SassyLassy and the Great Outdoors + ... More 19th Century

Greenery bursts forth in 2017 to provide us with the reassurance we yearn for amid a tumultuous social and political environment. Satisfying our growing desire to rejuvenate and revitalize, Greenery symbolizes the reconnection we seek with nature, one another and a larger purpose. Pantone

January 1st is the day each year when I can finally join the current year's Club Read. As in past years, I'm going to start off with Pantone's colour of the year: Greenery. This is particularly apt for me this year as I am going to read more of my books about the wonderful world outside.

Other planned reading will include continuing with Zola's Rougon-Macquart cycle, of which I read ten in 2016. I also hope to stay in the nineteenth century a fair amount; it was such a time of change and so much to think about. Then there is Reading Globally, Viragos, and anything else that catches my magpie attention.

This year I will also read more "suggested" books: books from the Reading Globally and Viragos themed reads, as well as books from a wonderful present, in which a completely random book will appear in my mailbox each month.

Last year was a disaster for me in terms of quantity of books read, perhaps due to my foray into the nineteenth century where many books weighed in at 500+ pages, and not helped by reading almost nothing in November and December. However, the loss of quantity was more than made up for by the quality of books read.

Exactly 50% of the books read were written in the nineteenth century, or about the nineteenth century. Of that 50%, 84% were fiction.

56% of the all books read were in translation, which was a good thing.

So much for stats, on to the real stuff:

Best Fiction read in 2016:
- The Bridge of Beyond by Simone Schwarz-Bart
- Texaco by Patrick Chamoiseau
- L'Assommoir by Emile Zola

Best NonFiction read in 2016:
- The Morville Hours by Katherine Swift
- The Opium War by Julia Lovell

Absolute Worst Book read in 2016:
- The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante - at this stage I doubt whether I will ever read another book by her

New to Me Author I will Continue to Read:
- Jean Giono

More Books Read from Favourite Authors:
- The Antiquary by Walter Scott
- Poor Miss Finch by Wilkie Collins
- The Siege by Ismail Kadare

A place for books discovered in other people's threads.

Tudor Tracts ed A F Pollard bas Jan 2nd
Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier arubabookwoman Jan 24
The Man on Mao's Right by Ji Chaozhu edwin (2015) Feb 2

They Were Counted by Miklós Bánffy reference rebeki Jan 23

Will be following with interest this year again...

Happy New Year!

Welcome back! More 19th century is good, chunksters notwithstanding... :)

Happy New Year! I am delighted you are continuing to read and review books from the 19th century -- I learn so much!

>1 SassyLassy: I'm going to try to soak in the reassurance. I can use it. Happy New Years Ms. S!

>3 SassyLassy: and I'm just putting this together- your worst book is by the same author I'm currently infatuated with. Whoa. I don't if that means that particular book is bad, or Ferrante just isn't for you. I'm hoping the former.

I'm looking forward to following you along in your 19th century wanders.

Just dropping a star....

Looking forward to more reads from the nineteenth century.

I'm looking forward to following your 2017 reading. I was mostly a lurker last year, and my goal this year is to comment at least occasionally. Best wishes for the New Year.

>3 SassyLassy: Already your reading tempts me! I am not familiar with Jean Giono, but will be taking a look at his few works translated to English. I found it interesting that Amazon includes one his works translated to Irish. I don't see that often. Also loved your review of The Bridge of Beyond.

Green. How lovely. We could do with it.

Looking forward to your continuing march through the nineteenth century.

Hi Sassy, I've been away for a while, but have dropped a star here. I was not surprised to read that last year was not a good reading year for you; I have read that a lot on LT friends' threads. It seems like you may have had a different reason though... tomes. I majored in 19th c literature and history, and when I was in college, I disdained anything less than 500 pages. Glad to see someone else carries the torch!

56% of the books you read last year were in translation? Wow! That's amazing. I've never been able to get it about 33%, maybe because I read quite a bit of nonfiction as well. I'm glad that you do your bit to keep small translation presses alive! ;-)

I was just in the middle of a big long entry only to have it disappear into an empty screen, something my computer has been tricking me with lately. Rather than try recreating it, I will just say thanks all for the nineteenth century encouragement and all comments are welcome.

I will try to recreate this comment: >10 dchaikin: I suspect that it is the author, not the book. I notice in thorold's review he said

Something that came out when I discussed the book with Italian friends is that the English translation seems a lot less shocking than the original. There seems to be a clear difference: the English version, although not refined, is in a voice that sits fairly comfortably with a middle-class woman narrator; the Italian seems to be much more raw and transgressive in its choice of registers.

Perhaps I would have preferred the book in Italian, but sadly I don't know the language. For some reason I have great difficulty with contemporary middle-class woman narrators, finding them by and large completely unsympathetic. However, I have been following your Ferrante reading, finding it interesting and intriguing, and if anyone could convince me to try her/him again, it would be you.

Continuing on

>14 Linda92007: It was a thread of edwin's a couple of years ago that mentioned Jean Giono and I had remembered his name since. I buy NYRB classics on sight, as they are rare in this part of the world, so when I saw Colline (touchstone doesn't work in English) in a semilocal bookstore in November, I bought it. "Oh", said the clerk, "Do you know Paul?" In response to my completely blank look, she explained patiently that he is the translator (Paul Eprile) and lives close by the bookstore town, so naturally I would know him if I was buying such a book and that would be my reason for buying it, the only reason they had an NYRB book!
The Bridge of Beyond is actually another NYRB release, still one of my favourites.

>16 labfs39: It was odd about 2016 and reading. I love that about disdaining "anything less than 500 pages" ... after all how else could you be serious, right?
Books in translation are important to me, as they seem to be one of the few ways we can get real glimpses of other cultures and viewpoints short of moving there for years. I don't know when I started this, probably way back with my first foray into War and Peace. In 2015, my project was to read through an alphabet of authors' names whose work had been translated into English and that was really fun and there were more new authors. For 2016, the numbers were certainly helped by reading ten Zolas, part of my nineteenth century project.
And Other Stories http://www.andotherstories.org offer contemporary writers in translation, as does Readers international http://readersinternational.org . I have had subscriptions to both at different times and have only had one disappointment, not bad at all, as that was entirely a matter of taste.
It is harder to get nonfiction books in translation, I agree. One of the best I have read in the last couple of years it Zhou Enlai: The Last Perfect Revolutionary

On to this year's books.

Every year I start off with a short whodunnit kind of book, just to get that first book finished quickly as encouragement. Nothing is worse that getting bogged down in your first book. This year's read came from a review by cariola.



1. His Bloody Project: Documents relating to the case of Roderick Macrae by Graeme Macrae Burnet
first published 2015
finished reading January 5, 2017

Graeme Macrae Burnet begins these "Documents relating to the case of Roderick Macrae" with a Preface, telling the reader how he came upon the documents which make up his novel. This was a fictional device frequently employed by Walter Scott, and the nod to the master Scottish storyteller was appreciated. He goes on to assure us that Roderick Macrae's memoir, in which Macrae describes his murder of three of his fellow villagers, is true, slyly referencing the Ossian controversy, in which an epic poem in Gaelic was heralded as a great discovery, only to be later proven to be a forgery.

The first documents are statements from those who knew Roderick; statements which were presented at trial. Immediately we see two sides to the young boy, setting up a duality of character his lawyer will later seek to develop in court. Roddy's schoolmaster called him "among the most talented pupils I have taught..." and "... a gentle lad", while another villager called him "...as wicked an individual as one could ever have the misfortune to meet", having "the Devil's own cunning".

We then get the memoir itself, which Roddy says his advocate encouraged him to write. It describes his life and the murders. The memoir details the life of crofters in Scotland, the obligations to the all powerful laird, the danger of civil or religious dissent, and the futility of dreaming of a better life by getting out. There are motives here to murder Lachlan MacKenzie, but they are motives that would not be restricted to Roddy, whose largely disinterested account portrays him as a sympathetic character.

Medical reports on the state of the victims' bodies follow. More details are given here than were provided by Roddy in his memoir. For the first time, the reader has doubts and questions about young Roddy.

The section "Travels in the Border-Lands of Lunacy" purports to be an account of an examination of Macrae by the real life J Bruce Thomson, a pioneer in the field of criminal anthropology and psychology. Thomson had been invited to consult on the case by Andrew Sinclair, Macrae's lawyer. Here it is obvious Burnet is having fun with it all as Thomson reveals himself to be a pompous, prejudiced, albeit observant commentator, possibly dangerous and antithetical to Sinclair's purpose.

The Trial is the last section but one. Burnet tells us it is a compilation of reports from various newspapers and the court record. Naturally, given the sensational nature of the trial, the court and the town were crowded with those hoping to get a seat and there are snippets of reports by southerners on the locals, a community southerners still love to mock. Mr Sinclair entered a Special Defence of Insanity on behalf of his client. Burnet does an excellent job here with the presentation of evidence and examination of witnesses. Once more, he has fun at the expense of the medical profession, with lawyers on both sides being driven to exasperation by the doctors' testimonies.

The surprise to me came with the Lord Justice-Clerk's address to the jury. Scottish law allows one of three verdicts: guilty, not guilty, or not proven (formerly proven, not guilty, not proven). The emphasis is not on circumstance, or what could have been the case, but on what can be proved. It seemed to me that enough ambiguity had been raised among various accounts that 'not proven' should have been addressed. Even without the ambiguity, I found it an odd admission.

All in all, that's probably a small quibble for a second novel shortlisted for the 2016 Booker, and so for a wider audience. Burnet has written a truly convincing book, one that the reader must keeping reminding him/herself is fiction. I'll now look for Burnet's first novel, also a psychological study of a killer.

_____________

edited for typo

Finally nipping round to drop a star Sassy.

I pretty much agree with you on His Bloody Project. It was good but not as original as the hype suggested IMO. But I would read this author again.

Fabulous review of His Bloody Project, Sassy. I also enjoyed it, and IMO it was one of the few novels from last year's Booker Prize longlist that deserved that honor.

Enjoyed your review of His Bloody Project

>18 SassyLassy: I also enjoyed your review. I also read the book but didn't know he wrote another psychological study of a killer. I'll follow close if/when you come to that one.

Terrific review of His Bloody Project. And thanks for posting the quote from Mark on Ferrante. It's particularly interesting to me because in the English translation of the Neapolitan series the language is very clean and somewhat elegant. It's never harsh, except when quoting someone. I think it's part of the appeal for me.

Yes, please carry on hammering away at those 19th century novels - it's an inspiration to all of us! (Maybe I'll get to read some Scott or Zola this year as well...)

