Cornflower Books

Anticipation

    With sufficient reading matter to keep me going for several months, I oughtn't to be looking at what is yet to be published, but I noticed a couple of books, due out in April and May respectively, which despite the reproachful piles I shall be very keen to read at the earliest opportunity.
    Above is the gorgeous cover of A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book, a "vivid, rich and moving saga" set in Edwardian England and moving to Paris, Munich and the Somme, (the link there gives all the details). For all those of us who loved Possession, this book sounds like a must-read, don't you think?  

 

     To another very fine writer, and William Fiennes' second book (after the memorable The Snow Geese) is The Music Room, "a tribute to place, memory and the permanence of love". This is another 'memoir' - for want of a better description - but this time concerning home (a seven hundred year-old moated castle) and family.

Are you anticipating any forthcoming publications? Simon S. certainly is!

Books and cakes - 13

 

 

     Although the Book Group posts will be here from now on, the Books and Cakes ones - the 'virtual afternoon tea' fare to go with the book we are reading  - will remain on the original site. If you pop over there you'll see what is by far the oddest recipe I've tried (and one that's not unrelated to the post below this)!

To be read - The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

     Here's another candidate for our gallery of striking and apt covers, but looks apart, Alan Bradley's very unusual crime novel grabbed my interest as soon as I opened it. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is the first in a series featuring Flavia de Luce, a precocious young heroine with an all-consuming interest in chemistry - particularly the making of poisons - and a wonderful Victorian laboratory in which to practise it.

      The book won the CWA 2007 Debut Dagger Award and is the opening volume of the Buckshaw Chronicles. There's more on it here, where you'll see its nostalgic interest has led it to be described as "Enid Blyton for adults".

     Flavia lives with her father and sisters in a huge old house in 1950s England; when she finds a body in the cucumber patch, the young sleuth is determined to investigate and as becomes apparent, she has many mysteries to solve: "Who was the man she heard her father arguing with after the [dead] snipe had been found [with the rare Penny Black impaled on its beak]? ..... Who or what is the Ulster Avenger? And, perhaps most peculiar of all, who took a slice of Mrs. Mullet's unspeakable custard pie that had been cooling by the kitchen window?" 

This sounds fresh, original and fun!

 

Cornflower Book Group 2009 : Volume 2

      The Cornflower Book Group will be discussing Anne Tyler's Breathing Lessons next Saturday (17th. Jan.), but after we've spent time in 1980s Baltimore we are off to Belle Epoque France for our next book, Alain-Fournier's The Lost Estate.
     Published in 1913 and known in some editions by its French title, Le Grand Meaulnes, or in other translations as The Land of Lost Content, or The Wanderer, this is a classic of French literature, "evocative .... unbearably moving ... poetically charged, expressive and deceptively simple [in style]".

    "When Meaulnes first arrives at the local school in Sologne, everyone is captivated by his good looks, daring and charisma. But when he disappears for several days, and returns with tales of a strange party at a mysterious house and a beautiful girl hidden within it, Meaulnes has been changed for ever. In his restless search for his Lost Estate and the happiness he found there, Meaulnes, observed by his loyal friend Francois, may risk losing everything he ever had."

     My usual availability checks (local libraries, Amazon US and UK, The Book Depository) suggest this is easily obtainable. If you'd prefer to read the French original, go ahead, though that may be slightly harder to come by. I hope, whatever the language, the book appeals enough for a good few of us to read it ready for discussion on this site on Saturday 14th. February; meanwhile you can find out a bit about the author here and here, and if you haven't read along with the group before but would like to join us, please do!

Running to read

  

 

     I was amused - and amazed - to see that Danielle reads while at the gym! (and by the way, I can thoroughly recommend her current gym book, Elizabeth Jane Howard's Slipstream: A Memoir), but her revelation leads me to ask if anyone else reads in an unusual place or situation.
     I do go to the gym (and that disclosure may surprise some who know me!) but I've never thought of trying to read there. However, there is a connection between reading and running in this household as Mr. C. very kindly brings me a cup of tea in bed early in the morning and leaves me to read while he goes for a run. I stay warm and snug under the duvet with a good book while he goes out in the cold and dark wearing trackies and a silly hat; chacun a son gout.....
     I only ever seem to read in ordinary places, and I never even read 'under the desk' when I was at school, so I hope the less conventional among you will, like Danielle, surprise us with your 'reading in/on/under...' or 'reading while doing....'

