The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel

The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For collects the best of twenty-one year’s worth of Alison Bechdel’s Dykes to Watch Out For comic strip. The strip mainly follows the life and times of a group of lesbian friends in an unspecified location in the USA. But as time passes, some straight and/or male characters are also introduced.

Over the course of nearly four hundred strips, we get intimately acquainted with the politically conscious and slightly neurotic Mo (I think of her as the main character, but possibly this is mainly because she looks like Bechdel herself); with Clarice and Toni, an interracial couple who are the first to consider becoming parents; with Lois, Sparrow and Ginger, who share a “home for wayward adults”; with the sarcastic and somewhat pretentious but ultimately loveable Sydney; with Jezanna, the owner of Madwimmin Books, a feminist-lesbian bookshop, and the rest of her staff; etc. These are the regular characters, but the cast also includes transgender teens, a very unconventional straight couple, Mo’s friends’ parents, and so on.


(Mo and Sydney with their cats, Vanessa and Virginia. It’s all about the details.)
Bechdel herself has referred to Dykes to Watch Out For as “half op-ed column and half endless serialised Victorian novel”, which is pretty much the perfect description. The fact that we follow the characters for so long makes it inevitable that we’ll grow immensely attached to them; the op-ed column bit refers to the fact that they’re all highly engaged with the social and political issues of their time. They’re political activists who rarely miss a LGBTQ demonstration; they debate how to conjugate their ideals and their daily lives; they constantly scrutinize race and gender and how these impact their lives; they work at domestic abuse shelters, or alternative bookshops, or as college professors, or as environmental layers; they examine their own prejudices and their privilege; they feel betrayed when one of them gets involved with a man and then realise that this reaction goes again everything they believe in; they write theses on how literary representations of hypersexual lesbians and women of colour contrast with their actual experiences of desire; they ponder monogamy and polyamory, etc. And whatever else they’re doing, they never lose the ability to laugh at themselves.

While these may sound like issues that are very specific to a community of liberal lesbian feminists, the main appeal of The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For is actually how very universal and how human it is. Anyone who struggles to be the best person they can be and to live according to their ideals, whatever these may be, will probably be able to relate to these characters and their conflicts. Bechdel says in her introduction to this volume (which is itself a brilliant comic) that her goal in writing the strip was, first of all, to make lesbians visible; and secondly, to “explode essentialism” by portraying them as complex and diverse human beings. She succeeded brilliantly – Mo and company are nothing if not completely human.

As you can tell by now, I grew to really love these characters, to the point that I was very depressed when the book ended because that meant I wouldn’t get to spend more time with them. What makes them all so loveable is exactly that they’re not perfect. They make mistakes, and yet they do the best they can. Take Mo, for example. She was the character I could relate to the most, and not just because she eventually goes to library school. This is embarrassing to admit, but I could see a lot of myself in her least appealing traits. Mo is, to put it bluntly, a whiner. She talks too much and doesn’t listen nearly enough. She tries her friends’ patience by going on and on about her own worries and rarely ever remembering that they might have troubles of their own. The curious thing, though, is that it would be immensely unfair to call her self-centred. A lot of what keeps her up at night are social problems that don’t affect her directly. So in the end, despite the fact that she tends to neglect those who are closest to her, it’s difficult to think of her as self-absorbed or to refrain from loving her.


(Click to enlarge)
One thing that occurred to me as I read The Essential Dykes To Watch Out For was that it’s possible that someone with different political inclinations than my own will see the same Keep Out neon-signs here that I saw in Narnia. It’s easy for those who care about feminism, the environment, diversity, etc. to feel right at home in this book. But anyone who holds views contrary to those the characters constantly voice might feel alienated. With this in mind, I thought it was interesting that towards the end of the book Bechdel introduced a new character, Cynthia, whom she describes as the “stalwart voice of educated, right-wing sensibility in a sea of bleeding-heart, knee-jerk liberals.” Cynthia is one of Ginger’s students, and though she starts out as a voice of dissent, she turns into an interesting person in her own right. Of course, it’s very easy for me, someone whose sensibilities are very close to those of Mo and her friends, to point to a sole character and to say that her existence means that the book is not, in fact, alienating. But Cynthia’s presence is at least a sign of Bechdel’s willingness to humanise her ideological opponents, and that’s something I really appreciate.


(Click to enlarge)
They read it too:
Nothing of Importance
Athyrium filix-femina (The Lady Fern)

(Have I missed yours?)

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The Folk Keeper by Franny Billingsley

Corinna Stonewall – Corin to the world – is a fifteen-year-old orphan. Her choice to dress as boy was a sort of survival strategy, and it helped her conquer a position as the Rhysbridge Foundling Home’s Folk Keeper. The Folk are savage and constantly ravenous underground creatures that have to be kept appeased with gifts of food, lest their turn their displeasure to the household, the livestock, or the crops. Being Folk Keeper is a dangerous position, but it’s one that brings Corinna power, and that allows her to escape the life of servitude that would otherwise be her lot.

Corinna’s life changes when one day a Great Lady sends for her and tells her that her husband, Lord Merton, specifically requested that she be taken to their house in Cliffsend, one of the Northern Isles. She accepts on the condition that she become their new Folk Keeper, and off they go – towards the fiercer Folk of the North; towards, Finian, Lady Alicia’s son; and towards old secrets that will explain why Corinna always knows the exact time, why she lacks motor coordination and keeps stumbling about, or why her hair always grows two inches while she sleeps at night.

The Folk Keeper is a dark retelling of the selkies’ legends, but I won’t tell you how exactly these elements fit into the story, as that would spoil half the fun. Corinna’s somewhat abrasive narrative voice, the very original imagery, and the atmospheric storytelling make this a retelling unlike any other I’ve read before. Actually (and yes, I realise I’m about to contradict myself), I was somewhat reminded of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Tombs of Atuan, which is a huge favourite of mine. Both books have a similar sort of ambience; both are largely set in dark underground places; and both are, among other things, narratives about young girls who have reached puberty and have to confront the changes in their bodies, the difficulties in facing the world as women and sexual beings, and the fact that whether their want to or not, they are actors in age-old power struggles.

As I read The Folk-Keeper, I was also reminded of a quote on fairy tales I read at Jenny’s blog recently. In her review of On The Nature of Fairy Tales by Max Luthi, Jenny said , “Luthi notes that relationships and feelings are externalized rather than explained in emotional terms. Relationships and connections between characters are tangible: a princess will slip something into her lover’s pocket before he leaves. A girl who walks a long way in search of something or someone will wear through three pairs of iron shoes, her weariness represented rather than described.” I think this is very true. It’s something that might be misread as lack of subtlety, but for me it’s just a different mode of storytelling altogether. I also think this might be a part of the reason why fairy tales are sometimes dismissed as lacking depth and complexity and Not Being About Human Concerns At All, mostly by people who aren’t used to reading them.

There’s a lot of subtext in The Folk Keeper – about gender, about power, about female sexuality, and about the changes in how Corinna experiences her identity as she grows up. But rather than being overt, this is mostly expressed in the imagery, especially in the transformation imagery in the second half of the novel. This use of symbolism, and the opportunities it gives authors to express things that the language we use is not quite prepared to tackle directly, is actually one of the main reasons why I love fairy tales and fantasy so much.

I said before that Corinna’s tone was quite abrasive, and this is true. While I can see this putting off some readers, it was actually part of why I found The Folk Keeper so engaging. Corinna is a very angry young woman, and with good reason: that’s simply the demeanour she needed to adopt to be able to survive. This is often the case with boys and girls growing up in difficult circumstances, but with girls in particular it’s often seen as some sort of horrifying tragedy, and a perversion of their “natural” gentleness and tenderness. Hooray for unapologetically angry protagonists (who have good reasons to be angry, like Corinna does).

So: we have a uniquely atmospheric story, an original heroine, folk tale elements galore, and plenty of gender subtext. Add a fully-realised fantasy world that seems larger than what fits into the book, and what’s not to love? Please write more books, Ms Billingsley. I’ll be keeping an eye on you.

(Have you posted about this book too? Let me know and I’ll be glad to add your link here.)

