Cornflower Books

Quiet, please

    A thread on Twitter the other day, started by US literary agent and former editor Sarah Bowlin, asked which "quiet" novels people love. Publishing is so often focused on books which are "not quiet", she said, but she loves the "quiet" ones too, and so do many others, for it won't be a surprise to readers of this blog that the response to her question showed clearly that there are many, many fans of novels which are understated, unshowy, unhyped, but which in their more intimate scale, often concerned with the domestic, the mundane, the still, small voice of calm, are every bit as immersive and as satisfying to the reader as their louder, bolder, counterparts, and often become true long-term friends, turned to in all moods.

    Click the link above to see the full range of recommendations. Among those I offered or seconded are JL Carr's A Month in the Country, Mollie Panter-Downes's One Fine Day, Dorothy Whipple, Elizabeth Goudge, William Trevor, Jane Gardam, John Williams's Stoner, Barbara Pym, Anita Brookner, All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville-West, Elizabeth von Arnim's The Enchanted April. Lots of Persephone books fall into the quiet category, as do some delights from Dean Street Press. If you can add to the list via a comment below, please do!

Friday reads

    A mention of Kate Atkinson's brilliant Life after Life (in Cathy Rentzenbrink's Dear Reader: The Comfort and Joy of Books) had me reaching this morning for its sequel A God in Ruins, bought ages ago but not read. I'm off to a flying start with it and hoping it will be as immersive a read as was Life after Life.

    Cathy Rentzenbrink's own book is part autobiography, part 're-reading as medicine': finding comfort in the familiar. I've made a note of some of her favourite novels to read for the first time or to re-visit, as it's good to be reminded of past delights or pointed towards future treats. Here are a few of them:

Any Human Heart, William Boyd (see also Waiting for Sunrise and Love is Blind)

Not that sort of girl, Mary Wesley

Possession, AS Byatt (and see The Children's Book)

Moon Tiger, Penelope Lively

The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood (the book group read Alias Grace)

The Silkworm, Robert Galbraith

The Infatuations, Javier Marías

Commonwealth, Ann Patchett (see also Bel Canto - another book group read, and State of Wonder)

Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier (and My Cousin Rachel - the book group again)

    To finish with Kate Atkinson, and for good measure, here's a post on the excellent Transcription.

Fifteen favourites

   

    I am grateful for all the kind, thoughtful comments on yesterday's post, and I'm interested to see that thus far and in terms of the wider questions the post raised, they are firmly in favour of traditional blogging over other forms of social media. Even when we don't have the time, inclination or sufficient 'original thought' to comment, posts long and short are still appreciated and enjoyed, it seems.

    While not moving on just yet - further conversation is welcome, should you feel moved to join in - I thought I'd step sideways within book group territory, take a deliberately quick look through the 68 books* the CBG has read and choose 15 personal favourites, books I'd read again or ones that made me keen to explore their authors' other work. Each title below is linked to our discussion on it, so if the book is new to you or one you want to revisit, you can read a range of views besides mine. They are listed in the order in which we read them, beginning with our very first:

    All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville-West

    The Mysteries of Glass by Sue Gee

    The Tiger in the Smoke by Margery Allingham

    A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr

    Fifth Business by Robertson Davies

    The Tortoise and the Hare by Elizabeth Jenkins

    The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers

    Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

    The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim

    The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham

    Crusoe's Daughter by Jane Gardam

    Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce

    The Warden by Anthony Trollope

    In this House of Brede by Rumer Godden

    Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

 

*You'll find all 68 titles listed in the right hand sidebar if you scroll down a bit beyond 'Writers'/'Readers'/'Publishers' etc.

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Cornflower Book Group - Jane Eyre

    Reader, I loved it.

    Jane Eyre was longer than I'd remembered, better than I'd recollected; Jane was more complex, had more spirit; Mr. Rochester was just as appealing in his quieter moments, less so in his bluster and braggadocio scenes - though as it was necessary for plot purposes to give him 'a past', we had to see that side of his character, too. Creepier by far than I'd recalled was St. John Rivers with his conscientious blackmail and manipulative ways, made all the more powerful by his sanctimoniousness.

