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.

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...

( Read more... )

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

.

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!

I'm making good progress with Clarissa - I reached the 1000th page today, which means I'm just over two-thirds of the way through it. I'm reading detective fiction between times, when I'm in the mood for something with an actual plot. I've just finished Mrs McGinty's Dead by Agatha Christie. She's not the most fashionable of authors to like, but for me a Christie book is a big box of treats - though slightly naughty treats, to be sure.

They are, of course, dated - but for me that's a big part of their appeal. My personal preference in detective fiction is very much for the 'Golden Age' type of mystery. I've tried some of the 'hard-boiled' detective novels (e.g. The Maltese Falcon), but they're not to my taste. I like my murders cosy and unrealistic - a country house setting is an added bonus, and I have no problem with the detective rounding up all the suspects near the end of the novel and almost-accusing each one in turn. I don't mind that I can never guess whodunnit. I don't mind that most of her characters are stereotypes. I can happily swallow all that for the sheer pleasure of wallowing in her genteel world, where right and wrong are entirely clear-cut.

At this point I'll throw out a question to any detective fiction fans reading this - if you had to draw up a list of classic crime writers, who would be your master or mistress of the genre?

The Official Agatha Christie Website

I'm nearly halfway through Clarissa, which comes as something of a surprise to me - when I took up the challenge of reading this novel, I expected it would take me many, many months to read. What follows are my thoughts thus far.

It seems a little ridiculous to issue spoilers in this case, given that (a) the novel was first published in 1747, and (b) the plot (such as it is) is in its essentials a simple one, and doubtless familiar to anyone with any interest in 18th century fiction. Nevertheless, be warned, that if you haven't read the novel and are thinking of one day doing so, you might not want to read on. (The above photograph, btw, is a still from the BBC adaptation of the novel, which I would suggest is a good introduction to anyone with an interest in this novel.)

( Read more... )

For anyone interested in reading more about this novel, I heartily recommend this site. Some of the pages are still under construction, but the Clarissa pages offer some interesting insights and thought-provoking questions to consider while reading the novel.

Having signed up for the first course in a planned English Literature OU degree (beginning in October), I've decided in the meantime to try to read a bit more Serious Literature. I've begun with the book on my shelf that's most daunting in terms of sheer size, Samuel Richardson's Clarissa. This is a 1500 page beast of a book, told through a series of letters (such a quantity of letters, indeed, that one wonders how Clarissa ever managed to find the time to do anything else!). I have a slight knowledge of the story from an old BBC adaptation of the book, starring Saskia Wickham, with Sean Bean as the wicked Lovelace. In the past I've been delighted to read 18th century novels that are often far less prolix than Victorian ones, but Clarissa is clearly an exception.

I'm reading at the rate of just a few pages a day, and when I'm too fagged I pick up instead Josephine Tey's mystery novel, The Franchise Affair. I know there are people who've voiced concerns about the politics of the story (the notion of 'bad blood' and the idea that criminals can be spotted from analysing their facial characteristics), it's unusual in having a kidnapping rather than a murder as the central crime of the story. The pace is far more leisurely than some contemporary mystery novels, but personally I like that. I can understand the appeal of books with 'page turner' appeal, but they do make me feel rather breathless sometimes!

N.B. Incidentally, this blog will now tend to devolve into something more approaching general chit-chat about books rather than actual reviews, which I'm struggling to find the time to write in a manner that does proper justice to the books concerned.

This is a very odd novel, combining a derring-do adventure tale with elements of science fiction and metafiction. The story is narrated by Thomas Thomson, who resides at Mrs Pinkerton's boarding house, tormented by a shell-less turtle and an Irishman with a bad case of wind. He is approached by lawyer Edward Norton, who wants Thomson to write the story of his client, Marcus Garvey, on trial for the murder of two dissolute aristocrats, Richard and William Craver. Norton's plan is that Thomson should write a book describing Garvey's experiences, which might help to exonerate Garvey of the murders.

Garvey's tale is quite extraordinary. The sole survivor of an ill-fated expedition into the Congo, two huge diamonds were found on his person at the time of his arrest. During the course of the expedition, claims Garvey, they came across a race of people he named Tectons - underground creatures, very tall and pale, who emerged through tunnels in the ground.

It's difficult to explain the intricacies of the novel without giving away the final plot twists. Suffice it to say, Garvey's story isn't quite all it seems. This is an unusual and fun novel, but the adventure story did drag on a bit. Rather strangely, given that the author is Spanish and the book is translated from the Catalan, the main characters are English, and the non-Congo sections of the novel take place in London. Although the novel covers the period 1914-1918, there is precious little period detail, and the book's 'London' exists more in the author's imagination than in reality.

