Lucy Mangan – Bookworm : A Memoir of Childhood Reading

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Book Review, Books about Books, Bookworm, Children's Books, Humour, Lucy Mangan

Lucy Mangan leads readers through a long distance reading journey with map, compass and excellent orienteering skills

Oh heavens, I didn’t want to get to Journey’s End, I really didn’t. This is an utterly delicious romp up hill and down dale through a childhood’s (Lucy’s) adventures between the covers of books.

Now Lucy was born in the 70s. She is not of my generation, so some of her childhood reads were certainly books I had never heard of, never mind read, but I just didn’t care, and chomped up, with equal delight, travels through books known and unknown. She also details experiences (as an adult I assume) with the whole history of childhood reading, indeed the production, the when and the why, of books written for children, whether, as in the high Victorian era, to morally educate and save young souls from temptation, or, – revolutionary, to entertain, to open up worlds, to surrender to with blazing delight.

IF you are a lifelong reader, IF you fell upon being read to with feverish delight and anticipation, but BURNED to take control of this for yourself, IF you still half regret the loss of that falling-in-love with reading, a kind of entrance into Paradise, DO NOT WAIT A MOMENT LONGER – you must have this book, you must read it, like you must draw breath.

This is an utterly joyous journey through the literature of childhood, from the earliest days of putting strange shaped squiggles together and suddenly grasping that c a t (for example) meant something – well, I guess that moment is equal to the moment serious greybeards first began to decode hieroglyphs.

Magic, that’s what

But Mangan is not only a wonderful chronicler of literature for children (the academic analysis) she is brilliantly right there within the experience of the exposure at the time of a child’s reading. She writes with as much joy and gusto as she reads

Pointless to describe the waystations on her journey, but this book is as much to be filed in Humour (she is one gloriously witty woman) as it is in Biography or factual tome about the history of children’s literature

Rarely has a book simultaneously made me laugh out loud so much whilst also educating me

Suffice it to say, Mangan had me, firmly following her guided tour, from this, early comment

Was your first crush on Dickon instead of Johnny Depp? Do you still get the urge to tap the back of a wardrobe if you find yourself alone in a strange bedroom

To which I could only shout YES! YES! Even if Johnny Depp was not yet a crushable entity when I first ‘crushed’ Dickon

Photograph by Romain Veillon from his book Ask the Dust

I was delighted to be offered this as a review copy as a digital ARC, and, have discovered to my delight that Mangan has written other books. WHICH I SHALL BE BUYING.

My only cavil (and I don’t know whether this was purely ‘digital ARC challenge’ or not) is that the author’s delightful habit of footnote and footnote within footnote asides does not work well in the digital format. It would work perfectly on a printed page, where the visual signs of long footnotes can happily spill over several pages without reader confusion.

Bookworm UK
Bookworm USA

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It’s Publication Day! Margery Sharp has landed!

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Book Review, Cluny Brown, Fiction, Humour, Humour and Wit, Lighter-hearted fiction, Margery Sharp, The Nutmeg Tree

It’s re-issue day at last for Margery Sharp, thanks to Open Road Media and some dedicated bloggers who have been raising flags for her for at least a couple of years.

Followers of this blog and most of us new Margery readers know that Jane who blogs from beyondedenrock has done sterling work in helping Margery to reach a new generation of readers. You will find, if you explore that there are reviews to more Margerys, not to mention reviews of various Margery books, from readers around the blogosphere who engaged, this year and last, in Jane’s hosted Margery Sharp day

Go explore Margery – she is a light-touch, light-hearted writer, who writes books which are hugely entertaining, witty, and well-turned in writing craft. Margery can indeed write sharply and incisively; you get the sense she feels warmly towards humanity, but is not at all saccharine.

Cluny Brown and The Nutmeg Tree have both been reviewed on here, so you can follow the links.

They feature two delightfully individual and quirky central characters, and I’m delighted to have met and made friends with Cluny and Julia

When Jane started her championship of Margery on her blog, she was only available, if you were very lucky, as a charity shop find, rumpled and elderly, but at reasonable cost. And, as time went by, and more of us were introduced to the wonderful Margery Sharp, the dwindling copies of Margeriana began to reach eye-watering prices via market-place sellers. I could only find a battered Cluny and a battered Julia-Nutmeg, at reasonable outlay. 

Until now – so have a look at the other titles Open Road Media have released. I trust some of them will make their way on here in due course!

Cluny Brown Amazon UK
Cluny Brown Amazon USA

The Nutmeg Tree Amazon UK
The Nutmeg Tree Amazon USA

Margery Sharp – The Nutmeg Tree

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Book Review, Humour, Humour and Wit, Margery Sharp, The Nutmeg Tree

A woman of impeccably loose morals.

