tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-39100914438171921092024-03-12T15:54:13.990-07:00Vintage ReadsVintage Readinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05971819409379613967noreply@blogger.comBlogger294125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910091443817192109.post-77576295654383370722024-03-01T08:00:00.000-08:002024-03-01T08:00:34.281-08:00Breakfast at Tiffany's<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-g6x2Z6gxqhrbWKJ_oXWaJ-3YORSYgVrRAbbim_vrbyBIh6vvqpfeQ9ENY81ObpdWm5clOrT2IcwvGgQgV2z4ODnj62a-NUp3aYT97Xt92FS00opvcxmL475ovRaHWOzchi_hn5qN7FuTrnHJuIwA2Y6WPDmsR28tM56RVqHZRsD_k-lkp6THcGWdLMk/s3264/20240202_145108.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3264" data-original-width="2448" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-g6x2Z6gxqhrbWKJ_oXWaJ-3YORSYgVrRAbbim_vrbyBIh6vvqpfeQ9ENY81ObpdWm5clOrT2IcwvGgQgV2z4ODnj62a-NUp3aYT97Xt92FS00opvcxmL475ovRaHWOzchi_hn5qN7FuTrnHJuIwA2Y6WPDmsR28tM56RVqHZRsD_k-lkp6THcGWdLMk/w480-h640/20240202_145108.jpg" width="480" /></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I enjoyed Jenny Jackson's <i>PIneapple Street </i>and its 'old money' Brooklyn setting. I </span><span style="font-family: arial;">was also intrigued by its epitaph - a quote from Truman Capote. '</span><i>I live in Brooklyn. By choice.'</i></p></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I'd never actually read his famous novella <i>Breakfast at Tiffany's </i>and it's difficult to read without an image of Audrey Hepburn shimmering before you. The Holly Golightly of the book is a rather less progressive young lady and at times is almost unlikeable. I suppose when you consider her background, orphaned as a child and married at 14 before running away to become, let's say, an escort, her choices were limited. The unnamed narrator is a much kinder character who brings out Holly's better self.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Of course, it's the quality of Truman Capote's beautifully descriptive prose that makes this book so good. From the opening lines reminiscent of Scott Fitzgerald's <i>The Great Gatsby </i>you know that you are in the hands of a great writer.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>She was still on the stairs, now she reached the landing and the ragbag colours of her boy's hair, tawny streaks, strands of albino blonde and yellow, caught the hall light. It was a warm evening, nearly summer, and she wore a cool black dress, black sandals, a pearl choker. For all her chic thinness, she had an almost breakfast-cereal air of health, a soap and lemon cleanness, a rough pink darkening in the cheeks.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">A lot of the famous lines and images in the 1961 film come directly from the book; Holly sitting on the fire escape drying her hair in the sun and playing her guitar, her love of Tiffany's '<i>Nothing very bad could happen there'.</i> And of course her famous line about it being tacky to wear diamonds before you're 40!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Although written in 1958 it is actually set in 1943 during the war. When Holly receives a telegram to say that her beloved brother has been killed the 'mean reds' (her words for depression) threaten to overwhelm her.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Certainly there are phrases and sentiments in the book which are unacceptable now but the story of a young writer's first Brooklyn apartment and his infatuation with a young women who lives in the apartment below and owns a ginger cat with a 'pirate's cut-throat face' is utterly charming.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Outside, the rain had stopped, there was only a mist of it in the air, so I turned the corner and walked along the street where the brownstone stands. It is a street with trees that in the summer make cool patterns on the pavement; but now the leaves were yellowed and mostly down.</i></span></p>Vintage Readinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05971819409379613967noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910091443817192109.post-42026389788262457282023-08-09T13:22:00.000-07:002023-08-09T13:22:41.107-07:00Penguin Orange Classics - The Joy Luck Club<p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr-Ad73T8izSU1jTPWns4InCstyMMTRc-bpF233ly9rMxygTfQT8CT9aR-t7wdQbgB_PZP5muYG8IXD5SvRuKHb2ocV0JgYEvcDl8wrxX9KlIqRM1YHwHvt8WD9PaihwqIpZ8MhwABCQmdkY7UVZQeBnlardVf32W-fu-Bat_wseFPXSiaUcpj6Ig8XyQ/s3264/20230717_171918.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3264" data-original-width="2448" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr-Ad73T8izSU1jTPWns4InCstyMMTRc-bpF233ly9rMxygTfQT8CT9aR-t7wdQbgB_PZP5muYG8IXD5SvRuKHb2ocV0JgYEvcDl8wrxX9KlIqRM1YHwHvt8WD9PaihwqIpZ8MhwABCQmdkY7UVZQeBnlardVf32W-fu-Bat_wseFPXSiaUcpj6Ig8XyQ/w480-h640/20230717_171918.jpg" width="480" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><i><p><i>And I am sitting at my mother's place at the mah jong table, on the East where things begin.</i></p></i></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Can't believe it is almost 35 years since <i>The Joy Luck Club </i>was published. I was a young woman working in a library when this book came out (pre-internet and iphone) and I loved it then and have reread it many times over the years. </span><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I had to treat myself to the Penguin Orange Classic paperback. Very classy cream and orange cover and I love the Chinese dragon entwined around the penguin!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">All the motifs from the novel feauture on the front and back covers; Waverly's chess pieces, Jing-Mei's piano and the mah jong tiles where the 'aunties' play in each other's houses and invite Jing-Mei (June) to be the fourth corner after her own mother dies.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I think <i>Best Quality </i>is my favourite story in <i>The Joy Luck Club </i>where the rivalry between June and Waverly which began when they were children comes to a head. (</span><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Waverly was a child chess prodigy and June's mother forced her to play the piano). At a crab dinner to celebrate Chinese New Year, Waverly who was taught by her mother to always have the best selects the nicest crabs for herself, her husband and daughter while June picks the crab with a missing leg and her mother doesn't have one at all. Waverly humiliates June during the dinner and June is close to tears. Her mother afterwards tells her not to worry about Waverly and gives her a jade necklace which is light green and tells her it will become darker with wear - proof of her self-worth and value.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">June's distress at the crab dinner is of course tempered by the unintentional humour in the Chinese-English of the mothers:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><i>"Suyuan! called Auntie Lindo to my mother. "Why you wear that colour?" Auntie Lindo gestured with a crab leg to my mother's red sweater.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><i>"How can you wear this colour anymore? Too young!" She scolded.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><i>My mother acted as though this were a compliment. "Emporium Capwell." She said. "Nineteen dollar. Cheaper than knit it myself."</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><i>Auntie Lindo nodded her head, as if the color were worth the price.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><i>The Joy Luck Club </i>still reads </span><span style="font-family: helvetica;">as fresh as when it was first published. </span><span style="font-family: helvetica;">That is the liberating power of imaginative fiction.</span></p>Vintage Readinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05971819409379613967noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910091443817192109.post-71757347012218325452023-03-31T09:04:00.003-07:002023-04-01T16:49:59.885-07:00Real Tigers (Slough House #3)<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGr21S7zPY31DR37HgFg7xbiXVXCsR2a9B2l-n6awQCrUnRygs1Vq90GhYj7xNp7i8PcfwUlKlKBwyy_Nr8aN70vJ3ekTm1cQm0vXj1F9l6lIVJkrDXM0qJ-Wpe5P5VEq-wbuTHLwpCMYfNydGA2tqGYW64GcBh1bhNe3C5E0PoOP_MNZOLkpDpwsH/s3264/20230203_152042.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3264" data-original-width="2448" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGr21S7zPY31DR37HgFg7xbiXVXCsR2a9B2l-n6awQCrUnRygs1Vq90GhYj7xNp7i8PcfwUlKlKBwyy_Nr8aN70vJ3ekTm1cQm0vXj1F9l6lIVJkrDXM0qJ-Wpe5P5VEq-wbuTHLwpCMYfNydGA2tqGYW64GcBh1bhNe3C5E0PoOP_MNZOLkpDpwsH/w300-h400/20230203_152042.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I raced through the Slough House series by Mick Herron after reading an interview with one of my favourite writers, Mary Lawson, who recommended them. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">These well-written, fast-moving spy thrillers with a nice line in humour and a central London setting are just what I need right now. </span></p></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Slough House just went live. The four of you are up.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">London is sweltering in a heatwave and tempers are fraying in Slough House the building for washed up spies on the wrong side of the river. Leaving work Catherine Standish runs into an old acquaintance from her Regent's Park days. Catherine knows that chance encounters don't happen to spooks and tries to go to ground on London's streets but can't shake off her tail. Bundled into a van and asked by her kidnappers which one of her colleagues she trusts the most she names River Cartwright. Which could be a mistake.