Posts Tagged ‘Vintage Fiction’

Elnora the Absolutely Amazing: A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter

Posted in 1900s, Century of Books - 2014, Classics Club, Read in 2014, Stratton-Porter, Gene, tagged , , , , on January 18, 2014| 8 Comments »

a girl of the limberlost gene stratton-porter 001A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter ~ 1909. This edition: Grosset & Dunlap, circa 1927. Hardcover. 453 pages.

My rating: 6/10

Spinning my book-discussing wheels somewhat, trying to think of what to say.

An unusual book; definitely memorable for its strong imagery of beautiful Elnora, her white-haired, haunted mother, and the moths that flit in and out of every scene, until popped into the cyanide-filled killing bottle.

You see what I mean? This one made me downright squeamish here and there.

So here we are back in the Limberlost Swamp in Indiana, some years after our previously met fine fellow, Lord Terence something-or-other O’More, a.k.a. Freckles, has quit his timber patrols, married his Swamp Angel, and taken on his aristocratic hereditary mantle. The locals whisper his name with awe, and his benevolent shadow is present throughout the book, along with a more substantial appearance at the end of the tale. But in the meantime, the timber companies have harvested many of the trees, and oil has been discovered in the swamplands, so many of the smallholders on the fringes of the Limberlost are doing very well indeed.

One farm, however, remains untouched. The Widow Comstock’s trees are still standing; no oil pump brings black gold to the surface. Stern Mrs Comstock ekes out a subsistence living by farming, living off the land, and selling butter and eggs to the townfolk. She refuses to let a tree be fallen or an oil well drilled, as she holds the land as a sacred trust in memory of her dearly departed husband, whose acres these were.

Oh, yes. The husband. He perished most unpleasantly by falling into the quicksand swamp just out back of the family home. Mrs Comstock ran to the rescue, but she couldn’t save him because she went into labour right there on the edge of the swamp, and her baby was born as its father glubbed his last. And, get this, because the swamp is “bottomless”, the body is still down there, sixteen years later. No wonder Mrs Comstock’s hair went prematurely white, and she’s more than a little eccentric.

That baby, our heroine Elnora, has grown to sweet-sixteen-hood being deeply resented by her mother, with the only openly expressed love in her life coming from a child-less couple one farm over. (These folks had two daughters, but these perished early on; their parental love is therefore spent on deserving Elnora.)

Okay, this is turning into a saga already, and that’s just the barest setup. Let’s see if I can condense.

Elnora is desperate to continue her education past the country school and go onto high school in town. Off she goes in her clunky shoes and calico dress, only to be immediately and openly scorned by the other teenagers, and shocked to discover that she will need to pay tuition and buy books. Luckily a way opens for her. The kindly neighbours buy her clothes (which she insists on paying them back for out of stern pride) and she discovers that she can earn money by collecting Indian artifacts and nature specimens – arrowheads, rocks, leaves and insects – which she sells through the local naturalist, the Bird Lady. (See Freckles.)

Garbed in her new duds and with her gorgeous red-gold hair fashionably arranged, Elnora instantly becomes the belle of the school, winning over the entire student body. She is also naturally intelligent, and she excels at her studies, graduating at the top of her class. Attracted by some mysterious pull to try her hand at playing a violin left in an unoccupied classroom, Elnora is a virtuoso at first touch of the bow. (Must be heredity, because her dead dad was a dab hand at the violin, too, which is why her mother refuses to countenance an instrument in the house.)

Benda's illustration of Elnora and Phillip girl of the limberlost gene stratton-porter

Lovely Elnora and her wealthy lover, Phillip, dallying amongst the wildflowers. Illustration from the first edition “A Girl of the Limberlost.”

She befriends a trio of pathetic orphans, one of which is adopted by the neighbour couple, and in general is a ray of sunshine about the swamp. Butterflies and moths flock to her outstretched hands, to be caught and killed and then pinned to mounting boards for resale to collectors all over the world. ~ Insert subplot concerning rare moth here. ~

Then love walks in.

A wealthy young man discovers Elnora and falls in love with her, but both deny their feelings for each other because the young man is otherwise engaged. He leaves. She stays. He has a bust  up with his fiancé and returns to pledge his troth to Elnora. Complications ensue; Elnora runs off to spend some time with Freckles and Angel and their winsome brood of perfect children; young man has a spell of “brain fever” and is saved at last minute by his original fiancé’s agonizingly selfless kind deed of telling him where Elnora is hiding out.

Oh, and Mrs Comstock has a complete change of heart part way through, when she finds out that her husband died because he was creeping through the swamp on his way to a rendezvous with another woman, sneakily avoiding being seen by his great-with-child wife. Once that’s cleared up, Mrs Comstock comes to appreciate sweet Elnora, and turns into a model mother immediately.

I didn’t fall in love with Elnora as so many readers have, perhaps because I didn’t become acquainted with her when I was a young reader. My cynical side, which allowed itself to be fairly quiet while revisiting Freckles, surged to the surface while reading Elnora’s melodramatic tale.

Do you know what this book remends me of? Nothing other than L.M. Montgomery’s Kilmeny of the Orchard, which I read and despised last year. Elnora hails from 1909, and Kilmeny from 1910; almost-twin daughters of a style of story-writing just a bit too dated for my full appreciation, I suppose. (Or maybe it’s the common trait of these untrained young girls instantly mastering the violin…)

But sharp-eyed readers of this blog will note that I awarded A Girl of the Limberlost a respectable 6/10. That’s because, despite my rudeness regarding Elnora’s unlikely tale, it was very readable, and it kept me decidedly engaged from first page to last. And I will keep it, and probably reread it, though doubtless while muttering in annoyance here and there.

It’s a rather unique book, in so many ways, and I can see why there are so many fans.

Here are thoughts from a few other readers.

One in favour: Shelf Love: A Girl of the Limberlost

And one not so enamoured: The Book Trunk: A Girl of the Limberlost

I agree with both of these reviews, if that’s possible. To me, Elnora was a too, too “perfect” heroine, but there were glimpses here and there of something rather interesting going on, and I must say I loved Elnora’s mother at her very nastiest; she was the high point of the book, until she had her epiphany and deteriorated into being oh-so-nice and sweetly motherly and sentimentally soppy.

So another conflicted review of Gene Stratton-Porter’s work. Which means I’ll be reading more of her, I’m sure. She intrigues me, in a rather uneasy way.

And her many tempting food descriptions make me hungry. I’ve been thinking longingly since I turned the last page of fragrant spice cake and crispy fried chicken!

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Sybylla One and Two: Miles Franklin’s 1901 Australian Teenage Angst, Feminist Ideals, and Brilliant (?) Career

Posted in 1900s, 1940s, Century of Books - 2014, Read in 2014, tagged , , , , , , , , , on January 14, 2014| 6 Comments »

These next two books are proving to be something of a challenge to me.

Well, not actually the books themselves. Reading Miles Franklin’s teenage bestseller, My Brilliant Career, and her publisher-suppressed sequel (and apology to her parents) My Career Goes Bung, has been a fascinating process. My dilemma lies in how best to express what these books are really all about, and how they reflect the strong ideals of their author in her own life, while still inhabiting the fictional realm.

