dovegreyreader scribbles

The New House ~ Lettice Cooper

'A removal, Rhoda perceived, is like a slow journey across difficult country, full of halts and pauses, interspersed with odd meals and cups of tea consumed hurriedly, like meals and drinks in a station waiting room.'

It's Persephone tea with Cornflower today and Karen's choice this month, The New House by Lettice Cooper, and before I drop a clanger any hints on pronunciation?

I have heard Lettice, when used as a name, pronounced Letteechay and I'm wondering whether that's for real or someone doing what we always do when we drive past Spud-u-like and chorus, 'Oh look, Spadoolikay.'
It would good to know if we're supposed to be talking salad leaves or something far more refined because I also see it's a variation of Letitia, the Latin for joy so I'd like to get it right.

It's hard to imagine quite what an upheaval moving house and downsizing might have been like in the pre-war days. It seemed enough of an accomplishment to get ourselves, three children, a dog, a cat, two guinea pigs and six chickens six miles up the road fifteen years ago and one thing I recall very clearly is how bereft I felt to leave our little terraced cottage. I had a ridiculously sentimental attachment to it as our first 'bought' home. Well, all £12,300 worth of it most of which was owned by the Halifax Building Society, but it had been the home we'd restored ourselves and brought all our newborn babies back to, and though it was the right time to move I came as near as possible to hating the people who had kindly bought it from us, as if they'd stolen something that was mine.
It took me months, if not years to get over that and I'd drive past and hope they were looking after my lovely kitchen and my gorgeous en suite bathroom, especially as we had to start renovating all over again when we arrived here. It took me a while to bond with the middle of nowhere yet now I can't imagine ever living near to civilisation.
The New House is another of those perceptive Persephone reads that captures the world on the cusp of change, published in 1936 and Family Powell, a generation 'yearning for wholeness' have seen the old order change in the aftermath of the First World War. With the death of the gentle, loving and tolerant Mr Powell (a merciful release it would seem when you get to know Mrs Powell) , son Maurice's marriage and move into the family business and daughter Delia's free-spirited escape, it's the unmarried daughter Rhoda who seems to have drawn the short straw. Stuck at home looking after mother, witnessing the 'fall from the ranks' and masterminding the downsizing from large family home to something much more modest...and heaven forfend within sight of other people's washing, poor Rhoda watches helplessly as life passes her by. With the chasms of change briefly exposed by the house move...and how interesting that it is a home that is left behind and house that they move to... perhaps the time is right for Rhoda to make her own bid for freedom,

' Today, she thought is like a crack in my life. Things are coming up through the crack and if I don't look at them, perhaps I shall never see them again. Ordinary life in the new house will begin tomorrow and grow over the crack and seal it up.'

With its themes of class, money and decorum...

'They saw her move past the window, bareheaded, in her jumper and skirt.
    "She ought to put a hat on if she's going past all those houses,"...'

and marriage and women's lives, The New House is a perfect  microcosm of a family of its time, all its foibles and temperaments delicately exposed and all revolving around Mrs Powell who, like a child at the centre of her own world, has an expectation that everyone else has been born to minister to her every need. As the maids, cooks and general factotums disappear the onus falls on her children and there's even a risk that the family will have to do their own housework, perhaps wash a dish, all much more than Mrs Powell can contemplate.
I wonder if it's because I'm still reading Virginia Woolf's The Waves (published in 1931) also with a character called Rhoda, that I sensed parallel moments in The New House, particularly that Freudian revelation of the inner consciousness and the Woolf-like exploration of the same scene through different eyes.

'If, thought Rhoda, you could, just for a single minute, get inside another person, and look at yourself and everyone from them, what a difference it would make to all the rest of your life!'

and she proceeds to remember moments as a child when she had tried to do that.

I had no idea that Lettice Cooper was related by marriage to Jilly Cooper and her Preface to the book offers some delicious insights into the possible family sources for The New House whilst also identifying Lettice Cooper's skill as a writer who

'seldom judged her characters and found humour and pathos in every situation...every time the reader becomes outraged at the monstrous egotism of a character, the kaleidoscope shifts and they do soemthing spontaneously and unexpectedly kind.'

A lovely read and for next month (April 28th) I've chosen The Casino by Margaret Bonham, short stories mostly set in Devon, and now it must be time for tea with Cornflower.

Wenlock Poetry Festival

Preparations are well in hand for the dovegreyreader scribbles trip to the Wenlock Poetry Festival at Much Wenlock from 9th -11th April being organised by Anna Dreda and her team at Much Wenlock Books. I hope you're all ready for the off.
Threatened train strikes and a nightmare rail journey home (even without strikes) on the Sunday see me travelling by coach, which will be different, but once I arrive I will be around and blogging live from the Festival.
The programme is full of interesting and new events for me so I'm really looking forward to hearing some new names (to me) in amongst the more familiar figures of Roger McGough and Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy.
I've been brushing up too, so as well as reading Carol Ann Duffy's Selected Poems I dusted off my original copy of Roger McGough's first collection Watchwords which I bought for 50p back in 1972, and probably out of one of my first £12 a week student nurse pay packets. It's travelled through every move I have ever made since then, so packed and unpacked ten times but always put on the shelf wherever I've lived.
Browsing through I was very amused to find this from Roger McGough...

If I Were Poet Laureate

If I were Poet Laureate
purveyor of words to the Queen
I'd make some welcome changes
and liven up the scene

I'd wear silver lame trousers
and velvet jacket of black
with 'By Royal Appointment'
in gold letters on my back...

I do hope someone somewhere is appliqueing those words on a jacket for Carol Ann Duffy who meanwhile has written a special poem for the Festival which, in what is now becoming a wonderful and traditional fusion of craft and words, is to be knitted throughout the Festival and afterwards. If anyone wants to contribute to this knitted Laureateal offering have a look here for more information; being an expert on the letter 'O' after the Poetry Society knit-a-poem last year I'm hoping there might be a few left.
If anyone is likely to be at the Festival please do find me and say hello, it's always lovely to meet you and I'll be in and out of the bookshop for the WiFi.
Now having barely concealed my disappointment at no offering from the Laureate for the dovegreyreader scribbles 4th birthday a few weeks ago, and you may recall Bookhound valiantly stepped up to the plate, here by special permission is the Poet Laureate's poem to celebrate the Wenlock Poetry Festival.

Here are my bees,

gold blurs on paper,
besotted; buzzwords dancing
their flawless airy maps.

Been deep, my poet bees,
in the parts of flowers,
in daffodil, thistle, rose, even
the golden lotus; so glide,
gilded with talent, thuswise-
and know of us:
how your scent pervades
my shadowed, busy heart,
and honey is art.

Carol Ann Duffy

The boy done good...

With apologies to anyone who's fed up with all this whale talk...but it's the Kayaker on NZ TV so I have to put it here for posterity...

So Long, See You Tomorrow ~ William Maxwell

What a good thing you're all there, because how readily I had slipped into seeing So Long See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell as a sequel to They Came Like Swallows.
I still didn't know sufficient about William Maxwell to see what was going on here and that had been partly intentional, it can be the joy and the puzzle of discovering a new (to me) writer. It's tempting to search out everything written about an author in these circumstances but I'm being measured, not going overboard and thus far I have gleaned the bare facts.
So I've gathered that William Maxwell was the fiction editor of The New Yorker from 1936 to 1976, and worked with 'literary greats such as J.D. Salinger, Vladimir Nabokov, John Cheever and Eudora Welty, amongst others.'
That John Updike thought William Maxwell had a voice that was

"one of the wisest and kindest in American fiction."

That much of his writing is autobiographical and that I'd sell a ferret (running out of cats) to read The Paris Review interview (Issue 85 Fall 1982), just a bit too expensive to buy online so I'm desperately hoping it will be in the next Canongate collection. Those interviews are unsurpassed, such a literary treasure trove, each one telling me so much that I want to know about a writer, with that well-placed and disarming question revealing so much more depth in those conversations.
I did track down an interview with Barbara Burkhardt author of William Maxwell - A Literary Life just for some more on William Maxwell's use of autobiography in his fiction because I'm starting to want to fill in some gaps,

'Maxwell’s mother died when he was ten years old, during the influenza epidemic of 1918 to 1919. He did not intend to keep returning to his mother’s death, yet it was the central fact of his life and work and kept resurfacing when he wrote fiction taken from some aspect of his own experience. He kept the material fresh by reconsidering it from different vantage points as he aged and by continually experimenting with different narrative techniques....'

And in the end I had to order the book, suddenly I know enough about William Maxwell to want to know it all... quite how did the death of his mother affect this boy of ten sufficiently for it to constantly surface in his fiction? 

So Long, See You Tomorrow is narrated by a man in his fifties attempting to reconstruct events from his teenage years, a friendship whose loyalty is tested by the murder of Lloyd Wilson on his Illinois farm. It is a  murder of passion committed by the friend's father and slowly but surely the evidence and the circumstances are revealed.
It was the nameless narrator's introduction of himself that had me barking up the wrong sequel tree.
All those details about the death of the mother in childbirth, the relentless and timeless pacing around that such a loss involves, the family shut off from each others' grief and each suffering their own version of this terrible loss and of little help to each other, the remote and distant older brother and all explained in William Maxwell's pitch perfect prose

'...I had inadvertently walked through a door that I shouldn't have gone through and couldn't get back to the place I hadn't meant to leave.'

Does a single sentence come any more perfect than that?
Am I right, was William Maxwell as gentle and as humble as he sounds?
Those observations of a child's world as an adult and with such perfect attention to the little details in They Came Like Swallows, now reshaped, reordered into a new and shifting perspective. This feels like William Maxwell gently manipulating the viewpoint to see what else might be revealed, not only to us but to himself.
Have you ever gone back to a place you knew well as a child?
It's size and shape is fixed in your child's mind's eye and invariably huge, and then you get there as an adult and find something comparatively reduced and slightly disappointing.
Why a picture of a Cornish beach you may ask, well my lasting memory of this child's eye distortion is Elephant Rock on Bossiney beach in Cornwall.
When I was six, it towered over me and the beach, when I went back for the first time in my thirties, it seemed almost like a miniature version of the one I thought I knew, far less imposing.

'...a small segment of the past, remote and yet in perfect focus, like something seen through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars.'

You see, William Maxwell pins it down perfectly.
Moment's like this are captured time and again in a book that will bear many readings whilst doubtless yielding new insights each time.

To my ears this was Bunny's adult voice and assuming as I did that premise I was instantly rewarded with so much, because when I turned the final page of They Came Like Swallows my greatest wish was to know how Bunny may have fared in later life.
So if not a sequel can it be termed a continuation?
An exploration in fiction of William Maxwell's life?
If all you Maxwell aficionados could please keep on straightening out my thinking about him I'd be very grateful, and I can only apologise if I'm carving up a beloved rare gem, into a rough diamond before your very eyes with all this tentative thinking out loud.
There are of course risks to be taken with the fallibility of memory and the narrator acknowledges this,

'What we, or at any rate what I, refer to confidently as memory - meaning a moment, a scene, a fact that has been subjected to a fixative and thereby rescued from oblivion - is really a form of storytelling that goes on continually in the mind and often changes with the telling..'

'...what I thought happened was so different from what actually did happen that it might almost have been something made up out of whole cloth.'

But as Barbara Burkhardt suggests,

'By the time he published So Long, See You Tomorrow in 1980, he said that all he wanted was to say exactly what he meant “in the only exact way of saying it.” Working so intently with other writers’ prose helped him to refine his own'

I'm currently reading Time Will Darken It and at snail's pace William Maxwell's 1966 short story collection , The Old Man at the Railroad Crossing & Other Tales whilst keeping Truman Capote's Paris Review interview observation on the art of the short story uppermost in my mind

'After reading it, can you imagine it differently, or does it silence your imagination and seem to you absolute and final? '

I think I know the answer...

Erika's Quiz

Hello me old muckers, Rocky here, long time no see eh?
She promised faithfully,  no more of those papparazzi shots of me cooking in front of the Aga... or asleep in the wool basket... or even worse wearing a silly party hat, so I bet you've missed me.
Never mind, I'm here now, feast your eyes... gorgeous aren't I, even though I'm not allowed to sit on the kitchen table, she went loopy but took the photo first.
My thanks to everyone who entered last week's quiz, Rhys is sorting that out and thank you to Erika in Delaware for setting you this week's. I'm really enjoying having a lie-in on a Sunday and getting every one else to do the work so if anyone else fancies pitting their wits against the well-read crowd that enter these portals, getting the pencil ends chewed around the world as everyone goes insane looking for the answers, then please have a go and send me your ten questions.
Erika's theme is Children's Books and I think there are a couple of brain-tanglers in there that might flummox you this week...well I got them all right, but that's to be expected.
We need the names of books and authors for the answer

***Don't write your answers in comments***

send them to me at dovegreyreader at gmail.com by midnight GMT on Friday April 3rd and I will adjudicate in feline fashion and a book prize will follow for the winner eventually.