Julia ,’by marriage Mrs Packett, by courtesy Mrs Macdermot’ is the central character of three strongly delineated women, in Margery Sharp’s delightful The Nutmeg Tree.

Sharp, a deliciously witty writer of rather eccentric English romances and childrens’ books, from the 1930s to the 1970s, had sadly gone out of print, and was only available as lucky finds in second hand shops or sometimes on line at some eye-watering prices.

Fortunately, Open Road Integrated Media who have a wonderful reputation for reissuing ‘minor’ classics in good, digital format, have now reissued a generous couple of handfuls of her titles.

And this is one of them, and I was delighted to be offered The Nutmeg Tree by Open Road, as a copy for review

Julia is a middle-aged actress, member of the chorus, and any kind of vaguely theatre related work she can get. She is a woman of impeccably loose morals. Promiscuous in part because she has a generous heart (and even more generous bosoms), she cannot bear to disappoint or embarrass a suitor. Not to mention the fact that she is hopeless with money, will squander what she has on a good time and good friends, and, when treading the boards work is slender, a man might take her out for a meal. She is not averse to undertaking the odd swindle, to part a fool from his money, either

It is Sharp’s particular genius, her wit and her warmth, to take this seemingly unprincipled woman, and make us root for her, delight in her, and understand exactly why so many who meet her, both men and women, happily fall under the spell of her charms. Despite her dishonesty, she is remarkably honest with herself about her failings, and really dislikes hurting or offending those whom she fleeces.

The opening paragraph of the book immediately showed me this was going to be a sparkling and good humoured read:

Julia, by marriage Mrs, Packett, by courtesy Mrs Macdermot, lay in her bath singing the Marseillaise. Her fine robust contralto, however, was less resonant than usual, for on this particular summer morning the bathroom, in addition to the ordinary fittings, contained a lacquer coffee table, seven hatboxes, half a dinner service, a small grandfather clock, all Julia’s clothes, a single bed mattress, thirty-five novelettes, three suitcases, and a copy of a Landseer stag

I was already laughing so hard by this point, with the tune of ‘On the twelfth day of Christmas’, rather than the Marseillaise, playing in my mind, that I half expected the sentence to end with the proverbial partridge, pear tree and all.

Julia, on her uppers again is the mother of a grown-up and extremely intelligent daughter, presently at Girton. She was never the most motherly of women, and Susanne, or Susan as she is now called, has been brought up by Julia’s mother-in-law, a well-to-do woman whom Julia admires, and who has always treated Julia kindly. Even if she does nurture a rather peculiar fantasy that her daughter–in-law would make a great success if she would only open a cake-shop in Knightsbridge.

Julia hasn’t seen her daughter for years, but Sue wants to get married to a man, whilst her grandmother wants her to wait till she is twenty one. Susan sends a letter to her mother asking her to come to France (where she and her grandmother are holidaying) to help persuade Mrs Packett senior to accept Sue’s beau, Bryan, and a speedy marriage.

Dormant mother love is wakened, and the story follows Julia’s eventful journey to France, and the amusing encounters which await her there

In a neat twist, it is Julia, and even the older Mrs Packett, who are the flexible and adventurous ones, whilst Susan, bar a desire to marry a little young is implacably rigid and insufferably worthy

Susan was a prig. Not an objectionable prig, not a proselytising prig, but a prig from very excess of good qualities.. Like all the right-minded young, she wanted perfection; the difficulty was that her standards of perfection were unusually high. Exquisite in her own integrity, she demanded an equal delicacy and uprightness from her fellows

Susan – unlike Julia – is not a lot of fun, Take, for example, this typical throwaway Margery Sharp gem, about Julia’s pecuniary embarrassment and the detail of her underwear :

Julia decided to take single instead of return tickets, and to buy a new dinner dress with the money saved. She also purchased a linen suit, a Matron’s model hat, and three pairs of cami-knickers. She had indeed plenty of these already, but all with policemen embroidered on the legs

I shan’t (of course) reveal spoilers, but do just need to say that I thought the ending was utterly brilliant, and done with panache.

A film version, or should I say an extreme ‘based on’ was made, starring Greer Garson. Whatever the merits of the film, most of the elements of Sharp’s novel have been bent into unrecognisable shape. The title of the film was Julia Misbehaves

I enjoyed this book enormously; though Sharp is writing light, witty romance, it is in a unique and wonderfully executed manner. Her characterisations are brilliant, her humour never laboured and, knowing more Margery’s are waiting for me, accessible, and reasonably priced is enchanting.

Thank you Open Road! And thank you to Jane at beyondedenrock, who probably woke us all up to Margery

The Nutmeg Tree, and other Margery titles are being published on April 12th. Not long to wait!