I will try to keep things brief(ish); one could go on for pages and pages and pages. Luckily there are others who have covered this ground before, and I think that if I succeed in piquing your interest in this writer and her books I will have to say, “Good enough.” Biographies and resources are definitely available for further study.

my brilliant career virago press miles franklin 001 (2)My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin ~ 1901. This edition: Virago, 2002. Introduction by Carmen Callil. Paperback. ISBN: 0-86068-193-9. 232 pages.

My rating: 8.5/10

My sphere in life is not congenial to me. Oh, how I hate this living death which has swallowed all my teens, which is greedily devouring my youth, which will sap my prime, and in which my old age, if I am cursed with any, will be worn away! As my life creeps on for ever through the long toil-laden days with its agonizing monotony, narrowness, and absolute uncongeniality, how my spirit frets and champs its unbreakable fetters—all in vain!

Whoa, steady on, there!

These emotions, from the introduction of My Brilliant Career, written in the voice of fictional autobiographer, almost-seventeen-year-old Sybylla Melvyn, absolutely sob teen angst. Appropriately so, for their real author, Australian Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin, was just sixteen herself when she dashed these words off in the late 1900s, and the youth of the author is very evident throughout the story.

The fictional Sybylla starts life as the indulged child of a successful New South Wales landholder and an aristocratic mother. When Sybylla is eight years old, a prolonged drought inspires her father to change his occupation, to that of a stock dealer in nearby dairy-farming region, and the landholdings are sold and the family relocated to a much smaller farm. Sybylla’s father proves to be a very poor businessman, and his escalating failures start him drinking to excess, until the family’s circumstances become reduced to the point of bankruptcy. Sybylla’s mother is predictably soured by all of this, and her frustration with her declining lot in life and with her continually sulking eldest daughter comes to a head. Sybylla is told to get out into the world and earn a living, as the family cannot support either her careless ways or her continued financial drain on family resources. A reprieve comes through an offer by Sybylla’s well-off maternal grandmother to come and live on the family estate.

Sybylla finds life at her grandmother’s very congenial, and she blossoms into something of a local belle, eventually attracting the attention of the district’s wealthiest bachelor, the dashing Harry Beecham. Harry and Sybylla come to a tentative agreement – tentative, anyway, on Sybylla’s part, though ironclad on Harry’s – that she will marry him once she turns twenty-one. As she is just seventeen when this takes place, anything might happen in the ensuing years, and of course it does.

Harry loses his estate and leaves the district in order to re-establish himself; Sybylla’s parents send for her to take on a post as a governess with a family friend who has loaned the Melvyns money; Sybylla’s labors will count towards the interest. This proves to be a squalid and humiliating experience; Sybylla ends up having a nervous and physical breakdown, and returns to her parents’ home to recuperate, much to their combined dismay.

Harry returns, with fortune well on its way to being restored, but Sybylla has developed a deep antipathy to the married state, having observed the brutal physical and emotional effects of even a happy marriage on the women she has been observing as she becomes ever more acquainted with the wider world. Though Harry offers her a deep respect and swears that he will allow her the freedom to pursue her own interests (writing and music), and she is herself more than a little in love with him, she is ultimately unable to commit herself to him, and there Sybylla’s story abruptly ends.

This novel was an immediate bestseller, and brought the young author – Miles Franklin was twenty-one when it appeared – much fame and notoriety, as it was claimed by the publisher to be autobiographical, and the parallels between aspects of the lives of fictional Sybylla and real-life Miles were too obvious to dismiss. Teenage girls thrilled to Sybylla’s emotional outpourings and her desire to make something of herself, to have a “brilliant career”. The melodramatic tone of the tale caught adult readers’ attention, while family friends and neighbours raised querying eyebrows at the “Franklin girl’s” manipulation of the facts, and eagerly purchased the book for its curiousity value.

Despite the welcome income her debut novel brought, Miles Franklin was appalled at how it was received, and by the assumption that her family was accurately portrayed; she had meant it as a fiction. When her publisher inquired as to whether she would allow a second edition, Miles Franklin staunchly refused, and the book went out of print, until it was finally reissued in 1966, twelve years after her death.

The emotions expressed in the novel, chiefly those of frustration at the lack of opportunities for education and professional development for women, resonated with the modern feminists of the 1960s, and My Brilliant Career has been in print ever since, a highly regarded piece of early feminist literature, and a blazing example of a young woman’s refusal to bow to the status quo.

So much for the “meaningful” aspect of this book. Was it a “good” read?

Well, yes. It really was. I enjoyed it greatly.

Sybylla, for all of her over-the-top rantings about the woefulness of her life, early on turns into a very real and relatable character. I found that I was completely drawn in to her rather heart-rending little saga, and though I had moments of wanting to shake her vigorously – my “mother” side coming to the fore, I’m sure – I was completely on her side throughout. I sighed a bit when she turned down Harry Beecham at the very last; he was a wonderful catch, especially for the time and place. It was touch and go there for a bit, until Sybylla’s deeply entrenched intention of lifelong single womanhood got the upper hand!

Fascinating, then, to read the “sequel” to My Brilliant Career, which was written soon after the first book was published, but which was turned down by the publisher because of fear of scandal. More below.

First edition cover of "My Brilliant Career", which is gently mocked in the author's sequel/rebuttal, "My Career Goes Bung".

First edition cover of “My Brilliant Career”, showing the illustration which is gently mocked in the author’s sequel/rebuttal, “My Career Goes Bung”.

my career goes bung virago press miles franklin 001My Career Goes Bung by Miles Franklin ~ 1946. This edition: Virago, 1981. Foreword by Verna Coleman. Paperback. ISBN: 0-86068-220-X. 234 pages.

My rating: 9/10

I bless the serendipity which brought this book to me just before Christmas, when I was assembling books for the Century reading challenge. The name “Miles Franklin” was in the forefront of my awareness, having just purchased her first novel, My Brilliant Career, to represent 1901, and that in combination with the green Virago cover caught my eye.

While My Brilliant Career is something of a curiousity, a teenage writer’s attempt at dramatic fictional autobiography, My Career Goes Bung shows a polish and maturity which make me eager to explore more of this writer’s work.

The back story behind the delayed publication of the novel is fascinating as well. Written in 1902, concurrent with the author’s brief social success in Sydney as an up and coming young writer due to the instant popularity of My Brilliant Career, this next novel was returned by Franklin’s publisher with a terse, “No, thanks!”, citing fears of libel suits as well as concerns about its audacious and “advanced” views on sexuality and women’s rights. Miles Franklin then packed the manuscript away, and for decades believed it to have been destroyed, until the discovery of a second copy in an old trunk of her mother’s led to its publication in 1946.

In My Career Goes Bung, we are introduced to the “real” Sybylla, the young woman who has penned a bestseller based very loosely on fact, but which has been accepted as strictly autobiographical. In My Brilliant Career the fictional Sybylla’s parents and associates are portrayed as much less than admirable, and it is not at all surprising that the young author finds herself humiliated by the whole experience, and deeply apologetic to her parents, who were in actuality supportive of the young Sybylla’s literary strivings.

Peeling away the layers then, we have three characters to consider while reading these books. At the core, the very real person, Miles Franklin. Then her sympathetic alter-ego, the Sybylla Number Two of My Career Goes Bung, and lastly the teenage creation of excessive emotion and high imagination, Sybylla Number One, of My Brilliant Career.

Got that? It’s not all that complicated once one is immersed in the books; it all falls into place quite neatly. (Trust me!)

