oandthegang reads (but not enough...)

At Christmas I made a rather jolly pile of Christmas themed books, not only as decoration, but also to remind myself to actually read them. On Christmas Day I started Hercule Poirot's Christmas, discovering rather late that the chapters each deal with a different day, starting on 22 December and ending on 28 December, so if I re-read it next year I will know to start in time. I also re-read The Blue Carbuncle in the very nice Collector's Library edition of The Best Of Sherlock Homes, but I put down A Christmas Carol in an odd corner and didn't come across it again until after Twelfth Night. It will have to be put out for rereading next year. I finally finished Christmas Pudding by Nancy Mitford, and although I'm generally a fan of hers this was rather a disappointment so will be going to Oxfam. I made a small dent in Christmas At The New Yorker which will have to come out again next year. I should really have reread The Nine Tailors, one of my favourite books, at New Year, but will have to set it aside for another suitable moment (perhaps next time I visit someone living in a vicarage).

After Christmas I thought what a good idea it would be to keep books which must be read - or at least a small selection of them - on the coffee table in the living room in place of the Christmas books. There are far too many books on shelves, chairs, and boxes to stack there, so it is the place for my newest books, and here, only eleven days into the new year, the stack is becoming unruly (ok, it does include some bought towards the end of last year). I've joined the author a month group and the WW1 group, just to add a bit of pressure, but was unable to get on with anything until I had read all of the Inspector Montalbano series by Andrea Camilleri. They are wonderful and although one knows, because the character was born in 1952, that they must soon end as Montalbano ages with every book, it was nonetheless saddening to read that Camilleri is reported to have delivered the final volume to his publishers, although there is no confirmed publication date. I like the clever artwork on the covers, which is carried through on the hardback editions to the spine of the book itself. So depressing when television tie-in editions are published with actors' photos, etc.

On the coffee table now is Great Britain's Great War (I notice the touchstone thingy had entered this title, but suddenly arbitrarily substituted A Tale Of Two Cities) by Jeremy Paxman, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went To War in 1914 (started too soon after finishing The Guns Of August so WW1 history break needed) Gentry: Six hundred years of a peculiarly English class (interrupted half way through and needing to be finished, An Officer And A Spy, Mitterrand, A Study In Ambiguity, Darling Monster, The Goldfinch, The Great War (a book mostly of photographs published by the Imperial War Museum), and two books given at Christmas The Lost Child Of Philomena Lee (I'd seen the movie and wondered how the story was told in the book), and Love, Nina: despatches from Family Life by Nina Stibbe about which I'd not heard very much but which is in the media somewhat as Alan Bennett rejected in print Stibbe's claims that he is secretly a bit of a handyman, good at fixing washing machines etc. and there now seems to be a bit of a low level spat. I am nearing the end of another Christmas gift book, William An Englishman of which more in separate comment. Also in the pile are some Penguin Great Ideas books, Of The Abuse of Words, Days Of Reading, and The Myth of Sisyphus. I'd meant to bring home some of the Orwells in the series but seem to have come home with Virginia Woolf instead. That is what happens when one buys too many books at once.

So, where to start?? Given M Holland's current difficulties I'm leaning towards the Mitterand, but suggestions welcome.

I love the Inspector Montalbano mysteries too -- I've devoured them since I discovered them two years ago, thanks to LT.

Also, when LT gives you the wrong touchstone, look to the right under Touchstones and click on where it says "others" to get a list of possible other titles. Usually, the one you want will be there.

Great thread title!

That's quite a stack of books; it could make a coffee table in itself! Gentry: Six Hundred Years of a Peculiarly English Class sounds intriguing. Initially I just put in Gentry and got all kinds of interesting sounding touchstones. Also hoping to read William An Englishman this year, so look forward to your comments.

Didn't M Mitterand have the same problems as M Holland, only not quite as out in the open, initially at least? You could follow them both and compare.

A Merry Christmas to you oandthegang, hope you have a big coffee table.

No suggestions, but I'm curious to learn where you will go next.

>2 rebeccanyc:. Ah, thank you rebeccanyc, I thought 'others' just meant that other people in the group had the book. Obviously still a lot learn.

>3 SassyLassy:. 'Gentry' is fun. I'm only up to 1790 at the moment (The Failing Vision: 1790 - 1910), Each chapter looks at a family representative of a particular period, starting with the Plumptons in the 1440s, and ending with Cliffords in 2010. Lots of family letters, some of them amazingly vicious.

I'm going for Mitterand, although at 692 pages in hardback it may prove too weighty for commuter train reading. (I had to give up on War and Peace for that reason. Yes, I know I could buy the paperback.)

Also in my heap (er, organized collection of coffee table books) is The Intellectual Life Of The British Working Classes which I was enjoying hugely and encouraging everyone to read but stupidly put aside at some point and must now set myself to finish.

I read Hercule Poirot's Christmas over the holiday too. It was one I hadn't read previously. William an Englishman was my first book of 2014 and I I'm glad I read that one. It was a good place to start my WWI reading for the year. I will look forward to your comments. And Rebecca put the Inspector Montalbano mysteries on my wishlist a while ago. Your coffee table idea sounds terrific, but my hubby would not agree. :)

What did you think of the Poirot? I enjoyed it at the time but now can't remember anything about it. Which I suppose makes it a good Christmas reread though not a great book. I can't make up my mind about Christie, occasionally I enjoy her books, but they don't quite hit the spot for me. I don't really read any of my whodunnits for the mystery, I read them for the style and the little details, which makes Dorothy Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey series so wonderful, with Inspector Montalbano jostling up behind. Wimsey is a model of true good manners, putting others at their ease, particularly in The Nine Tailors. I doubt I would be able to indulge the vicar's love of campanology so cheefully. There are also those little things that no reader at the time would have considered odd, as when the vicar, having rescued Wimsey and his man Bunter from the snow, announces to his wife that they would be one extra for supper; Bunter's eating arrangements need not be mentioned. I hope you get to the Montalbanos. Do persist even if the first one doesn't quite take with you. I read them in strict chronological order and the stories become warmer and more eccentric as the series progresses although a certain bleakness also creeps in.

I'm not getting on well with the Mitterand. He's not coming off the page, but it's early days yet. I remind myself that I initially struggled with Robert Caro's Passage of Power which turned into a splendid, jaw-dropping, read. It doesn't help that French interwar politics were such a nasty morass. I'm bunking off by reading my Cormac McCarthy for the author a month group, but will persevere. I also need to read the 132 page manual that came with my new mobile phone. (Madness! Utter Madness!) Actually it didn't come with it. What came with it was a small leaflet telling me the manual was on the internet. So helpful. At 132 pages it's just about big enough to merit its own LT entry.

What are you going to read next for WW1?

Oh, I liked the Poirot, and found it to be a good Christmas read. I like Christie, and love Dorothy Sayers. I think I've read all of the Peter Wimsey series. Recently they were on special Kindle deal, so I think I have all of them on my Kindle, thinking I might do a reread this year of at least some of them.

For the Virago Group I plan on reading Mr Britling Sees it Through by H G Wells. I also have The Proud Tower and The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman planned for "soon".

My thread is http://www.librarything.com/topic/162119 if you are interested.

I've added my review of William An Englishman to the general reviews of the book (not sure if I should be linking it in here).

I think that most people in this group post their review here and copy it to the book page. If you read some of the threads, you will see that a review can cause quite a bit of discussion. Your review is excellent, and I have added a thumb's up.

Do copy your great review here as there has been a fair amount of discussion about the book in CR and it's good to see all the different perspectives.

What Colleen and Sassy said! I follow people's threads to read their reviews (well, and to chat . . .).

William: an Englishman by Cicely Hamilton

This is a rather extraordinary book about a little man - little in all senses of the word. The novel begins "William Tully was a little over three-and-twenty when he emerged from the chyrsalis stage of his clerkdom and became a Social Reformer. His life and doings until the age of twenty-three had given small promise of the distinction of his future career; from a mild-mannered, pale-faced and undersized boy he had developed into a mild-mannered, pale-faced little adult standing five foot five in his boots. Educated at a small private school in the suburbs of London, his record for conduct was practically spotless..." In the space of the first three sentences Hamilton has used the words 'little' and 'small' twice. William's only recognized attributes are that he is painstaking and obedient. He lives at home with his fierce and unpleasant mother, whom he vaguely dislikes, and who only allows him a small sum from his own earnings, which he spends modestly. His wishes are indeterminate and his ambition non-existent. He is a "negligible quantity" with his fellow insurance clerks, and a plan to take him out and get him drunk comes to nothing because no-one was sufficiently interested in him to give up an evening to do so. When his mother suddenly dies William feels only a sense of release, as well as some importance at finding himself with some money and in charge of his own life. His difficulty is that he has no idea what to do with it. Needing to unburden himself and seek guidance and unable to contain himself any longer he addresses one of his fellow clerks with the immortal words "I say!". The fellow clerk, Faraday, is also somewhat of an outsider, and unbeknownst to William is also "Vindex" of 'The Torch', a journal given to furtherance of The Class War. After some gently comic confusion William is taken under Faraday's wing and soon blossoms in pursuit of the Cause. As one cause links to another he meets Griselda Watkins "his exact counterpart in petticoats; a piece of blank-minded suburban young-womanhood caught into the militant suffrage movement and enjoying herself therein..... Like William, she had found peace of mind and perennial interest in the hearty denunciation of those who did not agree with her."

William and Griselda are each empty vessels, the vacuum of their minds and hearts filled by the causes which they have adopted. When with true affection they marry and leave London to honeymoon in a remote cottage in the Ardennes (secured through Griselda's acquaintance with a cosmopolitan female revolutionist understood to be of Russian Polish extraction) it quickly becomes clear that they have no room or capacity for interest in anything other than their respective causes. They are uncomfortable in the country and happiest in the revolutionist's library reading tracts in line with their sympathies. Their lack of curiosity and their unsophisticated dedication to their own causes within a set circle of fellow believers have shut them off from any knowledge or understanding of the larger world, so when they decide to cut short their honeymoon to return to the comfort of London their shock at finding that Belgium has been invaded is total. Talk of war had been regarded in their circles as a capitalist trick; the workers would never agree to fight. Thus the outbreak of war is doubly catastrophic, for it means the collapse of faith in the causes which the couple of held so dear.

What makes this novel extraordinary is that it is built around a man who could easily be regarded with ridicule or contempt, yet Hamilton holds him in our sympathy, we regard him with a compassion bordering upon affection. Hamilton wrote the novel while serving in France during WW1, first at the Scottish Women's Hospital and later with Concerts At The Front, and her experience of war on the ground shows. Only once does a sense of exasperation with William and his like come through, when towards the end of the novel through William she rails against the people back in London who talk about war and struggle without any idea of the real meaning of such things.

Although the novel ends predictably, over its course the reader experiences with William the sheer awfulness of war as experienced by the helpless bystanders through whose homes it passes, the powerlessness and uncertainty they experience, bizarrely contrasted with the normalicy of life a mere train ride away, if only one could get on that train.

The course of William's life is determined by a series of accidents, unburdening himself to a Socialist, going abroad for the first time in August 1914 to a country where he can't speak the language, and ultimately being handicapped by his own small weak body. His life is a tragedy, even if only a small one.

I have recently read a number of books about WW1, and one is of course familiar with the subject matter and newspaper or film footage of the horrors of war, but I think this is the first book which has made me feel in some small way how I would feel if I found myself caught up in a war.

After posting my William review (now pasted in above) I read the other posted reviews of it, and was struck by an extract that Heaven-Ali had included in his/her review of 8 December 2012, which describes an event which William witnesses without warning or explanation.

".... William saw the two civilians clearly. One was a short and rotund little man who might have been sixty to sixty-five and might have been a local tradesman - nearly bald and with drooping moustaches, rather like a stout little seal. Essentially an ordinary and unpretentious creature, he was obviously aiming at dignity; his chin lifted at an angle that revealed the measure of the roll of fat that rested on his collar, and he walked almost with a strut, as if he were attempting to march. .... ... .... There was something extraordinarily pitiful about his attempt at a personal dignity which nature had wholly denied him; William felt the appeal in it even before he grasped the situation, the meaning and need of poise."

When reading the novel I hadn't spotted the interesting correspondence between William and the rotund moustachioed little man, and I put it forward for other readers to consider.

I've finished reading Child Of God, and was surprised by how much I disliked it. I've always been a great fan of McCarthy, and initially I was enjoying it - the trademark McCarthy language, the jokes, but then at some point the seemingly pointless squalor and visciousness of it all got to me. I could cope with the violence, the necrophilia (though I hoped my fellow commuters were not reading over my shoulder), the slimy rotting corpses, but it was the cruelty to animals which did for me - primed fire crackers shoved into living pigeons, and finally an incident with a giant idiot baby and a robin. With this last incident I just thought 'What is he thinking of? What goes on in this man's mind?' With a sort of horrified fascination I reread the passage a number of times, wishing I had never read it in the first place.

'Child Of God' was first published in 1973, and I should check where it falls in the ordering of his work.

The novel opens with the auctioning of a farm, watched by the mentally unstable son of its former owner. He orders the auctioneer off the land, threatening to shoot him, but the auctioneer deals him a blow so savage that "Lester Ballard never could hold his head right after that. It must have throwed his neck out someway or another. I didn't see Buster hit him, but I seen him laying on the ground. ... ... He was laying flat on the ground looking up at everybody with his eyes crossed and this awful pumpknot on his head. He just laid there and he was bleeding at the ears. Buster was still standin there holdin the axe. They took him on in the county car and C B went on with the auction like nothin never had happent but he did say it caused some folks not to bid that otherwise would of, which may of been what Lester set out at, I don't know. John Greer was from up in Grainger County. Not sayin nothing against him but he was." Greer buys the farm and Ballard takes up an increasingly feral life in the local woods and hills.

Child Of God is a short book which would be best read at one sitting. Not only would that provide the opportunity to sink into the beauty of McCarthy's language, but it would probably give greater impact to Ballard's descent into total madness. I read it in bits over a number of days. There is a slightly odd structure in that the third party narrative is occasionally interrupted by short chapters in which unidentified locals talk to one another, sometimes about Ballard, sometimes about the Sheriff, sometimes just yarning. The narrative intermittently shifts to follow Sheriff Fate and his deputy. I feel that at some level there is a foreshadowing here of the structure of No Country For Old Men a much later and more satisfying work, albeit far more mainstream.

As the book progresses it seemed more akin to a shlock horror movie, glorying in grotesque goriness, seemingly with no other point. I don't know why I've had this reaction to this book, whether one can only read so much of McCarthy before his subject matter begins to wear, whether it is an earlier and perhaps inferior work, or whether I have changed and my appetite for his material diminished.

I'd be interested in other readers' reactions.

(this will also be posted on the Monthly Author Read thread)

Hi O! Enjoying your reviews!

Interesting about the McCarthy - I really like him too, but that is the second negative take on Child of God I've seen recently, so I don't think I will bother reading it. It was his third novel, by the way (out of ten so far). I was shocked to learn that he will be 81 this year!

Just to say that 'Mitterrand' is becoming much more enjoyable. I'm only up to page 76 though. As predicted, its size and weight makes the book occasionally difficult to read on the train. During WWII Mitterrand wrote privately that he thought the French themselves had in their expansionist adventure under Napoleon laid the seeds for the two world wars. Interesting idea.

As I was given a lovely Christmas present of a book a month from Persephone I will now be beginning my February book, The Wise Virgins by Leonard Woolf.
(This is Persephone scheme is a great present by the way. You can choose books to send to someone and Persephone will despatch them on a monthly basis, sent in nice padded envelopes, so the recipient gets a surprise book every month.)

I have a Waterstones gift voucher which was another Christmas present. It has been burning a hole in my pocket and I only have two weeks before I see the friend who gave it to me, so must use it before then. I have been inspired by the Centennial Read thread to go off and read some of the old classics like Edgar Rice Burroughs so I may blow the voucher on adventure and detective tales. Hatchards Bookshop always does terribly seductive displays, and I frequently fall for their tables of paperbacks with facsimile or faux vintage covers; usually the likes of Bulldog Drummond, The Riddle Of The Sands (loved that but I recommend that any prospective reader ensures that their edition has a legible map at the front. The one I first bought had very poor reproduction making the map unreadable, but I now have a better edition.), The Thirty-Nine Steps, Margery Allingham etc.

Ah. Just spotted the flaw. My voucher is for Waterstones, not Hatchard's. Waterstones now owns Hatchard's but the vouchers are not interchangable. As my local Waterstones branches have very limited selections I may have to go to the big Waterstones in town, which is dangerously close to Hatchards. And once one is in town....

Thanks for the information Cait. That may explain things somewhat. Whereas my earlier reaction to The Border Trilogy books (which are on my shelf only skimmed) was that compared with Blood Meridian McCarthy had sold out and gone mainstream, perhaps the contrast between Child Of God and Blood Meridian is just a maturing and honing of style.

Must get my Thinging under control. Was awake until 4am this morning reading various threads, and then the cat, who takes no hostages, forced me out of bed at 6.45. Cats don't have weekends, and they can't understand why humans want them. 6.30 is breakfast time (unless he's really hungry, when he will get me up earlier). Having dragged myself downstairs to feed him this morning I found that he still had food, he just wanted an audience while he ate. Took myself back to bed at 7.30 to catch up on sleep so I am not a zombie tomorrow, but just thought I'd take a peek at LT on the laptop .... and here it is 10.50. There is so much on LT I really must ration myself or it will consume my life. I continue to be awed by the ability of you seasoned Thingers to keep on top of it all AND read AND have time for all the other things you do.

