Cornflower Books

Looking forward to reading ...

    

    ... Jacob's Room Has Too Many Books by Susan Hill, due out in October.

    "When we spend so much of our time immersed in books, who's to say where reading ends and living begins? The two are gloriously wedded, as Susan Hill shows.

    Considering everything from Edith Wharton's novels through Alan Bennett's diaries, Virginia Woolf and the writings of twelfth-century monk Aelred of Rievaulx, Susan Hill charts a year of her life through the books she has read, re-read or returned to the shelf. From beneath a shady tree, or the warmth of a kitchen, Hill reflects on what her reading throws up, from writing and writers to politics and religion, as well as the joy of dandies or the pleasure of watching geese cross a meadow.

    Full of wry observations and warm humour, as well as strong opinions freely aired, this is a rare and wonderful insight into the rich world of reading."

    For anyone who hasn't read Susan's earlier book Howards End is on the Landing, there's a post on it here.

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A novel for grown-up children

    "The Lark is a novel for grown-up children. It has many of the ingredients of E. Nesbit's children's fiction, starting with a magic spell, and moving on to secret doors, missing keys, dressing up, trespassing in shut-up houses, imprisonment, good-hearted burglars, small but dramatic injuries, mistaken identities, extraordinary coincidences, boats, trains, pet rabbits, cocoa, and small squabbles about nothing in particular. And it is bursting with the same energy, humour and sense of discovery that made Nesbit one of the best-selling children's authors of the early twentieth century. As in The Wouldbegoods, The House of Arden, Five Children and It, and The Railway Children, she revels in the power of fiction to make things turn out all right."

    Charlotte Moore, from her introduction to E. Nesbit's The Lark, my current reading.

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Lol

    "[...] Aunt calling to Aunt like mastodons bellowing across primeval swamps [...]"

    I've been reading The Inimitable Jeeves and laughing out loud. Trying to analyse PGW's brilliance, 'all' I can come up with is his perfect verbal timing and a gift for words which amounts to a personal thesaurus of beautifully expressive, inventive substitutes for the commonplace. As I said here, thank goodness for smiley people who write cheery books.

Done and dusted

   

    You may well have seen the news that the long-awaited first part of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials 'equel', as he terms it - The Book of Dust - is due for release in October. I heard the author talk at the Oxford Literary Festival a couple of years ago and appetites were whetted.

    I'm minded to re-read the first three books in preparation for the new one, and if I do I hope to be as spellbound as I was before.

In passing

   

    I mentioned The Thirteenth Tale in passing yesterday. Diane Setterfield's second novel, Bellman & Black, is currently available for Kindle at £1.99, and it's very much worth reading, as you'll see here.

What there is to say we have said

 

    A final few words on What there is to say we have said.

    I mentioned in that earlier post that I was reading this collection of letters "with great enjoyment, delighting in being in the company of two such lovely, eloquent, interesting people", and that stood throughout the book.

    Eudora Welty and William Maxwell corresponded for fifty years, their relationship initially a working one - besides being an acclaimed novelist in his own right, William Maxwell was Eudora Welty's editor at The New Yorker - developing into a close, sustaining, supportive friendship which lasted to the end of their lives. Miss Welty came to look upon Bill, his wife and daughters as almost a second family, and their shared joys, often in simple things, give their letters a warmth and gladness which make them such a pleasure to read.

    They discuss books, friends in the literary world, flowers - for both were keen gardeners and especially rose growers - their travels, and daily doings; early letters particularly include Bill's editorial advice which is very carefully considered (do editors these days typically go to such lengths, I wonder), while later ones applaud achievements, and discuss but do not dwell on age, ill health, and loss. Throughout the correspondence there is easy, genuine enthusiasm, keen observation and the writer's eye for telling detail, all coloured by a generous-hearted fellow feeling which means it's with reluctance that you turn the final page. I came away from the book feeling that both parties would have been very fine people to know, and that's saying a lot.

    If you love reading letters, if you enjoy literary memoirs, or if you simply like spending time in good company, keep an eye out for this book.

 

See also:-

    The Optimist's Daughter

    They Came Like Swallows

The two towers

    In the archives we have posts on writers' houses, their portraits, and even their dogs (and see also); today, a quick snap taken at lunch in The Scottish Restaurant* on Friday - prior to heading to this film - happens to show two towers with literary associations. In the foreground is the Scott Monument, the largest memorial to a writer anywhere in the world, and beyond it the clock tower of the Balmoral Hotel, famous now as the place in which J.K. Rowling completed Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The snow, atmospheric as it was, didn't settle.

