Harriet Devine's Blog

Virago

If you visit blogs regularly you won't have missed the fact that this week has been deemed to be Virago Reading Week. I spotted this first on My Porch -- and thanks to Thomas who created this banner. There's a competition going on over there with a free book for anyone who can identify the books in the picture but I'm not entering as I can't identify any of them. 

In fact I had not planned to have anything to do with VRW as I tend not to enter challenges, preferring instead just to follow my instincts and read whatever appeals to me at the moment. But last night I realised I had been reading a fairly relentless diet of crime lately and wanted something completely different. My eye happened to fall on a little clutch of Viragos in my bedroom bookcase -- there's no logic behind the collection of books in here, I just cram them in from time to time. And in amongst them was Beyond the Glass by Antonia White. I bought this a year or so ago at the 50p bookshop in Notting Hill Gate, just because it was there, really. But in a way it's quite an appropriate one to read this week as Antonia White's Frost in May was the first ever Virago to be published. I read that a couple of years ago and reviewed it here. 

Antonia White writes autobiographically, though she doesn't write autobiographies, if that makes sense. Basically her novels are based closely on her own life. Frost in May is about her childhood, her father's conversion to Catholicism, her own religious faith, her time at a convent, and the unhappy way in  which all this ended. Three more novels followed of which this is the third, though it only takes her up to age 23. So I started it and now I'm going to finish it. So far so good -- I'll let you know the final verdict in a few days.

Simon on Stuck in a Book has some interesting comments on Virago today, not least that all the Modern Classics were published by Virago before he was born! I well remember when they first started coming out, and I'd say they really transformed my reading experience. Rosamund Lehmann was one of my first discoveries and I still love her now.  I always buy a green-backed Virago if I see it in a charity shop, though I haven't read all the ones I've got. Oh those green backs! What were they thinking of when they abolished them.

Innocent Blood

I was in London for the night a few days ago and found myself without a book to read. So I raced off to the nearest charity shop and then dithered for ages before I spotted this. I thought I'd read most of PD James's novels but had never even heard of this one. I hoped it was going to be an overlooked Adam Dalgleish, but no -- it's a totally uncharacteristic psychological thriller which, if you had read it without knowing who wrote it, you would probably have attributed to Ruth Rendall/Barbara Vine.

I can't exactly say that I enjoyed it, because this is a disturbing book to read. The central character is Philippa Palfrey, the adopted daughter of an academic sociologist and his rather feeble second wife. Set in 1976 and written in 1980, it takes as its starting point the change of British law, in 1975, which enabled adopted children to find out the identity of their birth parents. As the story begins, Philippa has just turned eighteen, and loses no time in seeking this information. What she finds out is extremely shocking. Her father has died in prison, where he was serving a sentence for raping a young girl, and her mother, Mary Ducton,  is coming to the end of a prison term for the murder of the child. Never having felt that she really belonged in her adopted family, Philippa immediately sets out to make contact with her mother, and soon afterwards, Mary having been released, she rents a flat for the two of them to live together. While all this is going on, someone else is also taking an interest in Mary's imminent release. This is Scase, the father of the murdered child, and his reasons for wanting to find her are very simple -- he wants to kill her. 

I said this was a psychological thriller, and of course it is the psychology of these characters -- and what is gradually unfolded about the reasons for it -- which gives the novel its fascination. Philippa, who remembers nothing of her past before her adoption at the age of eight, and is highly intelligent but emotionally cold, unable to feel love either for or from her adopted parents, gradually learns to feel something for the mother whose reasons for her own actions are only very slowly revealed. As for Scase, the would-be killer, he becomes a surprisingly sympathetic character even as we dread the outcome of his well thought out and precisely executed plans. There are many twists and turns in the complex plot, with the revelations continuing right up to the final chapter and even in the epilogue. 