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A Monstrous Regiment of Women by Laurie R. King

A Monstrous Regiment of Women, the second book in the Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series, begins right after Christmas 1920, with an elated Mary Russell counting the days until her twenty-first birthday - when she’ll finally come into her fortune and be able to get rid of her guardian, an aunt with whom she doesn’t get along. However, her old friend Sherlock Holmes puts a damper on her good spirits when he makes a direct and somewhat mocking reference to the subtle change in her feelings towards him, which has been taking place for quite some time.

While she’s busy avoiding Holmes, Mary Russell meets Margery Child, a very charismatic woman who preaches at The New Temple of God and mixes unlearned theology with unapologetic feminism. Mary, who is herself a theological scholar at Oxford, is impressed that Margery intuitively grasped what has been the focus of her work for some years. But as much as she admires this woman and the work her church is doing (which includes creating women’s refuges, working with prostitutes, and generally making sure that pre-WWI feminism doesn’t lose its momentum now that some women have got the vote), she’s also slightly suspicious of her. And her suspicious deepen when she realises that several wealthy women in Margery’s inner circle have died in unusual circumstances.

The title A Monstrous Regiment of Women is of course a reference to John Knox’s 1558 misogynist diatribe, The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women. This, along with the quotes that precede each of the novel’s chapters, help set its tone perfectly. More than the mystery itself (though to be honest, the two are hard to separate), what interested me here was the insightful analysis of a particular moment in history – the “what now?” that followed the accomplishment of the suffragists’ goals, and the several different ways people reacted to that accomplishment. Interestingly enough, it’s a situation not unlike the one we face today, with plenty of men and women convinced that any further work towards gender equality is absolutely superfluous at this point.

When I expressed my disappointment in the Maisie Dobbs series a while ago, Teresa told me I should just read the second Mary Russell book instead, and she was absolutely right. The two books tackle some of the same terrain – the issue of the “surplus women”, the wounds left by the Great War, the trouble that returned wounded soldiers had adjusting to post-WWI society, the way the War eroded traditional gender roles and class divisions, etc. – but Laurie R. King’s style agrees with me so much more. It certainly helps that I love Mary Russell, and that she feels completely real to me in a way Maisie Dobbs never did.

Something I was very curious about (spoilers warning, I guess, though I think it’s difficult to begin the series without knowing this) was seeing how Laurie R. King would handle the change in Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes’ relationship. I don’t mind age differences when both people involved are adults, so that wasn’t an issue for me. But knowing Mary and Holmes eventually become a couple did seem strange at first, because in The Beekeeper’s Apprentice Holmes is almost a father-figure. And though age doesn’t matter in itself, there seemed to be some potential here for a power imbalance that I’d like to see addressed and explored.

Before I go any further, I should confess that my mental point of reference here was Harriet Vane, partially because I unconsciously compare all mysteries to Dorothy L. Sayers’; partially because the fact that those books tackle the intrusion of power dynamics and gender politics into intimate relationships with such precision and insight is the very reason why I adore them so. To be in a relationship with someone, you need to be able to feel comfortable with being vulnerable and fully unguarded around them. But in certain social circumstances – and in the 1920’s and 1930’s, this was surely common for educated, independent women – you can’t help but wonder if your vulnerability betrays everything you stand for ideologically. It doesn’t have to, I don’t think, but this was a serious conflict, and I appreciate books that take it seriously.

Mary doesn’t struggle with this as much as Harriet Vane did. I could dismiss this as the intrusion of a modern sensibility into the story; a sensibility which is the result of a world in which this is no longer as big an issue. But I think Laurie R. King is far too good a writer, and far too careful in her research, for that to be the reason. And as I said above, she does explore the power dynamics between Mary Russell and Holmes. It could simply be that Mary’s life has been very different; that she doesn’t have Harriet’s history of having been put in a position of powerlessness; that she has the absolute confidence of the young. In any case, while she doesn’t take kindly to being protected, she doesn’t seem to think it possible that she would ever be cornered into accepting anything other than a full partnership. I do like her confidence, and I hope that as the series progresses, she will continue to face the odd looks the world will inevitable give her and Holmes with her strong will and biting irony.

A few words on the theological aspect of the novel: the work Mary does at Oxford involves analysing translations of the Bible and studying the way feminine imagery and references to God in the feminine have been erased over time. I don’t know much at all about theology, but I thought this was extremely interesting. Also, the fact that King herself has an MA in Old Testament Theology gives me faith in its accuracy. I also appreciated that both Mary’s scholarly work and Margery’s sermons were presented in a very non-sensationalist, non-Da Vinci Code sort of way.

Interesting bits:

Holmes took out an electric torch and a key and inserted the latter into a tiny fissure in the wood. With a low click, one section of the wall lost its solidity. He set his shoulder against it, we slipped into the resultant dark space, and he pushed the door to and bolted it. With his torch, he indicated the way, undid and locked another door, led me up numerous stairs, then through a shadowy office and into a mahogany wardrobe hung with musty overcoats. We unfolded from the back of it into a space that smelt of coffee and tobacco and coal fire and the ineffable essence of books.

(“The ineffable essence of books:” I just love this description so much.)

“May I tell you a story, Inspector? It is not a long story, nor a pleasant one, and the amount of guesswork that has gone into it would horrify Holmes, but elements of it I know to be the truth.” He eased back into his chair with an “at last!” expression on his face.
“It begins with the war and the perfectly appalling number of young men who were killed and crippled during those four years. At the beginning of the War, there were around six million men in this country of a marrying age, between twenty and forty. By the end of 1918, nearly a million of them lay dead. Another two million were wounded, half of them so badly damaged they may never recover. Where does this leave some two to three million healthy young women who would ordinarily have married healthy young men and spent the rest of their lives caring for babies and husbands? The papers refer to them—us!—as ‘surplus women’, as if our poor planning left us here while the men were removed. The women who ran this country, and ran it well, from 1915 to1919, have now been pushed from their jobs to make way for the returning soldiers. Strong, capable women are now made to feel redundant in both the workplace and the home, and no, Inspector, this is not just suffragette ranting; this is the basis of our case…”

Reviewed at:
Susan Hated Literature
Age 30+: A Lifetime of Books
A Work in Progress
Books and Movies

(As always, let me know if I’ve missed yours.)

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The Sunday Salon – The Ones I’m Leaving Behind

(If only this were the half of it...)

My dear friends, I need your help. In a little over two months I’ll be packing my bags and moving away, and this means I won’t have regular access to the 135 books on my TBR pile for a year. Naturally I want to read as many of them as possible in the next two months, but my reading always slows down during the summer, so I know I won’t be able to get to nearly as many of them as I’d like.

Another problem is that I can’t decide what I want to read. The closer the date of my move gets, the more all these books begin to sound incredibly appealing. I’m fairly sure that if I wasn’t going anywhere I wouldn’t be in the mood to read any of them, and that the moment I move away, they’ll all become exactly what I’m craving. Unless, that is, the library and used bookshops at my new location make me forget about them completely, which is what I’m sort of hoping will happen.

Anyway, this is where you come in. If you’ve got a few minutes to spare, I’d be incredibly thankful if you clicked over to my LibraryThing and told me what I need to read before September. Any reason is valid: “I loved this book and think you would too”, “I’m on the fence about this book and would like to hear your thoughts so I can decide if it’s for me”, “I sent you this book ages ago and I can hardly believe you haven’t read it yet, you ungrateful creature” (it’s mortifying to think how many of you actually have reasons to say this), etc.

Your help will be very much appreciated. Based on what you tell me, I’ll make myself a summer reading list. I promise to read the three most voted books for sure; if there aren’t three most voted books, I’ll randomly draw three titles and read those.

This year my summer reading plans will be restricted by my move, but to those of you who’ll have a bit more reading freedom in the upcoming months, have you made any reading plans for the summer? If so, what are they? Or will the summer be all about following your reading whims?

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1930's, Middlemarch and Diana Wynne Jones

The 1930's Mini-Challenge isn't over for another three weeks, but I thought that now might be a good time to do a link round-up of the first twenty books reviewed for the challenge. Hopefully this post will encourage those of you who haven't been able to read anything yet to do so before the 18th of July. Three weeks is plenty of time, and you know you want to! Once the challenge is over, I'll do another link round-up, and also (bribery ahoy!) draw a winner who'll get to pick one of the books reviewed.

