Getting stuck in my ways

I dislike being lent books – nothing is more likely to make something seem unappealing than being told at length how much you’ll love it. I never seem to get round to reading these things which clearly fails to endear me to the lender, and on the rare occasion I borrow and love something I really don’t want to give it back – this also fails to endear me to the lender, but in an effort to expand my reading horizons I’m part of a postal reading group. (Although in the interests of full disclosure it’s only fair to admit that the group is made up of likeminded readers so whilst my tbr pile expands horizons stay much the same.)

I have two months to read each book, and somehow always leave it so I’m rushing through it in the last few days, but so far I’ve managed not to disgrace myself or let the side down to badly which is perhaps part of the reason the latest book to arrive perturbed me as much as it did. In short I did not like it, wasn’t attracted to it, and am thanking heaven it was a short quick read. It’s the first time since school days I’ve bothered to read a book I haven’t taken to, but I felt honour bound to get through it and it did serve to illustrate to me how decidedly I stay in a reading comfort zone.

I’m vaguely aware of a whole world of books which don’t really appeal to me without even including things I feel I’ve grown out of or moved on from. I know when my buying habits changed from fairly indiscriminate to deeply discriminatory and now I’m wondering exactly when my interests began to narrow down to the specific niches they occupy today? I suppose when I started to live alone (and like it). Altogether reading a book I didn’t like cover to cover has been an interesting experience, it’s not something I mean to make a habit of (unless the postal strike leaves me with no choice in the matter) but once in a way I suppose it’s good for my reading health.

Keeping it in the family

Or who do you think you are... I am lucky enough to have a written set of memoires for both my grandfathers, both of whom managed to pack a fair amount of living into their lives. It’s something I’m especially grateful for today as my mother’s father, the last remaining representative of his generation in my immediate family, finally succumbed to cancer this weekend so there will be no more opportunity to hear his stories first hand – and could he tell some crackers.

Both sets of memoires are highly edited and not always very accurate (mum’s dad especially was not the man to let the truth get in the way of a good story) but they both manage to capture something essential about both men and the times they lived in. I don’t know how common it is to write your own memoires these days, or to keep the kind of diary’s that give much insight into a life. I do know that letter writing seems to be a sadly dying art and somehow emails are not entirely the same thing. It seems likely in the future that we will leave enough of ourselves spread across the internet to give our descendents plenty to mull over, but there’s something about a set of thought out written down memoires that’s special.

I would particularly like – and keep buying them notebooks as a hint – for my parents to write their lives down. Mum learnt to fly as a girl and dad once saved a whale as well as managing to dodge being sent to Vietnam by the skin of his teeth. Dad’s dad was almost certainly a man who danced with a girl who danced with the Prince of Wales, and mum’s dad swore he robbed a bank. With a tank. He explains that it was the war, and that looking back its behaviour that could be seen as out of order, but at the time seemed normal. I have no idea at all if he really was involved in a bank robbery or not, but it’s entirely the sort of thing he might and would have done.

I can promise though that the opening anacdote of granddads book; “On a beautiful spring morning in 2002, at the age of seventy-nine, I found myself heading straight for a concrete wall at over 70mph in a Ferrari 500. The fifty year old grand prix car was completely out of control.” Is entirely true. He was always a bit of a handful.

It’s easy to look back on previous generations and see their lives as interesting, when its family the wider sweep of history is bought not only to life but into the home. My maternal grandmother was German, she arrived in the UK in 1948, young, unmarried and with a baby in tow, she never really told her story, although I can guess at bits of it, I do know she never spoke German again after she learnt English. How common where German war brides? I don’t even know that. All our families have these stories and they’re all worth recording, I’m keeping my fingers crossed for more family memoires all stored up and waiting for the lucky historian to stumble across one day.

Saplings (part 2)

Moving on...I’ve had ‘Saplings’ on the shelf for a few months (the very attractive Persephone Classics edition – I think I like these even more than the original grey jackets), and post flu was looking for some easy reading. What I really wanted was something like ‘The Secret Garden’ or ‘A Little Princess’ (anyone who knows ‘Saplings’ can draw their own conclusions at this point) so I hoped Streatfeild’s style would fit the bill, which it did, I will also admit that before the end it brought tears to my eyes (a mix of sentiment and flu).

Briefly the book tells the story of the Wiltshire family, mainly the 4 children, and the effect the war including the loss of a beloved father has on them. It’s an admittedly flawed but generally brilliant book, and one I can’t help but think more parents should read. Streatfeild gets to the heart of how profoundly little things can undermine children, how important a sense of security is and how easy it is to disappear between the cracks in family and school life.

