He saw this pattern now as a series of lovely things hung one behind the other like great curtains. Closest to him was the life of men with the mov
He saw this pattern now as a series of lovely things hung one behind the other like great curtains. Closest to him was the life of men with the moving figures of those he must love, an old man and a little girl and a husband and wife whose generosity would make their home his. Then came the city of bells and towers, then the blue hills behind it, then the sky that now to him a rich, o'erhanging firmament. And behind that? He was no imaginative child and his vision of wings and crowns was not as clear as Henreitta's, but behind the things that are seen he was aware now of the things that are not seen and in his new-made pattern they were the warp.
The 'city of bells' is the Cathedral town of Torminster, based on the real-life city of Wells, Somerset - the smallest city in England. Elizabeth Goudge spent much of her childhood in Wells, where her father was the vice-principal of the Theological College. Her knowledge of this special place - its citizens, and its rituals - provides much of the colour and background to this novel.
"I don't know why, but a small cathedral town always seems to attract peculiar elderly ladies . . . Of course, no doubt we are all of us much more peculiar than we have any idea of . . . It may be that I am considered odd myself." (Grandfather)
"In Torminster everyone knows much more about one than one does oneself, you'll find." (Felicity)
There are many lost characters in the novel, the most important of which are Gabriel Ferranti (an unsuccessful writer), Jocelyn Irvin (a retired soldier) and Henrietta (the adopted daughter of Canon Fordyce, who is also Grandfather to Jocelyn). Indeed, the parable of the Prodigal Son is used to symbolic effect in the story. All of these characters will make their home in Torminster and their lives will be bound together in a 'pattern' that seems fated in both the spiritual sense and what Shakespeare described as 'the stars'.
This book is set during the Edwardian era that would have been Goudge's own childhood, and details like clothing (there are especially wonderful descriptions of 9 year old Henrietta's accoutrements) and the ecclesiastical calendar are undoubtedly accurate. However, you couldn't really describe Goudge's book as 'realistic'. Although this particular novel doesn't delve as deeply into fantasy as some of the Goudge canon does, it has its own romantic colouring and flavour. She has a particular style all her own, and although it's difficult to pin down into words, it will be recognisable to all of her readers. She has a distinctive mix of whimsy and wisdom in her books, and there is an insistence on the importance of love. Her religious faith imbues all of her stories, but it has elements of humanism, too. Goudge's reverence for beauty, learning and the natural world create a special atmosphere in all of her books - but in her best novels; and to my mind, this is one of them - those elements serve a higher power. There is something very old-fashioned by a Goudge novel, but old-fashioned in the best way. She is the least cynical writer imaginable and I always feel uplifted by reading any of her books....more
I felt the old pull of the earth, the solemn magic that comes out of those fields at nightfall. I wished I could be a little boy again, and that my
I felt the old pull of the earth, the solemn magic that comes out of those fields at nightfall. I wished I could be a little boy again, and that my way could end there.
On the title page of this book, Willa Cather includes this Latin phrase from Virgil: Optima dies . . . prima fugit. Later, her narrator James ‘Jim’ Burden defines it as meaning “in the lives of mortals, the best days are the first to flee.” It’s an apt phrase for this book, which is more than anything an exercise in nostalgia for not just a childhood - but the landscape of one’s childhood. The book is set in the fictional Nebraska town of Black Hawk, but was understood to be the town of Red Cloud (named for a famous leader of the Oglala Lakota tribe). Willa Cather lived in Red Cloud during the formative years of her late childhood and adolescence, and although she gives this book a male narrator, it is so suffused with romantic melancholy that one feels the author put much of her own longing and nostalgia into it.
Like the narrator Jim Burden, Willa Cather was born in Virginia and moved to Nebraska in 1883 when she was 9 years old. Although Cather names no dates in the book, that exact timeline seems to fit the story. Red Cloud/Black Hawk was opened to homesteaders in 1870, and the first chapter of the book covers the time period when the first wave of farmers settled into the hard work of converting the prairie grass into farm land. After the death of his parents, Jim arrives by train from Virginia to live with his grandparents on their farm. On his journey, he learns that the Shimerda family - from Bohemia - are bound for the same destination. The Shimerdas have a daughter, Antonia, who is a few years older than Jim and she becomes his favourite childhood companion. They learn the prairie together and have adventures which never leave his imagination.
Antonia had always been one to leave images in the mind that did not fade - that grew stronger with time. In my memory there was a succession of such pictures, fixed there like the old woodcuts of one’s first primer: Antonia kicking her bare legs against the sides of my pony when we came home in triumph with our snake; Antonia in her black shawl and fur cap, as she stood by her father’s grave in the snowstorm; Antonia coming in with her work-team along the evening sky-line. She lent herself to immemorial human attitudes which we recognise by instinct as universal and true.
Although Cather chooses to narrate her story from a male perspective - perhaps to make it more palatable to the general reading audience of 1918; perhaps so she can filter romantic longings through a conventional outlet - this is a book that glorifies women and their role in shaping and ‘civilising’ the Great Plains landscape. Antonia is the most beloved, the most representative, of a group of immigrant girls who come to America with nothing and manage - through their hard work, vitality and good sense - to transform their family fortunes in a generation.
Cather’s writing is at its most beautiful in this book and she brings the prairie landscape and its inhabitants vividly to life. It’s an idealised vision, I suspect, but then she does admit to its being so. ...more
The wind sang a low, rustling song in the grass. Grasshoppers’ rasping quivered up from the immense prairie. A buzzing came faintly from all the tr
The wind sang a low, rustling song in the grass. Grasshoppers’ rasping quivered up from the immense prairie. A buzzing came faintly from all the trees in the creek bottoms. But all these sounds made a great, warm, happy silence. Laura had never seen a place she liked so much as this place.
