Tag: England

Review 1836: Rhododendron Pie

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Ann Laventie comes from an artistic and elegant family, all of whom are witty and have excellent taste. All, that is, except for Ann, who thinks they are wonderful but likes ordinary things and people. While her family disdains their solid Sussex neighbors and stays away from them, she likes them, especially the large and noisy Gayford family. Still, she feels she must be at fault.

A young film maker, Gilbert Croy, comes to stay and pays Ann a lot of attention. After Ann’s sister Elizabeth moves to London, Ann goes to visit her, convinced that she is in love with Croy and determined to come back engaged. But once in London, she begins to notice things. Her brother Dick’s sculptures, for example, all look alike. She absolutely adores a girl that everyone in her siblings’ group of friends shuns.

Rhododendron Pie is Margery Sharp’s first novel, and it’s quite funny as it explores the bohemian world of her upbringing versus the more mundane. Ann is an appealing heroine, and frankly I liked the Gayfords a lot better than the Laventies, especially in their reaction to Ann’s engagement. Her mother, though, an invalid who is mostly just a presence in the novel, gives a wonderful speech at the end. A fun one from Margery Sharp. I’m glad to have read it for my Classics Club list.

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Review 1833: Unsettled Ground

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Twins Jeannie and Julius Seeder live precarious but contented lives with their mother Dot in the cottage where they were born. At 51, neither has much education. Jeannie was kept out of school so frequently with rheumatic fever that she never learned to properly read and write. Julius only attended school until 15. Jeannie and her mother keep a market garden while Julius earns what he can through various odd jobs. Their mother has taught them to be independent and not borrow money.

When Dot dies unexpectedly, however, the twins are thrown by one thing after another. They had always understood that their cottage was theirs for life, rent-free, because their landlord, Mr. Rawlings, was partially at fault for their father’s horrendous death. However, almost immediately after Dot’s death, Mrs. Rawlings arrives to tell them they owe £2000 for back rent. The man they sell vegetables to informs Jeannie that Dot owed him money, and the husband of her mother’s best friend says she owed him £800. But they can find no money in the house. Then, right before the wake, a thuggish young man tells them they are being evicted in a week. They have no money for a funeral.

Although Jeannie finds a job doing a woman’s garden, she is paid by check and has no idea how to cash it. The electricity has been disconnected. But Jeannie and Julius are too proud to ask for help or let anyone know what’s going on.

This story about people living on the margins of society had me utterly rapt. I could not do anything but wonder how it would all end. Fuller has done it again with another powerful, absorbing novel.

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Review 1832: The Lantern Men

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Anthropologist Ruth Galloway has taken a job at Cambridge, and she and her daughter Kate are living with Frank, the American historian she met several books ago. She has made this move for a promotion but also to make a break from Harry Nelson, Kate’s father and her married occasional lover.

But fate pulls her back to Norfolk and the Saltmarsh, which she dearly misses. Nelson has got a conviction against Ivor March for two murders of beautiful tall blond women, but he thinks March murdered two more women whose bodies were never found. Although the two women’s bodies were found in the backyard of March’s girlfriend, Chantal Simmonds, and his DNA found on them, he has insisted he is innocent, and he has several acolytes who believe him.

Now March has told Nelson he will divulge the burial place of the other two women on the condition that Ruth perform the forensics rather than Ruth’s ex-boss Phil. Ruth agrees, and when she disinters the bodies, she finds three, not two.

The deaths seem to center around a group of people who used to live in a commune. The men called themselves the Lantern Men and went out to rescue lost women. But the legend of the Lantern Men is more sinister.

This series continues to be excellent, both in the mysteries and in the private lives of the recurring characters. Although Griffiths pulls a little bit of a fast one in the identity of one character, I didn’t hold it against her. My only regret is that when I read this book I only had one more book to read in the series until the next one came out.

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Review 1828: #ThirkellBar! Northbridge Rectory

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Cover for Northbridge Rectory

Northbridge Rectory is the tenth book in Angela Thirkell’s Barsetshire series and another reread for me, so I won’t repeat my review but simply provide the link to it. Instead I’ll comment on what I noticed this time through.

Everyone is much more actively involved in the war in this one, so it seems closer. Yet it seems far away, too, as we busy ourselves with the emotional lives of several characters.

I’m starting to notice Thirkell’s tropes, and one is for the infatuation of a young man for an older woman. In this case, it’s the young officer Mr. Holden for Mrs. Villars, the rector’s wife. Sometimes, these infatuations are handled sympathetically and in one case a few books ago, it was a mutual regard that added a bit of pathos to the plot. In this case, it is more comic, with Mrs. Villars not noticing at first or making herself respond in a practical way after feeling in herself a tendency to want to imitate the fragile flower that he thinks he worships. However, his comments about how tired she looks make her more and more irritated.