    Rochester is abrupt, sarcastic, commanding, a "fierce falcon", a "rough-coated keen-eyed dog" - and given what's to come, there's irony in that description. Jane makes of him an idol, and he falls. She, on the other hand, is unshakeable, moved by heart but ruled by head, a true product of Mr. Brocklehurst's Lowood regime designed to render his girls "hardy, patient, self-denying."

    The aspect which perhaps made the greatest impression on me, reading the book now as opposed to in my teens or early twenties, was its depiction of - as my edition has it - "a woman's passionate search for a wider and richer life than that traditionally accorded to her sex in Victorian society." To that end, I'll quote a passage which must represent Charlotte Bronte at her most direct:

    "It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. [...] Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced for their sex."

    So, a very rich book with themes of proto-feminism, atonement, self-actualisation, among others; elements of the gothic and heroic; subtle power play; a highly romantic novel. How was it for you, if you were reading it for the first time, and how did you find it this time round if it was a re-read? While you're pondering, do pop over to Cornflower for a virtual cup of tea and slice of cake.

Cornflower Book Group - April 2015

   

    Thanks to everyone who responded so enthusiastically to my suggestion that we pick up the threads of the Book Group, and here at last I am doing just that.

    Having said before that our aim is to explore both the highways and byeways of literature, our next book is most definitely in the former category to the extent that we have probably all read it, but maybe not for some time.

    A chance mention of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre yesterday* set me thinking that it might be a good choice for us: if you read it when young, what will your more adult self make of it, and if you haven't ever read it, then I hope this "work of genius" (as it's described on the back of my Penguin edition) is a treat in store.

    "Orphaned into the household of her Aunt Reed at Gateshead, subject to the cruel regime at Lowood charity school, Jane Eyre none the less emerges unbroken in spirit and integrity. How she takes up the post of governess at Thornfield Hall, meets and loves Mr. Rochester and discovers the impediment to their lawful marriage are elements in a story that transcends melodrama to portray a woman's passionate search for a wider and richer life than that traditionally accorded to her sex in Victorian society."

    I wrote a dissertation on the romantic hero in the novels of the Brontë sisters in my final year at school, but I don't think I've revisited any of the books since then. Once it came to mind, I was immediately very keen to re-read it, though I'm curious as to how I'll feel about this classic so many years on; I hope you won't take much persuading to pick it up, either.

    As it's quite a long book, and I don't want anyone to feel under pressure, I've given us about ten weeks to read it, and set the discussion date as Saturday, 25th. April. That's when I'll put up a brief post here, and everyone can have their say in the comments, then or in subsequent days or weeks. No-one should have any difficulty getting hold of a copy, assuming you don't already have one on your shelves.

    I hope you approve of this choice and will be happy to join in, whether you're a long term member of the group or will be participating for the first time.

 

*See Ichigoknitter's (knitting) podcast.

Cornflower Book Group - In this House of Brede

  

    Rumer Godden spent five years writing In this House of Brede and she said they were "among the richest and most rewarding" of her life. Her close and very personal contact with the Benedictine community at Stanbrook Abbey meant that she gained access to many of the nuns on her regular visits, and was given permission to observe all services and ceremonies. Her research into Benedictine history, tradition, liturgy and music was detailed and extensive, and the book is the richer for it.

    When asked why she chose the religious life as the subject for a novel, she recalled, "My writing self, which is the more truthful, answered: Because nuns are dramatic. Theirs is the greatest love story in the world." It is a dramatic and utterly gripping story she has told, one which sheds so much light on a way of life about which we perhaps know a little, or have certain preconceptions, and which illuminates with great empathy, not to mention the novelist's skill.

    As a story, I felt it was at its most successful when within the abbey walls, the narrative strands which took us into the outside world seemed, in comparison, rather less assured and more contrived on occasions, but in its depiction of a life underpinned by simplicity, humility, clarity, selflessness and common purpose it was masterly.