It's a vile day here. The wind is howling, rain is streaming down the windows. The cat is roaming about downstairs waiting to nag me about lunch, and I am shortly due elsewhere. Happy Sunday, one and all.

Ouch. I find that I do a lot of scanning of people's threads and not a lot of commenting. That way I stay up to date but still have time to read.

I enjoyed Child of God as I have each of McCarthy's novels I've read. It's been a few years, though, so I don't remember the novel in much detail.

#22 - Me too. It does bother me at times that others seem to take the time to read and comment on everything I post, but I don't always reciprocate. But we have to save SOME time for reading, or there'd be nothing to talk about.

#21 - You'd like my weather--sunny and warm, if a bit breezy. A last day for the kids to play outside in shorts before another arctic cold front comes in tonight.

Enjoying your excellent reviews. Flooding here in South West France, as it's been raining more or less continuously for four days. Fortunately I live on a hill.

I haven't checked the whole state of Texas, but I'm guessing Steven's weather is getting worse by the minute. Snow expected in Houston tomorrow (not common).

Enjoyed your review of Child of God, chuckled at your sleepless night. I haven't figure out how to stay caught up here. Eventually I will have to skip some posts.

(Review of The High Window done for the Monthly Read: Chandler)

"All I knew about the people was that they were a Mrs Elizabeth Bright Murdock and family and that she wanted to hire a nice clean private detective who wouldn't drop cigar ashes on the floor and never carried more than one gun. And I knew she was the widow of an old coot with whiskers named Jasper Murdock who had made a lot of money helping out the community, and got his photograph in the Pasadena paper every year on his anniversary, with the years of his birth and death underneath, and the legend: His Life Was His Service."

Yes, we're back in Chandler territory, and Marlowe's taken on a new case. (Does anyone know if the choice of Marlowe for a name was significant?) Mark Billingham in his introduction to the 2005 Penguin edition comments that Chandler gave him a taste for dark and realistic crime fiction, where the solving of the puzzle is less important than character. I'm not sure about character, let alone plot - what Chandler delivered was style.

I finished The High Window about a week ago, and I've just had to read the back cover to remind myself what it was about. Although The High Window is perhaps weaker than his more well known works, I must confess that I've not entirely followed the logic of any of his plots. I seem to recall that one of his biggies, The Big Sleep or Farewell, My Lovely or possibly The Lady In the Lake famously has a character disappear inexplicably leaving a bit of a hole. I note from the introduction that The High Window was twice made into a film, once as 'Time To Kill' in 1943 and once as 'The Brasher Doubloon' in 1947, but neither was successful.

Regardless of plot Chandler is always satisfying to read; one reads him for the smart aleck one liners, the imagination inevitably superimposing Bogart on the author's original Marlowe, and the splendid similies ("Her hair was as artificial as a nightclub lobby"). Much alcohol is consumed, and much tobacco is smoked. There is a degree of strong arm and fisticuffs. The gentle reader calls from the sidelines 'No, don't give Marlowe your keys! Don't arrange to meet him later! You know it will end in tears!", but deaf to the reader's entreaties the characters hand over their keys, make appointments, and die. The very predictability is part of the satisfaction of reading these books.

The High Window's plot includes a Nutty Female. Nutty Females do turn up in Chandler's work from time to time, and I assume they are a reflection of popularization of psychoanalysis at the time. I think they are a bit of a flaw, but take them as part of the period setting.

So, while I definitely think that everyone should read at least one Chandler, this is not one that I would recommend.

And for realistic crime I would recommend the Martin Beck series starting with Roseanna.

StevenTX and baswood, how goes your weather? After umpteen weeks of strong wind and rain, we have finally had some blue sky here. Although I live near the Thames I'm on a little bit of a hill so not yet threatened by rising groundwater, erupting sewers, or overflowing rivers. Parts of the British coastline have been permanently altered by the force of the waves and debate has begun in ernest about whether to strengthen defences or to retreat from the flood plains, which of course leads on to other questions about the place of agriculture, etc. The ground water level is now so high it is thought that it will take to at least May for the surface to dry.

Have just finished reading The Wise Virgins. It's going to take some considered pondering to review, but in the meantime I do recommend it.

Got behind with Great Britain's Great War, and the series finished transmission last night, (also missed part of that as I was locked into a Sopranos repeat). I must try to make a point of finishing it soon otherwise it will get put to one side and swallowed up in the long grass.

As predicted, my Waterstone's voucher, combined with a trip up to town, has led to an influx of whodunnits, some of which will doubtless appear in this thread. Among the haul I picked up The Case Of The Gilded Fly, the first of the Gervase Fen series, which from its description should be rather fun. I quite liked the progression in the standard author's disclaimer. The Gilded Fly note is fairly straightforward: "As the setting of this story is a real place, more or less realistically described, it must be emphasized that the characters in it are quite imaginary and bear no relation to any living person. Equally fictitious are the college, hotel and theatre in which most of the action takes place, and the repertory company I have portrayed bears no relation to that at Oxford, or indeed anywhere else that I know of." Two years later he wrote in the Note to The Moving Toyshop "None but the most blindly credulous will imagine the characters and events in this story to be anything but fictitious. It is true that the ancient and noble city of Oxford is, of all the towns of England, the likeliest progenitor of unlikely events and persons. But there are limits." I like his attitude.

Not sure I've ever read a Chandler book, but it sounds like a great case for political correctness be damned and just enjoy it. The "nutty females" make me wonder if Chandler was writing with movies in mind. I will take your advice and read one, having enjoyed several of them in film format.

Devoured the entire Martin Beck series a few winters ago.

Strengthening defences sounds a bit Canute-ish. I can understand seawalls and such things, but suspect there's a certain inevitability to it all.

Agreed

Oandthegang, you are absolutely right about Chandler being all style and if you are in the right mood it can be great reading. Excellent review of The High Window

The weather here in South West France has become less wet. We have had a very mild winter so far; temperatures in mid winter can go down to between -10 to -15 but this year there have only been three nights when we have had a slight frost. Still time for a cold snap though.

Here's hoping you get a weather break soon, O! Enjoyed your thoughts on Raymond Chandler. I love those style of movies, but have never read any noir. I'll have to remedy that.

The Wise Virgins by Leonard Woolf

(this review is terribly long and rambling, probably because there is so much that I want to say and still haven't found a sensible way to do so, so there are lots of quotations from the novel as well as me going on and on. So here goes...)

I'm not normally a reader of introductions, as I believe that the test of a work is its ability to stand on its own without explanation, but for some reason I did read this one, which has some quite interesting background information. It seems likely that at least some of the novel's original readers would have recognized Leonard and Virginia Woolf in the characters of Harry Davis and Camilla Lawrence. Certainly their friends and family did. The Wise Virgins was first published in October 1914, and Leonard said 'the war killed it dead'. It was not republished until 1979. Lyndall Gordon's introduction to this Persephone edition comments that on its first publication the reviewers had little idea what Woolf was on about, but on its second it was read too closely as a roman a clef.

The story opens "Man is not naturally a gregarious animal, though he has become so under the compulsion of circumstances and civilization." It develops the argument that although people would naturally have lived in solitary caves circumstances have forced them to live in ever tighter groups, with builders building rows of houses for whole classes of people rather than individual houses for individual families, but behind each door "each is still a monogamous and solitary animal, mysteriously himself in his thoughts and his feelings, jealous for the woman who has come to him, despite the clergyman and the gold ring, as she came to him in the cave, to be possessed by him and to possess him and to bear him children in the large brass bed". London intellectuals go out to the suburbs and exclaim 'Oh. these red-brick villas! All exactly the same, just like the people who live in them!" But, argues the book, they are "the same only in the thin crust which civilization has formed over the fires of their primeval feelings. They wear the same straw hats and muslin dresses in the summer, and in winter bowler hats and dark dresses; they think the same things and in the same way, because the ways of this strange world in which they find themselves wandering are so difficult to understand, and they humbly and gratefully take what is given to them. That is why they go into the builder's stuccoed villas; for them the stucco and the red brick and the wooden gables and the delicate pink of the almond blossom that brings spring for a brief week to every third house, stand for comfort and cosiness. They have been told these things and therefore they believe them; in that, it is true, they are all the same. But in themselves, in the feelings that no-one has taught them, under the painted plaster crust of straw hats and opinions, they burn each of them with a fiery individuality."

On first reading, I whizzed through this section, which goes on for about three pages, thinking 'yes, yes, get on with it', but on going back over the book in preparation for this review, I realize that this is where Woolf set out his stall.

In one of these rows of comfortable stuccoed red-brick houses, in the fictional London suburb of Richstead (a conflation of Hampstead and Richmond), lives the Garland family. The story begins in their garden one hot sunny June afternoon. Mrs Garland is a widow with four virgin daughters. Although "not strictly a virgin" she is "a widow of so many years' standing that she might almost have been said to have reached a second virginity". The Garland's garden shows no trace of masculine presence, there are two laburnum trees 'like maidens' and white arum lilies 'standing like virgins' bloom in island beds together with perfectly tended roses. Three of the daughters are sitting in the garden. Ethel, at thirty-seven, is the oldest, and is doing needlework. Gwen, the youngest, is reading a novel, as is her older sister, May. Gwen is experiencing vague discontent, which has come on her increasingly of late, but which she knows is wrong, and would not dream of mentioning. Gwen asks Ethel if she is ever annoyed by novels, their cleverness, the people in them who have everything, and whether she often thinks of herself as just like the heroine. After a pause Ethel says she used to, but doesn't think she does anymore. Gwen says she does, and supposes that everybody does, although it's absurd to do so because they're not like the people in books, who are so superior. She demonstrates the absurdity by asking Ethel to imagine one of their friends as the heroine of the novel, going off to Cornwall for a week with an artist, having conversations like the people in the book. Ethel replies 'But, Gwen, dear, it's a book. I don't think I want things to happen to me like that." Gwen asks "But, Ethel, don't you ever wish something had - would happen, I mean?"

Ethel moves the conversation on to the new family who have moved in down the street. Mrs Garland has called on them and returns to her daughters with the news that the family is called Davis, the father is a solicitor, they used to live in Bayswater and keep a carriage, and they have a daughter Hetty about the same age as Gwen, and a son who is an artist. There is some disappointment that the Davis family is probably Jewish, but that does not entirely quell the girls' excitement at the thought of meeting the son, and dresses are selected for the following evening.

Harry Davis, who is accepted to be a portrait of Leonard Woolf, though described by his sister as having Leonard's worst characteristics multiplied to the -th degree, is a curious creature. He enormously resents the move to Richstead and feels nothing but contempt for its inhabitants.

One of the most curious aspects of this novel one hundred years on is the emotional state of the characters given their ages. Gwen is twenty-four and Harry seems to be the same, yet they both seem like teenagers in that uncomfortable limbo between child and adult. Harry is given to making absurd or outrageous statements, guaranteed conversation killers. His parents apologize for him, or say he has an odd sense of humour. In fact he is uncomfortable in company and frequently plows relentlessly on with a clearly unsatisfactory subject rather than risk the trauma of finding another. Alone in his room after first meeting the Garlands he twists with anger in his chair; they haven't liked him, he hadn't got on with them, he never could get on with people; the Garlands were dull and stupid, but Gwen had been interested in him, none of them could understand him. Amongst all this angst is the other teenage classic - sex. Quite daringly for the period Woolf writes of Harry as he agonizes about the Garlands "To understand Harry Davis and his place in the universe - it would be necessary to have some account of the thoughts which now came to him. Convention and the keepers of the public conscience make this account impossible in the English language. The reader must fill up according to his or her ability eight to ten minutes introspection."

That same evening Gwen goes to bed dejected and discontented, unable to decide if Harry was nice. Had he liked her? Had he despised them all? He thought her stupid and dull; was she stupid and dull? There was something unpleasant and cynical about him, but he thought in a way unlike anyone she knew.

Harry has his eye on a girl in his art class, Camilla Lawrence. She seems romantic and mysterious to him, and he needs something romantic in his life. He thinks of her purity of face and her virgin remoteness.

Here are two different approaches to virginity. While the Garlands are virgin not only by their lack of sexual experience but also by their innocence and their life without any masculine influence, a simple, domestic, virginity, Camilla is virgin in an almost holy way, by her distance and unattainability.

Camilla's set are well heeled intellectuals who sit about in large leather armchairs talking about the arts. Camilla seems to have divided reviewers; for me she never really came off the page. She has an older sister, Katharine, who is much more interesting. She is used to some extent as a foil for Camilla; Katherine is more engaged with the world, more perceptive and wise than Camilla. She is also physically attractive, soft and alluring. Harry despairingly asks himself why, if he is to be in love with anyone, couldn't he be in love with her.

While dreaming of Camilla Harry entertains himself by widening Gwen's literary horizons. He starts her off with Dostoevky's Idiot and moves her to "The Master Builder". While he thinks of her enough to provide the books, he sees her too seldom for her to discuss the books with him, nor does it occur to him that she might wish to do so. The unpleasant prudish vicar engaged to Gwen's sister May attempts to keep Gwen away from Harry, and finally tells him that the books he has been lending her are 'not quite the thing' for a young girl to read, as without the experience of life to enable them to see clearly their minds will be unsettled.

Ultimately, in a return to the theme of her opening discussion with Ethel, Gwen does take the books as a model for life, specifically identifying herself with Hilda in The Master Builder. Harry's contempt for suburban life has fueled the discontent which she already felt, and the books have shown her other ways to live.

Harry indulgently applauds Gwen when she tells him that she is going to model herself on Hilda, however when she prepares to throw aside her present life he is appalled. While she quotes back at him his own words he finds himself absurdly thinking of a line from Hedda Gabler "People don't do those sorts of things", but after all he's said it's impossible for him to tell her so. Speaking to Camilla later he says "It was all an absurd mistake. I talked to Gwen as you - we all talk... she believed, as we don't"

Harry's relationship with truth is complicated, as it is for most people. He is a great advocate of truth telling, as, it seems, are the members of Camilla's circle. Katharine tells him that Camilla's boundaries between truth and fantasy are soft, and that she cannot be told the truth about herself, which of course what needs to be done to save Harry.

Sometimes Harry seems to say things he doesn't believe just for shock value or to fill gaps in conversation. Sometimes he seems to say them just to be conventional. Sometimes he says them to avoid saying what he means. Sometimes it is almost as though he is two people, the thinking one and the one that is spouting whatever he is saying. In one particularly good passage he lies because he's expected to:-

"He looked straight into her eyes. It seemed to him that he was watching coldly what was going on within. He could have laughed bitterly at himself, at her, at the whole world. It seemed to him that he saw her soul, her miserable, weak, frightened soul, forcing itself to believe his lying words. It knew they were lies, it knew they were lies. It was turning in there, squirming down there. It believed, it had shut its eyes. She flushed. It believed - she believed. He could have taken her by the throat and shaken her.'

One of the subjects Harry brings up most frequently is his Jewishness. Given his general anger and lack of social ease I found it hard to decide what he was doing in his outbursts on the subject. His comments are harsh, yet he says he is proud of being a Jew. Sometimes it seems he is using his Jewishness simultaneously as a device to distance himself and an excuse for that distance. He will never be like the others, he is the Wandering Jew, he admires but despises Gentile women for their paleness and bloodlessness. He says that Jews want money, knowledge, intelligence, and taste, in order to get power to do things and influence people, which is in itself a form of creativity. On some occasions his outbursts seem intended to offend by their very unpleasantness the person to whom he is speaking. But he also ascribes to his Jewishness his energy, his desire to do rather than just be.

Woolf was writing at a time when anti-Semitism was fairly standard in many, if not most, circles, and indeed many of the other characters in the novel express suspicion or dislike of Jews. At times even the narrative sections of the book read harshly. Mrs Davis is described as having been a handsome woman, but someone who would look better under a palm tree swathed in scarves singing the Song of Miriam. Reviewers at the time of original publication were also confused, some wondering at the author's harsh view of his own people, with others wondering why he would boast of being a Jew.

Despite Harry's contempt for them, the novel has a certain sympathy for suburban women, for it is hinted that to some degree they have all at some stage gone through a period of unrest but with no outlet have subdued their ambitions and desires in committees and cookery lessons. One of the Garland sisters, an eighteen year old boy in a woman's body, escapes by spending her life on the golf course. Harry declares himself pro-suffrage and Woolf maintained that all sensible men should adopt feminism as a policy or belief.

I could read this novel several times and get more from it each time. I was interested to note StevenTX's review of Night And Day, which looked to cover similar territory, so I should have a read of that at some point.

For those who have doggedly read down to this point, I assure you there is still some of the novel not covered in this baggy review; the book runs to 285 pages. I regret that our scattered nature prevents me from discussing it with you over a good dinner, but for now, over and out. (and I will endeavour to do more concise reviews in future.)

I was fascinated by your review of The Wise Virgins especially as it is one of the books I am planning to read this year as it celebrates the centenary of its original publication date. Interesting to read that Leonard Woolf thought that "the war killed it dead". I did not pick up from your review much about the forthcoming conflict (1st World War) which I somehow expect would have dominated many authors thoughts, although it was interesting to read about attitudes towards Jews.