>10 dchaikin: >17 SassyLassy: >23 dchaikin: I read Days of abandonment in English (in 2009, I think it was Lola who recommended it), and, partly as a result of that experience and the discussions I had with Italian friends at the time, I've been trying to read My brilliant friend in Italian, but my Italian isn't really good enough yet, so I keep stranding. From my very limited experience, I wouldn't call the language clean and elegant: if anything, it seems to be direct and earthy.

>14 Linda92007: >17 SassyLassy: Giono is someone I hadn't heard about at all until a few weeks ago, when my arm was twisted to make me sit through a slightly cheesy Canadian cartoon adaptation of The man who planted trees. The film probably made it seem even cruder propaganda than it was intended to be, but I still got the impression that Giono might be worth looking into. I imagine that Giono must be rather like Marcel Pagnol, but with less of the unpleasant huntin' shootin' fishin' stuff - does that sound like a fair assessment?

>17 SassyLassy: Thanks for the links to & Other Stories and Reader's International. I've got them bookmarked for further perusal.

Zhou Enlai: The Last Perfect Revolutionary sounds fascinating. Wonderful review, btw. I don't know enough about Mao and the Cultural Revolution (just snippets here and there); do you think this would be a good starting point if I take advantage of the English translation's opening chapters? Or is there another book you would recommend?

Thanks all. It's always good to get that first review of the year done. In my original post above that disappeared, I also had said to >13 arubabookwoman: please do comment; it's what makes things lively.

Thanks for all the encouragement about the nineteenth century. There will be Zola and Scott! I've just finished my first nineteenth century book of the year, a mere 523 pages, so hope to have something to say about it after I recover.

>24 thorold: With regard to Marcel Pagnol, I have seen Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources (his versions not the later ones) and don't really remember the 'huntin' shootin' fishin' stuff' -- maybe it just seemed to fit in -- but although there was necessary hunting in Colline, if you accept that there are things in rural life that you don't encounter in more urban life, and some of them are unpleasant, it didn't seem what you describe. It was the story of a group of people in a hamlet working together over a difficult summer to just survive, but for me the natural world was far more to the fore. The word that came to my mind while reading him was "quiet". I have The Horseman on the Roof on the TBR, as well as a book in French, Arcadie... Arcadie inspired by a review of edwin's, so will be able to assess that judgement better after reading more. I see that Pagnol used some of Giono's books in his films, so that connection is beginning to intrigue me as well.
I haven't seen The Man who Planted Trees.
Here is the start of an article on him, or a full article if you have a subscription:http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/06/05/great-jean-giono/

>25 labfs39: Hope you can find some of those publishers' books.
With regard to Zhou Enlai: The Last Perfect Revolutionary; it would certainly work as a starting point as the digressions into other characters and events aren't detailed enough to get unwieldy. If you want something more detailed, Mao's Last Revolution is an excellent source and reference. Then there is fiction and I thought The Concert was excellent (just added my review from a 2015 thread to the book's page).

Just catching up with your thread. Looking forward to more 19th century reads. I'm hoping to get to more myself this year, as sometimes I forget how much I love many Victorian authors.

>26 SassyLassy: Thanks for the recommendations on Chinese history. I've added them to the list.

This book was in my pile of possibles for last year's nineteenth century read, but the size kept holding me back. Luckily, it was the current selection for the Virago group's Chronological Read project, so I had a prod to read it this year.



2. Deerbrook by Harriet Martineau
first published in three volumes in 1839
finished reading January 13, 2017

How far would your sense of duty take you? Would it cause you to subordinate yourself to the good of others, to what other people expect you to do based on their misperceptions of your deeds and words? Duty and the distinction between duty to oneself and duty to others is one of the major dilemmas at the heart of Deerbrook.

Dearbrook was a rural English village, reasonably prosperous, reasonably pretty, and oh so mundane. The two major merchant families were headed by Mr Rowland and Mr Grey: business partners, neighbours and friends. Their wives, however, were a completely different matter. Mrs Rowland and Mrs Grey were rivals in everything, but somehow managed to have their small children educated together by Miss Young, whose salary the families paid.

Into this claustrophobic world came the Misses Ibbotson. Hester and Margaret were recently orphaned and had come to visit their only relative, Mr Grey, "...while their father's affairs were in course of arrangement, and till it could be discovered what their means of living were likely to be." Naturally the two eligible young women became an instant source of speculation and gossip. Mrs Grey was convinced that all eligible young men would be captivated by Hester, as dazzled as she herself was by her beauty. Margaret was lauded for her intelligence and quiet manner. Mrs Grey particularly championed the aptly name Edward Hope, the village doctor, as a match for Hester. Mrs Rowland couldn't tolerate the idea of anybody from Deerbrook marrying into the Greys, in her mind Greys should leave Deerbrook upon marriage.

The interfering machinations, the use of manipulations and innuendo by both Mrs Rowland and Mrs Grey would result in one potentially vey unhappy marriage, one emotionally devastated sister, a promising career put on the skids, a mob attack, and one aborted engagement.

Honesty emerges as the other major dilemma for Martineau's characters. Some have no regard for it, committing outright acts of deception to mold the world to their wishes, no matter the pain it caused or how close to home it fell. Others used truth selectively, pushing matters here, holding back there. Still others struggled to find the truth, within themselves and in others.

Truth and duty, no longer fashionable in some circles, were major moral concerns in much of nineteenth century English literature. Martineau cloaked some of her discussion in religious terms, which might not necessarily resonate with today's readers, but which do give insight into the thought of her contemporaries. She is perhaps a bit too comfortable with the idea of adversity as something which can be overcome and thus make us stronger and so closer to the deity. However, that takes nothing away from her skill at characterization. The sheer egregious audacity of Mrs Rowland creates one of Victorian literature's best evil women. Children are convincingly portrayed, their prattle showing them unconsciously developing into little miniatures of their parents complete with their points of view. Martineau's sly descriptions of social visits show that she was not only an astute observer, but also a victim of the tedium induced by middle class convention.

Deerbrook is a first novel, but Harriet Martineau was already an established writer. She was the author of a series of popular articles, "Illustrations of Political Economy" and three books on American life written after two years of travel in North America where she spoke in support of Abolition. Chronologically, Martineau fills the gap between Jane Austen and George Eliot. Stylistically, she would be looking ahead to Eliot, but there are definitely echoes of Austen here. The Athenaeum reviewer felt her superior to Austen, while Blackwood's compared her to Madame de Stael. Martineau wrote one more novel before abandoning fiction and returning to essays and articles.

>29 SassyLassy: Great review of Deerbrook, Sassy. Interesting that someone who is obviously a skilled fiction writer should abandon the genre so completely.

Deerbrook went on my to-read list last year, and your thoughtful review has definitely pushed it up the queue.

>29 SassyLassy:

Lovely work!

Star from me. Great review!

Nice review Sassy. Definitely one for the wish list.

>29 SassyLassy: Great review of Deerbrook! That book seems to be turning up a lot recently. I definitely need to get to it this year.

>30 Linda92007: I thought that too, but as a single woman, Martineau had to make a living and as a essay writer and leader writer, perhaps the income flow was more reliable. More that that though, I believe she was a committed activist and fiction may have been too time consuming for her to write when she was so focussed on the "real" world.

>31 mabith: What was it that put it on your to-read list? I think you would enjoy it and would be interested to see what you have to say about the treatment of Maria Young, which I didn't get into as it would have been that much longer a review.

>32 lyzard: > Thanks for your great work on leading and moderating the group read. Looking forward to the next one.

>33 labfs39: >34 Caroline_McElwee: Thanks and Caroline, I think you would like it.

>35 valkyrdeath: I suspect it is turning up so much due to lyzard's above mentioned group read in the Virago group. This was the second one I have participated in and as a chronological one, it will offer a lot.

Don't know if any of the above in (36) made sense, as I am still on a high after an amazing 52 hours spent going to, participating in, and coming home from this:



It really was that crowded. Absolutely amazing!

Image from CTV news.

>36 SassyLassy: Someone's review here, either last year or in 2015. It was before I started keeping track of who I got recommendations from.

Edited to add - My mom was at the march too! Even if I'd been well enough to go it would have been impossible in a wheelchair with that kind of crowd.

>36 SassyLassy:

Martineau had a breakdown after completing Deerbrook and was very ill for some time. Whether it was just the physical effort of writing, or whether she put too much of herself into it, or both, she certainly shied away from writing much more fiction; nothing of the same kind.

>37 SassyLassy:

Amazing scenes!

>29 SassyLassy: A fascinating review - I'm sad now as I missed a talk on Harriet Martineau last week that I'd meant to go to (in my knowing nothing of her). She lived locally for some time, the time coinciding with a period of recovery from illness and I've just read that that period coincided with a period in which she was led to move towards the social constraints of women at that time, perhaps that impacted what she wrote - though wiki says she wrote two books for children (one a novel), a book on her illness and began work on her autobiography, oh and a book on bringing up children. I'm from near where she stayed yet know nothing of her, probably partly due to obeying the social constraints on gender of my times, and spending far too much time not reading.

>37 SassyLassy: right on.

>37 SassyLassy: Yay!

Clicking on your review to go to the book page, i am astonished to find that I apparently have a copy of Deerbrook. I thought I had seen it so often in bookstores but never bought it. But now, of course I have no idea where this copy is...

>42 edwinbcn: It doesn't surprise me that you have a copy of it, albeit unread, as you are someone I think of as a Victorian reader. When you read it, I would be interested in what you have to say.

>40 tonikat: >39 lyzard: Toni, that talk would have been interesting indeed. I would like to find more of her books, particularly one with some of her articles on Political Economy. I am always interested in domestic guides from other times.

>37 SassyLassy: That so many participated is so encouraging. There was even a small demonstration in my small (and overwhelmingly red) Southern city.

Vita Sackville-West was the Virago Group's author of the month. Thanks to LyzzyBee for this one.



3. No Signposts in the Sea by Vita Sackville-West
first published 1961
finished reading January 17, 2016

There are no signposts in the sea, nor as Edmund Carr tells us, are there any tombstones. Both these statements are significant to Edmund. The senior leader writer for an unnamed leading broadsheet, "... one of the weightiest of our national newspapers", Edmund had just been diagnosed with a terminal illness, one which would cause little pain or limitation until the very end. Like most of us, the fifty year old Carr had never really seriously contemplated his end. Now, he said, "I wondered quite dispassionately how best to arrange what remained of my life."

The day after his diagnosis, he discovered that Laura Drysdale, a woman whom he greatly admired, was going on a sea voyage of some months duration. He took an indefinite leave from his office and booked passage on Laura's ship, telling no one of his diagnosis.

