Weekly Geeks World Tour

This week's Weekly Geeks asks you to tell us about your globe trotting via books. Are you a global reader? How many countries have you "visited" in your reading? What are your favorite places or cultures to read about? Can you recommend particularly good books about certain regions, countries or continents? How do you find out about books from other countries? What countries would you like to read that you haven't yet?

I do enjoy reading about places 'elsewhere'. Fiction provides an excellent opportunity to really get into somebody's mind and see the world from their point of view. One of my favourite Proustian quotes which encapsulates this idea for me says that "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes."

Some of the places I seem to read about most, besides my own North American surroundings, are England, France, Eastern Europe (especially Ukraine), Japan and China, and a smattering of various other countries here and there. I particularly enjoy reading about Ukraine, because of my family background, and since my trip to Kyiv I've only become more fascinated by Ukrainian culture. I also really enjoy reading Scandinavian fiction, for no real reason except that I somehow connect with it. Nevertheless, when I was looking at my reading habits for this post, I realized I haven't read as widely as I had thought; I am aware of many books in translation, which are on my TBR, but I haven't actually read as many as I anticipated. One of the areas that is lacking which was pointed out by this exercise was South America. Except for Garcia Marquez, I haven't made great inroads into the writing of South America, although there are so many authors to choose from!

One of the ways I find suggestions for great international fiction is through all of you: other bloggers' reading habits inspire my own, very often. There are also a few sites that result in growing lists of things I really want to buy! One is World Literature Today; they have limited content up at their website but it is fascinating stuff. Here are a few works in translation I've read recently and really enjoyed --

• The Book of Chameleons / José Eduardo Agualusa (Angola)
• The Elegance of the Hedgehog / Muriel Barbary (France)
• Miss Chopsticks / Xinran (China)
• The Post Office Girl / Stefan Zweig (Austria)
• Doctor Glas / Hjalmar Soderberg (Sweden) *I read this classic years ago but it remains one of my favourite books; I've reread it a couple of times and recommend it

Over at One Swede Read, there's a list of all the countries of the world with the relevant books she's read slotted in. (And she reviews a wide variety of world fiction). It's a handy way of keeping track, and seeing where your titles tend to pile up. And of course there's always a map -- Weekly Geeks has provided a link so we can all create our reading maps this week. I like what Christina over at Jackets & Covers has done with her map; she's created one map to show where she has physically travelled, then a second to show her bookish rambles. I haven't gone many places in real life, but my reading rambles are quite extravagant, so I'm stealing her idea! To see what other people are reading and what their suggestions for international fiction are, be sure to visit other Weekly Geeks -- I've already discovered both new bloggers and numerous new titles.


First, where I have actually gone...



create your own visited country map


Then, where my reading has taken me...



create your own reading map

Library Loot

Once again Eva's weekly library loot post draws me in... she always finds so many great reads it is inspiring. Here are my finds this week:

The Earth hums in B Flat / Mari Strachan

Recommended by a number of bloggers, this first novel by Welsh writer Strachan takes place in Wales, and features a young girl as narrator. Gwennie is a bit odd; she's certain she flies at night, and she sees things she doesn't understand. Her innocence is not cutesy, rather her lack of knowledge of the adult world results in a plot in which she slowly chips away at the secrets her family holds. It sounds intriguing, and is set in a place I haven't read much about.

The Art of Salvage / Leona Theis

My first read for the Canadian Book Challenge, this one takes place in Saskatoon -- might as well start in my home province. :) It tells the story of Delorie, new to Saskatoon from a small town, and all that occurs after she becomes pregnant then gives the baby to her own mother to raise. According to the dictates of the day, she maintains an emotional distance from baby Amber. It's told in alternating sections from Delorie's and Amber's perspectives (though not in first person).

Spiderweb / Penelope Lively

Another book to feed my recent Penelope Lively fixation! This one features Stella Brentwood, retired anthropologist who retires to a small cottage in Somerset, only to discover that her new neighbourhood may be more difficult to understand than any of the societies she's studied over the years.

The Storyteller's Daughter / Cameron Dokey

An entry in the "Once Upon a Time" series, this YA retelling of the story of Sheherezad looks appealing. Out of all the authors who write for this series, Dokey is my favourite, and she always has something to say about the act of storytelling itself.