Your review has made me look forward to reading this.

There doesn't seem to be any reference to the war, unless there is some slight mention in conversation which I've missed. The introduction says Woolf began it while on honeymoon in Spain in September 1912, showed the first draft to his sister in August 1913, and that it looks back to the period of his courtship of Virginia in 1911.

It does seem to have caused considerable ructions in his immediate circle. His sister said it shouldn't be published, his mother said she would break with him if it was, and Virginia, who for some reason didn't read it until early 1915, wrote in her diary that it was very good in some ways and very bad in others, and two weeks later had the worst of her breakdowns, and the only one during which she refused to see Leonard.

Very interesting review of The Wise Virgins. Onto the wish list it goes!

I don't think you need to be worried about lengthy reviews, there are quite a number of people around who like reading them.

It is not that surprising the book does not refer to the war. If it was published in October 1914, it must have been conceived, planned and written mostly before the war broke out. The First World War was a conflict that escalated rather quickly and unexpectedly, just weeks after the assassination on June 28, with most countries at war by the end of July, early August.

I enjoyed your review of The Wise Virgins. There is a lot of similarity, not only with the themes in Virginia Woolf's writings, but with parts of Dorothy Richardson's epic novel Pilgrimage, which was also "killed by the war," but for more obvious reasons.

(More to say later, but it's time to go vote.)

There seems to be an awful lot of Dumas adaptations on the television recently, most of them awful. I read The Three Musketeers when young, possibly even in a child's adaptation, and had never read any others, so I thought I'd give him a try. The small bookshop near my office had about four different editions of The Three Musketeers and two of The Man In The Iron Mask. As some of the editions were expensive hardbacks and at least one of the paperbacks had that dreadful photo-reduced print of pages once intended for a much larger book it was tricky to know where to put my money. I have on occasion stood in bookshops reading two translations side by side, and found them radically different. So whether or not I liked Dumas, given that I don't read French, would be determined by which translation I bought.

An extra concern I have about translations is that the translator may have updated the language. I want to read Pride And Prejudice as it was written, I don't want anyone changing the language. On the same basis, if I want my Musketeers to sound as English would have corresponded to the French when Dumas was writing. I don't want to find any Musketeer saying 'chill'.

One doesn't often see references to the translator in reviews, so I thought I'd put up a thread about translations where people could recommend (or not) particular translations. I've called it "I'm pickin' up good translations..."

Finishing my comments on The Wise Virgins... The title obviously derives from the parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins, in which a group of bridesmaids is told to bring lamps. The wise ones bring oil for their lamps, the foolish ones don't. So how does this fit in with the novel? Is Gwen a foolish virgin whom Harry makes wise by introducing her to Dostoevsky and Ibsen? Or is the title just one of convenience and not meant to be fitted so closely to the story?

I will definitely add this book to my reading plans at some point.

I'm also going to jump over to the new thread on translations. I hope we can also have a more general discussion about the other issues you've raised such as the pros and cons of deliberately translating works in archaic language to match that of the original versus using the modern vernacular.

StevenTX, sorry for the delay in coming back on the question of the title The Wise Virgins. I have pondered it for some time without coming to a satisfactory conclusion. The parable is generally interpreted as being a warning that the time of the second coming cannot be known, and that the wise will be prepared no matter how long the wait. Those who are prepared will be taken in to the feast (heaven) and those who were not will be banished. I cannot see where this applies in the novel. I look forward to your thoughts (and those of others) when you have read the novel. Gwen with her impatience and its disasterous consequences might be said to be a foolish virgin, but it is hard to see who is wise in the prepared way.

The Maltese Falcon Dashiell Hammett

Too many adjectives.

But seriously, folks, ... ...

The most striking thing about this novel is the physique of the characters, particularly Sam Spade's. Instead of a unified organic whole his body seems to be a writhing assembly of independently minded parts.

One of my favourite sentences is "He made angry gestures with mouth, eyebrows, hands, and shoulders."

What??? Were these parts each making their own gestures? I imagine Spade twitching bizarrely while all these unspecified gestures were being made, which I doubt was Hammett's intent. He's gone to great lengths to convey nothing.

Hammett seems anxious about the potential of bodily parts to break free. On page 1 we learn that Spade's assistant, Effie Perine (never mentioned other than with both names) has brown eyes. On page 22 Effie Perine's brown eyes open wide. On page 24 her brown eyes are uneasy. On page 94 she moves her brown eyes to indicate the inner office. Phew! Still brown, then. Did Hammett imagine we might worry they'd changed?

Hammett uses clumsy expressions which I found constantly interrupted the flow of the narrative. Spade is supposed to look "rather pleasantly like a blonde satan", but also somewhat wolf-like. He has a v-shaped mouth over a v-shaped jaw, and when he smiles he smiles with his lower lip, exposing his 'jaw teeth". (Right, that'll be the bottom/lower teeth.) I think Bogart must have attempted this, as when I read it I immediately remembered him making a curious grimace which exposed his lower teeth. It had made an impression on me because his teeth were not good and it looked both unattractive and peculiar. My attempts came nowhere near a hint of a smile and gave me cramp in my chin.

Spade's wolfishness is reinforced by his gleaming yellow eyes and the 'animal noise' which he frequently makes 'in his throat'.

The following passage gives some feeling of the tediousness of the descriptions:-

"She shook her head, not smiling. Her eyes moved back and forth between her lids as she shook her head, maintaining their focus on Spade's eyes. Her eyes were inquisitive.

Spade put an arm across her back, cupping his hand over the smooth white bare shoulder farthest from him. She leaned back into the bend in his arm. He said: 'Well, I'm listening.'

She twisted her head around to smile up at him with playful insolence, asking: 'Do you need your arm there for that?'

'No.' He removed his hand from her shoulder and let his arm drop down behind her.

'You're altogether unpredictable,' she murmured.

He nodded and said amiably: 'I'm still listening.'

'Look at the time!' she exclaimed, wriggling a finger at the alarmclock perched atop the book saying two-fifty with its clumsily shaped hands."

Even the clock doesn't get away with simply saying the time, it says it with its hands, clumsily shaped though they are. And why was she 'wriggling' her finger? Hands feature a lot in this novel. They are generally ugly, though occasionally slim. Fingers are also ugly, and usually thick. Fingers get frequent mentions. Arms are long. Eyes get up to all sorts, occasionally in collusion with brows - "Anguish clouded her eyes, partly closed them under eyebrows pulled up at the inner ends." It's like having an out of control sat-nav describing moves so peculiar that I was constantly stopping to figure out what they could be, and then working out their feasibility. I reckon that a substantial number of them could only be replicated by a classically trained Indian dancer.

The only conceivable justification for this unhelpful verbosity would be that Hammett was being paid by the word.
Which is a pity, because underneath it all is an interesting plot with nice twists.

I quite liked the old fashioned obviousness of the characters' names. The detective is Sam Spade, there is an extremely over-weight character called Mr Gutman, a 'Levantine' called Mr Cairo, and a beautiful, but iffy, client called Miss Wonderly.

Hammett may have a great reputation but I found him altogether too tiring.

I enjoyed your review of The Maltese Falcon. I suspect that Hammet was a highly literate man writing for an audience largely made up of pulp readers and that he enjoyed playing around with words and metaphors. Much of this could be self-parody.

Nice take on The Maltese Falcon, Those hard boiled noir crime thriller writers do leave themselves open to parody.

>42 Oandthegang:, >43 Oandthegang:, Oh gracious, I laughed! Especially at "One of my favourite sentences is 'He made angry gestures with mouth, eyebrows, hands, and shoulders.' What??? Were these parts each making their own gestures? I imagine Spade twitching bizarrely while all these unspecified gestures were being made..."

I would have assumed, based on the film, that the writing in this book would have been spare and tight. Clearly not. Also, Sam Spade is blonde?!!! No way. Sounds like a case of the film improving the book.

>46 fannyprice: Not only is Sam Spade blonde, but he's around six foot something and his sloping shoulders are so rounded that he is described as conical - as broad as he is deep(*) - so that his grey suit hangs badly.

Now I reckon that if someone is conical they will start with a pointy little head and cast a shadow pretty much like a pyramid. Surely we are not to understand that Spade had a big bottom! Did Hammett mean perhaps that he was cylindrical? Seems an odd mistake to make.

(*the book is in the car on its way to Oxfam, so the 'broad as he is deep' is not an exact quote, but very much the spirit of what was written)

Stopped in for a quick Hello..got sidetracked by posts #42 & #43.....I love The Maltese Falcon and everything I've read by Hammett. I love the NOIR genre, in all it's imperfections.....might not be great literature, but some of those stories were real corkers!

In breaks from slogging through Crime And Punishment (you can tell how much I'm enjoying it so far!) I've been gradually working through other people's threads and I've noticed there's quite a lot of correspondence about how people arrange their books.

Am I alone in sorting my books by height?

I'm not utterly dogmatic about it and I will occasionally move a book away from its closest height mate to somewhere where it might have a bit more in common with its neighbours, and there are some rough groupings, some of which follow naturally from height, as certain types of book tend to be published in certain formats. Hardbacks tend to be larger than paperbacks, although there are inconvenient exceptions such as the little Collector's Library books. Art, photography, fashion, interior design and cartoons are frequently large format, and gardening splits inconveniently into large format and quite small books with not much in the middle. Where lots of books are the same size there's a rough, though not rigid, split between fiction and non-fiction. Where books are the same size I sort them alphabetically by author, and then either alphabetically by title, or if a series, in series order.

I'm not quite sure why I'm telling you all this, or why you should be remotely interested; I suppose it's because I saw that there were people being quite scrupulous in the segregation of their books.

I like the randomness, and the element of surprise when looking along a shelf. It's a bit like listening to Radio 4 (current and former UK residents will understand) where you wander about the house listening one minute to a programme about women's rights in Afghanistan, the next to a dramatization of Shirley then to a programme about bacteria, a comedy sketch show, and, if you're up early enough in the morning, there's 'Tweet Of The Day' which features a different bird call each day and last thing at night there's the Shipping Forecast - a weather forecast specific to ships. In the same way the radio can surprise and educate me as it ranges over subjects I would not have thought to seek out, so I can look at my bookcases to see what's there without having to drift from room to room to find a subject which takes my fancy.

I am not a fan of lists. Seldom make them and only slightly more frequently read them, so will not be offended by anyone departing at this stage, but here, in praise of the random bookshelf, are the books from the bookcase immediately on my right.

(having completed the listing I must now come back to say these shelfs have turned out not to be as diverse as one might wish for the purposes of illustration, but there we are....)

Top shelf: (in descending order of height - all hardback)

Letters To Alice
Stephen Spender A Life In Modernism
Uncertain Vision
Inside Story
An Exaltation of Larks
James Lees-Milne
The Pope's Rhinoceros
Birdsong
Margot Fonteyn
Lake Wobegone Days
Mother Tongue
Stalingrad
Dark Palace
The Crossing
Cities Of The Plain x 2 (US & UK editions)
All The Pretty Horses
A Horse's Tale
The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn
Roughing It and The Innocents Abroad (one volume)
Lord Hornblower
Captain Hornblower R.N.
The Innocents Abroad and Jumping Frog (one volume)

Second shelf: (in descending order of height - mostly hardback with a couple of paperback interlopers)

Modern Fashion In Detail
Historical Fashion In Detail
The Decoy Duck
The Fantastic Kingdom
Kay Nielsen
American Country
A Blueprint For Survival
The World Of Edwardiana
The If... Files
Magnum Cinema
Quilts Of Provence
Decoys Of Maritime Canada
Decoys A North American Survey
New Jersey Decoys
Factory Decoys
Decoys Of The Atlantic Flyway (a bit of a theme going here, but mostly published by the same company)
Rackham's Color Illustrations For Wagner's Ring
The Magic Of Dance
Underground Graphics
Les Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry
Amphigory
Amphigory Too
The Steadfast Tin Soldier illus P J Lynch
Banksy
The Great Life Photographers
East Of The Sun And West Of The Moon illus Kay Nielsen
Perrault's Fairy Tales illus Edmund Dulac
Peter Pan J M Barrie illus Michael Hague
The Tempest illus Edmund Dulac
The Sleeping Beauty Quillier Couch illus Edmund Dulac
Arabian Nights Laurence Housman illus Edmund Dulac
Rubayat Of Omar Khayam Edward Fitzgerald illus Edmund Dulac
Christmas At The New Yorker
The Age Of Uncertainty
Alice's Adventures In Wonderland (can't be bothered trying to correct the Touchstone. We all know who wrote it) llus Arthur Rackham
Grimm's Fairy Tales illus Arthur Rackham
Tales Of Mystery And Madness illus Gris Grimly

Third Shelf: (all hardback. A messy shelf because the Oxford reference books and Fowler are really a bit small for where they are and I've had to shove the Seven Pillars off to one side because it looked too odd in the midst of the Oxford publications)

Alexander 'Greek' Thomson
Malleus Maleficarum
Max Beerbohm Caricatures
Seven Pillars Of Wisdom
Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (two different editions - it's a long story)
then a gang of Oxford reference books, Fowler's Modern English Usage and Bowls, Bowling Greens and Bowls Playing

Fourth Shelf:

Too far down, and anyway you get the idea....

Continuing in praise of randomness. Just turned on the tv and caught the last quarter hour of 'Lambing Live' (yes, does what it says on the tin - lots of lambs being born), and now there's a programme about William Marshall, a medieval knight.

I pretty much cram my books on what ever shelf is empty...with the exception of my hardback collection of J.D. Robb and cookbooks. Even my cookbooks are just crammed on the shelf in no order whatsoever.

I've tried arranging my books for appearance's sake, but couldn't find anything. Most recently they were all alphabetical by author, regardless of subject or genre, except that oversize and mass-market-sized books were on separate shelves. I say "were" because everything's in a jumble now as the house is being painted. In addition, I culled out and sold hundreds of books as I was taking them down from the shelves. So when the painting's done I may try a new arrangement, but I haven't decided yet what it will be.

I organize by height a bit, in part because the shelf space necessitates it.

Love the book organization discussion! It's something I've been thinking about a lot since we moved into a new home recently and we're going to have built in bookshelves put in along one entire wall in our reading/piano room. I've always grouped nonfiction by topic and fiction alphabetically, though I pull books that are excessively large or small to the ends. I don't own that many books yet since previously I did not have the space or money to buy many. I love some of the pictures I've seen recently if books grouped by spine color. Highly impractical, but it looks really neat!

>54 japaul22: How exciting. I would love to be able to have a wall or two of books, but my place is tiny and the books have to compete with pictures for wall space. Arranging by colour sounds great, but probably really only works with things like the Penguin Great Ideas series, otherwise there would be all those hideous sub-sections - orange with purple, orange with green, how much green before it really belongs in the green section.....

Arranging by spine color is most practical when your collection is mostly hardcover and you're willing to dispense with the dust jackets--neither true in my case. Before we started our house painting we consulted with an interior decorator on colors and ideas. She was obviously horrified at the randomness of my library and suggested it would look better if the books were all turned backward to show only page edges of a uniform color. My books are to be read, not looked at! She hasn't set foot in this house again.



For what it's worth, here's a picture of my library taken about eight years ago. Except for a few prominent sets at the top left, the arrangement is alphabetically by author, but I think at the time I had most non-fiction and genre fiction separate. What you're seeing is just under half of my shelf space. Until recently, though, it was much more crammed than you see it here, with books stacked behind books.

What a cosy looking library. Are those authors looking down from the top of the wall? At a random guess, are the black books with the white bands Everyman publications?

Love your decorator story. It surpasses for silliness an arrangement I used to see from my office window. Someone had knocked out the back wall of their Victorian terrace and built a very expensive looking three story glass extension, which afforded all of us in the office a splendid view of the interior. A spiral staircase rose from the double height ground to a sort of mezzanine which faced onto the garden and ran the full width of the house. Rather than railings, glass, or anything else one might imagine would be suitable for preventing falls, the mezzanine was edged with long low bookcases and,you guessed it, the spines all faced towards the window and the spiral stair. Looked great from my office, and presumably from their garden, but must have looked most peculiar to anyone on the mezzanine. I always wondered if there was a matching set of bookcases facing into the mezzanine, making the books facing into the garden purely decorative - just a dusting problem for the cleaner.

>57 Oandthegang: The pictures are of military leaders from the American Civil War. I used to be more interested in history than literature. My mother executed those portraits, and others, in cross-stitch. A few months ago I donated them to a university's historical museum where they are now on display.

Yes, the black and white volumes are Everyman's Library. I had tons of them because a local used book store bought Everyman's overstock and put them on sale for $8 per volume or less, still in shrink wrap. I don't have as many as I used to because I sell or donate most books once I've read them. At times I've organized them all together as a set and may do so again.

>49 Oandthegang: While completely sharing your love for random radio, I'm afraid I'm far less spontaneous when it comes to books (and music).

When I want a particular book, I want it now, without having to search for it, or remember what colour or height it is. That means my books are arranged for practicality, not beauty, although I do take a certain pleasure at looking at shelves full of books on the same topic. Fiction is arranged by country, by century, then alphabetically by author, then chronologically by that author. Easy enough, although it does involve a few arbitrary decisions for people who overlap centuries. Thomas Hardy is easy, because although he lived until 1928, I have made him a nineteenth century author as his work was published then. Joseph Conrad, who published in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, I have made a twentieth century author, as more of his work was published then, and he seemed to be more forward looking.