Sybylla Number Two goes off to Sydney to attempt to take advantage of the hubbub around her bestselling novel and to meet some of the literary stars of the day, with an eye to advancing her writing career. She is greeted with enthusiasm as the novelty of the moment, the little “bush girl” in her simple frocks, very much the innocent abroad, fending off the wolves by her impermeable naïvety in regards to their social manipulations, and in the case of many of the men, their sexual advances.

Sybylla attracts the eye of the handsome, calculating and immensely successful Goring Hardy, a thinly disguised version of the real-life “Banjo” Paterson (Waltzing Matilda, The Man From Snowy River, et al), who finds the virginal Sybylla a tempting prospect for conquest. Sybylla submits to his caresses, but allows no further liberties than some hot and heavy fondling and kissing; at the end of a week of secretive meetings, both parties realize that the relationship is not about to progress any further, and politely part ways. (Miles Franklin did have a short-term relationship of some sort with Paterson, hence the libel suit fears in regard to the fictional version.)

Sybylla is apparently something of a “babe” – in the most modern sense of the term – attracting the lavicious attentions of every many she meets. Another suitor, one Henry Beauchamp, assumed by all to be the original of the dashing Harry Beecham of My Brilliant Career, appears to vigorously woo Sybylla, but she spurns his frequent marriage proposals with steadfast determination. Sybylla then rather scornfully dismisses Sydney society as an artificial and fickle atmosphere antipathetic to true creativity, and returns to her family home more than ever determined to live the life of an independent woman, unshackled by the chains of marriage and childbearing, to pursue her ideals alone.

The End. (With the sound of enthusiastic feminist cheering faintly off on the sidelines.)

The real Miles Franklin stood by her convictions as firmly as did her fictional alter-ego. Though courted by many men, she never married. She continued to further develop her unique literary voice, supporting herself while writing by a variety of occupations, including nursing, housemaiding, and working as a secretary. She adopted the unlikely and picturesque nom-de-plume “Brent of Bin Bin”, avoiding her (modified) real name in order to sidetrack unfavourable comparisons of her subsequent work to My Brilliant Career, and had a modest success in her lifetime as a writer of Australian historical sagas and slightly quirky fictions.

Miles Franklin. I don’t think I’m quite done with her yet. What an interesting writer. Century of Books, you’ve already introduced me to a number of new-to-me mind-broadening reading experiences, of which this one stands out, so early along. I wonder what other happy surprises this reading year will bring?

Project Gutenberg Australia has a number of Miles Franklin’s works represented online, well worth looking at. My Brilliant Career and My Career Goes Bung are widely available in physical book form, in some cases as a combined edition, which I highly recommend. The second book enhances the first, and they greatly reward being read together.

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Living the “Simple” Life: The Princess Priscilla’s Fortnight by Elizabeth von Arnim

Posted in 1900s, Read in 2014, von Arnim, Elizabeth, tagged , , , , , on January 13, 2014| 7 Comments »

the princess priscilla's fortnight elizabeth von arnim 001The Princess Priscilla’s Fortnight by Elizabeth von Arnim ~ 1905. This edition: Smith, Elder & Co., 1906. Hardcover. 329 pages.

My rating: 7.5/10

Her Grand Ducal Highness the Princess Priscilla of Lothen-Kunitz was up to the age of twenty-one a most promising young lady. She was not only poetic in appearance beyond the habit of princesses but she was also of graceful and appropriate behaviour. She did what she was told; or, more valuable, she did what was expected of her without being told. Her father, in his youth and middle age a fiery man, now an irritable old gentleman who liked good food and insisted on strictest etiquette, was proud of her on those occasions when she happened to cross his mind. Her mother, by birth an English princess of an originality uncomfortable and unexpected in a royal lady that continued to the end of her life to crop up at disconcerting moments, died when Priscilla was sixteen. Her sisters, one older and one younger than herself, were both far less pleasing to look upon than she was, and much more difficult to manage; yet each married a suitable prince and each became a credit to her House, while as for Priscilla,—well, as for Priscilla, I propose to describe her dreadful conduct.

German Princess Priscilla is finally facing an appropriately marriageable suitor, a personable prince with a suitably secure income, and all that is left is to arrange the formal engagement. But the princess is suffering from what would vulgarly be called “cold feet”, so she dreams up a plan to escape from her overly lavish courtly surroundings, “where one is never alone”, by taking up an incognito life in an English country cottage with her personal mentor, the elderly ducal librarian, who sympathizes with Priscilla’s secret desire to pursue the beautiful simple life.

Bribing one of Princess Priscilla’s maids to go on ahead and meet them in Cologne, prefatory to travelling through France and crossing the Channel, Priscilla and Herr Fritzing disguise themselves in old clothes, scarves and veils and depart the castle on bicycles. Luck smiles on them; they make a clean getaway, and eventually fetch up in the English countryside, where they turn a sober village upside down by their joint combination of well-meaning naïvety and high-handed snobbishness.

Two young men fall immediately head over heels in love with the oblivious princess, two households are bitterly disrupted, and then the cheerful farce of this improbable adventure turns even more sober when Priscilla’s thoughtlessness and misplaced generosity causes a hitherto honest young woman to turn thief through irresistible temptation, and an elderly woman to be murdered for the money Priscilla has given her.

Once luck deserts the two idealistic German vagabonds, it does so with a vengeance. Their emotional maid, deeply resentful of her lowly position and the assumption that she will take on menial tasks unthought-of in castle days, blackmails Herr Fritzing for his last penny. The indignant mothers of Priscilla’s two local suitors descend upon the household with their respectively outraged and tearful maternal woes, and the local tradespeople send in their bills and refuse to extend any more credit to the suddenly-beleaguered establishment.

Luckily this is by way of being a fairy-tale-ish confection, and a bold rescuer appears from an unexpected direction. Priscilla comes away from her rural fortnight a much sadder and wiser young woman, and the obvious morals are writ large in bold letters all over the concluding chapters.

This playful story with a semi-serious message is a very readable light novel, something along the lines of The Enchanted April and The Jasmine Farm in tone, with a similarly neat and tidy satisfactory ending. Perhaps not one of von Arnim’s best and most complex works, but more than acceptable for cheerful diversion, and charmingly witty, with the author getting her usual digs in at the Germanic patriarchy’s tendency to squelch their women into an acceptable meekness.

Here is Princess Priscilla at Project Gutenberg, and here are several other favorable reviews:

The Captive Reader ~ The Princess Priscilla’s Fortnight

Geranium Cat’s Bookshelf ~ The Princess Priscilla’s Fortnight

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A Tragic Sojourn in Amazonia: Green Mansions by W.H. Hudson

Posted in 1900s, Century of Books - 2014, Classics Club, Read in 2014, tagged , , , , , , on January 11, 2014| 9 Comments »

green mansions 1944 dj w h hudsonGreen Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest by W.H. Hudson ~ 1904. This edition: Random House, 1944. Introduction by John Galsworthy (1915); illustrations by E. McKnight-Kauffer. Hardcover. 303 pages.

My rating: 3.5/10

Memorable and deserving of its status as a literary classic? “Yes” to the first bit – it is definitely memorable – and “Sure, okay, I guess so” to the second. I can see how this one caught people’s attention, with its exotic setting and all. In 1904 deepest darkest Amazonia was still fairly blank on the world map.

