Thank Heaven Fasting

Thank Heaven Fasting / E.M. Delafield
London: Virago, 1989, c1933.
240 p.

Another book with marriage at its heart, this one is a little bit bleaker than some. It's set in Edwardian England, where young Monica Ingram - only daughter of socially ambitious parents - understands that the only goal of a woman's life is to marry well. 

Young women must be very very careful - reputation is everything. And Monica, with a young and soon faded kind of prettiness, much catch a husband. She has a caller whom she likes, but according to her mother, he is much too young and unimportant for her. And then alas, she gets drawn aside and has her head turned by a rake at a party, being momentarily unguarded. In a moment, her reputation falters. 

Her family takes her away for a while but by next season she sees that the new crop of younger, prettier debutantes have made her life more difficult. She spends a few years festering, with two options appearing on the horizon. One just wants her to listen to his complaints and grumbles, and the other is a froggy looking gentleman of her parents' generation. But needs must, and getting the crumbs of a choice makes Monica happy in the end. As the author notes, Monica "could never, looking backwards, remember a time when she had not known that a woman’s failure or success in life depended entirely on whether or not she succeeded in getting a husband."

This was an interesting read; it shows the utter lack of options for young girls of this class. They have no education, no worldly knowledge at all, no access to money -- marriage is literally the only choice, unless they happen to be a particularly strong natured girl and run off to be a Bohemian. Monica is not that, and she's contrasted with her childhood friends, sisters Frederica and Cecily Marlowe. They have it worse than she does; they are homely and their beautiful mother can't stand them, and makes no effort to help them to a good marriage. Their characters show all the inward neuroticism that arises from their stifled lives. 

This book is a strange mixture, written in that light Delafield tone but full of deadly serious commentary. She reveals, in small details, the stifling world that girls like Monica lived in. The so-called choices open to them are pretty terrible, and to our modern eye, it's almost unbearable to read about their daily round and their disappointed hopes - they have no power to shape or control any of these, and just have to survive them. Despite how lightly the book begins, it's an airless world and a sad ending, from our perspective.

 

Banyan Moon for the Literary Sewing Circle

If you're a reader who is also a maker, you might be interested in joining on the latest round of the Literary Sewing Circle that I run over on my sewing blog! We read a book together and then make something inspired by our read.

This fall our read is Banyan Moon by Thao Thai, a novel covering 3 generations of Vietnamese women living in Florida. The Literary Sewing Circle runs for 5 weeks, plus 2 extra weeks to get your project done,  and anyone can join in. 

Full details are over at Following the Thread now.

Out of the Rain

Out of the Rain / Elizabeth Cadell
Friendly Air Publishing, 2023, c1987.
266 p.

My library had another light Cadell book available on audio so I listened to it right after I finished the last one -- it was quite different, set in a much more recent year. This one feels 70s while the earlier ones felt a bit more 50s/60s somehow. 

Out of the Rain has a single mother, countryside entrepreneurs, and an inheritance scandal to drive the plot. The main character is lawyer Edward Netherford, who lives alone in a service flat and likes his routine. He has 3 obnoxious clients, however, the Brockton siblings, who ask him to retrieve valuable paintings from their late father's second wife which really belong to them. He heads to the country to stay with an old friend and track this second wife down. 

When he arrives one late night, his friend's inn is on fire, and he's sent out to a house that was registered on the local b&b list as all other spots are taken by current displaced guests. This ends up being the heart of the book - neat freak Edward is taken in by the widowed Estelle, her mother, grandfather and three little boys. His mannered city ways are contrasted with Estelle's earthy country views and as always in Cadell's books, the domestic, countrified, traditional way of life is Obviously Much Better. 

There is a bit of a theme going with the Brocktons and mismatched marriages which turn out happily. Edward has to come and go in pursuit of the paintings, and each time stays with Estelle's family and settles in to the general chaos. Somehow he's a natural with fixing things around their house for them, and being a favourite of the three very small children. We can all see where this is going. 

This was a frothy read, mostly forgettable in the end. Not much romance, just quiet hours with Edward adjusting to a view of life so different to his own. There are a few minor subplots, and the Brockton second wife turns out to be an important element in the story (she's a sensible countrywoman who had been the housekeeper). This was okay but the very dated gender roles and hammering home of the idea that lazy country days and a woman's life being subsumed in her children was an ideal state of being didn't really resonate for me at all. I didn't dislike it but don't think I'll search out any more Cadell any time soon. A little bit is enough for now. 

Family Gathering

Family Gathering / Elizabeth Cadell
Friendly Air Publishing, 2018, c1979.
308 p.

