Cornflower Books

When owls do cry

  

    By day I've been reading a history of Edinburgh, but by night I've put aside the Scottish Reformation and the Enlightenment to turn to some 'escapist' fiction from the children's shelf, and very enjoyable it is.
   Angela McAllister's The Runaway is set in 1803. It is prefaced by a brief, stark scene on All Souls night five years earlier which sets the tone for what is to come. The runaway herself is Megan, fleeing home and an unexplained tragedy for which she blames herself, haunted by unrelenting dreams. She comes to a manor house in a semi-deserted village and there she is taken in by the strange, blind Marguerite, but Megan is puzzled and unnerved by the reclusive woman, the shuttered house and the two owls who appear to watch and know all that goes on.
    Megan then meets Tom, a boy apparently just passing through, but with some kind of undisclosed mission. Her loyalties are now divided: should she move on with Tom after his 'business' has been transacted at All Souls, or should she remain in Morne to care for Marguerite who needs her and warns her to stay clear of the boy. The scene is set for a dramatic climax.
    This is a very atmospheric book which yields its secrets gradually. I loved its mix of the supernatural and the mysterious, its remote, period setting, its references to Megan's power to heal which failed her at the crucial moment. I liked also its redemptive ending, though I'd be keen to know what happened 'next' as it finishes a touch too abruptly, but nevertheless I can recommend it highly.

Edited to add: a note on age group. Always difficult to say as children's interests and aptitudes at any given age can vary widely, but I'd give this to a 12-year-old and up, though I think I saw it somewhere in the 9+ category.

Good lines: ageing

    "... he was weathering well enough and it was far more dignified to let nature take its course, to weather in a National Trust sort of way."
From Corduroy Mansions by Alexander McCall Smith.

What do you read ....

... when you're too tired to read?
Not such a daft question as what I mean is, when you want something easy and undemanding, perhaps familiar and soothing, what do you choose?
Do you listen to a book on tape or on the radio?
Do you look at something with lots of pictures and few words?
Do you go for diaries, letters, short stories, i.e. literature in bite-size pieces?
Or do you have a particular old favourite which just can't be beaten when you've no mental energy for anything else?

As kingfishers catch fire

  I finished reading Rosie Alison's debut The Very Thought of You a few days ago and although I've since read some non-fiction and am near the end of another, shorter novel, it is still very much with me. It's a book which will, I think, depend upon the mood of the reader for its impact - for some, it won't work, but for others its pace, its tone, its particular emotional frequency will ensure it is enjoyed and remembered.
   It begins with the young Anna Sands being evacuated from London at the start of the war to the safety of a grand Yorkshire house which has become a boarding school for the duration. The house is home to Thomas Ashton, a former diplomat. Married to Elizabeth, he's now crippled after polio but has nevertheless achieved "a hard-won balance" and sees purpose in the use to which his ancestral home has been put and his own role within it. Elizabeth's equilibrium is not as sure and she seeks fulfilment, and as we see the couple through Anna's eyes as well as our own direct sight, we begin to understand how and why fissures develop.
   The book is a love story, however, (see the epigraph Late Fragment by Raymond Carver) and one described on different levels and with different facets. Crucial here is an unacknowledged intimacy, an "unspoken connection"; indeed, more than one, and this is very powerful. There are Jane Eyre-like strands, and an overall restraint which is carefully handled, and though often plangent, this is a good-hearted book whose mood has lustrous moments.
   I have two points of criticism, though neither detracted from what was a satisfying and very absorbing book. Within the story are a couple of real-life characters, and though their presence adds another dimension - and an interesting one at that - there is sometimes a slightly abrupt and obvious change of level from the fictional plot to accommodate them. Beyond that, I found some passages over-written, but far from being a gratuitous indulgence in prose on the part of the writer, I felt they were indicative of her deep and genuine involvement with her characters. As such - and I must stress this - none of it took away from the book's pull, and reading it was a real pleasure. I look forward to more from Rosie Alison.

To be read: Edinburgh writers

  

Coincidentally, I have three books by local writers to read this week, the first one of which is about the city itself.

I'm already well on with Michael Fry's Edinburgh, and a fascinating read it is, exploring the contrasts and paradoxes behind what Sir John Betjeman called "the most beautiful city in Europe", and charting its evolution from early settlement on the craggiest of its seven hills to elegant, enlightened, cultured capital.

