Lady Rose and Mrs Memmary

First of all a bit of acknowledgement for Paperback Reader and The B Files for hosting Persephone Reading Week, as a Persephone fan of some six years standing it’s a been a pleasure to come across so many of their books being discussed, but collating, reading, and commenting on all of those posts has to be hard work and I’m very grateful that someone else was doing it for my reading pleasure.

Ruby Ferguson’s ‘Lady Rose and Mrs Memmary’ is a book I’ve tried to read once before, and which didn’t really grab me at the time. This reading week coupled with Paperback Reader’s enthusiasm for this title made me pick it up again and I took it to London with me to read on the train. I feel a little guilty about admitting that it’s still not really a book for me, but I do feel happier about saying it now I’ve finished it. I’ve had a look at a couple of very positive reviews this afternoon, and whilst they haven’t changed my mind they have confirmed a feeling that this would be a terrific book for a reading group because I do feel it’s one to polarise opinion. I’m also pleased to be able to link to fans of the book because I feel it leaves me free to be a bit negative (but not I hope too negative).

Whilst trying not to give too much away this is the story of The Lady Rose as related by an old family retainer to three chance tourists on a sunny afternoon in the 1930’s. Lady Rose is a considerable heiress, a favourite of Queen Victoria, imaginative and passionate and seemingly blessed by every good fairy. (SPOILERS) Eventually she marries, her husband is a ruthlessly repressed man, and despite three children she adores it’s not a terribly happy marriage. At this point I thought I knew what would happen, I thought there would be divorce (because sometimes I can’t resist reading the end of a book before I’ve finished, and yes I do know this makes me a terrible person, but it also revealed that something big was on the way). Anyway it wasn’t divorce, but suffice it to say that the husband is no longer an issue.

So then at the point when it all feels like it should work out it all sort of goes wrong again, except by this point it’s almost the end of the book, and it all happens quite quickly and has left me a bit non plussed. I suspect I would have loved this book when I had a crush on the Scarlet Pimpernel, and was reading Kidnapped, thinking that Bonnie Prince Charlie was a romantic hero, but now I think of him as a vicious alcoholic, bad general, and all round bad egg. For Lady Rose he’s a hero. There was too much of the fairy tale about this book for me, I couldn’t go along with it, and kept doubting the veracity of little things within the plot.

Things which interested me like the powerlessness of married women in the 1880’s, even a woman like Lady Rose, with wealth and title of her own were – to my mind- skipped over a bit, when she puts herself beyond the pale of society she seems to do it so carelessly, and with so little regard for her children that I find it deeply troubling. This is a book for people who believe the world well lost for love, and not for those, like me, of a slightly more cautious and cynical frame of mind.

The Man Who Never Was - Ewen Montagu

My first book for Persephone reading week and it isn’t even a Persephone, but it was Persephone inspired so I’m counting it in. I read Duff Cooper’s ‘Operation Heartbreak’ a couple of years ago so the details are vague now, but I remember finding it very moving – definitely one of the best ones for me so far (and looking very like it’s going to be reread this week). I found ‘The Man Who Never Was’ in a second hand shop in Shetland and bought it partly as a souvenir and also because of the ‘Operation Heartbreak’ connection – In my heart of hearts I didn’t think I’d ever get round to reading it.
Which really would have been my loss. In a nutshell in the spring of 1943 a corpse was launched off the Spanish coast with planted information which significantly helped the allied war effort. ‘Operation Heartbreak’ is an apt name for the Duff Cooper version, the nonfiction version of events is if anything more moving than the fictional account. Cooper who I’m guessing was in the know clearly felt the need to invent a back story for ‘Major Martin’, the sort of life which would make his eventual end make more sense. Ewen Montagu and his team did the same thing, but for slightly different reasons, although there’s still a sense that Major Martin needed to become a person to make what happened to his body acceptable to all those involved.

