Posts Tagged ‘Social Satire’

A (Slightly) Lumpy Sort of Literary Dessert: Christmas Pudding by Nancy Mitford

Posted in 1930s, Century of Books - 2014, Mitford, Nancy, Read in 2014, tagged , , , , on December 18, 2014| 10 Comments »

christmas Pudding by Nancy Mitford 001Christmas Pudding by Nancy Mitford ~ 1932. This edition: Curtis Books, 1973. Paperback. 238 pages.

My rating: 5.75/10

I had to go back to April to double-check my rating of the earlier companion piece to this very minor entry into the satirical humour, between-the-wars, Brit Lit canon, Miford’s 1931 Scottish grouse moor-set Highland Fling. I see I rated it at 5.5, which is, on further reflection, quite generous. Christmas Pudding therefore gets an also-generous 5.75/10.

This is Very Light Fiction, and not quite up to Wodehousian standards, which one would assume was the author’s goal. There is a certain flair for humorous phrasing which gives a strong hint of what the Mitford would later accomplish to a higher degree in her most critically, popularly and financially successful books, the semi-autobiographical The Pursuit of Love, Love in a Cold Climate, The Blessing, and Don’t Tell Alfred.

Christmas Pudding is a romantic farce, with the expected eclectic cast of characters, most taken out of their usual urban habitats and tossed together into close proximity in the isolation of a country house Christmas. Here are the major characters, and a glimpse of the set-up:

  •  Paul Fortheringay, recently published author of Crazy Capers – a grim tragedy of a novel despite its name – is devastated when instead the “serious” book he has laboured over with such care is received as a humorous satire. “Funniest book of the season!” the critics bray. Paul is not amused. How to salvage his writerly self-esteem? Perhaps with a work of unmistakeable sincerity, such as a biography of a hitherto-neglected literary personage? But all the obvious subjects are already well written up, so Paul decides on an obscure pre-Victorian poetess, Lady Maria Bobbin, whose diaries and letters are rumoured to be still extant and sitting in dusty preservation at the country estate of Compton Bobbin.
  • Walter and Sally Monteath, the penniless yet well-born young couple at the centre of Highland Fling’s hectic action, have recently been blessed with a baby girl. Still on the brink of financial disaster, the couple (now with child and nanny) are most ready to accept any offer of hospitality over the holidays, graceful sponging on wealthier acquaintances being their speciality.
  • Middle-aged but very well preserved Amabelle Fortescue, retired and rather well-invested ex-demimondaine, moves in the better circles and includes such Bright Young Things as Walter and Sally among her chums. Paul is also a pal. Amabelle has decided to do something different this Christmas, and has taken Mulberrie Farm as her temporary abode, an amusing departure from the London whirl-of-gaiety norm.
  • Next door to Mulberrie Farm we have the sedate estate of Compton Bobbin (aha!), inhabited by hunting-mad Lady Bobbin, the unchallenged matriarch of her meek household and the terror of the countryside at large. Also in residence are her daughter Philadelphia, beautiful, bored, listless and waiting for something – anything! – to rescue her from her bleak existence in the rural purdah dictated by her mother, and young Roderick – Bobby – Bobbin, down from Eton for the hols. Bobby is an oldish sort of young man; he is rather well acquainted with our Amabelle, without his mother’s knowledge, of course.
  • Michael Lewes, of the diplomatic service, presently stationed in Cairo, but coming back to England for Christmas, which he will be spending as a guest of the Bobbins. Michael has long been in love with Amabelle, and persists in asking her for her hand in matrimony, to her continual good-natured refusal.
  • Major Stanworth is another neighbour Mulberrie Farm. A widower, he’s a rather good sort, hearty and cheerful and, as it turns out, at a stage in life where some womanly consolation for his single state is welcome.

Plot in a paragraph:

Paul writes to Lady Bobbin asking permission to go through Lady Maria’s papers. Lady Bobbin gives a brief but forceful “No!” Hang on, says Amabelle, when Paul bemoans the situation to her, I know the young Bobbin heir. So Paul is dispatched to Compton Bobbin under guise of being Bobby’s holiday tutor, the plan being that while he pretends to be closeted with young Bobby in academic solitude, he will in reality be working on his biography of Lady Maria, leaving Bobby free to go a-visiting on the quiet at Mulberrie Farm. Paul sees Philadelphia, and his heart goes thump-thump, as does Michael Lewes’ heart, which is open for consolation after yet another gentle put-down by Amabelle. Philadelphia, suddenly the focus of two sets of admiring male eyes, perks up marvellously. Major Stamworth’s more mature charms appeal to Amabelle, and hers to him; a romance quietly blossoms in the most unlikely way. Scads of Bobbin relations descend for Christmas on Compton Bobbin, as do a number of Amabelle’s friends on Mulberrie Farm, including Walter and Sally, who are just sort of there in the tale, though they don’t really play a major part in the intrigues. Will Paul have his cover blown? Will Bobby’s deception be revealed to his bossy mum? Will Philadelphia go for money, good nature and sterling worth (Michael) or poverty, hot passion and the literary arts (Paul)? Will urbanite Amabelle and country gentleman Major Stanworth get together for good and walk arm in arm off into the rural sunset?

I thought that Christmas Pudding, Mitford’s second published novel, was perhaps a more polished piece than Highland Fling, with its young author settling down a bit and finding it easier to maintain a narrative strand of sorts. (Well, not that young, really, for when I do the math I see that Nancy Mitford was 28 years old when Christmas Pudding was published, which surprised me rather – it reads as though she were 19 or thereabouts, with its frequently cheeky “Let’s shock the elders!” tone.)

Though the book is set during the holiday season, one can’t really call it a “Christmas book” in the heart-warming, nostalgic, feel-good sense; the smiles it engenders are just a little too cynical, though there is a rather funny episode Christmas morning which I think will stick with me, concerning one of the wee children roistering about the country house where most of the characters are staying.

At about five o’clock in the morning Master Christopher Robin Chadlington made a tour of the bedrooms, and having awoken each occupant in turn with a blast of his mouth organ, announced in a voice fraught with tragedy that Auntie Gloria had forgotten to put a chocolate baby in his stocking. “Please might I have a bit of yours?” This quaint ruse was only too successful, and Christopher Robin acquired thereby no fewer than fourteen chocolate babies, all of which he ate before breakfast. The consequences, which were appalling, took place under the dining-room table at a moment when everybody else was busily opening the Christmas post. After this, weak but cheerful, young Master Chadlington spent the rest of the day in bed practising on his mouth organ.

Forgive me, for I laughed out loud at this passage.

“Weak but cheerful.” Oh, indeed! That could well describe this frothy little novel.

P.S. – Young Christopher Robin has a sister named Wendy. I know some of you will deeply appreciate that tidbit. 😉

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Noel Coward’s Tropical High Jinks, and One and Only Novel: Pomp and Circumstance

Posted in 1960s, Century of Books - 2014, Read in 2014, tagged , , , , , , , on October 10, 2014| 9 Comments »

pomp and circumstance noel coward 001Pomp and Circumstance by Noël Coward ~ 1960. This edition: Pan, 1963. Paperback. 287 pages.

My rating: 9/10

Havoc under the sun…

Samolo – a lazy, sun-drenched island in the South Pacific where nothing ever really happens…
Until suddenly it is announced that the Queen and Prince Philip are to pay a state visit. From then on chaos reigns. And the arrival of the curvaceous Duchess of Fowey, who brings out the beast in every male, only adds confusion to confusion.

Here we have an easy candidate for the most unexpected book of 2014.

I can’t quite recall where I acquired this tattered and very well read paperback; it just sort of appeared one day at the top of a book stack, like the frothy sort of thing that it is, effortlessly rising above the (comparative) heavyweights below.

As this seems to be my year of reading mostly lightweight novels, and its year of publication was so-far blank in the Century of Books list, what could I do but succumb?

I was initially a little uneasy as to whether I could sustain my interest for the whole thing, as it started off at frenetic high speed, all very much a-laugh-a-minute, and that sort of style can get tiresome early on, especially if the writer bobbles, but Coward, old pro that he was by his point in his career, kept up the pace marvellously well, and completely won me over.

