Cornflower Books

Book of the day - Cover Your Eyes

   

    I know a lot of us are fans of Adèle Geras's books, and will be glad to hear that her new novel for adults, Cover Your Eyes, has just been published. I'm greatly looking forward to this one and shall be reading it soon (and then passing it straight on to my mum who loves Adèle's work), but until I get to it, here's the blurb:

    "Eva was once a legendary fashion designer whose career ended abruptly. She lives with her family in Salix House, the home she's loved for forty years. When the family announces it's time to sell, Eva is reluctant. The house contains many memories and long held secrets.

    Megan is a fashion journalist who interviewed Eva for a magazine. Devastated at the end of a love affair, Megan is drawn back to Salix House.

    Although decades apart in age, both women share painful pasts. Perhaps together they can confront their fears, discover the truth of Salix House's secrets, and move on."

    Click here to read an article Adèle has written about the real and terrible events which form the background to the novel, and on a lighter note, the fun she had creating her central character's life in fashion - Eva is a Jean Muir figure, and that elegance and style should make for some lovely detail.

    Adèle ends her piece thus: "I think the present is much more interesting when it's aware of the past; when it looks back in some way. In Cover Your Eyes, Eva's early years are woven through  the text, threading scenes set in 1938 and at various times in the 1960s into a story that takes place in the present day. I hope that everyone who reads it enjoys this novel and relishes, like me, travelling magically through time."

    I can't wait!

Another fine one leaves us

    P.D. James, a lady I admired enormously, has died today aged 94. Much has been and will be written about her and her work, but that apart, it was her wit, her sharp intellect, her wisdom, personal courage, and integrity which engendered so much respect and esteem. I've been privileged to hear her talk in person, and rarely have I felt as I did then that I was in the company of someone who was - very quietly and unassumingly - head and shoulders above most others.

    If you haven't read her beyond her novels, do look out for Time to Be in Earnest: A Fragment of Autobiography and Talking About Detective Fiction.

 

Edited to add: take a look at the Books at the BBC tribute to P.D. James, a special archive of radio programmes in which she featured.

Absolutely Topping!

   

     I mentioned the other day that I'd been past the premises of Topping & Co. in St Andrews before the shop opened, well on Friday I was back in the town again and had time for a quick look in, and what a lovely place it is! First of all I was impressed by the fitting, very smart floor to ceiling shelving with library ladders, cosy alcoves, and a wood-burning stove to take the chill off a cold day, though the welcome itself was warm enough to induce a glow, and tea and coffee are offered to all customers. As to the stock, from what I saw it was a very good mix of what you'd expect to find alongside less predictable and well-chosen titles befitting a shop of that calibre. It was exciting to be there, and that's not something you can say about every bookshop.

    I didn't take pictures but you'll get a fair idea of the look of the place from these shots of the Ely and Bath branches. As it was, I had a brief chat with the very pleasant Louise Topping, and spotted a book which I didn't have time to buy but have since sent in my St. Andrews correspondent (i.e. daughter Harriet) to get for me: "it's a book lover's paradise" was her verdict after she visited, and she's right. Do go if you can - on the 10th. Dec you could meet Alexander McCall Smith.*

 

*Speaking of authors, if you're a fan of Kate Atkinson's and would like to see her garden, follow the link here.

My Life in Houses

   

    I have long admired Margaret Forster's writing: she's clear, straightforward, understated, quietly compelling; not showy, loud or 'clever'. I've read her biography of Daphne du Maurier and several novels, chief among them Lady's Maid, and Keeping the World Away, about Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Gwen John respectively (see this post), ones to look out for if you don't already know them.

    Her latest book is a memoir, My Life in Houses, a portrait of the homes she's lived in and an account of their significance to each stage of her life, and I commend it to you for its author's clear-sightedness, self-awareness, level-headed pragmatism and lack of sentimentality.

    The book begins with a quotation from Leonard Woolf of which the following is an extract:

    "The house - in which I include its material and spiritual environment - has an immense influence on its inhabitants ... what has the deepest and most permanent effect upon oneself and one's way of living is the house in which one lives. The house determines the day-to-day, minute-to-minute quality, colour, atmosphere, pace of one's life; it is the framework of what one does, of what one can do, of one's relations with people ..."

    Margaret Forster charts her life from house to house, from growing up in Carlisle, to her lodgings in Oxford (college life having been tried and found wanting), to a rented flat in the Vale of Health in Hampstead where newly married to fellow writer Hunter Davies she finds a situation close to perfection, and thence to a house which, despite unpromising beginnings becomes the settled, much-loved family home and a place of refuge and content. Those are the bones of the book; you must read it to see how - simply but profoundly - they are fleshed out.

    Reflecting on the particular nature and significance of home - in this instance a house she has lived in for most of her adult life - Margaret Forster says "Yet somehow the house itself, its very fabric, is of importance. An intimate knowledge of its layout, of how all the rooms are arranged and used, stimulates a weird pleasure. I know this house. It has been changed by us not only in the real, practical sense of altering its appearance and internal geography, but by our living within it. Instinct guides me everywhere. I don't have to wonder where I am going or what I will find. The house doesn't need to remind me of what has taken place, why certain rooms are of a significance nobody else could possibly guess. Take the building away and it is alarming to realise memories might not be enough. Something indefinable would be lost. I need the house's influence - the 'influence' that Leonard Woolf thought 'might well be the subject of a scientific investigation'. ... Our house has not exactly moulded me. But, on the other hand, it has provided a structure and a privacy which have been of immeasurable value. I was not mistaken, as a child, to believe that having a house, never mind a room, of my own was, for me, hugely important.

    "... My house is like a garment, made to my exact measurements, draped around me in the way I like. I never want to change it."

Popping in and catching up

    Posts have been few and far between lately, and that's set to continue as other commitments take priority, but I must just mention a few things as I pop in briefly:

    The respected bookseller Topping & Company is about to open a branch in St. Andrews. I passed the shop in Greyfriars Garden this morning and found it tantalisingly full of stock but its doors firmly closed until next Monday (the 17th.). I shall look forward to visiting Toppings on my next visit.

    A couple of articles caught my eye over the last few days: A.S. Byatt on Margery Allingham - "she turned puzzles into true drama, but with a conscious artificer's grace" - and an interview with Richard Adams, still going strong at 94.

    As to current reading, I am greatly enjoying Margaret Forster's memoir My Life in Houses - and related to that, do see Liz Wood's comment on this post in which she offers a profound and most fascinating insight; much food for thought there.