The Real Jane Austen

 Whenever a new biography of Jane Austen comes along I'm on it like a car bonnet! Particularly if it illuminates aspects of the novels I'd not thought about before. Paula Byrne's The Real Jane Austen - A Life in Small Things has some very intriguing interpretations of Mansfield Park.

Byrne's theory that Tom Bertram, eldest son and heir, who is not romantically interested in women, or marriage and is fond of theatricals may be homosexual is not conclusive, but it is an interesting interpretation and of course, if he never has children Fanny and Edmund may inherit Mansfield Park.

The suggestion that Mrs Norris is a kleptomaniac because of her eagerness to whisk away the green baize curtain to her own cottage is backed up by the well-documented scandal in Austen's own family where her aunt, the wealthy Mrs Leigh-Perrot allegedly stole a card of lace from a millinery shop in Bath and faced jail, deportation or the gallows.

I knew the business with the locking and unlocking of gates at Sotherton was sexual imagery but I'd never before thought that Maria's stepping outside of the cultivated garden into the wilderness with Henry Crawford foreshadows her own 'ruin' when he seduces her.

This book has made me want to to re-read Mansfield Park and that is the best recommendation for any new biography of Jane Austen.

By the way, there is some very amusing and perceptive Austen criticism on the wonderful Bitch in a Bonnet blog.

Nordic Noir

I've been reading Norway's 'Queen of Crime' Karin Fossum while the snow falls outside.  She writes psychological crime fiction and her novels feature Inspector Konrad Sejer a grey-haired senior detective with a kind heart and steely determination.  In Don't Look Back Sejer investigates the death of a young woman whose body is found by a Norwegian lake. She is lying so peacefully with her face close to the edge of the water she could almost be asleep and someone has thrown a coat over her body as if to keep her warm.  I liked the close-knit small village atmosphere and the descriptions of the Nordic pines surrounding the lake.  Occasionally a sentence or word jars a little and I suspect that something has been lost in the translation but this is an exciting read with an unsettling twist on the final page.

I then read Bad Intentions about the apparent suicide of a teenager.  Sejer is unconvinced by the statements of his friends and when an artist painting at Glitter Lake inadvertently discovers the body of another teenager events begin to fall into place.  Call Me is also about a teenager with a fondness for macabre practical jokes and a pet guinea pig named Bleeding Heart!

I have to say that I raced through these books but after spending so much time in the company of thieves, liars, perverts and murderers I began to think about an interview I read with Anne Tyler in The Guardian where she was quoted as saying 'there aren't enough quiet, gentle, basically good people in a novel.'  I'm enjoying my foray into Scandi-crime, but I'm not sure it is a genre I could read exclusively.

Gaudy Night

I spent Christmas racing through the Martin Beck novels by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo and I'm now compiling a tbr list of Scandi-crime from your suggestions.  Thank you so much.  I've temporarily moved from the seedy underbelly of Stockholm to the dreaming spires of Oxford to re-read Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers.  Published in 1935 Gaudy Night is part of the golden age of detective fiction.  It is highly enjoyable but it has dated and some of the snobbish references to 'common shop girls' can grate.  However, I think if you read a lot of early 20th C fiction you do have to keep a sense of time and place.

The main premise of the story is that detective writer  Harriet Vane visits her alma mater, Oxford University for the Gaudy Night celebrations.  While she is staying there someone sends poison pen letters to staff and students and acts like a deranged poltergeist at night.  The female dons ask Harriet to help them discover the 'poltergeist's' identity without too much adverse publicity for the college.  Harriet agrees but soon finds the situation beyond her and calls in her old friend Lord Peter Wimsey.

I loved the descriptions of Oxford, 'students dashing to lectures their gowns hitched hurriedly over light summer frocks', the porter's lodge stacked with bicycles and punting on the Isis.  Sayers is wickedly funny on academia and there is a long running joke about Miss Lydgate's epic work History of Prosody which always needs just one more footnote.

The actual crime element is pretty slight.  The novel is really about the relationship between Lord Peter and Harriet and the dilemma of intellect versus domesticity for women.  I did enjoy it though.  Did anyone who has read it find the business about the dog collar absolutely bizarre?

Roseanna

Having been glued to the Danish detective series The Killing with its morose heroine detective Sarah Lund I've been wanting to dip my toe into the genre of Scandi-crime novels.

Radio 4 recently adapted the classic Swedish crime novel Roseanna by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo who famously wrote the Martin Beck series after putting their children to bed.  Roseanna was so riveting on the radio I knew I had to read the book.

The body of a young woman is spotted in the scoop of a dredger clearing a Swedish lake.  Detective Martin Beck is bought in to investigate and he begins the painstaking process of identification which takes several weeks as no missing person has been reported.  After discovering her identity he then attempts to unravel the events which resulted in her death.

Before internet, mobile phones and sophisticated forensics the process is time-consuming with long periods of inactivity and boredom.  Beck, however is tenacious and assisted by his able colleagues he finally makes a breakthrough.

