December Read: Sylvia Townsend-Warner

Looking forward to this one even though I'm still in October and reading Margaret Kennedy! Am planning to skip the Atwood and move straight on to Townsend-Warner. Maybe with Mr Fortune's Maggot.

Share your plans and thoughts here...

I'm planning to read Summer Will Show.

I completely love Sylvia Townsend Warner my book group are coincidentally reading Lolly Willowes this month (it was my suggestion) so I am looking forward to re-reading that next week. Before I get to that I have started Selected stories of Sylvia Townsend Warner

>3 Heaven-Ali: I love Townsend Warner too, especially her short stories. I am wavering between reading yet more of her short stories or one of her novels. And if I do read a novel which one? Mr Fortune's Maggot (kindly sent to me by Karen) or Summer Will Show (equally generously sent to me by Andrew/ Leseratte).

Decisions, decisions. I've already read Lolly Willowes (which I loved), The Corner that Held Them (which was as exquisitely written as ever but didn't engage me much) and a few short story collections (fab).

>4 Soupdragon: I loved both Summer will show and Mr Fortune's Maggot they are quite different to each other though the one I loved almost as much as Lolly Willowes was The True Heart but you might not have that to hand.

>5 Heaven-Ali: No, I don't have that one but it's joined the wishlist!

I have The true heart, Summer will show, the Selected stories of Sylvia Townsend Warner and Music at Long Verney lined up to read. I started The true heart this morning and am already drawn in by the evocative landscape and the appealing heroine.

Hi, lovely Virago Readers! I fell off track for the last three months, but I managed to review a book for December - Lolly Willowes, by Sylvia Townsend Warner (1926). It's my first STW book, and I loved it!

You can find my review on my blog: https://theblankgarden.com/2017/12/05/to-show-our-scorn-of-pretending-lifes-a-sa...

Happy reading! :)

>8 Juliana.Brina: lovely review. So glad you enjoyed it.

I see that it's Sylvia Townsend Warner's birthday today. I would like to have started reading Lolly Willowes in honour of the occasion but I don't have access to a copy (the public library has let me down for once). So I intend to pick up the first on my little pile which is Mr Fortune's Maggot. This was the first VMC I noticed as such when I kept seeing it in bookshops (I was intrigued by both the cover and the title), though it was not the first I read or owned.

>10 europhile: Mr. Fortune's Maggot is the only STW I've read and I thought it was absolutely wonderful!

I finished The true heart on the train this morning. What a lovely read! The parallels with Cupid and Psyche are subtle but fun to pick out, and there are some very entertaining side characters who help Sukey with her quest. She is determined to marry Eric and save him from being locked away in an asylum, even if she has to appeal to Queen Victoria herself to achieve this. The Essex landscape is beautifully described, and it's nice to see this oft-maligned part of England treated with such sensitivity. Highly recommended!

I've started of with some short stories - The Cat's Cradle Book - spun around a fascinating concept. I don't think they're quite her best, but that's only because the concept is restricting, and I think her best short stories are brilliant.

Review here

I've neglected her novels in the past, because I wasn't convinced that they could live up to the short stories, but I am enthused about them now. I've only read Lolly Willowes and I'm thinking of working forward chronologically, which means that Mr Fortune's Maggot is up next.

Okay - I'm in. I've read Lolly Willowes, Mr. Fortune's Maggot , Summer Will Show and The Corner That Held Them but have avoided her short stories, which I expected to be disappointing after the novels. But now Jane is saying the reverse. So I will read the SS this month. Everyone seems to have different views on her books but I did not like LW - because I do not like fantasy - loved Mr. Fortune and really really loved TCTHT.

I've reviewed my STW holdings and found I also have Claire Harman's biography and I'll Stand By You, the selected letters between STW and her lover, Valentine Ackland. In storage I also had her pamphlet in the 'Writers and their Work' series about Jane Austen, which I dug out and read last night. It was quite short and a very interesting overview, but it reminded me once again that I still need to read Mansfield Park!

My good intentions throughout the year haven't come to much - but I'm determined to join in STW reading! I've picked Swans on an Autumn River to take away on a long weekend. (Published as A Stranger With a Bag in the US, I believe.)

I finished re-reading Lolly Willowes and am half way through the Selected stories of Sylvia Townsend Warner.

I have so enjoyed these author months. I only failed on one - Christina Stead .

