Cornflower Books

Home and family

 

    I've been reading Robert Sackville-West's book Inheritance: The Story of Knole and the Sackvilles, a portrait of his ancestral home and his far from ordinary family. Knole, near Sevenoaks in Kent, is a calendar house, having - allegedly - 365 rooms, 52 staircases and 7 courtyards spread over 4 acres, but the book is not so much a guide to a building or an account of its changing fabric over the centuries, more a description of a place and the people who, in all sorts of ways, have been bound to it and by it.

    The story begins in 1604 when Thomas Sackville, 1st. Earl of Dorset, acquired a lease on the property, and as generations of Sackvilles follow on down to the present day, and as the house expands and contracts, suffers periods of deterioration and renovation, of shuttered emptiness or the bustle of busy daily life, so the family which occupies it finds its fortunes rising and falling, its wealth conserved or squandered, its members withdrawing and looking inward or living in the public eye.

    Where I think the book really gets into its stride is in the late 1800s when Victoria, mother of Vita Sackville-West comes to Knole. The illegitimate daughter of Lionel, 2nd. Lord Sackville, and Pepita, a Spanish dancer, Victoria was brought up in Paris, attending a convent in the Rue Monceau [a neighbour of the Ephrussis]. A vibrant, strong-willed woman, she was to marry her cousin Lionel, 3rd. Lord Sackville, and have only one child, and she - Vita - who because of her sex would never inherit Knole, loved the house with a passion and 'crystallised' it as "Chevron" in her novel The Edwardians.

    Bypassing Vita, the estate went to her childless cousin Eddy (the model for Davey Warbeck in Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love), then again in an indirect line until the author inherited, his birth in 1958 the occasion for much rejoicing including the flying of the Sackville flag from Vita's tower at Sissinghurst.  Since 1946 the house (but not the park or the collections within the building) have belonged to the National Trust, and achieving the necessary balance as tenant/owner/custodian/host is something Robert Sackville-West must do daily. He says this book is his "stamp of territoriality" when his home is as much a public place as a private one. It's an eloquent, expressive mark-making, an appreciation of a remarkable heritage, and a fascinating insight into what connects one to a house. 

Have you read ... Ellis Peters?

 
    I know that the Brother Cadfael books by Ellis Peters are enormously popular, as was the television series based on them which starred Derek Jacobi, but I've not read the books or seen the programmes. The entry on the writer in 100 Must-Read Historical Novels by Nick Rennison caught my eye, though:

    "In a career that lasted more than fifty years, Edith Pargeter wrote dozens of crime novels, many of them set in the past ... some under pseudonyms, most notably Ellis Peters. Her greatest creation was the humane and sympathetic medieval monk Brother Cadfael who uses his knowledge of herbal medicines and his insights into human motivation to unravel the crimes that come regularly to trouble the town of Shrewsbury and its monastery ....   A Morbid Taste for Bones immediately established the monk as one of the most intriguing historical detectives and his character grew ever more complex as the series continued...The herbalist monk has genuine depth [and] a personal history - he was a soldier in the crusades before he took the cowl in middle age - and his character has been shaped by a knowledge of the world outside the abbey walls. Many more medieval detectives have flitted through the pages of historical mysteries since A Morbid Taste for Bones was published but none has ever really matched him."

    Have you read Ellis Peters?

Blethering

   It's too late in the day to engage the brain for anything serious, so let's just have a wee blether instead. Firstly, I'm delighted with the great response to The Bookshop - so many people have read it, enjoyed it and contributed to the discussion, and I know others who prefer not to make public their thoughts on the book have read it, too, and I hope gained from all the comments. I wish every book the CBG does turned out to be as popular and successful a choice!

    Our February book is, of course, Winifred Holtby's South Riding and I was amused, though not at all surprised, to see that the Virago Book Club are reading it, too; I'd love to think they got the idea here but I'm sure that's not so. If you sign up on their site, you'll be able to join in the discussion there, too.

    I should think lots of you will have got a Kindle or similar device since I wrote about mine, so how are you all getting on with them? What sort of books are you buying (or getting free)? I ask that because in an article in today's paper, Scott Pack makes the interesting point that many Kindle owners are fans of so-called "disposable fiction" - they read lots of crime or romance, say, and tend to send their books to the charity shop once they've read them, so the e-book format is perfect for them (cheap and no storage constraints); Pack contrasts that with those who buy more hardback fiction for keeping purposes.

