Tag: England

Review 2657: Literary Wives! The Soul of Kindness

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Today is another review for the Literary Wives blogging club, in which we discuss the depiction of wives in fiction. If you have read the book, please participate by leaving comments on any of our blogs.

Be sure to read the reviews and comments of the other wives!

My Review

Although this novel has a main character, Flora, it is more of a community novel, about a group of people whose lives are affected by Flora. I was going to say by her actions, but Flora doesn’t really act.

Flora’s best friend Meg has never approved of how much Flora’s mother, Mrs. Secetan, cossets her, but in school Meg picks up the cossetting herself. Flora is a beautiful young woman, getting married to Richard in the first chapter, and people tend to worship her and try to protect her. Her influence is well-intentioned, but she doesn’t seem to understand that what she believes is good for other people may not be.

There’s her father-in-law, Percy, for one. He is a widower who drinks a bit too much and whom Mrs. Secetan thinks is uncouth. He has been happy with his mistress Ba for years, living apart, having his days to himself and his nights with Ba. And Ba, who owns a dress shop, likes the independence this gives her. But Flora thinks they will be happier married.

And Kit, Meg’s younger brother, adores Flora. She encourages him in his career as an actor even though he can’t act and is a financial burden on Meg.

And Meg loves her friend Patrick, whom everyone but Flora realizes is gay. Even when Richard tells her that, she can’t believe it and persists in wondering why they don’t get married.

If you ask Richard, he’s happily married, although he works a lot. Yet he occasionally seeks out the company of a neighbor, Elinor Pringle, whose playwright/activist husband leaves her alone almost all the time, even when he is home. Their friendship is entirely innocent, but when Flora learns about it, she can’t grasp that.

In fact, Flora, meaning well, is often cruel because she utterly fails to see anything from anyone else’s point of view. And only Kit’s friend Liz sees her for what she is. Everyone else thinks she’s wonderful.

I feel that Taylor is very observant of people’s foibles. As a realist writer, she doesn’t really deal in unmixed joy. She has a fine eye for complex personalities, though.

What does this book say about wives or about the experience of being a wife?

There are three marriages on view here—Richard and Flora’s, Percy and Ba’s, and the Pringles’, although we don’t get much perspective on the feminine half of the marriages except Elinor’s. From the beginning I didn’t forecast success for Flora’s marriage because she wasn’t paying attention during the groom’s speech and seemed more concerned about her doves. But it seems to be surprisingly successful. Yet, Richard is clearly getting something out of his friendship with Elinor that he doesn’t get from Flora. He is innocent of any intent to deceive, but Flora is beginning to doubt him by the end of the book, and I foresee trouble from that.

Percy was happier with Ba as his mistress, because he had time for himself. And perhaps Ba, although we don’t see much from her point of view, was happier, too.

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In the introduction to my edition, Philip Henshir states that Taylor felt it was better to be lonely than bored. Certainly, there are some lonely people in this book. Elinor Pringle is one of them. Between his activist meetings and his time spent writing bad plays, her husband Geoffrey leaves her almost entirely alone. She has little to do, so she is both lonely and bored. In this marrriage, we see only her dissatisfaction.

As for Flora, she seems perfectly happy as wife, mother, and interferer in other people’s business until her interference nearly causes a tragedy and she gets a letter from Liz. And then, at least to her, her husband seems to be meeting another woman.

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Review 2655: #NovNov25! A Pale View of the Hills

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A Pale View of the Hills, Kazuo Ishiguro’s first novel, is restrained and delicate and at first seems relatively straightforward. But towards the end, ambiguity sets in, forcing the reader to think back through the events of the novel. I read it for Novellas in November.

Etsuko is a Japanese woman, a widow living in England whose eldest daughter, Keiko, has recently committed suicide. Her younger daughter, Niki, is visiting from London, and a child they see on a walk together reminds Etsuko of her life in Nagasaki just after World War II. Particularly, she is reminded of her friendship with a woman named Sachiko.

Nagasaki is recovering from the bombing. Etsuko is married to Jiro only a short time, and she is pregnant. The other women in her apartment building talk about Sachiko and say she is unfriendly. She lives with her daughter Mariko in the only house left in the area, a rundown cottage.

Etsuko meets Sachiko when she expresses worry about Sachiko’s young daughter, who seems to be left alone quite often. Sachiko talks as if her daughter is the most important thing in her life, but she doesn’t worry when she is out late, and Mariko is a very strange girl. Also, we eventually learn that Sachiko has an American lover, Frank, who keeps promising to take them to America but then abandons them and drinks up all their savings.

