Cornflower Books

Break of Day in the Trenches

    The darkness crumbles away.

It is the same old druid Time as ever,

Only a live thing leaps my hand,

A queer sardonic rat,

As I pull the parapet's poppy to stick behind my ear.

Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew

Your cosmopolitan sympathies.

Now you have touched this English hand

You will do the same to a German

Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure

To cross the sleeping green between.

It seems you inwardly grin as you pass

Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,

Less chanced than you for life,

Bonds to the whims of murder,

Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,

The torn fields of France.

What do you see in our eyes

At the shrieking iron and flame

Hurled through still heavens?

What quaver - what heart aghast?

Poppies whose roots are in man's veins

Drop, and are ever dropping:

But mine in my ear is safe -

Just a little white with dust.

Isaac Rosenberg (25th. November 1890 - 1st. April 1918)

 

There is a brief commentary on the poem here.

Saints of the Shadow Bible

   

    Mr. Cornflower writes:-

    John Rebus, the gritty Edinburgh detective hero of Ian Rankin's superb series of crime novels, has been ageing 'in real time' ever since the first book appeared in 1987. As a lifetime of cigarettes, booze and Scottish junk food take an increasing toll on his raddled body, Rankin has had to show a great deal of ingenuity in explaining how the grizzled old soak, against all the odds, has managed to cling on in various shady corners of a police force increasingly intolerant of the old ways.

    The latest book, Saints of the Shadow Bible, plays deftly with the theme of old against new, as Rebus finds himself fighting two battles: to solve a series of crimes involving leading figures on both sides of 2014's independence vote, while at the same time playing a double role as part of an investigation into police brutality and corruption in the early 1980s, in which he was - and is - uncomfortably implicated. As always the pace is sharp, the plotting deft, and the evocation of place and atmosphere brilliant.

Out in paperback - Motherland

    Out today is the paperback edition of Motherland by William Nicholson, and as it's one of my top novels of the year so far, I wanted to shout about it a bit more, so here's what I had to say back in March:

 

    2012. Alice Dickinson - whom readers first encountered in The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life - goes to France to meet the grandmother who has only just learned of Alice's existence. "You come from a long line of mistakes," Pamela Avenell tells her, "and one true love story".

    It's that love story which is at the heart of William Nicholson's superb new novel, a book whose characters link it to the loose Sussex trilogy - The Secret Intensity ..., All the Hopeful Lovers and The Golden Hour - but which also stands alone. It's a masterly piece of work from a writer whose gifts include an unsurpassed ear for dialogue, a fluency in the telling of a story which keeps the reader turning the page while yet wanting to linger in and savour the moment, and an empathic insight into the hearts and minds of each of his characters. You can tell that I loved every word of it.

    In 1942, Kitty, an army driver stationed in Sussex, meets Ed, a Royal Marine Commando, and his best friend Larry, a liaison officer attached to Canadian Army Combined Operations. Kitty falls in love with Ed, but both Ed and Larry fall in love with her - sanguine, accepting Larry wishes his rival well, and then the two men take part in Operation Jubilee, the catastrophic Dieppe Raid - in which the casualty rate was almost 70% - and Fate plays her hand.

    Setting the book in England during the Second World War and in India shortly after it, William Nicholson uses real events to test his characters and real people to play opposite them. It's a winning combination, never stilted or contrived, but plausible and convincing, and in his Author's Note he quotes his sources and acknowledges his debt to the work of his wife, the social historian Virginia Nicholson, and in particular to her book Millions Like Us: Women's Lives in the Second World War.

    If you're not already acquainted with William Nicholson's work, don't lose a moment, and read him at the earliest opportunity - he is that good.

What to look out for

    OUP have brought out a centenary edition of Alain-Fournier's The Lost Domain: Le Grand Meaulnes translated by Frank Davison and with an introduction by Hermione Lee, and you can see Dame Hermione talk briefly about the book here. What she says is very interesting, especially in the light of our CBG discussion on the book; had I not already read it, her summing up would draw me in.

    This leads me to wonder whether there is not a place for the equivalent of a set of signposts at the beginning of certain books - in addition to the conventional introduction which I always read after the text as it so often gives away crucial parts of the plot - more a 'what to look out for', a pointer towards key themes, stylistic quirks, and so on, which would inform your reading, as Hermione Lee does in her short video, with the detailed analysis and contextual exposition and comment being left for later.

Handpicked books delivered to your door

   

    May I point you in the direction of The Glenogle & Bell Book Company, a new venture just launched by Vanessa and Malcolm Robertson - formerly of The Edinburgh Bookshop - by which you can take out a monthly subscription to have specially selected books delivered to you, or to a friend as a gift. The company are offering a wide range of packages for all ages, interests and tastes, and these will be further customised to ensure that the recipient gets something special every month. Read Vanessa's blog for more information, and have a look at the packages themselves - I'm sure that given the Robertsons' background in publishing and bookselling they will contain delights aplenty (and I can't say I'm not tempted myself!).