The opening chapter to this children’s classic is titled ‘Going West’ and it chronicles the family’s journey, by covered wagon, all the way from Wisconsin to the ‘Indian country’ (modern Kansas and Oklahoma). The explanation for why the family is taking its chances in the unsettled West is that ‘there were too many people in the Big Woods now’. It’s such an American story: Manifest Destiny and fresh starts all rolled into one.
The book is narrated from the third-person point of view of Laura Ingalls, who is roughly 6 years old at the beginning of the family’s journey. Like her father - Charles Ingalls, or ‘Pa’ - Laura is totally game for this journey and truly alive to the beauty of the prairie landscape. As an adult reader, I was particularly attuned to the rapturous descriptions of the prairie - so sweet and clean and unspoiled. It is definitely portrayed as an Eden, with plenty of wild animals and space for everyone.
Some of the main themes of the series really start to emerge in the book - for instance, the family’s self-sufficiency. Although there are a few examples of neighbours helping out, Ma and Pa are depicted as being fully capable of taking care of their own little family. This is a book about ‘building’, too - and full of what Caroline Fraser, the author of Prairie Fires, calls the description of ‘process’. In this book, the narrator describes the following: how to build a house (walls, fireplace, roof, floor), make a bed, dig a well and shape a willow chair.
Pa and Laura love the wildness of this new land, while older sister Mary (always portrayed as a ‘good, obedient girl’ in comparison to naughtier, more curious Laura) and mother Caroline represent civilisation. Caroline, ‘Ma’, always insists on good manners and cleanliness, and is herself consistently portrayed as gentle, patient and kind. Ma’s ‘little china woman’ is itself a symbol of civilisation and is placed on a carved wooden shelf when the house is finally completed.
In the later books, most of the conflicts come from the challenges (natural and economic) of trying to make a living through farming. In this book, the central problem is that the land - which had seemed available to any settlers willing to ‘tame’ it - is already occupied by ‘Indians’ (named as the Osage tribe in the book). I couldn’t help but notice that the family’s split personality also divides on the subject of native Americans. Ma fears and resents them, while Pa and Laura are interested in them - even fascinated - and far more respectful of both their ways and their rights to the land. The book ends with the family’s retreat and a reverse journey back north, this time to Minnesota instead of Wisconsin.
In Caroline Fraser’s biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Prairie Fires, she notes that Charles Ingalls ‘never seemed to realize that his ambition for a profitable farm was irreconcilable with a love of untrammelled and unpopulated wilderness’. More than any of the other books, this one celebrates that wilderness . . . even as the family dedicate themselves to an attempt to civilise it. ...more
I read this novel when it was first published (2011) and I remember loving it - and pressing it into the hands of anyone who would listen to my ravingI read this novel when it was first published (2011) and I remember loving it - and pressing it into the hands of anyone who would listen to my ravings about it. In the past two weeks I have read the author’s follow-up Circe - also wonderful - and Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls, which examines the story of Achilles and Patroclus from the point-of-view of their slave/friend/lover Briseis. Barker’s very different depiction of Achilles made me want to reread this book - for contrast, but also to see if I still admired and enjoyed it as much.
The answer is YES. Yes, I did. I don’t know how she does it, but the way Miller unfolds and reveals the love story between Achilles and Patroclus is just mesmerising. Also very sensual, but tastefully and never embarrassingly so - which isn’t easy to pull off.
Patroclus is the protagonist of this one, and it is very much his coming-of-age story, and a love story (as mentioned), but it’s also a story about what it means to be hero. The book begins in Patroclus’s early childhood. Despite being the son of a King, Patroclus’s birth is inauspicious. His mother is ‘simple’ and despite the wealth she has brought to her husband, he regards their marriage as a trick that has besmirched his honour and his reputation. Patroclus, small for his age and lacking in noticeable talents and intelligence, is a disappointment to his father from the first. When he accidentally kills another young boy, Patroclus is exiled from his own father’s kingdom and sent to be fostered by King Peleus, the father of Achilles.
Achilles - whose mother is the sea-goddess Thetis - was born to be the age’s greatest warrior, but his life is shadowed by a dark prophecy. Miller sets the stage for the epic Trojan War from the first chapters of the novel, and even as the two boys grow up together - and move from friendship to love - their fates become entwined with that decade-long war made eternally famous by Homer.
Miller’s writing style balances gracefully between the poetic and spare. She uses none of the tricks of the thriller, and yet this novel is quite unputdownable in its own way, with not a moment of boredom for the reader. She is very skilled at characterisation as well, and even secondary characters like Briseis and Odysseus are vivid and distinctive. She breathes life into these legendary characters and in the process writes a very moving love story. An all-around satisfying reading experience. Highly recommended. ...more
”I thought once that gods are opposite of death, but I see now they are more dead than anything, for they are unchanging, and can hold nothing in thei”I thought once that gods are opposite of death, but I see now they are more dead than anything, for they are unchanging, and can hold nothing in their hands.”
Greek mythology is not a particular interest of mine, but this author has an almost uncanny ability to give voice to the old stories and characters. With impressive imaginative authority, Miller puts Circe - who has long been relegated to a supporting role in The Odyssey - at the centre of her own story. Even more impressively, Miller manages to make the story feel very relevant; and she does so without ever falling into anachronisms of expression or feeling.