Being by PD James, this is a really well written and highly intelligent novel, which questions many assumptions about social class, education, child-rearing and even the sort of crimes most of us may well prefer not to think about at all. It's pretty relentless so don't pick it up unless you are prepared to throw yourself in to what will be a rather harrowing but also very thought-provoking journey. I'm not sure I would have started it if I'd known what I was in for, but I'm not sorry I did. 

Library Recycles Books

Nice idea for a library information desk! No idea where this is -- anyone know?

Don't Look Back

   

As I seem to be on a quest for ever more and better crime, I was really pleased before Christmas to see a BBC Four documentary called Nordic Noir, which tipped me off about some previously unknown Scandinavian crime novelists. Having been rollicking around Sweden with Wallander and Salander I thought I'd venture further north, and I liked the fact that Don't Look Back promised to take me up to Norway. So I packed up my snowboots and my woolly jumpers and off I went -- but then I found I didn't really need them. What I'm trying to convey by this rather overstretched metaphor is that, enjoyable though this novel may have been, the fact that it took place in Norway was almost incidental.  Yes, the characters and places have nordic names, and people eat what to me were rather unfamiliar foods (heart-shaped waffles figure quite prominently) but this is not a novel which really explores either the country or its zeitgeist. That doesn't make it a bad book, of course. It is in fact rather a charming and gentle sort of crime novel, if that doesn't sound like a contradiction in terms. The plot centres on the discovery of the body of a young woman beside a remote mountain tarn. When it becomes clear that she has been killed, Inspector Sejer is called in to investigate. This is a small country community, everyone knows everyone else, and at first there seems to be no clear motive for this crime. As time goes on, of course, secrets are uncovered and relationships start to reveal unsuspected cracks. A pretty conventional and traditional police procedural, in fact. So -- I did enjoy it, but I'm not racing out to buy another Karin Fossum, though I'd probably pick one up if I happened to spot it in the library. 

William Merritt Chase

Having realised the depths of my ignorance about William Merritt Chase, whose lovely Study of a Young Girl I showed you last week, I thought I'd better give him another slot. Of course he was terribly famous and wonderfully prolific, a teacher as well as a painter, and the founder of the Chase School of Art, later renamed the New York School of Art. This painting is called Peonies and so it should be as the flowers rather dominate over the composition. Loads of his paintings can be seen here, and I may well show you another before too long.

At Mrs Lippincote's

There's no doubt in my mind that Elizabeth Taylor was a really important  20th century writer. I've been slowly working my way through her novels for some time, and in fact read one, Palladian, quite recently which, though I certainly enjoyed it, I thought not one of her very best. This one, At Mrs Lippincote's -- her first published novel -- despite its rather unpromising title, happily turned out to be absolutely wonderful.

Published in 1945, the novel tells the story of Julia Davanant, wife to Roddy and mother to Oliver. Roddy, in the RAF and recently posted to a small town somewhere in England, treats his wife and child with relative affection but has absolutely no understanding of either of them. Indeed this is rather a farce of a marriage, and Julia is well aware of it, though she tries to ignore the implications. Things are not helped by the presence of Roddy's cousin Eleanor: "forty and unmarried", who "had a little money in Imperial Tobacco, a royal blue evening dress, and was in love with her cousin, for whom, as they say, she would have laid down her life with every satisfaction" and consequently has little time or affection for Julia. Bored, disaffected, sensitive, witty, deeply attached to her strange, precocious little bookworm of a son, Julia finds excuses to disappear on little expeditions to the seedier side of town or relatively innocent lunch dates with Roddy's eccentric Wing Commander. Roddy is indignant and thinks she should be at home, but his own private life turns out to be rather less than perfect. Interwoven with all this is a fascinating perspective on the war, which in one sense impinges little on everyday life but in another sense is fundamental to everything that happens. 

