A dark tale of dastardly doings and daring deeds! #Virago #GladysMitchell #TheRisingofTheMoon

There was a good reason that Philip Larkin called Gladys Mitchell “the Great Gladys”, and that’s well on display in the book I want to talk about today! if you’re a regular here, you’ll know that I’m part of the LibraryThing Virago Modern Classics group; and this year we’re having themed monthly reads to try to help us get through those unread Virago volumes on our shelves!! I am still playing catch up with reviews, as you might have worked out, as I read “The Rising of the Moon” during March but am only just getting round to sharing my thoughts here. I must admit to having struggled a little when choosing March’s read – the prompt was an author who had only one book on the VMC list, and there were just too many choices! I started, then abandoned, a few titles but eventually settled on Mitchell. I love her Mrs Bradley mysteries, and this may well have been the first I read, but it’s decades since I revisited it – so I figured a re-read would be something of an adventure!

I no longer have my Virago copy of this, as I passed it on to my BFF, J – however, fortunately my old Hogarth Crime edition was still lurking in the stacks!!

First published in 1945, the book is set in the little town of Brentford, on the Thames, and is unusual perhaps amongst her books in that much of the focus is not on Mrs Bradley herself but on the narrator, Simon Innes (aged 13) and his brother Keith (aged 11 and a half). Set some time pre-war, the book evokes a world long gone, a quiet country town where everyone knows everyone else, the circus coming to town is a major event, and children are allowed to roam freely in town and country carrying a scimitar and an old gun!

Simon and Keith are orphans, living with their older brother Jack and wife June, their toddler Tom and the beautiful lodger Christina (with whom everyone seems to be in love). When not attempting to get into the circus free or wrestling with maths homework, the boys spend much of their time visiting their eccentric friend Mrs Cockerton, who runs the local antique shop and treats the boys with a respect they enjoy. However, this idyllic setting is soon shattered when a performer from the circus is murdered, in what is described (but never in detail) as Ripper-like fashion. The local police, led by Inspector Seabrook, initially suspect one of her fellow performers; however, when another murder occurs after the circus have moved on, he’s forced to call in Scotland Yard, who turn up with a Home Office consulting psychologist in tow: one Mrs Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley, with whom the boys form a strong bond. Suspicion falls on brother Jack; attempts to investigate and help clear his name cause more issues; Jack and June’s relationship is affected by jealousy; and as the murders continue, the boys and the lovely Christina all seem in danger. Just what *is* the truth behind the Brentford murders?

… I did not dream of crossing the lock-gates and the footbridge on my return, but hurried up the slope of the road bridge and came out where the old chapel used to be, and so to the bustle of the high street, glad (for the first time, I think) to see street lamps as well as the moon, and to hear the noisy buses and grating trams instead of the little sounds of the flowing water…

You will find no more of the plot revealed here, as this is a wonderfully written and evocative book and I highly recommend reading it for yourself; not just for the mystery and plotting, but also for the setting and the marvellously realised characters. “The Rising of the Moon” is not just a crime novel, it’s a stunning and gripping novel in its own right and proof (if it was needed) of how great a writer Gladys Mitchell could be! The book entertains and succeeds on so many levels: for a start, the small-town setting of the era is brilliantly captured, with its locals and pubs, the dances at the swimming baths, the gossip and the scandals, the nearby countryside and a world where dinner is taken at the middle of the day. Then there’s the mystery itself which is clever and twisty, and takes all Mrs Bradley’s knowledge to crack. I have to say that I *did* pick up fairly early whodunnit, and I don’t know that this was entirely because I’d read the book before; if I’m correct, Mitchell offers the readers an early clue which is quite revealing and commented on by the boys who don’t realise its significance.

Ah, the boys. The success of a book like this depends on the author getting the child’s voice right, and as far as I’m concerned, Mitchell is spot-on. Simon is an utterly convincing and believable narrator: a beguiling mix of child-like and knowing, as a 13-year-old would be, and conveying the mixture of the prosaic (going to school, doing chores, looking after little Tom) and the adventurous (trailing a murderer, going out at midnight to investigate, coping with the horrors they discover in the murderer’s house). He’s also approaching the cusp of adulthood, as his feelings for Christina make clear, and all of this combines to make him an unforgettable character.

Larkin called this book Mitchell’s “tour de force” and it’s not hard to agree with him. “The Rising of the Moon” is compelling and spellbinding reading from start to finish; I literally didn’t want to put it down, and leaving it behind when I went off to work every day was torture as I just wanted to sit down and lose myself in the book! Mitchell is a marvellous author, her books often veering to the macabre side of things, and that’s certainly the case here; although there’s nothing really gruesome (except for one event at the end, which isn’t graphic) there’s a darkness running under the story, with greed and madness surfacing as events come to a head. It’s really very dramatic at the end, and utterly gripping.

Most of my reading of Gladys Mitchell was pre-blog – I had a phase of being obsessed by her books in my twenties – and although I’ve revisited a few titles during the life of the Ramblings, this was the first time I’d been back to “The Rising of the Moon” for ages; in fact, I may never have re-read it. However, I’m so glad the Virago themed reads pushed me back to it; Mitchell was an astonishingly good writer, this is a stunningly good book and I’m hoping I’ll be able to find something of hers to read for the #1954Club – time spent in the company of the Great Gladys is definitely time well spent!!