In my copy (penguin) there is a grainy old black and white photo of what I can only describe as the corpse being committed to the waves, sped on by all good hopes for its effectiveness. I kept returning to it – it’s a thoroughly haunting and deeply poignant image which made me as a reader dearly want a satisfying story for Major Martin too. The Major’s actual identity is still unknown (permission to use the body was granted on condition that its actual identity would never be known) which seems to kick into action a deep human need for a story. For the mission, operation mincemeat, to succeed every detail had to make sense so a life was created – a man who has a family, falls in love, is reckless with his money, is an excellent officer, and who enjoys a bit of nightlife.

A man we would all like, who seems to have become real to his creators (shades of Miss Hargreaves) and who having briefly sprung into being dies again to go to war. It raises so many questions for me that I’m surprised ‘Operation Heartbreak’ is the only fictional account to come out of the incident. Had mincemeat been a failure a lot of the pathos would be lost, but Operation Mincemeat was an outstanding success that saved hundreds (maybe thousands) of lives during the invasion of Sicily. Major William Martin of the Royal Marines was a hero even though he never existed; it’s quite a paradox for a Tuesday.

All of which should make it clear that this is a bit of quality writing (despite sometimes dry descriptions of army procedure and protocol) which has aged remarkably well. For any ‘Operation Heartbreak’ fans out there it’s more than worth tracking down, I see it from time to time in charity shops, and cheap copies are available on amazon, it’s also more than worth finding for its own sake.

Finally apologies for the awful picture - still struggling with technical difficulties...

Shadow Dance – Angela Carter

I’ve really enjoyed paperback-reader Angela Carter month, and am rather hoping she does another one. I’ve been a fan of Carter for a few years now and whilst I’ve read most of the easy stuff there are still a few short stories and novellas I could be better acquainted with, plenty of nonfiction that’s unread, and still ‘The Passion of New Eve’ to get through. After my Dr Hoffmann experience New Eve can stay on the shelf for a while, but I did want to read at least two Carter’s whilst there was plenty of encouraging discussion going on around her work so my Oxfam purchase of ‘Shadow Dance' was very timely.

I was far more impressed with ‘Shadow Dance’ than I expected to be - until now I’ve not been so taken with the early novels, but this book felt perfect. Tense and chilling, it’s a very convincing sort of gothic horror written and set in the 1960’s. Essentially beauty becomes the beast – a pretty girl is badly scarred in a knife attack and returns an, at first silent, but always avenging fury to exact her pound of flesh. Her counterpart is the puckish Honeybuzzard – most likely responsible for her injuries he’s a lord of misrule and chaos. Whatever harm they bring to each other though is as nothing to the harm they bring on others.

The thing about the sixties that I don’t often remember is that it’s a generation of twenty and thirty somethings formed by one war and looking hard at the possibility of another. The narrator (Morris) remembers his mother dying in an air raid whilst having sex with a stranger against the outside of his bedroom door. At least he assumes she died – she’s certainly gone, but no identifiable body is forthcoming. In a world where things like that happen nothing can be terribly certain so Morris develops a dependency on Honeybuzzard who seems to be always certain, and always determined to do precisely what he wants.

Honeybuzzard is the sort of fairy who would spoil the milk and put the hens off laying not so much out of personal spite as sheer perversity – as is Ghislaine (the girl he scars). Both are too damaged and to damaging to fit into any sort of society, so all the way through as the expectation for some sort of cataclysmic dénouement built I was getting closer to the edge of my seat, and it’s the end which really shows Carter’s quality. The climax is satisfyingly dramatic but at the same time its woven in with something far more earthy and real than I expected; it’s a combination which reinforces the sense of not knowing what’s real and what’s prevarication on the narrators part all the way through. I’m still unsure of how complicit Morris really is in Honeybuzzard’s actions – even how much blood he may have got on his own hands.

I don’t feel I’ve got anywhere near doing this book justice, but I really do recommend it, which brings me back to my beginning. I’m never sure about traditional reading groups – I’m clearly not enough of a joiner in to find the idea attractive, and time’s a bit short to read books that don’t entirely grab me. Angela Carter month has really appealed to me though – and I’m looking forward to Persephone reading week for much the same reasons – the chance to read discussions on books I know I might be interested in, a good push to get something off the shelf I’ve meant to read for ages, and plenty of feedback about the books I am reading, all without any particular pressure. Heaven for the slightly disorganised and sometimes despairing (desperate) reader.