I found this book in audio format via my library, and thought I'd check it out -- I've read two books by Cadell before - I quite liked the first and was meh on the second! This one was pretty good though I found there were a number of flaws for a modern reader. It reminds me a bit of the wackiness of a Wodehouse or Waugh novel, in its depiction of an aristocratic country family a bit down on its financial luck but full of eccentrics. 

Natalie Rome is 42 but in this book that is solidly middle aged. She's timid and quiet, but somehow she meets the dashing William and marries him. She's heading to his family seat, Romescourt, to wait for him to return from his deployment. The idea is that she'll stay with his family and find a house for them to live in nearby while she waits. But Natalie has a daughter, Helen, who is a crisp businesswoman in her 20s who loves the city and order. 

Natalie arrives to great chaos; she's picked up from the train station by the spacey Lucille (her new stepdaughter), meets her mother-in-law (a caricature of a country aristocrat who dresses oddly, gardens, talks extremely loudly and doesn't really listen to anyone else, and of course controls life at Romescourt), her father-in-law who loves gardening and doesn't talk much at all, and her new stepson Jeremy, who is also an artist and is presented as quite a catch (spoiler: I couldn't stand him). 

I was enjoying the first half to two thirds of this book - Romescourt and its surrounding houses are a delight, and Lady Rome is a hoot - every time someone does something she doesn't understand, she comments "I don't think they're quite right in the head". I listened to this one on audio, and the reader was hilarious with her characterizations, especially of Lady Rome. 

However, I did find that the story dragged near the end and there were too many crisis points, both with  Lucille's multiple engagments (she's so passive she can't say no) and with the forced romance between Helen and Jeremy. Helen is a confident city girl but is presented as a bossy harridan who needs taking down a peg, and Jeremy is the one to do it -- his behaviour is awful, he's a total jerk, and I didn't believe that Helen would be attracted to him in any way. But they pair up at the end anyhow, maybe because Natalie wants it so much? Definitely of an earlier time. 

So there were some great set pieces in this book and some really amusing characters and moments. But there were also some cringey bits that are very dated and unpalatable to this reader. A mixed bag, but listening to Lady Rome in the first half made this pick worth it ;) 

Four Gardens

Four Gardens / Margery Sharp
London: Dean St Press, 2021, c1935.
228 p.

Another book about a marriage; well, about a woman in a marriage, anyhow. Caroline Chase is a young woman of middle class standing, it's Edwardian England and she's 17, and makes her way into an abandoned garden which she adores. There she meets a rich young man, her age but of a much higher social class. They have a bit of a pash, but of course it will never go anywhere. When she realizes this, the garden is forever ruined for her, and she ends up soon after marrying the dull but dependable clerk Henry Smith. 

Her second garden is the small one in back of their townhouse, in which she barely has time to dig. She now has 2 young children and Henry is working all the time, raising himself up in the shoe factory where he's an office worker. He's so successful, especially as he expands into army boots as the war begins, that he becomes a partner. And their status grows. 

When the children are a bit older, their fortunes allow Henry to provide a large house on the Common, complete with large fancy gardens in which Caroline isn't allowed to potter - they have a gardener. This house belonged to Lady Tregarthan, and Caroline is petrified at first meeting her, when seeing if the house will suit. But Lady T is a doll and they get along splendidly. The Smith children, Leon and Lily, are used to prosperity, and they seem shockingly modern to the staid Caroline, still hanging on to her Edwardian values. The contrast is sharp. Their love affairs and struggles are so important to Caroline, even when she doesn't quite understand them. 

Caroline's fourth garden comes when Henry dies quite suddenly, leaving them nearly broke. They leave the big house - Leon and Lily to their own lives, and Caroline to a small apartment in the town in which she creates a balcony garden all of her own, and finally feels the peace and contentment she had been looking for all her life. Solitude, her own garden, and nobody needing her. Ah, perfection. 

This story is nostalgic, looking back at an earlier era (published in the 30s, it really shows the sudden shift in societal norms between Caroline's generation and that of her children). Caroline is sweet but really put upon, everyone expects her to be there for them and whatever they may need but not much thought is given to Caroline's needs. There are interesting side characters, in particular a whiny friend from her youth who she never quite shakes off, and of course Lady T. And a very obnoxious modernist painter who entangles Lily, but doesn't stick around. 

I thought this was a quieter read, a little less snappy and plot driven than some Sharp stories. Much more a study of a character and of a social setting. And I liked it a lot. Some interesting commentary, and as always, sharp insight into characters and class. 

