From reading the description and from the way that the book opens, I had expected The Country of the Pointed Firs to be a sort of American Cranford.  Consequently, I was expecting to love it as much as I did Elizabeth Gaskell’s lovely novella when I read it last year.  To say that I did not is a bit of an understatement: I didn’t dislike the book, I just thought it was ok.  That’s not to say that I thought The Country of the Pointed Firs was a bad book, but it was one that didn’t work for me.  It’s perhaps unfair of me to judge a book based on the merits of another, but the set up is so similar that I can’t help it.  In both books the narrator returns to a small, unremarkable town that holds a place in her heart, and then proceeds to introduce the reader to the town’s residents and all the quirks that come with small town life.  However, there the similarities end.

Although the concept is a lot like that of Cranford, the execution and the mood of the book are very different.  Cranford chronicles the little, but all important, incidents in the lives of the women who live there, whereas The Country of the Pointed Firs is more of a series of character studies: Jewett introduces the reader to characters and more often than not just lets them sit there.  Sometimes there will be an anecdote, occasionally there may be tea, but by and large nothing happens.  This is not in the way that nothing happens in Cranford, where the little, everyday things are made to seem important to the reader because they are important to the characters, infused with Elizabeth Gaskell’s warmth and humour, but in a way that emphasises the slow and sedate pace of life and the reserved nature of its people. Whereas Cranford had a real feel of community to it, The Country of the Pointed Firs portrayed a life that was typified by, if not loneliness, then at least isolation, broken by occasional moments of contact with others.  Most of the characters are widows, widowers, or people who simply never married. Some of them were intriguing (I particularly liked Mrs Todd and the widowed fisherman who sits alone in his cottage knitting) but I find myself failing to remember many of them.

The book starts out so promisingly:

When one really knows a village like this and its surroundings, it is like becoming acquainted with a single person.  The process of falling in love at first sight is as final as it is swift in such a case, but the growth of true friendship may be a lifelong affair.

After a first brief visit made two or three summers before in the course of a yachting cruise, a lover of Dunnet Landing returned to find the unchanged shores of the pointed firs, the same quaintness of the village with its elaborate conventionalities; all that mixture of remoteness, and childish certainty of being the centre of civilization of which her affectionate dreams had told.

I expected to be made to feel all these things as the narrator discovered them anew, but I didn’t.  Ultimately, how much any reader enjoys this book will boil down to how much they like the characters in it, because Jewett gives you nothing else to go on.  As for me, I found the book interesting as a reading experience (particularly given my woeful lack of experience of American fiction), but one that was interesting in an intellectual rather than emotional way.  I found myself unmoved.

If anyone would like my copy of this book, please leave me a message in the comments.  It came from BookMooch, so it’s a bit battered and has occasional marginal notes, but I’d like to see it go to a good home as it’s not one I’m likely to read again.

The Country of the Pointed Firs and Other Stories by Sarah Orne Jewett.  Published by Norton, 1981, pp. 296.  Originally published in 1896.

In Liza of Lambeth, Maugham draws on his own experiences as a trainee doctor who would frequently be called to attend on people in the poorer areas of London.  Liza is an eighteen year old factory worker who enjoys dancing, drinking, wearing new clothes and generally living life to the full.  She lives with her aging mother, walks out with Tom and spends time with her friend Sally.  All this changes when a new family move in to the street and the father, the much older Jim Blakestone, starts paying attention to Liza.  Even though Jim is married, Liza finds herself unable to resist him and so begins her downfall.

Like Up at the Villa which I read earlier last year, this book is not at all the sort of book that it seems to be from the first chapter, which is so full of stereotypical cockney merriment and hijinks that I half expected Dick van Dyke to pop up and start performing a song and dance routine.  However, it does not take long for Maugham to reveal the hard reality of the daily lives of the inhabitants of Vere Street, in which all men beat their wives, women fight each other, and death is an ever-present possibility.  None of the characters ever seem particularly unhappy with their lot in life, facing their relative poverty with equanimity and good cheer, prosaically discussing the practicalities of having insured a person as they lie dying or excusing their husbands’ violence as just being down to drink.  Of course, this makes it all the more heart-breaking and shocking to read as a modern reader or even a Victorian reader of a higher class with different expectations of what life should be like.