“I talk one language, you hear another.” #ViragoModernClassics #DjunaBarnes

Today’s book on the Ramblings is, alas, not a part of our #ReadIndies celebration; when it was issued, Virago was indeed an indie, but they no longer are so can’t be included. However, as I’ve mentioned previously, I’m taking part in a monthly reading prompt via the LibraryThing Virago Modern Classics group, and this month we’re choosing from authors and books from North America. There was a wide range of choices available, as the image I shared from my stacks revealed, and it would have been easy to plump for the remaining Amanda Cross title I have. However, in the end, I decided to go for something else and picked “Smoke and Other Early Stories” by Djuna Barnes; and I’m very glad I did!!

Barnes was a multi-talented woman, known for her artistic and journalistic talents as well as her fiction; her best-known work is probably the modernist classic “Nightwood”, but she was also prolific in other forms, and I’ve previously written about the little Faber collection of “The Lydia Steptoe Stories“. “Smoke…” is a fascinating collection, first published by Virago in 1985, having previously been issued in 1982 by Sun and Moon Press in the USA. As the introduction by Douglas Messerli reveals, this was part of a project to issue collections of many different kinds of work by Barnes in multiple volumes; though I’m not sure how far this got…

Paprika Johnson played softly, and she sang softly too, from a pepsin disinfected throat, and more than reverently she scattered the upper register into the flapping white wash of the O’Briens.
Sitting there in the dusk, upon her little square of safety, in a city of a million squares, she listened to the music of the spheres and frying of the onions in Daisy Mack’s back kitchen, and she sang a song to flawless summer, while she watched Madge Darsey loosen her stays in the tenement house opposite.

“Nightwood” was published in 1936 after Barnes had been living in Paris for some time; however, these early stories date from 1914-1916 when Barnes was still in New York and writing for New York newspapers. That fact in itself is perhaps shocking, because these stories are quite experimental and unusual so not what you might to find in a mainstream publication. Nevertheless, drawing on the bohemian Greenwich Village milieu in which she lived, Barnes wrote her idiosyncratic tales about the lively and colourful misfits who lived there. There’s Paprika Johnson, playing her banjo on the fire escape and transfixing the neighbourhood; sisters Una and Lena who are rivals in love and also for the land they’ve inherited; Mamie Saloam the dancer; and Clochette Brin who longs for nothing more than a set of silver spoons. The stories tell of individual lives or of a whole family or several generations; and each is fascinating and unforgettable.

He was a tall man – with long, pale hands that swayed from the wrists like heavy flowers on slender stems. His eyes were long, pointed and blue with a curious spray of blood veins running through them as though the eyeballs themselves were small berries set in the centre of a vine. He had a peculiar way of walking, half lounging, and though he never gave the impression of being in a hurry, he somehow managed to get about a little quicker than anyone of his three friends. His hips flattened out abruptly from the base of the slender legs, and the bulging pockets of the tweed suit were always half full of paper clippings. A cigar usually hung in the corner of his mouth and sent an occasional wreath of smoke above the head which had already begun to lose its hair. The impression was the same as that obtained from a picture of a high mountain on which a cloud had descended.

However, what stands out most of all from these early works is Barnes’ stunning writing; and I found myself somewhat irked with the introduction, where Messerli at times seemed to almost be apologising for these being early newspaper stories! Whatever they were written for, they’re unique and outstanding, as was Barnes’ prose. Her metaphors and turns of phrase are quite brilliant and she captures strange settings and lives in strikingly individual language and it’s wonderful. I have sprinkled a few illustrative quotes through this post but could have pulled out any number of these – Barnes was obviously a unique prose stylist.

Had Pilaat come from a less cleanly family, he would have loved them very strongly and gently to the end. But he had been comforted and maimed in his conceptions and his fellow love by too many clean shirts in youth. He still longed to correct things, but he wanted to correct them as one cleans up a floor, not as one binds up a wound.

As you can guess, I loved this marvellous collection, and after finishing it went off to search for more collections of Barnes’ works. And here I hit the buffers a bit, as it turns out that there are limited works by her in print, apart from of course “Nightwood” – which is really shocking! A couple of collections of early works (one of which partly duplicates this one) and a poetry collection are all that are easily available, which is frustrating, because if the Sun and Moon Press releases had come to fruition I would have loved to explore these. After noodling about, and going down a modernism wormhole, I ended up sending for this mahoosive collection which does contain some Barnes work – but that’s another story…

Anyway, putting that aside, my montly Virago read for Feburary was a huge success! I loved Barnes’ writing and her quirky and memorable characters, and the book also features some of her wonderful line drawings which are a bit Beardsley (though perhaps less finished than his are). I thought I had read these stories at some point, but nothing was familiar so this may be one of those books that’s lurked on the shelves for decades. In any event, this encounter with Barnes’ stunning writing was a real treat and as I can’t recall if I’ve actually read “Nightwood” I may just have to track down a copy… ;D

 

…love, that high, romantic thing…” @BL_Publishing #WomenWriters #FarMoreThanFiction

Today on the Ramblings, I’m very happy to be taking part in a blog tour for one of the new releases in the British Library Woman Writers series – the book in question is “A Pin to See the Peepshow” by F. Tennyson Jesse and it actually plays a part in my embarking upon my blogging life! You see, back in the early 2010s I rediscovered Virago Modern Classics at the same time as I started reading book blogs. I had been a huge fan in the early years, but bringing up the three Offspring had kind of got in the way of books at times. However, as they flew the nest, I really got back into reading, and the Viragos led me to LibraryThing’s wonderful VMC group. It was here I finally got the impetus to start up my own blog, and nearly 10 years later am still here.

