no such thing as...

The Two Destinies - Wilkie Collins [1876]

2008-10-06T11:09:49Z

This late novel tells the story of Mary Dermody and George Germaine, who fall in love when they are little more than children. Circumstances force them apart, but the girl's grandmother insists that the two are destined to be together and that they will find a way to each other again. Many years later, George comes across a young woman attempting to drown herself. He saves her life, not realising that she is the girl he fell in love with ten years earlier. They both have different surnames (he under the terms of his step-father's will, she because she has married), and fail to recognise each other.

Over the course of the next few years, George receives what seem to be telepathic messages from the woman whose life he saved, and again he goes to her aid. He is in love with her, but her circumstances do not permit her to return his love.

Perhaps the most interesting section of the novel is when George goes to the Shetland Islands in an attempt to recover from his infatuation with the woman, and there stays at the house of Mr Dunross and his mysterious daughter, whose face is constantly shrouded by a heavy veil.

This is a love story pure and simple, with no sub-plots and none of the twists and turns one associates with Collins' best work. It doesn't quite work, because it seems incredible that Mary and George do not recognise each other, or that they don't at some point compare notes and realise they knew each other as children. The 'supernatural' elements of the story are not really a major part of the story and do not entirely convince. Enjoyable if you want a well-written romantic story, but it is one of Collins' least successful novels, to my mind.

Love and Mr Lewisham - HG Wells [1900]

2008-10-03T10:23:00Z

Although best known for his science fiction novels, amongst HG Wells' published novels are a number of books that are far removed from that genre. He wrote several novels about ordinary middle class lives, including this one.

Mr Lewisham is a serious (and rather pompous) young man of eighteen, who scrapes a meagre living as an assistant master in a Sussex school. He has a grand plan to further himself through application to academic study, and breaks up his free time into strictly timetabled chunks - twenty minutes of Latin, twenty minutes of Shakespeare, and so forth.

His plans come unstuck when he meets Ethel Henderson, who is visiting relatives in the area. She is an attractive young woman, but she does not share his academic interests or his socialist principles. She is contrasted with a young woman Mr Lewisham meets as a student in London, who shares his ideals and interests, but does not attract him physically.

Nevertheless, Mr Lewisham chooses to marry pretty novelette-reading Ethel. Wells describes the first rapturous months, when love is fresh and passion is all, and then the manner in which disillusionment sets in, once the honeymoon gloss has worn off and they struggle to find common ground in order to make the marriage work.

This is a short, tender novel, dealing insightfully with the conflict of head versus heart, and the compromises and sacrifices people are often forced to make when love enters their lives.

Autumn Term - Antonia Forest

2008-10-01T12:36:06Z

This is the first in a series of books about the Marlow family and is set in a boarding school. Originally published in 1948, Autumn Term follows the two youngest Marlow girls, twins Nicola and Lawrence, during their first term at the school their elder sisters already attend.

Much as I love Enid Blyton's boarding school stories, Forest is clearly a much classier writer. Her characters are more complex, the teachers ordinary human beings rather than stereotypes, and the girls' adventures are more credible. On discovering that they are not, unlike their sisters, outstanding scholars, Nick and Lawrence try to redeem themselves by joining the school Guide Company. During a hike, a haystack on a nearby farm catches fire, with Nick and Lawrence revealed to be the prime suspects. In an Enid Blyton novel, the real culprit (usually an unpopular girl) would either confess or be exposed, and the twins would be wreathed in glory. Not so in Forest's book.

During the second half of the term, the twins' form decides to stage a play, their friend Tim (real name Thalia) re-writing The Prince and the Pauper for them to act. Forest goes into great detail with regard to the writing, producing, and staging of the play.

Although this is ultimately a feel-good story, it's refreshing to read a school story where there are no obvious heroes and villains. There are no great epiphanies, no saint-like teachers, no buffoons. It's just a pity that Forest's books are very hard to get hold of - Autumn Term is available second-hand for a decent price, but if you want to collect the others you'll struggle to find a copy with a single-figure price tag.

The Dead Secret - Wilkie Collins

2008-09-30T10:59:31Z

Wilkie Collins is one of my favourite Victorian novelists, and I think it a pity that only his two major novels (The Woman in White and The Moonstone) are widely read today, as even his minor novels have much to offer.

The novel begins with a former actress, Mrs Treverton, summoning her maid Sarah Lesson to her side. Mrs Treverton, a married woman with a young daughter, Rosamond, is on her deathbed. She charges Sarah to reveal to her husband the secret they have kept between them. Timid Sarah, seeing Mr Treverton's devastation on learning of his wife's death, finds herself unable to reveal the secret to him. But neither does she have the courage to destroy the piece of paper, signed by herself and Mrs Treverton, on which the secret is set down. Instead, she hides the paper in an unused room in the Trevertons' large house, Porthgenna, and flees.

