dovegreyreader scribbles

Starve Acre ~ Andrew Michael Hurley

Bookhound had been out shopping and as he came in the door said...

'I've just been listening to the most amazing book on the radio, think you'd love it. Something about a strange tree and a dead hare...'

It didn't take me too long to find out that the book was Starve Acre by Andrew Michael Hurley, one that had been bleeping away on my radar after a few interesting mentions on Twitter. Adele Geras in particular had rated the book for its unsettling spooky scare factor, and David  Parks' puff  likewise,

'a story that shivers itself deeply into the consciousness.' 

I was in.

I have to say too, that this is a book that might have sold itself to me thanks to Joe McLaren's cover alone. Distinctive, compelling and instantly recognisable on my shelves.

I often check the name of the cover artist but following up on Joe McLaren led me to a post on Spitalfield's Life about his work. If you don't know of Spitalfield's Life hie thee there forthwith because The Gentle Author offers a daily glimpse into London life and you won't be disappointed. I met said Gentle Author at Port Eliot Festival, and knowing they prefer anonymity I will say no more, but  it is a wonderful glimpse into a life fast disappearing. Thank you to whoever sent me a link there because I was enthralled by a series of images from inside the now empty London Hospital building. I shared it around all my student nursing colleagues who had done a stint there with me in the 1970s and we had a good old nostalge about Cavell Home, the 'Big End' and the day Evel Knievel's Wembley jump went wrong and there he was in casualty.

It's now about like three hours since I started this post what with all the diversions (I've had lunch and sorted the washing too) but back to Starve Acre. 

Robert and Juliet Willoughby have moved back to live in Richard's family home at Starve Acre where they are now trying to come to terms with the tragic loss of their five year old son Ewan. Opposite the house is a field where Richard, on bereavement leave from his teaching job, is conducting some mysterious digging works inside a pitched tent. It transpires he is searching for the roots of  the Stythwaite Oak, a long-lost tree, and, despite veiled warnings from neighbours about not meddling, he continues relentlessly with his quest under the guise of academic research. When Richard unearths the skeleton of a hare things start to take a bit of a turn for the considerably worse. 

Honestly you won't believe what happens next...but in the context of the book you absolutely will. Andrew Michael Hurley makes the impossible and fantastical quite plausible.

Slowly the back-story of Ewan emerges; once a normal happy little boy who loved playing in the field but who suddenly turns into the devil incarnate, capable of extreme cruelty and the oddest behaviour. Countless appointments with the child psychologists offer no explanations or diagnosis.

And these two strands of the story weave in and out before eventually merging into the most macabre and ultimately shocking story imaginable, so of course I can't tell you much more about it. When a grieving Juliette calls in a group called The Beacons, and their medium Mrs Forde, prepare for an unusual twist. Starve Acre is all things malevolent, sinister, gripping and tense, and at its centre the traditional symbolism of my beloved hare is maxed out on every level by Andrew Michael Hurley...fertility, rebirth, rejuvenation, resurrection, intuition, life through death, crafty wisdom ...oh my word it is all in there.

I was reminded of several other books too, especially Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel and Lanny by Max Porter, but also Masquerade by Kit Williams with its buried hare, but ultimately this is a unique book, and one in a league of its own for the final denouement. DO NOT READ THE LAST LINE UNTIL YOU GET THERE...DO NOT ...but brace yourself and prepare to put the book the book down and think 'What the *^&%$' .Starve Acre is one of those books that leaves you with an after story to be resolved too, because all I could do was sit there and wonder how on earth this was going to sort out.

If you have read Starve Acre I would love to know your thoughts sans spoilers. I should have added it to my Top Shelf Best Reads of 2019 but it was by my desk waiting for this to be written. Now I've written it I want to read the book again and that so rarely happens.

And any other macabre reading suggestions...

Books that really pull it off...

I read Don't Look Now for our Daphne Du Maurier book group theme last month and there's another one that absolutely nails it too.

 

 

 

 

Miklós Bánffy

A huge great big enormous thank you to those of you who sang the praises of Miklós Bánffy in comments a while ago.

I had never heard of him, let alone the Transylvanian Trilogy, but I know your judgement out there is impeccable and so on the strength of it I ordered Book One, They Were Counted.  Published in 1934, this huge tome arrived and my heart sank a little, only a little, and very briefly when I saw the size of it, along with the thought that there are two more. I added the Kindle version for £1.99 and that has been a blessing on trips out....because I don't want to stop reading.

