Wild Swans chronicles the lives of three generations of the women of the author’s family, from 1909 to 1991.  The book begins with her grandmother, who became a concubine to a local warlord at her father’s insistence.  After the warlord’s death, she flees from his house where she has been forced to live with his other wives and concubines, taking with her her baby daughter, Jung Chang’s mother.  In spite of family disapproval, she gets married to a Manchu doctor who gives everything up to live in poverty with her. Jung Chang’s mother grows up in an area of China which is under Japanese rule and the Chinese people are considered second class citizens.  An intelligent girl, she is recruited by the Communist resistence and begins working towards a free, egalitarian China.  She falls in love with a young Communist party member and they have several children, including Jung Chang herself, but each regime change, relocation or shift of opinion brings renewed suspicions, even for those as devoted to the cause as Chang’s parents and so she grows up amid the violence, intimidation and uncertainty of the Cultural Revolution.

 This book blew me away with its scope, its attention to detail and the way that it made everything make sense.  I had a vague notion of life in Communist China before reading Wild Swans but this book made me able to see how and why everything happened, the subtle shifts and insidious changes as well as the grand sweeping ones which lead to the situation in China being what it was. 

As an outsider, I’ve only ever seen the end product, but Wild Swans makes it perfectly clear that Communism in China was a very positive thing when it set out.  Its aims were clear, its systems logical and its demands for gender and social equality admirable.  Given that Jung Chang has provided the reader with a context in which to set this by describing the story of her grandmother, sold by her father as a concubine for political and financial gain, the changes seem all the more attractive.  This is where the book excels: although Chang talks about the political changes that take place, these are inextricably linked with the very personal, relateable stories of the lives of herself and her family.  It transforms the political ideas and dictates from abstract notions into concrete things which have a real and immediate impact on the family.  It’s all well and good to read about family members being split up as the party sends them to different locations, but it makes it real and heartbreaking to read about Chang’s elderly grandmother journeying across China, largely on foot, to be with her daughter only to be sent back to her home town almost immediately, or Chang’s mother miscarrying from the harsh journeying conditions because her husband refuses to favour her by letting her ride with him in his car as she is of a lower rank than he is.

Chang manages to describe a time that is very confusing politically and to convey that turmoil and uncertainty without once confusing me as a reader.  Her prose is lucid and quite spare but very effective.  Wild Swans is the perfect blend of the personal and the political and is an amazing testament to the powers of endurance and the integrity of all of Chang’s family, not just the women. It is at once a compelling story and a fascinating, insightful account of life in a time and place so different it’s like reading about another world.

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang.  Published by Flamingo, 1993, pp. 696.  Originally published in 1991.

In this particular volume of Durrell’s memoirs of his journeys he travels to Mauritius with the dual aim of educating a Mauritian student in the conservation of the local wildlife and catching some of the more endangered species to take back to his Jersey zoo to start breeding programmes.  It sees him and his companions encountering marijuana growers in the high forests and scrambling around on exposed rocky islands chasing after skinks, all told with Durrell’s characteristic humour and flair for recounting anecdotes.

This isn’t my favourite of Durrell’s books that I’ve read so far, probably because it seems to focus more on the zoological aspects of Durrell’s expedition than some of his other books.  Although Durrell’s animal stories are wonderful, it’s his descriptions of human antics that accompany them which I enjoy the most and I think the balance between the two isn’t as even in Golden Bats and Pink Pigeons as in others, particularly his Corfu stories.

Nonetheless, it remains an entertaining book, not least because of some worrying illustrations of Gerald Durrell in the sort of terrifyingly short shorts worn only by teenage girls and British men of a certain age when on holiday in hot countries where they think no one will notice.  Dodgy clothing choices aside, his stories never fail to elicit a chuckle.  His account of chasing skinks over Round Island is a joy to read, and he is able to characterise animals in an unfailingly vivid and comic manner.  Take for example his description of some monkeys:

We rounded one corner and came unexpectedly upon a troop of eight Macaque monkeys, sitting at the side of the road, their piggy eyes and air of untrustworthy arrogance making them look exactly like a board meeting of one of the less reliable consortiums in the City of London.