It's almost impossible, or seems so to me right now, to give any idea of why this is such a great novel. Really not a huge amount happens -- the joy of the novel is in the telling and the tone. I was a little reminded of Barbara Pym at times by the wry wit of of the writing, which occasionally made me laugh aloud. But really the subject is a bit more serious than Pym's usually are because at its heart it is, I suppose, an analysis of a failing marriage. Julia is a truly superb character and I couldn't help wondering how much she resembled ET herself -- I rather think she must have done, though of course she may have just been an amazing imaginative creation. Anyway this is a novel of immense subtlety and it gave me a great deal of pleasure.  

 

Study of a Young Girl

This is actually called "At Her Ease (Young Orphan, Study of a Young Girl)" by one William Merritt Chase, about whom I know nothing and am too jet-lagged to find out right now. But I love the colours and the feeling of it, so here it is just to enjoy.

The Cutting Room

 

I was actually in the middle of quite another book when I picked this up in a place where I was staying the night and in an idle moment started reading it. That was it -- I was unable to stop till I got to the end. I knew nothing about it, though I now gather it was a huge success when it was published a few years ago. It's a remarkably well written novel, but it's definitely not for the squeamish or prudish.

Set in Glasgow in the early 2000s, the story is told by Rilke, an antiques auctioneer and an extremely promiscuous homosexual. As the novel begins, he has been called to a large old house to assess and sell the contents. The owner has recently died and his 80 year old sister wants to get rid of everything. The furniture and pictures are beautiful and valuable, but she especially wants him to see, and dispose of, what her brother kept in the attic -- a large collection of rare old pornographic books and some boxes of papers. In among these, Rilke finds an envelope containing old photographs. All are pornographic but some are of an intensely disturbing nature and suggest that a murder may have been committed. He sets out to investigate and his investigations, plus his own sexual proclivities, take him into the very seamiest side of Glasgow life. 

As I said, this is a beautifully written novel, and quite remarkable in its ability to be so given the frequently disturbing nature of its subject matter. And Rilke is a marvellously imagined protagonist. Highly intelligent, utterly sexually amoral, he appears -- indeed is in many respects -- cynical and world-weary, but in fact his whole trajectory here is motivated by compassion. His various relationships with his friends and colleagues are also fascinating -- it would be great to know his history before the start of the novel, but I really applaud Louise Welsh's refusal to reveal it, as a lesser novelist would certainly have done. I wonder if I'd like her later novels as much? I'd hate them to be a let-down.

Little Boy Reading

This is The Reverend Randall Burroughs and his Son Ellis, painted by Johann Zoffany (1733-1810), a German-born painter who ended up in England. Nice.

Consequences

Penelope Lively -- such a celebrated author who has won so many prizes! I've read a few of her novels and liked some a lot, others not so much -- in fact I didn't get on at all well with her 1987 Booker prizewinning Moon Tiger. I'd liked the look of this one, though, which was published in 2007, but now I've read it, and found it quite enjoyable, it definitely didn't have that special something which for me makes the difference between a book which is OK and one that is something exceptional. And what is that special something? I'm not absolutely sure but at the risk of sounding precious I think it might be that it says something about the human condition -- something that sounds right to me, makes me see things in a different light, rings a bell that I didn't know was there to be rung? Consequences didn't do any of that for me. Basically it is a family saga, starting just before WW2 and making its way throught the generations to the present day. So we have Matt and Lorna, who meet on a park bench, fall in love, and move to rural Somerset where Molly is born. Matt dies in the war, Molly grows up and gives birth to Ruth who becomes a mother herself. People fall in love, or not, form relationships, have children. They look back over their lives and their parents' lives and their grandparents' lives and see, or do not see, connections. Much of this meeting and falling in love seems pretty fortuitous or coincidental, but I suppose as the novel is called Consequences something is being said about the way peoples' actions inform the future of themselves and of coming generations? But this did not grab me in any significant way, I'm afraid. I also found myself rather irritated by the style, which switches between past and present tense for no perceptible reason. Of course PL writes well, and I'd been really looking forward to this, but as you can tell I was rather disappointed. Oh well, you win some you lose some, I suppose. Better luck next time.