And, not a library book, but a book I purchased off the library's sale cart -- something I am very excited about as I didn't even know it existed -- Elizabeth Goudge's autobiography, The Joy of the Snow!! I love Elizabeth Goudge even is she is a bit "old fashioned" and I'm thrilled by this find. On first flip through there does look to be a chapter or two about her religious views but also a fair amount on the writing life so it should balance out. Plus she talks about all the houses she's lived in, something I find strangely fascinating.

Coal & Roses

Coal & Roses / P.K. Page
Erin, ON: Porcupine's Quill Press, c2009
93 p.


I've written a little about Page's work previously, and how much I admire her for continuing as a strong and vibrant creator into her 90's. She seems to be able to work in many formats; this book is a collection of 21 glosas. In case you are as unaware of this poetic form as I was, here's a definition:


Glosa = Originating in the late fourteenth to early fifteenth century Spanish courts, the glosa is a way for poets to exchange or build upon one another’s ideas in a structured poetic form. A glosa normally has four ten-line stanzas preceded by four lines quoted from another poet (this quatrain also acts as a kind of epigraph to the poem). Each stanza ends with a line taken sequentially from the borrowed quatrain. While there is no required metre, lines 6, 9 and 10 of each stanza are often end-rhymed. The glosa picks up on the concept of glossing – that is, elaborating or commenting on a text. Poets often vary the form slightly – for instance, by making some or all stanzas shorter than the standard ten lines. [From In Fine Form – The Canadian Book of Form Poetry]

What this means in practice is that Page has taken four lines from various poets, including such names as Anna Akhmatova, Gwendolyn MacEwan, Borges, Lorca, and Wallace Stevens. She begins with a quatrain from one of their poems and then glosses on it. In Akhmatova's case, there is a triple glosa, three quatrains from her work commented on for a big finish. The design of the book really adds to the experience of reading; before each glosa, there is a page with a brief biography and a portrait of the poet Page is referencing for her own poem. It's a wonderful way to discover new poets, and new depths to the poets you may already be familiar with. Reading these felt like eavesdropping on a discussion between poets, themes and ideas drawn on and expanded upon by a new sensibility. It was intellectually fascinating, and inspiring -- it made me think that I should be more careful to take note of my responses when I am reading a poem. Even if I am not about to break out into a wild orgy of glosa composition, I can still take the time to mull over a poem and think about the ways its lines may be interpreted according to my own experiences and knowledge.

Once again, this volume put out by Porcupine's Quill Press is a lovely book; good design, nice paper, attractive cover, quality binding, and of course, excellent content. I have not yet seen a P.K. Page volume that I haven't liked.

A Force of Nature

A Force of Nature: the frontier genius of Ernest Rutherford / Richard Reeves

New York: Atlas, 2008.

207 p.

Another choice inspired by the Science Book Challenge, this book is part of a series called "Great Discoveries". I read another in this series last year, Miss Leavitt's Stars, and really enjoyed it. So I thought I'd read this one as well; it's written by a biographer and political correspondent, not a science writer, and is a tiny bio at 207 small pages -- how do you compress a life like Rutherford's into just so much space? Well, Reeves has succeeded admirably.

I picked this up for many reasons: I like reading about physicists at that time period, and I was interested in Rutherford because he spent a few years teaching at McGill University, my alma mater. (In fact the physics building was named after him, and you can now take a virtual tour of the Rutherford Museum - a room full of his old equipment and apparatus).

It tells us the story of a man who was described by a colleague as "a force of nature". He was an exceptionally bright New Zealand farm boy, and his career began in the 1890s, when he won a scholarship to Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University, then the premier centre for physics studies. He was always very confident and self-assured, not fitting into the genteel English gentleman scientist mould very well; he was once described as looking like an Australian shop-keeper, and when he gave radio addresses it was joked that he didn't need radio to reach the colonies (his voice was notoriously loud, so much so that in later years researchers put signs up in the labs Rutherford supervised reminding "people" to lower their voices so as not to disturb the various delicate measurements going on). But nobody ever denied his brilliance.

