Old English Rose Reads

2011 Wrap Up

The new year got off to an inauspicious start yesterday, when the Old English Thorn and I found ourselves unexpectedly on a coach from Edinburgh to Heathrow after gale force winds meant that the aeroplane we were supposed to be on was unable to take off.  What should have been a one hour twenty minute flight turned into an eight and a half hour coach journey, followed by the tube across London and then a train back out again.  Door to door we were travelling for a little over fourteen hours.

Thankfully, I have the day off today to recover, providing me with the ideal opportunity to reflect on the year gone by before launching myself into the new one tomorrow.

In 2011, I met (exactly!) my goal of reading 150 books totalling 40,659 pages.  I slowed down an awful lot after getting married and halving my commute time, so I’m pleased I still managed to get to 150.  The full list with links to my reviews can be found here.

I discovered some fantastic new authors, including E. F. Benson, Winifred Holtby, D. E. Stevenson, Margery Sharp and Michel Faber who I know I’m going to enjoy reading more of in 2012.  There were so many of them, not to mention old authors that I revisited, that it has been difficult to select the top ten books that I read in 2011, but these would be the ones that I would most heartily recommend.  In the interests of fairness, I haven’t included rereads, or two of these spots would be occupied by the ever wonderful Miss Austen.

South Riding by Winifred Holtby (1936)

I read this book quite early on in the year, but it’s stuck in my mind ever since. I was instantly drawn into the world of the fictional Yorkshire constituency and its inhabitants, utterly entranced by its impressive combination of detail and breadth.  Winifred Holtby introduces such a range of characters from all walks of life, but they are each described so well, however briefly, that I felt I knew each and every one of them.  It’s a rare talent for an author to be able to make me care so deeply about so many characters but Holtby manages it with consummate skill.  I was reluctant to finish the book and I’m treasuring up the rest of Holtby’s work to read when I need to treat myself.  Review

Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell (1851)

Although Cranford is less than half the size of South Riding, it is in many ways a similar type of book, focusing as it does on the mundane issues of a small community and yet somehow making them utterly fascinating.  With each episode I found myself becoming more and more involved in town life as though the book were gossip being related directly to me.  As with South Riding, I wanted to move to Cranford and live there with its community of brave, humorous, kind and gentle ladies.  It made me smile even when it made me cry.  It’s a delightful little read, surprisingly touching and highly recommended.

The Foolish Gentlewoman by Margery Sharp (1948)

Margery Sharp was one of my discoveries this year.  She writes the sort of humorous, gentle novels which seem to fit into the Persephone canon perfectly.  While this particular novel displayed the same wit, charm and light touch that I expected, it was nowhere near as breezy and flippant as The Nutmeg Tree which was my introduction to the author.  It had a wistfulness and sadness about it which I thought actually made it even better.  The humour was set off by the seriousness and I liked the way that everything couldn’t be wrapped up perfectly and sorted out in a fairy tale ending.  I was impressed that Sharp was brave enough to do that, and it’s made me look forward even more to discovering the rest of her work.

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (1998)

This remarkable book got 2011 off to a fantastic start for me.  The story of a misguided missionary who moves his family to Africa during the 1950′s but utterly fails to connect with the locals on any level was something of a departure from my usual reading fare, but I was completely drawn in by the narrative style.  The voices of the four daughters and their mother as they tell the story of their struggles are engaging both intellectually and emotionally, weaving a rich tapestry of opinions, viewpoints and voices.  My heart ached for each and every one of them as they tried their best to survive and to integrate in spite of the preacher’s inability to understand either the natives or his family.  Exceptionally written.  Review

The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber (2002)

If it weren’t for the rather risque subject matter of this book about a prostitute’s attempts to make her way in the world, it would almost be possible to believe that it were actually a Victorian novel rather than a novel about the Victorians.  The writing is elegant and mesmerising; it even made me appreciate the advantages of present tense narration and books which address the reader directly, both of which I usually dislike intensely.  Faber writes brilliant, diverse female characters and Sugar, Agnes, Sophie and Mrs Fox are some of the best that I’ve encountered this year.  I’m not convinced about the rest of Faber’s work as it looks to be mostly modern in its setting, but I have two of his other books sitting on the shelf and 2012 is the year to give them a try.  Review

Before They Are Hanged by Joe Abercrombie (2007)

This is the second book in a trilogy, so it feels rather odd to have this one on my top ten list and not the first one.  Often the middle book can fall into the trap of being mediocre filler between the interesting exposition in book one and exciting denouement in book three.  Not so in this trilogy.  I liked the first book well enough, but in Before They Are Hanged the trilogy really comes into its own.  Start with The Blade Itself and discover an exciting, bloody fantasy novel.  I can’t wait to finish the series.  It’s also reminded me that I used to read a lot more fantasy than I have done recently.  I must rectify this if it’s all going to be this good.

Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson (1997)

If a book were ever to be written specifically for me, it would be an awful lot like Human Croquet.  This book was bizarre, but very definitely my kind of bizarre.  It had all the elements that I love in a book: word play, humour, clever time shifts and twisted fairy tale tropes.  I doubt it will appeal to everyone because of its odd structure and peculiar style, but it’s definitely worth a try because there’s every possibility that you’ll love it as much as I did.  Read it and discover that Atkinson writes more than just the detective fiction for which she seems to be best known.  Review

The Wedding by Dorothy West (1995)

The Wedding is possibly the most thorough and insightful explorations of racism in America that I’ve read since I first encountered Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor when I was twelve.  It surprised me by how different it was to what I had expected.  There were no lynchings, violence or hate crimes, just assumptions, opinions and social conventions which are insidious and pervasive.  In many ways it’s like reading an Austen novel, but here people are discriminated against ever so politely based on the shade of their skin rather than their class.  It also shows how complicated the issue is, with people who consider themselves coloured but have pale skin being looked down on by some as not black enough and by others as all too black and indeed vice versa.  It’s a very interesting and thoughtful book.

Wild Swans by Jung Chang (1991)

I’m a little bit surprised that this is the only non-fiction book to make it onto my 2011 list, as I’ve read a few excellent memoirs this year.  However, Jung Chang’s story of her grandmother, her mother and herself growing up over a period of huge change in China wins in scope, in detail and in the sheer remarkable nature of the story being told.  Through Chang and her family, we see China change from a land of imperial warlords and their concubines to one in the iron grip of Mao’s dictatorship. It provided a compelling insight into a world that is completely alien to me and I found it utterly fascinating.  Review

The Uxbridge English Dictionary by Jon Nasmith et al (2005)

Ever since I was first introduced to it by my parents while listening to the radio on a long car journey, I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue has been one of my favourite comedy shows.  I enjoy every round, however silly, but I particularly love listening to the ludicrous yet ever so clever new definitions for words that the teams come up with in the round called Uxbridge English Dictionary.  This book is a compendium of the best of those definitions and it had me crying with laughter on every page.  If you like the radio show, you’ll love this book.  If you’ve never heard it, I insist you go forth and do so immediately, but anyone with an appreciation for the peculiarities of language should enjoy this regardless.

So, 2011 was a really good reading year for me.  I’ll be looking at tmy plans for 2012 tomorrow.  I’m excited already!

2011 Victorian Literature Challenge Wrap Up

Back in December 2010, I signed up for my first reading challenge on this blog: the Victorian Literature Challenge hosted by Bethany at Subtle Melodrama.  I still don’t think I’ve quite grasped the mechanics to participating and linking posts, but I really enjoyed the books that this challenge prompted me to read.

The challenge had four different levels of participation:

Sense and Sensibility: 1-4 books.
Great Expectations: 5-9 books.
Hard Times: 10-14 books.
Desperate Remedies: 15+ books

I said in my initial post that I was aiming for the Hard Times level, with the intention of reading one book each month.  In fact, I’ve managed to achieve the dizzy heights of Desperate Remedies, reading a grand total of sixteen Victorian books, including short stories, novels and poetry.

Because of my increasingly enormous review backlog, many of these books are ones that I haven’t written about here yet (although I fully intend to eventually).  To give an idea of what I thought about the books I read, the list below is ranked in order of preference and includes the star rating that I gave each book on LibraryThing (5 = I loved it; 4 = I really liked it; 3 = I liked it; 2 = It was ok; 1 = I didn’t like it).  All the links are to my reviews, where they exist.

1. Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell (5)
2. The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot (4.5)
3. Cautionary Tales by Hilaire Belloc (4.5)
4. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (4.5)
5. Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (4)
6. Elizabeth and her German Garden by Elizabeth von Arnim (4)
7. The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope (4)
8. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (4)
9. More English Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs (4)
10. The Warden by Anthony Trollope (3.5)
11. The Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith (3)
12. Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens (3)
13. Wessex Tales by Thomas Hardy (3)
14. The Monk and the Hangman’s Daughter by Ambrose Bierce (3)
15. The Professor by Charlotte Bronte (2.5)
16. Liza of Lambeth by W. Somerset Maugham (2)

As you can see, I really enjoyed most of these books, and all of them proved an interesting reading experience even if I didn’t like them as much.  All of the books that I read were by different authors, which was one of my aims when I set out, and as a result I ended up discovering lots of new-to-me Victorian authors which I might not have done without this challenge.  Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Elizabeth von Arnim, Anthony Hope, Joseph Jacobs, Anthony Trollope and Geroge and Weedon Grossmith were all authors I hadn’t read before, but I already have second books by all of them (except George and Weedon Grossmith who apparently only wrote The Diary of a Nobody).

In addition to discovering some new favourites, I also had fun encountering some familiar faces.  I made it through a Thomas Hardy book for the first time ever!  While The Wessex Tales did nothing to alter my opinion that Hardy is all doom and gloom, it did prove to me that I can get through it and even enjoy it (albeit in small doses).  I think it will still be a while before I attempt Jude the Obscure, but I might perhaps be tempted to try Far from the Madding Crowd in 2012. 