“Charming” is an overused term in describing the light novel, but in this case it is most apt. With a bit more consideration, charming isn’t complex enough, for there is a lot of snark here, too, of the most readable sort.

Maybe a page scan is in order, to give one a sample of the contents.

First, an overview.

The curtain rises over the (completely fictional) small South Sea island of Samolo, an idyllic tropical paradise populated by a happy-go-lucky native population and a large colony of British nationals who make up the bulk of the government. For Samolo was never conquered in the warfare sense of the word; the inhabitants merely welcomed the superior managerial style of the inhabitants of that other, colder isle and gladly made way for a dual society of semi-equality. The native upper classes mingle easily with the Brits; the ones a bit farther down the social scale are apparently quite thrilled to provide staffing for the expatriates in their various cottages, villas and stately homes. Everyone is very hail-fellow-well-met, with a bit of resigned-but-not-bitter bitching about the occasional laziness of the servants and their tendency to wander out of paid employment when the mood strikes them providing reliable tea table and cocktail party conversation. (Yes, this is most definitely a fantasy.)

Our narrator, one Grizelda Craigie (Grizel), is the happily married forty-something wife of banana grower Robin. Coward sustains the first-person voice of his female narrator beautifully, something I had serious qualms about when I realized that this was what he was undertaking.

Grizel moves in the upper social circles of Samolo, being on best-friends basis with the British Governor’s wife, Lady Alexandra (Sandra), so of course is the first person to be confided to when the news of the impending Royal Visit breaks.

This is just the start of the drama, for in quick succession Grizel must cope not just with the professional stresses (so to speak) of her highly placed friend, but with an incident in which her small son is mixed up in a very below-the-belt assault on a schoolmate (either triggering or in retaliation for a sharp knock on the head by the other party; the parents on both sides predictably receive conflicting stories from the superficially wounded lads), by the sudden confession of a bachelor friend that he has used her name in telegrams inviting his latest (aristocratic and very prominently married) paramour for a visit, with the intent that the lady actually spend her nights with said bachelor while pretending to occupy Grizel’s guest room, and by involvement in the island’s amateur dramatic association as it plans an elaborate aquatic pageant to be presented to the Queen and her consort, despite prognostications of squally weather soon to come.

Mix in an assortment of Samolan and expatriate characters of all walks of life – from gardener to Prime Minister to journalist to ex-secret-service-agent-turned-sugarcane-planter to aristocratic Duke, and add for good measure a brusque English nanny, numerous beloved-but-high-maintenance visitors, maddening letters from Mummy back home in England who always seems to know the latest Samolan news well before there-at-the-source Grizel, an intense lesbian who is openly smitten with our narrator, the various clashing personalities of the Dramatic Society members, and an epidemic of chicken pox striking in the most unexpected quarters.

It’s all highly silly, but increasingly enthralling. There are moments of sincerity here and there: the portrayals of both Griselda’s and Sandra’s marriages are warm and believably true-to-life, and the family scenes with the children are hugely enjoyable. Most of the sarcasm – which is in relentless but in general quite gentle – is reserved for Grizel’s outer circle of friends and acquaintances, with some deep digs being got in here and there at anti-monarchists both in Samola and back home in England; Noël Coward’s staunchly pro-monarchy patriotism is unabashedly on view.

Several homosexual couples play significant roles, with stereotypical behaviour paraded in full technicolour. I felt just a bit ashamed to find these characters and episodes so amusing, but comforted myself with the thought that the depictions were coming from a writer of that persuasion himself, for Noël Coward was well known to be gay, though always politely reticent about his private affairs.

Pomp and Circumstance was Coward’s one and only attempt at novel writing. One rather wonders what inspired this project, amidst all of the plays and musical compositions. It definitely works, and in my opinion deserves to be shelved alongside the older but similarly giddy Wodehouse tales, as more than slightly goofy, cheerfully amiably, decidedly literary entertainment.

I had a difficult time deciding where to take a page scan from, as much of the joy in this thing is in the building of the story and the connections and contexts of each succeeding episode, so perhaps a bit of Chapter One will be best. This will give a taste of what is going on here; it definitely gets better.

And keep your era-appropriate sense of humour dusted off. One can find much which might be viewed as potentially offensive and politically incorrect these five decades on. Disturbingly vast quantities of alcohol are consumed, mostly in cocktails with oddly evocative names – the “Horse’s Neck”, presumably a long sort of drink, seems exceedingly popular – though sometimes straight from the bottle. Cigarettes are prominently smoked during every emotional and romantic moment, too.  If these sorts of things bother you, best to stay clear. Everyone else, it’s a richly glorious vintage romp.

Pomp and Circumstance has been reissued numerous times since its first appearance in 1960, though it appears to be out of print at present. A quick look online shows it easy to find, and I’m guessing the larger library systems will still have copies. Enjoy!

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No Fond Return of Love: Barbara Pym’s 1961 Stalker Novel

Posted in 1960s, Century of Books - 2014, Read in 2014, tagged , , , , , on October 4, 2014| 10 Comments »

 

no fond return of love barbara pym 001

Great cover on this 1981 Granada edition, designed by someone who has obviously read and “got” the book.

No Fond Return of Love by Barbara Pym ~ 1961. This edition: Granada, 1981. Paperback. ISBN: 0-586-05371-9. 287 pages.

My rating: 8/10 on a first reading. Perhaps to be elevated after a future re-read. This author is always better the second time around.

Barbara Pym is in rather fine form with this further delving into the complex lives of a number of single women in various stages of contentment (or otherwise) with their unpartnered state.

As with the stellar Excellent Women, and most of her other stealthily pithy novels, No Fond Return of Love has twin strands: the inner voice of a quiet spinster of the keenly-watching-from-the-shadows type, and the omnipotent authorial observation (not always uniformly benign) of various relationships playing out in that spinster’s sphere.

The set-up is familiar to the Pym reader. A single, upper middle class lady of no-longer-young vintage, engaged in some sort of quasi-intellectual undertaking, encounters a number of new people, including a man who both repels and attracts her. The man may or may not look upon the spinster with equal interest; the interest, if piqued, may or may not be romantic. Pym then shines an illuminating light on her chosen small segment of society; she dances her puppets about in increasingly bizarre postures until at last pairing them up in sometimes unexpected partnerships, which frequently feel less than wholly satisfactory, though cleaving to the traditional pattern of a tidy, “happy” ending.

Dulcie Mainwaring is our key character here, though she occasionally steps aside to allow others to have their moment in the dusty spotlight of Pym’s regard. A pleasantly attractive and undeniably intelligent women in her early thirties, Dulcie has just been given her walking papers (in the most tactful way) by her long-time fiancé – he has recently informed her, in acceptably clichéd terms, that he is “not worthy of her love” – and though Dulcie unprotestingly goes along with this charade, her inner confidence is badly shaken.

Pulling herself together, Dulcie decides to divert herself with attendance at a conference designed to address some of the various complexities of her particular line of work. Dulcie belongs to that of the vast network of poorly paid, unseen people (mostly female) who proofread, fact-check, do minor research, tidy up footnotes, and compile indexes and bibliographies for scholarly works of research and biography, and the conference is highlighted by lectures on such arcane topics as “Some Problems of an Editor”, by presenters mildly well-known amongst their peers.

As anyone who has been to this sort of a limited-interest conference may have found, the really interesting networking happens during coffee breaks and over evening drinks, and this event is no exception. Making a deliberate effort to shake off her post-broken-engagement gloom, Dulcie winds herself up to approach a fellow attendee, the slightly younger, slightly more experienced-in-the-arena-of love, and more than slightly patronizing Viola Dace. Though not exactly kindred spirits at first encounter, the two find themselves sharing an interest in one of the conference’s key speakers, the handsome and apparently charming Aylwin Forbes.

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Aylwin Forbes effortlessly repulses Viola’s attempts to renew their nebulous relationship with well-practiced urbanity; Dulcie watches their wary exchanges with an eyebrow secretly cocked; she catches every nuance. There is something about Aylwin which piques her interest, and after the conference is over and Dulcie is back home in the over-large house she has inherited from her late parents, she finds him popping back into her field of awareness.

