Song for a Sunday

I re-watched the film Nine a couple of days ago.  It got middling-to-poor reviews, and it's true that the storytelling isn't great, but the cast certainly is.  Unbelievably, in a film starring two of my favourites - Dame Judi Dench (showing how great she looks with a flapper bob) and Nicole Kidman - it was Marion Cotillard who stole the show.  That woman is simply brilliant.  And she sings what is easily my favourite song from the film: My Husband Makes Movies.  I love it so much that I can cope with the word 'movie' for once.  Here she is:

Two competitions...

I've turned over the Weekend Miscellany to competitions - one of which could win you all sorts of bookish goodies from Glasses Direct, and the other of which could see you choosing Hesperus Press's next reprint.  On with the show...

I'm copying and pasting the Glasses Direct competition:

1.) To celebrate Glasses Direct's new blog, the online prescription glasses retailer has launched the GD Book Worm Club, an online competition that encourages book readers, whether avid or occasional, to post their reviews so that others can read up on their recommendations on a plethora of reads. Whether it be a good old paperback, a Kindle or Kobo, Glasses Direct want glasses wearers to join the GD Book Worm Club.
Each month, GD Book Worms can submit their reviews on a book they've read, which will then be posted onto the Glasses Direct blog. Whichever review gets the most happy comments wins that months star review.

Each monthly winner will receive a star prize, as well as a pair of glasses. For April, the winner will receive a Kindle Touch, a pair of Element or London Retro frames with their prescription and one of the Spring Summer 2012 goody bags* from the glasses e-tailer's press event, held at The Soho Hotel this April.
Email your entries to: gdwin(at)glassesdirect(dot)com
And don’t forget to include a picture of yourself with the book! (If you’re camera shy, just the book will do but we’d rather see your lovely faces)

*Goody Bag Contents:
1 pair of designer sunglasses (Chloe, Serengeti, Marc Jacobs, Armani etc)
Handmade speccy cookie from Love Birds
A gift voucher for a pair of Element or London Retro specs.
Spectacle necklace
Retro sweets (no reason, but who doesn’t love sweets?)
Eco-concious cotton lunch bag
London Retro/Element USB stick.

2.) I spotted a great post on Lyn's blog, giving the opportunity for readers to choose the next Hesperus Press classic title.  I hadn't seen or heard anything from Hesperus for years, and was rather worried that they'd disappeared, but I'm delighted that that isn't the case.  Before themed blog weeks really existed, I ran an I Love Hesperus week - gosh, years and years ago - what fun it was!

To celebrate their 10th anniversary, they're looking for 500 word submissions suggesting out of print classics (usually pretty short - 100-200 pages) that they could reprint, and why.  The deadline is 1st June, and the book would come out in September - more info here.  The 500 words will form the introduction for the winning book.

Their books are always so beautifully produced, as well as having great contents.  You can read all my Hesperus reviews here, and start wracking your brains!

Books I Borrowed...

There are a few books I've borrowed from friends and libraries which have now been returned, and so I'm going to give each one a paragraph or two, instead of a proper review.  Partly so I can include them on my Century of Books list, but partly because it's fun to do things differently sometimes.  Of course, it's entirely possible that I'll get carried away, and write far too much... well, here are the four books, in date order.  Apologies for the accidental misquotation in the sketch today... I only noticed afterwards!

Canon in Residence - V.L. Whitechurch (1904)
This was surprisingly brilliant. Rev. John Smith on a continental holiday encounters a stranger who tells him that he'd see more of human life if he adopted layman's clothes.  Smith thinks the advice somewhat silly, but has no choice - as, during the night, the stranger swaps their outfits.  Smith goes through the rest of his holiday in somewhat garish clothing, meeting one of those ebullient, witty girls with which Edwardian novels abound.  A letter arrives telling him that he has been made canon of a cathedral town - where this girl also lives (of course!)  He makes good his escape, and hopes she won't recognise him...

