Harriet Devine's Blog

Woman Reading

I saw this attractive image on somebody's blog - apologies if it was yours. It's by an Italian painter who I'd never heard of before - Federico Faruffini (1831-1869). He won several prizes including a first class at the Paris Salon the year before his death, but according to Wikipedia, 'Lack of recognition and financial difficulties is [sic] said to have led him to his suicide at age 38'. Sad.

Chatterton Square on Shiny

Here's a book you really need to read. I have quite a history with EH Young's brilliant novel. I've reviewed it twice on here, in 2010 and 2016 (though the second one, posted for Simon and Kaggsy's 1947 Club, was pretty much a rehash of the first). In fact my love affair with Young (let's call her Emily Hilda) began in 2010 when I read another of her great novels, Miss Mole, for a book club in Oxford of which Simon was also a member. I had a real binge on her after that and I think I've read every novel she wrote. But this one has always stood out as being exceptionally good. It was her last novel, written just a couple of years before her early death at 62.

Set in the attractive Georgian area of Bristol called Clifton, though EH renames it Upper Radstowe, the story takes place in the summer of 1939. This is a country on the brink of war, and the attitudes to this of the various characters reveal a great deal about their inner lives. And it's those inner lives that dictate the plot, in which one man, the pompous, controlling, self-centred and conceited Herbert Blackett, gradually comes to realise that the wife he has believed to be completely devoted has a powerful aversion to him and an inner strength he never suspected. 

There's a complex web of inter-relationships here, some love affairs and some friendships, and some fascinating revelations about attitudes to divorce. And then there's the feelings of one loving mother and her two young adult sons to the inevitable hostilities. I could say more but you can read my Shiny review here. Even better, read the book. 

 

Woman Reading

Many people will recognise the style of this one - of course it's by the celebrated Swedish artist Carl Larsson (1853-1919). He's much loved for his delightful pictures of his wife and their eight children - I'm thinking that this is probably one of them, maybe convalescing after an illness or perhaps just enjoying being out in the fresh air on a cool Swedish spring day. If you want to indulge in a Larsson-fest you can see over 600 of his paintings here.

 

New Shiny Review

I spent many years deeply immersed in the poetry of William Wordsworth, the 250th anniversary of whose birth falls this year. Could there be any secrets so well kept that I didn't know them? Well, no, actually. Nevertheless I enjoyed this new book, written by someone who is descended from the poet's brother. The secrets he talks about here are ones that were known only to his family and close friends during his own lifetime, though of course they have been raked and mulled over by scholars and academics ever since.

Andrew Wordsworth is a sculptor, not an academic, though he does have a degree in English Literature. He's done sterling work here, and the book is full of interesting discussions of the poet's life and writings. I didn't always agree with his conclusions, but that's by the by. I found the book surprisingly absorbing and readable, and it was good to be reminded of all the things I knew and loved about this exceptionally interesting poet.

Want to know what the secrets are? Have a look at my review, new on Shiny today.

Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler

As co-editor of Shiny New Books, one of my jobs is to proof read all the upcoming reviews by our great team of reviewers. I find this extremely pleasurable, partly because it satisfies my need to make tiny adjustments to other peoples' writing - though I have to say everyone writes so well that this is rarely needed. But also of course I get inspired by some of the reviews to go out and get the book for myself. 

This certainly happened with Ann's recent review of Redhead by the Side of the Road. It's been a while since I read anything by Anne Tyler, and this inspired me to get back to her. I actually listened to it on Audible, and I enjoyed it a lot.

This is the story of Micah Mortimer, a forty-year-old computer technician. Years ago he started a successful IT business with a friend, but things went wrong and he left the company to set up on his own. Now he runs his own operation, called Tech Hermit, which sends him out visiting people who have run into trouble with their computers. It's not very lucrative, but he gets by because he has taken a position of janitor of a block of flats, which provides him with free accommodation.

