Olivia by Olivia

Olivia / by Olivia (Dorothy Strachey)
London: Virago, 1987, c1949.
112 p. 

This slim novel was the only one that Dorothy Strachey, sister of Lytton Strachey, ever wrote. Told as a reminiscence, in the immediate first person, it takes place in a girl's boarding school in France the year that Olivia is 16. A shy English girl, she's overwhelmed by the passion and freedom of her new life there.

But she soon begins to understand that it's a hothouse, with emotional connections forming and unforming, jealous taking of sides going on, and multiple loyalties to negotiate.

Olivia herself falls hard for one of the headmistresses, Mademoiselle Julie. Her love for Julie is much stronger and uninhibited than that of her friend Laura, another student who is generous and kind to all, but not at all as histrionic about her loyalties as Olivia.

While this is known as an early lesbian novel, the love is more charged emotionally than physically. There are a few embraces and kissing of hands, but it is more about the emotional state of young Olivia's teenage obsession, and Mademoiselle Julie's comfortable playing off of her students against one another and against Madame Cara, the other headmistress. Where do all their loyalties lie? Olivia can only see her own desire, and this does become a bit tiresome after a while. It's a good thing that this is so short, as I'm not sure I could have taken too much more of her florid idolization of Mademoiselle Julie. 

As a school novel I think it both highlights and exaggerates the way this closed community of women becomes keyed up by the dysfunction at the top. When the conclusion comes, one of them is dead and one is heading to Canada -- almost as bad?  

While intriguing for its historical content (and there is a long note that expands on the author's experiences in the Virago edition, which adds a lot of colour and interest to the story) this was a worthwhile read for her examination of character and desire. The student/teacher aspect is disturbing, but not unusual; and as the story comes from Strachey's own life there is probably a lot of verisimilitude to the way she presents it. 


Readalike:

Another school novel, certainly not as passionate, though it also has angelic students who set examples for the rest, Gwethalyn Graham's Swiss Sonata delves a bit more into the social conditions of a girl's school in the 30s. It does not shy away from talking about the political conditions in Europe in the 30s either, which makes it quite powerful.

Mothers & Daughters in mid-century

The Winds of Heaven / Monica Dickens
Penguin, 1963, c1955.
239 p.

Now this is a sad story if ever I've read one. Louise is a widow; in her late-fifties, she is considered 'old' in this story - I had to check on her age again because she seems older in her dependence on others and inability to shift for herself. After her useless husband dies and leaves her penniless, she has to rely on her three adult daughters, who all seem to see her as a nuisance, mostly.

She moves around from daughter to daughter, staying a few weeks here, a few weeks there, and spends most of her winter with an old friend in her coastal hotel.

But this year is different; her friend has a serious accident, and she and the other older ladies at the hotel are turfed out that same day to make room for paying guests. In confusion, Louise heads back to London to try to find a place to land.

One daughter is on holiday with her family, one is out of town, and the other lives on a farm and is pregnant and doesn't want her -- though Louise's sympatico son-in-law Frank does, and comes up with a solution to find a place for "Granny" where she can be homed but also out of everyone's hair. He has a friend with a caravan, which they park on the farm, and Louise moves in.

She's delighted; though tiny, it's all her own, it's a nest she can creep into and not feel like a burden. Also, her awkward granddaughter Ellen can stay with her there instead of going along on sporty family holidays. This is wonderful for both of them, until a day when Something happens and it's not so wonderful any more. 

In the end, Louise is saved only by the deus ex machina move of her London acquaintance, a bed salesman named Gordon Disher, who proposes, and in the process tells off her three selfish daughters all in one go. It's rather satisfying. 

I found this book both intriguing and confusing. Louise seems so old -- were women in their late fifties really senior citizens in 1955? And her daughters are so cold. I know that all mother-daughter relationships are not perfect, but Louise seems like a gentle woman who has spent her life putting up with a boorish husband and doing everything for these girls. Perhaps some turnabout, girls? 

The style is brisk and descriptive, focusing on these characters and the inexorable results of their neglect. It's just that it seemed a little bit over the top to me, in some ways, and really full of disagreeable people. I can't say that I really enjoyed this picture of depressing family life, even if it is by an author I really want to like but haven't yet warmed to. 


A Favourite of the Gods / Sybille Bedford  
London: Virago, 1984, c1963.
322 p.

This was an odd book: feeling like it begins in the era of Henry James with Anna, an American heiress who marries an Italian prince and can't live with his philandering; moving to Constanza, their daughter, a more free-spirited girl who grows up in England with her mother after they've left Italy and her father; and continuing on to Flavia, Constanza's very modern English daughter. 

Most of this book focuses on Constanza, though, and her place in this family. Her feelings about her mother, her father, her short-term English aristo husband, and her own daughter are examined, though she's rather a cold and emotionless creature. Or rather, she fits into that upper class style of living in which one does things on a whim, and doesn't really care much about emotional connection whether between spouses, or parents and children. 

At one point, Constanza and Flavia get off a train in Europe en route from Italy due to a search for a missing ruby ring - and they end up staying in that small railway town for years. Their decisions seem to made on the spur off the moment - as another reviewer noted, they all seem to be wealthy, frivolous characters who have very little to recommend them to the reader's interest. 

And I think that was the primary difficulty I had with this book - I couldn't connect at all. While it was clearly set in the early part of the 20th century, it felt jarring to read the modern references. All these women seem to be acting from social norms that are old and outdated (except for perhaps Flavia, but we see little of her). I felt discombobulated by the story, uncertain where it was going or why I should care anyhow. At times, there were reflections which caught me, but overall this is not going to be a favourite. 

The women don't seem to have much fondness for one another; poor Anna gets the stink eye from her family for her moral stance once she leaves her husband. Both the other characters and the author herself seem to think she's being ridiculous and unworldly by not just going along with the Italian lifestyle she found herself dropped in to. And the selfish and narrow-focused Constanza is beautiful and elegant and all that. Maternal feelings seem in short supply in this book, and equally so any daughterly fidelity. If you want a story about brittle women focused on status and money and their own personal beauty, comfort and satisfaction, then perhaps you will find this one more to your liking than I did. 