But let the size of this not deter any potential readers of dear Miklós Bánffy because I have warmed to him as a writer and a person (he had the most unusually soulful eyes) and very quickly become embedded in the dying days of the Habsburg empire (of which I don't know a lot) and the lives of Count Balint Abady and his cousin Count Laszlo Gyeroffy.

I didn't know a thing about Count Miklós Bánffy de Losoncz (30 December 1873 — 5 June 1950) either, but discover (thank you internet) that he was a Hungarian nobleman, liberal politician, and historical novelist living in a very nice castle indeed until the political situation took a turn for the worse in the Second World War...

Miklós Bánffy populates They Were Counted with alacrity, almost to a point where I felt overwhelmed, but it was a party, it was inevitable and all added to that sense of walking into a crowded room of people, all of whom know each other...but you know none of them. I quickly realised that there was no point in a nicely drawn genogram, it would take me forever, so I have relied on the author's skill in guiding me through the voices and personalities and he does it to perfection. Mild confusions are rapidly ironed out and the most wonderful panorama of a story starts to emerge.

Someone suggested gliding through the politics and enjoying the rest, and to some extent I have done that, though a bit of me would like to understand all this better. Better than 'what' I don't know, because I have no base line for Transylvania and Hungary in 1904, so I am learning new things. In a strange way it segues with my Silk Road reading for all the genetic mixes that the trading route created across the steppes of Asia and into the far reaches of Europe. It is also only a short thirty-five year hop in time, and a slight drift east, to the world of Olivia Manning and The Balkan Trilogy.

Whilst I realise the country was sliced up again after the First World War, the 1922 Bartholomew atlas has come in handy again too and confirms the presence of Banffy...

I would love an audio version of this but to date I don't think there is one, please let me know if you find one, but in the meantime I am wallowing in the book and its world.

Now then is it just me, living down here in the back of beyond, who hadn't heard of Miklós Bánffy or does his name trip off your tongue every time someone asks for a good book recommend...

And thinking along Austro-Hungarian empire lines, does anyone have any more reading suggestions while I'm holed up in this part of the world..

I suppose I really should read Dracula again...

And there's always Joseph Roth's Radetzky March...

But there must be more, and maybe some travel writing too.

 

 

 

 

 

A Question of Upbringing ~ Anthony Powell ( A Dance to the Music of Time - Book One)

‘It doesn’t do to read too much,’ Widmerpool said. ‘You get to look at life with a false perspective. By all means have some familiarity with the standard authors ...but it is no good clogging your mind with a lot of trash from modern novels.”

 

Bless Widmerpool for this and I'm wondering whether anyone else has had any luck with Book One of A Dance to the Music of Time...

If not take heart because it was fourth time lucky for me so this might just not be the 'right' moment for you. It was with some determination that I sat down on New Year’s Eve with A Question of Upbringing (1951) and told myself this just had to be read if I was going to set up this wonderful book-a-month project to launch a new decade of reading. Previous fails saw me no further than page twenty or so and even picking up the book gave me heart sink.

Isn’t it amazing what a different copy can do....and also a pledge to come back here and write about it at the end of the month. Good  font, line spacing and the much-loved no-tussle floppy pages in this newly-jacketed edition from Arrow Books.

I will add that, as usual, a read like this often takes me off in one direction and it is that trail I will share here each month. If you are reading along you may have taken an entirely different path, seen completely different things (in fact I hope you have) and that is absolutely fine and how this works best. Nothing 'gospel' or erudite about my pronouncements, just a starter for ten, so please do add your own thoughts and trails in comments if you want to.

I’m a bit of a genogram person, even with the most straightforward of books, so I was in my element with Nicholas Jenkins, his slowly-expanding social circles and my new Muji notebook with its beautifully smooth paper.

First at boarding school, thence to France and then to university. I'm always mildly amused by all this ‘going up’ and ‘going down’ and ‘sent down’ university lingo, but I’ve also enjoyed being a bystander to Jenkins’ life, and those invisible power struggles in a room full of people. The verbal slings and arrows now observed by a mature Nicholas Jenkins, but largely unnoticed or interpreted differently by his younger self. All those competing personalities vying for attention and the little glimpses of reality...why has 'Quiggins' hirsute leg' stuck in my mind....I've no idea.

And then some really sensitive observations of friendships and how they end..

'One of these parting of the ways that happen through life.'

'Human relationships flourish and decay, quickly and silently, so that those concerned scarcely know how brittle, or how inflexible, the ties that bind them have become.'

