Part of moving has involved packing up all my books and finding new homes for them on the new shelves.  I’ve completely cleared out my LibraryThing catalogue and I’m only adding books back to it once they have a proper place (this is partially because the Thorn has suggested that I tag each book with its location so that he can find them all by himself).  Consequently, www.random.org only had a small pool of books from which to select this month’s read, and the deities have ordained that it shall be book number 41.  According to my TBR pile, that means that I am reading…

The Last and the First by Ivy Compton-Burnett

Ivy Compton-Burnett occupies a unique place in English literature.  Unquestionably one of the greatest English novelists of the twentieth century, she seems to have been uninfluenced by any earlier writers: she is wholly and inimitably herself.  When she died, in 1969, it was believed that she had completed one more novel.  After a search, the manuscript — hand-written, and covering several exercise books — was found by a friend.  All her admirers will be thankful and delighted that there is now, and finally, a nineteenth title to add to the Compton-Burnett canon.  Like all its predecessors it is characterised by dry satirical wit and profound observation of human behaviour, aphoristic brilliance and total integrity.  In particular it continues, and further refines, the economy and austerity of her later novels: here we have the distillation of her art.

She strictly observes her own conventions.  Once again we have the English country house setting, around the turn of the century.  This time there are two families at its centre, and the inevitable “power figure”, the tyrant.  The members of the families interact and comment; there are a pair of typically delightful children; and the domestic “chorus” includes both housekeeper and butler, splendidly realised.  On the face of it, this is a simple tale, but one that is packed with opportunities for Ivy Compton-Burnett to exploit her many gifts, and especially her unrivalled quality of irony, ruthless and comic.  The dialogue, carrying the entire weight of characterisation, is more subtle and condensed than ever.  Her final novel will be ranked among her finest.

I have never read anything by Ivy Compton-Burnett before so I’m a bit dubious about reading her last novel first, particularly as the foreword suggests that this one was pieced together after her death and so probably isn’t the best reflection of her work.  I also feel as though I’m going into this book blind, as the internet has failed to yield any reviews or plot summaries which might provide an indication of what it is about.  Nevertheless, I’ve heard some interesting things about Compton-Burnett and I know she is a favourite of Simon at Stuck in a Book, so I’m looking forward to giving her a go.

This month, the deities of www.random.org have ordained that I should read book number 412. According to my TBR list this means that I am reading…

The Beauties of a Cottage Garden by Gertrude Jekyll

This is a celebration of the beauties and possibilities of Heoliotrope and Honeysuckle, Auricula, Snapdragon, Spanish Iris and Corydalis, and all the other plants that enliven and exalt the gardens of England.  Gertrude Jekyll gives good advice on how to make a garden a place of repose and pleasure.  Writing with enthusiasm on the colours and scents of flowers, on the frustrations (and delights) of weeding and on the debasing influence of flower shows, she is practical, wise and entertaining in equal measure.

The TBR Lucky Dip has yet to produce a pick with which I am not thrilled.  The Beauties of a Cottage Garden pleases me for four reasons:

1. It is very short, which is an excellent thing as it’s already the 22nd July and I have only just made this selection, so I will be able finish it by the end of the month in spite of all the other demands on my time.
2. It is one of the few books which isn’t either packed up or already transported to The Flat In Which I Do Not Yet Live (well, reading books anyway; all the academic books are yet to come and the Old English Thorn is not going to know what’s hit him) meaning I can actually get at it.
3. It was originally published in 1899 and therefore counts towards the Victorian Literature Challenge.
4. It’s about gardens.

While I have very little interest or aptitude for gardening, I enjoy spending time in the garden  when the weather is fine.  In fact, one of the many attractive features of our new flat is that it has a very nice garden with flowers and a perfectly striped lawn that is magically tended for us, so all we need to do is sit outside and take advantage of it.  This year I’ve already enjoyed a couple of books which take gardens as their theme, so hopefully this book will prove equally entertaining.  After all, it does feel like the right time of year to be reading about gardens.

