If the idea of Mills and Boon romance makes you want to gnash your teeth and commit a violent crime than ‘Bedelia’ is almost certainly the book you’re after. My copy was a Christmas present and is my second brush with Vera Caspary, I read ‘Laura’ (which she is better known for) back in the summer looking for hard boiled noir and ending up with romance. I was very so-so about ‘Laura’ but my heart leapt when I saw the tag line on ‘Bedelia’- “She Seduces Men – But Does She Kill Them? A mystery about the wickedest woman who ever loved.”

Written in 1945 this is a cracking little thriller as well as being (and this is slightly coincidental) a sort of anti-Mills & Boon. The scene opens on the evening of Christmas day 1913 – newly married Charlie Horst has just lit the Yule log he’s had drying all year and feeling himself the happiest of men as he contemplates his wife – Bedelia. She appears to be the perfect wife; basically an angel in the kitchen and a whore in the bedroom (Caspary is careful to mention her black silk corsets, experience, and voluptuous appearance as often as she does Bedelia’s housekeeping and cooking abilities). Charlie who’s a very ordinary looking and somewhat insecure proposition can’t believe his luck – he’s not even particularly wealthy, which is why when his wife announces she’s pregnant he takes out a large life insurance policy...

It’s destined to be the last evenings of Charlie’s happiness – as the rest of the evening unfolds the first cracks appear in this image of domestic bliss and by the end of the week things are looking pretty bleak. Bedelia is slowly exposed as a nervous inconsistent creature with a past, Charlie begins to realise that the bits and pieces about her life that she’s let slip don’t add up. He’s also becoming increasingly suspicious of his friend and neighbour Ben Chaney and the effect he seems to have on his wife – is Ben all he seems and how much longer can Charlie gloss over Bedelia’s faults? Especially when he’s struck down by an almost deadly attack of indigestion and the local doctor starts to behave very strangely refusing to let him eat anything prepared by his wife. And then they get snowed in...

I’m not giving much away when I tell you that Bedelia turns out to be a ‘Kitten with claws’ (it’s on the back cover for a start) who may have left a string of dead husbands behind her, but I won’t spoil the end which is both deeply chilling and slightly surprising. This is pulp fiction at its cleverest and best, a good tense read that messes with some preconceptions along the way. Caspary doesn’t do anything to excuse Bedelia’s actions – there’s no question about her being both dangerous and unbalanced, but she makes Charlie subtly unsympathetic at the same time; not to the point that you want him dead but enough to make him vaguely unlikable.

He’s a jealous man, an angry man, a man who might become violent. A man whose mothers body was hardly cold when he started remodelling her house, a man who enjoys knowing his old friend Ellen is in love with him – expected to marry him until he came home from a holiday with a new wife for her to befriend, and by the by a man with thinning hair. Bedelia on the other hand put’s her all into bolstering his ego, making him comfortable, pleasing him in bed, and entertaining his friends. She’s an expert wife who seems to enjoy the man in her life – although crucially we never really understand what she thinks or why. There’s a hint of a tough childhood but nothing specific is revealed; the real Bedelia will remain a mystery. In fact apart from that bad habit of doing away with her husband’s (a spiritual daughter of Braddon’s Lady Audley) she is the perfect submissive Mills & Boon style miss...

As an antidote to romance with a feminist twist it would be hard to find a better book. There’s a film version which I’ve never seen but which sounds equally intriguing so it looks like two neglected classics for the price of one – should either version cross your path don’t ignore it ‘Bedelia’ is a treat.