It's Sunday and I've managed to read another couple of books. One of them was kindly sent to me by Legend Press -- a collection of short stories called Eight hours. It's an ingenious idea -- each story, by a different author, takes place in real time (an hour, obviously). I suppose the best way to describe them is to say they are very contemporary, issue-based stories -- abuse, incest, problems with sexuality and so on. Clever idea -- they have published several of these collections. So if this appeals to you, do support Legend Press by buying a copy! They are a newish independent publisher -- here is what it says about them on their website:
The other book I have read was an amazingly lucky find. I spotted it in a charity shop for a pound and snapped it up on the strength of its green cover. It has not been reprinted, seemingly, and does not appear on the Virago website. I had never heard of E Arnot Robinson, who was apparently a prolific novelist and very popular in the 1930s. This was a most fascinating and enjoyable book. 'Ordinary families' is clearly an ironic title, as the families here are really far from ordinary, though perhaps the point is that all families are in some way extraordinary and indeed what we would now call dysfunctional. The novel is narrated by Lallie, who is eleven at the start and in her 20s by the end, so it is, of course, what we in the trade call a bildungsroman -- a book about growing up, in other words. Lallie is a member of the impoverished middle class Rush
family, who live in Sussex and whose lives revolve around boating. The middle daughter, she is intelligent, perceptive, thoughtful, and feels like a misfit. Her real love is bird-watching, which causes great mirth and leads to comments about her brains, which are not valued at all -- when, as a young adult, she expresses the wish to go to college and study something like zoology, the idea is roundly squashed as not at all the sort of thing Rush girls should be doing. Really, though, what the book is about is Lallie's growing awareness of her own sexual feelings, and her subsequent love for an older man, the archeologist Gordon Summers, who has been for many years unhappily involved with a married woman. The progress of their relationship is beautifully done, and I found myself relating painfully to the agonies she suffers when he tells her that he really likes her but does not feel it would be right to start a relationship with her, and again when she sees his intensely sexual response to her beautiful, amoral younger sister Margaret. The ending is extraordinary -- I don't want to spoil it in case anyone manages to get this and read it, but events seem to be going in a very satisfactory direction until almost the last paragraph in which there is a real sting in the tail. The writing is intelligent and witty, and all in all this was a great discovery, so if you ever spot it, go for it!