Edmund kept a diary on the voyage, a diary which is most of the book. The reader sees him falling in love with Laura, tormenting himself with what could be. He had always avoided serious entanglements and now felt that to enter into a relationship with someone would be wrong, given his condition. Instead, he put Laura on a pedestal, agonized over her words and deeds, desperately searching for signs she might care for him. The tragedy is that obsession can cause us to lose our way, causing us to miss the very signposts that would lead us out of the storm.

This is a very well written book about the nature of love and of marriage, questions of long standing importance to Vita Sackville-West. The novel was set in 1955, a time of great uncertainty about the future for people like Edmund and Laura. It seems difficult now to imagine a world where given a certain amount of material well being, people could just step away for a time to actually think and read and write. One of the things that struck me most was the sheer excellence of the syntax of her language. Every once in a while I would stop and reread a bit, not necessarily for what was said, but for the pleasure of reading something so well constructed, but then what else would you expect from a man like Edmund, the voice of The Times, or a woman like Vita?

My only quibble was with the use of the third person "one" in place of "I" or "you". This usage has always bothered me. It is as if the speaker is unable to commit to a point of view and so fobs it off on that anonymous "one", who is actually "we" for a particular elite. This discussion of second marriages where "one" has different referents highlighted the stilted cadences of it all:

I take it that one does not commit the same mistake twice, not unless one is a film-star with a positive passion for divorce. No. But one would not commit it unless one was very sure that it wasn't one -- and when one is in love one isn't always able to judge.

How can anyone so dispassionate actually be in love?

However, any other usage would not have been nearly as convincing. It would not have conveyed who Laura and Edmund were.

No Signposts in the Sea was Sackville-West's last novel. It was written over two different sea cruises she took with her husband Harold Nicholson. Like Edmund, Vita was preoccupied with death on these cruises. She was ill with the as yet undiagnosed cancer which would kill her a year later. All in all this was a good book to lead off that contemplation of what really should be said before it is too late.

>43 SassyLassy:

Martineau's Illustrations Of Political Economy is available at the Internet Archive (and probably some other places). Be advised, though: there are nine volumes of her "illustrations"! :)

A version also been reissued by the Broadview Press as an ebook, but I think that's only a selection of her stories, not the whole nine yards volumes.

>45 SassyLassy: How nice to discover such a book. Never heard of the book nor the author. Great review, on the wishlist it goes!

>37 SassyLassy: You were there! Must have been such a high. Even on television and an ocean away I could feel the strength and unity.

>37 SassyLassy: very inspiring!

Terrific reviews of the Martineau and of the Sackville-West...touched that s-w wrote so closely about what she was going through.

I also much enjoyed reading No Signposts in the Sea, two years ago, and it is a book that stays with you.

>37 SassyLassy: Pink is my favourite colour. I can't stand orange.

enjoyed your excellent review of No Signposts in the Sea - PS I am not old enough to be going on cruises.

>29 SassyLassy: & >45 SassyLassy: Excellent reviews! Both of these books are collecting dust on my tbr shelf. You have reminded me to pick them up soon.

>37 SassyLassy: What an experience!

>46 lyzard: Thanks for that information. I will look for it. Perhaps she has it divided into topics and I can just pick an area or two of interest!

>47 Simone2: >51 VivienneR: It truly was a high, very exhilarating and positive. It makes it all the more difficult to watch what is happening now.

>48 dchaikin: >49 edwinbcn: I can see myself reading this again. It was a compelling picture of one person's thoughts.

>50 baswood: Oceans of pink, but many of the Canadians opted for the traditional red, especially with toques. My marching boots were red. Orange was definitely out! well, except for a few apt placards.

>51 VivienneR: I think you would enjoy both of them. They are very different, for different moods, but both worthwhile.

The first "Greenery" book of the year:



4. Corduroy by Adrian Bell
first published 1930
finished reading January 27, 2017

One of the great gulfs between people is the divide between urban and rural. By rural here I don't mean living in a pleasant village with smart shops. I means actually working on the land, being of the land. If urbanites think of such a life at all, it is either with horror at the thought of cultural isolation, or with a storybook image of how farms are run. Sheep afflicted with scrapie, drought, wheat rust, marauding wildlife: the urbanite contemplates none of it.

Such a soul was Adrian Bell. In 1920 he was twenty years old. He entertained thoughts of being a poet. His father thought he should "do something". Young Adrian knew that whatever that something was, it could not be in an office, and pleaded for open air. The two agreed on a year with "an established farmer of Suffolk, who agreed, for the usual premium, to teach me agriculture".

Adrian had gone to English public schools. His father was news editor of The Observer. His was a world far from that of Mr Colville's Suffolk farm. This was five hundred acres of mixed farming with about twenty help. In a pattern still seen today, Mr Colville and some of his brothers each had his own farm close to the same village, while other members of the family engaged in supply or support trades. The Colvilles were successful, and well regarded by their neighbours. Bell, with his background, was quick to peg them as yeomen.

Corduroy is the story of Bell's year at Farley Hall, starting in autumn after harvest, the traditional start of the agricultural year in that part of the world. His first realizations were of just how poorly prepared he was. His clothes, which he had carefully selected as fit for the most rugged hiking and outdoor activities, were seen by the workers as "gentleman's clothes". He had difficulty understanding the local accent. He found himself to be physically weak and positively inept at mechanical tasks. To his credit, he persevered.

He learned a new vocabulary, one of weather, topography, soil and machinery. He learned animal husbandry. He went rabbiting with ferrets and learned about the eternal war against crows. He was amazed at the complexity of farm money management. "Never had I imagined anything so intricate as the keeping of farm accounts." The more he learned and adapted, the more awkward he felt on his visits back to Chelsea, a world where a woman at a party asked

"What are the names of the pigs? And the cows?" I told her they had no names; only pedigree stock and horses had them, and that was a matter of convenience; to which she replied "How heartless", and liked me less.

Suffolk looked like a far better alterative.

At the end of the year, Bell took the enormous step of buying a fifty acre farm close to the Colvilles. With the publication of Corduroy ten years later, he became one of the leading writers of rural life, as well known as someone like Richard Mabey is today. It is said that many English soldiers from the countryside took his book with them to WWII, as a reminder of what they had left behind. There are occasional flashes of the prejudice prevalent among people of his class and time, views that do not seem to have been shared by the people by whom he was surrounded in the country. Although farming and the English countryside have changed, a change that was already starting in the years after WWI when Bell first started, Corduroy has lost none of its freshness. As urbanization swallows the majority of the population around the world, reading of the world left behind is as good a journey as any travel book can offer.

________________________________

Oddly, Bell was also famous as the creator of the crosswords in The Times

>37 SassyLassy: excellent photo! Seeing all of the different marches on tv was very inspiring. I didn't get to go to a march, but did knit a pink hat for one of my daughter's friends who was marching in New York.

>53 SassyLassy: excellent review Sassy, I do have it.

Nice review of Corduroy by Adrian Bell. That's the kind of book I would definitely like to read.

Read your review of Corduroy with interest, especially as I am an urbanite living in a farming community. A little different for me as I do not have to work on the farms, but I do realise how different my life is compared to some of my neighbours.

Loved your review of Corduroy, I'll definitely add it to my list.

>53 SassyLassy: I really enjoyed this excellent review, too.

Thanks all. The urban/rural split is a divide that worries me, as fewer and fewer people have the least idea of where their food comes from, or how to do practical things in a pinch, yet feel free to disparage those who provide them with all things food and country related. Those who practise agriculture today are often highly educated, and all are highly skilled. Their must be a way to bridge the gulf.

>57 baswood: Has agritourism come to your area yet? I'm not sure what I think of it yet. Currently it seems to focus on "prettier" agriculture, like lavender, or grapes, or olives.

>54 NanaCC: Those pink hats en masse were great. There were so many varieties of design and shades of pink that it made a display in itself.

>60 SassyLassy: I love the color in that photo.

January's Zola, finished a day late, but it was a busy month!



5. The Beast Within by Emile Zola translated from the French by Roger Whitehouse (2007)
first published in serial form in La vie populaire from 14th November 1889 - 2nd March 1890
finished rereading February 1, 2017

The Beast Within expands Zola's exploration of heredity and its effects on character, and whether or not such character traits can be influenced by environment; specifically, can the urge to do evil be tempered, or even completely suppressed. For the beast within is terrifying, capable of any and all depravities.

Jacques Lantier had the wrong heredity. Part of the illegitimate Macquart branch of the Rougon-Macquart families, he was the son of the ill fated Gervaise*, who had gone off to Paris leaving the small boy in the care of Aunt Phasie, his father's cousin. Jacques appeared to be successful, to have broken the family curse. At twenty-six he was a driver on the Western Railway, skilled at his job, diligent and conscientious. However, his dedication to work masked a secret affliction.

Kill a woman! Kill a woman! The words had sounded in his ears since his early adolescence with the maddening , feverish insistence of unsated desire. Whereas other boys coming to puberty dreamed of possessing a woman, the only thing that excited him was the thought of killing one. It was pointless trying to deceive himself.

Such thoughts were provoked by intimate contact with women, so Jacques tried to sublimate himself completely in his work, in his care of the locomotive La Lison, which was "...like a mistress, soothing him and bringing him only happiness". There are suggestions that his impulses were preceded by various physical aura. At such times his body took on a life of its own; "he became the slave of the beast within".

The Beast Within has five murders, a probable murder, a suicide, pedophilia, possible incest and a wrongful conviction, so the pace is as swift as the trains that thunder through the tale. Standing by the side of the tracks, Jacques saw the first murder, that of President Grandmorin, president of the Western Railway. As the train flashed by, Jacques saw the knife thrust in the first class compartment. Wandering along, he wondered if he had really seen such a thing, and a woman too, for the glimpse was that of a moment. Confirmation came an hour later when the body was found beside the tracks. 'What he had merely dreamed of that man had actually done..."

By the end of the second chapter, all the murderers and victims have been introduced, and Grandmorin has been murdered. There were connections throughout, all centred on the railway that gave them their living. Statistically such a cluster would seem improbable, but Zola works his way through the motivations making it all believable. At the time he wrote this novel, railways were making their way across France

like a giant creature, a colossus that lay sprawled across the country, its head in Paris, its backbone stretching the length of the main line, its arms and legs spreading out along the branch lines and its hands and feet at Le Havre and at other towns it found its way to. On and on it went, soulless, triumphant, striding towards the future, straight as a die, wilfully disregarding whatever shreds of humanity survived on either side of it, hidden from view yet still clinging to their own hardy inner life, their ceaseless round of passion and crime.

Lacking alarms and emergency pulls, they became perfect sites for crime. There had been a high profile murder on the train in 1860 and another in 1886, both of which are echoed in The Beast Within. On another front, Zola had read the recently published Crime and Punishment, with its exploration of a killer's mind. Jack the Ripper was grabbing headlines. Scientists were looking for a criminal "type". How could a writer like Zola ignore such a stew?