One of the VMCs I read pre-blog was, of course, “Pin…” and it was probably the most important title in drawing me back to the books and exploring much of the back catalogue I’d missed. Since then I believe the book has slipped out of print, despite its high profile in the 1970s particularly (when it was the subject of a BBC adaptation). But I’m giving this personal history here so you’ll understand how happy I am that “Pin” has been reissued by British Library Publishing; I think it’s a wonderful and enormously important book and thoroughly deserves to be widely read, and I’ll try to explain why; although inevitably there is the risk here of me giving away some plot details.

“Pin…”, originally published in 1934, draws its core material from the notorious Thompson/Bywaters case of the 1920s, a case Jesse would no doubt have been familiar with as she covered a number of high-profile trials during her writing career for “Notable British Crimes”. She was so fascinated by the subject that she also wrote a book analysing the motivations behind crimes; so when it came to writing “Pin..” she already had a proven track record in dealing with crime and murder.

The lovely new BL cover

Set in the early decades of the 20th century, the book’s protagonist is a young woman, Julia Almond, whose inflated sense of her own worth will lead to tragedy. Born into a dull suburban setting, she dreams of a more passionate, exciting life and her work in a fashionable clothes shop in London’s West End gives her an outlet for her fantasies. Desperate to get away from the stultifying atmosphere at her parents’ home she makes an ill-advised marriage to the older, tragically dull and recently widowed Herbert Starling. However, a chance meeting with the much younger Leonard Carr, whom she knew at school, will eventually lead to an affair, murder and a trial – as well as damning misogynistic judgements about her behaviour and way of life. As anyone who knows the story of the Thompson/Bywaters case will realise, things will not end well for Julia…

The floor of the box was covered with cotton-wool, and a frosting of sugar sprinkled over it. Light came into the box from the red-covered window at the far end, so that a rosy glow as of sunset lay over the sparkling snow. Here and there little brightly-coloured men and women, children and animals of cardboard, conversed or walked about. A cottage, flanked by a couple of fir trees, cut from an advertisement of some pine-derivative cough cure, which Julia saw every day in the newspaper, gave an extraordinary impression of reality and of distance.

It’s a little difficult to say a lot more about the plot without giving away too much, and in fact if you can go into this book knowing little about the case which inspired it I think the effect of reading it would be even stronger. Jesse writes quite brilliantly, for one thing, conjuring her heroine and the setting vividly. Julia is living in a world where things are changing for some and the old social mores are being thrown off; although as she will find, class is still a major issue and what the monied can get away with, she can’t. Trapped desperately in her affair, craving her lover yet afraid to leave her husband because of the security he offers, she has no real way out; in that era, women’s choices and opportunities were very limited. Then Leo takes dramatic action; yet Julia appears to be the one on trial. And here we get to another of the strongest strands of the book.

There is, inevitably, a horrible legal case. And although Julia would today be considered not culpable, she’s judged very much by the morals of the time and those morals have different standards for women, and particularly women of a lower class. Julia does not help herself – in many ways she’s not an especially likeable character, yet despite this, Jesse creates anger and sorrow on her behalf for her eventual fate. Julia Starling is, in the end, realistic in that she is human and fallible – and she certainly doesn’t deserve what happens to her.

My original Virago edition

“A Pin to see the Peepshow” is a memorable and sometimes chilling work which gets under the skin; and it’s also a brilliantly written and constructed novel, which is compelling reading. Jesse was obviously intent on making several points about society’s expectations of women and the double standards employed, and she makes those points well, though never to the detriment of her narrative which builds to a devastating (but not unexpected) climax. Her method is very much “show” rather than “tell”, which makes the book all the more effective. I was so engrossed in the story that even though I knew what was coming, I was willing the end to be different… By presenting the conclusion in the way that she does, Jesse conveys the reality of the consequences of murder at the time in a way that had me even more convinced than ever that the death penalty is not the solution – particularly in a case where the evidence and attitudes are so tainted…

So as far as I’m concerned, this is an essential re-issue from British Library Publishing in their Women Writer’s series, and a book I think should permanently be in print. As a piece of literature it’s compelling; as a portrait of the social mores of the time and the judgements meted out to women it’s outstanding; and as an argument against the death penalty it’s powerful and unforgettable. If you only ever pick up one book from this excellent series (and that would be your loss, because there are so many treasures!), I would urge you to read “A Pin to See the Peepshow”.

*****

As with all of the British Library Women Writers series, “Pin” comes with excellent supporting material. There is a list of notable events of the 1930s, a short bio of Jesse and a foreword by Lucy Evans, Curator at the Printed Heritage Collections, British Library. The afterword by series consultant Simon Thomas gives an excellent overview of both the original case and its similarities to (or differences from!) “Pin”. Altogether, an essential release!

A welcome reissue from @BL_Publishing #BLWomenWriters #FarMoreThanFiction

Back in the very early days of the Ramblings, I wrote about a wonderful Virago Modern Classic – “The Love Child” by Edith Oliver. I was on a bit of a voyage of rediscovery with VMCs at the time, and this one had been highly recommended by Simon at Stuck in a Book. It’s been out of print for many years, but I’m very happy to see that Simon has managed to help it back into print via the British Library Women Writers series for which he’s series consultant- which is marvellous news!

As I wrote at the time, “The story concerns Agatha Bodenham, whose mother dies leaving her on her own, with no resources to fall back on as she has led a dull, lonely, reclusive life and has no close friends or nearby family. We see her unable to relate to her aunt at the beginning of the book and it is obvious she is unable to deal with people at all – we would probably described her as “emotionally damaged” nowadays. Agatha, in her loneliness, conjures back into life her make-believe childhood friend, Clarissa, who is everything that Agatha is not – spontaneous, lively, curious and mercurial. Initially, only Agatha can see Clarissa but gradually, as Agatha’s love suffuses her, Clarissa becomes real to everyone.

