Jumping the Queue

 

Jumping the Queue / Mary Wesley 
London: Penguin, 1988, c1983.
208 p.

I picked this book up recently while thrifting, and decided to read it immediately. Mary Wesley is hit and miss for me; there are intriguing bits to her stories, great settings and lots of realistic, complex female characters. But there are also outdated social mores, particularly when it comes to gender relationships. 

This book has flaws of that sort, from taboo sexual relationships to rape that's glossed over. Without those elements I would have liked this much more. The story is fascinating - Matilda Poliport is a widow, with four grown children whom she's mostly estranged from. She's described on the back cover as "elderly" -- she's actually just on this side of sixty. 

Matilda has decided she has nothing to live for. No husband, children who don't care about her much, well, I guess she has no role in life if not a wife and mother. She has a lovely cottage in the country, nice community, a favourite goose, and time to do anything at all. But what she decides to do is to take some pills and swim out to sea. 

She is foiled in her plans by a rowdy group of young adults on the beach, and in turn she foils the suicide attempt of a man on the bridge, who turns out to be the matricide on the lam that has been in all the papers. She takes Hugh home, and between them they spark something in each other again. They start living, Matilda going up to London briefly, Hugh figuring out how he can leave the country discretely. He doesn't ask for details of Matilda's life and she doesn't ask why he killed his mother. 

This is a story of a woman's life, and what gives it meaning. It questions what we live for and what we value. It mixes the appearance of  a bucolic country life with black humour and bitterness. I liked a lot of it, mainly for its look at how women are squeezed out of everything as they get older. Matilda is overlooked by her own children, patronized by some of the locals, and she's a lonely woman with no real friends to speak of (her two old London friends are nasty and competitive with her). But there is so much bleakness here - murder, suicide, incest, petty cruelties. I found it depressing, and a little unpleasant overall. Wesley certainly skewers this family's psychology without holding back. Well written but no pleasantries to be found here. 

Breakfast With the Nikolides

Breakfast with the Nikolides / Rumer Godden
London: Virago, 2013, c1942.
220 p.

I recently read this Godden book; I have a number of her books and have enjoyed many. This one, however, I didn't enjoy. I found a few elements that were engaging, but overall it was too problematic and unfortunately dull for me. 

It's set in a small town in India (other readers place it as current Bangladesh) -- Charles Poole is an agricultural specialist based in this location, to teach new farming methods to the locals. His estranged wife Louise suddenly arrives with two daughters in tow; she's fleeing Paris under German occupation. But she hates India; the culture, the people, the climate, everything. She's a miserable woman and Charles is very self centred. He is happy to have his daughters with him, though, and gives the eldest, Emily, a spaniel. This dog turns out to be the crux of much of the action of the book that follows.

Emily is an adolescent who does not get on with her mother at all, they are opposites and Emily is a proto-emo teen. But she instantly adores her father, whom she barely knows, and this creates another wedge in the family. 

There are descriptions of their lives, their glamourous neighbours the Nikolides, and many of the locals, including a veterinarian whose life intersects with the Pooles in a vital way. There is also a local student whose obsession with the veterinarian leads to tragedy. 

I felt that there was a bit too much going on here, and the story felt disjointed. Godden can often write in a fragmentary, dreamy way, especially in her India novels, but I didn't think it worked well here. I struggled to finish it, and didn't feel any sympathy for the characters who felt wooden to me (except for maybe the veterinarian's wife). Charles and Louise were just nasty, and the descriptions of India felt old-fashioned, without any self-awareness.  This one wasn't a winner for me! 
 

The Plague Stone

The Plague Stone / Gillian White 
London: Phoenix, 1996, c1990.
320 p.

Another oddball book that I picked up in a thrift store, drawn in by the cover and the series. This is the first book I've read by this author, and I won't be looking for her further work! 

It's called The Plague Stone for the looming presence of this landmark in the middle of the village of Meadcombe, a hulking rock wound about with legends of black magic from the past. 

There are three women in this book - Marian, Sonia and Melanie. Each has a dilemma and on one dark night, they all wish for change on the Plague Stone. Their wishes are granted, but is it coincidence or something darker? That's the question of this book, and it seems speculative and philosophical until it isn't, rather it's something quite real - this change in the tone and expectations from beginning to end was unsettling as a reader, and I don't think it quite worked. I was left wondering what actually happened here. 