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Catherine's disappearance raises alarm bells back at Slough House led by the hard-drinking, smoking, flatulent Jackson Lamb, a former spook from the Berlin days.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">'<i>This is the Secret Service. Not frigging Woman's Hour.'</i></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Young River Cartwright is an interesting character. Exiled to Slough House since he crashed King's Cross in a training exercise (even though he was set up) he is impulsive to say the least and can't stand the tedium of admin</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> work. Swinging into action he embroils his colleagues (known as the slow horses - a pun on Slough House) into a violent situation where, as always, they are largely unarmed, ill-informed and unprepared. But at least it gets them out of the office.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Real Tigers </i>is one of my favourites in the series because the weather reflects the action. As the heatwave finally breaks the violet hour gives way to darkness and a soft rain falls over London. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>This is the noise the rain always makes; the soft sighing of the pavements.</i></span></p>Vintage Readinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05971819409379613967noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910091443817192109.post-1779301639538764532023-01-14T13:18:00.004-08:002023-01-20T12:26:50.556-08:00Lucy by the Sea<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw-ReB2fpclCwBkApudd5jjnOb1zzzPUGRDMwGTUOYuPXuQyxi9ADdLunuV8CULIv9iS4LV6jbRjbBvjy79j3nEeOyVXkC5sUlvQh6xI-3LYLTx88IMPS7Lqyxnlm_E_sFjBnoj6fDV8n7U73IXWaC_9bAucBrFKSQot9vcKqPuRVGVrSYNvmCy1KP/s3264/20230109_133442.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3264" data-original-width="1956" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw-ReB2fpclCwBkApudd5jjnOb1zzzPUGRDMwGTUOYuPXuQyxi9ADdLunuV8CULIv9iS4LV6jbRjbBvjy79j3nEeOyVXkC5sUlvQh6xI-3LYLTx88IMPS7Lqyxnlm_E_sFjBnoj6fDV8n7U73IXWaC_9bAucBrFKSQot9vcKqPuRVGVrSYNvmCy1KP/w384-h640/20230109_133442.jpg" width="384" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: arial;">Easily the best novel I read last year was Elizabeth Strout's <i>Lucy by the Sea. </i> I love Lucy's gorgeous narrative voice. I think this novel is as good as the first in the quartet <i>My Name is Lucy Barton </i>but instead of a younger Lucy in her hospital bed overlooked by New York's Chrysler building we have a newly widowed Lucy transported by ex-husband William from pre-pandemic</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> New York to ride out the lockdown in a house overlooking the sea in Maine.</span><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Lucy's mother is a powerful presence even though she is no longer alive. Appalling though she could be, sometimes remembering her words 'People need to feel important' helps Lucy to get some of William's excesses in perspective.</span><p><span style="font-family: arial;">You get the sense that this may be the last Lucy novel, not least because characters from other novels resurface. Bob Burgess from <i>The Burgess Boys </i>takes regular coastal walks with Lucy, Katherine from <i>Abide with Me </i>appears as an adult and Lucy's gentle, troubled brother 'socially distancing for 66 years' succumbs to Covid. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">This is not a sad novel, though. There are beautiful descriptions of the changing sea and sky throughout the pandemic year. Bob Burgess and William arrange a studio for Lucy so that she can continue to write. There is humour in William's insistence on doing all the cooking yet needs praise for every meal he makes while Lucy washes up. Although</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> still haunted by her childhood experiences she finds joy in small things - a faded table-cloth edged with pink pompoms she finds </span><span style="font-family: arial;">in the Maine house. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">As a trauma survivor and perhaps naturally reticent Lucy takes care not to overstep around the adult daughters she loves but when her eldest daughter is about to repeat a mistake Lucy herself once made when younger, she steps up:</span></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I turned so that I was facing Chrissy. "You listen to me," I said. "You listen to every single word I have to tell you. And take your sunglasses off I need to see your face,"</span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I'm now rereading the wonderful <i>My Name is Lucy Barton.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I also read </span><i style="font-family: arial;">Darling</i><span style="font-family: arial;"> India Knight's re-imagining of Nancy Mitford's </span><i style="font-family: arial;">The Pursuit of Love. </i><span style="font-family: arial;">I think it just about works. Certainly, the updated characters are clever and amusing and I kept turning the pages but without the wartime background you lose the poignancy of the original.</span></p></div>Vintage Readinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05971819409379613967noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910091443817192109.post-11307587056943972862022-12-05T12:23:00.003-08:002022-12-05T12:43:21.280-08:00Love and Saffron<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPQApiUUbmxnjnSl5CH09JCrRdiY_90HbMW3-lYRWTaYpHXjx9ni-ORaBdNB7nUPEm9RKOdW7mPS_z3w6sSK50L4CsOt4bfsxvrF13KgY-i37o1giuoLJjjoF8C20EUqBMKZDX_bFUoobDJ0aD2Rr6AK3fc_9XpUGoZDFXMX0hkhPwCAWuuXcxFtaK/s3264/20221112_152823.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3264" data-original-width="2448" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPQApiUUbmxnjnSl5CH09JCrRdiY_90HbMW3-lYRWTaYpHXjx9ni-ORaBdNB7nUPEm9RKOdW7mPS_z3w6sSK50L4CsOt4bfsxvrF13KgY-i37o1giuoLJjjoF8C20EUqBMKZDX_bFUoobDJ0aD2Rr6AK3fc_9XpUGoZDFXMX0hkhPwCAWuuXcxFtaK/w300-h400/20221112_152823.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><div><span><blockquote><i style="font-family: arial;">Mother loves her magazine subscriptions, and every month, as soon as they arrive, she folds back the pages to her favourite columns. The first two she reads are yours and Gladys Taber's "Butternut Wisdom" in <u>Family Circle</u>. I prefer yours. It makes me feel like I am having a conversation with a good friend, and your enthusiasm for life has taught to be more aware of my own world around me, and especially the outdoors. Oct 1st 1962.</i></blockquote></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Kim Fay's warm-hearted </span><i style="font-family: arial;">Love and Saffron</i><span style="font-family: arial;"> is a novel of female friendship relayed in a series of letters exchanged in the early 1960's. It has echoes of Helene Hanff's </span><i style="font-family: arial;">84, Charing Cross Road.</i></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Imogen Fortier writes a column called <i>Letter from the Island </i>in the <i>Northwest Home & Life </i>magazine detailing weekends spent in her cabin on Camano island, Washington. Her accounts of island living - picking wild native blackberries, clam digging, watching cormorants and sandpipers - prompt a fan letter from Joan Bersgstrom, a 27 year old Stanford graduate who lives with her mother in California. Joan encloses a gift of saffron and a recipe for using it in a dish of steamed mussels. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">A correspondence develops between the older and younger woman who share recipes, book recommendations and increasingly their hopes and fears. This is set against a background of events of the 1960s. Both women are devastated when Kennedy is assassinated. Joan is not keen on the new fashion for stirrup pants and a little uptight about Helen Gurley Brown's newly published <i>Sex and the Single Girl.</i> Imogen, being almost 60, is much more laid back but she can't quite get used to the four boys from Liverpool with funny haircuts although does learn the words to <i>Twist and Shout.</i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">The friendship culminates with Imogen paying a surprise visit to Joan in California. Then the correspondence goes quiet and you will have to read it to find out why!</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">I loved all the sixties references and concerns - Joan Didion, Jane Jacobs, Jax fashions, the Cuban missile crisis - and Kim Fay's skill as a writer makes you feel that you are reading actual letters rather than fictional representations. This book would make a lovely Christmas gift for female friends.</span></div>Vintage Readinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05971819409379613967noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910091443817192109.post-31497792324370923272022-09-25T06:00:00.002-07:002022-09-25T06:00:19.660-07:00Agatha Christie by Lucy Worsley<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5JqOiSjYVEbTbwC9Gov3N2vvXXzOQhJlvDG8leXRhzvU_8GGuFelzMcxHFhSNuddw7c28_CECI6SXIhNjprylyNCAcJzOm7bqz2yGDzcsXjrJzVqohpCmShVW6CgYvSGxgSJJoh6ic6UHmHKG3KVIXpypr8J-OJcHoBMH216a9eqh4_yUJkB3ozpq/s3264/20220916_150826.