He was recognized as a great experimental physicist and a mentor, involved in hundreds of atomic discoveries (like the orbital structure of atoms, the concept of the half-life of radioactive materials, and the achievement of Cavendish Lab being the first to split the atom). His own work as well as his particular genius at mentoring other young men make his place in physics a vital one. However, he championed not only other men: in 1920, Cambridge University was experiencing a post-war boom, and to reduce the number of students it was suggested that women be refused admission. Rutherford, along with chemistry professor William Pope cowrote a letter to the London Times, stating:

For our part, we welcome the presence of women in our laboratories on the ground that residence in this University is intended to fit the rising generation to take its proper place in the outside world, where, to an ever increasing extent, men and women are being called upon to work harmoniously side by side in every department of human affairs.... at the present stage in the world's affairs we can afford less than ever before to neglect the training and cultivation of all the young intelligence available. For this reason, no less than for those of elementary justice and of expediency, we consider that women should be admitted to degrees and to representation in our University.

Go, Ernest!

I enjoyed this short history of Rutherford's life, even though I know there is much more about him to learn. That's what the bibliography is for, I suppose: now I will have to look up a longer biography and read it too. This was well written, and talked about a scientific life in the way that I enjoy, full of gossip and personal tidbits which make the person real to me. (His wife telling him at dinner, in front of important guests, "Ern, you're dribbling again" just made me laugh). The science is very clear, both the explanation of various experiments and of their significance -- plus there are some great photos of the labs and the scientists involved. Entertaining to see the relatively unsophisticated equipment they used to make these extraordinary discoveries! I like this series for its engaging approach to scientific lives, and recommend them to anyone looking for a brief but fascinating introduction to various characters such as Rutherford. I think they might be particularly appealing for science minded high school students, but as someone far away from the teenage years I can state that I found this thoughtfully written and a satisfying read.

Gatekeepers: A History

Gatekeepers: Reshaping immigrant lives in Cold War Canada / Franca Iacovetta
Toronto: Between the Lines, c2006.
370 p.

This fascinating history, winner of the Canadian Historical Association's 2007 Sir John A. Macdonald Prize, was a great read. I am particularly interested in this topic; my BA was in North American History and Literature, and I've kept reading history since, though with not quite as much regularity as I've kept reading literature! Still, I have a fondness for Canadian history, and this book, exploring the role that immigrants played during the Cold War, was a complex and thorough reading experience. The focus is primarily on European immigrants, including Ukrainian & Soviet immigrants, which, if you've been reading this blog for any length of time you will know is personally of interest to me. So for all of those reasons, I found this book both illuminating and surprisingly entertaining.

Iacovetta is a feminist, labour, gender, and migration historian -- and all of these topics are rolled into this narrative. The book looks at those whom she calls "gatekeepers": middle-class institutions (like the Red Cross, the IODE, church and ethnic organizations, even the NFB) and middle-class individuals (journalists, social workers, hundreds of volunteers) and their role in 'Canadianizing' newcomers. But it also looks at the experience of immigration from the newcomers' point of view, and how they in turn influenced the gatekeepers. Each chapter takes one aspect of immigration and discusses it from a variety of angles; for example, the first chapter looks at how the press presented both political and human interest stories. In further chapters, she then examines governmental and institutional attitudes towards socializing all these new immigrants, as well as pointing out the place of Canadian but ethnically based groups, such as the Ukrainian Canadian Committee, in shaping views of how one should remain ethnic while becoming Canadian. The views of such support groups were prescriptive, most of them being strongly and vocally anti-leftist and anti-Communist. (This was the Cold War, recall).

An element I was drawn in by was the focus on women's experiences; many of them were joining husbands or families that had come ahead, while others were single refugees without a family structure to protect them. Iacovetta draws on magazine and newspaper reports - from such mainstream publications as Macleans and Chatelaine - to reveal a fear of female sexuality which informed the treatment of immigrant women. If they followed the strictures laid out for them, learning how to become good housewives and raise morally upright Canadian children, all was well. When things went awry, and domestic violence or more forthright feminine behaviour was revealed, the women were punished by being blamed for any problems which arose. This included having their characters maligned even when they were the victims of violent crime. She discusses a number of criminal investigations among immigrant populations in which women were murdered, and how the focus of coverage was on explaining why these women brought this violence upon themselves (variations on the old and tired 'well look what she was wearing' accusations in cases of rape). In fact, there were numerous social and economic reasons behind these happenings, which Iacovetta delineates and explores further.