Without wanting to give too much of the plot away, the rest of the book revolves around Agatha and Clarissa’s intense love for each other, the destructive effect of the incursion of outsiders, and a very poignant but not unexpected ending. The book is beautifully written, very readable and surprisingly complex. Clarissa represents in some ways Agatha’s repressed maternal love, an outlet for the emotion that she has never been able to express. She also in some ways is the person Agatha might have been, had she been brought up in a different environment and allowed to blossom instead of having her growth stunted.

This is a remarkably good book and Olivier’s handling of the various emotions between the two main characters and those who circulate around them is masterly. She’s very good at conveying the intense feelings they have and the differences (and also similarities) between Clarissa and Agatha. In different ways, each only exists because of the other and so any exterior influence is bound to destroy the bond between them with catastrophic effect.”

My view of the book hasn’t changed over the years – it’s a beautifully written and evocative work, and I was happy to have the chance to revisit it. I commented in my original post that it was such a shame the book was out of print, so it’s wonderful to see it available again in a stunning BLWW edition.

Both editions are lovely in their own way!

The new release comes with the usual excellent supporting material of preface, 1920s facts and a mini biog of Olivier. And as well as an intriguing afterword by Simon, the book also includes some wonderful extracts from Olivier’s autobiography which add an extra level of interest to what is a marvellous book. “The Love Child” was Olivier’s first novel, and I suspect is still her best known, probably because Virago chose to focus on it. Like all of the BLWW books, as well as telling a compelling and moving story, “The Love Child” shines a light on women’s lives in the past, the choices available to them, society’s expectations and the emotional effect of these elements. This is a superb addition to the range and highly recommended from here! 😀

“velvet nights spiked with menace” – in which Angela and I are reconciled…

Fireworks by Angela Carter

As a rule, I don’t generally have disastrous reading experiences. Life is too short to waste on books you don’t like so I try to tailor my reading to things I actually want to read or hope I’ll get something from; or to continue the ongoing search for those works which change your life. However, I had a less-than-pleasant encounter with Angela Carter during our week of reading for the #1977club, when I found “The Passion of the New Eve” to be most unpleasant with no redeeming features. This *did* irk me a bit, because I’ve enjoyed her work in the past; so, as Carter is the author of the month on the LibraryThing Virago Modern Classics group, I resolved to try again, and picked up “Fireworks” a slim volume of short works.

Sorry Virago, but I really *don’t* like that cover at all – I want a green version……

First published by Virago in 1988, the book collects works that span a number of years, some as early as 1974 (though it isn’t specified which is dated when). I had previously read, and been intrigued, by the opening story “A Souvenir of Japan”; and indeed several of the stories seem to be set there (and apparently draw heavily on the period Carter lived there in the early 1970s). There are nine stories here, all very disparate in subject but all very much in Carter’s style.

I speak as if he had no secrets from me. Well, then, you must realize that I was suffering from love and I knew him as intimately as I knew my own image in a mirror. In other words, I knew him only in relation to myself. Yet, on those terms, I knew him perfectly. At times, I thought I was inventing him as I went along, however, so you will have to take my word for it that we existed. But I do not want to paint our circumstantial portraits so that we both emerge with enough well-rounded, spuriously detailed actuality that you are forced to believe in us. I do not want to practise such sleight of hand. You must be content only with glimpses of our outlines, as if you had caught sight of our reflections in the looking-glass of someone else’s house as you passed by the window.

I don’t know if it was just that I was in the right mood this time, but I found myself seduced by Carter’s prose from the very start. The stories cover much ground – the complexities of personal relationships (“A Souvenir…”, “Flesh and the Mirror”); myth, legend and brutality in far countries (“The Executioner’s Beautiful Daughter”, “Master”); morality (or lack of it) in disintegrating landscapes (“Elegy for a Freelance”, “Master” again); being an outsider, the ‘other’ (“A Souvenir…” again, “The Smile of Winter”); plus strange and haunting works which draw on fairytale and fantasy (“Penetrating to the Heart of the Forest”, “Reflections”, “The Loves of Lady Purple”). These stories are disturbing and beautiful and I found myself lost in other worlds brilliantly created by Carter in astonishing prose.

These tree trunks bore an out-crop of plants, orchids, poisonous, iridescent blossoms and creepers the thickness of an arm with flowering mouths that stuck out viscous tongues to trap the flies that nourished them. Bright birds of unknown shapes infrequently darted past him and sometimes monkeys, chattering like the third form, leaped from branch to branch that did not move beneath them.

I mentioned brutality and yes, there is violence (emotional, physical and sexual); however, I didn’t have quite the problem with it that I did reading “Passion…” Maybe I recognised that it was necessary here for the stories Carter was telling; maybe the storytelling was so strong that I could see the point; or maybe her beautiful writing counterbalanced the darkness and provided a necessary harmony in her work. Certainly Angela Carter’s prose was just stunning in these tales; hypnotic and haunting, it convinced me that I hadn’t been wrong in my belief that I had loved her work previously – and still can and do. The stories are multi-faceted, multi-layered things of beauty and cruelty, and I think that a second reading would pull out many more references and resonances than I saw on my first read.

I had fallen through one of the holes life leaves in it; these peculiar holes are the entrances to the counters at which you pay the price of the way you live.

Picking favourites is always difficult (and maybe controversial!) when reading a collection of short works, but I have to mention in particular “Reflections”; this wonderful and dark fairy tale, drawing on mythology, had the most amazing imagery and the pictures it painted in my head will stay with me.