Maybe it was this that made me sit down and write (with pen and ink and paper) a long letter to a 'friend' of many years ago whose Christmas letter seemed replete with anxiety about a terrible year past and uncertainty about what the future may hold. Ours a friendship that saw us through some interesting years in our young lives but suddenly the ties felt tenuous and I didn't want to let them unravel. Whether she will feel the same who can know. I said please don't feel obliged to reply, and if she doesn't we'll just stick to Christmas cards and carry on regardless. 

And then there are the vagaries of public school life for boys in that immediate period after the First World War.

What had gone before seemed to take the shape of the 'unsayable' in A Question of Upbringing, mentioned at a slant, but I sensed it somehow, especially in that scene in the school chapel, and felt it even more keenly when they sang a verse from one of my favourite hymns...

As o'er each continent and island
The dawn leads on another day,
The voice of prayer is never silent,
Nor dies the strain of praise away. 

Whilst all eyes are on the return of Le Bas mine were casting a much wider net, for the place and the atmosphere, to the gentle tones of  The Day Thou Gavest Lord is Ended with a descant provided by a group of boys sitting behind.

I was there.

Just thinking about the number who had died in the Great War, the heroic mantle bestowed on the dead, and quite how that legacy of sorrow impacted on the life of the school and those that would have to follow them, led me to another book on my shelves. Public Schools and the Great War - The Generation Lost by Anthony Seldon and David Walsh offers fascinating insights into an aspect of the war that has been the subject of much debate...

'The Great War is deeply imprinted on the sense of history and identity of every public school, its inescapable presence felt in the many familiar places which commemorate it - memorial chapels and halls, plaques, photographs and statues...'

and this...

'The public schools have not emerged well in the representations of the Great War, the predominant impression being one of callous staff officers who operated a long way behind the lines, and bumbling junior officers.'

Now I think about it, this has almost become the received opinion and this book works hard to reappraise these perceptions, exploring the 'codes of service, courage and loyalty, meriting our respect rather than our derision.' There are a few telling and relevant observations which I connected to A Question of Upbringing, especially this...

'Several headmasters and housemasters were broken by the losses of so many of their young men,'

And that had me wondering about Le Bas, the draconian housemaster...

'He merely seemed to Stringham and myself a dangerous lunatic, to be humoured and out-witted...'

We know little about Le Bas's history but...well maybe I'm investing too much in it. we'll see.

Anthony Seldon and David Walsh go on to explore the impressions of the officers in the Great War shaped by media productions such as Oh! What a Lovely War and the TV series Blackadder Goes Forth, outlining the various portrayals of men 'lacking brains, leadership or courage'.  They step in with a timely comparison to Journey's End, the play by  R.C.Sherriff written in 1927.

And perhaps this, another observation, holds true for Jenkins' school...

Exhausted and traumatised by over four years of war, the schools returned to a curriculum and way of life that was reassuringly familiar.

And of course Antony Powell is writing in the 1950s, well-removed from those early days, but, broader perspectives aside, I surprised myself (based on previous attempts) and enjoyed honing in on this world through the eyes of a single narrator in A Question of Upbringing. I feel myself well-launched onto the eleven remaining and am really looking forward to Book Two A Buyer's Market.

If anyone else is reading along with A Dance to the Music of Time 2020 please do share your thoughts, and even if you are not reading along but have read this far (thank you) all comments are most welcome. 

 

 

Bridge is Fifty Years Old...

Forget that it is forty-five years ago this weekend since I met Bookhound...no, the really important anniversary of the weekend is this...

It was fifty years ago today, January 26th 1970, that Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon & Garfunkel hit the record shops.

I bought my copy for 25/- from my Mum’s Trafford’s catalogue and paid it back at 2/6d a week from my wages as a Saturday girl in Woolworth’s on Wallington High Street. I still have the LP (of course I do, this is me)

...though I doubt much sound comes out of it these days because I played it into oblivion, but no matter because I’m probably still word perfect on every song and Bookhound and I have now decided we really should treat ourselves to a record deck and play some of these LPs again.

‘El Condor Pasa’ .. of course I’d rather be a sparrow than a snail, who wouldn’t..

‘The Boxer,’ the poor boy whose story’s seldom told.

Who can forget ‘ So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright’ ...so long who? We’d never heard of him, and what’s all this harmonising ‘til dawn. Architects may indeed come and go but Frank has stayed lodged in my consciousness forever thanks to that song.

‘Cecilia’ and my mum frowning ever so slightly at the rather risqué lyrics.

I’d get in from school, my mum would be there, we’d have a cup of tea and sit on the settee together, put the LP on the radiogram and have a listen.

And that beautiful ‘Song for the Asking’ and the wistful moment when it ended and I would turn the record over and start it all again.

