Tag: classics

Review 2789: No Fond Return of Love

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Dulcie Mainwaring is just recovering from the shock of her engagement being broken off (albeit quite a while ago) when she decides to attend a conference. She does part-time academic research and indexing, but a throw-away thought that she prefers researching live subjects proves significant.

At the conference she meets and befriends Viola Dace almost against Viola’s will. Viola’s profession is a bit murkier than Dulcie’s, and she implies that she had an affair with one of the speakers, Aylwin Forbes, the author of several scholarly articles and the lecturer on “Some problems of an editor.” (The lecture titles cracked me up. There’s another on “Some problems of indexing.”) Aylwin is thinking more about his impending divorce than his lecture and has a dizzy spell during it. (Later on, I had my doubts about Aylwin’s supposed affair and reputation, because he remembers his encounter with Viola as one kiss, whereas Viola is wondering why he hasn’t returned to her after his divorce. It’s hard to get a good idea of this, despite Aylwin clearly being susceptible.)

Dulcie’s “research” becomes more obvious as, having decided she is attracted to the handsome Aylwin, she begins visiting people and addresses associated with him. Although for some reason this seems odd but harmless in the book, today we call it stalking. Aylwin, who keeps meeting her, has a confused impression of a pleasant face but can’t remember her name.

Viola actually ends up moving into the home that Dulcie inherited from her mother, although she complains about how far it is from the action and doesn’t really seem to like Dulcie. Also moving in is Dulcie’s young niece Laurel, who would rather live in her own bed-sit, but her parents won’t let her.

As Dulcie and often Viola traipse around checking out Aylwin’s relatives and their homes and following up rumors, Dulcie meets her old fiancé Maurice, who seems to be reconsidering his decision to break it off, Viola seems to get less interested in Aylwin, and Aylwin is attracted to someone even more unsuitable than either his ex-wife or Viola.

These ordinary people seem believable with all their oddities and inconsistencies. I liked Dulcie even though she is a stalker. The other characters not so much. There’s a lot of sly humor in this book.

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Review 2788: Scotch Mist

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Scotch Mist is a light as air romance novel with beautiful settings and an attractive heroine.

Alison Fairlee is something unusual for her time—a working woman who runs a decorating business and shares a flat with her friend Jane. She is in her mid-30s and has no thought except to make her business successful and stave off her deadbeat mother and sister. Unfortunately, her mother, Lady Caroline, who since her return from India has thought it preferable to stay with friends than to purchase or lease a home, has arrived unexpectedly, assuming Alison can put her up. Her sister Pamela is with her. Alison tells them they can only stay one night, because Jane is returning the next day.

The next day, Jane suggests that Alison go on vacation while her mother goes to a friend and Pamela takes a two-week cruise. Alison loves Scotland, so she agrees and drives off by herself. Unfortunately, when she is ready to stop, she can only find a commercial hotel, uncomfortable and cheap. She is outside the next morning when she is overheard complaining to herself about the hotel by Neil McPherson. He invites her to stay at his home, which he has converted to a hotel that he leases out to hunting and fishing parties.

Alison falls in love with Glenlochart House, which is empty, expecting guests the next day. Neil is the laird but has been unable to support the estate without this solution. Alison and Neil get along well, and he hires her to help redecorate the house, which is a bit shabby.

The next day, however, wealthy Andrew Tosh and his son Roddy arrive. Andrew is a vulgar self-made man, and Roddy spends his time chasing women and spending his father’s money. He finds talking to Alison more amusing than fishing, and Alison finds him amusing. Neil finds himself unexpectedly jealous.

Pamela returns early from her cruise after being exposed to measles and told to quarantine. Instead, she finds a letter from Alison to Jane about Glenlochart and decides to go there. She leaves immediately, sending a telegram with insufficient information about her arrival. Alison doesn’t receive the telegram until it’s almost too late to meet the train and doesn’t know where the station is. Roddy offers to drive her, but there is confusion about the route, and they don’t find her.

