Cornflower Books

Long time no see!

    I don't know where the time has gone - I certainly did not mean to be away from here for this long - but before the year is out, here's a quick look at my reading highlights of 2023. In no particular order:

    A Fortunate Woman, Polly Morland

    The Bookseller of Inverness, S.G. MacLean

    The Waters under the Earth, John Moore

    And a Dog called Fig, Helen Humphreys

    The Covenant of Water, Abraham Verghese

    The Improbability of Love, Hannah Rothschild

    The Secret Hours, Mick Herron

 

    Wishing you the best in books and in all things in 2024!

A simply lovely read

    A Cotswold village in the 1950s, the May Day fair, a handful of characters populating this bucolic stage.

    Miss Read's Thrush Green is comfort reading: gentle, wise, attuned to the beauty of the natural world and to the cares, concerns, and joys of the human one. If you're looking for a 'nice' book, go no further.

                                                  ~~~~~

    For more about the author, her obituary is here, and her Desert Island Discs here.

A bit of catching up

    What have I been reading since last we spoke? Well, John Moore's The Waters under the Earth was utterly absorbing, and when I finished it I handed it to Mr. C. who rattled through it in no time at all and enjoyed it every bit as much as I did. Yes, it's long (and would be chopped quite a bit were it submitted to an editor these days, I think), but its portrait of a family in changing times - it's set in the early 1950s - is a sensitively vivid one which offers welcome detail rather than a broad brush. Moore is wonderful on the natural world, too, - see this snippet, for example - and on the march of 'progress' which threatens to impoverish rather than enrich the whole, and he's good on shifting societal attitudes and mores, and the opening up of possible futures for people whose options had before been confined. A new reality intrudes on the settled world of the main character Ferdo and his beloved ancient oak woods, harsh truths must now be confronted rather than denied. I'll leave it there and let you discover for yourself, as I hope you will, its intricacies and many charms. 

    Next came Sean Ashton's The Way to Work, a cleverly surreal novel set on a commuter train. In its early stages it reminded me of Susanna Clarke's Piranesi in its Escher-like depiction of a never-ending chain of carriages with weird rules and systems and no apparent means of alighting, but then, if you'll pardon the pun, it went off the rails a bit and left me a touch travel-sick; another reader may of course settle very comfortably to the more disorienting elements of the story.

    Now I'm on to Abraham Verghese's new novel The Covenant of Water which is a whopper at over 700 pages, but almost half way through I can say that for my taste not a word is superfluous and I can't wait to read on.

    What have you been reading recently? Anything you would particularly recommend?

The woods

    "In her memory there had always been a lot of sunshine, the unfolding bracken fronds were more golden than green, there were broad clearings where the insects buzzed and the birds flitted in a special sort of honey-coloured light: lakes of luminescence in which every bee and every butterfly became a pinpoint of light as it swam there. And there were pools and rivulets and alleys and tunnels of sunshine going between the trees; and there were great banks of flowers in their seasons, bluebell and bedstraw, wood sorrel and foxglove, and woodruff that smelt as sweet as hay. What she saw when she looked back into her childhood was a glade in the Forest of Arden shown upon a bright-lit stage: Here shall you see No enemy But winter and rough weather."

    From The Waters under the Earth by John Moore.

February's books

    I warmly recommend all the above.

    I've read the delightful Henrietta's War by Joyce Dennys several times and it never disappoints.

    Penelope Lively's According to Mark was another re-read, and a reminder of how good a writer she is.

    D.J. Taylor's collection of excellent short stories Stewkey Blues I covered here.

    Mother's Boy, a fictionalised look at the life of Charles Causley, was my first Patrick Gale and I'm sure won't be my last.

    Magic Lessons by Alice Hoffman kept me enthralled throughout.

    Celebrated 'nose' Jean-Claude Ellena provides, in his Atlas of Perfumed Botany, "a varied and fascinating cartography of fragrances, tracing historical connections and cultural exchanges". If you're interested in scents and their origins, this would be a lovely addition to your bookshelf.

The novelist

    " 'The novelist has an infinity of choices,' Mark read. 'He chooses what is to happen, to whom it happens, and in what way he will relate to what happens. The picture he constructs is complete in its own terms. When he says "This is the story and the whole story" we must accept it. Perhaps novelists are the only people who do tell the truth.' ....