Nor will I ever forget spending an entire DAY dialling (on an old telephone with the circular number dial) the Albert Hall in London to get tickets for the Simon & Garfunkel concert there in a April that year. My friend June and I had seats in the choir, overlooking the stage and Art Garfunkel sang the most perfect version of Bridge Over Troubled Water that I would ever here.

How sad that it all ended in jealousy and acrimony, and mostly over that very song. I choose to ignore that bit though, Bridge Over Troubled Water mains one of the theme tunes to my life. Another one would of course by Blue by Joni.

Anyone else have a Bridge memory...

 

Full Tilt ~ Dervla Murphy

You could be forgiven for thinking I’ve just been sat here staring out at the rain and gloomy grey skies all winter, but no, indeed very much no.... I’ve been cycling from Dublin to India with Dervla Murphy, and I didn't even know I wanted to go. Admittedly Dervla’s been doing all the pedalling but I’ve been cheering her on from the safety of my armchair. Truth be told, though I've stopped short of donning the padded shorts, I have fallen back on memories of my hundred miles along the Otago Rail Trail in New Zealand back in 2016.

Full Tilt - Ireland to India with a Bicycle was a chance encounter. Eland travel books are not such an easy find in the bookshops down here, (though Exeter Waterstones are increasing their stock) so when I came across this one and saw the cover I was intrigued. It reminded me of the Kayaker’s pictures taken in the NW of India. 

Both images lure me in. I want to travel that road.

I didn’t know much about Dervla Murphy but there seem to be so few journey books like this by women in the past that I decided it was worth pumping up the tyres and setting off. Dervla set off in January 1963, in the midst of Britain’s coldest winter in recent times. It snowed on Boxing Day and we didn’t emerge the other end until a March thaw as I recall. I was nine and heaven knows how we kept the house and us warm. Arriving at school with frozen feet in wellies and knee high socks comes to mind as well as ice inside the windows and the purchase of an extra blanket (very jazzy Aztec)  each for my brother and I which I still have and use.

I'm sure you will have your own memories too...

But how unusual was it for a woman to embark on a journey like this in the 1960s; cycling alone across Europe before heading out across Persia (as it was then, now Iran) Afghanistan and onward to Delhi. And what a character and wonderful travelling companion Dervla turned out to be. Born in 1931 and raised in Lismore in Ireland, Dervla was given a bicycle and an atlas for her tenth birthday. She left school at the age of fourteen to care for her mother (this seems to be a recurring theme for so many women of this era I’ve read about lately) but she would regularly manage cycling trips around the U.K. and Europe. When both her parents died Dervla found herself a free agent and set off on this the first of many journeys around the world.

Self-effacing and modest, resilient and resourceful, courageous and long-suffering, I quickly grew to like Dervla. I’d say the perfect travelling companion but I’d probably have got on her nerves because show me a hill and a bike and I immediately require a battery, and I suspect Dervla much prefers her own company anyway. A woman uniquely aware of her own limitations but prepared to push them to the limits and able to cope with extremes... unlike me who’d be asking ‘Are we there yet?’ And needing another ‘rest’ under the guise of ‘admiring the view.’

I was reminded slightly of A Time of Gifts and Patrick Leigh Fermor’s walk through countries in the 1930s, now much-changed by war and circumstances. Persia and Afghanistan, the places and the people, viewed through Dervla’s eyes in the 1960s came to life in the most extraordinary way. Dervla has that happy knack of countering anything that could be seen as a criticism, or even remotely judgemental, by layering it with gratitude and understanding. The smelliest, filthiest people (and there were a lot of unwashed of long-standing) are the kindest and most welcoming, though tactics various for declining food were a must.

It was as I settled into the journey, the places and the people, and thanks to Dervla’s beautifully descriptive writing that I realised it was segueing with another image in my mind. On my last trip to New Zealand I had timed my return flights to come back into daylight; this having made the night flight into darkness mistake once before. As the plane flew towards the Caspian Sea I had the most breathtaking view of this vast and desolate territory

I hadn’t quite realised how that landscape had seared indelibly into my imagination until I started to read Dervla’s account. Her descriptions brought my mental image into being...

'...This stretch is just about the most beautiful part of the Hindu Kush I have seen. The glory of those mountains makes one feel that it must all be a dream. Every peak and slope and outcrop is different in shape, texture and colour, the rock and shale and clay shaded purple, rose, green, ochre, black, pale grey, dark grey, brown, navy and off-white...'

What a palette, what a place.

About half way through Full Tilt I realised my need was great for an old atlas, and by some miracle Bookhound found an old Bartholomew tome dated 1922 on his shelves. The maps are sheer, old-fashioned perfection...