I *completely* failed with Christina Stead..... =:o

I'm not counting Ms. Stead as a "fail" because I didn't even make the attempt. That one is an "abstention."

Sadly, I've failed with Sylvia Townsend Warner. The problem is me, not her. We are moving house in one week and concentration is in short supply. I've turned to mysteries & crime novels & other mindless things.

I've been on mindless reading for quite some time Laura. Plus I've read so many of my VMCs already I don't feel guilty about the ones I haven't read. But I am well into Ms. Warner's short stories and they are marvelous!

Good luck with the move. Highly stressful even when it's a good move. Remember to hand carry the kettle so you can make tea when you arrive and don't forget to butter the cat's paws. (If you have a cat.)

>20 romain: Thanks for the words of support. This is a "good move" but yeah, stressful all the same. What's this about buttering cat's paws? That's a new one on me.

Something British I think. You butter the cat's paws once you arrive and it spends so long licking it all off it doesn't run away. I used to think it was just my mother who did this but then I saw a British movie where Celia Johnson does it to her cat. I've never done it. With my luck the bloody cat would run across the furniture with greasy paws. :)

Also a suggested remedy in Aus. Tried it with one of mine when we moved many years ago but it didn’t work with her but she was as wild as a March hare so I don’t think anything would have worked for her. She eventually returned to the new home after a week but was very bedraggled and hungry. Stayed close to home after that!, Didn’t need to do it for the other felines - they were quite sedate and lazy and didn’t move very far.

>22 romain:, >23 mrspenny: wow, who knew? Not me, anyway! Thanks for the tip, Barbara! We have a kitty but she's old and very timid and stays entirely indoors (hoping not to start the age-old indoor/outdoor cat debate here ... we've had both types; this one started life as an outdoor cat but changed her mind later on).

>19 lauralkeet: Good luck with the move; I hope it is as stress-free and smooth as possible.

I've just started Summer will show, the beginning of which is quite addictive.

I'm just peeking into the collection of letters myself. I've read Mr. Fortune's Maggot and The True Heart and liked them both, but I'm in the mood for some letters just now.
Congrats, Ali, on the 11/12 success. And good luck to L with the move and all inhabitants' adjustments, four-legged and two-legged.

Just to add that I am finding the letters slow but pleasant reading. About half the collection is devoted to exchanges in the 1930s, the other half including pieces from 1940s-1968. Lots of talk of love and longing and sorrow over parting, counting the days until reunions, that kind of thing. Very heartfelt. I'll Stand By You

Today I reviewed Selected Stories.

http://heavenali.wordpress.com/2017/12/19/the-selected-stories-of-sylvia-townsen...

I am still reading the STW short stories. Excellent. Unfortunately Christmas etc has gotten in my way.

I finished Summer will show which was a very good read. The traditional English country house setting soon gives way to Paris during the first days of the Revolution in 1848. Sophia has always felt stifled by her role as lady of the manor and provider of heirs, but when this life is brutally shaken she finds herself shocked and bewildered, and the only plan she can think of is to track down her estranged husband and try to have another child. However, her plans change abruptly when she meets her husband's mistress Minna for the first time, and Sophia finds herself living a totally different life and mixing with types of people whom she has never before encountered. Sophia is certainly not always likeable but she is interesting, and through her we get a vivid picture of the exciting, turbulent and dangerous days of the French Revolution. This was an excellent book and I'm glad to have read it.

I did actually finish Mr Fortune's Maggot last month, in a couple of sittings. I had picked it up several times but not started it because it had no chapters or section breaks and I knew I wouldn't be reading it all in one go. A wonderful story with a light humorous tone. I wanted to find out more about how STW came up with it than she revealed in the short preface so I looked it up in the Claire Harman biography. Unfortunately this more or less repeated what had been in the preface. Still I have started the biography but will be taking my time with it as i have another non-fiction book from the library with a tight deadline.

I was just looking at Hitler's Black Book list for people to be rounded up in the UK when Germany conquered the country. Sylvia Townsend-Warner (listed as Sylvia Warner-Townsend) was on it and listed for "scientific research". So was Virginia Woolf and a few other Bloomberries. And Rebecca West. Besides their anti-fascist views I wonder if the common thread is their sexual orientation. Or could be the Nazis didn't like Modernist writers?

They certainly didn't like modernist painters which is why so much great German art from the era is now abroad but I think you're right Elaine - it was their progressive outlook for women.