Harriet Devine's Blog

Wonder Cruise by Ursula Bloom

Until this actual moment she had not realised that she was sick of diggings, and of doing the same thing day after day. She had not realised that Mrs Puddock's rooms were awful, and that Monday washing, Tuesday ironing, Wednesday mending, and Thursday hair-wash were much like  a pair of handcuffs set like shackles on her wrists.

A couple of years ago, in my never-ending search for pictures of women with books, I ran across a most lovely painting, which turned out to show the novelist Ursula Bloom. I'd never even heard of her, and was immediately curious, but it turned out her books were all out of print, and I forgot all about her. So imagine my surprise when a couple of weeks ago I got an email telling me that Corazon Books has just started reissuing her titles as e-books, and offering me the first one for review. How could I refuse?

If you look Ursula up on Wikipedia, or on her new website, you'll see that she was in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's most prolific novelist, having written over 500 books. Apparently she had no trouble in writing well over 5000 words a day, and could finish a novel in three weeks. Now I know what you're thinking, and I was thinking it too -- could they possibly be any good? Well, if Wonder Cruise is anything to go by, the answer is yes. 

A delightful, funny, sometimes surprising novel, Wonder Cruise was published in 1932. It's the story of Ann Clements, a woman of 35, daughter of one clergyman and sister of another. She works as a secretary in a London firm, lives in simple, cheerless rooms (diggings) in Kensington, has lunch every weekend with her repressive, prudish brother Cuthbert, his wife Eleanor and their daughter Gloria, 'whose birth could only be looked on as a miracle, seeing Cuthbert was for ever declaring that marriage had no physical side'. Once a year she goes with them on holiday to Worthing, and her life is one of deadly monotony. She feels old, and she looks old. 

The only relief in this endless boredom is the fact that one of Ann's colleagues has roped her into the office raffle, much to Cuthbert's disgust. She's  won a few small prizes, but imagine her surprise when she discovers that she's won £300 in a sweepstake. Cuthbert, needless to say, insists she must invest the money and leave it to Gloria, but Ann, encouraged by her boss, takes a bold step and books herself a place on a Mediterranean cruise. Very excited but full of misgivings, she buys herself some new clothes, though having no idea what she'll need these include a tweed suit and sensible shoes.  And, though Cuthbert does his best to persuade her to change her mind, she's soon off for Gibraltar, Malta,  Venice and points east. 

I hardly need to tell that huge changes are in store for Ann in the coming weeks. The tweed suit goes into the trunk and pretty clothes are bought to replace it, her dowdy long hair is cropped into a fashionable style, and Ann starts to look and feel young and attractive. Of course none of this happens overnight, and she is full of misgivings, but the great pleasure she gets from her new look and the attention it gets for her cannot help but win her over. Yes, that attention -- for men start taking a great interest in Ann. There's the attractive older (and, shockingly for Ann, divorced) Oliver Banks, there's the ship's doctor, and various members of the crew. Later, there's a totally gorgeous Italian who Ann finds irresistible despite knowing he is hopelessly unreliable. I have to say I was quite surprised at how open the novel is about the sexual shenanigans on board ship and elsewhere -- people  are constantly jumping into bed with each other without a second thought. Ann doesn't, of course, but feelings and desires she never suspected she had are violently awakened and nearly lead her to make a very foolish decision. Just as you may start thinking all this is getting bit predictable, Ann suffers a disaster which causes her to miss the ship's departure and she's stranded in Venice with no money and no clothes. But this only leads to a whole new series of ups and downs, both comic and painful, before everything turns out better than any of us could have imagined. 

I enjoyed every minute of this delightful novel. Bloom writes with great wit and I often found myself chuckling at some throwaway remark. But there's compassion, too, and Ann's transformation, her doubts and misgivings, and her dread at the thought that she'll have to return to her life of crashing boredom, are wholly believable. So I'm really pleased to have had a chance to read this and will be looking out for more reprints in the future. 

And in case you're interested, here's a painting of Ursula, done the same year that this novel was published (maybe it's even the book she's got in her hand). Yes, on top of everything else, she was a stunning beauty. 