Books do furnish a ...

... church!

    This is Waanders in de Broeren, a bookshop in a fifteenth century church in Zwolle in The Netherlands. There are many more pictures and architectural details here, and you'll see there that the designers were, appropriately, inspired by the work of Dom Hans van der Laan, the Benedictine monk and architect. Isn't it beautiful?

Bargains and bookshops

   

    Today's bargains in Kindle books include three of my favourites from last year: in non-fiction, Kate Summerscale's Mrs Robinson's Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady (post here with a link to pictures of some of the book's locations), and in fiction, The Messenger of Athens the first of Anne Zouroudi's Mysteries of the Greek Detective series (post here), and Suzanne Joinson's A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar (post here, and interview with Suzy here).

    I've also snapped up my first Rachel Hore novel, The Silent Tide, on the strength of Margaret's recommendation.

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    It's not just e-books I've been buying, though, for I was in the St. Andrews branch of Waterstones for a little Christmas shopping earlier in the week, and the young man who served me was so pleasant he deserves a mention (though unfortunately I don't know his name), but it's that sort of service that draws a customer back, don't you think?

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    Diversification is a feature of many bookshops these days, and Blackwell's Oxford has another string to its bow by virtue of its walking tours. We went on the Inklings tour recently and enjoyed it very much, and I see that from tomorrow they are offering their Christmas Literary Walking Tour which includes a glass of mulled wine in the ancient inn in which Shakespeare stayed. I'll be back in Oxford soon, and while I won't manage to fit in the tour, I shall certainly pop into the shop and make up for the limited browsing/buying time on my last visit.

Penelope Lively on the novel as 'satisfactory whole'

 

    "In a novel, the narrative moves from start to finish, from beginning to end. But within that framework time can be juggled, treated with careless disregard - the story can progress, can dip backwards, fold up, expand. What matters is the satisfactory whole defined by Frank Kermode: 'All such plotting presupposes and requires that an end will bestow upon the whole duration and meaning.' For a novel to work, you want to come away from reading it with the sense that everything has gathered towards a convincing conclusion - not one that necessarily ties up every loose end, but one that feels an integral part of what has gone before. It must make sense of the space between the beginning and the end. You start reading a novel with no idea where this thing is going to go; you should finish it feeling that it could have gone no other way.

    The novelist would like the writing process to be thus; it is not - or at least not for me. I do need to have a good idea where the thing is going - I won't have started at all until a notebook is full of ideas and instructions to myself. And I will have achieved the finishing line only after pursuing various options, wondering if this would work better than that. The reader should have an easy ride at the expense of the writer's accumulated hours of inspiration and rejection and certainty and doubt."

   From Ammonites and Leaping Fish: A Life in Time by Penelope Lively.

   See also Robertson Davies on this subject.

Past Perfect: Penelope Fitzgerald

   

    Ahead of publication of Hermione Lee's Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life, do listen if you can to Radio 4's Past Perfect in which literary historian Michael Alexander assesses the much-admired novelist whose works are perhaps not as widely read as they should be. He highlights the modesty and economy of her style, and alongside her biographer, her daughter, and Julian Barnes, considers what makes Penelope Fitzgerald's books so distinctive and distinguished.

Cornflower Book Group - The Shooting Party

 

    Exactly one hundred years on from the events of the novel, we look back to the period in which Isabel Colegate's The Shooting Party is set - the Edwardian era immediately before the First World War - with an even greater sense of perspective than that summed up so eloquently in the book's opening passage.

 

    In the light of what we know was to come, the book is a sharply delineated commentary on its time. Its focus is narrow - a small group of guests gathered at Sir Randolph Nettleby's Oxfordshire estate for the most important shooting party of the season, on the last weekend in October 1913 - and yet through that prism it shows much. Historic and impending social and societal change, attitudes, beliefs and mores, all are there in the background, almost as allegorical tapestries adorning a wall, in front of which is played out the central drama, that of a sporting rivalry which leads to a death.

    Precise, evocative, economical and controlled, it places vivid pen-portraits of its major characters within the narrative and then balances them in the final few pages with equally brief but nonetheless full and fitting accounts of what was to become of them in the years ahead. There's more to that than just a simple tying up of loose ends, for an important subtext is that of legacy - in the widest sense, what will be left and to whom. Sir Randolph is preoccupied with the decline of the rural way of life and of estates such as his own on which so many people rely for their livelihood; Lionel Stephens, barrister and romantic idealist, looks to war or some other "great trial" as a cleansing force, one that would rid society of its baser habits and make for a better world. Bob Lilburn and Gilbert Hartlip, men of lesser conscience, are more concerned with form and self and reputation; and then there's Tom Harker, poacher turned if not gamekeeper then beater, a fulcrum of sorts for the plot, Cornelius Cardew, the outsider, and his proselytising, Dan Glass and his scholarly ambitions, even young Osbert and his concern for his duck; all, in their way, are spokes in a wheel, even though some question their purpose.