Reading Nicholas Nickleby was exactly the experience that I had expected, filled with deserving poor, miserly uncles and charitable rich men.  I was disappointed because of the lack of decent female characters and the overall predictability, but I’ve come to the conclusion that I should stop hoping that Dickens will do anything other than what I know he’s going to do and appreciate him for what he does, if that makes any sense at all.  There’s a new BBC adaptation of Great Expectations coming this Christmas, so I may reread that book as I know Miss Havisham bucks the trend of insipid women quite spectacularly.  Now that I’ve reminded myself that Dickens does exist outside of the classroom, I’m also going to devote a bit more of my reading time to him next year in honour of the Dickens Centenary.

My favourite book by far was Cranford which I had read in part before the challenge.  I started reading it shortly after watching the BBC adaptation, but I must have misplaced the book when I moved back home after university and somehow never picked it up again until now.  I’m glad I did, because I fell in love instantly with its cast of brave, kind ladies.  It’s easily one of my favourite books from 2011.

Although not my favourite book from this challenge by a long way, perhaps the most interesting to read from a critical point of view was The Professor by Charlotte Bronte.  I consider Jane Eyre to be one of my favourite books of all time and I really wanted Charlotte Bronte to be like Jane Austen, whose books I find all equally fantastic.  However, I was surprised by how indifferent I was towards this particular book.  It wasn’t bad (this is, after all, Charlotte Bronte) but it didn’t capture my heart or my mind and I can see why it was only published after the successes of her other novels.

So, all in all, a really good challenge.  I’m glad that I participated and thank you once again to Bethany for hosting!

Why I don’t use the library

As someone who reads quite a lot, people often ask why I don’t use the the library more.  Before I was married, my answer was that my commute was so long each day that I got home too late to use it in the evenings, and my weekends were taken up with visiting the Old English Thorn and engaging in wedding related activities.  Now that we’re living together a sensible distance from our workplaces I no longer have this excuse and not so long ago, I posted enthusiastically about my new found ability to use the library. 

Libraries are undeniably wonderful places which do the world of good and make books and reading accessible to everyone.  I have fond memories of visiting the library as a child, browsing the shelves for as long as I was allowed and coming back in the car with my nose already firmly buried in one of my new acquisitions.  It was a magical place then, shelves filled with opportunities, and it’s still excellent if all I want to do is potter happily around and pick up books from the shelves as they take my fancy.  I’ll continue to use it on occasions when I wish to do that, but on the whole, I don’t use the library any more.

The two main reasons people usually state that they don’t use the library are:

1. They like to own books, not just read them
2. It’s more convenient to buy a book than use the library

Both of these are true for me.  Few things give me greater pleasure than sitting on our sofa, looking across the living room at our wonderfully stuffed shelves and it is indeed a bit of a pain to have to reserve a book on the library’s website, wait for the email saying that it has arrived, load up my carrier bags with books to take back and traipse along to the library, rather than just pointing and clicking on Amazon and letting them take care of the rest.

However, the main reason that I choose not to use the library will probably surprise a lot of you: it saves me money.

Yes, you did read that correctly.  I have saved money this year by not using the library.

To buy and own the books that I have read so far this year, which, by and large, is what I have done, cost me £240.26.  It may sound like quite a lot, but as I’ve read 143 books, that works out at £1.68 a book which is a long way from extravagance.  While a few of them were gifts or review copies which cost me nothing, the vast majority were bought myself.  They range from £0.20 charity shop purchases to brand new Folio Society volumes which are costly but irresistible in their beauty.  These books are all mine to do with as I please now.  I can put them on my shelves to read again when the mood takes me; I can give them away to other people as gifts; I can sell them on Amazon or at a car boot sale; I can put them on BookMooch or take them to the Notting Hill Book Exchange and swap them for other books; I can donate them to charity.  If I wanted to, I could use them to start a rather substantial fire if our heating ever fails (not that I would ever consider doing something so terrible).  The point is, I paid that money and I own those books.  They are mine.

To borrow the same books from the library would have cost me £255.40, which is £1.79 a book and £15 more than I actually paid.  This is not taking into account the inevitable fines when someone reserves a book that I’ve borrowed so I can’t renew it and can’t return it until the following weekend because I work during the only weekday hours that the library is open.  Had I taken these books out of the library, I would have spent more money and yes, I would have had the same hours of reading pleasure, but I would have nothing tangible to show where my £255 had gone.