The story resumes fifteen years later. Rosamond has recently married and is the new owner of Porthgenna. But the buried secret is in danger of being revealed, the situation complicated by another claimant to Porthgenna, Rosamond's misanthropic uncle Andrew Treverton. He and his equally anti-social servant, Shrowl, provide the comic relief of the story.

It is fair to say that this is far from being Collins' best novel, though it rehearses some of the themes and ideas to be found in the later novel, The Woman in White. Sarah Leeson is a sympathetic and well-drawn character, but the capricious Rosamond is hard to like. There are no staggering plot twists, and the reader knows what the big secret is almost from the start. Nevertheless, this is a fun novel and recommended to fans of Victorian literature.

Gentlemen & Players - Joanne Harris

2008-09-30T10:36:41Z

I found this novel absorbing, if slightly confusing. There are two narrators, Snyde and Roy Straitley. We meet Snyde as a child and as an adult. As a child, he lives with his father, who is caretaker at the independent St Oswald's Grammar School for Boys, and has a love/hate relationship with the school. Himself destined to go to the local comprehensive school, he views St Oswald's with a mixture of awe, envy, and bitterness.

Desperate to become part of this privileged world and to escape from an unsatisfactory home life, Snyde gets hold of a St Oswald's uniform and pretends to be a pupil there, quickly befriending a charismatic older boy, Leon Mitchell. A tragic event cuts short Snyde's involvement with the school, but he returns as an adult - in the guise of a teacher. Unable to forget or come to terms with his memories, he sets out to destroy the school from within.

Straitley, a classics teacher on the brink of retirement, is a worthy adversary. His love for St Oswald's is uncomplicated, though he himself has begun to feel increasingly obsolete. He refuses to come to grips with computers, never reads his emails, and regrets the modernisation of the education system. One thing this novel does very well is to highlight the tensions between traditional and modern ideas - the tug-of-war contest between those who have embraced technology and new subjects, and the old guard represented by Straitley, clinging to a more ordered world of Latin, tweed jackets and gowns worn in the classroom.

Harris is also very good on the day-to-day life of a school, staffroom spats, and the politics of education in its broadest sense. I wouldn't describe the book as a page-turner, although Harris creates a sense of menace and claustrophobia that pervades the book.

The problem with the book is that, when you've finished it, you suddenly realise how utterly implausible the whole story is. This is compounded by the twist at the end, which I must admit I suspected from fairly early on, and seemed to me unncessarily melodramatic and forced.

To sum up, this is a highly enjoyable novel, but you'll need to suspend your disbelief before you start reading. It's also an extremely complex novel with its switches of viewpoints and plot twists, so it does demand a fair amount of concentration.

NB In order to avoid giving spoilers, there is a deliberate error in my review.

September Books

2008-09-30T08:45:00Z

104. Cruel Tales - Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam [1883]
105. Mr Pottermack's Oversight - R Austin Freeman [1930]
106. Understanding Paintings - Themes in Art Explored and Explained - ed. Alexander Sturgis
107. The Girl in Blue - PG Wodehouse
108. The Reeve's Prologue and Tale, with the Cook's Prologue - Chaucer (eds A & J Spearing)
109. Titus Andronicus - Shakespeare
110. Gentlemen & Players - Joanne Harris [2005]*
111. Ariel, The Restored Edition - Sylvia Plath
112. Maigret in Court - Georges Simenon [1960]
113. Complete Nonsense - Edward Lear
114. Autumn Term - Antonia Forest [1948]*

*reviews to follow shortly

toomanybooks @ 2008-09-29T19:52:00

2008-09-29T18:52:30Z

I'm afraid I've rather neglected this blog of late. First there were the school summer holidays, then I received my Open University** course books and panicked that I wouldn't have any time for writing thoughts about books read purely for pleasure - indeed, I wondered if I'd have any time actually to read any books for pleasure - and now I've come down with a nasty bacterial infection that's left me feeling pretty shattered.

However, after some thought, I decided to un-delete the blog, and hopefully will soon begin writing here regularly again. Watch this space, and thanks for sticking around :-)

**After 20+ years away from formal education, I enrolled with the OU to take course A100 (The Arts Past and Present) this year, with the long-term aim of studying towards a degree in English Literature.