Once in his position as canon, Smith's new outlook on life leads to a somewhat socialist theology - improving housing for the poor, and other similar principles which are definitely Biblical, but not approved of by the gossiping, snobbish inhabitants of the Cathedral Close.  As a Christian and the son of a vicar, I found this novel fascinating (you can tell that Whitechurch was himself a vicar) but I don't think one would need to have faith to love this.  It's very funny as well as sensitive and thoughtful; John Smith is a very endearing hero.  It all felt very relevant for 2012.  And there's even a bit of a criminal court case towards the end.

Three Marriages - E.M. Delafield (1939)
Delafield collects together three novellas, each telling the tale of a courtship and marriage, showing how things change across years: they are set in 1857, 1897, and 1937.  Each deals with people who fall in love too late, once they (or their loved one) has already got married to somebody else.  The surrounding issues are all pertinent to their respective periods.  In 1897, and 'Girl-of-the-Period', Violet Cumberledge believes herself to be a New Woman who is entirely above anything so sentimental as emotional attachments - and, of course, realises too late that she is wrnog.  In 1937 ('We Meant To Be Happy') Cathleen Christmas marries the first man who asks, because she fears becoming one of so many 'surplus women' - only later she falls in love with the doctor.  But the most interesting story is the first - 'The Marriage of Rose Barlow'.  It's rather brilliant, and completely unexpected from the pen of Delafield.  Rose Barlow is very young when she is betrothed to her much older cousin - the opening line of the novel is, to paraphrase without a copy to hand, 'The night before her wedding, Rose Barlow put her dolls to bed as she always had done.'  Once married, they go off to India together.   If you know a lot more about the history of India than I do, then the date 1857 might have alerted you to the main event of the novella - the Sepoy Rebellion.  A fairly calm tale of unequal marriage becomes a very dramatic, even gory, narrative about trying to escape a massacre.  A million miles from what I'd expect from Delafield - but incredibly well written and compelling.

Miss Plum and Miss Penny - Dorothy Evelyn Smith (1959)
Miss Penny, a genteel spinster living with her cook/companion Ada, encounters Miss Plum in the act of (supposedly) attempting suicide in a duckpond.  Miss Penny 'rescues' Miss Plum and invites her into her home. (Pronouns are tricky; I assume you can work out what I mean.)  It looks rather as though Miss Plum might have her own devious motives for these actions... but I found the characters very inconsistent, and the plot rather scattergun.  There are three men circling these women, whose intentions and affections vary a fair bit; there are some terribly cringe-worthy, unrealistic scenes of a vicar trying to get closer to his teenage son. It was a fun read, and not badly written, but Dorothy Evelyn Smith doesn't seem to have put much effort into organising narrative arcs or creating any sort of continuity.  But diverting enough, and certainly worth an uncritical read.

The Shooting Party - Isabel Colegate (1980)
Oh dear.  Like a lot of people, I suspect, I rushed out to borrow a copy of The Shooting Party after reading Rachel's incredibly enthusiastic review.  Go and check it out for details of the premise and plot.  I shall just say that, sadly, I found it rather ho-hum... perhaps even a little boring.  The characters all seemed too similar to me, and I didn't much care what happened.  Even though it's a short novel, it dragged for me, and the climax was, erm, anti-climactic.  Perhaps my expectations were too high, or perhaps my tolerance for historical novels (albeit looking back only sixty or seventy years) is too low.  Sorry, Rachel!

Author Photo Identity Crisis

Somerset: The Books

Whilst down here in Somerset, I have been mostly adoring the cat, but also jaunting off to various places - including, yesterday, sunny Lyme Regis...

...and whilst out and about I have, of course, been buying some books.  Being the gent that I am, I thought I'd share my spoils with you - asking the usual questions: have you read them, and what do you think?

Letters - Sylvia Townsend Warner
I had a copy out of the library, but I was pleased to find one myself, for the chapter of my thesis I'm currently writing.

Look Back With Gratitude - Dodie Smith
You might remember that I loved Dodie Smith's first volume of autobiography, so I was excited to see another volume - and risked life and limb to rescue it from a teetering pile on top of a bookcase.