 

*I recommend the Cullen Skink.

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No more twist

 

   

    Dearest Eudora - [...] we have had such a happy time in London [...] The weather like Rupert Brooke's poem. And all the squares full of flowering trees and daffodils. There were five huge rooms full of Turners at the Tate, a big Constable show, and the original drawings for The Tailor of Gloucester - which drove me half out of my mind with pleasure -

    Love from us both,

    Bill

   

    William Maxwell to Eudora Welty, April 20th., 1976, What there is to say we have said.

 

    I love William Maxwell's enthusiasm and sense of joy; I feel sure he would have applauded this review.

Good words

   

    In a shop today I discovered a charming little book, Other-Wordly: Words both Strange and Lovely from around the World by Yee-Lum Mak, illustrated by Kelsey Garrity-Riley.

    Here are a few of their good words -

    Brumous (adjective, English): of grey skies and winter days; filled with heavy clouds or fog; relating to winter or cold, sunless weather.

    Nefelibata (noun, Spanish & Portuguese): "cloud-walker"; one who lives in the clouds of their own imagination or dreams, or one who does not obey the conventions of society, literature, or art.

    Komorebi (noun, Japanese): the sunlight that filters through the leaves of the trees.

    Psithurism (noun, English): the sound of the wind through the trees.

The voice of artefacts

    "Don't think I am sending [this photograph of ] Virginia Woolf's house out as my Christmas card - this is just for you and one other and me. It is not when she was alive - it shows I think. But nobody was home, and so I thought it would be all right if I took a picture [...]"

    Eudora Welty to William Maxwell, December 21, 1955

    "The photograph of Virginia Woolf's house [in Rodmell] is so beautiful, so full of unanswered questions, and the fact that you took it makes it like a twosided gold coin [...]

    I don't know how to tell you how much the photograph of Rodmell means to me. I live so much by these magical properties - how much my life as a writer depends on them, the voice of artifacts."

    William Maxwell to Eudora Welty, late December, 1955; both extracts are from letters collected in What there is to say we have said, edited by Suzanne Marrs.

    If this remark is anything to go by, Mr. Maxwell was on the same wavelength as VW herself. (There's another short passage from that book here.)

    The picture of Monk's House is from the National Trust site.

Invisible signatures

   

    " [...] few letter writers can create the sort of prose Eudora and Bill did. Their letters are filled with vibrant, beautifully crafted expressions that beg to be quoted [...] The letters often possess their own storylike architecture and thematic motifs. They have circular and associative structures, moving between past and present as they develop and then return to the starting point. Such letters deserve to be read as literature, for they satisfy the two demands that Bill asserted we should make of an author: 'that his characters have the breath of life in them and that behind the interplay of action and ideas, perhaps at times even intruding on it, there is a presence we feel, often in the very first sentence.' For Bill, 'the greater the literary artist, the clearer our recognition is of the presence, the voice, the invisible signature of the mind in which the whole fancy took place originally.'

    William Maxwell and Eudora Welty both brought the 'breath of life' to their letters - letters that close with visible signatures but are pervaded by 'the invisible signatures of the mind'. The keen intellect, the sense of humour, the lack of self-absorption, the embracing of experience in all its complexity, the capacity for love, the generosity of spirit, and the ability to face loss and death - these constitute the invisible signatures of Welty and Maxwell, signatures that are as powerfully present in their letters as in their fiction."

    Suzanne Marrs, from her introduction to What there is to say we have said: the correspondence of Eudora Welty and William Maxwell.

    I'm reading this collection of letters with great enjoyment, delighting in being in the company of two such lovely, eloquent, interesting people.

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A horse, a horse

   

    Comments from Fran and Toffeeapple on yesterday's post brought to mind this excellent novel which you may not have come across.

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The Horseman

   

    

    Rural Devon, 1911. Life on Lord Prideaux's estate follows the pattern set by the seasons as they dictate the work on the land. Tim Pears' new novel The Horseman follows young Leo Sercombe, the carter's son, through one farming year and into the next, each episode recounted in short chapters which take the reader deep into the life of the valley.

