Margery Sharp Day 2016 – how could I have missed this? I knew it was happening, but I forgot to do anything about it. I console myself by reading the appreciations of the others, in particular those new to the joys of this clever, clever writer.
Here’s a link to Margery Sharp appreciator and special day organizer Beyond Eden Rock’s post. This year Jane happily chose one of my very favourites, The Innocents, as her own book. A roundup is promised; I look forward to reading everyone’s thoughts.
Happy 111th Birthday, Margery Sharp! May the re-publishers please get going on bringing you back into print. Someone? Persephone? Grey Ladies? Virago? The early works are quite simply stellar, though I admit there are some minor bobbles later on.
And here is my own reviewlet of The Innocents which I wrote back in 2013:
The Innocents by Margery Sharp ~ 1972
This edition: Little, Brown & Co., 1972. Hardcover. 183 pages.
My rating: 11/10. I think this may well be my very favourite Margery Sharp, and, as you all may have guessed by now, I am seriously enthusiastic about this author to start with.
This was my second time reading The Innocents; I will be rationing myself to revisiting it, oh, maybe once a year or so, because I don’t want to wear out its already special status in my favourites list. For all of that enthusiasm, this is a very quiet book, one of those minor tales concerning a few people only, with nothing terribly exciting going on within it. But it is a compelling read, and I was completely on the side of the angels right from the get go, though fully cognizant of their failings.
In brief, then.
A middle-aged spinster living in a quiet English village is visited by a younger friend who has married very well indeed, and who is now living in America. It is immediately pre-WW II, and the married couple are hoping to squeeze in a Continental holiday before things cut loose. They are also travelling with their small child, and the unstated purpose of the visit-to-an-old-friend soon becomes clear: they are hoping that they can leave the child in the peace of the country while they continue on their tour.
All is arranged, and spinster and child settle in to a peaceful routine, which quietly turns into a longer-term arrangement as war intervenes and the parents return to America without stopping to collect their child.
Here’s the hook. The young child is very obviously mentally retarded, and though the father suspects this, the beautiful and vivacious mother refuses to even consider that her offspring may be in any way “sub normal”. The child and her caregiver form a deep and complex bond in the ensuing years before the now-widowed mother returns to collect her daughter and return with her to America, to launch into society, as it were, as a charming sidekick to her fashionable mother.
The reality is much different than the dream, and the subsequent events are absolutely heart-rending. The author lets us all suffer along with the brutally dazed child until bringing things to a rather shocking conclusion, which she has already told us about on the very first page.
Margery Sharp is at her caustic best in this late novel. Loved it. A longer review shall one day follow, full of excerpts and much more detail.
*****
In lieu of a new review, here are some more of my past posts from the archives. May I say “highly recommended”?
And two of the juveniles, for good measure:
Jane’s party this year has been very bad for my book budget! I was able to find a copy of this online, and after reading this I’m even more anxious to read it. I wish to know that someone would reprint these! From something Jane said, I understand that Persephone is not interested in them.
Thank you for being part of this year’s party, and for inspiring me to rush to but a copy of ‘The Innocents’ when you first wrote about it.
I learned from a reliable friend that Nicola Beauman isn’t fond of Margery Sharp and that she only publishes books that she loves, so we probably won’t ever see Margery in a dove-grey jacket.
It’s a pity, but I would like to see a whole swathe of her books reappear and there are so many possible homes. If the likes of Edith Olivier, Janet McNeill and Margaret Kennedy can be sent back out into the world I have to hop that it’s just a matter of time …..
Jane, your contribution to this effort has been amazing! Blogs like yours–and this one, Leaves and Pages, (is it Barbara? sorry 🙂 )are much better traveled than my own blog specifically for Margery Sharp, and therefore give more of a presence to this fine author. I am glad of it! I have no good answers as to why she has not been republished, and I have been doing this for awhile. One theory? She has fallen between publishers…one publishing house might not be able to publish her works if another rival publishing house is ‘sitting on them’; (and therefore make comments like ‘We don’t care for her work’) she has fallen between countries…British publishers might not be as interested in someone who has sold most of her books in America, her book rights to American film companies like MGM, her manuscript collection donated to Harvard, and might possibly be still entangled in Disney royalties. Hard to say. And I still scratch my head over it…scholars dismiss comic humor as beneath them, and yet they, if anyone should be able to see ‘beneath’ their own prejudices in this regard and grasp an immense depth of psychological insights from Sharp’s wide range of characters. It couldn’t be the few non politically correct references in her work to other races, could it? (an unfortunate by-product of the era and class she wrote from within…but it has never stopped anyone from republishing authors from this era). Angela Thirkell is much more offensive in this regard, and as to Virginia Woolf…well let’s just say she can be downright repellent in her prejudices, and that never kept her from being ‘lionized’. Quite a puzzler. It is nice to see, though, that a broader range of readers is coming to appreciate her work. Sign me, Befuddled in Blogdom.
Thanks L&P. I’ve often read good things of Margery Sharp and hope to read her myself some day.
Please keep up the great work in 2016!
I hope you find the opportunity. As you may have gathered, I’m a sincere fan.
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