Isabel Colgate's Winter Journey

Winter Journey / Isabel Colgate 
London: Penguin, c1996.
208 p.

If you are in the mood for a slow-moving, reflective look at sibling relationships in middle age, complete with relevant musings on English history, this is the book for you. 

Edith and Alfred are siblings who are not much alike, though they have a decent relationship. Edith is coming back for a visit to the family farm, upon which Alfred now lives, having returned home after a long career as a photographer. Alfred is a bit dreamy and slow-moving in comparison to Edith, a busy, successful Parlementarian. 

The question is, now, what to do with the farm and the holdings? How can Alfred continue living there, and how do Edith's ideas for the place work when she doesn't own it, but feels she has a moral share in it? Will modernity and noise and people win out, or will Alfred's longing to just be left alone prevail? And will their relationship survive it all? 

Well, it's not as dramatic as all that, even though all these questions do arise. There is much talk about how both of them got to this point in middle-age. And how age changes things, both physically and philosophically. In discussions about the family life of their hired help, modern issues rear their heads - domestic violence, divorce, gender relations - while in their restrainedly heated conversations, their conflicting ideas about what to do with the place (sell? renovate? open an artist's colony? make a motocross track like their neighbour? No to the last, at least) affect their lifelong power balance. 

The pace is slow here; the language is rich, and the sentences long. They reflect the long and winding thought processes that both siblings are undergoing now that life itself is slowing down and ambition decreasing. When you wish to reach for a story based in character and sense of place, that relies on introspection and reflection to drive what plot there is, this is a good pick. That is not as negative as it sounds -- for this kind of read, Winter Journey is a great choice. Edith was a character I really enjoyed, and Alfred's own centrality to the story is moving. Perfect for a slow winter's night's reading.

The House on Mango Street & Offshore

These two books may seem to have nothing at all in common - why would I even think of reviewing them together? Because I seem to see a similarity between the way that they approach a story of an unusual or a difficult girlhood, told from the viewpoint of the young girl in question. While set continents apart, they are also both a bit distant from today and give a new look at growing up in the 20th century. 


The House on Mango Street / Sandra Cisneros    
New York: Vintage Contemporaries, 1991, c1984.
110 p.

This classic is a series of vignettes illuminating the childhood of Esperanza Cordero, a young Latina growing up in Chicago. Esperanza looks from her adolescent perspective at the world around her, at the adults and the roles open to her as a woman. Each tiny chapter feels like a poem, in a sense; the language is poetic, evocative, and Esperanza's outsider view reveals life in small details.

This is a beautiful read - some parts are funny, some charming, many are sad or full of pathos. Esperanza notes beauty all around her, even in the midst of her hard neighbourhood and focus on finding a home for their family. She overcomes the restrictions and limitations of her setting to find her voice, and live up to her name by remaining hopeful.

Although this a pared down story, mostly an expanded poetic approach to narrative, it reminded me - in the way that Esperanza is situated firmly in her family and cultural context, but has more artistic longings - of Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Both main characters in these books are powerfully thoughtful and strong young women.

What a lovely read, one that offers a picture of a Latina girlhood in the US, and that provides an accessible way into a story that was so fresh and new when it was first told. 

Offshore / Penelope Fitzgerald
London: HarperCollins, 2003, c1979.
144 p.

In the early 60s there is a community of barge dwellers in "the Reach", in London. There are five boats, five units in this story. And on one of the boats we find Nenna, a young, troubled mother with two daughters, Martha (12) and Tilda (6). Martha is the character of interest -- Tilda is a strange, not very believable 6 year old. She speaks and acts more like another 12 year old, while Martha is an adult, taking care of both her mother and sister. 

For me, this story was Martha's, although there are many other very adult storylines and themes going on. And there is tragedy, and an open-ended conclusion, and possibilities for a future for Martha and Tilda, in Canada even! 

Poor Martha tries to keep her family together and functional, as her mother is distracted by her bad relationships and failed marriage, and their neighbours move from petty criminals to violence, boats sinking, men trying to take control, the river acting as metaphor for the instability of everything. Everyone living in The Reach is on the edge of life in many ways.

"The barge-dwellers, creatures neither of firm land nor water would have liked to be more respectable than they were... but a certain failure, distressing to themselves, to be like other people, caused them to sink back, with so much else that drifted or was washed up."

Penelope Fitzgerald writes with a economy of language - a few words can say an awful lot. While parts of the story did feel a little dated in terms of gender roles and so forth, there were some glimpses at a more equal future. Though there really isn't a firm conclusion to the shifting relationships and the shaky hold on making a legal living in this book, there are lines left open, and opportunities hinted at. If you like a sharp, unromantic look at what it's like to live in poverty and to scramble to make an unconventional living, this may be the book for you. If you have romantic ideas about living on a houseboat, reading this may disabuse you of those notions.

An interesting and unflinching look at unhappy people in unusual settings. And Martha's child-on-the-cusp-of-adult outlook only serves to highlight the flaws in the adults around her in greater relief.

Excellence in Short Stories Looks Like This

Over the last little while as I've been reading toward finishing my Century of Books project, I had two short story collections in the rotation that I was working away on, story by story. Mavis Gallant recommended reading stories one by one, not all mashed up together like a novel, and since I first heard that, I've been trying to do just that, as much as I can.

In any case, I picked up Mansfield's classic, finally; and also a large collection by one of my favourite authors, Penelope Lively. I'll start with the older book.


The Garden Party & other stories / Katherine Mansfield   
London: Penguin, 1971, c1922.
255 p.

This collection of 15 stories was a delight. I was drawn in by the style and the approach: they focus on the little moments, on domestic settings and on women's thoughts and feelings. The writing is evocative, poetic, and spare at the same time. 

I found it interesting how the stories all end in a very open-ended way. They drift off, or they stop without a complete tying up of loose ends. They leave the characters carrying on in uncertainty or without huge epiphanies; but they leave the reader in the midst of the narrative, without closure, and unable to forget the characters. 