In the wilderness

 

     Having introduced this book the other day I went on to read it in double-quick time, so completely did it grip me from the start.

     As I mentioned, Gil Adamson's The Outlander is a first novel set in Canada in 1903, its main character the young Mary Boulton, referred to throughout as 'the widow'. Mary has murdered her husband and is now on the run from his twin brothers who are out for vengeance.

     What follows is an extraordinary story, as powerful for what is left unstated or alluded to as for what is described. The writing is sensitive, pensive almost, but within that there is pace and suspense and mysteries to unravel. As Mary runs from her hunters, so her past is teased out gradually, scenes glimpsed through her solitary remembering: "Unpopulated, these memories, but each one nonetheless saturated with human presence, like an unattended meal still steaming."
    Starving, ragged and half-mad, Mary's mind returns to the life she was brought up to: "sonatas and etudes; the art of a good menu; trousseaux ... Bedtime at nine. Toast cooling in its wire stand on the breakfast table. Alabaster skin and parasols."
     Fleeing ever deeper into the wilderness, she is helped along the way by other solitary souls and eccentrics who have turned their backs on their former lives. Eventually Mary finds sanctuary of sorts with the charismatic Rev. Bonnycastle in his skewed self-built house which "stood drunk against the plumb of the surrounding cedars" in a rough mining settlement, and life is bearable for a while with this kind man "who wore his scars on the outside and held a merry heart within. How much better that was than its opposite." But the contentment is not to last and Mary is soon at fate's mercy once more.
    The book is a compelling mixture of delicate, beautifully judged writing, historical detail and thrilling plot. One review I read suggested that its descriptive style was a hindrance to the story rather than a help; I disagree - its intricacies enrich it and make it vivid. It is quite superb.

    

And the winner is.....

.....Curzon!
    Deirdre was the 'first foot' on the new site (and I hope you were carrying a lump of coal when you posted your comment, Deirdre!) but it's Curzon whose name has been drawn out of the hat and who wins the prize. The book will be on its way soon.

Covering up

     We have talked before about the look of a book, often commenting on how poorly the cover conveys a true sense of the style and content within. It's a topic I want to come back to, particularly to highlight really lovely covers, and here's the first one.

  

  

Fitting its subject perfectly, and a beautiful natural image in its own right, this fern from the Science Photo Library provides the simple adornment for The Richness of Life, a collection of the science essays of Stephen Jay Gould.

     I'm dipping into the book just now and discovering that great writing - for it surely is that - makes the subject sing; and there speaks a non-scientist!

To be read - The Outlander

     As we've had a few flakes of snow here in Edinburgh today (quite unusual for us), here's an appropriate scene to head the first of what I hope will be many 'To be read' posts - a brief introduction to books which have arrived on my shelves and which I'll be reading, and writing about in greater depth, soon.

    If you can make out Michael Ondaatje's words there on the cover you'll see that in his opinion Gil Adamson's The Outlander is "a remarkable first novel". Ann Patchett describes it as "a page-turner of the highest order....a true wonder", and their views are borne out by the book's appearance on several prize lists.
    Here's where the story begins: "On a  moonlit night in 1903, a mysterious young woman flees alone across the Canadian wilderness, one quick step ahead of her pursuers. Mary Boulton is nineteen years old, half mad, and widowed - by her own hand."
    With this introduction sharpening my sense of anticipation, you can imagine my feelings when, on opening the parcel which ought to have contained this very promising-sounding novel, I discovered that there had been an error and what I'd actually been sent was this book!! Happily the mistake was quickly rectified, and having now waved away the Mint Julep and fastened on my snowshoes, I am where I shoud be, high in the mountains of Canada and engrossed in what looks like being an extraordinarily accomplished and involving novel. This is not one to put down, and I'm rushing back to it. More soon! 