    'The novelist,' he read, 'recounts as much of what happened as is appropriate or pertinent. He leaves out what is either unnecessary (to the plot and to the theme) or what would distract. In other words, the silences are not lies but rejection of extraneous matter. Only those conversations are reported which are relevant; only those actions that have some bearing on what is going on. The characters, presumably, have a whole other life as well, off the pages of the book; they eat and sleep and talk to people who never feature.' "

    Words to ponder from Penelope Lively's novel According to Mark.

Off the Page

    Some time ago I suggested that readers might find interesting episodes from a 1980s/90s television series called Off the Page in which Jenny Brown (the first director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival and now a major literary agent) interviewed well known writers with Scottish connections. The ones I had discovered - and particularly enjoyed - featured Mary Stewart, Rumer Godden, and Dorothy Dunnett, but alas they had vanished from YouTube when I last checked.

    The happy news is that all four series of the programme are available here; you have to sign up (free) to ITV/STV Player, and I don't know whether it's accessible from outwith the UK, but it's worth a try. I shall watch those distinguished ladies again with great pleasure and browse through the other episodes for more gems.

Funny, magical, touching, wise ...

    With the sad news today of the death of Dame Hilary Mantel, here again is my post on her marvellous novel Fludd:

    The dour Lancashire village of Fetherhoughton; the austerity of the 1950s. At the presbytery, Father Angwin has lost his faith, his housekeeper Miss Dempsey seeks solace in her domestic duties - "There was always something one could polish. And if ingenuity were really exhausted, one could turn mattresses" - and the Bishop ("His Corpulence") comes meddling in church affairs. Up the road is the convent, grim to say the least, where poor young Sister Philomena does her best but cannot fully submit to the life her vows entail.

   In her prize-winning 1989 novel Fludd, Hilary Mantel takes the theme of transformation and applies it to her unsuspecting characters with dazzling effect. With the arrival out of a storm of the 'curate', Fludd, far-reaching change is begun and lives are touched and opened: "falseness can no longer be endured, truth must out. There must be new combinations within the heart: passions never witnessed, notions never before formed." As soon becomes clear, Fludd is no ordinary cleric, and while he's not Mary Poppins, in Fetherhoughton 'til the wind changes, nonetheless he has work to do and unusual powers with which to do it (his self-replenishing whisky bottle reminded me of Cary Grant and Monty Woolley's sherry in The Bishop's Wife!).

    I discovered this book by reading Juxtabook's review (what were we saying about the influence of blogs?), and it is every bit as good as Catherine says it is. Funny, magical, touching, wise, intelligent - the list of its attributes is long; here you'll find writing of great poise and style, a comic's gift for timing and a dramatist's ear for dialogue, but its unusual charm lies in the way in which Hilary Mantel treats her transformative theme. "The real Fludd (1574-1637)," she tells us in a note, "was a physician, scholar and alchemist. In alchemy, everything has a literal and factual description, and in addition a description that is symbolic and fantastical." However you choose to apply that to the story, whoever or whatever you think Fludd may be - and the book leaves the reader to make up their own mind about things - I found it a marvellously entertaining, clever work and I enjoyed it hugely.

See also this.

JRRT & TLOTR on TRIH

    The Rest is History podcast has just released two episodes on JRR Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings respectively, and I commend them to you whether you are a Tolkien fan or not. The discussions between historians Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook are informed, eloquent, engaging, and consider the author and his works in a broad cultural context, perfect for those who already know a lot about the man behind the books and enlightening for anyone who is less familiar with him.

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!

Recently read

    Favourites among them: The Silver Branch and The Other Bennet Sister (a delight!).

January's books

    All good, but the top three on the pile were the highlights: The Armourer's House by Rosemary Sutcliff is pure delight, Juliet Nicolson's The Great Silence 1918-1920 Living in the Shadow of the Great War, fascinating and moving in equal measure, and The Appeal by Janice Hallett is ingeniously, brilliantly done!