    There were some lovely lines such as the Downton-esque, "He is the eldest son, and there is coal beneath the Park," and "... he was a good gardener and good gardeners were known to be on the despotic side", also the references to Olivia's reading, including "frivolous novels" such as the works of E.F. Benson; but one of the most telling, I think, was again to do with Olivia when she and Cicely and Aline are following the guns and she feels an unexpected and unexplained sense of excitement and in noticing every detail of her companions and of their progress "to the front line" wonders, "are we really all so beautiful and brave, or do we just think we are?".

    How did you find the book - too slow and studied, or a perfect portrait of a time and place?

    Did you feel its prefiguring of the slaughter to come was too obvious, or was that point well-stated?

    What of the mix of characters - were any too stereotypical, did you think?

    Have you read anything else by Isabel Colegate, and on the basis of The Shooting Party, would you seek out her other novels now?

    Any more impressions, thoughts, likes and dislikes?

 

The 'Books and Cakes' post for The Shooting Party is here.

Age-old stories

    "A faun carrying an umbrella; a hobbit who lives in a hole; a mysterious name - Lyra; an ill-treated schoolboy with a scar and a secret. Children's fantasies may be said in some sense to begin with resonant images - certainly they often do so in the authors' myths of origins. However, they also begin in an author's reading practices, in his or her own experiences, in the influences which, acknowledged or not, shape and articulate their own vision and help define what it is and, sometimes more importantly, what it is not."

    That's the opening of the chapter 'The magical Middle Ages in children's fantasy literature' by David Clark, from Magical Tales: Myth, Legend and Enchantment in Children's Books, a book which I am finding quite fascinating and which is leading me off down all sorts of highways and byeways, remembering books and stories I read as a child, discovering others I haven't read yet and very much want to; it's a many-branched signpost, and it provides a clear illustration - if one were needed - of the cross-pollination of ideas, of how an 'old story' can by re-interpretation become something new, and of how the chain of influence and inspiration stretches from folklore, myth and legend, through the earliest written literature to that of the present day.

Books in brief: Black Sheep

    'The novella is harder to write [than a novel] because there's no hiding place."

    That's Susan Hill talking about the form which "demands discipline", and you can hear what else she had to say about it on Monday's edition of Front Row.

    She talks about every idea "which comes whole into [the writer's] head" having its own shape and size, and she is adept at handling her material, whether it's a long or a short form that it dictates; in her latest book, Black Sheep, she shows that skill once again, producing a masterpiece of economy and control.

    In only 130 or so pages, she presents a community with its social hierarchy, its customs, mores, and history, and a family - a focus for external events and internal struggles. There isn't a superfluous word, an unnecessary scene, and as in the superb A Kind Man (brief post on it here), Susan Hill tells an affecting story made all the sharper and more memorable by that very spareness.

Book of the day - This is the Story of a Happy Marriage

    "This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage is a wide-ranging and deeply personal combination of essay and memoir. Here, Ann Patchett shares entertaining and moving stories about her tumultuous childhood, her painful early divorce, the excitement of selling her first book, driving a Winnebago from Montana to Yellowstone National Park, her joyous discovery of opera, scaling a six-foot wall in order to join the Los Angeles Police Department, the gradual loss of her beloved grandmother, starting her own bookshop in Nashville, her love for her very special dog and, of course, her eventual happy marriage.

    The book overflows with close observation and emotional wisdom and [its stories] are told with wit, honesty and irresistible warmth."

    I said on Friday that I was reading too many books just now, but when this one arrived next morning I almost plunged in right away, so keen am I to read it, but in the end I exercised some restraint. I'm a fan of Ann Patchett's, of her fiction (see these posts on State of Wonder and Bel Canto), of her book posts on her own bookshop blog, and of the essays of hers I've read here and there, including The Getaway Car, her "practical memoir about writing and life", and The Bookshop Strikes Back, both of which have been included in this collection. She's so eloquent, warm, witty, far-sighted, I find her a joy to read, and I'm sure this book will be just that.

Bargains

     

    One of today's Kindle Daily Deals is James Runcie's Sidney Chambers and The Shadow of Death, the first in his Grantchester Mysteries series. "I am completely smitten," I said when I read the book last year - you can find the full post here, something of the background to the novel here, and a post on the second in the series here.

    William Nicholson is a writer I admire greatly, and his The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life hooked me from the off, so I've just snapped up the two 'loose sequels', All the Hopeful Lovers and The Golden Hour, at a mere 56p each in the Quercus e-book sale.