   I said this was a blether of a post and in that vein, if you're on Twitter, you may be interested to follow the excellent publication Slightly Foxed tweeting as @Foxed Quarterly, while The London Library is doing a grand job of raising its profile in various ways including as @TheLondonLib. For a brief tour of the largest independent lending library in the world conducted by its president Sir Tom Stoppard, click here (is that some modern spelling of 'playwright' the Sky Arts Book Show page are going in for?!).

Arabian nights

 

    In her historical note at the end of Secret of the Sands, Sara Sheridan quotes Edith Wharton: "Slavish accuracy must necessarily reduce the novel to a piece of archaeological pedantry instead of a living image of the times." There's nothing dry and dusty about this book - except the Arabian desert in which it is set - instead, it's a rich and vibrant story whose strong factual basis has been imaginatively and very successfully interpreted so that as a piece of escapist historical fiction it's an excellent read.

    If you've loved Katie Hickman's The Aviary Gate (there's a post on it here) then I think you'd enjoy Secret of the Sands equally. Set in 1833, it follows a real figure, Lieutenant James Wellsted, whose posting with the British Navy to survey the coastline of the Arabian peninsula is, he hopes, a route to fame and fortune. As he submits an account of his travels to publisher John Murray in London, so events divert him from his planned course and he is sent into the interior on a mission to rescue two brother officers.

    While back in Britain slavery has been abolished, here in Oman it is big business, and by a strange twist of fate Wellsted finds himself the protector of Zena, an Abyssinian slave girl, and the travelling companion of the two ruthless men who captured her. What follows will be a test of loyalty, allegiance and ingenuity, an adventure and romance played out in the harshest conditions.

    I was drawn in by the book's easy, unselfconscious style which incorporates a mass of historical detail, the sensuous descriptive passages which vividly evoke its exotic setting, and its intriguing characters (Farida, the Irish wife of Ali Ibn Mudar, the Navy's agent in Muscat, is a particular star!). The plot has been very carefully constructed and nothing in terms of fact, motivation or situation has been overlooked, so it's a pleasingly complete piece and a thoroughly enjoyable book.

    When you're reading a writer for the first time the acid test of their work is whether you're then inclined to read more by them, so would I read another Sara Sheridan? Without doubt.

Dreams, awakenings, secrets, discoveries

     Four new books today, though one is already a big hit with me. From the left:

 - A lovely hardback copy of Deborah Harkness's A Discovery of Witches which I read in proof a couple of months ago. You may remember that I was greatly taken with the book (post here) and it featured among my books of the year, so if you've been anticipating its release your wait is almost over as it will be out very soon (I'm looking forward to the second in the series to see what happens next).

- Kim Edwards, author of The Memory Keeper's Daughter, has a new novel just out. The Lake of Dreams begins when, in a locked window seat in a rambling lakeside house, Lucy Jarratt discovers a cache of letters and objects which reveal a complex family history. From a suffragette to an artist with links to the art nouveau movement, these newly found people from the past will have an impact on Lucy's direction in the future.

- Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler is "a time-bending tale of manners, morals and the search for the perfect man"! Jane Mansfield, the daughter of a Regency gentleman, wakes one morning in present day Los Angeles and finds herself in the body of someone called Courtney Stone. Jane must quickly accustom herself to the strange modern world, but what she and Courtney do have in common is a love for the novels of Jane Austen. There are romantic entanglements and more in this "diverting romp".

- Exactly a year ago I wrote about Hector & the Search for Happiness by François Lelord which I found to be the perfect pick-me-up when one was needed. The second volume of Hector's journeys is now available, and in Hector & the Secrets of Love, our hero goes off in search of Professor Cormorant, a brilliant scientist who has disappeared with a pharmaceutical company's love potion formula! A "witty fable filled with thoughtful insights into how we find and keep love", this sounds like fun.

Running with the hare

  

     "I'd think, as the construction lights on the cranes came on at dusk, stretching deeper and deeper into Tokyo Bay, that I was becoming a sort of amanuensis and that I should probably record what [Iggie] said about Vienna before the First World War, sit at his elbow with a notebook. I never did. It seemed formal and inappropriate. It also seemed greedy: that's a good rich story, I'll have that. Anyway, I liked the way that repetition wears things smooth, and there was something of the river stone to Iggie's stories."