The first two stories are the longest, and the title story is quite dreadfully intense, as a young upper class girl at her family's garden party must face the horror of death, loss and the complete dissociation from these things endemic to the class system. Mansfield's light touch dances over these elements in all the stories, but the underneath peeks through nonetheless. 

The first story is set in Mansfield's native New Zealand, and the setting is rich. You can feel the heat and the sea as you read - I can picture the house and the yard and the quiet clearly. You can feel the stifled energy of the women as well. The writing style reminds me quite a bit of Virginia Woolf; no wonder Woolf both appreciated and envied Mansfield, they are very similar. 

I'm glad I read this - the fine writing and the illumination of women in many situations, either as domestic workers or wives/mothers or indeed daughters, was compelling. The spinsters who show up in stories like Miss Brill or The Daughters of the Late Colonel are always teetering at the edge of pathetic, one feels sympathy for them while realizing their precarious existence. Definitely a collection worth reading, and rereading. I'm sure I'll revisit it often.

Pack of Cards / Penelope Lively 
London: Grove, 1999, c1986.
336 p.

And now to one of my favourite authors, whose stories are always enjoyable (though I think I prefer her novels just that little bit more). It's a larger collection than some, incorporating stories from an earlier collection (Nothing Missing But the Samovar) and ranging over the years 1978 -1986. Because there are so many stories here (35) and Lively's voice is so distinct, I'd recommend not reading it all at once, or it will pall. There are some excellent stories and some that have dated quite a bit, mostly the ones in which she is tackling a current social problem (ie: The Voice of God in Adelaide Terrace). 

A connection that I might not have seen if I hadn't been reading these two books so near to one another is that many of the stories in this collection echo some of those in Mansfield's. 

In Mansfield's Miss Brill, for instance, a happy spinster at a concert in the part is hurt by overhearing what a pair of young people is saying about her. In Lively's Miss Carlton and the Pop Concert , an older woman joins the audience in the park at a music fest of sorts, and happily imagines the inner lives of the romantic looking hippies near her. But she's disillusioned by their talk of work and cars and the music and she leaves feeling not quite so young as she'd started out feeling. There are other similarities of tone between them, of attention to the domestic. I'm surprised I've never seen that before, but then, I haven't read much Mansfield until now. 

This collection is quite British in its restrained emotional understatement. Lively is always intelligent, and wryly witty, and many of her preoccupations show up in these stories. Archaeology, history, time passing, the past, memory, houses, what-might-have-been - all these turn up in some form. I enjoy feeling like I know an author's approach to life and I do feel that I can estimate, at least generally, what a Penelope Lively story or novel will be like, and this book doesn't deviate from that pattern. I enjoyed it, revisiting some old favourites and finding some new gems as well. 

Undset's Jenny

Jenny / Sigrid Undset; translated from the Norwegian by W. Emmé
New York: Knopf, 1921, c1911.
305 p.
(read via Open Library)

Jenny Winge is a tall, confident, artist living in Rome with her friend Cesca when we first meet her. She's a quiet, self-contained Norwegian girl, as opposed to her flighty, dramatic, and quite beautiful best friend.

When Helge Gram arrives in Rome, he gets turned around in the dark and asks two Northern looking girls for directions to the railway station. From then on he is part of Jenny & Cesca's group of free-wheeling artists; like everyone else, he first falls for the vibrant Cesca, but eventually realizes it's Jenny he loves. 

Jenny is ready for love; as a reserved woman in her late 20s who has always been responsible for her family she's never had the opportunity for romance. She and Helge become engaged, and then leave the sunny peaks of Italy to return home to meet his family and get settled into a routine before marrying.

But that's where everything goes wrong -- the staid, restricted life that Jenny has to fit herself back into is stifling. And Helge doesn't look as appealing under the grey skies of home, especially when he's within in the circle of his unhappy family and jealous mother. Jenny begins to look elsewhere...but not too far, unfortunately for them all. 

This was a long, slow, story. It is told in segments, at least that is how it felt to me. Italy; Norway; then Italy again. And the slowly shifting relationships between the characters, both friendships and romantic liaisons, are the heart of it. 

I loved the characterizations of all the players - the two male friends that Jenny & Cesca are in company with in Italy are, surprisingly, not awful. They care about each other, they are concerned for one another, and they look after one another as well. It's refreshing to see friendships like this in early novels. And Jenny and Cesca also take time together to talk about more than just men, though Cesca does have her share of angst about them. There is conversation about art, and life, and meaning, alongside the more dramatic elements of the story.

It does get a little gender focused in the end as Jenny finds herself single and pregnant, and has to decide how that will shape her life. But her choices aren't obvious ones, and the outcomes were not what I'd expected.

While this is, overall, sadder than I'd hoped it would be, and grimmer about the potential of women to live freely as artists or just as people fulfilling their dreams, it is also a good read. It delves into things that we don't always think of people discussing candidly in 1911. This is one of the reasons I do like reading books from our recent past - we can't deny that people were aware of gender politics or the realities of sexual desire, or the constraints that women faced socially, when they are the basis of this novel. 

I don't want to expand on the plot - it's pretty tangled. But the  external events of the story are really only there to highlight the internal ones. It's Jenny's (and to a lesser extent Cesca's) story; their emotional development and decisions are the entire point. I won't forget these characters soon. Recommended. 

The Women in Black

The Women in Black / Madeleine St John   
Melbourne, Australia: Text Classics, 2012, c1993.
234 p.

Finally, a new discovery that was a true gem: romantic, comic, clever, and a keeper! This book was recommended to me by Nancy Pearl back at the end of the summer, but only now have I found a copy via the magic of interlibrary loan. However, after quickly finishing it, I'll be searching for my own copy, since this is a book I know I'll be rereading often.