Enjoyable reading? I am so sad to say that as far as I’m concerned, this is an emphatic “No!”

Ugh. It’s been a very long time since I read something that repelled me as deeply as did Green Mansions, glowing descriptions of Amazonian flora and fauna and Galsworthy’s effusive foreword aside.

Venezuelan aristocrat Abel gets mixed up in a failed coup and must flee for his life. He ends up in the interior of Guayana, someplace beyond the Orinoco River. As he wanders about, doing a bit of hunting here, a bit of gold prospecting there, he starts to gain an appreciation for the natural wonders of the jungle. He then falls in with a small tribe of “savages” and decides that maybe this would be a cool place to hang out for a while. Impressing the chief savage with the gift of a silver tinderbox, Abel slings his hammock in the corner of the communal shelter and settles down to being waited on by the women in between stints of building himself a guitar and condescendingly teaching the youngsters of the group to fence with wooden foils.

The E. McKnight-Kauffer illustrations in my 1944 edition of this book are lovely; the best part of the book!

The E. McKnight-Kauffer illustrations in my 1944 edition of this book are lovely; the best part of the book! Check out all the symbolic details that the illustrator has included here.

To condense greatly (which I wish the author would have) Abel encounters a mysterious girl in the nearby forest, in the taboo region where his host tribe will not hunt. She teases him with glimpses of her lovely self, all the while whistling and chirping like a mysterious bird. Eventually the two make contact, but as he embraces the elusive creature Abel is bitten by a deadly coral snake. He flees through the forest, expecting death at any moment, stumbles upon the camp of an old European man, and collapses. When he comes to, miraculously on the mend from the snakebite, he finds that he has found Bird Girl’s “grandfather”, a shifty-eyed elderly bearded type named Nuflo.

Much twittering about the forest ensues, Abel lusting after Rima (which turns out to be Bird Girl’s name) and Rima being all ethereal and hard to get. She’s the wood nymph protector of the forest creatures, etcetera. Meanwhile Nuflo daily sneaks off with his two dogs and surreptitiously kills the odd little animal, which he devours in a secret hideaway, joined by Abel who is getting rather famished living on the roots and berries which Rima feels are the only food needed to sustain life.

At some point all three go off to the place “twenty days away” where Nuflo discovered her wounded mother, on a quest to find Rima’s hypothetical vanished tribe. (Nuflo, “grandfather” title to the contrary, is actually no relation, but he had appointed himself guardian of the tiny child when her mother eventually died, some ten years before Abel enters the picture. Rima is now seventeen, making her ripe for love and hence fair game, as the author continually implies.)

Off to find the lost tribe.

Off to find the lost tribe.

Anyway, Abel convinces Rima that her mother’s tribe appears to be truly vanished, and Rima decides to return to the forest, leaving Abel and Nuflo to follow at their own pace, because she’s just so darned marvelous and ethereal (not to mention weather resistant in her spiderweb dress) and not requiring of any boring shelter or cooked food so she can travel so much faster than the menfolk. And she wants to prepare a lovely forest home for herself and Abel, as she has finally agreed to give in to his passionate entreaties, but she wants them to “do it” properly in nice surroundings.

So imagine Abel’s feelings when he and Nuflo come back home to find that the savages have chased Rima to the top of a tall tree and then burned it down, with her plunging to a fiery death. We don’t get to witness this, just hear about it from one of the savages, leading to the false hope that Rima may still be alive out there in the forest. (Spoiler: She isn’t.)

Rima's spirit lives on is the gist of this one, I think.

Rima’s spirit lives on is the gist of this one, I think.

Abel vows revenge, and goes to the next tribe of savages over (who are, naturally, sworn enemies to the first tribe of savages) and sets them to slaughter tribe of savages number one. Once everyone is dead (including Nuflo), Abel scrapes up Rima’s ashes, makes an ornate clay urn to contain them, and returns to civilization, where he spends his time pondering the wickedness of man, the glorious wonder of nature, and the sad fate of his bird girl.

I’m trying to think of one single character who didn’t make me want to vehemently cuff them at some point, but nope, can’t do it. Rima is just plain annoying, with her teasing girlish ways, her glowing red eyes, greyish-ivory skin, cloud of halo-like hair and spiderweb dress. Abel is a lout, living off the locals and rudely critiquing every detail of their morals, intelligence, appearance and lifestyle. Nuflo is shady to the nth degree, and the native tribespeople are paradoxically portrayed as universally unintelligent, deeply superstitious and highly manipulative.

I am glad I finally read this book, as it is so highly regarded by so many and so often referenced in literature, but I am even gladder to have turned the last page, and I have zero intention of ever reading it again.

Onward then, to something more palatable. I deserve something really good, I think, to take the taste of this one away. Let’s see now… maybe something by Elizabeth von Arnim? Of a similar vintage, to restore my faith in authors of this era.

This is how I felt after reading this book. (The illustration is actually from early on in the story, when Abel despairs at getting his hands on the elusive Rima.)

This is how I felt after reading this book. (The illustration is actually from early on in the story, when Abel despairs at getting his hands on the elusive Rima.)

And please don’t let my snarly review put you off. Thousands thrilled to this book, and you might well be among them. Here it is, online at Project Gutenberg.

Green Mansions by W.H. Hudson

Has anyone else read this? Loved it or despised it or felt completely ambiguous about it? Please do share!

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Nazis in the Scottish Mist: Crooked Adam by D.E. Stevenson

Posted in 1940s, Century of Books - 2014, Read in 2014, Stevenson, D.E., tagged , , , , , , on January 9, 2014| 9 Comments »

crooked adm d e stevensonCrooked Adam by D.E. Stevenson ~ 1942. This edition: Fontana, 1974. Paperback. 219 pages.

My rating: 6.5/10

You have to hand it to D.E. Stevenson. Even if she didn’t know anything at all about her subject (mental illness in Rochester’s Wife, for example) it didn’t stop her from taking a good old swing at it, cheerfully glossing over the complicated bits by having her characters tell each other, “It’s too specialized to explain. Just trust me.” And of course, they do.

In this case it is schoolmaster Adam Southey who is the clueless one. His headmaster, Samuel Cooke, is a prominent scientist who is working on a secret war machine, a kind of death ray which focus an ultraviolet beam of light on an object – say, an enemy airplane – and causes it to burst into flames. “A Death Ray!” exclaims Adam, only to be lectured by his superior that this is inaccurate: “It’s too specialized to explain to a simple soul like you. Just trust me.”

It is early in World War II, and Adam is disappointed that His Majesty’s Army has no use for him, due to a childhood injury which has left one of his legs shorter than the other. Despite this physical handicap, Adam is fit and strong, and can swing along at a great rate, which is about to come in very handy very soon. He surprises a suspicious intruder attempting to get a look at Cooke’s secret weapon, and ends up accompanying the van carrying the machine to a secret army testing base in Scotland, with some interesting adventures on the way, including an attempted hijacking and a stint of camouflage with a travelling circus.

Once in Scotland, with Marvelous Invention to Change the Course of the War almost ready to demonstrate, Adam’s adventures get even more exciting, as he stumbles upon a Cleverly Disguised Nest of Nazi Spies (complete with submarine access to a secret tunnel), teams up with the local shepherds and fishermen to foil the Wicked Teutonic Menace, and ultimately finds True Love.