Chapter Six, entitled "Culinary Containment?", provided an entertaining look at how 'postwar food and nutritional gatekeepers', such as dieticians, public health nurses, social workers, food writers and so on, influenced middle-class aspirations among newcomers. While many of the women entering Canada at this time had previously worked or been alienated from a home for many of the war years, the Canadian ideal was still the 'domestic containment' of women as homemakers. Women's magazines and television, including NFB films, strongly pushed for the retention of ethnic foodways as a way of making immigrants feel connected to their roots while minimizing subversive political activities. This multi-cultural view held that culinary pluralism was a method of making incoming cultures part of the greater Canadian whole. Still, much emphasis was placed on the consumer desires for new and shiny kitchens full of large North American appliances, and reliance on flashy supermarkets. Furthermore, the well off and comfortably housed nuclear family stood for democracy, as opposed to the Soviet family where the mother had to work outside the home and struggle for enough food to get by. Iacovetta talks about various NFB films made for educational purposes, to inform the gatekeepers and encourage the 'correct' aspirations in immigrants. One such example is Arrival, made in 1957, showing how an Italian woman becomes accustomed to her new life partly through the comfort of appliances and abundant food.

This is quite a complete history on this subject, full of great archival photos, a tempting bibliography and useful index. It reminded me of why I loved my history degree so much in the first place, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in either women's history, the stories of immigration to North America, conditions of the Cold War years, or simply well written social history with tons of fascinating tidbits. I always know I have really enjoyed a book when I can pick out bits to use as witty dinner party reparteé ;) But seriously, if you enjoy reading nonfiction and like women's history, this one is a great find.

Check out Between the Lines' website; they publish some fabulous history and socially relevant nonfiction -- their backlist as well as forthcoming publication list is quite tempting!

Happy Canada (Book Challenge) Day!

I am so thrilled - not only is it Canada Day, and I have the day off - but it is once again the start date for a great reading Challenge, the Canadian Book Challenge 3. I love this challenge; it's so flexible and well organized and just a lot of fun. The Challenge is to read 13 Canadian books from today, July 1/09 to June 30/10. Just 13! Easy stuff when there is so much to choose from; there is no restriction on what kind of book you want to read - fiction, nonfiction, graphic novels, YA, picture books, poetry...it's all up to you.

The last two years I've tried reading one book from each of the provinces and territories, so this year I'm going to shake things up a little for myself. My plan for the Canadian Book Challenge 3 is to read novels set in the Prairies (Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba). If I finish way ahead of schedule, I will try reading 13 YA novels with the same setting. Of course, plans may go awry, but I know that in any case, I will most certainly have read 13 Canadian books by next July 1.

Pop over the Book Mine Set and sign up. You know you want to! ;)

Canadian Shorts

I had signed up for the Book Mine Set's 2nd Canadian Book Challenge last July 1 with the intention of reading a book from every province and territory, thirteen in all. But, with two territories left to go I realized I just wouldn't be able to do it. So instead I am counting these two short story collections as the final entries into my Canadian Book Challenge tally. They were certainly worthwhile Canadian reads!

Making Light of Tragedy / Jessica Grant

Erin, ON: Porcupine's Quill Press, c2004.

203 p.

This collection of 23 short stories has the same oddball edge as Grant's recent novel, Come, Thou Tortoise (which I loved). The title of the collection is not one of the story titles -- rather, each of the stories is in its own way a wink at fate, an aside, a way to deal with what life hands the characters. I found many of them charming, amusing and original. The first story in the collection is "My Husband's Jump", which won Grant the 2003 Journey Prize (and which is reflected in the cover design). It carries a sense of the mysterious; a woman's husband makes a ski jump at the Olympics, but never lands. Over the course of six short pages, she struggles to come up with meaning, with understanding. It highlights Grant's eye for the absurd and her concomitant compassion for those afflicted by absurdity. I liked all of the pieces collected here, but was particularly fond of one near the end, entitled "Taxation", in which two roofers look down on the world, and the dynamic of their friendship changes as one espies a woman down below. It's a wonderful tale, with a sense of hope and a sense of humour -- which could describe many of the stories collected herein.

