Cornflower Books

To be read - 4

    "We love books. We take them to bed with us. They weigh down our suitcases when we go on holiday. We display them on our bookshelves or store them in our attics. We give them as gifts. We write our names in them. We take them for granted. And all the time, our books are leading a double life.

    The Secret Life of Books is about everything that isn't just the words. It's about how books transform us as individuals. It's about how books - and readers - have evolved over time. And it's about why, even with the arrival of other media, books still have the power to change our lives.

    In this illuminating account, Tom Mole looks at everything from binding errors, to books defaced by lovers, to those imprisoning professors in their offices, to books in art, to burned books, to the books that create nations, to those we'll leave behind.

    It will change how you think about books."

    Tom Mole is Professor of English Literature and Book History and the director of the University of Edinburgh's Centre for the History of the Book; his own book will be out on 19th. September.

Out now in paperback ...

 

    ... Diane Setterfield's Once Upon A River - as this post shows, one of my top favourite books of the year so far.

A Single Thread

    Tracy Chevalier was in Edinburgh today to launch her new novel A Single Thread. Her Book Festival event was chaired by Clare Hunter, author of Threads of Life, and while the discussion naturally looped back often to embroidery - the book's main character Violet Speedwell is one of the 'broderers' of Winchester Cathedral - it covered much else besides, and the audience spent a happy hour learning about the writer's craft - in the widest sense.

    Asked about the novel's genesis, Tracy explained that she had always been fascinated by cathedrals and knew they would feature in a novel one day. On a visit to Winchester she discovered all the stories and associations for which its cathedral is best known, but then she came upon a display of ecclesiastical embroidery done by a group of volunteers between 1931 and 1936, and she realised she had her subject. Something about the seat cushions, kneelers and alms bags - made under the guiding hand of Louisa Pesel and all worked in wool on canvas - caught her imagination, and she decided to explore that world through her character Violet, one of the so-called surplus women, those from whom the terrible losses of the First World War had taken all prospect of marriage.

    Violet has left an overbearing mother in the family home in Southampton to try to make an independent life for herself. Working as a typist in an insurance office in Winchester, she lives in a boarding house, ekes out her meagre income, and is uncomfortably aware of the condescension and judgement - express or implied - to which the single woman is constantly subject. She comes upon the work of the broderers and on impulse she joins the group, learning the stitches from scratch, making friends, finding in her new interest an absorbing occupation and in the cathedral itself a place of refuge. 

    On the therapeutic aspects of needlework, Tracy spoke of her association with the charity Fine Cell Work and the ways in which stitching benefits the prisoners who take part in the scheme. As Miss Pesel says in the book, "When there is an upset, there is nothing like needlework to bring calm and focus," but in common with the fictional Violet, the inmates also find a sense of achievement, of having made their mark in the world through colour and texture and the creation of something beautiful and lasting: every good reason to pick up a needle. Asked whether anyone could learn how to stitch, while in the novel the skilful broderers prize evenness, Tracy spoke to the craft's inclusivity, making the point that it is often the very irregularity - the obvious handmade-ness - of handwork which gives it its character.

    I'll cover what Tracy had to say about her writing process in another post, but for now I'd urge you to get hold of a copy of A Single Thread (officially released on 5th. September) and hope you will enjoy the story of Violet, the embroiderers, and Winchester Cathedral as much as I did.

To be read - 3

    "Grandmothers is the story of three very different women: fiercely independent Nan, who leads a secret life as an award-winning poet when she is not teaching her grandson Billy how to lie; elegant Blanche, who, deprived of the company of her beloved granddaughter Kitty by her hostile daughter-in-law, seeks solace in alcohol and takes to shoplifting; and shy, bookish Minna, who in her peaceful shepherd's hut shares with her surrogate granddaughter Rose her passion for reading. The outlook of all three women subtly alters when through their encounters with each other they discover that the past is always with us and that we go on learning and changing until the very end.

    Grandmothers is a beautifully observed, sometimes subversive, often tender and elegiac novel from the bestselling author of The Librarian."

    There's more on Salley Vickers here.

Sanditon

    I had a vague plan to revisit Jane Austen this year, but as is the way of these things it had come to nought until Oxford World's Classics got in touch to ask if I'd like to read Sanditon in their new edition with an introduction by Austen scholar Kathryn Sutherland.

    You may well have seen that Andrew Davies has adapted the book for television and transmission begins on ITV on Sunday (the 25th.) so all eyes will be on what he has made of a text which runs to just 70 pages, but before tuning in for the Davies treatment I was keen to read the original, thought to be the first seaside novel, i.e. "a novel that explores the mysterious and startling transformations that a stay by the sea can work on individuals and relationships."

