Relatively Speaking

It seems a bit of a habit with me to see plays somewhere towards the end of their run.  I saw the brilliant All My Sons on its final night, and by the time I blogged about Peter and Alice, it was off the stage.  Well, you've got until 31 August to see Alan Ayckbourn's Relatively Speaking (1965), and I deeply encourage you to do so if you possibly can!

We had a lovely surprise when we arrived ('we' is me and Andrea, my frequent theatre-buddy) at Wyndham's - our balcony seats were upgraded to brilliant circle seats, right in the middle of the row and tickets which would have cost nearly double what we spent.  Sadly that was because of poor ticket sales (which is absurd on a Saturday night in London, but is encouraging for anybody hoping to grab a bargain on any night) - why people weren't there, I can't imagine.  It was the best comedy performance I have ever seen on the stage (All My Sons is still the best play I've seen, but nobody could call it a comedy.)

It's difficult to write much about Relatively Speaking without giving away elements of the plot (which I'd accidentally spoilt for myself the day before seeing the play, by starting Ayckbourn's The Crafty Art of Playmaking) but suffice to that the whole thing is a delightful, perfectly executed example of crossed wires, dramatic irony, and conversations at cross purposes.  The first scene opens in Ginny's (Eastender's Kara Tointon) flat with a semi-clad Greg (Max Bennett) wandering around the place.  There are mysterious phone calls and unexplained packages ("It's a book! From the book people!") and poor Greg is getting suspicious of Ginny (a pair of slippers under the bed need some explaining) - yet also getting increasingly in love with her.  They exchange wonderfully witty dialogue, affectionate but with a layer of one-upmanship, while she avoids anything definite and he proposes in the most adorably inept and heartfelt manner.  Both characters are a little rough-and-ready, with hearts in the right place, and the audience is certainly drawn into wanting the best for them... but Ginny is off to visit her parents. (Or is she?)

The next scene sees Sheila (Felicity Kendal - YES, FELICITY KENDAL) and her husband Philip (Jonathan Coy) on the patio of the lovely Buckinghamshire house, engaged in a marital dynamic which seems to be of long standing.  Sheila is a slightly downtrodden wife, but one who could never be entirely trodden down, one feels.  Jonathan Coy is given the only unsympathetic character of the foursome, as a slightly self-important, blustering businessman.  He goes off to find a hoe to do some vigorous gardening, and, through the sidegate of the excellent set, Greg arrives... He wants to come and ask Ginny's dad for her hand in marriage, and has somehow caught the train that Ginny missed.

And this is where the fun starts.  For reasons which might already have become clear, but which I shan't spoil just in case, nobody is quite on the same page as each other.  Least in the know is poor Sheila, and Felicity Kendal is absolutely perfect at her dialogue - her replies show that she has no clue why she has got embroiled in these conversations, and yet is willing to go along with it all, out of sheer kindness.  Kendal was every bit as wonderful as I'd hoped and expected.

But she had a match!  Max Bennett is sublime as Greg.  I saw him in Luise Miller a while ago, and remember being impressed by him, but he excels at comedy.  Everyone's comic timing is exceptionally good, with quickfire back-and-forth conversation delivered beautifully, but Bennett manages to make his character entirely lovable.  He is decent and proper, but also quick-witted, witty, and down-to-earth.  It's rare that a play has a character whom you love and appreciate entirely, but Relatively Speaking manages to have two - which is, indeed, half the cast.  Philip was never intended to be sympathetic, so he's out, and Kara Tointon - though very good - never seems quite to grasp which direction she wants to take her character in, and she sort of fell between two stools.

But the real star of the piece is Alan Ayckbourn.  His writing is perfect.  It is, of course, a standard of farce and comedy to have characters misunderstanding each other, but Relatively Speaking is crafted so brilliantly, with layer after layer of different crossed wires between different characters,  Even better, the responses characters give are believable, and it is also always credible that other characters wouldn't realise they were on different pages.  So difficult to engineer, and so slickly done.

If you want to laugh for two flying-at-the-speed-of-light hours, and have the chance to go before the end of August, PLEASE give yourself a treat and see this utterly delightful play.  I quite want to go straight back and watch it again...

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Stuck-in-a-Book's Weekend Miscellany: Shirley Jackson Special!

Hope everyone is enjoying their weekend so far - I'm going to be seeing Felicity Kendal in Alan Ayckbourn's Relatively Speaking tonight, which is pretty exciting (although I did start reading a book by him yesterday that gave away the plot, ooops...)  Entirely unrelated to that, this week's book, blog post, and link come with a Shirley Jackson theme!

1.) The book - it was via Claire/Paperback Reader's Facebook page that I discovered the obscure Shirley Jackson novels I'd hankered after were - gasp - soon to be reprinted by Penguin!  So, Hangsaman, The Sundial, and The Road Through The Wall will all come out over the next few months.  I'm starting to wish I hadn't spent a pretty penny on The Sundial, especially since I still haven't read it...

2.) The link - the New Yorker had a great interview with Shirley Jackson's son last month...

3.) The blog post - hunting around for a recent Shirley Jackson post, I stumbled on a great review (and discussion in the comments section) of We Have Always Lived in the Castle, over at Estella's Revenge.

Have you read any/much/all of Shirley Jackson?  Let me know your favourites, or you want to read next....

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Remarqueable

Sometimes classic books are a bit of a disappointment, sometimes they're good but you can't see why they're considered better than others, and sometimes they play a real blinder, to use, er, sports terminology.  All Quiet on the Western Front (1929) by Erich Maria Remarque (see my hilarious post title pun?) is in the final category.  Of course I had heard of it, but it took Folio sending me a beautiful review copy, and my book group choosing to read it, for me to actually get down to it. And I'm so glad I did.

I suspect it'll come as a surprise to nobody to learn that the novel is about the life in the trenches during the First World War.  It is written from the German perspective, but (for most of the novel, at any rate) it could be German, English, French, or any of the nations fighting on the front line.  The same fear, bravado, camaraderie, philosophy, violence, and death happened whichever way you look at it, and Remarque beautifully, movingly depicts the everyman soldier experiencing this mad, unbelievable world. (My edition has a translation by Brian Murdoch, which seems excellent to me.)  There is some justifiable resentment about the way the older generation sent his generation (the main character, Paul, is 19) out to face unfathomable horrors, and the rhetoric they used:

While they went on writing and making speeches, we saw field hospitals and men dying: while they preached the service of the state as the greatest thing, we already knew that the fear of death is even greater.  This didn't make us into rebels or deserters, or turn us into cowards - and they were more than ready to use all of those words - because we loved our country just as much as they did, and so we went bravely into every attack.  But now we were able to distinguish things clearly, all at once our eyes had been opened.  And we saw that there was nothing left of their world.  Suddenly we found ourselves horribly alone - and we had to come to terms with it alone as well.