Andreea at Passionate Booklover has been our most prolific participants to date. She's been reading her way through the Bloomsbury Group reissues, and thought that Rachel Ferguson's The Brontës Went to Woolsworth was a book that perfectly "captured a time that is long forgotten and an atmosphere full of charm and warmth".

Andreea also read Mrs Tim of the Regiment by D.E. Stevenson, which she found "engaging and lovely", and Miss Hargreaves by Frank Baker, which she declared "a hilarious book about an unusual friendship; it’s a wonderful story about creativity, the power of imagination and the its consequences." Doesn't that sound wonderful?

Last but not least, Andreea read the popular Persephone title Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day: "Miss Pettigrew is an irresistible book full of memorable and naughty characters, witty dialogue and wonderful adventures. This novel is humorous, charming and intelligent and I loved everything about it."


Speaking of Persephone, Shonna Froebel at Canadian Bookworm read Cheerful Weather for the Wedding by Julia Strachey and found it "an amazing little book, and hugely enjoyable"; while I read and loved Lady Rose and Mrs Memmary by Ruby Ferguson.

The 1930's were a decade in which several memorable classics were written. Susi at The Book Affair read P.L. Travers' Mary Poppins, but sadly she wasn't too impressed: "Overall," she says, "the book had its perks, but it also had many downfalls." Jessica at Park Benches & Bookends had much better luck with Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald: "The overall impression that I got was that Fitzgerald really did pour everything he had into this novel with a stunning result. " And Mel U at The Reading Life was also impressed with Virginia Woolf's The Waves: "There is much wisdom in this work. Many passages to marvel at and savor abound in The Waves".

Moving on to more obscure classics, Gavin at Page 247 loved Stella Gibbons' Cold Comfort Farm, which is also a big favourite of mine: "Filled with dramatic and over-wrought language, all perfectly tongue in cheek, Cold Comfort Farm is great fun to read." Violet at Sill Life With Books read E.M. Delafield's The Diary of a Provincial Lady, but she wasn't a big fan: "I’m probably being way too hard on what is, essentially, a fluffy read. But, I did get tired of her moaning on about the lack of money, which was largely brought about by her own fiscal irresponsibility."

The 1930's are also known as one of the decades of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, so it's no wonder that many of our participants have been reading classic mystery novels. Birdie found the plot of The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett "so lovely and complex with everyone double-crossing everyone else, and Spade keeping his balance like a tightrope artist". Margot at Joyfully Retired had this to say about Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers (which happens to be my favourite read of the year so far): "There was no murder involved which was refreshing. There was still plenty of intrigue to keep any mystery buff satisfied. I loved the dialogue and the descriptions of the school and the various characters. It definitely had that 1930s feel to it." She also read Murder On the Orient Express by Agatha Christie, to which she gave an A+.

Moving away from mysteries, Fence at Susan Hated Literature reviewed Address Unknown by Katherine Kressman Taylor, an epistolary novel from 1938 that sounds incredibly intriguing: "There is such a tendency for people to believe that the Nazis were evil monsters. But they weren’t, they were simply people, like any other people. And they did such terrible terrible things. As most humans are capable of under certain circumstances. I think this comes across quite brilliantly in this novel." I can't wait to get my hands on this book, as I tend to love novels that defy the simplistic notion that we can just dismiss those who commit horrific acts as monsters.

Helen at She Reads Novel reviewed I'll Never Be Young Again, one of Daphne du Maurier's early novels, and said, "This would probably not be the best Daphne du Maurier book for a newcomer to begin with, but it’s a good choice for someone who wants to venture away from Rebecca and read one of her less popular novels." And Buried in Print made me want to read Winifred Holtby’s South Riding by saying "...details make the stuff of good stories in the hands of a novelist like Winifred Holtby."

Violet read Esther’s Inheritance by Sándor Márai, a Hungarian novel from 1939 that has been recently translated into English: "I enjoyed Esther’s Inheritance, although I did find it a bit frustrating: if I were Esther, I would have kicked Lajos to the kerb, because he (and fascism) were nasty bits of work."

Finally, don't forget that books that aren't from the 1930's but are set then also count. Susi read Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day (another favourite of mine), which is set both before and after WW2. Susi said, "I had a hard time connecting with the protagonist, even though the writing style of the book is brilliant. I recommend this book to everyone, just because I’m a huge fan of Ishiguro’s novels and I think everyone should read [him]." And I read The Group by Mary McCarthy, a novel from the 1960's that follows a group of Vassar graduates in 1930's New York.

That's everything for now - don't forget to add your reviews to the mini-challenge Mr Linky to be included in the final round-up, as well as in the giveaway of one of the books reviewed for the challenge.

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Two more things: first, by popular demand I decided to move the discussion of George Eliot's Middlemarch from the week of the 2nd to the 7th of August to the week of the 23rd to the 29th. I hope this won't inconvenience anyone - I figured that those who have finished by early August could always schedule their posts for a few weeks later, and the extra time would give people who'd otherwise be unable to join in the chance to participate.


And speaking of awesome things happening in August, have you noticed that Jenny will be hosting a week-long tribute to the wonderful Diana Wynne Jones? It's actually in the first week of August, so that's one more reason to postpone Middlemarch. Please click over to Jenny's blog for more details. And isn't the button gorgeous?

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The Diary of a Provincial Lady by E.M. Delafield

The Diary of a Provincial Lady is a comic novel from 1930 that chronicles the adventures and misadventures of an upper-class country lady: her struggles to balance the household finances; her attempts to deal with her temperamental Cook and with the sensitive Mademoiselle, the children’s French governess; her constant fight to keep the insufferable Lady B., her smug and superior neighbour, at bay; and so on. The novel is written as a diary, and it covers a period of about one year. Fortunately there are sequels, which continue to follow the Provincial Lady all the way into WW2.

I first added Delafield’s novel to my to be read list because several of you suggested it when I reviewed Henrietta’s War by Joyce Dennys earlier this year. I can see the similarities, especially in how both books use a comparable kind of humour to paint a fascinating portrait of early twentieth-century upper-class English country life. But the main difference is that in Dennys’ work, the sharp humour is often alternated with some very moving moments in which Henrietta’s very real fear and helplessness far overweigh the comedy.

Of course, WW2 is a historical context that easily lends itself to this kind of overlapping of comedy and tragedy, so it would be absurd to resent Delafield for not doing the same here. In The Dairy of a Provincial Lady, the elements that go beyond the comedy are perhaps not immediately obvious, but as you read on, you do begin to glimpse them. E.M. Delafield is absolutely hilarious – there were actually a few passages that made me laugh out loud, and this rarely happens. Mostly I just register the fact that I’m amused in my head with no outwards manifestation. But as fabulous as the humour is, even better was the fact that behind it I could sense the workings of an acute mind, and of a sensibility that, historical context aside, I didn’t find too distant from my own. The Provincial Lady sees through the absurdity of the social pretences she has to uphold, and ironically remarks on them even as she goes along with what she’s expected to do. As Jilly Cooper puts it in her introduction,

…and gradually one realises that, despite the short sentences and the simplicity and unpretentiousness of the prose and subject matter, here is a very subtle and deliberate talent at work, naturally satirical, with a marvellous ear for dialogue and an unerringly accurate social sense

Something else that positively surprised me was Delafield’s attitude towards class. Don’t get me wrong; the Provincial Lady is far from free of class consciousness, and the book is set in a very privileged social world (the Lady’s financial struggles are a result of the fact that she's expected to maintain a certain lifestyle) and doesn’t often consider what might be going on outside it. That’s what its scope is meant to be, and this fact is made clear from the very beginning. But I expected it to also be carelessly elitist, as many 1930’s novels are. Instead, there are several instances in which its heroine seems to be acutely aware of the artificiality of the social structure that determines that she’s mistress while others are her servants, or that Lady B. is her social superior. Delafield’s sense of social justice and her subversive humour also extend to gender, as the passage I include at the end shows – and so does the fact that she asks herself things like: Query, mainly rhetorical: Why are nonprofessional women, if married and with children, so frequently referred to as “leisured”? Answer comes there none.