For her part, Etsuko behaves like a dutiful housewife and entertains Jiro’s visiting father, whom she likes very much. But in the present time we understand that she left Jiro to move to England with Niki’s father.

The plot of the novel centers on Sachiko’s choice—whether to return to live with her rich uncle and cousin, who welcome her, to live the life of a traditional widow, or to go off with Frank. The girl Mariko detests Frank, by the way, and she is also concerned about the fate of some kittens.

There is a moment late in the book that made me doubt that I fully understood what was going on, and this ambiguity is not resolved. As a narrator, Etsuko is not altogether reliable, but whether this moment is a slip of self-identification or of something more sinister, readers have to decide for themselves. Certainly, by then the story has taken on a darker tinge.

Some readers may not care for this ambiguity and others, I understand, have come up with some far-fetched theories, but along with its elegiac pure prose, it is this moment that turns the novel into one you will remember and think about.

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Review 2649: #NovNov25! Seascraper

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I’m not quite sure what to make of this novella, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize but did not make the shortlist. It’s an atmospheric, closely observed story set in the 1950s that seems as if it is from an earlier time. I read it for Novellas in November.

Thomas Flatt is carrying on the difficult work followed by his grandfather, scraping the sea bottom at low tide for shrimp. He is the only man left doing this grueling job the old-fashioned way, with a horse and wagon, and the pickings are getting slimmer. He didn’t choose this path but was made to quit school to help his grandfather before he died. He lives with his demanding mother, but he has a secret desire to perform music at a local folk club.

One evening he comes home to find a stranger with his mother, an American named Edgar Acheson. He claims to be a movie director and produces as proof a cover of a movie magazine with a photo of his younger self. He wants to make a movie using the dismal fall sea as the setting, and he wants to pay Thomas, as an expert on the beach, to help him find locations. And indeed, the beach at low tide can be treacherous. He gives Thomas a check for £100, an astonishing amount, and arranges for him to take him with his horse and wagon that night.

And that’s pretty much all I want to say about the plot except that it holds surprises. Events happen that allow Thomas to explore feelings about the father he never met and to consider a new path for himself.

This novella was moody and minutely observes the details of Thomas’s exhausting job. It is the novella’s later events that leave me not knowing what to think about it.

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Review 2648: #ReadingAusten25! Persuasion

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Persuasion is a reread and re-review for me, and I see that my original post works just as well as it did before for a general review. So, I was trying to think of a topic I could discuss, and I decided to focus on its villains.

Maybe “villains” is too strong a word for this novel. The only outright villain in Austen that I can think of now is Mr. Wickham in Pride and Prejudice. But certainly Austen’s work features selfish people, people who wish ill to others, and even people who actively work against others. It strikes me that, although many of these characters are comic, they are less comic as she goes on. Is it my imagination, or are there also more of them?

First, there’s Anne Elliot’s entire family. Her father and sister Elizabeth are cold and snobbish and care only for appearances. Neither of them thinks Anne is of any account. And Sir Walter Elliot holds this high opinion of himself despite his having recklessly outspent his income, he and his daughter refusing to retrench where it might lessen their consequence. Above all, Sir Walter felt that Frederick Wentworth was beneath Anne when she fell in love with him seven years ago.

Anne’s sister, Mary Musgrove, is a little more bearable, but she is also self-consequential, as evidenced by her disdain of the Hayters, her husband’s cousins. However, she finds Mary useful (selfishly so, but Anne wants to be useful) and although she never considers Anne’s comfort, the contrast between Anne’s life in her father’s house and the one in Mary’s, with her nearby warm and welcoming in-laws and the visits with the neighbors, is striking. Of course, Anne has to bear Mary’s whining.

Then there is Mrs. Cox, Elizabeth’s friend, a poor widow and daughter to Sir Walter’s lawyer, so of inferior station. Pretty much everyone except Sir Walter and Elizabeth understands that Mrs. Cox means to marry Sir Walter if she can. However, she isn’t actively malevolent, and the only aspect we see of her is excessive agreeableness (sycophancy?). As she is living with two such people and probably endures many humiliations, I sort of feel sorry for her.

