A few little reviews...

It has come to my notice that it is December, and there are only 27 days left this year.  I have almost 20 reviews to write for A Century of Books... oops, didn't work this out very well, did I?  (Well, I still have 10 books to read - but I have 4 of them on the go already.)  So I'm going to rush through five of them today - books that, for one reason or another, I didn't want to write whole posts about.  But do still free to comment on them!

Daddy Long-Legs (1912) by Jean Webster
An orphaned girl is given a scholarship by a mysterious, anonymous man - she has only seen his back - and one of the conditions is that she must write updates to him, without getting any replies.  She nicknames him Daddy Long-Legs.  Can you guess what happens?  Well, I shan't give away the ending.  I was mostly surprised at how modern this children's book felt, despite being a hundred years old - a lot of it would have been at home in a Jacqueline Wilson story.  I enjoyed it, but did find it a little creepy, and rather repetitive, but these are probably signs of not having read it when I was the target age.

Metamorphosis (1915) by Franz Kafka
Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning to discover that he is an enormous bug.  Which is going to make his job as a salesman somewhat difficult.  The reason I'm not giving this novella/short story its own review is that I don't feel I have anything new to say about it.  Kafka is famed for his matter-of-fact approach to the surreality in this story, and rightly so.  What surprised me here was how middlebrow it all felt.  It is definitely comparable to David Garnett's Lady Into Fox - which actually seems to have greater pretensions to literariness.

Married Love (1918) by Marie Stopes
Another one which surprised me - I'd always heard that Marie Stopes started a sexual revolution in the UK, offering knowledge about sex to the everywoman for the first time.  Turns out she is much more conservative, and less revelatory, than a lot of the other guides written around the same time, and earlier.  I read these guides for my current DPhil chapter, by the way - my favourite so far being the person who argued that sexual intercourse and reproduction were acceptable as separate impulses, because protozoa separated them.  Sure, why not?  (I wonder if I've just made all sorts of inappropriate search terms for this blog now...)

Miss Hargreaves: the play (1952) by Frank Hargreaves
This is something of a cheat, since it was never published - but it was performed, with Margaret Rutherford in the lead role.  Tanya tipped me off that copies of all performed plays were in the Lord Chamberlain's archives in the British Library - so I had the great privilege and pleasure of reading the play, with Baker's own penned changes.  It's pretty similar to the novel, only with the action restricted to a few settings.  Such fun!

V. Sackville West (1973) by Michael Stevens
I'm a sucker for a short biography, and I hadn't read one of VSW before, so I gave this one a whirl.  It's a critical biography, so Stevens discusses and analyses the work while giving an outline of VSW's life.  About halfway through I thought, "this feels way too much like a doctoral dissertation."  Turns out it was a doctoral dissertation.  I think I'll be turning to a more charismatic writer for my next biography of Vita, as this one was rather prosaic and charmless, although very thoroughly researched.

Right, well that's five down!  How are the other Century of Bookers getting on?

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Mr. Allenby Loses The Way - Frank Baker

This is one of those books I probably wouldn't blog about if it weren't for A Century of Books.  Under the terms and conditions of this challenge, I promised (er, sort of) to read a book from every year of the 20th century, and post a review of each one.  I didn't think that would be the tricky part.  The paltry figure I currently have stated as completed is not quite so paltry as it appears, since there are three or four books which I've read but have yet to review.

Sorry, side-tracked.  I wouldn't normally blog about Mr. Allenby Loses the Way by Frank Baker because it is has the two characteristics of many books I read: it's incredibly difficult to find affordable copies, and it's not especially good.  If it were scarce but brilliant, I'd be the first to write about it; if it were readily available and mediocre, I'd write that review too.  But since it's impossible to find (I read it in the Bodleian) and not really worth finding... oh well, rules is rules, and this is my book for 1946.  Plus it's nice to think that someone will have written about this book on the interwebs, because otherwise a would-be Googler would find nothing.

The name Frank Baker will doubtless ring a bell - it is he who penned one of my all-time faves, Miss Hargreaves, and I keep persevering with his work, in the hope that I find something else as wonderful.  (Miss H, as I blogged recently, even pops up her head in Mr. Allenby Loses The Way.)  But genius seems only to have wandered by once, and the other Baker books I've read are rather more pedestrian.  Actually that's probably not the right term for Mr. Allenby Loses The Way because, in fact, it baffled me utterly in its strangeness.