Zola did not follow the commonly held beliefs though. Jacques is sympathetically portrayed as he struggles against his demons, leading a commendable life for the most part. He had few of the physical characteristics that the age regarded as indicative of a criminal. Those are reserved for the most innocent person in the novel.

Naturally the crimes that fill the novel could not take place unnoticed. The law stepped in. Zola reveals it to be as corrupt in its way as the most depraved killer. In France, the initial investigation was carried out by an appointed magistrate, not by the police. The magistrate decided whether or not a particular case would proceed to trial. This situation made political interference commonplace in any case suggesting scandal or bad press. Zola's legal types found a lack of evidence, suppressed and destroyed evidence, and knowingly convicted an innocent man, all this even before the Dreyfus case.

There is nothing like a reread of a great novel. It is never the same as the last time it was read. My memory of The Beast Within is almost entirely of the railway. Zola had made trains and station such an integral part of the book that convinced by his metaphors, I thought of La Lison as a human beast, a magnificent animal. As I read this time, I wondered how the rest of it had escaped me over the years. Perhaps part of it was two different translations. I had initially read it with the title La Bête Humaine, which I had translated as "the human beast", making the train the beast in my mind. That edition was translated by Leonard Tancock in 1977. Looking it over now, I realize that the dialogue seems stilted, so perhaps the characters did not come to life as they did in Whitehouse's translation. At any rate, this reread made a brilliant synthesis of the two, with its redirected focus. If you have never read a novel by Zola, this is an excellent place to start.

__________________

* see L'Assommoir

I've been meaning to read something by Emile Zola, so maybe that one will be the first. Great review!

>60 SassyLassy: love the lavender field Sassy.

Hm, I have two Zola's near the top of piles, The Earth and Nana. I saw a dramatisation of the latter on the BBC when I was in my teens, and had nightmares!

Excellent review. I've made note to begin with that one, when I do get to Zola.

Enjoyed your excellent review of The Beast within

Oh, I am so slow to get over here to your thread! And thus, I am not reading your posts in real time sadly. >1 SassyLassy: Glad to see the new Pantone. That is my kind of green! >37 SassyLassy: I didn't know you had been to the march! We chose to march locally here in NH (although I did do the equally large 2004 March for Women's Lives in DC so I know some of what you were feeling, although I suspect the intensity was ramped up a bit this time) Thank you for going.

I have skimmed your reviews to catch up. I have turned away from most 19th century novels at this point in my reading life, although last year I did read The Rise of Silas Lapham by William Dean Howells thinking I had never read it (and it seems I had).

The Zola novel sounds fascinating. Very tempting.

>63 mabith: >65 RidgewayGirl: This would be a great one with which to start. It was the first one I read.

>64 Caroline_McElwee: Lavender is so beautiful. I couldn't resist that image. I try to grow lavender everywhere I can, but somehow Canadian winters can do it in, so every spring there is trepidation to see what has survived. I find the French lavenders do better here than the English varieties, but that is subject to some micro environments within my own garden, so I have to balance it out. It's all worth it when it blooms.

Nana is the next Zola after the one I am currently reading, so you have tweaked my curiosity.

>66 baswood: I keep waiting for you to get to the nineteenth century, but then if you did, I would never learn all the great things your current reading delivers!

>67 avaland: I'm so glad you found me. That is a good green. I remember pictures of your house and it does seem like your kind.
Having marches around the US and in other countries was really important to the overall purpose, so thank you too for going. It was intense but in the best kind of way.
The Rise of Silas Lapham is one I should perhaps read as I am short on American authors in this pursuit.

Last winter I found myself researching masques as part of drama for something I had been asked to do. Several sources mentioned Kenilworth as having one of the best descriptions of such productions. Being a great Scott fan, I looked it up and so it was. This winter I got to read the whole thing.



6. Kenilworth by Walter Scott
first published in 3 volumes in 1821
finished reading February 23, 2017

O what a tangled web we weave
When first we practise to deceive.*

Pity Robert Dudley, first Earl of Leicester and favourite of the Virgin Queen. Such a status was perilous, for the Queen loved to play off courtiers against each other and there were many who would have been delighted to replace Dudley. Even worse for Dudley, the queen was a jealous sort and while not willing to elevate Dudley to royal consort, she was not about to see him as anyone else's consort either.

Walter Scott has taken the bare bones of this court drama and created a completely reworked account of Dudley's real first wife, Amy Robsart, using his comprehensive knowledge of Elizabethan England to create a novel of intrigue, drama and just plain old enjoyable reading that rivals Dumas. Kenilworth is set in the year 1575, a full fifteen years after the death under strange circumstances of the historical Amy Robsart. Scott used this well known death to create the atmosphere of suspense in his novel.

He starts at Cunmor Hall, where Amy lived quietly in seclusion, the source of much speculation in the village, where her identity was a mystery and where it was believed she was the paramour of either the tenant of Leicester's hall, or Richard Varney, Leicester's aide. The truth was that she was secretly married to Leicester and was being held virtual prisoner by these men. While Dudley kept her there in conditions befitting his Countess, despite her repeated requests he refused to announce their marriage, fearing Elizabeth's wrath. Dudley was nothing if not ambitious. As he explained it to Amy

...you speak of what you understand not. We that toil in courts are like those that climb a mountain of loose sand -- we dare make no halt until some projecting rock afford us a secure stance and resting place -- if we pause, soon we slide down by our own weight, an object of universal derision. I stand high, but I stand not secure enough to follow my own inclination. To declare my marriage, were to be the artificer of my own ruin --

Meanwhile back at Court in London, Leicester was a virtual captive of the Queen, afraid to leave for fear of losing his political war with the Earl of Sussex, his opportunities for financial and political advancement, and most of all his coveted status as favourite. Scott, intrigued by Elizabeth and a scholar of her era, sets up her management of the rivalry between Leicester and Sussex

...to bridle him who thought himself highest in her esteem, by the fears he must entertain of another equally trusted, if not equally beloved, were arts which she used throughout her reign...
...it might be in general said, that the Earl of Sussex had been most serviceable to the Queen, while Leicester was most dear to the woman...

Leicester did not realize it, but even while threatened from within the Court, his position was about to be threatened from outside. Amy's rejected suitor Tressilian, believing Varney to have seduced her, took the matter to Court, with Sussex as his intermediary. Leicester's secret was almost revealed, suppressed only by Varney's outrageous deception of the Queen.

Elizabeth was about to make one of her famous progresses. She had granted Dudley the honour of receiving her and the Court at his estate at Kenilworth. Thither she also ordered Sussex, Varney, and the absent Amy Robsart. Amy, knowing only that Dudley would be entertaining the Queen, insisted to him that she be present as his Countess. Leicester and Varney could not allow her to do any such thing. Tressilian wanted her there to plead what he believed to be her wrongful confinement. How all this was managed and the dread over Amy's fate provide the suspense for the rest of the book.

Scott has used the Queen's actual historical progress to Kenilworth as his backdrop for the events there. She was there for nineteen days. Scott has many of his supporting characters take part in the great progression north to the estate, a journey that seems as colourful and rich as a medieval progression. Leicester entertained the Queen with jousts, bear baiting, feasts, dances and masques, and it seemed all of England took to the roads toward the castle to participate. Elizabeth herself had an entourage of over four hundred people. While Leicester was managing all this, behind the scenes the Leicester of the novel had to deliver himself and his reputation from the web of intrigues that threatened not only him, but also Amy at every turn.

Kenilworth is masterful story telling and although there is almost no historical accuracy as far as the relations among the characters are concerned, it is an excellent picture of the age written with a novelist's skill and a historian's knowledge. Writing almost seventy years later, no less an author than Thomas Hardy said "... no historian's Queen Elizabeth was ever so perfectly a woman as the fictitious Elizabeth of Kenilworth". Kenilworth is also probably one of the most accessible of Scott's novels for today's readers. It is one of his very few set outside Scotland. Consequently the language, history and digs at Scottish factions that defeat many readers are not to be found here. Instead, there is a far more straightforward narrative. So, if you've ever wondered about reading Scott, this may be a good place to start. Then you can go on to his other great works.

_________________________
*Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field by Walter Scott 1808

______
edited for typos (they just keep appearing)

Cunmor Place where Amy Robsart and Robert Dudley lived: a suitable setting for clandestine activity.
Picture from bodley.ox.



The ruins of Kenilworth castle

Terrific review of Kenilworth. I got carried away in your plot summary. Enjoyed your latest Zola review too.

I am very intrigued by Kenilworth, thanks to your excellent review. Added to my wishlist.

>69 SassyLassy:
Fun! Oddly enough, I think Kenilworth was actually my first Scott. It has some very good bits, especially towards the end, but as I remember it there's also a lot of very generic historical-novel page-filling stuff that could drive you away before you ever get that far.

>69 SassyLassy: Excellent review! You sold me on Kenilworth and I have downloaded a copy from Project Gutenberg. Thanks for those great images too, it always helps to have an idea of where events took place.

>71 dchaikin: Two great nineteenth century authors both creating suspense, but oh such different styles.

>72 NanaCC: Intrigued by intrigue -- I think you would enjoy it.

>73 thorold: It's funny about the historical-novel page-filling stuff. It's there in all Scott's work as you know, being another Scott reader, but maybe reactions are different to English versus Scottish history, depending on a whole world of things the reader brings. I read in the introduction that Scott's publisher wanted him to write about Elizabeth as a counter balance to his previously published work The Abbott about Mary Stuart, which in turn was a sequel yo The Monastery, so that was how Kenilworth came about.

>74 VivienneR: I like knowing anything about sites of novels too. A friend who used to live in Coventry, (very close to Kenilworth) says they have wonderful son et lumière presentations at Kenilworth against the ruins. I hope you enjoy the novel.

Here is a fascinating site from Pushkin House which recreates the Russian world of 1917, day by day leading up to the Revolution. Letters, photos, newspaper articles, diaries, anything that would give a sense of how people felt on that day are included. Not deep, as it is done in a sort of Facebook format, but definitely interesting: https://project1917.com
Then again there is a Facebook version, but it's more distracting.

From today's link, lots of talk of rioting in Petrograd, and then from inside the city this terrible dilemma for Mathilde Kshessinska, a prima ballerina:

On the 26th, a Sunday, General Halle telephoned me once more to warn me that the situation in the city was very serious, and that I should save what I could from my house before it was too late. He telephoned repeatedly all through the day. Although he still considered the situation very serious, he hoped it might improve "if the abscess burst". His advice to save what could still be saved placed me in a real dilemma. Although I never kept my large diamond jewellery at home, but left it with Faberge, I still had at home a great number of small jewels, not to mention the silver and other precious objects with which my rooms were decorated. What was I to choose? What was I to take away, and where?