”What makes a witch? I have come to believe it is mostly will.”
Circe is the daughter of Helios (the Titan sun god) and a clever naiad called Perse (daughter of Oceanos, another Titan). In the very first line of the story, Circe says of herself: ”the name for which I was did not exist.” Although she is the first-born child of her parents’ union, her parents and three younger siblings all regard her as slow, imperfect and inferior. She exists (literally) at her father’s feet; mostly ignored and dismissed by the others. She experiences her ‘privileged’ immortal life as a ”dull misery”. When extremes of rejection and jealousy provoke Circe to finally act, she does so in an instinctive but totally imprudent way - and is punished with solitary exile to the island of Aiaia. There, Circe begins to learn her craft - and realises that witchcraft (called pharmykos) is the union of ‘will’ and ‘work’.
It wouldn’t be much of a story if only Circe were in it, so her long exile and apprenticeship is punctuated with encounters with other important mythic and mortal figures: Hermes and Athena, but also Daedalus, Odysseus, Medea, Penelope and Telemachus. Miller makes all of these characters complex and nuanced, especially the mortal ones. (As a child, Circe asks Prometheus what humans are like and he answers: ”They are all different. All they share is death.”)
Plot points aside, what makes this story so compelling and relevant is the growth and development of Circe as a character. Most readers will be able to respond to her efforts to define herself apart from her own powerful family. She has to discover her own gifts, and her own value as a person - and she does so with very little help or encouragement. She has to figure out her boundaries: for responsibility and guilt, but also for anger, pain and love. Finally, she is a woman who has to learn and ‘own’ her power in a very male-dominated world. (When she says of her father Helios, ”My father has never been able to imagine the world without himself in it,” it works on so many different levels.)
Miller’s plotting and characterisations are superb, but I admired her writing style as well. The first-person POV gives an intimacy to the story, but the language is formal in syntax, which suits the classical tale. She somehow manages to be both ornate and beautifully clear. Her metaphors, when used, are particularly apt.
Overall: a wonderful read with a highly satisfying ending. I suspect it will be one of my top books of the year....more
”’People always think that happiness is a faraway thing, thought Francie, ‘something complicated and hard to get. Yet, what little things can make it ”’People always think that happiness is a faraway thing, thought Francie, ‘something complicated and hard to get. Yet, what little things can make it up; a place of shelter when it rains - a cup of strong hot coffee when you’re blue; for a man, a cigarette for contentment; a book to read when you’re alone - just to be with someone you love. Those things make happiness.’”
A Tree of Heaven grows in the mossy yard of Francie Nolan’s tenement house in Brooklyn. On the very first page of this novel, Francie describes the experience of reading in the shelter of this tree on a “serene” Saturday. Her tree is a hardy and determined variety: “it grew in boarded up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps and it was the only tree that grew out of the cement.” If it’s not obvious at first, it will be obvious by the end of this story: that tree, a thing of beauty growing in such unpromising circumstances, is a metaphor for Francie herself.
This is one of the truly great American “coming of age” stories, and Francie Nolan is an unforgettable protagonist. Born in unpromising circumstances - her Irish father is a singing waiter, but mostly a drunk; and her Austrian mother is a scrub woman - Francie and her little brother Neeley live in abject poverty. Most of the novel takes place in the years when Francie is transitioning from a child of 11 to a young woman of 16. Brooklyn before World War I is a neighbourhood full of immigrants: with the Irish, Germans, Italians and Jews living cheek by jowl. It’s a wonderful slice of social history at a time when America was rapidly changing, and the details are so precise and vivid that it reads more like living history than dead. Childhood was different then, and Francie and Neeley are self-reliant in a way that it hard to imagine in this more pampered and protected age. They run the errands, bargain with the butcher, sell rubbish for pennies, and mind themselves. At 14, Francie has left school and is pretending to be 16 whilst working full-time as the main economic support of the family.
The characterisations are one of the main pleasures of the novel, and strong women dominate the narrative (and Francie’s life). Her maternal grandmother is an illiterate immigrant, yet she endows her daughters and granddaughter with her own “thin invisible steel.” Katie Rommely, and her sisters Sissy and Evy, are “slender, frail creatures with wondering eyes and soft fluttery voices” but they are all indomitable in their own ways. Following her mother’s advice, Katie raises her children with thrift and discipline, pride and an appreciation of beauty. From their babyhood, she reads them a page of the Bible and a page of Shakespeare every day until they can read for themselves. It is understood in the older generation that an education can make all of the difference and lift the next generation. However, “book smarts” aren’t all that matters. Aunt Sissy - illiterate, and first married at 14 - is full of streets smarts, cunning, savvy, and importantly, great kindness. She is truly one of the most memorable characters in the novel.
Although the Nolan children experience hunger, humiliation and at least one great sadness in their young lives, I found this novel more uplifting than melancholy. There are some painful scenes in which Francie is shamed because of her ignorance and poverty - the incident when she is vaccinated against smallpox comes to mind - but Francie’s love of life is a transcendent quality which she shares with the reader. Her small triumphs are greater than her losses, and self-pity doesn’t make a showing on these pages.
The profile of American immigrants may have changed in the last 100 years, but this novel is still a powerful exercise in developing empathy in the reader. The intensity of the family’s struggle for survival gives the story its corresponding emotional intensity. It rings with truth, but truth that has been shaped by a master storyteller. I read this book many years ago, but if anything, I loved it more on this rereading. ...more
”She had seen what life could be, and man could do when the devil was in him. She had not much hope of any wholesale change; only of the creation of i”She had seen what life could be, and man could do when the devil was in him. She had not much hope of any wholesale change; only of the creation of isolated homes of beauty from which, please God, the loveliness should spread.