 

 

 

 

Woman Reading to Child

My title makes it sound as if this would be a pleasurable experience, but looking at the painting, which is by Charles Josiah Chaplin (1825-1891), it certainly doesn't look that way. After a bit of research (aka a couple of minutes googling) I found the real title, which is 'The Lesson'. I love these Victorian paintings that tell a story! The child is clearly being reprimanded, or at least forced to listen to some kind of improving reading -- her mother's hand, raised imperatively, suggests she's really drumming it home. As for the little book face down on the floor -- did the little girl throw it down in a tantrum? She'd obviously rather be playing with the skittles on the left, anyway.

On a more technical note, I'm always so impressed by how these artists paint fine fabrics -- the satin of the mother's dress is stunningly done. I like the floral screen too. 

At the Edge of the Orchard by Tracy Chevalier

This is Tracy Chevalier's latest novel, which I've just finished. I'll be writing a full-scale review of it for the next issue of Shiny New Books, which is coming out on 3 April, but I couldn't wait to tell you what an excellent book it is. 

Like The Last Runaway, which I reviewed here recently, this is set in mid-19th century America. As usual, Chevalier has done her research brilliantly, and the era comes vividly to life. The novel starts in rural Ohio, in an area accurately but unpromisingly known as the Black Swamp. Here live the Goodenough family, struggling to survive in the harsh environment where every year a child is taken by the swamp fever. The family is profoundly dysfunctional, and the five surviving children suffer terribly from the disharmony between their taciturn father and their angry alcoholic mother. Eventually, after a shocking event takes place, the youngest son, nine-year-old Robert, leaves home to become an itinerant worker, gradually ending up in California.

The majority of the novel is Robert's story, and we see him making a career for himself as a plant collector and forming new and sometimes unexpected relationships. He's a fascinating character, a good man though obviously damaged by the tragedies of his childhood. He has to go through a lot if ups and downs in the course of the novel, but by the end he seems to have taken a path that will lead him to a very different and hopefully successful and happy life.

I actually listened to this on Audible, very well narrated by Lisa Ross, and I loved every minute of it -- in fact it kept me awake at night as I couldn't bear not to hear a bit more and then a bit more. So this is highly recommended as a great listen or, of course, a great read.

Woman Reading

 

This is by the American painter John White Alexander (1856-1915). Painted in 1895, it's called Repose. I like it because it's so simple -- no fussy background, just the figure absorbed in the book. You can see a lot more of his attractive paintings here.

The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier

...she held out a hand toward Honor. A small, ambiguous gesture, it still had the power to untwist Honor's stomach, for it said: I am running away. Help me. She and the woman were now linked by that gesture.

 I was first introduced to Tracy Chevalier's novels when a friend took me to hear her read from her 2010 novel Remarkable Creatures, which I loved, and reviewed on here. I read a couple of her others, and then more or less forgot about her until I saw she had a new novel coming out this year. I had a bit of trouble getting hold of a copy of At the Edge of the Orchard -- I've got it now, and will be reviewing it for the April edition of Shiny -- but my attention was caught in the meantime by her previous novel, The Last Runaway. I've always taken an interest in the early history of the United States, and in the gradual abolition of slavery, so this looked like something I'd enjoy, and I certainly did.

The novel, set in the 1850s, tells the story of Honor Bright, a young Quaker woman from Dorset in England, who travels to Ohio with her sister Grace, who is to be married to a young man who has recently emigrated. Sadly, Grace contracts a fever and dies before reaching her new home, and Honor is forced to travel on alone, and to move in with the bereaved fiancé and a recently widowed relative. It's a somewhat invidious position, and they are not especially pleased to have her, but the Quaker community has a strong morality and they make her welcome as best they can. In fact the community as a whole surprises Honor by its relative coolness, very different from the warmth and generosity of that of her native village. 

Honor soon attracts the attention of a young farmer, Jack Haymaker, and, though full of doubts, she agrees to marry him. It is the only way I can make a place for myself here. Otherwise I am afloat, with no idea how to find land again. Soon after she moves into the farm where Jack lives with his domineering mother and his sister, she discovers that the village lies right on the route of the so-called Underground Railroad, a network of safe havens for slaves fleeing to freedom from the South. Honour's warm heart is immediately touched by the plight of these desperate souls, and she starts to help them by leaving food and showing them ways to continue their journeys. But her mother-in-law discovers what she's doing and expressly forbids her to continue -- to do so will put the farm in jeopardy -- leaving Honor in a terrible dilemma -- should she follow the dictates of her heart and the benevolent ethics of her Quaker upbringing or obey the family she has married into?