Pamela in the meantime has forgotten the name of Alison’s hotel. She is picked up by the taxi service, Dugald McDougal, a young man running the taxi to save money for medical school, and Pamela being flighty, they spend the night smooching. In the meantime, Roddy and Alison give up driving around trying to find Pamela and go to Edinburgh for dinner, getting stranded overnight in the mist.

When Alison gets back to Glenlochart, Neil shows he is angry, which she reads as disdain, as everyone else assumes the worst. Soon, Lady Caroline arrives, having been kicked out of her friend’s house for flirting with her husband, and the situation gets even more awkward.

Alison’s relatives are so awful, it’s funny, and the novel spends a lot more time on all the complications than the romantic angle. But Alison is an interesting heroine, and this is a fun book to read. I was just a bit shocked at how blithely Pamela travels all over the place after having been told to quarantine.

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Review 2785: #1949Club! The Parasites

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The Parasites is my last book for the 1949 Club.

The Delaney siblings are lying around and messing up their sister’s home, as they do every weekend, when Maria’s husband Charles tells them they are parasites. Although Niall is a successful songwriter and Maria a famous actress, Niall admits that it may be the case. The novel takes us back through incidents of their lives as the three consider whether Charles is right. A clue may be that the narrative sometimes changes from third person to second person plural, as if they were one organism.

Marie, Niall, and Celia are the semi-related children of the Delaneys, their father a famous singer and their mother a famous dancer (referred to solely as Pappy and Mama). The children run wild through hotels, and even though Niall and Celia are more subdued, they are clearly unruly, but at the theater, all three know to sit quietly. Celia plays with her dolls while Maria mimics her mother, and Niall watches the orchestra.

As we follow them, it becomes clear that Maria and Niall lead their lives with no concern for anyone else, except maybe each other, and Celia protects the two of them. In her young womanhood, she neglects her own talents as an artist to take care of Pappy after Mama dies and later do the same for Maria’s children.

Du Maurier herself struggled with some of the issues this novel brings forward. We don’t know what her childhood was like, but since her father was an actor-manager and her mother an actress, it may have been very much like the one depicted for Maria, Niall, and Celia. She lived separately from her husband for years, like Maria does with Charles, and she doesn’t seem to have felt a lot of connection with her children, also like Maria. (There’s a funny/dreadful passage where Maria is left alone for the day to care for her newborn daughter Caroline.) Did Du Maurier write this novel for readers to sympathize with her characters? I don’t think so. We don’t like them very much. To understand them, maybe. Not caring much about the children is also part of the plot of Frenchman’s Creek, a novel that is supposed to be romantic, but in which the heroine just blows off her family for long periods of time. Du Maurier herself admitted that she neglected her family for her writing. I think that in many of her books she has characters demonstrating some of her own traits.

It’s interesting also that there are three children and one of them is a boy. Du Maurier had two sisters, but she also stated that she had a sort of male alter-ego that she used in some of her books, so perhaps she saw herself in Niall.

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Review 2784: #1949Club! The Emigrants

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The Emigrants is my third book for the 1949 Club. It was originally written in Swedish about the first people from a particular Swedish parish to emigrate to the U. S. The English translation wasn’t published until 1951, but the original book was published in 1949, so it qualifies for the club. The Emigrants is the first book in what was planned as a trilogy but ended up as a quartet.

Karl Oskar Jakobsson is a young man when his father injures himself in the field so that he can’t work. The solution is for Karl to buy his father out of the farm, with his father reserving a room in the house and some pastureland, a cow, and so on. And because Karl is going to be the landowner, he has to get married, so he marries Kristina Johansdotter.

The land, farmed by generations of the family, has already been divided up as much as it can be, a sixteenth—seven acres—of the original plot. And Karl Oskar has taken on a lot of debt. His seven acres have been cleared of the many stones as much as they can be. And then there are several years in a row of bad weather for crops. Karl Oskar feels as if he’ll soon be facing foreclosure, so he decides to sell off his farm and emigrate to the U. S., the first person in his parish to do so, in the 1850’s.