1) A helpful robin

2) A rabbit which tells time

3) A room full of salmon pink geraniums

4) A squirrel singing irritating rhymes

5) A road hog amphibian

6) 4 children who aren't duffers

7) Pickled limes

8) The wars of the tomatoes

9) Smuggled to safety in  a bundle of Straw

10) Smuggled in  a cartload of wood

9) and 10) are two young boys centuries apart

Whistlestop London

My trip to London this week really was very whistle stop but I have to say a big thank you to anyone living in  London right now.
You are doing a stalwart job of coping with all the pre-Olympic disruption so that people like me, who have loved the Olympics for ever (me since Rome 1960) can revel in 2012. London is being rebuilt and refurbished whilst life carries on around it, and only 856 more days of it to go I see from the countdown clock on the Telecom Tower. We've registered for tickets this week and I'll sell everything to be there, I'll watch anything and I'll sleep on the underground if I have to.

You might wonder how I got that shot...not the hotel, that was tucked behind Euston station and I listened fondly to the platform announcements from my room, nor the 'day job' staff meeting venue, that was Holloway Road, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
It was my complete good fortune to discover that David Vann was in the UK and doing a reading from his novel Legend of a Suicide at the To Hell with Books  on Tuesday evening, which as luck would have it was within pigeon spitting distance of my hotel and only required a minor dash through Bloomsbury to get there.
I had a quick literary moment as I took in Gordon Square, one time home of Virginia Woolf and imagined her walking across here too.

I wasn't the only one who had to be there to hear David Vann either, the place was jam-packed and steaming-hot and we can only be thankful that I had decided to leave off my long sleeved thermal vest thinking London is always much warmer than us here in the middle of nowhere.

As it is I only lost one stone when with the vest I might have lost two but would have needed an ambulance.
I managed to sneak a shot of David Vann around the heads and also get my copy of the book signed, and by the time you read this we know that David sadly didn't win the Sunday Times Short Story Award last night for which his story had been short listed, and which he read us and which we laughed at and loved.

It was also a real pleasure to meet these hands that blog too.

Yes that's fellow NTTVBG bloggers Simon of Savidge Reads and Kimbofo of Reading Matters.
And it was also a real pleasure to meet and chat to Evie Wyld author of After the Fire, A Still Small Voice which I've promised to read, it's had stunning reviews.
Another work day and then as luck would have it an early evening invite to a gathering of bloggers at Headline Books, on the 16th floor of that building and thus that stupendous view across London.
Good to meet Simon and Kim again...that's life, you've never set eyes on someone before and then you see them two days running, and I came away from Headline clutching amongst other things a copy of Andrea Levy's The Long Song for which I am also very grateful.
By the time I sink into my train seat there's a real risk I'll be unconscious before Berkshire and unlikely to wake up at Exeter, so I have to do things to keep awake, because I have this nightmare vision of Bookhound on the platform at Exeter shouting 'Hold the train, she's asleep in there' and him having to come on and drag me off.
My 'real book' concession along with the e reader was Time Will Darken It by William Maxwell and fortunately I had no wish to fall asleep as I read.

I just had to keep stopping and thinking about what makes this book so amazing, thus far it's the way William Maxwell ends his chapters with an observation or a single moment or gesture, carefully refracted and at a slightly oblique angle allowing the reader to invest the significance, I could have carried on reading all the way to Penzance...imagine that
'Hold the train, she's reading in there...'

Hold the front page...

We'll save this week's dovegreyreading until tomorrow because when the phone rings at 7am here we know it's either something exciting or something terrible going down with the Kayaker (son of dgr for anyone who doesn't know) currently travelling and working his way around New Zealand.
He made a rapid recovery from having every last possession stolen from his camper van just two weeks into his year long trip last November, and then retrieving it all three weeks into his trip; he's travelled around and for several months has been working as a photographer on the boats that take tourists out whale watching and dolphin-swimming around Bay of Islands.
This on the basis that someone's got to do it and I think you can see how miserable he is..
 
One can but hope that if any of your children make the front page of the newspaper it's for the right reasons and fortunately I can report that the Kayaker happened to be in the right place at the right time for a set of scoop whale photos.

So anyone in New Zealand, dash out and have a look at today's New Zealand Herald because that's his whale picture on the front page and only follow this link if you can cope with reading about the inevitable end result. which was a hearty breakfast for the whale.
But even better... could we now be in possession of our secret weapon for this year's village show and the photography section?
How sensible of the committee to put in that wildlife category.
Thankfully the kayaker was on the boat at the time and not in the water, for which  we are very grateful, because nothing is ever certain when last week he was doing this.

The Lady is for turning...

I wonder if anyone else watched The Lady and the Revamp over on Channel Four last Thursday evening?
I had been looking forward to it so had scribbled 'Thursday 9pm Lady' on the kitchen whiteboard to remind me, (not sure what it reminded the men of the house to do) written in amongst things like 'toothpaste' and 'next one out get milk' or  'gone to Plymouth, back later'. The whiteboard being the main source of all incoming and outgoing information about what this house needs and does, where its residents may be or should be at any one time and if absent for any length of time, where they have gone to live.
I'm sure posh houses don't have these.
England's longest surviving weekly magazine for women and cited as Her Majesty's favourite read, it would seem the Queen and I have unwittingly been helping The Lady limp along by buying it in recent months. I'm a recent convert since discovering back in January that Susan Hill was the new Literary Editor and all without realising how crucial every single purchase seems to be at the moment.
And then recently I was approached about doing an interview for The Lady and who knows, even though I've explained no silver spoons and no blue blood, it's supposed to be happening soon and I suppose some of you might seek it out that week, or at least find it on the shelves in Smiths and have a look...every bit helps apparently.
In fact I'd really not meant to start reading it until I was about seventy.
It seems like a declaration of something definite when you start taking The Lady, a sort of graceful shift into old age and you can't help but notice all those adverts for devices that ease your passage...if you see what I mean, screening tests for peripheral arterial disease and stair lifts and mobile phones with great big numbers. Of course I might have come to the magazine sooner had I been born with the silver spoon in the right place and in need of nannies, housekeepers and gardeners, but as it is I sensibly married Bookhound and he saves us a shed load of expense in that direction.
Rachel Johnson has taken over as the editor and probably hates being constantly identified as sister of Boris (Mayor of London), but she is so I will, and tasked with a remit of increasing circulation to 35,000 from an ailing 20,000 or so she walked in the building with a great big bag on her arm which obviously contained a very great big new broom.

‘We want to attract women aged 45 and up who want more out of their magazines than celebrity pieces and high fashion. What we want to create is an intelligent and articulate women’s magazine with attitude. That’s what it’s about. Not age or Prada bags and Gucci shoes.’

Her motto is more hip, less hip-replacement'

So Rachel walked right on in and got stuck into the old guard...who weren't happy bunnies at all.
The old literary editor had gone in a cloud of sour grapes before the first adverts, the previous editor hung on until after the third ad break which seemed pretty tenacious of her.
With a stupendous building in London at their disposal, staff who seemed to have inherited jobs like peerages and with an archive to die for, The Lady was clearly in need of turning.
Then there were the covers, ah yes, the covers that seemed redolent of the 1970s 60s...50s hadn't changed since prehistory, and proprietors who were also clinging to the wreckage of the past whilst fearing the plunge into the future, it was clear Rachel Johnson was eventually going to have to be ruthless and she was.
Now I'm not a great magazine purchaser, heavens above I feel like I write one single-handed here without having time to read other people's, but as well as some interesting feature articles (including several from Margaret Powling who often stops by here), The Lady has one other very big plus going for it with me and it's The Ladygram.
I'll bet it's been going for donkey's years but I've developed a bit of a sad addiction which seems harmless at £1.80 a throw when it could be much worse, because there's this rather smug looking mugshot of the man who compiles it (I'm sure it's the angle and he's probably very amenable) but it's the slight turn of the mouth and the distant look in Keith Parker's eye which seems to be saying to me

'Go on then...you'll never manage it'

and the really annoying thing is I don't.
It's crossword-like clues and the answers go into a numbered grid (Box A). Then you have to transfer the numbered letters of your answer into another correspondingly numbered grid (Box B)
The initial letters of the answers in Box A will spell the name of an author and the title of a book they have written...are you keeping up?
Meanwhile all is not quiet in Box B because that's supposed to be shaping up into an identifiable quotation from the book.
I've never completed one yet and it drives me insane, so much so that at any given moment I announce I'm going to Ladygram and I have to dash off and  have a little go and I still get nowhere, but I have huge confidence in you all, someone out there will crack it.
Bearing in mind that one wrong answer may well have skewed this whole thing here's my laboured attempt at author and title from a few weeks ago (and I missed the answers the next week) and bear in mind this took me several 'bath runnings' to do and it nearly overflowed three times because I had no maid drawing my bath for me.
Name that author, name that book...

B - - - R A - L - - PO - C - E - LAC - - P

Here's an example of a clue too

'Spanner under hammer - just a game!' (13 letters) ...it shouts anagram at me but to no avail, I can't see it and I refuse to cheat and google these things.

or what about

'Openers sound quality is the crux' (8 letters) that's been bugging me for weeks

Box B isn't looking a lot better for the 'identifiable quotation' either.
You can only wish Rachel Johnson the best of good old British luck with all this, she's sensibly writing a diary and has a publishing deal for that lined up and should I make it 'tween those pages you'll be the first to know.

The Small Mine ~ Menna Gallie

So where are we...March?
And now I'm writing about a book I read last November. These are the last of the pile that has sat patiently on that right hand table of my L shaped desk arrangement which runneth over with all manner of things.
The place where I put all the books I want to write about, snippets that have triggered blog thoughts, piles of books I might be referring to, my twirly tabletop book case, anything that is a work in progress, and slowly I've been mopping up last year's reading to make way for this year's and I'm down to the final two books of 2009.

The Small Mine by Menna Gallie and A Woman's Work Is Never Done by Elizabeth Andrews, with a foreword by Glenys Kinnock and both published by Honno Press, that independent Welsh Press publishing women's writing which I came to know and love last year.
Several times I've been tempted to shelve them unwritten about and move on, but each time I've picked them up I've known what a good read they were and what a shame it would be not to let you know that...so here we are five months on having a stab.
Born in 1882  near Aberdare, Elizabeth Andrews was the third of eleven children in a mining family, eventually marrying but remaining childless. Her father died of silicosis and it is the miner's cause that Elizabeth reveals with so much passion in A Woman's Work is Never Done, part autobiography, part memoir  which provides the most revealing social history of the coalfield communities.
Central to Elizabeth's crusade was her personal motto 'Educate, agitate, organise' and in these days of  the 'Every Child Matters' political theme it's interesting to see that we've invented nothing new. Elizabeth Andrews highlighted the needs and development of 'The Child' as central and paramount back in the 1920s.
The child's needs were indeed great.
The Chief Medical Officer of Health's Annual Reports said as much,

'...of two million toddlers between two and five years of age, 31 per cent were dull or very dull through preventable causes, and one million children became 'damaged goods' before they reached the age of five.'

Other local statistics were equally shocking.
Infant mortality, one of several indicators of a country's health status, was 105 per 1000 births in the Rhondda in the early 1920s (current figures for the UK stand at 4.8) and Elizabeth Andrews set about the authorities with determination in her campaign for pit head baths....there is a connection.
I had never quite realised the importance of pit head baths or the fact that without them the men went home in filthy, soaking wet clothes which all had to be washed and dried in an overcrowded kitchen and which 'played havoc with the health of young children.'
Elizabeth campaigned tirelessly on many other fronts... for clean milk free from TB, Diphtheria, Cholera and heaven knows what else... it must have been like drinking poison, for family allowance, nursery provision, improved sanitation and votes for women and I'm in full agreement with Glynis Kinnock,

'...a truly great Welsh woman who has sadly fallen out of our history...whose contribution as a socialist, an internationalist and a suffragist has never been given the plaudits or the acknowledgements which men, who made similar contributions to Welsh life , have received.'

I was bound to find all this fascinating and moving on next to The Small Mine written and almost certainly set in 1962, proved to be a perfect reading combination and a chance to identify how times may have changed, attitudes shifted and conditions improved. In fact Menna Gallie's book catches the whole community on the cusp of change with its themes of the Cold war, the underlying and ominous threat of a nuclear bomb and the unrest that prevailed within the mining communities after the nationalisation of the coal industry in 1947.
As Jane Aaron highlights in her introduction,

'...to desert the Coal Board job for a job in a privately-run small mine is still seen in this novel as a form of betrayal of one's community and its values.'

And this is exactly what young Joe Jenkins, village beau, has done, but he's made some enemies along the way and with less stringent safety regulations in place in the private mine...
Joe and his girlfriend Cynthia represent the new generation and the inevitable schism between tradition and progress.When tragedy occurs Menna Gallie somehow pinpoints that moment with acute precision through the different versions of  grief felt within this tiny, close-knit community and for me she encompassed it with one small act of rebellion.

'' - Drawing the curtains and trying to make me wear black, like a Victorian Miss. My life is not blighted, my heart isn't broken forever. I'm sorry I can't play up. He's dead. OK...'