Well, what else to do but research the man, then? Which Dulcie proceeds to do, with a tenacious thoroughness which does credit to her meticulous skill in tracking down elusive references and firmly knitting up tenuous connections. Dulcie’s technique, which involves much trudging about and putting herself into situations where she can inquire as to her subject without causing undue alarm to the interviewee, might well be what we refer to nowadays as stalkerish, but Dulcie, though obsessed with the minutiae of Aylwin’s life and the state of his troubled marriage, somehow manages to stay just on the sane side of this sort of behaviour. We view her actions as manifestations of her innate desire to acquire and organize information, even as her curiousity leads her into some exceedingly unlikely situations, in which the author’s sense of humour is fully indulged.

Dulcie is joined in her home by her eighteen-year-old niece Laurel, and then, in an odd plot twist, by the perennially sulky Viola Dace. Aylwin himself shows up, still vaguely attracted to/repulsed by Viola, and mildly interested in Dulcie in a platonic sort of way – she might be useful to him in a professional sense, Aylwin practically muses – and then increasingly infatuated with the oblivious (and half his age) Laurel, who has herself become romantically interested in the florist-shop-owning son of the family next door.

Meanwhile Dulcie has scraped acquaintance with Aylwin’s clergyman brother, Neville, who himself is having romantic problems with the aging spinsters of his flock, and with Aylwin’s rather soppy but ultimately likeable estranged wife Marjorie, with his matter-of-fact mother-in-law, and eventually with his surprisingly “common” mother, who owns a not-very-good guesthouse (complete with moulting taxidermied eagle in the lobby) in a seaside town, where most of the characters converge for what one fears will be a tremendous confrontation. This never materializes, though Dulcie has a bad moment or two as she crouches behind a piece of guesthouse furniture while Aylwin and Marjorie emotionally discuss the dissolution of their marriage, thinking they are alone.

The tale has strong elements of farce, as you may have gathered from this sketchy outline of some key points, but Pym’s dry tone, and the ever-apt inner thoughts of Dulcie kept me quite enthralled, even while I was mildly annoyed with myself for my collusion in such a nonsensical sort of thing. Dare I say that this reminded my of something which David Lodge might have dreamed up? Or even Robertson Davies, on one of his lighter-hearted days? Full of in-jokes which leave the reader feeling slightly on the fringes of the intellectual circle in which the author has placed his/her characters, and coming close to outright vulgarity with some of the more outlandish developments.

I didn’t much care for the ending, which seemed to argue that any man is better than none, after a book’s worth of practical examples of why a spinster’s fate might not be such a bad one. I thought that after going to great pains to demonstrate her character’s rich inner life, Barbara Pym let Dulcie down. Perhaps, writing at the end of that “happy housewife”-focussed decade, the author caved in to the 1950s’ ideal of marriage always being better than the alternative?

 

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Some Time in Hollywood: Inside Daisy Clover by Gavin Lambert and Life is a Banquet by Rosalind Russell

Posted in 1960s, 1970s, Century of Books - 2014, Read in 2014, tagged , , , , , , , , , on July 4, 2014| 2 Comments »

I recently put myself in the mildly surreal situation of simultaneously reading two very different books set in the same location and covering a similar time period. Luckily they were both so very strongly voiced that I managed to focus on each as it deserved.

The first book, a novel by Gavin Lambert, a British-born author who moved to California in the 1950s and had considerable acclaim as a screenplay writer, was much better than I had anticipated from its cover appearance. The bizarre images of Natalie Wood starring as the titular character in a movie version of the novel and the fulsome blurb shouting out “-the happiest, saddest, sexiest Hollywood novel of all!” were a bit off-putting, but the first page grabbed me and pulled me into the story and never let me go until the nebulous but satisfying conclusion.

The second book was an engaging though fairly workaday movie star autobiography, written by Rosalind Russell with the assistance of a co-author, fellow actress-turned-writer Chris Chase. Published a year after Rosalind Russell’s much too early death from breast cancer, it is a mostly flattering self-portrait with a leavening of self-criticism, which left me with a warm-all-over regard for this very matter-of-fact and very dedicated screen and stage actress, famously “in Hollywood but not of it”, as one of her friends declares in the memoir. Rosalind Russell appears from this account to have had an admirably stable personal life, at least compared to the majority of her Hollywood peers.

inside daisy clover gavin lambert 1963Inside Daisy Clover by Gavin Lambert ~ 1963. This edition: Penguin, 1966. Paperback. 265 pages.

My rating: 8/10

Thirteen-year-old Daisy Clover, father vanished from her life some years previously, is living a squalid life in a trailer park in rundown Playa del Rey, California with her mentally troubled mother The Dealer (named for her fixation on solitary card games).

Daisy finds joy in saving her nickels and dimes for occasional forays to a recording booth where she unselfconsciously belts out songs with more than a little “rare natural talent”, and she has just purchased the first of what will turn out to be a vast number of notebooks in which she will record her inner thoughts for the next two decades.

Confided to her diary, Daisy has a soberly related sexual awakening assisted along by a certain Milton, an older boy, “quite nice looking, he had muscles and butch hair and good teeth, but also a slight weight problem”, with their relationship consummated on an old, mattress-less brass bed in Milton’s father’s used furniture store, “priced at $25.00 and marked VERY NICE. Dot, dot, dot, dot.”

Daisy turns fourteen on a disastrous day which includes her mother inadvertently setting fire to their home, and it seems that despair is the theme of her young, angst-ridden life, but things are about to take a strange turn. Daisy enters one of her recorded discs (a new recording; all of the old ones having been destroyed in the fire) in a talent contest, and is “discovered” by Magnagram Studios magnate Raymond Swan.

Turns out that not only can our heroine sing like an angel, she can also act like a reincarnation of Mary Pickford (with the added benefit of being able to supplement her performance with vocals), and stardom bursts upon Daisy.

But this is not, of course, without its drawbacks.

Daisy’s patron Mr. Swan and his oddly hot-and-cold wife Melora keep Daisy on the path to ever-increasing fame, and while she finds deep satisfaction in the singing and acting aspect of her new life, being a true artist and all that jazz, the personal cost of her new life is rather brutal.

The Dealer has been whisked off to a mental home and erased from Daisy’s official biography, allowing her to be billed as “The Sensational Singing Orphan” (or something like that – couldn’t find the exact term in my flip-through just now), and Daisy is now under the care of her gosh-awful older sister Gloria, who married some years earlier and scooted out of Playa del Rey without a backward glance. Now that Daisy is a potential movie star, Gloria is very much back in the picture, and Daisy has quite a lot to say in Dear Diary about that development.

The years roll on. Daisy is a definite success as per Mr Swan’s planning and Gloria’s fervent pushing, but then the Star Train derails, when Daisy falls deeply in love with the worst possible prospect for promotional purposes she could come up with.

Once a top notch star, but now fading fast, the much older actor Wade Lewis is now a notoriously self-destructive drunk and a reportedly manipulative lover-of-many, but Daisy ignores the hissing whispers and goes with her emotions. The two find a common ground in their dislike for the lives they lead, and a genuine connection develops. The relationship strikes enough sparks to catch widespread attention, and through Daisy’s bullheaded  insistence a marriage takes place. Too bad Wade’s real sexual interests are not in women, despite his reputation in the gossip columns…

Gosh, what a grand little slice-of-American-life novel, right up there with the smutty California romances and pill-popping exposés of Jacqueline Susann, albeit much better written than anything she pumped out just a few years after Lambert’s Daisy Clover appeared.

A measure of redemption is (predictably) found after the inevitable crash-and-burn of the aging child star, and the ongoing relationship between Daisy and The Dealer adds a poignancy and appeal to what might otherwise be an utterly depressing condemnation of everything that’s wrong with the American Star Machine.

Gavin Lambert turned his novel into a screenplay, though with considerable changes to adapt it to the screen, and the movie Inside Daisy Clover was released in 1966, starring Natalie Wood as Daisy, Christopher Plummer as Mr. Swan, and Robert Redford as Wade (with the character changed, at Redford’s insistence, to vaguely bisexual versus the original completely-homosexual-passing-as-straight).