It's set in Sydney, Australia in the summer of 1959; young Lesley (who changes her name to Lisa) gets a temporary job helping out at Goode's Department store in the weeks before Christmas, while waiting for her test results to see if she'll be able to go to university. She ends up in Ladies' Cocktail Frocks, mainly, with Mrs. Patty Williams and Miss Fay Baines as her fellow saleswomen; Miss Jones is their alterationist; and Magda is the glamorous Continental refugee who runs the inner sanctum, Model Gowns. But they all wear a uniform: black dresses.

All these women (well, except perhaps Miss Jones) have their own lives that are slowly expanded upon in the short chapters that follow. And they begin to cross over into one another's lives, too, once Magda takes an interest in Lisa. Most of the story revolves around romance in one way or another, but it's utterly charming -- full of female relationships, and of course frocks. Oh, those dresses!

The writing is exquisite: it's clever and quick, with wonderful characterizations and settings. Goode's Department Store is a great canvas for this story. And it's quite seasonal: it opens 6 weeks before Christmas, and the retail setting and the chaos of big sales reminded me of the opening of a recent read, House of Windows (1912) in the depiction of a group of salesgirls cleaning up after an annual sale. I do love store novels!

I hadn't known what this book was about before picking it up, but when I get a recommendation from someone who knows my reading tastes, I try to follow it. I loved this book. It's a fairy tale in which all goes well and everyone ends up happy, but it isn't saccharine. There are jabs, there are clear-eyed observations of the characters, and there is a lot of witty humour. And there are really some lovely bits. One of the highlights for me was when the mysterious Miss Jones speaks to Lisa near the end, after everyone has heard that she has aced her leaving exams and will be heading to university. She says:

"Well, it's no surprise to me at all. I don't expect it's a surprise to you either. You're a clever girl, I could see that... A clever girl is the most wonderful thing in all Creation you know; you must never forget that. People expect men to be clever. They expect girls to be stupid or at least silly, which very few girls really are, but most girls oblige them by acting like it. So you just go away and be as clever as ever you can; put their noses out of joint for them. It's the best thing you could possibly do, you and all the clever girls in this city and the world."

If you love clever stories about clever girls, and beautiful dresses, and women and men together, pick this one up as soon as you can. What a delight.


*I discovered while writing this up that there is a new movie (Sept 2018) based on this book - filmed by the author's friend Bruce Beresford, who wrote the introduction to the copy which I read. I can only find the trailer so far but hope to see it someday. Hopefully that means there will be a new edition of this book released so that it can be more easily found!

Two Childish Fantasies

The Enchanted Castle / Edith Nesbit
London: Fisher Unwin, c1907.
352 p.
read via Open Library

To fill up a couple of spots on my Century of Books list, I went for some children's books. I started with this lovely story that I'd never read before, even though Nesbit's Five Children & It was one of my favourite childhood reads. 

Fortunately I found a nice readable copy with original illustrations on Open Library, and settled in to enjoy a story by the master of what I like to call realistic fantasy. In all of these books, the magic that the children run across is tricky; it isn't what it seems, it takes their wishes very literally, and there is always something in every situation that they didn't expect - usually not a good thing either. 

The setting is doggedly pedestrian, usually children stuck alone on a summer holiday somewhere with only some old relative - or in this case, the poor French teacher - looking after them.

In this novel, three siblings are staying at the sister's school during a holiday period - they can't go home as another sibling has chicken pox, so these were last minute arrangements. Gerald, Kathleen and Jimmy are plucky children who like to pack lunches and go exploring around the countryside. One day as they hike into the grounds of the local big house, which is quite castle-like, they find a sleeping princess who must be awoken with a kiss. Turns out she's only the housekeeper's niece, but until they discover that she seems quite royal indeed - especially when she puts on a magic ring and turns invisible. 

The simple logic of magic in Nesbit's world is so funny and clever; the children puzzle out how the ring works and can estimate how to solve the problems it's causing by mathematically determining the duration of its effects. They encounter lovely, dreamy magic and some fairly terrifying bits; they learn to be careful what they wish for, and they inadvertently repair a doomed love affair among the adults around them while they are at it. 

Of course, since it is over one hundred years old, there are some bits that are dated and not in tune with our present expectations, like the incident where Gerald paints his face and pretends he's a fortune-teller. But there isn't much here that is egregiously offensive. 

This is heavily influenced by classical mythology, with a scene where the children frolic with Greek gods who are statues by day. There are magic rings, hidden rooms, ghosts, American millionaires, and sandwiches and cakes galore. It's so very British, and a total delight. I like Nesbit's wry descriptions of characters and the way she makes the fantasy in her books both ridiculous and pragmatic at the same time. Definitely an enjoyable read for 1907!



The House Without Windows / Barbara Newhall Follett
New York: Knopf, c1927.
52 p.
read via Scribd

Now on to my second try, a mercifully short novella about Eepersip, a young girl who runs away and lives in the forest and at the seaside among all the wild animals, making her clothes out of ferns, flowers, or seaweed. 

It's immensely florid in writing style, and plotting is very slight. Eepersip decides that living in civilization is not for her, and just walks away into the hills one day, leaving her parents to search for her ever after. She eludes them and when she finds out later that she has a little sister, she returns home to lure that sister away to live with her in the woods as well. That only lasts a few weeks and the little girl goes home to Mummy -- Eepersip is quite disappointed by this but all I could think of was thank goodness for that poor mother! 

The most interesting thing about this book is the actual circumstances of its writing (although the name Eepersip is surprisingly earwormy). There is a historical note included in the document that I read (linked above); this book was first written by Follett when she was 9, then rewritten from memory at 11 and published with the assistance of her father. She was apparently a girl who was intense and a bit of a prodigy; she loved nature and writing, and though she'd been married in her early 20s, one day she just up and disappeared, walked right out on everything like Eepersip had, and was never heard from again. And never tracked down. Eerie echoes of her first story. 

But unless you are reading this for its historical curiosity value, it's not really worth reading at all. Very influenced by the period and by the youth and idealism of its very young author, and therefore not of lasting interest.

Two Terrible 60s Marriages

The Garrick Year / Margaret Drabble  
London: Penguin, 1986, c1964
172 p.