Here is the main entrance to her mansion:


It helps to have been associated with a future tsar and two Grand Dukes.

No wonder there was a revolution!

Wikipedia says the balcony of her house was used by Lenin in 1917 to address the crowd when he returned from Switzerland.

>76 SassyLassy: Fascinating Sassy. There are a few exhibitions about this time in Russia, in London at the moment.

I pass Pushkin House regularly, it's on the corner of Bloomsbury Square.

>77 Caroline_McElwee: Pushkin House looks like it has some amazing exhibits. London is so far away!

A hundred years ago today Mathilde and her companions dashed out with her dog and jewels. Meanwhile Anna Akhmatova wrote from Petrograd I spent the day as follows: in the morning I went to the embroiderer's to inquire concerning a new dress. Then I wanted to take a cab home. The first cabbie I saw was an old man, who answered: "sorry, madam, I'm not going there... There's gunfire on the bridge."

I can see this website turning into a minor obsession this year.

>76 SassyLassy: thanks for the heads-up!

Back to reading: February was a short month, so Zola once again overlapped. I shall have to read another this month



7. Germinal by Emile Zola translated from the French by Peter Collier
first published in serial form in Le Gil Blas from 26 November 1884 to 25 February 1885
finished rereading March 5, 2017 -- first reading translated by Leonard Tancock

When Emile Zola died, fifty thousand people took part in his funeral procession, among them a delegation of miners offering their own tribute to the author of Germinal.* Falling on the social history side of Zola's intention to write a natural and social history of a family by exploring the roles of heredity and environment in his Rougon Macquart series, Germinal looks at the exploitation of miners, a topical theme then and now. In La Bête Humaine (62 above) Jacques Lantier was possessed by the dark demons he believed were part of his inheritance. In Germinal, his brother Etienne Lantier only occasionally worried about his family's darker side. Instead, he looked at the world around him and believed by improving it, he could improve the future.

Etienne was a radical, even a revolutionary. This is signalled right away, for the very title of the novel, Germinal references the calendar of the French Revolution, in which Germinal was the seventh month, March 21-April 19. Like most radicals, Etienne didn't start out with such views. He had a trade as a mechanic, but the economic decline that had swept northeastern France had left him and so many others unemployed. Walking the countryside at night, desperate for work, he came upon a coal mine. Zola gives his first picture of the gloom and hopelessness that pervade the novel:

...he was suddenly brought to a halt by the sight at ground level of a great shapeless heap of low buildings topped by the outline of a factory chimney rising from its midst; here and there a lonely light flickered through a filthy window, five or six lanterns were hung up outside on brackets whose blackened timber projected mysterious silhouettes like giant scaffolds, and, from the midst of this fantastic apparition, swimming in smoke and darkness, there rose a lone voice, the prolonged loud wheezing of a steam engine exhaust valve, hidden somewhere out of sight.
Then he recognized it as a pit-head. A feeling of defeat came over him.

At first it seemed there was no work, even here, but a sudden death created a vacancy right as a new shift was beginning. Etienne had a new job.

Maheu led Etienne's team, and Etienne boarded with Maheu's family. Each member from the grandfather racked by silicosis down to the youngest starving infant depended on what the mines could provide. Except for the baby, all the children slept together, from twenty-one year old Zacharie, through fourteen year old Catherine, down to the four year old, and it was in this room that Etienne slept too. Cold and hunger were pervasive. Etienne met a Russian refugee in a local tavern, a man who lent him books. They spoke of Marx, Bakunin and Proudhon. Etienne drew from each, forming his own amorphous theories. What did ring true was the need to somehow break the cycle of bosses and workers as antagonists, with the workers like beasts of burden, animals promiscuously reproducing to feed their masters.

The descriptions of life underground provide a physical hell parallel to the spiritual hell above ground. Packed into cages, the miners descended each shift into unbearable heat and dark, with always the threat of a cave in, only to be released from these same cages after their ascent at shift's end. Part of the job of those who actually worked at the coal face was to keep the wooden supports in shape, replacing those with rot from the constant seeping of underground water and building new supports for every two metres the tunnel advanced. When the company announced it was reducing the price for a tram of coal and no longer paying for time spent working on supports, the miners balked.

Strikes and unions were illegal at the time, so any efforts at organizing were clandestine. Zola highlighted this with his description of an enormous rally held in the woods at night, a rally addressed by Etienne, from which he emerged as the de facto leader of the workers from the local mines. Set up in opposition was Chaval, a miner who had taken Catherine to live with him; a man who saw in Etienne a rival on all fronts. The miners and their families spent a brutal winter, having refused to work. The horses, the real animals below ground in the mine, lived better, being fed and cared for each day. Miners from Belgium were brought in, along with soldiers to guard them. Finally the families of Montsou felt they had to go back to work or die, for death from cold and starvation was already making inroads among them.

Meanwhile, those who owned and supervised the mines had as little understanding of the miners' position as the miners did of theirs. Zola deliberately showed them as victims themselves of the system, writing "I must make the bosses humane so long as their direct interests are not threatened" and "...the bosses are not deliberately vindictive". In the end, they might not have faced starvation, but they too paid a heavy price.

Zola used revolutionary references to heighten the sense of struggle. The novel ends in April, the old month of Germinal. Etienne addresses his comrades as "Citizens". The well meaning ladies from the families in charge of the mines fail to see starvation in a "let them eat cake" fashion. Workers fruitlessly appeal to soldiers to join them in the struggle.

The last hundred or so pages of the book, read in one sitting, rushed toward the cataclysmic finale, brought on by a completely unexpected event, but one completely in character with its perpetrator.

This is a novel that has lost none of its ability to shock and energize. By coincidence, my reread was bracketed by a rewatch of John Sayles's Matewan, about the 1920 coal miners' strike in West Virginia, and by the news that the Donkin coal mine in Cape Breton, extending kilometres under the Atlantic Ocean, will reopen after fifteen years, under the management of Kameron Coal and the Cline Group, whose mines are not unionized and whose safety record is poor. Perhaps more people should be reading this novel.

____________________
* from the introduction to the Oxford World's Classics edition by Robert Lethbridge

Oh, that project1917.com is addictive.

>81 RidgewayGirl: I agree completely!

From March 14, 2017

Will the Tsar abdicate?

Prokofiev is annoyed by the crowds roaming the streets of Petrograd: "This monotonous loitering has begun to annoy me" but manages to continue working on a violin concerto.

Dzerzhinsky is released from Buyrka prison in Moscow. By December he will be head of the newly formed Cheka.

Meanwhile in the marshes around Minsk, Alexander Blok reports that "everyone is bored witless..." in "this swamp forgotten by both God and the Germans"

This next novel worked for both the nineteenth century and the first quarter Reading Globally theme of writers from the Benelux.



8. A Posthumous Confession by Marcellus Emants translated from the Dutch by J M Coetzee
first published in 1894 as Een nagelaten bekentensis
finished reading March 8, 2017

Thirty-five year old Willem Termeer is the narrator of this confession. He tells the reader right away on the first page that he has just murdered his wife. The rest of his "confession" is his decidedly one-sided summation of his life, for Willem assumes his auditor will be "...interested in the course of my development", that he will "...understand how different I seem to myself from the vast majority of people."

He then gives a self-serving account of his life from his entry into grade school forward. At times coloured by self loathing, at other times by empty bravado, Termeer shows himself as one of those weak whingeing creatures whom every bully recognizes on sight, and as the one no work team or social group would choose for a member. Throughout his life, he has done nothing but disappoint, often deliberately. He persists in seeing himself as a victim of circumstance, doing nothing to try to alter those circumstances.

Why read such a self analysis then? Well as J M Coetzee tells us in his introduction, Marcellus Emants was interested in psychology, in analyzing "the new sciences of heredity and psychopathology to explain human motivation". Coetzee sees Termeer's confession "...as a monument to himself, thereby turning a worthless life into art". No matter how despicable Termeer may have been as a person, no matter how disinclined the reader may be to empathize, Emants has done an excellent job of making the reader feel so strongly about such an odious and inconsequential person, and of having that person reveal himself so convincingly, and it is his writing that is the reward.

Excellent review of Germinal, Emile Zola, which really is an unforgettable reading experience. You reminded me of the unputdownable rush of the last 100 or so pages of the novel, where Zola's storytelling ramps up the suspense.

Also enjoyed your review of Kenilworth which is a book I will steer well clear of as I am at the moment immersed in the historical faction of Elizabeths reign and so Scott would only confuse things further for me.

9. The Young Ardizzone: An Autobiographical Fragment by Edward Ardizzone
first published 1970
finished reading March 10, 2017

Edward Ardizzone's "Little Tim" and "Lucy" books have been favourites of mine throughout my life. Just looking at the illustrations is enough to transport me to seaside walks in coastal villages with their smells of salt water and wild roses, with the mystery of what lies beyond those amazing hedges. Most of all, it rekindles the romance of a child's wish to run away to sea, not an adventure in Jim Hawkins fashion, but in the gentler manner of Tim.

It was Ardizzone's skill that reassured generations of child readers that no matter what the adventure, right up through shipwreck, things would always be safe in the end, all would be forgiven over tea, and there would be a kindly old sea captain at the end of the lane who would somehoe make you think it was worth another try. Meanwhile, you could still putter around close to shore.

In his "Autobiographical Fragment", Ardizzone relates a series of events in his early life, accompanied by drawings. Reading these escapades in conjunction with his drawings, it's not difficult to see where his stories originated. Born in Haiphong in 1900, Edward was brought to England in 1905 with his sisters. They were raised largely by their maternal grandmother, as his father continued work in Asia with the Eastern Extension Telegraph Co, and his mother joined his father there for long intervals, with brief visits back to see her children. This was not an uncommon situation for children of Edward's class, and he led a comfortable Edwardian childhood in rural Suffolk.

His description of his grandmother right away calls to mind some of the redoubtable matrons of his books: So it was my grandmother who loomed large in our young lives. Indeed she loomed in more ways than one, for she was immensely stout and had a formidable temper.
There are other people who surely become Charlotte and Ginger, as well as some of the more minor characters

Ardizzone's reminiscences are full of the details that fill his sketches. They are episodic in a sort of rambling way, as if he had first dictated them. It was the accompanying illustrations which were the most rewarding part of the book, as the tales felt like they were being told by an elderly gentleman, too polite and well bred to reveal anything of consequence.

Look instead to his wonderful children's books to see the real genius of this author-illustrator.





images from The Fine Art Company

The Virago Group featured Edith Wharton for March, a chance for me to read a new author. It won't be my last book by her.