    That is Edmund de Waal looking back to time spent in Japan with his great uncle Ignace from whom he was eventually to inherit a collection of 264 netsuke, pieces which had been in his illustrious family for several generations. His memoir The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance traces the route the collection took from their acquisition in the Paris of the 1870s by Charles Ephrussi, a likely model for Proust's Swann, an art expert and collector who championed the Impressionists [there were items from the Ephrussi bequest in last summer's Impressionist Gardens exhibition] to Vienna c.1900 when Charles gave the pieces to his cousin Victor (de Waal's great-grandfather) as a wedding present. From elegant Parisian townhouse in the Rue Monceau to the vast Palais Ephrussi in the Austrian capital,

"The netsuke have moved from a world of Gustave Moreau ... to the world of a Dulac children's book in Vienna. They build their own echoes, they are part of those Sunday mornings' story-telling, part of The Arabian Nights, the travels of Sinbad the Sailor....They are locked into their vitrine, behind the dressing-room door, which is along the corridor and up the long stairs from the courtyard, which is behind the double oak doors with the porter waiting, which is in the fairytale castle of a Palais on a street that is part of The Thousand and One Nights."

    In following the collection, de Waal follows his family's story from its rise as grain merchants in Odessa, to extraordinary wealth as bankers and financiers with reputation and means to rival that of the Rothschilds, and then, as war changes everything, to persecution, relative poverty and death. It is an utterly compelling account, beautifully, sensitively written, moving and amazing. You can see a short video of Edmund de Waal talking about what lay behind the work here, but do read the book - it is marvellous.

Glittering prizes

   Just announced, the Costa Book of the Year 2010 is Jo Shapcott's Of Mutability - that's poetry winning two years in a row! 

   Also today, the South Bank Sky Arts Award for Literature has gone to Candia McWilliam for her memoir What to Look for in Winter.

Good lines: the slush pile, nineteenth century-style

     "John Murray is settled in his plush, canary drawing room and is in the humour for a day of amusement. There is little else to do, Friday or not, as it is November and it is raining too heavily to consider his habitual ride in Hyde Park or even an outing to the club. The park this afternoon will be nothing but a morass of mud, for the weather has been frightful for over a week now. Murray's desk is scattered with manuscripts though he has spent the last two days reading and discarding a very large pile of what has been sent to him. There seems to be rather a vogue at present for ladies writing poetry about the evils of slavery or worse - novels. Mr. Murray naturally deplores the institution of slavery and is a hearty proponent of emancipation, however, in all likelihood, he deplores the poetry and novels of ladies who espouse The Cause far more. Even the measured script of their handwriting sets his teeth on edge, for manuscripts written by a man, in his opinion, have more character. After subjecting himself to over two dozen attempts at capturing the spirit of the age this morning alone, he'd be hard pressed to make a choice between banning slavery and banning well-meaning ladies with any pretensions to literary prowess."

From Secret of the Sands by Sara Sheridan.

Rex quondam rexque futurus

    

 

          I'll just say straightaway that J.P. Buxton's I am the Blade is a cracking read! Amazon reviewers - and they include novelist and Times children's books critic Amanda Craig - are unanimous in giving it five stars, and I'd do the same. A re-telling of the Arthurian legend, this is historical fiction for older children and adults of any age. There's action and adventure enough to propel the plot along at a fair speed but there's also so much Dark Age detail there, so much fact and myth alike, and it's never forced and stilted but of a piece with the story. I was gripped right through and am now missing the book and the world it so deftly conjures.

    Its events taking place through one lunar phase and culminating in a dramatic scene on Easter day, it follows young Tog, a woodcutter's ward, who is given a strange deathbed message by his rough guardian and has to flee from a murdering stranger. As he travels through Cornwall in the direction of an island in a lake, so he teams up with a Breton boy and a Pictish girl, and they encounter other-worldly creatures as well as Saxon circus performers and the last Romans in Britain. But all the while Tog's destiny is governed by his possession of a strange sword, one that seems to be leading him into ever greater danger.

    Tog - real name Artognu, pronounced Arthnu - is, of course, Arthur, although he has no clue about his parentage and what lies before him, but while the legend of the sword in the stone is well known to most of us, this version is so fresh, so full of humour and keen intelligence that it's new and original and a joy to read. There's nothing arch or contrived here and there's a realism about the characters which will make them recognisable to readers of any age, and important to them - you will care what happens (and there are too many novels of which that can't be said). I mentioned that I was sorry to have reached the end of the book, but happily the next instalment of Tog's adventures, A Heartless Dark, came out earlier this month, so there's that to look forward to.