The other very touching story is the restrained love triangle of the two penniless scholars, the terrifying Miss Pemberton and the timid Mr. Downing, and the comfortable and warm Mrs. Turner. Miss Pemberton, who seems at first a grim bully with Mr. Downing under her thumb, turns out to have a much more sympathetic side.

I loved the depiction of Mrs. Turner’s nieces, Betty and “the other girl,” and their swains, Captain Topham and Mr. Grieves. And I don’t know how Thirkell does it, but even though Betty has as many verbal tics as the voluble Mrs. Spender, Betty seems delightful while Mrs. Spender is just plain irritating.

Not only am I finding these novels just as delightful as I go on, but I’m also finding them deeper (in a light way) and more touching. We get just a sentence about the (backwards spoiler for Cheerfulness Breaks In) survival of Lydia Merton’s husband at Dunkirk, since Thirkell with this book is dealing with other characters, but it cheered me right up.

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Review 1821: Berry and Co.

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I hadn’t heard of Dornford Yates until a friend gave me a copy of Berry and Co. Apparently, Yates wrote a series of books about the same characters called the Berry books. This one was published in 1920.

The characters are Boy, the narrator, a major but certainly no longer serving; his sister Daphne, who is married to their cousin, Berry; and their cousins Jonah and Jill, all wealthy young people who live together at Whiteladies in Hampshire.

There isn’t really much of a plot to Berry and Co. In fact, I would have taken it for a collection of short stories except that it is clearly labeled a novel. Each chapter consists of a little adventure or some sort of prank, and the only recurring plot has to do with Boy flirting with a series of young women until he finally settles on one.

The novel is certainly meant to be funny and light-hearted, similar perhaps to Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster series. Now, I do love a Jeeves and Wooster, but I did not much enjoy Berry and his pals. In fact, the reason I bring in the Jeeves books is because comparing them helped me understand why I liked one much more than the other.

Of course, Bertie Wooster and his pals are always getting themselves in ridiculous situations or pulling pranks similar to the ones in this novel. Here’s the difference. Bertie is essentially brainless, but he is also good-hearted. Almost all of his tangles result from him trying to help out a similarly dim-witted pal.

Berry and his friends, however, are highly intelligent, and their pranks tend to be mean-spirited. Sometimes, they are aimed at nasty characters, but other times these idle people, who have to be pushing 30 by 1920, just don’t like the way someone looks or is dressed. In other words, it’s a class thing.

I didn’t enjoy most of these jokes, which seemed juvenile, like something they would have done in college. Further, the zippy narration is periodically interrupted by rather florid descriptions of the scenery that don’t seem to belong to the same novel.

The characters, with the exception of Berry, aren’t very distinctive. They all engage in the same kind of banter, and a lot of time is spent with them rolling in laughter or trying to suppress it. Frankly, my favorite character was Noddy, a Sealyham terrier with a lot of personality.

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Review 1815: The Black Arrow

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I occasionally collect children’s books, mostly those with good illustrations, and a few months ago I started thinking about the books that used to be readily available, all adventure stories by various authors but illustrated by N. C. Wyeth. I decided to look for some of those, and the ones I bought were both by Robert Louis Stevenson, Kidnapped (my personal favorite) and one I’d never read, The Black Arrow.

Young Dick Shelton has lived under the wardship of Sir Daniel Brackley for most of his life and is loyal to him even though he seems to switch sides in the Wars of the Roses rather frequently. But mysterious attacks against his men by a group calling themselves the Black Arrow begin to awaken Dick to feelings of just resentment against Sir Daniel. For he has used the war and his position to cheat people out of their property.

Dick is on his way from Sir Daniel’s encampment when he encounters a boy named Jack Matcham whom he met in the camp. The boy (who everyone but Dick can see is really a girl) asks Dick for his help to get to Holywood. Dick helps Jack, but they fall back into Sir Daniel’s hands. Once there, Dick begins asking about the death of his father, for he has heard rumors that Sir Daniel was responsible.

This is an entertaining adventure story, and I’m not sure why it isn’t as highly regarded as Treasure Island (which has never been one of my favorites). The only thing I can think of to make it not as popular is the archaic speech Stevenson uses, which, while probably not that authentic, did not strike me as inauthentic, if that makes any sense. The novel features plenty of action, some appealing characters and some villains, and Richard of Gloucester (eventually to become Richard III) even makes an appearance as a young man.

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Review 1811: The Blue Sapphire

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Julia Harburn is sitting on a bench in Kensington Gardens waiting for her fiancé when a young man sits down beside her and tells her he is on a business trip from South Africa and doesn’t know anyone in London. He is perfectly polite and friendly, but when the fiancé, Morland Beverley, arrives, Julia can tell Morland isn’t pleased.

Julia is taken aback, then, when she comes home one day to find the man, Stephen Brett, having tea with her stepmother. But this isn’t a tale of a stalker—it’s the story of how Julia finds herself.