From the very beginning there are storm clouds on the horizon – both in terms of impending war and within the family dynamic. Lena who is all wife and mistress, mother very much as a second thought is clearly the weak link in the family, through no fault of her own she will never be able to provide the stability her children need from her – when she loses her husband she falls apart, but she’s not really a bad mother, just not naturally suited to the role, and ill prepared for it by a sheltered life of privilege. The Wiltshire children also suffer from their sheltered life, they are particularly ill prepared for their first experiences of life outside the charmed circle of their own home.

In the end only Kim the 3rd child and youngest boy seems likely to thrive, he alone has the resilience to keep on bouncing back and to understand how to get what he wants and needs. Tuesday the baby of the family develops a series of nervous ticks and tricks as the domestic landscape around her continuously changes without explanation.

The older children Laurel and Tony should on the face of it be more equipped to cope, but they both fail utterly. Streatfeild spends more time on Laurel the eldest and her problems are easier for me to understand. Lacking any particular talent or beauty in a family that has both she is consistently brushed aside with little to fall back on, she inherits a need to love and be loved from her mother, although her instincts are more familial she still needs to come first with someone, and although there are plenty of people who care there is no one who cares enough to give her the help or love she needs.

Tony will probably grow out of his problems, as will Tuesday, Kim is already coping by the end of the book, and Lena has found a new husband who will provide her with the care she has to have to survive, but Laurel at 16 is left with the cheering prospect of finishing school and embarking on a career to get away from a home no longer tolerable to her. All in all her future seems bleak to me, and that’s why this strikes me as the kind of book which needs to be widely read and discussed, I wonder how many people can look through their own extended families and not find parallels with the Wiltshire children nor wonder about the times when we might have made just a little bit more effort for someone. All this without preaching – a genuinely thought provoking, conscience pricking book. Well done again Persephone!

Saplings (part 1)

 One of the things I love about Barbara Pym and about ‘Some Tame Gazelle’ especially is her sympathy for and understanding of the spinster; middle aged virgins and sexually inexperienced women are neither automatically threatening nor ridiculous in her books - they are simply a fact. Passion is all well and good but Pym is able to separate love and the need to love from sex in a way that we currently seem to struggle with. If the surplus woman was a figure of fun and derision pre 1914 at least by the end of the war she becomes somewhat less pathetic.

I’m considering this having just finished Noel Streatfeild’s ‘Saplings’ including the afterword (a much more satisfactory arrangement than a forward/introduction in my opinion). Dr Jeremy Holmes, who writes the afterword in my Persephone edition, feels the need to explain that a relationship might be seen as abusive by today’s standards, and to assure us that this is not so. Reading the book it’s clear that whatever other dangers and tragedy the 4 children it centres upon face, sexual abuse of any kind is not on their cards, it strikes me as an especially modern preoccupation that anyone could find this in the text, even to the extent to deny it.

‘Saplings’ has very little to do with single women, but it has reminded me again what an excellent publisher Persephone is. I’m inclined sometimes to give my heart to Virago – so many excellent books covering so darn much, sometimes in my mind Persephone suffers in comparison, and then I read something they’ve published and realise all over again how much there is to them. ‘Saplings’ is a book like that; middle class, middle England - very much what I would expect, and also the most amazingly perceptive examination of family dynamics and the damage it’s possible to inflict on children without even realising it that I’ve ever read. How could I have expected that?

Not for the first time in a Persephone book I found so many quietly subversive elements that I know it will take time to process it all to my entire satisfaction, but first off it was Lena the mother who jumped out of the book at me. A woman who should never have been a mother, not because she’s a particularly bad parent but because temperament suits her to be a wife and lover – her man will always come first, it’s not a fault so much as a fact, but one that will be hard on the children, especially when the man is no longer their father.

I love that despite the faults of the character she creates Streatfeild maintains sympathy for Lena, allowing her to be all about her sexuality - accepting rather than blaming her for the fact that her children are an important but secondary part of her life. It’s easy to imagine Lena as the charming but wicked stepmother in another sort of story, I just find her the sort of character painted in so many shades of grey and who breaks so many taboos even today that she’s a delight to read. I also notice that her sexuality, which might be taken for granted in contemporary fiction, is pulled out here not as abnormal but as a slightly unbalanced way of loving; all physical nothing spiritual, and that a mix of both is needed to build a real enduring happiness on.