Emma, snobbish upperish class Englishwoman, and David, Welsh actor with violent tendencies, are married and have two very small children. Emma is just getting a look at a new broadcasting job with the BBC when David tells her he's been invited to perform in two plays in Hereford -- they don't consider splitting up for the season, rather Emma gives up her opportunity and arranges their entire family life as they move to the rural theatre town where she knows she'll be terribly bored. And she is. 

Fortunately they have a French nanny so Emma has lots of time to wander about feeling abandoned and unhappy, and to fall into a desultory affair with the celebrity director who has brought David to these plays. And David meanwhile throws himself into his roles and entertains himself with his fellow actors and lots of drink. 

It's only in the end when their little daughter nearly drowns that Emma comes to her senses. And by that time they are almost ready to move on again. Despite Emma's continual harping on her uselessness as only a mother and her unhappiness that is her constant companion, she girds her loins as they begin to talk of moving to the far east where David has another opportunity...

As you can tell, I wasn't overly impressed with this book or its selfish, whiny characters. There were insights about small towns and being the new person there; there were discussions of motherhood and of marriage, but as a whole I found this quite depressing. 

The expectations that women seemed to have in England in the 60s are very, very low. David has affairs, he gets angry and hits Emma or the walls, he is selfish and often unkind, but Emma seems to need this, she seems to enjoy it in a martyrish way. Their marriage is unpleasant to visit within this story, but Emma does say at one point that even in marriages that look messed up from the outside the participants are getting something out of it. I just can't see that there would be a lot to get from this one! Maybe I'll have to try another Drabble to see if I like another title a little better. 

A Bouquet of Barbed Wire / Andrea Newman
London: Penguin, 1976, c1969
288 p.

And another twisted tale of love and obsession... I found this book at a used bookshop and thought I'd give it a try. Have to remember that England, the 60s, and bad relationships are not my cup of tea.

It wasn't completely terrible, but all you really need to know is that it was made in a tv mini-series in the 70s and scandalized the nation with its approach to sex and hangups within a family unit.

 Young middle-class Pru gets pregnant and marries Gavin, her sexy lower-class lover/teacher who has a fondness for hitting her. Her father, Peter Manson, is driven to distraction by his dislike of Gavin and his unacknowledged desire to keep Pru for himself, in all ways. His soft and fluffy wife, Cassie, is all very understanding, and yet prefers her twin boys to her eldest daughter, herself. 

In his annoyance, Manson starts an affair with his young secretary - cliché alert! And then as part of all these prickly relationships, Pru does something that Gavin doesn't like at a family dinner, and on their way home he beats her so badly that she is hospitalized. And yet, STILL, he's not all bad. Even her own mother, angry at first, allows him to see Pru since after all he's her husband... and then forgives him completely once he turns his sexual charms on Cassie herself. Ew. 

This book also had some interesting bits, but in the main it felt voyeuristic, silly, and risqué for the sake of shocking readers. Really not a successful read for me. 

So, time to move on from bad marriages to something a little lighter, I think!

Spark's Symposium

Symposium / Muriel Spark
London: Houghton Mifflin, c1990.  
192 p.

The setting for this novel is a dinner party. Or is it? The dinner party which begins and ends the book is only the marking point for the rest of the story. Chapters begin "Three weeks before the dinner party" or "It was the first week in October, two weeks before the dinner party" etc -- tying everything in to the events which will occur, giving us a glimpse of the connections that will inexorably lead to the dinner party. 

Margaret Murchie is a Scottish girl, the youngest of three, who seems to be connected to many mysterious deaths, having been in the vicinity of both accidental deaths and murders repeatedly. Even her family is afraid of her now. The Murchies also have an uncle who is mad; he lives in a hospital and is allowed out on good days. He is particularly fond of Margaret. 

And on his advice, Margaret makes a plan to marry well, meaning of course to marry money. She tracks down her prey, William Damien, in the fruit department at Marks & Spencer, and is a newly married woman at the time of the dinner. William's mother Hilda is the one with all the money, though. 

Ella and Ernst are a rich couple who've picked up a friend, a young man named Luke who they are both interested in. Luke is a student who works part time as a caterer for extra cash, and will be serving at the dinner party they are both attending. 

Then we have Lord Suzy and his very young wife Lady Suzy, cousins Roland and Annabel, and our hosts, artist Hurley and his companion Chris. 

The story explores each of these characters and their varied foibles, but centres around Margaret, and her shady past, the most. Spark's writing is crisp and unsympathetic, she uncovers the venality of motives in each individual, and seems to feel that there is an inevitability about the outcome of the story. She slips in dreadful details amongst the salmon mousse and wine. 

Spark's sensibility is very English, and the skewering of social mores and social climbing is thorough. Her clever and acidic wit is in full evidence and the writing is very good. While I was a little put off by the weirdness of this book, both in plot and in feel, I'll be reading more to see what I really feel about Muriel Spark. 

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes / Anita Loos; illustrated by Ralph Barton.
New York: Penguin, 1998, c1925.
123 p.

Finally read this classic: it's a fictional diary of a working girl whose plans are to catch that gentleman, eventually! 

For some reason I always thought this was a much later book - probably because of the movie featuring Marilyn Monroe - but it was published in 1925, in the heyday of flappers and It Girls and excessive wealth being splashed around everywhere. It really reeks of the Twenties! 

In the intro, it notes that this was the first American novel to make fun of sex; while I'm not sure about the claim, it certainly does make light of all the gentlemen that the diarist Lorelei and her best frenemy Dorothy encounter. 

It's written as if it were Lorelei's actual diary, with spelling and grammatical errors intact. It gets her voice and perspective across very convincingly, with quite a number of little throwaway lines changing the reader's perception of what's happening. Loos had great comic timing. 

This is a short novel, but very entertaining, full of events, travel, shenanigans and so on. Lorelei is a little dippy and self-deceiving about her aims, but friend Dorothy is no-nonsense, acerbic, straightforward, and a great foil to Lorelei. All the most venal and commercial instincts that Lorelei has in regards to her gentlemen she attributes to Dorothy. They are a pair of gold-diggers out for themselves, but their complete self-absorption reflects a sense of this era and its effects on these young women. Their search for financial security is flightier, sexier and funnier (and more successful) than, say, Lily Bart's in The House of Mirth twenty years earlier, but the same dependence on men's money for women's security is the central theme. 