   

Mentioned by Michael Fry in a passage on the way the city is represented and portrayed in contemporary literature is friend of Cornflower Books, Alexander McCall Smith. However, it's not one of his Edinburgh novels I shall be reading this week; Corduroy Mansions is set in London, and was originally available online in daily instalments (the author talks about it here). I read it then and shall be delighted to revisit it in book form now.

From a very well-known and prolific Edinburgh writer to a city author's first novel. Elaine di Rollo's A Proper Education for Girls was first published under the title The Peachgrowers' Almanac and follows Victorian twin sisters Lilian and Alice "on their very different paths to freedom".
One review describes it as " a generous, rollicking read... it harks back to the loving pastiche of Angela Carter and ... the camp Victoriana of Susanna Clarke and Michel Faber".
Intrigued? I am. More on this soon!

Cornflower Book Group - Tragedy at Law

 

     "Detective novels are a retreat into an imaginary past in which a small number of protagonists circle one another in an enclosed dream world. A cordon sanitaire of fantasy protects the characters from the clumsy, grubby reality of life around them; although there are plots, betrayals and killings, these seem far removed from the paranoia of one's own time, and readers have the satisfying certainty that the sleuth will resolve the puzzle and rout the murderer."
So writes Richard Davenport-Hines in The London Library Magazine in an article in which he looks at the "escapist pleasures" of the Library's detective fiction collection - which includes Cyril Hare's books.
    Hare's Tragedy at Law is the CBG's second taste of the crime novel, and is more austere and cleanly cut and less atmospheric and uninhibitedly 'luxuriant' than Margery Allingham's marvellous The Tiger in the Smoke, but nevertheless it is very enjoyable indeed. Hare was a barrister, and it's the vanished world of the judge and his retinue on circuit in the south of England during the early days of the war which is the setting for the various disturbing events which involve at their centre The Honourable Sir William Hereward Barber, Justice of the King's Bench Division. It is a lawyer's book, precise, considered, inward-looking, and it shows a healthy degree of pomposity-pricking self-awareness!
     P.D. James, as quoted on the cover, says it is "written with elegance and wit", and I agree. I loved the occasional authorial aside - "Her ladyship interjected a comment upon the Court of Criminal Appeal which, in deference to that august institution, may here be omitted" - and a professional interest in the setting and subject-matter was fully satisfied by both the minutiae and the greater scheme of the plot respectively, while both, I think, avoided excluding the layman.
    Returning to Richard Davenport-Hines' article, he describes Cyril Hare's books as "wise, elegant novels" and says, tantalisingly, that his An English Murder "has a brilliantly convincing motive for homicide that no novelist has used before or since"! But what of Tragedy at Law? I loved it, and I did guess 'who did it', which was cleverly, pleasingly plotted, I thought; how about you?

Like mother, like daughter

    Permit me a slight breaking of the 'being quiet on this subject' resolution. Here's Harriet discussing her current reading matter with me last night:

     "Henrietta is awesome! I love this book.
      Oh no, that means I'm turning into you!"

History books

 
   Three new arrivals, three historical novels from the children's lists, but all of them bound - I'm sure - to have adult appeal, too.

    Let's start with Mary Hoffman's Troubadour (and isn't that a beautiful, magical dust jacket to draw you to the book even before you've opened it?). This is a story of "persecution and poetry, love and war set in C13th. Southern France". Cathars, crusaders, a young woman fleeing a loveless, arranged marriage to become a minstrel herself, courtly love - it is all here!

    Sally Gardner's wonderful novel I, Coriander was a great hit with me a year or so ago, but I haven't read her since then. I can make up for that now as I have two of her books:
     The Red Necklace  is set in Paris in 1789 - "murder, magic, secrets - and the blade of the guillotine is still to fall. While the aristocracy dine, dance, gossip and gamble their way to disaster, the poor and starving dream of revolution. Enter Yann Margoza, destined to be a hero ..."
Amanda Craig says of it, "Like A Tale of Two Cities rewritten by Angela Carter...", while our own dear friend Adele Geras comments "... much brio and zing... a rattling good story"!

  
   In The Silver Blade we move to 1793 and the Reign of Terror, and Yann is helping desperate people to escape to England, where Sido, the girl her loves, waits to hear from him. This is " a thrilling tale of secrets, of locks and keys, of murder, revenge and romance."

So lots to enjoy here, and to share with the youngest member of the family (who is currently reading this!).