Here is the new generation shaking off the old and Elizabeth Andrews has a view on that too

'The younger generation of today who are enjoying these hard won privileges and personal freedom get very impatient with their parents and older people when they relate past struggles. But it is from the ruins and sufferings of the past that we have built the present, and the future will depend on what we do now.'

Two more great reads from Honno.

On electronic books...

I discovered a new magazine last year, only published once a year but somehow last year's was close at hand for most of the year and this year's likely to be the same, The Royal Society of Literature Review.
At £50 a year subscription and living so far from London I'm not a member and I doubt bloggers make it to Fellows, so either I've missed this review in previous years or it has just been made available to us on the outside to see what those on the inside get up to, and I found my copy in Waterstone's.
This issue has, amongst other articles, Penelope Lively et al on the short story, a commentary on the enduring (or not) power of Bloomsbury, a fabulous discussion between Hilary Mantel and Beryl Bainbridge on writing historical novels, John Carey on William Golding and the full transcript of the Hawthornden Anglo-American lecture given by Elaine Showalter and entitled American women and Jane Eyre fever examining the excitement and imitations the Brontes have inspired across the Atlantic and there's plenty more. It's £5 well spent to my mind because I shall be dipping in until the next one.
Of interest also, several writers discussing the e-book and its implications.
Now I've got to admit I do like a bit of new technology and I don't like letting it get too far ahead of me, let it emerge and settle and then I seem to plunge in just before the next new thing arrives. So  I'm currently exploring the joys of my iPod Touch, Apps are my new best friends and I shall just let the forthcoming iPad do its own thing, I have enough on my plate with this.
How can something so small hold full length films, hundreds of books, let me find WiFi hotspots and check e mails and the blog when I'm travelling and it probably cooks and washes the dishes, I just haven't asked it yet for fear of usurping Bookhound from his favourite occupation. I have War & Peace and Ulysses on there, the complete works of Shakespeare and who knows what else.
It now seems light years since the Sony e reader arrived here amidst much fanfare, prophets of doom predicting the end of the book as we know it and me frantically fumbling around installing things on the computer to make it work.
The Tinker took one look and realised it was the answer to his every reading need, ordered one and has caught up on countless classics, using it almost constantly ever since. When he was in hospital last year I left him mine, ate some more of his jelly babies, took his off to recharge and he just carried on reading The Count of Monte Cristo.
Whilst most authors seem rightly exercised about copyright issues Philip Pullman is also not optimistic about longevity, asking whether it's all a flash in the pan and can time sustain access to the technology or will an e reader become a dinosaur.
Frances Wilson fears this 'smirking silver object.'
Jenny Uglow is wary regarding intellectual property rights but welcomes the idea that readers 'will be exposed to a range of literature they couldn't possibly imagine - or carry' ....magic paper with the power 'to reach the maximum number of people.'
Philip Pullman is an iTouch convert as am I, but  books + travelling = e reader for me.
I'm with Bryan Appleyard writing recently in the Literary Review who likes the e reader (he has a Kindle) for the simple reason that it is only for books.
Nothing else can intrude on the reading experience, no little box popping up to tell me there are e mails, no temptation to go off and have a quick go on Scrabble (TEXTILES - 96 points this morning) or catch up on who's had what for breakfast on Facebook, just me and hundreds of books in my bag which I find are enough to get me through most of those unforeseen moments of boredom as well as train journeys.
Once I became accustomed to the screen and the buttons I hardly noticed the difference, I'm reading without distraction and that's all that seems to matter. I can cope without the paper and the cover and the feel of the book and the weight of ten books in my luggage quite easily, though I do always carry one slender book at all times in case of withdrawal symptoms.
In turning the pages there is a very slight delay between press and next page so now I'm like a swimmer doing a tumble turn and have timed my press to perfection as I'm reading the last line.
I can bookmark as I'm reading, and to cope with not being able to write in the book I keep a notebook and pencil tucked inside the bespoke cover I made the day it arrived after having serious issues with the ghastly slurry coloured faux leather one the Sony e reader came in.
I'm sure they're not for everyone but mine is definitely for me and I love it still. I'm currently en route to London for two days of 'day job' staff meetings, I'll be reading this month's Ulysses chapter and if I do manage to leave a comment here it will be down to the wonders of iTouch technology and some WiFi somewhere.

Virginia Woolf ~ Anthony Curtis

We've now done four episodes of NTTVBG, had a great discussion about Jennifer Johnston's The Illusionist over at Reading Matters yesterday, and for anyone who may not have heard, we've swapped the weeks slightly. The next book will be Skin Lane by Neil Bartlett over at Savidge Reads on Sunday April 11th followed by The Boys in the Trees by Mary Swann here on Sunday April 25th.
In retrospect I see it might have been a mistake to reread Sketches in Pen and Ink by Vanessa Bell and then pick up the biography Virginia Woolf by Anthony Curtis at the same time as I was supposed to be reading Susan Sellers's fictional account Vanessa and Virginia for the last NTTVBG.
Perhaps don't try this at home.
The final meltdown culminated in Crisis Saturday when no matter how hard I tried to read more of Vanessa and Virginia I just couldn't overcome my qualms about this fictional account of the reality, and though I may have done the book a great disservice by throwing in the towel, I also realised that all reading has to be for pleasure, and that this is what often happens with book groups. You can't like every book and it wouldn't be right if someone didn't pitch up with a failure to report.
It was all Anthony Curtis's fault, (not mine I'm sure) because Virginia Woolf is unlike any other biography I have read on her, with its focus on the life and writing, but scant if any mention of mental or physical illness and rest cures and madness. There were essential references to it of course, but so often this aspect becomes the focus of any book on Virginia Woolf's life, a sort of raison d'etre hook on which to hang anything else that happens as the story moves inexorably towards its grim finale, but all perhaps veiling so much more that may be of interest along the way.
I remain quietly, though perhaps simplistically, convinced that unrecognised grief and loss were at the root of many of Virginia's lifelong troubles and the joy of Anthony Curtis's book was the space in which to formulate those opinions (rightly or wrongly) for myself.
Looking at the timeline proved useful. The loss of her mother in 1895 when Virginia was just thirteen, still a child, then her sister Stella two years later, her father Lesley Stephen in 1904 and then her brother Thoby in 1906. A London family decimated in less than eleven years, with barely the time and space to account for and mourn one loss and build some resilience for coping with the next before it happens.
Virginia's breakdowns often seem to follow rapidly on the heels of those deaths too,
A child's life journey is irrevocably changed by the loss of a parent or a sibling and we know so much more about loss in adolescence now too and how teenagers can end up in what Phyllis Silverman calls 'a no-man's land of grief.' Old enough to know that 'everyone dies and bad things happen' yet 'too young to fully synthesize these thoughts or be certain how life will go on.' Though teenagers hadn't been invented in Virginia's time, the principle remains the same, typically they close down emotionally and the support of the remaining parent or another adult is now considered paramount to better outcomes.
A nation also on the cusp of change, perhaps Victorian ways of mourning being replaced with something less stringent but with Lesley Stephens's profound grief at the loss of his wife proclaimed so overtly, and the ongoing emotional and almost childlike demands he made on those around him, all making it  hard to identify quite where Virginia may have found that essential support and how little space there may have been for her to express her emotions to another adult.
Doubtless also a good-enough reason to keep a diary eventually but who can begin to imagine the excruciating and debilitating pain of those successive losses.
It's only in recent years that loss and bereavement care has moved towards the recognition that continuing bonds with the dead person are necessary if complicated grief reactions are to be avoided, I doubt Virginia Woolf was blessed with such an understanding in those around her at the turn of the twentieth century, where maintaining a healthy connection with the dead person may have been at odds with the prevailing attitudes .
I doubt these are original thoughts, I can't believe there isn't PhD on it somewhere, but it all made for interesting speculation as I read, and with Anthony Curtis's focus on each book and its background I can see that I could now reread them with this focus in mind and probably glean new insights
I've already mentioned the beautifully integrated photographs, many that I hadn't seen before, an object lesson in how to create the right atmosphere and set off a text to perfection and offering a gentle backdrop to this book.

London on a wet evening...Kensington High St in 1906...a nocturnal view of the Victoria Embankment in 1929...the family on holiday in Cornwall.
A beautiful book in so many ways.

NTTVBG and another Rhys quiz!

Don't fortnights go quickly when you have to read a book in between?
So today the NTTVBG are meeting over at Reading Matters with kimbofo to discuss The Illusionist by Jennifer Johnston, but that doesn't mean the rest of you can have a day off from the excitement.
I'm sure it's the moment you've all been waiting for...another quiz from Rhys!
This one entitled Where Did it Happen?
Now I don't know the answers either and, though we've already established that these quizzes might not be for those of a nervous disposition, because nothing may be as it seems especially when you get the answers, I'm going to be really devious and withhold the 'Major Clue' of a few author's names that Rhys added in at the beginning. I think you all scared him last time and he thought he'd better help a bit:-)
Now you can wrack your brains all day long, debate, dash to the shelves, ponder some more, sit for hours knowing that you know but if only you could remember or you can just dash to google and do it in five minutes...you decide.
If you're still on your knees by Wednesday, I might just reconsider revealing Rhys's clue before the closing date of midnight on Saturday March 27th (GMT)
I think we'll say we want locations to be as exact and detailed as possible, grid references, google maps that sort of thing (joke) and please *** Don't put your answers in comments***

Send them to me at dovegreyreader at gmail.com, I'll forward them straight to Rhys who comes up with a winner and sends me the gold envelope and I have an off the shoulder gown from New Look ready for this next announcement and luckily it matches the Dorothy Perkins' cardi from last time.
Good luck everyone.

Where did it happen?

 

1. Where did Louisa Musgrave slip and render herself lifeless?

 

2. Where was Pip when he was jumped on by Magwitch?

 

3. Where did Dr Manette spend his long years of imprisonment?

 

4.  Where was Silas Marner’s gold stolen from?

 

5.   Where in Europe did Milly Teale die?

 

6.  Where in Venice did von Aschenbach die?

 

7.  Where did Birkin and Gerald have their naked wrestle?

 

8.  Where did Mrs Dalloway hold her party?

 

9   Where was Jay Gatsby’s mansion?

 

10. Where did the French Lieutenant’s Woman stand staring out to sea?

Felt accompli...

I've done it and ruined it like you're supposed to and in the end I added in very last bit of chunky I could find... Sirdar Norsgarn circa 1974, Alafoss Lopi Pink Elephant leftovers, bits of this doubled up bits of that trebled, round and round on the circular needles, we all grew quite fond of it and I fended off all the '...er why? ' questions with the 'It's a prototype' response.



Still no requests received for hand-knitted spinnakers for ocean-going yachts so, feeling like an executioner I led it to its fate.



By now feeling like a murderer...

I had to leave the room, in fact go and, tricoteuse-style, knit something else to take my mind off the final execution.




So it took two days to dry properly over the Aga, but now ruined to fuzzy felted perfection and I just have to think what to do with it next.
Is it a bag?
Is it a cushion?
Is it anything else at all?

dovegreyreading...

I'm in a leisurely reading mood at the moment.
As well as Jean Baggott's The Girl on the Wall, I'm still meandering very slowly through The New House by Lettice Cooper for the next dovegreyreader  & Cornflower Persephone tea and still have the new David Mitchell The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet chugging alongside The Concert Ticket by Olga Grushin...same as last week. I may set aside David Mitchell for a while, it's brilliant, fast-moving and dazzling but I am just not in the mood to be dazzled right now.
I've also been reading Kimbofo's choice for this Sunday's NTTVBG The Illusionist by Jennifer Johnston, so not a word about that before Sunday.
I've added in a work-related memoir, An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken, about the loss of her baby at birth, which is matched up with Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking in the cover blurb. All too sad and challenging for many I know, but as I sit and 'listen' to real parents' experiences of a baby born sleeping, in amongst all the other sadness of life, four mornings a week now it can really help to find books like this and gain some new perspectives.
Of this book Alice Sebold says

' By the end of this memoir you will have held a beautiful child in your hands and you will have acknowledged him. This book is an extraordinary gift to us all.'

A few new arrivals have caught my eye as usual and perhaps it's going to be A Dangerous Year for Boys on this year's Booker longlist?
New novels from Martin Amis, David Mitchell, Peter Carey (this one looks good) a new one from Robert Edric, Salvage, which I plan to read carefully because I know I did his writing a huge disservice last time round in my brash young blog days of the first Bookerthon.
And now the latest Ian McEwan, Solar.

I'll own up that I don't greet them with the same degree of enthusiasm reserved for a new Byatt, Waters or Mantel but I'll be giving them all a go and I do have high hopes for some of them.
Solar, before I even get near the content, has a very interesting touchy-feely cover.
If you see it in a bookshop, just discreetly go and stroke that cover and see what you think.
Most odd but apparently we're in for womanising Nobel Prize-winning physicists so who knows what's in store.
There's a new book from Joanne Harris too, blueyeyedboy, and the title seems to be written like that, lowercasenospaces.
Right, I'll now confess that I haven't read Chocolat or even seen the film, so I'll just step back from the explosion of 'You musts' whilst adding that I tried Blackberry Wine and couldn't get on with it at all.
Please advise.