Finally by way of celebration to mark my release from the sofa - here it is properly unemcumbered for the first time in a week...

Some Tame Gazelle

I’ve finally woken up after an exhausting week of swine flu, and taken enough Tamiflu to no longer be a danger to others so today I’m venturing beyond the door and into the world again. I know I’m feeling better because at least I can concentrate enough to read again – and stay awake. Being ill without a book in hand has been an odd experience but yesterday I got all the way through ‘Some Tame Gazelle’, a sure sign of returning health.

Barbara Pym was recommended to me in an online reading group – dove grey books, originally set up to discuss Persephone publications it’s evolved into a brilliant source of recommendation and reading inspiration so when someone there says read it and Virago prints it what could be more convincing? So far I’ve loved all the Pym’s I’ve read and look forward to the rest of the reissues but ‘Some Tame Gazelle’ has something special about it.

It is the tale of Belinda and Harriet Bede, two middle aged spinster sisters, both Oxford educated and comfortably off who have elected to spend their old age together. They live hard by the village vicarage inhabited by the Archdeacon with whom Belinda fell in love 30 years previously when they were both undergraduates; Harriet meanwhile entertains herself with a string of young curates in need of her tender care. In many ways this was the perfect antidote to all the surplus woman books I read over the summer, after so many unhappy spinsters finding contented ones feels like a treat.

‘Some Tame Gazelle’ was Pym’s first book, she started writing it in 1934 when she was only 21, but it wasn’t published until 1950, apparently it’s how she imagined herself and her sister might be in prosperous middle age. I have a lot of sympathy with Pym’s outlook in this narrative, it’s easy to believe in Belinda’s continuing dream of love with the Archdeacon, and the sometimes prickly relationship she has with his wife. Henry is a man difficult to the point of being almost entirely unlikable, for Belinda it is certainly better to have loved and lost, but the habit of loyalty and thinking herself in love are enough for her happiness, when a proposal comes along from a very respectable but unappealing quarter she has no hesitation in turning it down. I suspect that if Henry ever where free and inclined to marry her she would turn him down too.

Harriet’s passion for curates also makes sense; Pym makes no bones about them being more in the way of pets than potential lovers. Despite her middle years Harriet doesn’t lack for entirely suitable suitors but again elects not to marry, and why should she. Her life is comfortable, well ordered and full of interest; the curates fill a romantic void, but also allow full scope for her mothering instincts. If any of that sounds a little unhealthy I don’t think it’s meant to. These are women who have elected to make the best of what they have without compromise – no marriage without love or the chance of passion. As I said I can believe in Pym’s vision although I wonder what a slightly older woman would make of it. I’ve seen plenty of the sort of insubstantial personal relationships she describes between men and women being made use of to substitute for something more conventional or deep, but wonder how many would really pass up the opportunities Belinda and Harriet have? I’m torn on this, initially I began to think it unlikely, but I’m veering back the other way now.

Another thing that really fascinated me about this book was its place in time. All the other Pym’s I’ve read have been very much of the time in which they were written; the 1950’s and 60’s and that time has felt real, with ‘Some Tame Gazelle’ that’s not really the case. The descriptions of food and clothes, as well as manners and conventions make it feel like the 1930’s. Clearly there has not been a war, and as yet there is no hint of a war, on the other hand both sisters have taken their degrees almost it seems as a matter of course and reached their 50’s so it can’t really be the 30’s. I’m not sure why this disconcerted me so much but it did there is definitely something odd about reading such an ordinary pre war vision of a war free future.

Narcisse Noir

Well I have survived my first week at the new job with nothing more serious than (very) sore feet and the odd bruise and cut – wine is a hands on dirty dangerous sort of occupation, but now I’m at the weekend and seriously in need of some escapism. I’m still flipping through ‘Perfumes The Guide’ in odd moments – it’s an excellent book to get lost in and spent a very satisfying half hour this morning scouring town for a perfume called ‘Encre Noir’, I thought a scent called black ink might just be the thing for a booklover, the description promised a top note of wet paint to delight anyone who’s ever dipped a pen in India Ink. I found the perfume and can confirm a definitely bookish smell on first spray, most satisfactory.

