Cornflower Books

Can you help?

     I've got a slightly unusual request today: can you recommend a book suitable for being read to someone who is in hospital and unable to read for themselves? I won't go into details except to say that the patient is an older lady, but I think what is required is something light, pleasant, easy to listen to, but diverting nonetheless. Any suggestions?

Later: thankyou for all the excellent comments here - you've come up with so many good things to choose from, and I'll pass them on to the person who'll be doing the reading. My thanks again.

Good lines: the 1950s high street

     "The main street of Fetherhoughton was known to the inhabitants as Upstreet: 'I am going Upstreet,' they would say, 'to the Co-op drapers.' It was not unprosperous. Behind window displays of tinned salmon, grocers stood ready at their bacon slicers. Besides the Co-op draper, the Co-op general store, the Co-op butcher, the Co-op shoe shop and the Co-op baker, there was Madame Hilda, Modes; and there was a hairdresser who took the young women into private cubicles, segregated them with plastic curtains and gave them Permanent Waves."

From Fludd by Hilary Mantel.

Of Redstreaks, Stubbards and a Barn Door

      1672 and the apple country of the west of England; the effects of the English Civil War are still felt, but the events of twenty years earlier have little direct meaning for young Jonathan Dymond as he travels the villages with his cider press, following the harvest and giving service where apple stores have no press of their own.

     That's the setting for Maria McCann's The Wilding, a story of home truths, family secrets and loss of innocence that sees the naive Jonathan, weak of will but good-hearted, come up against his cruel Aunt Harriet, "a Cromwell in petticoats", "so respectable and righteous and ... malevolent", as he involves himself in the lives of her servant Tamar and the mysterious Joan, all of them women whose history is not what it might seem.

    There is much to-ing and fro-ing in the book as Jonathan travels from his parents' home to his aunt's, his pretext the pressing of apples and the making of cider but his real aim the unravelling of the mystery which links his recently deceased uncle Robin, the withered Joan and the temptress Tamar. With each journey, it seems, comes a new step in Jonathan's descent from carefree youth to troubled adulthood, "from lust and waste to fear and deceit, all in the grand old way", and though this is all well-ordered and steady of pace, it feels at times too patt. But while its careful plotting and multiple matters of conscience can sometimes seem too neatly contrived, it is a very enjoyable read and should hold you throughout.

    There's a lot more that could be said about the novel: its allegorical references, its nicely understated period feel, its apple lore (Redstreaks and Stubbards are apple varieties and the Barn Door is the name given to a particular wilding, "a bastard tree, sprung up without planting"); I liked its fluency, its twists and its moral dilemmas, and were I nearer to Manchester, I'd certainly go to hear Maria McCann at this event at which she (and friend of Cornflower Books Adele Geras) will be speaking.

The top 20 UK literature blogs - October

    Wikio have kindly given me a preview of the latest UK literature blog rankings, and as always, I'm very pleased to be among such interesting people.

1   Charlie's Diary

2   Cornflower Books

3   Savidge Reads

4   The BookDepository.uk news feed

5   booktwo.org

6   Stuck In A Book

7   Reading Matters

8   Asylum

9   Pepys' Diary

10 dovegreyreader scribbles

11 Just William's Luck

12 A Don's Life - Times Online WBLG

13 An Awfully Big Blog Adventure

14 The Book Smugglers

15 A Common Reader . . .

16 Other Stories

17 The Good Books Blog

18 Harriet Devine's Blog

19 Elizabeth Baines

20 My Favourite Books

Ranking made by Wikio

Taking hold

 

     Adam Snow, a dealer in antiquarian books and manuscripts, takes a wrong turning while driving through deepest Sussex one evening and finds himself stopping at the gate of The White House in an effort to get directions. What he finds on walking up the drive is a deserted, half derelict house and a once grand, now wildly overgrown garden, but instead of turning back, Adam lingers a while in the Spring dusk, intrigued by the strange, sad place. All is still and quiet, nothing moves; but then Adam feels a small hand creep into his own.

    That is the first of a series of increasingly frightening experiences which Adam has in places as far apart as Oxford and a French monastery*, and when what had first felt like a benign presence becomes instead a powerful and threatening one, Adam tries to discover the history of The White House and what binds him to it.