Chevalier is a superb researcher, and the historical background is wonderfully well evoked. I learned a lot about the harsh and difficult living conditions of 1850s America, about Quakerism, about slavery and about quilting, which figures prominently in the novel (I read somewhere that Chevalier made herself a handmade quilt in preparation for writing the book). She's also known for creating strong and interesting women characters, and there are two of these in the novel -- the milliner Belle Mills, who befriends Honor when she first arrives, and the free black woman Mrs Reed, who works tirelessly to aid slaves on the run to find their way to nearby Canada and freedom. As for Honor, she develops from a shy, quiet, naive young girl into a woman who knows her own mind and sticks to her principles. An absorbing read that passed many happy hours.

 

The Forgetting Time by Sharon Guskin

If I tell you that this book takes the concept of reincarnation as its central premise, will you stop reading straight away? You'd be missing out if you did, because this is a fascinating novel and the scientific research that underpins it is pretty hard to explain away. 

This is the story of Janie, a single mother, and her four-year-old son Noah. He's a clever, funny little boy, but he's causing his mother, and his school, increasing amounts of anxiety. He loves Janie, his 'Mommy-Mom', but he's always asking when they can go and find his other mother, his brother Charlie, and his other home. He has a phobia about water, so Janie simply cannot bath him, he talks about Harry Potter books and guns, two things Janie has never mentioned to him or allowed him access to. In fact as the novel begins, his teachers are so concerned about him that they insist he sees a psychiatrist, who diagnoses early onset schizophrenia and writes out a prescription for heavy-duty drugs, which Janie really doesn't want to give Noah. But she's getting desperate. So when she runs across an online reference to a Professor Jerome Anderson, who has spent most of his working life investigating cases in which children appear to remember their past lives, she's desperate enough to agree to meet him and allow herself to be guided by him in uncovering the truth behind Noah's apparently inexplicable claims. And, after some intensive research and one devastating red-herring, the three of them find themselves knocking on the door of a woman whose beloved son Tommy disappeared without trace a few years before Noah was born. Denise has always refused to believe that Tommy is dead, and her first reaction to Noah's claims is furious disbelief, but in the end she and Janie are forced to believe that what the child says about his 'real' home and family cannot be explained in any other way. 

So, maybe you'll have to suspend your own disbelief when reading this novel, but don't let the unusual premise put you off. Guskin has not only done her research -- the novel is interspersed with extracts from scholarly books on the subject -- but also convincingly imagines what it would be like if your beloved child constantly told you that you were not his real mother, or if a totally unknown little boy turned up on your doorstep not only claiming to be the son you have refused to believe is dead but also describes his own murder and the whereabouts of his bones. The denial, anger and pain of both mothers is moving believable, as is the effect on Denise's surviving son and her estranged husband. As for the police, they are grateful to Noah for telling them where to find the remains of poor Tommy, but insist on viewing him as an unusually high-level psychic, a concept they are familiar with, and cannot accept that he is remembering a past life.

Running in parallel to the main plot is an account of the history and present problems of Professor Anderson. A brilliant and initially much admired researcher and teacher, he has damaged his reputation by concentrating on an area thought to be peculiar and beyond the pale of true science. He has spent most of his life collecting accounts of children who have identified their previous families and demonstrated knowledge about them that they simply could not have gained any other way. But the majority of the cases he has found have been in India, Thailand and other far-Eastern countries, where reincarnation is taken for granted. For this reason, he is particularly anxious to include Noah's story, as a rare example of such things happening in a Western country too. But Anderson has his own problem -- he is suffering from a form of Alzheimers called semantic aphasia, in which the sufferer gradually and increasingly forgets common everyday words. Very scary for anyone, but particularly so for someone whose life has been spent reading and writing. 

So the underlying theme of this thoughtful and interesting novel is remembering, or failing to remember. Anderson tells Janie that children who have these clear memories of previous personalities almost invariably forget them as they reach the age of five or six, and at the end we find that this has proved to be true in Noah's case. But we've also seen the powerfully healing effect, for him and for his mother, of his vivid recollections being validated. 