Mapped out

    

     Permit me one more reference, for now, to the wonderful world of Mapp and Lucia, but this time to a new novel which fills a gap between two of E. F. Benson's. Taking on another author's characters is an immensely challenging undertaking - Tom Holt did it with Lucia in Wartime and Lucia Triumphant - but Guy Fraser-Sampson's Major Benjy comes highly recommended (read Simon's post about it here), and any Bensonites within striking distance of Oxford may like to hear Guy talk about the book at the Oxford Literary Festival on 1st. April. 

Soulmates

     I've read several novels recently which are the fruits of an enormous amount of research and background reading on the part of the writers, and on the whole such books are very satisfying. The balance has to be right, of course, too much plain fact can sound didactic, it has to be incorporated into the narrative appropriately and with ease, but when it's done well it adds another dimension to a story. James Long's Ferney is the latest of this clutch of books (The Behaviour of Moths and Our Horses in Egypt are others very much worth reading) and in it are centuries of English history glimpsed, as it were, through a gap in the curtains, but playing a major part in the story.
     The book begins with Mike and Gally Martin buying Bagstone Farm, a ramshackle old cottage in Somerset. Gally, plagued by nightmares and seemingly irrational fears, feels that this is the place for her to settle down in - it seems like 'home'. Mike, anxious to please his troubled young wife, agrees despite his many misgivings which are made all the more acute when the couple meet a neighbour, the apparently ageless and mysterious Ferney.
     What then transpires is an enthralling story, and one which James Long pulls off beautifully. The strange attraction of the house - for Gally at least -, the even more curious familiarity and ubiquity of Ferney are explained as an extraordinary love affair is described.

    Originally published in 1998 when it acquired a loyal and notable following, the book fell out of print until a few months ago. Re-issued now and with a sequel apparently in the offing, this is a clear candidate for the 'most enjoyable reads' list, and makes me want to visit its setting, the real West Country village of Pen Selwood, forthwith.

 

Riseholmer

 

 
     In the light of Sunday's post, and whether you are an old friend of E.F. Benson's Mapp and Lucia novels, or you wish to make their acquaintance, let me direct you with all decorous haste to this wonderful treasure house of Luciaphilia!

Reading resolutions

 

   

     There are mentions of new year reading resolutions on several blogs I've seen. People are joining challenges, electing to devote time to Victorian literature, say, or books in translation. Others may have determined to narrow or widen their reading as their inclination takes them, concentrating on a genre, an author, a period, or moving into unfamiliar territory by deliberately choosing something they have hitherto seen as not for them.

                                                                    

     I have no particular aims in mind as yet - other than the perennial one: to read more than I did last year - but what interests me is where the path takes me when I'm able to follow it without any particular direction or destination in mind. Serendipitous discoveries await, I hope! That said, there are trails begun which I want to follow further, and many recommendations I'd like to take up, but I'm fortunate in that a lot of good books do come my way through the reviewing I do so I never have to go far to find the next one.

   Have you made any reading resolutions? Do you plan to join a book group, learn to love Dickens, make more time for poetry or short stories? Or are you being disciplined in a different way such as not buying any more books until you've read a certain number you already own, or being 'monogamous' and getting through only one book at a time?

    Why ask? Our reading habits are fascinating, aren't they?

Luciaphilia

 

  

    For pure delight it is hard to beat E. F. Benson's Mapp and Lucia novels, and I've just been re-reading the second in the series, Lucia in London.

Her husband's aged aunt has died, leaving him her London house, and the prospect of queening it in the cosmopolitan capital is too delicious for Lucia to resist. She leaves her beloved Riseholme to its own devices and installs herself in Brompton Square, embarking on a hectic round of social climbing, all chronicled - to the chagrin of her erstwhile friends and neighbours - in the pages of the Evening Gazette by the pseudonymous 'Hermione'. 

Lucia is rightly described by her dear friend Georgie Pillson as "...a hypocrite....a poseuse, a sham and a snob....but she prevented your being dull", and when inevitably she returns to the simple life of her country home ("a centre of culture and art"), leaving behind her smart set with their Stravinski, their Auction Bridge and their too amusing surrealism, it is to galvanise the village community again, not least in deliverance from the commanding Lady Ambermere "whose wish was everybody else's pleasure".