 

Something Light

Something Light / Margery Sharp
Open Road Media, 2018, c1960.
250 p.

Moving on from Spinster September reading now, to a story about a semi-spinster, a woman turning thirty who decides it's time for her to get married so sets out to find a suitable husband. 

Louisa Datchett is living in London in the 50s. She's a dog photographer for the most part, but she's also soft-hearted. It seems that men will use her as their assistant, agony aunt, substitute mother, delivery person, salesperson for their weird crafts, or bank, but never really see her as marriage material. She decides to go about this very logically, looking for the rich and/or settled person she decides would be best to connect herself with. 

She starts out on her quest, thinking she's getting somewhere with a rich man - but ends up giving him up to a widow, an old friend of his, out of sympathy. (the funniest part of this one was that he admired Louisa's appetite most of all). 

This gives her the idea of going back to an old friend of her own, from her home town. He's steady, he's dependable, he's gainfully employed... he's not at all interested in settling down. 

Then she finds the perfect family man. She's hired as a housekeeper, in a kind of trial run, to meet his children (adults not too much younger than she is) and see how she fits in. But to Louisa's surprise, "At last, she’d met a man she positively disliked. She was no longer indiscriminately fond of men." This obviously isn't an answer. 

So she goes back to work, but is having a hard time finding gigs. Just as she's depending on margarine sandwiches to get through the day, instead of finding a new man, The Man finds her. To the modern reader, he might not seem a perfect catch, but it's clearly a happy ending, Louisa will have money to live on and a husband who seems to adore her. 

There was a lot of humour in this, alongside some appalling male behaviour which is being sharply pointed out, even if not as directly as it would be now. Louisa's reflections on the life of the single woman are both sad and hilarious, but her chipper take on life breaks down in a scene where she is being taken advantage of by another woman instead of just another sad sack man (which she expects). 

Fortunately her luck holds and the book ends with a happy ending on the horizon. Attentive readers will see this coming, but this is still a lighter read than expected - for a Margery Sharp novel you might even call it frothy! I enjoyed this one a lot, and found the dog photography aspect quite entertaining, while wishing Louisa would have given most of the men in her life a good boot long before she finally does it. 

 

Vera, by Elizabeth von Arnim

Vera / Elizabeth von Arnim
London: Virago, 2006, c1921.
336 p.

Here's a reread that features both a spinster and a terrible marriage! I first read this years ago, but wanted to reread, and found that I'd forgotten a lot of it. 

This is Von Arnim's novel which had a lot of scandal around it; it was rumoured to be drawn from her terrible second marriage to Francis Russell, Earl Russell and older brother of Bertrand. 

The setup is this: Lucy Entwhistle, 22, has been living with her father all her life; however, he's just died. She is in the garden taking a break from the upset in the house (he just died that very morning) and along the road comes sweaty Everard Wemyss, 45 and desperate for someone to talk to. He pushes his way in, seeing in Lucy someone who will listen to him. He has his own troubles - his wife Vera has just died. But, Vera's death is suspicious, a potential suicide, and the scandal means he has to take a few weeks to rusticate and seem to be grieving even while he mostly seems annoyed and frustrated by having to change his routine because of Vera's selfishness. 

Lucy doesn't know any of this (yet). She is in shock, and the only other person with her is her spinster aunt, Dorothy Entwhistle. Aunt Dot expects Lucy to come and live with her, which she does for a short time. But Wemyss has given her the rush, and wants to marry her before his proscribed year of mourning is up. Miss Entwhistle finds she doesn't like him, but Lucy is bowled over, and there's not much to do but support them. 

Miss Entwhistle's instincts were correct, however, and after their quick marriage, Lucy finds she is constantly walking on eggshells so as not to upset Wemyss and his multitude of unspoken expectations. They move from his city house to the country house where Vera died, and in response to Lucy's discomfort he tells her she's being neurotic. Everyone must do what he says, and think what he thinks, and focus on his comfort above all -- Miss Entwhistle, coming down to the house when he is away, when Lucy falls ill, finds that she is not at all comfortable or welcome there, having her own mind and a backbone. 

This story is ploddingly terrifying; Wemyss is so selfish and narcissistic, and his nature is revealed slowly, step by step as we see more and more of his natural behaviour and self-justification for abusive interactions. And we also see how weak Lucy is and how malleable. I hated Wemyss, wanted to drag Lucy out by her ear, and loved Miss Entwhistle and hoped for better days ahead. Quite a powerful read, dark and unrelenting. Whew! 

 

Jolley's The Well

 

The Well / Elizabeth Jolley
NY: Penguin, 1997, c1986.
192 p.

