Cornflower Books

I laughed, I cried, I couldn't put it down

   

    I went out on a limb the other day and said, on the basis of one chapter, that Niall Williams's History of the Rain looked like being a special book. Well, I've read the whole of it now, and it is just that.

    I'll write a proper post when I've gathered my thoughts, but by way of a place-holder, let me say that it took me from laughter to tears, and I could not put it down.

    Look out for it when it's published on 10th. April -  it is the perfect booklover's book and a lot more besides. Quite wonderful!

Being aboard a readership

   

    "I love the feel of a book. I love the touch and smell and sound of the pages. I love the handling. A book is a sensual thing. You sit curled in a chair with it or like me you take it to bed and it's, well, enveloping. Weird I am. I know. What the Hell? As Bobby Bowe says to everything. You either get it or you don't. When my father first took me to Ennis Library I went down among the shelves and felt company, not only the company of the writers, but the readers too, because they had lifted and opened and read these books. The books were worn in a way they can only get worn by hands and eyes and minds; these were the literal original Facebooks, the books where faces had been, and I just loved it, the whole strange sense of being aboard a readership."

    From History of the Rain by Niall Williams.

(Eighty pages in, I'm completely hooked by this novel - and that's an apt choice of word as you'll see if you read it; so far it's glorious!)

Books for the incurably curious

    The shortlist for the 2014 Wellcome Book Prize has been announced and it includes Elizabeth Gilbert's cracking novel The Signature of All Things (which I wrote about here). The prize "aims to stimulate interest and debate about medical science through books and reading", and that book certainly takes things botanical to a new level - it is wonderfully engaging and entertaining.

    The other shortlisted books are Wounded: From Battlefield to Blighty, 1914-1918 by Emily Mayhew, “ a homage to the courage and determination of the men and women who cared for – and saved the lives of – the hundreds of thousands of British soldiers who were wounded at the Western Front”; Inconvenient People: Lunacy, Liberty and the Mad-Doctors in Victorian England Inconvenient People by Sarah Wise, which “brilliantly exposes the phenomenon of false allegations of lunacy (and the dark motives behind them) in the Victorian period”; Creation: The Origin of Life / The Future of Life by Adam Rutherford, "an account of the synthetic biology revolution"; Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks, "an investigation into the phenomenon"; and Far From The Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity: A Dozen Kinds of Loveby Andrew Solomon, "a book about how parents relate to children".

    The winner will be announced on 29th. April.

Did you know ...?

    "In Ancient Greece, the act of reading was seen as a kind of possession by the text; the loss of autonomy involved in allowing one’s spirit to be inhabited by an unknown writer meant that reading was viewed with suspicion – an activity unsuitable for free citizens and grown men."

    That gem comes from a review of Ewan Clayton's The Golden Thread: The Story of Writing.

Cornflower Book Group - The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde

   

    "... all human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil: and Edward Hyde, alone, in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil."

    That line seems to get to the nub of the thing, and what an interesting thesis RLS proposes in his Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. The introduction (by Jenni Calder) to my edition stresses Stevenson's Calvinist upbringing and its influence on his work, and it's his exploration of what he sees as the duality of human nature - the evil side, always present but usually suppressed by the good - that is at the heart of the book.

    His Dr. Jekyll is an upstanding man, respected, liked and admired, and thus his 'fall' - his unleashing of the dark side - is all the more chilling than if he'd been of lesser character. In choosing the path of temptation, corruption and depravity, he experiences a liberation as disquieting as it is dramatic. The morality by which he has lived a life "of effort, virtue and control" is set aside in favour of "the undeveloped, unexercised evil side of his nature", and "the greater the aspirations towards good of Jekyll, the greater the monstrosity of Hyde."

    At 70 pages, this is a very short book but one which can be read on several levels; however, it's the moral analysis which is so fascinating. As Jenni Calder says, "[RLS] had experienced directly the iron grip of Calvinism and of bourgeois morality on human behaviour, and he recognised that it could be destructive, destructive because it affirmed that good for the majority was something external, artificial, not intrinsic to human nature: men could not be good unless they were told how to be good. Stevenson himself recognised a rather different kind of morality, a morality that came from within, that depended on a sensitive understanding of human relationships and responsibilities, that was flexible, individual, spontaneous. And it was this that made him so attractive, as man and writer, to so many, for at the time he was writing there was a certain weariness with the heavy-handed moral and religious principles of Victorianism."

    There we have it.

    What did you think?

 

    (The 'books and cakes' post for the novel is here.)

Books in brief: Entry Island

   

    A troubled detective, a small island, a murder, a race memory, these are the ingredients in Peter May's latest novel Entry Island. Fans of his terrific Lewis Trilogy will be glad to know that although the main strand of the plot is set in the eponymous Entry Island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the secondary one is back 'home' in the Hebrides, and there is much atmospheric local detail in this historical back-story which gives balance to the contemporary Canadian one.