I've read very few war novels - that is, novels involving front line fighting.  I tend to choose novels set back in England during the wars, perhaps because it is possible - with a stretch of the imagination - for me to comprehend what that was like.  But trench warfare is so alien to anything I can imagine experiencing that it is like reading about another planet.

And yet All Quiet on the Western Front is quite matter-of-fact about the day-to-day experiences of the soldiers.  The novel opens with them being given double food portions, and being joyful about it - the reason being that half their comrades have been gunned down.  The comic and the tragic constantly intertwine in the narrative, and that was one of several things that reminded me of the final Blackadder TV series (although, of course, any influence would have been in the other direction).  So, Remarque tells of army jokes, a ridiculous naked trip to some French women happy, ahem, to help the war effort, a fellow soldier who always seems able to procure smart clothes and exotic foods wherever they are.... but, on the flip side, murder and death are never far away.  Remarque's images are striking and effective:

There in the bed is our pal Kemmerich, who was frying horsemeat with us not long ago, and squatting with us in a shell hole - it's still him, but it isn't really him any more; his image has faded, become blurred, like a photographic plate that's had too many copies made from it.

There is a curious conflict in reading the novel, of sympathy with a hero who does not feel sympathy for the enemy.  Paul is intelligent and kind, and even discusses the futility of war - but Remarque shows the veil of dark violence that is second-nature to him in moments of attack.  And yet, when this attack is at close-quarters, things change.  There is an astonishing scene where Paul kills another man in a hole created by a shell in no-man's-land.  He stabs the Frenchman, to stop him alerting anybody to his presence - but, as the man slowly dies, Paul is filled with regret - and speaks movingly to the dead body:

"I didn't mean to kill you, mate.  If you were to jump in here again, I wouldn't do it, not so long as you were sensible too.  But earlier on you were just an idea to me, a concept in my mind that called up an automatic response - it was that concept that I stabbed.  It is only now that I can see that you are a human being like me.  I just thought about your hand-grenades, your bayonet and your weapons - now I can see your wife, and your face, and what we have in common.  Forgive me, camarade!  We always realise too late.  Why don't they keep on reminding us that you are all miserable wretches just like us, that your mothers worry themselves just as much as ours and that we're all just as scared of death and that we die the same way and feel the same pain."

But minutes later, Paul dismisses these words as being the emotions of the moment, and survival is once more his only consideration.  The battle scenes often felt a bit like boys playing at soldiers - only, of course, it was real lives at stake, and real, horrible deaths.  The introduction in the Folio edition mentions that British reviewers in the 1920s (for it was translated almost immediately, and sold over a million copies in English within a year) complained about the indecency of describing soldiers using the toilet.  But slaughter and depictions of lingering death were acceptable.  Go figure, as our American cousins would say.  (I should add, descriptions of death and pain, though naturally upsetting, are never gratuitous in this novel - leaving them out would be a huge disservice to the soldiers who experienced them.)

Above all, All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel which shows the futility, anguish, and unfairness of war. Although never didactic, it is impossible to read about these experiences (which, I assume, reflect many of Remarque's own) without loathing war and what it does to the everyman.  Well, I say that.  Ten years later, of course, much of the world was involved in another.

Towards the end of the novel, Paul thinks:

We are soldiers, and only as an afterthought and in a strange and shamefaced way are we still individual human beings.

That may have been true for the brutalities of war and 'those who died as cattle', but one of the greatest things about this great novel is the way in which Remarque humanises the soldiers.  Paul is, essentially, every hapless WW1 soldier - German, English, wherever - and All Quiet on the Western Front should, in my opinion, be on every high school history syllabus across Europe.

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Life in a Day

I'm greatly enjoying your comments on yesterday's post, so do keep them coming!

Have I mentioned yet that I've set up a two-person film club with my friend Andrea?  I think I have, but I'll recap - we take it in turns to host and choose the film, and then put our comments and scores out of ten in a little notebook.  So far we've watched some truly wonderful films, and a few not-so-wonderful ones.  The list is: I Live in Grosvenor Square, And A Nightingale Sang, The Enchanted April, Secrets & Lies, Like Crazy, Separate Tables, On Approval, Manhattan Murder Mystery, Mildred Pierce, Shakespeare Wallah, Kramer vs. Kramer, and Life in a Day.  We've covered the 1940s, '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s, and 2010s (but not 2000s - yet).

Life in a Day was the one we watched yesterday - my choice, as it's one of my very favourite films.  I shan't repeat what I wrote in my 2011 review (do go and have a read!) but I did want to mention that it's available on YouTube, for those of you who wanted to see it.  And not illegally on YouTube, but legitimately put there by the people who made it - because it was a YouTube initiative, I assume.  Please set aside an hour and a half to watch this delightful, moving, poignant, beautiful, funny, inspiring film.  It reminds me how infinitely varied humans are - and yet how much we all have in common.

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The Greats

This is an idle question, but perhaps an entertaining one too.  I was thinking to myself, while reading a biography of Ivy Compton-Burnett, which authors I would place among the Truly Greats.  There are thousands of authors who are good, hundreds who are very good, but I could only come up with a list of five whom I consider to be Great.  That is, their writing is not only better than other authors', but different somehow - and so different that even imitators seem to belong to another world, or perhaps another plane.

On that list, after careful consideration, I put, in order that they wrote:

William Shakespeare
Jane Austen
Charles Dickens
Virginia Woolf
Ivy Compton-Burnett

I doubt anybody would put together this same list.  I am limited to the authors I have read and that, in turn, is limited to writing in modern English.  Some people might only have one name on their list; a lot would put down many more.  I have not necessarily chosen my favourite authors (although three of these - the women - would qualify for that too.) That would be a substantially longer list.  I have chosen the only writers whose work resonates (to me) with something extra, something special, something which sets them enormously apart from anybody else.

As I say, in some ways this is an artificial question - but I suspect some of you might have answers.  And I'd be intrigued to hear them.

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A House in Flanders - Michael Jenkins

I wouldn't usually write a book review for the weekend (although this self-imposed rule might well be something nobody notices?) but today I am seeing a couple of lovely ladies from the internet, in beautiful Malvern, and one of them gave me A House in Flanders - thank you Carol!  (The other is Barbara, of Milady's Boudoir, so I expect to see a post about a Malvern trip there, in due course.)  Since I'll be seeing Carol, I thought I should write about the book she gave me about this time last year - which would mean it was during our trip to Chatsworth, I think.  The edition I have is from Souvenir Press, but it has also been reprinted as one of the lovely Slightly Foxed editions.