Julia was close to her mother, who died when she was younger. She has never felt that her father paid attention to her. In fact, he’s always been quiet and depressed. Since he remarried, she has felt in the way, and her stepmother encourages her to move out and find a job. Julia finally finds a room with an eccentric but friendly landlady, who gets her a job in a hat shop. Morland isn’t very happy with her decision, but he has been delaying their wedding until he gets a partnership in his father’s firm, and anyway he is in Scotland golfing.

Julia’s parents are away in Greece when she gets a letter from Scotland from an uncle she didn’t know she had—her father’s brother. He says he is ill and wants to see her, so she goes, even though Morland is very much against her doing so. Thus begins an even greater adventure for her.

This novel is just what you expect from D. E. Stevenson: a heroine who didn’t know she had it in her, some light romance, some self-discovery, and some entertaining characters. Even though I could foresee the result of the romantic angle from the first pages, it didn’t make reading any less enjoyable.

I received a copy of this book from the publishers in exchange for a free and fair review.

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Review 1810: #ThirkellBar! Cheerfulness Breaks In

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It’s been so long since I read Cheerfulness Breaks In that it wasn’t as I remembered. Still, it was funny and affecting. It is also the first of Thirkell’s Barsetshire series to be set during the war.

The novel begins with the wedding of Rose Birkett, whose shenanigans occupied Summer Half, set three years earlier. Rose is still as selfish and stupid as she is beautiful, and her parents are terrified until the last minute that the wedding won’t go off. Thankfully, it does, due to the efforts of the groom, Lieutenant Fairweather. During the wedding, we encounter many of the characters who have appeared before in the series, particularly Lydia Keith.

No longer a bouncing 16-year-old, Lydia at 20 has stayed at home to help her father run his estate and to care for her mother, who is in poor health. As the novel begins in the summer of 1939, she is soon also involved in other activities related to the war. However, unlike her friends Geraldine and Octavia, she is too bound by her home situation to join the nursing profession.

Many of her friends, including her good friend Noel Merton, view her efforts with sympathy and concern. He notices how she has worked to become kinder and not quite so utterly frank, but appears not have noticed that she is in love with him.

This novel is full of the many activites that evolve from the war, but the amusing conversations and other events continue, as the full brunt of the war does not seem to have hit the community yet. Other couples get engaged, but in the romance department, the novel is mainly concerned with Lydia and Noel, each of whom thinks the gap in their ages is making the other uninterested.

I remembered Cheerfulness Breaks In as one of my favorite of this series, and although its plot is somewhat different than I remembered, it is lovely, funny, and touching. As an homage to Trollope’s series set in the same fictional county, I have been noticing more and more last names from the older series as I read along.

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Review 1807: Murder by Matchlight

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It’s 1945, and London is in blackout during the period of the Blitz. Nevertheless, Bruce Malling is out for a stroll in Regent’s Park. He is sitting quietly on a bench near a footbridge when he sees a man pop over the railing and hide under the bridge. A few minutes later, another man strolls onto the bridge, calling out to ask if anyone is there. By the brief flicker of matchlight as the man lights his cigarette, Bruce sees another face above his. Then he hears a thud. Bruce runs up to find the man dead and then catches the other man as he comes up from under the bridge and tries to run away.

A police constable arrives on the scene as does a doctor, who pronounces the man dead. His ID identifies him as John Ward, but when Inspector MacDonald inquires about him, he can find no one who knows anything about him except that he was Irish, was charming, and had no visible means of support. Inquiries at his previous residence then reveal that he was not John Ward at all.

This novel is full of colorful characters that MacDonald meets at the victim’s boarding house. It is an interesting puzzle with lots of secrets. Being part Irish myself, I didn’t appreciate the aspersions cast on them in one passage, but otherwise I enjoyed this mystery.

I received a copy of this novel from the publishers in exchange for a free and fair review.

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Review 1806: Harlequin House

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When Mr. Partridge decides he needs a holiday, he just walks off from the Peters Lending Library, leaving it closed. He may be an older man with a shape like an egg, but he is lawless. Wandering around the seaside town of Dormouth Bay, he spots Lisbeth Campion and follows her. Lisbeth is the type of girl that men are always following. He not only follows her, he has tea with her and her aunt.

Later that night, he sees Lisbeth getting into a car with a man. He gets in the back. Finding they have landed in London at midnight, he learns that Lisbeth has been looking for her brother, Ronnie, who through a misunderstanding, of course, has been in prison for delivering cocaine and is just out. Ronnie claims he thought it was baking powder.

Although Lisbeth is engaged to a fine, upstanding captain in the army, Captain Brocard wants to ship Ronnie to Canada with a small pension, as he has never successfully kept a job. Lisbeth has other plans, though: to rehabilitate Ronnie so that the captain returns to find him an upstanding citizen with a job.

Using Mr. Partridge’s five pounds, the three find a modest lodging in Paddington and set out to find jobs. And they find very odd ones.

Harlequin House is a charming, silly comedy. It made me laugh.

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