Although it may not have been my favourite of his memoirs, Golden Bats and Pink Pigeons has reaffirmed Gerald Durrell’s place in my heart and on my bookshelf as a sure writer for a cheering book.

Golden Bats and Pink Pigeons by Gerald Durrell.  Published by Fontana, 1979, pp. 157.  Originally published in 1977.

The first three years of my childhood were spent in a vast Victorian country house in Wiltshire called Clouds.  Built entirely of green sandstone, it boasted forty bedrooms, and a kitchen so far from the dining room that a miniature railway track had to be built to carry food from one place to the other.  Luckily, tepid meals were the norm in those days.

How could I possibly resist such an opening?

In Dawn Chorus Joan Wyndham tells the story of her family, beginning with her great-grandfather, Percy, who built Clouds to be his family home and continuing on through the generations down to her own memories of her childhood and teenage years.  Her life begins in 1921 at the second incarnation of Clouds, the first having burned down before she was born, then is transported to London after her parents separate, where her mother’s friends, a group known as ‘the Souls’ simultaneously entertain and embarrass her with their eccentric antics.  Joan attends a convent school and has a somewhat tempestuous relationship both with religion and the nuns responsible for her education, until she goes to the theatre and sees John Gielgud as Hamlet, whereupon she decides to audition for RADA.

This is a wonderful memoir, not only because the subject matter than it chronicles is so interesting, but also because the evidence on which Joan Wyndham draws is so miraculously complete.  Her relatives seem to have been meticulous record keepers, and so her accounts of their history is littered with diary entries and excerpts from letters which lend a great immediacy to the writing.  Her own letters and diaries are written with remarkable candour and shared with an openness and lack of embarrassment which makes Dawn Chorus a delight to read.  Even though I do not doubt that the selections used have been carefully chosen, Wyndham seems quite happy to display her younger self both at her best and at her worst.  I cannot think of many writers who would share their awkward teenage diaries, rife with overblown emotions and incidents rather forgotten, so willingly with the reading public.

Whatever subject she is talking about, Joan’s diary entries are warm and filled with emotion so that she really leaps off the page and comes to life.  They are often highly amusing, although sometimes not intentionally so, imbued as they are with the seriousness of youth.  At one point, she goes to stay with a family in Paris:

Friday For three days now there has been no paper in the Tante Fannee.  I’ve had to use all the tissue paper from my trunk.  Luckily, I have been asked to dinner by my Romanian relatives in Paris.  They are very grand and rich so I will probably be able to pinch a few rolls of paper to take home with me.

On another occasion, Joan goes on holiday to Wales:

I have become the complete ‘hearty’ down here, striding out in the dew before breakfast in corduroy trousers with a stick, a whistle and two dogs, and then down to the farm to feed the cows and see the newborn calf.  Then back for a breakfast of kidneys, bacon and pickled herring, followed by a few rounds of clock golf, finally taking the rowing-boat out for a cruise around the outlying islands, with binoculars slung round my neck, and no makeup.  Horrible metamorphosis!

On a more genteel note, we also sold produce at the Vicar’s bazaar, raffled teasets at the Conservative fete and made conversation over tomato sandwiches at various county tea parties.  I’ve also been climbing the mountains around Snowdon.  So bleak that nothing grows on them but the sparsest grass, with thin streams running down into the hidden lakes, and sheep lying curled in the rock crevices.  One of the lakes is supposed to be bottomless but I fell into it, so I can positively state that it isn’t; it’s shadowed by red-berried mountain ash.  Mountains almost reconcile one to Wordsworth.