They should come to it weary and sickened and go away made new. They should find peace there, and beauty, and the cleansing of their sins.”
This, the first book in the Eliot Chronicles trilogy, is an exemplar of what I’ve come to think of as ‘the restorative country house’ theme. The house, Damerosehay, is an old house set in the marshlands of the Hampshire coastline - close enough to see the sea. It has a large walled garden, of course, and ancient oaks trees, and a ‘wild garden’ just for the children. Lucilla Eliot presides over Damerosehay, and in her early widowhood (age 58) she found and furnished the house with the express intention of making it a haven for her children and grandchildren. The year was 1918, and her youngest and most adored son had just been killed in World War I. His only son, David, was suddenly orphaned - and her impulse to create a beautiful, nurturing house was born out of the need to foster David, but also the desire to remake a world shattered by the war.
When this book begins, the year is 1938 and war again is looming. David, now a successful actor, has fallen in love with Nadine - the ex-wife of his uncle George. Ben, Tommy and Caroline, the children of George and Nadine, are living with Lucilla at Damerosehay - but their Eden is suddenly threatened by this great breach in the family. Lucilla must find a way to convince Nadine and David that their love threatens the very fabric of the family and the future of Damerosehay- whose heir is meant to be David.
The plot-line is very simple and laid before the reader at the very beginning. One is never in much doubt about the outcome, but the charm and the pleasure of the book is in the way that Goudge describes the house, including its unusual history, and the individual battles that various of the characters must wage between their higher and lower natures. Family and community are valued above individual needs and desires, and in that sense, one sees how the book must have chimed with its own time: it was published in 1940, in very dark days for England.
Goudge’s work has an especially distinctive signature. Her Christian beliefs are very much reflected in the ‘philosophy’ contained in her books, but she also has a fanciful, whimsical side that appeals to me very much. Although I would never read a book overtly Christian and didactic, somehow - with Goudge’s light and wise touch - I’m always very moved by the way she depicts the struggle of life. She’s very much aware of the dark side, but so attuned to that which is ‘light’: beauty, goodness, nature, love. For instance: ”One’s real self gets very sharpened when one is unhappy. It gets able to pierce through and make peepholes in the stuff of everyday life. It’s practically the only advantage of being unhappy.”
I was a child who always longed to be good, and perhaps I am more susceptible than most to the appeal of the higher nature. I only know that I have never yet been disappointed by a Goudge book, and I find that its gentle wisdom has its restorative powers over me as much as its own characters. ...more
When I was growing up, in a medium-sized town in Texas, there was a family that everyone admired. They had three beautiful daughters, all of them smarWhen I was growing up, in a medium-sized town in Texas, there was a family that everyone admired. They had three beautiful daughters, all of them smart, talented and lively, and one son - the youngest child, presumably longed for. The father was a doctor, the mother was a sort of mistress of the arts: she sang, acted, sculpted, sewed, cooked, entertained, and did it all of it notably well, and on a scale that seemed grand for our town. The family seemed to have more fun than other families; they seemed to have the trick of knowing how to live life well. This golden age lasted maybe twenty years; and then everything came unstuck. The father had an affair, and then another family, with a much younger women. His medical practice, and his reputation, never recovered. The mother was left the huge house just at the stage that all the children had begun to leave; once the scene of so much warm hospitality, the house began disintegrating, literally, became a white elephant that couldn’t be unloaded. The mother was given jobs, mostly jobs beneath her, mostly just as favours. She died in late middle age, of cancer. The father moved away, as did three of the four children.
I haven’t thought of this family in years, but this book - this luminously beautiful and tragic book - reminded me of the way I used to think of them and others like them. How often I’ve thought about how luck can run out in life; how even the lives that seem the most golden and graced can end in loneliness and even tragedy.
In his introduction to this American novel, published in 1974, author Richard Ford describes the novel as ”an anatomy of an American family with everything going for it, but whose occupants endure loss almost helplessly - one might say naturally.”
The novel covers approximately 20 years in the lives of Nedra and her husband Viri (Vladimir) and their children Franca and Danny. It describes their circle of intimate friends, their animals, their Victorian house on the Hudson river, their summers in Amagansett and perhaps two dozen meals. “Life is weather. Life is meals,” says the omniscient narrator, and I can think of few novels which describe weather, the seasons and meals in a more beautiful and sensual way. Does the narrator suggest that that is all life is, ultimately, a series of animal pleasures raised to a higher art (if one is lucky, if one has the gift and wealth for it)? I never could quite decide if the emphasis on the stuff of life is meant to be noble or pathetic; but whatever, it certainly cast a spell on me.
”Their life was two things: it was a life, more or less - at least it was the preparation for one - and it was an illustration of life for their children. They had never expressed this to one another, but they were agreed upon it, and these two versions were entwined somehow so that one being hidden, the other was revealed. They wanted their children, in those years, to have the impossible, not in the sense of the unachievable but in the sense of the pure.”
Both Viri and Nedra have this artistic sense that elevates the mundane. Viri is an architect - perhaps not ever achieving the greatness he had once dreamed of - but someone who draws beautifully and tells wonderful stories. Nedra has a gift for creating true beauty in her domestic arrangements and especially imaginative ‘tableux’ for holidays and birthday parties. For one particularly memorable childhood Christmas, Viri creates an amazingly detailed Advent calendar for the children. (The narrator also tell us that “he was late as usual; a week of December had already passed.”)