August Books

2008-09-02T09:28:38Z

94. Suicide Excepted - Cyril Hare
95. The Clocks - Agatha Christie
96. From Life - Julia Margaret Cameron and Victorian Photography - Victoria Olsen
97. Five Little Pigs - Agatha Christie
98. Halloween Party - Agatha Christie
99. The Golden Arrow - Mary Webb
100. The Oxford Murders - Guillermo Martinez
101. Mary Webb - Gladys Mary Coles
102. The Dead Secret - Wilkie Collins
103. Nemesis - Agatha Christie

July books

2008-07-30T11:45:43Z

I've mostly read books for the purpose of research this month. I'm looking forward to getting back to reading books for pure pleasure :-)

86. The Minotaur - Barbara Vine
[I'm a big Vine fan, but for me this was rather disappointing - not one of her best, IMO]
87. English Society in the Eighteenth Century - Roy Porter
88. London Life in the Eighteenth Century - M Dorothy George
89. Victorian Murderesses - Mary S Hartman
[Good, solid book, but I found Twisting in the Wind by Judith Knelman far more enjoyable]
90. Faro's Daughter - Georgette Heyer
[The first Heyer I've ever read! Very useful for my research project, but less enjoyable than I'd hoped]
91. Paris and London in the 18th Century - George Rudé
[Too much politics and not enough social history for the purposes of my research]
92. Endless Night - Agatha Christie
[More of a psychological thriller than a murder mystery, and rather disappointing]
93. The Black Moth - Georgette Heyer
[Rather better than Faro's Daughter, I thought - a silly romp :-)]

toomanybooks @ 2008-07-19T10:07:00

2008-07-19T09:07:59Z

I seem to have written nothing in here since I listed the books I read in June. The reason for this is quite simply that my current reading is all to do with 'research' and I haven't felt much like reviewing the books in question. I'm planning to write a novel set in late 18th century England, so I've been madly reading everything I can get my hands on - history books, 18th century novels, and historical fiction set in the right time period. This has also led me to reading Georgette Heyer for the first time ever. I know she is many people's 'comfort reading' of choice, but - possibly because I'm making notes rather than just enjoying the stories - they don't really work that way for me. I'm currently reading The Black Moth, which I believe is the first novel Heyer wrote. It does very much feel like a first novel (i.e. it could do with some pruning) , but it's a lot of rather silly fun :-) Not quite sure what I'll read when I've finished this - perhaps a Fanny Burney novel (Camilla), although as I've now got the kids at home for 6+ weeks I'm not sure how much reading time I'm going to get.

June Books

2008-06-30T08:39:06Z

67. Virgins of Venice: Enclosed Lives and Broken Vows in the Renaissance Convent - Mary Laven
68. Twelfth Night - Shakespeare
69. The Glass-Blowers - Daphne du Maurier
70. The Story of a Marriage - Andrew Sean Greer
71. Medieval Women: A Social History of Women in England 450-1500 - Henrietta Leyser
72. The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction - ed Jerrold E Hogle
73. The Secret Language of the Renaissance: Decoding the Hidden Symbolism of Italian Art - Richard Stemp
74. The Bloody Countess: Atrocities of Erzsebet Bathory - Valentine Penrose
75. Belinda - Rhoda Broughton
76. Cullum - E Arnot Robertson
77. Black Swine in the Sewers of Hampstead: Beneath the Surface of Victorian Sensationalism - Thomas Boyle
78. The Two Gentlemen of Verona - Shakespeare
79. Brook Evans - Susan Glaspell
80. The Taming of the Shrew - Shakespeare
81. Countess Dracula: The Life and Times of Elisabeth Bathory the Blood Countess - Tony Thorne
82. The Ladies of Grace Adieu - Susanna Clarke
83. The Cambridge Companion to the Eighteenth Century Novel - ed John Richetti
84. City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in Eighteenth Century London - Vic Gatrell
85. Memoirs of Emma Courtney - Mary Hays

The Ladies of Grace Adieu - Susanna Clarke

2008-06-21T15:20:13Z

Clarke’s 'Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell' is a novel one either detests or adores. I’m in the second camp, and was therefore looking forward to reading her collection of short stories – in fact I’ve been saving it up as a treat.

Almost inevitably, perhaps, I was disappointed. I kept asking myself why I loved the novel so much when the stories left me vaguely entertained, at best, but more or less emotionally uninvolved. Perhaps it’s simply that most of the stories are too short to allow for much in the way of character development. If most of these stories had appeared as set pieces in a novel, probably I would have allowed myself to be pulled in.

Somehow, Clarke's short fiction just doesn't pack a sufficient punch - which might be my 'fault', an indication of my tastes, rather than to suggest that she has 'failed'. And after all she has created a distinct world with its own rules, and she has a very deliberate and unique style - the blending of fairytale with a Jane Austen-ish voice seems to me well done. I can't fault her world-building or the elegance of her writing.

Nevertheless, there is something rather too wispy about the stories in this collection. Most of the characters aren't particularly rounded - or rather, they don't have any great weight. Perhaps I'm too used to reading Victorian sensation novels featuring complicated, angst-ridden heroines. Clarke's style is charming, but is charm enough? Perhaps it is, if one is in the right mood.

For me the stand-out stories were Mrs Mabb (which feels more ‘complete’ than many of the stories, and has the feel of a real Clarke story) and Mr Simonelli or The Fairy Widower, which is much longer than the other stories and there is sufficient space for it to grow. I liked the Gothic atmosphere of the fairy widower's house - the fact that what the characters see isn't what is actually there - the humour of lines like, 'All excellent but not cheap and so I complained', and the very visceral description of the bedroom in which the fairy's wife gives birth.