Nonfiction is different. History, politics and biographies from a given country all live together, as they did in the real world, arranged chronologically. Gardening is divided by topic: letters, famous authors, famous gardens, biographies, then the five Fs of gardening for books actually about plants. Reference books tend to be with their related topic.

I do love looking at books arranged by colour or some other externality in rooms arranged for presentation, but I swear too much when I can't find something to arrange things that way! Now that I'm getting the And Other Stories publications, which are carefully designed to be a set, I sometimes wonder about arranging them as such, but so far I have split them up and arranged them by country.

>56 StevenTX: I envy you your shelves. That's a great story about your decorator!

>59 SassyLassy: I'm grinning hugely at your library arrangements! Clearly your approach is cerebral, mine visual. You would sit in my house irritated by The Curse of Lono sitting next to The Times Atlas while in your house I would be itching to move that tall skinny gardening book away from all its short stout neighbours.

I like the idea that you could by looking at a shelf immerse yourself in a particular country in a specific time (how do you deal with countries which appear and disappear?) but I doubt I could carry in my head sufficient detail to search that way. I just see the book in my mind's eye and trot off to an appropriate place. It's not foolproof, but I think that's partly down to the fact that I still haven't really settled my books and what lives where. I suspect your library is much bigger than mine, and so perhaps it would be harder to keep in mind images of books one had bought a long time ago.

Going back over a month and off topic - I love your review of The Wise Virgins. I only just read it.

>59 SassyLassy: I once tried an arrangement very similar to that, with fiction divided by country and then chronologically. I found it very difficult to remember whether some authors were American or English, English or Irish, etc. Then there are all the multi-national authors like Nabokov, Lessing, Beckett, etc.

Putting non-fiction separately and by subject worked quite well, however, and I may do so again when I re-shelve everything.

"She was obviously horrified at the randomness of my library and suggested it would look better if the books were all turned backward to show only page edges of a uniform color."

How bizarre. How in the world would one know which books were which?

>63 fannyprice: nice comment Fanny. The suggestion was so bizarre that I hadn't got as far as imagining trying to work with a room like that!

>61 dchaikin: Thank you.

>63 fannyprice: - A few months ago someone here posted a link to a gallery of library designs that included one where the owner had done just that--faced all the books backwards, showing only the page edges, so the idea didn't originate with our decorator. I've been trying to find that picture, but without success. It's not something a book lover would do. It makes about as much sense to me as hanging pictures facing the wall so they all look the same.

>66 StevenTX:, hah, that's another brilliant design idea. I feel like we've got the beginnings of a ghost story set.

>80 StevenTX: Odd you would pick two books that I have too! My Curse of Lono is filed with the other Thompsons in the journalism section, in the American room, while The Times Atlas is in another room, with other map books on an over size shelf above another such shelf for art books.
In the room where I am now, the "Russian" room, although in English, I'm looking at my three volume Isaac Deutscher biography of Trotsky. Volume 2, The Prophet Unarmed, is about 2 cm higher than volumes 1 and 3, being a later edition, although the spines all follow the same format. It would seem odd to wander elsewhere to find it, even if it was only on another shelf in the same bookcase. Think of those mixed height garden books as a paper garden, just like the real world, especially when the spines have beautiful flowers!

>62 StevenTX: Citizenship allocation is something near and dear to me, so I do struggle with some authors. Usually language of writing and country of residence is the determining factor. Take two Poles who wrote in English: Joseph Conrad I have made English and Jerzy Kozinski I have made American. However, I'm not entirely consistent, as Ha Jin, who lives and works in the US, and writes in English, I have made Chinese as most of his books are set in China, and those set in the US still seem to have a Chinese outlook. However, exiles are a different matter, and I usually allocate them to their country of origin.

>67 fannyprice: It seems to me that there is a French publishing firm, Gallimard, that has all its spines in the same white format and most of its books the same height, in their Collection Blanche. It actually looks quite wonderful seen en masse, but not very practical. I think you can see it in a post by bas reviewing Sartre

>68 SassyLassy: OK, I concede that having the middle volume of the Isaac Deutscher somewhere else would be annoying. As well as the aesthetics of filing by height, there is a practical advantage in maximizing space for wedging in other books sideways along the top. Volume 2 would simply have to act as a divider for the horizontal books. I will now wander around bookshops looking for time and territory defying books.

I have discovered Margery Allingham (yes, still dodging Dostoevsky).

Coroner's Pidgin Margery Allingham pub 1945

Mr Albert Campion was taking a warm bath. He'd just got home for six weeks' leave after three years abroad "employed on a mission for the Government so secret that he had never found out quite what it was". Lying in the bath he was trying not to fall asleep as he had a train to catch in hour and fifteen minutes time.

He was not surprised when he heard the front door open and then some scuffling sounds, as he assumed his man must have got the telegram to say he was due back.

"Campion was just about to shout a greeting when he became aware of a new, and more unlikely series of noises; swift footsteps raced up the main staircase, the front door shuddered open just as someone on the inside was closing it, there was a muttered expletive, and finally an entirely unfamilier feminine scream.

"Mr Campion sat up slowly.

"Another unfamiliar female voice, but older this time and very close at hand, said pleadingly: "Be quiet, dear, oh, be quiet."

"Then more scuffling, followed by whispering, and afterwards a second door opening and closing."

Mr Campion decided that some sort of surprise party had been organized for him, and that everyone was in the front room. Wrapping towels round himself he snuck down the corridor to his bedroom to get his dressing-gown. The room was in semi-darkness and it was only when he turned around after putting on his gown that he noticed that there was someone on his bed - a woman wearing a black silk nightdress and in an advanced state of rigor mortis. She was a complete stranger, she hadn't been there when he had turned on his bath, but whoever she was he couldn't permit her appearance to prevent him from catching his train. In his sitting-room he found three frighted people: his man Lugg and "two of the most striking women he had ever seen in his life". The older woman was "an Edwardian beauty still young in everything but years". She reminded Campion of Reynolds' portrait of Mrs Siddons.

What follows is a joy to read. As an ill assorted group of people gradually assembles in Campion's sitting-room, good manners prevail in this most bizarre and ridiculous situation.

"Is the lady in my bedroom staying long?" he enquired of Lugg.

"I didn't know you was back", said Lugg.

"Oh well then, that's all right." Campion appeared relieved. "I was just going anyway. I only dropped in for a bath between trains. You just go on as though I weren't here."

"The woman who reminded Mr Campion of Mrs Siddons collected herself and intervened. "Oh, this is Mr. Campion, is it?" she said graciously. "I'm afraid we're imposing on you terribly. I don't think we've met, have we? But I've heard my son John speak of you many times - Carados, you know."

"It was a very fair effort. The great drawing-rooms of the early part of the century had been a severe training ground and some of their stoic gallantry reappeared for a moment in her quiet voice and unshakable ease of manner."

The woman is Edna, Dowager Marchioness of Carados.

"As soon as he had digested this piece of information the utter unbelievableness of the present situation struck him afresh, and he pulled himself together with difficulty.

"Why, of course," he said stupidly. "Please use the place as much as you like. Tell me, is Johnny about?"

Allingham has tremendous fun with the Marchioness. It was the Marchioness who found the body, and, not wanting it to spoil the plans for her son's wedding, she had prevailed upon Lugg to help her move it. The problem for all concerned is that she has little regard for the law or truth, or anything that would get in her way. She is used to life being ordered for her convenience. The body was inconvenient and potentially scandalous, so it was her duty to move it to protect her son. But move it from where? Lady Carados tells different stories to suit circumstances as she sees them, and even Johnny cannot get a straight answer from her. Despite her increasingly manifest dottiness, "she had such poise and authority.... Her potential dangerousness grew at every moment. She was like a beautiful, high-powered car driven by an engaging maniac".

Lady Carados' interference has muddied the waters and fairly soon pretty much everyone is under suspicion.

I enjoyed the humour and the writing in this. It appears from the inside jacket that there are twenty-one Campion novels, but Vintage has decided to publish them out of order for some reason, so that The Crime At Black Dudley, the first in the series, will not be published until early 2015. An interesting contrast to Penguin's re-issuing of the Maigret novels in chronological order at the rate of approximately one a month. This is rather a bore. The Crime At Black Dudley was published in 1929 and Allingham appears to have written a further eleven books before Coroner's Pidgin, and while I'm sure that like the Wimsey and Montalbano stories the books will stand up on their own, both of those series benefit from being read in the order they were written. So, do I wait until 2015 or do I break the order?

I loved your review of Coroner's Pidgin! I generally prefer dark and depressing works, but this one really does sounds like fun. I am not familiar with Margery Allingham, but will now definitely be watching for her books.

66 -
I'm not sure about a gallery but in my 2013 thread I did show two pictures of that design concept here. I actually think it's a really lovely design if highly impractical.

68 -
A lot of French books do indeed have a standard format for their spine and covers. For example, Folio. I like it as it makes for very easy bookshelf organizing and shelving compared to a lot of American publishers who have so many variations amongst them. Plus, it's not as impractical as you think to have them all have the same cover as Folio, for example, deals mainly with classics so then it's easy to organize all the authors together without worrying about different editions.

Enjoyed your review of Coroner's Pidgin. You had better buy the books as they are reissued in case the earlier ones go out of print before 2015.

>72 lilisin: Love the gallery photos! I suspect the people with the impossible to reach books must have viewed some very similar.

>73 baswood: Thank you Bas - I will take that as license to divert myself further from the interminable Crime And Punishment.

No doubt one day I will look back with amazement at the degree to which C&P bores me, but as it took around 278 pages to get vaguely interesting and continues to score abysmally on the commuter test (i.e. how many pages before I nod off. C&P frequently only scores about four. A good score would be not noticing the journey then sitting on the platform at my destination still reading until reaching a suitable point to stop). Even flitting between translations has only helped to get me through, not to engage me. I'm up to page 430 (P&V edition), still living in hope that I will warm to it, but with a mere one hundred and twenty pages to go the chances of it winning my heart seem slim.

Yesterday I finished Crime And Punishment. The sun came out, the birds sang.

This morning I started George Monbiot's Feral: Searching For Enchantment On the Frontiers Of Rewilding. Early days but a good score on the commuter test.

>75 Oandthegang: Yesterday I finished Crime And Punishment. The sun came out, the birds sang.

LOL!

>75 Oandthegang: Yesterday I finished Crime And Punishment. The sun came out, the birds sang. A little added bonus from George himself?

Ah, but now there are your thoughts on it to come! I love a good dissing review.

I was trying to attach an image of the war memorial in Cambridge, but with no luck.

Is anyone else concerned about how public this site is? It may only be a figleaf, as obviously I don't know who else is a member of LT, but I do think of the site as having a closed audience. In my haste to log in I have not really been paying attention to the site home page seen by non-members, but today I looked at the Recent Activity which took me through to reviews, which appeared to have chains, I could then click on to a book, see how many people owned it, click through to their individual home pages, see their photographs, tags, etc. As I said, slightly academic, but I feel rather exposed. I hadn't joined up expecting to become public property without control. Naive perhaps, but there we are. Just thought I'd check that others were fully in picture.

>79 Oandthegang: Yes, I've been aware that non-members can view LT pages as easily as members. I've even sent links of interesting discussions to non-members. But as long as anyone who wants to can become a member, it doesn't really make much difference. You can become a private member and hide your library, but that takes away the benefits of interacting with other members.

I guess there are two potential concerns: one is exposing too much of your life to people who know you (ex-spouses, co-workers, etc). The other is opening yourself to potential identity thieves or home burglars. Personally, I have no worries about the first, and you just about have to cut yourself off from the world to be safe from identity theft. I've been a little concerned about announcing when I'm going to be out of town, but the odds of a burglary ring monitoring LT are pretty slim.

>80 StevenTX: Have just had a quiet chuckle imaging the burglary ring, though I suppose on a more serious note if one were the owner of such things it would probably be wise not to log rare or valuable books (assuming one knew which books were rare or valuable!) I checked out Skinswaps today as it sounded really interesting, and Amazon is advertising it at a pretty hefty price.

>81 Oandthegang: I checked out Skinswaps today as it sounded really interesting, and Amazon is advertising it at a pretty hefty price.

They have lots of cheap used copies, though. That's how I bought my copy. I paid 24 cents for it (plus shipping).

Unless you use the name Oandthegang elsewhere and/or have it connected to your real name somewhere and/or use the same password for LT that you use elsewhere, you probably will just find people associating your LT activities with the Oandthegang name.

I found the idea of the burglary ring funny too.

I have twice entered long and detailed comments about Crime and Punishment, comparing the different versions, etc. etc., and both times a misplaced click has wiped the entire text. I suppose I could be spared this if I typed up the review somewhere else and then copied it into comments, rather than drafting live on the site, but there we are. I had previously posted a half finished draft which I stopped because I was falling asleep, but I am now giving up. Clearly reviewing Crime And Punishment is as frustrating as reading it.

Suffice it to say that I only persisted with the book because it was a monthly author read. It would be an acceptable short story, or perhaps a two reeler with Lillian Gish in the role of the ridiculously self-sacrificing Sonya, but no more. I will never read another Dostoevsky.

For translations, I used Ready for speed and humour, but P&V for more detail. I suspect I would have enjoyed McDuff's translation better.

That's it.

Personally I think you should use It would be an acceptable short story, or perhaps a two reeler with Lillian Gish in the role of the ridiculously self-sacrificing Sonya, but no more. I will never read another Dostoevsky. as your review.

Oh dear. I feel your frustration. Enjoyed your review.

At the movies..... a night away from the books.

Just back from watching Calvary, which I strongly recommend. This Irish film, set in Sligo, opens with a priest, Father James (played by Brendan Gleeson) sitting in the semi dark of the confessional. Someone enters the other compartment and Father James waits to hear the confession. The man on the other side of the grille, however, has not come for absolution. He announces that as a child he was abused by a priest, who is now dead. The man wants to take his revenge, and gain notoriety, not by killing a corrupt, sinful, priest but by killing a good priest. He is going to kill Father James, but gives him a week to get his things in order. At the end of the week, on Sunday, Father James is to meet the man on the beach for his appointment with death.

Father James discusses the matter with his bishop, who says that as the man had not expressed remorse or requested absolution the conversation was not sealed by the rules of the confessional, but although he suggests that Father James tells the police he leaves it to him to choose. As it is a small parish Father James thinks he knows who it is, by the voice, but cannot be sure. He tells no one else about the threat, and the film follows him day by day for the rest of the week.

Father James is no milksop steeped in a lifetime's service to the church. His vocation came late to him, after the birth of his daughter and the death of his wife. Gleeson's physique, - his bulk, his slightly long hair and thick beard and direct intelligent gaze makes him a powerful figure, a man of the people striding through the landscape in his cassock, in sharp relief to the crabbed sycophantic trouser-wearing priest with whom he shares the rectory.

His rural parishioners have a concentration of weirdness not normally found outside a David Lynch film, but while the sharp dialogue has many scenes which had the audience (all eight of us!) laughing out loud, there was an uneasy malevolence which felt much more weighty after the film ended. As I left the cinema Breugel's images of the Passion were going through my mind, particularly Christ Carrying The Cross, for Father James is Isaiah's man of sorrows.

"He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised and we esteemed him not.

Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows.

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth."

There is sorrow, but the jury is out on healing and redemption. Definitely worth a second viewing.

Bonus item: for those who stay through the credits there are quite nice images intercut with the credits, at least one being of a natural feature discussed in the course of the film.

Calvary sounds like a movie I'd like to see, but it is not yet released here. Thanks for the great summary!

Worried that Crime and Punishment did you in. What's up with your reading nowadays?

The Year Of The Hare by Arto Paasilinna

Things have been busy of late, and though I've read a lot I've fallen behind on reviews, despite having read a number of good books. So now the extra test of reviewing books that I read some time ago - what do I remember of them?

The first book that came to hand this evening was The Year Of The Hare. I couldn't remember anything about it, but that pleased me because that meant I could read it again, and I knew I'd enjoyed it the first time. Odd sort of recommendation, but there we are. So having had a quick flip through it (but not enough to ruin my rereading), I can give some indication of the story.

As the evening of a Finnish midsummer draws in two men, tired after a long and quarrelsome day, are heading home, driving into the sun, the beauty of their surroundings lost on them.

"They were a journalist and a photographer, out on an assignment: two dissatisfied, cynical men, getting on for middle age. The hopes of their youth had not been realized, far from it. They were husbands, deceiving and deceived; stomach ulcers on the way for both of them; and many other worries filled their days."

"On the crest of a hillock, an immature hare was trying its leaps in the middle of the road. Tipsy with summer, it perched on its hind legs, framed by the red sun."

The photographer brakes too late. The leaping leveret hits the windscreen and is thrown off into the forest. The photographer backs up to the place where the hare was hit and the journalist rushes into the trees to look for it. He finds it, and although its left hind leg is broken it seems otherwise unharmed. The journalist makes a splint for its leg and cradles the hare in his arms as it calms down. He doesn't respond to the impatient calls from the photographer, who angrily drives off, abandoning him. The journalist, Vatanen, idly looks through his wallet and considers its contents, indicative as they are of his life. He then picks up the hare and heads deeper into the forest.