    What did you think of it?

Cornflower Book Group - The Warden

   

    Why has it taken me until now to read Trollope? I don't know the answer to that, but I'm so glad to have discovered him at last.

    I was charmed by The Warden, the first of his Chronicles of Barsetshire; I loved its humour, its good-natured unpretentiousness, the authorial voice and commentary, the gently caricatural portraits, the moral 'meanderings' of the story, its handling of a political subject with grace and human understanding. There were small riches of one kind or another on every page, and if you're a collector of great names, the book has more than its share, so add to your list those of Sir Abraham Haphazard Q.C., Dr. Pessimist Anticant, the social critic, and Mr. Popular Sentiment, the influential novelist (about whom we heard yesterday)!

    This was a soft and comfortable book, a few hours of pure pleasure, and it's surprising - or perhaps not, in the light of yesterday's post! - to read that when it was first published it sold so slowly to begin with that Trollope made only £20/9/3 from it in the first two years: "as regarded remuneration for the time, stone-breaking would have done better". Happily, his fortunes changed, and the rest, as they say, is history.

    There were many eminently quotable lines, but let's have a couple for good measure:

    "You might pass Eleanor Harding in the street without notice, but you could hardly pass an evening with her and not lose your heart." Aw!

    Then, and I'm digressing now with reference to this post, here is the opening paragraph of the Conclusion:

    "Our tale is now done, and it only remains to us to collect the scattered threads of our little story, and to tie them into a seemly knot." Interestingly, he goes on "... were it not for the custom of the thing, we might leave it to the imagination of all concerned to conceive how affairs at Barchester arranged themselves." So custom - or expectation on the part of the reader - requires the neat finish.

    Back to the main point - was this your first Trollope (and if so, are you now inclined to read more), or are you an old hand, happy to revisit the book? Either way, do give us your thoughts.

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.)

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.

Cornflower Book Group - Tom's Midnight Garden

   

    Reading my notes on Philippa Pearce's much-loved children's book Tom's Midnight Garden, I'm struck by how straightforward it seems but how complex is the thinking behind it.

    It was first published in 1958, and the contemporary part of the story is indeed of its time - urgent communication was by telegram! This has a certain nostalgic charm. But beyond the simple device of a lonely boy's finding his way into a garden which no longer exists, of making a friend there, and of his growing attachment to both place and person coming to dominate his thoughts and actions - strong and appealing in itself - is the concept of time, and the intricacy of the author's use and examination of it.

    A clock striking thirteen, and seeming thus to mark an extra hour in the day; the clock that is always there, even when its surroundings change, "time in, time out"; the time past that is not a fixed or linear time for Tom in that he can visit the garden at all seasons and hours of the day, and can go and back and forward within the garden's time, unlike in his own, where "Time was marching steadily onwards in the way it is supposed to go: from minute to minute, from hour to hour, from day to day". The ticking of the clock sounds to Tom like a human heart, "alive and beating", and by extension his life in the garden and his friendship with Hatty is so much more real and vivid and absorbing for him than the contained, mundane hours spent in his aunt and uncle's flat. But time itself is both friend and enemy, each second taking him closer to his next longed-for visit to the garden, but also to his eventual return to his own home, the loss of his nocturnal adventures and the companionship of Hatty.

    "Tom thought again: Time no longer - the angel on the grandfather clock had sworn it. But if Time is ever to end, that means that, here and now, Time itself is only a temporary thing. It can be dispensed with, perhaps; or, rather, it can be dodged. Tom himself might be able to dodge behind Time's back and have the Past - that is, Hatty's Present and the garden - here, now and for ever. To manage that, of course, he must understand the workings of Time."

    In the end, Tom comes to understand that as Hatty - now Mrs. Bartholomew - tells him, "... nothing stands still, except in our memory." He cannot live in the past, but has a secret he can hug to him, memories to sustain him, and will return home content.

    I found it a very touching book, a satisfying one, clever and thought-provoking. I can see why it has become a children's classic and has earned a place on many people's 'favourites' shelves, and also how it could be re-read and enjoyed - and perhaps appreciated differently - at any age or stage in life.