The White/Garnett Letters - David Garnett and T.H. White
And this will be useful for my final chapter, which includes sections on David Garnett's Lady into Fox!  Our Vicar was pleased that some of my purchases could be considered work-related.

Love in the Sun - Leo Walmsley
Ever since Jane/Fleur Fisher raved about this, I've been hoping to stumble across a copy.  Thanks, Lyme Regis!

Journey to Paradise - Dorothy Richardson
I'm rather too scared to try Richardon's endless Pilgrimage series, but I thought this collection of short stories and autobiographical pieces might be a good way in.

Gone To Earth - Mary Webb
I read somewhere that this helped inspire Lady into Fox, and have been hoping to find a copy.  This trip has unearthed (ahem) a lot of titles I've had on my mental wishlist!

Injury Time - Beryl Bainbridge
An Awfully Big Adventure - Beryl Bainbridge
I'm all ready for Beryl Bainbridge Reading Week, now!  Are you?

The Hand of Mary Constable  - Paul Gallico
This looks like Gallico in surreal/psychological mode, which is how I like him...

Somewhere Towards The End - Diana Athill
This brings my Athill autobiographical volumes to three, without having read any of them... but this is the one which appeals most.

Woman in a Lampshade - Elizabeth Jolley
Short stories by another author I'm stockpiling without yet reading!

Non-Combatants and Others -Rose Macaulay
Love me some Dame Rose, and didn't have this title yet.

To Margaret, From Pat

This is something a bit different - probably valueless, but once I'd seen it, I couldn't leave it behind.  It's a handwritten collection of excerpts and poems, clearly given as a romantic gift from Pat to Margaret.  It's not dated, but based on the poems included, it's post-1940; based on the handwriting, I don't think it's much after.  How lovely!

The Importance of Literacy in My Life, and Yours

by Wiley Cash

I grew up in a middle-class neighborhood called Forest Brook in Gastonia, North Carolina. Forest Brook was everything a kid could want in a neighborhood; it was full of both forests and brooks, and even now when I whisper the name, I feel just as much mystery and excitement as I did when I was ten years old. My younger brother and I spent our childhoods riding our bikes on dirt paths, wading through creeks, climbing up trees, and performing all the dangerous feats boys attempt when they grow up in a neighborhood like ours. Even though we spent a lot of time playing outside, we spent just as much time reading and being read to by our mom.

My parents’ second story bedroom windows looked out over an expanse of field behind our house. Dense woods bordered the field on either side. At that time, if you would’ve walked through the field for about two miles you would’ve eventually found yourself in a nice, upper-class neighborhood with a country club where my brother and I would eventually work as lifeguards. Just past the golf course that ringed the club was a tiny municipal airport with a beacon light that could be seen from my parents’ bedroom windows.

At night, after we’d taken our baths and before we’d said our prayers, my brother and I would sit in our mom’s lap in an old wicker rocking chair while she read to us. This ritual probably started when I was around three years old, and I would guess that I climbed down out of that rocking chair for the last time when I was six – only because I was too big to be rocked without my feet touching the floor, not because I no longer wanted my mom to read to me. After that I’d sit on my parents’ bed and listen while my mom read out loud and rocked my brother, who would climb down from that chair for the final time just a few years after me and join me on the bed, our mom still in the rocker, reading to us.

Those are very comforting memories: the sound of my mother’s voice close to my ear while she rocked me when I was small or drifting across the room to where I sat on the bed once I was older; the smell of Dial soap on my clean skin and the scent of the summer-warmed window panes as they cooled against the night air; the sound of chirping crickets lifting from the field behind our house. I remember these things as if they still take place each night; in my mind, maybe they do. I also have a clear memory of staring out the window and watching the beacon light at the airport as it revolved atop the tower, its beam strafing the field behind our house with a faint glow before disappearing, only to reappear seconds later. The beacon light was hypnotic; it lulled me to sleep more than the crickets or the rocking or the sound of my mom’s voice as it grew quieter and quieter while our eyelids grew heavier.