10. The Reef by Edith Wharton
first published in 1912
finished reading March 13, 2017

The Reef, first published in 1912, reminds the reader that there was a time when social conventions strictly governed life, paradoxically making social interactions both more and less difficult; less difficult since they created a framework within which to behave, more difficult as it was impossible to break out of the framework without washing up on a reef. What is more, for many people, these conventions weren't just a rigid code, they were a deeply held set of moral principles, with grave consequences for those who betrayed them.

Such a believer was Anna Leath. A New Yorker, Anna had married an American with property in France. They had moved there to his estate, Givré. Widowed while still young, Anna remained on the estate with her formidable mother-in-law, the Marquise de Chantelle.

On a visit to England, Anna encountered George Darrow, a man she had known back in New York, a man who might have become her husband, but for those odd twists of fate which work to prevent promising relationships from ever getting started. Now, without acknowledging it to each other, they both recognized that the early promise was still there, that they could take it up again. The courtship resumed, although neither spoke of it as such. Restraint was still paramount.

Mrs Leath, on this occasion, was no less kind than before; but she contrived to make him understand that what was so inevitably coming was not to come too soon. It was not that she showed any hesitation as to the issue, but rather that she seemed to wish not to miss any stage in the gradual reflowering of their intimacy.

Darrow, for his part, was content to wait if she wished it.

Anna invited George to visit Givré, an invitation which George took to be an eventual agreement to marry him. However, just as he was starting his trip there, he received her telegram: "Unexpected obstacle. Please don't come till thirtieth. Anna". These are the novel's opening lines, offering as many possibilities to the reader as they did to George. He went as far as Paris, but did not answer her telegram or communicate with her further.

In Paris George stared down a predictable path with an aspiring actor, Sophy Viner. Their brief fling introduces the question of how such relationships were to be treated in their world. George and Sophy had their own views. Readers at the time found it shocking.

The first part of the novel is Darrow's. The reader sees the world, Sophy, and Anna from his point of view. Months later, he made his visit to Givré and the point of view becomes Anna's, for this is her world to introduce to George and the reader.

George and Anna manoeuvred once again, never addressing anything head on, each internalizing the visit, trying to make things easier for the other. There is a strong feeling of Henry James in this novel: in the setting, the language, and the relationship. At the centre is the moral quandry between the two, the reef upon which they may founder. Wharton brilliantly leaves the ending up in the air, leaving each reader to come to a conclusion, just as George and Anna must do.

>86 SassyLassy: "The Virago Group featured Edith Wharton for March, a chance for me to read a new author."

:-O

>87 ELiz_M: New to me that is.

>88 SassyLassy: And that is what I found so surprising! I am being hopelessly American, assuming everyone has read some Wharton. She is (used to be?) a staple of the high school English curriculum (especially Ethan Frome).

>85 SassyLassy: I haven't heard of Ardizzone. Will have to look out for him. (I see your book is one of those lovely Slightly Foxed publications.) I haven't read any Edith Wharton. I don't know why, but I've always expected her books to be overly worthy. Perhaps it's the name.

Enjoyed your review of The Reef, Edith Wharton. The author would be new to me as well.

>86 SassyLassy: Edith Wharton wasn't a new author to me, but after reading The House of Mirth this month for the Virago author read (and on the strength of a re-read of The Age of Innocence a few years ago), she's definitely a new favourite!

I have The Reef at home, but have yet to read it. For that reason I've skim-read your review, but am glad to see you liked it.

>83 SassyLassy: I'd never heard of this author or book, but it sounds like something I'd enjoy, if that's the right word.

I've read several books by Edith Wharton, and she is definitely one of my favorites. I think perhaps The Custom of the Country is my favorite of hers, so far. The book has one of those characters that you love to hate. It might be time to read another soon. I have her complete works on my kindle.

In keeping with my great outdoors thought for this thread, here is a beautiful scene from BBC Scotland on their weekly photos feature. Photo taken by Eric Niven in Camperdown Park, Dundee.



It's really spring somewhere in the world.

That is a stunning picture Sassy.

I would love to be in that field of daffodils right now.

>94 SassyLassy: I love that picture. It reminds me of where I was so very lucky to have grown up. The fields of daffodils in the spring are a favorite memory.

I'm thinking that's even more than a 'host'? Beautiful.

>94 SassyLassy: >98 tonikat: More like a carpet, really. Interesting to see that some of them haven't even flowered yet. Scottish spring is obviously a few weeks behind the Dutch one.

Being me, i was curious why they have a Camperdown park in Dundee - it turns out that Admiral Duncan, who defeated the Dutch at the battle of Camperdown (and has a pub named after him in Treasure Island) was from Dundee.

That is stunning. Made extra interesting by the purple tree trunks.

I see it has been six weeks since I was last here. Time to try catching up.

I first saw this book on Torontoc's thread and made a note of it. Then I was lucky enough to have it turn up in my mailbox as the first of a wonderful year of book presents, one a month, selected by a bookstore based on information I gave them about my reading habits. So far they haven't gone wrong.



11. The Vanishing Man: In Pursuit of Velázquez by Laura Cumming
first published 2016
finished reading March 22, 2017

The Vanishing Man is a tale of one man's obsession. It is also a loving look into the work of Velázquez, one that taught me more about his work than I suspect I ever would have learned from an art textbook. Lastly, it is a look at the nineteenth century art world and the rise of the expert.

In 1845, John Snare, a printer and bookseller in Reading England, decided he would bid on a portrait being offered at auction. The catalogue described the painting as 'A Half Length of Charles the First (supposed Van-dyke)'. Snare was astute enough to realize that although the subject was indeed Charles, he looked too young to be king as yet. He reasoned that it could not have been painted by Van Dyck, who only arrived in England after Charles had been king for eight years. Based on a fleeting mention in a travel book of a portrait of Prince Charles which had disappeared, Snare decided the artist was Velázquez. Snare was able to buy the portrait for £8. He then set out to prove his theory.

Cumming, the art critic for The Observer, writes about the art world of Snare's time with authority. In a world before photography and full colour art books, opportunities to see either an actual work or accurate representations of it were few, and generally limited to wealthy patrons. Inaccurate identification and outright fraud were common. The wealthy might make a tour of "the Continent" to see masterpieces of art and architecture, but Spain was not part of that well worn path. Very few in England has actually seen anything by Velázquez.

Snare's drive to authenticate his work would lead him to bankruptcy, separation from his family, and a lonely death in New York City. Along the way was a remarkable trial in which the Trustees of the 2nd Earl Fife accused Snare of possessing stolen property, to wit, the portrait. Cumming's description of the trial is "... a battle between an English tradesman and the Scottish aristocracy, riven with prejudice, mockery, racism and class bias, and characterized by wild discrepancies of experience and judgement".

This was a throughly enjoyable book: at once mystery, art appreciation and social history, in the hands of a writer skilled enough to combine the threads, and leave the reader wanting to continue Snare's and Cumming's quest. There are colour plates of much of the art discussed, and illustrations, both of which allow the reader to follow Cumming as she tells her story.

My UK edition of this book is titled The Vanishing Man: In Pursuit of Velázquez. The North American edition is titled The Vanishing Velázquez: A 19th Century Bookseller's Obsession with a Lost Masterpiece. The former is the original title and captures far better the nuances and threads of the book, for there are actually three vanishing men here: a servant who barely appears in Velázquez's Las Meninas, a work discussed at length by Cumming as representative of the artist's skill; Charles, who disappears when his portrait is lost; and Snare himself who left almost no trace of his life after the trial.

_____________________



Las Meninas by Velázquez from the Prado Museum website

The vanishing man in the portrait is the servant on the right who is barely there

You've been in hiding Sassy!

>101 SassyLassy: I started this book a while back, but for some reason got distracted, I need to get back to it.

Catching up here -- enjoyed your reviews of The Reef and The Vanishing Man. I've read lots of Wharton -- even taught The House of Mirth, but I've never heard of this one -- for some reason, "new" novels by her keep popping up on my radar.

The Cumming book sounds interesting. I'll have to look for a copy.

>101 SassyLassy: Sounds interesting - and tempting.

I recently read the Laura Cumming book too, under the title The Vanishing Velazquez, and enjoyed it very much.

Edith Wharton is one of my favorites. She is a female author I'm disappointed that the Nobel Committee overlooked.

Where are you hiding Sassy?

>106 arubabookwoman: I wonder if your edition's title was designed to make it more marketable, or perhaps to _target a different audience than those who might consider a vanishing man to be a mystery!
Good point about the Nobel

>107 Caroline_McElwee: Good news ahead. I have been trying to at least keep reading posts on LT, even without commenting, but for the past month I have been busy packing up the household goods, not to mention books, for a 2,000 km move to Canada's East Coast. Things just suddenly fell together in May to make it possible. So a week from today the drive begins. I am severely behind in my posting, although what little I have been reading is light, as my mind is full of lists and other such things. I can't wait to get back to Zola and my other "real" reading.

See you all in about two weeks, once the drive is over and the new internet is set up. Here is a picture of the closest town to where the house is:



image from Nova Scotia tourism

>108 SassyLassy: Bon voyage Sassy and happy landings. I'm also in the midst of relocation, but much more locally.

Looks like a lovely place Sassy. Lucky you. See you once you have landed.

Beautiful!- Are you near Lunenburg?

That looks like an ideal spot!

Wow, that will certainly be a gorgeous place to live.

So pretty.

Happy for you and your move, Sassy.

Have you picked a boat yet?

Thanks all. I'm torn between excitement over the new place and despair over packing at this end.

>111 torontoc: It will be just under 15km from Lunenburg. Do you visit there?

>116 thorold: That is one of the most exciting things about it all. I used to sail a lot when I lived on the East Coast, but haven't done any for some time. Apparently you can go down to the harbour on Wednesday afternoon and people will take you on as crew. My friend and I used to do this in our teens for races, and I am really looking forward to it again. It will be a great way to get acquainted with the new classes of sailboats.
It's just another indication of how the world has changed. I can't imagine parents today allowing their children to jump onboard a boat with relative strangers and the alcohol that seemed a constant during races, but it was a really great experience.

"See" you all in about two weeks.

>117 SassyLassy: I visited Lunenburg a number of years ago - it is a beautiful town!

>108 SassyLassy: Beautiful place. Can we all come to visit?

How has the move gone Sassy?

Oh, so much catching up to do! I have an arc copy of The Vanishing Velazquez somewhere here, buried under newer arcs and purchases. It's good to know you enjoyed it.

I seem to have missed your move (yay! finally!). Where to?

Well here I am. It's actually almost four weeks later. My reading has been minimal in April, May and June during house selling, house buying, packing and moving, but it's time to at least mention it, even if only for my own records. I will pick up on my more usual longer reviews when I get to books read here. First:

>119 VivienneR: Absolutely!