Tiny print, and I need a magnifying glass, but it made a huge difference as I started to follow the trail across great salt deserts and mountain passes, whilst giving myself a much-needed geography lesson at the same time. I now have the Hindu Kush, the Karakoram and the Himalayas perfectly aligned in my head. 

I’m all about the Hindu Kush now and my next journey has set off with Eric Newby and A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush. For some reason I (and it would seem others) have always had this down as a serious book, one of those venerable reads that will 'do me good.' It's certainly doing me good but mainly because I am laughing so much, I had no idea Eric Newby was so funny. I will follow this with Colin Thubron’s Shadow of the Silk Road. There is something about these travellers, setting out in the days before the internet and mobile phones and GPS,  that I am finding very engaging. Proper job explorers these. 

 

So that's me and my travels from the armchair...

I'd love to know if you have read any of these, Dervla, Eric or Colin, and who else you might add to the pre-cheating days of travel writing. People who had to use a map, write letters, send telegrams and generally think on their feet rather than send a text message.

And then there was the winter of '63... were your feet cold in wellies too...

 

Almost Gone With the Wind...

We have been almost gone with the wind this last few weeks, with the greenhouse bandaged up against a succession of storms and trees down in neighbouring villages. Such an event brings out an acute case of Log Covetousness in Bookhound who, despite a nicely full woodshed of his own, can never resist the thought of squeezing in a few more. He dreams of someone ringing up and saying' Come and help yourself,' which of course doesn't happen because every storm-gained log is accounted for in these parts, but he slows the car down to 5mph as we drive past in order to pay his respects to the glorious vision.

I think it's a Man Thing.

Mary Azarian understands..

Mary Azarian kindly gave permission for me to use some of her images here in the early days of the scribbles and I have loved them since the day I discovered them, they never lose their appeal. I hope the season is being kinder to you now wherever you are...not long until that February day when the light floods back in.

I recommend plenty of this until that day...

Meanwhile I have made a start on The Letters and came across this...

'Went to the cinema to see "Buffalo Bill" the other day and it was very good too, but I would have enjoyed it much better if you had been with me. I hope to see "Gone With the Wind" tomorrow, I've seen it once but I must see it again.'

I can't tell you how thrilled I was to read that. A letter from my Dad to my Mum, and written on June 9th 1944. He's had to leave his happy ship King George V, and my Mum, behind in Liverpool where they've met a few months previously, and is now stationed with the Royal Marines at Portsmouth where he's doing more training (bugle replaced by guns now) in readiness for a posting to a new ship which will be heading to the Eastern Front.

My Dad also comments on the big events of the week... 

'What do you think of the news about the second front, wonderful isn't it. I hope the boys go right through now...'

D Day has happened and perhaps the tide will turn on a war that he's been on active service with since the age of fourteen in 1939, but he's now nineteen and he's off to see Gone With the Wind again, isn't that wonderful. Now quite what my Mum would have thought of a cinema outing to see Buffalo Bill I can't imagine, but she loved Gone With the Wind and I think he knows that, and that the barest mention will win him points. It's the thought that counts.

I was thrilled because by coincidence I had started to re-read Gone With the Wind over Christmas, and Helen Taylor is to blame for me picking the book up again after a gap of fifty years or so. First time around a single paperback copy did the rounds of Form 4C at Nonsuch Girls, and it seemed the whole class was smitten. But in December I had started on Why Women Read Fiction - The Stories of Our Lives, Helen Taylor's new book (and for which I am very honoured to have done an interview) and in the first few pages of the book Gone With the Wind gets much attention...

'Since the novel (1936) and then film (1939) came out around the start of the Second World War (when families were torn apart and homes and lives destroyed), women of a certain age found it comforting and inspirational...they said they had learned from this book (and later the film) about love, loss, and courage...'

In researching a previous book, Scarlett's Women : Gone With the Wind and its Female Fans, Helen had discovered a legion of women for whom Margaret Mitchell's tome was a very special book.

Helen argues that women, whilst questioning the 'reactionary racial agendas' and rejecting the 'rosy picture of American slavery and the Civil War', were able to identify with Scarlett as a feisty feminist, and also with other 'fresh female role models and new ways of thinking about masculinity and romantic love.'  Helen also points out that whilst men may have seen the film, fewer of them have read the book. Given that I doubt my Dad would have wanted to be seen reading Gone With the Wind in the rufty-tufty environment of a wartime military barracks, he was by now madly in love with my Mum so who can know what he took away from the film. He was more of an Ashley than a Rhett, but perhaps he was becoming a hybrid of the strengths and finer points of both of them now I think about it.