Despite the simplistic tone of the whole thing, written in a “Gosh! Golly!” schoolboy-adventure-tale-genre sort of way, it is rather an enjoyable romp, and the groaning faux-pas-by-sincere-author moments add to the charming vintage atmosphere. The hero is sweet and true-blue all the way through (“Crooked Adam”, as one of his schoolboy charges murmurs in a scene-setting aside to a friend, is really one of those double entendre nicknames which mean the exact opposite – gimpy leg aside, Adam is straight as they come) and we can only hope that his serendipitous love interest will live up to his nobleness, once the war is safely over.

Though this adventure started off rather slowly for me – this is my second go at reading it, as the first try fizzled out – once I pushed past the “I can’t explain my invention; you’ll just have to take my word for it that it’s marvelous” bit by Dr. Cooke and wide-eyed Adam’s acceptance that he’s too dumb to grasp the complexities of science I started to grow rather fond of our sterling-natured hero, and cheerfully went along with the tale until the heroic and neatly tied up end. I’d noticed before that D.E. Stevenson often has no qualms about cold-bloodedly eliminating her bad eggs, and Crooked Adam proved no exception, with the author showing more sympathy with the German Nazis versus the turncoat Englishmen, who get their (fatal) comeuppance.

Yes, one might safely shelve this one with the propaganda novels, I think.

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The Emotional Walking Wounded Seek for Solace: North Face by Mary Renault

Posted in 1940s, Century of Books - 2014, Read in 2014, Renault, Mary, tagged , , , , , on January 6, 2014| 4 Comments »

north face mary renault 001North Face by Mary Renault ~ 1948. This edition: Longmans, 1949. Hardcover. 318 pages.

My rating: 6/10

This is a little-discussed novel by the author who went on to become world renowned for her historical fiction centered on ancient Greece: The Bull From the Sea, The King Must Die, Fire From Heaven, et al. Before Mary Renault hit her stride with the ancients, she wrote a number of contemporary novels, all concerning the romantic relationships and struggles for self determination of the characters. Most featured hospital settings or nurses and doctors as characters, as the author drew on her own hospital and nursing experience for inspiration and to provide accurate detail.

North Face was Mary Renault’s fifth published novel, released in 1948 in North America (and a year later in England), just as Mary Renault was settling into a new life in South Africa, where she had moved with her partner Julie Mullard after winning a $150,000 prize from the American motion picture company MGM for her fourth novel, Return to Night. Renault was to write one more contemporary novel, the highly regarded The Charioteer (1953) before turning to ancient Greece for the inspiration of her future writing years.

The story opens in a boarding house in rural Devon, where two opinionated single women who are staying for their holidays are making each other’s acquaintance and finding each other rather unsympathetic. Miss Searle is an intellectual college don who travels with her weighty works of Chaucer, which she has been immersed in studying for the past decade. Miss Fisher is a nurse, with a hearty, rather “common” manner; she has a jolly appreciation of the realities of life, and finds Miss Searle’s fastidious air to be more than somewhat annoying.

World War II has just ended, and everyone we meet is still showing signs of the many years of emotional trauma they have experienced. Some have been wound up so tightly they are finding it difficult to return to some sort of new normal; society itself has taken a giant step sideways, leaving those slow to adapt floundering. Add to this the effects of personal tragedies, which are exacerbated by the effects of the war, and suddenly the tense atmosphere of every sort of social gathering is perfectly understandable.

The Misses Searle and Fisher unite in speculation regarding their fellow guests. They are most interested in the solitary Neil, who is abstracted and unapproachable, and spends his days trekking about the countryside with knapsack and detailed maps. A man with a secret, surely? Which is found to be true. Neil is a more than competent boys’ school teacher who has had a fairly uneventful war. Deemed an essential worker, most of it has been spent in his usual occupation, despite his attempts at joining active service. Finally he was accepted into a Service position, still in England, but far from home.

While Neil was otherwise occupied, his young wife discovered and was discovered by the young officers at the nearby American army camp; what started as innocent flirtation turned into a series of sexual liaisons. Neil had returned from his military posting to find that his wife was no longer interested in him in a sexual or emotional way. The dissolution of their marriage led to personal tragedy, as the couple’s young daughter, adored by Neil, is horribly injured in a fire while Neil is out and her mother is entertaining a soldier in her bedroom. The child dies, and on his return from her funeral, Neil is confronted by his wife’s demand for a divorce. She is pregnant by her latest lover, and wishes to start a new life with him post-haste.

Neil is therefore wandering about in Devon in a sort of trauma-induced trance, agonizing over what next to do, and if life is even worth living. In this state he bumps up against another troubled soul, the slender, virginal (literally) Ellen, who has just arrived at the guesthouse.

Ellen has also had an emotionally fraught time of things after the death of her fiancé, a fighter pilot, in the closing months of the war. He was a childhood first love; the two were brought up together as their mothers were step-sisters, and though Ellen was deeply attached to him, she was unable to bring herself to share his deeper passion. She feels that her rejection of his physical advances had hurt him so much that he had been careless while on his last mission; she holds herself responsible for his death, and has punished herself and sought to get over her frigidity by arranging a liaison with another man at the guest house. This falls through, as Ellen is unable to carry through with the physical aspect of the “fling”, and she too is wandering the countryside in something of a daze.

Neil and Ellen discover some shared interests, most notably rock climbing, and the theme of frail human pitted against cold stone and working out emotional issues through physical exertion runs through the novel. As Neil’s and Ellen’s romantic interests in each other grows, Miss Searle and Miss Fisher provide a sort of argumentative and gossiping Greek chorus to the progress of the affair, each putting her own interpretation on what is going on.

Much self-analysis and heart-rending ensues, before Neil and Ellen find comfort in each other’s arms.

A slightly unusual novel, and definitely of strong interest to the Mary Renault completest. I had no trouble at all reading this one through, though it was rather deeply seeped in gloomy psychological trauma and all sorts of Freudian situations, including a gypsy’s warning to Neil and Ellen to “stay away from high places”, which immediately led me to expect some sort of tragic ending, what with all the clambering about on cliffs. (Which didn’t materialize, much to my relief.)

Each of the two main protagonists finds at least some of the solution to their inner turmoil through the concentrated effort of working across a sheer rock face, though I was rather annoyed at the author for allowing Neil to get himself out of a desperate climbing situation while leaving Ellen stranded and requiring Neil’s aid, a metaphor which I felt was likely to represent their future life together.

Oh, and because it is Mary Renault, I am sure you are wondering about the gay/lesbian themes. Not much going on here, unless our intellectual and buttoned-up Miss Searle is a latent lesbian, but as she is quite obviously attracted to the masculinity of Neil, that one doesn’t really fly. Neil has had a close friend and climbing companion, Sammy, killed in the war, but how close a friend is never detailed and the relationship seems to be platonic from the hints dropped by Neil. Ellen thinks that she may be lesbian due to her frigidity towards her fiancé’s advances, but she allows herself to be wooed by a female friend and it doesn’t “take” so she crosses that possibility off the list. I think that’s about it, or at least all I can think of without re-reading with this sort of analysis in mind. 😉

Not in the same league as the best of this writer’s works, but most interesting in view of her future accomplishments. Next on my Mary Renault want-to-read list is The Charioteer, which is deemed to be the best of her contemporary fictions, along with the satirical The Friendly Young Ladies.