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3264" data-original-width="2448" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5JqOiSjYVEbTbwC9Gov3N2vvXXzOQhJlvDG8leXRhzvU_8GGuFelzMcxHFhSNuddw7c28_CECI6SXIhNjprylyNCAcJzOm7bqz2yGDzcsXjrJzVqohpCmShVW6CgYvSGxgSJJoh6ic6UHmHKG3KVIXpypr8J-OJcHoBMH216a9eqh4_yUJkB3ozpq/w480-h640/20220916_150826.jpg" width="480" /></a></div><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I do like a literary biography and Lucy Worsley's <i>Agatha Christie - A Very Elusive Woman </i>is a great autumnal read. It's a traditional 'womb to tomb' format which can sometimes be tricky but Worsley keeps this fresh by interjecting her own thoughts. For example, when she was researching Agatha's first husband, handsome pilot Archie Christie and</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> saw his picture she thought he was 'totally hot!'</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I expected the most intriguing part of the book to be Agatha's famous eleven day disappearance in 1926 which caused so many repercussions and gave her an unfair reputation for being difficult. Actually though I became absorbed in the voluntary nursing that Agatha did during the Great War before switching to pharmacy dispensing which she did as a volunteer in both world wars. Of course, it was the pharmaceutical knowledge of drugs and dosage which inspired some of her famous plots.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The popular image of Agatha Christie is that of a formidable older women but Worsley brings into clear view the young Agatha described by a contemporary as 'tall, very pretty, Scandinavian coloring and a lovely complexion' who falls in love with the dashing aviator Archibald Christie. Sadly the marriage didn't last and Archie's affair prompted Agatha's disappearance where she drove aimlessly around the Surrey Hills at night contemplating suicide before heading towards a quarry. The car wheels became jammed in a hedge and hitting her head on the steering wheel may have</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> shocked her back into an appreciation of life. Worsley attributes this to a mental breakdown and fear that she was losing her mind and in</span><span style="font-family: arial;">capable of looking after her young daughter which seems entirely plausible.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Less easy to explain is the subsequent trip to a department store and booking into the Spa Hotel in Harrogate under a pseudonym where she seems to have rather enjoyed herself. While friends and family grew frantic with worry and rival police forces were searching for her Agatha was socialising with other guests, dancing the Charleston and having parcels of clothes, books, magazines and flowers delivered to her room.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">What an extraordinary life she had! A hugely successful writing career. Author of <i>The Mousetrap </i>the longest running West End play. A passion for buying and restoring houses. A subsequent marriage to Max Mallowan which launched a new interest in archeology, excavation and travel. I can't say I warmed to Max or her chilly daughter Rosalind in this biography but Agatha comes across as a joy who adored and financially supported her family and friends and when the taxman finally came calling </span><span style="font-family: arial;">said 'I shall go on enjoying myself and have a slap up bankruptcy!'</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">This will join Valerie Grove's <i>Dear Dodie </i>(biography of Dodie Smith, author of <i>I Capture the Castle) </i>as one of my favourite writer biographies. What are yours?</span></p>Vintage Readinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05971819409379613967noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910091443817192109.post-21697490736303003042022-06-03T09:56:00.002-07:002022-06-03T10:07:25.859-07:00The Cinderella Killer - a Charles Paris mystery<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmq74WQ02EsZz3J7yvowqLu9bSfHVeEHAFpGW5vywa24_Q1LzSjl5IdeqYcaugdxLbnZdw_mV1agOTCB8tkX4X3piz7hVQTH4C4U9RKy5fZuE5-TdM2pZBx9zfyYWHjWgll_Zp0sfj_TeDm28ymCffQGKx_mfhYVBHJk6uAfIEqBtlVrbedYzQyvuw/s3264/20220525_173845.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3264" data-original-width="1836" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmq74WQ02EsZz3J7yvowqLu9bSfHVeEHAFpGW5vywa24_Q1LzSjl5IdeqYcaugdxLbnZdw_mV1agOTCB8tkX4X3piz7hVQTH4C4U9RKy5fZuE5-TdM2pZBx9zfyYWHjWgll_Zp0sfj_TeDm28ymCffQGKx_mfhYVBHJk6uAfIEqBtlVrbedYzQyvuw/w225-h400/20220525_173845.jpg" width="225" /></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><blockquote><p><i>His hair was getting increasingly grey at the temples - still hopefully just on the side of distingue rather than decrepit - and he hoped when the grey had colonised all of his head he'd resist the temptation to dye it. So far as Charles could see from the evidence of other actors, the only tint available for men was the colour of conkers. And he didn't fancy going around looking like that. He had his pride.</i></p></blockquote>Pretty much the only time I listen to Radio 4 nowadays is for the Charles Paris adaptions featuring the brilliant Bill Nighy as the dissolute actor/amateur detective. I've never actually read the books by Simon Brett though so I started off with </span><i style="font-family: arial;">The Cinderella Killer </i><span style="font-family: arial;">and very much enjoyed it. Probably not for you if you are into dark and intricately plotted crime fiction, but if you like rackety English pubs, theatrical shenanigans and a </span><i style="font-family: arial;">very </i><span style="font-family: arial;">attractively louche central character you will like this.</span><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Charles is in panto at Eastbourne. He has a minor but lucrative role in the Empire Theatre's production of Cinderella. The cast is a mix of second rate soap stars who can't act but get top billing and veterans like Charles and old-time </span><span style="font-family: arial;">pantomime dames who can act but are not even named on the posters. The director is a choreographer more interested in the musical numbers than rehearsing the script so Charles is usually to be found in The Sea Dog pub.</span></div><div><i style="font-family: arial;"><br /></i></div><div><i style="font-family: arial;">In spite of the rain through which he splashed, the front at Eastbourne sill retained the Victorian elegance which had once seen it called 'The Empress of Watering Places.' Lights still shone from the pier, with its blue and white paint, it's Victorian Tea Rooms, it's Atlantis Night Club at the end. Charles loved the tacky charm of English seaside towns out of season.</i></div><div><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Loved the amusing yet poignant descriptions of life as a mostly out of work </span><span style="font-family: arial;">actor - staying in digs and living paycheck to paycheck. Charles is semi-estranged from his wife Frances because of his drinking and spends Christmas alone, irritated to see less talented actors who have made it big on TV and haunted by certain reviews of his own performances 'Charles's Paris looked as if he had wandered in from another show (and would rather be back there).' </span><i style="font-family: arial;">Eastbourne Herald</i><span style="font-family: arial;">.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"> I've ordered some of the</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> Charles Paris books to read over the summer and I also found this lovely review by </span><a href="https://verityreadsbooks.com/2019/02/08/series-i-love-charles-paris/comment-page-1/" style="font-family: arial;">Verity Reads Books</a></p><p><br /></p></div>Vintage Readinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05971819409379613967noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910091443817192109.post-35111005599280596222022-03-13T14:45:00.005-07:002022-03-13T14:51:04.412-07:00Lily King<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi2iLlT_t18PF1ZpbthS6kTNf23RrTtlMlcLe3QARoXMJgU2niltjY0FJ0Zfv2SIpVSpKLkrUfad1mUC2UNXiXz902EE-iVK_qQbwnQL_cYthma78d_l0Wno6LQzsxnpMdg6m-WdXNxQeJUMJsQlAUoPjdvn2XcBftpVfu_DSgj3g7fxekFPoQ3FOlg=s3264" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1836" data-original-width="3264" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi2iLlT_t18PF1ZpbthS6kTNf23RrTtlMlcLe3QARoXMJgU2niltjY0FJ0Zfv2SIpVSpKLkrUfad1mUC2UNXiXz902EE-iVK_qQbwnQL_cYthma78d_l0Wno6LQzsxnpMdg6m-WdXNxQeJUMJsQlAUoPjdvn2XcBftpVfu_DSgj3g7fxekFPoQ3FOlg=w400-h225" width="400" /></a></div><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Lily King's short story collection </span><i style="font-family: helvetica;">FIve Tuesday's in Winter </i><span style="font-family: helvetica;">was the highlight of my recent reading pile. I loved her 2015 novel </span><i style="font-family: helvetica;">Euphoria </i><span style="font-family: helvetica;">and her more recent novel </span><i style="font-family: helvetica;">Writers & Lovers. </i><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The nice thing about short stories is that you can read a whole story in the morning and get a feeling of accomplishment for the rest of the day!