Coming Attractions 08 / ed. by Mark Anthony Jarman

Ottawa: Oberon Press, c2008.

118 p.

This annual collection from Oberon Press always has something of interest in it. This year I was particularly desirous of reading it, as one of the contributors is Rebecca Rosenblum, who I've been hearing much about as of late; her first collection, Once, has been released very recently. Her three stories open the book, and they are all intriguing, with youngish people negotiating their way through urban life. I found the second, "The House on Elsbeth" particularly memorable, with its triad of students reacting to and witnessing (causing?) the results of domestic violence. Very creepy in its way.

There are two other contributors, Daniel Griffin and Alice Petersen, neither of whom I've read before. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed all three of Griffin's stories; they are 'manly' -- about men, from a male viewpoint, something I don't always connect to (sounds terrible but it is true). His second story "Promise" was excellent, its last line shocking even while I should have seen it coming. The main character is distant from his disturbed brother, but has tried to make a connection at their mother's request; she is worried about him, rightly as it turns out. That crooked relationship pulls you through the story and packs an emotional punch. The last three stories in the collection are Petersen's, and I thought they were fine stories, well written, but they didn't really catch me like the others did. They are about art, about the process of creation and the toll on a person's life when they strive to be something different than what is around them. Interesting and thought provoking. This collection is one more in a series that is always worth picking up.

The 2nd Canadian Book Challenge ends on Wednesday, July 1, but don't despair. July 1 also marks the beginning of the 3rd Canadian Book Challenge! Go on over to the Book Mine Set and join us for another year of great Canadian books!

Moon Tiger

Moon Tiger / Penelope Lively
Toronto: Key Porter, 2005, c1987.
207 p.

Another book by Lively; I was so struck by Consequences that I had to read another of hers right away. Fortunately my library has a number of her titles, so I picked up this one, the book for which she won the Booker Prize in 1987. I thought it was wonderful. I am starting to get the impression that Lively is very interested in the interplay of women's lives, memory, and history.

This novel takes a form that I am quite fond of, that of old women looking back on their life from the end of it. Claudia Hampton is in hospital, recalling her past as she nears her death. She was a journalist during World War II and spent much of her professional life as a journalist and writer of popular history, and her fascination with language and history permeates the book. The narrative jumps around in time, following Claudia's thought processes, but is not confusing. As people come to see her their appearance in her hospital room prompts recollections as to their role in her life. She is a cantakerous and blunt woman, not fond of too many people, but it is repeatedly remarked upon how beautiful and attention grabbing she was in her prime. (Remember that she is telling her own story!) Players in the story include brother Gordon, with whom she has a very close relationship indeed; his bland and ordinary wife Sylvia to whom Claudia is casually cruel; daughter Lisa, pale in comparison to her fiery mother, and left to her grandmothers to raise (Claudia does not have a strong maternal instinct); Jasper, Lisa's father and Claudia's sometime lover; Laszlo, a Hungarian student refugee who she shelters for a while; and Tom, her one, brief true love.

Claudia is a vibrant, uncompromising woman who doesn't allow herself to be limited to the accepted behaviours for women in her peer group. While working as a war correspondent in Egypt in WWII, she talks her way into advancing with some male journalists to the front, and there meets Tom, a steady kind of man, an officer and a calming influence on her. Of course, we know as soon as we meet him that he will not be around for long, but his loss alters Claudia's entire life. It is the emotional centre of the story, affecting her responses to life afterward. Following the war, she works at a newspaper in England and then begins to write her histories. Repeatedly referring to history as 'kaleidoscopic', her manner of telling her own story reflects that judgement; bits of this and that combine to finally come together in some kind of pattern, in hindsight. She comes out with ideas about the permanence of language and the impermanence of the historical record:

We open our mouths and out flow words whose ancestries we do not even know. We are walking lexicons. In a single sentence of idle chatter we preserve Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Norse; we carry a museum of words inside our heads, each day we commemorate peoples of whom we have never heard. More than that, we speak volumes — our language is the language of everything we have not read. Shakespeare and the Authorised Version suface in supermarkets, on buses, chatter on radio and television. I find this miraculous. I never cease to wonder at it. That words are more durable than anything, that they blow with the wind, hibernate and reawaken, shelter parasitic on the most unlikely hosts, survive and survive and survive.