Salter utterly seduced me this description: “They sat by the fire as Viri read. A Child’s Christmas in Wales, a sea of words that wet his mouth, an unending sea. They were rapt, they were dazed by the very sounds. His calm narrator’s voice flowed on. The dog’s head lay triangular, like a snake’s on his knee. The final sentence. In the silence that followed they dreamed, the wood dropping clots of white embers softly into the ashes, the cold at the windows, the house filled with brilliant surprises.
I found myself constantly jotting down lines and paragraphs: some of them philosophical, some of them striking and memorable for their pleasing arrangement of words. I found the writing transporting; the whole of it charmed me, even when its ‘message’ seems melancholy, even nihilistic. There is no complete life. There are only fragments. We are born to have nothing, to have it pour through our hands.
Perhaps Salter was thinking of Eliot’s The Waste Land when he wrote those lines: These fragments I have shored against my ruins. But with fragments as beautiful as these, as full of warmth and life, even if temporal, I was (at least) convinced that fragments are enough to make a life....more
. . . “I understood that in this small space of time we had mutually surrendered our loneliness and replaced it with trust.”
I wonder how many creative. . . “I understood that in this small space of time we had mutually surrendered our loneliness and replaced it with trust.”
I wonder how many creative, misfit kids have had the dream of running to New York City and pursuing fame and fortune? Part of the dream is “making it” of course . . . (Cue New York, New York chorus: “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere”) . . . but even more potently, there is the dream of both finding oneself and simultaneously disappearing in this vast city where anything goes.
In the late 1960s, Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe were just that sort of creative misfit: New Jersey kids with a huge sense of self-belief and the desire to live for Art. What kind of Art to be decided on later . . . and with some pragmatic notion of Commerce factored in as well. I assume, if you are reading this book, that you are already somewhat acquainted with who they became, but what this memoir gives you is such a wonderful sense of the beginning of that journey.
There are just so many reasons to read this book. Smith name-checks many legends of 1960s-80s New York City, and the book would be worthwhile just for the time, place and atmosphere. But it’s Smith’s vivid recall of the telling detail, not to mention her emotional honesty, which makes this a truly memorable read....more
The 1992 Merchant Ivory film of this novel is as close to perfect as any film adaptation can get, and yet there is still much pleasure (and greater deThe 1992 Merchant Ivory film of this novel is as close to perfect as any film adaptation can get, and yet there is still much pleasure (and greater depth) to be found in Forster’s masterful novel. This is one of those ‘classics’ that I had thought I had read many years ago, but only a few chapters in I realised that I never had done. Despite knowing the story very well, and the film sticks very closely to the book, I thoroughly enjoyed reading Forster’s incredibly well-balanced plot of three interconnected families. Brought together by various chance meetings, the Wilcoxes, the Schlegels and the Basts represent three very different social classes and emotional orientations, and yet their lives are destined to impact each other in ways both tragic and beneficial.
Margaret Schlegel is one of the heroines of British literature for me. Her clear-eyed fairness, her charity and humour, and her absolutely insistence on cutting through everyone’s bullshit to get at the emotional truth of matters makes her such a compelling protagonist. A very satisfying read all-around. ...more
I’ve known about this book for years, but for some reason I kept putting off reading it. Perhaps I knew, instinctively, how much it would take out of I’ve known about this book for years, but for some reason I kept putting off reading it. Perhaps I knew, instinctively, how much it would take out of me; perhaps I was just waiting for the right time. Would I have always found this book to be almost unbearably moving? Perhaps. I only know that it has given me the most intensely emotional reading experience that I have had in a long while.
It’s a ‘book of a life’: a life in some ways uneventful, but full of quiet ‘desperation’ (Thoreau’s words) and small tragedy. Stoner is William Stoner: the only child of poor farmers, he is sent to university to earn a degree in agriculture so that he can help his father improve their small farm. In one of the few rebellious acts of his life, Stoner changes his course of study to English literature, and then he stays - for the rest of his life - at the university. He marries a woman who he barely knows or understands; they have one child; he falls in love, just once; he has a longstanding vendetta (not of his choice or making) with a fellow professor; and he teaches, year in and year out, for 40 years, until the somewhat precipitous end of his life. Stoner has a life which can be summed up in a tidy paragraph, but what this book does so beautifully, so profoundly, is give the reader the sense of what emotional depths some people (all people?) hide behind quiet, often undemonstrative, exteriors. Except when he is teaching, Stoner is an emotionally inarticulate person, and yet what John Williams conveys - in the most elegiac and elegant language - is a depth of passion:
”He had, in odd ways, given it to every moment of his life, and had perhaps given it most fully when he was unaware of his giving. It was a passion neither of the mind nor of the flesh; rather, it was a force that comprehended them both, as if they were but the matter of love, its specific substance. To a woman or to a poem, it said simply: Look, I am alive.”...more
"'Well, thank goodness that Anne and Gilbert really are going to be married after all. It's what I've always prayed for,' said Mrs. Rachel, in the ton"'Well, thank goodness that Anne and Gilbert really are going to be married after all. It's what I've always prayed for,' said Mrs. Rachel, in the tone of one who is comfortably sure that her prayers have availed much."