    The books are comedies of manners, beautifully satirical, cleverly observed, but above all witty and fun. If you don't already know them I recommend you make their acquaintance without delay as they are such an amusement. I have the old Black Swan editions, but Penguin have collected them in two volumes and the first three in the series appear as Lucia Rising .

    "As fresh as paint," said Nancy Mitford of the books, "the characters are real and therefore timeless".

She was quite right. Au reservoir!

Reading aloud

 

       "Reading aloud has a chequered past, not always distinguished. Florence Nightingale loathed being read to, and said it was 'like lying on one's back with one's hands tied, and having liquid poured down one's throat'. But Charles Darwin enjoyed it a lot, especially if the novel contains 'some person whom one can thoroughly love, and if a pretty woman all the better'."

      That passage comes from Jenny Hartley's fascinating book Reading Groups (of which more anon), and in the context of groups, reading aloud is not unusual, it seems. One London group has been meeting for an hour every week for the last twenty-five years, and its members take turns to read aloud for twenty minutes, amounting to "a moment of pure enjoyment in a busy week".

     At home, though, is reading aloud much practised - that is, apart from reading to children - and if so, in what circumstances? My husband does read M.R. James to me as it works as an instant cure for occasional insomnia, but other than sharing a particularly choice quotation, reading is done silently here.

    There are always audiobooks, but do you listen to them only when reading would be impossible, such as while driving, or do you actively like to have a story told to you - with all that that involves in terms of interpretation, cadence, rhythm and so on, or do you much prefer just to read a book for yourself? Are you then a Nightingale or a Darwin?!

Poor old horse

 




 

    

     I came to Rosalind Belben's novel Our Horses in Egypt with high expectations - it won the
James Tait Black Prize for Fiction, I'd read excellent reviews and Mark's most interesting interview with the author  - and I've discovered that its reputation was well-deserved. What an achievement this book is, both in terms of style, content and tone; it could so easily have been off the mark, but it's spot on.

 

   

     The story is two-stranded: we follow the fate of Philomena, a hunter requisitioned by the Dorset Yeomanry, who serves in Egypt and Palestine until the end of the First World War but does not come home afterwards, and that of her former owner, the redoubtable Griselda Romney, who in 1922 decides to travel east, with her young daughter Amabel and Nanny in tow, to try to find her horse.
    I can't give away any more of the plot than that, but it is a gripping, completely unsentimental read, and a highly skilled combination of extremely well-researched but never intrusive fact and very plausible fiction. Its style is original: concise narrative, almost terse 'commentary', distinctive, pithy speech, but it's the ability of Rosalind Belben to put herself - and therefore the reader - in the horse's position which is so remarkable, and that is where the book's power lies.
    I'll digress for a moment to one reference I recognised which interested me - Amabel "read to Nanny, stumbling, 'Pilot', from 'Pilot and Other Stories'..." That's a 1916 book by Harry Plunket Greene, famous singer, fisherman and writer (you can see him here, and there's more in this post) of whom we have a recording which includes the very sad folk song "Poor old horse".
    But back to the book itself and its account of war (and life) from a horse's perspective, and then the plight of the animals left behind, something which so appalled Dorothy Brooke on her arrival in Egypt in 1930 that she set up this remarkable equine charity. You will learn much from the novel, and you'll be affected by it, but it is written with such emotional control that though you may remain dry-eyed you are unlikely to forget it.

Welcome!

    

Welcome to Cornflower Books.
    The fire is blazing bright, candlelight casts a soft glow, and were you all here at home with me I'd be serving champagne and canapes to toast the new site and its readers!
    If you look around you'll see that much of what's here is familiar as I've transferred many of the features from the original site. The links in the sidebar have been expanded to include more of my favourites; you'll notice publishers and literary publications have lists to themselves, and I expect to be adding more writers and readers soon.
   As it is Buy a Friend a Book week again, what better way to celebrate the launch of this site than to give away a copy of a favourite book. As ever, all you have to do to put your name in the hat is leave a comment on this post and tell us what you are reading as 2009 begins. You are welcome to join in whether you are a Cornflower regular or you've just happened upon us, and distance is no object as I can send the prize anywhere in the world. I'll draw the winner in a few days' time, but meanwhile, who is going to be Cornflower Books' 'first-foot', I wonder?
   Happy new year!