There were two things that I found irritating in this book (although do remember that I was predisposed to be irritated anyway).  The first is Maugham’s attempt to reproduce a cockney accent in his writing.  Although it is usually possible to work out what characters were saying, unlike in some books where attempts at written accents make a character’s speech virtually unintelligible (Lorna Doone, I’m looking at you), it is rather grating.  I know Maugham wants to stop readers from imagining the inhabitants of Vere Street speaking in perfect RP, but this is already implied through vocabulary choice and the accent reproduction was a step too far for me.  The other thing was Liza and Jim’s relationship, which Maugham makes no attempt to explain.  The attraction for older, married Jim is obvious, but why does Liza fall in love with him?  She knows he is married with a daughter only a few years younger than her, she knows he beats his wife, she knows he gets drunk and yet still she goes with him.  When Liza is first introduced, she is such a feisty and opinionated character that I expected her to slap Jim and screech at him when she first feels him surreptitiously stroking her leg as he sits beside her in the cart, but she keeps quiet at the time and later lets him follow her home and kiss her.  Perhaps her downfall is supposed to seem all the more tragic because her love is inexplicable and illogical, but I personally found it too unbelievable.

I would have probably enjoyed this book more had I not read the introduction first, not because Maugham gives away anything of the story but because the writing in it out-classes that of the actual story completely.  The introduction is far more polished, professional and engaging and I found it more interesting than the story itself.  Liza of Lambeth was Maugham’s first novel, written when he was only twenty-three, and the introduction in the Vintage edition of the book was written for a retrospective collection of his works when he was a much older man with a much better developed writing style, so the discrepancy is entirely understandable.  Nevertheless, the comparison that it invites is not favourable and so this is another introduction which would be better moved to the end of the book, I think.

Liza of Lambeth by W. Somerset Maugham.  Published by Vintage, 2000, pp. 139.  Originally published in 1897.

Elizabeth and Her German Garden is a semi-autobiographical account of a year in the life of Elizabeth von Arnim in the garden of her house in Pomerania.  It is a book which is in equal parts an elegiac description of her physical surroundings and a keenly observed, wryly detached depiction of the people who inhabit that world with her, most of whom are apparently rather unwelcome.

At only 207 pages in the edition I read, and that with large type and larger margins, it is a short book but full of excellent content.  Whether she is discussing plants or people, von Arnim’s writing is a delight to read, and my copy of the book is littered with tiny bits of paper marking pages with particularly lovely passages.  Her musings on governesses are typical of her style which is both insightful and often amusing:

I wonder why governesses are so unpleasant.  The Man of Wrath says it is because they are not married.  Without venturing to differ entirely from the opinion of experience, I would add that the strain of continually having to set an example must surely be very great.  It is much easier, and often more pleasant, to be a warning than an example, and governesses are but women, and women are sometimes foolish, and when you want to be foolish it must be annoying to have to be wise. 

One of the things that struck me about this book was the faint air of sadness about it.  I think it came across particularly because of reading Perfume from Provence quite recently, which also has a section on the trials and tribulations of creating a beautiful European garden.  Whereas Winifred Fortescue’s happiness and enthusiasm burst from the page, Elizabeth appears to have a rather unhappy life and to be trying hard to create her own happiness along with her garden, although her attempts are often frustrated.  I initially thought that The Man of Wrath must be a teasing, affectionate name for her husband, but the more she spoke about him, the more apt the name seemed, while Winifred Fortescue and Monsieur are obviously perfectly matched and gloriously content together.  Had Perfume from Provence not been so fresh in my mind, this impression might not have come across so strongly, but as it is the tone felt slightly wistful.

I long more and more for a kindred spirit–it seems so greedy to have so much loveliness to oneself–but kindred spirits are so very, very rare; I might as well cry for the moon.  It is true that my garden is full of friends, only they are dumb.

In spite of this, Elizabeth and Her German Garden is not a sad or depressing book.  Von Arnim has a great sense of comedy and the book is filled with wit and charm.  Thankfully von Arnim seems to have been rather prolific, so I have plenty more of this to look forward to in her other novels.