To sat Micah's life is orderly is something of an understatement. Everything he does is done to a strict timetable - one day for floor washing, another for cleaning the kitchen and so on. As he carries these tasks out he talks to himself in a foreign accent - 'Now for ze moppingk'. He is a super careful driver, always answerable to an imaginary traffic god who praises his skill as he evades difficult situations. As Ann says in her review, he is certainly on the spectrum, though Aspergers is never explicitly mentioned.

In spite of all this, Micah generally enjoys his life. He's had a series of girlfriends, though he's a bit unsure why they have never lasted all that long. His current girlfriend is Cassie, a schoolteacher. They see each other a few times each week, eating and staying over in each others homes. As far as Micah is concerned, it's a satisfactory relationship, but everything goes badly wrong when Cassie calls him up one evening to say she's in danger of being evicted from her flat. Micah is concerned, but suggests, only half joking, that she could always sleep in her car. A day or so later, she comes to dinner at Micah's and is surprised to find he has a visitor, who will sleep in the spare room. Micah expects her to stay the night as usual, but she leaves, obviously upset, and he is puzzled, unable to understand her reaction. Even worse, she soon tells him the relationship is going nowhere and she wants to break up. 

As for that visitor - it's a young lad named Brink, who turns out to be the son of Micah's first ever girlfriend Laura. Brink has walked out of his first term at university and disappeared from the parental home. He has sought Micah out because he believes he may be his father - Laura has never revealed who this was. To his disappointment, Micah assures him that this cannot be true - he and Laura had broken up two years before Brink's conception. Micah feeds him and lets him stay the night, but tells him next morning that he must leave unless his contacts his mother. The boy refuses to do this, so Micah shows him the door.

All this has the effect of slowly making Micah think hard about the consequences of his actions. He has never really understood why people behave as they do, and is clearly hopeless at reading their emotional reactions. And, though he will undoubtedly always have these problems, the circumstances cause him to reach out to people and to have conversations and finally to mend some bridges.

This is a really charming, often touching novel. It's dotted with delightful vignettes of Micah's visits to his tech-averse clients and to the eccentric inhabitants of his home environment. We also get to meet his large family of sisters, whose chaotic, messy lives fill him with horror, though there's a lot of love between them all and they clearly care very much about their baby brother. Most of all it's a fascinating portrait of an intelligent, likeable man struggling to make sense of a frequently incomprehensible world.

Woman Reading in a Garden

This is indeed 'Woman Reading in a Garden', painted in 1880 by the great French artist Edouard Manet (1832-1883). Those of us lucky enough to have a garden to read in must be feeling blessed in these strange times.

The Bell in the Lake on Shiny New Books

My most recent review on Shiny is about this absorbing and enjoyable historical novel, set in Norway in the 1880s. The story takes place in a remote village set in a valley. The village is '20 years behind its neighbouring villages, which were 30 years behind Norway’s towns and cities, which were 50 years behind the rest of the world’. But as the novel begins, new ideas are making their way into the village, initially in the person of the new young pastor, who is determined to eradicate the old beliefs and superstitions clung to by the villagers. One of his first actions is to find a buyer for the ancient stave church, which will be dismantled and sent to Germany, while the pastor builds a smart new one. This prompts the arrival of a young German architect to supervise the dismantling. Both men fall in love with the same young woman, leading to a series of events which will affect the future of the whole village.

Full of fascinating detail about the traditions and beliefs of the times, and at the same time a moving love story, this is said to be the first of a trilogy, and I'm already looking forward to the next volume. You can read my whole review here.

 

Woman Reading in a Garden

Actually 'Two Women in a Garden' by the celebrated British artist Eric Ravilious (1903-1942), whose work has never before been posted on here. Thanks to my daughter for sending this to me.

