Cornflower Books

O. Douglas postscript

    Ursula Buchan, granddaughter of John Buchan, great niece of O. Douglas (Anna Buchan) has most kindly left a comment on my post of the other day - do take a look.

    We had the pleasure of hearing Ursula speak at the Slightly Foxed Readers' Day a couple of year ago, and there's a summary of that excellent event here.

A grand day out

    I've written before about the St. Andrews branch of Topping & Co., as pleasant a place to browse as I know.   

    Mr. C. and I made a few purchases,

of which the above were mine, but I'm keen to read his, too, especially the David Crystal and the Churchill book.

    We followed our book shopping with lunch at The Adamson and a walk round the cathedral, both of which are highly recommended.

The great escape

   

     "Fiction can show you a different world. It can take you somewhere you've never been. Once you've visited other worlds, like those who ate fairy fruit, you can never be entirely content with the world that you grew up in. Discontent is a good thing: discontented people can modify and improve their worlds, leave them better, leave them different. And while we're on the subject, I'd like to say a few words about escapism. I hear the term bandied about as if it's a bad thing. As if 'escapist' fiction is a cheap opiate used by the muddled and the foolish and the deluded, and the only fiction that is worthy, for adults or for children, is mimetic fiction, mirroring the worst of the world the reader finds herself in. If you were trapped in an impossible situation, in an unpleasant place, with people who meant you ill, and someone offered you a temporary escape, why wouldn't you take it? And escapist fiction is just that: fiction that opens a door, shows the sunlight outside, gives you a place to go where you are in control, are with people you want to be with (and books are real places, make no mistake about that); and more importantly, during your escape, books can also give you knowledge about the world and your predicament, give you weapons, give you armour: real things you can take back into your prison. Skills and knowledge and tools you can use to escape for real. As J.R.R. Tolkien reminded us, the only people who inveigh against escape are jailers."

    Neil Gaiman (via Myth and Moor).

Looking good ...

 

    ... The Countenance Divine by Michael Hughes, out in August:

    "In 1999 a programmer is trying to fix the Millennium Bug, but can't shake the sense he's been chosen for something.

     In 1888, five women are brutally murdered in the East End by a troubled young man in thrall to a mysterious master.

     In 1777 an apprentice engraver called William Blake has a defining spiritual experience; thirteen years later this vision returns.

     In 1666, poet and revolutionary John Milton completes the epic for which he will be remembered centuries later.

     But from where comes the feeling that the world is about to end?"

 

    Toby Litt says this is "one of the most exciting novels I've read in recent years. Michael Hughes writes like a brilliant cross between David Mitchell and Hilary Mantel," while the acquiring editor at publisher John Murray says, "It’s very rare that a debut both has this much ambition and also delivers on that ambition; it’s dizzying, genre-blending, polyphonic and one hell of a ride."

Books inspired by books

   

    "I always feel like my books are inspired by my books. Bel Canto was a novel that took place outside of linear time. I got so frustrated writing a book in which nobody knew what day it was that I decided my next book, Run, would take place in twenty-four hours. In Run I had a character who was an ichthyologist, and I enjoyed writing about science so much that in my next book, State of Wonder, pretty much all the characters are scientists. I was nervous about publishing my essay collection, This is the Story of a Happy Marriage* because it was so personal, but as it turned out no one seemed to care. It made me wonder about writing a novel that was closer to home, something that had more to do with families and less to do with the Amazon, opera, or fish, some of the far-flung subjects I'd been tackling. I wanted to approach the novel more in the way I'd approached the essays: instead of the story coming from research it would be built from the material I had at hand. Which isn't to say the book is true, it's not, but it's made from things I knew and understood. I love doing research but I have to say this was a lot of fun too."

    That's Ann Patchett talking about the genesis of her latest novel Commonwealth which will be out here in September. It's the story of a family, told over fifty years and offers "a window into how we change from the children we were, and how we are always ourselves." I'm greatly looking forward to reading it.

 

*I've no post as such on that one, but as with Bel Canto and State of Wonder (I've yet to read Run), I warmly recommend it.

Spirit of place

    I'm always very glad to see a book I've loved get the recognition that comes with a literary prize listing or win, and today it's kudos to James Rebanks in the form of a shortlisting for his The Shepherd's Life: A Tale of the Lake District for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize. That award celebrates a work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry which "best evokes the spirit of a place", and James Rebanks' book certainly does that and more besides (there's a short post on it here).

    Also shortlisted are The River by Jane Clarke, The Great Explosion: Gunpowder, the Great War, and a Disaster on the Kent Marshes by Brian Dillon, Weatherland: Writers & Artists Under English Skies by Alexandra Harris, Nothing is True and Everything is Possible: Adventures in Modern Russia, and This Divided Island: Stories from the Sri Lankan War by Samanth Subramanian.

    The winner will be announced on 23rd. May.

Period charm

    I found these three novels by O. Douglas in a local secondhand books shop yesterday and I couldn't pass them by; "nice books about nice people" are too few in number, it seems to me, and from what I know of the author, that's a fair summing up of her work.

    The House that is Our Own was first published in 1940, and it bears the following touching dedication to the author's brother, John Buchan, who died early that year:

    "To you, J.B., who with little liking for mild domestic fiction, read patiently my works, blue-pencilling when you had to, praising when you could, encouraging always, I dedicate this story, which you are not here to read, of places you knew and loved."

    I was interested to find this sticker inside the back cover of one of the other books - Binns was a well-known Edinburgh department store, now House of Fraser. That it sold books is news to me, but I suppose such shops did in those long-gone days.

    Turning to the books' dust jackets (and these have plenty of period charm), a couple of short articles on the subject - here and here - may be of interest.

 

Edited to add: I've linked above to two very striking portraits of John Buchan; here is one of his sister herself, the family resemblance marked.