The Nutmeg Tree Amazon UK
The Nutmeg Tree Amazon USA

Dan Rhodes – When the Professor Got Stuck in the Snow

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Book Review, Dan Rhodes, Humour, When the Professor Got Stuck in the Snow

I first encountered Dan Rhodes with the wonderful, witty, intelligent, feel-good rom-com and more This Is Life. Rhodes on that showing, knew how to warm the cockles of the heart without spoonsful of saccharine, with a delicious, inventive sense of humour, sharp observations, and finely honed prose. I have to confess that the ‘humour’ genre generally raises nary a chuckle in this house, as you can spot the boom-boom punchlines coming in predictable fashion

Rhodes did not do that boom boom in This Is Life. However….he does it rather a lot in this book. If the story of a book will involve an earnest attempt to reach a place called Upper Bottom, it is absolutely obvious there will be much very unsubtle humour, geared at the reader’s inner four year old, and with more than a whiff of Ooh, Matron! Carry On about it.

And there was……but Rhodes had me groaning out loud with ‘no, no I can’t believe you are really going to go for potty humour in this way’ amusement. I whickered, snickered, sniggered, chortled, gasped, giggled, barked, roared, face-palmed in appalled disbelief, whinnied, screeched, howled, gibbered and made every attempt at working through an evolution of as many animal sounds possible as I proceeded through this possibly shockingly nasty book

One of the two central characters in this piece of fiction is a certain Professor Richard Dawkins who is a worldwide celebrity through the authorship of very well written books about evolution and genetics. He has also written books espousing a very militant atheism and achieved a guru like fame, loved and loathed in equal measure. This Professor Richard Dawkins has also become famous for using Social Media to scatter his pronouncements in peppery fashion on this that and the other. Curiously, the Professor Richard Dawkins who is one of the central characters in Mr Rhodes book bears more than a passing resemblance, albeit tweaked into a Spitting Image puppet kind of way, to a world famous evolutionary biologist and militant atheist whose name happens to be Richard Dawkins. And who is a professor. It’s possibly a coincidence.

“Dawkins at UT Austin” by Shane Pope from Austin, United States Wiki Commons

The Professor Dawkins of this book is a devoted public speaker, travelling here there and everywhere to carry the message of atheism to ignorant unbelievers who hold different views from those espoused by evolutionary biologists steeped in the scientific method. In this book, this Professor Dawkins is taking his message to the cosy Women’s Institute in a place called Upper Bottom. He is travelling with his assistant, a man called (by Professor Richard Dawkins), Smee. Though that isn’t his real name. Unfortunately an extreme wrong kind of snow weather event means his train can’t reach the Bottoms, (there are, of course, many Bottoms) and all roads to all Bottoms are blocked. The Professor is forced to seek shelter from the storm, with his trusty assistant carrying the bags, in the proverbial any port in the. Which just happens to be in Market Horton, whose claim to fame is being ‘The Gateway To The Bottoms’

The kindly hosts who will rescue the illustrious Professor and his devoted amanuensis are a retired vicar and his wife, Mr and Mrs Potter, who have a twin bedded bed and breakfast room in their house. Mrs Potter is a slightly simple soul, though enormously kind. She does make quite a few mistakes. For example, confusing this Professor with another gentleman of a reasonably similar sounding last name, who is a real-life mathematician. On being disabused of her error, and told that our professor is an expert on genomes, she makes another mistake, as anyone might, and tries to arrange the décor of the spare bedroom in a way which will make our rescued from the snow Professor feel right at home. Kindly Mrs Potter has installed a collection of objects from her garden, brought in for the winter, to gladden the heart of her chilly guest. And that was where I started making loud animal noises, which only got louder and more frequent

A gladsome wintery scene, commons, pixabay

I rather guiltily found this an enormously feel-good book. But then, I’m not called Professor Richard Dawkins, Martin Amis, Lynne Truss, Scarlett Johansson, A.C Grayling, Pippa Middleton, or any of the other names caught in the sights of Mr Rhodes pop-gun

For the record, this book (which I gratefully received as a Christmas gift digital review copy from the doughty publishers, Aardvark Bureau) was originally published a year ago in a limited run of 400 as a self-published book by Mr Rhodes, who is a successful author.

Surprisingly, this was a book seen as a little too hot to handle, as the legal teams of publishing houses were curiously worried that a certain Professor Dawkins might have a few choice objections, particularly as there is no disclaimer that none of the characters named in the book bear any resemblance to any real people who happen to have similar names.

I can quite understand that anyone called Professor Richard Dawkins might be very offended by this book. I would be, if that was my name. And so I’m very ashamed to say that even admitting that, I couldn’t stop laughing. Even though I no longer think that Dan Rhodes is such a warm-hearted person as I did after discovering that feel-good rom com ‘This Is Life’

Not a Professor

This is a kind of feel-bad because you feel so good book. I’m afraid I recommend it, and hope that Professor Richard Dawkins has some variant of a duck’s back gene, and handles this as if it were water.