There is a similar brutal and entertaining honesty in the extracts from her family’s writing that she includes.  Take, for example, her mother’s record of Joan’s early development in her Baby’s Progress Book:

Joan is never still for one moment and exhausts all who look after her.  When finally tired out, she sits and twiddles her hair without ceasing.

Hearing Hears more than is good for her.

Smell Good, but has a habit of snorting.

Sight Slight squint.

Taste Greedy

Later on there is no doubt at all of the genuine affection between Joan and her mother, as evidenced by their numerous letters to one another, but her mother’s evident frustration with her young baby and the ruthless way in which she records it is highly entertaining.

This book can become a bit confusing at times, as Joan tends to refer to people by their first names rather than their relationship to her, so it can become easy to lose track of who is who and in which generation.  Nevertheless, this is a fine memoir of life in England for the upper classes between the Wars, and definitely one that should be more widely known (according to LibraryThing only two other people own a copy of this book, so the vast majority are missing out).  Joan Wyndham continued to chronicle her life in several other books, and I enjoyed her style so much that I’m sure it won’t be long before they find their way onto my shelves.

Dawn Chorus by Joan Wyndham.  Published by Virago, 2004, pp. 233.  Originally published in 2004.

In this book, Lady Winifred writes about her experiences of moving to a tiny mountain village in Provence with her husband, referred to throughout as Monsieur, and the trials and tribulations of dealing with a new country.  Not only does she come up against the barrier of language, both French and Italian, but also the completely different culture and way of life there.  Her collection of amusing anecdotes about managing the builders, servants and gardeners, dealing with local officials, encountering the dubious honour of being invited to a wedding, and learning to drive on the treacherous mountain roads are all told with a smile, and ability to laugh at herself and a genuine love for the place that is utterly infectious.  The illustrations by E. H. Shepherd which accompany the text throughout just make this book even more enjoyable to read.  If I hadn’t wanted to visit Provence before, I certainly would after reading Perfume from Provence; as it is, I’m only more keen to go there someday.

The section on driving was particularly entertaining, not least because of the way in which Lady Winifred anthropomorphises her cars.  There is the gallant English Sir William whom she has had to leave behind and her new little Fiat named Desiree because there is a long period of waiting for the car to arrive from the manufacturers during which she is ‘desiree mais pas trouve‘.  But it is the section on driving lessons which is most endearing.  My woes at the hands of the DVLA pale into comparison beside a friendly local teaching Winifred to brave the mountain roads by directing her up a precarious, winding track, completely unprotected from a long drop into the valley below on one side, which turns out to be a one way street running in the opposite direction to that in which she is driving.  Of course, she only learns this on meeting a rather surprised car coming straight towards her.  I also loved the account of how one of Winifred’s friends accidentally runs over her garden while Winifred is giving her a lesson and all the servants are enlisted to try to disguise the damage before the gardener notices, after which they gleefully conspire to deny all knowledge of noticing anything happening.

Perfume from Provence is such a happy book, full of laughter and fond nostalgia, and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this relaxing, amusing tale of French rural life as seen through the eyes of the bemused but affectionate English to anyone at all.

Perfume from Provence by Lady Winifred Fortescue.  Published by William Blackwood and Sons, 1947, pp. 274.  Originally published in 1935.

Celia Fiennes was an intriguing, unmarried woman who journeyed around the country on horseback between 1685 and 1703 noting down what she saw.  The exerpts from her diary contained in this volume display a country comprising towns teeming with industry, linked by dirty, muddy and treacherous roads.

I’m sure this book would be fascinating to someone researching their local area or looking at the history of England at this time, but as a mere reader I found it hard going.  Fiennes does not describe the places she visits so much as she provides an itemised list of exactly what is there: the book is a succession of distances, acreages, numbers of churches and building materials of houses.  She is very matter of fact in what she reports and tends to focus on the physical features of the towns and landscapes, rather than talking about the people and their customs.  Very occasionally she will deviate from this course to report on a local food or habit, such as her disgust at the smokers in Cornwall where ‘both men, women and children have all their pipesof tobacco in their mouths and soe sit round the fire smoaking’ (p. 79) but this is an unfortunate rarity.