If I wanted to reserve books that are marked down on the website as being in my local library just to make sure they were there and waiting for me when I managed to visit the library, this lot would have cost a further £23.40.  My county library charges £0.60 to reserve a book from their stock, so even if I don’t feel the need to reserve books in my branch, any book that I want to read that isn’t in the local branch costs me £0.60 automatically to request.    If a book isn’t held within the county, it’s a further £4.40 charge to source it from elsewhere, meaning any book borrowed through inter-library loan costs an impressive £5.  If I’m going to spend £5 on a book, I’m going to spend my money somewhere which doesn’t expect me to give said book back in three weeks’ time!  It’s going to be mine to have and to hold till death do us part.  I appreciate that there are administration and postage costs involved in the inter-library loan process, but if I can buy the book for much less than this, why would I pay the extra?  Who would?

As a rule of thumb, anything that’s out of print is cheaper to buy than to borrow.  One of my favourite books that I read this year is Margery Sharp’s The Foolish Gentlewoman which I sought out after adoring The Nutmeg Tree last year.  To borrow it from the library would have cost £5.  I bought my copy in a second hand book shop for £2, and even those without access to the bounty of Charing Cross Road can buy their very own copy for £2.81 including postage and packaging from Amazon Marketplace.  On the one hand, it makes me sad that libraries don’t have the funds or the space to hang onto books like this and keep them out on the shelves, as it means that fewer people will find them and fall in love with them by chance.  On the other, more objective hand, I understand that it makes little sense to keep something in circulation when it is no longer popular.

Libraries have to be selective.  They are designed to cater to the entire population and so their stock tends to reflect what is current and what is popular.  This is not a bad thing.  It is in fact a very good thing that libraries are well stocked with the latest bestsellers and perennial favourites.  I think it’s great that anyone with a library card can walk in and take home one of these books for free.  It just doesn’t reflect how I choose to read.  If you look at my reading list, you can see that very little of it is recent writing; only four books were published this year.  Consequently, I don’t really benefit from the constantly updated display of new releases which stands by the entrance to the library.  I’ve also not read that many classics this year; I’ve read old books, but most aren’t prominent enough to have multiple copies sat on the shelves in the library.  Many of the books I’ve read are ones that have fallen into obscurity for one reason or another.  Old children’s books which are no longer fashionable; lesser known works of well-known authors; early twentieth century women’s novels; names that I’ve stumbled across mentioned elsewhere and then gone in search of without knowing anything about them.  It may sound sad, but for me and the way I read, the library cannot compete with the Internet.

If I didn’t have money to spend on books, I would no doubt have picked out a selection of titles each week from what was available on the library shelves and I would have enjoyed myself doing it.  However, as I do have money that I choose to spend on books, I’d rather read the specific titles that I actually want to read than those books in which I have a vague interest.  And to do this, it’s cheaper for me to buy them.

Review: ‘Black Butterfly’ by Mark Gatiss

I don’t often stray into the world of mystery stories.  In our (reasonably extensive) library, there is only one shelf of mystery novels tucked away in a corner.  It’s not that I don’t like them per se, it’s just that there are other genres that I prefer.  However, I can occasionally be tempted by a good historical mystery, I love Lindsey Davis’ Falco novels for example, so when I stumbled across Mark Gatiss’ trilogy about the delightful rogue Lucifer Box, each book set in a different era, I was intrigued.  I thought the first book was delicious, filled with Oscar Wilde type wit and deviancy.  The second book was less my cup of tea as Lucifer Box’s character was much less prominent.  Sadly the third and final (I think) book, Black Butterfly, continued the downwards trend and was my least favourite so far.

In The Black Butterfly, Queen Elizabeth II has just come to the throne and Lucifer Box is being shoved off his as he has retirement foisted upon him.  In spite of this, he finds himself compelled to investigate when perfectly sensible public figures start dying in reckless accidents.  Who is the mysterious Kingdom Kum?  And who or what is the Black Butterfly?  But someone does not want him to find out.

As each book in this trilogy is set in a different era, Lucifer Box naturally ages as the books progress.  I love the idea of  the aging spy, and seeing how he adapts and changes with time.  However, in practice I didn’t really think it worked.  Although Lucifer complains about his reduced capacity for action, there seemed to be no material difference between his abilities in this book and the earlier ones.  The only difference is that he’s more curmudgeonly about it all.  The sharp wit that I loved so much in the first book was sadly lacklustre in The Black Butterfly.

The plot was as amusingly ridiculous as I have come to expect from a Lucifer Box story.  In particular, I thought that the link to the Boy Scouts was wonderful and really humorous.  However, the primary attraction of this series to me is the central character and I found him diminished in this novel, so consequently my enjoyment was also diminished.  At just over 200 pages long, I don’t feel the time spent reading it was time wasted as it was mildly entertaining.  However, it’s definitely my least favourite of the series and I’m quite glad it’s come to an end.

Black Butterfly by Mark Gatiss.  Published by Pocket Books, 2009, pp. 204.  Originally published in 2008.