Leaving his old life behind, and outwitting initial attempts by his wife and employer to get him back, Vatanen sets out on a series of adventures largely determined by, or as a consequence of, his concern for the hare. The adventures become increasingly bizarre as Vatanen fights forest fires, herds cows, becomes involved in military war games, and tracks a bear across the border into Russia - always accompanied by the hare.

Part whimsey, part satire, part shaggy dog story, according to the back cover of my edition 'The Year Of The Hare' is the author's favourite of his works, and has long been a best seller in Finland and France (an interesting pairing). I was surprised to see that the novel "is frequently dramatized for the stage and has been made into a film twice". I can't begin to imagine how this could be played out on stage. Even a film would miss the spread and the affectionate detail of the work.

Well, now that I've reviewed it I might just go off and read it again.

Excellent review of Year of the Hare. Can't understand why it should be a best seller in France, but it sounds a good story

I never heard of Year of the Hare, but now I'm going to look for it!

Not sure whether Vatanen's injured hare or the one from Local Hero met a more fitting fate, but the book does sound intriguing and I suspect I'm somewhat short on Finnish fiction.

>92 baswood: Perhaps it's mistaken for a cookbook?!

I've recently discovered that Anthony Powell's twelve novel cycle A Dance To The Music Of Time is again available with the excellent Mark Boxer illustrated covers. This has probably been the case for years, but the publishers carelessly neglected to inform me. For some reason the volumes are delivered to my local book shop in ones and twos in random order, so it has taken me a little while to get my hands on A Question Of Upbringing, the first of the series. (Yes I know I could have ordered it, but where's the fun in that?)

I had remembered the series chiefly for the dislikable Widmerpool, his Thunder Box, and his comment that "books do furnish a room" (the title of the tenth novel). In memory the cycle had that feeling of collapse and despair that seemed to typify so much of what everyone I knew was reading back in the seventies. What I had forgotten is what a truly excellent writer Powell was. I was captured from the first sentence - "The men at work at the corner of the street had made a kind of camp for themselves, where, marked out by tripods hung with red hurricane-lamps, an abyss in the road led down to a network of subterranean drain-pipes." The workers with the snow falling on their fires seem to the narrator reminiscent of the legionnaires of the ancient world, their postures bringing to mind Poussin's painting 'A Dance To The Music Of TIme', and he thinks of mortality and of his days of school "where so many forces, hitherto unfamiliar, had become in due corse uncompromisingly clear".

I had forgotten the light heartedness of the writing:-

........ Le Bas was evidently pretty angry.

He was a tall, untidy man, clean-shaven and bald with large rimless spectacles that gave him a curiously Teutonic appearance: like a German priest. Whenever he removed these spectacles he used to rub his eyes vigorously with the back of his hand, and perhaps as a result of this habit, his eyelids looked chronically red and sore. On some occasions, especially when vexed, he had the habit of getting into unusual positions, stretching his legs far apart and putting his hands on his hips; or standing at attention with heels together and feet turned outwards so far that it seemed impossible that he should not overbalance and fall flat on his face. Alternatively, especially when in a good humour, he would balance on the fender, with each foot pointing in the same direction. These postures gave him the air of belonging to some highly conventionalised form of graphic art: an oriental god, or a knave of playing cards. He found difficulty with the letter 'R', and spoke rather as if he were holding an object about the size of a nut in his mouth. To overcome this slight impediment he was careful to make his utterance always slow and very distinct. He was unmarried.

'Stringham appears to think that you can explain, Jenkins, why this room is full of smoke.'

'I am afraid my uncle came to see me, sir. He lit a cigarette without thinking.'

'Where is your uncle?'

'I have just been getting Cattle to let him out of the house.'

'How did he get in?'

'I think he came in at the front door, sir. I'm not sure.'

I watched Stringham, from where he stood behind Le Bas, make a movement as of one climbing a rope, following these gestures with motions of his elbows to represent the beating of wings, both dumb-shows no doubt intended to demonstrate alternative methods of ingress possibly employed by Uncle Giles.

That sounds good.

Still massively behind on the reviews, etc., but inspired by Baswood's general cultural reviews just thought I'd make a quick plug for the British film 'Lilting', which I saw recently without knowing anything about it in advance. If you read the blurb it sounds like a depressing night out, but it really isn't. In fact it's often quite funny. I think summaries generally run along the lines of chap trying to establish relationship with the mother of his dead partner, but it's actually about so much more. The partner - whose death is off screen and then taken as historical fact - is of Chinese descent, and his widowed mother, who lives in a care home, has refused to assimilate or even to learn English, although she speaks a number of other languages. Matters are further complicated because her son died without telling her he was gay and that his English friend whom she intensly dislikes was his partner of some years. Despite, or perhaps because of, the language barrier, the mother is gently courted by an Englishman who also lives in the care home. The small cast is excellent, particularly the mother (sorry, will have to fill in names later) and the film is beautifully shot. Worth a second viewing.

The Exiles Return Elisabeth de Waal

An Austrian professor travels by train from Paris to Vienna. The closer he gets the more anxious he becomes. As he travels though Switzerland he tells himself it's not too late, he can get off, visit a Swiss colleague and say that was his reason for travelling. He has left his wife and children back in the States. She was deeply opposed to his making this trip, and he is having difficulty getting used to the idea that he doesn't need to justify himself to her, that he is free to do as he chooses. The train connections to Central Europe have only recently been restored, and Professor Adler is returning to the city of his birth, the city he had to flee. His wife had adapted well to life in America, and established a successful business making lingerie for rich American women whom she rejoices in humiliating as they stand naked before her. The professor, however, yearns for his old home and the life he left behind, but like all who return to old homes, he has not anticipated change. When his train pulls in to Western Station the station building is no longer there. The once bustling beautiful city is now empty, dirty, and shattered.

"As he walked along its pavements, it aroused in him that curious ambivalent sensation which one experiences in dreams, that of knowing where one is and not knowing, of recognition and non-recognition, of the comfortingly familiar and the terrifyingly strange - the sensation of deja vu: am I really myself, experiencing this, or has it all already happened a long time ago?"

Disoriented to the point of nausea Adler walks the streets like an automaton.

"Finally, there he was on the Ring: the massive pile of the Natural History Museum on his right, the ramp of the Parliament building on his left, beyond it the spire of the Town Hall, and in front of him the railings of the Volksgarten and the Burgplatz. There he was, and there it all was: though the once tree-bordered footpaths across the roadway were stripped, treeless, only a few naked trunks still standing. Otherwise it was all there. And suddenly the dislocation of time which had been dizzying him with illusions and delusions snapped into focus, and he was real, everything was real, incontrovertible fact. He was there, Only the trees were not there, and this comparatively trivial sign of destruction, for which he had not been prepared, caused him incommensurate grief. Hurriedly he crossed the road, entered the park gates, sat down on a park bench in a deserted avenue, and wept."

The new social fabric of the city is as difficult to adjust to as the physical. The city is still under the Allied Occupation. Under the law of reparation anyone wishing to return would be reinstated to the same or equivalent post to the one he had held before if he had been dismissed or forced to resign because of his political views or his race or religion. Adler imagined he could come back and take up where he had left off, but life is not that simple. de Waal charts the awkwardness and suspicion attendant upon the return of the Jewish refugee. The Austrians are afraid of what the Jews may seek to reclaim, they are embarrassed by their history. Adler cannot help wondering about them. To someone who has declared his wartime past Adler says "It is a satisfaction to me to have met one self-confessed unrepentant Nazi. There must be many of them. Where have they got to? They all seem to have disappeared. One goes about amongst people, wondering. It is so harassing to have to suspect, looking for signs, listening for unpremeditated revealing remarks, and perhaps being unfair to people whom one may have wrongly suspected." de Waal illustrates the fear of being suspected when an estate agent goes to great lengths to establish that pictures on his wall were legitimately obtained with proper provenance.

Adler's is not the only return, however. Theophil Kanakis, a member of Vienna's small but wealthy pre-war Greek community, is seeking a small palais, something he feels he must once have seen, or heard described, an opulent little gem of a building in which he can assemble beautiful things and people. He has seen that other cities sustained far more damage than Vienna, but he fears that redevelopment will destroy its essence. An exile at one remove, Marie-Therese Larsen is the American born daughter of an Austrian princess. Remote and curiously naive, Marie-Therese goes to Austria to spend time with her mother's family, where she begins to find a kind of peace. Kanakis adds the girl to his collection, with tragic results.

The stories of Kanakis and Marie Therese seem to have been forced into an uncomfortable marriage with that of Adler.

Elisabeth de Waal was the grandmother of Edmund de Waal and readers of The Hare With The Amber Eyes will recognize the autobiographical roots of this novel, which was not published in her lifetime.

Extra info: royalties from the sale of this book go to the Refugee Council.

The Hare With Amber Eyes was a book in my book group. But, not knowing anything about the book and I knowing ahead of time I wouldn't make our meeting, I didn't read it. Now wondering if I should read it, and this one too.

>99 dchaikin:. I found The Hare With Amber Eyes a bit of a curate's egg, some bits were fascinating, others quite dull, but that will depend on the reader's interests. I was fascinated by the section on pre-WW1 Paris and felt slightly smug that a particularly unpleasant painter was someone whose work I'd never really liked - a somewhat embarrassing admission as I don't think one's estimation of someone's character should affect one's estimation of the work they create.

It took a while for the subject matter of Hare to rise above de Waal's writing. Despite these reservations there was sufficient interesting material in the book that I've given or recommended it to other people.

(I've just realized that I own at least three books with the word Hare in the title. Slightly surprising. Must look out to see if there are more.)

He Wants - Alison Moore

I bought this after hearing an interview with the author which seemed to suggest that a novel about men in late middle age who'd led narrow unfulfilled lives would not be depressing.

Wrong.

The Drinker - Hans Fallada

"Of course I have not always been a drunkard. Indeed it is not very long since I first took to drink. Formerly I was repelled by alcohol; I might take a glass of beer, but wine tasted sour to me, and the smell of schnaps made me ill. But then the time came when things began to go wrong with me. My business affairs did not proceed as they should, and in my dealings with people I met with all kinds of setbacks. I always have been a sensitive man, needing the sympathy and encouragement of those around me, though of course I did not show this and liked to appear rather sure and self-possessed. Worst of all, the feeling gradually grew on me that even my wife was turning away from me. At first the signs were almost unnoticeable, little things that anyone else would have overlooked. For instance, at a birthday party in our house, she forgot to offer me cake. I never eat cake, but hitherto, despite that, she had always offered it me. And once, for three days there was a cobweb in my room, above the stove. I went through all the rooms in the house, but there was not a cobweb in any of them, only in mine. I meant to wait and see how long she intended to annoy me with this, but on the fourth day I could hold out no longer, and I was obliged to tell her of it. Then the cobweb was removed. Naturally I spoke to her very firmly. At all costs I wanted to avoid showing how much I suffered through these insults and my growing isolation."

The Drinker is a gripping read. A novel of two hundred and eighty-two pages about a descent into total degradation written by a man who named himself after a murdered horse may not sound promising, but I do recommend it. The narrator is Herr Sommer, the owner of a small business which he built up with his wife, but which she has now left to run their house. Sommer knows that his wife is better at many important aspects of the business than he, she is efficient, good with people, and makes the effort to deal with customers and suppliers directly. He is proud and awkward, and has not bothered to keep up contacts. An important contract to supply the local prison is up for renewal, a contract which the Sommers have had for nine years, and while his wife had visited the prison governor every time the contract was due to be renewed, Sommer just gets out a tender quote his wife submitted three years ago, copies it over, and mails it. Unsurprisingly, the contract is lost. The bank then refuses to cash Sommer's cheque. Sommer cannot admit his failure to his wife. At dinner that night, after yet another quarrel, Sommers suddenly thinks of a bottle of red wine in the basement, and, unsure why the idea has come to him, suggests to his wife that they have it with the meal. For the first time wine doesn't seem sour, and on a mere glass and a half the world seems good. The following day he visits a tavern, and after downing a noggin of beer moves on to schnaps. Alcohol takes control of him very quickly. He must now conceal his drinking as well as the business failure.

The energy of the novel comes from Sommer's rapid shifts in perception, like looking at the world through a constantly turning kaleidoscope. He hides his drinking from his wife, he is ashamed. He wants her to discover his drinking, he wants her help. He wants her to discover his drinking so she will feel shocked and guilty, because it's her fault that he is drinking, she has turned him into this wreck with all her efficiency and her coldness. She is scheming to make a wreck of him so she can take over the business.

Sommer eludes his wife's attempts to get him to the doctor, and is soon on the unstoppable descent to prison and the asylum.

Fallada knew whereof he wrote. He was addicted to morphine, alcohol, and cigarettes and spent time in prisons and insane asylums, occasionally combining both in asylums for the criminally insane. Perhaps the most shocking section of The Drinker is that which deals with Sommers' time in the asylum, a ghastly place of total degradation where the forgotten live in filth, malnurished and disease-ridden.

There seems to be a lot of discussion and debate about Fallada and his work. Even this Melville House edition, nicely printed and good to hold, is inconsistent in its information. The back cover says "This astonishing autobiographical tour de force was written by Hans Fallada in an encrypted notebook while he was incarcerated in a Nazi insane asylum". The publisher's note 'About Hans Fallada' at the back says ".. (Fallada had) suffered an alcohol fueled nervous breakdown and was in a Nazi insane asylum, where he nonetheless managed to write - in code - the brilliant subversive novel, The Drinker." This note comes immediately after the 'Afterword' written by John Willett who says that Fallada was in a closely guarded criminal asylum on a charge of attempted murder . "It was there that, under the pretence of writing a propaganda novel, he wrote The Drinker, not in code as has sometimes been suggested, but in fine criss-crossed lines to economize paper." Willett is not certain that the novel is intentionally about anything other than its obvious subject matter, despite the temptation to draw parallels with the degraded state of Europe at the time. It is interesting that the 'About..' and the back cover both refer to a Nazi insane asylum, the Nazi reference apparently redundant. Fallada had done time in another asylum for the criminally insane before WW1 after killing a friend in a duel and then attempting to kill himself. Although The Drinker was written in 1944 it wasn't published until 1950, by which time Fallada was dead of a morphine overdose.

I thought The Drinker was one of the grimmest books I've read, but it was compelling as you say, if only to find out how low he could sink.

Mariana - Monica Dickens

Mary is alone with her dog in the country. Clearly she has lost someone, but it is not clear what the circumstances are. People have been trying to make sure she has company, to watch out for her, and have not understood that she would rather be alone. "So she and Bingo had come down to Little Creek End for a long week-end of solitude. Nobody here but herself and the dog and a thousand memories of the week-ends when there had been two people and a dog in a lonely cottage on the Essex marshes." While Mary sits by the fire, reading by the light of an oil lamp, a vicious storm rages outside. She begins to fret that there may be a letter for her back home in London, a letter stamped 'RECEIVED FROM H.M. SHIPS', perhaps an important letter. She decides to ring a friend to ask her to go round and check tomorrow, but discovers the phone is dead, the line brought down by the gale. She turns on the radio for a favorite programme only to hear 'The Admiralty regrets to announce that the British destroyer Phantom struck a mine and sank early this morning.' Three of the seven officers and twenty of the men have been lost. Next-of-kin of the missing men have been informed.

Without any means of discovering whether her husband is alive or dead Mary lies awake in the dark, unable to contemplate the future, so instead forces herself to think of the past. "The past, the certain past, was the thing to hold on to. It was safer to look back than to look forward." As she lies waiting for morning "she thought of the things that had gone, the years that had led up to this evening - the crisis of her life. All the trivial, momentous, exciting, everyday things that had gone to make the girl who lay in the linen-scented darkness waiting to hear whether her husband were alive of dead."

This somewhat bleak opening chapter is followed by a delightful and funny tale about a girl who lives with her widowed mother and her mother's brother in a small flat in London, but holidays with her extended family down at her paternal grandparents' large Elizabethan house, Charbury, in Somerset. Mary's father was killed in the Great War, and her mother has chosen to work to support herself and her daughter rather than be supported by his parents. Her own mother is unpleasant, and lives with her unpleasant servant in an unpleasant house in Dulwich. Moving between the contrasting lifestyles keeps Mary as an outsider, occasionally a misfit, but enables her to see a greater range of options than might otherwise be the case.

Monica Dickens acknowledged that the novel was based on her own childhood and growing up. Charbury is based on her grandparents' Elizabethan house, Chilworthy, near Chard in Somerset. Mariana is very much a period piece but the trials and tribulations of growing up, finding friendship, love, and a career are at heart still the same. As is a certain wistfulness for a life forever gone.

The title of the novel refers to a poem by Tennyson, which Mary learns to recite at drama school, about a woman waiting, without hope, for her lover's return.

The day I finished Mariana I recommended it to a colleague as a really good, cosy, book. "Cosy?" she said. What do you mean 'cosy'?" I said it was one of those books that made you feel warm after you'd read it. "You mean chick lit?" she asked. My yellow down days are behind me, but having just looked for the first time at Harriet Lane's preface I see she says that Mariana "belongs, quite triumphantly, to the hot-water bottle genre of fiction", in which she includes The Pursuit Of Love.