Karl Oskar’s younger brother Robert is a teenager when he goes out to work as a hired man on another farm, the family plot already being divided as far as it legally can be. He is an independent boy who loves reading, and his employer mistreats his workers. Robert ends up running away, breaking his contract, which is illegal. He tells his brother he won’t return, and he has to hide from the law, so eventually his uncle, Danjel Andreasson, takes him to help on his farm. By then, Robert and his friend Arvid have decided that one day they will go to America. They just don’t have money to go now.

Danjel’s father was involved in the Åkian heresy and eventually institutionalized. Danjel has turned from these beliefs, we are to infer, but he has an experience and returns to them. One of the beliefs is that no church hierarchy is necessary for worship. Danjel collects a small group of followers who are the dregs of local society. He gets in trouble with the Lutheran church authorities for having illegal religious meetings in his house.

Once Karl Oskar decides to leave Sweden, he gets together with Robert to tell him, only to find out that Robert has already planned to go, too. Then Danjel and his followers decide to come, only most of his followers have been intimidated by the church and he only has Ulrika, a former prostitute, her daughter Elin, and Danjel’s wife and four children. Danjel is a kind and generous man, so he pays for Arvid’s passage, too, while Karl Oskar pays for his wife, three children, and Robert. At the last moment, a neighbor, Jonas Petter, joins them to get away from his wife.

These are the travelers, and although Karl Oskar is the main character, we periodically see things from the points of view of the others. Although the book is somewhat omniscient in viewpoint, it stays removed from these characters and concentrates on moving forward.

This first novel just gets (almost) everyone to America. It is interesting, and Moberg provides some historical background in the introduction. There is definitely a class divide here. The church authorities treat the farmers paternalistically, and the farmers are often referred to as peasants. On the ship the captain and sailors are disdainful. The farmers are definitely superstitious and gullible—even semi-educated Robert believes some ridiculous things about America that he reads in a book. Danjel is actually quite crazy and hallucinates angels onboard the ship. He tells his followers things like that they will be able to understand English immediately upon arrival in America, so they don’t need to try to learn onboard. He believes this because of some passage in the Bible.

Apparently, these few first immigrations (I’m not sure if the people are inventions or not) started a flood of immigration to America from this parish in Sweden, Ljuder.

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Review 2781: The Talnikov Family

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When The Talnikov Family was published in 1848, it stirred up quite the kerfuffle with its tale of an abusive family. In fact, it was suppressed. This novel is largely modeled on Panaeva’s own upbringing.

Natasha is part of a large family whose parents don’t pay attention to their many children except to abuse them verbally and physically. Natasha especially seems to be a target of her mother. The household also includes aunts—their father’s sisters—some of whom spy on each other and the children. When one of the boys goes to work for his uncle, his uncle seems to feel it’s his duty to beat him. And their mother hires a governess based on how strict she is.

The family seems to be upper class, but the girls are always cutting down clothing from the adult women or are padding out shoes that are adult sizes. They are poorly fed, because the governess likes to withhold food as punishment.

There isn’t much of a plot to this novel, just stories of superstition and mistreatment throughout the family. The novel doesn’t really have much of an arc, either, just recounts one appalling event after another, but it apparently began debates about such topics as gender, sexuality, and revolution.

Panaeva became a major force in the Russian literary world, running a literary journal that published works of the likes of Dostoevsky, Turgenev, and Tolstoy.

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Review 2771: Frost in May

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I am not at all religious, in fact, have always felt little interest in what bits of religion I encountered as a child. And I have no opinion about Catholicism. So, it’s going to be hard to write this review without sounding anti-Catholic. I promise I am not. But anti the way this school is run—yes.