Carter in the early 1970s

So Angela and I are reconciled. Yes, there is violence and cruelty (and rape, I’m afraid) in these stories, but this time around I felt Carter was using these things for a purpose. The worlds she portrays are beautiful and brutal, filled with vivid landscapes, striking imagery and troubled people, smoke and mirrors, dreams and allegories. I am pleased to say that I will *definitely* be reading Carter again

The price of love #ViragoAuthoroftheMonth

My Mortal Enemy by Willa Cather

At the beginning of the month, I wittered on about not known which Willa Cather book I should read from the rather imposing pile of books by her that I own. I received lots of lovely comments and suggestions, but as the month rolled on and its end became closer, I was getting no nearer to reading one. So I have to confess that the choice was eventually made in a terrible fashion – I went for the book that was slimmest…. :s

“My Mortal Enemy” was first published in 1926, and if I’m honest at 122 pages of biggish type it really should be classed as a novella. The book is narrated by the wonderfully named Nellie Birdseye, and she tells us the story of Myra Driscoll, later Henshawe, whom she meets at pivotal points in her life.

Their first encounter is when Myra makes a return visit to the (fictional) small town of Parthia. Myra grew up here, friends with Nellie’s aunt Lydia, and has become something of a scandalous figure since her elopement with Oswald Henshawe. Brought up by her great-uncle, Myra always has a wild streak and unfortunately her uncle disapproved violently of her beau. So Myra marries for love and by doing so loses the chance of a decent inheritance from her relative.

Nellie is fascinated by the idea of Myra and her dramatic love affair, and somewhat dazzled by the older, glamorous woman. She and her aunt Lydia are invited to New York to spend Christmas with the Henshawes, and the setting is still rather glittering and exciting to the provincial girl. However, Nellie becomes aware of cracks below the surface; Myra is a jealous woman, money is an issue, and Oswald seems to attract admiring women…

We (and Nellie) finally encounter Myra and Oswald some years later on the Californian coast. Nellie, now grown up (and possibly married?) is teaching and Myra is now a bedridden invalid. Tormented by noisy upstairs neighbours and looking for comfort in a return to her religion, Myra nevertheless still exerts a fascination on those around her. Oswald cares for her faithfully, despite still managing to attract the friendship of younger women, but Myra is a woman wracked with regrets – for having given in to love, cursing herself is a shallow person who should have instead stayed with the money she loved and needed. As her life comes to an end, she looks for fulfilment elsewhere and seems to find a kind of inner peace.

So I may have chosen my shortest Cather but it certainly isn’t a thin read! There are big themes here – whether love or money is most important; whether complete honesty is crucial to a marriage; whether what we receive in this world or the next is most important. I understand that Cather returned to her own religion too, and the comfort Myra draws from this at the end of her life is perhaps taken from her own life.

As to the mortal enemy of the title and to whom this refers, I actually felt that was rather nebulous. Some have taken it to mean her husband; some Myra herself; and some the whole process of love, what we’ll do for it and the havoc it can cause in our lives. Certainly, Myra has suffered for the decision she made, regretting the fact that she left behind a comfortable life with plenty of money; but she has always been victim to her passions and in many ways paid the price.

I sat down beside her, and we watched the sun dropping toward his final plunge into the Pacific. “I’d love to see this place at dawn,” Myra said suddenly. “That is always such a forgiving time. When that first cold, bright streak comes over the water, it’s as if all our sins were pardoned; as if the sky leaned over the earth and gave it absolution.

Cather’s writing is lovely throughout, and in such a short book she manages to paint nuanced portraits of all the characters. In particular, the relationship between the Henshawes is subtly rendered, and Cather captures brilliantly the delicate balancing act they go through to keep the marriage on track.

So my Willa Cather read for this month turned out to be a good choice in the end. “My Mortal Enemy”, despite its short length, is a thought-provoking and enjoyable read and if it’s any indication of the quality of Cather’s work, I’m definitely up for more! 🙂

Wisteria and Sunshine – #ViragoAuthoroftheMonth

The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim

Well, after all that fretting and trying to decide, I guess that it’s no surprise that I actually ended up choosing Elizabeth von Arnim’s “The Enchanted April” for my Virago Author of the Month read. The weather has been so cold and I was so fed up returning to work after the Easter break that something sunny and lovely was just what I felt like – and I certainly got that here!

Published in 1922, TEA is perhaps the best-known and most read of Arnim’s works and it’s often been adapted for stage, screen and other media. It’s not hard to see why as it’s a delight from start to finish, though I do wonder if the atmosphere and wonderful narrative voice would carry over from the book.

The story begins in a grey February London, where Lotty Wilkins is contemplating escape. Her marriage is a disappointment, her husband Mellersh being stiff and unresponsive, and she dreams of Italy. By chance she spots an advertisement offering a month’s rental of a castle in the country of her dreams; and it seems the ideal time to spend the nest-egg she’s been saving. And a chance encounter with a fellow member of her club, Rose Arbuthnot, sets things in motion.

Rose is also unhappy in her marriage; a pious vicar’s daughter, she has become estranged from her husband Frederick who spends most of his time away from home. Rose is unhappy that he earns a living writing biographies of famous courtesans, and throws herself into good works to compensate for this. However, she too is seduced by the advert and when Lotty realises this she sees a chance for them both to take the castle and have their month of freedom.

The cost, however, is an issue; and so the ladies recruit two others to help pay the bills, in the form of Lady Caroline Dester, a society woman famed for her beauty, and Mrs. Fisher, a grim old widow stuck in the past when she associated with such famous men as Ruskin and Carlyle. The four disparate characters finally manage to arrive in San Salvatore and it is here that the fun begins.