I picked this one up thanks to the nudge from #SpinsterSeptember on IG, a challenge hosted by @Pear.Jelly. I've read some Jolley before and thought this one sounded intriguing. 

It certainly was. It follows the life of spinster Hester Harper, living on a fairly isolated farm in Australia, caring for her aging father. She decides she needs some help around the house so takes in a teenage orphan from a home, Katherine. They get on together very well, with Hester becoming enamored of the young girl, deciding to give her an education and treat her like family. Katherine does what's required of her, caring for "Miss Harper dear" and learning to sew - she's a natural. But living this "old ladies' life" begins to wear as she gets older.

Once Hester's father dies, they move into a small house on her property, just the two of them. Katherine wants to learn to drive, so despite Hester's misgivings (Katherine might be able to leave her!) she teaches her. But Katherine is always a bit wild, and driving home late from a party in town one night, she hits something on the road. Hester won't let her get out to check, but tells her to drive slowly into the yard, right up to their old abandoned well, and takes care of it. 

But this changes everything. Katherine begins to hear a voice from the well, and begins to tell Miss Harper all about the way she's going to get married and sew baby clothes and more. Meanwhile, there is an impending visit from a friend of Katherine's from the orphanage, another young woman who is planning on going to America - Miss Harper imagines her rapidly changing future with all these changes, and it's not what she'd planned.

This story is dark and quite creepy in its own way. What exactly is real, and what may be delusion? We're not 100% sure which interpretation is right. Katherine can seem dangerous and sly, and then in a moment, it's Miss Harper we aren't quite sure of. This story looks at isolation and repression, and the limited roles for women at this time and how it affected their behaviours. And at money, and poverty, and class, and potential. Really fascinating themes and also a bit of a psychological thriller going on. I didn't know much about it when I picked it up, but it was well worth reading! 

The Silver Curlew

The Silver Curlew / Eleanor Farjeon
Victoria, BC: Rare Treasure Editions, 2021, c1953.
176 p.

Another children's book this week - this one a real delight as well. I have always enjoyed Eleanor Farjeon, so was pleased to find one I hadn't yet read in my library catalogue. The Silver Curlew is a retelling of Rumpelstiltsken but with all the added charm of a Farjeon story. 

We find the Codlings, Mother and children, living in a windmill in Norfolk. Doll, who is 18, is beautiful and indolent. What she loves most is daydreaming and eating. Poll, much younger, is a lively outdoorsy kind of girl with enough get up and go for both of them. The older boys are working and not integral to the story. 

One day the spoiled king of Norfolk happens by just at the time that he's looking for a wife. Beautiful Doll catches his eye, especially when the family brags about her (non-existent) spinning prowess to cover up a more embarrassing family incident. He marries her, with the exception known to all fairy tale readers - she must spin enough thread to use up all the bundles he stuffs the house with, or off with her head. 

And a spindle imp appears to help her. Then one year later he reappears when Doll has to spin again - or he'll take her and her newborn baby too. Poll must find all her courage to save her family from ruin. 

Being Farjeon, the story is full of extras -- wry humour, caricatures such as the spoiled king, lots of rhymes and songs interspersed in the story, an extra fairy tale of the man and woman in the moon embedded in this story, and a quite scary encounter for Poll with the imp and his minions in the midst of the dark wood. 

There is real magic in this story; it has its own atmosphere and the wordplay is part of it. It's like a dream, where it doesn't matter if things make sense, you just have to deal with them as they appear. It's short enough to be read all in one go, which I would recommend as you don't want to break the spell this story weaves. I loved it. 

Magic for Marigold

 

Magic for Marigold / LM Montgomery
TO: Seal Books, 1988, c1925.
274 p.

I've read all of LM Montgomery's work, and own nearly all of the books, as I do like to reread them. However, I'd never reread Magic for Marigold; I only remembered not liking it when I was a younger reader. I thought it was time to revisit it and see what I thought, after seeing that the Facebook group LM Montgomery Readathon had chosen it as the latest read.

I was surprised at how much I did not recall - nearly nothing about it! I remembered the visit of the spoiled princess Varvara one day when Marigold was alone, that's about it. It was fun to read this as if it was the first time. 

But it really wasn't as good as the Anne, Emily, or Pat books. It was episodic, with each chapter showing Marigold's adventures as she grows up. I recognized a few of the chapters as rewrites of some of the events of other books or short stories, changed up to fit into Marigold's story. There was a lot of focus on domesticity (though not as much as Jane of Lantern Hill) and tons of clan politics, like in The Tangled Web. Lovely little Marigold and her rather sweet, ineffective mother live with her stern grandmothers, Old Grandmother and Young Grandmother, and the expectations for behaviour in a little girl are strong. When Marigold contravenes these proper behaviours, it's always because of a cousin or neighbour (or runaway princess) who are 'bad' -- girls full of pep who do what they want, hang the consequences. Rather Pippi like! 