Briefly ...

- Following on from Monday's post, I'm delighted to hear from Millrace Books that they plan to bring out another Jane Duncan novel, My Friend Monica, in the Spring.

- Oxslip kindly told me about a free poetry app from the Poetry Foundation - follow that link to her site for more information - and as Burns Night approaches, fans of his poetry may like to know that there is a Burns app, too!

- The South Bank Sky Arts Awards will be decided in London this week, and from the list of nominees (follow that link and scroll down) I noticed Edmund de Waal's The Hare With Amber Eyes in the literature category. I've now read it and I can certainly see why it is getting all these plaudits.

- Aspiring writers of fiction may be interested in the five day creative writing course Finding the Plot which takes place at Oxford's Corpus Christi College in April and is part of The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival.

- Click here and scroll down to 'Memorable motto' and read about writer Jeremy Dyson's 'Shelf of Joy'. What a lovely idea!

Cornflower Book Group - The Bookshop

 

     This could be a short post as I'm tempted just to say, if you've read The Bookshop I hope you enjoyed it as thoroughly as I did (I thought it was wonderful) and if you haven't read it yet, do so with all speed!

     Florence Green decides "to take a step forward in middle age" and opens a bookshop in the small seaside town of Hardborough. She has to contend with undue influence and local hierearchies, petty rivalries and jealousies, a supernatural presence, and a clientele whose tastes run more to the Life of Queen Mary (it is 1959*) than to the modern novel, but then her decision to stock Nabokov's Lolita proves to be both a money-spinner and a further cause of her undoing.

    Wryly funny with moments of pure comedy - but also others of resigned regret, and exquisitely written with not a superfluous word nor an ill-chosen one, even the most slight of scenes and characters are beautifully drawn, and there are lines a-plenty worth quoting. From Milo North whose "fluid personality tested and stole into the weak places of others until it could settle down to its own advantage" to Violet Gamart who "from long habit .. rejected the idea that her husband might be necessary for anything", the "Mixed Infant", and the bookshop stock - "... a pile of novels which had the air, in their slightly worn jackets, of women on whom no one had ever made any demand", everything is just so, testament to how fine a writer Penelope Fitzgerald was.

    The novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1978 when Iris Murdoch's The Sea, the Sea won, though Penelope Fitzgerald did go on to win in 1979 with Offshore, but for me it's a miniature piece of perfection which goes straight on to my 'books of the year' longlist. 

    What did you think of it?

 

*Too early for Prince Charles's taste for cherry brandy, to which Florence and Mrs. Gipping refer, to have been made public, surely, but maybe the Hardborough ladies are gifted with prescience or have a friend  - Mrs. Gamart's nephew? - at court!

Friday reads

   

    From time to time we have "what are you reading? " posts here, and I like them because they give everyone the chance to say what they are currently reading and perhaps mention how they are getting on with it - it's a nice way of spreading the word about books of all kinds, which is what this site is all about.

    On both Twitter and Facebook there is a "Friday reads" meme/page/'thing' run by The Book Maven whereby again everyone just states what they are currently reading, so let's adopt that tag today and see what the Cornflower readership is reading.

    To get us going, my "Friday read" is I am the Blade by J.P. Buxton which I began last night - it grabbed me from the very first page and I'm loving it (I even took it to read in the bath)!

    What's yours?

The eye of the tiger

        

    Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, is quite the talking point on both sides of the Atlantic just now and it's not hard to see why. The author is Chinese American, the daughter of immigrant parents, and a professor of Law at Yale. Clearly an intensely driven person, she has channelled this powerful combination of high ambition and relentless hard work into the upbringing of her own two daughters, believing that "...Chinese parents have two things over their Western counterparts: (1) higher dreams for their children and (2) higher regard for their children in the sense of knowing how much they can take."

    Contentious? Yes. Opinionated? Without doubt. Respectful and tactful when it comes to other ways, other views? No.