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The best in this collection I think is W</span><i style="font-family: helvetica;">hen in the Dordogne. </i><span style="font-family: helvetica;"> A lonely rich boy, traumatised by his father's suicide attempt, finds solace in the company of two sophomore boys who housesit him for the summer while his parents visit the Dordogne. Episodes of midnight swimming in the garden pool, eating whatever they feel like from the freezer and a tennis match which proves to be a life lesson make this an unforgettable summer. The kindness and easy camaraderie of the two older boys who help the 15 year old get his first girlfriend makes this an uplifting story which I think is a theme for the whole collection.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">If you've ever had an adolescent daughter who rolls her eyes at everything you say you'll be wanting to read <i>North Sea</i> and I also liked<i> Timeline. </i>Lily King gets an amusing reference to the Talking Heads in (which she also did in <i>Writers and Lovers!)</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I was a bit disappointed with Janice Hallett's <i>The Twyford Code. </i>Shame because I loved her earlier novel <i>The Appeal. </i>Not quite sure why I didn't like it but I got bored with the fish symbol appearing everywhere and I'm not that interested in acrostics. I also didn't think she captured the working class voice of the central character whereas in <i>The Appeal</i> she brilliantly portrayed</span><span style="font-family: helvetica;"> an insular middle class community.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Lastly<i> In a Good Light </i>by</span><span style="font-family: helvetica;"> Clare Chambers is a reread for me. Along with another of her earlier novels <i>Learning to Swim s</i>he perfectly captures what it is like to grow up in England in the 1970s and 80s. One of my favourite writers.</span><span style="font-family: helvetica;"> </span></p>Vintage Readinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05971819409379613967noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910091443817192109.post-70152163966954124052022-02-03T09:47:00.002-08:002022-02-05T14:20:50.295-08:00Nomadland<p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiYP8t5D0YnL7TU9GAPJF5nYZxf4xoM1Ja6EUBmvzjlMd6ouXEq44bct0nXnZKB3K4gcFLwJBs39MxTT8x7WtcH07cMPEitKj6cKiuHohDPf45JCfFKr5OIWugFUJgS9iGyD8DLZ3_y9ewsz3scPYtZH3zMUYQs6WqNxLyodJLsRzI_E3W2uNtLt0iD=s3264" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3264" data-original-width="1836" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiYP8t5D0YnL7TU9GAPJF5nYZxf4xoM1Ja6EUBmvzjlMd6ouXEq44bct0nXnZKB3K4gcFLwJBs39MxTT8x7WtcH07cMPEitKj6cKiuHohDPf45JCfFKr5OIWugFUJgS9iGyD8DLZ3_y9ewsz3scPYtZH3zMUYQs6WqNxLyodJLsRzI_E3W2uNtLt0iD=w360-h640" width="360" /></a></div><i style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i style="text-align: left;"><br /></i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Being human means yearning for more than subsistence. As much as food or shelter we require hope. And there is hope on the road. It is a by-product of forward momentum. A sense of opportunity as wide as the country itself. A bone-deep conviction that something better will come.</i></div></i></span></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Something about Jessica Bruder's <i>Nomadland</i> really captured my imagination. I'm interested in the lives of</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> drifters, hobos, transients and migrant workers - from the pioneers in Laura Ingalls Wilder's <i>Little House on the Prairie </i>to novels by Miriam Toews, Louise Erdrich and of course, John Steinbeck.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I haven't yet seen the film so all my perceptions are based on the book in which journalist Jessica Bruder spends a considerable amount of time travelling with nomads, absorbing their philosophy and attending their meetups including the famous Quartzsite in Arizona. Some are forced onto the road for personal or economic reasons while others just prefer living off-grid.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The focus is on Linda May who became homeless in her 60's, </span><span style="font-family: arial;">lived for a while on her daughter's couch in an already overcrowded apartment before taking to the road with the reasoning. '</span><i style="font-family: arial;">I'd rather be queen of my own house than live under the queen of someone else's house.' </i><span style="font-family: arial;">On the road she finds many other nomads in their 50's, 60's even 70's. Many survive on social security taking back-breaking seasonal work as camp hosts at forestry centres, Amazon warehouses or in sugar beet processing plants.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Bruder encounters camaraderie and cheerfulness but experiences how tough life is </span><span style="font-family: arial;">with RV breakdowns, freezing temperatures and work-related injuries a recurring problem. Many get through their Amazon Camperforce shifts on paracetamol and ibuprofen, walking for miles in the warehouses and getting repetitive strain injuries from the hand held scanners.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Bruder's time spent with nomads extends to working the same jobs. In one episode both amusing and slightly chilling she works at an Amazon fulfilment centre where she is pursued by a robot loaded with patchouli oil and reeking of it. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">As well as the warmth of characters such as Linda May, Ghostdancer, and Swankie Wheels it is the quality of writing that makes this book so good.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">See you down the road!</span></p>Vintage Readinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05971819409379613967noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910091443817192109.post-11233069886847542122021-12-23T16:24:00.007-08:002021-12-23T17:10:52.061-08:00The Amazing Mr Blunden<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiUTs-f2vf1RNSGWxlJddDJULDqjAXG4LwTbJ_HKWKWRsx8tCs9kfo-Asb5DiJE-bbVelYF7j6IZ1xm5WkOuONnKTwk4KDCiWG7hqxP9FiUo0SEMrJQRAo-9YS3HoJTD96OB-ap3B4qmsDbx9SMJk4hHs-lQKufgLAQ2QAORehc8411FMi4for3uZTq=s3033" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3033" data-original-width="1826" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiUTs-f2vf1RNSGWxlJddDJULDqjAXG4LwTbJ_HKWKWRsx8tCs9kfo-Asb5DiJE-bbVelYF7j6IZ1xm5WkOuONnKTwk4KDCiWG7hqxP9FiUo0SEMrJQRAo-9YS3HoJTD96OB-ap3B4qmsDbx9SMJk4hHs-lQKufgLAQ2QAORehc8411FMi4for3uZTq=w241-h400" width="241" /></a></div><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"></span> <i style="font-family: arial;">A blackbird was calling, a single note repeated, a warning note; but she could not turn her head to look at him. It was as if she were concentrating all her mind upon one thing but against her will. And upon something she did not understand. Then she sensed that there was something moving through the mist on the lawn, just beyond the pont at which her eyes were focused. She could not see very clearly, but it seemed to be two pale figures and they were moving towards her slowly and with purpose.</i></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Antonia Barber's charming children's ghost story <i>The Amazing Mr Blunden </i>has been republished by Virago Modern Classics just in time for Christmas. I think it holds its own among the best coming of age stories such as Rumer Godden's <i>The Greengage Summer </i>or Dodie Smith's <i>I Capture the Castle.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Originally published in 1969 as T<i>he Ghosts </i>it was made into a film and renamed <i>The Amazing Mr Blunden</i> in 1972. If you had a 1970's childhood you may remember Diana Dors brilliant performance as the drunken Mrs Wickens.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Who are the boy and girl that Lucy and Jamie see walking in the garden of the old house?Surely just children who live nearby with eccentric parents who dress them in a Victorian style. Why then do they have no shadow? Who is the mysterious old solicitor called Mr Blunden who turns up at their home with a job offer for their cash-strapped mother? Why does he speak like something out of David Copperfield and why are his clothes so dry despite walking through the streets of Camden Town in the pouring rain?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Can you move the Wheel of Time in time to put right a terrible mistake made over a hundred years ago? Lucy and Jamie meet the ghostly Sara and her brother Georgie by the sundial near the round seat in the old garden and Sara tries to persuade Lucy and Jamie to travel back in time to help them: </span><i style="font-family: arial;">'To you the people who lived before you were born are now dead but you are also dead to the people born after you.</i><span style="font-family: arial;">'</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">This warm-hearted and clever ghost story may be just the thing to read for a little Christmas magic. </span></p>Vintage Readinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05971819409379613967noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910091443817192109.post-13149393581291330742021-09-22T11:19:00.008-07:002021-09-23T01:55:07.165-07:00Clare Chambers<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCveWQprsDGjB2xa-cn9vmfQSuJGOsAZZknQgmZeHA-Ec83X7iD638l0Og05ICkMPZRIxTh2ID08shgBipqchMgRkJCj-U1fNvNC12sCSteVdoMFAy0Khk_UzQh6XGPbRe37YbqNhC1mE/s2048/CC.