There's not a strong throughline to this one, it's really just stories of Marigold experiencing visits to relatives, finding new friends, visiting her imaginary friend in the spruce wood, loving cats and nature and her mother, and growing up through many stages between young childhood and age 12/13 where the book ends. Each chapter stands alone as its own story, really, and so this book can be read in spurts, it doesn't have to be followed for plot. 

It's still not my favourite Montgomery, but now I want to make some fancy cake, or some of the Hop and Go Fetch Its that are constantly mentioned - although I can't find any more information on what exactly these little iced cookies might be. Even if it's not the best Montgomery, it's still quite delightful. 

The Magnificent Spinster

 

The Magnificent Spinster / May Sarton
NY: Norton, 1988, c1985.
384 p.

I was inspired to finally pick up this book, which has been on my shelves for a while, thanks to the #SpinsterSeptember challenge hosted by @pear.jelly on Instagram. There are many wonderful reads being suggested under the hashtag, but I thought of this one right away, thanks to the obvious title! 

I like May Sarton's journals very much, but haven't always had a lot of luck with her novels. This one had an interesting structure that added to it; the narrator Cam is trying to write a novel about Jane Reid, her 7th grade teacher who had a huge influence on her life, becoming a friend when Cam was an adult. Cam says she can't write a biography so she'll try to do it as a novel, imagining Jane's life before her. And in various parts of the story, Cam's current voice breaks through, explaining how she's having a hard time with this novel. Those kind of meta parts were fascinating and I enjoyed them. 

The rest of the story was good but a little measured and straightforwardly narrative. Jane's life from childhood to old age is covered, and the changes are vast. Jane comes from a wealthy family, and so at least never has to worry about living in penury. Cam tries to show that from early on, Jane wants to experience life and has a great talent for friendship, although she never seems to have any attraction to the idea of men and marriage. But Cam herself is gay, and was in a long term relationship, and she and her partner discussed whether they thought Jane was gay as well - and came to the conclusion that she was more asexual, that her passions were sublimated into the love of life and friendship, that she lived with great openness and passion for the world. 

Jane's childhood in particular is beautifully drawn and filled with nature, music, art, sisters and a loving family. Her years as a teacher in an alternative school are fascinating. When she leaves the school and begins a middle age that Cam really isn't much a part of, it gets a little broader. There is a whole section in this part in which Jane goes to Germany post-war to run some kind of arts program that is supposed to connect the communities again. I found this dull and far too detailed, like a concept that Sarton wanted to get in somehow, but didn't add to the story. As the book felt a bit too long for me, this section that dragged could have easily been shortened, in my view! 

And then when Jane gets older and becomes a new kind of friend to Cam, needing her rather than Cam always running to Jane, this is more understandable and real, very personal rather than conceptual. I found Jane's life mostly compelling, in many ways, and it's a vision of a woman's life in an American strata of society that seems to have disappeared. As I mentioned before, I did feel that this was a bit too long and my attention flagged in parts. And I do think I still prefer Sarton's memoir/non-fiction writing. But I'm glad I read this; the idyllic island that Jane's family owns will be a mental getaway for ages!

Hotel Bosphorus

 

Hotel Bosphorus / Esmahan Aykol
trans. from the Turkish by Ruth Whitehouse
London: Bitter Lemon Press, 2011, c2001.
246 p.

I picked up this Turkish mystery during Women in Translation Month for a little lighter reading, and I was entertained! It's the first in a series featuring Kati Hirschel, a German immigrant to Turkey who owns and operates a mystery bookshop. 

Kati is the typical amateur sleuth: she has a job that allows her to move around pretty much at will (great for the plot), she likes to stick her nose in, and she's a bit disaffected, trying to develop relationships with unsuitable men, this time a policeman involved in the case she finds herself in the middle of. 

Petra is a friend of Kati's from Germany, now a film actress with middling success but fairly well known. Kati hasn't talked to her for a long time when Petra suddenly gets in touch to let her know that she'll be filming in Istanbul, and maybe they can get together. They do catch up, but that very night one of the producers involved in the film is found murdered in his hotel room. Since Petra is one of the primary suspects, Kati doesn't want to leave this to the local police, she wants to investigate as well (surely reading all those detective novels she sells has given her an edge?) 