If you’re a fan of gentle but gripping domestic stories, of books set in Interwar England, or of biting social satire, then The Diary of a Provincial Lady is for you. I need to get my hands on the sequels (and on Delafield’s Persephone title, Consequences) as soon as possible.


Favourite bits:

Receive a letter from Mary K. with postscript: Is it true that Barbara Blenkinsop is engaged to be married? and am also asked the same question by Lady B., who looks in on her way to some ducal function on the other side of the county. Have no time in which to enjoy being in the superior position of bestowing information, as Lady B. at once adds that she always advises girls to marry, no matter what the man is like, as any husband is better than none, and there are not nearly enough to go round.
I immediately refer to Rose's collection of distinguished Feminists, giving her to understand that I know them all well and intimately, and have frequently discussed the subject with them. Lady B. waves her hand--(in elegant white kid, new, not cleaned)--and declares That may be all very well, but if they could have got husbands they wouldn't be Feminists. I instantly assert that all have had husbands, and some two or three. This may or may not be true, but have seldom known stronger homicidal impulse. Final straw is added when Lady B. amiably observes that I, at least, have nothing to complain of, as she always thinks Robert such a safe, respectable husband for any woman. Give her briefly to understand that Robert is in reality a compound of Don Juan, the Marquis de Sade, and Dr. Crippen, but that we do not care to let it be known locally. Cannot say whether she is or is not impressed by this, as she declares herself obliged to go, because ducal function “cannot begin without her”. All I can think of is to retort that Duchesses--(of whom, in actual fact, I do not know any)--always remind me of Alice in Wonderland, as do white kid gloves of the White Rabbit. Lady B. replies that I am always so well-read, and car moves off leaving her with, as usual, the last word.

A letter from Lady B. saying that she has only just heard about measles--(Why only just, when news has been all over parish for weeks?) and is so sorry, especially as measles are no joke at my age--(Can she be in league with Doctor, who also used identical objectionable expression?).--She cannot come herself to enquire, as with so many visitors always coming and going it wouldn't be wise, but if I want anything from the House, I am to telephone without hesitation. She has given "her people" orders that anything I ask for is to be sent up. Have a very good mind to telephone and ask for a pound of tea and Lady B.'s pearl necklace--(Could Cleopatra be quoted as precedent here?)--and see what happens.

Am still thinking about this failure, when I notice that conversation has, mysteriously, switched on to the United States of Ameerca, about which we are all very emphatic. Americans, we say, undoubtedly hospitable--but what about the War Debt? What about Prohibition? What about Sinclair Lewis? Aimée MacPherson, and Co-education? By the time we have done with them, it transpires that none of is have ever been to America, but all hold definite views, which fortunately coincide with the views of everybody else.
(Query: Could not interesting little experiment he tried, by possessor of unusual amount of moral courage, in the shape of suddenly producing perfectly brand-new opinion: for example, to the effect that Americans have better manners than we have, or that their divorce laws are a great improvement upon our own? Should much like to see effect of these, or similar, psychological bombs, but should definitely wish Robert to he absent from the scene.)

The child Henry deposited by expensive-looking parents in enormous red car, who dash away immediately, after one contemptuous look at house, garden, self, and children. (Can understand this, in a way, as they arrive sooner than expected, and Robin, Vicky, and I are all equally untidy owing to prolonged game of Wild Beasts in the garden.)
Henry unspeakably immaculate in grey flannel and red tie--but all is discarded when parents have departed, and he rapidly assumes disreputable appearance and loud, screeching tones of complete at-homeness. Robert, for reasons unknown, appears unable to remember his name, and calls him Francis. (Should like to trace connection of ideas, if any, but am baffled.)

Other Opinions:
Still Life With Books
A Work in Progress
My Porch
Read Warbler

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The Red House Mystery by A.A. Milne

A.A. Milne’s 1922 The Red House Mystery is, as you’ll no doubt be unsurprised to hear, a country house mystery. It all begins when Mark Ablett, the owner of the Red House, receives a letter one morning saying that his wayward brother Robert is coming from Australia to see him. Robert arrives after lunch and is taken to the library, where Mark is to join him. Shortly thereafter, the servants hear loud voices followed by a shot; and when Mark’s cousin Cayley, a guest at the Red House named Bill, and a stranger named Antony Gillingham who had just wandered by break into the locked room, they find Robert’s murdered body and Mark gone. The immediate explanation, offered by Cayley, is that Mark must have accidentally shot Robert during an argument and then ran away in a panic. But there are several details that don’t quite fit into this story – which is why Antony and Bill decide to become Holmes and Watson and investigate the murder.

The first thing you need to know about The Red House Mystery is that it’s hilarious – it’s as much a comedy of manners as it is a mystery. The tone of the book reminded me quite a bit of The Moonstone, actually. Milne’s book is not long enough to be quite as immersive a reading experience, but I loved them both immensely for very similar reasons. And though it’s Conan Doyle that the characters explicitly reference, Wilkie Collins’ influence is really just as noticeable.

One of the interesting things about The Moonstone, and about Victorian sensation in general, is the fact that it’s based on the idea that the very existence of genteel criminals was shocking and difficult to believe. In 1922, A.A. Milne could play with that notion in a way that Collins couldn’t yet have done in 1868, because as much as he worked to subvert this, it was still too sensational to blatantly defy upper-class respectability. But the social changes that took place in those decades allowed Milne to write a novel that directly pokes fun at the notion of inherent genteel respectability. Take, for example, the reason why Antony Gillingham decides to investigate the murder:

The inspector had arrived in it to find a man dead and a man missing. It was extremely probable, no doubt, that the missing man had shot the dead man. But it was more than extremely probable, it was almost certain that the Inspector would start with the idea that this extremely probable solution was the one true solution, and that, in consequence, he would be less disposed to consider without prejudice any other solution. (…) But Antony could. He knew nothing about Mark; he knew nothing about Robert. He had seen the dead man before he was told who the dead man was. He knew that a tragedy had happened before he knew that anybody was missing. Those first impressions, which are so vitally important, had been received solely on the merits of the case; they were founded on the evidence of his senses, not on the evidence of his emotions or of other people's senses. He was in a much better position for getting at the truth than was the Inspector.

This is, of course, an admission that there is a bias, and the bias is partially a social one. Antony is not only a stranger to the Red House, but a man cynical enough to see beyond social appearances. And later on, when Antony and Bill begin to have their suspicious about what might have happened, Bill thinks:

Bill had helped him to sausages, played tennis with him, borrowed his tobacco, lent him a putter.... and here was Antony saying that he was what? Well, not an ordinary man, anyway. A man with a secret. Perhaps a murderer. No, not a murderer; […] That was rot, anyway. Why, they had played tennis together.

People one plays tennis with cannot of course be murderers – expect when it turns out they are. It’s interesting to think that the reason why I so enjoyed the subversive humour of The Red House Mystery and The Moonstone is the same reason why I struggled with The Franchise Affair recently: while Collins and Milne examine (or relentlessly mock) this immediate presumption of innocence based on someone’s social standing, Tey seems to take it at face value. This is also the reason why I’ve become such a reader of mysteries, especially older and historical ones, over the past few months. They give me such an opportunity to examine the social fabric of a particular time period, and the exercise is so endlessly fun.

If you’re thinking that the tone of The Red House Mystery sounds a bit too light and flippant for a novel in which someone gets shot in cold blood in a locked library, worry not. Yes, humour abounds, as does witty dialogue and social satire, but the novel still acknowledges the dark side of human nature and the horror of the crime that has been committed. And if our Watson, Bill, is having a little too much fun with the investigation, the older and warier Antony acknowledges the tragedy of the situation.

The Red House Mystery is an immensely satisfying read. The ending, while not completely surprising, does allow a complex enough story to emerge (and interestingly, another parallel with The Moonstone is the fact that the crime is only made viable by the absence of knowledge and technology that we have today). What a pity that Milne didn’t write more mysteries.