False notes

   A few days after finishing this book I'm still wondering about it, and trying to gauge its impact. Janice Y.K. Lee's novel The Piano Teacher is set in Hong Kong, the action moving between 1952, when it begins, and 1941 and subsequent years, to which it flashes back frequently. Newly married Claire Pendleton comes to the colony with her engineer husband, but it is soon clear that marriage was for her an escape route from her life at home in England and she wants more than the stolid Martin. She takes a job as a piano teacher to the daughter of a wealthy and well-connected Chinese couple, the Chens, and she meets their chauffeur, Will Truesdale.  Will is, however, more than a driver and his links to the Chens go back to pre-war days when all were part of a glittering, flighty and frivolous social set. As a relationship develops between Claire and Will, so we are told his story and that of the dreadful events of the early forties when Hong Kong was occupied by the Japanese.
     The book scores very highly on atmosphere, on detail, on local knowledge and on its depiction of the dark days - it is unflinching here, but this frankness is right in the context. What I found less convincing was the character of Claire herself - she's a device by which the author tells her tale, but in herself she is undeveloped, almost inconsequential, even, and that's where the book lost me because I was involved emotionally on a general but not on a particular level.
    What I mean by that is that I found the wartime scenes fascinating, illuminating, horrifying - important to know about - and as such, of course, one cares because what is being depicted really happened and real people suffered as the fictional ones are made to suffer. But I didn't care about Claire, or Will's glamorous Eurasian lover Trudy, I couldn't say that I came to know them, and this feeling of detachment (which applies to all the characters but Will, I think, and even then ....) let the book down for me. But that said, it's well-crafted and has much besides to recommend it, and I did read it with a lot of enjoyment.

Do read ...

.... this.
Then I'll be quiet on the subject for a while!

And the winner is ....

... Sian!
Thankyou to everyone who entered the draw and left a recommendation of a good book (that list  - follow the link there to see it - makes an excellent resource in its own right).
Sian's prize will be on its way to her soon.

Balancing the books

    We've talked before about the degree to which we use libraries, and our reasons for doing so. These can be altruistic: helping to keep the library open for others for whom buying books is not an option; practical: books we wish to read or consult may not be readily available in the shops, or we may lack space to shelve them at home; a matter of preference: we may want to try a book first and see whether it is one we'd like to own as well as to read.  All this is variously admirable, sensible and understandable, and I wouldn't presume to challenge it.
   However, I've seen two writers commenting recently on the 'borrowing rather than buying' trend for the simple reason that it affects not just their income  - though I'm told that there is little difference between their royalty on a heavily discounted paperback and what they'd get through the PLR scheme - but more importantly, their future career. Publishers, I learn, pay no heed to the number of times a book is borrowed from a library, all they are concerned with are the weekly sales that book achieves. If those are not high enough, they are less likely to take the author's next book, even though thousands may have read the previous one by borrowing it and it has had great appeal, to the point where readers are contacting the writer in droves and clamouring for their next.
   Closer to home, as I mentioned the other day, Bloomsbury are reportedly considering publishing the second of Joyce Dennys' Henrietta books, but that will depend on good sales of Henrietta's War - that's sales, not loans. Put bluntly, if we want the second book* we shall have to buy** the first.
    I have no axe to grind here, I'm not an author nor am I a bookseller, I use libraries and I buy books from all sources, but I am very interested in how the publishing industry works, in the market forces which drive it and in how that affects what we the consumers are offered to read. Given the current economic climate it is obvious that we might prefer or be obliged to borrow rather than buy a book, but it's worth considering how that can and does suppress sales, the consequences of which may never have occurred to us. By what means we acquire our reading matter becomes then, in terms of conscience, a question of balance.

*And to illustrate the point, this out of print book is not available in any of the City of Edinburgh libraries, and comes at a hefty price secondhand.

**I'm talking here about sales of new books, of course, as purchases from the charity shop, etc. don't count.

As time goes by

   Stefan Zweig's recently re-discovered novella Journey into the Past begins at Frankfurt railway station where two people meet to board the train to Heidelberg.
"And while the rattling wheels invisible below them rolled onward, into a future that each of them imagined differently, the thoughts of both returned in reverie to the past."
   The First World War has separated Ludwig from his unnamed lover, and they have been apart for nine years during which much has happened in each life. But now they meet again. Does anything other than the ghost of a feeling remain after all this time, and if so, is a future together a possible or a plausible one? Can the past support even the present?
    This is a slight book, but an intense one, subtle and highly charged. There is little more to the plot than I have already outlined, but it's a deceptively simple essay on nostalgia, obsession, and on whether a fragile love can be an enduring one; as such its profundity demands a second reading.
     This book was my introduction to Zweig so I can't comment on the broader scheme of things other than to say that my reading of it seems to place it in line with the rest of the canon (see this article on Zweig by Clive James, and another, comprehensive piece by Julie Kavanagh).