The deliberate mis-spellings in On Lickerish Hill annoyed me after a while. I don't mind Clarke's retro spellings in 'JS&MN' (surprized, shewed, and so forth) because they are genuine old spellings, but I didn't really see the point of the innumerable mis-spells in this story, and Miranda isn’t an uneducated young woman. Also not all the spellings agree (so we have 'kewrious' followed by 'curiouslie'). The ending disappointed me. Basically the story is a fairly straight re-telling of the Rumpelstiltskin story. I just feel that in someone like Angela Carter's hands the ending would have been very, very different – perhaps Miranda might even have happily gone off to live with Tom Tit Tot.

The Duke of Wellington Misplaces his Horse is certainly short, but is it a story? Like the other tales in this book, it demonstrates that encounters between humans and the fairy folk are fraught with dangers, but the tone is so entirely safe that it just doesn't have the necessary edge, for me, to make the story anything more than a piece of whimsy. (I found myself thinking of a Daffy Duck cartoon, in which Daffy must outwit the cartoonist by drawing in 'what happens next' before s/he does.) It was mildly diverting as an entertainment, but I think with all these stories I was constantly wanting the 'something more'.

Perhaps it's just that I prefer a darker take on faerie than Clarke's elegant, witty vision, which has all the clean symmetrical lines of a typical Georgian house. Perhaps I'm wanting too much - the something nasty in the woodshed - but if Clarke has a woodshed it's clean and tidy and the only dust in there is a light sprinkling of fairy dust that might make me sneeze but won't have me running away screaming.

Countess Dracula - Tony Thorne

2008-06-19T08:40:39Z

When I began reading this book, and realised that Thorne doesn’t take Báthory’s guilt for granted, I wanted so much not to be convinced by his arguments. The case against her seems so overwhelming, how could it not be true?

Nevertheless, could Thorne be right? Is it possible that the charges of which Báthory still stands accused were trumped up for reasons of political expediency? It seems incredible, but so do the crimes of which Báthory was accused.

Thorne makes the point that, “Unquestionably part of Elisabeth Báthory’s offence in the eyes of her peers was that she had too much property…and too much power”.

There is little contemporary documentary evidence extant, apart from the evidence given by witnesses at the trial. These, though, were obtained under torture (rather ironically, given the nature of the crimes allegedly committed by Báthory), and are therefore of questionable accuracy.

Surviving letters written by Báthory suggest that she was an intelligent woman. The tone of her letters is measured, formal, even chilly – though this would not have been unusual for the time. It has to be said that in the letters at least she does not come across as a deranged, hysterical woman.

It is important to see Báthory in the context of her times. She was born in 1560, in a part of the world subject to constant threats of war and political upheavals. Thorne points out that “a culture of cruelty – not violence, but deliberate cruelty – was endemic in the era that has come to be known as the early modern”. In 1514, “a legal code known as the Tripartum…enshrined and confirmed the privileges of the nobility and decreed perpetual serfdom for the peasant populace”. In other words, all the power rested in the hands of a few noble families. The peasant population existed, according to the mores of the time, purely to serve their masters (and mistresses). Their lives were not worth very much. Indeed, “the mere murder of a commoner was not enough to start off legal proceedings…Homicide was viewed as a relatively minor abuse of power or privilege.” In many cases, relatives who complained when a member of their family was murdered were content to accept a payoff.

Am I convinced by Thorne’s arguments? Not entirely, no, although I’m far less certain of Báthory’s guilt than I was before I read this book. As Thorne says in the penultimate chapter, many women were burned as witches for all manner of lurid and, in most cases, fictitious offences against man and God.

It is entirely possible that Báthory’s greatest crime was to be an extraordinarily wealthy and powerful widow. Nevertheless, Thorne does not discount the possibility that she did participate in meting out punishments to her servants that would strike the 21st century reader as barbaric. Ultimately we can never know exactly what Elisabeth Báthory did or didn’t do, but the myth of the countess who bathed in blood is as enduring as the myth of the vampire itself.

Brook Evans - Susan Glaspell [1928]

2008-06-16T18:53:42Z

It’s the old, old story – boy meets girl, they fall in love, but boy’s mother considers the girl not good enough for her son and the lovers are forbidden to meet. They continue to meet in secret, until – almost inevitably – the girl falls pregnant.

Naomi Kellogg is the girl in this story, passionately in love with Joe Copeland. Her parents practice a stern, joyless kind of Protestantism, and the news of Naomi’s pregnancy is a huge disgrace, particularly as the year is 1888.

When Joe Copeland is tragically killed in a farming accident, Naomi’s parents all but force her to marry Caleb Evans, a man even more cheerless than they, who loves Naomi and is willing to give her child a name. They move out west, and Naomi’s child is born – a girl she names Brook after the brook beside which she and Joe used to meet.