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.

This month, the deities of www.random.org have ordained that I should read book number 147 . According to my TBR list this means that I am reading…

The Pleasures of English Food by Alan Davidson

Stargazey pie, Cheshire cheese, toffee apples, fish and chips, Sussex pond pudding, Cumberland sausages, pasties, gingerbread, dumplings, and Cox’s orange pippins are just some of the edible delights in this glorious celebration of English food from across the country and its history.  From the etiquette of afternoon tea to the origins of mince pies, from the best way to eat a Stilton to how to cook a proper Yorkshire pudding, here are both well-loved favourites and unsung heroes from the nation’s mouth-watering culinary heritage.

This is another book from the English Journeys box set that I bought earlier this year.  It’s not one I would have picked up just yet as I’m terrible at remembering to read things other than novels and memirs, so the TBR Lucky Dip has served its purpose admirably this time.  Like the first book from the set that I attempted, Through England on a Side-Saddle by Miss Celia Fiennes, this sounds just my sort of book.  Descriptions of traditional and local dishes and ingredients from all over England, combined with an investigation into their histories?  Yes please!  However, Miss Celia Fiennes was such a disappointment that I’m a bit nervous about approaching this one and I’m really hoping this one doesn’t go the same way.

This month, the deities of www.random.org have ordained that I should read book number 775 . According to my TBR list this means that I am reading…

The House in Dormer Forest by Mary Webb

“I suppose, if one could get past your soul and look at your features, you might even be plain,” he said.  “But your soul sheds such a light, Amber.  I shall never be able to see your features.”

In the depths of Dormer Forest, nestling in a valley, lies Dormer Old House, inhabited by the Darke family, Solomon and Rachael with their four grown children: intense, idealistic Jasper, Ruby, pretty but silly, black-eyed Peter and the off one out, Amber, a girl with a genius for loving – and laughing.  There too lives cousin Catherine of the slanting eyes, whose pleasure it is to ensnare men’s hearts.  Brooding over all is the great matriarch, Grandmother Velindre, with her religious texts and reprimands, her beady eye upon the five young people in search of love and happiness.  As the fate of each unfolds it is Amber who emerges triumphant: one still June morning she is found under a blossom tree by a strange and noble man…

In this, her third novel, Mary Webb examines, with gentle wit and irony, the claustrophobia of intense family life, the crushing of the human spirit by religious and social conventions, and the powers and weaknesses of a woman’s place within them – evoking too, with her characteristic lyricism, the poetic beauty of the Shropshire Forests where all is enacted.

Once again, I’m really rather pleased with my fate at the hands of the bookish number generator.  Mary Webb is an author that I’ve been meaning to read for some time as she is one of the writers famously satirised by Stella Gibbons in her novel Cold Comfort Farm. I’ve heard lots of good things about Gibbons’ book (and I have vague memories of seeing it performed as a school play a very long time ago), so it will be good to read some of the source material that inspired it before progressing on to the parody itself.  It does suggest that this isn’t perhaps the cheeriest of books, so I’ll try to have something suitably happy lined up for afterwards.

This selection also enables me to tick another book off the Virago list, which is an added bonus.

Has anyone else read this book?

This month, the deities of www.random.org have ordained that I should read book number 177. According to my TBR list this means that I am reading…

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Out of his smoke-filled rooms in Baker Street stalks a figure to cause the criminal classes to quake in their boots and rush from their dens of iniquity…

The twelve mysteries gathered in this first collection of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson’s adventures reveal the brilliant consulting detective at the height of his powers.  Problems involving a man with a twisted lip, a fabulous blue carbuncle and five orange pips tax Sherlock Holmes’s intellect alongside some of his most famous cases, including ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ and ‘The Red-Headed League’.