Hoarders vs. chuckers

   Talking to a friend who is currently going through a large and important collection of books with a view to disposing of some of them prompted me to revisit the subject of hoarding vs. chucking.
    We rarely get rid of books, just occasionally sending to the charity shop a duplicate or a book which was so far from my taste that I feel it must seek its rightful reader out in the world (see the first line quoted here!). But we have space to accommodate more books - though at the rate we acquire, we'll reach the tipping point soon - so we still have the luxury (?) of keeping what we want and letting go things which are less important.
    I know we've touched on this before, but it was a while ago and new readers may not have seen past posts, so which are you - a hoarder or a chucker? Are you ruthless, keeping only those books which are especial favourites, of sentimental value or difficult to replace, and if so, is that irrespective of the amount of space you currently have, or do you retain whatever you buy or are given regardless of 'merit'?
    In the latter category, here's an excerpt from an interview with the writer, critic and collector John Richardson from At Home with Books: ' "I worry about space, but I can't get rid of a book. They are all over the place, on chairs, on the floor, even in the car." Does he ever feel overwhelmed by his books? "I wouldn't mind that feeling," he says. "I've just inherited the library of a friend ... At the moment they are in the garage in boxes. But I could never turn away a book. Never." '

Speaking of collecting books, if you have room for another and haven't already entered the draw, please do so!

Cornflower Book Group 2009: Volume 8

  Are we fearless readers?
  Yes!
  Are we daunted by any writer's reputation?
  No!
  Shall we tackle a little bit of Dame Iris, then?
  Why not!
   When I mentioned Iris Murdoch the other day and saw that the response was largely favourable, I thought I'd go ahead and choose a book of hers for the CBG. After noting everyone's comments and searching out reviews here and there I've gone for the 1968 novel The Nice and the Good, and here's what it says on the back cover:
"A work of coruscating moral brilliance, The Nice and the Good revolves around a happily married couple, Kate and Octavian, and the friends of all ages attached to their house in Dorset. The novel deals with love in its many aspects, as embodied in a fascinating array of characters. The resonant sub plot involves murder and black magic in Whitehall, as the novel leads us through stress and terror to a profoundly joyous conclusion."
     The Harpers and Queen critic said, "Rich in people; in important episodes; rich especially in its enigmatic reflections on and attitudes toward love ... Looking back, one remembers the story as one long lovely summer afternoon, during which one did indeed love and learn and laugh and hold one's breath with suspense."
    We're doing Cyril Hare's Tragedy at Law next weekend, so after that let's dive in and take the wave and then dry off on the sand (shivery bite in hand, no doubt) and discuss The Nice and the Good on Saturday, 29th. August. Everyone welcome.
    Are you willing to take the plunge?!

Guernsey revisited

   I've been re-reading Mary Ann Shaffer's The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and I think I've enjoyed it even more the second time around. It was a highlight of last summer's books, and it might not have stood up to being revisited within a twelvemonth, but it has!
   Here are last year's thoughts on it, and I quoted a few good lines the other day. Interestingly, the book's heroine Juliet Ashton became famous for her "Izzy Bickerstaff goes to War" columns in The Spectator, and I wonder if  - in the writer's mind - they bore any similarity to Henrietta's letters in The Sketch?
   What else to say other than to recommend it most highly to anyone who has yet to read it: you are in for a real treat!

Good lines: social comment

    "A doily! On the Steinway!"
From The Piano Teacher by Janice J.K.Lee.

Book tombola

    

     Here we go again with another Buy a Friend a Book week draw.

     On offer as the prize is a favourite book of mine (a new copy, I hasten to add) and all you have to do to be in with a chance of winning it is to leave a comment on this post giving the name of a book you've read recently which you would recommend highly.
     Comments will stay open for the next few days, distance is no object as I can send the parcel anywhere in the world, and you are welcome to enter whether you are a regular visitor here or you've just stumbled upon us this minute.
     Please do have a go!