I'm also very taken with a book that would seem to follow on nicely from Helen Rappaport's Beautiful For Ever and fits my current preference for some non-fiction, Wild Romance The True Story of a Victorian Scandal by Chloe Schama, also indexed and referenced, which I always like.
Recounting the flirtation, secret affair and subsequent marriage of nineteen-year old Theresa Longworth and William Yelverton (later the Viscount of Avonmore) and the trials that ensued providing juicy scandal and yet more fodder for the novels of Wilkie Collins.
But there really is nothing to beat one of Adele Geras's 'Best Book Ever' emails, I love them and always follow them up because Adele is never wrong. So this message arrived at about 11pm one evening and by 11.03pm I had ordered the book and it's here,

Good to a Fault by Marina Endicott, Canadian, Giller listed, won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book and then slipped right off my radar, so my thanks to Adele.
Well that's me, how's your bookish week been?

The Girl on the Wall - One Life's Rich Tapestry ~ Jean Baggott

Stop all the reading clocks because the most exquisite book arrived yesterday; it's quite taken my breath away and the fact that I'm rushing in to tell you about it the next day should give you some idea of how very special it is.
The Girl on the Wall - One Life's Rich Tapestry by Jean Baggott and published by Icon Books.
Growing up in West Bromwich in the 1940s and denied the chance to take up her place at grammar school, Jean Baggott is now seventy two and in the final year of a history degree at Warwick University. It was the tentative revelation of her tapestry to one of her tutors that led to this book.
Inspired by the ornate plasterwork ceiling in the Billiard Room at Burghley House in Lincolnshire, this is the culmination of sixteen months (yes, just sixteen months....would be sixteen years here) of stitching and Jean's very own Bayeux; a remarkable and unique visual representation of her life, memories and associations in all their astonishing and intricate detail and it really is the most stunning work of art.
Alongside each little time capsule Jean has written an accompanying chapter by way of explanation which effectively reads as a social history of her life and our times. Several of the seventy-three capsules are personal and Jean has chosen not to elaborate on them but many more are of huge relevance to all our lives and shared. Then there are the little mysteries, the ones that feel like a door onto a forgotten world which Jean explains, and in doing so prompted more memories of my own.
The writing style is knowledgeable yet unpretentious and with an intimacy that reveals Jean to be a wonderful raconteur as I discovered yesterday afternoon.
Having picked up the book as Bookhound went out and me thinking half-heartedly 'I'll do some ironing in a minute' I was still rooted to the seat when he came back a few hours later, and a hundred pages of engrossed reading and looking had happened without me realising.
It's a weighty book which always suggests high production values and Icon really have done a very special job with this one but it's a book that seriously merits this attention to detail; wonderful paper quality (you can smell good paper a mile away can't you) and beautiful colour photos throughout. A large poster of the tapestry (though still not actual size) came with the book and I've pored over it for hours and another smaller one folds out from the back.

So much to see, always something new each time I look and clearly a lifetime of personal memories captured and preserved and all from a fascinating point of view.
You see I didn't know that the nation's children were, as of one, surprised when Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip announced an impending Royal birth and you'll chuckle as I did when you discover that they all thought Prince Philip had no 'naughty bits', and read the book to find out quite how that reliable news had filtered its way down to young Jean and her friends.
It's a book to inspire as well and though I couldn't get the website link to work yesterday I understand there are tips from Jean on there about stitching your own needlework memories. I'm heartened to see Jean doing all this in her seventies (deo volente I have just a bit of time to go) and I'm likewise embarrassed to send you here to see one of my very unfinished offerings which Quilt Inspirations asked if they could use in a feature on Attic Windows. Jean inspires me with hope and inspiration, whilst the season and Lyndall Gordon's book give me a much needed prompt to finish that Emily Dickinson wall hanging, The Inundation of Spring Enlarges Every Soul.
In the meantime I did find this on youtube, so it's my absolute pleasure to introduce Jean, her very special and beautiful tapestry and her wonderful book to you and now, please excuse me while I get back to reading.

Opening the gold envelope now...and the winner of the quiz is...

It arrived in the post from Rhys amid great ceremony this morning, Jim carried it to the door on a velvet cushion, or would have done but for the fact that he's on holiday.
Rocky awoke from his slumbers on his £1 Tesco rug in front of the Aga and observed it briefly...

Kate Winslet had very kindly lent me her Yves St. Laurent Oscar dress and I'd accessorized accordingly with a nice scarf from the outdoor shop because it was a bit chilly, sadly no pics, the battery chose that moment to die but we soldiered on.
And the winner is


Congratulations to Evelyn Atkinson...yes, it's really you!
If you send your address to me at dovegreyreader at gmail.com a bookish surprise from the dovegreyreader shelves will arrive in the post.
And my thanks again to Rhys, I gather he has several more up his sleeve.

A few Oranges...

The longlist is here... just a few gaps on my shelves but quite a few I've been 'meaning to read' and several I'd already given up on, we'll see.

dovegreydigest...

While we twiddle our thumbs waiting for the Orange long list today I thought I'd do a conglomeration.
I've let too much time bookish water pass under the bridge (even for me who will often give a book a few weeks to ferment before writing my thoughts on it here) to write in any detail about these reads that straddled Christmas and New Year.
However, their presence on the table at my right hand, where I stack up anything I want to cover here, is also starting to bother me. I can see them constantly out of the corner of my eye and they're all glaring at me, as well as confirming that the year is already flying by at a rate of knots.
It seems a shame not to mark their passage onto the Books Read list, so a quick round up should help.

The Coroner by M.R.Hall, and it was the arrival of the sequel in proof copy that had me ferreting out the first in the series.
A pacy, engrossing read offering a coroner's perspective on the world of crime and a credible female lead in Jenny Cooper, flawed, damaged and struggling with life as she is appointed to the role of Severn Vale District Coroner. I was riveted as well as enjoying what I can only assume is good insider info on the life and work of a coroner from an author who has either worked in the system or knows someone who does. Every frustration in the system suitably exposed as the coroner explores the cause of death and those distinctions clearly made and separated from crime-solving, though Jenny does seem to cross that boundary from time to time. A character I would seek out and read in a series, so how handy that I have the next one lined up.

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann and I'm utterly ashamed and mortified that a book I felt had been one of my best reads in recent months has sat unwritten about for so long.

1974 and as Phillipe Petit makes his tightrope walk across the Twin Towers high above New York, life in the city below is also a balancing act for a disparate group of residents whose lives will be woven together by this day and this event. Themes of home, faith, loss and loneliness stalk the street priest, the grieving mother of the son killed in Vietnam, the hookers, the subway graffiti artists as their lives connect, and Colum McCann explores that old observation about degrees of separation  slowly narrowing and reducing them to a proximity that could perhaps have felt contrived but somehow worked wonderfully for me.Don't ask me how long I spent speculating about that bendy man on the cover (real or computer graphics) or why I missed writing about such a beautifully written book; perhaps writing a blog is a balancing act too, it just happens sometimes and though I could kick myself, time to move on.

Though I rarely write here about books that I haven't enjoyed because I never finish them, I'm making an exception for The Blasphemer by Nigel Farndale.
I did finish this one in the desperate hope that the end would somehow pick up the narrative depth of the beginning, which had me hooked in very quickly. I was in a forgiving mood because it was Christmas, and I don't even drink but the halls were decked with boughs of holly and all was right with the world...I may have been much less tolerant of this book in February.
By the end I had galloping plot muddle overdose and I emerged trying to convince myself that the time hadn't been wasted because perhaps it had introduced me to a writer who knows how to tell a good story, but one who had created a sort of motorway pile up of incredulous ideas and sadly seemed to have put a lifetime of them into the one book.
The plane crash, the diabetic daughter, the volcanic eruption, the letters from the Great War deserter, the school teacher- terrorist theme, the doomed love affair, the long swim for shore, the ship hitting an iceberg, the nasty goings-on at the university, the sighting of angels, the siege, the kidnapping, the earthquake, the unwanted pregnancy, the fall through the glass roof, the marriage on the rocks, the abduction, the meteorite hitting London...well I may have done a bit of a pick-and-mix porkie-pie fabrication there for fear of spoilers but trust me, a good few of them are in there.. did I forget the bomb?
I may have done, so that's for me to know and you to guess, but something went sadly amiss with this novel for me.
Actually, what do I know about these things, Melvyn Bragg thinks it's 'a great achievement' , The Australian thinks it's 'exquisite and luminous' and is a cert for the Booker short list and there seem to be plenty of strong reviews on Amazon. It'll probably be a Hollywood blockbuster too so just ignore me swimming against the tide, but I really wanted to sit Nigel Farndale down and say now let's just slow down a bit here.
Lets' make 'em wait, here we have books two, three and four as well and they'll be very happy with all of them, just not all between the same covers.
Is it me? Has anyone else read it? What thinkest thou?

Invisible by Paul Auster... I'm in that valley of the shadow of ambivalence, read but not sure that I enjoyed or had that much sympathy with anyone and may have been bamboozled by Paul Auster's usual narrative somersaults.
Also will someone pleeeeeeeeeeeease explain the end?
It might just alter my perceptions and catapult me into the open plains of brilliant sunlight, understanding and appreciation.

Team Ulysses ~ Camp Nine

Well Team Ulysses, I don't know about you but I'm feeling in a fairly buoyant Ulyssesian mood this month.
Spring is sprung here and while we've been wintering our way through Sirens and Nausicaa ,and Oxen in the Sun, Lisa in Oz has been sweltering through summer and doing a proper job for us.
Don't miss her schoolgirl recollections of the Joycean streets of Melbourne.
It's been really good to laze my way through three months of Circe and not feel rushed about it, time to gather up some energy for the final push. Slowly but surely any intentions to read notes and understand more deeply, which, despite my best intentions otherwise seemed to hit me as I approached the halfway mark, have fallen by the wayside.
I've let go and laughed out loud through Circe, and constantly imagined how this must have been received back in the 1920s.
Thank you to Marcia who sent me a link to Garrison Keillor's A Writer's Almanac  ( a revelation to which I have now subscribed by e mail) and an entry about William York Tindall, a James Joyce scholar born in 1903 in Vermont. Having heard about this 'notorious book' William Tindall decided to buy a copy when he was in Paris, discovering that it 'wasn't a dirty book but a fascinating one' and to his amazement he had made his purchase on June 16th.

"When he returned to the U.S., he started teaching a course in modern literature at New York University, and he was one of the first professors in the United States to assign Ulysses to his students. The book was still banned in the U.S. at the time, so his students had to read a bootlegged copy that was chained to a desk in the library."

I feel slightly chained to my copy too.
It's been wandering around the house with me for the last nine months, a sort of constant in my reading life, when the time finally comes it will feel very strange to put it back on the shelf.
But it's too big to travel with and I've seriously considered but resisted the heinous crime of  taking a scalpel to it and dissecting it into smaller parts on several occasions through this year. I once watched someone do this to the Norton Complete Shakespeare at an Open University Summer School and the tutor group bar one all followed like lemmings.
The 'bar one' was me weeping over in the corner at the carnage.
However I do have several longish train journeys coming up before June so I've settled on buying an electronic copy for my e reader instead. I still heart my e reader and as Ulysses only set me back £1.59 I don't feel too out of pocket.

How it will feel to read it on screen I don't know and I wonder what James Joyce might have thought of such electronictrickery ?
I did come across a review of Ulysses by another favourite writer, Jorges Luis Borges.

'I am the first traveller from the Hispanic world to set foot upon the shores of Ulysses, a lush wilderness already traversed by Valery Laubard, who traced its dense texture with the impeccable precision of a mapmaker, but which I too will describe, even though my visit within its borders has been inattentive and transient.'

and at least he was honest...

'I confess that I have not cleared a path through all seven hundred pages...and yet I know what it is, with that bold and legitimate certainty with which we assert our knowledge of a city, without ever having been rewarded with the intimacy of all the many streets it includes.'

Written in 1925 Borges seems to have taken a courageous stance when the book was getting such a mixed reception elsewhere and of Circe he writes

'Joyce sketches a delirious brothel scene, and the chance conjuring of any loose phrase or idea ushers in hundreds - the sum is not an exaggeration but exact - of absurd speakers and impossible events.

Calling James Joyce a 'millionaire of words and styles' Jorges Luis Borges predicts that

'ten years from now...we will still enjoy him'

The Tinker's lifetime on (he was born in 1925 and will be eighty five any day now... he's very well and I'll bring you news of his next exciting escapade soon)  Borges was not mistaken and adds something I'm certainly starting to believe too,

'Be what it may, I will always esteem and adore the divine genius of this Gentleman, taking from him what I understand with humility and admiring with veneration what I am unable to understand.'