I’m rather pleased with this selection as it gives me the opportunity to start reading the set of lovely Penguin Pocket Classics editions of the Sherlock Holmes stories that I bought from The Book People in February.  It also qualifies as another book for the Victorian Literature Challenge (which is progressing well so far, with 5 books read out of a potential 15, all of which have been by different authors) and on top of that it fits in nicely with my April aim of reading slightly chunkier books to slow myself down as it is the second largest volume in the Holmes collection.  It’s made up of short stories too, so it will be perfect commuting reading.  I think I’ve done well this month!

This month, the deities of www.random.org have ordained that I should read book number 316. According to my TBR list this means that I am reading…

Death of a Naturalist by Seamus Heaney

With its lyrical and descriptive powers, Death of a Naturalist marked the auspicious debut of one of the century’s finest poets.  Seamus Heaney was born in Mossbawn, Co. Derry, Northern Ireland.  He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995.

This is a book that I have in a box set of Faber poetry books, most of which I’ve dipped into before but not read properly. I’m excited about this selection, as I’ve not read any Heaney since he was on the syllabus for GCSE poetry, but I remember liking his writing and it will be good to rediscover him after all this time.

I think the random number generator was smiling on me with this choice: evidently it knew that I’d left it rather late in the month to choose a book and so it kindly (and entirely randomly, I hasten to add) selected what is possibly the slimmest volume in my TBR pile at a mere 46 pages.  I should be able to squeeze such a little book in before March is over.

This month, the deities of www.random.org have ordained that I should read book number 35. According to my TBR list this means that I am reading…

The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster

It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not…

In three brilliant variations on the classic detective story, Paul Auster makes the well-traversed terrain of New York City his own, as it becomes a strange, compelling landscape in which identities merge or fade and questions serve only to further obscure the truth.  What emerges is an investigation into the art of storytelling, notions of identity and the very essence of language.

This was yet another book that I picked up at university as possible extra reading for one of the courses I was taking, then never got round to reading because I loathed that course (Critical Theories, a course of which they changed the content and structure every year because every year, in general, people disliked it and didn’t do as well as in other areas) with a fiery passion and the thought of inflicting more than the required reading on myself each week did not hold any appeal.  If I find this one too heavy going I may just read the first book, City of Glass, for now and then put it back on the TBR pile until I feel up to reading book two.  We’ll see how it goes.

(Apologies for the lack of reivews this week; it’s been very busy.  Hopefully I’ll catch up a bit this weekend and can get back to normal next week).

When I came up with the idea of using a random number generator to select one book for me every month, I wasn’t entirely sure what I was letting myself in for.  I needn’t have worried about January’s choice though, as it seems to have been remarkably kind to me in my first month.  Lady’s Maid by Margaret Forster is a book which I added to my wishlist after it was recommended in a discussion about good neo-Victorian novels, along with several other titles which are also waiting patiently on the shelves now.  A copy turned up on BookMooch not long afterwards, and so it came to have a home on my shelves.  I probably wouldn’t have read it for quite some time though, had it not been January’s TBR Lucky Dip selection.

Lady’s Maid tells the story of Wilson, a girl from the northeast who becomes lady’s maid to Elizabeth Barrett.  At first she feels alone and awkward in her situation, but slowly she comes to love her mistress and grows in confidence.  Wilson becomes increasingly important in Miss Barrett’s life, facilitating her secret marriage to Robert Browning and flight to a new life in Italy.  Throughout this, Wilson has her own life to contend with: her family, her suitors and her hopes for the future.

I really enjoyed this book.  It struck an excellent balance between being the story of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s maid, encompassing her daily life, concerns, struggles and interactions with other people in service, and the story of Elizabeth Barrett Browning as told by her maid, who is the initial draw of this book for most people, I should imagine, myself included.  Margaret Forster has written a biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and so, feeling reasonably safe that it was as historically accurate as I was likely to get, I thoroughly enjoyed this glimpse into the lives of two of the great Victorian poets.  I fell in love with her husband’s poetry from the moment that I opened the Best Words anthology that was the bane of many a GCSE student’s existence at that time and read the lines:

That’s my last duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf’s hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.