A Spot of Housekeeping

The observant among you may have noticed that I’ve been shamefully neglecting the blog in recent weeks.  This is partially due to time being spent on more pressing needs (I have no idea how the Old English Thorn and I have accumulated so much stuff but, thanks to our loving parents, it is all now sitting in giant plastic boxes taking up space in our study and needs sorting through and [hopefully] disposing of), and partially due to the fact that my poor little laptop is dying.  I’ve had it for about eight years now, which is ancient in computer terms, and it can no longer cope with running anything which requires it to work at speed.  Such as the Internet, for example.

I highly doubt that I’ll catch up with all of this year’s reviews before we’re well into the next one, so I’ve decided I’m not going to worry about it.  The reviews will continue to trickle in and I will write them for everything I’ve read, but some may be more complete than others depending on how much of the book I can remember.  Thankfully I’m unlikely to have the same problem next year, as my greatly reduced post-wedding reading rate means I’m reading about half the books that I was before September and so it should be much easier to keep up.

As with all things, the further I fall behind, the less inclined I feel to write reviews and so instead I’ve been doing a bit of blog housekeeping in the fleeting moments when I can persuade my computer to do something online without timing out:

• I decided that the list of all the authors whose books I have reviewed in the right hand sidebar was getting too long and unwieldy, so I’ve cut it down so that it just shows my favourite authors.  It makes things much tidier and also gives a better overview of my literary tastes than the complete list.
• The giant alphabetical list may have gone from the sidebar, but it has migrated to a different location.  Instead it is now hidden under the ‘Author Review Index’ tab at the top of the blog, so it’s still easy to see at a glance which authors I have read and reviewed.
• Although I started Old English Rose Reads in August of 2010, prior to this I reviewed the books I read on GoodReads and LibraryThing.  I’ve now copied those reviews over to this site (somehow managing to fit them all in between the date of my first post and my first review on the blog so that they’re all still in chronological order) and they’re all tagged with Archive Review.

I have a few other blog-tidying projects in the works, but I’m going to be good and accomplish a few more reviews before I allow myself to be distracted by such things.  Or so I tell myself anyway.

Review: ‘Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man’ by Fannie Flagg

Sometimes an author is known for one book more than any other, and this is certainly true of Fannie Flagg, best known as the author of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe.  Whether it’s because this is her best book or whether it’s because of the film, I don’t know as, though I’ve had that book on my shelves waiting to be read for more than a year now, but somehow it was the less well-known and more recently acquired Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man which I ended up reading first.

The novel is divided into two sections.  In the first, Daisy Fay lives with her Momma and Daddy in the largely deserted coastal town of Shell Beach, running a failing malt shop with with mysterious contents hidden in the freezer.   In the second, seven years after the book begins, Daisy leaves Shell Beach to compete in the Miss America Pageant.

The book is written in diary form and the distinctive and engaging voice of the narrator is apparent from the very first words of Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man:

Hello there…my name is Daisy Fay Harper and I was eleven years old yesterday.  My Grandmother Pettibone won the jackpot at the VFW bingo game and bought me a typewriter for my birthday.  She wants me to practise typing so when I grow up, I can be a secretary, but my cat, Felix, who is pregnant, threw up on it and ruined it, which is ok with me.  I don’t know what is the matter with Grandma.  I have told her a hundred times I want to be a tree surgeon or a blacksmith.

The most wonderful thing about this book is undoubtedly Daisy Fay herself.  Unlike a lot of young characters in literature I read, she is neither wise beyond her years nor imbued with an idealised amount of childlike innocence: Daisy is a perfectly believeable eleven year old.  She is bright and knows her own mind (although her opinions are sometimes rather impractical, as with her choice of career), but she is also quick to be swayed by others and is anxious to please.  She is independent, adventurous and optimistic; she’s the type of character who epitomises the word ‘spunky’.  The big gap between her warm, funny narration and her frequent lack of understanding of the things she describes, obvious to the adult reader, means that Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man is at once one of the most humorous and one of the most heart-wrenching books that I’ve read this year.

Her character shines through when she writes her own will, believing that she is likely to be killed:

This is my last will and testament and I am sorry it is so small, but as you know, most of my stuff burned up.  I leave my sweetheart pillow to my mother.  I leave my clothes to Michael, even though he will probably not want to wear that one pair of girls’ blue jeans.  If not, give them to Patsy Ruth Coggins.

I leave my cat, Felix, to my daddy.

And the last thing I have to say is that I am responsible for burning down the malt shop.  I did it by mistake, so don’t try and take the insurance money away from Daddy.

It wasn’t enough anyway.

It is not just Daisy Fay who leaps off the page; there is a whole host of characters who are bold, brash and entertaining but which manage to stay just the right side of believeable.  My favourite was Mrs Dot, self styled society lady who runs the debutante society in Shell Beach and is always dispensing little pearls of nonsensical wisdom.  Thanks to her I now know that:

Sincerity is as valuable as radium.

A lot of the events that take place are slightly ridiculous, such as Daisy’s daddy making her use an inexpertly stuffed fish to win a fishing competition or pretend that she has come back from the dead so that she can make money by preaching, but the story and the situation still feels remarkably real.  I think it’s because the novel is less about what happens and more about who it happens to; it is the characters who are most important and they are excellent.