Although this book qualifies for my Reading Presently project (I never did write an update on that... well, I've read 29/50, which is a super quick update, and shows I have a little way to go) it would also cover a tricky year for my Century of Books, being published in 1992 - and since it is about the author's experience as 14 year old boy in 1951, that indicates quite how long his memory has had to stretch itself.

In that year, Jenkins spent the summer with his 'aunts in Flanders' - although they were no blood relation, they were mysteriously called aunts by his parents; all is revealed in the book - and, despite being without young companions, experiences the sort of halcyon summer I didn't realise existed outside of fiction.  Most of the other residents of the beautiful Flanders house are elderly women - sisters, sisters-in-law, nieces and the like - with the odd man thrown in, and chief amongst these is Tante Yvonne.  Although she hardly leaves the house and garden any more, and scarcely moves around those, she is a force of kindness and strength that holds the household together.  Everybody - even her intimidating sister Alice - bows to her natural authority, and a rather moving closeness develops between Yvonne and Michael.

I am always dubious about autobiographies which claim to recall verbatim conversations which happened years earlier - I can't remember conversations I had ten minutes ago, let alone forty years - but I suppose that is necessary in order to have any dialogue in the book at all.  What is more revealing is the way in which the characters - from happy-go-lucky, slightly downtrodden Auguste to glamorous Mathilde, and everyone in between - are drawn with a curious mixture of the fourteen year old's perspective and the adult's reflection.  A boy of fourteen is certainly capable of compassion and empathy, to a certain extent, but Jenkins' understanding of age and weariness seems insightful for a man of 55 (as he was at the time of publication), let alone a teenager.

It was a very busy summer. And when I say busy, I mean busy - in fiction he wouldn't have got away with the number of significant incidents that happened, from a legal tussle to helping the local madwoman to the return of a German soldier who had occupied the house during the Second World War.  I kept forgetting that it was all over the course of a few months.  As though to draw attention away from this whirl of action, each chapter focuses on a different person in the milieu (or arriving from outside it), which certainly helps bring the people to the fore, rather than the events.

Jenkins' nostalgia silently permeates the book, and that is another factor which could only (of course) have come with time and reflection.  As he writes towards the end: "I was surprised by how passionately I wanted this world I had so recently discovered to stay intact."  That hope was, of course, impossible - and the book closes with the death of Yvonne, some time after Jenkins returned to his everyday life.  But in the affectionate and moving portrait he put together of his summer in Flanders, and the 'aunts' he met there, he has created a way to keep that world intact, and it is beautiful.

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A trip to buy books...

I was having lunch with Naomi (of the erstwhile blog Bloomsbury Bell) the other day, and in amongst bookish chatter and catching-up, she happened to mention that she had found a magical bookshop in Wantage.  She described it as a sort of Aladdin's cave of literary wonder, and it was all I could do not to push my salads aside uneaten, and hope on a bus to Wantage immediately.  My self-control didn't last very long as, only a couple of days later, I found myself on that selfsame bus...  Since I haven't had a day away from my thesis for a while, it felt well-earned.

It all started very cheerily on a walk I discovered the other day.  The other day I realised that this beautiful riverside walk was my path to the town centre from my new house (more or less), and so I headed along here to catch the bus.  It's slightly longer than the walk along the roads, but I think we can all agree that this is a much better alternative?

I must stop judging places by their name.  'Wantage' is such an unprepossessing name that I'd assumed it was concrete and ugly - whereas in fact it is a beautiful market town.  As demonstrated, indeed, by the market that was happening while I was there - which stopped me taking photos of the gorgeous old buildings.

Detailed instructions from Naomi led me to this door...

Rather curious that it's called a 'shopping mall', since it's actually only one shop - well, a furniture shop combined with a bookshop.  And inside, as Naomi promised, there was a long corridor flanked with books.  One bookcase was filled with Viragos (and not quite filled with them by the time I left) but the rest were romance and unexciting modern fiction.  But that corridor led to various other rooms, at strange and architecturally spurious angles, and it was a definite book haven.  The hardback fiction section wasn't quite as brilliant as I'd hoped, but the biography and paperback sections were superb, and the most fruitful room was filled with a miscellaneous selection of classics and hardbacks that should, were the shop logical, have been shelved elsewhere.  And there were these...

(Karyn - I took the photo for you, and this isn't even all of them!  You'll have to add this to your itinerary next time you're in the UK.)

You're probably waiting to hear what I bought - and with very cheap prices, I didn't restrain myself...

The Long Weekend by Robert Graves and Alan Hodge
I've been keeping an eye out for this during my whole DPhil, since it's a really useful social history of the interwar years.  I didn't realise how cheap copies were online, otherwise I'd have bought it years ago - but hopefully it'll still be useful for final thesis edits!

Love, Let Me Not Hunger by Paul Gallico
Gallico and puppets was genius in Love of Seven Dolls, so Gallico and circuses could well be a brilliant combination.  So long as it doesn't go all fey and whimsical... Gallico can fall either side of that line.

The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf
The Autobiography of Storm Jameson (vol.1 & vol.2)
I still haven't read anything by Jameson (beyond a non-fiction book about contemporary novelists) but I do love an author autobiography - and I do, of course, love anything connected with Vita or Virginia.

The Surgeon of Crowthorne by Simon Winchester
I don't work for the OED any more, but whenever I told people that I'd read a book about it (which was Lynda Mugglestone's Lost For Words) they thought I was talking about this one.  And it's not too late to learn a bit more about the history of the job I loved so much.

Mr Beluncle by V.S. Pritchett
I loved Pritchett's autobiography (my review here), and this was in the back of my mind somewhere... maybe mentioned in that book?  Or own up if you were the person who mentioned it!

The Hothouse by the East River by Muriel Spark
The Finishing School by Muriel Spark
A couple more Sparks to add to my collection!  I think that I have all of them, now - I especially like the beautiful edition of The Finishing School, and that might push it to the top of the pile - although the excellent reviews given to A Far Cry From Kensington during Muriel Spark Reading Week are strong competition...

At The Jerusalem by Paul Bailey
I wonder how many people have bought something by Bailey after reading that he was the inspiration for the author in Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont? (Is that right?  That's how I remembered it, anyway.)

An excellent haul, I think you'll agree - and the whole lot only set me back £23, which is pretty impressive.  It's been too long since I went to a newly-discovered bookshop, so I'm very grateful to Naomi for sharing the secret of this one!

Afterwards, I took my packed lunch off for a walk, certain that Wantage would have a little park somewhere - or a beautiful churchyard at the very least.  I was doubly rewarded - I walked through a beautiful churchyard to get to a JOHN BETJEMAN MILLENNIUM PARK.  Some of you may know that I avidly 'collect' millennium projects - my ex-housemate Mel and I used to go in hunt of them, and they range from boulders to mosaics to church gates.  Almost every village has one - and most of them were unveiled in about 2003.  My own village in Somerset has a signpost telling you all the road names, since this information is otherwise kept secret.  So a millennium park was pretty impressive - and equally nice were the various pieces of sculpture with Betjeman's poetry on them. Turns out he lived in Wantage between 1951-1972.