When the Professor Got Stuck in the Snow Amazon UK
When the Professor Got Stuck in the Snow Amazon USA

William Alexander – Flirting with French

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Book Review, Flirting With French, France, French Language, Humour, Language, William Alexander

Enchantée! Formidable!

(Nervously worries whether that extra e is correct, and whether I rolled the r properly)

I do hope William Alexander won’t mind me making the obvious connection between him and that other American ‘Billiam’ – Bryson – that there are a lot of similarities between the two. Both (from author photos) are genial appearing bear-like men. Both are clearly extremely erudite, wonderfully, subtly witty, weave magic with words, have a fine line in self-deprecating humour, and a light-touch wearing of their evidently extensive knowledge. Both also have minds and a writing style which does not go from London to Edinburgh in a straight line, grimly in pursuit of the journey’s end, instead preferring to ramble about delightfully on the scenic route, taking in Japan, Alaska and other surprising destinations along the way. And paradoxically, they both manage to cram all the rambles into a probably shorter (well, it certainly feels that way) journey than that taken by a more linear, less joie de vivre-ish sort of writer.

William Alexander, a dedicated Francophile, with fantasies of being French is presented with a couple of challenges to this fantasy. One is that he doesn’t speak French. And the second is that he is in his 50s, long past the ‘window of opportunity’ for becoming bilingual, or even fluent, according to various experts on the learning of language itself, and the learning of a second or additional language in particular.

This wonderfully good humoured book explores William’s sterling, perhaps foolhardy efforts to become someone who thinks and speaks like a Frenchman. Along the way, he even adopts a new name, in case this will help. ‘Guy’ pronounced the French way naturellement comes from a shortening of the French version of his own name (cue opera by Rossini)

Less happily along the way William discovers he suffers from atrial fibrillation, and more seriously ventricular fibrillation and has several shocking (literally) medical experiences, whilst he half-idly wonders whether the extreme stress and struggle of his attempts to engage with the language have hastened the ‘breaking’ or break-down, of his heart.

(Here is a lesson for all those of us who are not French : this is how to do it, magnificently, and with impeccably rolled rs – come on, now rrrrrrrrrregrrrrrrrrrrette rrrrrrrrrrrrien – you too will be applauded like this, by an ecstatic audience, if you get those rolls as brilliantly executed as this lady manages:)

There are marvellous, fascinating and witty explanations of language theory, an exploration of the frankly illogical (sorry!) language which assigns the masculine gender to breasts and the feminine gender to beards. Unless the French were always just more nuanced than the English around fixed positions on gender. In which case, kudos, amis et amies. Or is this an fine example of French humour?. The French clearly also are streets ahead of us English speakers in mathematical ability, since their numbering system oddly at times includes multiplication and addition – quatre vingt , quatre vingt dix and the like.

I have now become as fixated on wanting to read more of William’s writing as he is about wanting to speak better French. A book on growing tomatoes (!) and one on baking bread awaits. The man is a raconteur to the manner born, and probably has a whole fleet of shaggy dogs to take out on rambles

Flirting with French Amazon UK
Flirting with French Amazon USA

J. Ryan Stradal – Kitchens of the Great Midwest

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Book Review, Food, Humour, J.Ryan Stradal, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

The sociable and unsociable matter of eating…………

First time novelist J.Ryan Stradal, the dust-jacket tells me, ‘co-hosts a literary-culinary events series called Hot Dish’ – which makes him rather well suited to the writing of a novel loosely based around an extraordinary fictional female chef. And, in the end, I think his culinary literary dish is beautifully seasoned, with enough, but not too much sugar, and with enough heat, bite, bitterness, sourness, saltiness and umami, not to mention suitable crunch and give, to be of good literary taste. Sounds a weird culinary dish doesn’t it, with all those flavours, but in the end it works, though there was one story where I feared winsome would be the overall remaining image – before realising that what we have is a meal of a book, with many different flavours. Which is what you want from a full meal – not avocado at every course!

His central character, who glues all the different stories together, is Eva Thorvald. We meet her first as the big baby of Lars Thorvald. Lars is a doting dad, a chef in a trendy Minnesota restaurant. Eva’s mum Cynthia is a waitress with serious ambitions to become a sommelier. Baby Eva has Lars planning on developing her palate by feeding her home-made guacamole and hummus in week 1. Clearly, big-hearted Lars has a lot to learn about babies, but is absolutely up for that learning. Cynthia isn’t, and has jumped ship to pursue her ambitions, destination Australia or New Zealand, whilst Eva is still only a few months old.

                    Lutefisk – let’s not linger.