    What did you think of it?

    While you're gathering your thoughts, do go and have a virtual slice of cake.

Cornflower Book Group - February & March 2014

 

    As you know, the Cornflower Book Group is reading Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce as our January book (we'll talk about it from next Saturday), but today let's look ahead to our February and March titles as a bit of advance notice is helpful. I hope you'll approve of both novels I've chosen and will be as keen to read (or re-read) them as I am.

    In February, a short, dark book for what will still be quite short, dark days (at least up here in the northern hemisphere): Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, first published in 1886, a classic which really needs no introduction.

    For the lighter, brighter March days, I've taken Julie's prompt (see her comment here) and decided to offer Anthony Trollope's The Warden (1855), the first of his Chronicles of Barsetshire, as a group read, and if that goes down well, we might even cover more of the series in future months.

    The chances are you'll have copies of both books already on your shelves, but if not they should be easy to come by. There are numerous paperback editions, audiobooks (for example here and here), Kindle versions are available free (and should you be so inclined you could go the whole hog and get the Complete Works of Anthony Trollope - all 47 novels, stories, notes, biographies, criticism and so on - for £1.39, and the slighter but nonetheless comprehensive Stevenson canon too), and if libraries don't have them to hand then sharp words are in order!

    Let's say we set our discussion dates as from Saturday, 22nd. February for Dr. Jekyll, and Saturday, 29th. March for The Warden.

    I'm looking forward to some good reading with these two, and I hope you'll join in and read them with me.

Cornflower Book Group - January, 2014

    

 

    The Cornflower Book Group read a well-known children's book last year in December/January, and at this dark time of year (at least in the northern hemisphere) when many of us are inclined to settle down round the fire and pick up something familiar to read, I thought another children's classic might not go amiss, so I've chosen the Carnegie Medal-winning Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce, first published in 1958.

    "Lying awake at night, Tom hears the old grandfather clock downstairs strike . . . eleven . . . twelve . . . thirteen . . . Thirteen! When Tom gets up to investigate, he discovers a magical garden. A garden that everyone told him doesn't exist. A garden that only he can enter . . ."

    If you have already read the book I hope you will welcome a re-read, and for anyone coming to it for the first time, its should be a most pleasant discovery. Philippa Pearce's books are marked by their "extreme sensitivity and consummate writing skill", and this is her best known, the critic John Rowe Townsend commenting: "I have no reservations about it. If I were asked to name a single masterpiece of English children's literature since [the Second World War] . . . it would be this outstandingly beautiful and absorbing book."

    That's good enough for me and - I hope - for you, too, so please seek out a copy and read it ready for discussion from Saturday, 25th. January.

    The book should be easily obtainable in paperback, there is a Kindle edition, and an audiobook, libraries should have it, US Amazon stocks it, and there may already be a copy on your children's bookshelves! I always mention The Book Depository in these posts because they offer free worldwide delivery, so in case of any local difficulty getting hold of it, they may be a solution.

    If you haven't read along with the group before you are more than welcome to join us. It's open to everyone and is all very informal and good-natured - there are no rules, no commitments, you simply read the book and leave a comment on it in the discussion post, and you can be as brief or as expansive as you wish, picking up others' points in subsequent comments if you want to answer them in the 'thread' format. I apologise for being a bit later than usual with this selection, but it's a short enough work for us to read and digest by the due date, so despite the busy-ness of this time of year, I hope you'll feel moved to pick up Tom's Midnight Garden, perhaps in the post-Christmas lull, and above all, I hope you'll enjoy it.

Cornflower Book Group - The Pillow Book

   

    What did you make of The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon?

    "I have written in this book things that I have seen and thought, in the long idle hours spent at home, without ever dreaming that others would see it. Fearing that some of my foolish remarks could well strike others as excessive and objectionable, I did my best to keep it secret, but despite all my intentions I'm afraid it has come to light."

    Genuine? Disingenuous? Calculating? We shall never know, but whatever the purpose of these writings or the intentions behind them, they have endured and been read for 1,000 years.