There is a lot in this book - some subtle humour, mostly self-deprecating - some social commentary on many different levels of Turkish society and European stereotypes of Turkey as well - some fairly explicit encounters with said policeman which also points out differences of viewpoints and behaviours. The mystery makes sense and takes a rather dark turn; Kati is able to decipher some subtle clues because of her German background and connection to Petra, in ways that the locals can not. 

I found this very readable and want to follow up with the other 2 books in the series as well. Kati was slightly annoying like most amateurs in these kind of books have to be -- if they were polite and followed all the social rules there wouldn't be much of a story! I loved the setting, and would like to see what else the author has to say about this world. 

What Time the Sexton's Spade Doth Rust

 

What Time the Sexton's Spade Doth Rust / Alan Bradley
TO: Doubleday Canada, c2024.
288 p.

After a gap of about 5 years, a new Flavia de Luce book is here. I've read this whole series since the beginning and have really enjoyed it. From Flavia herself, to her sisters and Dogger and all the side characters, I've always looked forward to going back to this world. 

Here Flavia is a tiny bit older; she's now stuck with looking after her noxious cousin Undine, who is like an exaggerated annoyance, a vision of what Flavia might have been to others earlier in her life. But Flavia is starting to feel some adult responsibility, even while she's still eager to be on a case and beat the local police to the solution of any murders happening around Buckshaw. 

This time poor Mrs. Mullet, long-suffering cook for the De Luce family, is suspected of murder when a local man drops dead from mushroom poisoning. Flavia gets right on that and is able to easily prove Mrs. Mullet couldn't have done it -- but this draws her into a much larger plot that she could never have foreseen.

With ties to the local American army base, Flavia's family connections, and long held secrets, this mystery is unexpected and a bit convoluted. It is connected to the family secrets revealed in the last few books, but if you read those some years ago you may need a bit of a refresher to get all the hints here. 

I will never say no to another book about the wonderful Flavia, but this one wasn't the strongest one in the series. It was still a delight to visit Flavia and Dogger again, but after the previous book was said to be the series finale, I was imagining a big gap of years and having Flavia as a 25 year old sleuth instead of there being a gap of only months. I'm not sure she will be able to turn into a teenager and grow out of her precocious obsessions with crime and chemistry smoothly in the years ahead! 

But if you're looking for a fun mystery, this could be it. If you're a Flavia fan, I don't need to convince you. If you haven't yet tried this series, begin at the beginning for the full effect. Enjoy! 

My Death by Lisa Tuttle

 

My Death / Lisa Tuttle
read by Hillary Huber
Old Saybrook, CT: Tantor Media, 2024, c2004.

I saw someone mention this on Instagram recently and it piqued my interest. There was an audiobook edition available at my library, so I downloaded it and listened to it immediately. I've read a couple of Tuttle's other books and always find them interesting for their focus on women and mythology, in a modern setting. My Death included all these topics, in a fairly short book that turns out to have quite a wild twist in the end! 

A widowed writer is about to meet her agent, after a year of mourning in which she hasn't written at all. Trying to come up with a book idea for him, she stumbles across a painting by Helen Ralston, an artist she used to like in college. Ralston's art has been mostly overlooked, rather she is remembered primarily for her affair with an older male artist and as the model for one of his famous paintings. 

On the spur of the moment she decides she's going to write a biography of Helen Ralston -- to her surprise, Ralston is still alive, in her 90s and living with a daughter in Edinburgh. Everything just seems to be falling into her lap to get her book written, even if she just came up with the idea. 

But as it continues, this straightforward literary novel about art and writers and women's work begins to feel uncanny. The narrator starts to feel so many coincidences and similarities between Helen's life and her own, and it makes her panic a little. There's something going on that is making her uneasy, but why? Helen and her daughter are lovely, they want to help her, she should be happy about it! 

Very close to the end the creeping sense of the weird just bursts right out. I was left wondering what in the world I just heard -- and had to go back and listen again. I could not have predicted this ending in a million years, and it was a mind-bender. Tuttle doesn't tie everything up neatly, she leaves it with a bit of an open ending for you to figure out, and that may frustrate some readers, but I really enjoyed the way she did it. It's wild, something so fantastical I was taken completely by surprise -- and it was great. If you like small stories of the weird in women's lives, definitely give this one a try. It's just been republished in the NYRB series as well, so it's much more accessible now. Take a look for it! 

The Word for World is Forest

The Word for World is Forest / Ursula LeGuin
NY: Tor, 2010, c1972
189 p.