If you haven't read this one, but have seen the movie, well.... the book is better. Give it a read if you need something utterly amusing. 

Molly Make-Believe

Molly Make-Believe / Eleanor Hallowell Abbott   
New York: Century Co., c1910.
211 p.
read via Open Library

This charming novel from 1910 is also slightly epistolary - while the story itself is told in regular narrative, letters are included, and letter-writing makes up the plot. 

Carl Stanton is a youngish Boston businessman who has recently become engaged to the beautiful, cold Cornelia. She is going to Florida with her mother for the winter season, but Carl can not go along - he is suffering from a lengthy attack of rheumatism and is currently invalided. His is a sentimental nature; he begs Cornelia for long, intimate letters while she is away. She, however, promises only to write on Sundays, more than that would be excessive. 

And she keeps that promise. She writes short, impersonal notes and even postcards, while Carl suffers pain, boredom and loneliness in his rooms all alone. She does enclose something in her first letter which she thinks might interest him: a circular from the Serial Letter Co, a company promising to write letters to you from imaginary people, for a fee. Carl signs up for the love letter program, hoping both for some entertainment and to have a model to show Cornelia when she returns. 

But, predictably, the charming, fun-loving, flirtatious love letters (and gifts) begin to  beguile Carl, and he becomes desperate to know who "Mollie Make-Believe" really is. Without realizing it, he is falling in love with the spirit of these letters. The false note in this novel comes as he is discussing his situation with a doctor friend, and they realize that for all they know, the letter writer could be an old spinster making some money, a man, or even - gasp - a black woman! How terrible that would be. If it were indeed one of these the story could have been much more current and sharper than it is. 

But of course, it is really a young and pretty unmarried white girl who has seen Carl at social functions before, and is equally smitten with him. She hides her identity from him even as her feelings grow to match his, though she's unaware of his side of things. 

In the end, Carl recovers enough to break things off with Cornelia and go in search of his own Mollie. Unfortunately, the scanned copy at Open Library, which I read, and which is the only one I can find anywhere, is missing the final two page spread. 

There is enough at the end to know what happens, but oh my, to lose the conclusion! I'll be searching out a paper copy just to read the last page. It's a period piece, for sure, but a mostly light and entertaining one. The letters from Mollie are charming, there is some humour and pathos involved, and we all know that the right love match is going to win out.  

I enjoyed the letter writing concept quite a lot; it sounds like a fine idea to me! Here is a page of Mollie Make Believe's brochure, outlining the kinds of letters on offer - I think it is delightful. If you also enjoy letters and the charm of early 20th century romantic fiction, this is one that's not drowned in purple prose, rather, is readable and amusing. 

The Visits of Elizabeth

The Visits of Elizabeth / Elinor Glyn (1900)
read via Open Library

Elinor Glyn, known for her racy erotic (for the early 1900s) novels, and for her coining of the term "It" for sex appeal, wrote many novels and spent time working in Hollywood. But, I am more interested in the fact that she was the sister of Lady Duff Gordon, Lucile of London, a fashion designer -- and that they had a Canadian mother and spent some of their formative years in Guelph, Ontario. 

In any case, I thought it was high time to read one of her novels so have started with her first, The Visits of Elizabeth, published in 1900. This has extra appeal for me as it is an epistolary novel, a favourite style of mine -- it's told in one-sided letters from the young, disingenous Elizabeth to her mother, as she travels from relative to relative to visit great homes and meet important people (the reader can see that her mother is trying to marry her off to someone rich, even if Elizabeth seems too naive to understand this immediately).

Elizabeth makes unintended double entendres that scandalize some people and entertain others, and never sees the significance of her remarks or of many that others make to or around her. And when she is kissed early on by a handsome Earl who mistakes her candour for knowledge of the world, he receives a slap and a frosty reception for much of the rest of the book.

This naiveté in the face of the upper class circles she's moving in is at first quite funny. The joke does carry on rather, though, and a reader begins to think that Elizabeth really might be starting to clue in by the end of the book. However, the upbringing of an innocent girl at the turn of the century might explain a lot -- and add in Elinor Glyn's racy humour and it makes sense. 

Elizabeth goes first to friends and family in England, then makes a jaunt to France - this part isn't quite as sparkling, but it was intriguing to see how French rich families interacted in their great homes as opposed to the English ones that I know much better from all my reading of Victorian, Edwardian and mid-century writing! 

She does meet a number of eligible men, though it's clear which one is likely to be successful pretty early on. And her innocent reportage allows for many foibles of both young and old to be exposed in a way that isn't too cruelly satiric or tiresome for the reader, rather it's almost always amusing (and sometimes poignant). 

Elinor Glyn

If you'd like to encounter Elinor Glyn in a story that isn't yet as overheated as some of her later, most popular reads are said to be, this is a light, frothy, satisfyingly predictable story that I found amusing and charming. Long live letters! 

Women Talking

Women Talking / Miriam Toews
Toronto: Knopf, c2018.
216 p.

And now for a book published in this century -- even just this year. I picked this one up as soon as it was published, as I found the topic intriguing. Toews was inspired by a real-life situation in a Mennonite community in South America where the women and girls had been drugged and raped by members in their community. She imagines the conversation that might have occurred amongst the women once they'd figured out what was happening.

Despite the horrible concept, Toews doesn't go too heavily into descriptions of the events, though what she does include is bad enough. One can imagine that not only the actual acts but the betrayal behind them made this insupportable for the women in this story. 

In this book, the men of the community have gone to town to speak for and retrieve those other men who've been arrested and held in prison. Taking advantage of this absence, a group of women of all ages meet in a barn to discuss what has happened and what their reaction to this should be: Do Nothing, Stay & Fight, or Leave. Since the women aren't able to read or write, they conscript August Epp, a returnee to their community, to record the minutes for them. 