Interesting bits:

“Are you prepared to be the complete Watson?” he asked.
“Watson?”
“Do-you-follow-me-Watson; that one. Are you prepared to have quite obvious things explained to you, to ask futile questions, to give me chances of scoring off you, to make brilliant discoveries of your own two or three days after I have made them myself all that kind of thing? Because it all helps.”
“My dear Tony,” said Bill delightedly, “need you ask?” Antony said nothing, and Bill went on happily to himself, “I perceive from the strawberry-mark on your shirt-front that you had strawberries for dessert. Holmes, you astonish me. Tut, tut, you know my methods. Where is the tobacco? The tobacco is in the Persian slipper. Can I leave my practice for a week? I can.”

The library was worth going into, passages or no passages. Antony could never resist another person's bookshelves. As soon as he went into the room, he found himself wandering round it to see what books the owner read, or (more likely) did not read, but kept for the air which they lent to the house. Mark had prided himself on his library. It was a mixed collection of books. Books which he had inherited both from his father and from his patron; books which he had bought because he was interested in them or, if not in them, in the authors to whom he wished to lend his patronage; books which he had ordered in beautifully bound editions, partly because they looked well on his shelves, lending a noble colour to his rooms, partly because no man of culture should ever be without them; old editions, new editions, expensive books, cheap books, a library in which everybody, whatever his taste, could be sure of finding something to suit him.

Mrs. Norbury was delighted to see them, as she always was to see any man in her house who came up to the necessary standard of eligibility. When her life-work was completed, and summed up in those beautiful words: “A marriage has been arranged, and will shortly take place, between Angela, daughter of the late John Norbury....” then she would utter a grateful Nunc dimittis and depart in peace to a better world, if Heaven insisted, but preferably to her new son-in-law's more dignified establishment. For there was no doubt that eligibility meant not only eligibility as a husband.

Other Reviews:
Books and Other Thoughts
Fleur Fish Reads
Novel Insights
GeraniumCat’s Bookshelf
A Fondness for Reading

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Tamar by Mal Peet

It seems that I’ve been having a sort of unofficial Carnegie Medal month. I could say that it’s in anticipation of Nation winning it tomorrow (I’m going to seriously cry if this doesn’t happen, though no more than a tear or two if it goes to The Ask and the Answer or The Graveyard Book instead), but the truth is that it happened more or less accidentally. I’ve been collecting Carnegie winners for months now, and suddenly I got the urge to read them all at once. So far, I haven’t been at all disappointed.

Tamar is historical novel, partially set during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands in the Second World War. Tamar is the code-name of a Dutch man who lived in England before the war began, and who’s sent to his home country as a spy in 1944. His mission is to help reorganize the Dutch resistance and undermine German authority until the Allies arrive, while his companion, Dart, is a radio operator who reports back to London. Tamar is also a story set in England in the 1990’s, about a fifteen-year-old girl who is herself named Tamar and whose beloved grandfather, a spy during WW2, has committed suicide following his wife’s dementia. Using a box her grandfather left her to guide her, Tamar uncovers a story that goes back to the wartime period of which her grandparents never spoke, and whose repercussions have impacted her family more than she can imagine.

My experience with Tamar was very much influenced by the fact that I accidentally spoiled it for myself. When I was a little over a hundred pages into it, I let the book fall often on a page towards the end, and my eyes fell on a sentence that caused the story I thought I was reading to reshape itself into something entirely different. But you know, this wasn’t actually a bad thing. Tamar isn’t a novel with a twist; not exactly. It’s rather a novel in which the truth gradually changes shape and redefines itself. I’m sure I’d have realised what was happening before the moment when it all becomes completely clear, but knowing the truth from early on allowed me to pay more attention to the clues, and it actually made the whole reading experience even more moving.

The cover of Tamar seems to suggest a wartime espionage thriller, but the focus is actually more on social than on military history. I’m always interested in books that explore aspects of WW2 I don’t know much about, and the occupation of the Netherlands certainly qualifies. I appreciated learning about the Dutch resistance movements, the danger of retaliation that had to be carefully considered before each act of rebellion, the Hunger Winter of 1944 and the fact that the Nazis used starvation as a military weapon, and so on. Needless to say, this wasn’t pleasant to read about, but it was interesting. And as is often the case with wartime novels, the extreme circumstances acted like a magnifying glass that allowed Peet to portray human beings both at their best and at their worst.

Then there’s the present day storyline, which, unlike what sometimes happens with novels that use this kind of structure, was every bit as compelling as the historical sections. In fact, if I have one complaint about Tamar, it’s that I wish the first of the contemporary sections had come sooner. I began to care about the historical narrative a lot more once I understood just how it illuminated what was going on in the present. Which brings me to my favourite thing about this novel: Tamar is a story about the long-term impact and the far reach of wartime horrors. Tamar was born in 1979, but her grandparents’ silenced wartime experiences directly affect her life. I think this is something people have only begun to fully grasp somewhat recently. It puts me in mind of books like Stranger in the House, where several of the people the author interviewed said they were trying to make sense of their parents or grandparents’ stories because they had realised these weren’t merely history – they were a fundamental part of what had mapped the emotional dynamics of some of the most important relationships in their lives.

Tamar’s family is a complicated one, and the war is part of the reason why. After her father suddenly disappears when she’s still a child, she’s practically raised by her grandparents. Her grandfather is somewhat of an emotionally unavailable man, but he actually becomes close to her – which is why his suicide feels like such a desertion. Making sense of the burden he had to carry for most of his time allows Tamar to at least make peace with the past. The novel’s ambiguous, complex ending avoid easy answers or clichés, and leaves the reader to face the extraordinary weight of history, just like Tamar has to do herself. How can someone who has seen, done and lived through certain things be expected to resume an ordinary human existence? How can certain secrets be kept for so long? And how much can you forgive, or expect someone else to forgive?

Favourite passages:

He loved her. It was dead simple, the way he loved her. Seamless. His love was like a wall that he’d built around her, and there wasn’t a chink or flaw in it. Or so he thought. But then she started to float out of the real world, his world, and he was like a little boy trying to dam a stream with stones and mud, knowing that the water would always break through at a place he wasn’t looking at. There was nothing desperate about the way he did it, though. He was always calm, it seemed. Expecting the worst and determined not to crack. She started to get up in the night and turn on all the taps, and he would get up too and stand quietly beside her watching the endless flow of water as if he sound it as fascinating as she did. Then he’d guide her back to bed before turning the raps off. One night I heard something in the living room and saw the two of them standing out on the balcony. He’d wrapped his dressing gown around her, and I heard him say, “Yes, you are right, Marijike. The traffic is like a river of stars. Would you like to watch it some more, or go back to bed?”

It’s a very private thing, losing your mind. And all sorts of people, complete strangers, get involved. It was that, the invasion of his privacy, that started Grandad crumbling. And the fact that all those people – the social workers, doctors, police, psychiatrists – were younger than him, and not as clever, but more powerful. He felt – he must have felt – control slipping away. And what he did was build the wall higher, work harder to dam the stream, work even more fiercely to keep the world at arm’s length.

“I keep thinking about the Germans in the firing squad. Killing and then killing again and again, looking at the faces…How? How did they do that? I can’t… I can’t even imagine. But, the thing is, if you took one of those men and stripped away the uniform, and sat him next to me, how different would we be? Would you be able to see murder on his skin? Smell murder on his breath? And not on mine?”
She could not tell if he expected an answer. She did not have one.
“I feel,” he said. “I feel…” He searched for the word; the fingers of his right hand moved as if he were blind and groping for it. “Diminished. Ashamed. Because I watched all that killing, and when it was over, do you know what I wanted to do? I wanted to kill someone. Anyone. It seemed the only possible reaction to what I’d seen.”

Reviewed at:
Reading Rants!
Stories Are Light (warning: contains detailed spoilers)

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Oops

So, between a busy period at work and some unexpected personal problems to deal with, I seem to have taken a short impromptu blogging break. I’ve barely been online since last Thursday, and as things are going to continue to be busy for some time, I’m afraid I’ll have to make use of the dreaded “Mark All as Read” Google Reader button. The alternative would surely result in me driving myself crazy trying to catch up. It’s amazing how out of touch I feel after only a few days (and how much book bloggers post! Not that I love you any less for it, of course.)