>120 Caroline_McElwee: As moves go, it was relatively painless, but it was probably the most extended one in terms of time it took from first packed box to starting to open boxes at this end. This place is 33% smaller than the former one, and so has far fewer spaces for pictures on the wall, which seems to be the biggest problem: bookshelves vs pictures. The old house happily accommodated both. Like the old house though, there are great windows and views.

>121 avaland: Will PM you, but yes (yay! finally!)

Back to reading:



12. Daughters of the House by Michèle Roberts
first published 1992
finished reading March 24, 2017

This was an odd book for me. I kept getting the feeling I was missing something, that if only my brain would kick into gear something would become clear.

First cousins Thérèse and Léonie, one French, one half English, spent the summers of their childhood together in the old family home in Normandy. It was just after WWII and there were secrets in the village that could not be divulged to children. Fast forward many years. Therese has spent twenty years in a convent, Léonie has the house. Thérèse wants to leave the convent and return to the old home. Tensions arise everywhere as the old teenage rivalries surface once more. Thérèse had stirred up the village years earlier as some kind of secular incarnation of the saint by that name, the Little Flower. Léonie was much more down to earth and is now determined to keep the house.

The past they wanted to know about so much is gradually uncovered after Thérèse's return: collaborators, murder and most of all, their true relationship. Are they cousins or sisters? Who is the mother (s)? There is lots of room for speculation here, but ideas just wouldn't gel for me. Perhaps I will try rereading this for All Viragos All August, now that I can think again, as the writing itself was strong.

This was a book I read based on a review on a thread in Club Read, so whoever you are, thanks. I am always looking for books which feature the real life detective Vidocq.



13. The Black Tower by Louis Bayard
first published 2008
finished reading April 9, 2017

A hapless medical student in Paris, Hector Carpentier, finds a dead man on his street. It is the early nineteenth century, the French Revolution is still fresh in the minds and politics of the citizens, and the death doesn't look good for Hector.

Enter the dreaded Vicocq, master of terror and disguise. Bit by bit he has Hector wittingly and unwittingly discover one version of the fate of the Dauphin Louis-Charles, son of the executed Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

A real "what if...?" book, this was plain fun, even during a week of nonstop house showings. Recommended for anyone needing a quick diversion.

No summary or review needed here, just a few comments:



14. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
first published last decade of the sixteenth century, this edition was part of The New Cambridge Shakespeare series, 2nd edition, 2003
finished April 10, 2017

Over the past five winters I have participated in a Shakespeare reading group, the highlight of my winters. We would meet every two weeks for two hours, read and discuss. In between sessions, we would do any supplementary reading that appealed to us individually. Over the summer, we would individually see the production at The Stratford Festival in Stratford Ontario. In the fall we would meet one day and discuss our various theatre experiences and reactions. It was a wonderful way to engage with Shakespeare, something I had never managed to do before, and it is probably the thing I will miss most now that I have moved.

This year was Romeo and Juliet. It was not a play I was particularly interested in. For those who haven't read it, as I hadn't since high school, it's probably one of those works you think you know, and don't need to look any further. It was a great and pleasing surprise to find myself actually enjoying the play, looking forward to the sessions and finding out what was behind all those snippets from the play that float around in the ether. Sadly my tickets for the performance, booked back in January, were for the day I actually left, so I did not see it. Stratford has started filming its performances though, so maybe over the next year it will be on CBC.

>124 SassyLassy: I'm a regular Stratford goer; my best friend and I have been seeing multiple plays every season since 2007. This year I've only seen The School for Scandal so far, and we have tickets booked for Timon of Athens in early August. I wasn't planning on seeing Romeo and Juliet, because there last two productions of it have been awful, but it is getting good reviews this year. What shows have you seen in the past?

Glad you're settled in. You've made me want to reread Romeo and Juliet. My daughter has me thinking about it because she is going through a musical phase, and really wants to see Westside Story (other interests included Hamilton and Les Mis. I'm liking this phase a lot).

>124 SassyLassy: If the Stratford production doesn't make the big screen, you could settle for watching the Baz Luhrmann film. I love the soundtrack and there are some wonderful visual moments. I love the play because it is such a clear illustration of the role of fate and is very good at creating tension between knowing it will end badly, but still hoping it won't (It sets up so many "if only...." moments).

>125 Cait86: In the last several years I've been to Hamlet, Othello and King Lear. Touchstones don't seem to recognize the first two. These were all plays our group read first. Do you read plays before you see them (or after for that matter)?

>126 dchaikin: That does sound like a great phase for your daughter. Here's hoping it lasts.
Still settling in, as it has been so great outside that unpacking inside loses all its already meagre attraction.

>127 ELiz_M: That Baz Luhrmann film was new to me this year and it really did put fate forward as you say. I also watched the Zeffirelli version this winter as well. Quite a contrast!

It's been over four months since I finished this next book, so it's definitely past time to write about it. It's always a challenge for me to discuss a Zola novel, especially in the brief catchup fashion I'm attempting here, but this is certainly one of the best to date in the Rougon-Macquart cycle.



15. Nana by Emile Zola translated from the French by Douglas Parmée (1992)
first published 1880
finished reading April 20, 2017

When Nana was first published in 1880, the French reading public was already familiar with her as the daughter of the doomed Gervaise Macquart in L'Assommoir. A wayward precocious street urchin in that book, it would come as no surprise to Zola's readers to now find her on the stage, eager to take on all Paris and more. This was 1867, the year of the World's Fair, and the world had come to Paris to take it all in.

Despite such a setting, there is a contemporary feel to the novel. Nana had a master promoter in Bordenave, the manager of the theatre where she first came to the attention of the public. Zola describes her first performance, initially having fun with the audience, cajoling them along, but not making a great impression. However, by the end of the evening, her name would be on everyone's lips. In a silly operetta, Zola's dig at Offenbach, she appeared later in the third act

...naked, naked and unashamed, serenely confident in the irresistible power of young flesh... Covered by a simple veil, her whole body could be seen, or imagined, by all through the diaphanous, white, frothy gauze. It was Venus being born out of the waves, hidden only by her hair.... Now there was no clapping, and no one thought of laughing. The men had a strained, earnest look on their faces; their nostrils were taut, their mouths parched and burning. It was as if the softest of breezes had passed through, full of secret menace. This good-natured girl had suddenly become a disturbing woman offering frenzied sexuality and the arcane delights of lust. Nana was still smiling, but it was the mocking smile of a man-eater.

Nana had arrived.

She was seen with a variety of men. They lined up at her door. She took a serious lover and threw that chance away for a ne'er do well, only to stage a comeback worthy of an twenty-first century star.

Zola had tried unsuccessfully to write for the stage, and he knew that world. He also did his usual meticulous research. Contemporary readers of his would have recognized certain real life actresses and scandals. Nana's lovers encompassed a broad range of society from mistress to the court chamberlain of the Empress to an enduring lesbian relationship. It's no wonder critics and censors went wild. The first edition of 55,000 copies sold out in one day. No less an authority than Flaubert said that Nana "...tends toward myth but never ceases to be real".* It is Zola's skill that makes Nana such a credible character.

The last chapter of the book, the famous Chapter 14 ("Unsurpassable", "Incomparable" Flaubert again), is Zola's comment on life, the Second Empire, and corruption of all kinds. Nana easily stands with Anna Karenina and Dorothea Brooke as one of the great fictional characters of the nineteenth century.

_______________
*Quoted by Douglas Parmée in his introduction pxxiii

Yesterday I put in my fall Hemerocallis order, and as a nod to Zola and Nana included several of "Zola's Pink Nightgown"



Image from Nottawasaga Daylilies

>128 SassyLassy: Oh, i loved all three of those productions! Timon of Athens unfortunately, was rather boring. Not a bad production, just not a very thrilling script. I've read most of the major Shakespeare plays because I took two Shakespeare classes during my English degree, so it's really only the minor ones that I haven't read (except Hamlet. Somehow in four years of English lit. education I managed to miss Hamlet). I actually like both experiences; when I see a play that I haven't read, like Hamlet, or Timon of Athens, or Titus Andronicus a few years ago, I find I get quite swept up in the action and the characters. When I see a play that I have read and know well, I focus more on the production/theatrical elements, like how the director chooses to represent the themes through the set and costumes, or the use of lighting. Both are fun experiences! Next year's playbill looks incredible, with Martha Henry as Prospero in my favourite Shakespeare play, The Tempest. I hope you're enjoying your new home! I'm planning an East Coast road-trip with a friend for next summer, so if you have any recommendations, I'd love to hear them!

>131 Cait86: Interesting perspectives on known vs lesser known to you plays. I know what you mean about the different focus on a play you know well. Perhaps it is that we don't need to focus so much on grasping the content of the language and are free to see it in the particular director's interpretation. I would love to see Martha Henry as Prospero.

I love the new home. PM me closer to your visit and I'll see what I can come up with for your road-trip. I love road-trips.

16. Postcards by Annie Proulx
first published 1993
finished reading April 25, 2017

Sometimes it pays to leave a partly read, sort of discarded book lying around. Postcards proved to be just such a book for me. For several months I had been reading it in a desultory fashion, a few pages at a time now and then. Gradually a new stack of books grew up around it. Then one day, while putting them all away, I rediscovered it, gave it what I thought would be a last glance, and instead read it right to the finish.

Loyal Blood murdered his girl fiend in 1944 and buried her in the stone wall of his family's Vermont farm. He told his family the two of them were setting off out west, and disappeared into the night. Over the next forty years Loyal sent postcards home, never giving his family a return address. He wandered the United States working a series of jobs. Sometimes he was up on his luck, mostly he was down.

Annie Proulx has a remarkable ability to capture the lives of those who work in manual jobs, be it on the land, the sea, the factory floor or the home. She also has a great ear for dialogue. You can easily imagine her sitting down with her characters and fitting right in. Her laconic style lends itself to the postcards that open most chapters. Not all are from Loyal. There are others from farm agents, insurance people, other family members and random notes. Some go back in time. Each chapter picks up on its postcard and develops the story of not only what happens to Loyal over the years, but also what happens to his family. Occasionally the author interjects with little asides of "What I See".

What emerges is the loneliness of the itinerant worker, cut off from family and friends, a loneliness that in Loyal's case has the additional burden of being a self-imposed punishment. There is the family back home in Vermont, never knowing what he is doing, needing him desperately, feeling their own loss. Against this is set the family's collision with post WWII American development, a world that so many were unequipped and unprepared to enter.

What lingers are the ghosts of all those forgotten people, so easy to overlook in the upward climb. The sense that nothing has really changed for the Bloods of the American hinterland is strong and disheartening, a tribute to Proulx's ability to portray their lives.