    Silent, self-contained, the boy is an observer, noticing what others take for granted or never even see, but it is his affinity with horses that drives him, an empathy which goes far beyond any sentimental attachment. As his gifts become apparent, so they are spotted by Lord Prideaux himself, his groom, and even his lordship's headstrong daughter Lottie; and as a career path appears to open up to Leo, so an unlikely friendship develops.

    This is not a book for those wanting action, plot, or pace; instead, in a series of still life-like scenes of the village school, a pheasant shoot, a horse fair, the harvest, a lost world is revealed, brush stroke by slow brush stroke. The book has a distinctive rhythm, even at sentence level, and this checks one's progress through its pages, putting the reader in step with Leo's engagement with the natural world, matching his stride as he takes in every detail of his surroundings, every quirk and tic of the people amongst whom he has grown up.

    The book wouldn't be out of place shelved alongside Hardy, with Cider with Rosie, perhaps The Go-Between, and Country Boy. There's nothing rose-tinted about its depiction of a harsh life, a rigidly stratified society, unremitting physical labour, unwritten codes of conduct, but there's a great deal of beauty in it, and an acute sense of 'hearing' the world turn - albeit in a few quiet West Country acres - that gives it an integrity not found in lesser pieces.

    This book promises much for the remainder of the trilogy of which it's the first part; I'm sure Tim Pears will deliver.

    Jim Naughtie meets the author here.

Paper chase

 

   We were talking about Jane Austen the other day, and that reminded me of this post from 2011 (in case you haven't seen it).

Half way through ...

    

    ... and The Horseman by Tim Pears is every bit as good as I hoped it would be.

    More on it soon.

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A couple of bargains

   

    A quick scan of this month's special offers for Kindle has turned up a couple of books I can recommend.

    The Kashmir Shawl by Rosie Thomas was a favourite of mine back in 2011: "a beguiling book and a thoroughly good read" was my summing up then. There's a post on it here.

   

    Mentioned in passing quite a while ago was Monty and Sarah Don's The Jewel Garden, an account of the creation of a garden, and a lot more besides; well worth reading.

Quick links

    - Sue on Sue

    - In a bind

    - Imagine

    - Alibis in the Archive

    - Time present and time past

The Mysterious Miss Austen

   

    News today of a forthcoming exhibition at The Gallery, Winchester Discovery Centre, from 13th. May to 24th. July.

    The Mysterious Miss Austen marks the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen's death, and will feature around 80 items including paintings, illustrations, letters, clothing and other objects. Five portraits of the author (some in private collections) will come together under one roof for the very first time, while on loan from the British Library will be the manuscript of an alternative ending to Persuasion. Also on show will be Jane's silk pelisse (pictured), her purse, and her case for sewing materials.

    The exhibition is being curated by Louise West, former curator of Jane Austen’s House Museum and chair of the Jane Austen 200 working group, and Professor Kathryn Sutherland, a leading Austen scholar.

                                                ~~~~~

    Janeites who do not already know the Austen Only blog will find a wealth of information there.

    There's a scholarly article about the pelisse here.

    This post may be of some interest.

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Last words on rain

   

    "To watch rain pock the surface of a chalk stream, feel mizzle on the chill skin of your face or smell petrichor rising from summer-dry soil is to be baptised into a fuller, older, and more deeply felt relationship with the natural world."

From Rain: Four Walks in English Weather by Melissa Harrison.

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How to read more

    Michael Deacon offers this tip in today's Telegraph:

    "Keep a notepad by your bedside table. Each time you finish reading a book, write down its title, its author, and the date you finished it. Nothing else. Just title, author and date.

    [...] It barely even sounds like a tip at all. But the mere presence of the notepad is significant - because it guilt-trips you into reading more. A tiny, anxious part of your brain starts worrying about how you'll feel at the end of the year, when you open the notepad and see how little you've achieved. And so, to avoid this moment of shame, you read and read and read.

    I started keeping my notepad on the first of January, and have already finished three novels, two books about politics, and an autobiography. That's certainly more than I would in a normal month. Yet I'm no less busy at work. Fatherhood is no less demanding. The only difference is the arrival of the notepad, peering across at me like a suspicious teacher. Hastily I snatch up another novel, desperate to win the notepad's approval.

    Ah, the wonderful power of neurosis."