Beautiful For Ever ~ Helen Rappaport

I've already declared an interest in Beautiful For Ever, having given it the thumbs up when Susan Hill asked for my thoughts on Helen Rappaport's proposal submission to Long Barn Books, so we've got that bit out of the way. My thanks to Helen too who has kindly agreed to pop in and out of comments today and chat with you about her books and answer any questions.
And if perchance you haven't read any of Helen's books you have joys in store because she invests all her subjects with a wonderfully well-written, scholarly vibrancy that can't fail to impress. Having read No Place For Ladies and  Ekaterinburg I just knew I wouldn't be disappointed with Beautiful For Ever and I wasn't.
The true account of Sarah Russell's rise from the hot potato and fried fish shop at no.4 Clare Market, a sort of Victorian Spudulike (or Spadoolikay as we like to call it) to the lofty heights of Madame Rachel of 47 New Bond Street (on the corner of Maddox St) purveyor of  exotic beauty creams and potions to the rich and famous.

'Costly Arabian Preparations for the restoration and preservation of female loveliness....'

with the canny advertising preying on womens' insecurities

'How frequently we find that a light blemish on the face, otherwise divinely beautiful, has occasioned a sad and solitary life of celibacy, unloved, unblessed, and ultimately unwept and unremembered.'

Quite how an illiterate woman with countless children possibly by a man named Phillip Levison, ( but nothing seems certain where Rachel's concerned,) came to believe that her contribution to society's well-being was as profound as Dr Jenner's for the smallpox vaccine makes for very interesting reading. As does Rachel's rise to the dizzy heights of charging 'more than twenty guineas' (that's £1500 in today's money) for enamelling a lady's face.
It all has to be read to be believed.
Enamelling a simple process that somehow Madame Rachel beefed up to look like a specialist treatment, and how the women flocked to have their faces tweezed and exfoliated followed by the application of a sort of crevice-filling paste of arsenic or white lead, topped off with a dab of rouge and powder.
That'll be twenty guineas please.
What I may have missed in my incredulity as I read was quite how long that enamelling stayed on...I get the impression it was quite a long time.
Dogged by court cases, scandal and prison sentences, Madame Rachel and her daughters seems impervious to it all.
Bottles of very dubious Jordan Water at twenty guineas a bottle were the subject of one court exchange between Serjeant Ballantine and Rachel junior...

'Q: Now I ask you Miss Leverson, did you believe this Jordan Water was reality of sham?
A : I believed it to be a reality.
Q: You mean to tell the Court and jury on your oath that you believe that water came from the River Jordan?
A: I believe it is brought from the East.
Q: From the East! Well but that is very indefinite, for the East may mean Wapping...'

Slippery economy of the facts was also Rachel's speciality which made for interminable and wearying court cases. The resulting scandal amongst the wealthy became embarrassingly damaging as the true extent of spending by wives desperate to indeed be beautiful for ever were exposed, and it's not hard to see how Madame Rachel had stripped Mary Tucker Borradaile of her considerable assets of £5,300 in a mere six months.
But it all raises many other interesting themes too, even if the women had taken wealth into the marriages, it was  their husband's money they were spending.
I'm a great believer in a decent moisturiser but how much do I spend on time delaying anti-age spot vitamin and collagen-laden versions if I'm really honest...well only if they've got double Boots Advantage Card points actually, but I should know better. I've done enough dermatology training to know I'm on a hiding to nothing, a jar of Pond's and drinking more water would probably be just as useful and cheaper.
And why do I still love that ridiculously expensive cleanser that comes with the muslin cloth when there are far cheaper versions...except they are not quite the same.
Doesn't Marie Helvin famously use butter or something?
Actually I read that years ago so I thought I'd better check, she's spending a bit more these days...

'I keep my skin looking young with… STOP, £396. It’s a hand-held radio-frequency device to tighten skin. It’s very relaxing. I use it for 20 minutes while listening to Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour. It’s therapeutic and I can feel it working. My cat loves watching me do it.'

If you get the opportunity to hear Helen talking about Beautiful For Ever around the literary festivals don't miss it. As well as being a Russianist and an academic Helen used to be an actress and so has an incredible and unforgettable stage presence and a voice that projects to the rafters...no shouting from the back 'we can't hear you', you'll hear and love every word. The book is also fully referenced with detailed sources, a full bibliography and an index making this a useful reference work as much as a thoroughly enjoyable read.
But now I'm really intrigued because Helen is staying with the Victorians for her next book too, on the death of Prince Albert and for publication in 2011 to coincide with the 150th anniversary of Albert's demise, what a treat that will be.

and the winners are...and the quiz answers are...

We seem to be behind with prize draws so the paw has chosen along with the help of Michael Daniels random number generator, and here are the winners

Things to Make and Mend by Ruth Thomas

3 ~ Rhonda

12 ~ Margaret 46

37 ~ Carol Pratt

61 ~ Nancy

Supergirl by Ruth Thomas

19 ~ Sally B

36 ~ Erika

40 ~ Irene from Emsworth

42 ~ Mrs Pao

Check it's really you against names and numbers on the original post if you are uncertain and then e mail addresses to me at dovegreyreader at gmail.com and if you could stick caps lock on and put "I'm a Winner" or similar in the subject line that would help enormously.
And if Emma Thomas is out there, still no word from you about your prize draw copy of Beside the Sea by Veronique Olmi, we've tried e mailing ...

Now the quiz...
Well this is how it's going to work, Rhys is in charge and has e mailed the answers, which read like another quiz to me, (number nine still has me stumped) but I'm sure he'll explain all, and out of over twenty entries there are five winners. Having asked Rhys to choose just one I understand he's done that somehow (but doesn't know who it is either) and the winner's name is sealed in a gold envelope which is on its way to me in the post.
We are currently hoovering the red carpet and I will go out and hire a ball gown for the occasion (and possibly have a make-over and manicure too) before opening the envelope and announcing the winner, and whomsoever it may be can make a gushing acceptance speech with tears before thanking their English teacher at school and their dog and things and will then be in receipt of a surprise book from the dovegreyreader shelves.
I gather there's another quiz ready and waiting and it's fiendishly difficult so expect that soon.
Anyway, here are the answers... er good luck.

1 Our Jane

 

2. Scotty

 

3. The serial adulterer

 

4  Heathcliffe......It's Cathy come home now

 

5. Thackeray........related to Annie Thackeray/Ritchie., Leslie Stephen, Virginia  Woolf, and Angelica Garnett

 

6 Marian Evans

 

7 The Master

 

8.  He who married the lady in the blue dress and dropped a wine glass in a river......

 

9.  masterofliteratureasaculdesac

 

10.  Dear Goat.

 

Springwatch

Happy Mothering Sunday and the tide seems to be out on that sea of crocuses I planted about eighteen months ago, so just the three for you to feast your eyes on...

But isn't nature clever to make all those first spring flowers such a lovely bright yellow when your eyes need the colour?
And then there are the primroses, usually everywhere by now

Yes, that's right, just the one so far.
It's obviously been a real winter this year but good news, it seems our neighbour's bees may have survived.

Well just the one, but I think you'll agree clearly a clever one to find one of our three crocuses yesterday.
I've seen some of Kate and Adam's Lambing Live, which for those not here has involved the BBC moving onto a Welsh sheep farm for the week and I was hoping for some sweet little spring lamb pics of our own to share, except this lot in the front field don't keep still for a minute...


and they only came to the gate because Bookhound had just driven off in the Land Rover and they thought I was the farmer with the food, an easy mistake to make if you're a sheep I suppose.

dovegreyknitting...

Well I'll go to the foot of our stairs... so there was all this excitement last night about dovegreyreader getting a mention on Front Row on Radio 4. You too can Listen Again here and my thanks to Natasha Solomons and Damian Horner for thinking of me. Now without wishing to suggest you won't want to listen to the whole programme just whizz about seventeen minutes in and there it is.
And for anyone who's been route marching around the internet all night looking for us and is desperate for some bookish conversation here we are, except it's Saturday so we do everything but books on a Saturday. Just scroll down a bit and you'll find what you're looking for, or follow the links over here >>>> and you'll be sat there all day getting up to speed.
But anyway enough of that I have very important things to discuss with you...mainly, aren't sleeves boring?
I gave myself a few knitting afternoons this week and finally finished it...

But oh the sleeves, that second one just seemed to go on and on and I hit the wall a while back. I have several friends who do both at once but I think that might be even worse for me...though I have to say, I am delighted with the end result.
I'm so rarely completely 100% delighted with everything I make, something usually goes awry somewhere and it has here, it's glaring right at me, you're all sure to spot it too...think cuff and unequal. But as they say, only God's work can be perfect, so once I'd redone that band to include the forgotten buttonholes and slogged through the sleeves I have to say this one is pleasing. Lovely fit, the offset rib is fine, I'm probably as warm as the Jacob sheep and the Mohair goat were and the quirky variations seem to work.
It's a Claire Crompton pattern designed for Spin-a-Yarn over at Bovey Tracey with the offset rib a frolic of my own and the wool was from Blacker's of Launceston.
But as if Blacker's on the doorstep wasn't enough I have to report that we now live in even more perilous and exceedingly dangerous times here in the Tamar Valley.
Becs Clayton has finally opened her new and long-awaited wool emporium The Cornwall Yarn Shop also in Launceston, a mere seven or so miles up the road.

Yes, let's say fifteen to twenty minutes driving taking into account tractors and cows and having to do thirty miles an hour through the village, five minutes to park the car , three to walk to the shop and that's me door to door in less than half an hour.
It involves a border crossing but I managed to be there on March 5th, St Piran's Day, and the sun shone for the opening.

Becs has plans for a coffee shop on the first floor, a workroom on the top floor, weekly Knitclubs as well as workshops and classes. Greeted by the most fabulous selection of the very best wool and patterns, and having come into a modest but unexpected monetary windfall last week, it seemed a treat was in order, (actually I somehow seem to have spent this windfall three times over already) so I started my browse.



Some lovely Noro shelves too

Forgive the indulgence, pictures like this must seem a bit lacking for any non-knitters, the knitters on the other hand might all be out there stroking their screens...
In the end I made a highly enjoyable purchase of some Debbie Bliss Donegal Aran Tweed in a lovely shade of delicate pea green ( you can just see it, top left corner, the picture above the Noro) more the colour of tinned peas than frozen, and the Debbie Bliss pattern for the shawl-necked jumper in the Winter 09 magazine.
It's already on the needles because I have to be thinking decent Village Show entries this September since I voted knitting back as a class in its own right at my first committee meeting the other night. Due to lack of interest (i.e. just me and my socks and someone else doing Kaffe Fassets)  it had merged into 'A Handmade Item' which you may recall had the socks and the Kaffe fighting it out with a matchstick model of the Mary Rose or was it a Harley Davidson....anyway it hardly seemed a level judging field even if my socks did win. Committee members seem expected to enter every class in the show so I can see I'm going to be tearing my hair out over rock cakes, five species of flower in an eggcup, four carrots, the longest runner bean in the world and heaven knows what else.
And just ask who came up with the idea for the set recipe baking class?
With the theme "Celebrating the Centenary of Guiding" weaving through the show classes I had a light bulb moment, it could only be chocolate brownies.
As always Bookhound, with impeccable timing, made his entrance back into the wool shop just as I was paying at the till.
Wool shop owners all know that this is the time to go sotto voce and complete the purchase in a pianissimo whisper....thanks Becs.
Anyway, if you're heading down west it now makes a great deal of sense to divert into Launceston and call in at number 3 Madford Lane.


 

dovegreyreading...

I have been disciplining myself to stop messing about and get out for a walk in all this glorious spring sunshine we've been having this week.
Grab a dog and go for a bimble along the lane, light on the back of the eyes...good.

It's been deceptively cold which was a good thing as I accidentally dropped the door key in the granite trough outside the front door as I was faffling around with my camera (better that way round)  and there it sat nicely on the ice ....

Did anyone else have a Troll all those years ago when they were the craze, and very expensive?
Then I've been out, not once, not twice but three evenings on the trot, including a planning meeting for this year's Village Show as I have been invited to join the organising committee, (think Vicar of Dibley and you won't be far wrong) so reading time has been at a premium. When that happens I want to be sure to be reading good books or I get crochety at fifty wasted pages of life and a book I am not enjoying and eventually have to give up on.
No time wasted this week though.
I finished Beautiful For Ever by Helen Rappaport, my thoughts on that on Monday and I'm delighted that Helen has agreed to hover around in comments during the day if anyone wants to chat with her, I certainly have my list of questions.
I hear the book bags are going from Long Barn like...well like hot bags, at the £6.99 buy one get one free offer, plus a whisper of 'dovegreyreader' also helps, and Helen's book currently also available there at the pre-publication special offer price of £10 inc. p&p.
One of the many joys of writing a blog is the unexpected arrival of a book you've been desperate to get your hands on, so when a signed proof copy of David Mitchell's new novel, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet arrived I just had to have a little look which turned into a big look.