The book proceeds by 8 long short-story chapters. Eva holds these all together, as it follows her at various stages of her life from babyhood to quirky chef commanding huge fees for ‘pop-up dining’ events in secret places, and with a lottery system for ‘winning’ a place with a wait-list of 295 years!

Although I didn’t quite believe in this aspect of it, perhaps in a world where people already have booked places to travel to Mars, I should!

Each story has a recipe (or several) and the overall structure of the book works beautifully, so that when the reader reaches the last 20 or so pages, the excellence of the concept should have them (it did me!) smiling broadly, thinking that each of the chapter-dishes had worked splendidly on their own, and even more splendidly in the full book-meal context.

What I would say is, if one dish-chapter is not quite to your taste, stick with it, as the changing flavour of another chapter will prove a fine and piquant contrast.

Delightful, quirky, satisfying. A feel-good read but with enough odd-ball and grit in the mix to avoid consumption of Aspartame and its nasty side-effect

                         I definitely want to linger….

Oh………..and whether you are a foodie sourcing out heritage varieties, avoiding GMO like a kiss from a shark, or someone crying ‘bring on the sat-fats, bring on the sugar’ you will find a lot of pleasurable sark sent the way of ‘the other side’ to your eating.

It might be an acquired taste to engage with the lutefisk though.

I was delighted to receive this as a review copy from Amazon Vine UK, and only sorry that I had none of Pat Prager’s peanut butter bars to accompany my read with an Ardbeg 1974 Provenance, served neat (you’ll have to read the book)

Kitchens of the Great Midwest Amazon UK
Kitchens of the Great Midwest Amazon USA

Herman Koch – Summer House With Swimming Pool

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Book Review, Crime Fiction, Dutch author, Herman Koch, Humour, In Translation, Summer House With Swimming Pool

Unspeakably incorrect, shockingly funny, designed to offend: doesn’t completely pull it all off

My goodness, Herman Koch cheerfully uses his razor sharp pen to slice open and blood-let all the things we dare not say, and perhaps dare not think. Both women and men who are more thoughtful and separated from their caveman past may find themselves gasping in some sort of horror – and also, perhaps, barking with guilty laughter.

Marc Schlosser, the central character of Koch’s book, (translated from the Dutch by Sam Garrett) is a doctor who once had rather noble ideals, but now has a clientele of the wealthy or famous, whom he pretty much despises. They come to him with their concerns about their failing sexual performance and allure, their fears about cancers in unspeakable parts of their anatomy, and at times for the under the counter dispensing of medicines which will enable them to party hard as they did in their youth, or to shuffle off this mortal. But most of all, they come to him not because he is in any way a better doctor (he knows he isn’t) but because he gives them a 20 minute session instead of a shorter session.

Patients can’t tell the difference between time and attention. They think I give them more attention than other doctors. But all I give them is more time. By the end of the first sixty seconds I’ve seen all I need to know. The remaining nineteen minutes I fill with attention. Or, I should say, with the illusion of attention

Married (happily) to Caroline, with two daughters, Julia, who is a budding nymphette, and pre-pubescent Lisa, Schlosser is absolutely not above seducing other women. He blithely tells his female and male readers, that, sorry, this is all the drive of biology. However (and he again will excuse this via biology) he is also a hypocrite. One of his patients is a famous actor, Ralph Meier. He despises Meier, a grossly overweight and disgustingly, overtly lecherous individual, but really begins to hate him when Meier makes an offensive and public pass at Caroline, at a first night party. Caroline thinks Meier is pretty loathsome too. Which is why it is rather surprising that Schlosser accepts an invitation to visit (with his wife and his daughters, naturally) Meier and his wife in their holiday home – that ‘summer house with swimming pool’ Caroline can’t understand why, as Marc finds Meier pretty disgusting, and she also finds him pretty disgusting, the invitation has been accepted by Meier, who goes out of his way to arrange holiday plans so that they will be ‘in the area’ and turn an informal invitation, formal.

Marc, without any shame, lets the reader know (first person narrative) that he has designs for a bit of nookie with Judith Meier, in the same breath that he is castigating Meier for his unbridled and offensive lechery. The only difference between the two is that Schlosser is a subtle seducer, not an indiscriminate grabber and fondler of female flesh. Rather, he seduces, like he doctors, providing an illusion of paying attention

So far, so wickedly funny and offensive, mixed together. Things rapidly turn very much darker on that holiday, however, and humour, for the most part, gets left behind. Schlosser will come to suspect that Meier, with the collusion of his family and friends, have been responsible for causing hideous harm and ruining lives. And he will seek to exact a terrible, undetectable revenge.

Told by mixture of flashbacks and flash forwards to the present, the book opens with Meier about to face a reckoning of sorts.