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><i><img border="0" data-original-height="1152" data-original-width="2048" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCveWQprsDGjB2xa-cn9vmfQSuJGOsAZZknQgmZeHA-Ec83X7iD638l0Og05ICkMPZRIxTh2ID08shgBipqchMgRkJCj-U1fNvNC12sCSteVdoMFAy0Khk_UzQh6XGPbRe37YbqNhC1mE/w400-h225/CC.jpg" width="400" /></i></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i style="font-family: arial;">If only I hadn't gone back to the house on the day Lexi left; if only Anne Trevillion had been better at tennis; if only they hadn't taken on a new German teacher at my father's school thirty years ago. </i><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Learning to Swim by Clare Chambers</span></span></div><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Took a late summer trip to Covent Garden which was abloom with flower barrows and the city seems alive again after a long lockdown. The book that accompanied me on the train was <i>Learning to Swim </i>by Clare Chambers which I absolutely loved.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">You may have read her latest novel <i>Small Pleasures </i>set in the 1950's where a likeable female journalist investigates a suburban 'virgin birth'. The success of <i>Small Pleasures </i>has resulted in the reissue of the earlier novels and I'm racing through them and must confess that I liked <i>Learning to Swim </i>even more! </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Probably because it's a coming of age novel, my favourite genre, from modern classics such as </span><i style="font-family: arial;">A Greengage Summer </i><span style="font-family: arial;">and </span><i style="font-family: arial;">I Capture the Castle</i><span style="font-family: arial;"> to </span><i style="font-family: arial;">Jane Eyre.</i></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Clare Chambers has a light touch and I liked the opening where we first meet Abigail visiting her mother who is sorting photos from a cardboard box and muttering:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>'Blurred, blurred, duplicate, awful bags under my eyes, don't know who that is.'</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Abigail is in her early thirties and plays cello in an orchestra. She has some difficulty crossing London by tube carrying a cello but makes it to her charity concert and runs into Marcus Radley a man she has not seen for thirteen years. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i> 'We were both remembering the occasion of our last meeting: the heat in the chapel; the schoolgirl soprano breaking the last of us down; the windy graveside.'</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">From there the novel goes back to Abigail's early life. A shy girl who is bullied at school finally finds a best friend and becomes besotted with her bohemian family. My favourite part was when a teddy bear gets thrown in to the Thames! </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Having now read four of her novels I would say that Clare Chambers has something of the storytelling skill of Anne Tyler and the very English humour of Jilly Cooper. Glad I still have two more to read. </span></p>Vintage Readinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05971819409379613967noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910091443817192109.post-71231919111071064432021-07-17T10:45:00.001-07:002021-07-17T10:47:15.691-07:00The Appeal<p align="left"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-small;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL0Y75SjoNUEG7MOxMBvMDlZkl3ct0vFWcRBoBDpg6QUhJsiGP-Ad9GnYlhFEzIW2JKdD7j2ZUQSRegyRo4C8fwGCnfv1T5MWRAS9MGnivM3t9e7iJ5_JWMSHQKn02NOQdcgXHuA2Wb_s/s2048/Appeal3.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1071" data-original-width="2048" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL0Y75SjoNUEG7MOxMBvMDlZkl3ct0vFWcRBoBDpg6QUhJsiGP-Ad9GnYlhFEzIW2JKdD7j2ZUQSRegyRo4C8fwGCnfv1T5MWRAS9MGnivM3t9e7iJ5_JWMSHQKn02NOQdcgXHuA2Wb_s/w400-h209/Appeal3.JPG" width="400" /></a></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><i>This is amateur dramatics, not the RSC.</i></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"></span></span> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I took this smart and amusing murder mystery to Brighton last weekend and it was a great beach read with a highly original structure. The story is relayed entirely in emails and WhatsApp messages yet still manages to have a bit of a Dorothy L Sayers classic crime feel.</span></span></div><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Legal students Femi and Charlotte are handed six months' worth of email correspondence between a local amateur dramatics society and asked by their boss to look at it with a fresh perspective. Some emails are missing, some irrelevant, some fail to deliver and some remain drafts. Femi and Charlotte are given no background information but deduce that it is an ongoing legal case.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">From the emails they learn that The Fairway Players have just staged a successful production of <i>Blithe Spirit </i>and are planning their next play when director Martin Hayward announces that his granddaughter Poppy has a cancer diagnosis. Martin and wife Helen (leading lady) and his extended family appear to be queen bees in this group and the players and wider community begin a fundraising appeal called A Cure for Poppy. However, sponsored runs, cake sales, charity football matches and Yogathons won't raise the required amount and more ambitious ways to raise money are considered.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Clever character portrayals emerge - needy nurse Isabel, pushy former PR Sarah and my favourite - 23 year old Jackie who is 'currently travelling' and whose emails arrive from all over the world, always a step behind and giving away more than she may wish to. There are also some highly amusing moments when their boss who is not tech-savvy tries to join the WhatsApp exchanges between Charlotte and Femi as they try to work out why someone dies and who is not as they appear to be.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">This mystery also examines how a fundraising appeal can become heartlessly corporate expecting people who work as tea ladies and nurses to stump up £10 for a raffle ticket or £80 to attend a ball. The most moving email was from a man who donates to the Appeal for Poppy describing the loss of his own daughter and the impact it has had on him and his wife only to get an automatic Dear Donor reply telling him where to make his cheque payable to.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><i>The Appeal </i>by Janice Hallett is my reading highlight so far this year. Hope you enjoy it, too!</span></p><p></p><p></p>Vintage Readinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05971819409379613967noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910091443817192109.post-2907801102141033392021-05-01T18:23:00.001-07:002021-05-01T18:24:55.711-07:00Mary Lawson<span lang="EN-GB"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1559" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrF334E5slwqDjVJfH6QdIIr-yTeD_FHOwTjv7J5LVW5tg4YaosDgFMPnPkNTVZ3-FA_-A-6rrVEiX-Gg9XDjVnvki7wIHWdUECTATxEftdH-u1POR3_h0Ltj5bOk0opLPnwM0C8OqxLg/w305-h400/ML.jpg" width="305" /></div><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><p align="LEFT" dir="LTR">She threw out a bottle of perfume the twins had given her for Christmas one year, the name of which - <i>Ambush</i> - had made her father laugh out loud ...</p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p align="LEFT" dir="LTR">A new novel by Mary Lawson is always a pleasure. Like Anne Tyler she writes about families out of step with each other and her literary landscape is always Northern Ontario in Canada. I’m re-reading Mary Lawson’s three earlier novels before I start <i>A Town Called Solace.</i></p><p align="LEFT" dir="LTR">My favourite <i>Road Ends </i>was<i> </i>published in 2015 and its snowy setting is the fictional town of Struan. The novel has a warm beating heart, largely in the form of Megan the eldest daughter of a mother who can’t stop having babies and then losing interest in them when they become children. The eldest brother Tom is struggling to cope with the suicide of his friend and instead of using his degree he opts to drive the town snowplough. Some of the most vibrant scenes in the novel are Tom struggling to get the ancient ‘headache yellow’ snowplough to start and then rumbling down the roads of Struan with ‘the new snow flying off the blade of the plough in a great soft arc.’</p><p align="LEFT" dir="LTR">Megan has the household pretty much buttoned down, cooking, cleaning, laundry, organising her mother, keeping her younger brothers under control and loving and caring for her smallest brother Adam. It is when she decides to leave for London that this outwardly respectable but deeply troubled family start to fall apart. The dopey mother and wilfully blind father can’t seem address the benign neglect of little Adam but as Lawson weaves their narratives together you begin to understand the reasons for their behaviour.</p><p align="LEFT" dir="LTR">Lawson is wonderful on the London of the late 1960s and 21 year old Megan’s experiences as an outsider in the world of Mick Jagger, bedsits, mini skirts, Carnaby Street and sexual freedom. I am looking forward to starting <em>A Town Called Solace</em>.