The place and its intense beauty have an immediate effect on Lotty, who perhaps wanted the holiday more than anyone. She positively blossoms, and her reaction to the place affects the others. Rose, too, is enchanted although troubled by the state of her marriage to Frederick. Lady Caroline (reverting to her nickname of Scrap) simply wants to be left alone – her beauty and position are a constant burden to her and she lives in terror of being ‘grabbed’ by everyone who wants her attention. As for Mrs. Fisher, it’s hard to see at first what motivates her although even she will be changed by the location.

Complexities occur in the form of husbands: Lotty invites hers to join them as she cannot bear to enjoy all this beauty without her partner to share it with. Rose wants to do the same but is tormented by the realisation that he finds her a bore. Scrap wants nothing to do with love, being sick of being fawned upon by every man she meets. And Mrs. Fisher thinks all this talk of husbands improper. However, thrown into the mix are the solitary Mr. Briggs, owner of San Salvatore, who turns up in pursuit of one woman only to be thrown off-balance. And who is this mysterious old friend of Scrap’s that suddenly appears?

Needless to say, the conclusion of the book is lovely and occasionally unexpected. I’m not going to reveal anything (although I have to say that I raced through the book, desperate to find out how things would be resolved), but I will say that each woman comes to Italy to escape from her current life, and each finds what she needs there.

“The Enchanted April” really lives up to its name – it *is* utterly enchanting. I loved each of the characters – from Lotty’s visionary dreaming through Rose’s moral crises, Scrap’s inability to appear anything but lovely and pleasant, and Mrs. Fisher’s testy reliance on the past, each is individual and wonderfully defined. Even the supporting characters are lovely, and the setting is of course glorious – Arnim’s descriptions of the scenery were delicious and wafted me away from cold every day England to a beautiful setting, dripping with my favourite wisteria. They were so vivid that I was filled with an urge to set of for Italy immediately myself.

It would be easy for a book like this to slip into romance territory, but fortunately it’s saved from becoming too saccharine by a number of elements. Firstly, there is Arnim’s trademark humour; the other books of hers I’ve read have been full of wonderful dry wit, and this is no exception. The description of Mellersh’s first encounter with Italian plumbing, for example, is just priceless.

Secondly, there is of course a more serious undercurrent to the book; the theme of loneliness is never far away from the surface. Lotty and Rose are both lonely within their marriage; Scrap has kept herself whirling around in a frantic haze of society simply to hide up the hollowness of her life; and Mrs. Fisher hides from the coldness and lack of love by burying herself in the past.

Arnim in 1920 courtesy elizabethvonarnim.wordpress.com

Arnim is particularly good on the reasons why a marriage can go wrong: from the grinding repetitiveness and the petty disagreements that flare up from living close to someone, to the growing apart and the becoming bored with the same person, it’s clear that she feels the women need something to revitalise their relationships. It turns out to be the change of scene and the break from the everyday that allows them to become themselves again, thereby jump starting their marriages. And in the case of Scrap, she’s allowed the space to think, to look at her life and to see what’s missing and what she really wants from it.

It’s also clear that Arnim believes that our surroundings are vitally important to the people we are; and I suppose that was part of the charm of her “Elizabeth…” books, as the main character spent much time in her beautiful garden, so crucial to her peace of mind. Certainly, the book cleverly exposes the difference location makes to Lotty and Rose; initially they seem like two ordinary, dull married women, but once they are in San Salvatore and we see them through the eyes of the Italian servants, we have to adjust our perspectives as it’s clear that they are in fact beautiful young women.

There are no doubt criticisms that could be levelled at “The Enchanted April”: for a start, it’s not exactly feminist and Arnim seems to think that the love of a good man is the solution to everything. There’s never any idea that they can live a fulfilled life without that relationship, and in fact Rose’s constant attempt to make her own way by doing good work is rather mocked in the book. Also, the class element is unavoidable; even though Lotty and Rose are not rich, they certainly can afford servants and the distinction between the guests and those serving at the castle is clear.

Nevertheless, this was a joyous and uplifting read; Jacqui compared it to “Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day” in her excellent review here, and it certainly has a similar fairy-tale quality to it. If I’m honest, and I had to choose, I think “Miss Pettigrew” might just pip “The Enchanted April” to the post (although the former has no wisteria, which is a disadvantage…) We don’t all have the luxury of a month away in the sun to discover or rediscover our real selves – but oh, wouldn’t it be wonderful!

The Ultimate Sacrifice – Virago Author of the Month

The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West

Following on from the LibraryThing Virago group’s choice of Vita Sackville-West for January, our author of the month for February was the great Rebecca West. I struggled to get onto reading one of her books last month, finally picking it up right near the end; so a little belatedly, here is my review of her first  (and probably most well-known) work of fiction, “The Return of the Soldier”. Billed as a novel, at 160 pages with big type it’s a book you can read quickly; however, it gives much food for thought and I can see why it’s so highly regarded.

West is an author I’ve only read a little of (my review of her “The Harsh Voice” is here) but I have a large number of her books on the shelves. Had time been on my side I would have liked to spend time with one of her more substantial works – but then, this book has more substance to it than you might expect. “The Return of the Soldier” was written while the Great War was still taking place and published in 1918; narrated by a woman called Jenny, it tells the story of the return of her cousin Chris Baldry from the Front, back to his beautiful home on ‘the crest of Harrow-weald’ and the welcoming arms of his beautiful wife Kitty and of course Jenny (who appears to live with them).