I stayed hooked nearly all the way to the end, but the resumption of a fairly crass bit of humour, and a ‘hell hath no fury’ proverb wriggle out wrap (sorry, can’t say more, spoiler alert, but those who have read the book will know what I mean) felt inauthentic and lazy.

Enjoyed a lot, lost a star for the last 20 odd pages.

I received this as a review copy from the Amazon Vine programme UK, following its recent release as a paperback (hardback came out last year) And I also remembered this came very highly recommended indeed by FictionFan who wrote a sterling review at the time, though it remained on an undecided back burner for me, till offered it on Vine.

Summer House With Swimming Pool Amazon UK
Summer House With Swimming Pool Amazon USA

Dodie Smith – I Capture The Castle

Tags

Book Review, Cold Comfort Farm, Dodie Smith, Humour, I Capture The Castle, Pride and Prejudice

A Trip Down Memory Lane Even Better Than The First Time…..

I first read Dodie Smith’s impeccable `I Capture The Castle’ way back in nineteen hundred and frozen to death when I was some few years younger than her precocious, intelligent, wise beyond years and yet innocent narrator, Cassandra – she is 17. No doubt I was equally precocious, at least. Cassandra, daughter of a highly eccentric, impecunious writer-with-a-block, fancies an authorial career for herself (as indeed to some extent I did in my early teens)

Cassandra Mortmain, her beautiful older sister Rose, her even more beautiful stepmother, Topaz, artist’s model and artist herself, ferociously intelligent younger brother Thomas, and unwaged Greek God handsome-but-with-a-slightly-dim-expression general help Stephen, her aforementioned writer Father, and her dearly loved dog and cat, live practically below the breadline, in a stunning, decaying castle. Everyone had seen better times, financially, and everyone is aware that a tea of bread and margarine might come to seem luxurious any time soon:

Rose is ironing……it will be a pity if she scorches her only nightgown. (I have two, but one is minus its behind.)

Dodie Smith set her book, published in 1948, before the war, in the probably early 30s. She had begun writing it in 1945, and had worked and re-worked it revising it for two years. The book shows evidence of the painstaking work only in its perfection. It is beautifully crafted, and has that gorgeous felicity of seeming to have sprung in effortless ease, trippingly, from the authorial pen. There is no sense of the blood, sweat, toil and tears of its gestation.

Dodie of course also wrote 101 Dalmatians

Cassandra, wanting to exercise and develop her writerly skills, keeps journals (you have a sense Dodie herself may well have had a similar history) She is a witty, almost but not quite winsomely so, young girl, full of feeling, the ability to be cynical, but warm-hearted and affectionate. And, like many young girls, she has some dreams about her own future, which involve both romance and vocation. This is the story of both, starting from a place where the family’s finances preclude them ever meeting suitable young men, despite the fact that the more worldly Rose realises that marriage to a moneyed man is probably the family’s best option, and that she is the only one placed to achieve this. Both Rose and Cassandra realise they have certain parallels to an earlier pair of sisters – Jane and Lizzie Bennet, especially when a well-heeled couple of Americans take up residence in a nearby grand house

Especially for my dear fellow blogger Fiction Fan, there is indeed a bathing in wild water scene (tasteful and very very funny) but not involving Colin Firth

Another sparkling literary nod may have been to Stella Gibbons – Topaz, with her tendency to commune with nature (running out into the fields in her nightgown with probably nothing on underneath, and creating symbolic art works) could be some kind of relation to Elfine in Cold Comfort Farm. Stephen, whose Greek God looks will make him something of a hit with a Bohemian set, is a little like a reluctant, noble, introverted Seth.

Cassandra’s joyous combination of intense feeling, curiosity, intelligence and most particularly her already well-developed powers of observation and mastery of writerly skills make her an absolutely enchanting first person narrator. This is a book to relish, word by word, from start to end.

Some have expressed frustration with the ambiguous ending. Personally, I find that it, too is sheer perfection. That is certainly what I feel as a more sophisticated reader than the 13 or 14 year old I was when I read it last. And I suspect (as I was precocious) I may well already have approved the ambiguity.

This is not a `book for young adults’ (though it certainly can be read with great enjoyment by them) It is a book for anyone who might like to see the world through the eyes of a particularly enchanting young woman, and for anyone who appreciates light touch wit, irony and enjoys literary referencing.