    Susan Hill's The Small Hand is - typically of the author - economical, clear and straightforward. No words are wasted, no fancy devices used, it is well-dressed, mannerly story-telling at its best. It's a short book, but I found myself taking it at a measured pace - which I think it demands for its full effect - not wanting it to end, keen for the next exquisite episode. I've read two of Susan's earlier ghost stories, The Woman In Black and The Mist In The Mirror, and I recommend them thoroughly, but there was something about the contemporary setting of this latest book which made it all the more chilling. It's simply, beautifully done.

                                             ~~~~~

*If you don't already know the DVD Into Great Silence, a film about La Grande Chartreuse, I recommend it, too.

Resolutions revisited

    I may be being a bit mischievous here, reminding you of this, but as we are into the last quarter of the year I wondered how everyone was getting on with their reading plans and resolutions - remember this post? A fair few of you commented there telling us what you hoped to read over the coming months, so how have you got on? 

Team effort

    

     I was amused recently when a publisher offered to send books for me and my team to review, because of course there is no team, it's just me here, peddling away as fast as I can, and I'm not sure how I've given the impression that I have assistants!

     However, occasionally the good Mr. C. tosses together a few bons mots, seasons them with his boyish enthusiasm and general good humour and proffers a post, and he's done so today. Over the weekend he was engrossed in a crime novel, racing to the finish while the Ryder Cup was waterlogged, so I asked him for a small contribution to these pages and he's dashed off a little something for us - particularly for those for whom golden age detective fiction set in Scotland gets the pulse racing. I hadn't expected he'd be quite as brief as he's been, though I prize succinctness, and I've had to edit him slightly, too, as he made a mistake of fact (you can't get the staff these days....). Anyway, here's the man himself:

      “An eccentric, close-fisted laird, his beautiful niece and an evil retainer inhabit a rat-infested castle set in a wild, lonely part of Scotland still bitter with foray, feud and Covenant. After the unexpected arrival of some guests on Christmas Eve, the laird sways and topples from the tower, hurtling to death in the moat below. Murder? Or suicide in an attempt to incriminate the niece's lover? Or...?”

      Thus begins the blurb to Michael Innes’s Lament for a Maker, a copy of which has just fallen into our laps thanks to a most generous friend. Written in the late 1930s, it is a wonderfully arch and sophisticated exercise in exotic settings, 'colourful characters', intricate plotting and well-managed resolutions. Ranald Guthrie, the misanthropic, scholarly laird; Ewan Bell, the autodidact cobbler; Aljo Wedderburn, the sagacious Edinburgh lawyer and 'man of business'; 'daftie Tammas' the simpleton - they and the other protagonists burst fresh and living from the page. A real treat and a real incentive to read more Innes.

                                                       ~~~~~

       My thanks to my 'team', and should you want to know more about Michael Innes - or J.I.M. Stewart, to give him his real name - you'll find a post here.

Good lines: on apples and cider-making

 

     "What does Solomon say? 'Comfort me with apples.' Everything about them is kind and comforting: the mild eating apple, the sharp or bitter fruit that crushes to a miraculous sweetness, the homely apples, like tried and trusted friends, that serve all purposes. Comforting too is the steady rhythm of milling, the scent of the murc*, and the first tricklings of the must which Mother Nature, without need of hope or yeast, turns to purest crystal. The drink's virtue lies in its noble simplicty, and I wished everything in life could be as clear as the task I was about."

From The Wilding by Maria McCann.

 

*"The result of milling is a pulpy mixture of the solid and liquid parts of the fragmented apple, which, by definition, is know as ‘pomace’ (or ‘pummice’), or ‘murc’ in some areas." See this article.

A box of delights

    Last year we had Postcards from Penguin (I'm using mine as bookmarks and to send to friends), but now - and even better, I think - we have Postcards from Puffin: 100 Book Covers in One Box, and what favourites are among them! Too many to show individually but I've put a few together to give you an idea of what's included and there are more over here. Don't they bring back memories?

Watership Down, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Peepo ...

The Hobbit, Paddington, Swallows and Amazons ...

Roald Dahl, E. Nesbit, Frances Hodgson Burnett - I want to keep all of them so I think I'll have to buy a second set to give away.

     Last year, demand for the Penguin ones greatly exceeded supply; let's hope sufficient sets of the Puffins have been printed so everyone who wants them can get one.

Edited to add: re. Iris's comment on online availability, Amazon UK has them, as does The Book Depository, while Amazon US look to be getting them sometime.