I’m also talking about perfume because it introduced me to one of my favourite authors – Rumer Godden. Hers is a name I sort of knew for years, but never really paid any attention to until I read somewhere about a near legendry scent – Narcisse Noir, and that it was one of the few/only perfumes to inspire a book; Godden’s 'Black Narcissus', which was also the inspiration for one of my favourite films (also Black Narcissus). This is what finally made me read Godden, and kick myself for not reading her before. For absolutely no good reason she seems to be drifting out of bookshops and out of print at the moment, although if I’m honest I don’t think much of the cover art Pan chose for her books - I certainly wouldn’t have picked one up if I didn’t know what was inside, and perhaps I’m not alone in that.

In ‘Perfumes’ Tania Sanchez describes Narcisse Noir thus:

“Shed a tear for Narcisse Noir. Where is the darkness, the strangeness, the smell of the cold, damp ashes after a bonfire, the animal breath – the drama? It was for woman in columnar gowns, marcelled hair, and red lipstick waving foot long cigarette holders and making life memorably difficult for everyone...It is now a pretty, safe little sweet jasmine and orange blossom. How can you ruin a man’s life properly whilst wearing this?”

It’s very close to being a good description for the book as well, and I am thanking heaven that no one can reformulate and dilute books at this moment. I made the pilgrimage to Les Senteurs in deepest darkest Belgravia to smell Caron’s Narcisse Noir once, if you ask nicely they will decant some into a little sample tube and you can take it away to consider. I used mine to drench my copy of ‘Black Narcissus’ - it still smelt pretty strange and opulent to my nose and I can think of worse things to make libations to.

If you haven’t got a copy and you see ‘Black Narcissus’ cheap then buy it. Second hand on amazon today it’s about £15, so clearly there’s demand for it, and so there should be. It’s a dark and strange tale of a group of nuns sent into the Himalayan mountains to start a school and dispensary in an old harem palace. From the beginning they are out of place and at odds with their surroundings which resist all attempts to be tamed into Anglican ideas of correctness. All business has to be conducted through Mr Dean, another dark and disturbing element who proves powerfully attractive to some of the nuns. There is also Dilip the young general, who come to the nuns for lessons, nephew of the man who has presented the nuns with their palace. He too is an exotic disquieting presence in the house; it is his habit of wearing Narcisse Noir that gives the book its name. It is Dilip who explains that “you have to be very strong to live close to God or a mountain, or you’ll turn a little mad.”

It’s not giving much away to say that eventually all the nuns turn a little mad as the mountain seduces them into giving into their desires, be it for a garden of flowers rather than vegetables, or children to care for more deeply than is allowed, or even a man. The ending is both tragic and hopeful which seems fitting for a book about faith.

There is something fascinating about nuns and convents, I’m certainly aware of more books about them than their male equivalents, what I love about ‘Black Narcissus’ is that Godden manages to explore the sacrifices faith demands and the difficulties of living a communal life with sympathy, and presumably a deep personal faith. It’s not a faith I share, but she makes me understand it which I think is rare and precious gift enough.

Mrs Tim of the Regiment

Bloomsbury publishing’s ‘Bloomsbury Group’ has intrigued me from the off. There has been such a boom in reprinting old titles – something that I buy into entirely, be the books unjustly neglected classics or pure nostalgia. In fairness I think most of them fall somewhere between the two, although it’s impossible to fault Virago, Persephone, Hesperus et al in terms of quality even where there is an element of nostalgia involved.

I have a definite preference for books which have proved their worth, actually I’ll rephrase that – I have a definite preference for writers who have proved their worth and stood the test of time. Some of the observations in ‘Howards End is on the Landing’ have made me think a bit more about why I pick books like this, and made me feel a lot happier about it. Of all the books I keep there are only an armful or two by contemporary (or at least late 20th Century) writers. There are armfuls more that I’ve read, enjoyed and disposed of - because they seem so disposable - and who knows perhaps in 30 years Dan Brown will read like Dornford Yates and I’ll enjoy the period detail.

What Bloomsbury did which seems subtly different to other publisher’s approaches (and is surely a touch of marketing genius) is to approach book bloggers for title suggestions thereby ensuring a certain amount of interest from the off. I hope it works for them because they turned to some brilliant readers and any publisher who prints ‘The Bronte’s Went to Woolworths’ would have my whole hearted approval whatever they went on to do.

Out of the four titles I didn’t already know D. E Stevenson’s ‘Mrs Tim of the Regiment’ is the one I’ve been keenest to read. I enjoyed ‘Miss Buncle’s Book’ when Persephone bought it out and hoped for more like it. I found a copy of 'Amberwell' earlier this year, and although I enjoyed it wasn’t really smitten. I know Elaine at Randomjottings had similar experiences with other titles, so it’s very gratifying to have an excellent D. E. Stevenson presented for my reading pleasure with such a flourish and quality guaranteed (after all I’m a busy woman again).