When Brook falls in love with Tony – of Italian extraction, and a Catholic – Caleb disapproves, but Naomi tries to persuade Brook to carry on meeting Tony in private. Her own disappointment still fresh even after eighteen years, her one wish is for Brook to avoid the same loveless life that she has endured. But Brook has a fierce loyalty towards the man she considers her father, and it is not until many years later that Brook begins to understand her mother and wish that she had behaved differently towards her.

Naomi’s inability to communicate with her teenage daughter is contrasted with Brook’s relationship with her own son. Brook has been offered a chance of love and happiness, but she feels – not without reason – that her son won’t understand.

Glaspell does an excellent job of showing the conflict between Naomi and Brook. There are faults with the book – there is something a little too melodramatic about the first section of the book, and it is hard to understand in the final section of the book why Brook falls in love with Erik. Although this isn’t, to my mind, as good a novel as Fidelity (also published by Persephone), it is nevertheless very readable, and Glaspell handles her themes with a good deal of compassion and understanding.

Belinda - Rhoda Broughton [1883]

2008-06-12T10:58:10Z

This Virago Modern Classic is a marvellous book. By turns funny and sad, it tells the story of Belinda Churchill. Whilst on a visit to Dresden, she meets David Rivers. The two fall in love, but Belinda is unable to communicate her feelings to David, who interprets her reticence as coldness.

Recalled to England on the sudden death of his father, David sends Belinda a brief letter, but doesn’t contact her again. Distraught and miserable, Belinda little cares what happens to her now, and decides to devote herself to the life of the mind. She decides to marry her sister Sarah’s ex-fiancé (one of many), the elderly and humourless academic Professor Forth (based upon Mark Pattison, who was also the model for George Eliot’s Casaubon).

Married for just three days, she receives a long letter from David and realises the full weight of her mistake. When they meet again, Belinda realises she has never stopped loving David – but she is now a married woman, and so of course there is nothing to be done. Or is there?

This is a very fizzy, witty novel, with a host of memorable minor characters, including the interfering Miss Watson). Belinda is a charming heroine who refuses to be ground down by her dried-up stick of a husband who sets her to work as his secretary. Love does eventually triumph, but in an unexpected way.

The Bloody Countess - Valentine Penrose

2008-06-12T10:24:53Z

This is not, strictly speaking, a biography of Erzsebet Bathory, neither is it an historical document.

French poet Valentine Penrose was active in the Surrealist art movement and married to British surrealist Roland Penrose (his second wife was photographer Lee Miller).

Thus I feel that I need to issue a ‘buyer beware’ notice to anyone thinking of picking up this book – it’s written in a rather dreamy style that takes enormous liberties with the facts. She doesn’t cite her sources and the book is very much an impression of what Erzsebet Bathory might have been like rather than presenting the reader with solid facts.

The style is lyrical, occasionally clumsy (possibly a reflection of the fact that the book was translated from French to English) and will not appeal to people who like their biographies tight and solid – Penrose’s book doesn’t follow a chronological sequence, and the more extreme flights of fancy might cause many readers to throw the book across the room.

Nevertheless, as an imagined insight into the world and mind of Erzsebet Bathory, I found this a valuable book. Bathory was responsible for the deaths of up to 650 girls and young women. She was obsessed with torture and – most of all – with remaining young and beautiful. Unlike Gilles de Rais, who also committed unbelievably awful atrocities, Bathory escaped a death sentence by virtue of her blood tie to the kings of Hungary and Poland. Some might think Gilles de Rais got the better deal – following the trial, Bathory was imprisoned in a cold, dark room in one of her many castles. One might be tempted to say she died sad and lonely, but the impression I got from reading this book is that sadness and happiness were states unknown to the strange, cold, unknowable Bathory.

Despite some rather eyebrow-raising glib generalisations along the way, Penrose does a good job of putting Bathory’s crimes into the context of her society and time – a superstitious, violent society, where ordinary people counted for very little.

The Story of a Marriage - Andrew Sean Greer [2008]

2008-06-01T08:57:22Z

Let me begin by saying that I enjoyed this novel very much. The writing is often exquisite (though sometimes, when straining for poetic effect, Greer falls off the edge), and although this is very much a literary novel (albeit of the ‘domestic’ variety), it gripped me quite as much as a good murder mystery would do.

Having said that, there are a few major problems with this book. The plot itself is hugely enjoyable – when I started to read the book, I feared I was in for a fairly dull account of a rather humdrum marriage. But the arrival of Holland’s one-time friend ‘Buzz’ Drumer leads to some genuine snap, crackle and fizz. However – and it’s a big however – I found the plot entirely unbelievable (despite Greer’s impressive use of period details). Normally this would be a problem for me, but I was so pulled into the story and the writing that I managed to suspend my disbelief totally, and I almost felt as though I were reading a thriller. Other readers, however, might not find suspension of disbelief so easy, and might thus be disappointed.