Anyway I was immediately enthused to revisit and settled down with Gone With the Wind on my Kindle, my Mum's weighty copy nearby, and whisked through the first 500 pages in no time...and then the prevailing wind died down (sorry) and I ran out of steam. Christmas and New Year were done, the decorations were packed away, Scarlett has arrived back at Tara and found it standing but only just, and I decided to stop for now and make it a book of two volumes.

I will read the second half when the mood comes around again, but meanwhile I'm wondering if Gone With The Wind holds a special place in your life too...

If so can you remember when you read it and what you thought...

Or maybe not...maybe there's a different book that fills that space..

Please do leave a comment because I'm sure Helen Taylor will be interested too, and I'd love to know your thoughts if you read Why Women Read Fiction . I'll have much more to say about it through the year I'm sure.

 

The Horseman ~ Tim Pears

Apart from the fact that I always get the author Tim Pears confused with the author Iain Pears, I had wondered where Tim and his books had been all my life and so I made a start. Well, this was back in 2018 and a summoning up of any draft posts behind the scenes revealed this written in July 2018, when the sun was shining. It seemed a shame to waste it, and I reckoned a memory of summer would be just the ticket for those of us in the midst of a Northern Hemisphere January, so eighteen months later herewith...

The Horseman, the first in Tim Pears's Westcountry Trilogy had been on my radar for a long time. Words like 'hypnotic' and 'pastoral' and 'bucolic' were floating around in my consciousness, and several of you emailed or mentioned the book in comments for which I thank you because I got there in the end.

'1911. In a forgotten valley on the Devon-Somerset border, the seasons unfold, marked only by the rituals of the farming calendar. Twelve-year-old Leopold Sercombe skips school to help his father, a carter. Skinny and pale, Leo dreams of a job on the estate's stud farm. He is breaking a colt for his father when a boy dressed in a Homburg, breeches and riding boots appears. Peering under the stranger's hat, he discovers Miss Charlotte, the Master's daughter. And so begins a friendship between the children, bound by a deep love of horses, but divided by rigid social boundaries - boundaries that become increasingly difficult to navigate as they approach adolescence.'

This is definitely a book to read slowly, at the pace of life at the time in which it is set. I read it in short instalments over several weeks and was actually reading one day sitting up behind the summerhouse.

It was surprisingly 'noisy' for our little corner. One tractor was baling up the hay in Outer Down and another was ploughing up Long Acre. Two men, two tractors, one afternoon doing a job that would have taken who knows how long and how many men back in 1911. If you missed the video over on Instagram you can watch it here.

Nowadays, with a subject such as this...farming in the early twentieth century, how easy it is to extract the poetic... the beauty and the scenery and the seemingly leisurely pace of life, whilst ignoring the realities. None of the realities are lost in The Horseman so brace for some early scenes that might make you wince a little, but you will be quickly disabused of any notions of sentimentality and can proceed with the rest of the book under no illusions about the hardships of the life. 

We often think about it around us here. We watch the hedge trimmer flail and smash its way along the lane in a day, doing the work that would have taken countless men countless days...

Indeed, during the winter we can still see that careful hedge-laying handiwork of the past...

We also know that the 'carters' from the farm lived in our cottages ( we were once two but are now one) and it was a bit of a revelation for me to find out what being a 'carter' really involved, along with the profound and crucial importance of the horses in their work ploughing and harvesting. The horses needed people who understood them too so I will be intrigued to follow the life of Leopold Sercombe in the next two volumes of this trilogy

There are several deeply poignant undercurrents flowing through The Horseman and I am intrigued to see how these will play out in The Wanderers and The Redeemed which I have yet to read. Whilst mechanisation is starting to arrive in 1911, and with it the requirement for a smaller workforce, we know that the workforce is about to be decimated by World War One. And not only that but the horses will be taken too.

I was reminded of a beautiful picture we saw at Torre Abbey a while ago..

The explanatory notes alongside had been helpfully corrected by someone who obviously knew their ploughshare from their harvester, 

...but there is an undeniable sadness in the innocence of this idyllic scene, during the summer before the war, saying so much of the unsayable and the unknowable at the time. And of course, we know what lies ahead.

I know quite a few of you have read The Horseman so please do share your thoughts in comments...

And also the next two books, I really am way behind so this is a series I must catch up with.

 

 

The Pulse Glass and the Beat of Other Hearts ~ Gillian Tindall

‘The cycle from prized object to discarded one to rubbish, and then to extinction is a well-established one...’

