Cornflower Books

Novel of the week

   

    I've read three novels over the last week, all good, all to be recommended, all much enjoyed. Despite their finer points, however, one is overwrought, another is over-long, and both those two address the issues at their hearts uncomfortably earnestly and with an ill-fitting 21st. century sensibility, reflecting on their period characters a contemporary outlook rather than views in keeping with their time.

    The third book falls into none of these traps. Juliet West's Before the Fall is a highly accomplished debut with that integrity - sense of wholeness - which is so often lacking in novels of all genres and at all points on the literary scale. Based - tragically - on actual events, it is in essence a love story set in London's East End during the First World War, but it stands out for the quality of its writing, and for the way in which it depicts the moral spectrum of its period rather than ours. While my hand was twitching for the virtual editorial pencil where the other books were concerned, of this one I wouldn't change a word.

Good lines: 'through leaves'

   

    "As long ago as 1924, Vita had recorded simple everyday occurrences guaranteed to make her happy: 'walking on crisp snow; running a stick along railings; stamping on a nut; stripping the shell from a hard-boiled egg; writing with the really ideal nib*; plunging into the sudden comfort of warm water on a cold night'. Each inspired a sensation she labelled 'through leaves' on the analogy of the uncomplicated pleasure inherent in kicking one's way through dry leaves on an autumn walk. Though not intended as an inventory of personal fulfilment (Vita's list omitted Harold [her husband], poetry, gardening, her houses, Ben, Nigel [her sons], dogs and intimate friends, it indicates something of the nature of her engagement with her world."

    From Behind the Mask: The Life of Vita Sackville-West by Matthew Dennison.

 

*Oh yes!

By their books shall ye know them

    If you had to plot a person on a map of character, so to speak - i.e. mark their position on a chart of temperament, foibles, predilections, and so on, you could do worse than define them with reference to their taste in books.

    I came to this conclusion the other day when I was reading Cynthia Harnett's The Wool-Pack which is set mostly in the Cotswold village of Burford, a place I know slightly, and indeed I've stayed in The Bay Tree in Sheep Street, a building which could be the model for the Fetterlocks' house in the book. Picturing the location, I quickly sank into the story and its delightful and detailed look at 15th. century rural life, and then I noticed that on the endpaper of my library copy was a map with places such as Newbury, Winchester and Southampton all marked. "Oh no," I thought, "don't tell me that Nicholas has to leave the safety and comfort of home and go on a journey!" And with a moment of sharp self-awareness I realised that if I'd been a member of The Inklings when Tolkien was writing Lord Of The Rings, I'd have said "just let them stay in The Shire, Tollers," and then where would we be?

    In case I give the wrong impression, I do of course leave my northern fastness to venture 'abroad', I am not a recluse, but I love home and my roots go down deep, so any novel which makes much of a happy house and a settled person is welcome on my shelf. Let them travel if you must, I would say to an author of their characters, but bring them safely back again, so that at story's end these lines of Browning's might sum things up:

   The year's at the spring
    And day's at the morn;
    Morning's at seven;
    The hillside's dew-pearled;
    The lark's on the wing;
    The snail's on the thorn:
    God's in His heaven—
    All's right with the world!

The Beat Goes On

   

    Mr. C. writes:

    "I hope you get as much fun reading these stories as I had writing them" says Ian Rankin in the introduction to The Beat Goes On, the complete set of short stories about Edinburgh detective John Rebus. Mission accomplished: both for hardened Rebus fans and for newcomers, this collection is so evocative you can almost smell the malt tang of the Caledonian Brewery and see the grey, glittering city with its dark passions and moral ambiguities. There are tales of high society and low life, tales of bitter depravity and macabre humour, all illuminated by Rebus's glowering intelligence as he pursues a very personal ideal of justice through the bars and drawing rooms and suburban bungalows and grim estates of Edinburgh. A dangerous book to have on the bedside table - you just want to keep reading on and on into the wee small hours of the night - and a dangerous book to lend: make sure you get it back.

Fact and the unexplained

    From last month's Historical Novel Society London conference, here is the very interesting discussion Fact and the Unexplained: Myths, Fairy Tales, and the Gothic, chaired by Kate Forsyth with Prof. Diana Wallace, Essie Fox, Jessie Burton and Deborah Harkness*. (I loved Kate Forsyth's description of historical fiction as "history set to music".)

*I recently re-read A Discovery of Witches, the first volume in Deborah Harkness' All Souls trilogy, and enjoyed it just as much as the first time - it's a lot of fun. If you want to know more, watch this edition of Book Lust with Nancy Pearl.

Recommendations

   

    Back in May, on the recommendation of Lory, I added Hild by Nicola Griffith to my lengthy wish list. Browsing the latest edition of The Good Book Guide today I see the novel - which is based on the early life of St. Hilda of Whitby - is the 'Editor's Choice' in the historical fiction section, praised for its exhaustive research, page-turning qualities, characterisation, and the fineness of its 'cloth'. I've moved it up my list.

    From my own recent reading I'd like to offer you three recommendations (and these books will all be appearing in next month's Guide):

    Mr Mac and Me by Esther Freud, which I loved for its delicacy, its subtlety, its beautiful, restrained writing, and for the poignancy of its story, that of Charles Rennie Mackintosh in the Suffolk village of Walberswick at the beginning of the First World War; "a fine novel of art and nature, and of life's ebbs and flows."

    The Taxidermist's Daughter by Kate Mosse is the first novel of hers I've read, and on the strength of it it won't be the last. She describes herself as a storyteller, I believe, and this book clearly demonstrates that skill. A gripping gothic thriller again set on the south coast but this time in the very stormy spring of 1912, I was impressed by the way the central conceit is developed, and I admire the lengths the author went to for her research (the clue is in the title!) for this "compelling story of justice, and of a punishment to fit a crime".

    First Impressions by Charlie Lovett is indeed, as its subtitle has it, a novel of old books, young love and Jane Austen, and if you've read Charlie's The Bookman's Tale, its style will be familiar. It's a literary romp set in Oxford and London in the present day and in Hampshire in the late 1700s, and it features the genesis of one of the greatest novels in the English language and a dastardly plot to discredit the blessed Jane. It's fast-paced and fun, and if at times it recalls the old silent movie 'pretty girl tied to the railway tracks by the evil villain' trope, it's none the worse for that!

Short but sweet

    The above was found on Twitter; I don't know the identity of the young book reviewer, but I admire the passion behind their words!

Good lines: good reasons

   

    "Kiss me."

    "I beg your pardon!"

    "We're two lovers of old novels in a garden in the moonlight. Kiss me."

     Will she? Won't she? You'll have to read Charlie Lovett's First Impressions: A novel about old books, young love, and Jane Austen to find out.

A quick look

   

    Talking about 'looking' over on the other site today reminds me that I haven't mentioned Chiang Yee's The Silent Traveller in Oxford since I read it.     The author was a consummate observer, seeing details others would not, and from them constructing an atmospheric and - despite wartime privations - joyous portrait of a time and place. Any man who can begin a chapter with the words "I LOVE rain" is my sort of writer, and indeed he describes himself later as "an odd person who indulges himself by taking pleasure in things not noticed by those of a more objective turn of mind". That's spot-on, and the book is charming.