The movie was, by all accounts, a flop.

But the book most definitely isn’t, and I’ll be keeping an eye out for some of Lambert’s other Hollywood novels, apparently seven in total, as well as a collection of short stories and a number of well-regarded celebrity biographies.

Gavin Lambert was – no surprises here, after finishing Daisy Clover and considering some of its themes – homosexual himself, and his sympathetic and ultimately open portrayal of gay characters was unusual and rather brave for his era.

life is a banquet rosalind russell 1977 001Life is a Banquet by Rosalind Russell and Chris Chase ~ 1977. This edition: Ace, 1979. Paperback. ISBN: 0-441-48230-9. 260 pages.

My rating: 7/10

From mince-no-words fiction to slightly airbrushed real life, with this cheerful autobiography set mostly in the early years of Rosalind Russell’s career, but with enough concentration on the decades of the 1950s and 60s to add a supplementary picture of this most unique setting to my concurrent reading of Daisy Clover.

Rosalind Russell was unusual among her peers in that she willingly (by her account) turned her back on Hollywood for a time to return to her roots as a Broadway actress. She then went back to Hollywood, taking along her stellar role of Auntie Mame  from Patrick Dennis’ bestselling book-turned-theatrical production which was one of her outstanding stage performances, and then transitioned gracefully from first-run star to character actress in her later years.

Happily married for thirty-five years (to the same man, of course, making her rather unique in Hollywood circles – meow, meow!), Russell’s description of her relationship with her husband, Frederick Brisson, was downright heart-rending, especially in conjunction with his tribute to her in the book’s introduction.

Rosalind Russell died in 1976, aged 69, after years of struggle with both serious rheumatoid arthritis and breast cancer. Life is a Banquet was published a year after her death.

Though the autobiography is decidedly self-edited, it made me most sympathetic to its writer, not to mention deeply curious about the bits which were glossed over, though none of them appear to be at all scandalous. Rosalind merely kept a ladylike silence over other people’s private business, and obviously chose not to go into salacious detail regarding her own black moments.

Rosalind Russell was a truly beautiful woman – her photographs leave me smiling in admiration of the absolutely lovely composition of her face – those winged eyebrows over those dark, wide-set eyes! – and those sultry eyes show a glint of something else: deep intelligence and a love of laughter. Her well developed sense of humour shines through in this book.

As I mentioned earlier, Life is a Banquet is written in a slightly pedestrian style, and though it was pleasantly engaging and held my interest well, I couldn’t give it a higher rating than a “7” on my personal reading quality scale.

This memoir has left me with a warmly approving regard for its writer, and with a strong desire to watch the movie version of Auntie Mame again, and to seek out some of Rosalind Russell’s other movies, of which there is a large choice, from 1934 to 1971.

I think one might safely say Rosalind Russell was a Star well deserving of that designation in all of the best ways.

 

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Sit-Coms, Kierkegaard, and (Post)Mid-Life Crisis Sex: Therapy by David Lodge

Posted in 1990s, Century of Books - 2014, Contemporary Fiction, Read in 2014, tagged , , , , , on May 7, 2014| 10 Comments »

therapy david lodge v2Therapy by David Lodge ~ 1995. This edition: Penguin, 1996. Softcover. ISBN: 0-14-025358-0. 321 pages.

My rating: 7/10

I still do not unreservedly love David Lodge.

In fact, until just a few mornings ago, when I set aside what I should have been doing in order to finish up this book, I was more than a little ambiguous about his work, having previously read Changing Places and Nice Work with no more than mild pleasure and a fair bit of tuning out in the more long-winded bits.

This confession out of the way, I must say that I really like what he has done here. Therapy has struck an appealing chord with me, despite its narrator being of the wallowing sort, mired in his narcissistic bog, gazing pensively at his own reflection even as he continues to sink further and further down into a stinking morass of his own making.

Laurence “Tubby” Passmore, serendipitously successful writer of a long-running sitcom, The People Next Door, is feeling down. Really, really down. There’s no logical reason for it, as he continually reminds himself. He’s making more money than he can spend; his thirty-year-old marriage is placid and his university professor wife is keen on keeping up their sex life; his grown children are well launched; he has an outlet for sharing his thoughts with his platonic “mistress” in London, where he keeps a pleasantly-appointed luxury flat for overnight stays; his rural home is a welcome haven after days spent in the city; his posh silver car (the “Richmobile”, of unspecified Japanese make) is absolutely fabulous; and his various therapists – Miss Wu for acupuncture, Dudley for aromatherapy, Roland for physio, and Alexandra the cognitive behaviour therapist –  are solicitously caring and even somewhat helpful, giving short periods of relief from his overwhelming emotional blah-ness.

To be sure, there is that nasty thing with his knee, those occasional searing twinges of excruciating pain which occur at random and which have defied surgery, but surely that can’t account for the pervasive feeling of gloom which has settled around him, his eternal angst-ridden state, his abstraction which is starting to affect all of his relationships. But at least things are stable on the home front. For, after all, with three decades of marriage one comes to rather rely on one’s loyal spouse for eternal acceptance and understanding…

While mulling over his own personal Existentialist Dread, and doing a bit of research on the topic as a whole, Laurence happens upon the name of Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, and, upon delving into Kierkegaard’s Journal, becomes obsessed with the man, finding – or perhaps more accurately, fabricating – parallels between their two dissimilar lives. As he becomes more and more emotionally involved with the philosopher, Laurence’s grip on his real life loosens even further, which is perhaps why his wife’s calm statement that she is leaving him comes as such an unexpected shock.

Therapy is a lot of fun to read, cringe-worthy narrator and all.

It is divided into four segments, the first being a straightforward, tell-all journal, with Laurence’s musings on the various structures and forms of writing obviously (and most interestingly) reflective of David Lodge’s own thoughts on the topic. The second section of the book is a collection of character portraits of Laurence written by him from the perspective of a number of his intimate associates, followed by a poignant flashback episode to Laurence’s teen years and his first love, the virginal (and staunchly Catholic) Maureen. Here is where the narrative takes an interesting though rather predictable twist, leading into the fourth section, which serves to bring Laurence’s narrative to a conclusion by sending him on a very personal pilgrimage along the road to Santiago de Compostela.

David Lodge is a very engaging writer, being just crude enough in his humour to elicit a certain amount of vulgar snickering, and then soaring away from the muck with some truly poignant bits of prose regarding the human condition and our universal quest for self-knowledge and the eternal why-are-we-here. Occasionally the navel-gazing gets a bit intense, but if one can soldier on one is rewarded by some gloriously funny bits, and some rather terribly true and relatable reminders of the absurdities of interpersonal relationships. (And the actual therapy episodes – of all sorts – are tellingly described and possibly the most deeply humorous bits of the book.)

I found myself mostly in sympathy with Laurence Passmore, despite the ick-factor of Lodge’s detailed descriptions of his sexual woes – for what with Laurence’s age (late fifties), physical condition (not great), and emotional turmoil (excessive), things are getting a bit difficult to, um, sustain in that department – which were kept from being too off-putting by the aforementioned humour of the author. (Though I’ll never be able to look at a bottle of Paul Newman’s Salad Dressing in quite the same innocent way again…)

Laurence/Tubby hits rock bottom, but struggles to his feet, and his redemption, though utterly predictable, left me feeling downright cheerful.

What else? Let’s see…

Grand glimpses of the actual process of creating sit-com episodes; the television studio bits are nicely done.

I rather liked the flashback sequence to Laurence’s teen days and his first love Maureen. Rather sweet, and an interesting excursion into a more innocent(ish) past, teen courtship-wise.

All in all, a decent read in a modern-light-novel sort of way, with the bonus of a mini-course in Kierkegaardian philosophy, delivered quite painlessly.

I do believe I may be reading more of David Lodge in the future, though I will allow a decent interval to pass before tackling him again. Enjoyable as I ultimately found it, I was very ready to be done with this book when I did close the last page; at over 300 pages it was a significant investment of reading time and attention, and there was a certain amount of authorial musing here and there which took some concentration to properly absorb.