The Tree of Heaven by May Sinclair

This is, of course, one of the newly issued Women Writers Series from the British Library, a great cause for rejoicing. I've already reviewed one of the series, My Husband Simon, on Shiny New Books (here), and am now deep in EH Young's wonderful Chatterton Square - this is actually a re-read, as I first read and reviewed it on here way back in 2010 (here). But as far as I can remember I've never read anything by May Sinclair before, and didn't really know what to expect.

I read this with great enjoyment and admiration a few weeks ago but it's taken me till now to review it precisely because there's so much of interest in it I didn't know where to begin. Understandably much emphasis has been placed on the Suffragette theme of the novel - written in 1917, before women got the vote, it contains a great deal of interesting material about the way in which one of the central characters, Dorothea, reacts when she encounters The Women's Franchise Union. She's sympathetic to their cause, but not happy with the way they are setting out to achieve it. For Dorothea values her independence above all else, and finds herself disturbed by the 'blind, unquestioning obedience' that adherence to their methods seems to demand. And that same desire for independence leads her to make a decision she will have cause to regret later - her refusal to marry the man who she knows she loves.

But this is getting ahead of myself. The novel begins by introducing the comfortably middle-class Harrison family: Frances and her husband Anthony and their four young children, Michael, Nicky, Dorothy and baby John. The personalities of these four, who are central to the development of the novel, are clearly demonstrated by their attitudes to the party the older three have been invited to. Michael, despite the inducements of cake and entertainments, does not want to go. When pressed by his mother for his reasons, he tells her he's afraid of 'forgetting things' - it's 'pieces of me that I want to remember. At a party I can't feel all of myself at once - like I do now'. For the rest of his life, Michael will always go his own way, refusing to follow his father into the successful timber business and instead becoming a poet, and supporting the politically divisive issue of Irish independence. Nicky, meanwhile, is initially excited but decides he too would prefer to stay at home when he learns that one of his great-aunts will be there and knows she will want to kiss him. More full of guile than his brother, he pleads an earache and though his mother suspects him of faking it, Dorothy persuades her that he should be given the benefit of the doubt. She herself goes to the party because 'Her body was obedient'. Nevertheless the seeds of her later self are already in place:

Dorothy had her father's mind. You couldn't move it. What she had said once she stuck to forever....As if sticking to a thing for ever could make it right once. And Dorothy had formed the habit of actually being right, like Anthony, nine times out of ten. Frances foresaw that this persistence, this unreasoning rectitude, might in time become annoying in a daughter.

Later in the novel the family gains an additional member, Veronica, or Ronny: 'a little girl who sang songs and was afraid of ghosts'. Her mother Vera is married to Anthony's brother, but she has a lover and finds the child is putting a strain on her freedom, so Ronny is sent to live with the Harrisons, with whom she remains indefinitely. I found her a most fascinating character. Right from the start she forms a strong bond with Nicky, and the two remain inseparable throughout their growing up years, and will eventually end up together, though Nicky has to make a bad error of judgement first when he marries the wrong woman for the wrong reasons. Ronny remains other-worldly, intuitive, contented and accepting, even when faced by tragic circumstances. 

And needless to say, tragic circumstances have to be faced by the whole family, because by the time the children have become young adults, war is declared. One by one the young men - including Dorothea's lover - volunteer. Nicky goes first, keen and willing. Michael upsets everyone by declaring himself a pacifist, but eventually cannot hold out and feels he must also join in. John, the youngest, is the last to go, and the novel ends as he too sets off to France. By now the family has to face the inevitable bereavements. The fact that Sinclair wrote and published the novel before the war ended gives all this especial poignancy.

This is an exceptionally full, rich novel, fascinating in the way it addresses important social and political events through the response to them of the various family members. Sinclair was clearly someone with immense intelligence and an impressive diversity of interests - as well as novels she published biography, poetry, criticism and philosophy. She never married or had children of her own, making her successful portrayal of a group of young children and their development to adulthood of particular interest. 