When I was twenty, my parents left our home in Gastonia and moved to the beach at Oak Island, North Carolina, roughly five hours east of where I’d grown up. A bridge connects Oak Island to the mainland, and from the bridge you can see the Caswell Beach lighthouse at the eastern end of the island. Not long after they’d moved, I was crossing the bridge with my mom at dusk; the lighthouse’s beam was just barely visible against the darkening sky. My mom looked at the lighthouse, and then she turned and looked at me.

“Just think,” she said, “whenever you see the lighthouse, you’ll know you’re almost home.”

I knew what she meant, and I appreciated the sentiment, but I knew that I’d never think of Oak Island as home, regardless of its beauty or the beauty of its landmarks. I still think of home as being farther west in North Carolina, at the edge of a little field in a neighborhood dotted with forests and brooks where a beacon light shines through the bedroom window while my mother reads stories to my brother and me.

Whenever I read, I may not always recall the sound of my mother’s voice or the sensation of being rocked, but I always feel the same safety and comfort I felt as a young boy watching the night creep across the field toward our house while the warm breeze rolled through the window screens. I can’t imagine a life that doesn’t include reading.

Even with that said, it’s amazing how often I take my literacy for granted, especially in my day-to-day life at the grocery store where I read labels on products, at the pharmacy where I read warnings on medicine, and at the doctor’s office where I read pamphlets and information about what may or may not be ailing me. I tend to think of my reading life as something I nurture in private, something I use to escape. But I’d be wrong to think of it this way; reading is something I use to survive, and if you’re reading this now, then you use reading to survive as well.

As an author who’s just published my first novel, I’m aware that reading has given me a job. But as an adult who uses my literacy each and every day, I’m aware that reading has given me the ability to thrive in a very complicated world. A 2003 federal study found that one in seven adults don’t possess the literacy skills to read beyond the level required of a children’s picture book. I can’t fathom the fact that so many people have never had the pleasure of opening a novel and escaping their everyday lives. Even more daunting and sobering is the reality that these people’s everyday lives are complicated by illiteracy; tasks that we take for granted – going to the grocery store, buying a plane ticket, writing a letter of complaint – are endlessly and unnecessarily complicated.

My wife and I spent the past few months searching for a way to give back to a reading community that has allowed my dream of being a published author to come true. The answer became clear one day after I opened UNCA Today, the alumni magazine of the University of North Carolina at Asheville. The magazine had profiled Amanda Edwards, a woman who’d been a good friend of mine while we were students at UNCA. Amanda is the Executive Director of the Literacy Council of Buncombe County in Asheville, North Carolina. I read the profile on Amanda, and then I called her about ways my wife and I could contribute to the amazing work the council is doing in Buncombe County. I began researching literacy programs throughout North and South Carolina, and I was shocked by what I discovered. According to the 2003 study, in North Carolina 14% of adults struggle with basic reading skills; the rate climbs slightly to 15% in South Carolina. On the bright side, I discovered that in many cities it costs as little as $25 to buy the materials that will teach an adult how to read. I can’t imagine a better investment in the future of an individual, a community, or a city. Think about what $50 or $100 could do for men and women in your community; then think about what $1,000 could do. With that in mind, my wife and I have decided that we want to raise thousands of dollars for literacy projects and public libraries throughout North and South Carolina, but we need your help.

Beginning on May 14, my publisher, William Morrow, is sending me on a fifteen-city tour throughout North and South Carolina where I’ll be holding events at some of the finest independent bookstores in the country. At almost all of these events, my wife and I will be donating a portion of the proceeds from book sales to local literacy projects and public libraries, and we’ll be encouraging booksellers and the public to give what they can as well. I’m proud that we’ll be partnering with the Literacy Council of Buncombe County, the group that inspired this idea, and I’m especially proud that we’ll be partnering with the Gaston County Public Library in Gastonia, North Carolina, where I received my first library card on the day I turned six.