Published in the 1960's this classic police procedure novel has barely dated.  Although you may wince at a couple of the expressions used to describe women it is not gory or excessively violent.  I now want to read more in the Martin Beck series and I'm also going to try Liza Marklund.

Any Scandi-crime recommendations would be very welcome.  Season's Greetings to all bloggers and readers!

Penguin Classics

Every now and again I like to read outside of my comfort zone and Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad was certainly that. A perceptive examination of the music industry with its drug casualties, sell-outs, passion and punks.  At times it's brilliant, at others uneven but I did like the kleptomaniac Sasha.  If you've ever sat through a 'death by Powerpoint' presentation at work you will appreciate Egan's creativity with one whole chapter relayed by Powerpoint slides.

I blame Anbolyn and this lovely post for my inability to resist the new clothbound Penguin Classics editions of Sense and Sensibility and Mansfield Park . I do like the embossed covers and best of all Sense and Sensibility has the original Penguin introduction by that most perceptive of Austen critics Tony Tanner.

Talking of Austen critics The Sky Arts Book Show which seems to have been renamed Mariella's Book Show featured a highly enjoyable interview with John Mullan talking about his excellent book What Matters in Jane Austen?: Twenty Crucial Puzzles Solved.  Much as I like Mariella (and I always like to check out what she is wearing!) she seemed a bit lukewarm about Austen.  No accounting for taste I suppose.

I like the fact that Jane Austen is down-to-earth about money.  In a letter to her brother she wrote of her pride in receiving royalties for Sense and Sensibility "I have now written myself into £250 and it only makes me long for more."  She knew that women - particularly single women - needed money to survive and thrive. 

The novel is dominated by money.  Mrs Dashwood and her daughters are forced to live in reduced circumstances because of the selfishness of their brother and his appalling wife.  Willoughby marries an heiress rather than Marianne to clear the debts caused by his extravagance.  Mrs Dashwood continually imagines she can live beyond her income and her optimistic speech about her financial outlook is one of the most amusing in the novel.

"I could wish that the stairs were handsome. But one must not expect everything; though I suppose it would be no difficult matter to widen them.  I shall see how much I am beforehand with the world in the spring, and we will plan our improvements accordingly."  In the mean time, till all these alterations could be made from the savings of an income of five hundred a year by a woman who never saved in her life, they were wise enough to be contented with the house as it was ...
Jane Austen Sense and Sensibility,1811

Truth and Beauty

'Lucy was writing, but it came in short bursts and the bursts weren't coming often enough to bring her up to the number of pages she needed.  In February she threw a congratulations, You've Wasted Half Your Fellowship party and everyone came and danced in her apartment and had a wonderful time.'
 

I've been absorbed in this poignant memoir about the friendship between Ann Patchett and the poet and writer Lucy Grealy which lasted from their meeting as aspiring young writers at the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1985, throughout the publication of their respective books to Lucy's death in 2002.

Lucy suffered from cancer as a child which damaged her mouth and jaw and continually undergoes surgery to reshape her face.  Constantly in pain she suffers from depression and finds it difficult to sustain relationships with men.  She blames all of her problems on her face and although she is adored by her many friends who provide her with constant moral and financial support she is needy and demanding.

Lucy finds writing success before Ann, her book Autobiography of a Face becomes a bestseller and Lucy appears on Oprah and begins a round of book tours and interviews.  Adoring the high life she spends her next advance before the book is written and slowly descends into a spiral of missed deadlines, pain killers and continual operations to re-shape her face and teeth.

Ann's slow and steady approach to her writing career leads eventually to the huge success of Bel Canto in 2001.  Lucy dies of an overdose in 2002.

It must be said  that Lucy's sister opposed the portrayal of Lucy in Truth and Beauty.  Nevertheless I found this a haunting memoir about friendship, loss, art and literature. One of my favourite reads this year.

Alys, Always

You know I'm always looking for well-written contemporary fiction and most of the writers I like are American woman.  Anne Tyler, Elizabeth Strout, Curtis Sittenfeld, Ann Patchett, Barbara Kingsolver and Louise Erdrich to name but a few.  So I was delighted to discover this little gem of a novel set firmly in and around London by the English writer Harriet Lane.

With more than a nod to Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca, this is the story of literary journalist Frances who happens upon a road accident where a dying woman exchanges a few words with her.  Frances can tell from the woman's 'cultured, expensive' voice that she is privileged and later discovers that she is the wife of a famous writer.

Frances then takes it upon herself to replace the dead wife and insert herself into the writer's life  although - as with all unreliable narrators - you can never be quite sure of her motives and whether she is really as cold-hearted as her actions convey.

There are wonderful descriptions of London and the gossipy, insular world of a literary magazine.  If you are looking for an autumnal read with a bit of a sting in the tale you may want to pick up a copy of Alys Always.