I might have been tempted to read a longer version of Celia Fiennes’ travels to see if this focus on industry and buildings is universal or just showing the bias of the editor who selected the exerpts for this volume, and also to read Celia’s thoughts on the places I have lived and know well, none of which are included in this book.  However, the prose, quite simply, is not enjoyable to read.  Bearing in mind when Celia was writing I wasn’t expecting modern punctuation and grammar, but equally I hadn’t anticipated her being the queen of the run-on sentence.  Some of them go on for several pages and while I could posibly bring myself to forgive her if it was beautiful, elegant, descriptive prose, I cannot when it’s a great big list with some verbs and conjunctions added.  To let Celia speak for herself and show you what I mean:

The situation of Lancaster town is very good, the Church neately built of stone, the Castle which is just by, both on a very great ascent from the rest of the town and so is in open view, the town and river lying round it beneath; on the Castle tower walking quite round by the battlements I saw the whole town and river at a view, which runs almost quite round and returns againe by the town, and saw thesea beyond and the great high hills beyond that part of the sea which are in Wales, and also into Westmorelandto the great hills there call’d Furness Fells or Hills being a string of vast high hills together; also into Cumberland to the great hill called Black Comb Hil whence they dig their black lead and no where else, but they open the mine but once in severall yeares; I also saw into Yorkshire; there is lead copper gold and silver in some of those hills and marble and christall also. (pp. 16-17)

And that’s one of the short sentences!

I was also rather disappointed at how absent Miss Celia Fiennes herself was from this book, although admittedly this could be a problem of editing for this particular edition.  Even though they were confined to Britain, her journeys seem quite remarkable for a single woman during this period, and I was looking forward to reading about what that was like.  I wanted to find out about her own experiences of travelling, any difficulties arising from her unusual circumstances as an unmarried lady on such a journey (albeit with an escort of servants who are occasionally aluded to) and her interactions with the people that she meets.  However, with the exception of a few disparaging comments about her landladies and complaints about rye in the bread upsetting her stomach she barely features at all.  The account of travelling through England could have been written by anyone, male or female, and that seems a great shame to me.

Please don’t let my review put you off picking up Celia Fienne’s writings, however, if this sort of thing is of interest to you.  Nonetheless, I would suggest getting hold of the full volume of her travels rather than this collection of extracts to avoid the disappointment of your local area not being one of those featured in this book, and also not approaching it looking for an entertaining, casual read.

Through England on a Side-Saddle by Celia Fiennes.  Published by Penguin, 2009, pp. 87.  Originally published in 1947, written in 1698.

Title:

Author: Patricia Warren

Published: Hodder & Stoughton, 2006, pp. 248.  Originally published 2003.

Genre: Memoir

Blurb: Since she founded the Farmers’ and Country Bureau from her farmhouse in the Peak District more than twenty years ago, Patricia has been helping love to blossom the length and breadth of rural England.  She has hundreds of marriages to her dredit and numerous babies including one set of quads.

A born matchmaker whose warmth, patience and humour have literally changed the lives of thousands of people, here she brings us the real life stories of love and romance she has helped to create.  Tales from the Country Matchmaker is pure delight and a heartening reminder that there really can be a happy ever after.

When, where and why: I picked this book up from a local charity shop to add to my collection of wedding reading.

What I thought: Tales from the Country Matchmaker was a sweet book, full of stories of pleasant people, isolated by character or circumstance, being brought together for a happier future.  Patricia Warren, the eponymous matchmaker, was obviously a lovely woman who had a wealth of interesting anecdotes to relate, but unfortunately I didn’t think that the book was very well organised, so it quickly began to feel repetitive and muddled, although undoubtedly earnest, gentle and heartwarming.