    Part diary (and The Diary of a Provincial Lady came to mind on occasion), part series of still lifes, a commonplace book, a social history, its anecdotes akin to episodes of a soap opera, its gossipy comments not far from tweets at times, its lists much like those often seen on blogs; elsewhere the author's keen observation and appreciation of a scene make for entrancing reading, and as the translator Meredith McKinney says in her introduction to the Penguin Classics edition, from "deep inside the moment of experience", she teaches us to see.

    Caustic, snobbish, prone to extreme and sometimes crass juxtapositions, condemnatory, dogmatic, Sei Shōnagon lived in a rarefied world where appearance was everything, but if as she says above she set down her thoughts for herself alone, then she had no need to temper her words and moderate her feelings in consideration of others' sensibilities. Allowing her the scope that that intended privacy permits, what she gives us across the centuries in her "handbook of poetic references" is largely a thing of beauty. She finds rain "so unpoetic", so I part company with her there, but I smiled at her dislike of sloppy diction and language unbecoming to the speaker, and I admire her eye - and memory - for detail, and love her evident genuine delight in so many things, and that she finds it "fascinating that things like [the effect of dew on foliage] can utterly fail to delight others"! She is unique in her mindful attention to the slightest thing, and so while in some lights the book is, as the translator says, "a crazy quilt", it also has its own sense of order and identity.

    Which parts - if any - caught your interest? Did you love her lists, enjoy her minute observations, become involved in her narratives? Did you warm to her enthusiasm and appreciation of beauty, or did you find her uncompromising attitudes uncongenial? Would this book prompt you to read more Japanese literature or discover more about Japanese culture, either in the present day or in the past? Are you tempted to begin a Pillow Book of your own - a diary or scrapbook of things which catch your attention and engage the senses?

Cornflower Book Group - The Shooting Party

 

    Exactly one hundred years on from the events of the novel, we look back to the period in which Isabel Colegate's The Shooting Party is set - the Edwardian era immediately before the First World War - with an even greater sense of perspective than that summed up so eloquently in the book's opening passage.

 

    In the light of what we know was to come, the book is a sharply delineated commentary on its time. Its focus is narrow - a small group of guests gathered at Sir Randolph Nettleby's Oxfordshire estate for the most important shooting party of the season, on the last weekend in October 1913 - and yet through that prism it shows much. Historic and impending social and societal change, attitudes, beliefs and mores, all are there in the background, almost as allegorical tapestries adorning a wall, in front of which is played out the central drama, that of a sporting rivalry which leads to a death.

    Precise, evocative, economical and controlled, it places vivid pen-portraits of its major characters within the narrative and then balances them in the final few pages with equally brief but nonetheless full and fitting accounts of what was to become of them in the years ahead. There's more to that than just a simple tying up of loose ends, for an important subtext is that of legacy - in the widest sense, what will be left and to whom. Sir Randolph is preoccupied with the decline of the rural way of life and of estates such as his own on which so many people rely for their livelihood; Lionel Stephens, barrister and romantic idealist, looks to war or some other "great trial" as a cleansing force, one that would rid society of its baser habits and make for a better world. Bob Lilburn and Gilbert Hartlip, men of lesser conscience, are more concerned with form and self and reputation; and then there's Tom Harker, poacher turned if not gamekeeper then beater, a fulcrum of sorts for the plot, Cornelius Cardew, the outsider, and his proselytising, Dan Glass and his scholarly ambitions, even young Osbert and his concern for his duck; all, in their way, are spokes in a wheel, even though some question their purpose.

    There were some lovely lines such as the Downton-esque, "He is the eldest son, and there is coal beneath the Park," and "... he was a good gardener and good gardeners were known to be on the despotic side", also the references to Olivia's reading, including "frivolous novels" such as the works of E.F. Benson; but one of the most telling, I think, was again to do with Olivia when she and Cicely and Aline are following the guns and she feels an unexpected and unexplained sense of excitement and in noticing every detail of her companions and of their progress "to the front line" wonders, "are we really all so beautiful and brave, or do we just think we are?".