I'd encountered convincing real life stories of this kind before, so it was fascinating to find them being treated in this way in a novel. I enjoyed it enormously, and I think you would too, whatever your belief system may be!

Woman Knitting

This is Woman Knitting at the Window (1902), by the Danish artist Peter Ilsted (1861-1933) who. together with his brother-in-law Vilhelm Hammershøi and Carl Holsoe, were founder members of a celebrated progressive school of painting known as 'The Free Exhibition'. Now better known as the Copenhagen Interior School, they were famous for painting 'sunshine and shadow', and all three had a predilection for views of women painted from behind. I love the fact that this woman is using the last of the natural light to get on with her work. 

The Lark by Edith Nesbit

It's really been a week of nostalgia round here -- having had a couple of dismal failures the week before, I've retreated into the past with a vengeance and with the most pleasing results. (Why are the oldies so often the best?). In my last post I told you about a re-read of one of my favourite authors, Margery Allingham, and here's a novel by another much loved novelist, Edith (or E.) Nesbit. But, though I've read and re-read all her childrens' books, I'd never read any of her novels for adults. If this one's anything to go by, I've been missing a huge amount of pleasure.

I have my friend and co-editor Simon of Stuck in a Book to thank for alerting me to The Lark, which he praised to the skies in a recent review. Although I couldn't help associating the title with a book about birdlife (quite wrong) I managed to download the complete works of Nesbit on Kindle for £1.99 and, being away from home last week, started reading The Lark on my phone. Simon was right -- it's an absolutely fantastic read.

So, no, The Lark has nothing to do with the little bird of that name. Here's what Jane, one of the pair of central characters says:

Life is a lark -- all the parts of it, I mean, that are generally treated seriously: money, and worries about money, and not being sure what's going to happen. Looked at rightly, all that's an adventure, a lark. As long as you have enough to eat and to wear and a roof to sleep under, the whole thing's a lark. Life is a lark for us, and we must treat it as such.

 

 Jane and her cousin Lucilla are nineteen, and after a comfortable upbringing financed by their guardian have suddenly been thrust out into the world to more or less fend for themselves, said guardian having absconded with most of their money. He has left them a little cottage on the outskirts of London and £500 in the bank, but though this was a considerable sum in those days, the girls are well aware that it won't last unless they find some way of making a living. These are two cheerful and resourceful girls, though naturally a bit naive. Jane's admirer, whose name is Rochester (nice joke), calls them perfectly fearless, perfectly unforgettable. They are as brave and as innocent as angels, and it's hard to fault that. Having found, almost by chance, that they can sell the flowers from their tiny garden, and having, by an even bigger chance, been given the use of the huge garden and a couple of rooms of a large mansion (which happens to belong to Rochester's uncle), they set themselves up as florists and do quite well at it. In this they are greatly aided by Mr Dix, an impoverished ex-soldier (this is 1922, by the way) who they meet at Madame Tussauds in a hilarious scene where they are certain his sad, drooping figure is that of a waxwork, but who turns out to be a superb gardener and turns into a good friend. 

It soon turns out that selling flowers is all very well but not bringing in as much as they need. So the next move (they having by now been granted the use of the whole house) is to take in paying guests (or Pigs, as they can't help calling them). The results of this are decidedly mixed -- the first three rather grotesque women turn out to be crooks, who leave after two rent-free weeks, and the next three, the Thorntons, a charming trio of two brothers and the wife of one of them, turn out... But I'm not going to tell you any more as you are going to have to read this for yourself.

You may think this sounds as if it's all too good to be true, and in a sense it is -- certainly there are a great many happy coincidences and the girls have a huge amount of luck -- but there are also some serious setbacks which put their determination to see life as a lark to enormous tests. But through it all, their will to succeed, and not to be brought down by the problems that often face them, carry them through to what is a happy and hopeful (though I felt rather sudden) ending. 

This is one of the most enjoyable books I've read for a long time. It made me laugh, it made me think. It was joyously upbeat, and it was amazing to realise that it was written by a woman in her sixties who was to die a couple of years later -- there was an incredible sense of youthful high spirits here. There's all the wit and charm of Nesbit's best children's books but with some themes directly relevant to a grown-up audience. The characters are wonderfully delineated, and so is their relationship with each other and with their friends and admirers. In fact the only criticism I had of it was that it ended too soon. I'd give anything for a sequel, as we are left with some big changes afoot for Jane and Lucilla, and I long to know how they would deal with them. As Simon said, this book should really be reprinted in Persephone's grey covers, and the sooner the better. 