Ursula LeGuin is a reader who is probably most familiar to me via the Earthsea books - which are very much fantasy, even with some pointed commentary within them. But I was quite surprised by The Word for World is Forest, which I picked up at a thrift store and read right away. 

This was much more of its time (70s) even if it is set on a different planet sometime in the future. The concerns about colonialism, toxic masculinity, misogyny and opposing world views feels very rooted in the 70s, but unfortunately is still relevant in so many ways now as well. But the vibe of the story does bring up the feeling of war and Vietnam and all those early 70s concerns. 

It opens on the planet of Athshe, a forested world that Terrans have colonized with militaristic settlements, clearcutting as much as possible, having basically deforested Earth by this time. The people are pretty awful, military blowhards who have enslaved the native, peaceful Athsheans. Captain Davidson is one of the worst; the story opens with his perspective and he embodies all the worst qualities possible in a man. He's made an enemy of Selver, an Athshean whose wife was raped and murdered by Davidson much earlier. The Athsheans have a dreaming culture, and Selver dreams mass violence into existence on Athshe because of his experience - something that had never been seen there before. 

Selver becomes a God to the Athsheans and leads a mass revolt, leading to the defeat of the colonizers, who are then limited to a small cleared area to wait for the next space ship to take them off the planet forever. But in the process, the Athshean culture has been irrevocably changed. 

This was a shorter book, and I felt there was a lot of straightforward narrative in it, lots of clear villains and heroes. Not as imaginative as some of her other work, a little didactic at times. But I do think it reflects the time and her concerns very strongly. It's part of the Hainish Cycle, so some of the other alien races who appear on Athshe discuss the Hainish past; if you're familiar with any of the other books you'll find the connections easily. But you don't need to know anything about the Hainish Cycle to understand this one. I did find the character of Davidson quite despicable and didn't enjoy reading about him much. He was too horribly realistic and similar to some politicians today. 

Lots of interesting ideas here but I'm unlikely to reread it & will pass this on to other readers soon. 

Tidal Waters

Tidal Waters / Velia Vidal
trans. from the Spanish by Annie McDermott
Edingurgh: Charco Press, 2024, c2023.
113 p.

This was an odd one, a short read that says it's fictional, but has so many elements of the story that correspond to the author's life that it's hard to know how to categorize it. 

The main character in this book is named Velia, she moves back to the black community on Colombia's Pacific Coast that she grew up in to start a reading program for children (just like the author). The book is epistolary, told in a series of letters to a friend in the literary world, back in the capital. 

I thought this was interesting, with details about a community I didn't know anything about. I enjoyed the discussion of reading and working with families; much of that felt familiar to me, as a librarian. But I didn't fall for this the way so many other readers have. I didn't really connect to "Velia" as the character. There was a lot in the letters about her affairs and sexual life, which I wasn't as interested in reading as her more intellectual ponderings. And I'm not sure where the story was going, as it doesn't have much plot, it's more a thoughtful examination of a life and its development. 

I appreciated the focus on literature as a way to experience and engage with life, and the work that her organization Motete was doing. Not sure if this would be better placed as a creative memoir, though. 

In any case, much of interest here even if I didn't really love it as a whole. 

 

Eartheater

 

Eartheater / Dolores Reyes
trans. from the Spanish by Julia Sanches
NY: HarperVia, 2020, c2019.
224 p.

We meet our unnamed narrator in an Argentian barrio, where her mother has died violently and her aunt is now taking care of her and her brother Walter. Until she discovers that when she eats earth, she can see visions of how someone died. Her aunt is horrifed by this and leaves them to their own devices. 

Eating dirt, mainly from where a dead person has walked, gives her visions, and once this knowledge gets out she is inundated by requests from people with lost loved ones to help them find the truth. She is revered for her skill, while at the same time also avoided and shunned for the same thing. 

This book tackles the epidemic of femicide in Argentina, bringing up so many issues of violence against women which almost always goes unpunished. It also investigates poverty and class, showing the results very clearly in this small family of two. 

I was drawn into the story immediately, and felt that the first half was very strong, as she discovers her talents and begins to use them. In the second half, she finds herself a boyfriend (who is also a cop, something which adds to the social commentary of the storyline). And she and her brother and his friends try to avenge the death of one of their crowd when she discovers how he died. This section felt a bit like a different kind of story, to me. There is frequent description of she and her boyfriend and their sexual encounters, sometimes graphic. It didn't seem to serve any purpose in the narrative other than to be edgy, maybe? I felt uncomfortable with it, especially when I read the author bio and saw that her eldest son had the same name as the boyfriend in the book. And the big scene of violence at the end felt a bit too cinematic, like it was something observed, not real to the characters. 