27. Chapters in a Mythology - Judith Kroll
28. The Blackest Bird - Joel Rose
29. Medea, Hecabe, Electra, Heracles - Euripides
30. The End of the Affair - Graham Greene
31. Beginning Theory - Peter Barry
32. The Diary of Virginia Woolf Vol.3 1925-30
33. The Waves - Virginia Woolf
34. Moving Targets - Margaret Atwood
35. Writers and Company - Eleanor Wachtel
36. The Bostonians - Henry James
37. Third Girl - Agatha Christie
38. The Unraveling Archive - ed. Anita Helle
39. Suite Francaise - Irene Nemirovsky
40. Edith Wharton - Hermione Lee
41. The Moving Finger - Agatha Christie
42. Pandora in the Congo - Albert Sanchez Pinol

Note - I'm going to try to write this book without making specific reference to the life and death of the author, because I think the knowledge of what happened to her can get in the way of the reading of this book.

Suite Francaise consists of two novellas, which follow - through the eyes of a handful of individuals - the fate of France from June 1940 to July 1941. Nemirovsky planned to write a work in five parts, but in the event this is all we have of the planned sequence. In the first part, 'Storm in June', Nemirovksy concentrates on a few individuals caught up in the exodus from Paris in 1940, when a German invasion of the capital was feared. By focusing on just a few individuals, Nemirovsky gives an evocative picture of a world breaking apart, the roads out of Paris clogged with refugees caught up in the collective panic. She is very good at showing how class and money still matter even in such circumstances - the upper classes desperately clinging to their social standing, even when it no longer matters.

The second, much shorter, novella ('Dolce'), is set in a French village, occupied by a German garrison. The tone of this novella is very different from 'Storm in June', the atmosphere calm, almost static. With the younger French man off fighting, the village consists only of the elderly, women, and children. Although they resent the Germans' presence, there is a degree of ambivalence - instead of being a composite faceless enemy, the Germans are individuals - young men away from home, who miss their parents and sweethearts.

Lucile Angellier lives with her mother-in-law, who loathes the Germans and has little regard for Lucile, assuming - quite rightly - that Lucile is not sorry for the absence of her unfaithful husband, Gaston. Bruno is a young German officer who comes to live in their house. Lucile attempts to mimic her mother-in-law's barely polite attitude, but she warms to the young man, who plays the piano beautifully and knows Balzac.

Nemirovsky's skill at detaching herself from the story she's telling - yet also maintaining an unsentimental sympathy and clear-sighted honesty - is remarkable considering that she was writing at the very time when these events were unfolding. Her plans for the rest of the sequence were of necessity incomplete, since neither she nor anyone else knew how the war would turn out. 'Dolce' ends when the occupying Germans leave France to join the assault on the Soviet Union.

This is a remarkable book, and if it has flaws (the complete absence of Jewish characters, for instance), reading the appendices will put Nemirovsky's achievement in historical context. But Nemirovsky's fate - though harrowing and unforgettable - shouldn't overshadow the valuable historical document that this finely-written novel represents.

Perhaps the first question to ask is whether it's 'right' to read someone's personal journals. Obviously some people publish their journals within their lifetime (Joyce Carol Oates, for instance), which means that the writer can control which bits to excise (either because the material is too personal, or to protect the privacy people still living). In this volume of Woolf's diaries, she comments on this issue - But what is to become of all these diaries, I asked myself yesterday. If I died, what would Leo make of them? He would be disinclined to burn them; he could not publish them. Well, he should make up a book from them, I think; & then burn the body. I daresay there is a little book in them: if the scraps & scratches were straightened out a little.

However much one admires Woolf's writing, and the innovation her writing represents, reading the diary it's hard for the modern reader to accept some of her remarks, particularly on race and class. To some extent one must take into account Woolf's upbringing, her own social class, and the times in which she lived. Nevertheless, when someone was as aware as Woolf of gender issues, militarism, and economic realities, it's hard to feel comfortable with her quick sketch of a black man she saw as she was going home one day, nor with her use of the phrase 'lower classes' (although her shenanigans with cook Nelly Boxall raise a few wry smiles - Woolf was clearly not comfortable with employing servants in the house, but neither could she manage without help).

Although Woolf accepted that having children was not an option for her (I don't want them any more, since my ideas so possess me), I think at some level she did regret her childlessness, comparing herself with sister Vanessa who did have children - yes & I have no children of my own; & Nessa has. There are also suggestions even in 1925 that she didn't think she would live a long life - And death - as I always feel - hurrying near. 43: how many more books?