The other big problem I had with the novel (and, again, it was a problem that in the end didn’t matter too much, because I was quite happy to have Greer take me on his story ride) is the plot twists. The first one I found particularly grating, because it’s been done before (and to much more powerful effect) in Dorothy B Hughes’ excellent novel, The Expendable Man.

I don’t want to give away too much of the story or the plot twists. The story is set in San Francisco in 1953. The Second World War is still a fresh wound, and the Korean War looms on the horizon. Pearl Cook is apparently happily married to Holland, her childhood sweetheart. They have a sweet young son, a friendly dog, and a nice house in a decent suburb. So far, so ordinary, until into their lives walks ‘Buzz’ Drumer, who tells Pearl that he’s an old friend of Holland’s. Pearl immediately senses something isn’t quite right. She remembers Holland’s cousins (his closest relatives) gently warning Pearl not to marry him, and she begins to wonder what, exactly, they meant.

Greer writes from a female point of view, that of the young housewife Pearl Cook – a risky strategy, but speaking as a woman reader I never found myself thinking ‘a woman would never say/do that’.

Fear and repression are the themes of this novel – the personal repressions (of sexuality, of race) in a tense post-war America where many young men are damaged by their wartime experiences and spies are executed.

Books read during May

2008-05-30T09:07:47Z

I seem to have got through a lot of books this month, even for me. Insomnia has its uses :-/

52. Clarissa - Samuel Richardson [started during April, finished in May]
53. My friend Maigret - Georges Simenon
54. No Name - Wilkie Collins
55. Case Histories 1 (Dora and Little Hans) - Sigmund Freud
56. The Hunger Artists - Starving, Writing and Imprisonment - Maud Ellmann
57. Women & Madness - Phyllis Chesler
58. The Courtesans - The Demi-Monde in 19th century France - Joanna Richardson
59. Therese Raquin - Emile Zola
60. Grandes Horizontales - The Lives and Legends of Four Nineteenth Century Courtesans - Virginia Rounding
61. Twisting in the Wind - The Murderess and the English Press - Judith Knelman
62. Manon Lescaut - Abbe Prevost
63. In Dora's Case - Freud - Hysteria - Feminism - C Bernheimer and C Kahane (eds)
64. The King of the Copper Mountains - Paul Biegel
65. Mad Hatter's Holiday - Peter Lovesey
66. The Complete Plays - Christopher Marlowe

toomanybooks @ 2008-05-28T20:26:00

2008-05-28T19:26:34Z

I picked these up today from the Oxfam bookshop -

I must admit I've never heard of Dinah Craik before, but I tend to snatch up Oxford World Classics the same way I snap up Persephones and Virago Modern Classics - they're always very attractively put together, and the list includes many 18th and 19th century novels by neglected/under-appreciated female authors.

I also bought this a few days ago, from a discount bookshop -

I'm very much taken with the bits and pieces in it - each page has little slots and pockets with facsimile documents tucked inside them :-)

Some more photos of the inner cuteness -

The King of the Copper Mountains - Paul Biegel [1965]

2008-05-27T02:28:29Z

King Mansolain is dying. He has reigned over his kingdom of animals and dwarfs for more than a thousand years, and now his heart is tired. His friend the hare consults the Wonder Doctor, who says the only thing that can save the king's life is a potion made from a rare plant. The Wonder Doctor doesn't know if he can find the plant in time to save the king's life. In despair, the hare asks if there is anything that can be done to prolong the king's life while they wait for the doctor to return with the magical plant.

The Wonder Doctor can think of only one thing that might help. As he travels throughout the kingdom in search of the rare Golden Speedwell, he will tell every animal he meets to come to the castle and tell the king a story. Only a new, exciting story told to the king every day might help to keep his heart beating evenly.

First published in Dutch in 1965, this is a classic children's book that somehow never received the acclaim it deserves. Each animal's story is moving, as is the frame story itself, as the animals do their best to keep their beloved king alive.

I was about ten when I first read this book, and it was one of those books I read over and over again. I loved it so much, in fact, that I nicked the school library's copy...I later lost that copy (serves me right!) and eventually I managed to pick up an expensive second-hand copy. The book has now been re-published, and I hope it finds many, many new readers.

May Books - Part Two - On 'Dora'

2008-05-25T12:09:20Z

This month I read Freud's Fragments of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (commonly referred to as 'Dora') and In Dora's Case, subtitled Freud - Hysteria - Feminism, edited by Bernheimer and Kahane. In addition, two other books I read (Women and Madness and The Hunger Artists - see previous post) made explicit references to Freud.