 

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Tigers in Guatemala: Rose Macaulay’s Off-Kilter Jungle Drama

Posted in 1930s, Century of Books - 2014, Read in 2014, tagged , , , , , on April 17, 2014| 10 Comments »

staying with relations rose macaulay 001Staying with Relations by Rose Macaulay ~ 1930. This edition: Pan, 1947. Paperback. 224 pages

Provenance: The Book Man, Chilliwack, February 2014.

My rating: 7/10

What did I just read?

My fourth encounter with the brilliant but unsettling fiction of Rose Macaulay – the others so far being Crewe Train, The Towers of Trebizond, and The World My Wilderness.

Of these, The World My Wilderness was closest to being a “plausible” story; the others were decidedly surreal. One cannot apparently read Macaulay on complacent auto-pilot; she takes a straightforward narrative and gives it the occasional twist sideways, just enough to catch the reader off guard.

Un-credited poem, one would then assume to be by Rose Macaulay herself, on frontispiece page.

Un-credited poem, which I assume to be by Rose Macaulay herself, on frontispiece page.

Among other disconnects from reality on this latest addition to my small Macaulay collection, it was the mention of tigers in the Central American jungle that caused me my greatest bemusement. I could handle all of the other scenarios – the luxuriantly roccoco villa built upon an ancient Mayan temple/Spanish monastery, the sophisticated love lives of the family of English step-brothers, -sisters and cousins living lives of lazy pleasure financed by their older relations, the American con-man with his uncanny knowledge of hidden treasure and his bizarre plot to attain such – but the tigers threw me off my stride.

At first I thought they were merely hypothetical tigers, and that the man referencing them was harking back to years spent in India, but they popped up again (figuratively speaking), apparently as a threat as “real” as the stalking jaguars which lurk in the overgrown Guatemalan forest. Had to stop and do a bit of research, it bothered me so much, and no, there do not appear to be actual tigers endemic to this region of the world. Such a relief! – I thought not, but there was that tiny bit of niggling doubt…

Okay, I’m going off on a strange tangent. Well, perhaps rightly so. This is a rather odd and slightly unsatisfactory tale.

It starts off conventionally enough. This is what the back cover of my old Pan paperback says:

Staying with Relations is about a family who live in a baroque, Maya mansion in the heart of the Central American forest. A young woman novelist goes from England to visit her relatives in Guatemala. Theft, kidnapping and hunting for treasure left there long ago by Spanish priests occur. There is an earthquake; a girl is lost in the jungle while escaping from kidnappers; unexpected aspects of the characters of the dramatis personae emerge. Rose Macaulay has enjoyed in this book the three pleasures of relating adventures, describing exotic scenery, and writing about people…She wrote this book largely as compensation for not having, in a tour of Central America, reached Guatemala and seen its ancient temples buried in jungle…

Macaulay dips her pen deeply into the satirical ink well; she jabs away at herself as much as at her invented characters, being continually cutting about the phenomenon of the English woman novelist and her apparently universal habits. Well, the writer should know.

staying with relations rose macaulay excerpt 001 (2)

Once we get this sort of thing out of the way, the novel proceeds on its way detailing the adventures of the not particularly sympathetic cast of characters. Though Catherine-the-lady-novelist at first seems to be the main character, with the action viewed through her eyes, the point-of-view increasingly shifts until we realize, with something of a shock, that we don’t really know any of these people at all. And certainly not Catherine!

As Macaulay puts her puppets through their paces, one strains to see what her intent is; what is she really going on about? And I wish I could say that I figured this out for myself, but I must give credit elsewhere. It was a comment by Simon at Stuck in a Book , in a discussion of The World My Wilderness, that clicked on the light:

‘Reliable’ is just another word for ‘consistent’, really, and Macaulay does seem to write in a consistently dry, almost satirical style, pursuing a similar theme in each novel – albeit a theme so broad that she could have written two thousand novels and never needed to approach it from the same angle twice.  It is dangerous to summarise thus (and others may have said this before me…) but I believe Macaulay’s broad theme across her novels is: ‘What does it mean to be civilised?’

Once one views the novel with this thought in mind, it all begins to make much more sense. Macaulay is continually discussing, both by the dialogue of her characters and her scene setting, the difference between the “barbarians” and the “civilized” folk. No conclusion is committed to, but the concept of “civilization” trumps all of the other scurryings to and fro which make up the conventional skeleton of the story.

I enjoyed this book as much as one can when one feels as if the author is speaking rather over one’s head. As a dramatic fiction it is as unnervingly just off normal in the same way as something like Evelyn Waugh’s satirical novel The Loved One is, or his slyly funny Decline and Fall. (Though Waugh is rather more accessible, in my opinion; Macaulay can be downright obscure, giving her readers very little help at all.)

I should probably quit now, having not really talked about the plot or any of the details of the story, and digging myself deeper with every sentence into a situation which I am going to have a hard crawling back out of. A veritable tiger-pit of a post, as it were!

For those who are already Macaulay aficionados, Staying with Relations will be a most interesting read. But I wouldn’t start here for my first introduction to this unique novelist. Perhaps try Crewe Train instead; it is just as satirically twisted but there are less characters to keep track off, and a more clearly defined heroine. Who is also, now that I come to think of it, “staying with relations”…

 

 

 

 

 

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Patricia Brent, Spinster by Herbert Jenkins

Posted in 1910s, Century of Books - 2014, Read in 2014, tagged , , , , , , , , , on February 6, 2014| 7 Comments »

patricia brent, spinster 1 herbert jenkinsPatricia Brent, Spinster by Herbert Jenkins ~ 1918. This edition: Herbert Jenkins, circa 1918. Hardcover. 312 pages.

My rating: 6.5/10

I keep forgetting about this book, even though I only read it a week or so ago. It’s already had the ignominy of being shuffled away into the hall closet with a stack of miscellaneous already-reviewed books, only being rescued several days later when I was delving around in there looking for Christopher and Columbus by Elizabeth von Arnim, which I was hoping would be as great a treat as other bloggers have promised. (It was.)

High expectations were inspired by this opening passage:

“She never has anyone to take her out, and goes nowhere, and yet she can’t be more than twenty-seven, and really she’s not bad-looking.”

“It’s not looks that attract men,” there was a note of finality in the voice; “it’s something else.”  The speaker snapped off her words in a tone that marked extreme disapproval.

“What else?” enquired the other voice.

“Oh, it’s—well, it’s something not quite nice,” replied the other voice darkly, “the French call it being très femme.  However, she hasn’t got it.”

“Well, I feel very sorry for her and her loneliness.  I am sure she would be much happier if she had a nice young man of her own class to take her about.”

Patricia Brent listened with flaming cheeks.  She felt as if someone had struck her.  She recognised herself as the object of the speakers’ comments.  She could not laugh at the words, because they were true. She was lonely, she had no men friends to take her about, and yet, and yet——

“Twenty-seven,” she muttered indignantly, “and I was only twenty-four last November.”

A rather handsome later edition cover. This novel has maintained its popularity well since its publication in 1918.

A rather handsome later edition cover. This playful novel has maintained its popularity well since its publication in 1918.

And by this back-cover précis:

Patricia Brent is a guest, damned by the prefix “paying,” at the Galvin House Residential Hotel. One day she overhears two of her fellow “guests” pitying her for her loneliness and that she “never has a nice young man to take her out.”

In a thoughtless moment of anger she announces that on the following night she is dining at the Quadrant with her fiancé.

She wasn’t, and she hadn’t, but she did.

When in due course she enters the grill-room she finds some of the Galvin House-ites there to watch her. Rendered reckless by the thought of being found out, she goes up to a table at which is seated a young staff-officer, and asks him to help her by “playing up.”

This is how she meets Lieut.-Col. Lord Peter Bowen, D.S.O. Then follow the complications that ensue from Patricia’s thoughtless act.

Patricia’s fast-on-her-feet rescue of her situation definitely sets off a tangle of complications, especially when her “pick-up” proves to be something a little bit different than anything she could have imagined.