Elizabeth and Her German Garden by Elizabeth von Arnim.  Published by Virago, 1995, pp. 207.  Originally published in 1898.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes comprises twelve short stories chronicling the escapades of Sherlock Holmes, as told by Dr John Watson.  Although the scenarios are all very different, each follows the same formula: a client comes to visit Holmes, usually with Watson conveniently there too, in a degree of agitation and bringing news of a seemingly impossible mystery.  Holmes then makes deductions and conducts cursory investigations, usually while leaving the reader and the hapless Watson mostly in the dark, before everything is revealed to work out exactly as he suspects all along.

This is an enjoyable collection of short stories.  Although I appreciate that arrogance and intellectual superiority are an integral part of the character of Sherlock Holmes and one of the main factors contributing to his appeal, I found this much less irritating in the short story format than he can sometimes become in the longer novels.  Because the narratives are shorter, there is no time for quite as much opaqueness and so many meaningful silences; instead, they race entertainingly from knotty problem through speedy investigation to brilliant revelation.  Impressed as I am by Sherlock Holmes after reading this volume, I am far more impressed with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for inventing such a variety of different situations and mysteries for his fictional detective to solve.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  Published by Penguin, 2007, pp. 365.  Originally published in serial, 1891-1892.

Title:

Author: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Published: Headline Review, 2006, pp. 146.  Original publication 1890.

Genre: Classic mystery fiction

Blurb: As the seamy streets of London drown in a sea of smog, Sherlock Holmes sinks into a drug-induced stupour.  That is, until Miss Mary Morstan presents him with a most intriguing case.  A terrible death, an unknown benefactor, stolen treasure and a secret pact between criminals stretching back to a mutiny-torn India, lead Holmes into an epic pursuit of the truth.

Where, when and why: I ordered this book from Amazon marketplace as soon as I finished the first one because I enjoyed it so much (in fact, I’ve not even recorded them in a mailbox post, so they’re both very recent purchases).  I picked it up to read because it’s small and light meaning that, unlike my current main read, it’s easy to read on the tube.

What I thought: Although I still liked this book, disappointingly I didn’t find it as enjoyable as A Study in Scarlet.  This was primarily because the mystery seems much more distant from the narrative this time and a lot of the interesting parts happened off-stage.  This story is a prime example of telling rather than showing: the reader sees very little detective work but instead the mystery is revealed in a lengthy, involved and rather irrelevant monologue from the culprit after he has been arrested; apparently all guilty people suddenly feel the urge to confess expansively.  I couldn’t help but feel rather cheated.

I also thought that the characters are not as well presented in this second Sherlock Holmes story.  Holmes disappears for a lot of it and so the reader misses out on his bizarre and erratic character, being left only with the much less interesting Watson.  I thought Watson’s love affair both unbelieveable and unnecessary and the book would have been much better without it.

Nevertheless, there are some wonderful set pieces in this book, notably the chase scenes.  The bloodhound and the police boat which are used at different points in the story to persue the suspected murder may not have the speed of modern equivalents, but Sir Arthur Conan Doyle writes tension-filled chases to rival those seen in James Bond films, full of twists and turns, obstacles and disappointments.  It’s parts like these that mean I’m definitely going to continue with the series, but I do hope that it improves.

Whether you’re a fan of Sherlock Holmes or not, I definitely wouldn’t recommend buying the edition I read, as throughout the book there are occasional superscript numbers for no apparent reason.  I presumed these  must be footnotes, but on turning to the back of the book I found no corresponding numbers and notes so I assume these must be printing errors.  It doesn’t get in the way exactly but it looks messy and when there are so many different editions of this story available it makes very little sense to buy a copy with mistakes.

Where this book goes: Given the irritation of this particular edition, I’ve decided to switch to the rather attractive Penguin Pocket editions for the rest of the series, three of which I picked up in a charity shop last weekend.  I’ll keep this book around until I manage to find a copy of it in my new preferred edition, but then it will be off to BookMooch.

Tea talk: Once again, this book was read on the train without tea.  I have got some longer reads coming up soon though, so hopefully I’ll have more interesting tea things to report.