An old favourite

    Today's email from the London Review Bookshop was on J.L. Carr, whose books are currently being reprinted by Penguin as Modern Classics. I've spoken here often about Carr's masterpiece A Month in the Country, but after this morning's prompt I do so again in case you don't already know the book - it's not to be missed. For those who are familiar with the novel, Byron Rogers's biography of its author is very much worth reading too.

Riverside

    A second title* from new publisher Manderley Press: Rosemary Sutcliff's The Armourer's House. First published in 1951, this is a look at Tudor London through the eyes of young Tamsyn who leaves her Devon home on the coast for her uncle's house on the banks of the Thames. 

    "The ships and river traffic passing Dolphin House - including the royal barge carrying King Henry VIII and his new Queen Anne Boleyn - feed Tamsyn's imagination and her dreams of going to sea for a life of imagination and discovery. But as she soon finds out, adventure and excitement can also be found closer to home."

    The introduction is by Lara Maiklem, author of Mudlarking: Lost and Found on the River Thames, and the illustrations are by Isabel Greenberg. My copy - ordered directly from the publisher - came beautifully wrapped and beribboned.

    For more on Rosemary Sutcliff try this post and this (very short!) one.

*Stevenson's Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes, their first book, is here

Recommending ...

     Apricot Sky by Ruby Ferguson is a delight! As Candia McWilliam says in her introduction to the new Dean Street Press/Furrowed Middlebrow edition (the book having first been published in 1952), "the plot of the novel is, simply, life, as lived by irresistible characters with humour, optimism, and affection". And of the writing, " [it's] a ballad in prose; the 'refrains' are singingly chromatic accounts, most often of weather, land or sea, [...] it's something like watching tweed being made, the bright threads combining to offer veracity to nature. She lays down colour with plein-air freshness and sincerity." She's spot-on about this funny, warm, light-hearted romance, the engaging story of a Highland family set just after the war. 

    White Spines: Confessions of a Book Collector by Nicholas Royle is a quest narrative set in second-hand bookshops. It's about the collecting impulse, the 'completist' mentality, the thrill of discovery, and the quiet pleasure of mooching around among old books. In Nicholas Royle's case, the quarry is the white-spined Picador paperbacks published from the 1970s to the '90s, but whether you define the hunt as 'hobby' or 'obsession', it's a rich and lively account of the world of books, writers, writing, and how those things can shape and furnish a life. 

   Devorgilla Days by Kathleen Hart is aptly subtitled A Memoir of Hope and Healing. Kathleen outlines but doesn't dwell on the very tough times which led her to buy a small white "sugar cube" of a cottage in Scotland's 'book capital', Wigtown, but it's clear that her easy acceptance by the community there, the friendships she has made, and the new sense of purpose and joy in life that she has found in her adopted home are of especial value given what she's weathered. Her core message applies to anyone, whether they are experiencing rough water or plain sailing: "Have a go. It's fine once you're in." In other words, choose expansion over contraction, try something and see, and don't be afraid to start over. Kathleen will show you how.

A loyal and fervent advocate

   

    A letter from Philip Larkin to his Faber editor Charles Monteith, the latter having turned down Barbara Pym's latest novel An Unsuitable Attachment:

   ' "... what I feel is this: by all means turn it down if you think it's a bad book of its kind, but please don't turn it down because it's the kind of book it is ... Personally, too, I feel it is a great shame if ordinary sane novels about ordinary sane people doing ordinary sane things can't find a publisher these days. This is the tradition of Jane Austen and Trollope and I refuse to believe that no one wants its successors today."

    Larkin was writing his own manifesto: "I like to read about people who have done nothing spectacular, who aren't beautiful or lucky." He wanted to read about people who can see "in little autumnal moments of vision, that the so called big experiences of life are going to miss them". That such things "are presented not with self-pity or despair or romanticism, but with realistic firmness and even humour." Larkin, now excessively riled, went out on a limb, saying that this was the "kind of writing a responsible publisher ought to support (that's you, Charles!)".  ...

    Monteith had suggested that Pym had not sufficiently developed as a writer, but Larkin was having none of it: "I think development is a bit of a myth; lots of writers don't develop, such as Thomas Hardy or P.G. Wodehouse, nor do we want them to. That is how I feel about Miss Pym." '

    From The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym by Paula Byrne.