    Austen's final, unfinished work, penned in the months shortly before her death, is set in a former fishing hamlet on the south coast of England, now being developed into what is hoped will become a fashionable health resort. It begins with a carriage accident, a good samaritan, hospitality and gratitude generously and open-heartedly exchanged between those afflicted and inconvenienced and those who come to their aid, and then it follows those characters - the Parkers and the Heywoods - to Sanditon, where Lady Denham holds court and visitors are the subject of much interest and speculation.

    Though there are a mere 24,000 words to indicate the ultimate direction of the novel, it's clear from what we have that the prism through which we shall see relationships unfold is that of the development of the resort aligned with its denizens' preoccupation with health and the benefits of the seaside:

    "[Mr. Parker] held it indeed as certain, that no person could be really well, no person, (however upheld for the present by fortuitous aids of exercise and spirits in a semblance of Health) could be really in a state of secure and permanent Health without spending at least six weeks by the Sea every year - The Sea Air and Sea Bathing together were nearly infallible, One or the other of them being a match for every Disorder, of the Stomach, the Lungs or the Blood; They were anti-spasmodic, anti-pulmonary, anti-sceptic, anti-bilious and anti-rheumatic. Nobody could catch cold by the Sea, Nobody wanted appetite by the Sea, Nobody wanted Spirits. Nobody wanted Strength. - They were healing, sifting, relaxing - fortifying and bracing - seemingly just as was wanted - sometimes one, sometimes the other. - If the Sea breeze failed, the Sea-Bath was the certain corrective;  - and where Bathing disagreed, the Sea Breeze alone was evidently designed by Nature for the cure."

    Kathryn Sutherland's introduction mentions the book's cinematic style - happily for Andrew Davies who has turned its twelve short chapters into eight hour-long episodes - and she concludes, "The cast Austen assembled offers ample scope to inject further energy, absurdity, and Regency rakishness into this joyous and unexpected seaside tale of opportunists and fantasists set on making the world anew."

    Its impressionistic style and fragmentary nature sets it apart from the six Austen novels we know and love so well, but its humour and promise make it a worthwhile, if poignant, read.

To be read - 2

    "A hugely important addition to the literature of what can be done to restore soil and soul," says the Guardian of Isabella Tree's Wilding: The return of nature to a British farm, while Adam Nicolson's verdict is "... truly the most magnificent and inspiring book."

    "Forced to accept that intensive farming of the heavy clay soils of their farm at Knepp in West Sussex was driving it close to bankruptcy, in 2000 Isabella Tree and her husband Charlie Burrell took a spectacular leap of faith and handed their 3,500 acres back to nature. With minimal human intervention, and with herds of free-roaming animals stimulating new habitats, their land is now heaving with life. Rare species such as turtle doves, peregrine falcons and purple emperor butterflies are now breeding at Knepp and biodiversity has rocketed.

    The Knepp project has become a leading light for conservation in the UK, demonstrating how letting nature take the driving seat can restore both the land and its wildlife in a dramatically short space of time, reversing the cataclysmic declines that have affected most species elsewhere in Britain over the past five decades. Part gripping memoir, part fascinating account of Britain's rural ecology, Wilding is, above all, an inspiring story of hope."

    The book was shortlisted for The Wainwright Prize (awarded a couple of days ago to Robert Macfarlane's Underland).

Friday reads

   

    "The sun was two fingers of the brink of the world when they rode out of Heytesbury, Laurence Haket, the lady Bernadine, Thomas, Will and Madlen. Drops of dew lay on every leaf and mist stood thick as milk in the hollows. Sheep's fleeces glew gold of the morning and the cattle stinted to graze and beheld the riders going by as if the days of Adam's kind were long gone and they hadn't never seen no man before. The riders went by hollow ways through dim woods where the birds sang loud as children achatter in the church, and by fields of ripening corn that hadn't been weeded a week, bright with red, yellow and blue blossoms. They came of their horses and led them on foot down the steep road into the dean of the Wylye, between still, sleeping towns without no smoke nor bells, and up a wild road on the far side onto high green downs, nearer to the sun, thick with bees and butterflies, where the grass grew so rich the horses trod without no sound. By mid-morning they came to the top of a hill that looked down on Mere, with its mighty castle, and beyond the town a great wold glimmered with the water of the Stour, and beyond that, blue and far, the downs of Dorset, so Thomas said."

    I'm reading To Calais, In Ordinary Time by James Meek, out soon and sure to get a lot of attention. It's set in England in 1348 and tells of a gentlewoman, a Scottish proctor (or representative of the clergy) and a young ploughman joining a company of archers on the road to Calais, while coming towards them is the qualm or plague, the Black Death to which half of the population of Northern Europe was to succumb. What is remarkable about the book is James Meek's use of language or idiom. I won't go into it here, but I will quote Hilary Mantel who says "fans of intelligent historical fiction will be enthralled by a story so original and so fully imagined. Meek show the era as alien, and doesn't falsify it by assimilating it to ours. But his characters are recognisably warm and human." It's an impressive piece.