Now, if you don’t want spoilers, skip this part, because it’s about Mr. William Elliot, the young, handsome, well-mannered relative, Sir Walter’s heir, whom Anne encounters briefly in Lyme and meets later in Bath. Everyone thinks he and Anne will make a match (except Elizabeth and Sir Walter, who think he’s after Elizabeth), but Anne has one safeguard—she has been in love with Captain Wentworth since she was 19. Also, she instinctively feels that there is something about Elliot she doesn’t understand. He turns out to be the moral equivalent of Mr. Wickham, although he doesn’t do anything as dastardly. Still, his attentions to Anne get in the way for a while of her gaining an understanding with Frederick Wentworth.

These negative characters are maybe a bit more nuanced but also more seriously depicted than equivalent characters in her other books, where they are often comic. They’re not at all funny in this book, and notice how almost all of them are related to Anne.

Austen is certainly a master at showing us people’s foibles in a way that is absolutely believable.

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Review 2645: #RIP XX! Uncle Paul

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Why have I never heard of Celia Fremlin before? This book is great! When I first read a review of it last year, I could only find an expensive used copy, but another blogger this year (sorry, I don’t remember who) set me looking again, and I found an inexpensive set of three novels, including this one.

Meg gets an urgent message from her older sister Isabel asking her to drop everything and come see her at a vacation caravan site on the seaside. The telegram simply tells her that Mildred, their much older half-sister, is in trouble.

After talking it over with her friend, Freddy, Meg travels to the run-down caravan park to learn that Mildred’s problems have to do with Uncle Paul. Fifteen years ago, when Meg was a child, Mildred married Uncle Paul, and they spent their honeymoon in a cottage just a few miles away. It turned out, however, that Uncle Paul was not only already married but he was wanted for attempted murder of his wife for her money, and Mildred was also wealthy.

Now it is the end of Uncle Paul’s 15-year sentence. Mildred seems to think he will be coming to get his revenge, but she has perversely rented their old holiday cottage.

Both of Meg’s sisters seem permanently distressed. Isabel worries constantly about her husband Philip’s reaction to everything, while Mildred is often alarmed enough to scream. Meg talks Mildred into returning to town and looking for different lodging, which she finds for her at a comfortable hotel. She also finds Freddy there.

Her sisters’ alarm seems to be contagious, though. When she arrived at the cottage, she found Mildred all aquiver because she had been hearing footsteps—Uncle Paul’s footsteps. Isabel is hardly less nervous. And Meg learns that she may also be in danger, because she was the one who recognized Uncle Paul in an old newspaper.

Fremlin manages to work a good deal of suspense from what seems like trivial incidents, and from fears that Uncle Paul could be any of several men around. But just when I was deciding that everything was in their heads, things got going.

This book reminded me of a lot of Mary Stewart’s combinations of suspense and a bit of romance that I’ve always loved. The writing style is sprightly, the dialogue is witty, and the characters are vivid. Finally, Meg is an engaging, intelligent heroine.

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Review 2642: #RIPXX! Bats in the Belfry

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Bruce Attleton is a once-successful novelist married to the actress Sybilla Attleton. He has planned to meet up with his friend Neil Rockingham in Paris, but he doesn’t show up. When Rockingham finds that no one knows where Attleton is, he thinks of going to the police.

In the meantime, Robert Grenville, a journalist who wants to marry Attleton’s ward, Elizabeth Leigh, learns that a strange man with a beard named DeBrett might be blackmailing Attleton. He traces DeBrett to a weird studio with a tower, breaks in, and finds Attleton’s briefcase in the coal cellar.

Grenville goes to the police, and eventually they find a body plastered into what had been a niche in the wall. But the body has no head or hands, so is it Attleton or DeBrett, since both seem to be missing?

There’s no love lost between the Attletons, and both were unfaithful, so is that a motive for murder? Or has Attleton faked his own death? Did Grenville kill him since he was denying permission for him to marry Elizabeth? Or does it have something to do with his cousin, who recently died?

If this doesn’t sound complicated enough, the mystery gets more so as it continues. I guessed the motive, but the murderer was just one of many guesses.

I think I like Lorac’s rural mysteries better because of their atmosphere, although the studio is certainly creepy. Of course, Inspector Macdonald is going to solve the crime.

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Review 2639: #1925Club! #RIPXX! #HYH25! The Secret of Chimneys

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My second book for the 1925 Club is The Secret of Chimneys. I usually don’t enjoy Christie’s political mysteries as much, but this one is a romp. It’s got everything—a missing jewel, impersonations and secret identities, secret passages, an arch-criminal, Italian gangsters, kidnapping, and Balkan assassinations.