How can you not want to embark on a journey whose first sentence begins

I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. That is, my feet are in it; the rest of me is on the draining-board, which I have padded with our dog’s blanket and the tea cosy……….I have found that sitting in a place where you have never sat before can be inspiring-I wrote my very best poem while sitting on the hen-house. Though even that isn’t a very good poem. I have decided that my poetry is so bad that I mustn’t write any more of it

I can begin to see how Smith influenced several other writers, too

Recommended. Perhaps best saved for a day when the world seems sad and bleak, and your get up and go has indeed got up and gone. A feel-good book, but one which won’t leave you longing to eat chilli peppers and horseradish to get rid of the cloying taste of saccharine

It was made into a film in 2003………..unfortunately, the trailer (on You Tube) rather made me gag and reach for the chilli and horseradish. Romola Garai as Cassandra, Bill Nighy as her father and Sinead Cusack as the forceful American mother of ‘ Darcy and Bingley’ were all, I’m sure, wonderful value – but it was the saccharine of the trailer which rightly or wrongly made me feel that a chocolate box cover approach may have been taken. The opening out of the story so that other people’s point of view happens, rather than everything seen and recorded through Cassandra’s filter, means I shall likely give this one a miss, and let Dodie’s sharp and tender pen be the onlie begetter

I Capture The Castle Amazon UK
I Capture The Castle Amazon USA

Nancy Mitford – The Pursuit of Love

Tags

Book Revieew, Humour, Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love

“My immediate impression was that he did not seem at all like a husband. He looked kind and gentle”

Re-reading Nancy Mitford’s stylish, witty tale of an eccentric, aristocratic family fiddling whilst Rome burns (or, as the 1930s advances towards war) was the perfect weaning/antidote to my recent immersion in a couple of major, towering, American novels (Steinbeck, Yates)

The problem with reading enormous, wonderful, meaningful writing, is that it becomes impossible to follow. Writers of brilliance only mean that more mundane writers are met with an expression of distaste, by this unforgiving reader. My normal ‘weaning’ is to read a non-fiction book, but I’m afraid that Yates left me with absolutely no time for a non-fiction writer who was not also a writer, a fine writer. I abandoned with irritation a non-fiction which was a crass combination in style of dry academia and Reader’s Digest overblown.

And then, oh joy, I came across The Pursuit of Love in a second hand shop. A well written re-read, a world away from the towering ones, is of course, the answer.

The Mitford Family

Nancy Mitford was of course, one of the Mitford Sisters : Mitford’s own background as the daughter of Baron Redesdale with her 6 siblings, clearly provided the imaginative springboard for the eccentric Radlett family of this book.

The Radletts are a remarkably opinionated and individual family. Paterfamilias Matthew is an irascible high Tory, his wife Sadie is permanently surprised that she seems to have produced a large brood of children. The central story of The Pursuit of Love is that of the second daughter, beautiful, sentimental, romantic, wilful Linda, and it is told by her cousin Fanny, who is a much more sober, grounded character. No doubt in response to the fact that her mother, known to all as ‘The Bolter’ abandoned her at an early age to ‘bolt’ in rackety fashion, with a succession of unsuitably lovers. Linda shows some worrying signs of being drawn to overwhelming love affairs, from an early age, emulating Fanny’s mother.

The joy of the book is that the voices of the characters are wonderfully drawn, succinctly observed, and there is a sure narrative drive, and a kind of snapshot of a class and a time, of course cranked up into ‘types’ which could be clichés if they were not written with such sparkle and sharp observation.

What really struck me in reading the book is that although the manner is frothy, there are some quite painful events within the pages – abandoned and unloved children, war, death. But the manner in which tragedies are experienced is pragmatic and rather ‘not talked about’ It’s a world away from our emoting culture. Some of the characters certainly appear to behave extremely shallowly, and have shallow concerns, but it would be a mistake to believe they ARE shallow. It’s more that the approved manner of being is to make light of misery, to get on with things, not to indulge emotions

Here is a typical little gem. Linda has given birth and Fanny (who is pregnant) is visiting her in hospital

At this point the Sister came in and Linda introduced us……She went away and presently returned carrying a Moses basket full of wails

‘Poor thing,’ said Linda indifferently. ‘It’s really kinder not to look’

‘Don’t pay any attention to her’, said the Sister. ‘She pretends to be a wicked woman, but it’s all put on’

I did look, and, deep down among the frills and the lace, there was the usual horrid sight of a howling orange in a fine black wig.

‘Isn’t she sweet,’ said the Sister. ‘Look at her little hands.’

I shuddered slightly, and said:
‘Well, I know it’s dreadful of me, but I don’t much like them as small as that; I’m sure she’ll be divine in a year or two.’

The walls now entered on a crescendo, and the whole room was fulfilled with hideous noise.

‘Poor soul.’ Said Linda. ‘I think it must have caught sight of itself in a glass. Do take it away, Sister’

This is (to my mind) wonderfully funny, plus saying stuff which is/was probably unthinkable – a lack of maternal feeling – but exploding the received ‘normal’ idea of mother and child instantaneous bonding with a feather light, nonetheless razor sharp barb

Mitford is frothy, light-touch, sharp and elegantly understated in her humour. ‘Pursuit’ is at its best, for me, in the early stages of the book, where the central characters are in their early teens, on the verge of no longer being children, but young girls who will soon ‘come out’ and enter the marriage market.