But she also talks a lot about the characters she meets. Her relationships are important to her, despite her bravado and claim that she is wholly independent. First with the loss of Tom, then late in life, Gordon's death, she remarks that she is less a person without them.

One thing I discovered about Penelope Lively when reading her children's books, years ago, is her excellent control of atmosphere. There is both a lot of description, using all the senses, and an evocation of mood that I find characteristic of all her books which I've read. The final pages of Moon Tiger are exquisite, carefully drawn and very moving. Here's a paragraph from a point when her brother Gordon is near the end of his illness; he, Claudia and Sylvia are driving home from a government function he insisted upon attending.

It is a grey winter afternoon, glittering with car lights, street lights, gold, red, emerald, the black rainy pavements gleaming, the shop windows glowing Wagnerian caverns. Gordon, talking, sees and takes note of all this. He talks of events that have not yet come about and sees light and texture, the kaleidoscope of fruit outside a greengrocer, the mist of rain on a girl's cheek. A newspaper kiosk is a portrait gallery of pop stars and royalty; the traffic glides like shoals of shining fish. And all this will go on, he thinks. And on, and on.

A note about the title -- I had no idea what the reference was, until I got to the middle of the book, Claudia's time in Egypt with Tom. A Moon Tiger is one of those green mosquito coils that we used to burn when camping; here it is a perfect metaphor for memory and Claudia's narrative of the past. The Moon Tiger burns beside the bed while she and Tom make love and spend hours talking about their lives, both past and possible future. When they finally drift off, "the Moon Tiger is almost entirely burned away now; its green spiral is mirrored by a grey ash spiral in the saucer." This image suggests to me that through the historical lens, the green and living experience of the past is turned into a pale imitation of itself in the retelling. Or perhaps it is suggesting that the possibilities of a happier life for Claudia had been burned away in Egypt with Tom's death. I am sure many more interpretations could be added.

I was fascinated by this book, both by the character of Claudia and the structure of the story. Claudia is unapologetically herself, not trying to win over the reader; it is nice to see a female character who is not entirely 'likeable'. Interesting, intense and sometimes irritating, Claudia is the heart of this book and carries it off with panache. To succeed with a story which is anchored to one character, that character needs to be strong, and here Claudia is definitely a powerful creation able to hold the focus on herself. I am not at all surprised that this won the Booker. Recommended, especially if you already have an interest in the vagaries of history and storytelling.



Eva said...
I loved Moon Tiger when I read it back in high school. I've always meant to read more Lively. Which did you enjoy more, Moon Tiger or Consequences?

I enjoyed Consequences when I read it; that's what made me want to continue reading her work. However, I've found that Moon Tiger has stuck with me more, and that I have really been reflecting on both the issues that Claudia brings up and the style in which Moon Tiger was written.

Dorothy W. said...
I would love to hear how Moon Tiger and Consequences compare. Thanks for linking to my review of Moon Tiger! I'm curious if Consequences is as good.

BooksPlease said...
I've read Consequences and loved it. How does it compare with Moon Tiger, which I haven't read?

It's similar; they are both about a family of women, and the sweep of history over the 20th century and how it affected very particular individuals. The style of Moon Tiger is less straightforward than Consequences, in that it does not move chronologically, as well as slipping in and out of first person and third person narrative (quite effectively). And with Consequences, we are following quite a number of people through generations; Moon Tiger is all about Claudia! But they were both great reads.


Other Views:
Dorothy at Of Books & Bicycles discusses some themes

Kaizeren at the Bookish Dark gives it a deep reading

Lively's Consequences

Consequences / Penelope Lively
Toronto: Key Porter, c2007.
258 p.

Last week I asked for questions about books I hadn't yet reviewed; two of those books were by Penelope Lively. And I still haven't reviewed them, or answered those questions! So here is a little bit about the first one I read, Consequences, which got me going on her works -- I'm reading a third one now. And, I've just seen that she has a new book coming out this fall, entitled Family Album. It seems to carry on in the same vein as the ones I've read; the struggles of family and relationships over a lifetime. Plus it all circles around a house. Can not wait!