All in all, a delightful day out!  If you're ever in the area, I recommend a day trip to Wantage - and, of course, the bookshop.

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The Flying Draper - Ronald Fraser

Out of all the books I'm reading for Reading Presently, this is the one I should have read before now... Tanya very kindly sent me The Flying Draper (1924) by Ronald Fraser, as she correctly thought it would be useful for my research (I'd actually requested a copy to the Bodleian library, and hadn't had time to read it there) - but somehow I have only just read it.  So it's going in the footnotes of my thesis...

Before I get any further - compiling my list of sketches from year six made me keen to include more in future.  Often I just can't think of anything to draw, so I came up with the idea of drawing punning cover illustrations, for how the book might look if the title were a little different... So, instead of The Flying Draper...

Ahahahaha... ;) As for the novel itself, the title does indeed give the game away.  For my research into middlebrow fantastic novels, Ronald Fraser provided a useful example which I hadn't found elsewhere: the flying man.  My only previous experience with Fraser had been a novel I did use in a chapter on metamorphosis, called Flower Phantoms - it wasn't hugely encouraging (which might account for the delay in reading The Flying Draper) since, although the idea of a woman turning into a flower was interesting, the novel itself was written in an equally flowery way.  Lots of swirling, whirling metaphors that ended up being so convoluted that they meant nothing at all, and all rather wearying to read.

The Flying Draper is much better; I thought maybe Fraser had developed his craft, until I discovered that it was actually written a few years before Flower Phantoms.  The narrator is aristocratic Sir Philip, who is rather a thin character of British decency, observing his energetic fiancée Lydia become absorbed in the life of another man - that man being Arthur Codling, the eponymous draper.  His flying happens rather matter-of-factly - the narrator and Lydia are a little surprised, but he doesn't seem to be, when he flies off a cliff and into the sea, where he bobs around for a bit until he comes out.

The draper is a great character.  He is rather detached from everyday life and manners, observing the world around him wryly, being wittily offhand while selling fabrics, and having the potential to be a brilliant eccentric in the same mould as Miss Hargreaves.  But he never becomes quite developed.  His flying takes over from the establishment of a promising character, and oddly diminishes him as a force on the page.  Similarly, Fraser never seems quite sure how to develop the story, once he has thought about it.  There is an intriguing plotline about politics being disrupted and disturbed by Codling flying, and a branch of parliament and a branch of the church wanting to have him expelled or locked up or killed.  But then Fraser suddenly introduces a heap of young, bohemian characters who don't seem to add much at all to the book.

It all gets a bit lost and winding at that point, which is a real shame - the flying draper was an interesting idea, and Fraser had lots of other ideas to follow it up - but he just shoved them all in, in any order, and hoped for the best.

And the style?  Well, some of it is still rather over the top, mistaking exotic and curious imagery for fine writing - such as the following...

"Codling has just published a book," he said. "I read all I could of it last night. A sort of account of his doings during the three years of his absence from England. The finest book, I think, that was ever written; so cold, so calm, so clear, like an April evening; and, pervading it, hints of a passion, huge and heedless and flowering, like the passion of our earth, Philip, in spring. He has felt passion, that man. When he writes of love you smell blossom and you see daisies spring up in the carpet. He knows more of love than is in the brains and hearts of most men to understand. And that is just the trouble. He handles his themes, and especially that theme, so primitively and so coldly, Philip, that it will be death and perdition to the sentimental, who preponderate. For most people his philosophy will be like a lump of ice in the small of the back."

...but Fraser shows a talent for amusing secondary characters, such as Codling's landlady, which I'd have liked to see much more of:

"What I call a near-actress," she answered. "Dances a lot and doesn't say much. And a very pleasant young woman she is, and I don't think I ever saw anyone so pretty in my life, Sir Philip. Blue-eyed and babyish, though very grown-up, hif you know what I mean. Hair like tow with a shine on it, and every bit her own, believe me or not. And a stink of powder like a Turkish harem. I did her up one night, Sir Philip, and the smell of powder and scent nearly knocked me down. But what she wore underneath! You never saw anything so flimsy. It's my believe you could undress her with one motion of the 'and, which no doubt she finds convenient, though I will say that she strikes me as being quiet for a hactress."

Some people have a hatred of comic working-class characters in novels (I remember reading that Angela Carter hated them), but I love affectionate spoofs of middle-class and upper-class characters, and it would be silly of me to make an exception for Cockney landladies.

So, all in all, The Flying Draper certainly has its moments, and is an enjoyable enough read (and useful for my thesis, thanks Tanya!) - but, like so many second-rate writers (for Fraser, sadly, is that) the narrative lacks coherence and the promise of ideas is ultimately not matched by their execution.  The Drying Flapper, on the other hand, I would love to read.

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Stuck-in-a-Book's Weekend Miscellany

Hope y'all are having a great weekend, folks!  (I've been thinking about my autumnal trip to America, if that's any excuse for that sentence - although 'autumnal' has rather scuppered that line of thought.)

It's getting rather too hot again, so I shall collapse in a heap - before I do so, here's a book, a blog post, and a link, as per.

1.) The book - Janet Todd wrote a fantastic book called Death and the Maidens a few years ago, and the Shelleys and Wollstonecrafts (read my review here) - I've heard that she's now got a novel out reimagining Jane Austen's Lady Susan. It's only available as an ebook, so I can't read it (and I haven't even read Lady Susan yet, as I want to save something by Austen) - but perhaps you can.  Find out more here.

2.) The blog post - Hurrah and hurray for Vintage Books reprinting Stella Gibbons!  When I think I know about her output, still more appear - I'm currently reading Here Be Dragons, but for today, go and read Jane/Fleur Fisher's fantastic and enticing review of The Rich House.

3.) The link - Nanny Net sent me a link to their 10 Nanny Themed Summer Reading Books... as target audiences go, this is up there with the person who emailed me recently saying they'd like to feature me on their TV show as 'a book lover and mother of two', but perhaps some of you will be intrigued!

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Beautiful Barbara Comyns

I can't remember if I've already blogged about the beautiful new editions of some Barbara Comyns novels that Virago have brought out, but it bears repeating.  They tend not to send me review copies, and I can't justify buying myself duplicate Comyns books when I have zero income - and I'm not getting rid of my Stanley Spencer covers - so it's pictures off the internet for now... but I'm going to have to find someone to give one of these two, as I hanker to see one in the flesh.  (Hmm... do you think Waterstones would stock them?)