In Zimbabwe, Anthony Cade is leading a bunch of old ladies on a guided tour when he runs into Jimmy McGrath, an old friend. Jimmy is about to depart on a gold-mining expedition, so he asks Anthony to do two favors for him. Jimmy once saved the life of Count Stylptitch, prime minister of Herzoslavakia, and the Count had his memoirs shipped to Jimmy after his death with a promise of £1000 if he gets them to the publisher before a specific date. Jimmy offers Anthony a cut if he will take them to England for him. Jimmy also came by a collection of letters that someone has kept with the idea of blackmailing the writer. He wants to return them so that the writer, Virginia Revel, addressing the letter from Chimneys, will feel safe. Anthony takes on both tasks and returns to England, traveling under Jimmy’s name.

It turns out that lots of parties want the memoirs. England is about to help the heir to the throne of Herzoslavakia, Prince Michael, ascend to the throne after a period of anarchy. As a friend to the monarchy, England will get an important oil concession. But perhaps the memoirs say something embarrassing about Prince Michael. Anthony is approached by Baron Lolopretjzyl asking to buy them. Anthony refuses. Then he hands them on to a man who says he’s a representative of the publisher.

Next thing he knows, the Italian waiter at his hotel has stolen the packet of letters, along with the newspaper clipping he found about Virginia Revel. He goes to see her and gets to her house just after she discovers the body of the Italian waiter in her study. She explains that he had come the day before and even though she knew the letters weren’t hers, she gave him some money just to see what it would feel like and told him to come back the next day. She is due at Chimneys, so Anthony disposes of the body for her and follows her.

The reluctant Lord Caterham and his daughter Bundle, who also appear in The Seven Dials Mystery, are entertaining important political guests at Chimneys—Prince Michael and Count Lolopretjzyl; the millionaire Herman Isaacstein, who is involved in the oil deal; Mr. Fish, an American collector of books; and Virginia. Anthony arrives late at night and approaches the house only to hear a gun shot. The next morning, Prince Michael is found dead. Inspector Battle has been summoned, and Anthony recognizes the prince as the man he handed the manuscript to. Anthony’s boot prints have been found outside, so he has some explaining to do.

And in all this, I forgot about the jewel, the Koh-i-noor, which King Nicholas last had at Chimneys and hid somewhere before he returned to Herzoslavakia and was killed.

The novel has two engaging protagonists in Anthony and Virginia and is lots of fun. There are several characters in disguise, and although I guessed the identity of one of them as soon as I heard of that person, the others fooled me. I also didn’t guess at all who killed Prince Michael.

This is a ridiculously unlikely but entertaining early book by Christie. Note, though, that there are several anti-Semitic comments as unfortunately isn’t unusual for the time.

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Review 2632: #ReadingAusten25! Northanger Abbey

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Northanger Abbey is, of course, partially Jane Austen’s spoof of Gothic novels, and her heroine, Catherine Morland, is definitely a fan of them. But before that story line kicks in, Catherine gets to visit Bath in the company of family friends, Mr. and Mrs. Allen.

Catherine is not a well-informed girl and tends to be naïve and to take people as they present themselves. The first few days at Bath go slowly, because the Allens don’t know anyone. Catherine, however, has a dance with Henry Tilney and is inclined to like him. Then Mrs. Allen meets an old school friend, Mrs. Thorpe, and Catherine immediately becomes bosom pals with Isabella Thorpe.

It seems that Catherine’s brother James is friends with Isabella’s brother John, and Isabella has set her sights on James. Despite the vaunted friendship, Isabella and John (who is obnoxious enough that even Catherine notices it) do a great deal to disrupt Catherine’s growing acquaintance with Henry Tilney and his sister Eleanor in favor of foursomes with them.

Finally, Catherine is invited to stay with Eleanor and delighted to learn the Tilneys own an old abbey. Unfortunately, Catherine lets her taste for Gothic literature carry her away.

Catherine is one of Austen’s most serious heroines, trying to navigate society and do what is right but fallen in with people whose intentions aren’t as honorable. But she is adorable, and her naïve reactions are amusing. Henry is genuinely witty and just the man to teach her to examine her assumptions a little more thoroughly. All in all, this is one of the lightest and most fun of Austen’s works.