    Detective Sime Mackenzie has been seconded to a murder investigation far from his Montreal base as his Scottish heritage and linguistic background fits him for this unique English-speaking outpost in an otherwise French area. The victim is a local businessman, his wife is the prime suspect, the case looks open and shut. But when Sime meets the dead man's widow, he is convinced he knows her - and yet they couldn't possibly have met. When he discovers a material link between them, the mystery deepens, and while it gradually appears that his Hebridean ancestry is somehow key, she is arrested and charged...

    Typically gripping, taut and tense - another great read from Peter May.

Talk amongst yourselves - and tell us what you're reading

   

    

    It's been one of those weeks: lots of interruptions - albeit mostly nice ones - to the usual routine, and consequently very little reading has been done. Meanwhile, the email inbox overflows, and the piles of books awaiting my attention grow bigger ... t'was ever thus!

    I'll be back with a proper post as soon as I can, but there are lots of good things currently on the arrivals 'shelf', so have a look at what's listed over there in the right-hand sidebar, and while I get on with Reckless (which is very enjoyable so far), please tell us what you're reading just now, or perhaps what has caught your eye recently.

Book of the day - History of the Rain

 

     Four Letters of Love by Niall Williams will be well known to many of you, and some fifteen years after reading it I still have the 'ghost' of the book in my mind. In April - appropriately, season of showers - comes his next novel, History of the Rain, and I love the sound of it:

    "Bedbound in her attic room beneath the falling rain, in the margin between this world and the next, Plain Ruth Swain is in search of her father. To find him, enfolded in the mystery of ancestors, Ruthie must first trace the jutting jaw lines, narrow faces and gleamy skin of the Swains from the restless Reverend Swain, her great-grandfather, to grandfather Abraham, to her father, Virgil - via pole-vaulting, leaping salmon, poetry and the three thousand, nine hundred and fifty eight books piled high beneath the two skylights in her room, beneath the rain.

    The stories - of her golden twin brother Aeney, their closeness even as he slips away; of their dogged pursuit of the Swains' Impossible Standard and forever falling just short; of the wild, rain-sodden history of fourteen acres of the worst farming land in Ireland - all pour forth in Ruthie's still, small, strong, hopeful voice. A celebration of books, love and the healing power of the imagination, this is an exquisite, funny and moving novel in which every sentence sings."

    Having read just one chapter, it's no doubt wholly premature of me to pronounce, but on the strength of that beginning I'd say this is a special book.

Edited to add: I was right!

A few things

    - Should you be so minded, there's still time to read Stevenson's Jekyll & Hyde for next Saturday's book group chat as it's only 70 or so pages long.

    - Anyone who would like to have gone to the Slightly Foxed Readers' Day will be glad to hear that the talks given by the splendid speakers back in November are being made available as podcasts, and the first one - Sara Wheeler on 'Travelling Unconventionally' - is up now.

    - I'm delighted to see Jane Gardam's wonderful novel Last Friends on the shortlist for the inaugural Folio Prize. Here in Edinburgh last summer, Jane Gardam talked about the book, the third volume in her acclaimed Old Filth trilogy.

    - And finally today, here's a lovely glimpse of the life of a bookshop 'manager'!

Celebrating women's fiction

    I've been in London as the guest of Orion Books at a party to celebrate women's fiction, and when I say I was thrilled to meet some of their stellar group of authors, those are not empty words. I shall unashamedly name-drop now because it's not every day that one gets the chance to talk to Deborah Lawrenson, Erica James, Liz Fenwick, Fanny Blake, Harriet Lane, and Diane Setterfield, but I met them all and had such fun in their company.

    Thank you, Orion, for a super evening, and thank you to all the authors whose work gives us such pleasure and without which these pages would not exist.

Writers' portraits - Hilary Mantel

    I'm glad to read that Hilary Mantel is pleased with this portrait by the young artist Nick Lord. It is to go on show at the British Library later this month and will be the first image of a living writer to be hung there.

    Its subject said, "I didn't want to look as if I was just sitting, contemplating the daffodils, but as though I might have an impact in the world". I think she's got her wish.

Cornflower Book Group - April 2014

   

    Having just read a biography of Rumer Godden I thought a novel of hers might be a good choice for the Book Group. The one with which she made her name was Black Narcissus, but it's a later book I've chosen, also a huge popular success, and a critical one, too.

    First published in1969, In this House of Brede was the product of five years of painstaking research and writing, and is its author's longest and most complex book. Here's the blurb:

    "Bruised by tragedy, Philippa Talbot leaves a successful career in the Civil Service for a new calling. She joins an enclosed order of Benedictine nuns. In this small community of fewer than one hundred women, she soon discovers all the human frailties: jealousy, love, despair. But each crisis of heart and conscience is guided by the compassion and intelligence of the Abbess and by the Sisters' shared bond of faith and ritual. Away from the world, and yet at one with it, Philippa must learn to forgive and forget her past."