I won’t say too much more, plot-wise, because I’m sure some of you will be keen to read this one for yourself, as I was. Already something of a fan of Herbert Jenkins – I cherish a thick compilation of the famous Bindle stories – I was keen to see what he would do with a feminine lead. Not too badly, though I must say that Patricia reads rather like a woman written by a man; there were occasional odd notes, especially to do with clothes.

For Patricia is not a dowdy spinster – oh, no, not at all! She dresses well and with exquisite care, rather surprisingly so, considering her obviously straitened means. Herbert Jenkins tries his hand at this description of Patricia primping to go out on her first adventure, to what she thinks will be a solitary visit to the Quadrant Grill-Room, the “major-man” being at this point merely a figment of her imagination.

As she stood before the mirror, wondering what she should wear for the night’s adventure, she recalled a remark of Miss Wangle’s that no really nice-minded woman ever dressed in black and white unless she had some ulterior motive.  Upon the subject of sex-attraction Miss Wangle posed as an authority, and hinted darkly at things that thrilled Miss Sikkum to ecstatic giggles, and Mrs. Mosscrop-Smythe to pianissimo moans of anguish that such things could be.

With great deliberation Patricia selected a black charmeuse costume that Miss Wangle had already confided to the whole of Galvin House was at least two and a half inches too short; but as Patricia had explained to Mrs. Hamilton, if you possess exquisitely fitting patent boots that come high up the leg, it’s a sin for the skirt to be too long.  She selected a black velvet hat with a large white water-lily on the upper brim.

“You look bad enough for a vicar’s daughter,” she said, surveying herself in the glass as she fastened a bunch of red carnations in her belt.  “White at the wrists and on the hat, yes, it looks most improper.  I wonder what the major-man will think?”

Swift movements, deft touches, earnest scrutiny followed one another. Patricia was an artist in dress.  Finally, when her gold wristlet watch had been fastened over a white glove she subjected herself to a final and exhaustive examination.

“Now, Patricia!”—it had become with her a habit to address her reflection in the mirror—”shall we carry an umbrella, or shall we not?”  For a few moments she regarded herself quizzically, then finally announced, “No: we will not.  An umbrella suggests a bus, or the tube, and when a girl goes out with a major in the British Army, she goes in a taxi.  No, we will not carry an umbrella.”

She still lingered in front of the mirror, looking at herself with obvious approval.

Would a young lady of such obviously strong self-esteem really be so humiliated by the gossipings of some of the nasty old biddies sharing her residential hotel? Apparently so, and once we’ve accepted this slightly shaky premise we might as well go ahead and abandon ourselves to the whole happily romping thing.

It’s all very fluffy, and definitely a farce, though it has its moments of poignancy here and there. Set in the early years of the Great War, some of the characters are present because they are home on leave while recovering from their injuries; the sombre background of affairs in Europe and the bombings in England are a fascinating backdrop to the frivolous antics of the foreground players.

I was fortunate enough to track down a vintage copy of the book, though it took several long months to arrive from the bookseller in England, but here it is in digital format courtesy of the fantastic Project Gutenberg, for your reading pleasure.

Project Gutenberg: Patricia Brent, Spinster

Dust Jacket, early edition.

Dust Jacket, early edition.

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A Bird in the Hand is Hard to Set Free: Brewster’s Millions by Richard P. Greaves, aka George Barr McCutcheon

Posted in 1900s, Century of Books - 2014, Read in 2014, tagged , , , , , , , , on January 21, 2014| 2 Comments »

brewster's millions 1902 richard greaves george barr mccutcheonBrewster’s Millions by Richard P. Greaves, pseudonym of George Barr McCutcheon ~ 1903. This edition: Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1903. Hardcover. 325 pages.

My rating: 7.5/10

This was a pleasant light novel which was easily breezed through in several sittings. Nothing here to challenge one; purely diversionary.

Montgomery Brewster is one of the set of young men with expectations, “The Little Sons of the Rich”, who form an informal club for card-playing, wining and dining in turn-of-the-century New York. In Monty’s case, it is his paternal grandfather who provides the expectations; Monty is widely believed to be the millionaire’s heir. This proves to be the case, and Monty’s natural sorrow at his relative’s demise – for Monty has been a ward of the old man since his parents’ untimely deaths – is salved by the news that he has been set down in the will for one million dollars.

Now Monty is gently pleased at this, the more so because he has been a hard-working young man and is not that desperate for the money, though there is no doubt that it will make life much more pleasant. Monty has been working in banking, and is pulling down a respectable salary; he boards with a widowed lady who has been something of a foster mother to him since childhood, and he is good friends with the household’s daughter, Margaret Grey. He is also romantically involved with a vivacious young woman who herself has good prospects, banker’s daughter Barbara Drew. An engagement is expected by both of them – Monty and Barbara – in due course, and all in all life looks fair to be peaceful and prosperous, with no clouds on the horizon.

Then, mere days after the Brewster will is proved, Monty receives a surprising communication from another lawyer. Monty’s late mother’s brother, his Uncle Sedgwick, has just shuffled off into eternity, and he has appointed Montgomery Brewster, son of his beloved sister, his sole heir. With a condition.

Seems that when Monty’s parents were married, a feud of sorts was started between Brewster senior (Monty’s grandfather) and the Sedgwick clan. Unforgivable words were spoken on both sides, and James Sedgwick was left with a bitter hatred towards the Brewsters, Monty excepted. As a sort of twisted revenge, he wanted to turn Monty into his chief heir but without mingling any of his (Sedgwick’s) hard-earned money with that of his enemy’s. Monty must divest himself of the Brewster fortune in a prescribed time, to be left with only the clothes on his body, in order to inherit the Sedgwick cash. And the amount of that legacy makes Monty sit up and take notice: $6,345,000! With projected interest, something like seven times the fortune already in hand.

Will Monty take the gamble?

Well, of course he will! For that is the entire premise of this rather silly story.

The conditions set for divesting himself of the Brewster fortune are stringent. Monty is not allowed to confide in anyone as to why he is ridding himself of his grandfather’s cash, with the deadline being Monty’s twenty-sixth birthday, just under a year in the future.

There was also a clause in which he (Sedgwick) undertook to dictate the conduct of Montgomery Brewster during the year leading up to his twenty-sixth anniversary. He required that the young man should give satisfactory evidence to the executor that he was capable of managing his affairs shrewdly and wisely,—that he possessed the ability to add to the fortune through his own enterprise; that he should come to his twenty-sixth anniversary with a fair name and a record free from anything worse than mild forms of dissipation; that his habits be temperate; that he possess nothing at the end of the year which might be regarded as a “visible or invisible asset”; that he make no endowments; that he give sparingly to charity; that he neither loan nor give away money, for fear that it might be restored to him later; that he live on the principle which inspires a man to “get his money’s worth,” be the expenditure great or small.

So Monty sets out to spend Grandfather Brewster’s cash, which he will need to do, as his calculations have shown him, at an average of almost $3,000 per day. He must demonstrate that he is receiving “value for money”, and he’s not allowed to tell anyone what he’s doing. Let the farcical fun begin!

For Monty’s friends, the other “Little Sons of the Rich”, prove surprisingly unwilling to let Monty squander his cash, and they go to great lengths to limit his expenditures. Early on in the proceedings, Barbara Drew is disgusted by Monty’s profligacy, and withdraws from their informal engagement, giving him pause, but only for a moment. As the year races on, Monty finds it harder and harder to spend fast enough, even adding to his fortune completely unwillingly by several freak occurrences – a second-rate prize fighter knocking out a champion (Monty had bet on the second-rater); a foray into stock trading on a “sure loss” which was turned around due to Monty’s investment; a visit to Monte Carlo ends with a bizarre winning streak – the fellow just can’t lose! Or, as the true case would be, win.

Luckily a financially disastrous yacht trip helps with the final disposal of Monty’s funds, as well as showing him that he has started to develop romantic feelings towards the young woman whom he had previously thought of as a platonic foster-sister, his old chum Margaret Grey. But Monty’s birthday is fast approaching, and suddenly Sedgwick’s executor disappears, and the Sedgwick millions with him. Could Monty have gambled and won, only to have ultimately lost everything through a cruel twist of fate?