The way in which Fannie Flagg opens the second section of the novel had my heart breaking for Daisy. When Daisy’s story picks up again she has aged convincingly although in a way that made me ache for her.  Still ultimately vulnerable and still desperate to please, she is less open than when the reader met her before.  Almost inevitably, she has grown a brittle shell around her and though she remains as bright and funny as before she has lost her innocence.

Skimming back through this book to review it, I was reminded of how much I loved it at the time.  Part of me wants to sit here and reread it right away, it’s just that good, but I think I’ll wait and instead not leave it too long before reading one of her other books.  Thankfully there are a few of them.

Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man by Fannie Flagg.  Published by Vintage, 1993, pp. 320.  Originally published as Coming Attractions in 1981.

Booking Through Thursday: Hard

What’s the hardest/most challenging book you’ve ever read? Was it worth the effort? Did you read it by choice or was it an assignment/obligation?

The hardest book that I’ve ever read is without a doubt Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe.  This wasn’t because the book itself was particularly challenging (it’s actually incredibly straightforward, if a bit wordy in the way of most 18th century novels) but because of the time that I read it.  I read Robinson Crusoe as the first set text on my first year ‘Inventing the Novel’ course at university.  It was hard because there were a hundred and one things that I would rather be doing; because I had just discovered medieval literature and wanted to spend all my time buried in that; because the Shakespeare lecturer was opening my eyes to so many new interpretations of plays that I thought I knew well; because the library was filled with more interesting books.  Most of all, it was difficult because it was just boring.

There, I’ve said it.  I thought Robinson Crusoe was dull as ditch water.  There’s nothing wrong with the story in itself, but the level of detail necessitated by the 18th century desire for realism is just mind-numbing.  Robinson Crusoe doesn’t merely grow grapes, oh no; he discovers vines, digs some up, transports them to his garden, replants them, waters them, cultivates them, watches the grapes grow, harvests the grapes, weaves baskets to put them in, eats some grapes and dries some for storage as raisins.  Being cast away on a desert island is exciting: the minutiae of daily life and survival is not.  There’s also the bizarre section at the end of the novel which everyone always forgets in which Crusoe and Friday travel to Europe and hunt bears and wolves.  Getting through that lot was hard.

I finished it because it was a set text, I knew I was going to have to write several essays and answer an exam about it and I don’t believe in doing that without reading the book properly.  Had it not been for that stick I would happily have ignored it.

Review: ‘My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time’ by Liz Jensen

After two distinctly disappointing reads I needed something that was sure to be good fun and not to take itself too seriously.  Thankfully my mammoth TBR pile is able to rise to any challenge, and after a quick flick through my library I settled on the wonderfully titled My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time by Liz Jensen.  This book was first brought to my attention when the lovely Fleur Fisher listed the title as part of her Clearing the Decks project, in which she chooses books to read and then get pass on.  While they may lead to a reduction of her own library, these posts seem to be only adding to mine as I keep discovering lots of titles which appeal to me enormously.  This particular one she mentioned back in March, it instantly went onto my wishlist and it was the first book I purchased once my self-imposed Lenten book buying restriction was lifted.  It was off the TBR pile and into my main library within the month, which is a pretty swift turnaround for me these days, and I’m glad I got to it so quickly as it proved to be a great piece of entertainment and the perfect antidote to the rather serious books which preceded it.

Charlotte, the narrator, is a young woman living in nineteenth century Copenhagen, where she supports herself and Fru Schelswig, the fat, base old woman whom everyone assumes is her mother, by working as a prostitute.  When the cold winter drives her to seek further employment, she and Fru Schelswig find themselves working for the disagreeable Fru Krak, cleaning her house from top to bottom with the exception of certain forbidden rooms in the basement.  Convinced there must be something hidden there worth stealing, Charlotte cannot help investigating and discovers a mysterious machine left there by Fru Krak’s vanished husband which will change the course of her life forever as it catapults her, all unknowing, into twenty-first century London.

This is the sort of book for which the term ‘romp’ was invented.  It is light-hearted, witty, filled with adventure and generally great fun to read.  If nothing hugely surprising happens, the plot is sufficiently exciting and the narration more than engaging enough in spite of that to draw the reader in and keep hold of their attention throughout.

Charlotte’s voice is one of the key features which makes the book so enjoyable.  She is self-assured and inclined towards melodrama and exaggeration, but her easy humour transforms this from a narrative style that could have been alienating and tiresome (and I know this all too well after suffering through the horrendous exaggeration of The House in Dormer Forest) into one that is self aware and not afraid to be self mocking.  My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time is rather silly and the book knows it and takes great pleasure in being so.  Charlotte’s habit of referring to the reader directly as ‘dearest‘ and complimenting them frequently is just one example of the book’s playfulness which makes it so much fun.