Firstly my thanks to Avis who emailed a while back about The Pulse Glass thinking I might enjoy it. With a healthy accumulation of spendable points burning a hole in my Waterstones loyalty card, I wandered in for a browse while Bookhound was enjoying his birthday treat with the menfolk watching Pymouth Argyle lose at football (again). There was a long story to this New Year’s Day involving a lot of walking, no buses, sausage sandwiches, Plymouth rain, a taxi, a Park & Ride bus full to the brim with football supporters topping out at 8mph and me very grateful for a hot bath when we finally arrived home.

But I won’t go into all that, just the happy outcome from Waterstones which was a copy of The Pulse Glass  and the Beat of Other Hearts by Gillian Tindall. I should add that it is always worth checking the Waterstones App because the book was half price to order online but not in the shop, and of course they honoured that at the till.

Taking a series of disparate objects Gillian Tindall builds a changing picture that I suspect most readers will be able to fit into some aspect of their lives. Whether it be the childhood toy, the old letters and diaries, the unnamed photographs, an old map; whatever it is it holds a story for the person who 'knows' it which may remain lost unless told. Gillian Tindall broadens the scope of each object by weaving in history around it.

And nor did I now what a pulse glass was.

It is a tiny hourglass, about the size of a stick of chalk but 'an exact half minute glass' designed for taking a patient’s pulse, and from the days when pocket watches didn't have a second-hand.

Starting and ending with the sudden death of her brother, small details emerge of their lives and family throughout the book, culminating in a searingly honest account of events in the final chapter. For Gillian Tindall this must have been both harrowing and cathartic, the stark revelations, the admission of true feelings about cataclysmic childhood events and those who instigated them. Nevertheless, in the context of what has gone before, it was somehow uplifting to read... to have the courage to face the truth and the realities, rather than be beguiled into false sentiment by the objects. As I turned the final page I knew I had discovered my first Best Read of the 2020 with my very first book; onto the Top Shelf it goes.

The Pulse Glass is a book that consistently allows for reader involvement at a personal level. I doubt many will read it without either scurrying up into the loft to find things, or wonder where things have gone, or look at known objects and suddenly see them in a new light. Ultimately the hidden story of the object remains just that unless told, or shared, or written about.  Someone has to want to know that story and to want to keep that object. Likewise the box of unlabelled photographs that I'll bet many of us have stashed somewhere could ultimately become meaningless bonfire fodder to future generations unless properly marked.

Now you know me by now. Nothing knowingly discarded if it holds a story and I am ably abetted by a very large and accessible loft...or perhaps it's a hindrance...perhaps it would be easier not to have kept all this stuff.  Anyway as the Christmas decorations went back up I had asked Bookhound if he could find the box of letters that my Dad wrote to my Mum (I'll call them Len and Vera for a minute) from when they met in early 1944 to their marriage in 1947.

'How much do you really want these found and brought down?' said Bookhound as he donned the head torch and prepared his ascent. I think he was hoping for a 'No don't worry now,' response but all he got was a look. There was a lot of rummaging and shifting of boxes until he finally emerged triumphant with these...

Hundred of letters posted to Vera, living in Liverpool, from Len as he sailed all over the world.

My Mum had died and my Dad ( I couldn’t keep it up for long) had given them to me long before he moved into Tinker's Cott with us here. I had picked out a few and read them before making a conscious decision not to read any more while he was still alive. Then of course you can't bear to look at them and so ten years or more has passed. I think it felt intrusive at the time and we never talked about them again, but inevitably I'm pondering that decision now because I have a growing list of questions after only twenty letters to which I may never get an answer. 

And what happened to my Mum's letters...

He would never have thrown them away, but was keeping hundreds of letters in the confined space of a ship just too difficult...

Were they in the shed and did the mice eat them as happened to Bookhound's fishing journals...

And did I ever know some of the things that I am now discovering.

Gillian Tindall talks about notions of memory...

'Memory, and in particular the fallibility of memory, has today become something of a fashionable subject. One has to agree that memory is obviously selective, that much is readily transposed, simplified or recalled over time with altered emphasis - which is not to say  that the reworked memory is necessarily a less valid version of what originally happened than the immediate memory was. Sometimes it can turn out more essentially focused...'

This was all food for much thought for me, a caveat to my assumption that I was remembering everything correctly. And so an inspiring book has led from one thing to another and here I have sat for the past week or so making some semblance of order of everything I have about Vera Griffiths and Len Chester. Photos, cards, certificates, school exercise books and I've started reading the letters. Already there is a story to be told, and if I don't sort this out for our children (who tell me they want it) no one else can. 