They've reprinted Sisters By A River, The Vet's Daughter, and the inevitable Our Spoons Came From Woolworths.  I don't know why that one clings onto print when it is far from her best, and they neglect gems like The Skin Chairs and Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead, but I'm delighted to see the first two of those reprinted titles.  If you've never tried Comyns, now's your chance - if you like your fiction a little edgy and unsettling, go for The Vet's Daughter; if you're  more a fan of surreal memoir, plump for Sisters By A River.  Here are the new covers - I do hope that 'W Book Club' isn't printed on the book... but I fear it probably is...

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#GreeneForGran

A quick post to spread the word about Greene For Gran - an initiative started up by Simon Savidge.  If you're a fan of blogging Simons, chances are that you've also been over to Savidge Reads - his tastes are quite different from mine, but of course I love his blog - and through that, got to know the tastes of Dorothy Savidge, aka Simon's Gran.  We were all sorry to hear about her illness, and that she passed away recently. It is only befitting, for a woman who loved reading, that people get reading in her honour - and Simon S hit upon the excellent idea of #GreeneForGran - that is, reading some books by an author Dorothy loved: Graham Greene.

He mentioned it on Twitter, and a few of us thought it sounded like an excellent plan and spurred him on - and now you can read all about the plans. Basically, read something by Greene during August, and maybe post or discuss during the last few days of the month.  Vintage Books will also be doing the odd giveaway over at Simon S's.

I've only read a couple of Greene books (Travels With My Aunt and Brighton Rock) and strongly recommend the former.  I have a few others on my shelves, and I intend to grab at least one of them during August and have a read.  I do hope you'll join in - and that you'll spread the word.

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Oranges (flash fiction)

I've been vaguely intending to include some short fiction on here ever since I started up Stuck-in-a-Book, but wondering how to go about it - it might be a bit of a jolt to those of you expecting a review.  But since I've put up some jovial poetry of late, I thought I might indulge myself with this, called 'Oranges'.  I actually wrote it with my friend Mel's flash fiction site The Pygmy Giant in mind, but that's on hiatus, so... it will be here instead! Be kind :)

The ‘five a day’ campaign was a real blessing to folk like me. I can see people slowing down as they walk past, probably on their way back from a day in the office, counting in their heads (and occasionally on their fingers)… and realising they’re one short. Next thing you know, you’ve sold an apple or a pear or an orange. Half the time it’ll probably go uneaten, put optimistically on the table and left to shrivel up – but that’s not my problem, of course. Once it’s sold, it’s sold.

It’s mid-morning and I’m doing ok today. I’ve stacked up my oranges nicely, and that’s not as easy as it looks. You have to have larger ones towards the bottom, to keep the structure secure – but, of course, customers don’t want to be cheated, and there are plenty who’ll spend five minutes trying to get the largest orange from the bottom of the pile. But today I seem to be doing better with strawberries – two pound a box, bigger and juicier than you’ll get in the supermarket – because the sun’s out. It makes a real difference to our work.

Andy beckons me over. He sells veg on the stall next to mine, and he’s a good lad – although the price he tries to get for leeks is a joke, believe me. I have a quick glance around, to make sure I won’t be missing any sales, and pop over to say hello. But I don’t get the chance – as soon as I’m in whispering distance, I hear the words I always dread.

“They say he’s in the area.”

Oh no. Not today – not with the sun out, and a good day’s business ahead of me. But of course, the sun always is out when he makes his appearances.

“Are you sure? Who’s said?”

Andy just shrugs – but nine times out of ten he’s right, and I know better than to ignore his warning. But what to do?

I sell a couple of boxes of strawberries to a nice old dear who’s a regular, and an apple to somebody who looks late for work, but my mind isn’t on it. I start packing up a few bits and pieces, and Andy has boxed up some tomatoes, but we know there’s nothing we can do really. There isn’t a proper way to prepare for what’s coming.

And, suddenly, it’s all happening. The first sign is the shrieking and shouting, but that only gives you about two seconds of warning before it’s too late – he’s here, he’s on you, at the speed of light – this time on a motorbike – heading straight for (ALWAYS straight for) those beautiful oranges I spent all morning arranging. Fruit is flying everywhere, the awning is torn to shreds, and he doesn’t give a monkey’s. He’s gone as soon as he came, destruction everywhere in his wake.

It doesn’t make any difference now, but I can’t help shaking a fist at the already-distant motorbike.

“Damn you, Mr. Bond!”

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Dumb Witness - Agatha Christie

I've mentioned a few times that I have spent the past couple of months immersed in Agatha Christie, being the only author who was able to circumnavigate my reader's block - everything else I tried was abandoned after a page or two, but I could tear through a Christie in a day or two.  Thankfully (for my general reading) I'm now having more success getting past p.1 with other authors, although it's still a bit impeded, but I did enjoy getting into Christie mode and wolfing them down.

I haven't blogged about them, partly because Christie novels are often very similar and partly because you can't say much without giving the game away - but in the spirit of my Reading Presently project (reading and reviewing 50 books in 2013 that were given to me as presents) I shall write about Dumb Witness, because my lovely colleague Fiona gave it to me when I left my job at OUP (which, incidentally, I am missing furiously.)  It was (is?) published in the US under the rather-better title Poirot Loses A Client.

We had quite a lot of chats about Agatha Christie over the months, but the reason Fiona picked Dumb Witness as my leaving gift wasn't only because she knew I hadn't read it - it was because of the dog on the cover.  We had lengthy cat vs. dog arguments (publishers, it turns out, tend to prefer dogs - librarians and book bloggers definitely fall down on the cat side) and this was Fiona's funny way of making a point - so, of course, I used a bookmark with a cat on it.  Sherpa, in fact, painted on a bookmark by Mum.

Dumb Witness is a Poirot/Hastings novel, which is my favourite type of Christie after a Marple-takes-centre-stage novel (she is sadly sidelined in a few of her own novels).  You may recall an excerpt I posted from Lord Edgware Dies, in which the delightful relationship between Hastings and Poirot is perfectly illustrated.  More of the same in Dumb Witness - Hastings constantly makes suppositions and conclusions which Poirot bats away in frustration, never revealing quite why Hastings is wrong (other than his touching readiness to believe what he is told by almost anyone) and holding his own cards close to his chest.

I shall say very little about the plot, because (unlike most novels I read) the plot is of course crucially important in a detective novel - so I'll just mention the premise.  Poirot wishes to follow up a letter he has received Miss Emily Arundell, asking him to investigate an accident she had - falling down the stairs, after tripping on her dog's ball.  Her letter isn't very coherent, but she seems to be suggesting that it may not have been an accident... Although she recovers from the minor injuries sustained in this fall, by the time Poirot receives the letter - mysteriously, two months later - she has died from a long-standing liver complaint.  Poirot decides to accept the posthumous commission into attempted murder...