    Here's a passage from Anne Chisholm's biography:

    "Brede did seem to be blessed: everyone who read it before publication was impressed by it. A hint of amazement is sometimes discernible behind the compliments... [Rumer's] agent told her it was a triumph; Macmillan were delighted, and [the editorial director of her American publisher] wrote from New York to tell Rumer he found the book 'absolutely extraordinary ... I would have been incredulous had anyone told me how terribly involved with and concerned for a community of Benedictine nuns I could become ...' "

    Rumer's US advance was $150,000, the equivalent, apparently, of just under $1,000,000 today, and her publishers' faith in the book was justified by its sales. Structurally, it is her most ambitious work - Anne Chisholm tells us - spanning nearly twenty years and dealing with two dozen major characters (it's satisfyingly chunky at around 500 pages in the Virago paperback edition). Although it was made into a film starring Diana Rigg, that "has not worn well" (AC again), and Rumer did not care for it. I hope our reaction to the book will be a positive one, and I've slotted it into the calendar for discussion from Saturday, 26th. April.

    Details of our February and March books are given here, and I hope you'll join us to read some or all of our next three titles; you'd be very welcome.

Comin' thro' the Rye

    Lamb House, Rye, East Sussex, has been home to at least three writers: Henry James, E.F. Benson, and Rumer Godden who leased the house from the National Trust for five years from1968.

    "[It] was a house with a considerable writing tradition. Although few traces of Henry James were left, Rumer used his writing room and rather enjoyed showing visitors round. She was asked one day if she knew Rumer Godden; 'All too well,' was her reply."

From Rumer Godden: A Storyteller's Life by Anne Chisholm.

    There's more on literary Rye here and here.

Books of the day - 2

   

     "A heart-breaking first novel about family secrets, soul-mates and missed opportunities," that's Mrs. Sinclair's Suitcase by Louise Walters, out soon.

    "Roberta likes to collect letters and postcards she finds in second-hand books. When her father gives her some of her grandmother's belongings, she finds a baffling letter from the grandfather she never knew - dated after he supposedly died in the war.

    Dorothy is unhappily married to Albert, who is away at war. When an aeroplane crashes in the field behind her house she meets Squadron Leader Jan Pietrykowski, and as their bond deepens she dares to hope she might find happiness. But fate has other plans for them both, and soon she is hiding a secret so momentous that its shockwaves will touch her granddaughter many years later ..."

    I've just read the beginning - a description of the bookshop in which Roberta works - and would love to go on with it right now, but it will have to wait a bit. US readers may like to know that it is to be published in the States, too, and by Amy Einhorn, publisher of Kathryn Stockett's phenomenally successful The Help. Finally, who could resist that cover?

Books of the day - 1

   

    Rosie Thomas's The Kashmir Shawl was a big hit with many of us, and it was one of my books of the year in 2011, so I'm glad to say that Rosie is back with a new novel, The Illusionists, out later this month.

    Billed as "her most ambitious and atmospheric novel to date", the book sees "love, seduction, magic and illusion collide as she takes us on a spellbinding journey through the shadowy world of Victorian London. Set in and around "The Palmyra", a new theatre of varieties, The Illusionists perfectly captures the spirit of Victorian England..."

    Beginning in 1870, it's the story of Eliza, an artist's model who meets a showman by the name of Devil Wix, a man whose dream is to run his own theatre company. Wix's right-hand man is Carlo Boldoni, an ill-tempered dwarf with whom he is usually at odds, and then there's Jasper Button, "mild-mannered, a family man at heart, his gift as an artist makes him an unlikely member of the motley crew.

    Thrown together by a twist of fate, their lives are inextricably linked: the fortune of one depends on the fortune of the other. As Eliza gets sucked into the seductive and dangerous world her strange companions inhabit, she risks not only her heart, but also her life ..."

    There is a video trailer for the book - filmed at Wilton's Music Hall, and you can find Rosie's blog here.

Monday miscellany

   

    - Elaine has a very interesting post on the Morland Dynasty novels of Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, or to be more exact, on their publishing history/future. I haven't read any of the books (yet), but Elaine's proposed marketing strategy to get the series to a new and wider audience sounds eminently sensible to me, and let's hope the publisher takes note.

 

   - Following on from the CBG's recent reading of Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce, do read - if you can lay hands on it - Maggie Fergusson's article on the book in the Winter 2013 edition (No. 40) of Slightly Foxed. She says the novel has "the most moving ending to any children's book" she knows, a great deal to offer grown-ups, and that the memorable skating scene is based on the author's father's account of the great frost of 1895, when he and his friends skated down the Cam. She goes on, "Philippa Pearce stops time in its tracks by trapping her memories between the pages of a book, like pressed flowers. But she does more than this. Time, in Tom's Midnight Garden, does not stand still, but bends and twists so that past and present embrace and comfort one another ... time itself curls about, accommodates, suspends its own iron laws for a while, to help us on our way."

   

     - Speaking of time bending and twisting, Kate Atkinson's Costa Novel Award-winning Life After Life plays around with time in no small measure. Here is an interview with Kate in which she talks about her fascination with the Second World War, "embedding reality within fiction", the importance of character, the problem of being categorized, and God in Ruins, the companion novel to Life After Life. "What is a 'good' writing day for you?", she is asked. "A sentence. A good one", she replies.

Life itself is a story

    "To me and my kind, life itself is a story and we have to tell it in stories; that is the way it falls."

    Rumer Godden, quoted by Anne Chisholm in Rumer Godden: A Storyteller's Life.