Well, what do you think will happen?

I enjoyed this humorous period piece, and I was quite amused as well to learn some of the history behind its writing. I will pass you over to this excellent article by Nathaniel Rich, American Dreams: Brewster’s Millions, from which I’ve excerpted this back story of the author’s own gamble. (And please click over and read the full article; it is excellent.)

Brewster’s Millions, a novel about a bet, was written on a bet. George Barr McCutcheon was visiting his publisher when the subject of bestselling novels came up in conversation.

“The name of the author is what sells the book,” remarked the publisher.

McCutcheon, who the previous year had written his first bestseller—the initial volume in the Graustark series of romantic adventure novels—disagreed.

“I will bet you $100 that it does,” said the publisher.

“I will take that bet,” replied McCutcheon, “and I will write you a story to show you that I am right.”

Six weeks later McCutcheon submitted a manuscript. It was the story of a young man named Monty Brewster who, in order to inherit $7 million, must spend $1 million in a single year. There are, however, strings attached. At the end of the year Monty cannot possess any assets; he is forbidden from telling anybody why he’s spending all his money; and he may only donate a piddling amount to charity. Monty is free to reject the challenge and keep the $1 million, but he accepts the bet without hesitation. He begins his year of spending dangerously by renting the most expensive apartment in Manhattan and leasing four Monets, three cars, two horses, and a chef from Paris.

McCutcheon, needless to say, won his publisher’s bet—in fact he made off nearly as well as Monty Brewster. Brewster’s Millions sold 150,000 copies in its first three months of publication, despite the fact that the author was listed as “Richard Greaves.” (A clerk at the publishing house posed for the press photo.) The novel remains in print 110 years later, and has been adapted for film at least 10 times.

*****

Note: I originally purchased a copy of the book in order to fill in the 1902 spot in my Century of Books reading project, but it appears to me that the book was actually published in 1903. My copy is a first edition, showing the author’s name as Richard P. Greaves on the front cover (later editions replaced the pseudonym with George Barr McCutcheon), and the publication date on the copyright pages states: Issued April 20, 1903. Not a big deal, but it did leave me feeling a bit uneasy about using it for 1902, so I filled that space with Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories instead. So if you’re looking for inspiration for this time frame for your own Century project, just an alert that the copyright date of 1902 which appears in almost every reference to Brewster’s Millions that I’ve seen may be slightly incorrect.

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Lady Duff Gordon’s Sally, Pearl S. Buck’s Trans-Cultural Monologue, Miss Pettigrew’s Day – 3 Micro-Reviews

Posted in 1930s, 1950s, 2010s, Canadian Book Challenge #7, Read in 2013, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 17, 2013| 2 Comments »

Three “relationship” novels read this month with varying degrees of enjoyment. All three are much discussed elsewhere, so I feel justified in giving them each what amounts to a very arbitrary micro-review. Of these three I doubt I will be returning to The Mistress of Nothing or Letter from Peking. Miss Pettigrew, however, will immediately be moving onto the keeper shelf.

the mistress of nothing kate pullingerThe Mistress of Nothing by Kate Pullinger ~ 2009.

This edition: McArthur & Co., 2010. Softcover. ISBN: 978-1-55278-868-4. 248 pages.

My rating:  6ish/10.  (Mostly for the first half of the book, which was quite engrossing, and the fact that it sent me away curious to learn more about the real Lady Duff Gordon. The last half deteriorated to a 3 or maybe, generously, a 4.)

This book won the 2009 Canadian Governor General’s Award for Fiction, to which I can only say that it must have been a quiet year in publishing.

Somewhere as I did a bit of internet research on the author and the novel, I read that Kate Pullinger worked on this for ten years. I’m assuming that it was very much a peripheral project, though I also saw that she received an Author’s Society grant to travel to Egypt for her research, and a series of Fellowships from the Royal Literary Fund. I personally think that the author should also have spent some time working on how to write a convincing bedroom scene, because the sexy bits in this one were blush inducing for all the wrong reasons, reading as though they’d been grafted into a reasonably serious historical novel from something much more slight and bodice-ripperish.

Based closely on Lady Duff Gordon: Letters From Egypt, edited by Lady Duff Gordon’s mother, Sarah Austin, and daughter, Janet Ross, and published in several volumes between 1865 and 1875, The Mistress of Nothing is, first and foremost, well researched. It is also beautifully written for the most part, making the latter plot and stylistic inconsistencies all the more glaring.

Lucie, Lady Duff Gordon was well known for her beauty and sparkling wit and moved in the highest social circles in England, though she and her husband were, relatively speaking, not all that wealthy. Lady Duff Gordon was a noted scholar, and specialized in translations of German literature. She was also doomed to an early death, for she had at some point contracted tuberculosis, and, soon after the birth of her third child, was told she must leave England for a warmer, dryer climate. Travels to South Africa and then to Egypt brought some respite, and The Mistress of Nothing follows the Egyptian sojourn which ended in Lady Duff Gordon’s death in Cairo in 1869. She was 48.

The Mistress of Nothing provides an intriguing if superficial portrait of Lady Duff Gordon, but the focus of the novel is on another genuine character, her personal maid, Sally Naldrett. Sally accompanied her mistress on her travels, and on the trip to Egypt was Lady Duff Gordon’s sole companion, as limited finances precluded anything resembling an entourage.

When the two women reached Egypt, they were fortunate in acquiring an Egyptian dragoman/factotum, one Omar, who by all reports was a devoted and efficient assistant and of great aid in every way possible. At some point Sally and Omar developed an even closer relationship; Sally became pregnant and gave birth to Omar’s child, a development unrealized by Lady Duff Gordon until the actual birth. Her Ladyship reacted in an extreme manner, refusing to have anything  to do with Sally and stating that the child was to be given to Omar’s family (he was already married to an Egyptian woman) and that Sally was to return to England. Sally ended up marrying Omar – under Muslim law he was permitted multiple wives – but there was no reconciliation between her and her mistress, and Sally disappears from Lady Duff Gordon’s narrative, though she was very much still present at least on the fringes of the household for quite some time before Lady Duff Gordon’s eventual demise. Omar stayed on, and retained his position in the household as well as Lady Duff Gordon’s good graces, being recommended by her to serve in the Prince of Wales’ household after her death.

All of this is true to the historical record, and quite fascinating it is, too. It’s very easy to see why Kate Pullinger decided to elaborate on the real life framework of this dramatic trio of personalities; the story as it stands is enthralling.

Where the fictional treatment starts to unravel is where the real life letters leave off and Pullinger’s pure invention takes over. Once the (fictionalized) virginal Sally discovers the joy of sex with Omar, the narrative changes from an interesting examination of expatriate life in 1860s Egypt to a mushy pastiche of Sally’s (imagined) thoughts and emotions and Pullinger’s inventive fabrication of what Sally gets up to once cut adrift from her once-benevolent employer. Though willing to go along with the tale, I was unwillingly lost along the way, and closed the book with a feeling of deep disappointment. It was so close to being such an excellent read…

Well, I see the above got longer than the promised micro-review, though I really didn’t say too much; it’s a largish topic and there are all sorts of things I could say about the fascinating character of Lady Duff Gordon, and the roles of women in the 19th century, and class distinctions, and the vast gap between mistress and servant despite their years of physical intimacy, and the political situation in Egypt and the whole aristocratic British person living abroad thing. But others will have said it already, so I will (and not a moment too soon – the morning typing time is running out) move on to the next book on my list.

letter from peking pearl s buckLetter From Peking by Pearl S. Buck ~ 1957.

This edition: Cardinal, 1964. Paperback. 218 pages.

My rating: 3/10

Pearl S. Buck was a prolific writer, with a number of excellent novels to her credit – The Good Earth, The Living Reed, Peony – and a whole slew of other stuff. Some of which, sadly, is not very good at all. Like this one, which sounded promising, started out not too badly, and slid downhill fast.

This might have made a decent short story, but Pearl S. Buck, by dint of much repetition and needlessly florid meanderings, padded it out into a novel.