It would be unfair of me to give a simplistic description of Dora's case, but for the benefit of anyone unfamiliar with it, that's what I'm going to do. Dora was eighteen when she came (or was brought, rather) to Freud. Like most of Freud's patients, she was from an upper-middle-class family. She presented with a number of symptoms, triggered by sexual advances made by Herr K, a friend of the family. When she confronted Herr K, he denied that this happened. Dora's father believed that Dora had imagined the incident. Complicating matters somewhat was the fact that Dora's father was involved in a sexual relationship with Frau K, the wife of Herr K. As Dora saw it, her father intended to give her to Herr K, in exchange for Frau K.

Dora abandoned treatment after just eleven weeks.

The 'problems' with this case are numerous and many of them are obvious. Janet Malcolm points out that, 'Everything we know about Dora and her father and the K.s is what Freud has chosen to tell us...The "fact" that Herr K. propositioned Dora and then lied is Freud's "fact"...for all we know, however, the actual, historical Dora may have invented the scene by the lake...'

'Facts' are slippery things. If something can be 'psychologically' true but not 'actually' true, how do we treat the merely 'psychological' truth? Should one kind of truth be privileged over another?

Whatever the truth of the scene by the lake, Freud's personal prejudice is evident in his treatment in his complete inability to accept that a sexual advance made by a middle-aged man to a teenage girl could be anything but pleasurable. Because Dora's reaction was disgust, she must have been hysterical and her symptoms were thus those of a girl who had displaced the pleasurable feelings that would have been experienced by a 'healthy' girl.

Freud interprets Dora's cough as a symptom of a repressed sexual fantasy involving the mouth, i.e. fellatio between Frau K and Dora's father. Many readers' eyebrows will surely be raised, however, at Freud's description of fellatio as an 'excessively repulsive and perverted phantasy'. One wonders if the repressed fantasy isn't Dora's at all, but Freud's. (Supposedly impotent, and sufferering from veneral disease, Dora's father seems more likely to have indulged in cunnilingus, described by Jacques Lacan as, 'the artifice most commonly adopted by "men of means" whose powers begin to abandon them'.)

Herr K represents - for Freud - 'normal' male heterosexuality. It is true that he acknowledged the sexual desires of women, but he 'refuses to consider female sexuality as an active, independent drive' (Toril Moi). In Dora's case, he identifies with both Herr K and with Dora's father. The idea of bisexuality is something Freud struggles to deal with - it threatens his concept of 'normal' male heterosexuality. In Freud's view, Dora's hysteria was caused not by her disgust at Herr K's advances, but because she repressed her true sexual desires, i.e. the desire 'to become [the] passive recipient for male desire' (Toril Moi)

May Books - Part One - wayward girls & wicked women

2008-05-22T19:31:17Z

[I realise we're not actually anywhere near the end of the month, but once I began writing this post it became clear it was going to end up being fairly lengthy, so I'll post the first part now and the rest towards the end of the month]

First up, Clarissa, which I actually began reading in April. Whatever the merits or demerits of the book (and there are plenty of both), Clarissa Harlowe surely illustrates the constricting double standard whereby men could more or less get away with whatever they wanted, but women had to pay for any transgression many times over. Later in the month I read The Hunger Artists by Maud Ellmann, which explores the theme of wilful starvation, contrasting in particular the case of Clarissa with a real-life case, the Long Kesh hunger strike of 1981, during which ten men died.

The theme of transgressive women continued in Wilkie Collins' novel No Name, in which our spirited heroine sets out to exact her revenge upon the man who 'stole' her inheritence. Although she has significant help from ne'er-do-well distant relative Captain Wragge, she is - in the early stages of the novel particularly - a very proactive heroine, neither mad nor evil, simply a resourceful woman who wants what is rightfully hers.

On the topic of insanity, Phyllis Chesler's Women and Madness proved both informative and hugely depressing. Unfortunately the edition I read was the 1972 version, which is very dated (although I would imagine that many of the basic themes remain the same in the 1997 edition).

Next, to Paris. First up, The Courtesans by Joanne Richardson, which takes a brisk look at a large selection of some of the most (in)famous courtesans of 19th century France (meaning, essentially, Paris). I followed this with Grandes Horizontales by Virginia Rounding, which studies in more depth the lives (and legends, as the subtitle of the book suggests) of four notable courtesans. She supplies more in the way of historical background detail than Richardson, including information about the Parisian system of prostitute regulation and the very significant point (back to Clarissa) that women's options were very limited. Life for women from the working class (which the four courtesans were) was, in addition, often short and brutal.

Although the best-known courtesans did well for themselves in material terms, theirs was a precarious existence. Should their main 'protector' withdraw his financial support, the courtesan was left with no alternative but to find a substitute - easy enough for a woman at the height of her youth and beauty, but a much more difficult matter as her beauty began to fade and other, younger women came onto the scene. It is also worth remembering that, however wealthy a courtesan became, however well-connected and aristocratic her lovers, she could never rise from the demi-monde to the haut-monde. As a woman - no matter what she did during her life - her sexuality defined her and precluded her from 'polite society', just as Clarissa Harlowe - once 'fallen' - can never be accepted by her family - not, at any rate, until she manages to starve herself to death.