I always worry I’ll miss something important when I do that, so please tell me if you’ve read any books you think I’d really like, or announced any fun events or irresistible challenges, or posted any interesting discussions. Don’t be shy about leaving me a link or two, as you’d really be doing me a favour! Also, I feel horribly guilty that I’m so behind on replying to your wonderful and thoughtful comments. Plus the people I owe e-mails/guest posts/joint reviews to probably hate me by now. I’m so sorry! I’ll get on top of things again soon (hopefully).

I haven’t been reading much at all this month, but I still have some May books to tell you about, so bookish chatter should resume as normal soon. Before I go, I’ll leave you with some literary news that made my day: Vintage Books will be reprinting fourteen of Stella Gibbons’ books. You might remember how much I adored both Cold Comfort Farm and Nightingale Wood, and how much I lamented that more of her work wasn’t available. I dearly hope that her two other fairy tale novels, which Sophia Dahl mentions in her introduction to Nightingale Wood, will be included among those being reprinted. Either way, the news made me ridiculously happy.

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The Magician’s Book by Laura Miller

In one of the most vivid memories of my childhood, nothing happens. On a clear, sunny day, I’m standing near a curb in the quiet suburban California neighborhood where my family lives and I’m wishing, with every bit of my self, for two things. First, I want a place I’ve read about in a book to really exist, and second, I want to be able to go there. I want this so much I’m pretty sure the misery of not getting it will kill me. For the rest of my life, I will never want anything quite so much again.

The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia is a combination of reading memoir, biography and literary criticism in which Laura Miller recounts her childhood passion for C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia, her disappointment and sense of betrayal when she became aware of the Christian symbolism behind the series, and finally the new appreciation of the books she developed as an adult. Miller blends her memories of her childhood reading and her literary observations with details about C.S. Lewis’ life that help contextualise his work, and with comments from authors like Neil Gaiman, Susanna Clarke and Jonathan Franzen, who were interviewed for the book and shared the stories of their own relationships with Narnia.

One of the greatest strengths of The Magician’s Book is the ease with which Laura Miller combines the personal and the scholarly. This book was everything I had hoped Francis Spufford’s The Child That Books Built would be – not that I didn’t very much appreciate Spufford’s book, but it’s a more formal and theoretical sort of work. And as I have discussed recently, the personal bookish essay is the form of literary discourse that appeals to me the most. It’s no surprise, then, that The Magician’s Book immediately conquered a place among my favourite books about books.

I think I’ve told you the story of my own relationship with Narnia before: I read my first Narnia book at nineteen, and over the next few years I went on to read the rest of the series, save for The Last Battle (which I didn’t think I could stomach). While there were things about the books I appreciated, I couldn’t help but feel extremely alienated by them, especially by the narrator’s tone. And in the end, all the elements that put me off – which weren’t so much the Christian undertones but rather the sexism, classism, racism, and profoundly traditionalist tone of the stories – were enough to break the enchantment before it even began. This citation from The Magician’s Book (which is itself a citation) perfectly explains why I could never feel at home in Narnia:

Eustace Scrubb, at the beginning of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, is derided not just for reading the wrong kinds of books, but also for having parents who were “vegetarians, non-smokers and teetotallers, and wore a special kind of underwear.” Such remarks, writes Goldthwaite, work like “keep-out signs on the clubhouse door.”

I’ve tried to put this into words before, but I didn’t quite manage. Goldthwaite does it perfectly, though: to me, the keep-out signs were really neon-bright, and they seemed to be specifically aimed at people like me. The problem isn’t really the fact that the books don’t agree with my liberal and secular sensibilities – it’s that they seem actively hostile to them, and determined to exclude people of “my sort”. That jolly, grandfatherly narrator that so many readers love? He didn’t like me and he wanted me gone. I could tell.

However, none of this made me feel triumphant, and it didn’t give me the urge to lord it over people I deemed credulous enough to miss all these troubling elements (you know I love you, Mr. Pullman, but you do sometimes sound like that when talking about Narnia). On the contrary, it made me feel quite sad and disappointed, like I’d arrived at a wonderful party much too late to be able to enjoy it.

Nothing will ever be able to replace the experience of reading these book as a child, but I’m happy to report that The Magician’s Book did make me appreciate the series’ complexity more – and it allowed me to at least vicariously experience Miller’s childhood enchantment with it. The book is divided into three main sections: Miller titled the part about her first encounter with Narnia “Songs of Innocence”, the one about her disappointment “Trouble in Paradise”, and, finally, the one about her newfound love of the series “Songs of Experience”. The Blake allusions are obvious, but in addition to this, Miller explains that she based this structure on His Dark Materials and on Heinrich von Kleist’s “On the Marionette Theatre”, which was one of Pullman’s inspirations for his series. Perhaps it’s the fact that I’d been discussing von Kleist with a friend recently, but I thought this was very interesting.

What von Kleist, Pullman and Miller mean by “experience” is not the opposite of innocence, but the ability to find a different sort of paradise – one that isn’t based on ignorance of troubling things, but rather on their acceptance. If Miller is able to appreciate Narnia as an adult, it’s not because she found a way to explain away the series’ troubling gender, class, or race issues. On the contrary; she fully acknowledges them, as well as the fact that the discomfort they cause so many readers to feel is perfectly valid and legitimate. But at the same time, she recognises that there’s more to the books than just these things.

The Magician’s Book deals with several questions that my own reading has caused me to consider many times before: historical and cultural context, authorial control, reader’s response, plurality of meanings, and the fact that one’s appreciation of a work of literature is the result of the intersection of all these things, and of a delicate balancing act. Miller’s dealing with the series so-called “politically incorrect” elements (she does such a great job of explaining why this is such a dismissive term) was particularly striking. She neither ignores nor overemphasis the books’ historical context, and while she doesn’t throw away the baby with the bathwater, she also doesn’t give Lewis a free pass. This happens to be my preferred way of reading, and what I always strive to do when dealing with prejudice of any kind in older books. I think it’s immensely silly to act as though anyone who brings this kind of thing up is part of a conspiracy to ruin classics for other readers, and that the next logical step is surely to burn all these books in a bonfire. But it’s just as silly to make people feel that if they enjoy books with objectionable elements, then they must tacitly approve of misogyny or racism. The balance is tricky, but it can be found as long as we’re willing to openly talk about these things.

One last point that I found interesting: Laura Miller says that one of the many ways in which people try to dismiss or minimise the series’ misogyny is by pointing out that Lucy, the most beloved of its protagonists, is a girl. She goes on to suggest that it might have been Lewis’ investment in traditional masculinity that caused him to choose a female protagonist for so many of the series’ central moments – Lucy is able to display fear, doubt, and vulnerability, and Lewis wouldn’t have been comfortable with a boy who admitted to these feelings. This reminded me of something Scott Westerfeld once said, about how there’s a larger number of female YA narrators because people aren’t used to thinking of teenage boys as articulate, introspective, and in touch with their feelings – and, because of the way they’re socialised, many of them actually aren’t. One of the reasons why I love John Green so much is exactly because is books break this pattern. But I’m going on a bit of a tangent here.

I’ll probably never become a Narnia fan, but I’m glad that The Magician’s Book made me gain a new respect for the series. And for Lewis himself too – he was a complicated man, and though, like Laura Miller, I suspect he wouldn’t have liked me much, I can see we had a thing or two in common after all. I’m now quite curious to read his book An Experiment in Criticism.

Favourite bits:

The characters in books can never really be our friends because as much as we might learn about them, they can never know anything about us. Still, they exercise our capacity for empathy, extending it beyond the boundaries of race, gender, species, even virtue. Readers will sometimes blame a morally objectionable main character for a novel’s failure to engage them; really, the fault lies with the author’s inability to make us stop quibbling about such things. If characters had to be admirable or even likeable to captivate us, then Humbert Humbert and Scarlett O’Hara would not be people you recognize without my having to explain which novels they come from.