I look forward to reading more Monica Dickens.

Mariana has a thread running through it about the smell of linen and polish. I can think of no other novel which has made me want to polish the furniture and hang out washing.

Whenever I open this thread I see that optimistic list of things I was going to read, and as the nights are beginning to draw in I really must try to get back to some of those books before the year is out.

>106 Oandthegang: It is definitely something that always happens to me. I make reading plans and they just don't happen the way I thought they would. I've read some good books this year, but most were not anywhere near top of mind when the year started.

>106 Oandthegang: That's why I don't make reading plans . . .

Excellent review of The Drinker by Hans Fallada, Reading the paragraph you quoted I get the impression it was written by a person who was either insane or on the edge of insanity. Very bleak indeed.

The Ministry Of Fear - Graham Greene

If someone had just attempted to kill you you would go to the police, wouldn't you? But perhaps if you yourself were a convicted murderer you might not. Particularly if you thought the attempt on your life was because of a cake. Hard to convince the police about a matter like that. They might send you back to the asylum.

Arthur Rowe is angry. He is affronted that anyone should attempt to kill him, a murderer. He had recognized the poison in the tea as it was the same one he had used to kill his wife. Before matters go much further a bomb drops, separating Rowe from his would be assassin. After briefly consulting a private investigation agency Rowe sets out to discover the mystery concerning the cake.

First published in 1943 and set in London and its environs during the blitz this is a nice bit of classic spy story, and would have made a good movie in its day, however being a Greene novel it's about more than just spies and double agents. Rowe killed his wife out of pity for her incurable suffering, and although the jury was lenient, packing him off to an asylum, he has never been able to forgive himself. Rowe's acute sensitivity to suffering, his sense of pity, has been his undoing. As a child he had seen a rat, its back broken by a dog, trying to make good its escape, and unable to bear its suffering he took a shovel and beat in its head, only to be severely reprimanded for the killing, his pity misunderstood. In killing the wife whom he loved he has stopped his own life. Rowe loses his memory, but it is lost only from the end of his childhood. He remembers his happy boyhood, and from what he knows of himself as a boy tries to imagine what that boy became, who he might now be. Boys always want to be heroes; the child-like Rowe is able to act on that urge.

Great lines such as "He could have gone on listening to her for hours; it seemed a pity he had to kill himself, but he had no choice in the matter."

A good book for a short train journey, particularly in the pleasing Collector's Library edition. (I am a fan of these nicely printed little hardbacks with their attached ribbon place markers.)

>110 Oandthegang: that sound good. You just put it on my wishlist.

I do like Graham Greene and this one sounds like a classic, but I don't recall seeing it. I will have to look harder.
I just finished one of his nonfiction books.

You had me worried at the start of your Mariana review, so I was glad to see it worked out for you.

>112 SassyLassy: Yes, when I first started Mariana I put it aside after the first chapter as I'd just read something a bit gloomy and wanted to read something cheery to recover. When I picked it up again I reread from the beginning and I'm so glad I did. I will be foisting copies on friends. One of the good things about doing reviews is that it makes me pay attention to details I'd have missed otherwise. I don't generally read forwards and afterwards, but have taken to reading them when I'm doing my review to pick up extra information. That was how I found out what the Tennyson poem was about, and understood why the book took its title.

The Ministry Of Fear starts each chapter with a line from something called The Little Duke by Charlotte Yonge, which according to the introduction was a popular Edwardian children's story.

Enjoyed your review of The Ministry of Fear, not one of Greene's most popular novels, but it sounds good.

Instructions for British Servicemen In France 1944

This pamphlet was prepared by The Political Warfare Office and issued to the soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force by the Foreign Office, London. It was actually written by Herbert David Ziman, a journalist on the staff of the Daily Telegraph, while on secondment from the Intelligence Corps to the French Section of the Political Warfare Executive.

The section What Do The French Think Of Us? begins "It is fair to say that in 1940 we and the French parted on pretty bitter terms. They felt that we had not sent them a large or powerful enough B.E.F., and that we had left them in the lurch at Dunkirk. Few of them believed we should carry on the war long after the evacuation. We, on our side, thought that the French had fought badly and had let us down by asking for a separate armistice which left us in the lurch."

There is some information about French history and culture and the effect of the German occupation. 5,000 French citizens per year (averaging out to one person every two hours) were shot for active resistance. There were 1.25 million French prisoners of war, nearly a million French men were deported to Germany, and another 150,000 were in prisons or concentration camps in France. The troops were warned that the French might be too exhausted to show much enthusiasm at their arrival.

Although of a specific time and circumstance, much of the advice here would be just as valid for travelers today visiting places where the locals' lives are not as easy as their own. Soldiers are warned against buying goods and consuming resources, thus depriving the locals of scarce commodities and distorting the market. On the other hand, they are not to give their food and supplies to the locals, to discourage the development of a black market. They are also warned about trying to make free with the local women, to criticize the locals, or imply that their own homes and culture are superior to those of the French. And finally, stay off the booze.

A little section on entertainment says that although ENSA will in due course provide entertainment for the British troops, in the meantime "the films for ordinary French cinemas will have to be provided by the Americans and ourselves for months to come. It would be as thoughtless to crowd the French out of their own cinemas or cafes as to buy all the food in the shops; you have had plenty of chances for recreation at home." Interesting to ponder on the effect on the course of French cinema, after years with little to watch suddenly being exposed to Hollywood.

I am mystified by the little section of French phrases at the back. There are myriad regional accents in the UK. Pitman shorthand, which is written phonetically, can be puzzling to Londoners, who say 'bath' with a long 'a', whereas Pitman, as a northerner, wrote it with a short 'a'. Here is the official 1944 Political Warfare Executive phonetic spelling (after the French original):

Il-y-a eu un accident.

Eel-ee-ah-ewe urn ack-see-dong.

Je ne comprends pas.

Sher ner compron pah.

Ma voiture est en panne.

Mar vwattewer at on pan.

What are all these silent 'r's? Whatever section of the British population this worked for, the rest of them must have sounded very bizarre indeed.

>155 Fascinating

>115 Oandthegang: I sure hope those poor servicemen didn't run into any québecois! Actually, the accent in Normandy is quite similar to Québec, so they probably would have encountered the same complete incomprehension anyway. Love the je/sher phonetic attempt.

Wilfred And Eileen - Jonathan Smith

"It was all very well, this fun, but Wilfred was tiring of it."

'Wilfred and Eileen' opens in Cambridge, 1913. Wilfred and his friends are in their final week before going their separate ways. There is the final ball to be got through, and Wilfred is not only tired of the ways of his fellow students, but also less than enthusiastic about his partner for the ball, Diana. Down by the river in the afternoon he meets a Miss Stenhouse in the company of his friend, David. He encounters her again at the ball, and while Diana dances Wilfred takes Miss Stenhouse - Eileen - to see some of the sights of the college. They return to the ball, Wilfred spends the rest of the ball with Diana, and in the morning writes to Eileen to say how much he enjoyed meeting her, and suggesting they meet up again in London, where they both live. He is unsatisfied with the tone of his letter, he worries that it is presumptious based on such a short meeting, and tries not to look forward to a reply.

Wilfred and Eileen was the first novel by Jonathan Smith. In his Afterward he explains how he came to write it.

Smith was Head of English at Tonbridge School, and was intending to write a biography of or critical introduction to Siegfried Sassoon. One day he found waiting outside his classroom a boy, Anthony Seldon, (who went on to become Master of Wellington College and a political biographer) who said something extraordinary had happened to his grandparents during the Great War, and that his mother, Mary Seldon, had considerable quantities of autobiographical material by his grandfather, Wilfred Willett. Smith felt there were similarities between Sassoon and Willett in terms of their background and experiences, but also in their style. Smith also saw a remarkable love story in the early part of Willett's material, and it was that which he felt moved to write about.

Smith says "It is a tricky thing lifting out a section of a real person's life and trying to turn it into a novel. ... .... It is trickier if the direct descendats, the close family, are still living. A father's real life or a mother's real life is more than a 'story' to a living son or a living daughter; it's far more important and far more potentially touchy than mere historical material to be shaped and rewritten." Smith was concerned that he had been entrusted with intimate personal material and that how he used it, if he got a publisher, would affect how those real people, Mary's parents, Anthony's grandparents, would be seen by the rest of the world.

It may be this concern, on top of the new experience as a novelist, which prevents the characters from really coming alive. The most vivid parts are those concerned with Wilfred's early experiences in the hospital; the descriptions of the medical practices at the time are not for the faint hearted. The first chapter, designed to show the over-stylized, affected behaviour of Wilfred's Cambridge cohorts, and the artificiality of their lives, feels particularly stiff, which is odd as Smith himself was at Cambridge, albeit some decades after Willett, decades in which the speech and pastimes of the students has doubtless changed. Perhaps the feeling of distance and artificiality are meant to illustrate William's feelings, may even come from his own writings, but unfortunately it simply gives the impression that the author is not at ease with his material.

Smith went on to write Summer In February also set around the time of the Great War and based on real events. It would be interesting to compare the two to see how his approach has changed, if at all.

Interesting to read the story behind the story in your review of Wilfred and Eileen

The Young Pretenders by Edith Henrietta Fowler

"Grannie would never come back any more. At least that was what nurse said, and so the children knew it must be true.

"'When we're grown up will we know everything right like Nana does?' asked Babs, as they talked it over afterward in the garden.

"'I dare say,' answered Teddy carelessly. 'What shall we play at now, Babs?' So the children forgot the news that nurse had told them, and cheerfully accepted the fact that their grandmother, with whom they had lived during the whole of their short lives, had gone away indeed beyond recall. They had always thought of Grannie as a piece of the drawing room furniture, quite a nice piece, but dull and delicate as most drawing-room furniture is to the child mind."

Teddy, seven, and Babs, five, had lived with their grandmother in "the dear old country home" since their parents, Major and Mrs Conway, went back to India four years earlier. As their grandmother was too old and infirm to deal with them, and Nana, the nursery nurse, though kind and caring, is also elderly, the children spend most of their time outdoors making up games and learning about the world from Giles, the gardener, whom they regard as their best friend and sole playmate. They become in effect village children, consorting with servants and villagers and speaking like country folk, totally ignorant of city ways or the rigid codes of behaviour to which members of the Victorian middle class should adhere.

The children are told that their father's brother, Charley, has come back from India and will be coming to see them. They eagerly look forward to meeting their soldier uncle for the first time, unaware that their time in Eden is about to end.

This rather curious children's book was first published in 1895, reprinted in 1911, and not printed again until Persephone bought it out in 2007. I find the book curious because it seems so strongly aimed at the person reading to the child that I cannot imagine the child's view of the story. The novel is largely about the gulf in understanding and expectation between children and adults and the grief that results. Fowler is firmly on the side of the children and drives home again and again the duty of the adult to understand the child and to be aware of the harm that adults may unthinkingly do them. The novel is also concerned with honesty and clarity in people's dealings with one another.

First Fowler deals with the children's reaction to the death of their grandmother. As country children they are fully acquainted with death, and were inconsolable when the dog died. The dog was part of their world; their grandmother wasn't. She'd gone to London some time ago, and was fading in their memories. It's not immediately apparent that anyone said straight out to the children that Grannie was dead, or even that she had gone to London because she was ill. Fowler makes clear that in the circumstances the children's lack of interest is to be expected. Nana and Giles, themselves mourning their old mistress, misjudge the children's emotional state, Nana thinking of them as poor little mites, and Giles thinking them callous.

A telegram from Uncle Charley summons Teddy, accompanied by Nana, to the funeral in London. Neither Teddy nor Nana return.

After nearly a week a letter arrives to say that Uncle Charley will be arriving the next night, too late for Babs' bedtime. Babs rushes down in the morning to see her heroic soldier uncle, but instead of a ruddy cheeked scarlet uniformed figure with medal, sword, and trumpet, she finds a mild looking fair haired man in civilian clothes at the breakfast table. She refuses to believe that he can be her uncle. Furious and frustrated, she stamps her foot, and tells him to go away. She says Giles has told her wonderful stories about her uncle and how soldiers are the pride of the nation and he doesn't look a thing like the pride of the nation. Her uncle manages to sooth her somewhat and asks who Giles is. Babs waxes lyrical about Giles and tells Charley how since Nana and Teddy went to London she has "lived in the garden, goin' about with Giles more'n ever, and we've had the loveliest talks about you, and the crops, and when the old pig will be ready for killing; and I weed, and dig, and help Giles all day".

This is a disastrous meeting on many levels.

Captain Conway is the son, husband, and brother-in-law of beautiful women. The dandified captain and his pretty empty-headed wife had decided to take in Teddy and Babs pending their parents' return from India, but in making this decision had imagined their niece as an exquisite fair-haired doll to be dressed up and taken about as a decoration and source of conversation.

Teddy, who is already staying with Charley and his wife, has inherited his mother's fair good looks and can smile like an angel. He is not entirely pleasant, but adults do not realize this, taking his laziness and self-absorbed disengagement for good behaviour.

Babs, however, is plain, dark, and square, with fat legs, and no amount of correction of speech, manner, or dress will alter this. Her "tender sensibilities and ardent feelings" will have no place in the cold fashionable world which the captain and his wife inhabit; he can think only that the niece "who was to take the place which a daughter of his own would have filled was quite the plainest, most common-looking child he had ever noticed".

When they arrive in London Babs is banished to the top floor nursery and kept out of sight, while Teddy is brought down to be shown off to other adults. The children undergo increasing difficulties as their freedom is curtailed and strict nurses and governesses are imposed on them. While Teddy gradually figures out correct form, even if he doesn't understand it, Babs cannot anticipate adult's responses. The first time the children see their aunt in evening dress Teddy says "You're as lovely as a fairy, or an angel!" Babs, after a deep intake of breath, says "How splendid you do look! Giles always said Uncle Charley married one as would be more for ornament than use - and you are, aren't you?" Teddy gets a kiss, Babs gets a scolding.

Babs realizes her aunt will never like her, and understands why. On a rare encounter with another adult, who asks whether she prefers London or the country, Babs says she prefers the country because in London it matters about being pretty. When she lived in the country she didn't know she wasn't.

During the course of the stay with Uncle Charley Teddy changes and grows apart from Babs. Fowler captures well the way children square off with each other. Teddy on being silently assessed and accepted by some older boys doesn't hesitate to abandon his sole friend and playmate of the previous four years. Ultimately he becomes "the heartless, mindless, soulless creature which is generally to be found in preparatory and public schools" where "good bowling and steady batting are so much more suited to schoolboy life and ambition than a thoughtful temperament or a vivid imagination". This is nicely balanced by Uncle Charley's journey in the opposite direction.

The preface by Charlotte Mitchell mentions that Fowler's children's stories evidence the influence of the contemporaneous debates about the ideas of educationalists such a Friederich Froebel and Maria Montessori. There also seems to me to be a hint of a sort of sentimental Victorian Christianity in the emphasis on Bab's innocence, lack of guile, truthfulness, and the transformative openness of her heart. Babs is often referred to as the little lamb. More difficult to cope with, certainly initially, is Babs' baby talk. There used to a fashion for writing the speech of very young children as they might speak, complete with mispronounciations. Babs does this in spades, but while it is initially irksome it becomes less jarring as the book goes on. Indeed, the entire book went from an initial trudge to something quite thoughtful and poignant.

I just wish I knew what children make of it.

The book is prettily illustrated by Phillip Burne-Jones, whose line drawings of little children with mere dots for eyes and little other detail of facial features have something in common with Edward Gorey.

That is soooo sad. I think I shall have to read it.

>121 SassyLassy: I hope you do. I'd be interested in your take on the ending.

I've set up a group called Seasonal Books. It could have been a thread here, but I set it up outside this group only because if I'd set it up within Club Read 2014 it would be moved down and lost when Club Read 2015 begins. It's a place to list/discuss books relating to a particular point in the year, whether it's a date or festival, e.g. Christmas, or the 14th of July, or a particular time, e.g. summer. It needn't be the subject of the book, it could be incidental, but for whatever reason for you it is linked to that date or time, or else particularly captures the feeling of that date or time. Entries are welcome for short stories and poems as well as entire books. I hope you will drop by from time to time to add books or perhaps pick up suggestions.

I see that the cover of The Rights And Wrongs Of Women has changed (or at least it was arbitrarily changed on my entry). The original had a strong black graphic on a strong red background, entirely in keeping with the politics of the book. It seems to have been reissued with the same graphic, but on a dark blue background. Are publishers trying to tell us that the sisters are no longer angry, but women now feel a bit miz?

I have done a rather longer post about this on the WW1 reading thread, but for those of you who don't go that way may I point you in the direction of the Historic Royal Palaces website, which has quite a lot of information about the "Blood Swept Land And Seas Of Red" installation, in which 882,246 large ceramic poppies are being planted in the moat of the Tower of London to represent the British WW1 dead. The poppies started being planted in August, to correspond with the outbreak of war, and the last one will be planted at 10:50 (UK time) on 11 November. After Armistice Day the installation will be dismantled. All of the poppies have been sold, with the proceeds going to charity. The website shows the daily twilight reading of names of some of the dead, followed by the Last Post. ( http://poppies.hrp.org.uk/ ) If you are in the region it's worth going in to the Tower to see the photographic exhibition (including film) about the recruitment of the Stockbrokers Brigade (aka The Ditchers).