Although people travelling backwards in time to visit periods in history is a subject often addressed in fiction, the reverse situation depicted in this book is not, and Liz Jensen does a wonderful job of imagining the twenty-first century as seen through the eyes of someone from the past:

But the dream did not end, & could not be escaped from so easily, & indeed it then most swiftly turned nightmarish, for waiting at the black wrought-iron park entrance…stood a shiny black carriage of iron, horseless, on four wheels, that growled like a foul-tempered hippopotamus.  Professor Krak bade us enter it through a door in its side: ‘Our means of transport, ladies,’ he said, & then, in a foreign tongue which I presumed to be English, commenced a rushed conversation with the driver of the vehicle, who was – Lord! I could scarcely believe my eyes! – as black as a coal-scuttle, just like in the illustrations of man-eating cannibals I had seen in the cellar at the orphanage!  But before I could scream in terror & make my escape, the machine roared to life with a smooth lurch & we sped into the pellucid gloaming which in that place seemed to pass for night.

All this is related in a mixture of archaicisms and modern slang which seems peculiarly appropriate to a time traveller.  Simple devices such as the use of ampersand instead of ‘and’ provide continuous reminders that Charlotte is from the past.  Fru Shleswig is also given an effective, distinctive manner of speaking, using a sort of Middle English spelling which implies her ignorance and peasant-like bluntness.

The book isn’t without its faults.  For an adventurous book about time travel, it takes a surprisingly long time in exposition building up to this actually taking place and although it is interesting from the beginning because of the narrator the story could perhaps have benefited from starting a bit sooner.  The pacing of the narrative remains slightly uneven throughout the book, but this is never enough of a problem to affect the enjoyment of reading such a thoroughly entertaining book.  I’ll definitely be reading more by Liz Jensen in the future.

My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time by Liz Jensen.  Published by Bloomsbury, 2006, pp. 311.  Originally published in 2006.

Review: ‘The Sack of Bath’ by Adam Fergusson

I really enjoy being a member of the various online book communities that I’m a part of, much as they are largely responsible for my enormous TBR pile and wishlist.  I know I can find opinions on everything from the latest popular bestseller to obscure novels which I’d never have discovered on my own on GoodReads, LibraryThing and the various blogs I read.  On this particular occasion it was LibraryThing which came up trumps when a few months ago it was pointed out that Amazon was offering pre-order copies of the newest Persephone The Sack of Bath by Adam Fergusson, for only £1.  Having investigated the title it seemed a little outside of what I would expect from a Persephone book, but a £1 Persephone is not something that I’m able to turn down, so I ordered it regardless.  I picked it up off the shelf to read recently because it was small and portable.

The Sack of Bath was written in 1973 in response to the decisions made by Bath City Council to demolish large swathes of Georgian cottages in order to provide the city with newer houses, better access and improved facilities.  Fergusson acknowledges that the aim itself was admirable but the ways in which they sought to accomplish it were misguided.  With words and pictures he illustrates the ongoing destruction of Bath and issues a heartfelt plea for it to be stopped and more reasonable measures, such as renovation and preservation, be considered instead.

Although The Sack of Bath is just as well written today as it was when it was first published, it lacks the immediacy which it would have had in the 1970′s when the demolition and construction was being carried out.  It is interesting, yes, but in a vague and distant way rather than in an inciting-architectural-rage-and-writing-to-your-local-MP-to-stop-this-sort-of-thing way that I suspect it was intended.  The closest thing that I can liken it to is reading a newspaper article covering some terrible natural disaster and trying to encourage readers to give aid, but doing so nearly forty years after the event when everyone appears to have recovered quite nicely, thank you very much.  It just isn’t the same as reading it when it was relevant.

The problem is that the book is written in such hyperbolic language and strident tones that it implies nothing less than the wholesale destruction of historic Bath, which couldn’t be more different to what any visitor to Bath today will see as they walk around the city.  In fact, the most recent new development is incredibly sympathetic to the aesthetics of the city and blends in beautifully (or as beautifully as modern high street shops ever could) with the historical setting.  Admittedly this is probably at least in part due to the pressure of action such as the publication of The Sack of Bath but there is such a huge gap between this and the city overrun with hideous concrete boxes that you might expect from reading the book that it lost a lot of impact for me.  Clearly this book was influential in its time and I have no doubt that it did a lot of good, but I didn’t find that it quite worked reading it now.

The Sack of Bath by Adam Fergusson.  Published by Persephone, 2010, pp. 81.  Originally published in 1973.

Review: ‘The House in Dormer Forest’ by Mary Webb

When The House in Dormer Forest by Mary Webb came up as May’s TBR Lucky Dip book, I was pleased for two main reasons.  Firstly, it’s a Virago Modern Classic, which meant I could add another one to the ‘Read’ shelf on LibraryThing and not feel quite so bad about the large number still sitting glumly on the ‘To Read’ shelf.  Secondly, it’s one of the novels parodied by Stella Gibbons in Cold Comfort Farm which I’ve been wanting to read for ages, and this provides me with the perfect excuse now that I have the requisite background reading.  The very fact that Mary Webb’s book was the subject of parody should have been sufficient warning for me about what I was letting myself in for, but I wasn’t prepared for a book quite as amusingly terrible as The House in Dormer Forest turned out to be.