Each woman is a distinct personality with a distinct perspective; they do not all agree. Some of them are gentle and kind, some young and giggly, some brusque and prickly. They argue, they debate, and they plan. And after their 48 hours of debate, they come to an agreement, but you'll have to read this to find out what they might have decided to do. 

The voices of the varied women are different enough that this reads a little bit like a play, with characters presenting their opinions to be considered and debated. It breaks down an outsider's assumptions that Mennonite women are all the same, or that their lives are experienced in only one way. I found this illumination of individual women the most fascinating part of the story for me. Their strength is the core of the book, as they learn to trust their own instincts and square them with their beliefs. 

I haven't really enjoyed Toews' very popular earlier books, so was surprised by how much I loved this one. It's thoughtful, powerful, with a unique and intriguing format, and has stuck with me. 

A favourite moment that sums up a lot:

Salome is laughing. We may feel lost, she says, but we will know we are not losers.
Speak for yourself, says Mejal.
I always do, says Salome. You should try it too.

An Avenue of Stone

An Avenue of Stone / Pamela Hansford Johnson
London: Penguin, 1953, c1947
288 p.

I plucked this book off my shelves where it has been for years, in order to read something published in 1947 for my Century of Books project. Really, that was my criteria. And this time, such a random choice proved a good one, as I greatly enjoyed this read. 

Another wartime read, this one is much more grim and serious than the last novel set during wartime that I just finished. But this is also a novel that, unlike many others I've read, treats the war contemporaneously, and reflects mostly on the psychology of post-war life as experienced by the two younger main characters. During the action of the book, VE Day and the bomb in Hiroshima both occur, and both times, the reactions are not what we might expect from our current-day perspective. It was fascinating. 

This is the second novel in Johnson's "Helena" trilogy, although I didn't know that when I began. The books do stand alone, even with frequent references in this one to the past shared between Helena and her children: stepson Claud and daughter Charmian. 

Claud feels responsible for Helena now, despite their rocky beginnings, and he is especially close to Charmian, fourteen years younger but essentially his best friend. These two struggle together to understand and support Helena, a loud, brash, overpowering personality who is now facing the reality of growing old -- she's in her 60s and is realizing that she is no longer sexually appealing to men, and so that particular power which she's always relied on has deserted her. It's very difficult for her to accept. As a performer and singer and powerful presence for many years, she has been accustomed to being the key figure everywhere she goes. But as Johnson says in this title drop: 

Those who live their lives quietly, unmoved by either great sorrows or great joy, are often, in their final years, granted the dispensation of Discovery. Now, for the first time, they find out the secondary roads of the imagination, the side-streets, the alley-ways, the low doors each with a key in the lock.

...But those who have lived richly, exhaustively, staring into every face, attentive to every voice, are only too often pursued by the spinster Furies, and are driven at the end down avenues of stone where the walls reach to the sky, and the doors are sealed, and the pavements are rubbered against all sound but the beat of the hurrying heart.

It's an intimate character study, of Claud, of secretive Charmian, and of course of Helena. Johnson skewers pretension and doesn't let any of the characters escape self-knowledge in the end. The London life they lead tires them all, and yet seems inescapable; Claud wonders if he will go on taking care of Helena in her emotional ups and downs forever -- eventually understanding that he must leave her in order to carry on his own life. Charmian struggles with her wartime marriage, which many people, including Claud and Helena, think was a terrible mistake. And Helena, at centre stage, focuses on herself most of all and on the strangely intimate and unwieldy relationship she's formed with a former army friend of Claud's, John Field (or as she styles him, Johnny). 

It's a foreign, uncomfortable read in some ways, but an illuminating one in many others. The characters' foibles are clearly drawn, the small aggressions of society are revealed, and the impulses behind actions that are clear to others are cloudy to those acting them out. It's very realistic in that way, and it creates such a visceral sense of the period. One of the characters even mentions that she's done over her dress in a "Make Do & Mend" class -- one of the first times I've seen that mentioned in fiction. It's all so of-the-moment. And the vast, overwhelming exhaustion, physical and emotional, resulting from the war and its eventual cessation clearly permeates the whole story. 

This is absolutely worth searching out, even if you haven't read the first book in this set - I haven't and yet really connected with this one. Recommended. 

The Innocents

The Innocents / Margery Sharp
Boston: Little Brown, c1972
192 p. 
Read via Open Library

As my introduction to the books of Margery Sharp, I've read the poignant tale of an "elderly" woman (at least in her 60s!) and her charge, a friend's daughter left under her care during wartime, and one described in the old way as an "innocent".

Cecelia, a former beauty living in this  small English village, married a rich American; on her first visit back after 6 years, she leaves her 3 year old daughter with the sweet vicar's daughter, the elderly spinster who narrates the tale - whose name we never learn.

But war intervenes -- while Cecelia and Rab are in Europe, war breaks out and they're called back to the US. When, eventually, Cecelia returns to the village to retrieve her child, about 6 years later, there is discord between this flashy American and the Englishwoman who has understood little Antoinette perfectly and only wants to keep her safe and secure. 

To what lengths will she go to keep Antoinette in the quiet and comforting surroundings she is now accustomed to? Especially as Cecelia thinks that with a little therapy and training, Antoinette (or Tony) will suddenly rally and become a regular young woman she can show off in society...

But Antoinette, no matter how developmentally challenged, understands the struggle that is being waged over her. And she knows that's she powerless to affect what is going to happen to her. As the narrator notes: 

Resignation belongs properly to the middle years. I myself was I suppose forty before I resigned myself to my humdrum lot. In one's thirties, one still hopes. But to be resigned to one's lot as a child is terrible. 

Set in the 40s, the story shows many shadings in the understanding of a mentally challenged child in this era. Her foster mother finds that she will do anything for Toni, even though like a good Englishwoman she doesn't give in to sentimentality often. It reveals a fascinating choice made in the final chapters, one which would provide great fodder for book club discussion. 

