Hello, all!
Still here, I am, silence on the blog notwithstanding. It’s been ridiculously busy, but a breathing space appears to be developing, as we’ve finished the heavy lifting-scary heights segment of our most recent home improvement project, putting on a spanking new roof.
The view from up top. (Note the little satellite dish which keeps us connected to the online world.) Still not quite sure about the roofing colour choice, but I guess we’re stuck with it now – it’s supposed to be good for forty years, and I suspect I will be long gone before it needs replacing. (At least, I sincerely hope it outlasts me, even if I live well into old age.) Next project: painting everything on the outside of the house, and installing quite a bit of new wood siding. (This new roof thing is rather like painting one thing in a room – everything else immediately looks tired and shabby.)
My reading has been mostly late at night and decidedly escapist. Re-reading the ever-amusing Margery Sharp (Cluny Brown, The Innocents, Rhododendron Pie) and Dodie Smith (I Capture the Castle), some rather fascinating memoirs (Lucy Irvine on a desert island, Noel Streatfeild in her childhood vicarage, Edward Abbey in the Utah desert – respectively Castaway, A Vicarage Family and Desert Solitaire), the slightly shocking adult version (sex! and lots of it) of Streatfeild’s juvenile favourite Ballet Shoes, The Whicharts, Winifred Holtby’s The Land of Green Ginger, among others. I have abundant opinions on all of these, so hoping to sit down to a round-up post quite soon.
Currently plugging away at Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness, and finding it so aptly named. (The heroine has just shot her beloved horse – sob! And she’s on blighted infatuation number three or four, and it’s not going at all well in her life in general on every front.)
Mary Renault famously wrote her own lesbian drama The Friendly Young Ladies in not-so-gentle mockery of Hall’s rather dreary tragedy, and I am finding myself increasingly in sympathy with Renault’s rejection of the melodrama of Hall’s portrayal of “inverts” and “the third sex”. I shall soldier on; the Great War is looming, and we’re heading off to Paris. Perhaps things will start pepping up for poor, conflicted Stephen Gordon, love life wise? (Though I rather fear not.)
I’ve been staying close to home and reading from the shelves, but an upcoming excursion into new territory (Washington and Oregon) mid September may well prove rewarding if all goes well. We’ll be travelling the back roads, so will be watching for those promising “Used Books/Vintage Books” signs which so often reward investigation. You never know what will turn up in the most unlikely places!
More soon.
Happy end-of-summer reading, everyone.
Wish i could read R.PIE by Sharp.Pity its not being reprinted.
A great pity. I keep hoping that someone will pick up Margery Sharp’s out-of-print list, as has happened with Dorothy Whipple at Persephone. Another author I’d love to see republished is Elizabeth Cambridge. Rose Macaulay’s less well known works, too. And quite a few others. I do believe that the possibility is becoming more likely – so many authors being dusted off recently as they are “rediscovered” as being exceedingly readable in our era as well as their own.
Well done, roofers. And, I admire your reading spirit. The summer I roofed, mended, and painted, I was so tired that I once fell asleep waiting for the kettle to come on the boil.
Oh yes! I very much hear you. 🙂 Hence all the re-reads this summer. No way one can properly concentrate on anything challenging – almost every night I’ve been waking up to take the book off my face, rescue my glasses, and turn off the light.
Oh I must read some more Margery Sharp I have been reminded of her several times today.
She’s one writer who really needs to be republished, I think. Not at all “serious” literature, but so cleverly written, and thought provoking as well as reliably amusing. Hard to classify, really. Margery Sharp’s writing has a high degree of quality about it.
I have the same hope for new editions. I’ve just started reading Margery Sharp, and it’s frustrating how scarce her books are, at least in affordable editions in the US (I did manage a copy of Harlequin House, based on your review for Jane’s reading week).
It’s lovely to see you posting again. I hope your trip goes well, and that you find some lovely bookstores among the other sights 🙂
Yes – we need her to be available again! Her works are well suited to appreciation by readers of today. Gorgeous little period pieces with timeless appeal. And very funny. And so very well written. An immaculately proficient writer – never a word out of place.
Yeah, I can’t face the prospect of reading The Well of Loneliness. It sounds unbearably dreary. (Didn’t care for The Friendly Young Ladies either, though!)
Do you know, it’s dreary but quite a fascinating read as well. It wasn’t a terrible hardship to read, though I did bog down here and there. It could have been edited a bit more tightly, to its improvement, I think. LOADS of repetition. And the ending – well – won’t share it as I hope that people will read this book for themselves – but argh!!! – the ending… Actually, I wish you would read it, Jenny. I’m curious as to what you would make of it.
I do hope you write about The Whicharts, that is such a very odd book. I read most of Streatfeild’s adult work about … eight years ago now, and it was fascinating but so unpleasant.
A very odd book, and as you say fascinating but somehow unpleasant. Would “slightly sordid” be the right term?
When I was reading ‘The Well’, I kept myself going through reminding myself that it’s actually a positive thing that the dreariness is now a problem. Imagine if Stephen Gordon was the only literary lesbian role-model around for young girls … it’s a rather miserable thought.
Ah, good point. It does rather trouble me that my edition (Virago) is tagged on the front cover “The bible of lesbianism” – because seriously, that’s a pretty dire description if true. While Stephen Gordon has some admirable qualities, by and large the gay characters (male and female) don’t come out looking exactly role model-ish. I thought I detected a fair bit of possible self-hatred by the author in this book. Perhaps? I have started a review, but having a hard time condensing my thoughts into something sensible. There are several things going on with the book, and I’m trying to reconcile the merits and demerits of it as a straight “story” with the obvious sincerity of the author in making a plea for societal acceptance of homosexuality as a legitimate state of being, something one is born with. (But then there’s that ending, which rather flies in the face of the “born not made” argument, doesn’t it? Perhaps???)
Ooh, I think I read the same copy! I struggled with it to (my final review is at https://shoshibookblog.wordpress.com/2013/12/31/the-well-of-loneliness-radclyffe-hall-1928/). Overall I mostly found it terribly dated, though an undeniably significant, period piece. Like you say though, I’d hate to dismiss Hall or the sincerity of her exploration of sexual expectations of the time.
I love the color!!!
Thank you. I am starting to like it more and more, myself. And it’s so lovely to hear the rain pelting down and be secure in the thought that there will be no more leaks. The old roof had a few problem areas… 🙂
Nobody seems to mention THE UNLIT LAMP by Hall.One of my favourites about a repressed spinster living with her mother.
I think I will be putting this one on my look-for list. Haven’t had time to write up a proper review of Well of Loneliness, but I must say I am curious now about Hall’s other novels.