In fact, this book has reminded me of how much I enjoy Robert Browning, and I may make one of his books my poetry offering for next month.  His wife, however, is not someone I’ve read very much (the ubiquitous ‘How Do I Love Thee?’ excepted) and after reading Lady’s Maid I’m so cross with her that I don’t feel any inclination to do so any time soon.  Elizabeth Barrett in this book is utterly selfish; she is kind and affectionate towards Wilson only when she needs her or has no better occupation, and as soon as Wilson asks her a favour or goes against her wishes then she is petulant, tetchy and sometimes downright cruel.  I spent most of the book feeling righteous indignation of Wilson’s behalf for her treatment at the hands of her mistress, and this is indicative of Forster’s skillful storytelling.

The style of the novel is unusual but effective.  It alternates between third person narration, although the perspective that this reports is always Wilson’s and the reader never sees the thoughts of any other character except through her own interpretations of what they might be, and letters from Wilson to various other characters.  The writing segues seamlessly between the two forms, often running sentences across the break between the two so that the narrator will begin saying something and Wilson herself will finish it.  I thought that this semi-epistolary style worked very well, as it gives the impression that more of the book comes direct to the reader from Wilson than really does, while simultaneously allowing Forster a freedom of writing which would have been necessarily restricted by a novel comprised purely of letters.  It is a clever technique and results in an engaging, emotionally involving read.

The letters are also a means of reflecting Wilson’s growing confidence and learning, both personally and stylistically.  Initially, her letters are timid and shy, desperate to please the recipient and so hiding a lot of the truth that is revealed to the reader in the narrative sections of the novel.  As Wilson becomes increasingly sure of herself, she begins to be more open and honest.  She express opinions and even makes demands.  At the same time, her letters go from being full of unnecessary capitalisations and awkward phrasing to being written in a smooth, warm, elegant prose.  I thought it was an interesting touch that the writing skills of both Wilson and Elizabeth Barrett Browning develop only as they begin to blossom personally.

Lady’s Maid was a very satisfying book to read.  Margaret Forster’s writing kept me engrossed with her wonderful ability to describe locations and capture characters.  I definitely recommend this one.

Lady’s Maid by Margaret Forster.  Published by Fawcett Columbine, 1990, pp. 549.  Originally published in 1990.

This month, the deities of www.random.org have ordained that I should read book number 222. According to my TBR list this means that I am reading…

Lady’s Maid by Margaret Forster.

When she arrived in London in 1844 — young and tremulous but full of sturdy Northern good sense and awakening sophistication — Lily Wilson became more than a lady’s maid to the fragile, housebound Elizabeth Barrett.  Her mistress’s gaiety and sharp intelligence, the power of her poetry, and her deep emotional need drew “Wilson” into a strange intimacy that would last sixteen years.

It was Wilson who smuggled Miss Barrett out of the gloomy Wimpole Street house, witnessed her secret wedding to Robert Browning in an empty church, and fled with them to threadbare lodgings and the heat, light and colours of Italy.  As housekeeper, nursemaid, companion and confidante, she was with Elizabeth in every crisis — birth, bereavement, travel, literary triumph.  As her devotion turned almost to obsession, Wilson forgot her own fleeting loneliness and the barrier between mistress and maid turned to gossamer.  And when Wilson’s own affairs took a dramatic turn, she came to expect the loyalty from Elizabeth that she herself had always given.

Artfully weaving fact and fiction, Margaret Forster has uncannily captured the tone and passion of a classic Victorian novel — the intricate nuances of relationship, the social limitations of servitude and womanhood, and the poignant bloom of affections injured and reborn.

This book came to me from BookMooch not too long ago, and it sounds as though I should really enjoy it.  Good choice, book selection gods!  Has anyone else read this yet?