    Amy Chua and her much more liberal, 'Western', husband Jed Rubenfeld decided to use the Chinese model of parenting for their daughters Sophia and Lulu. This requires absolute obedience and intense application from the child, their natural preferences ignored and over-ridden at every stage, and enormous involvement on the part of the parent. Schoolwork comes first with no grade lower than an A being acceptable and any slippage bringing disgrace on the family - to avoid this, tests are prepared for by long hours of rote learning, drilling and repetition. Sleepovers and play dates do not figure in the child's life, nor do computer games and after-school activities, but music does and Prof. Chua's daughters learn the piano and the violin in part to prevent them becoming "soft" and to guard against "decline...laziness and ... spoiledness". But this is no ordinary pattern of weekly lesson and daily practice with a view to sitting a few exams and playing in the school orchestra; the Chua/Rubenfeld family do things at another level. Top-class teachers are sought, involving whole weekends driving long distances to attend lessons. To support this, practice takes many hours a day, often going on into the night to prepare for an audition or recital, and there's no downtime on holidays as every vacation sees the violin being taken as hand luggage and arrangements made for the use of a piano at every hotel.  

     There are pay-offs, of course, but pitfalls, too, and what works well for one child does not necessarily suit another, and so while Sophia is mainly acquiescent, Lulu is not, and it is with her that the Chinese method's weaknesses are evident, and Chua must question what she is doing.

    I found this book fascinating and compelling. There were passages at which I gasped, so extreme are the lengths to which Amy Chua goes to 'ensure' success for her daughters. She is candid, self-aware and admits to a tendency to show off and overdo things (a little understatement there), and she strays into self-parody when she realises that - never mind the daughters for a moment - her dogs will only ever be 'ordinary' pets: "it is perfectly fine for most dogs not to have a profession or even any special skills", she says [do you hear that Mollie and Pippin? You're off the hook!]. That gives you a taste of the standards she sets for herself and her family - there is no let up, no lax behaviour, no taking things easy or accepting second best; achievement is all. What this says for the health of family life as a whole, for the emotional well-being of the girls, for the well-rounded upbringing we Westerners tend to believe is good is up for debate, and that debate will inevitably be a heated one. If you're looking for a provocative book, here it is!  

Subject matters

 

     Another 'reading habits' question for you today: are there any subjects which would tend to draw you to a book?

    I don't mean genre here, rather what the book's about - what it features. So, for example, if a blurb or a review tells you a novel has a particular setting - exotic, domestic, an English village, a Tuscan villa, etc., or a character with a certain job - a writer, an artist, a musician or something more unusual, or that it focuses on a house or the creation or restoration of a garden, say, would that alone (quite apart from who the writer is or how starry the reviews may be) tend to make you pick it up?

    The question is not as daft as it may sound, as subject matter, when translated to title or cover design, can be the very thing which gets the potential reader's interest. For instance, you might be drawn to 'gates into a garden' books like this one or this, or something with a bit of balustrade! Of course our reading tastes and interests often range widely, but if you can put them in a nutshell and say something like "I'll always go for a country house in 1930s England" or "...a storm-lashed beach in nineteenth century Cornwall where a tortured composer walks by night", I'd love to hear about it.

(The picture is from the cover of this book, and those gates combined with: "As darkness settles on a forgotten castle at the foot of the Carpathian mountains ..." made me buy it!).

Highland life

 

    I introduced Jane Duncan's novel My Friends the Miss Boyds the other day and gave a flavour of it on Saturday; now I've read the book I can tell you what a delight it is. Taking the form of a 'chronicle' written by Janet Sandison looking back to the events of her childhood (specifically when she was eight), it's an account of life in the Highlands at the end of the Great War. This is no sentimental, tartan and heather story, though; it's a warm and intelligent look at a vanished way of life.

    Janet lives with her extended family at Reachfar, a croft near the village of 'Achcraggan' in the Black Isle. Content much of the time with her own company or that of her dog, Fly, her uncle George or farmhand Tom, she runs errands for her grandmother, takes her turn with farm chores and works hard at school. The family's standing in the close-knit community means that they are highly respected and often looked to when help is sought, and when the Miss Boyds come to Achraggan, the Sandisons are indeed needed.

    The six spinster sisters from Inverness are the cause of a raised eyebrow or two in the village through their simpering, embarrassingly flirtatious ways, but when one of the younger Miss Boyds brings trouble on the house, things take a more serious turn.

    There are some great set-pieces and many passages which had me in stitches - the speech patterns and vocabulary ('deaved', 'half-yoking', 'fushionless', 'thrawn', 'spae-wife' - I'll translate if you want!) reminded me strongly of my grandmother who came from that part of the country and was just a little older than Janet was at the time the book's set; but it's also a poignant story, finely done and keenly observed. I loved the book and I hope that Millrace will re-issue more of Jane Duncan's novels.  

And the winner is ...

...Caroline S!