But as for this one -- it is a novel of three generations of women; the title comes from a mention of a parlour game the first generation played, called Consequences, predicated on the meeting of two randomly chosen people causing a strange and unforeseen result. This whole book, then, is a look at what results from a chance meeting of two people in prewar England.

Debutante Lorna meets artist Matt in a London park in 1935. They fall madly in love, get married and move to a small and very rustic cottage in Somerset. They have a daughter, Molly. Matt goes to war. You can imagine the result.

Lorna and Molly move to London and eventually Lorna marries Lucas, Matt's best friend. Molly grows up, does not get married, has a daughter, and ends up working in the arts field setting up poetry readings and literary events. She meets a poet and finds her own True Love.

Molly's daughter Ruth breaks the mould somewhat; she does get married and lives a conservative life, with two children and not much to do with the arts. But, she does not find her true love in marriage and gets divorced. Then her interest in family history grows and she tracks down the Somerset cottage where her grandparents had lived and loved so long ago. And guess what awaits her there?

This brief and static summary gives the bones of the story. But it is so much more. Lively's ability to create a setting is truly admirable. The Somerset cottage and surrounding landscape feel very real; Matt paints murals on the walls and while they are talking about the images they seem so present that I could almost feel the plaster under my hands. The three women are the main characters, each in their turn; I liked Lorna, loved Molly and tolerated Ruth. Each lives in such different circumstances, but I think I enjoyed reading about Molly as she is in her prime in midcentury. The surroundings were delightful, and her active involvement first in a library and then in the literary world was of particular interest to me. The focus on children, however necessary to the continuance of the family line and thus the storyline, did not appeal to me as much and perhaps that is why I found Ruth's story a bit more dull. Lorna gets the most space, and her world is nearly cinematic in its conception, but maybe it's the distance that makes it seem more romantic somehow. The war and all its attendant tragedy has a patina over it which seems to colour my reading about that era, an effect which I have to consciously try to counteract. The writing itself is masterful, parts are quite quoteable, and the straightforward chronological progression of the story is brought neatly full circle at the end. I very much enjoyed reading this and as I mentioned, it has spurred me on to read more of her work. I read her amazing children's books years ago and what I mostly remember of them is the atmosphere. Lively is very talented at creating a mood in her books, a skill I find admirable. What really made me finally pick this book up, however, was a mention of it a while back by Kerry, at her blog Pickle Me This. She quoted Molly's thoughts about the library she works at for a brief time, and it was so delightful I knew I had to read it. Here is the quote:

It sometimes seemed to Molly that the library was a place of silent discord and anarchy, its superficial tranquility concealing a babel of assertion and dispute. Fiction is one strident lie-- or rather, many competing lies; history is a long narrative of argument and reassessment; travel shouts of self-promotion; biography is just pushing a product. As for autobiography... And all this is just fine. That is the function of books: they offer a point of view, they offer many conflicting points of view, they provoke thought, they provoke irritation and admiration and speculation. They take you out of yourself and put you down somewhere else from whence you never entirely return. If the library were to speak, Molly felt, if it were to speak with a thousand tongues, there would be a deep collective growl coming from the core collection up on the high shelves, where the voices of the nineteenth century would be setting precedents, the bleats and cries of a new opinion, new fashion, new style. The surface repose of a library is a cynical deception.

I loved that! There is another atmospheric moment I'd like to share with you; in this scene, Molly and her daughter Ruth are having dinner with Lucas and Molly's brother Simon. The power goes out and they light candles and continue on.

There are so many shadows in this room, she thought. Candlelight creates a further dimension. No wonder people used to believe so fervently in ghosts. Space seems suggestive, packed with possibility. It's Caravaggio as opposed to David Hockney. The Fulham kitchen had become a glowing cavern, its mundane furnishings muted, turned into vague murky shapes. The light picked out faces, hands, the red intensity of wine, the white cascade of wax from candles. Everyone had acquired a new presence; Lucas and Simon were craggy Hogarthian characters, Ruth was romantically pretty. When you can't see things clearly, thought Molly, they are open to interpretation. What is that shape in the corner? The small dark blob on the dresser shelf? What elegant hands Lucas has.

I'll leave you with those samples of Lively's writing. I hope they will intrigue you and perhaps encourage you to give her work a try. It's very rewarding.

(questions will be answered in tomorrow's post on my next Lively, Moon Tiger)