1799 and Japan is visited by the representatives of the Dutch East India Company and I have been spellbound by it all, the setting, the dialogue, the repartee, it really is an 'extraordinary novel' and I think one of those I won't want to end.
I was in the 'I love Cloud Atlas' camp and the 'I'm not sure about Black Swan Green' camp so it's never a certainty that I'm going to love every thing David Mitchell writes, but so far so Booker, I feel sure this will be another for my longlist cometh July.
Talking of longlists, the Orange Prize for Fiction longlist will be revealed next Wednesday... so what's going to be there?
Any suggestions?
Back to my reading week and spoiled for choice I settled on So Long See You Tomorrow from the lovely box of William Maxwell books that arrived from Ellen in NY, and not realising that it's a sequel to They Came Like Swallows that's been an unexpected reading joy.

Talking of swallows and evicted wrens as I was on that post, I have exciting news to report...

...droppings on the wren nesting box, I'll bet that's made your day:-)
We think they may have taken up residence which is great news, it's heartbreaking to watch the swallows arrive, bully the wrens out of their winter squat and then find the tiny wren's eggs smashed outside the front door.
I also picked up The Concert Ticket by Olga Grushin 'just to see' , and seventy pages later I realised I was very late for everything else I was supposed to be doing.
A famous exiled composer is returning to Cold War Russia for one night only to conduct his final symphony and it becomes an obsession at the heart of Anna's family to get hold of a ticket. It's beautiful writing, every moment of leaden bleakness balanced with a joyful leap of the imagination interwoven with splashes of light and colour. I'm really loving this one.
So that's my booky-walky week, how about yours

Enjoy ~ Alan Bennett

In keeping with our resolve to be the West Country version of the West End Whingers and take advantage of Plymouth's Theatre Royal on a regular basis we set off to see...

No... we just walked past that sign... to get in to see Alan Bennett's play Enjoy last week performed to a packed house.

I was hankering after a pre-theatre supper, whilst Bookhound kept wittering on about a flask of tea and sandwiches in the car sitting in the car park.You can sometimes never be sure if he's joking or not and so I was relieved to see no picnic bags in his hand as we left home, except he told me he'd put them in the boot earlier.
In the end my supper was nearer the mark, though I should perhaps have declined the profiteroles, but who in their right mind ever can?

I'd read a few lack lustre reviews of this recent production of Alan Bennet's play, first performed to ambivalent audiences in 1980 with Joan Plowright, Colin Blakeley, Liz Smith in the starring roles, so we weren't really sure what to expect.
The play tells the story of the last inhabitants of a row of back-to-back houses about to be demolished. An observer is sent in to sit and watch the family and take notes about this fast disappearing way of life in order to reconstruct the home in a sort of living museum-style tourist attraction.
Obviously a bit too far fetched for a 1980's audience but prophetic thanks to the National Trust.
The blurb promised a 'rich and wonderful play...a joyous production' and with the inestimable Alison Steadman and David Troughton starring, how on earth could it be otherwise?
I can remember as clear as day watching Alison Steadman as Beverley in the TV version of Abigail's Party back in the 1970s. I'll bet my next lot of profiteroles that if you saw it you too can recall the way she said 'Demis Roussos'.. with that lovely nasal twang.

Then of course there was Mrs Bennett in Pride and Prejudice,
New to the theatre after a few years' break I see that after both this and The Pitmen Painters, curtains are definitely old hat, you walk in and there is the set, subtly lit and for all to see and ponder which we did as we took our seats.
The first half was funny but not side-splittingly so, someone seated in front of us was laughing when no one else did and we were besieged by the wrapped sweet brigade behind, but we were coping.
Over our tubs of chocolate ice cream during the interval we wondered if this was to be the sum of it.
Oh no, oh very no... the second half had the entire audience weeping with laughter, the sort of uninhibited laughter where you completely forget yourself and are wiping away the tears, blissfully unaware of the person next to / in front of / behind who may not have found it quite so funny and is now writing on their blog about the cackling woman falling about laughing next to / in front / behind them....sorry whoever you are.
In fact I don't recall laughing quite so much in a theatre ever (we don't get out much) and just how did David Troughton as Dad stop himself corpsing whilst lying 'dead' on the floor ...except he had his back to us so may have been rattling with laughter too. As Mam settles down to 'wash the corpse' for the sake of tradition and the benefit of the silent social observer, she discovers to her horror a prowess in Dad's anatomy that quite shocks her....if he's really dead it's with a legitimate smile on his face.
It's a fine line between comedy crossing the line into farce but this one didn't stray. The one liners were shot through with Bennett-onian dead pan expressiveness, the comic timing was perfect, expressions were everything and we really were falling about. Perhaps the London reviewers have seen seen it all, perhaps down y'ere in Plymouth we don't get out enough, but wonderful for an end of winter outing.
This being Alan Bennett the tears of laughter will also as quickly turn to tears of sadness, and Alison Steadman, looking most unlike the Alison Steadman we know, gave a master class in character acting, every nuance given its right emphasis and we left the theatre in high spirits.
If Enjoy is coming down your way, best not to miss it,

'I don't know why it's called Enjoy...it was something waiters said to you when they brought you your meal. I was so used to writing plays with downbeat endings that I wanted something positive...I also wanted the audience to have a good time, so Enjoy is a kind of invitation to them.'

Direct Red - Gabriel Weston...again

Sorry about Monday but this is what has happened since I picked up  Direct Red - A Surgeon's Story by Gabriel Watson, it's all come flooding back, I promise we'll stick to the book today.
I'd only really viewed the surgical gods from considerably lower down in the food chain, so I was interested to see what life might be like for a woman supposedly on an equal footing but working

'in a world dominated by alpha males...where a certain moral ambiguity and clinical detachment are necessary tools for survival.'

Indeed they are, but Gabriel Weston bravely and honestly challenges those pre-conceptions and her own thinking around many of the situations she finds herself in. The result is many portions of humble pie consumed and a self-effacing account of life at the cutting edge (sorry) as Gabriel Weston walks her reader through many of those staple scenarios of the TV hospital drama, but with a personal touch that debrides (sorry, I can't stop myself,  it's all begging for it) those surface layers to see what really may lie beneath in the mind of the doctor.
There's the inevitable kudos of those first days of being a medical student until the first resuscitation is required...and forget that promise because it's all reminded me of our first day in uniform.
We'd been nurses for about three days (and I discover that Gabriel Weston would have been about two years old in 1972) all standing chatting on the platform at Russell Square underground waiting for the train to take us back to our nurse's home in Belsize Park. There was a bit of a commotion and then the crowd of passengers around us parted like the Red Sea to allow us to take command of the situation and decide what to do next about the person who had jumped under the incoming train.
Whiter shade of pale doesn't come close and you know those emergency stairs at Russell Square that they tell you not to take because there are so many of them...
But in many ways this is what made this book so special for me, situations of my own that I could identify with, but it matters not whether you are medical or otherwise because so many of the central observations of Direct Red translate willingly to other life scenarios. It's a book about people and how they react to one another and what we all do to try and protect ourselves, whether being done to or doing unto others, this is humanity plain and simple.
Be ready with a strong stomach if this is not your thing because Gabriel Weston doesn't couch (sorry, that was unintentional) any of this prettily or euphemistically. There is plenty that will certainly make your eyes water, one scenario in particular an object lesson for Gabriel Weston in professional pride and quite how we may all compromise our integrity in its preservation whilst convincing ourselves and others that we are doing the right thing.
And prepare for great sadness too, expect to read what it might really be like to suffer a miscarriage for example, but any account that avoided such moments would not be truthful and nor would it have that ring of sincerity and honesty that Direct Red does which explains why it was longlisted for the Guardian First Book award last year.
Meanwhile here's an observation from Gabriel Weston and perhaps something to bear in mind if you ever find yourself in need of surgical attention.

'It is no longer enough to be technically proficient; nowadays, we need to be nice. And this presents the modern surgeon with a great challenge: how to combine a necessary degree of toughness with an equally important ability to be gentle.'

I think I'll just settle for them being stunningly brilliant and proficient at what they do, I always like to check for a steady hand too, neat needlework skills are a bonus and then I'll be thankful for such small mercies and acts of kindness that may come my way, and to be honest, I'll forgive the rest.

Endsleigh Salon update...'School' continued

 
I must bring you news of the other 'School' themed reads from our last Endsleigh Salon evening, because I'd hate you to think we'd just languished around wishing we'd been at Malory Towers, or were thankful we'd missed out on the Abbey School and the Morris dancing.
 
The History Man by Malcolm Bradbury, very 1970's bohemian with every kind of 'ism' going on which as I recall, having lived through it, must have been at least feminism and pacifism and I'm sure you can think of a few more. The book seemed to be 75% dialogue, a series of impressions and from where I was sitting the print looked tiny, but Rebecca had read it and enjoyed as I recall, though wasn't quite head over heels about it.
Tom Brown's Schooldays by Thomas Hughes and published in 1857 proved very disappointing and perhaps offered a good example of a novel whose imagery is more often gathered from the watching of the film rather than the reading of the book.
Who can forget that little chap being roasted by nasty Flashman.
The Secret History by Donna Tartt might have been that old favourite, a room divider...
'Oh I loved that book.
'Oh God, the worst book I've ever read.'
But if there was any doubt about that one dividing the room you should have seen the ranks take up arms over Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.
'Hated it'
'Loved it'
'Adored it'

We do actually say far more than that and there was a great debate about why we'd hated it, loved it and all those other things about both books. Linda and I were sadly united in our dislike, for style, some irritating narrative devices and characters in Never Let Me Go, whilst the village contingent (there are so many of them they could do with a bus now) were unanimous in their admiration.
It's clearly a geographical thing but I have a reread scheduled just in case my current Kazuo Ishiguro revisit can shed new light, because I had read it in the midst of a Bookerthon, often not the most propitious way for a book to endear itself to me. It may sadly however be curtains for Linda with Kazuo though I was more than persuasive about A Pale View of Hills and said nice things about The Remains of the Day too, with tempting snippets about Dartmoor and Tavistock and Creber's all getting a mention therin.
Looking to Chillaton for some moral support...no, they hadn't been as impressed with The Remains of the Day.
Sorry Kazuo, I tried but you win some you lose some.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark was on the other hand unanimously received with praise on all sides of the salon.
The Dead School by Patrick McCabe had its reader very exercised in the describing of; bleak but very funny, sort of Father Ted meets Quentin Tarantino and set against a backdrop of the early 1970s, the troubles in N.Ireland and two parallel lives which cross.The final verdict was a great read.
The Piano Teacher by Janice YK Lee proved to be nothing to do with schools at all but had been a good read however Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi was added in by its reader as the most fantastic read. All added to by her visits to Tehran and the university in the past and how it really felt to wear a burkah and, as we never stop a discussion trail leading wherever it wants to, interesting debate followed about the life and the restrictions then and the current political climate.
Thinks by David Lodge sadly had its reader surrendering at page seventy something and moving swiftly on we all agreed that Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones, which was the fall back option, was a truly beautiful and clever book that could happily have lost its ending and were it possible, been even better.
Lastly The Finishing School by Muriel Spark... and we all thought oh great, what better way to end, that'll be two brilliant Muriels in one evening then, but sadly it was not to be. The Finishing School felt like a very insubstantial read to its reader, riven as it was with themes of jealousy, satire and middle-class values.
Next theme Back to the Land...

Direct Red ~ Gabriel Weston

 I've been in a wallow of gritty reminiscence since reading Direct Red - A Surgeon's Story by Gabriel Weston so it's time for this photo again to set the scene and give you a Monday morning smile....yes, yes, the hat...I know it's very odd.
It's perhaps a lesser known fact that there was a time when I thought my future nursing career rested not in a staff nurse's uniform but in the operating theatre.
Even I can hardly believe that at the age of twenty-three and that lifetime of wanting to be a nurse, all that saving lives and dedicated patient care and interaction with living (hopefully) awake and breathing people I had dreamed of, was about to be exchanged for the role of a scrub nurse. Letting my hair go frizzy as the autoclave door swung open, wearing a mask all day long, passing cutlery and needlework accoutrements to a surgeon, counting swabs and ministering to completely unconscious patients.
It was a bit of a one-way street and not what I had intended at all, though to be fair I think my nursing career and my life were both at something of a crossroads.
I'd enjoyed theatres as a student mainly because I'd done my placement in the smaller more intimate learning environment of Gt Ormond Street's branch hospital Queen Elizabeth, Hackney Road. We'd do on call and sleep in sort of flowery bower of a 1930s bedroom next to the theatre and it all felt very important and dramatic to get that 3am knock on the door to get theatre ready for Mr D to operate on an emergency.
I can still remember the cases, 4am and us all clustered around a newborn baby with intestinal obstruction which turned out to be caused by Apple Peel Syndrome when the surgeon finally got in to have a look...the intestines coiled and shaped like the complete peel off an apple.
Mr D was a real gentleman too, quite gave me a false impression about surgeons, talked to everyone as if they were a human being just like him.
Sorry... where was I...was I supposed to be talking about a book?
Anyway I loved it all so just imagine it, a few years later, qualified and looking very Holby City in my nice green scrubs and white clogs, first scrub as a staff nurse in theatres at Gt Ormond Street, bit slow off the mark and the surgeon threw some tonsils at me because my hand wasn't ready to receive. The surgeons were really higher even than the gods in the hospital heirarchy, many of them world pioneers but there still seemed no need to fling some throaty detritus at me.
Mr D would never have done such a thing.
Fielding tonsils was not to be my bag, I was over my love for theatres very quickly after that and hastily went back into starched uniform as per above, staffing on the metabolic unit for the few months I had left to work. I would be leaving to get married and moving to Devon where I had a place to train as a midwife.
That wasn't right either, didn't even make the first day because by this time I had decided I was fed up with hospitals and my future lay as a Clerical Officer in the DHSS as it was known.
That lasted a few months until I had to resuscitate someone who'd collapsed after being told they weren't entitled to benefits.
Then I realised I did like saving lives after all (yes he lived and was probably entitled to everything after I'd finished with him) but perhaps not quite this dramatically and the rest is well-documented history here, health visiting and the great outdoors it was for me.
Sorry...
I got a bit carried away and you will too if you have even a hint of any hospital experience (either side of the bedside, if you see what I mean )
I promise I'll talk about Direct Red tomorrow....no sorry it'll have to be Wednesday I must catch up with Endsleigh Salon tomorrow before the next one.