I can never repay the gift the reading community has given me – for the memories of those nights in my parents’ bedroom when my mom read to us, for the times in my life that were so hectic or horrible that reading was the only thing I could do to escape – but this is a start.

If you’re interested in stopping by one of our events or learning more about the organizations we’re working with, please check out the tour schedule here. If you can’t come to an event, but you’d like to make a donation, please feel free to contact any of these organizations listed here or the literacy council or public library in your community.

In the meantime, read to your kids, read to other people’s kids, and, if you don’t think you’re too old to enjoy it, have someone read to you. It’s up to them whether or not they want to rock you to sleep while they do it.

More Women Than Men - Ivy Compton-Burnett

When I wrote about Pamela Hansford Johnson's pamphlet on Ivy Compton-Burnett, I mentioned that it had made me keen to read more of my beloved Dame Ivy's work soon.  It didn't take me long - at Easter I delved through my collection of Ivy Compton-Burnett novels to find one to fill a gap in A Century of Books, and opted (because I love its dryly prosaic title) for More Women Than Men (1933).

If I dared, I would try an Ivy Compton-Burnett Reading Week, but I don't think it work - partly because people often seem intimidated by her, but also because it's no secret that Ivy Compton-Burnett's novels are all similar in tone and title.  It's difficult to differentiate Mother and Son from Daughters and Sons; Parents and Children from Elders and Betters; A Family and a Fortune from A Father and his Fate, etc. etc.  The previous owner of my copy of More Women Than Men obviously had the same issues, for she has noted down a little list on the first page:

1933
Girls' school
Mrs Napier
Felix Bacon.

Well, anonymous (and probably deceased) owner of my book, you have organised my thoughts for me.  More Women Than Men does, indeed, take place in a girls' school - which is unusual for Ivy Compton-Burnett, who usually sets her novels in sprawling families with nine or so children.  I initially thought that she would just transfer this dynamic to the hierarchies and alliances of pupils and teachers, but in actual fact none of the girls say anything at all in the novel.  Rather, we watch the headmistress, Josephine Napier, rule over family and staff with a firmness which doesn't repress the verbal dalliances of those around her, but which does render them powerless in the face of her unflappable logic.  People love to chop logic in Ivy Compton-Burnett's novels - and I love reading them do it.  Truisms are interrogated; the polite shorthand tricks of conversation are exposed as evasions, and analysed to death.  None of it is very natural, it is definitely stylised - but deliciously so.

"I feel a little conscious of my appearance," said Felix, coming up to the group.  "Perhaps it is being one of the few people who can wear formal clothes."

His speech was met by incredulous mirth, his hearers keeping their eyes on his face, in case of further entertainment.

"Well, I hope that no one will be conscious of mine," said Josephine.  "It is not my habit to be aware of it; but when I am oblivious, it may be hitting other people in the eye.  I got into the garment in time, but I admit it does not add to the occasion."

"People always seem to think admission alter things," said Helen, "when it really rather helps to establish them."

I'm running ahead of myself, as usual, since I haven't explained who these people are.  Apologies if the following run-through is confusing - there are always a lot of characters in Ivy Compton-Burnett's novels, often with complex interrelations.  More Women Than Men starts with Josephine greeting her all-female staff back after the school holidays.  Helen is a new staff member, and the others are returning - none of these are pivotal to the plot, for the majority of the novel, but each is rather wonderful to read about.  Miss Munday is large, vapid, and doleful; Miss Luke is grateful and ignored; Mrs. Chattaway is one of the few who has been married (now widowed):

Mrs. Chattaway seldom referred to her wedded life, and her companions, in spite of their sincere deprecation of the married state, assigned her reticence to her sense of loss; whereas the truth was, as they might consistently have guessed, that the memory was uncongenial.