Like Mrs. Rachel, I think that nearly all Anne Shirley fans have looked forward to this book and the happy denouement of the Anne and Gilbert romance. At the beginning of the book, the pair get married - and the book itself focuses on their first two years of married life. Although the Avonlea family make a few cameo appearances, this storyline primarily focuses on Anne and Gilbert's first home in the rather dream-like setting of Four Winds Harbor. Their little house, full of memories and legends of marital happiness even before they arrive, has a remote location, but inevitably it becomes the center of a small group of friends. Captain Jim, Cornelia Bryant and Leslie Moore are definitely amongst my favourite of all of Montgomery's secondary characters. Captain Jim and Cornelia provide the humour, while Leslie's tragic life gives the book a dash of tragedy and mystery. Although Leslie is drawn to Anne, for a long time she resists her full friendship - partly because of her own envy and the comparisons she cannot help but make to the differences in their two lives. Unlike Anne, who is married to a worthy man who she dearly loves, Leslie was forced into a marriage that she didn't want - and is now tied to a man who is damaged and child-like. But Anne will also confront tragedy in this book, and one of the silver linings of that tragedy is that it brings her and Leslie together in true friendship.
This is a book of contrasts: there are some unexpected losses, but also the sort of reversals and romantically happy endings more associated with fairy tales. Montgomery definitely has some surprises in the plot for her readers, but there are plenty of the usual charming elements, too. Her wonderful descriptions of nature, and her piquant characterisations, mean these books are as satisfying for adult readers as young adult ones. Anyone who is 'of the race who knows Joseph' is bound to love this book. ...more
The plot of Wives and Daughters hinges on irony. To protect his only child, Molly, from the unwanted romantic advances of one of his medical protegeesThe plot of Wives and Daughters hinges on irony. To protect his only child, Molly, from the unwanted romantic advances of one of his medical protegees, Dr. Gibson decides to take a wife. Unfortunately, his wife - Hyacinth 'Clare' - thinks it is her maternal duty to find Molly a husband. Molly may be a wife, or she may be a daughter - an important role in a household that consists only of a widowed father and a few servants - but the choices are pretty much confined to those two.
Gaskell set this domestic novel in the 1830s - at least 30 years before her own Victorian age, which was so changed by new laws, scientific discoveries (for instance, those of Darwin's) and massive industrial change (e.g., railroads, manufacturing). It's a very different novel from North and South, with its great awareness of these changes, and the pressures which came from them, and much more like Cranford with its emphasis on a small community and the varied personalities within it. Gaskell really excels at characterisation - and she has a great gift for making characters come alive on the page, even if they are rather conventional heroines. Although there are some excellent male characters in this novel - Dr. Gibson and Squire Hamley in particular - the novel is also satisfyingly female-centred. Even the minor characters are given sharp, particular personalities - for instance, Harriet and Lady Cumnor or the Miss Brownings - but inevitably it is the trio of Molly, her stepmother Hyacinth and her stepsister Cynthia which are most interesting to the reader. Gaskell avoids the obvious, and rather than make the two stepsisters enemies, she makes them confidantes (with some exceptions) and friends. She also sets them up to be foils. Molly is obedient, honest, loyal, loving and humble - really, a paragon of Victorian daughter-hood - while Cynthia is pretty and proud, charismatic, wilful and vain. In some ways, wife and stepmother Hyacinth is a comic creation - although her character's eccentricities and egocentricities can become tiresome, both for her family and the reader. She is snobby, silly and selfish, but not entirely a bad person. Her many little speeches - so full of inconsistencies and liberally mixed with both self-pity and self-regard - mostly hit a humorous note, although I do think there are rather too many of them. The novel reads quite slowly at times, and the character of Hyacinth Gibson does more than her fair share to bog it down.
This being an English novel set in the 19th century, there are all sorts of fine shadings of class in the book, and they play various roles in the plot. The other major families of the book are the Hamleys of Hamley, who have two sons (Osborne and Roger) and are the oldest family in the county; and the aristocratic Cumnor family, considered to be upstarts by Squire Hamley, but much richer and more influential. When Hyacinth was a young woman, she was a sort of governess and general companion to the Cumnor family, and is still given the affectionate treatment of a favoured servant, if not quite a friend. The two families will have their own roles in the marriage plots of the novel.
It only occurred to me, on this rereading, that this novel has some resemblance to Mansfield Park in the sense that Gaskell plays the tricky game of having the romantic hero fall first for a unsatisfactory and less deserving love. Misunderstandings and conflicts are certainly necessary for the plot of any romance, but this is one of the more problematic plot points. If you first present your hero as gullible, and then fickle, there are definitely some branding problems to deal with. Sadly, Gaskell died before the novel was finished, and the romantic denouement - which can be guessed at - is not entirely wound up for the purposes of emotional satisfaction. Still, this novel is hugely enjoyable for the same reasons that Trollope's novels are enjoyable. Gaskell describes the social sphere so well, and she has the ability of making characters both realistically flawed but still sympathetic.
Also, even when Gaskell is writing in the domestic sphere, she is well-aware that women can exert far more power in the household than conventional Victorian wisdom. Even though the Squire's wife is an invalid, her gentle good sense holds the family together. On the other end of the personality spectrum, the reader is well-aware that Lady Cumnor rules the roost. I do love Gaskell's insights to human relations, for instance this great moment when Lady Cumnor is giving advice to Cynthia on the eve of her marriage:
"'You must reverance your husband and conform to his opinion in all things. Look up to him as your head, and do nothing without consulting him.' It was as well that Lord Cumnor was not amongst the audience, or he might have compared precept with practice."
Reading Dunbar, the latest Shakespearean retelling of the King Lear story, made me want to revisit this old favourite. I have so many unread books, yeReading Dunbar, the latest Shakespearean retelling of the King Lear story, made me want to revisit this old favourite. I have so many unread books, yet sometimes there is also much pleasure in rereading. I don't think it quite had the same impact on me as the first time I read it, in the early 1990s, but I still hugely admire this novel.