Nanda Grey’s father is a recent convert to Catholicism, and Nanda also is eager to embrace it. So, her father has enrolled her in school at the Convent of the Five Wounds. It is a very strict school. Letters in and out are read, even to and from parents, censored and sometimes confiscated. Girls are not allowed to be in pairs. Pictures and text are cut out of storybooks, which in fact are only occasionally available. All the students’ reading seems to be on religious topics. Not much time is spent in the novel discussing school subjects, but a lot is spent on religious matters. In fact, for a while I wondered what else the children might be learning, if anything (but apparently some Latin is included, big surprise).

Nevertheless, Nanda is fervently involved in all this, even though she is periodically checked by Mother Radcliffe, who seems to find her willful. (The idea is to break the will, which I think is awful.)

It took me longer to read this short book than it should have because I got really tired of the religious bent to it. In fact, there are about six pages of Nanda’s meditations that she wrote during a retreat, and I completely skipped them. But I was appalled by some of the ideas of the school. For example, when Nanda is still quite young, she talks about how every child should be prepared and happy to die at any moment. It’s in a sermon by a priest, but it’s obviously part of the girls’ consciousness—and embraced. I found it shocking.

Throughout, there are events and incidents that show constant attempts to work against the girls’ natural likes and interests. Parts are assigned in a play not based on the girls’ interests or abilities but counter to them. And the lead, Nanda’s best friend Léonie, who is very good at her part, is removed from it because she’s enjoying it.

Nanda’s enthusiasm and devotion begin to encounter setbacks as she approaches the age of fourteen. Then she runs into a major obstacle, one that even affects her relationship with her beloved father.

The novel doesn’t have much of a plot but is more involved with the daily details of school life.

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Review 2768: #RIPXXI! The Methods of Lady Walderhurst

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It took me a while to find information on R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril (RIPXXI) for this year, since they are now only active on Instagram and Threads, where I am barely active or not at all, respectively. But here is my first book for this challenge, which runs from September 1 until the end of October.

When I was looking for an adult book by Frances Hodgson Burnett for my Classics Club list, I read that The Methods of Lady Walderhurst was a sequel to The Making of a Marchioness, which I enjoyed very much. When I finally began reading it, though, I became confused because it begins before Emily Fox-Seton’s marriage, and The Making of a Marchioness ends quite some time after it. Furthermore, it had been years since read TMofaM, but the book seemed very familiar.

As it turns out, this book was written as a sequel to the original Marchioness, which apparently ended with the betrothal. Later, the books were combined, and the Persephone copy that I read years ago must have been a combined edition. That explained to me why when I originally read the first book, it felt as if I was reading two—one a romance and one a dramatic suspense novel.

The Methods of Lady Walderhurst begins shortly before the wedding of the naïve, open Emily Seton-Fox, a well-born but poor errand runner for rich women, to Lord Walderhurst, a middle-aged marquis. Almost immediately, the subject of Alec Osborne comes up. Osborne is a distant relative who has considered himself Walderhurst’s heir. He has a disgraceful past, and Walderhurst dislikes him. He has married a Eurasian girl named Hester, and eventually they come to England on a visit from India.

Emily, now installed as Lady Walderhurst, is a friendly, guileless creature, and as she knows they are not well off, she talks her husband into letting them live in a vacant house on the estate. She does not realize how much Alec Osborne hates her.

Then Walderhurst has to travel to India on business, and Emily invites the Osbornes to move into the big house. She finds she is pregnant, and from that point Osborne begins plotting to kill her, working with Hester’s Indian maid. Hester herself is aware of his feelings but feels more ambiguous because of Emily’s kindness, which alternaturely infuriates her and softens her.

Where will it end?

From a romance novel in the first book, this story moves right into sensation novel territory. Although it describes Emily as childish and almost stupid, it really invokes the reader’s sympathy toward her. I enjoyed it just as much the second time. Warning: it does not portray its Asian characters in a positive light, but then again, there’s Alec.