From one group of transgressive women to another, Judith Knelman's Twisting in the Wind is subtitled 'The Murderess and the English Press'. The book concentrates on murders committed by women during the early and mid part of the 19th century. She has many interesting things to say, not least the double standard whereby men convicted of murdering their wives were less likely to be hanged than were women who murdered their husbands or lovers (although, in contrast to modern times, the murder of infants elicited nowhere near the same moral outrage as the murder of adults). Some parts of the book are less satisfying - Knelman tends to write a little about many murderers rather than picking one or two representative examples and exploring them in greater depth. Nevertheless, a fascinating and thought-provoking read.

No Name - Wilkie Collins [1863]

2008-05-13T10:40:19Z

This is one of the lesser-known of Collins' novels, which surprises me, as this is a cracking good read in the best 'sensation novel' tradition.

Sisters Magdalen and Norah Vanstone live an idyllic life with loving parents until tragedy strikes. Their father's death is followed quickly by the death of their mother. Not only are the sisters left orphans, but - because their parents weren't actually married when the girls were born - they are not entitled to inherit any of their parents' money or possessions. The entire fortune goes to their uncle, who has had no contact with his brother for years and has no love for his nieces.

Norah takes this change in her circumstances philosophically, resigned to finding work as a governess. But Magdalen cannot accept her situation. A very active and independent heroine, she sets out to exact her revenge. When she discovers that her uncle is dead, she turns her attentions to his sickly, miserly son. Magdalen is aided in her plans by Captain Wragge, a distant relation. He is a self-confessed swindler, and is a great comic character - quite as memorable as many of Dickens' grotesques, but he is also likeable because, whatever his other faults, he has a strong streak of humanity running through him.

It is difficult for a modern reader to disapprove of Magdalen too much, even though what she sets out to do is questionable in the extreme. Collins shows us how her character grows, and her humanity it shown in her fondness and consideration for Captain Wragge's tall, nervous wife. The other memorable character is Mrs Lecount, the possessive housekeeper of Noel Vanstone, the man who inherits the money Magdalen believes is rightfully hers. One of the great joys of the novels is the cat-and-mouse plotting and counter-plotting that goes on between Wragge and Lecount, each trying to keep one step ahead of the other.

'Clarissa' update

2008-05-03T17:49:46Z

Well, remarkably, I'm within 200 pages of finishing the book. I'm actually quite glad I decided to read the full version rather than an edited-for-length one - if I'd done the latter, I think I would have felt that I'd cheated. It really hasn't been at all a painful experience to read a book of this length (except in the physical sense that holding the thing upright for any length of time is a strain!).

A few meditations, cut for possible spoilers...

Much of the last several hundred pages are devoted to Clarissa's physical decline, death, and the repentence of her family. It's never made clear what, exactly, causes Clarissa's fatal illness - at one point she's described as dying from grief, but that surely isn't entirely plausible. There are a couple of hints that she might have been pregant - in two letters she is asked outright if she is pregant, and she avoids answering the question. Richardson couldn't have her overtly willing herself to death (to do so would be un-Christian), but it's very clear that she welcomes death, indeed encourages it. Consumption? Deliberate starvation? Such suggestions have been made, but don't entirely convince. I suppose ultimately we just have to accept that Clarissa does, indeed, die from grief.

Although a part of me got annoyed with Clarissa's death-wish, it seems fairly clear from reading the text that - after the rape - her position in society is a difficult one. Although rape was at the time a capital offence, it's clear that many of the characters do not treat the crime with a great deal of seriousness. Even her dearest friend, Anna Howe, urges Clarissa to marry Lovelace. If she refuses to marry him, it seems her only options are either to go abroad, where she can no longer disgrace her family, or die.

April Books

2008-04-30T19:37:30Z

43. Seven for a Secret - Mary Webb
44. Hamlet - Shakespeare
45. To Let - John Galsworthy
46. Studies on Hysteria - Freud/Breuer
47. The Miller's Prologue and Tale - Chaucer
48. All's well that ends well - Shakespeare
49. The Franchise Affair - Josephine Tey
50. Studying the novel - Jeremy Hawthorn
51. Mrs McGinty's Dead - Agatha Christie

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Currently reading My Friend Maigret by Georges Simenon, another favourite of mine in the detective genre. I started reading his books back in about 1993 - I'd just got back from a wonderful holiday in Paris and, missing it dreadfully, read anything I could get my hands on with a Paris theme, however tenuous. For anyone who's interested in his novels, I'd also recommend Patrick Marnham's biography, The Man Who Wasn't Maigret, a very readable portrait of an interesting life. Maigret features in a whopping 75 of Simenon's novels, so no danger of me running out any time soon!