Sunday Salon

It's a long time since I had so many books on the go as I have at the moment -- a plethora, an embaras de richesse -- loads. After I finished the Elizabeth Bowen I blogged about last week -- The Last September -- I managed to find the other one of hers that was lurking on the bookshelves. It's called A World of Love, and is a much later work, published in the 1950s as opposed to the 1920s. But oh dear, I do not like it nearly as much.  It's set, again, in an Irish country house inhabited by an odd assortment of people, none of whom I find at all attractive, which is why I am not really liking it. But I want to know what's going to happen, even so -- I'm about half way through and am determined to finish it, as the story is quite intriguing. A young girl has found some old love letters in a trunk in the attic -- they appear to belong to her mother, written to her by her first love, a young soldier who was killed in the first world war. But there are some strange undercurrents going on between the various family members and I would like to know why. It's slow going, though, as I am much more interested in other things I'm reading.
I have started a book which is for the Cornflower Book Group. It is William Maxwell's They Came Like Swallows. I had just about heard of Maxwell but never read anything of his before. I am absolutely loving it -- the quality of the writing is superb. I'm taking this one slowly, too, for the opposite reason -- it is short, and I want to really savour it.
Also on the go, also going slowly because I'm enjoying it and I don't want to have finished it, is E. Nesbit's  Harding's Luck. This is often described as the sequel to the one I was raving about a little while ago, The House of Arden, but really it is not a sequel in the true sense, as the action it describes runs parallel to the action in that book. Both books are about children who find ways of travelling back in time, and the books overlap in the sense that the characters actually meet each other, and their lives turn out to be intertwined in a most significant way. But while the two children in The House of Arden are rather privileged middle class kids, Dickie Harding is a very poor, underprivileged orphan from one of the poorest parts of London. He is disabled and has to use a crutch -- so when he gets back into the seventeenth century, and finds himself completely able bodied as well as wealthy and loved, the contrast is great indeed. You would think he would just want to stay there, but Dickie is an honourable boy and feels he must help Mr Beale, the man who took him under his wing and who he calls 'farver', even though he knows Beale is a tramp and a burgler. Wonderful stuff.
Having got into Nesbit and having written a few days ago about her biographer, Julia Briggs, I managed to get the biography itself --  A Woman of Passion -- from the library. I read it when it first came out but don't own a copy, so I am really looking forward to reminding myself about Edith Nesbit's rather extraordinary and unconventional life. I've only just started this so will be blogging about it much later.
Competing for my attention I also have a pre-publication copy of Susan Hill's latest children's book, The Battle for Gullywith, and a book called The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence....
I wish I was on that desert island with all these.