He [Lewis] had a passing interest in anthropological and psychological theories about where the recurring motifs in the world’s religions and legends might have come from, and was intrigued enough by Carl Jung’s theory of archetypes to look into it. Ultimately, though, Lewis concluded that what Jung had to say was not so much a theory of myth as yet another myth. Jung’s description of the collective unconscious was magnificent, written in the quasi-mystical language of “good poetry”, but it wasn’t supported with sufficient material evidence to merit the status of science. “Surely the analysis of water should not itself be wet?” Lewis quipped.

(The reasons why I liked this bit is because it was very nice to find some common ground with Lewis for once.)

The honest, educated reader, when tackling the towering literary works of the past, now faces a different, though no less precarious task: how to acknowledge an author’s darker side without losing the ability to enjoy and value the books. Prejudice is repellent, but if we were to purge our shelves of all the great books tainted by one vile idea or another, we’d have nothing left to read—or at least nothing but the new and blandly virtuous. For the stone-cold truth is that Virginia Woolf was an awful snob, and Milton was a male chauvinist. The work of both authors can be difficult to read, but also immensely rewarding. Once upon a time, when people believed encounters with great art were morally uplifting, it was easier to summon the extra bit of initiative requited to give the classics a try, and literature professors were expected to encourage them. Today, scholars are more likely to tell readers about the pernicious influence of the great books they used to revere.

Myths and stories are repositories of human desires and dears, which means that they contain our sexual anxieties, our preoccupation with status, and our xenophobia as well as our heroism, our generosity, and our curiosity. A perfect story is no more interesting or possible than a perfect human being.

Reviewed at:
The Indextrous Reader
Nonsuch Book
Kristina’s Favorites
Bermudaonion’s Weblog

(Hmm…I think I remember there being more reviews of this book out there, but for some reason I can’t find them. Let me know if you have one and I’ll be glad to add it.)

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Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

Nick is the bass player for a queercore band with ever-changing names. Norah loves music, so naturally she’s at the show. Nick’s night is ruined when he realises that his ex-girlfriend, Tris, is also at the show, and with a new guy – or so he thinks. Norah happens to be sitting next to Nick when he sees Tris walking towards him to say hi, so he does what seems to him the most logical thing in the world – he asks Norah to be his girlfriend for five minutes. And so begins a night where between surprise shows by their favourite band, misunderstandings, past significant others appearing when they’re least expected, and long walks holding hands, two people get to know each other.

Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist was satisfying in all the ways I hoped it would be satisfying – which, with my recent track record of books turning out to be completely different than I thought they’d be, was actually a very nice surprise. I didn’t find this story quite was resonant as Rachel Cohn and David Levithan’s other joint effort, Ely and Naomi’s No Kiss List, but then again, I didn’t think I would. I wanted a story about music, connections, and that thrill you feel when you’re getting to know someone you suspect is going to matter a lot to you – and that was exactly what I got.

Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist actually packs a lot for such a short book. I felt that I was truly getting to know the characters (all of them, really – and nothing made me happier than the fact that Tris turned out to be a complex human being and not merely an Evil Ex), in a way that allowed me to understand why what was happening mattered to them, why they hesitated, why they were scared. A lot of miscommunication happens in this book; a lot remains unsaid; a lot is merely implied. And of course, these silences matter as much as the things Nick and Norah are telling each other. You’d think this kind of thing would be hard to pull off in fewer than 200 pages, but somehow Cohn and Levithan manage – mostly due to their expert use of different points of view.

I’ll confess that the fact that from the age of sixteen on I’ve been obsessed with the movie Before Sunrise (I own a VHS tape of it! Remember VHS tapes?) somewhat predisposes me to enjoy stories set in a single day/night and in which two people get close to each other. This is somewhat strange, considering the fact that I keep complaining about how most love stories out there are about the development of an initial connection and not about long-term intimacy and all the work it involves. The reason why I wish this wasn’t so is because I think we’re bad at acknowledging that stories can actually continue once two people get together, and that “happily-ever-after” isn’t really easy or boring. I have seen so many people act surprised when relationships don’t turn out to be completely effortless it’s not even funny. The kind of stories we tell are more of a consequence than a cause of this, of course, but the whole thing has probably entered infinite-loop territory, where the stories reinforce what we believe which in turn causes us to tell more of these types of stories, and so on and so on.

I’m not about to claim that a 200 pages book set in less than twelve hours completely breaks this pattern, but I will say that one of the reasons why I loved Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist is because as much as it is about newness and the excitement of getting to know someone, it does acknowledge that intimacy isn’t necessarily easy. Those are some intense twelve hours or so that Nick and Norah spend together, and they have to work through a lot of fear – fear of being vulnerable, of getting hurt, of falling in love, of being rejected, of losing control, and even of being happy.

On what is actually a related note, this book has one of the best make-out scenes I’ve ever come across. Once again, Cohn and Levithan make excellent use of two points of view to show what each of the characters is feeling, and the result is a very emotionally complex scene. It’s also a passionate scene, but what makes it so good is that not only does it get the passion across, but it also acknowledges the huge fear and vulnerability involved in going that far with someone. The fact that Nick and Norah had only met a few hours ago is irrelevant, as the scene takes place at a point where it’s obvious to them both just how high the emotional stakes are.

I’ve been blabbing for this long and I haven’t even mentioned the role music plays in the story. I’ll just say that if you’re passionate about music, and if you love the thrill of seeing your favourite band hit the stage, you’ll find plenty here that will make you smile.

Before anyone asks – not, I haven’t seen the movie. Should I?

Bits I liked:

“I’m confessing I don’t know if I’m reading for this.”
“What is ‘this’?”
Being open. Being hurt. Liking. Not being liked. Seeing the flicker on. Seeing the flicker off. Leaping. Falling. Crashing.
“Norah. I’m not sure if I’m ready for Norah.”
Tony/Toni/Toné smiles, her teeth the same white as her collar.
“There’s no such thing as ready,” she says. “There’s only willing.”

The guitars rampage. The drums batter. Owen O. snarls bastardizations at the world. A bell rings and Pavlov’s dog as a fucking seizure on the dance floor. Since I’m not a part of it yet, I see it: how a group of people can become a blizzard, how all the time spent buying and picking out exactly the right clothes doesn’t mean shit now because nobody is looking at clothes or poses. It’s all about force and pulse and unleashing the giant urges. I am pushing through skin and spike to get to Norah. I am jolting through this human turbulence to catch sight of Tris. I am slamming through this bright, bright darkness to figure out who the fuck I’m looking for, and why.

My heartbeat accelerates. I am in the here, in the now. I am also in the future. I am holding her and wanting and knowing and hoping all at once. We are the ones who take this thing called music and line it up with this thing called time. We are the ticking, we are the pulsing, we are underneath every part of this moment. And by making the moment our own, we are rendering it timeless. There is no audience. There are no instruments. There are only bodies and thoughts and murmurs and looks. It’s the concert rush to end all concert rushes, because this is what matters. When the heart races, this is what it’s racing towards.

Reviewed at:
Everyday Reads, Fyrefly’s Book Blog, Rhinoa’s Ramblings, The Zen Leaf, Reading Through the Night, All About {n}, Life in the Thumb, Out of the Blue, Jenny’s Books, A Chair, a Fireplace and a Tea Cozy, Into the Wardrobe

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Chicken With Plums by Marjane Satrapi

Set in Iran in the 1950’s, Chicken With Plums is the story of Nasser Ali Khan, Marjane Satrapi’s great-uncle. Nasser is a celebrated musician, a tar player. One day, his wife breaks his instrument during an argument, and after several failed attempts to repair or replace it, Nasser takes to his bed and decides to give up on life. Chicken With Plums follows his last few days and his loved ones’ attempts to make him regain his interest in life – or to coach him to eat by cooking his favourite dish, which gives the graphic novel its title. These are alternated with flashbacks that help the reader understand the many factors that made Nasser reach a point of such despair.

I think Alberto Manguel’s distinction between journeys and homecomings will be useful to help me make sense of this book. This story was very much a journey into foreign territory for me – and I don’t mean this because it’s set in a culture I don’t know too much about. What I mean is that the idea of simply giving up on life is so strange to me. If this sounds a bit Wheee-Rainbows-Unicorns-Kittehs!, it’s not meant to. I know what it’s like to battle depression, and I know that the problem with depression is exactly that it makes you stop caring about anything. But there has always been something or someone that strongly anchored me to life, even in my bleakest moments. I acknowledge that this is a huge privilege, which is why I told myself to stop wanting to jump into the story, shake Nasser, and drag him out of his bed and try to simply listen to the story I was being told instead.