As the book opens, the women are living in their gilded cage, relatively untouched by the War but surrounded by absence. As well as the fact that Chris is away fighting, they are also haunted by the loss of Chris and Kitty’s young son; the nursery has been left untouched and Kitty is often to be found in the room as if seeking comfort. The women have prepared an immaculate nest for their man and themselves, one that he was apparently sad to leave; it seems perfect, idyllic and slightly unreal, given what is happening in other parts of the world.

Strangeness had come into the house and everything was appalled by it, even time.

Crashing into this glittering facade comes a woman from the nearby town of Wealdstone; the place is described in stark terms as something of a blot on the picturesque local landscape, and Mrs. Grey is set forth in a cruel and patronising way. In fact, the reaction of Jenny and Kitty quite shocked me until I realised I was seeing her through the filter of their eyes; the descriptions of a working woman are harsh, representing her as a stereotype with cheap clothes and accessories, and worn face and hands, and I found their reaction hard to take.

Mrs. Grey has, somewhat surprisingly, come with news that Chris is ill. Why she should know and not his wife and cousin is not revealed at first, but as we read on we find that Margaret Grey, when she was a young innkeeper’s daughter, knew Chris Baldry very well. In fact, unlikely as it seems to Kitty and Jenny now, she was his first love and as he’s suffering from shell-shock and has blotted out the past 15 years, he’s pining to return to Margaret and the affection of his youth.

So Chris is brought home and despite the evidence before his eyes is unable to accept the reality of where and who he is. He cannot remember Kitty; Jenny is a childhood playmate; and to the astonishment of these sophisticated women, he has an instant bond with Margaret despite the coarsening effects upon her of age and a hard life. Chris is happy with Margaret and his life in the past; but can he be allowed to stay there or will the doctors brought in to treat him be able to bring him back to the present and the prospect of the return to battle?

For that her serenity, which a moment before had seemed as steady as the earth and as all-enveloping as the sky, should be so utterly dispelled made me aware that I had of late been underestimating the cruelty of the order of things. Lovers are frustrated; children are not begotten that should have had the loveliest life, the pale usurpers of their birth die young. Such a world will not suffer magic circles to endure.

“The Return of the Soldier” is a powerful first novel, and surprisingly complex for such a short work. West brilliantly builds up the initial setting, painting a picture of the lovely world created (mainly by Kitty) for Chris and initially as I read I accepted (with Jenny) that the house and location was wonderful and that all three were happy there. However, as I read on, the appalling snobbery of the women made it clear that this was a shallow, stale and worthless environment to live in, and the contrast of the superficial falsity of the controlled life Kitty had created, cold and barren, was made with the real, deep emotional life of Margaret. Jenny finds out the back-story from Margaret, and the relationship between her and Chris is touchingly revealed. The latter only seems to come properly alive when he’s with his first love, his attitude to Kitty (and all other beautiful women) seeming more as that of a man being very careful with a piece of fragile china. Little details, such as the fact that Chris had not even given his home address to the authorities when he enlisted, reveal how little attachment he had to his wife and home, and it’s clear that his life with them was meaningless.

The young Rebecca West

Kitty herself is a clever and unpleasant creation; self-absorbed, controlling and ultimately selfish, she would rather Chris was made well to return to the battlefield and possible death, than stay in his happy world of 15 years ago with Margaret. As for the latter, she’s a fascinating creation; Jenny manages to recognise her worth, despite her prejudices, and she’s obviously a person of much more substance than the rich women. Her lot in life shows the difference that circumstances can make to a person because had she had the money and comforts Kitty and Jenny had, they would not have been able to make such harsh and hideous judgements about her.

Surely she must see that this was no place for beauty that has not been mellowed but lacerated by time, that no one accustomed to live here could help wincing at such external dinginess as hers…

The title of the book obviously has a double meaning; initially there is the physical return of Chris to his home, but there is also the eventual mental return from his place of safety to normality so he can tragically return to the fighting. Although the women are somewhat cut off from the War, they have their own kind of battle for Chris and it’s painful to watch. All of this is conveyed in beautiful, evocative prose and West’s writing is magnificent. To get so much into such a short book is a remarkable achievement, and reading “The Return of the Soldier” has really convinced me that I need to pick up more of those West books languishing on Mount TBR.

Dipping into Sylvia Townsend Warner’s short stories

“Dipping” is a word I’m trying to introduce into my reading vocabulary at the moment, as I seem to have got myself into a mindset of having to finish a book at a time, regardless of what it is. And when it comes to poetry and short stories, this isn’t necessarily the best way to read, so I’m going to attempt to be a little more flexible, picking up volumes of poems and shorter works when the mood takes me and not fretting about when I finish them. And I was gifted with some lovely volumes at Christmas, so this would be the ideal way to start exploring them.

A book I’ve been keen on getting for a long time is Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Selected Stories in a lovely Virago volume, and my Secret Santa Trish kindly came up trumps with this one. The stories are chosen by Susanna Pinney and William Maxwell, STW’s literary executors, and having only read one of her books before (“Mr. Fortune’s Maggot”) I was interested to see what her other work was like.

So far, I’ve read a few stories and they really are good. In particular, “The Love Match”, the first story in the collection, is a real gem and a wonderful way to open the book. Telling the story of Celia and Justin Tizard, a brother and sister who come to live in the little town of Hallowby, it initially seems that Mr Pilkington, who brings them there, might be the focus of the story or heavily involved. In fact, he plays a minor part, and STW twists and subverts your expectations with a dark little tale about a very strange relationship between the wars and how it plays out. I was left with a *lot* of questions about Celia and Justin, about what really *had* been going on in the town, and also thinking about what happens behind closed doors and beneath the surface.