 

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Before Anne: Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin

Posted in 1900s, Century of Books - 2014, Classics Club, Read in 2014, tagged , , , , , , on January 5, 2014| 15 Comments »

rebecca of sunnybrook farm kate douglas wiggin 001Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin ~ 1903. This edition: Grosset and Dunlap, circa 1920. Hardcover. 342 pages.

My rating: 7.5/10

I never read this venerable classic as a child, coming to it in young adulthood, but I enjoyed it when I did finally settle down to it. My tattered paperback copy was packed and unpacked over a number of moves until coming to rest at the back of the schoolroom bookshelf, where it still sits today. I hadn’t realized that my first copy was a quite highly edited one – “abridged for younger readers”, if one reads the fine print – until I stumbled upon this vintage hardcover, read it, and realized that there was more to the story than I had been aware of.

Not much more, really, mostly just an elaboration on the religion-related episodes, where Rebecca mulls over the appeal of the missionary life and discusses her faith at length, but it was satisfying to at last read the book as it originally appeared in print.

11-year-old Rebecca Rowena Randall (her late father was a devotee of Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe) has been sent off to live with her two spinster aunts in Riverboro, as her widowed mother is having a difficult time making ends meet for herself and her seven children on mortgaged Sunnybrook Farm. And it’s interesting to note that though Rebecca identifies herself as coming from Sunnybrook Farm, and obviously has strong sentimental ties to her family home, we don’t get any further acquaintance with the place itself, with the action taking place almost exclusively in Rebecca’s new home.

Grim Aunt Miranda and quiet Aunt Jane are unprepared for the bouncing Rebecca as they had requested her sober older sister Hannah instead, but after the initial surprise all accept the situation and prepare in their various ways to make the best of it. This is the era of stern duty, after all.

Do I need to detail the escapades which Rebecca gets herself into and out of? It’s fairly standard stuff for this sort of novel, and anyone who is familiar with Louisa May Alcott, L.M. Montgomery and Jean Webster can fill in the blanks. Rebecca finds kindred spirits in an elderly childless couple to whom she can tell her woes when Aunt Miranda’s sharp tongue stings too much to bear, and she soon teams up with a best chum, in this case the blond and smiling Emma Jane Perkins, good natured foil to her more rambunctious and clever friend. The two attend the local one-room school together, have ins and outs with the other children, deal with the school’s Mean Girl, the cruelly named Minnie Smellie, and good-naturedly patronize the local ne’er-do-well family, the Simpsons, headed by the light-fingered Abner, master of the midnight visit and the subsequent “trading” of goods picked up from about the neighbourhood.

In a scenario which reminded me of the later Daddy-Long-Legs plot, the young Rebecca (she’s only eleven at the start of the story) meets a much older wealthy bachelor (Adam Ladd is thirty when he and Rebecca first meet), charms him with her childish prattle, and evokes feelings which grow into something much more mature in both parties. But that is looking far ahead, though hints are abundant from the first meeting that Adam and Rebecca have “special” feelings for each other, and of course nothing untoward happens, with Adam nobly refraining from romantic thoughts about his young protégé until she reaches college age. At which point, let’s see… he is thirty-eight and she is seventeen. This raises a bit of an “ick” response in modern-day me, but it seems perfectly acceptable to this time period’s novel writers, so I’ll just leave it right there, labelled prominently “Era Acceptable”.

Rebecca is a truly charming heroine with an innate dramatic bent which shows itself in her love of writing and music. As well as creating poetry and stories, Rebecca sings beautifully and later masters the piano, with the author being very clear that in all of these accomplishments her heroine has had to stringently apply herself to master the crafts and to polish her natural abilities, which I found nicely refreshing – too often our young protagonists blithely achieve lofty heights with surprising and unlikely ease.

Early on in the story I started thinking, “Hmm, this story seems just a bit familiar. Haven’t we met these people before on Prince Edward Island?” A quick internet search showed that I was not alone in this thought, though I was mildly surprised to realize that Rebecca was created first, with Anne following several years later. Check out this article, Mirror Images: Anne of Green Gables and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, which is quite fascinating in its examination of parallels between the two iconic literary heroines.

Likeable as Rebecca is – and she is truly a winsome child – she never quite comes to life as does her younger literary sister Anne. Kate Douglas Wiggin seems to be standing just a little off in the distance in describing her creation’s thoughts and feelings; her rather stilted language and stock situations belonging more to the 19th Century, whereas Anne feels much more like a creature of the here and now.

A must-read for anyone at all interested in the time period and the vintage “youth fiction” genre; there is humor and irony galore to reward the adult reader of young Rebecca’s adventures, though I’m afraid a young reader of the 21st Century might bog down somewhat in all of the missionary subplot and the relative mildness of the “action”.

new chronicles of rebecca kate douglas wigginNew Chronicles of Rebecca by Kate Douglas Wiggin ~ 1907. This edition: Grosset and Dunlap, circa 1920. Hardcover. 278 pages.

My rating: 6.5/10

I was pleased to discover that there is a companion book to Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, New Chronicles of Rebecca, published four years later, in 1907. It consists of a linked series of anecdotes enlarging upon and adding to the Rebecca saga, drawing on readerly familiarity with Rebecca’s original adventures, and giving many more details as to her life and some strong clues to her future.

Because of its anecdotal nature, this is much less of a stand-alone novel than the first Rebecca, but it is thus freed up to delve into some intriguing sidelines of life in Riverboro. We meet Emma Jane’s swain, Abijah Flagg, and hear his back story, as well as becoming more intimately acquainted with the Simpson clan. Though Rebecca is viewed primarily as a children’s story, it is very apparent in New Chronicles that the author is writing as well to the mature members of her readership, as a key plot concerns the common-law relationship of the Simpsons, and Rebecca’s part in awakening the feckless Abner to the wrong done to his “wife” (and mother of his children) by his neglect of the religious ceremony to legitimatize their relationship.

In another chapter, a young woman abandoned by her husband during her second pregnancy dies along with her newborn child, and the young Rebecca and Emma Jane have the distressing and quite graphically described experience of being left alone with the deceased while Emma’s father goes to fetch the neighbours. Luckily the now-motherless first child creates a diversion, and then a longer-term project as the girls decide to prevent young Jack’s disposal of to the poorhouse. The girls find him a foster mother and form a society of benevolent young “aunts” to oversee his amusement.

In general this is a mild addendum to the classic novel, but it adds enough to the overall portrait of Rebecca and her associates that it should really accompany the original as a required-reading companion volume.

A pleasant reading experience, both of these books. Though I warn you that you may look at Anne of Green Gables with new eyes on your next reading, and wonder just a bit how carefully L.M. Montgomery was examining K.D. Wiggin!

Here are both of the Rebecca books online at Project Gutenberg, along with numerous other examples of this prolific author’s work.

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Pale Shades of Lady Chatterley: The Blind Man’s House by Hugh Walpole

Posted in 1940s, Century of Books - 2014, Read in 2014, Walpole, Hugh, tagged , , , on January 4, 2014| 5 Comments »

the blind man's house hugh walpoleThe Blind Man’s House by Hugh Walpole ~ 1941. This edition: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1941. Hardcover. 337 pages.