    Lastly today, another Quercus bargain, Island of Wings by Karin Altenberg. This elegant novel is based on real events and real people, and is set on the remote Scottish island of St. Kilda in the 1830s - there's a post on it here.

Friday reads (x 4)

   

    I have too many books on the go at the moment, but my justification is that they are all good ones and they all fulfil a different reading function.

    Elizabeth Gilbert's lush 500-pager The Signature of All Things is balanced by the quiet observation of Sue Gee's new novel Coming Home, while for non-fiction I've got the visual pleasures of Virginia Woolf's Garden by Caroline Zoob (just out this week), and some mental stimulation from Magical Tales: Myth, Legend and Enchantment in Children's Books edited by Carolyne Larrington and Diane Purkiss, which accompanies the Magical Books exhibition I saw in Oxford last month.

    How about you? What are you reading this weekend? Multiple books, or strictly one at a time?

Norman Geras

    Very sad news this morning of the death of Norman Geras, academic, writer, author of the widely read and much admired Normblog. My thoughts are with Adèle and their daughters Sophie and Jenny.

The long and winding road

 

    Much has been made of the length of Eleanor Catton's Man Booker Prize-winning Victorian sensation novel The Luminaries, and at 832 pages it is by any standards long, but why - for that reason alone - would anyone baulk at reading it?

    I ask because I've seen various comments on this and other long books along the lines of "I couldn't read a book that long". Granted, if a book is boring, poorly written, distasteful, of no intrinsic interest, and so on, the reader is not going to stick with it beyond 50 or 100 pages, never mind 800, but if it is none of the above but instead is gripping, beautifully crafted, mysterious ... why wouldn't you wish to continue and stay the course?

    Clearly, if you had to read a long book for a deadline of some sort, to discuss at a book group, say, the limited reading time at your disposal might make it impossible, but under no such pressure, why would you not just settle down and enjoy the ride?

    If you are someone who instinctively passes over long books in favour of short ones, please do tell us why. Is it that you crave variety such as a constantly changing literary landscape, a wide range of voices, difference in pace and rhythm, and a fuller colour palate than that which one book read over what is necessarily a long period might offer? And conversely, if you're drawn to long books over shorter ones, can you explain their essential charm?

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    For those who are interested in such things, here is an article by one of this year's Man Booker judges on the judging process, and regarding another long book, Donna Tartt's third novel The Goldfinch (784 pages) is out soon, and here she is talking about it with Kirsty Wark on The Review Show.

The Man Booker Prize 2013

    The winner of this year's Man Booker Prize is The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton, praised by Robert Macfarlane, chair of the judges, as "a novel of the New Zealand gold rush which slowly but deeply staked a claim upon us ... as intricately structured as an orrery. It requires a huge investment of time from the reader, but the dividends it offers are astronomical."

    Congratulations to Eleanor Catton. I went to her event at this year's Edinburgh International Book Festival (she was speaking along with Hannah Kent, author of the acclaimed Burial Rites), and I've written it up here; as you'll see there, I was enormously impressed by her novel, which I summed up in a review for The Good Book Guide: "highly original, meticulously constructed, thematically convincing, a richly evocative mystery".

    The other shortlisted books were

We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo

Harvest by Jim Crace

The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín

To the writing lodge

    "[Tomorrow I] shall smell a red rose; shall gently surge across the lawn (I move as if I carried a basket of eggs on my head), light a cigarette, take my writing board on my knee; and let myself down, like a diver, very cautiously into the last sentence I wrote yesterday."

    Virginia Woolf, as quoted by Caroline Zoob in Virginia Woolf's Garden: The Story of the Garden at Monk's House.

    Of her desk, above, Virginia said, "It is not an ordinary desk, not such a desk as you might buy in London or Edinburgh you see in anybodies [sic] house when you go to lunch; this desk is a sympathetic one, full of character; trusty, discreet, very reserved."

Miscellaneous literary links

    I'd rather like to sample Jardins d'Écrivains range of 'literary fragrances', from Edith Wharton bath salts to Brontë candles or Woolfian eau de parfum ... Londoners can find them at Bloom Perfumery.

 

Here is a book club with a difference - it's a lucky dip: The Bookshop in Wigtown have a Random Book Club through which you'll get a hand-picked book a month but you won't know what it is until it arrives. Leave your literary comfort zone, "discover treasures you never even knew existed and bring the thrill of browsing dusty shelves right to your doorstep." The link above will give you full details.

 

 

    Tuesday's edition of Radio 4's A Good Read featured two novels the Cornflower Book Group has read and enjoyed greatly: J.L. Carr's A Month in the Country (post on it here) and Dodie Smith's I Capture The Castle (post here). Harriett Gilbert's guests were hotelier Alex Polizzi and writer Peter Robinson, and the programme is available as a podcast and on iPlayer.