    How did you find the book - too slow and studied, or a perfect portrait of a time and place?

    Did you feel its prefiguring of the slaughter to come was too obvious, or was that point well-stated?

    What of the mix of characters - were any too stereotypical, did you think?

    Have you read anything else by Isabel Colegate, and on the basis of The Shooting Party, would you seek out her other novels now?

    Any more impressions, thoughts, likes and dislikes?

 

The 'Books and Cakes' post for The Shooting Party is here.

Cornflower Book Group - Crusoe's Daughter

 

    Jane Gardam's novel Crusoe's Daughter takes its epigraph from Virginia Woolf's* The Common Reader:

"The pressure of life when one is fending for oneself alone on a desert island is really no laughing matter. It is no crying one either",

and this book is a life story, but both sad and funny, and it's a life in moments, observations, remembered details, 'keys' to a history, each one proffered in sentences which vary from the long to the short, the blunt or the busy, almost like so many pictures hung in a gallery.

    Polly Flint, whose story it is, is marooned by family circumstances and fate at Oversands on the north-east coast, and then as she grows up chooses to remain all but cut off, "sitting out" her life at the yellow house, working on her book "clothing [herself] in armour, hiding in a lair, hiding from pain."

    I loved so much about it: the many deft word-sketches which speak volumes; the running thread of Crusoe-comparisons with which Jane Gardam treats the themes of loneliness and isolation and the solace to be found in books; the household at Thwaite and Lady Celia with her Tennyson and Lewis Carroll much like Mrs. Fisher in The Enchanted April; the sheer verve of the narrative - there's nothing formulaic about it. It's a story of disappointments, hopes unrealised, expectations never met, but also of consolations of a sort, of pragmatism, of living as best one can. I found it a thoughtful and entertaining book and a heartening one. How about you?

 

*And Woolf, of course, makes a cameo appearance in the novel.

    (For what to eat while reading Crusoe's Daughter click here.)

Cornflower Book Group - our Autumn books

   

    The Cornflower Book Group already has its September book, that is Crusoe's Daughter by Jane Gardam (full details here), but I thought it might be helpful to plan ahead and choose something now for us to read and talk about in October and November, and I hope you'll feel well-disposed towards the books I have in mind.

    October 2013 seems the most fitting month in which to read The Shooting Party by Isabel Colegate for it is set in October 1913. It's about a shooting party at Sir Randolph Nettleby's Oxfordshire estate: "opulent, adulterous, moving assuredly through the rituals of eating and slaughter, [the guests] are a dazzlingly obtuse and brilliantly decorative finale of an era." And from a review: "Threads of romance, social comment, country lore and intrigue both above and below stairs are cunningly worked together to create a brilliant tapestry ... I have seldom enjoyed a book so much."

    If anyone baulks at the £12.99 UK cover price of the paperback (and I'm sorry that it is comparatively expensive), The Book Depository is selling it for rather less, and there are cheap secondhand copies available at Abebooks. For those in the US, your edition is more reasonably priced. Libraries should have the book, too, of course, and I hope no-one has any difficulty getting hold of a copy, whatever their preferred source.

    On now to our November book which is something a bit different. A work of non-fiction, written in Japanese 1000 years ago, it is The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon. The author was a Court gentlewoman whose dates were c.966-1017; she wrote the book for her own amusement but it is "one of the greatest works of Japanese literature. A fascinating exploration of life amongst the nobility at the height of the idyllic Heian period, it describes the exquisite pleasures of a confined world in which poetry, love, fashion and whim dominated, and harsh reality was kept firmly at a distance. In sections ranging in size from brief reflections to longer, lyrical tales, Shōnagon moves elegantly across a wide range of themes including nature, society and her own flirtations and frustrations, to provide a witty, unique and deeply personal insight into a woman's life at Court in classical Japan."

    So there are our three Autumn books and their discussion dates are below; please join us in reading them.