My rating: 5.5/10

Sir Julius Cromwell, blinded many years before by a bullet to the head in the Great War, has recently married the lovely and impetuous Celia, fifteen years his junior. The two are still in the physically passionate honeymoon stage of their relationship, Celia’s husband adores and indulges her, and she worships him; they are moving to a country estate in the town where Sir Julius grew up; a warm welcome by the locals is anticipated. So why does Celia feel so apprehensive and sick with fear, and why does she cringe away from the sightless gaze of her husband’s beautiful blue eyes?

Everybody loves Sir Julius, from the youngest vicarage child to his servants to the one surviving member of the noble family whose ancestral home Sir Julius has just taken over. Even the handsome Jim Burke, well-born but looked down on with disdain for his wandering ways and philandering approach to the local young women, has settled into a remarkably stable relationship as a companion-odd job man to Sir Julius; the two are comfortable in each others’ company, and Jim reads aloud by the hour to Sir Julius and is his intellectual equal in their long shared talks together.

The young Mrs. Cromwell, on the other hand, is not going over so well. Her hasty temper and impulsive ways wreak domestic havoc and Sir Julius is frequently called upon to smooth ruffled feathers. Celia is well meaning and vivacious; she soon realizes that she is making some bitter enemies among the local ladies – most particularly and seemingly without cause with the vicar’s wife, but she is floundering with how best to make friends and handle her servants tactfully.

When it becomes obvious to all that Jim Burke is looking with admiring eyes at the lovely wife of his employer-friend, gossip starts to ferment and Celia’s popularity takes a further nosedive. When the two are witnessed in an embrace in the woods, whispers become outspoken words, and Sir Julius’ happy world starts to crumble around him.

This is a readable though occasionally melodramatic examination of the psychological effects of blindness both on the blind man and on everyone around him. Much as Sir Julius attempts to just get on with things, his injury is the elephant in the room, engendering endless speculation. Celia in particular can’t seem to get over her surprise that her husband’s other senses are so highly developed to make up for the loss of his sight; she is almost offended by the keenness of his hearing, by the delicacy of his touch, and by his uncanny ability to navigate through the darkest of rooms. Jim Burke has perhaps the most natural response to Sir Julius and the two mens’ friendship is sincere, despite the complications of the jointly admired Celia.

Just as I thought to myself that the story was taking on shades of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, what with the maimed husband, passionate young wife and handsome young retainer aspect and all, what does clever Walpole do but make reference to D.H. Lawrence in his own narrative, leading me to believe that the resemblance to the scenario is more than accidental.

It was as though (Celia) had been placed out of contact with everyone living. She picked up a book—a heavy brown volume on the table at her elbow. The Letters of D. H. Lawrence. There had been a time when it had been the fashion among her friends to read Lawrence, as though there were a new gospel here. And perhaps there was. She could never be sure, because so much of The Rainbow and Women in Love bored and wearied her, and sometimes there were magnificent things.

But now she read on and on and it was as though Lawrence screamed in her ear, telling her that catastrophe was on the way. She could not understand why he rejected everything and everybody—rejection, hate, misery. And then would come some passage of natural description so lovely and quiet that his voice dropped to a loving encouraging whisper. He rejected all living human beings. He said again and again with sickening reiteration that he trusted no one. His dearest friends he would embrace at one moment and reject with loathing at the next. Everything revolved around himself. He was sick, he was poor, he was betrayed, and he said so over and over again. But he had genius, that strange gift of seeing everything and everybody for the first time, as though no one had ever lived on this earth before himself.

But his thin nervous cry increased her own fear. He was right. The world was dreadful because the people in it were dreadful—dreadful and menacing…

Poor Celia, and poor Sir Julius. Poor Jim Burke, too! For this love triangle evaporates into nothingness, leaving the married couple still in partnership with each other and leaving Jim to make peace with himself on the outside of society’s charmed circle after his brief time of friendship with his fellow kindred spirit.

Hugh Walpole capably weaves numerous personal histories together on his way through this domestic saga, and some of his characterizations are clever and beautifully poignant, particularly concerning the three vicarage children.  But ultimately I felt that The Blind Man’s House was something of a minor work; too busy with incident and attempts at analysis to ever really settle down into story; personalities only carrying the thing so far.

The Blind Man’s House is available online at Project Gutenberg Canada.

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A Swedish Ghost Story for a Dark Winter’s Night: The Treasure by Selma Lagerlof

Posted in 1900s, Century of Books - 2014, Read in 2014, tagged , , , , , on January 2, 2014| 4 Comments »

the treasure selma lagerlof 1The Treasure by Selma Lagerlöf ~ 1904. Original title: Herr Arnes penningar (Herr Arne’s Hoard). Translated into English in 1923. This edition: Daughters, Inc., 1973. Foreword by June Arnold. Softcover. ISBN: 0-913780-01-4.  159 pages.

My rating: 10/10

“Why are they whetting knives at Branehog?”

So deep was the silence in the room that when the old lady asked this question all gave a start and looked up in fright. When they saw that she was listening for something, they kept their spoons quiet and strained their ears.

For some moments there was dead stillness in the room, but while it lasted the old woman became more and more uneasy. She laid her hand on Herr Arne’s arm and asked him: “How can it be that they are whetting such long knives at Branehog this evening?”

Torarin saw that Herr Arne stroked her hand to calm her. But he was in no mind to answer and ate on calmly as before.

The old woman still sat listening. Tears came into her eyes from terror, and her hands and her head trembled more and more violently.

Then the two little maids who sat at the end of the table began to weep with fear. “Can you not hear them scraping and filing?” asked the old mistress. “Can you not hear them hissing and grating?”

The crippled fish-seller, Torarin, who has stopped at the wealthy Herr Arne’s household to warm up and partake of the liberal hospitality of the household, is just as shocked as everyone else by the old woman’s outbreak. For didn’t his own little black dog, Grim, howl forebodingly and refuse to enter the gates of Herr Arne’s compound? Something sinister could well be afoot.

It is 16th Century Sweden, in the depths of winter. The sea is frozen; ships are trapped helplessly waiting for a thaw. Torarin hopes to take a shortcut home over the ice, and soon leaves. Grim rejoins him and Torarin shrugs off the omen. That night, however, a fiery glow lights up the night sky. Herr Arne’s buildings are on fire! Neighbours running to assist are shocked to find that the fire has been set from outside, and inside the hall Herr Arne, his wife, and their entire household lie dead in pools of blood; his famous treasure chest filled with silver is missing. A dying gasp from one man tells of three roughly dressed men coming down the chimney hole with long knives honed for the slaughter, surprising the household.

the treasure selma lagerlof 2One person has survived the massacre, a fourteen-year-old orphan girl, Elsalill, loving companion of Herr Arne’s daughter. She is dazed and at first will not speak; Torarin ends up taking her into his own poor home, where she soon learns to drudge along with Torarin’s mother cleaning fish on the harbourside.

Then three richly dressed Scottish mercenary soldiers, marking time with many others while waiting for the sea to thaw, overhear Elsalill telling the tale of that horrible night; they mock her weeping and her contention that she will be revenged upon the murderers who killed her beloved friend even as she pleaded for mercy. And as they walk away Elsalill thinks that somehow they look familiar, and this proves to be true.