</p><p align="LEFT" dir="LTR">Anyone else vaguely remember a perfume by Dana called <a href="https://www.fragrantica.com/perfume/Dana/Ambush-original-4587.html">Ambush</a>? </p></span>Vintage Readinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05971819409379613967noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910091443817192109.post-7016777353980686322021-03-05T04:04:00.000-08:002021-03-05T04:04:03.597-08:00Josephine Tey<p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><i></i></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIzaR8HPRo5W39uTrRGyfhtFefUXMRc930qzqJN0llCiyvQf3gS9Kyz8VvYcNp5w12gcC7cx2FTGtcLcUqzZ8cDGHM3zGAzOk-tdD3mCG0ZLStT8kVd48DgYU31_nbFYvE3QctFW3Qfyk/s2048/20210227_164825.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1152" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIzaR8HPRo5W39uTrRGyfhtFefUXMRc930qzqJN0llCiyvQf3gS9Kyz8VvYcNp5w12gcC7cx2FTGtcLcUqzZ8cDGHM3zGAzOk-tdD3mCG0ZLStT8kVd48DgYU31_nbFYvE3QctFW3Qfyk/s320/20210227_164825.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> '<span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Go away from here. Go away while the going is good. Go away. Away from here.'</i></span><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I made the rookie mistake of reading the blurb on the back of the book before starting Josephine Tey's 1946 novel <i>Miss Pym Disposes </i>and annoyingly it gave away the crime! It didn't spoil my enjoyment though and I loved the setting - a girls PE college which teaches gymnastics, ballet and anatomy as well as taking in remedial patients. Just the spareness of the opening sentence shows what a good writer Tey is:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>'A bell clanged. Brazen, insistent, maddening.'</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The central premise - young woman writer visits alma mater and her success and stylishness proves to be a hit with the girls and the teachers - is not disimilar to Dorothy L Sayers' <i>Gaudy Night </i>although they differ in style and focus. In fact, the hectic timetable, teachers arguing in the staff room and a bit of cheating in an exam reminded me a lot of the Enid Blyton classic girl </span><span style="font-family: arial;">school stories <em>Malory Towers </em>and<em> St Clare's. </em></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Before whole-heartedly recommending <i>Miss Pym Disposes</i> though I will just say that those of us who read a lot of novels from the early part of the 20th C have to keep a sense of place and time and there are a couple of expressions in this book which are really not acceptable now. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial;">I've also started another Tey novel <em>The Singing Sands </em>set in the bleak beauty of the Scottish Highlands. It has a great opening with a London Euston train sliding into a Scottish station. On board is Detective Alan Grant of Scotland Yard visiting an old friend in the 'great clean Highland country' on doctor's orders. Overworked and suffering from claustrophobia Grant is planning to fish the lochs and relax. On board, there is also a dead body, as is the way with detective novels and Alan Grant doesn't want to get involved. He's off duty, he's not well, he's going on holiday. But something about the dead man's young face and rumpled black hair gives me the impression that Grant is not going to have a relaxing holiday.</span></p>Vintage Readinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05971819409379613967noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910091443817192109.post-38687317596333060972020-12-26T16:19:00.008-08:002020-12-27T10:55:11.052-08:00Black Narcissus<div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN6aCiDcrmR-xfzx1auNlTg1NsP2BrBQsH3ubNZG7M3JzZrM5mpnHQ7CLY5nzPkIWzWBZZRnBlkJ0N9N-sfdGWxXhFkb3crVlbekS6VrJ6uJdZ3ked7PYa7JP7D4vSURLlVAFx2Qfq9no/s2048/BN2.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1430" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN6aCiDcrmR-xfzx1auNlTg1NsP2BrBQsH3ubNZG7M3JzZrM5mpnHQ7CLY5nzPkIWzWBZZRnBlkJ0N9N-sfdGWxXhFkb3crVlbekS6VrJ6uJdZ3ked7PYa7JP7D4vSURLlVAFx2Qfq9no/w279-h400/BN2.JPG" width="279" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>'Then she could have sworn she heard a noise, a drag like a wet skirt on the floor, but the room was empty.</i>'</span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div><span><br /></span></div>Rumer Godden's novels begin with a journey. In <i>Black Narcissus</i> the five English nuns travelling to Mopu in Northern India think they will establish a school for making lace, a clinic and teach local children to read and write. Instead the Himalayan altitude begins to work on them and the Darjeeling wind which smells of tea and orange blossom evokes desire and memories. </span><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Sister Clodagh cannot stop thinking about her former love in Ireland, Sister Blanche yearns for a baby, Sister Philippa becomes obsessed with the gardens and poor sad, mad Sister Ruth becomes fixated on Mr Dean the macho site agent.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span>Only</span><span> the older, wiser Sister Briony keeps it together but even she can't prevent </span><span>Sister Blanche from making a fatal mistake which turns the local people against the nuns. Then Sister Ruth makes her move on Mr Dean.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Virago have just published this lovely edition and I'm very much looking forward to the BBC production tonight. I hope they do justice to a wonderful storyteller. Rumer Godden went on to write a more sophisticated study of a convent in <i>In This House of Brede</i>, one of my favourite novels, but nothing quite captures the gothic tension of <i>Black Narcissus.</i></span></div>Vintage Readinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05971819409379613967noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910091443817192109.post-20641496783089826342020-11-13T14:28:00.002-08:002020-11-13T14:31:06.529-08:00Ann Patchett<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigYVF5z7fZx74zzbhUz8RWpuOW1mkNu9P3Ci4pHVYQ98EFdFI5qc_6CLKa4xbj59sSLpmnHWT-RiSFYLgHsFC-3EXiC8oRpBtIErxDbCfLOr5PmoSVN-fR0aHdMekKTRhxRqYh1-0oCcU/s919/AP+The+Dutch+House.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="919" data-original-width="517" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigYVF5z7fZx74zzbhUz8RWpuOW1mkNu9P3Ci4pHVYQ98EFdFI5qc_6CLKa4xbj59sSLpmnHWT-RiSFYLgHsFC-3EXiC8oRpBtIErxDbCfLOr5PmoSVN-fR0aHdMekKTRhxRqYh1-0oCcU/s320/AP+The+Dutch+House.jpg" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">When my daughters were little I used to read them the <i>Blue Kangaroo </i>books by Emma Chichester Clark. While they were entranced with the adventures of Lily who kept losing her toy kangaroo, I became besotted with the house Lily lived in. It was generously proportioned with high ceilings, fireplaces and tall bookshelves, wooden spindles on the staircase and panes of coloured glass in the front door. We were living in a small semi at the time and when we eventually did buy a larger house I was looking for a Victorian house like the one in the <i>Blue Kangaroo </i>books.</span><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I do like a novel that centres around a house or has a house as character. Ann Patchett's <i>The Dutch House </i>features a post WW2 house built with secret crawl spaces, window seats and cinematic size panes of glass. There is a shattered ballroom on the third floor, once infested with racoons and now lovingly restored. The house is a backdrop for secrets slowly revealed and a rock of a big sister, the magnificent Maeve. There is also a second wife whose coldness and insecurity centres around her insatiable desire for the house.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I think this is Ann Patchett's finest novel to date and I want to go back to the beginning and read it all over again!</span></p>Vintage Readinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05971819409379613967noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910091443817192109.post-81108514289339752572020-08-07T11:19:00.000-07:002020-08-07T11:19:41.173-07:00When the sukebind is in bud ...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Delicious new cover for the Penguin Modern Classics edition of <i>Cold Comfort Farm.</i> I've never found this book <em>quite</em> as amusing as is often claimed. Probably because I am very fond of one of the novels it parodies (Mary Webb's <em>Precious Bane) </em>but there is lots to love about this 1932 classic.<br />
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Flora Poste is an elegant bluestocking, remarkably self-assured for a nineteen year old but her moments of self-doubt and kindness keep the reader on her side as she descends on Cold Comfort Farm to drag the unwilling inhabitants into the twentieth century.<br />
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I liked Mrs Beetle, wife of Agony Beetle and mother of Meriam the hired girl who falls pregnant 'when the sukebind* is in bud' and has produced several babies. Flora advises Meriam on contraception and Mrs Beetle offers her own advice:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Anyway, we know now, thanks to Miss Interference from up the 'ill. And I'll lay she's no better than she ought to be, a bit of a kid like 'er sailing in 'ere as bold as brass and talkin' to you about such things. Still, she does look as if she washed 'erselef sometimes, and she ain't painted up like a dog's dinner, like most of them nowadays. Not that I 'old with wot she told, you mind you, it ain't right. </blockquote>