The main thing I didn't like about Edward St. Aubyn's version was the viciousness of the two older sisters; and of course the really brilliant idea that Jane Smiley had was to tell the Lear story from the point of view of Goneril and Regan. Smiley's retelling sets the story on an American farm in Iowa, which was another stroke of genius on her part. An important part of the uneasiness of the Lear story, with its theme of inheritance, is the misogynistic idea that women (and of course Lear only has daughters) are somehow unfit to rule. There are few professions which allow a man to be sole ruler of his own little universe, but arguably to be a farmer - and the sole owner of 1000 unmortgaged acres - is one of them. The novel is set during the early 1980s, when farming work - despite modern mechanisation - is still a man's work. When Ginny/Goneril and Rose/Regan try to manage the farm, they are defeated (or rather swamped) by much more than just one problem.
The critique of modern farming in America is a fascinating subplot of this book, and it ties in really well with the theme of poisonous patriarchy. "You see this grand history, but I see blows. I see taking what you want because you want it, then making something up that justifies what you did. I see getting others to pay the price, then covering up and forgetting what the price was."...more
"Life had taken on a strange richness since Mr. Peabody had sidled like a terrified crab into his study, had lifted the thin gold shell of his watch a
"Life had taken on a strange richness since Mr. Peabody had sidled like a terrified crab into his study, had lifted the thin gold shell of his watch and show him the hidden watchcock. Until now life for him had meant the aridity of earthly duty and the dews of God. Now he was aware of something else, a world that was neither earth nor heaven, a heartbreaking, fabulous, lovely world where the conies take refuge in the rainbowed hills and in the deep valleys of the unicorns the songs are sung that men hear in dreams, the world that the poets know and the men who make music."
Even in her realistic stories, like this one - set in a Cathedral city in England during the 1870s - there is the trademark Goudge whimsy, always alive to the magic of the world. The reader is always aware of Goudge's deep religious faith, but it manifests itself in a deep love and wonder for God's creation. She is a unique writer - very old-fashioned, I suppose - but her writing has an enduring beauty to it. I love her writing; like the best children's books, its simple wisdom has the power to move and comfort me.
Only when I finished the book, did I think about how the title has a double meaning. It refers, on the literal level, to the ancient timepiece that was handed down to the Dean (Adam Ayscough), and which he later bequeaths to Isaac Peabody, the watchmaker. But more importantly, it refers to the Dean's 'watch' over the city that has been entrusted into his care. All his life, the Dean has had a sense of dutiful vocation - and he has attempted to eradicate evil where he has found it - but he has struggled to feel or show love. At the end of his life, he discovers the joy (and sometimes pain) of becoming entangled with the lives around him.
The book has a small cast of varied characters: the watchmaker Isaac Peabody, his embittered sister Emma, their cheerful maid Polly, the young apprentice Job, the elderly Miss Montague, a wilful child called Bella and several others. The Dean finds a way to befriend each of them, for mutual benefit. The novel is about the qualities of service, faith and love, but that definition doesn't do justice to the charm of the story. ...more
I never came across this companion book to the Betsy-Tacy series when I was a young teenager, and I wonder if I would have loved it as much as a 13 yeI never came across this companion book to the Betsy-Tacy series when I was a young teenager, and I wonder if I would have loved it as much as a 13 year old reader as I did as a middle-aged one? Emily does not have the effervescence of personality - or the fun-loving friends and family - which characterise Betsy Ray, and contribute to so much of the charm of those books. She is a much quieter heroine, and the book details her struggles with feelings of inadequacy, self-doubt and depression. For much of the book, Emily lets herself be in the background - for almost everyone except her grandfather, who is in her care. She lets her friends ignore and dismiss her; she lets a narcissistic boy take advantage of her kindness; and she lets herself feel limited by her own horizons. But for a certain kind of reader, I think that Emily is absolutely the perfect heroine. She has her own strengths and convictions, and when she manages to 'muster her wits', she finds both a sense of purpose and happiness in her life. I admired Emily very much, and was completely delighted by the happy ending she finds for herself.
This book, set in 1912-3, has a wonderful sense of period detail: not just in clothes and furnishings, but also in terms of key events in American history. Emily's grandfather is a veteran of the Civil War, and I was very interested to read about how the federal holiday styled now as "Memorial Day" was celebrated at the turn of the 20th century. Another interesting historical figure is Jane Addams, the pioneer social worker, who inspires Emily. Lovelace has a distinctive way of imparting life lessons, and in that sense, I think this book is one of her very best. ...more
The book cover of my Harper Perennial edition features 19th century insect prints of a grasshopper and an ant; the pictorial image refers to the AesopThe book cover of my Harper Perennial edition features 19th century insect prints of a grasshopper and an ant; the pictorial image refers to the Aesop's Fable which Patchett draws upon throughout this memoir of a friendship between two writers. Ann Patchett styles herself as the careful, plodding ant, while Lucy Grealy is the devil-may-care grasshopper who revels in summer's plenty, but then has to beg for food when winter comes.