When I first opened Mrs Tim I was afraid from the format it was going to be ‘Diary of a Provincial Lady’ without Delafield’s magic touch, but further acquaintance with Mrs Tim reveals her to be a very different woman. She’s much more ordinary, probably more domestically able, and the dynamic with her husband is somehow warmer – they feel more like equals, more romantically involved, more definitely on the same side. I think the provincial lady would like Mrs Tim, and I can’t imagine anyone who’s fond of either not liking the other but at the end of the day I find it easier to imagine a conversation with Mrs Tim, I suspect army wives haven’t changed as much as provincial lady’s have.

The Joy of Scents

Or ‘Perfumes The A – Z Guide’

I feel like I managed to pull a fast one with this, but somehow I managed to get on the mailing list of someone exceptionally nice who was kind enough to send me a copy. There’s something about unexpectedly finding myself the recipient of a book I really want which makes me feel like I’ve pulled a fast one – even in the most legitimate of circumstances and Perfumes definitely gives me a getting away with it vibe.

Smell is probably the most under rated sense we possess, but how dull life would be without it. Food would be bland, wine would be tasteless, crisp autumn evenings and fresh spring mornings would lose half their savour and baths would be merely functional. I am slightly obsessive about scent (possibly because of a decade in the wine trade where you really have to think about smell; if you ever notice someone absentmindedly swirl and sniff a cup of tea or glass of water you can be fairly sure of what they do for a living) for two reasons. First because I can think of no more powerful memory trigger, and second because smells I like make me happy (and without any of the repercussions of say chocolate or gin or very expensive handbags).

One of the great unexpected pleasures of wine tasting is discovering wines with a giggle factor; something that smells so utterly delicious, magical and complex that it makes you smile then laugh out loud before you even drink it. Perfume has much, much, more of the same quality; a well chosen scent also has the power to enhance confidence and provide comfort, so like I say – only slightly obsessed.

When Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez’s ‘Perfumes The Guide’ appeared in hardback last year I think it’s fair to say that it was as successful as anyone could possibly have hoped, I couldn’t wait to get it then not least because of all the press buzz, and spent weeks of convalescence making lists of things to look for when I was out and about again. The new paperback edition is far better, 451 extra fragrances have been reviewed (bonus) and everything has been generally streamlined and improved, but what really makes the book indispensable – as with any great book- is the writing.

Neither Turin nor Sanchez feels the need to pull their punches and both are evangelical about their subject, Reviews range from a few words to several paragraphs from brutally honest to ecstatic; they are also funny. Estee Lauder’s Spellbound is treated thus “medicated treacle. Powerfully cloying and nauseating. Trails for miles. Frightens horses. Gets worse.” Clearly they are also personal and subjective (by which I mean they don’t care for my personal favourite ‘Tabac Blond’) yet all the history and romance of perfumery are also contained here.

For me this is a book of pure escapism, already I am making new lists of things to seek out, hopeful of finding one of those elusive scents which will make me smile on the dullest day, but for when I can’t find anything, can’t go out, or can’t afford it then I can always turn to the description of YSL’s Kouros. I won’t quote, but beg that anybody reading this take the trouble to look it up next time they’re in a book shop, if the sheer lovely over the top nonsense doesn’t make you want to find a man in Kouros to smell then I am sorry for it.

Howards End is in the Landing

I have purposely tried to take my time on this book rather than swallow it whole because there just feels like such a lot of things to take in. I also know a lot of people are reading it or anticipating reading it and so I want to have my thoughts in order before holding forth. I had intended to get up early and finish it this morning. (I’m practicing getting up early for new job, the book was the carrot to sweeten the stick of not being a morning person – and it will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me to discover that I woke up, thought about it, and then went straight back to sleep).

I’ve seen 'Howards End is on the Landing' described as blog like, and I understand that, although the more I read of it the more it feels like a series of essays or lectures, maybe even a correspondence. I feel like I know things about Susan Hill now, but not that I know her – which is how I like it. She is proving to be an entertaining thought provoking presence in my home, but I like being able to close the book and put her away before her presence becomes to formidable.

The beauty of the format is that whilst each chapter leads towards a final point – a list of 40 books Hill wouldn’t be without, each one stands alone too and there are a number of them I will be revisiting time and again – either because I find them so in tune with how I think, or so out of tune. ‘Writing in Books’ is one of those chapters – and actually it gets me both ways.