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Review 2763: The Lark Shall Sing

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The other day a friend and I got on the topic of Elizabeth Cadell. She is an infallible read for a light-as-fluff experience. Most of her novels, written between the 1940’s and the 80’s, involve some kind of romance and sometimes a mild mystery. But she creates engaging characters.

This discussion reminded me that Cadell’s relatives had reprinted all her books—some not quite as good as others—so I decided to poke around and compare their list with the selection of mostly used books that I own. In poking around, I discovered that one of my favorites, Six Impossible Things, was not the second book about the Wayne family but the third! This meant, of course, that I had to buy the second and read all three. The Lark Shall Sing is the first. (Just an update: This whole discussion took place this spring, and I reread this book at the end of May. I just realized that although I read the first two, I forgot to read the third one. I’ll have to do that next.)

Lucille Wayne has come home to sell the family house, despite the recommendation to wait awhile by her godfather, Mr. Milward. She is from a large family now consisting of three young adult siblings and three child siblings. After their mother’s death, they stayed in the house a year, all except Nicholas, who was in the military, but Lucille convinced them to lease it for a year because they couldn’t afford it. Lucille had a job in Cornwall, and Roselle, having finished a secretarial course, was itching to get a job in London.

The year has elapsed, and the tenants, who once considered buying the house, were called back to South Africa. Lucille is engaged and plans to live with her fiancé Digby and his mother in Cornwall. Eleven- and nine-year-old Simon and Dominic are at school and live with their Aunt Mary, and ten-year-old Julia is at school and can spend the holidays with Lucille and Digby. Lucille has sent each of her siblings a letter instructing them to let her know which of their things they would like to keep.

Almost half the book is about them all coming home. Because as soon as they get Lucille’s letter, they all leave immediately for home, most of them with little money or preparation, to try to convince Lucille not to sell. On the way, the three children and Roselle are helped by three total strangers who somehow end up coming along. Roselle nearly faints when she gets off the train, and Miss Cornhill jumps off to help her, only to have her things go off in the train. Simon and Dominic arrive at the London station at rush hour, and Dominic is torn from Simon’s grasp and pushed onto the train while Simon can get nowhere near it. Simon is helped by Robert Debrett, who picks him up so he can signal to Dominic to continue, and drives him to the other end of the journey so he can meet Dominic’s train—in his limousine, because he’s a famous actor. Julia, exhausted and riding a bike too big for her, hits Italian brush salesman Pietro smack in the back and ruins his suit and brushes, but he puts her back on the bike and wheels her home. Nicholas arrives on a rickety motorcycle. Now, all everyone has to do is convince Lucille to keep the house.

This is a lovely book full of likable characters with some touching scenes, particularly the reunion between Simon and his dog, Long John. Of course, Lucille dislikes Robert on sight while Robert decides he’s sticking around to see if he can’t change her mind. What fun!

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Review 2759: Pastel

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A few months ago, I found there were several of Georgette Heyer’s books that I hadn’t heard of much less read. I managed to get ahold of a few, but so far, I’m finding there’s a reason why they haven’t been reprinted.

A puzzle about my copy of Pastel (not the one pictured) from Buccaneer Books is its listed copyright date. I wanted to see how old Heyer was when she wrote the book, so I looked at the copyright date, which says 1910! Heyer was only eight years old then! Her Wikipedia page says her writing career began in 1922, and a Google of the book’s publication date shows 1929, and judging by this cover, she was already well-known. So, where they got that date, I don’t know.

Now to the plot. Frances Stornaway loves her younger sister, Evelyn, but she can’t help feeling that she wants to be more like her. Frances is pretty, but Evelyn is beautiful. Evelyn does everything effortlessly, while Frances tries hard but doesn’t do as well. Evelyn is sparkling and outgoing and attracts people while Frances is shyer. Only their old friend Norman Acre doesn’t prefer Evelyn. He is in love with Frances, but Frances is too romantic to want to marry an old friend.