Marian is a widow, left to care for her aged mother-in-law, a nasty woman at the best of times who is now suffering from dementia as well. Marian just wishes that the old woman would die already and free her from this burden. 

Sonia is used to being a wealthy woman, and has to beg her father-in-law for a loan to save her husband's business. How she goes about it makes her cringe the next day. 

And Melanie is a teenager full of angst and goth tendencies, who can't stand her self-martyred mother and depressed, self-focused father. She just wishes to get out of the village. And she does; she disappears, setting off the rest of the drama. 

The dark centre of the book is Melanie's mother Janey, a woman obsessed with the idea that everyone around her belongs to a devilish cult, and they've stolen Melanie away. She is very wrong, but as it turns out, right in one small way. In any case, everyone else has their own issues they are dealing with and aren't as focused on Melanie as Janey wants them to be. She's known to be a problem teen and most locals assume she ran away (for understandable reasons). Janey, however, spirals into deeper delusion, even as no-one around her seems to notice. 

This leads to the shocking and abrupt conclusion. I didn't see this coming, or, if I did I couldn't quite believe the author would go there. Melanie returns at the end, too late to do anything, and she and her grandmother (who she had in actually run away to) are not what you might have expected or foreseen. It's a strange tale, more violent that I'd expected, and left me unsatisfied with the ending; the build up of the events in the story seem pointless in light of the ending. It sticks in the mind, but perhaps not for the best reasons. 

Mr. Wrong

Mr. Wrong / Elizabeth Jane Howard
London: Pan, 1993, c1975.
223 p.

This collection of nine short stories was not what I expected. The title story leads the collection, and it is much darker than I had anticipated. I wish I would have known that it was a horror story before I began - it was very unsettling indeed!  In fact it coloured the rest of the book for me, even though the rest of the stories are not really horror. I didn't actually like this story very much; sometimes I can admire even if it's not for me, but this one left a bad taste. 

There are other stories here that are looking at dysfunctional or unhappy families - Whip Hand or Pont au Gard are examples, showing difficult mother-daughter dynamics or couples confessing affairs. But there are a couple of others that are more charming, even if a bit edgy, like Toutes Directions. 

Overall the stories are well crafted, with a real focus on character. The settings do evoke an England of a certain time and focus; this was published in 1975, and I find many books by English women from this time period to have this kind of female struggle as a key element. It's a bit dark though, and I'm not sure I'd look for any of her work again if this had been my first read by her. If you like horror tales or an atmosphere of angst in your short stories, you may like this collection. 

Peace, Perfect Peace

 

Peace, Perfect Peace / Josephine Kamm
London: Dean Street Press, 2019, c1947.
206 p.

Now for the last of my Dean Street Press streak! This was a shorter read than some other titles in this series, and appealed to me because of its setting, immediately post-war with evidence of wartime still all around. 

This was the most interesting part of the book, for me - the descriptions of rusting barbwire entanglements on the beaches, the shortage of housing which necessitates the main characters taking a flat in poor repair, constant dust from bombed sites, rationing in food and in clothing (there are difficulties buying a dress and the main character has to settle for what's available). 

The storyline focuses on the Smallwood family. Frances is returning from her service with the ATS, and her husband should be coming back from his wartime service soon as well. She is going to retrieve her children from her mother-in-law Joanna's country house, where they've lived for the last five years. Joanna is loath to let them go, feeling that only she really understands them, particularly the boy Giles. 

There are struggles between Joanna and Frances over the two children, albeit mostly unspoken ones. Frances believes Joanna is trying to alienate her children, but nobody really believes her. Meanwhile, Clare, a friend of Joanna's, is stuck in the middle of this struggle, getting confidences from both sides. Clare, however, is more focused on her own life - romantic difficulties, and the agony of not being able to finish her second novel. 

I loved the setting and some of the elements of the story. But overall, I found it bland, with tiresome characters and an overreliance on the psychological elements of the story. It's trying to show the disruptions that the end of the war caused, specifically for women, but the characters are not engaging and I didn't really care whether Clare wrote a book or not, or the Smallwood family reconnected or not. The plot was thin and slow moving, and Clare just floats through the book, with nothing actually happening to her, and nothing resolved. The Smallwood issues are resolved as Frances' husband comes home and after some fuss, believes her and regathers their children into their small family unit, as is right -- this insistence on the small nuclear family to the exclusion of a wider inclusion of grandparents or friends also felt retrograde. 

So unfortunately this one wasn't really a match for me. I finished it to find out what was going to happen to the family, but I didn't love this one. 