Anyhow, this book has received a lot of attention, which is why I was able to find it in my library system. I thought the concept and the setup of the story, and most of the first half, really deserved all the hype - it had promise. But the second half let me down, like the author wasn't sure how to end it. Great idea, not so great book in the end. 

Miral al-Tahawy's The Tent

 

The Tent / Miral al-Tahawy
trans. from the Arabic by Anthony Calderbank
Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2000, c1995.
95 p. 

This is another novella I picked up recently, focusing on Fatima, a young Bedouin girl in the Sinai desert. She and her many sisters live in women's quarters while her wealthy and nomadic father is mostly elsewhere. Her mother suffers severe depression since she can only bear daughters - she has miscarried sons. Fatima's grandmother despises all her granddaughters for not being boys, and she is cruel and foul-mouthed about it all. 

Fatima is the youngest, and seems to have a gift for second sight, although it might just be a trauma response to everything she sees around her. For a brief time she's taken up by a French anthropologist, who seems to see her as another element in her collection of Bedouin items, like all of her horses. Soon enough Fatima's future ends as she is returned to her home, where she ends up unmarried and living in a small hut on the property as she continues to see things differently from everyone else. 

This was fascinating for its look at Fatima and her sisters; they spend time doing each other's hair, embroidering clothing (her sister is renowned for her skill, which seems a little obsessive, perhaps it's her way of dissociating) and seeing their cousins. As her sisters are married off, we also see some of the customs and rituals of marriage, and also some of the outcomes. 

This was interesting but again there was a little too much uncertainty about what was real or what was Fatima's imagination, at least for me. She isn't able to function well in the society she's stuck in, and while that is a theme that is explored here, and shown clearly, as a reader I found the timelines and situations a bit confusing. That could be because I am not familiar enough with the setting or the writer to get the allusions and deeper meanings of some of the symbols or metaphors here. I thought the writing style was overall really strong, and I may try one of her other books to see how I like it. 

The Faces

 

The Faces / Tove Ditlevsen
translated from the Danish by Tiina Nunnally
London: Picador, 2022, c1968.
144 p.

I had this little novel on my list so started it at near the end of Women in Translation month in August -- but although it's short, it's also a tough read so I read it fairly slowly.  

It focuses on Lise Mundus, a writer who is beginning to descend into her own reality. She's a children's book writer and in her second marriage, with three children. But she's facing a crisis: she is hearing things and seeing faces. She is also paranoid about her husband having an affair with the nanny, or even Lise's own daughter. The crisis spirals until she's admitted to an institution for care, and because it's written from Lise's perspective, it's hard for the reader to follow what is happening - what's real, what are Lise's hallucinations. 

I'm not much of a fan of books like this, where the mental state of the character is reflected in the writing. It feels like someone is describing their long and convoluted dream to you, which really only makes sense to them. I do find it quite a slog to read this style. 

I found some elements of interest here; the writing is strong stylistically in many parts, and the images and metaphors she uses liberally are fresh and interesting. It's also appealing that one of the signs of Lise returning to health is being able to write again. However, this wasn't a hit for me, although I may try another of Ditlevsen's books and see how I get on with her with another story. I admire what she is doing here, but it doesn't connect with me as a reader very well. 

Animal Life

 

Animal Life / Audur Ava Olafsdottir
trans. from the Icelandic by Brian FitzGibbon
NY: Black Cat, 2022, c2020.
188 p.

This short novel has an interesting premise: Dómhildur is a midwife, who descends from a long line of midwives on her mother's side and undertakers on her father's. It's the leadup to Christmas, and Dómhildur has just delivered her 1,922nd baby. She is taking some time off, and she is now living in the apartment that belonged to her aunt, a midwife known for her unconventional methods. 

As a storm rolls in, Dómhildur talks to a nosy neighbour, calls her anxious sister, and explores a wealth of writing and clippings left by her aunt -- including what appears to be an unfinished book. She discovers her aunt's strange reflections on birth, death and everything in between. She also finds that some of these writings echo her own experiences on the job and beyond. There is beauty among the strangeness, and hope for a new vision of life. 

This was a short read, and I had expected a little more about Dómhildur's work, as it seemed to be a big part of the blurb. But it was a bit more twisty, and focused on her experience of her aunt's life, her memories, and her thoughts on the future. It was ok -- I found it a little dry, a little slow moving, but maybe I wasn't quite in the mood. Read it on a stormy December night and it might be a bit easier to connect to! There were interesting concepts and characters, but it wasn't one I felt wowed by.