Who am I?

It's NTTVBG over at Other Stories today , but I do realise not everyone may have read the book or want to join in with that and Rocky's a little too worn out after yesterday to be much help, so I'm very grateful to Rhys who kindly e mailed this week offering to compile a literary quiz  for future use.
I was in party-planning mode so I jumped at that one and how perfect now that we are four and nearly grown up, to be doing a nice quiet quiz instead of all that raucous musical chairs and pass the parceling for a box of Maltesers, and being sick with party excitement as in previous years.

Now for obvious reasons....

****DON'T put your answers in comments****

though feel free to discuss and speculate if you want...or just to thank the quizmaster, and I'm assured that anything that may look like a typo is meant to be there.
E mail answers to me at dovegreyreader at gmail.com, I'll forward them onto Rhys who will come back to me with the name of some winners eventually, and I'm sure I can come up with a prize or two...
And if anyone else fancies some fiendish quizmaestering I'll bite their hand off too (and send you a book for your trouble) because I love a good quiz and I'm hoping Rhys will do some more too.

Who am I?
Major clue: all were born between 1700-1900                                            
....and wrote novels that are highly thought of.

 

1. I was born during the eighteenth-century and remained very close to my sister all my life. I made up a place called Hartfield and I have been criticised for not writing about Waterloo or the French Revolution and other important events.

 

2. In my novels I depict characters from a full span of social life. I am called a Romantic or a romancer, I had the unfortunate experience of becoming bankrupt – but I overcame that too.

 

3. I wrote in my novels about the most appalling poverty and brutality as well as people who are comfortably off. I have been criticised for having weak plots in my novels, but they made me rich and I became popular and successful, and in fact I became a performer.

 

4. I am a poet as well as a novelist. A lot of nonsense has been written about me and I am portrayed as a ghost-like figure walking endless moorland – this is not true.

 

5. Believe it or not I am remembered today for only one novel. I made up a character called George Osborne (no relation to the George Osborne of UK politics). My family’s literary influence went on for more than one generation: my daughter, my son in law, his daughter and his granddaughter.

 

6. I have my own ideas about things and I wrote my novels to explain them. I did believe in God devoutly once, but I have changed my mind. My life has been full of contradictions and controversy. I was shunned by society in one way and worshipped by society in another.

 

7. My novels were more highly thought of than my plays. I had a clever brother who became an eminent psychologist, but I kept my distance from him. I was closer to my clever sister but she was often ill. Friendships were very important to me and I enjoyed travelling.

 

8. I think I would call myself a Victorian. I accomplished a great deal by writing my novels, my poems, my short stories but I also truly regret aspects of my life. I wish I had had children and been kinder to my first wife. There was such a commotion when I died. I don’t understand how things could go so badly wrong.

 

9. My eyesight was always a problem to me. I was able to describe my homeland more clearly by living abroad. Did I reinvent the novel I’m not so sure I wrote what I thoughtabout.

 

10. They say I was beautiful to look at but I always thought my sister was the beauty. I suppose I would call myself a feminist but what I really saw was unfairness. The sea was always an inspiration to me and I tried to describe it over and over again.

Happy Birthday to...

Us!

Because almost 2,300 posts later, dovegreyreader scribbles is...
Four years old today.
In the absence of anything arriving from the Poet Laureate (I could barely conceal my disappointment) Bookhound settled down to compose an ode of gratitude to you all in celebration of this very auspicious day, because who in their right mind would write 2,300 posts if you didn't all stop by to read them.
I think you'll agree, Carole Anne Duffy will be hard pressed to top this...

Roses are red
Violets are blue
We're four today
And that's thanks to you.

by Bookhound.

dovegreyreading...

I was thrilled with the arrival of this one, but firstly I have to declare in interest in any book that emanates from Long Barn Books because, occupying a seat on the editorial board as I do, there's a chance I may have had a small say in the book's genesis.
So I did read the proposal for Helen Rappaport's latest book, Beautiful For Ever - Madame Rachel of Bond Street -Cosmetician, Con- Artist and Blackmailer and I added my hearty approval to the decision-making process, which all seems light years ago now.
Lured by the promise of beauty, the gullible rich came in their droves to Madame Rachel's Bond Street shop in the 1860s, face 'enamelling' at twenty guineas (£1500 today) a go a speciality, and it was all bound to end in tears, more about this one next week and I hear it has very narrowly missed out as Radio 4's Book of the Week.

The gorgeous cover designed by Emma Barnes of Snowbooks is a perfect fit for the book's themes and my copy actually nestled in this book bag...

... available to purchase from the Long Barn Books website should you covet one, and if you whisper 'dovegreyreader' in with the order there will be some discounted special offer arrangement.
As if this wasn't enough, the most exciting box of William Maxwell books arrived from Ellen in New York. 

"Beside myself " doesn't quite capture the dancing around delirium of the moment and my effusive thanks to Ellen were sent off in a trice, much more about William Maxwell soon.
Plenty more has caught my eye in this week's post too.
I've already read the first three chapters of Stella Duffy's forthcoming book Theodora for publication in June and it's a corker. I've had to drag myself away because I don't want to be premature with my thoughts on here and then find you can't get hold of it for months, so will read it nearer to its due date and be part of the big buzz that I feel sure this book will generate. The story of Theodora of Constantinople, the most powerful woman in the history of Byzantine Rome, forced into slavery as a child but determinedly in charge of her own fate and future. One for the wish list or to reserve at a library near you so then they'll have to buy it.
Another one I've been looking forward to so I was really grateful for a review copy of Dimanche and Other Stories by Irene Nemirovsky to be published by Persephone Books in April.
Then a deceptively diminutive little book with a big theme, Angels A History by David Albert Jones, published by Oxford University Press. Examining the powerful presence of angels in high art and popular culture and religion and spirituality, this one will be winging its way to a good home when I've read it. I have a very good HV colleague who, likewise fed up with clinical writing, pursued a degree in Art History, completing her MA dissertation on the representation of angels in Renaissance art. Let me tell you that used to be a welcome distraction at team meetings.
More angels but of the Barbara Pym variety, Less Than Angels in the new Virago edition and with a forward by Salley Vickers, what could be more perfect...

'Catherine Oliphant is a writer and lives with handsome Tom Mallow. Their relationship runs into trouble when he begins a romance with student Deirdre Swann, so Catherine turns her attention to the reclusive anthropologist Alaric Lydgate who has a fondness for wearing African masks...'

That sounds most un-Pym-like, I can't wait, but nor can I wait to open the latest novel from Jude Morgan, A Little Folly for which Jude Morgan has cast his eye over Regency London.
And whilst we're on the subject, I hear the paperback version of The Taste of Sorrow is now out and though I haven't seen it yet, I hear there's a comment from here in there somewhere.
So how about you, good booky week?

NTTVBG - The Girl with Glass Feet by Ali Shaw

It seems light years since the  NTTVBG met over at Savidge Reads and enjoyed Simon's surprise location and the fabulous cakes. The joys of blog book groups like this become clear, we can be wherever we want to be.
This episode featured, The Girl With Glas Feet by Ali Shaw and what an incredible discussion was had by all.
The novel's location a northern archipelago named St Hauda's Land, a cold, unforgiving landscape with an inner warmth that had me thinking Orkneys or Shetland (some knitting would have been good, I don't remeber any) and an edge of mystery and intrigue which was the perfect backdrop for Ali Shaw's story of Ida who is slowly turning to glass and the efforts of local photographer Midas to prevent it.
Yes, we had much discussion about the names and could MIDAs only exist if Ida was an intrinsic part of him...then there was all that 'touch turning to gold' to explore and plenty of magical realism ensued. It's that wonderful combination of the real world, all those touchstones of reality laced with the uncanny magic. Some of it worked wonderfully for me, some of it slightly less so which I think  was more down to my lack of imagination at a time when I've been knee-deep in gritty realism in my reading lately. But how fascinating it was to talk about the book with such an enthusiastic group of readers around the world.
NTTVBG posts go live just after midnight GMT on the scheduled Sunday so Australia was quick off the mark and had the discussion rolling by the time we all arrived. Some had been swept away by it, others were more measured, and in search of some enlightenment I had listened to an interview given by Ali Shaw to a US radio station.
I wanted to get his own thoughts on The Girl With Glass Feet  because mine were a bit muddled. I had myself tied in knots looking for the fairytale analogies...was this Cinderella with the glass slippers under a different guise or something else entirely?
In fact Ali Shaw cited Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid as more of a favourite and made reference to the glass delusions of Charles VI of France, when in a fit of madness Charles believed he was made of glass and wearing the psychological padded suit lest he break. Though ultimately this book is pure fantasy from the imagination of an incredibly talented young writer and thankfully Ali Shaw also added that explanations for everything didn't feel essential to the whole, let's have some mystery and 'unexplained' happenings in life these days and enjoy some uncertainty; some times we try too hard to make sense of everything and how can you make sense of magical realism, you can't, that's the point.
I think we all agreed Ali Shaw is a writer to watch and I would certainly want to read whatever he writes next and then as the day draws to a close with an astonishing 128 exchanges in comments and we all slowly wend our way home while Simon gets out the virtual vacuum cleaner, I get that little buzz of anticipation about the next book on the pile waiting to be picked up.
I'm really looking forward to this Sunday at Kirsty's Other Stories for discussion about Vanessa and Virginia by Susan Sellers because I've had a real Woolfian wallow in readiness and loved every minute of it...still dipping into The Waves, ten pages a day no more and I've finished the Anthony Curtis biography so I'm up to speed.
Do join us if you want to, and this time round it might not even matter if you haven't read the book, I think the Woolfian discussion will be fascinating.

dovegreyreader asks... Jon McGregor

I think it was quite clear  here that I rated Jon McGregor's latest novel Even the Dogs very highly indeed so it is my pleasure to welcome Jon to the virtual armchair for dovegreyreader asks... and my thanks to him for taking the time to answer our usual questions

Jon, I wonder if you could talk us through Even The Dogs...where the book came from, why this subject and how the book evolved, in other words, could you tell us as much about it as possible

You mean, a brief account of how I've spent the last four years of my working life? Okay....
The book started in 2003.  I'd got stuck in the early stages of writing what eventually became my 2nd novel (So Many Ways To Begin), and was struck by a story I heard about a man who'd been found dead in his flat.  Knowing little about the man, I began to imagine how his death might have come about, how he might have come to be alone when he died, what happened next.  "What happens next" being the key question in any story, of course.  I wrote the first chapter of 'Even The Dogs' at that point, and then put it away for a long time.  I realised that I would need to do a lot of research; I realised that the book would be about people living with drug addiction, people living on the streets, people living with all sorts of terrors and problems and ghosts; it just didn't seem like a book that I could or should be writing.  So I left it.
But then I came back to it.  The whole time I was working on my 2nd novel, 'Even The Dogs' was ticking away at the back of my mind, and I knew eventually that I would come back to it.  The characters were too vivid in my mind, and the narrative perspective which I'd established in that first chapter seemed like a really interesting challenge; something I would really be able to get my teeth into.
As for 'why this subject': I don't really know.  It started with the story of the dead man.  And I know some people who work in community health, and drug rehab, and the homelessness sector, so I had a bit of background info to begin with.  It was something I was interested in exploring - something I was interested in understanding a little more, and trying to capture something of the complexity and nuance of.  Which all leads into the next question -

I have to ask about the research...