The House in Dormer Forest follows the fortunes of the Darke family and their servants who live and work in Dormer Old House.  It’s difficult for me to summarise the plot so long after reading the book, but I’ve copied the blurb from the back of the book in my initial post concerning the novel.  Suffice to say that it is dark and oppressive and Stella Gibbons can’t have had much work to do in producing a parody, as the writing is so incredibly overwrought it almost feels like a pastiche to begin with.

Occasionally (very occasionally), her writing is intentionally amusing as Webb reveals her characters to the reader:

“I can’t be thwarted!” grandmother suddenly broke out.  She had a theory that, if crossed, she would die.  She was fond of saying: “I’ve got a weak ‘eart, Rachel!” –dropping her “h” not because she could not aspirate it, but because she did not see why, at her age, any letter of the alphabet should be her master.

I think this perfectly encapsulates grandmother Darke’s (the obvious counterpart of Aunt Ada Doom in Cold Comfort Farm) tyrannical desire to control everything and the manipulation ways in which she does so. 

Sometimes, the language is wild and beautiful, if rather over dramatic:

Dormer, in its cup at the bases of the hills, was always full of damp air and the sound of water.  Besieged by this grievous music — and what is there in nature sadder than the lament of falling water? — she felt as if she had opened the door not to the night and the stream, but on to a future full of doubt and dread, veiled in mist.

Yes, it’s a little bit much, but it’s suitably atmospheric and I think it’s quite effective.  I’m partial to the odd Victorian sensation novel so I am more than willing to forgive melodrama under the right circumstances.  Unfortunately, the majority of the time, the language tends towards being florid to the point of being ridiculous:

Who would ever seek in Amber Darke, so still, of so sad-coloured an exterior, the creature of fire and tears that could feed a man’s heart with faery food and call him into Paradise with songs wild as those of hawks on the untrodden snow-fields?

I appreciate that Webb is trying to emphasise how plain Amber is compared to other more attractive, lively women and therefore unlikely to attract her ideal husband, but really, Mary, is this necessary?  Faery food?  Hawks?  Untrodden fields (which seems an odd place for the hawks to be on; I would have assumed they were in the air as birds of prey hopping along the ground are really quite comedic and not at all wild and romantic as I think Webb is trying to suggest).  Jane Eyre has exactly the same thoughts about being plain and therefore unlikely to attract attention, but Bronte manages to express them without recourse to overblown similes about hawks and fairies, in a way which makes the reader sympathise with Jane rather than giggle at her.  Sadly for Amber, I found her impossible to relate to because her inner life is so ridiculous and extravagant rather than believeable.

The best example of this overwrought style comes when Jasper has gone to a track known ominously (everything in this novel happens ominously) as ‘the Beast Walk’ to think about things:

To climb this path harrowed his soul, made is face even at ten years look quite wizened.  But now, in his young manhood, the dark spell was infinitely stronger.  He drank here of a charm thick as black honey made from purple poison flowers by bees in hell.

Intellectually I know that this is supposed to show Jasper brooding and generally being consumed by dark thoughts; in reality I was too busy pondering why there are bees and flowers in hell, if the bees have committed some terrible sin and are therefore condemned to an eternity of making black honey and what this might be supposed to taste like.  Who on earth imagines a hell which features bees and flowers?  On the whole, I have to conclude that metaphors generally work best if the thing to which you are comparing something else actually exists or at the very least makes sense to your readers.  This is just ridiculous.

I can forgive ridiculous writing if a book has something else to recommend it (as in the case of early gothic novels which I also rather enjoy).  However, the plot of The House in Dormer Forest is one of sheer, unrelenting doom in which no one is ever happy and everyone goes on about it at length.  The atmosphere is suffocatingly dark and claustrophobic, and while this may have been the desired effect I think it needed to be accompanied by better writing so  that the reader could at least have had something to enjoy in the novel.  The only grim humour comes in the form of Sarah, a servant who visits retribution on those who displease her by deliberately breaking their china ornaments and gluing the shards together to form a globe.

As always, my views are entirely subjective and it could be that I’ve missed the point of Webb’s novel entirely.  Search for this book on Amazon UK and you will find the same effusive 5 star review posted no less than twenty-two times, which makes me somewhat dubious about it, but this review from a website featuing the Midlands in literature provides an interesting counterpoint to my own opinions which is much more praise-filled.  The general consensus seems to be that this was by no means Webb’s best novel, so I will continue to read the rest of her books and see if I enjoy those more than I did The House in Dormer Forest.

The House in Dormer Forest by Mary Webb.  Published by Virago, 1983, pp. 292.  Originally published in 1920.