As far as plot and solution go, Dumb Witness has all the satisfying twists, turns, and surprises that we all expect from a Christie novel - it certainly doesn't disappoint on this front, and this is one especially excellent twist, albeit with a few cruder details that are not worthy of her name on the cover.  But, alongside that, I loved Poirot's determination that attempted murder should be investigated and prosecuted, whether or not the victim was dead - Hastings, for all his gentlemanly bluster, can't see why it is a matter of importance.  Poirot's moral backbone is one of the reasons I find him such a fantastic character.

And the dog?  Yes, Fiona, the dog (Bob) is rather fun, and Hastings is predictably wonderful about him - although I did find the amount of words put in the mouth of Bob a little off-putting.  It reminded me of Enid Blyton's technique of including passages along the lines of "'"Woof', said Timmy, as if to say 'They've gone to the cove to fetch the boat'."  There, I believe, I have spotted the major flaw with Dumb Witness - or at least, an aspect where it could be improved.  It would be a far superior novel, had it featured a cat.

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Song for a Sunday

I'm a big Siobhan Donaghy fan, so was delighted when I heard that she would be reuniting with the other original members of (hideous band name alert) the Sugababes.  For those not in the know, Mutya Buena, Keisha Buchanan, and Siobhan Donaghy founded the Sugababes when they were about 15 with the fantastic song Overload, then left and were replaced one by one, so that the Sugababes now has no original members.  So the originals reformed, under the nicer but less imaginative name Mutya Keisha Siobhan, and will soon be releasing this lovely track - Flatline:

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The Red House - Mark Haddon

What with reader's block, moving house, and not having internet for a bit, it's been a while since you had a proper review from me.  And today is no different, because I'm handing over to somebody else to write about The Red House by Mark Haddon, which I was sent as a review copy.  Tom (who recently married my best friend) spotted it on my shelves, and commented on it, so I decided it would find a better home with him.  Whether or not he ended up agreeing, you can discover below... Tom, by the by, can also be found at the blog Food, Music, God.  Over to you, Tom!

I promised Simon a while back that I'd read Mark Haddon's The Red House and review it for him, and have sincerely been reiterating that promise to him ever since whilst getting distracted by other tasks like getting married or trying to qualify as a teacher. However, the other day my mother rang me up and told me that my father had recently read The Red House and she had just started it, and so it occurred to me that now might be the time to take action and stop anyone else having to read it ever again. That way, we can pretend that it didn't happen, that Mark Haddon can still write novels with razor-sharp characters and compelling narrative, and that this clichéd series of adolescent writing exercises is the work of someone else.

The novel is about two families united by estranged siblings who are trying to reconnect with one another after the death of their ferocious mother. There's Richard, the hospital consultant who remarried recently but doesn't really know how to talk to his new wife Louisa, and may have A DARK SECRET. His estranged sister, Angela, who's haunted by the ghost of her stillborn daughter, but of course she can't tell anyone about that, and married to Dominic, who seems reasonably normal but may also have A DARK SECRET. Richard's kids - Alex, a sex-obsessed teenager; Daisy, a buttoned-up Christian who also thinks rather more about sex than she'd like; Benjy, who is eight (I think) and I can't remember much more about. Angela's daughter Melissa, who is a self-obsessed cow who's kind of hot and whom Alex fancies, of course. Then there's the house itself, allegedly the conduit for all of these stories for some reason, although that's arguably just an excuse for the fact that Mark Haddon couldn't decide which character to focus on. The house seems to know quite a lot of poetry, and it talks like a travel guide written by James Joyce.

If you think that sounds like a lot going on, you'd be right, and that's part of the problem. It's a shame, as there are some good ideas here, especially with the teenagers in the cast - Daisy's struggle with her sexuality and where it fits with her faith is clearly aiming for some wider significance, for example. Alex and Melissa's teenage angst is sharply drawn, if rather aimless, and the differences in Angela and Richard's approach to their upbringing and the effect on their families could have been channeled into something effective in the manner of Jonathan Franzen. However, it just doesn't feel like it's been edited into any kind of coherent shape. It's this huge splurge of styles and influences and this, rather than seeming ambitious, comes across as amateurish instead. It doesn't build, it doesn't have much of a climax to speak of, and the central narrative just isn't strong enough to provide any real mooring.

It's also overwritten and laden with unnecessary detail. What is one supposed to make of a passage like this:

Louisa works for Mann Digital in Leith. They do flatbed scanning, big photographic prints, light boxes, Giclée editions, some editing and restoration. She loves the cleanness and precision of it, the ozone in the air, the buzz and shunt of the big Epsons, the guillotine, the hot roller, the papers, Folex, Somerset, Hahnemühle. Mann is Ian Mann who hung on to her during what they called her difficult period because she'd manned the bridge during his considerably more difficult period the previous year.

It's like Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian", that, only about photocopying. And that's not even the worst linguistic crime in the book - reading about Angela reading modern poetry, with snippets of Robert Browning woven through the text, is pretty painful, as is Richard's attempt at reading ancient Greek poetry, not to mention the inexplicable quoting of something that seems to be an encyclopaedia about lorries.

Or what about this:

Richard slots the tiny Christmas tree of the interdental brush into its white handle and cleans out the gaps between his front teeth, top and bottom, incisors, canines. He likes the tightness, the push and tug, getting the cavity really clean, though only at the back between the molars and pre-molars do you get the satisfying smell of rot from all that sugar-fed bacteria. Judy Hecker at work. Awful breath. Ridiculous that it should be a greater offence to point it out. Arnica on the shelf above his shaver. Which fool did that belong to? Homeopathy on the NHS now. Prince Charles twisting some civil servant's arm no doubt. Ridiculous man.

If you can find another novel in which you can find a narrative reason to justify spending this much time on one of the characters brushing his teeth, I'd be interested to hear about it. It's a testament to the way that The Red House is written that the author thought that this belonged, but it is apparently a novel about the mundane and the ordinary (or so the blurb says), and so there's plenty of that. Again, perhaps it's an attempt at being clever; to impart some wonder into the everyday processes of how peoples' minds work. If you feel a sense of wonder at the above, I'd be interested to hear about that too.