These two friends, who attended Sarah Lawrence together as undergraduates and later became best friends at the Iowa Writer's Workshop, carve out their roles and responsibilities from the start. Lucy will be the poet; Ann will write prose. Lucy will be the emotionally needy, brilliant one, and Ann will be the caretaking, steady one. Perhaps the essential characteristics of their different personalities would have been in place no matter what, but life has already carved them up in very specific ways. As a child, Lucy suffered from cancer - the treatment of which destroyed her face. Left without many teeth or much of a jaw, Lucy's life becomes a series of surgeries and reconstructions. By her early thirties, she has undergone more than 36 surgeries and finally has to face the reality that her face will never be rebuilt in any enduring way. She will never be beautiful. Rather like her disintegrating, melting face, Lucy is an endless pit of need. No matter how successful she is, no matter how devoted are the friends in her life, no matter how numerous the lovers, Lucy suffers from a depression and an utterly guiltless and bottomless neediness. Ann, on the other hand, is the child of divorce; careful and self-contained. She has been educated by Catholic nuns, who have encouraged her self-effacement and devotion to good deeds. There are many times in the book where it is quite difficult to fathom the depth of Ann's service to Lucy. She explains it quite early on. Realising that worrying about the self-destructive Lucy is counterproductive, and ultimately too draining, Ann decides to devote herself to helping Lucy in practical ways: feeding her, cleaning out her closet, dealing with her bills, sitting by her bedside, and holding her hand - both literally and metaphorically. "The world is saved through deeds, not prayer, because what is prayer but a kind of worry: I decided then that my love for Lucy would have to manifest in deeds."
The memoir covers a roughly 15 year period - through their early years of friendship in Iowa, to the glory years when they both achieve writing success, to the final, painful decline of Lucy who died at age 39. Patchett has a very clear but expressive writing style, and she doesn't overdramatise the events of this friendship; she doesn't need to. It's a moving tribute to the possibilities of friendship, and ultimately its limitations. ...more
I loved the Betsy-Tacy books when I was growing up, but somehow managed to miss out on the Deep Valley series. Even though Betsy Ray is only a minor cI loved the Betsy-Tacy books when I was growing up, but somehow managed to miss out on the Deep Valley series. Even though Betsy Ray is only a minor character is this novel, the storyline has exactly the same charm. The novel begins at Vassar - where Carney, lifelong Deep Valley resident - has just completed her sophomore year. Carney is a confident girl who has always enjoyed the most complete sense of belonging in her small community. She is used to being an important person, and her comfortable home is central to the social life of her Crowd. Going to Vassar, and having to find her place there amongst the rich East Coast girls, has been the biggest challenge of her life so far. In some sense, this book is about bringing the two parts of her life together - as represented by two very different sets of friends. Carney's past and her future are also represented by two very different young men: Sam Hutchison (who she meets that summer) and longtime beau Larry Humphreys, who is visiting from California. Carney is the most sensible of characters, far less flighty than my beloved Betsy, but she is also an appealing heroine - and this is a hugely enjoyable book. ...more
I cannot think of any other fictional series that carries the main characters from childhood (five years old) to marriage and settled adulthood. ThereI cannot think of any other fictional series that carries the main characters from childhood (five years old) to marriage and settled adulthood. There is something immensely satisfying about this progression, although Betsy-Tacy love and devotion being what it is, I think that most of Lovelace's fans will agree with me: I wish there were at least one more novel! We have to look to Lovelace's own life to know what happens next.
One of the things that I truly appreciated about this novel was the focus on Tib - and her two unsuccessful romances before she meets the 'right' one. The love, mutual respect and devotion of the Betsy-Joe marriage is such a great example to all of us. Somehow this book - indeed, the entire series - manages to be both realistic about life's challenges and sorrows, and yet also so full of human nature at its very best. An example which comes to mind is Betsy's reaction to having Joe's Aunt Ruth come to live with them during their first year of marriage. Her initial resentment and inner resistance gradually gives way, and she has the reward of knowing that she has not only done the right thing - but she has gained from it in ways that she couldn't have imagined.
I had to have a good cry after finishing this beloved book. What an absolute delight to read the entire series again after so many years. ...more
When I was a teenager, I was in love with the idea of the 'year abroad' - not so much backpacking and hostels, but more along the lines of the gloriouWhen I was a teenager, I was in love with the idea of the 'year abroad' - not so much backpacking and hostels, but more along the lines of the glorious European Grand Tour. Who knows what books formed my romantic notions, but I'm sure this would have been one of them. This novel, the penultimate in the Betsy-Tacy series, is an anomaly in some ways: no Tacy and Tib, very little of the Ray family, and almost nothing of Joe Willard. The family closeness, the Ray family rituals, the seasonal traditions - all of them are missing from this book. But what the reader gets instead is a fascinating slice of social history, and a glimpse of what Europe was like in the prosperous decades before World War I. It begins with a Betsy who has lost her 'grounding' in many ways. She has completed two fairly unsatisfactory years at the U (University of Minnesota in Minneapolis), she has fallen out with Joe, and she has more or less lost her way. It's a painful time for Betsy, and I think it's a painful time for her loyal readers, too! Both of us (Betsy, and the reader) have to adjust; we have to have our horizons gradually broadened. The novel follows Betsy's progress through Europe: first her long ship journey, with a stopover at the Azores and a crush on a charming Irish purser; then her time in Munich, where she befriends two German girls from very different social classes; then her trips to Bayreuth and Oberammergau; another romance in Venice; and finally, brief visits to Paris and London. While Betsy is in London, the war breaks out and she scrambles to get passage back home. I'm not quite sure how to classify this book; in some sense, the older books could be described as classic Young Adult, but I think this book will appeal mostly to adult readers who have some context for the people and places described in the book. It's not the most emotionally satisfying of the Betsy-Tacy books, but it is a unique pleasure to read. ...more
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