And so after five hours one afternoon the letters are now in date order, let the mission commence.

This is all Gillan Tindall's fault so beware, if you read The Pulse Glass you may be overcome with a similar situation.

Meanwhile, has anyone else read The Pulse Glass...

Does anyone else have a stash of old family stuff that needs sorting...

If so do you have plans for it...

Or maybe you have already done it...

Maybe you decided to get rid of it. There's no right or wrong here, just what feels best at any given time.

I took a great deal of trouble to sort out all our family photographs of the children before we moved here. Remember the 1980s when we all sent them off to Truprint and accumulated masses. All beautifully ordered and catalogued by year and as the removal man carried the box out to the van the bottom fell out and there were hundreds of photographs strewn across the Old Launceston Road. I haven't had the heart to go back and re-sort them in twenty-five years...until now.

Bonfires were mentioned in Gillian Tindall's book, conducted by well-intentioned people to whom the 'stuff' holds no meaning, tells no story, or perhaps tells a story they feel is best left alone. 

I think that word 'bonfire' might be what has spurred me on.

 

 

 

Let’s face the music and dance...

'Let’s Face the Music and Dance' is actually one of the book group’s themes for a book choice this year and I haven’t yet decided what my choice might be, but in searching for a title for a scribbles post here I’ve happily mangled up the words for a reading choice that I have made through 2020.

Before I progress I have to be allowed a brief diversion to say that Let’s Face the Music and Dance always but always reminds me of Torvill and Dean and that wonderful 1994 Lillehammer Olympic ice dance comeback, when 23 million people sat gripped, only to watch them slip into Bronze medal position. The skating duo went on tour that summer and a twelve-year-old Offspringette and I trekked off to see them at Wembley (I think). We were die-hard fans and I still get a bit of a shiver when I see them dance. Lasting memories of Offspringette’s precious programme slipping down underneath the tiered seating never to be retrieved (there were tears) and Bookhound ringing later that evening to tell us that our offer on this house had been accepted. I bought another programme and we moved in here two months later. 

Anyway, now to the book. I don’t announce this sort of reading thing quite so often these days because I can end up tying myself down to a book I may not necessarily enjoy, and then the reading becomes a chore, not a pleasure except I’ve already told you all I’m reading it, and some of you join in. To that end I’m really sorry about The Magic Mountain. I just got stuck half way up and lost my reading pitons. However I have been promising myself a read of Anthony Powell’s twelve volume masterpiece A Dance to the Music of Time for years now, having started and stopped the first volume A Question of Upbringing three times. Each time I kept asking myself was I really interested in this paean to the lives of men, but it was a chance remark from a friend (thank you Peter if you are reading this) who commented at a Christmas social event (Peter and Margaret’s Kitchen Warming, thank you again, it was lovely and so is the kitchen) that I don’t read many books by men. I had a think and a check back and have to admit that the percentages are indeed somewhat disproportionate, so twelve volumes of this should sort that one out.

I decided to first read A Question of Upbringing beyond page thirty before declaring and committing to another eleven volumes because it’s apparently the trickiest one to get into, but A Dance to the Music of Time is a series that begs to be read at a book a month starting in January, and there were some very encouraging noises when I tentatively mentioned it on Twitter. Bless Adele Geras who rates it so highly and whose approval was enough to spur me on. I also invested in the newly re-jacketed ‘floppy’ edition as an added attraction, and hey presto I was through and into the world of Nicholas Jenkins. The consensus is that these are books about human behaviour and it's taken me a while to sit back and watch, but in the words of Anthony Powell...

'The narrator Nicholas Jenkins, is merely a vehicle for expressing how people and happenings struck him during a period of some sixty years...'

Likewise he readily acknowledges the role of the reader in potentially making a different judgement to that of the narrator so there's another trick to look out for.

I had also invested (first attempt around) in Hilary Spurling’s handbook to the series, Invitation to the Dance which is a sort of vade mecum who’s who of every character, and which acts a handy reminder of their origins when they crop up again several volumes apart. And I have ordered a copy of Hilary Spurling's biography of Anthony Powell because nothing she writes disappoints. 

So I am hoping to read a book every month through 2020 and report back here at the end of each month which would allow for discussion in comments. But be warned, if we've started with a Torvill & Dean digression there are bound to be plenty more extraneous trails to pursue because who knows where the narrative will lead me....remembering with fondness our previous shared year-long reads of  Middlemarch, Ulysses and War & Peace.

Meanwhile, if on reading this you fancied joining me in this particular dance you would be a very welcome partner.