I <em>really</em> liked all the Jane Austen references. The novel's dedication comes from <i>Mansfield Park </i>'Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery' and begins with Flora's position in the world and financial prospects which is also typical of the beginning of an Austen novel. I suppose her interfering nature makes her a little like<em> Emma</em>, but Flora does not have Emma's wealth and status. She does however intend to write a novel as good as <em>Persuasion</em> when she is 53.<br />
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Sukebind is a flower invented by Stella Gibbons to symbolise human lust!Vintage Readinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05971819409379613967noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910091443817192109.post-64148144704153820582020-06-14T12:47:00.004-07:002020-06-14T12:55:33.802-07:00Daphne Du Maurier and Her Sisters<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">In September 1926, Daphne Du Maurier and her sisters Angela and Jeanne and their mother caught the Great Western train at Paddington bound for their first visit to Cornwall. Arriving at Looe they travelled a few miles west towards Fowey and gazed across the harbour at the Boddinick Ferry. They were overwhelmed by the harbour, the houses and the mystery and beauty of Cornwall.</span><span style="font-family: "calibri";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Daphne knew that here was a place where she could find the freedom and solitude she craved to walk, to row boats and above all to write. Angela and Jeanne also forged deep connections with the west country and both eventually settled there.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Daphne Du
Maurier and Her Sisters</i> by Jane Dunn is a traditional ‘womb to tomb’ biography in one sense but is also unusual
in that it is a biography of the three Du Maurier sisters, Angela, Daphne and
Jeanne. They had a very <span style="font-family: "calibri";">privileged London upbringing as daughters of actor-manager Gerald
Du Maurier.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gerald was
friends with J M Barrie who wrote <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Peter
Pan</i> and this book was a huge influence over the lives of the sisters who
renacted scenes at home.</span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Daphne was famously reclusive and remote as a mother and
wife, but I suppose the artist has to find time and space to write.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Writing took priority over everything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Angela wrote, too, but did not have Daphne’s
gift for storytelling or her confidence and willowy elegance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> It seems that Daphne got all the gifts. Angela recalled meeting a lady who mistook her for the famous Daphne and on realising her mistake turned to her husband and said ‘It’s only the sister!’ <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Jeanne the youngest sister remains quite elusive in the biography but she became an artist in the Newquay arts colony in Cornwall.</span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span></span></span> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">I particularly liked the account of the first meeting between Daphne and her future husband the handsome Guards Officer, Tommy 'Boy' Browning who had read her first book <em>The Loving Spirit</em> and sharing her love of boats and the sea set off in his own boat to find her in Fowey.</span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span></span></span> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">I'd forgotten how much I like to read a good literary biography - if you have any recommendations do let me know! </span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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Vintage Readinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05971819409379613967noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910091443817192109.post-79288691287801105982020-05-09T12:42:00.005-07:002020-05-09T14:10:40.540-07:00Trouble at Lowood<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><em>When the typhus fever had fulfilled its mission of devastation at Lowood, it gradually disappeared from thence; but not until its virulence and the number of its victims had drawn public attention on the school.</em></span> Jane Eyre </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Something about Victorian literature in troubled times. Charlotte Bronte's descriptions of typhus in <em>Jane Eyre</em> which infected forty-five of the eight pupils at Lowood school for orphans during a bright and beautiful April and May is remarkably prescient. The poorest suffered the most and of course Charlotte was drawing on memories of the loss of her two young sisters Maria and Elizabeth.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">It's been a while since I read <em>Jane Eyre </em>and it was such a pleasure to revisit the scenes where Jane climbs the step-ladder to the attic at Thornfield and throws open the casement window looking out over the hills and valleys and vents her frustration at the limitations of her existence. Charlotte's voice seeps into the text and becomes the voice of Jane. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">There is also the wonderful chapter where Jane meets Mr Rochester and as she walks alone on the frosty causeway she first of all sees his large dog, Pilot, and thinks for a moment it is the Gytrash of North England legend which haunts solitary ways and startles travellers.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">When Mr Rochester later asks Jane if she is from another world she goes along with his questioning to the bafflement of Mrs Fairfax. Jane, at last, has met a kindred spirit.</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "arial";"></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: x-small;"></span> </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: xx-small;"><em>"<span style="font-size: small;">No wonder you have rather the look of another world. I marvelled where you had that sort of face. When you came on me in Hay Lane last night I thought unaccountably of fairy tales, and had half a mind to demand whether you had bewitched my horse." </span>Jane Eyre</em></span></span></span><br />
<br />Vintage Readinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05971819409379613967noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910091443817192109.post-36468960997899856482020-02-29T14:59:00.000-08:002020-05-09T12:55:46.321-07:00Rebecca<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><em>"I'm afraid it does not concern me very much what Mrs de Winter used to do ... I am Mrs de Winter now you know."</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">My favourite moment in <em>Rebecca </em>is when the second Mrs de Winter finally decides to call the shots at Manderley ordering the morning room windows to be opened, the dead flowers to be taken away and crossing out Mrs Danvers' cold menu and demanding hot food in the dining room.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">From that moment she rises in power and the novel is no longer a 'study in jealousy' as Daphne Du Maurier called it. Whether Maxim de Winter is worth it is another question. He is difficult to like and how much of his account is true? In fact, one of the most perceptive characters in the novel, the deeply unpleasant Jack Favell, Rebecca's cousin, is much more convincing that Maxim and gets some of the best dialogue, too.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">I rather like this overblown cover featuring the red rhododendrons which grow at Manderley and symbolise danger. Interesting too, that the azaleas which also feature in the novel as Rebecca's favourite flower are highly toxic.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">However many times you reread <em>Rebecca </em>the novel never loses its power and Manderley never loses its charm with the sloping lawns that lead down to the sea, the 'safe' west wing overlooking the rose garden and the ominous east wing showing glimpses of the sea from the landing and bedrooms. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">Any recommendations for a really good biography of Daphne Du Maurier?</span>Vintage Readinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05971819409379613967noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910091443817192109.post-76487709702638967602019-12-21T15:30:00.002-08:002019-12-22T14:21:44.069-08:00Big Stone Gap<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<em>The Wise County Bookmobile is one of the most beautiful sights in the world to me. When I see it lumbering down the mountain road like a tank, then turning wide and easing into Shawnee Avenue, I flag it down like an old friend.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">I’m re-reading old favourite the <i>Big Stone Gap </i>trilogy by Adriana Trigiani. Chicklit? Well maybe, but I love this portrayal of the inhabitants of an Appalachian coal-mining town set in the 1970‘s. Ava Maria Mulligan is the only person of 'Eye-talian’ origin living in <i>Big Stone Gap</i> and since the loss of her mother she feels an outsider in the town she was born in. At 37 she works as a pharmacist and feels she is headed towards spinsterhood until she meets <i>very</i> attractive miner Jack 'Mac’ MacChesney who lives with his mother in Cracker’s Neck Holler.</span></div>