Crusoe' Daughter - from Saturday, 28th. September

The Shooting Party - from Saturday, 26th. October

The Pillow Book - from Saturday, 23rd. November.

Cornflower Book Group - September, 2013

 

    We've read 60 books, we've had a break over the summer, now it's time to begin our autumn reading.

    I hope that everyone who has read some or all of the Cornflower Book Group titles and taken part in our discussions so far will be keen to get going again and start a new book. For anyone not already familiar with the group and the way it works, it's a very informal set-up, open to all, involving reading one book every month and then sharing your thoughts on it - briefly or at length, just as you wish - by way of comments on the discussion post. Ours is a friendly group, and while our opinions on a given book will of course often diverge, when we disagree we do so in a good-natured, respectful manner.

   

    To begin the new season I've chosen Crusoe's Daughter* by Jane Gardam, a novel first published in 1985 and said to be the book of which its author is most proud (though she self-deprecatingly qualifies that by adding, "I don't know about proud..."); it's also the one the critics call her finest. It tells the story of Polly Flint and the 80 years she spends in a house by the sea on a bleak coast, the world of books her solace and obsession, and you can read the opening passage here.

    On Saturday, 28th. September, I'll put up a short post on the novel to get our conversation going, then it's over to all of you to join in and have your say. If you haven't taken part before but feel like doing so now, you'll be most welcome, and of course I hope all 'old hands' will return with renewed vigour and enthusiasm.

 

    *(For the benefit of anyone overseas whose local shops or libraries don't have Crusoe's Daughter, you can order it post-free here; it's also available as an e-book.)

Cornflower Book Group - The Razor's Edge

    To begin, an excerpt from my introductory post on W. Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge:

    "It is said to be one of his finest books, and "one of the most interesting". Selina Hastings in her biography The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham goes on, "In it he engages with the three topics which always most fascinated him, sexual passion, the mores of society and the nature of goodness, in this case as illustrated by the division between the material and spiritual worlds .... From publication the book made an enormous impact. There were many adulatory reviews - 'sheer delight' said Cyril Connolly, 'Mr. Maugham's best novel since Cakes and Ale' - and sales were immense."

    I can see why it got that adulation! I found this book so interesting - elegant, intelligent, what might be seen as a 'difficult' subject handled with respect and balance, and Maugham's own part in the narrative as observer, recorder, confidant, occasionally guide and mentor, was a masterly stroke.

    The story travels from America to France, from just after the First World War to many years later, and it concerns a young man, Larry Darrell and his spiritual quest. His wartime experiences have led him to abandon the conventional career path and marriage which were laid before him and which he was expected to take, to seek instead "a philosophy, or maybe a religion, and a rule of life that'll satisfy both his head and his heart." Larry is self-possessed, cordial, charming and serene, and in a journey across continents which takes him from manual labour to mysticism, meditation and contemplation, from study to selfless acts, we follow his progress with interest, and this reader for one cared about the outcome.

    As Larry's counterpart in the world of material things we have Elliott Templeton with his outrageous snobbishness and his "absurd affectations", his Charvet underpants monogrammed and coronetted, his 'collected personages' to rival those claimed as intimates by Lady Montdore in Love in a Cold Climate, his great wealth and essentially empty and trivial life. And Maugham weaves in and out between the two men, bumping into them in Paris or the south of France, getting news of them from friends and relatives, charting the undulations of their lives until the end when he deems it "a success story" in that everyone involved got what they wanted.

   There were some sharp and lovely lines ("American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers", and a passage on Elliott's vision of heaven), and I thought the book's easy, relaxed pace and composed, urbane style carried the story beautifully.

    How did you find it? What did you think?

Cornflower Book Group - The Enchanted April

 
    "It was, that year, a particularly wonderful spring, and of all the months at San Salvatore April, if the weather was fine, was best. May scorched and withered; March was restless, and could be hard and cold in its brightness; but April came along softly like a blessing, and if it were a fine April it was so beautiful that it was impossible not to feel different, not to feel stirred and touched."