She could be bitchy about other authors, but she had admirable insight into her own motives - [Rose Macaulay] is jealous of me; anxious to compare us: but I may imagine it: & it shows my own jealousy no doubt, as suspicions always do. One cdn’t know them if one hadn’t got them. Like all of us, she was flawed, but there is a great deal of wit and intelligence in these diaries. The entries dealing with her writing processes are fascinating and valuable.

This historical detective novel begins with the brutal murder of Mary Rogers, a much-admired young woman who worked in a tobacconist's shop in Manhattan. Her customers included Washington Irving, Charles Dickens, and Edgar Allan Poe. The murder is investigated by elderly High Constable Jacob Hays. His suspicions come to rest upon Edgar Allan Poe, who writes a story based on the Mary Rogers killing. There are other murders throughout the course of the novel, including that of Charles Adams, a publisher. Other real people are brought to life by Rose, including Samuel Colt (inventor of the revolver) and his brother John.

The detective element of this novel is sadly lacking - there's no sense of urgency about Hays' investigations, and his ultimate 'solution' to the Rogers' murder comes out of nowhere - which, as any reader of the genre knows, is a definite no-no! I dislike the way the author switches from past to present tense, seemingly for no good reason, and the heavy-handed approach of having Hays' bookish daughter explain Poe's work to him. The writing itself is serviceable, but not particularly attractive. Rose seems unclear whether he's writing a detective novel, a biographical novel about Edgar Allan Poe, or a historical novel about 1840s New York. Because of this, the novel lacks focus, and ultimately drags.

Rose has clearly done tons of research, and there is much interesting material on the gangs of New York and the sensationalist newspapers of the day. As a novel, though, it's too much of a hotch-potch to be entirely satisfying - Rose's tendency to throw in everything but the kitchen sink makes for a messy and disconnected novel that ultimately I found unsatisfying.

12. Augustus John - Michael Holroyd
13. Abracadaver - Peter Lovesey
14. The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre - John Polidori and others
15. Author, Author - David Lodge
16. The English Novel in History 1895-1920 - David Trotter
17. Alexander's Bridge - Willa Cather
18. Lake of Darkness - Ruth Rendell
19. Tis Pity She's a Whore - John Ford
20. Ariel Ascending: Writings About Sylvia Plath - ed. Paul Alexander
21. Very Good, Jeeves - PG Wodehouse
22. The Hours - Michael Cunningham
23. Macbeth - Shakespeare
24. The Sea - John Banville
25. Victorian Sensation: Or, The Spectacular, the Shocking and the Scandalous in Nineteenth-Century Britain - Michael Diamond
26. In Chancery - John Galsworthy

The plot of this novel – such as it is – is easily explained. Max Morden, a (by his own admission) dilettantish art historian in (I presume) late middle age has been recently widowed, his wife Anna dying from cancer. In mourning, and still haunted by the ghosts of the distant past as well as those of more recent vintage, he returns – for want of anywhere better to go – to the seaside resort he visited as a child, staying at The Cedars, which he remembers as being the holiday home of the Grace family.

The book consists of the narrator weaving together patchy memories, of his wife’s illness and dying, of the childhood trauma involving the Graces. The son, Myles, was mute and had webbed feet. From Chloe the narrator experienced his first kiss, after first falling for the mother. The plot is almost beside the point – this is the story of one man’s examination of himself, of past experiences and his part in them.

The language is perhaps the most remarkable thing about this novel – it is indeed poetic, often extraordinary. One Amazon reviewer commented that ‘the reader [is] constantly assaulted with stunning images’, but I think ‘assaulted’ is the key word here. Whilst the ‘fancy prose style’ (and the conceit of the unreliable narrator) is at times reminiscent of Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert, what's lacking is Nabokov’s playful lightness of touch. Even though one might, with good reason, despise Humbert, in some odd way I found the narrator of The Sea more repellent: he is conceited, egotistical, and directs towards his daughter an offensive (to me) amount of coldly cruel comments.

My other big problem with the book is its ‘shocking’ climax, which is both melodramatic and forced. From the start of the book the reader is aware that the narrator was somehow caught up in a major drama involving the Graces, but when it comes it seems too hackneyed to carry much emotional weight.

Although there is plenty to admire in this book, I can’t honestly say that I enjoyed it.