I shall carry on dipping into this book whenever the fancy takes me, as it seems that I’m going to be guaranteed something interesting. Now I just have to get myself into this mindset as regards poetry: should I read chronologically? Open the book at random? Search for titles that are recommended or highly thought of? Any suggestions gratefully received…

Virago Volumes: A Stricken Field by Martha Gellhorn

What was I saying about being a trivial reader? That’s perhaps the wrong word – fickle might be a better word; for example, there are many, many books I’ve had on my shelves for 30 years and *never read*! I’m trying to rectify that at the moment (Proust being the main example); but Martha Gellhorn is another case in point. However, paradoxically, the book of hers I chose to pick up was this one, “A Stricken Field”, one of my more recent Virago acquisitions. I thought the subject matter (Prague in 1938) might fit better with my current mindset, and Gellhorn was on my mind from reading about her in Sybille Bedford’s “Pleasures and Landscapes”. So there you are – I’m following my random reading muse as usual!

Gellhorn, of course, is as fascinating a character as Bedford. A war correspondent from a young age, witnessing the Spanish Civil War amongst other things, she’s cursed with often being remembered only for having been married to Hemingway – although pleasingly Wikipedia put her other achievements first: Martha Ellis Gellhorn (November 8, 1908 – February 15, 1998) was an American novelist, travel writer, and journalist, considered by the London Daily Telegraph, among others, to be one of the greatest war correspondents of the 20th century. She reported on virtually every major world conflict that took place during her 60-year career. Gellhorn was also the third wife of American novelist Ernest Hemingway, from 1940 to 1945. At the age of 89, ill and almost completely blind, she committed suicide. The Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism is named after her.”

So Gellhorn was obviously no ordinary woman and had no ordinary life – in fact, I imagine that a biography would be a really good read! However, apart from her reporting she also wrote fiction, and this book is her first full-length novel, published in 1940 when war was beginning to tear Europe apart; and also after years of conflicts on that continent, in Spain, and also in Germany, where the Nazi regime had been gradually developing an iron grip. The novel opens with Mary Douglas, an American journalist, flying into Prague in 1938. Munich pact etc. Mary is young, but she’s not naive, having seen the Spanish Civil War, and she knows that the creeping menace of the Nazis threatens the countries and people she loves. She’s hoping to find her friend Rita, a left-wing German who’s fled to Prague in search of safety, and they do indeed meet up early in the story. Rita lost her brother to the enemy’s brutality, and works for the resistance in Prague, trying to help fellow refugees survive. She has also found a fragile kind of happiness with a fellow worker, Peter; but they are living on a knife-edge, like every other enemy of Fascism at large in a country now being dominated by the jackboot. All the refugees are being forcibly repatriated to places where they will be tortured, put in concentration camps, and most probably die horribly. Can Mary and her journalist friends do anything to help – or is the impending cataclysm too much for any humanitarian efforts?

ASF is a remarkably powerful and moving novel; to be frank, it’s gut-wrenching, both in the emotional sense (as we ache for the suffering of the refugees) and the literal sense (there are references to torture, and one particularly awful interrogation scene). If I’m honest, the book as a novel is not particularly accomplished – the regular shifts in perspective are clumsy at times and hard to follow; the character of Mary never really develops much; and the group of journalists are just that, a fairly amorphous band who don’t take on much of an individual form. However, the book’s strength is in its reportage. It’s recording a piece of history, a shocking and horrible time, but one that needs not to be forgotten. The story of Rita and her lover Peter stands for any number of stories, for the thousands of people who suffered under oppression (and indeed those who still do). Gellhorn captures haunting images: Rita staggering down dark streets in Prague, not knowing where she’s going or why; the bundled up humans at the railway station being forced into trains taking them to their doom; those who cannot cope with the thought of leaving and take another way out…

“She thought: there will have to be a terrible justice, blowing over the world, to avenge all the needless suffering. Thus far, she had seen the innocent punished and insulted, pursued and destroyed; and when they tried to protect themselves, their enemies were swift, unanimous and relentless. Simple men were ignorant enough still to fight against each other instead of fighting side by side. She had seen only the triumph of the lie and the victory of the liars. It will take a long time to change this, she thought, we learn very little, we learn very slowly. She was afraid she would be reporting disaster and defeat her whole life.”

Martha Gellhorn in 1941 by an unknown photographer (Public domain via Wikimedia Commons)

It’s a stark story of a stark time; Mary tries at one point to involve some politicians in her attempts to help the refugees, but even they are powerless to make any difference. There are many shocks in this book, not the least the contrast between the privileges Mary enjoys because she holds an American passport, and the lack of everything – food, money, security, a chance at life – that the expelled refugees have. But what shocked me most of all was when this book was written and published. Gellhorn wrote the book in 1939, based on her real visits to Prague, and published it in 1940. In the 1938 of this book, the concentration camps and the treatment of Jews and Socialists is common knowledge – the reporters have become almost indifferent to it. I somehow had the impression that the revelations about Nazi camps after the war came as a shock to the world, but it seems that the facts were already well-known. Which leaves me thinking about man’s inhumanity to man, and how this vicious cruelty was allowed to carry on by all the so-called civilised nations. And thus it ever was and thus it ever will be – the bigwigs make their strategies and move little models around on a plan (or nowadays a digital simulation) but these represent real people, and it’s the latter who always pay the price for conflict – a look at the news reports nowadays proves that nothing’s changed.

It was a painful experience, but I *am* glad I read this book. As Gellhorn says in her afterword “Novels don’t decide the course of history or change it but they can show what history is like for people who have no choice except to live through it or die from it. I remembered for them.” She certainly did that, and this book should continue to be read so that we never forget.