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Like Anne Tyler, Adriana Trigiani has a gift for creating quirky characters. Iva Lou Wade, flirty librarian, driver of the mobile book van and local good-time gal known by her signature scent Coty’s <i><a href="https://yesterdaysperfume.typepad.com/yesterdays_perfume/2008/12/emeraude-by-coty-1927.html">Emeuraude</a> </i>is a brilliant creation. And then there is Fleeta the tough-talking pro-wrestling pharmacy assistant who likes to help herself to the Estee Lauder hand cream on display in the shop.</div>
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The beauty of the Appalachian mountains and the changing seasons provide a backdrop to the story and there is a fictional representation of Elizabeth Taylor’s visit to Big Stone Gap in 1978 with her then husband Republican John Warner who was on a campaign trail. Famously, Elizabeth Taylor sampled the buffet and choked on a chicken bone and had to be rushed to hospital. </div>
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A lovely read for a cold winter.</div>
Vintage Readinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05971819409379613967noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910091443817192109.post-37425407483449215772019-11-24T14:48:00.002-08:002019-11-24T14:48:54.378-08:00Literary Detectives<span lang="EN-GB"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My first favourite literary detective is Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey that blue-blooded aristocrat and amateur sleuth created by Dorothy L Sayers in the 1930's. Discovered to be a brilliant all-round natural cricketer at Eton. Accomplished musician who read History at Balliol. Son of the Dowager Duchess Honoria Lucasta Delgardie. A man of sensitivity who was mentally scarred by the Great War he manages to get all the female dons at Oxford University in a flutter in <i>Gaudy Night</i> and it is believed that Sayers fell in love with her own creation.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My second favourite is that tough shamus Philip Marlowe who fights corruption for 25 dollars a day amidst a California setting of dusty eucalyptus trees, manzanitas, pink sunsets and airless heat. The plots are sometimes utterly baffling but I don’t think Chandler is read for sophisticated plots. He is read for the attractiveness of his laconic private investigator Philip Marlowe and his mastery of the American vernacular.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Martin Beck is a different kind of detective. Created by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo in the 1960's, he is not physically attractive, he doesn't have the intellect of Wimsey or the amusing one-liners of Marlowe. He often feels unwell - nauseous or a stomach ache - and has no appetite, he can't fight and although he carries a gun he’s not a good shot. Unhappily married with a daughter he adores and a son he can't get on with. Yet when he questions a suspect he is devastating and he never gives up.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">I've just re-read <em>Roseanna</em> which has a fancy new cover. Published in 1965 it was the police procedural that spawned the Scandi-crime genre and is still a gripping page-turner. I would also recommend <em>The Laughing Policeman</em> and <em>The Abominable Man</em>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Who is your favourite literary detective?</span></div>
</span>Vintage Readinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05971819409379613967noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910091443817192109.post-44348228849316236482019-11-10T10:59:00.000-08:002019-11-10T11:06:41.283-08:00We will remember them.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Vintage Readinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05971819409379613967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910091443817192109.post-57092358687034823922019-09-22T11:17:00.000-07:002019-09-23T18:31:07.417-07:00These Wonderful Rumours!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I do like Home Front diaries. May Smith was a 25 year old school teacher living with her parents in 1939. She kept a journal which is fresh and uplifting to read despite the devastating impact of WW2. When the air raid sirens started - often in the early hours of the morning - she had to get out of bed along with her parents, grab her gas mask and go to her grandparents' house next door and sit in their cold cellar for two or three hours. Only when the all-clear was given could she go back to bed and still have to get up early the next day to teach classes of 48-60 children including evacuees. <br />
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May was a voracious reader and meticulously records her reading lists in her diary. She loved <em>Jane</em> <em>Eyre, Rebecca, The Code of the Woosters</em> and avidly read <em>The Provincial Lady</em> which was then serialised in <em>Time and Tide</em> magazine. She mimics E M Delafield's style rather well:<br />
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<em>Wednesday May 22nd 1940 Mrs</em> W has finished my voile frock, in which I duly paraded. It's very sweet, I think. It's trimmed with blue velvet ribbons and little mauve pearl buttons. Mother took one look and remarked without enthusiasm that That Sort of Dress Looks Nothing without A Lot of Sun. Very dampened by this remark, but still like it very much.</blockquote>
Fond of tennis, she played regularly and rode her bike around the village. She had two admirers and also pined a little for another who rejected her. There is a constant ongoing battle with the local dressmaker who never completes her tennis dresses, coats and day dresses on time and her love of clothes is severely curtailed when ration books come in. Proud of working and earning money she nevertheless lives from one pay packet to another and her father regularly subsidises her. I loved her father who teases her about her choice of hats referring to one hat as a 'pigeon trap' and can't control his mirth when he first sees May and her mother in their gas marks.<br />
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Bombs fell close to home, and just when May was getting blasé about the air raid sirens preferring to stay in bed than go down into the cold cellar there were huge explosions close by. May's family also had a lodger who was a Conchie (Conscientious Objector) who suffered abuse from the villagers. One diary entry tells of a 'woman just over 30 who lost her boy at Dunkirk and is only just recovering, and it has sent her quite grey. She has to rest in the afternoons.'<br />
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But life goes on and there are wartime romances and wedding cakes with cardboard icing because of the rations. May decides between her two admirers and chooses Freddie (although I rather liked the other one, Doug). May's diary is a delight to read and her youth and humour and exuberance speaks to us across the years.Vintage Readinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05971819409379613967noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910091443817192109.post-56449292856368262282019-08-01T16:31:00.000-07:002019-08-01T16:31:08.576-07:00The Provincial Lady in Wartime<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">For those of us who feel it is necessary to have <em>The Provincial Lady</em> with us At All Times the Macmillan Collector's Library edition is small enough to fit into a handbag or pocket and also has the wonderful Arthur Watts illustrations. </span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>The Provincial Lady in Wartime </i>(not in this edition) is one of the most vivid and humorous accounts of life in England during the beautiful September of 1939 - the time of the Phoney War. A huge wave of patriotism sweeps the country and everyone agrees that ‘we’ve got to show 'Itler he can’t go on like that, haven’t we?’ In her Devon home, the garden is full of Michaelmas daisies, dahlias and nasturtiums and the weather is lovely. It is difficult to believe that war has been delclared. The Prov Lady receives two little evacuees Margery and Marigold. Husband Robert is an ARP Officer and takes his duties extremely seriously, and daughter Vicky and son Robin are still at boarding school. </span></span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Determined to help the war effort the Prov Lady takes a flat in Buckingham Street in London hoping to find work using her literary skills. This proves impossible as there are many more volunteers than available work and she finds a job taking shifts in the all-night canteen operating in the ARP station under the Adelphi hotel. Here she meets some wonderful characters including lovely friend Serena, awful Mrs Pussy Winter-Gammon, a Society Deb whose mother eventually takes away and the female Commandant who dashes around raging that she is the only one who realises that England is at War to which everyone replies It Hasn’t Started Yet.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Never impervious to clothes, the Prov Lady buys herself a navy siren suit and throws a sherry party at which everybody discusses the war and friend Rose declares it will be Over by February. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><em>The Provincial Lady in Wartime</em> is the last of four volumes. Tragic events in E M Delafield's own life meant that she could no longer continue to write in the same humorous and semi-autobiographical style and there is a tinge of sadness to this final volume. </span></div>
Vintage Readinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05971819409379613967noreply@blogger.com10