One of Patricia’s clients remarked:

The trouble is, we’re all fed a diet of knights in shining armour whereas what I had in reality was this decent, good-looking, nice man who I was terribly comfortable with, but wasn’t fireworks and parties every night and travelling round the world.  Maybe the knight in shining armour was around the next corner.  But the guy who produces the fireworks is not the guy you want to spend your life with.  The comfortable alternative sometimes puts people off because lots of us want to live on the edge.  What I’ve learnt now is that companionship, trust and laughter are so important, and it can seem fuddy duddy — but it’s not, it’s real.  And we do have our firework moments. (p. 118)

This statement encapsulates the tone of the book for me.  It was steady, warm, quiet and sweet, at times touching and at others amusing, but sadly without any fireworks to provide a change of pace and mood.  I liked this book and thought that it had potential, but I wish that it had been written by someone else who could perhaps have brought the stories to life a bit more and made them seem more individual and exciting.

Where this book goes: This is definitely a BookMooch book.  It was an enjoyable quick read but it’s not one I’ll ever read again.

Tea talk: What else could I possibly drink while reading about such traditional country lives than a good, honest pot of strong English Breakfast Tea?

Title:

Author: Ariel Meadow Stallings

Published: Seal Press, 2006, pp. 219

Genre: Wedding planning

Blurb: Unenthused by a white wedding gown and bored by the hoopla of the Hollywood-style reception, Ariel Meadow Stallings found herself absolutely exhausted with the nuances of traditional nuptials. So, she chose to take a walk off the beaten aisle and embrace the non-traditional bride within. Through trial and error, Ariel and her fiancé managed to crank out a budget wedding with all-night dancing, guests toasting champagne in mismatched mugs, gorgeous gardens, no monogrammed napkins, no garter, no bridesmaids, and lots of lesbians. Shortly after her 2004 matrimony, Ariel began searching for other brides whose ceremonies defied age-old tradition and reflected who they are. From there, she developed the idea for a guide for the offbeat couple. (Goodreads summary)

When, where and why: I’ve enjoyed looking at Offbeat Bride for ages (quite probably long before I got engaged) and so I was really pleased to discover that there was a book too when I was browsing LibraryThing for wedding related titles which sounded readable.  I managed to get hold of this from BookMooch and started reading it almost right away.

What I thought: This book is just the sort of wedding book that I was looking for: it’s entertaining, insightful, useful and above all it doesn’t take itself too seriously.  It’s a great blend of anecdotes from Ariel and other similarly non traditional brides about their wedding days and the planning leading up to it and advice to brides who are in the process of arranging their own weddings.  As just such a bride, I found the book relatable and the hints and tips invaluable.  Unlike other wedding books and magazines that I’ve encountered, the advice in Offbeat Bride doesn’t concern how to fold your own napkins and the most politically correct way to seat people at the reception, but things like how to say “thanks, but no thanks” and how to avoid being talked into decisions because “it’s tradition”.  True, none of these things is particularly new or startling, but Ariel’s voice as she writes is so matter-of-fact and irreverent about the whole process that it’s like receiving a welcome, reassuring chat from a friend that everything will be ok, just stop fussing about the little things.  At the same time, she never loses sight of the fact that getting married is (gasp) important to people and that most people will go a tiny bit crazy over something completely irrational at some point during the planning phases.  This book presents a very balanced view, which is a welcome change from a lot of the wedding literature out there.

It’s worth noting that the Old English Thorn and I are having probably the most traditional wedding imagineable, complete with Catholic church, hall and buffet reception, taking his surname and living together for the first time after the marriage.  However, don’t let the title fool you; this book is an ideal read for any bride (or groom for that matter), whether planning a beach wedding with everyone in costume as pirates or a traditional ceremony in a white meringue of a dress.  Dilemmas like people disapproving, being offended by the guest list, or just wanting to help a little bit too much are certainly not unique to brides who favour black dresses and purple hair.  A wedding, it seems, is something on which everyone has an opinion, regardless of how unwelcome that may be.  Offbeat Bride recognises that and offers some great ways to either accept or ignore it.  It provides some much-needed perspective and entertainment at a time when it’s very easy to take things too seriously.