 

Sweet Danger by Margery Allingham

I believe this great 1933 Golden Age classic to be the first crime novel I ever read -- I was one of those children who spent hours of my life lying on the sofa with a book (still my position of choice), and my mother gave me this when I was about 12, presumably to feed my addiction. I can actually remember the time and the place -- it was in the Christmas holidays, and we were staying with friends in a big country house in Essex -- rather a good location for reading such a novel, in fact. I've re-read it more than once over the years, and this time I listened to a rather good reading of it on Audible. I'm happy to say it gave me as much pleasure as always.

Allingham was a prolific writer, but as I'm sure you know, her most celebrated novels feature the gentleman adventurer and detective Albert Campion. Apparently she invented him as a sort of spoof on Peter Whimsey, and in the early books he is deceptively bland and inoffensive, and even appears foolish, but behind his horn-rim spectacles there's pair of eyes that miss nothing and a stunningly brilliant brain. Sweet Danger is actually his sixth appearance, but it's remained one of my all-time favourites, partly because I encountered it so young and partly because it's the novel in which Campion meets his future wife, the adorably bright and feisty young Amanda Fitton.

The underlying theme of the plot is actually a rather contemporary one -- think John Gresham, for example -- Big Oil vs the small people. Big Oil in the person of the millionaire financier Savernake wants to take possession of a small, oil-rich principality on the Adriatic Sea, which belonged historically to an aristocratic family named Pontisbright. Although the line is believed to have died out, a young family in a Suffolk village think they have a claim to the title. So Campion and his friends, accompanied by Campion's manservant, the ex-con Lugg, descend on the village to help the investigation and to foil Savernake. They find the impoverished young family living in a run-down mill, which is kept going sporadically by the mechanically-minded 17-year-old Amanda and her assistant, Scatty Williams. Also living there are her beautiful older sister Mary and her younger brother Hal, claimant to the Pontisbright title, and their American aunt Hattie. Amanda shows Campion an old inscription on a slab of oak, which speaks of a missing crown, a drum and an ancient bell -- if these can be found, the inscription says, the title will be restored. 

Many adventures ensue, not the least of which is Savernake's attempt to get Campion off the case by offering him £50,000 (a huge sum in 1933) to go and quell a revolution in Peru. In fact the family and his friends in Suffolk believe him to have gone, and struggle on to solve the case on their own for some time, though Campion fortunately reappears in time to save them from probable death at the hands of mysterious intruders. And if all this were not enough, the village doctor, Dr Galley, proves to have an obsessive interest in black magic and the family barely escape with their lives after accepting a seemingly innocuous invitation to tea. The final part of the novel, with Campion and Savernake fighting it out in the mill-race, is extraordinarily tense and enjoyable. Indeed, though of course I knew what was going to happen, I still found myself on the edge of my seat, hoping everyone was going emerge unscathed. 

So Sweet Danger is not a murder mystery, but rather, I suppose, an adventure story. I've read some later Campion novels recently, including the brilliant Traitor's Purse (reviewed here) and another which I'm saving for the 1938 Club, and I can see that Allingham and Campion matured in very satisfactory and interesting ways over the years. However, this one will always have a special place in my heart, and it's great to see the beginnings of what will prove, after some ups and downs, to be a very happy and fruitful partnership (in every sense) between Campion and Amanda. Great stuff. 

 

Woman Reading

This is Ballerina Lisant by the French artist Henri Gervex (1852-1929), whose 'early work belonged almost exclusively to the mythological genre, which served as an excuse for the painting of the nude, but not always in the best of taste'. His most famous, or infamous painting, 'Rolla', was thrown out of the French Academy for the supposed libidinousness of the subject matter, which showed a naked prostitute on a bed, her male love getting dressed nearby. It was actually based on a poem by Alfred de Musset, and there's an interesting article about it here (where you can also see the picture). 

I like paintings of people doing things you wouldn't necessarily expect -- like those maids reading I showed recently. Not that there's any reason why a ballerina shouldn't read the newspaper, but you know what I mean.