I guess late is better than never, but I have finally gotten to your thread. When one is soooo far behind, the longer the thread, the more one is tempted to say, I'll do that one tomorrow. Well, tomorrow finally arrived.

I have enjoyed reading through your reviews. You have a wonderful way of talking through your impressions of a book. For the first time I am thinking about trying Raymond Chandler, thanks to your comments at the beginning. The other book that is sticking in my mind is The Exiles Return by Elisabeth de Waal. That is going on my wish list.

>126 Poquette: Thank you Poquette. I know exactly how you feel. I have not got through most threads, and so when I am short of time I start with recent posts to threads I have read, then move on to try to get through a couple of shorter threads, all the time aware of the long threads I haven't read which are getting longer by the day.

I am just coming to the end of a week's holiday, so perhaps I should set myself the task of getting caught up on all before going back to work.

The Fashion In Shrouds - Margery Allingham

I'm puzzled by this. It started off as a nice relaxing read in standard 30s style, but there are lots of very odd comments about women, both in the narrative and in the dialogue. Normally I'm not too bothered by sentiments in older books which would not be acceptable today, to the extent that they simply reflect generally held attitudes of their time, but Shrouds had so many absurd statements that I became quite cross with the author - she was a woman, professional, and presumably intelligent, how could she possibly say these things? There was a lot of this stuff because the plot is set in the world of fashion, with female designers, models, actresses, etc, so independent, professional women, including the intelligent Mr Campion's intelligent sister.

The front page of this Vintage edition says "Her novels heralded the more sophisticated suspense genre: characterised by her intuitive intelligence, extraordinary energy, and accurate observation, they vary from the grave to the openly satirical, whilst never losing sight of the basic rules of the classic detective tale". Perhaps Shrouds was one of the satirical ones and I missed it.

Yet another reason to complain about Vintage's bizarre decision to re-issue these out of order; one cannot see the development of style, and the story arc of the constant characters is revealed out of sequence.

Don't know what to do about Allingham. I will try The Tiger In The Smoke, probably her best known one. Vintage says on the front page of this edition of Shrouds "Famous for her London thrillers, such as Hide My Eyes and The Tiger In The Smoke, she has been compared to Dickens in her evocation of the city's shady underworld". This reminds me of a comment on the sleeve notes of a reggae number whose title and performer currently escapes me (possibly Toots and the Maytals, but doesn't seem quite right) which suggested, but oh so carefully avoided stating, that Bob Dylan had said that it was the best anti-Vietnam song ever written. Clearly arrant nonsense. So I am quite prepared to discover that some chap down The Dog And Fiddle once compared Allingham to Dickens. Will keep you posted.

The Years Of Lyndon Johnson Volume 1 The Path To Power by Robert A Caro

I have only just started this, but it is so good that I feel I must share my enthusiasm.

I bought The Passage Of Power when it first came out, and I was still quite new to LT, and was so thrilled with the book that I felt compelled to put in a gush before I was anywhere near finished. I never did get round to doing a proper review of Passage even though I thought it brilliant, and I'm probably going to do the same with Path To Power.

As with Passage, I make an enormous plea to people not to dismiss this either because they disapprove of/aren't interested in Lyndon Johnson or because they aren't interested in American (or any other) politics. This is gripping stuff, packed with detail about social and political history, psychology, and the dynamics of power. Without in any way meaning to belittle or trivialize this extraordinary and serious study, reading it has the addictive fascination of the early series of The Sopranos or Mad Men (substitute your own favourite series of power and influence if these didn't work for you).

Rather touchingly, Caro's introduction to this 1981 work says that this will be a three volume biography. Four volumes have now been published and Caro is working on the fifth. Clearly there is a lot to be said. Do not be put off by size of the volumes (this one is around a thousand pages). This is good train reading - the journey flashes by.

It took me a while to settle in to Passage, as in the early part Caro had an annoying tendency to interrupt himself. Sentences would start, qualify, digress, have a footnote or two, and finally get back on track. One had the feeling of the author almost falling over himself to include all the relevant information. Path just moves right in with no digression. The Introduction opens:

"Two of the men lying on the blanket that day in 1940 were rich. The third was poor - so poor that he had only recently purchased the first suit he had ever owned that fit correctly - and desperately anxious not to be: thirty-two-year-old Congressman Lyndon Johnson had been pleading with one of the other two men, George Brown, to find him a business in which he could make a little money. So when Brown, relaxing in the still-warm Autumn sun at the luxurious Greenbrier Hotel in the mountains of West Virginia, heard the third man, Charles Marsh, make his offer to Lyndon Johnson, he felt sure he knew what the answer would be."

Marsh was very rich and "addicted to the grandiose gesture, particularly toward young men in whom he took a paternal interest". He had been pleased by the work of a reporter, and as a 'tip' gave him a newspaper (company), and had underwritten a young oilman, Sid Richardson, whose run of luck had been so bad that he'd had to pawn his hunting rifle for food and board. Richardson's oil business had come good, and Marsh was now offering to sell Johnson at a discount his share of Richardson's business, an offer worth close to a million dollars, without Johnson having to make any up front payment, only to pay Marsh a share of future profits. Johnson said he would like some time to consider the offer, but felt almost certain he would have to decline it, saying "I can't be an oil man, if the public knew I had oil interests it would kill me politically", and decline it he did. Although he had never voiced the reach of his ambition, the only political post where oil interests could be damaging to a Texan was President of the United States.

The Passage Of Power emphasized the significance of Johnson's impoverished background, particularly problematic when he was up against the wealth and social ease of the Kennedys, who added to his discomfort by ridiculing him for his rural background. Johnson was always aware that an elected representative who lost his seat could become an impoverished nobody. His father had been elected six times to the Texas State Legislature but died penniless. Johnson once struck up a conversation with a lift operator in the Capitol, only to discover that the lift operator was a former Congressman. The Path To Power takes the reader back to the source, the history of settlement of the Texas Hill Country and of the Buntons and Johnsons, the bloodlines expressed in Lyndon Johnson. The editor of the local paper in Johnson City said "So much has been written about Lyndon, but the thing is that none of it explains what it was like to grow up in a place like this, and without understanding that, no one will ever understand Lyndon Johnson."

The story of settlement is vividly told as the poorest migrants, seeking to escape debt and oppression, moved west. Tragically, and inevitably, the poorest settled the poorest land, not understanding the ecological significance of the rolling hills of tall blue-green grass or the importance of regular burning in keeping back the brush. They settled, they grazed, they destroyed the grassland, and the blue-green hills became white barren limestone. Impenetrable brushwood covered any soil that remained. The cycle of poverty set in; no one would invest to bring utilities or transport and the former farmers and ranchers were left in their isolated shacks, still subject to the oppression of the loan systems which had driven their families west in the first place. The description of the desperate impoverished lives brought Cormac MacCarthy's people to mind. In an attempt to bring social and political justice through governmental change the locals joined up to the Alliance movement. Their letters to the Alliance journal reinforce this echo. One reads "Our lot is cast here in a rough portion of land where but a small per cent of the land is tillable, hence farmers are thinly settled. We number only about eight male members in good standing. But if we do live away up here on the Pedernales River, amid rocks, cliffs and waterfalls, cedars and wild oaks, we are not varments, but have hearts just like men." Another wrote that although he had never been to school, and only got his letters when he was thirty-five, he wanted to advance the Alliance, and if his letter were printed, he would write again, "for if I can read it I know other people can, who have been to school and worn shoes". The brutality with which this co-operative movement was broken by the government, banks, and merchants is appalling. In this setting lived the Buntons and the Johnsons.

Generation after generation the Buntons were physically and temperamentally distinctive. The men were over six feet, with large noses, very large ears, heavy eyebrows, coal black wavy hair, dark eyes, and magnolia white skin. Their facial characteristics and intense gaze made them often appear to be glaring. They had fierce tempers, a pride verging on arrogance, tempered only by a touch of sadness, and, unusually for frontiersmen, an interest in ideas and abstractions, happily engaging in discussions of about the theory of government. They were also shrewd, hard, and canny, able to put the practical first against the ideal. The Buntons were smart enough to settle east of the Hill Country. The Johnsons were remarkably similar to the Buntons, but were missing the hard, practical core. They were idealists, dreamers, romantics given to extravagance, interested in abstractions and skilled in debate. When Lyndon's Johnson grandfather married a Bunton woman the characteristics of both were united, save for the Bunton practicality. Their Johnson offspring seem to have had an inbuilt sense of command, and style. One old timer said of them "All the Johnsons strutted, except George. And he strutted a little. Hell, the Johnsons could strut sitting down." The Johnsons made, but lost, a fortune. Lyndon's politically active but impoverished father married a pretty college educated girl, who lived in comparative wealth and comfort in a local town, and brought her back to his isolated two room shack surrounded by dust, where she would be left alone for days while he travelled for work. Caro conveys the terrifying isolation of such a life, in her case made even more difficult by its unfamiliarity and by her intellectual isolation, for she too had been raised to value abstraction and debate, which was the unifier of their marriage.

Lyndon Johnson was the first born of this union, and from the beginning had a curious quality, a need to be the centre of attention, and a surprising ability to dominate, and to get his own way. He regarded everything as a competition which he must win. His need to be the centre of attention took somewhat sinister forms: as a small child he would run off and hide whenever his mother's back was turned, hiding for long periods of time so that people would be called in to search for him. A relation recalled one time when he had been hiding near his mother, whose acute distress would have been evident to him, but he still did not come out to comfort her. He ran away so often that his father had a big bell put up in the front yard so people in the fields could be alerted to look for him. He regularly ran away down river to the school house, so the school was persuaded to take him in even though he was too young to attend. Already educated at home, he had the advantage of the local children; he had no time for those of his own age and was able to impose his will on boys much older than himself. At the schoolhouse there was a blackboard on either side of the door to the outhouse, and children who needed to go out had to write their names on one of the blackboards as they went out. The children generally wrote in small embarrassed letters, but Lyndon would write in large letters LYNDON B on one blackboard and JOHNSON on the other.

Caro notes in his introduction the degree of self mythologizing done by Johnson, and his ability to wipe out the traces of anything that didn't fit. Journals of his college years have disappeared. Even though Johnson was dead, his old college classmates would only hint that the official record of Johnson as a popular charismatic campus character was not the whole story. In seven years of research Caro repeatedly encountered a reluctance, even worry, about disclosing information at variance with the public image, although once the corner was lifted people would corroborate and add further information. The popular charismatic college character was in fact disliked, nicknamed Bull (short for bullshit), characterized as actually incapable of telling the truth, and stole his election.

I am not yet a hundred pages into this book. (Think how I would have gone on had I finished it!) I suppose the best plea to others to read it would be to finish with a couple of paragraphs from Caro's introduction, which set out the contradictions of Johnson's character and the lasting influence on him of his family history.

"Knowing Lyndon Baines Johnson - understanding the character of the thirty-sixth President of the United States - is essential to understanding the history of the United States in the twentieth century. During his Presidency, his Great Society, with its education acts and civil-rights acts and anti-poverty acts, brought to crest tides of social change that had begun flowing during the New Deal a quarter of a century before; after his Presidency, the currents of social change were to flow - abruptly - in a very different course." The increasing involvement in Vietnam was to have a major impact. "The Presidency of Lyndon Johnson... was a watershed in America's history, one of the great divides in the evolution of its foreign and domestic policies. And in this evolution, Johnson's personality bore, in relation to other factors, an unusually heavy weight, both because of its overpowering, elemental force .... ...and because of the unusual degree to which the workings of that personality were.. unencumbered by philosophy or ideology."

Caro attributes to the presidency of Johnson not only the growth in the mistrust of the incumbent of the Presidency, but also the final tipping point in the long evolution from "constitutional' to "imperial" presidency.

By 1941 when Johnson was thirty-two and the year in which this volume ends, "a young man - desperately poor, possessed of an education mediocre at best, from one of the most isolated and backward areas of the United States - has attained the national power he craved. He has won not only a seat in Congress but influence that reaches far beyond his district's borders. ... ... ... In attaining this influence, he has displayed a genius for discerning a path to power, an utter ruthlessness in destroying obstacles in that path, and a seemingly bottomless capacity for deceit, deception and betrayal in moving it along. In every election in which he ran ... he displayed a willingness to do whatever was necessary to win: a willingness so complete that even in the generous terms of political morality, it amounted to amorality."

And yet, as Caro reminds the reader in The Passage Of Power, the poverty of Johnson's youth gives him the drive towards social betterment for the poor reflected in bills passed through those same political practices when he became president.

"When, in 1937, at the age of twenty-eight, Johnson became their Congressman, Hill Country farmers were still plowing their fields with mules because they could not afford tractors. Because they had no electricity, they were still doing every chore by hand, while trying to scratch a living from soil from which the fertility had been drained decades before They were still watching their wives made stooped and old before their time by a life of terrible drudgery, a life that seemed, as one Hill Country woman put it, "out of the Middle Ages". Four years later, the people of the Hill Country were living in the twentieth century. Lyndon Johnson had brought them there."

Sigh. I know I should read the Caro LBJ books, but it seems like such a big commitment . . .

Fascinating stuff about Lyndon B.

LBJ was such an interesting person, at a very interesting time in our history. I have a biography on my Kindle, which I should get to. You make the Caro books sound very interesting, but as Rebecca says, it does sound like a commitment. I am making a note for future.

>130 rebeccanyc: and >132 NanaCC: The Caro books are worth every minute spent reading them. From outside the US, LBJ appears to be just about the most forward looking president when it came to domestic issues. Had his foreign policies not gone off the rails, the US would be a very different place today. Unfortunately, albeit correctly, Vietnam appears to be a hugh part of his legacy, without anyone taking the time to study the counterbalance of his work on poverty, education and most of all, civil rights. Johnson may also be the last president who was able to get legislation through Congress in any kind of consistent manner. There were many unpleasant facets to him, but if you love the study of politics, it's hard to beat reading about this particular president.

I have only read the first three volumes, still waiting to read Volume IV, but I know it will measure up.

>133 SassyLassy: Sassy, I am in complete agreement. If it had not been for the war that he was stuck with, more people would appreciate all the wonderful things that he did accomplish and the things that have happened as a result of his forward thinking.

>134 NanaCC: Thanks, I was a bit apprehensive about that post!

Confronting The Classics by Mary Beard

Beard begins her preface by saying the book is a "guided tour of the classical world, from the prehistoric palace at Knossos in Crete to that fictional village in Gaul, where Asterix and his friends are still holding out against the Romans". She also makes explicit, both in the preface and in her introductory chapter 'Do Classics Have A Future?' that the study of the classics is not just about something which was 'done and dusted' many centuries ago, but, because the study of the classics was for long a part of Western education, an understanding of the classics is necessary to engage with our own recent past. Terrance Rattigan's 1948 play The Browning Version is about a Classics teacher at an English public school forced by a heart condition into early retirement. His venomous wife is having an affair with the science teacher and is sadistically destructive towards her husband. The title of the play is a reference to "the famous 1877 translation by Robert Browning of Aeschylus' play Agamemnon", written in 450 BC about King Agamemnon's return from the Trojan Wars and his murder on arrival by his wife Clytemnestra and the lover she had taken while he was away. I haven't seen either play, but Beard says that this classic work is in a sense the star of Rattigan's play. It is given to the teacher by one of his pupils as a retirement present, and reduces the man to tears. It is a key moment as it forces him to confront his own life and a quotation from the work which the boy has written in it is a bleak contrast to his own life, and perhaps an accusation. Rattigan, schooled in the Classics, was considering our engagement with the Classics, and how the ancient world can help us to understand our own. Beard maintains that the cultural language of the Classics and classical literature continues to be "an essential and ineradicable dialect of 'Western culture'". She considers the reasons for the decline in study of the classics, and the degree to which their study is truly in danger. She is concerned that while there is still a degree of general enthusiasm for the classics, there is a steady decline in the number of experts able to study and interpret them.

The introduction concluded, the book consists of thirty-one short chapters which are in fact book reviews previously published in the TLS, the NYRB, and the LRB. But what reviews! In reviewing various works Beard is discursive, amusing, and packs in lots of interesting information, sometimes barely touching on the work itself. I read a number of the reviews with enthusiasm, but as can sometimes be the way with these things, my interest waned and I set the book aside for a break. Then, in ruthless culling mode, I thought 'Right! I'm unlikely to finish that. It can go.' But then I picked it up, just to make sure, and I was sucked in again. And - confession time - I still haven't finished it, but thought I'd do a quick review and then get rid of it. Well, I've picked it up to review, and now I'm drawn in for a third time! I suspect the pesky thing may ultimately find a permanent home on my shelves.

As a taster, here is the opening of the chapter 'Quousque Tandem...?'

"Marcus Tullius Cicero was murdered on 7 December 43 BC: Rome's most famous orator, off-and-on defender of Republican liberty and thundering critic of autocracy. He was finally hunted down by lackeys of Mark Anthony, a member of Rome's ruling junta and principal victim of Cicero's dazzling swansong of invective: more than a dozen speeches called the Philippics, after Demosthenes' almost equally nasty attacks on Philip of Macedonia, three centuries earlier. The chase had degenerated into an elaborate, occasionally comic game of hide-and-seek, with Cicero torn between holing up in his villa to wait for the inevitable knock on the door and making a speedy getaway by sea."