I can't think why it's taken me so long to read this book, but I'm glad I finally did, because I truly loved it. Cunningham writes about one day in the life of three women. On an English morning in 1923, Virginia Woolf begins to write the book that will become Mrs Dalloway (its working title was The Hours). In 1990s New York, Clarissa Vaughan plans a party for her oldest friend and one-time lover, a dying poet who has just been awarded a major literary prize. And in 1949 suburban Los Angeles, pregnant housewife Laura Brown prepares for her husband's birthday, but all she really wants to do is read Mrs Dalloway.

From this initial conceit, Cunningham produces an engrossing story. Like Mrs Dalloway, the story deals with a single day in the lives of these three women. An ordinary, unremarkable day, a day stuffed with hours that must somehow be got through. Each woman has her own concerns and problems, which might seem trivial to other people, but of such seemingly insignificant cares our lives are composed. And we carry on because each hour offers the promise of some moment of joy, of something remarkable happening.

This is a complex novel, and I really can't do justice to it in a short review.The three women have nothing - and everything - in common. Very little happens, but life (and death) happens. Life is composed not just of the few big dramas, it's the many hours filled with the mundane, the trivial, the small turning points. I think it is for this reason, amongst others, that I dislike people criticising 'domestic' fiction. Most of us will never fight in a war or change history, but we all have to get through the hours of the day, and those minutes and hours are just as important to us as the times of great drama and crisis, because they are our lives.

I think it probably helps to know a little background information about Virginia Woolf before reading this book, and a knowledge of Mrs Dalloway does, I think, increase the richness of the experience. My only major quibble with the book is the ending, in which a major plot point links the women in what seems to me a rather contrived and unsatisfying way.

The plot of this short novel is slight - Bartley Alexander, a successful engineer who has applied his skills to bridge-building, is torn between two worlds. The first is represented by his successful working life, his gracious wife Winifred, and America itself. Whilst on a professional visit to London, to attend a meeting of British engineers, he goes to see a play. Acting in the play is Hilda Burgoyne, an old flame of Alexander's. She is very clearly identified with the ideas of freedom, youth, Europe and glamour.

Torn between the two women, and the two worlds, Alexander finds himself unable to reconcile his torment, and his mid-life crisis ends in a very public disaster when one of his bridges collapses.

This was Cather's first novel, and one which in later years she came to dislike, recognising that it was the work of a young writer who hadn't yet found her subject or style. The symbolism (in particular the bridge) is too overt to be successful, and the characters never quite come to life. I've read one description of the book likening it to a 'beautiful watercolour', and I think this is apt. In many ways a very elegant novel, the plot (rather like the bridge itself) simply isn't strong enough.

This is something of a literary departure for David Lodge, who ditches the satire, the campuses and the Catholics in favour of this rather ponderous attempt at biographical fiction. The subject of the novel is Henry James (Lodge himself rather wryly comments in an afterword that he was pipped to the post by Colm Toibin, whose The Master (which I've not yet read) covers similar ground and was shortlisted for the 2004 Booker Prize).

Lodge deals with an unhappy period during James's life. By the 1890s, sales of his books were poor, his novels greeted mostly with indifference by public and reviewers alike. He decided to turn his hand to writing plays instead. However, his adaptation of his novel The American achieved only modest success, and Guy Domville was largely a disaster.

The emotional core of the novel concerns James's long and warm friendship with George Du Maurier. A talented artist, Du Maurier turned to drawing cartoons and illustrations when he lost the sight in one eye. Fearing that the other eye was failing, he decided to try his hand at writing a novel. His first novel met with some success, but it was his 1894 novel Trilby that made his name. Trilby achieved the kind of popular success Henry James could only dream about. To add insult to injury, Trilby (although adding the words trilby [hat] and Svengali to the English language) isn't that good. James had to deal with conflicting emotions - although pleased for his friend's success, it would hardly have been natural if he didn't feel a few pangs of envy as well. I wish Lodge had explored this in more detail and with a bit less caution.

I can't say I didn't enjoy this novel, but it doesn't entirely succeed. Lodge is very good on the insecurities and sensitivities of the writer, and what it's like for a writer who feels misunderstood by his audience. But really the major flaw is that this reads more like biography than fiction, with a sprinkling of conversations thrown in. The result is that the story itself seems curiously lifeless.

Lodge also seems squeamish about trying to get inside his character's head, falling back on writing facts instead of showing us what Henry James, the man (or his Henry James, at any rate) was really like, so the reader sees him almost at several steps removed - we peer through the window at him, but are never invited in. Lodge seems reluctant to go beyond the biographical details and make stuff up - but that's what novelists do! The best section of the book deals with Guy Domville's London premiere, where Lodge frees himself from the constrictions of biography and allows his novelist's voice to take over.