    Anyone else reading something particularly good?

To be read - 1

 

    "London, 1321: In a small shop in Paternoster Row, three people are drawn together around the creation of a magnificent illuminated prayer book. Even though the commission seems to answer the aspirations of each one of them, their secrets, desires and ambitions threaten its completion. As each struggles to see the book come into being, it will change everything they have understood about their place in the world.

    Rich, deep, sensuous and full of life, Book of Colours is also, most movingly, a profoundly beautiful story about creativity and connection, and our instinctive need to understand our world and communicate with others through the pages of a book."

    Robyn Cadwallader is the author of The Anchoress (also on my TBR pile); you'll find her website here.

Recent reads (both from the 1940s)

   

    I've at last had a go at Edmund Crispin, reading the first of his Gervase Fen books, The Case of the Gilded Fly. Although I don't share his antipathy I can see why Dark Puss took agin Fen (comments here), but while I wasn't bowled over by the novel I'd certainly give Crispin and his academic detective another outing as with this book he seemed to be writing himself in. That may explain the time Crispin took to set the scene -16 pages to introduce the major characters, a further 60-odd lead up to the murder; I doubt an editor today would be as forgiving, or a reader more used to instant impact patient enough to stay the course.

    

    I may be the last person in the world to read The Little White Horse, in which case you will already know it is a delight. An ancient feud, a beautiful valley, faithful friends - animal as well as human, old wrongs righted, and things arranged just as they should be may be typical of an Elizabeth Goudge story's ingredients, but she combines them with such charm and good heart that every page is pure pleasure.     

Books do furnish a room

    "There was an oak table in the middle of the room spread with a white cloth and red and white breakfast china, and there was a settle by the fire and a couple of hard oak chairs, but no other furniture and no pictures or ornaments. But the room did not need them because of the books, which stood there upon the shelves breathing out a friendliness that seemed to furnish and ornament the room [...] Maria had no doubt that the loving usage that had turned the books into living creatures was Old Parson's [...]"

    Elizabeth Goudge, The Little White Horse - such a joy!

The novels that shaped our world

 

    Edinburgh's Book Festival starts properly tomorrow, but there was a special event, in conjunction with BBC Arts, in the George Street theatre this morning on the novels that shaped our world. Prefacing a series on radio and television this autumn to mark the 300th anniversary of the publication of Robinson Crusoe - considered to be the first English language novel - the event co-opted three members of the six-strong panel which has been choosing 100 novels of significance and asked them to outline the criteria with which they compiled their list and discuss what reading means to them. Edinburgh's own Alexander McCall Smith, novelist Kit de Waal, and TLS editor Stig Abell joined Joe Haddow, producer of Radio 2's Book Club, for an hour of lively chat with plenty of audience participation.

    While the panel felt that reading is "entertainment, first and foremost," a book's ability to "change us, move us, and give us a different view of something," should not be underestimated; "that's what literature is for," said Kit. Stig, a frequent re-reader, talked of (re-)reading for solace and comfort and escape, and noted that re-reading at different stages in life enriches our impressions, understanding, and perspective. Context and even location while reading were both accorded due significance, as was the influence - for good or ill - of English teachers. 

    The panel were unanimous in their condemnation of showing off about books, literary snobbery, and failing to respect others' tastes, no matter the preferred genre, though they made one exception to this, namely books which are badly written. Their list is, however, driven by admiration and the desire to share good things, as we might say to a friend, "I love this - do read it."

    In choosing their 100 they have identified a number of overlapping themes such as identity, class and society, coming of age, love, power, and so on. Questioned on what drew him particularly, Sandy said it was a sense of place, rather than a specific theme or type of plot, to which he responded most and he gave Forster's A Passage to India and the works of R.K. Narayan* as prime examples.

    Asked to name a book which had shaped them, several members of the audience contributed: War and Peace was cited for its deft portrayal of relationships, the subtleties of behaviour, and the futility of war; Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, so much more than its legacy in popular culture; Alan Garner's The Weirdstone of Brisingamen continues to transport a reader who first discovered it aged eight when it "taught [her] magic - of the book variety." Other works mentioned included The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers for its articulation of loneliness and introduction to American literature, Pride and Prejudice for initiating a shift in a young reader's path in life, and Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca for providing solace at a difficult time. Jane Eyre still connects a lady with the grandmother who bought a copy for her in Woolworths when she was ten years old. It unlocked her imagination, she said, and opened up "the inner life that can forever sustain you." 

    Above all, perhaps, it was the power of literature to foster empathy which was deemed its most important characteristic, one that is surely even more valuable in these troubled times.

 

*The book group read The Painter of Signs.