All Done By Kindness

 

All Done By Kindness / Doris Langley Moore
London: Dean Street Press, 2020, c1951.
246 p.

This is the first novel by Doris Langley Moore I've read, and I really enjoyed it, for many reasons. She was one of the first female fashion historians in England, and started the first costume museum there, with the support of luminaries such as Dior and the Queen Mother. She wrote novels, society guides, and plays and had a wide artistic circle. All this appealed to me! 

But on to this book itself. I didn't know much about it when I began reading, which is a great way to go into it. It follows the Sandilands family, a country doctor with two adult daughters, after he is given a trunk of old paintings by an elderly patient. She is grateful for his care for her despite her increasing lack of funds - all she has left is a big old house that's now mostly shut up. These paintings turn out not to be the junk they'd all first assumed. 

Dr. Sandilands' two daughters are quite different from one another. Beatrix, the eldest, is orderly, bossy and controls the household. Linda, the younger, is laissez-faire, with a part time job in the local library, and not much concern about housekeeping. She knows that her boss, librarian Stephanie du Plessis, is an amateur art specialist as well as a fiend when it comes to research, so asks her to take a look at the paintings. Stephanie comes up with a solid provenance and theory, and believes they are worth a whole lot. 

So Beatrix and Dr. Sandilands head up to a real art expert in London, Sir Harry Maximer. But his opinion on them depends greatly on what he wants to do with them. The scheming is underway! 

The book starts a bit slowly, but gets going once the paintings are in play. So many characters with their eye on them, so much shadiness, so many ploys and counterploys! It's great fun. I was all in once Stephanie de Plessis appeared; how many times does a clever librarian get to be the driving force in a novel? I loved it. 

It's fun, with a dash of serious art history, some romance, and a really satisfying ending with only one minor thread not tied up. The villain gets an unusual comeuppance and it made me laugh. For a clever and amusing romp, with art and librarians and museums involved, this one is a great choice. I'd definitely read more of Moore's work on the strength of this one. 

Miss Carter and the Ifrit

Miss Carter & the Ifrit / Susan Alice Kerby
London: Dean Street Press, 2019, c1945.
222 p.

I've been reading a whole lot of Dean Street books lately, and this was one of my favourites so far. It's set during WWII but it's also a bit of a fairytale. 

Miss Georgina Carter is a single woman in her late 40s, living in a comfortable though sparse flat. As the story opens, she is not so comfy, as she's lacking coal. She buys some wood blocks from a street seller to heat her flat, wood that had been part of roads long ago. As she burns them, one cracks open and an Ifrit appears to her (don't call him a genie!) He's been freed from his long imprisonment in this wood, and is ready to serve his new master. 

Miss Carter, however, is very practical and isn't quite sure what to do with this turn of events. She's embarrassed by his lavish servitude, insists he sits on the furniture as an equal with her, and nicknames him Joe. To prove his powers and willingness to serve, he magics in exotic food, cushions and colour, and other treats. When she is missing her only nephew greatly, Joe whisks her to Canada where he is training -- to the nephew's great shock. This scene is very funny, as the nephew tries to make sense of what is happening and convinces himself he is still drunk from his night out. 

But then a former flame, a friend of her brother's, shows up and Joe scents romance. Miss Carter insists it's not, but we are given glimpses of her past and his, and know that it will be. 

The joy of the book is the relationship between Miss Carter and the Ifrit. When Joe first appears, he is traditional, bound to his habits. So is Miss Carter - stuck in a British spinster's life with a constricted view of the world. Joe becomes fascinated with the modern world and is absorbing and learning at an exponential rate. And Miss Carter begins to learn and grow alongside him. They have conversations about ethics, wishes, morals, and meaning, and it's really engaging to read along. Joe even visits an old nemesis, another Ifrit who has chosen to go the opposite way to Joe, the way of power and corruption; this Ifrit is in thrall to none other than Hitler. (this book was published in 1945, so it was all still going when she wrote this). They free one another through their relationship; Joe quite literally, and Miss Carter from her small life.

I thought this was a delight, a mix between fantastical and really ordinary things - Miss Carter still goes to work in her office every day, for example, once wearing a beautiful dress that Joe has got for her, to the suspicious and jealous eyes of her coworkers. I thought the writing was light and entertaining, and the story certainly unusual, both funny and touching. Lots to think about here, and a happy ending for a 47 year old heroine. Really great read.