 

 

 

 

 

A Game of Snakes and Ladders by Doris Langley Moore

Earlier this year I had the immense pleasure of reading a couple of Doris Langley Moore's delightful novels, All Done with Kindness and My Carravaggio Style, both of course published by the wonderful Dean Street Press. I'm happy to say I've just read another one, and have a fourth waiting in the wings.

The two I'd read so far were both originally published in the 1950s, but this one was an early effort which came out in 1938, though it seems to have been reprinted in 1955. This new edition includes an extract from a letter Moore wrote to her publisher explaining the theme of the novel:

Fanny Burney would not approve of some of my chapters, but it was my affection for the novels of her school, in which the heroine goes through all kinds of distresses but emerges in a sweeping triumph at the end, that made me long to try my hand at the same theme—treating it, however, in our down-to-earth twentieth-century way.

When I was a child I often used to play Snakes and Ladders. Said to be based on the Hindu belief in the workings of karma, in this game you move around the board following the throw of a dice. Sometimes you land at the bottom of a ladder and whizz up it, but too often you land on the head of a snake and have to shoot right down to the bottom of the board again. Such indeed is the plot of this novel, in which two young women, more or less in the same position at the start of the book, see their lives going in totally opposite directions as a result of what may seem more or less arbitrary instances of luck.

Lucy and Daisy have ended up in Egypt. They are actresses, appearing in a successful musical comedy which has been touring the world. Lucy, a witty, intelligent vicar's daughter from middle England, has been responsible for rescuing the rather flighty Daisy from a difficult situation in Australia, and as a result the two are friends, though they really have little in common. Unfortunately the success of the show elsewhere is not replicated in Egypt and after a while it is forced to close. By this time, Daisy has become involved with a wealthy businessman and is happy to stay in Egypt. Lucy, however, plans to return to England, and has just enough savings to pay for the journey.

Everything changes, however, when Lucy falls seriously ill, and Daisy needs to arrange for her to go to hospital. Unfortunately she opts for an expensive private clinic rather than the free public hospital, and when Lucy emerges, having lost her looks and her singing voice, she finds herself deeply in debt. Daisy persuades her wealthy lover to pay Lucy's debts, and suggests he gives her a job in the theatre he runs. The one thing Daisy doesn't want is for Lucy to leave the country - her life as a kept mistress is one of long, empty days, and Lucy provides her with company for the otherwise dreary hours. Lucy accepts the job, but only so that she can start saving again for her journey. Her job is really rather demeaning - a sort of dogsbody for anything that needs doing around the theatre - but she persists and in time, with lots of scrimping and saving, she's got enough for the fare. But, in a series of really terrible circumstances, she ends up being conned out of the whole lot. And to make matters worse, she loses her job. 

Slowly, the years go by. Daisy's position improves greatly when her lover finally decides to marry her, and she ends up in a grand house with plenty of servants. Lucy meanwhile is now working as a cashier in a cinema, where one day, to her horror, she see her one-time lover, an English aristocrat, approach the box office with his wife. She darts away, afraid to be seen by him.

However, the scales slowly begin to tip the other way. Daisy, who has gained everything she thought she wanted, finds she is not accepted in the high echelons of society despite her valiant efforts. Lucy meanwhile is becoming relatively contented and after a long time (many years have now passed) has finally put by enough to make the long voyage home. At this point, a young woman who she befriended years earlier and did a great favour for decides to help her, so Lucy goes back to a congenial job and a place to live. And yes, there's a happy ending for Lucy, though Daisy is not so lucky.

I don't know if Doris Langley Moore knew anything about karma, but she certainly - here and in the other books I've read - was interested in how the results of our actions, even if not immediately obvious, come home to us in the end. Daisy has persistently behaved badly towards Lucy, who has always been good-hearted and wanted to help others. So it's a great joy to see Daisy's profound discomfiture at the end, when she sees Lucy having reaped a reward far beyond her wildest dreams, while she herself realises she will never get what she wants above all else. Excellent stuff.