Frances’s godmother invites just Frances for a visit. Lady Twyford has been matchmaking, so Frances is met at the station by a man who looks to her like a Viking god, Oliver Fayre. She falls in love with him at first sight, and he seems to like her. However, when he comes to call on her, he meets Evelyn, and soon they are engaged. Frances keeps up a brave exterior so that no one knows she cares for Oliver.

Frances eventually decides she’s never going to be in love again. She is fond of Norman, so she decides to marry him.

This novel shows none of the sparkling wit of Heyer’s historical romances. I believe she was hoping to write a realistic book about a certain level of society. As in her other contemporary novels (not counting her mysteries), there are a few “intellectual” conversations meant to reflect what young people are discussing in those days. One was a pretty good satire of an avant-garde art scene, while the second was heaped with sexist assumptions made by both men and women.

But basically, the story follows Frances through very mundane scenes and conversations. The book is well written but predictable.

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Review 2753: Woman at the Window

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Although Elizabeth Burke leads a simple life, she enjoys it. She is looking forward to her new job in a bookstore when her brother-in-law Adrian calls. Her sister Anna has been told she won’t walk again. We’re never told what happened to her, but she has undergone two surgeries and refused a third that was supposed to either kill or cure her. Now Anna has asked Liz to come take care of her.

Liz is reluctant to go, citing a fear of losing her independence, but her issues are more complicated than that. And that’s one thing I liked about this book—everything is nuanced and complex, nothing black and white. Her friend and neighbor Lollie advises her not to go, but within a few pages, she has arrived at Anna’s home in Lakeville, New York.

There she finds a disturbing setup—Adrian is exhausted and seems to dislike her, having misunderstood her reluctance. Bunce, the cook and housekeeper, also shows dislike. Johnny, Adrian and Anna’s five-year-old son, avoids Anna’s room and spends most of his time by himself. Anna, who is charming to everyone else, is cold to Johnny. Adrian’s mother stays in her room all the time and doesn’t seem to notice Johnny much.

The crux of the novel is the relationship between the two sisters and between Anna and everyone else. Anna is charming and everyone loves her. Her bedroom receives visitors constantly. She talks affectionately to Liz but calls her her pony to other people. LIz has always adored Anna but previously Anna never seemed to heed her very much. She has seen Anna tire of people and doesn’t want her to tire of herself.

Liz is self-conscious about her looks and dresses badly while Anna is described as looking like Alice in Wonderland, fragile and beautiful. But Liz doesn’t understand her own qualities. There are a few instances, for example, when her intervention or comment helps another person, but she always attributes the help to Anna.

I disliked Anna. I could see that under her much-vaunted charm she sometimes makes knowingly hurtful remarks. Liz, although sometimes abrupt, is much more attuned to other people’s feelings. The situation becomes more intense when a friend gives Anna a mirror, to be put outside her house so that from the window she can see everyone who goes by. She becomes relentless about ferreting out people’s secrets, and she doesn’t seem to understand that she has no right to know them. Twice, she makes it appear that Liz has divulged someone’s secret when she has not and causes trouble by letting people know she knows their secret or by telling it to someone else.

Liz has a secret she doesn’t want Anna to discover. It’s that she’s fallen in love on sight with Huxley Reals, an employee of Adrian’s company. But Huxley is Anna’s devoted slave, coming constantly to visit her.

As Liz gets acquainted with the community, her influence begins to help particularly the people in their house. She pays attention to Johnny and he slowly opens up. She says something to get his grandmother to spend time with him. She cautiously makes some friends. But she believes she will be leaving, even continuing to pay rent on her old room, and everything in her life is overshadowed by her complex relationship with her sister.

I liked this book, which was published in 1951, a lot. I sympathized with plain, abrupt Elizabeth and felt she underrated herself and overrated Anna. I liked several other characters in the novel as well and thought it was an interesting character study.

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