You should not read The Red House. Tell your friends not to read it. If people suggest taking it on holiday, don't. If you find it in your holiday home, leave it there. It's not a good holiday book. It's not good literary fiction. No, it's not lightweight, and yet it also doesn't seem to mean anything. It's shockingly dark in places (and shockingly dull in others) and it doesn't seem to known what to do with that darkness. Curious Incident was (and still is) magnificent, thanks to an exceptionally strong narrative voice. A Spot of Bother was flawed, but still gripping and surprisingly visceral in places - and the characterisation was second to none. In The Red House, despite a couple of strong passages such as Richard's disastrous run out on the moors, there's nothing to make this stand out. It's an ambitious experiment, and perhaps an admirable one; to his credit, at least Mark Haddon is still pushing his craft and trying new things. However, it's a huge disappointment that in doing so he has moved so far away from his strengths.

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Our future king is born!

Moving house has had its usual effect on blogging, but I just had to put up a celebratory post for the royal prince!

Very, very thrilling - a great and momentous day in the life of our nation.

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Song for a Sunday

I've spent the past few days packing, and must have listened to this about forty times.  It just gets better with every listen - 'Losing You' by Solange.  (N.B. do not interpret this mournful title with my feelings about moving house - this time, I'm actually really excited!)

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Leaving OUP (and which Jane Austen character are you?)

It feels as though it's only just started, but my time as blog editor of OxfordWords came to an end yesterday.  I was there on maternity cover, and the lovely woman who'd had her beautiful baby came back to the fore.  Although I was only there for just under six months, I've made some very dear friends, and was incredibly touched by the leaving gifts and cards I got.  As you'll see from my selection, I certainly didn't keep my love of the Queen (and kittens) quiet...

Notice also that my friend Fiona is feeding my Agatha Christie habit - and deliberately picked one with a dog on the cover, because of our long-running feud of cats v. dogs.  (This feud manifested itself almost entirely in sending each other cute pictures of our preferred animal.)

Luckily for me, they say I can still write for OxfordWords now and then, as an external writer, and I have one in the pipeline which isn't at all literary.  Today, though, to commemorate the anniversary of Jane Austen's death, my parting gift to OxfordWords was a 'Which Jane Austen character are you?' quiz - go and take it, and let me know who you ended up as!

(I'm Mr. Darcy, it turns out. Since I wrote the quiz, I could be accused of making sure of this... but I actually would have preferred to be Mr. Bingley...)

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Oh, Hastings

I seem to be experiencing a bit of reader's block at the moment, struggling to 'get into' any novel I pick up (and it doesn't help that most of them are in boxes, as I'm moving house this weekend.)  One author is working for me, and I am chain-reading her... it's Agatha Christie.  I've read five in quick succession (Five Little Pigs, Crooked House, Cat Among the Pigeons, Lord Edgware Dies, and A Pocket Full of Rye) and I've just started The Secret of Chimneys.  I shan't blog about all of them, because they've gone back to the library, and anyway it's very difficult to write about a detective novel properly, but I did want to share an excerpt from Lord Edgware Dies.

Is there anybody who has read an Agatha Christie novel in which he appears who does not love Captain Hastings?  He is so adorable - yes, he is essentially a Watson to Poirot's Holmes, but without Watson's adulation of Holmes.  Hastings can't ever quite shake the feeling, during investigation, that Poirot's best days might be behind him, or that his European ways are letting the side down.  I love their dynamic, and nowhere is it better illustrated than this fantastic exchange:

"No human being should learn from another.  Each individual should develop his own powers to the uttermost, not try to imitate those of someone else.  I do not wish you to be a second and inferior Poirot.  I wish you to be the supreme Hastings.  And you are the supreme Hastings.  In you, Hastings, I find the normal mind almost perfectly illustrated."

"I'm not abnormal, I hope," I said.

"No, no.  You are beautifully and perfectly balanced.  In you sanity is personified.  Do you realise what that means to me?  When the criminal sets out to do a crime his first effort is to deceive.  Who does he seek to deceive?  The image in his mind is that of the normal man.  There is probably no such thing actually - it is a mathematical abstraction.  But you come as near to realising it as is possible.  There are moments when you have flashes of brilliance when you rise above the average, moments (I hope you will pardon me) when you descend to curious depths of obtuseness, but take it all for all, you are amazingly normal.  Eh bien, how does this profit me?  Simply in this way.  As in a mirror, I see reflected in your mind exactly what the criminal wishes me to believe,  That is terrifically helpful and suggestive.

I did not quite understand.  It seemed to me that what Poirot was saying was hardly complimentary.  However, he quickly disabused me of that impression.

"I have expressed myself badly," he said quickly.  "You have an insight into the criminal mind, which I myself lack.  You show me what the criminal wishes me to believe.  It is a great gift."

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Sketches from Year Six

I passed my sixth anniversary back in April, and since then have been intending to put together my annual collection of sketches. I always intended these to be a running part of Stuck-in-a-Book, but they come and go, depending on me remembering I do them, finding time to do them, and if anyone says nice things about them!

Clicking on the picture will, in each case, take you to the post in question... (the cartoons below include quite a few two-parters, but that should be obvious in each case...)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Song for a Sunday

My favourite singer, Kathryn Williams, is back with a lovely, lovely song - 'Heart-Shaped Stone'.  She made my all-time top two favourite albums (Old Low Light and Little Black Numbers) and this single is very promising for the next...

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Young Entry - Molly Keane

I usually run a mile from Irish novels of a certain period - memories of The Last September make me shiver at the thought of Irish Troubles novels - but I was attracted by Molly Keane's Young Entry (1928), very kindly given to me by Karyn when we met up in Oxford last year. Any sort of political upheaval seemed a distant irrelevance to the carefree heroines of Keane's first novel (written at the sickeningly young age of 20) - a dollop of romance, high-spirited teasing, and countryside dalliances seemed a fitting antidote to the more serious or tragic end of Irish literature (for which there is, of course, a place - but that place is not on my bookshelf.)

Well, the heroines did not disappoint - except perhaps in an unexpected name. Prudence and Peter (yes, they are both women) are described thus - first Prudence:

Her demeanour in public places was totally perfect.  Had she been a boy one would have looked at her and at once said - Eton.  As it was, those who knew her, if they saw the back of her head and shoulders across a crowded room, said: "Prudence Turrett - couldn't be anyone else."  And those who did not know her asked immediately who she was.

And lest you think she's a totally passionless society great, I rather loved this description earlier in the novel:

A ladder in a favourite silk stocking could reduce her to tears, just as a phrase of wild poetry made her drunk with ecstasy, or a witty story moved her to agonies of mirth.  She did things to distraction - always.

And then, more level-headed, there is Peter (it is so strange thinking that Peter is a woman, given it is Our Vicar's name - I've known a Peta or two, but are any women called Peter?):

Having long ago come to the conclusion that young men did not sparkle in her company, she very wisely restrained all impulse in herself to sparkle in theirs; and left matters at a satisfactorily comfortable companionship. 

These companionships were many.  Brilliant young men liked Peter, because she gave them time to make their cleverest remarks.  Lazy men liked her because she never attempted to stir them to energy.