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Review 2627: #RIPXX: The Strange Case of Harriet Hall

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Since the beginning of September, I have looked for info about Readers Imbibing Peril, which I have participated in for years, since I couldn’t remember whether it started in September and went through October or started in October and went through November. Since I couldn’t find anything, I assumed it started in October. Well, it’s too bad that it actually started in September, because I missed marking three other mysteries for the challenge. It is usually advertised through Instagram, which I don’t use much.

So, despite this being my fourth book to qualify, it’s going to count as my first.

Well, there certainly are surprises in this book!

Amy Steer is a young woman looking for work, a necessity made worse by the empty state of her pockets and her landlady’s demands to raise her rent. She is looking through the want ads when she spots an ad looking for relatives of her father. She never knew her father, but she answers the ad and makes an appointment.

She meets a disturbing but seemingly kind woman who says she is Harriet Hall, Amy’s aunt. She says she is staying in a house in the country owned by friends and invites Amy to stay. She even gives Amy £100 to spend on nicer clothing.

On Monday, the day she is expected, nicely dressed Amy is on the train to her aunt’s. She meets a pleasant young man named Tony Dene who is getting off at the same station. They are getting along just fine until Amy tells him about Aunt Hall. Then he abruptly leaves the car. No one picks Amy up, so she is forced to walk five miles to Harriet Hall’s cottage, finding no one home. But the door is unlocked, so she stays.

The Denes lived with their uncle until he died the year before. Then Mary Dene, Tony’s mother, inherited everything and bought a property in the country. But soon Harriet Hall appeared. Mary has told her three children that Harriet is an old friend fallen on hard times. She lets Harriet live in the cottage rent-free, but Harriet comes over every day to sponge or take something. Tony and his sister Mollie hate her, but Lavvy, who is engaged to marry Sir Miles Lennor, only cares about her wedding.

Amy stays in the cottage Monday night, but Harriet never appears. Tony, who feels bad about abandoning her, drops by with his sister’s dog, and the dog’s barking at an old well in the back of the house causes Tony to remove the top. Inside the well is a body.

Tony calls the police, but once the body is identified as Harriet Hall and the police understand the relationship between her and the Denes, Tony is a suspect. He has no alibi because instead of driving home from the train station, he drove around aimlessly for hours.

Scotland Yard Inspector Collier is called in fairly quickly. Although more evidence comes out against Tony, Collier is reluctant to charge him. Then there is a shocking discovery followed by another death.

If Amy is supposed to be our heroine, we see remarkably little of her, spending more time with the Denes. However, she does get to be in peril.

There’s a little bit of a cheat here, as a person of interest doesn’t appear until page 150. But overall, we’re having so much fun we don’t care. Dalton’s books are well written and move along at a brisk pace. Some aspects of this one were obvious, but for 1936 the book seems fairly avant-garde.

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

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Review 2625: Funny Girl

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I have enjoyed some of Nick Hornby’s books very much, particularly some of his early ones, and others not so much. I have been watching the series Funny Woman, though, and when I learned it was based on this book, I thought I’d read it.

It’s the Swinging 60s, and Barbara Parker wants to make people laugh. Her relatives encourage her to enter the Miss Blackpool competition in hopes it will keep her in Blackpool instead of leaving for London. She wins, but when she realizes she’s supposed to participate in activities for a year, she decides not to accept. Soon, she is in London.

The novel follows her as she looks for work and a roommate, and finally an agent. The agent is more interested in sending her for modeling gigs, but she wants to act, so she gets him to send her for auditions. After some failures, she is lucky enough to come upon the writing team of Tony Holmes and Bill Gardiner, their producer Dennis Maxwell Bishop, and actor Clive Richardson. They are working on a different project that they’re not happy with, but they are so charmed by Barbara (now calling herself Sophie Straw) that they decide to write a show for her. Sophie’s offbeat humor makes her a sensation and the show Barbara (and Jim) a success. (Ironically, her character has her true name.)

I didn’t think this book was particularly funny, but it’s still a fun read that is full of detail about early British TV comedies (much of which I wasn’t familiar with), the craziness of London in the 60s, and the progress of our ambitious but likable heroine. Toward the end, it takes a turn toward conventional romance, but the ending lends perspective to everything. Although Sophie is engaging, a lot of this novel hangs on the existing synergy between the members of that original team and what happens when it inevitably cools off. And, of course, the difficulties of a young woman trying to make it in show business.

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