To say Nasser decided to die because his tar is broken is of course an oversimplification: as the story progresses, we realise that his disappointment has other causes, and that the episode with the tar was merely the last drop. Nasser’s music was his greatest passion, but it was also the one thing that gave him comfort in a life that turned out very different from the one he’d have chosen for himself. When that’s taken away from him, he falls apart.


Marjane Satrapi’s talent as a storyteller shows in the fact that she manages to make Nasser sympathetic even while he acknowledges how unfair he’s being to those who aren’t to blame for what went wrong in his life – namely his family. Nasser’s marriage is not a happy one, and couldn’t have been from the very start for reasons over which his wife has absolutely no control. And the children he leaves behind are of course completely powerless. He dismisses them as not really interested in whether their father lives or dies, but the reader can see that this is not so. There’s a very moving scene in which Nasser decides that the reasons why he hasn’t died yet is because someone is praying for him to live, and this can only be his daughter, as she’s the only one who still cares about him. In the top floor of the house, we see his little soon kneeling and praying for him.


In the end, I felt terrible for Nasser, even as I struggled with his decision and with his blindness to the hurt he’s causing. And I felt just as bad for the loved ones he left behind. I’m in awe of Marjane Satrapi’s ability to include such a wide range of emotions in such a short book, and to tell such a resonant story with such economy. (And also to include moments of humour in a book that sounds so completely bleak!) Chicken With Plums is a story of deep disappointment; disappointment of a kind I have never experienced before. I’m thankful that Satrapi gave me a glimpse of it – isn’t widening our emotional range one of the things books are for?


They read it too:
If You Can Read This, Lost in a Good Story, The Zen Leaf, Melody’s Reading Corner, Jenny’s Books, Out of the Blue, The Inside Cover

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Among the Bohemians by Virginia Nicholson

Too much reverence can estrange us from the object of our worship. I, for one, love to be brought up close – to touch, to taste, if possible to smell the lives of people from the past. I want to know how they coped. I want to compare my life with theirs. I want to feel I could have known them. This appetite for identification with history is important. A sense of contact brings with it a sympathy which helps us to understand our own links with the past.

(Isn’t that a wonderful quote? I love books that allow me to feel that kind of connection with the past. And this is certainly one of them.) Among the Bohemians: Experiments in Living 1900-1939 is a vivid and engaging portrayal of Bohemian life in the early twentieth-century. If you’re wondering what exactly this consists of, I can tell you that the social and cultural atmosphere this book captures is somewhat similar to that of the eccentric artistic families at the heart of A.S. Byatt’s The Children’s Book, or of Cassandra Mortmain’s family in Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle.

The Bohemian artists Virginia Nicholson writes about include Vanessa Bell (who happens to be grandmother, as she’s the daughter of Quentin Bell), Rupert Brooke, Katherine Mansfield, Jean Rhys, Ford Madox Ford or Dylan Thomas. But she also includes several names you might not be familiar with – what defines whether or not someone is classified as a “Bohemian artist” for the purposes of this book isn’t necessarily the work they went on to produce, but rather the fact that they identified as artists. These were people who valued idealism, freedom and creativity above anything else, and who shunned the shackles of bourgeois convention in the name of artistic authenticity – sometimes with rewarding results, and other times not so much.

The bohemians were more often than not people who lived in extreme poverty, and Nicholson’s portrayal of their struggles is far from romanticised. But as much as they struggled, they also conquered social liberties by simply disregarding norms nobody had dared to disregard before. The individual freedoms they claimed for themselves include the freedom to wear whatever they pleased; to associate with people of whichever social background, class, or ethnicity; to cook their meals and organise their houses according to their own preferences rather than to tradition; to choose freely who to marry (or who not to marry); to decide how to educate their children; in sum, to conduct their lives however they wanted. The thesis at the centre of Among the Bohemians is that if we live in a more tolerant society today, it’s partially thanks to them – they eroded the limitations that governed Victorian and Edwardian “respectable” behaviour by simply not caring who they shocked.

One of the things that makes Among the Bohemians so enjoyable is the fact that Virginia Nicholson’s tone is humorous, sympathetic, and deeply respectful. She’s not after gratuitous salacious details, and she’s certainly not out to shock her readers with how very scandalous these people were. I kept mentally comparing this book to the atrocious The Monsters by Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler. This is a group biography of Mary Shelley’s Romantic circle, another group of literary people who challenged the conventions of their time, and as the title itself indicates, it’s written in a gossipy, judgemental and morally righteous tone that completely sucks the life out of the book and puts one in mind of Respectable People sitting at their porch in a small town and tut-tutting everyone who walks past. As you can surely tell, my horrible experience with The Monsters made me appreciate Nicholson’s neutrality even more.

But saying that Virginia Nicholson refrains from judging these artists’ lifestyle choices is not the same as saying that she refrains from denouncing injustices of any kind. This is especially true when it comes to gender dynamics: she doesn’t hesitate to point out that for all their progressive thinking, many of these artists still expected their wives to clean up after them. There’s a particularly moving section on all the promising women artists that never were, quite simply because they didn’t have “rooms of their own”. They were drowned in domestic drudgery and never went on to produce the works they thought their unconventional lifestyles would allow them to produce. Nicholson also presents a fair assessment of the effects, positive and negative, that growing up in a bohemian household had on children – for which her own father’s experiences were no doubt invaluable.

Like in the equally wonderful Singled Out, Nicholson often makes use of pre-WW2 literature (with special emphasis in the interwar years) to illustrate her point. The inevitable result of this were many additions to my wishlist. Here are some of the titles I’m now curious to read:

• Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves
  
• Trilby by George du Maurier
  
• Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
  
• Ann Veronica by H.G. Wells
  
• The Woman Who Did by Grant Allen
  
• All Experience by Ethel Mannin
  
• Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
  
• A Little Learning by Evelyn Waugh
  
• Love in Bloomsbury: Memories by Frances Partridge
  
• Death of a Hero by Richard Aldington
  
• The Tamarisk Tree by Dora Russell

Have you read any of them? What did you think?

Virginia Nicholson is an intelligent, passionate and insightful writer, and I can only hope she’ll produce many more works of social history. If you’re at all interested in artists’ lives, in the early twentieth-century, in the Bloomsbury Group, or in interwar England, then this book is for you.

Interesting bits:

For the acquisition of clothes could be a daunting ordeal, particularly for women. Ready-to-wear clothes were the exception (…). Putting all these clothes on and taking them off again dominated one’s day. Hours were consumed by tying tapes, looping buttons, pinning pins, brushing mud off yards of hemline, adding false bits to one’s hair, one’s bosom and one’s bottom, tying ties, shaving and coiffing, gloving and hatting, ribboning and lacing, starching, frilling and goffering… There were better ways to lead one’s life, surely, and, as in so many aspects of everyday life, it was artists who broke through the stranglehold of middle- and upper-class conventions.

As sex definitions began to break down, Bohemia gave the all-clear to cross dressing. There were women with short hair, men with long; women wearing trousers, men in robes or tunics, and pierced ears for both sexes. Earrings for men were to become as symbolic of the libertine as of the creative spirit. A man wearing earrings was a gypsy, a pirate, a predator. Here again Augustus John was the embodiment of the Great Bohemian. You could pick on any aspect of his appearance and it would reinforce his pre-eminence in the field.

During the First World War, when so many men faced the prospect of being blown up or gassed or having their limbs amputated, caution and social ambition seemed more pointless than ever. Indeed it seemed like a good idea to dance while one could dance. As Zeppelins appeared over London, spectacular in the dazzling searchlights, Bohemia became wilder and gayer with a kind of man abandon. For Betty May, ‘…it sometimes seemed as if everyone one had ever known would be killed – one went on dancing and rioting in an effort to forget how dreadful it all was.’

Reviewed at:
Hannah Stoneham’s Book Blog

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