I'm usually one to value character over plot, and Keane's characters were a joy - showing all the signs of a young writer, in both a positive and negative way.  Good, that they were lively and enthusiastically drawn, and bad, that they were emotionally rather immature and over the top.  And yet, above and beyond this, the plot defeated me.

Much of Young Entry I enjoyed, particularly when it concerned the friendship of Prudence and Peter, and even their budding (and unlikely) romances - but, as Diana Petre points out in her introduction to the Virago reprint, a 20 year old Molly Keane could only write about the limited world she knew, and that was the society hunting set.

And so there is a lot about hunting.  I'm not just ignorant about the ins and outs and mores of hunting, I actively loathe it.  I have no problem with culling foxes humanely - I am a country boy at heart, and I know that country life is not all fluffy bunnies; I trust farmers to know what needs doing on their land.  What makes me shocked and angry and everything within me recoil is the idea that killing should be turned into a game or a sport.  It's not often that I demonstrate such strong feelings on this blog, and I don't want the comment section to become and to-and-fro on the topic of hunting, but I wanted to explain why there were reams of Young Entry that I could not enjoy.  Extracts like this one...

Peter was different.  More of a purist than Prudence; the hounds and their work was her joy, her interest and delight.  It supplied for her the poetry of existence.  She rode a fast hunt well enough; but in a slow one, with hounds working out each yard of a stale and twisting line, almost walking after their fox, she was nearly as happy.  While Prudence fretted and chafed, longing to get on, Peter - her eyes alight, alert for every whimper, watching, always watching - was content to see hound-work at its prettiest and most difficult.  Her soul blasphemed in chorus with that of the huntsman, when his hounds were pressed upon; and was with him also in ecstasy when the line was hit off afresh after a successful cast.

There are many scenes of hunting, and many which require knowledge of hunting.  They didn't simply bore me, in the way that depictions of sporting matches would do, they upset and ired me. So when major plot points and character movements concern the social correctness (or otherwise) of hunting in certain areas, and Keane seems to think we will both know and agree with these principles, I was left rather lost.

I'm still very grateful to Karyn for giving me this novel, as it was fascinating to see where Keane's writing career began and spot the seeds of what was to come - but, let's just say I'm glad that she didn't stop here.

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Further poems about authors

Many of you were kind enough to say nice things about my previous little poems about authors, and so, in this hot weather, I have turned my attention to writing a few more... I hope you enjoy them!

Not relevant... but nice.

A reductive reading of Dorothy Parker
Poems, journalism, more -
Yet you are remembered for
Advising, to the finer sex,
A total abstinence from specs.

Gentlemen
Men apparently declare
Their love based on a woman's hair.
That is all they need, to choose
(according to Anita Loos.)

Reassurance
You're my favourite of the three
And yet you have the faintest fame.
To generations you will be:
'Charlotte, Emily, whatshername'.

My Problem With Alfred
Reading Dead White Men is fun,
Unless, of course, it's Tennyson.
Among his literary powers
Is not included a respect for line length or stresses or anything so long as he can mention flowers.

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Oxford by Edward Thomas

I think most book bloggers will identify with this situation: THE book we read and never got around to reviewing.  Of course, there are dozens that would fit that category, but I imagine we all have one in particular which we wish we'd reviewed at the time - either because it was so good, or because we've wanted to link back to it on many occasions.  But the memory of reading it has simply faded. That book, for me, is Oxford by Jan Morris, given to me by my father when I came up to Oxford - and read about five years later, which isn't bad going for my reading schedule.  It's absolutely fantastic, that much I remember - but not much else.

In order for it to avoid a similar fate, I shall now write about Oxford (1903) by Edward Thomas.  Imaginative titles, these fans of Oxford come up with, no?  This was a gift from my friend Daphne, although I can't remember quite when.  Being published in 1903, perhaps I should have saved it for a tricky year when I do A Century of Books again in 2014 (this is still the plan!) but instead it's come under Reading Presently (I'll give you a proper update in due course.)

All I knew about Edward Thomas before reading this came from Helen Thomas's excellent biographies/autobiographies, and having read one or two of his poems (i.e. 'Adelstrop', twice).  Well, Oxford didn't teach me a lot about him either, as - understandably - he doesn't write very much about himself.  But his sensibilities are in every line.  Supposedly he writes about Oxford past and present, through the lenses of the students, the dons, and the servants - but really he is writing prose-poetry.  There are anecdotes and portraits, true, but he is clearly a poet rather than an historian or chronicler, still less the creator of a guide book (although he would later write some).

Would any of those professions give space for this description of a college garden?Old and stories as it is, the garden has a whole volume of subtleties by which it avails itself of the tricks of the elements.  Nothing could be more romantic than its grouping and contrasted lights when a great, tawny September moon leans - as if pensively at watch - upon the garden wall.  No garden is so fortunate in retaining its splendour when summer brusquely departs, or so rich in the idiom or green leaves when the dewy charities of the south wind are at last accepted.

It's lovely, and accordingly I love it (as mentioned before, I am much more at home with poetic prose than poetry) - but you will understand why I shan't try to give a factual précis of the material Thomas covers, because the writing is everything here.  I read Oxford very slowly, over the course of a few months, and I think that's the best way to read it.  It certainly shouldn't be taken out on the High Street if you want to find the bus station, not least because the book is over a hundred years old.

I have lived in Oxford for nine years, but there was very little in here that I recognised as being here today - perhaps the fields in Grandpont, and the view over Port Meadow (for now...), but not the rest.  The people have changed, the environment is no longer the way Thomas saw it.  Things change more slowly in Oxford than elsewhere, perhaps, but the ignorant rich no longer have access to Oxford (whatever the tabloid press might suggest.)  Legions of servants who know each undergraduate by time are similarly products of a bygone era.

Having said that, his portraits of personality types in 'undergraduates of the present and past' did hit home.  Once the trappings of the 1900s were tidied away, there still exist, in outline, the figures he depicts.  The mediocre student who does a bit of sport, a bit of studying, a bit of everything... the arrogant 'intellectual' who becomes disillusioned by the ignorance of his tutor... the man who speaks at the Oxford Union, 'There and at afternoon teas with ladies he is known for the lucidity of his commonplaces and the length of his quotations'.  I wonder which of Thomas's portraits was I... This section of the book was probably my favourite.  Not as poetic as the rest, but the only section where his aim was humour - and very amusing it was.

So, for a guide to Oxford, Oxford is hopeless.  Even as an historic record, it is hugely flawed.  But as a beautiful book, occasionally funny and always luxuriously written, it is a huge success, and I heartily recommend it.  For a more cogent and calm history, with writing beautiful in a very different way, make sure you also pick up Jan Morris's Oxford.

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