    As we know, Barbara Pym did not remain out of favour for she went on to be (re-)published to great acclaim, but it was Larkin's championing of her, along with Lord David Cecil's, that eventually turned the tide.

Still here!

   

    I'm not sure where the weeks have gone, but I am still here and have books to talk about. There will be posts coming on recent good reads, Devorgilla Days by Kathleen Hart and White Spines by Nicholas Royle, but for today, a word or two on a few others.

    After long being on my radar I've now read my first Louise Penny: I thoroughly enjoyed Still Life, especially its village setting and central character Inspector Gamache, and despite a bit of an over-stretched plot device I am definitely in the market for the next in the series.

    Anthony Horowitz's The Word is Murder was cleverly done, with the author putting himself into the book as an aide to an investigating officer. I don't read much crime, but this struck me as a nice twist on the norm.

    Agatha Christie: First Lady of Crime edited by HRF Keating is a reprint with a new introduction by Sophie Hannah. To get the most out of it you'd probably need a closer acquaintance with Dame Agatha's work than I have, but nonetheless it includes many interesting observations on what makes her the famous and enduring success she is.

    On to another huge bestseller: Rosamunde Pilcher. I recently re-read The Shell Seekers with much pleasure. It's a warm bath of a book, immersive and comforting, but what struck me was the editorial licence it displayed - nowadays a similar manuscript would be extensively pruned.

    As to current reading, I've just begun Ruby Ferguson's Apricot Sky and I'm delighted so far. It looks like being a sweet and happy story and has already had me laughing out loud. Stay tuned ...

Books in brief: China Court

   

    This is outstanding!

    You might call China Court a palimpsest of a novel: the history of a Cornish country house and its family, layered, interleaved, the past forever colouring the present. It's beautifully, evocatively written, but it's the masterly way Rumer Godden has constructed it that so impresses. In her preface she quotes Chaucer: Life is 'a thinne subtil knittinge of thinges', and such is her skill that she has carried the strands of her story with ease and perfect tension and worked them into a complex, fitting, and very pleasing pattern.

    I'll say no more than to urge you to read it for yourself.

(Edited to add: I've popped a favourite passage over here.)

Wildfire at Midnight

 

 

    Strange goings-on at a remote hotel on the Isle of Skye in the early summer of 1953 are the subject of Mary Stewart's second novel, Wildfire at Midnight.

    Model Gianetta Brooke, still bruised from the end of her short marriage, arrives at Camasunary for a few weeks of rest and relaxation. Her fellow guests are an odd assortment of people, and from the emotional undercurrents which seem to run between them she gets the impression that she has unwittingly walked into the middle of a drama of some kind. Just how dangerous the situation is quickly becomes apparent, and as that drama plays out on the slopes of the mighty Cuillin, where even in summer the weather can turn from benign to deadly in mere minutes, Gianetta encounters murder, mystery, superstition ... and her ex-husband.

    I'd describe this jolly good read as a 'locked room' detective story on a mountainside with a wee dash of The Wicker Man and The Thirty-Nine Steps; I enjoyed it very much indeed.

    For more Mary Stewart, have a look at Touch Not the Cat, and - as an aside - this post.

First impressions

 

 

    "[Sebastian] was aware at once of that sense of depth and strength that all old houses have. The wide staircase rose only gradually, with shallow worn uncarpeted stairs that gave the impression that they would take you very deeply in to withdrawn and peaceful places. The hall was dark, velvety with shadow and cosily warm. Beneath his feet, under the shabby rag, he could feel uneven flagstones. Meg's soft voice, calling for Zelle, and the sound of Mouse lapping water from a bowl marked DOG no more affected the deep silence of the house than Meg's glowing little figure disturbed the shadows. There was an old settle against the dark-panelled wall and a pot of flowers on a table. The house smelled of flowers, furniture polish, baked apples, dog and tobacco. Somewhere in the shadows a grandfather clock struck one, and a cuckoo clock far away upstairs made the same remark."

    From The Heart of the Family by Elizabeth Goudge.

    See also The Bird in the Tree and The Herb of Grace, the first two books in the Eliot Chronicles of which The Heart of the Family is the third.