Caroline's name was drawn by means of the random number generator so she wins the hardback copy of Edmund de Waal's The Hare with Amber Eyes. Everyone else who entered may like to know that the paperback edition will be out in just a few days' time.

Rounding up

 

    By way of rounding up the week's posts:

  - if anyone else would like to throw their name in the hat to win a copy of Edmund de Waal's The Hare with Amber Eyes, please do so (just follow that link and leave a comment), and I'll draw the winner tomorrow.

 

  - from Friday's Four by four, I picked up Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and I can't put it down (a sharp intake of breath has been the response to more than one passage!)

 

  - following on from yesterday's quotation, do you not think that had Winston Churchill, in broadcasts to the nation, referred to Hitler as "that mannie Hitler", the war might have been over sooner than it was?!

Good lines: the wireless

 

    " 'This is my sound boxie that Janet gave me.' Tom told him the first time they met. 'It is a wonderful contrivance, if you'll be minding to get its battery from the garratch at the smiddy on Saturdays. It's a sort of engine, like. You would be knowing about it maybe?'

    'A little.' said Twice, who is an engineer by profession.

    'When you'll be turning this knobbie, you can hear the mannie as plain as if he was beside you, and him speaking in a roomie away down in London. It is a wonderful thing. But av coorse, only if you'll be using it for a good purpose. If a person will be using it for badness, like that mannie Hitler was doing, it is a very bad thing indeed. Being chust an engine, like, it has no more sense, and some of the capers and nonsense that will be coming out of it whiles, you chust would hardly believe.' "

From My Friends the Miss Boyds by Jane Duncan.

(Having been on the 'sound boxie' a few times myself, I hope I'm not responsible for any 'capers and nonsense'!).

Four by four

 

 

    Four authors, four new books you may like to hear about.

Helena McEwen is an artist as well as a writer, and her latest novel, Invisible River, is about Evie, a young woman who has left her Cornish home and her childhood behind her to study art in London. This passage is enough to draw me to the book:

"I squeeze the tubes of oil paint on to the palette, one by one. I love the colours and their secret singing. Aureolin, a gentle golden yellow that is soft and hums, and high-pitched lemon yellow, sharp and startling, then the low velvet tone of alizarin crimson, and the seductive cobalt blue. It fills me with longing, if cobalt blue was a man I'd run away with him."

Amy Chua is a professor of Law at Yale and the mother of two daughters. Her book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, much talked about at the moment, is a memoir on parenting that looks to be fascinating reading. If you have ever wondered how Chinese parents typically raise high-achieving children and how their model differs from Western ones, this book will tell you, but crucially it's also about "a bitter clash of cultures, a fleeting taste of glory, and how you can be humbled by a thirteen-year-old."

Elizabeth Day is an award-winning journalist, and Scissors, Paper, Stone is her first novel. Described by Jennie Rooney as "a daring, absorbing and beautifully-written story of damage and betrayal", this tale of family secrets which eventually come to light is told by means of writing "both delicate and direct".

Lastly today, classicist Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles. You'll have a bit of a wait for this one as it is not due out until September, but no apologies for the advance notice as this version of the story of the Trojan War is billed as "a breathtakingly original debut". Achilles, Thetis, Helen, Patroclus, a love story, a battle between gods and kings: truly an epic.

Leigh on sea

   

     If you're familiar with the work of playwright and director Mike Leigh, and specifically the marvellously, comically grotesque characters in pieces like Abigail's Party and Nuts in May, then you'll know what I mean when I say that Louise Dean's novel The Old Romantic inhabits that sort of territory.

    Set on the south coast of England in and around Hastings and Rye, it concerns a fractured family, the Goodyews, whose 'patriarch', Ken, has death on his mind. Approaching eighty, and 'volunteering' at the local funeral parlour, Ken wants things in order now that he thinks his end is nigh. Long since divorced from Pearl, the mother of his two sons, Ken aims to die with his kin around him, but he hasn't seen Pearl for years, his elder son Nick broke ties with his parents when he went to Cambridge, became a lawyer and re-invented himself as a member of the middle class, and a further spoke in the wheel is Ken's current wife June, with her obsession with bus routes and bargains to be found at Lidl.

    This is a very sharp comedy of manners - bad manners, as I've seen it described - and parts of it are not for the faint-hearted, but while it won't appeal to everyone's taste, Louise Dean has done a terrific job on the subject of class, ageing and family dynamics, and with her keen ear for dialogue, her social observation and her cringe-making characters, it's a finely crafted blend of the comic and the uncomfortably realistic!