    Happily for the four ladies at the heart of Elizabeth von Arnim's novel, April at San Salvatore that year was not just fine but enchanted, and the magic of the book with its theme of transformation and regeneration continues to touch and delight, reading after reading.

    For anyone who hasn't read The Enchanted April, four ladies, previously unknown to one another, take a castle in Italy for a month's holiday. One, the lofty Mrs. Fisher, is a widow who lives mostly in the past, preferring to sit in solitude and remember "better times and better men"; Lotty and Rose are escaping their mundane, dutiful lives, and their husbands - one a pompous bore, the other a biographer of scandalous women; and the fourth member of the party is Lady Caroline Dester, society beauty and fair game, it seems, for every man she meets. The driving force behind the holiday is Lotty: "she who in England had been such a thing of gusts" now finds balance and indeed bliss at San Salvatore, so much so that she longs to share the experience with the husband she has left behind. Rose, with "the face of a patient and disappointed Madonna", also finds spaciousness in life at the castle, so that she too craves the presence of her husband from whom she has become distanced. And while Lady Caroline lies in the sun and smoothes her ruffled feathers, Mrs. Fisher grows restless and somehow her spirit burgeons as it has never done before.

    " ... there was something peculiar in the atmosphere at San Salvatore. It promoted expansion. It brought out dormant qualities..."

    and as not only Messrs. Wilkins and Arbuthnot arrive to join their respective wives, but the castle's owner Mr. Briggs drops in, too, the place casts its spell and love and light-heartedness blossom.

    The book is charming, (the film*, I think, almost more so), a happy, uplifting read, and one to return to. "The novel is the lightest of omelettes," says Terence de Vere White in the introduction to my edition, "in the making of which the least possible number of eggs get broken. Only an incorrigible pedant would try to judge it at a deeper level."

    Were you enchanted by it? I hope you were, and if this was your first Elizabeth von Arnim, are you now inclined to read more? Either way, perhaps you'll join us for next month's CBG book, for which you'll find details here.

 

*The film's location is the Portofino castle, Castello Brown, in which Elizabeth von Arnim herself stayed in April 1921 and in which she set the book. There seems to be no website as such, but this one gives some idea of the place.

 

Edited to add: the Books and Cakes post for The Enchanted April is now up - click here.

Cornflower Book Group - May, 2013

 
    "Immensely craftsman-like ... a fascinating book," Times Literary Supplement.

    "Larry Darrell is a young American in search of the absolute. The progress of his spiritual odyssey involves him with some of Maugham's most brilliant characters - his fiancée Isabel, whose choice between love and wealth has lifelong repercussions, and Elliott Templeton, her uncle, a classic expatriate snob. The most ambitious of Maugham's novels, this is also one in which Maugham himself plays a part, as he wanders in and out of the story, observing his characters struggling with their fates."

    W. Somerset Maugham's 1944 novel The Razor's Edge is to be our CBG book for May. It is said to be one of his finest books, and "one of the most interesting". Selina Hastings in her biography The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham goes on, "In it he engages with the three topics which always most fascinated him, sexual passion, the mores of society and the nature of goodness, in this case as illustrated by the division between the material and spiritual worlds .... From publication the book made an enormous impact. There were many adulatory reviews - 'sheer delight' said Cyril Connolly, 'Mr. Maugham's best novel since Cakes and Ale' - and sales were immense."

    There are two film versions, the first (1946) starring Tyrone Power and the second (1984) with Bill Murray. I shall read the book first - I've posted the opening passage here, by the way - and then perhaps watch one or other of them.

    There is still plenty of time to read Elizabeth von Arnim's The Enchanted April for discussion from Saturday, 27th. April (I've just finished my re-read and it did not disappoint), and then we'll go on to talk about The Razor's Edge from Saturday, 25th. May. Everyone is most welcome to join in whether you've read along with us before or have just found us, and the book itself should be easy enough to find in various formats and in libraries as well as shops. This will be my first Maugham and I'm greatly looking forward to it; I hope that it will be a welcome re-read for some and a new discovery for others, but above all an enjoyable and interesting book for anyone who picks it up.