Like Susan Hill I used to write my name in my books until I was about fourteen and then stopped, I have never possessed Bookplates. The Bookplate issue is one of a handful of moments when I feel like I’m really meeting the author – she doesn’t like them:

“Happily, I can go among all our books without finding a single volume bearing a bookplate. Bookplates are for posers, even when beautifully designed by real artists and engravers, though most people claim they are only there to identify the owner in case of loss. I don’t believe that. Do people put ID plates inside their handbags and wallets, or etch them on the family silver and China? Of course they don’t...”

But they do Susan they do. I think of bookplates as a particularly Victorian thing, all part of a passion for embellishment. The family silver isn’t really family silver without some sort of monogram or crest – it’s just silver. Any Victorian gentleman with pretensions to gentility would have furnished himself with a library, all his books neatly plated; I grew up with my great great uncles. If there were ever any valuable books they were gone before I was aware of them, what I remember are bound volumes of Punch, and rows of Dickens and Wilkie Collins, and some racy looking stuff in French and white leather. I read some of the Collins, cheap editions with uncut pages so I knew I was the first person to open them with any serious intent. They’re all gone now but I hope I stumble across one again sometime in a second hand shop, it occurs to me as well that my name scribbled across a page would be a silent (but hopefully powerful) reproach to any book borrower lax about returning things.

I don’t write in my books, or at least never about the text, not since being mortified by rereading my youthful ‘insights’ into T S Eliot. I still have my A level English books and I know they’re heavily annotated but I can’t bear to open them again. Not yet anyway. I like coming across others annotations though, especially when they’re far more insightful then me, I’m happy to underline things and dog ear corners, and it fascinates me to listen to what other readers do with their books and see how they fit into their lives, all of which is why ‘Howards End is on the Landing’ is turning into such a perfect peach of a book for me.

Vera

For years Elizabeth Von Arnim didn’t really appeal very much to me but people whose opinion I respect a great deal kept recommending her and so eventually I bought a copy of ‘Vera’. I was in a very big bookshop at the time, and I vaguely remember there being quite a choice but I was sold by the blurb on the back which declared this:

“Elizabeth Von Arnim’s masterpiece, Vera is a forceful study of the power of men in marriage – and the weakness of women in love.”

After all masterpiece seems like a good place to start, and forceful study sounded interesting, furthermore the cover was vaguely optimistic – open spaces and warm yellows. Yes, yet again judging a book by its cover turns out to be a mistake. This must have been five or more years ago, I tried reading ‘Vera’ then and got nowhere with it. This spring I rediscovered Von Arnim when I picked up the altogether more typical ‘Elizabeth and Her German Garden’ in a charity shop, I followed that with 'The Enchanted April' and wondered why I had waited so long – here was a delightful writer funny, observant, light and perhaps just a little wicked – and then I got round to ‘Vera’ again.

I notice that previous covers Virago used for ‘Vera’ give a better impression of its contents, this book is undoubtedly a masterpiece but I would describe its contents as explosive rather than forceful. It is certainly one of the best most empathetic descriptions of domestic abuse that I’ve ever read and it chilled me to the core. I found this book far more worrying, frightening, and downright spooky than ‘The Haunting of Hill House’ for example, and can’t help feel that the horror section might be its natural home.

‘Vera’ turns out to be the deceased wife of Mr Wemyss, only 2 weeks dead when he meets Lucy Entwhistle on the day she is orphaned. Poor Lucy is young (22) and cherished, the death of her father leaves her with nothing and almost nobody, so when the much older Wemyss simply takes over she lets him. The brilliance of this book is also the thing that makes it most chilling and likely. Lucy’s is a pleasant but still unformed personality; Wemyss is a monster of selfish determination with apparently no awareness beyond what he wants. His behaviour isn’t entirely rational and certainly falls short of what society expects, nobody seems to like him very much, but nor do they dislike him enough to really see what’s wrong with him, everybody likes Lucy but not enough to understand how vulnerable she is, or how in need of protection.

In the end Lucy is married to Wemyss, increasingly isolated, with a dawning realisation of what her situation is, and what most likely happened to ‘Vera’ who’s death looks less and less accidental. Wemyss behaviour becomes increasingly shocking not because he’s evil, but because he so totally believes that what he wants is right and anything that runs contrary to his will is wrong. The conclusion left me hanging with the certainty of tragedy to come, and wondering at what point it should have been possible to stop it. Probably a book best read by single people who can then count their blessings- and definately should come with a warning!