Sergius Allenby is a diffident newsagent who lives fairly contentedly with his wife and niece.  He's not unlike Norman, from Miss Hargreaves, in being an unassuming but imaginative man.  The family dynamics aren't as amusing as the Huntley family's, but it all seems fairly normal (albeit amidst the air raid sirens and rationings of the time) until a gentlemen turns up wanting to talk to Mr. Allenby.

There was something remarkable about him, thought Sergius, yet he could not easily have described him except to say he was tall, lean-figured, dressed in good but unmemorable dark clothes, with graceful, cat-like movements of the arms.  His dim eyes, blurred by heavy horn spectacles, stared down at his brilliantly polished black shoes as though within those orbs stirred some oracle who guided him.  He was like a shadow, without substance or personality.  When he opened his mouth to speak Sergius expected some extraordinary remark to issue from him.  “There is a basilisk sitting on your right shoulder.”  But he only said, in a persuasive and delicate voice, “You are Mr. Allenby, I believe?”

It turns out that the gentlemen is not, in fact, a gentlemen - but a fairy usurping the body of one.  Sergius is asked whether or not he believes in fairies, and somewhat nervously conceded that he always has done - based on the mysterious and imprecise events surrounding his own birth, abandonment by his mother, and subsequent adoption.  This confession is all that is needed for the fairy-man to grant Sergius five wishes - a transaction done with a businesslike demeanour unbefitting a fairy.

Sergius sat, drumming his fingers on the table-cloth and staring dreamily into space.  The strange referred again to his note-book.  "Hm. Yes," he murmured, "Sergius Allenby.  To be allowed five wishes with the usual reservations.  Period, one month.  Casual wishes not operative.  No other person to assist.  Allow me to congratulate you, Mr. Allenby.  I might tell you, in confidence, that you are the only person in this area to be granted five wishes."

"It does seem a lot." Sergius coughed apologetically.  "It always used to be three in the old tales."

"Frankly, there's not much one can do with three; and first wishes are invariably wasted."

And it is after this that the novel becomes strange.

I imagine quite a lot of you would have stopped listening when I used the word 'fairy'.  I've got to admit, I wasn't thrilled at the prospect myself.  Even with my love of slightly strange novels, which dabble in the fantastic (like a certain Miss Hargreaves, don't know if you've heard of it) I shudder at the thought of fairies and suchlike appearing in a novel.

Well, you're in luck.  Turns out he might not be a fairy after all.  Humphrey Nanson occupies the other narrative thread - he is a strange sort of psychologist, who muses a lot on the nature of morality, works in an underground room filled with erotica and children's books, and seems to be able to possess people.  Told you it became strange.  But he also enjoys toying with other people's lives, and wielding power over them.

“There is the simple expedient of the telephone directory.  Don’t you adore the pin of fate?  As for the joke – I would aim merely at the baffling and bewildering of the chosen victim.  For example, Harold Finching, warehouse clerk, receives, every Tuesday morning, through the post, a parcel of boiled cod and bootlaces.  Miss Pennyprim, of Mon Abri, discovers, every Sunday morning, a pair of bright scarlet bloomers hanging from her line.  Mr. Allenby, newsagent, is visited by a business-like fairy and told he may have five wishes.”

Curiouser and curiouser.  Even curiouserer is that Mr. Allenby's wishes seem to be coming true...

There are some fantastic ideas in this novel.  My favourite conceit within it (which is more or less incidental to the plot) is that of an artist so absorbed in painting the sea scene in front of him that it is not until the picture is completed that he realises he has included a woman drowning herself... as indeed she has.  But good ideas do not a novel make.  Where Miss Hargreaves was insouciant and joyful with an undercurrent of the sinister, Mr. Allenby Loses The Way rather loses the joy.  Instead we have a lot of meanderings about philosophy and morality and psychology which do little other than baffle and skip round in circles.  In the meantime, the plot arcs and interweavings don't seem to make much sense or maintain much continuity.

Perhaps most importantly, there is no character with the life of Miss Hargreaves.   She is a true one-off, a brilliant invention; I could read her dialogue with delight for months.  There is a vitality in her which spreads through her novel.  Mr. Allenby Loses The Way has no such character; everything is slightly leaden.  The writing is not bad, in and of itself, but neither is it sprightly.  The odd amusing turn of phrase reminds me of Baker at his peak, but only for a moment or two.

After I read Miss Hargreaves I had hoped I had been introduced to a wonderful writer, and could spend many happy years tracking down and loving his novels.  Instead, I am left rather desolate that Miss Hargreaves was the one bright light amidst mediocrity.  But I'll keep trying his books.  If any of them are half as wonderful as Miss Hargreaves, it'll have been worth the search.

Have you had that experience with any author - one brilliant book, but only one?  If so, let me know...

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