The assassins caught up with Cicero while he was heading for the sea, slit his throat, and sent his head and hands to Anthony and his wife, Fulvia. It is said that before the head and hands were displayed in the Forum, at the very place where Cicero had delivered many of his speeches, Fulvia opened the mouth of Cicero's head, pulled out the tongue, and stabbed it again and again with one of her hair pins. Beard discusses the historical figures and their context but, in furtherance of her belief in the continuing importance of the classics, not only for the representation of the events in later works of art and literature, cites the frequency with which the words of Cicero are still used. Cicero's first speech against Catiline opens with the words "Quousque tandem abutere Catiline, patientia nostra?" (How long, O Catiline, will you abuse our patience?) Not only has this sentence long been used as a trial text for typesetting, and now web design, but was used by Hungarian demonstrators in 2012, who bore placards emblazoned with the words "Quousque Tandem?", and the text in translation was quoted to the new Congolese President in 2001, and in an editorial in El Pais in 1999 criticising the Spanish prime minister for his reluctance to putting Pinochet on trial.

One quibble, which I have seen others comment on, is that the book packaging does not make allusion to the status of the articles as previously published works, however that is the fault of Profile Books, not the author.

I've had that book on the TBR for a while, O; thanks for your review. It does sound intriguing.

Considering what I have been reading lately, Confronting the Classics must be right up my street! Very much enjoyed your thorough survey, and this is going right onto my wish list.

Excellent review of Confronting the Classics. I am tempted to get this book,because whenever I dip into the classics I am amazed by how much they say. I just don't dip into them enough and this book might give me some encouragement.

Arrrrggghhhh!!!!

The year is rushing into the home strait and not only are there books from my first entry still not read (plus many other unread books unpacked or acquired over the year) but I am also behind on reviews, and there are some books which I've loved and meant to get up here. So, perhaps in less polish or coherence than I would have liked, and with pauses to refresh my memory of things read months ago, it's time to get in there and do it (and it's a great distraction from less pleasant tasks).

Alone In Berlin by Hans Fallada

Eva Klug has to remember to 'Heil Hitler' and watch her tongue when delivering letters to the Persickes - the old man is some sort of party functionary, his two older sons are in the SS, and the youngest, Baldur, is a nasty piece of work in the Hitler Youth. France has just capitulated and the celebrating Persickes joke about giving a roasting to Frau Rosenthal, who has lived alone on the top floor since her husband's shop was 'Aryanized' and he was taken away.

Eva's next delivery is to the apartment above the Persickes, a typed letter that she knows will contain bad news from the front.

Herr Quangel watches the profound change come over his wife as she reads.

"He looks down at her hair, it's got thin in the many years of their marriage. They are getting old, and if something serious has happened to Otto, she will have no one to love, only him, and there's not much to love about him. He has never had the words to tell her how much he feels for her. Even now, he's not able to stroke her, be tender to her, comfort her a little. It's all he can do to rest his heavy hand on her hair, pull her head up as gently as he can, and softly say "Anna, will you tell me what's in the letter?".

In the rage of her grief Frau Quangel rebukes her husband for not opposing the Nazi regime, for just going along with things for the sake of an easy life, and so he bears responsibility for their son's death. Although the criticism is not entirely fair, Quangle is galvanized into making small gestures of resistance, gestures which would be of no significance were they not occurring under a totalitarian regime. He comes up with the idea of dropping anonymous postcards around the city, postcards with slogans against the Fuhrer and the Party, against the war. These postcards will let people know that not everyone is signed up to the Nazi vision, that some people are thinking for themselves. He accepts that many of the cards will be lost or handed in, but if just a few of them enable dissent to spread the risk will have been worth it. His wife is disappointed in him; he has come up with something small, bland, and anonymous, just like him. He replies "Whether it's big or small Anna, if they get wind of it it'll cost us our lives". She realizes that whether an act is big or small no-one can risk more than their own life. "Each according to his strength and abilities, but the main thing was, you fought back."

Around this central couple Fallada weaves an assortment of characters, each with a different relationship to regime, from the informants and petty criminals through to the Inspector leading the hunt for the author of the postcards and the Gestapo who are his bosses. Fallada shows a whole chain of people corrupted by a combination of fear and power. The Inspector may toy with his suspects, but he in turn is subject to the whim of his brutish superiors. In one darkly comic scene he attempts to give a report to his drunken boss, who repeatedly interrupts him with toasts to the Fuhrer, insisting after each toast that the Inspector starts his report again from the top. They both know that the Inspector's career will be over if he doesn't match his boss glass for glass. The Inspector must read and drink, read and drink, as for long as it amuses the other man to make him do so. And against this background isolated individuals make their various brave small gestures of resistance.

Fallada himself had a complicated relationship with the Nazi regime. He accepted politically sanctioned commissions, yet at the same time wrote novels with sentiments against the regime. He enrolled his oldest son in the Hitler Youth, but gave financial and legal support to outcasts such as the authors and publishers who suffered discrimination on political or racial grounds. Sometimes the Nazis promoted his work, sometimes they censored it. Sometimes they sent him on tour, other times they sent him to jail. Like his characters, he had to balance between resistance and compliance.

The novel is based on the true story of Elise and Otto Hampel who, after the death of Elise's brother, ran a three year post card campaign before being caught and executed. Although it was only the two of them, their success for so long in evading the police and spreading the cards led the authorities to believe that they were dealing with a substantial resistance movement. Joannes R Becher, who was in effect the cultural minister in the post-war government set up by the Soviets in East Germany, was a friend of Fallada's and gave him the Gestapo file on the Hampels, suggesting he use it as the basis for a novel. Fallada wrote the book in twenty-four days but died before it was published.

'Alone In Berlin' was my first encounter with Fallada, whose name meant nothing to me, although I was aware of the titles of some of his other works. I thought this an excellent book, all the more interesting for its concentration on the ordinary people making small ineffective gestures with no real hope of damaging or overthrowing the system, making them not out of a sense of heroism or sacrifice, but simply because they needed to to keep faith with themselves.

Since reading 'Alone In Berlin' I went on to read The Drinker and more Fallada is waiting on my shelves.

Bricks And Mortar by Helen Ashton

Martin Lovell was putty in Lady Stapleford's hands and he fell in love with her daughter Letty "quite simply and immediately, without any suspicion that the matter was being arranged for him". Lovell, at twenty-four, was an innocent, decent and "sweet minded", socially and physically awkward, and passionate about architecture, which was his profession. Not particularly wealthy, he had come to Rome to look at the buildings, but at dinner in his third rate pension he finds himself seated opposite "the prettiest girl in the world". Letty Stapleford's father, Lord Stapleford, had died leaving his wife and daughter badly off, and Lady Stapleford was putting all her will and energy into getting her daughter married as quickly as possible at minimum expense. Letty, eighteen, is in her mother's estimation pretty, silly, and useless, but she is obedient, and dutifully, if reluctantly, allows Martin to guide her round churches and ruins in which she has no interest. Inevitably Martin's study plan is jettisoned and without quite understanding how it happened he returns from Rome a married man. Looking through the cab window on the way to the train station he sees the buildings he had been so eager to view and considers that "the whole of his life had been upset and changed, by an event which as yet he hardly realised. He had a sudden queer regret for a hundred things which he had meant to do and see by himself in Rome. He had been lost and drowned in the blue eyes of Letty and the days had gone by him and been wasted. The whole imperial confusion of domes and towers, of obelisks and columns, of temples and colonnades and fountains, lay behind him in an accusing golden sunset. He wondered whether he would ever come back again and make up for all that he had missed: for a moment he was full of regrets, then came the shouting and disturbance of the station" and getting into the train he "found himself shut up alone with a frightened, forlorn, beloved creature whose eyes implored him for protection against himself and her destiny."

'Bricks And Mortar' follows the course of Martin's career, his marriage, in which Lady Stapleford continues to interfere, and his relationships with his irritable petulant son and his clever strong willed daughter.

There is something charming about the novel, and it may be Martin himself. The forty years of his career covers a time of considerable change in architectural styles, from the Victorians to the modernists of the 1930s, and the success and decline of Martin's senior partner and, in due course, of Martin himself, is charted in the context of the buildings they want to, or are commissioned to, design, so some understanding of the various architectural movements and their significance, though not essential, is useful.

The Publisher's Note describes Ashton as "adept at writing an entertaining but interesting novel which leaves the reader with something to think about", a fair summation of 'Bricks And Mortar'.

>140 Oandthegang: I thought Alone in Berlin, which I read under the title Every Man Dies Alone, was amazing when I read it a few years ago, and also went on to read both The Drinker (which I found harrowing) and Wolf among Wolves.

>140 Oandthegang: Your review of Alone in Berlin has me very interested. Such a harrowing time, when small acts of defiance were so big, and so very dangerous.

Thanks to Walt Kelly it seems likely that every Christmas until I die I will be singing (quietly) "Deck the halls with Boston Charlie, walla walla wash, and kalamazoo. Norah's freezing on the trolley...." or, alternatively, "Good King Wenseslas looked out on his feets uneven..."

At least that's how I remember the words. I must have been around eight when I read them, long, long, ago, and very far away.

The Blank Wall by Elizabeth Sanxay Holding

"DEAR TOM:

Bea is going to Gracie's camp for a week or two. I think it will do her good. It really is pretty dull here."

Every night Lucia writes dull letters about everyday life to her husband a commander somewhere out in the Pacific during WWII. She knows they are dull, but they are intended to give him a vision of a placid life where everything carries on as normal. Lucia wonders what Tom's life is like and what, after two years of war, he is like, who he has become. She and Tom married when Lucia was eighteen and she has been a housewife ever since. She lives with her teenage son and daughter, her elderly father, and their maid in a house near the shore. The daughter Bea, is being particularly rebellious, and Lucia doesn't think she is handling her very well.

I found this novel frequently darkly humorous, though I'm not sure it was meant to be read that way. Lucia is a middle class suburban housewife, struggling through life's domestic minutiae in the midst of wartime shortages, and incidentally having to get rid of bodies, raise $5,000 to pay off blackmailers, and make small talk over lunch with new friends at the sailing club. She will do anything to protect her family from the danger that surrounds them, and yet the family keeps getting in her way. Her father invites one of the blackmailers in for a drink, her children suspect her of having an affair with the man and try to prevent her going anywhere on her own lest she attempt to meet him. Gangsters are repeatedly being told to wait for her in the boathouse, and are repeatedly kept waiting hours, either because Lucia is waiting for her family to get out of the way so she can get to the boathouse unseen, or because she cannot stop herself from making the beds, cleaning the bath, and doing the mending before she goes out to see them. Even when the police come to interview her she keeps them waiting while she mends a hem. In some respects the thing which is most frightening in the book is the hold Lucia's family has on her. Her children, particularly her daughter, view her with contempt because her life has been so dull and predictable, yet the whole family leans on her so much that she realizes that here she is, an adult, unable to go anywhere or do anything without being questioned, having to account for her time and actions, having no time to herself, no freedom. The reality of Lucia's situation is, of course, nightmarish.

I enjoyed it, and so did Raymond Chandler, who wrote to Hamish Hamilton "For my money (Elisabeth Sanxay Holding) is the top suspense writer of them all. She doesn't pour it on and make you feel irritated. Her characters are wonderful: and she has a sort of inner calm which I find very attractive." Alfred Hitchcock included The Blank Wall in the 1959 collection of his favourite suspense stories.

The Blank Wall was filmed in 1949 by Max Ophuls with the release title 'The Reckless Moment', starring James Mason and Joan Bennett, and the 2001 film 'The Deep End', starring Tilda Swinton, was also based on this novel.

Another one of those nice Persephone books.

>145 Oandthegang: The Blank Wall sounds like a book I would enjoy. On to the wishlist it goes.

Yes, it does sound fun! Elizabeth Sanxay Holding was one of the contributors to a collection of stories I read earlier this year, Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives, and I noted in my review that I enjoyed making her acquaintance (although without looking back at the book I don't remember which story she wrote).

Mystery In White - A Christmas Crime Story by J Jefferson Farjeon

"The Great Snow began on the evening of December 19th. Shoppers smiled as they hurried home, speculating on the chances of a White Christmas." After a false start the snow resumes; the excitement turns to anxiety as transport is disrupted and people consider the implications of any sudden thaw. In a third class carriage of the 11:37 from Euston sit an old bore, a chorus girl, a pale young clerk, an attractive, if somewhat jolly hockey sticks, brother and sister, and an old man who is on his way to see King Charles 1. It is Christmas Eve and none of them are going anywhere as the train is stuck in the snow, waiting for rescue.

Just as the reader settles in for a Murder On A Train story people begin to leave the train, heading off into the blizzard in hopes of finding another station. Four of the six arrive at a house where the fires are blazing, the kettle boiling, tea laid out, but no sign of any inhabitant. The reader begins to anticipate a traveller goes to bed in a luxurious castle only to wake up on a barren hillside story, and the supernatural tease is kept up very far in to the novel.

A light, seasonal, crime story first published in 1937, and republished The British Library as part of their vintage crime collection.

>148 Oandthegang: Sounds like fun

22 December.
Marley's Ghost appears to Ebenezer Scrooge.
Hercule Poirot's Christmas begins.

23 December.
1 a.m. The Ghost Of Christmas Past appears.

24 December.
1 a.m. The Ghost of Christmas Present appears.

25 December.
1.a.m. The Ghost of Christmas Future appears.
Happy Christmas!

26 December.
Good King Wenceslas looked out.

27 December.
Watson calls upon Holmes with the intention of wishing him the compliments of the season (The Blue Carbuncle)

Well, that was the year, that was.

Books I really wanted to tell you about but didn't get round to reviewing because I spent so much time thinking about them included:-

Miss Ranskill Comes Home - a novel which combines a delicate portrait of love and bereavement with satire about Britain during World War Two. One of my favourite books of the year.

Life After Life - yes I know just about everybody's read it by now, but I'd kept passing it by until someone thrust it into my hand, so only discovered it fairly recently, and enjoyed it so much I rushed out to buy more of her books. It appears that Atkinson has touched on some of the themes in Life After Life in other books, so I wonder if this one would have made such an impact on me if I had read her earlier books first. I look forward to being able to read Life again when sufficient time has gone by to allow me to forget a good deal of the plot details Shortly after reading Life I had a bizarre experience of coincidence which brought to mind the novel's alternative lives. (quick hum of The Outer Limits theme tune)

Feral: Searching For Enchantment On The Frontiers Of Rewilding In which George Monbiot discusses the Shifting Baseline Syndrome, sets out reasons to hate sheep, and argues for the introduction to Britain of asian elephants. He claims to be serious about this, but I suspect it is just a ruse to make us all feel better about living with wolves. This isn't really a fair summary. It's also about the importance of being in touch with nature, and takes a particular stance in the debate about rewilding. I love George. I don't agree with everything he says, but he has such passion, conviction, and rare in this field, self awareness and humour (though I gather there have been some spats of late with other media figures which have not been entirely good natured). Anyone unfamiliar with him can catch up with him on his home page, including videos of some of his lectures.

The Path To Power: The Years Of Lyndon Johnson and The Passage Of Power: The Years Of Lyndon Johnson - I've dropped quick raves in about each of them as I started, but haven't properly reviewed either. There's so much in each volume that there is inevitably a lot to say about them. I'm still trying to decide what I think about Johnson. On a social, personal, level I would have loathed him, but he seems to have had a certain genius and an iron will in pursuit of his single goal. While The Passage Of Power is fascinating because of the period it covers - the rise of JFK, his presidency and assassination, and Johnson's final attainment of the presidency and his battles with the Kennedy camp, particularly Bobby - The Path To Power is interesting for the social history about Texas and the early part of the twentieth century, but what I found most amazing was the institutional corruption - the bribery, patronage, and disregard for democracy - which seems to have been built in to the political system during that period (and for all I know before and after). It was like reading about Renaissance Italy, without the arts. Johnson as represented by Caro is in turn admirable and repellant. Caro is probably right to assess him as amoral rather than immoral. Lots of food for thought. I have Volumes 2 and 3 yet to read, and Caro is reportedly working on Volume 5, but I think I will pace my self at one volume per year.

The Goldfinch - another one which has doubtless been reviewed to death, but just to chip in with my two cents' worth, I thought it was brilliant and completely on form for around the first third, i.e. up to and including the years in California, then it began to slow down, picked up a bit, and then seemed to drift off into an entirely different novel rather like that movie (possibly Blazing Saddles?) in which at the end the characters charge out of their own set to go crashing through the sets of other movies on the lot. It seemed as though even the author was losing interest, possibly even the will to live. There is ultimately a suggestion that the whole thing has been some exercise in exploring Russian fiction, which, if true, is rather hard on the poor reader. A kindly editor would have sent this book for radical surgery before letting it out on the shelves.

There were probably other books, but these are the biggies. Hopefully I will review them properly some day, but I didn't want the year to go by without mention (technically here in the UK it has slipped by, but I'm counting on all you North American Thingers).

My other ambition for the year, well the other LT ambition, was to catch up on everyone's threads before the year was out, but I've failed on that too. Was appalled to see people were already steaming ahead in Club Read 2015, so had to keep up with them before I got behind on a year that hadn't even started.

So Happy New Year everyone, and see you in next year's thread.

O.