Where this book stays: I think I’m going to circulate this one to my mother and husband-to-be as I there’s stuff in it which will be useful for them too.  After the wedding circus is over (roll on September) it will be off to BookMooch again to find a new home with someone else.

Tea talk: I’m afraid I’ve been on the coffee again while reading this book.  I read it while I was at home in the evenings and so whenever the kettle went on (frequently in a house with no central heating) I was presented with a ready made cup of coffee by someone.  As tea would have required getting up, coffee it was.

Title:

Author: Gerald Durrell

Published: Fontana, 1971, pp. 220

Genre: Autobiographical wildlife fiction

Blurb: All Gerald Durrell’s books are extremely enjoyable.  My Family and Other Animals is the best, spun from his family’s five-year sojourn, before thewar, when he was in his early teens on Corfu.  In Birds, Beasts and Relatives, returning to the same place, he has done it again…  He effortlessly immerses us in the glittering bays and sun-shined olive groves, teeming with weird astonishments.

Where, when and why: This book was another find from the Winchester Cathedral book stall earlier this month.  I picked it up because I recently read Gerald Durrell’s A Zoo in My Luggage and it reminded me how much I enjoy his writing.  Talking about him when reviewing Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day made me decide to reach for this book now.

What I thought: There are few writers who are as skilled at relating an anecdote as Gerald Durrell.  His writing has a way of capturing the people, animals and situations that he encounters perfectly; reading this book was almost as good as being in Corfu with Durrell and his madcap family.  Reading about the family again was a welcome return after their absense in A Zoo in My Luggage.  As the people that Gerals Durrell knows best, they all have well-developed and entertaining personae within the book and are funny and embarrassing in the way that only family can be.  Seeing them again was a bit like revisiting old friends and I thoroughly enjoyed laughing with them at their own follies.

As always with Gerald Durrell’s writing, the book was a careful balance of human drama and encounters with local wildlife, containing just enough detail to be interesting without being too scientific.  These books are, after all, primarily fun.  However, as excellent as Durrell’s grasp of the anecdote is, they aren’t very well strung together in this book.  As it contains stories which were left out of My Family and Other Animals rather than being a continuation of the novel, there are large time gaps between the events which are related and they are presented in a random order without any thematic or chronological links.  I still enjoyed this book and I would recommend it to anyone else, but I would have preferred the book to have a bit more structure.

Where this book goes: This book joins my other Gerald Durrells on my shelves as they are all perfect quick, light reads for bad days.

Tea talk: This book was accompanied by honeybush tea from Whittards.  I don’t put sugar or milk in my tea, so I tend to favour leaves or blends which are naturally sweet and this one did not disappoint.  Definitely a good tea to perk me up on a chilly, rainy summer day.

Reading this book, it’s hard to believe that the events it chronicles happened less than 50 years ago. The story of Malika and her family is shocking, and rightfully so, but is told in a way which is dignified and matter-of-fact rather than the tabloid style, deliberately provocative narrative it could easily have become. I was amazed at how a book which is essentially the account of twenty years of monotony in jail was never tedious or repetitive. The account was a bit slow to get going and the very straightforward writing style which works so well later on seems a bit dull at first when describing family history and Malika’s earlier opulent existence at court. Of course, this could be due to the translator rather than the author, and this section is short enough that it doesn’t detract too much from the rest of the book.

La Prisonniere by Malika Oufkir and Michele Fitoussi.  Published by Corgi, 2001, pp. 397.  Originally published in French in 1980.

N.B. This is an old review written in 2010 and posted on Goodreads and LibraryThing before I started keeping track of all the books I read here at Old English Rose Reads.  I’ve decided to keep copies here so that this remains a complete record of my reading since I started reviewing books for my own pleasure.