This is a fascinating and often entertaining collection of Gothic tales from the early 19th century, although fans of modern horror should note that gore is in short supply, on the whole, the emphasis being more on psychological terror (justified or not) and mystery rather than on physical violence.

The book opens with Polidori's The Vampyre, a product of course of the same ghost-telling session at the Villa Diodati in Geneva that produced Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The vampyre, Lord Ruthven, may or may not have been based upon Lord Byron, but he is the forerunner of the stereotypical literary vampire, the glamorous aristocrat tempting the innocent.

Other tales, by a variety of authors, deal with matters that would have resonated very strongly with their original audience, such as The Victim, in which medical students buy corpses that have been 'burked', i.e. suffocated (in 1829 Burke and Hare were brought to trial, charged with murdering sixteen people). Confessions of a Reformed Ribbonman concerns a secret criminal brotherhood of Irish nationalists. The meeting at which they discuss the atrocities to come is reminiscent of a Black Mass, and even a modern reader could hardly fail to be moved by the senselessness and horror of the resultant violence.

Premature burial and 'living death' also feature in the stories, and the theme of 'the sins of the fathers', exploited most notably in the excellent but disturbing Gothic tale, The Red Man. There are nods towards Frankenstein in Life in Death, although it's a chilling tale in its own right, taking on the theme of man's attempts to outwit nature and mortality (or God, depending on your beliefs).

Not all of the stories are successful, but the book is well worth reading if Gothic fiction is your thing.

My goodreads profile, if anyone here is a member and fancies adding me as a friend :-) I'm also on LibraryThing, where my member name is scarletslippers, same as my personal LJ.

"If the US spy satellite crashes and wipes out all human life as we know it, what book should you absolutely, positively ensure that you have read before you get engulfed in a global fireball of epic proportions?"



Although a part of me thinks I ought to read a book I'd never read - one of the many I've been 'meaning to' read for years but never got round to (such as Anna Karenina or Crime and Punishment), I would probably go for this one, Reunion by Fred Uhlman, which I've read several times already. Barely the length of a novella, it's the book that has probably affected me more profoundly than any other.

On the face of it, it's a simple tale. The year is 1932, and a friendship forms between classmates Hans Schwartz and the aristocratic Konradin von Hohenfels. Hans is Jewish; Konradin's mother keeps a picture of Hitler on her dresser. Inexorably, the boys' simple world begins to change. Political events test their friendship. What makes this book truly special - apart from Uhlman's unsentimental writing - is the ending, when, many years later and living in America, Hans learns something about his former friend. I can't tell you what that something is without giving away a denouement that you really need to read for yourself; suffice it to say that the first time I read the book, the ending affected me to such an extent that I felt as if I'd been punched in the stomach.

Of the many books that I treasure, this is probably the book that means the most to me. If the world were to end, this is the book I'd read to remind myself of what it means to be human in an often brutal world.

ArtsWOM arts blog

Davies combines two narratives - a modern-day quest for the stuffed specimen of a long-extinct bird, and the 18th century tale of the naturalist Sir Joseph Banks and his mysterious mistress.

Fitz, an expert in the field of extinct birds, is contacted by an old lover, Gabriella. She introduces him to Karl Anderson, an important backer of Gabriella's work, who requests Fitz's help in tracking down the mysterious Lost Bird of Ulieta.

With the assistance of Katya, a girl who lodges in the same building as Fitz, he is drawn into the hunt for the bird, which was discovered in 1774 during Cook's expedition to the South Seas. One specimen was brought back to England, entering the collection of naturalist Sir Joseph Banks, who had accompanied Cook on the voyage.

The historical storyline follows Joseph Banks from his first meeting with a mysterious girl who lived near his home, and whose artistic talents he much admired. Shortly before Banks joined Cook's voyage, he broke off his engagement to another woman, and began an affair with the young artist. Nothing is known about her except that she called herself 'Miss B'. As Fitz and Katya become immersed in the quest for the missing bird, the impossible romance between Banks and his mistress takes on greater importance.

As an amateur family historian, I particularly enjoyed the genealogical hunt for Miss B, which leads Fitz and Katya to Lincolnshire and the final clue that will solve the puzzle. Along the way, Fitz and Katya must dodge Anderson (whose agenda isn't entirely clear) and a rather sinister American antiques dealer.

I thought the historical chapters were particularly well-written, and enjoyed that thread more than the modern-day tale, although the whole thing is a highly enjoyable, fun tale.