Meanwhile, the unavenged dead are not resting peacefully these winter nights, and Herr Arne’s daughter returns to the land of the living in order to beg assistance from Elsalill in righting her great wrong. But Elsalill has fallen in love with the very man who murdered her friend…

What a great little ghost story this novella was, evocative of a bardish tale told round a flickering fire in a land of sunless winter.  Swedish writer (and articulate lesbian feminist) Selma Lagerlöf  was an accomplished teller of tales, winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1909 “in appreciation of the lofty idealism, vivid imagination and spiritual perception that characterize her writings”, and The Treasure is a fine small example of her much greater body of work.

Available for free online at Project Gutenberg, but perhaps best read out loud on a dark winter night with lights down low to a rapt audience of listeners.

Skål!

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A Long and Complicated Murder Chase: The Album by Mary Roberts Rinehart

Posted in 1930s, Read in 2013, Rinehart, Mary Roberts, tagged , , , , on December 19, 2013| 4 Comments »

the album mary roberts rinehart pb 001The Album by Mary Roberts Rinehart ~ 1933. This edition: Dell, 1971. Paperback. 311 pages.

My rating: 5/10

There was a lot to like about this convoluted domestic drama, but it almost didn’t get its 5, for it just went on for too darned long. The length was redeemed by its passages of quite decent writing, and by the sweet love story of the narrator, which added an aura of hope to a supremely nasty tale.

So, Mary Roberts Rinehart.

She’s always sort of been there on the fringes of my reading consciousness. I have a handful of her murder mysteries (The Yellow Room, The Episode of the Wandering Knife, The Swimming Pool) which, over a period of years, regularly make the trip in to my mom’s place to provide some light reading for my book-a-day elderly parent. I recently read and reviewed one of her early melodramas, “K”, which I enjoyed, and I’ve just sought out and purchased a vintage hardcover version of her very early (1908) murder mystery, The Circular Staircase, the novel which established her career as a phenomenally best-selling mystery writer long before Agatha Christie entered the game. I once had a very handsome early edition of her very first book, 1906’s The Man in Lower Ten, which I gave away in one of those later-regretted merciless shelf purges; as I poke around exploring Rinehart a little deeper I do so wish I’d kept that one around, though I see it’s not as horribly expensive as it could be to replace if I so wish. Now that I’ve finally started paying attention, it seems that MRR is everywhere.

A case in point is this 1971 reissue of a much earlier novel which I happened upon recently at a local charity book sale. The Album is mostly murder mystery, but it is also the tale of a young woman’s emotional awakening, as the horrifying events she becomes embroiled in shock her into an awareness of her own situation and trigger her to defy the convention of her quiet and dismally unfulfilled life.

The Album was first published as an 8-part serial in The Saturday Evening Post in 1933. I could not find a record of what the author received for this work, but a similar serializations of The Wall in 1936 netted her a cool $65,000; not bad at all for the midst of the Depression! Mary Roberts Rinehart is well-known for being the highest paid writer of her era in the United States; she was hugely popular.

The Album is narrated by 28-year-old Louisa (Lou) Hall, a self-proclaimed “hopeless spinster” living with her widowed mother and a number of household servants – including a full-time chauffeur – in a stately house on a secluded side street of a large American city. The other four residences echo the Hall home in architectural detail and in the quiet wealth of the occupants. In the outside world, things are moving at breakneck speed, but the occupants of Crescent Place live in a manner of a generation before. “Out there” women are happily pursuing careers and enjoying their emancipation from staid Victorian roles; in the Crescent time stands still. The house is the sole female focus; the correct technique of ironing of the damask tablecloths and the micro-management of the servants whilst preserving large portions of the day for such peaceful pursuits as taking tea with like-minded neighbours, pasting pictures in albums, and purely decorative sewing has been elevated to a high art. Matriarchs rule in several of the Crescent Place homes, but whereas the men of the households are at least able to daily escape into the real world to pursue their careers and recreations, the daughters are kept well under the collective maternal thumbs. Though the superficial picture is peaceful, the emotions held in check behind the masks of duty are ever closer to eruption.

One afternoon the peace of the Crescent is shattered – forever, though the residents don’t know that quite yet – by the hysterical screaming of Lou’s next door neighbour. Dutiful spinster daughter Emily Lancaster, slave of an elderly invalid mother, has obviously had a severe shock; she collapses insensibly at Lou’s feet. She has just discovered her mother brutally murdered; five blows from a hatchet have suddenly severed Mrs. Lancaster from her iron grip on the household reins. The window of murderous opportunity was narrow. Mrs Lancaster was alone only for a few moments while Emily was in her bedroom changing her dress and feeding her canary; the second Lancaster daughter was showering and out of hearing; elderly Mr Lancaster was out, the servants were in the kitchen together. No stranger has been observed in the neighbourhood – the collective eyes of the Crescent residents, master and servant alike, are keen to any such intruder. Obviously an inside job, by someone familiar with the Lancaster household’s habits. But who could it have been? The discovery that Mrs Lancaster has been hoarding a small fortune in gold bars under her bed adds a sinister twist, especially when the strongbox key the murdered woman habitually wears around her neck proves to be missing.

More murders and attempted murders follow, and as the list of potential suspects shrinks through sheer attrition, the tabloids go wild with speculation, and dark family secrets are reluctantly revealed.

It is inevitable that Mary Roberts Rinehart is compared to her across-the-Atlantic contemporary, Agatha Christie, and the comparison is apt. Both writers liked to mix romance with their crime; both attempted to write “psychological” thrillers on occasion; both were good at fabricating intricately choreographed plots; both were inconsistent in providing clues to their readers; both loved the hidden identity reveal at the last moment, and the implausible motive.

The Album is a very uneven effort, and the narrator’s continual “if I had but known” refrain starts to grate slightly after the first few instances. Clues are mysteriously hinted at; some are proved to be vitally important while others are mentioned once and never again. The residents of the five houses act in the silliest of ways – first locking up their homes against the mysterious axe murderer and then wandering about alone in the night, which is handy for the furthering of the plot, but fatal for several of the key characters. Secret lives and hidden identities abound, and only in some cases are these fully developed; we are left hanging more than once.

On the plus side are some nicely competent policemen who continually just miss being in the right place at the right time – and who are not held up to scorn by the narrator and author, a pleasant change from the usual bumbling officials – and a creative use of truth serum which reveals key plot points.

The prototypically feminist Mary Roberts Rinehart accompanies her mystery with a strong critique of outmoded views on the roles of women. Both the oppressed daughters and their oppressing elders are held up to the light and analyzed and scolded by their creator for being complicit in their state of being. The daughters get the most sympathy, and are provided (in several cases) the opportunity to move away from their oppression into the light of the modern world; there is no question as to what the author thinks her characters should be doing with their lives.

The novel’s main fault (like this review!) is that it was ultimately just a bit too long. It took forever to get through, and I kept having to set it down because the sheer multitude of detail was getting in the way of my keeping the plot(s) straight in my head.

The murderer and the many secrets were revealed at the end, but by that time I was rather blasé about the whole thing; only my interest in the narrator’s romance and the well-deserved thrill she got from casting off her overbearing mother’s oppressive hand kept me engaged; the crimes faded into the background and the most horrifying details left me yawning.

An interesting read, and one that left me thinking favourably of pursuing more of this writer’s work, though it will definitely be a while before I will willingly read this particular title again. It’s going on the pile to go to town to visit Mom today, and it should keep her occupied for at least a day or two – a definite point in favour!

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