Josephine herself is married to Simon, who fades into the background - not so much browbeaten as so wholly in her shadow as to be rendered free of personality.  They have an adopted son, Gabriel, who is in fact Josephine's nephew - he is in his early twenties, but still living at home, rather uselessly.  Josephine's brother Jonathan (Gabriel's father) taught pupils independently, until the last one stayed with him for 22 years.  This last one is Felix Bacon, who (joining together disparate groups) becomes the drawing master at Josephine's school.  There are plenty of amusing conversations where Felix defends the idea of a man teaching girls to pupils' fathers who think the job beneath him.  (I should add that More Women Than Men, like maybe of Dame Ivy's novels, is set in a vaguely Edwardian period.)  And then there is the change of dynamic when a man is introduced to the all-female staff...

"You will find that not much gossip is done here," said Josephine, smiling as if in spite of herself.

"I suppose it hardly could be in a common room."

"Either there or elsewhere."

"And in a community of women!  I am glad I am seeing life for myself, as all the theories about it are untrue.  Now I see that you are dismissing me with a look.  Of course you are one of those people whose glance is obeyed."

Josephine initially appears to be the paragon of diligence and kindness - a rather dominant and detached paragon, one whose glance is indeed obeyed, but a paragon nonetheless.  It becomes apparent, however, that she is ruthlessly manipulative - and yet she is far more complex than those words suggest.  Her love for husband and adopted son is deeply genuine, but it is coupled with her immovable sense of justice, and the love she demands in return.  She puts up a great deal of resistance when Gabriel becomes engaged to Ruth, the daughter of Elizabeth, an old acquaintance of Josephine and Simon Napier whose reappearance causes quite a stir earlier in the novel.

"In that case you will be grateful to Ruth, Josephine," said Gabriel, coming nearer with a stumble, to avoid lifting his head.  "She is giving me a happiness greater than I had conceived."

"Then it must be on a generous scale indeed, indulged boy," said Josephine, her tone out of accordance with the change in her eyes.  "Let us hear about it before I resume my labours.  Come to the point, and enunciate some demand of youth."

"It is the demand that I was bound to make one day.  It is naturally often a demand of youth.  This breaking up of our life seemed to the best time to make it.  The lesser change must count less at the time of the greater.  I make the demand with confidence, having been taught, as you will say, to make demands.  I have said enough for you to understand me?"

"No," said Josephine, in a quiet, conversational tone; "I don't think so.  You have not said anything definite, have you?"

There are almost never histrionics in an Ivy Compton-Burnett novel.  Whatever their emotions may be, characters are far more likely to react by calmly picking apart their antagonist's sentence than hysterically screaming in their face.  These verbal gymnastics are not true to life, but they raise tension far more effectively (and originally) than a few outbursts could achieve.

did you really think that Sherpa wouldn't find her way into this post?

The interconnections, misalliances, grievances, dependencies and loyalties between characters in More Women Than Men would be impossible to explain in a mere blog post.  Although the dialogue is undeniably stylised, there are complex and believable relationships throughout the novel - an aspect of Ivy Compton-Burnett's writing which is seldom applauded.  A discussion of whether or not her novels are realistic would be fascinating - because 'realistic' has so many facets and definitions.  Would people talk like this?  No, definitely not.  Would people act like this?  Probably no.   But would people feel like these characters feel?  Yes - absolutely - and it is Ivy Compton-Burnett's genius that she can interweave the genuine and the bizarre.

It is not true, either, that nothing happens in Ivy Compton-Burnett novels.  In fact, More Women Than Men contains one of the most ingenious murders ever - done by exposing a ill person to a draught.  A spoiler, yes, but the reason that Compton-Burnett's novels have the reputation of nothing happening is that the plot, as such, doesn't really matter.  It's the way things happen, and the way she writes.  Oh! the way she writes!  I adore it.  Settling down to her aphorisms and linguistic somersaults is a joy - because they are not simply clever, but hilarious.

Of the six Ivy Compton-Burnett novels I've now read, this is perhaps my favourite.  Others have had sections where they dragged, but this one never did.  It's not the easiest of her novels to find, but definitely worth hunting down - I'm hoping that my enthusiasm will lead to one or two Ivy Compton-Burnett converts, or at least encourage some more readers to give her a go.  You'll love or loathe - and, if you love, you'll never look back.