And it's full of wry and clever observations of people, of village societies, of expectations and desires in life. Our narrator comments that "a village is almost as good as cruise ship for throwing people together" and recognizes that social habits have their uses: "It was once a curtsy dowagers recommended, to give a female time to think; in the present day and age I myself would recommend pouring tea."

For a gentle, clever, intelligently told story of a battle waged over the future of an innocent child, pick up this book. There is a lot to ponder here. 

House of Windows

The House of Windows / Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
London: Cassell, c1912.
338 p.
(read in ebook format)

I was first introduced to this Canadian author via The Dusty Bookcase, when varied titles by this author were reviewed there. I first picked up, or in actuality, downloaded, this one: it is set in a department store and opens with the chaos following a huge semi-annual ribbon sale. That was enough enticement for me! 

It's quite a delightful read: melodramatic, full of improbable coincidence, angelic women, strong businessmen and so forth. But with an edge of social awareness, as well. It reminds me of the way a recent read, Mrs. Westerby Changes Course, straddled two eras in its narrative, but in this case, Mackay straddles Victorian melodrama and the social conscience of a New Woman novel. 

The shop girls at this large department store (reminiscent of Eaton's perhaps) in this large fictional Canadian city (very reminiscent of Toronto) are worked off their feet. 10 hour days, 6 days a week, and very stringent guidelines for their behaviour. Management has conceded far enough to provide stools behind every counter, although all of the shop girls know that you are not to actually sit down, ever. And they work for a wage that isn't close to a living wage. Mackay delves into labour practices throughout this novel, interwoven intimately with the story. Adam Torrance, owner of this empire has firmly told his manager that only girls with an outside income to supplement their own starvation wages should be hired, so as not to have their girls turning to....other sources of income....  Eventually his older sister points out the illogical nature of this decision, but overall, he thinks he's doing pretty well by his employees, even if they don't.

But as to the other elements in this story: at the end of the opening chapter, in the chaos ensuing from the big sale, the shop girls find a baby in a carriage abandoned behind a counter. While they all dither, a new girl decides to just take the baby home and care for it herself alongside her angelically beautiful but blind sister. To her credit, they do all believe that this is just a poor child cast off by an uncaring mother, and has nothing to do with the gossip headlining the papers just now -- that the infant daughter of the shop owner himself, Adam Torrance, has been kidnapped. 

So many of these obvious coincidences occur as the child, now Christine Brown, grows up in the company of her two "older sisters". When she is nearly 17, all the characters are drawn together inevitably and the relationships begin to develop. But wait! Christine is now the victim of another kidnapping plot! Mark, Adam's adopted heir and lover of Christine, is in an auto accident and has amnesia! 

As Brian Busby's post notes, the action is reflective of a silent film in many parts, particularly the last section. While the book starts out focused on working conditions for young women in retail (tldr: dreadful) the melodrama takes over in the end. Still, there are some wonderful characters, and lots of entertaining plot to keep you reading. I really enjoyed the various strands to this story, and thought it concluded effectively. 

But the focus on the working lives of young women in these common jobs at the beginning of the 20th century lifts this from just light fluff. Mackay is clearly pointing out the fallacies that management used to justify their sexist treatment of these many, often very young, girls. It's shocking how many lines I could have picked out and quoted, and we wouldn't be able to tell if they came from this 1912 novel or a current newspaper. 

I hope that her intent to educate while entertaining was effective in 1912 and that some of her readers were inspired to improve their situations. I was suitably impressed and entertained while reading it myself. 

The House of Mirth

The House of Mirth / Edith Wharton
New York: Library of America, 1985, c1905.
347 p.

You know how it is when you finally read a classic, being dragged to it with the expectation that it will be a dry, "good for you" read, and you end up loving it, not being able to put it down, and being overcome with sobs at the end? No? Well, that was me and The House of Mirth. It really wasn't at all mirthful.

I expected to despise Lily Bart and her rich New York world. And while I did find Lily herself a bit annoying, and many of the side characters, especially the men, really irritating chumps, I was won over by the texture and the depth of the storytelling.

Not much summarizing needed for this classic: Lily Bart is a New York socialite who is closing in on 30. Her  beauty and charm is fading, and she needs to make an advantageous marriage soon, before it's too late. She has her sights on Percy Gryce, and is likely to hook him, too -- but her indecision once again arises and he slips through her fingers.

Part of this may be attributed to the fact that Lily is pulled between her high society lifestyle and her secret, deeper self which is more introspective and more interested in a non-wealthy acquaintance, journalist Laurence Selden. He doesn't step up, though, and Lily begins to spiral down the ladder of social significance, slowly, step by step. From being sought after and a queen of society, her dependence on men and need for income leads her to being a companion, then a secretary to the demi-monde, then a milliner and then to no work at all. From the heights to the depths. In Lily's journey to the bottom she comes to a realization:

Lily had an odd sense of being behind the social tapestry, on the side where the threads were knotted and the loose ends hung. 

But all along Wharton skewers the expectations placed specifically on women in this setting. As Lily says to Selden: 

Your coat's a little shabby, but who cares? It doesn't keep people from asking you to dine. If I were shabby no one would have me: a woman is asked out as much for her clothes as for herself. The clothes are the background, the frame, if you like: they don't make success, but they are a part of it. Who wants a dingy woman? We are expected to be pretty and well-dressed till we drop -- and if we  can't keep it up alone, we have to go into partnership. 

Lily notes the small niceties of society that make it next to impossible for a woman to be herself, or to truly befriend another woman unless, like Selden's socially conscious cousin Gerty, that woman has given up on 'society' completely. It's quite shocking to realize that this book, written in 1905, is still relevant in many ways to our world today. It's beautifully written and even though I knew what was coming, the final pages still brought me to tears. The frustration of a woman's life is unbearable to me even in fiction.

This is a strong and fresh read that still feels relevant, and which is written beautifully. Full of thoughtful characters caught up in tangled social situations that they can't seem to see their way clear of, it is compelling and frustrating and irritating and powerful. I'm glad I finally read it, for pleasure and not as a classroom assignment; it was worth the wait.