There were two main strands to the research - the stuff about death and dead bodies, and the stuff about drug-use and living on the streets.  With the dead bodies, I started off by reading medical textbooks, books about corpses and pathology and post-mortem examinations: I also spoke to a pathologist at the local hospital, and to the Nottingham coroner.  I attended some inquests.  I didn't attend a post-mortem - the pathologist gave me enough detail to make that unnecessary.  This part of the research was pretty straightforward, just factual and procedural.
With the 'lifestyle' research, it was more a question of talking to people.  I spoke to a couple of ex-drug users, mainly to get the details of the logistics of heroin-use (where do you buy it? how much does it cost? how much do you need? what does withdrawal feel like? what does using it feel like? do you ever share it? what's the vocabulary you use to describe all these things? etc etc), and the logistics of street life.  I also spoke to drugs-workers, community nurses and GPs about the people they've worked with - again, to get some idea of the logistics/mechanics of living on the streets and using drugs.  What I didn't do was ask much about people's own personal life-stories - I wanted to be clear that I was writing a work of fiction, and not simply harvesting other people's narratives.  But at the same time, I wanted to get the detail right.  It was important to me that the people who've lived like this, who really know about it, could read the book and recognise the world it describes, and not be able to pick holes in it.  And in fact, the people who helped me with the research were the first people to read the early drafts of the book, for just that reason.
I tried not to do too much research - and I tried not to use all the research I did - but I wanted to make sure that anything I included was accurate.  Or at least, accurate for someone.  The vocabulary, in particular, is so time and location specific that few people would recognise all of the slang used in the book.  But everyone will recognise some of it.  (Often, I used slang words as much for their resonance as much as for their widespread use:  "dark and light" for heroin and cocaine seems very specific to one town, for example, but as soon I'd heard it I couldn't resist using it.)

We are incredibly nosy here so we always love to hear about the workings of a writer's writing day. To know and and visualise the process that gives us the finished book somehow completes the reading circle, so can we know about any special desk, pen, ink and paper, old typewriter or PC, writing jumper, lashings of Balzacian coffee, room with a view or a blank wall, anything that helps us visualise you at work?

My writing practice seems to change every few years.  While I was writing 'Even The Dogs', I was mostly based in an office in Nottingham city centre, a room I was renting in an old packaging firm's headquarters.  By strange coincidence, the building opposite was a supported housing unit for people moving on from hostel accommodation (much like the place Heather lives in in the book), so I was often interrupted by some little drama going on in the street outside - usually people shouting up to be let in.
I've moved office now, to a studio building I share with some other artists and designers.
Basically; I write 9-5ish, I work in an office or room or somewhere fixed away from home where I can keep my notes and papers spread out on the desk.  I don't have an internet connection where I work.  I sometimes write longhand, sometimes on a typewriter, sometimes on a laptop.  I try not to use the laptop until I'm typing up a draft to show someone - the process of going from longhand to typewriter to screen can be a useful part of the editing process.  I have an Olivetti Lettera 32 portable typewriter which was made in Glasgow in the late 1950s and is a very lovely thing.  I also have an Olivetti M3, which was made in very limited numbers in - as far as I can tell - 1941.  It's a big black desktop typewriter which weighs a ton and makes every word sound like you really definitely do mean it.  I like having things that I can turn upside down and figure out how to fix just by staring at them.  I can't remember ever doing that with a computer.
My favourite pen is a muji 5mm.
My rules for a working environment are: no internet, no music, no view, being able to leave everything on the desk, easy access to tea and coffee, a little bit of company from time to time but not much, and having an idea before you sit down.

Who should we read as a matter of urgency, who should we read for pure pleasure and who is writing now who we mustn't overlook?

 

WG Sebald.  If you've tried and not got on with him, then try "Rings of Saturn" again.  As you read, picture a grandfatherly man with an incredibly dry sense of humour, a deadpan delivery, a twinkle in the eye, and an almost-but-not-quite-

unbearable undercurrent of sadness.  Once you can hear his voice, you will love this book.

Pure pleasure?  Tom Drury, "The End Of Vandalism".  This is the funniest, warmest, loveliest novel I've read for a long time.  Rural America, small lives, deadpan humour.  Very very good indeed.

Overlooked?  For quite some time now I feel like I've been overlooking Sarah Hall - I loved her first novel, with the possible exception of the last 12 pages, and she's written three since then which all sound great.  So let's say her.  Also I still think Jonathan Buckley's "So He Takes The Dog" is one of the great British novels of the last decade, and I still seem to be alone in that.  So him also.

On Classics...

I think the £1.99 I spent on this book, Reading in Bed ~ Personal Essays on the Glories of Reading edited by Steven Gulbar, might just be the best value I've ever had out of a single book purchase.

If I have one tiny quibble it's that of the twenty two contributors only two are women.
Now I don't want to start a war out there but surely the cover picture says it all, (Reading in Bed - Bascove 1994) it's surely women who have perfected the art of reading in bed (well it is here) and are therefore best placed to elaborate on its pleasures and Mary Azarian know that too.

Anyway setting that grumble aside I pick this book up with great regularity and dwell on another essay and it is Italo Calvino and Why Read the Classics who has had my attention this last week.
Despite a good education, that degree and a lot of reading I often feel hugely inadequate when it comes to my experience of reading the classics. Somehow I always feel I've missed out having come to so many for the first time in my forties and fifties.
Perhaps I'd love to be able to say,

''Ah yes, read Jane Eyre when I was fourteen, it left an enormous impression on me'

Well I got it as a school prize when I was thirteen, read the first chapter and cast it aside as far too like something I'd be made to read at school and went back to my Jean Plaidys. I didn't read it until I was in my forties.
Or how about,

'Yes, well this is my twenty-eighth read of Pride and Prejudice first read it when I was fifteen and I see something new every time.'

Italo Calvino agrees in principal,

'A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.'

but I'm not sure I could ever read a book that many times, twice has been plenty of Pride and Prejudice for me because there are so many others I want to read for the first time.
If I'm not careful it could all feel like a steady round of catch up so words of comfort from Italo Calvino in the first sentence

'...we need only observe that, however vast a person's basic reading may be, there still remain an enormous number of fundamental works that he has not read ... even the great nineteenth century cycles of novels are more talked about than read.'

More reading solace follows because it seems there are benefits to those shelves full of of the great unread and I'm warming to this essay considerably,

''....to read a book for the first time in one's maturity is an extraordinary pleasure, different from (though one cannot say greater or lesser than) the pleasure of having read it on one's youth. Youth brings to reading, as to any other experience, a particular flavour and a particular sense of importance, whereas in maturity one appreciates (or ought to appreciate) many more details, level and meanings.'

Going on to say

'In fact reading in youth can be rather unfruitful, due to impatience, distraction, inexperience...and inexperience with life itself.'

Don't you just want to hug the man, I feel so much better already.
I knew that, but somehow there's this feeling that really you've missed out terribly if you didn't read these 'classics' when you were young, and whilst I agree there are some things that can never be recaptured about that reading time, it's good to know that reading in maturity can be equally  productive.
Italo Calvino proceeds to offer fourteen nicely malleable definitions of classics; malleable in that I found I could tweak and make most of them fit my reading life and ambitions, ideas he has planted in my mind which will bear fruit as I read more I'm sure

'The classics are books, which upon reading, we find even fresher, more unexpected, and more marvellous than we had thought from hearing about them.'

and you can read them all here though be warned the page colours do threaten migraine.

And there's more sage advice about context too because I definitely have to mix in the old with a lot of the new,

'To be able to read the classics you have to know 'from where' you are reading them; otherwise both the book and the reader will be lost in a timeless cloud. This then why the greatest yield from reading the classics will be obtained by someone who knows how to alternate them with a proper dose of current affairs.'

I should probably thank Italo Calvino for writing this post today because there seem to be more of his words than mine but here's the best bit

'There is nothing for it but for all of us to invent our own ideal libraries of classics.I would say that such a library ought to be composed half of books we have read and that have really counted for us, and half of books we propose to read and presume will count - leaving a section of empty shelves for surprises and occasional discoveries..'

I decided to focus on the 'propose to read' end of the shelf and within five minutes had gathered in a pile that I feel sure 'will count', that's a few of them on the table in the picture...and a glimpse of a gorgeous tiny table with two tiny drawers that Bookhound found in the market last week. It fits that neat little space in front of the bedroom window perfectly, a lovely new contemplative sitting and writing place.
I don't want to hold myself to which of my choices I will actually read because I don't want this to become a challenge or a burden, just reading for pleasure, but I have decided to try and read three of them at least through this year.
Might it be Daniel Deronda or The Grapes of Wrath?
Some more Zola or Balzac?
Perhaps Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep?
I have a great deal of Truman Capote lined up, might he become a classic for me?
Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is becoming an urgent 'must', perhaps a  few of us will read that together as Team Tolstoy through next winter?
This isn't prescriptive, there's no 'should' or 'ought' about it either; I can decide whether these will become my classics or not and this is the essence of Italo Calvino's argument,

'Your classic author is the one you cannot feel indifferent to, who helps you to define yourself in relation to him (or her, Mr Calvino, or her!) even in dispute with him.'

So I wonder what you might put on your 'propose to read' shelf ?

They Came Like Swallows by William Maxwell

'They came like swallows and like swallows went,
And yet a woman's powerful character
Could keep a swallow to its first intent;
And half a dozen in formation there,
That seem to whirl upon a compass-point
Found certainty upon the dreaming air...'

                                                    W.B Yeats

William Maxwell's epigram to his beautiful novel They Came Like Swallows and how could I resist this picture of our swallows preparing to leave last summer.

It's always such a strange day too.
We get so used to them taking up residence, we live and work around their busy and constant daily presence, we watch the babies grow and if we're lucky and happen to be around the day the babies leave the nest and learn to fly, we see them lined up outside the kitchen window, plucking up the courage to take off.

Until suddenly that day arrives. There they are, circling around, unsettled and gathering, lots of noisy ceremonial fly pasts and aerobatic displays and suddenly you realise it's gone very quiet. You look up and the sky is empty and they've gone and I always feel a bit forlorn and melancholic because that's it, summer's done.
Writing that suddenly makes me yearn for these summer days again very soon, I'm almost done with winter now and if there's an opposite to forlorn I'm it and happily anticipating the arrival of the swallows.

But what an exquisite book this is and quite how has it remained hidden from me for so long remains one of life's big unsolved mysteries... a bit like the mystery of how those swallows know to come back to the same nest on our verandah year on year?
You may recall that They Came Like Swallows is the book I started in the cafe at Honiton and could have happily stayed put in that corner for several hours reading.
I knew then it was of those very special reads that come along every so often. The sort of book I'd buy in duplicate if I ever saw it in a charity shop because there would always be someone I'd want to pass it on to.

'Bunny did not waken all at once. A sound (what, he did not know) struck the surface of his sleep and sank like a stone. His dream subsided leaving him awake, stranded, on his bed. He turned helplessly and confronted the ceiling. A pipe had burst the winter before, and now there was an outline of a yellow lake.'

It is November 1918, and Peter Morison, known as Bunny, is eight, waking up one morning and reaching for the doll Araminta Culpepper he's really supposed to be too old to love but love it he does.
In an instant William Maxwell creates a child's world and a child's voice of such unfailing accuracy that you almost still your breathing to a minimum as you read for fear of disturbing it all..

' The lake become a bird with a plumed head and straggling tail feathers, while Bunny was looking at it.'

Bunny is a sensitive, introspective child much given to deep thoughts of total relevance to an eight year old, whilst his brother Robert at thirteen "is very trying" and seems to have been put on this earth to torment him. Bunny cannot recall a single day when Robert hasn't made him cry.
William Maxwell allows a great head of judgmental reader steam to build up before revealing perhaps why Robert behaves as he does, and there is much reader back-tracking and reforming of opinions as a  result.
Mrs Morison meanwhile is sitting sewing and working at something that seems very mysterious to Bunny, she is hemming squares of white cloth and when he hears the word 'diapers', Bunny and we know that changes are in the offing.
Like most children of his age Bunny is the centre of his own universe and, though by this age a child's wider vocabulary is settling into place, they often don't know the right questions to ask or have a baseline of experience of life events to know how to act or behave and this to me is always one of the pitfalls for any author using a child for the narrative voice.
You can invest them with intelligence and knowledge and it will perhaps feel congruous and possible, but it's far too easy to invest them with a greater degree of emotional intelligence and maturity than even the most gifted child is capable of.
No such pitfalls for William Maxwell and Bunny,

'But it was not easy to describe things. Especially things that had happened. For him to think of things was to see them - schoolyard, bare trees, gravel and walks, furnace rooms, the eaves along the south end of the building. Where among so many things should he begin?'
Robert would not have had any trouble.'

Children have to be allowed plenty of room in a novel, space in which not to know things, yet as adult readers we somehow have to be shown them. William Maxwell's method is clever because he allows Bunny to eavesdrop,

'They said Little pitchers have big ears. On the other hand there were ways of keeping from being noticed...after a while if he kept his eyes closed and breathed regularly, they thought he was asleep. That way he found out all sorts of things.'

The reader is complicit in the act but understands far more about what is said than Bunny does.
Children have to be allowed magical thinking too and Bunny indulges in plenty of that yet it is not Bunny but his mother, Elizabeth Morison who is the centre of this world and it is her relationship to all her family that ultimately may be tested.
There's so much more I'd love to say but can't for fear of giving away the essence of the plot and though you may hazard a guess at it, I had tried not to as I read so was hit by the full impact and have a duty to honour that reading experience for any of you who may not have read this either.
Suffice to say there is a great deal more that William Maxwell pitches absolutely perfectly with his portrayal of this family and I closed They Came Like Swallows knowing I had read something very special indeed.