Here’s the gist of it.

An American woman, happily married for twenty years to a half-Chinese, half-American man, leaves China with her twelve-year-old son at the start of the Communist government takeover. Her husband, due to an extreme sense of duty, remains behind in his job. (He’s the head of a Chinese university; you know already from this that it’s not going to end terribly well, what with the whole Cultural Revolution thing on the horizon.)

Back in America, the woman settles into her family home in rural Vermont, which has been conveniently waiting for her in perfect order all these years, complete with faithful (if gruff) hired man. A letter arrives. Her husband has been pressured to take on a Chinese wife, to prove his loyalty to his country. The woman puts off answering it. The son runs into issues with his mixed race ethnicity. Much emotion ensues. The woman talks. A lot. Both to herself and to anyone else who will provide a shoulder to cry on. The son decides “enough of this already, Mom’s micromanaging my life. No more confidences.” More tears.

Then the woman, all on a sudden whim, decides to track down her father-in-law, and finds him in the most unlikely circumstance, living in a small shack under the protection of a local big-wheel landowner, having lost his memory but still being cognizant enough of things to insist on dressing himself in Chinese silk gowns, of which he apparently has a whole closet full. (The father-in-law lived in China many years, and left after the death of his Chinese wife – the heroine’s husband’s mother – which was highly unpleasant. She was a revolutionary activist, and was  put up against a wall and shot. Instant martyr stuff.)

Not one but two prospective suitors materialize. “Divorce your husband and marry again!” Oh, what to do, what to do???! By the time it all sort of resolved itself (sort of) I no longer cared.

Heroine is a deeply unpleasant woman, for all of her heartfelt moanings in this first-person monologue. She is a complete and utter snob, self congratulating herself on her amazing superiority in embracing the Chinese culture of her beautiful husband – long passages on how physically gorgeous mixed-race people are – while those around her are so gosh-darned bigoted. She insists that the good old days in China were absolutely wonderful; the peasants were happy; her servants loved her; her beautiful life was so fulfilling. Why did those nasty Commies have to ruin everything? In the meantime she bosses her son around, patronizes the Vermont people who fulfill all of the roles her Chinese peasants used to, and puts off dealing with her husband’s crucial issue. Eventually she gives permission for him to take on a wife-in-absence, giving her yet another lowly person to mercilessly critique.

By the end I hoped that neither of the suitors ended up with her; they seemed nice fellows. And I wished her new daughter-in-law best of luck, and rejoiced for her sake that the son had decided to move far, far away.

Over the years I’ve read a lot of Pearl S. Buck, and enjoyed most of it. This one, as you may have gathered, not very much.

miss pettigrew lives for a day winifred watson 001Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson~ 1938.

This edition: Persephone Press, 2000. Softcover. ISBN: 978-1-906462-02-4. 234 pages.

My rating: 8/10

What a relief to turn to this playfully frivolous novel after Pearl Buck’s dismal thing.

Middle-aged Miss Pettigrew, supremely inefficient governess, is on her uppers. Down to her last shilling, she knocks on the door of one Miss LaFosse, following up a lead from an employment agency.

Miss Pettigrew is welcomed in and definitely proves herself useful, but in a most unanticipated way. Dashing young men, cocktails, nightclubs…ooh, la la! Miss Pettigrew has never experienced such a whirl as she does in this utterly life-changing day.

That’s all I’m going to say. A whole lot of fun, this light and airy novel. If you haven’t already experienced this silly, happy thing, seek it out immediately, and enjoy!

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I Did It! I Finally Did It! A (Literary) Visit to Mrs. Gaskell’s Cranford

Posted in Read in 2013, tagged , , , , , , on November 26, 2013| 12 Comments »

cranford cover elizabeth gaskellCranford by Elizabeth Gaskell (Mrs Gaskell) ~ 1851-53. (It appeared as a serial before being published in book form post-1853.) This edition: Everyman’s Library, 1942. Hardcover. 255 pages.

My rating: 9/10

What a joy this little book was. I cannot believe it has taken me so very long to read it, such an essential part of the “English novel” canon!

Our narrator is one Mary Smith, a young lady of good family, who visits and corresponds with the good ladies of a small (fictional) English village, Cranford, in the early years of the 19th century. Round about the 1830s, to be more exact, from the references to Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Papers being then newly released in their serial form. King William IV and his Queen, Adelaide, reign over the land, soon to be succeeded by the young Victoria. The ladies of Cranford, though far from London in more ways than distance, keep a keen eye cocked on the doings of high society and the nobility, and form their own society accordingly.

In the first place, Cranford is in possession of the Amazons; all the holders of houses above a certain rent are women.  If a married couple come to settle in the town, somehow the gentleman disappears; he is either fairly frightened to death by being the only man in the Cranford evening parties, or he is accounted for by being with his regiment, his ship, or closely engaged in business all the week in the great neighbouring commercial town of Drumble, distant only twenty miles on a railroad.  In short, whatever does become of the gentlemen, they are not at Cranford.  What could they do if they were there?  The surgeon has his round of thirty miles, and sleeps at Cranford; but every man cannot be a surgeon.  For keeping the trim gardens full of choice flowers without a weed to speck them; for frightening away little boys who look wistfully at the said flowers through the railings; for rushing out at the geese that occasionally venture in to the gardens if the gates are left open; for deciding all questions of literature and politics without troubling themselves with unnecessary reasons or arguments; for obtaining clear and correct knowledge of everybody’s affairs in the parish; for keeping their neat maid-servants in admirable order; for kindness (somewhat dictatorial) to the poor, and real tender good offices to each other whenever they are in distress, the ladies of Cranford are quite sufficient…

The Amazons referred to are a select group of upper class ladies who rule Cranford’s restricted society. Spinster sisters Miss Deborah and Miss Matilda (Matty) Jenkyns (rather elderly daughters of the some-years-deceased rector), the know-everything Miss Pole, snobbish Mrs Jamieson (sister-in-law to the late Earl of Glenmire, she’ll be happy if you’ll remember), and quiet Mrs Forrester (genteelly poverty stricken but held locally in highest regard due to her familial ties to the aristocracy) – all these ladies take the leading roles in Cranford’s major occasions.

Mary Smith frequently comes to stay with the Jenkyns sisters, and she is able to comment on the occasional village tempests. A certain Captain Brown and his two daughters, Mary and Jessie, settle in Cranford, and Captain Brown’s attendance at the previously all-female tea parties keeps the ladies on their toes, though he deeply offends Miss Deborah by his preference for the up-and-coming young writer Charles Dickens over the stately Dr. Johnson.

As the years slide by, reports from Cranford show us a peacefully microcosm in a gentle state of flux. Several characters move on or pass out of the worldly sphere altogether, several marriages occur, and a birth or two. Lady Glenmire arrives to the initial glee of her hostess, Mrs Jamieson, but soon confounds that lady by demonstrating some rather “low” tastes; nouveau-riche Mrs Fitz-Adam comes into her own at long last; a burglar alarm has the ladies all in a tizzy; and the failure of Miss Matty’s investments rallies the ladies to new heights of beneficent plotting.

It’s all very low key, but it is gloriously funny, and occasionally deeply pathetic (in a traditionally fictional way), and I am looking forward with interest to reading more of Mrs Gaskell, now that I’ve at last made her first-hand acquaintance.

And, last but not least, the Cranford references I continually come upon in my other reading will no longer leave me feeling quite so dreadfully ignorant of the original. Oh, happy day, indeed!

Yes, these women are stuffing a cat into a boot. I shan't tell you why; you will have to read the novel yourself to find out. But I assure you that Kitty comes to no harm, and the "operation" is a decided success! (You'll never guess it; it's a uniquely Cranfordian situation!)

Yes, these women are stuffing a cat into a boot. I shan’t tell you why; you will have to read the novel yourself to find out. But I assure you that Kitty comes to no harm, and that the “operation” is a decided success. (You’ll never guess it; it’s a uniquely Cranfordian situation!)
Illustration is from the 1904 J.M. Dent edition, illustrations by C.E. Brock.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/394/394-h/394-h.htm

 

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