The Pursuit of Love Amazon UK
The Pursuit of Love Amazon USA

L.C. Tyler – The Herring Seller’s Apprentice

Tags

Book Review, Cosy Crime, Crime Fiction, Humour, L.C.Tyler, The Herring Seller's Apprentice

Crime fic with a gleeful giggle, not with graphic gore

This wonderfully witty first outing in a series by L.C. Tyler certainly falls into the sub-category of crime fiction now described as ‘cosy’.

For which relief, much thanks.

As someone who really doesn’t want to be reminded of the frailty of our mortal frame by impossible accounts of savage dismemberings, and is less than interested in technophiliac bit by endless byte details of curious gadgetry whistles and bells in the perpetuation and the unravelling of crime, but instead yearns for a focus on the almost unchanging detail of human relationships, and what might drive the more normal among us (as opposed to the psychopathic) to commit crime, this discovery was an utter joy.

For which, once again, I must thank Fleur In Her World, as I loudly and publicly chortled, whinnied, snickered, giggled and less ostentatiously grinned through this clever, playful, good humoured outing. Though set firmly in the modern era – emails do get a mention – our central character/investigators could quite happily have been travelled back to the 50s.

We Tressiders were not the sort of family to leave bodies carelessly strewn around the house. By the time I returned home my father was safely boxed up and ready for disposal in the normal, seemly manner

Ethelred Tressider is a crime writer. Actually, this rather old-fashioned, donnish and endearing individual is 3 writers (with different pen-names) Although he dreamed of being a Booker-winning lit-ficcy type of scribe he happened to write a first novel, featuring a rather plodding but meticulous detective, 2 years away from retirement, which was a fairly runaway success. (sounds a bit familiar?) Twelve novels later his detective has miraculously aged 6 months and acquired an interest in gloomy Norman Church Architecture.

Fairfax is in his late middle age and is much embittered by his lack of promotion and by my inability to write him sex of any kind

Tressider has also started another series, historical crime, (sounds familiar?) set in the time of Richard II, and also (sounds very familiar?) a third, female identity as a doctors-and-nurses romance writer. His no-doubt lantern jawed doctor specialises in oral and maxillofacial surgery.

Ethelred has an opinionated, overweight literary agent with a remarkably bad dress-sense, and an obsessive predilection for low-end chocolate bars. Size and availability matter far more than quality. Elsie Thirkettle is probably the best and most clear sighted chum that Ethelred will ever have. Though she does also keep her beady eyes upon her twelve and a half percent.

It is possible that all agents despise authors….Few agents despise authors quite so openly as Elsie, however…’Authors? Couldn’t fart without an agent to remind them where their arses are.’

When a murder is committed close to Ethelred’s home in more ways than one – not only location, but also, the victim is his dead ex-wife, Ethelred is of course one immediate suspect. But rather in the manner of some of those other ‘cosy writers’ (Ngaio Marsh sprung most to my mind, because of the wit in Tyler’s writing) the obvious is not the only route. Whilst Ethelred is rather keen to uncover what is going on, it is Ethel (who is the author of some of the chapters) who is most keen – principally because she thought Geraldine, the ex-wife, was a total Bitch. For some reason Ethelred is less keen to have Elsie along as his ‘herring-seller’s apprentice’ The title of the book comes from the fact that a crime-writer’s major tool-of-the-trade is the liberal use of the red-herring

There is an important difference between fiction and real life. Fiction has to be believable

Full of sassy, witty, sideways pokes of fun at writers, the writing and publishing industry, writer’s blocks, crime fiction in particular – including several delicious little forays into well-known writer/book pastiches, as Ethelred’s writer’s block has him alarmingly producing rip-offs of other author’s’ style and characters, this wonderfully light touch outing introduces an investigative pair who will no doubt continue their affectionate, exasperating, bickering relationship in the unmasking of other crimes.

Though (whispers) the apprentice, Elsie, on this showing is probably the more efficient investigator of the two; despite what is clearly detecting rivalry as Ethelred strives to keep Elsie out of the investigation.

Tyler himself has also now launched into the first of a second series – set in historical times, A Cruel Necessity (A John Grey Historical Mystery) Look out in a few years’ time for the love lives of dentists to make an outing!

….and I’ve immediately downloaded the next in the adventures of Elsie and Ethelred Ten Little Herrings. I do hope all the others will make it to Kindle!

The Herring Seller’s Apprentice Amazon UK
The Herring Seller’s Apprentice Amazon USA

A light-touch, impeccable, joyous outing. With red-herrings deliciously dangled.