I have several Annie Proulx books still unread on the shelf, I must get back to her work, as I loved what I have read.

Isn't it great when you re-find a book that you have let slide for some reason Sassy, especially if you then find you love it.

>134 Caroline_McElwee: I think she is one of those authors you have to be in the right frame of mind for, but when you are, she is great. Have you read Barkskins? I contemplate it, don't have it yet, and every time I see it on a store shelf I hesitate, but I suspect I would enjoy it.

"Re-find" --- a great excuse for leaving those piles on the floor?!

17. The Ogre's Laboratory by Louis Buss
first published 1998
finished reading May 3, 2017

The Ogre's Laboratory was a book I took with me in the spring on a trip here to look at houses for sale. It was still off-season and I was staying in the "new" wing of a wonderful old fashioned hotel. I arrived in a major storm on a dark and very foggy night. The staff were wonderful. They had waited for me, saw me to my 1940s style room, said there was another couple staying upstairs, and left for the night. I was completely on my own.

All of this is by way of saying that as I climbed up into a huge four poster, such a title now seemed very apt for such a night. There are strange goings on in this novel: there is the ancient English country house, hints of the supernatural, and the spectre of Gilles de Rais, the notorious fifteenth century French paedophile. If I was to be engrossed in the story, this was the perfect place to read it.

There were priests too in the novel: a saintly archbishop, the shadow of the village's parish priest who was a recent suicide, the new vain and worldly replacement priest, and the alcoholic priest in the neighbouring parish. A young female reporter is thrown in for good measure. A mix like this needs skill indeed to hold it all together.

The blurb on the back of the book said this was "A compelling and atmospheric modern Gothic novel, and a moving exploration of a priest's crisis of faith...". The Gothic part started out well and then fizzled. The priest's crisis of faith seemed far more realistic, but too early it became apparent which option he would choose. Perhaps the most interesting and best portrayed character is the alcoholic priest, who was not a major character.

All in all it was a disappointing read, memorable only for the circumstances in which it was read.

You know, every time I come to your thread and see that Pantone green at the tone, it cheers me. It's one of my favorite shades.

>139 avaland: Every time I see Oliver on yours, it cheers me.

Elizabeth von Arnim was the Viragos' group author choice for April. I didn't get to read her then, but caught up in May.



18. Mr Skeffington by Elizabeth von Arnim
first published 1940
finished reading May 10, 2017

Lady Frances Skeffington, nearing fifty, had divorced Mr Skeffington some twenty-two years ago. Since then, she never really thought of him, although "It was thanks to the settlements he had made on her, which were the settlements of an extremely rich and extremely loving man, that she was so well off.... --- that she was free." Suddenly, however, she was seeing him at places like right there at the other end of the breakfast table, places where he decidedly was not present. Was it another result of her recent bout of diphtheria, the one that had caused her to lose so much of her beautiful hair? And as of that wasn't enough, now the coterie of men who had courted her all her life "...like her hair had dropped off".

Fanny had been a generational beauty, the one against whom all others were measured. She had never had to develop any skills or interests beyond those demanded of someone in society, as her beauty was her entrée. Until now, her busy social life had never left her time to notice this lack. Society is cruel to older women however, and as her calendar emptied Fanny began to wonder how best to make a comeback, and how to occupy her time. She decided she would get in touch with her former conquests.

While we are quick to notice the passage of time on the faces and figures of others, we are often the last to notice it on ourselves. Such was the case with Fanny, as she finally had to convince herself that all the dissembling she had been doing about bad lighting, lack of sleep and recent illness was pointless; the years had caught up with her. Why shouldn't they, they had certainly caught up with everyone else in her circle. Even worse,

... she thought how very disturbing it was if being older, besides its many other drawbacks, included the freedom to do what one used to be protected from by the proprieties. She could, then, go off alone now with anybody who wanted her to, to Paris or the other places one went off to, and nobody would say a word. Why, what a cold, naked world, with no fences left. How miserable everything was.

Wealthy fading beauties are not people who usually attract our interest or sympathy. Such a story could easily drift into the maudlin, or become trite, but Elizabeth von Arnim is a skilled writer who uses wit in such a manner that Fanny becomes, if not sympathetic, at least likeable. Although Mr Skeffington was written in 1940, and very much reflects its time and place, the reader knows all too well that there are still Fannys out there, the inevitable now stayed briefly by "work", but still inevitable. Not all of them will have the serendipitous outcome that awaited this Fanny.

>133 SassyLassy: noting Postcards as I loved The Shipping News.

Best wishes for your new home - looks a beautiful area.

Just getting to back to your thread... : |

>129 SassyLassy: I adored this review of Nana. My neighbor gave me a copy that had no date except the copyright (1880) and for a time I thought maybe it was an 1880 edition and just wondered about that book. I later learned it's probably a 1937 edition (not really sure though), but the initial wonder stayed. Ever since you started this series, it's this review I've been waiting for.

>133 SassyLassy: terrific review. I haven't read Proulx, but rumor has it she can be tough. This sounds really good.

>141 SassyLassy: Really enjoyed this review too.

>133 SassyLassy: I also enjoyed The Shipping News, so Postcards ends up on my wishlist. You almost always hit me with a B.B. when I visit.

Hi!

I'm coming late to CR this year so I just skimmed your thread. I concentrated on your Zola reviews as he's one of my favorite authors.
Nana may just be my favorite (among the ones I've read), so I'm glad you liked it too!

I recently read the first one, La fortune des Rougon, for my bookclub. It's a re-read as I read it many years ago when I was in high school. I have to say that I found it much more enjoyable now that I knew many of the characters from the books I've already read.
But I was also a bit surprised by Zola's view on genetics. While his quest in studying the influence of nature and nurture is laudable, it seems to me he places way too much weight on nature. From your review of La bête humaine it seems that he considers that Jacques Lantier is born a murderer, which I find disturbing, to say the least.

Anyway your thread inspires me to try and read more Zola! The next one would be Le ventre de Paris (the belly of Paris), as I've read The kill not too long ago with Author Theme Reads here on LT.

>142 AlisonY: Thanks - It is a beautiful area indeed and featured this morning on the radio for the longevity of its residents!

>143 dchaikin: Nana was an amazing and startling book. Even though it is part of a series, it could easily be read without reference to any of the others, so give it a try!

I have never found Proulx tough, but then she writes about places and people I can relate to. That said, I haven't tried Barkskins as the size looms large and it hasn't been well reviewed here. Size wouldn't stop me otherwise.

Elizabeth von Arnim has a real way with her era, seemingly light hearted, but underneath there is always something there.

>144 NanaCC: I love sending those BBs!

>145 chlorine: Welcome. I think Zola's emphasis on nature reflects a lot of the scientific thinking of his time, an area in which he read widely. His writing, however, makes me think that he hoped that nurture would win out, given enough time/ generations. Jacques did put up a good internal fight against his crime, and was on the way up.

The Kill was a favourite of mine in this series.

Thanks all for the encouragement. I am trying to get back to reviewing, but the sheer number of books in the pile waiting for something to be said about them is daunting.

Today is



One of my all time favourite authors: adventure, travel, poetry, short stories, something for everyone.

Edited to add this link to events should you be lucky enough to be in Edinburgh: https://rlsday.wordpress.com/events-programme/

>146 SassyLassy:
My advice would be to just list what you've read and review the last book you've read. In this way you can come back and add the reviews later if you have the time, while still being able to review new books as you read them. Better review something than nothing IMO! Or just write very short reviews.
Give yourself some slack, you deserve it!

Also, RLS day sounds like fun!

Ah, catch up. I never have good advice here, but just noting we like lists. : )

Agreeing with >148 chlorine: >149 dchaikin:

Agreeing with >148 chlorine:. >149 dchaikin: and >150 Caroline_McElwee:.

I've got over 20 reviews to catch up on myself. It is hard getting motivated when you're so far behind.

Thanks all. Here is a brief (for me) review in my catchup efforts. As you can see, I am truly behind.

This was read as part of the Virago Group's Chronological Read Programme. I did think twice before starting in on its four hundred plus pages at a time when there was so much to do, but was glad in the end that I participated.



20. Zoe: The History of Two Lives by Geraldine Jewsbury
first published 1845
finished reading May 30, 2017

Geraldine Jewsbury and Zoe are scarcely known nowadays, except perhaps to readers of lesser known Victorian fiction. However, when Zoe was first published in 1845, it was considered sensational material. The Manchester Public Library withdrew it from circulation, not just for fear of offending feminine sensibilities, but also out of fear for its effect on the minds of young men.

Originally, Jewsbury started writing the novel as a joint project with her good friend Jane Carlyle, and a mutual friend, Elizabeth Paulet. Jane felt the novel was taking an indecent turn, that it was "... an extraordinary jumble of sense and nonsense, insight beyond the stars, and blindness". She and Paulet withdrew, leaving Jewsbury to continue on her own. Jane was to retract her criticism once the novel was published, when she called it "wonderful".

What then caused all the commotion? Zoe is subtitled "The History of Two Lives". While Zoe herself may have shocked the English reading public, the second character, Everhard Burrows presented it with disturbing questions.

Everhard is introduced first, a precocious and neglected young boy, who becomes a renowned Catholic priest and scholar. Zoe makes her entrance some 68 pages in, arriving at the home of her uncle, a respected Anglican clergyman, where she is to be brought up. Zoe's background was murky. She was the daughter of an English captain and a beautiful Greek woman he had rescued from pirates. They married after Zoe was born.

Here, in the tradition of Mathew Lewis and Ann Radcliffe, are things aplenty to disturb the Victorian reader: priests, illegitimacy and Mediterranean people - foreigners. This is not a Gothic novel though. Instead, it addressed two challenging concepts central to nineteenth century thought: the role and purpose of religion, and the role and education of women. Zoe had become a highly educated and attractive woman, one capable of challenging Mirabeau, and more importantly, able to debate Everhard and hold her ground. It is the philosophical encounters and developing relationship between Everhard and Zoe that are the heart of this book. There are standard Victorian maxims here; "...life is no holiday game; they who live earnestly are weary enough at their journey's end - they rejoice when the time comes to rest from their labours". However, now, as then, the interpretation is with the reader. This one saw it as an encouragement to keep questioning.

I feel like I just discovered a hidden gem through your review. Also, I'm intrigued we have an active Virago chronological read. Not fully understanding the Virago obsession, I'm always curious. It generates a lot enthusiasm.

>153 SassyLassy: Ooh! I’d forgotten all about Geraldine Jewsbury, but your mentioning Jane Carlyle helped me worked out why the name is so familiar - Virginia Woolf wrote a wonderful, funny essay about their letters. I remember reading it years ago when I was doing a course on mid-Victorian Britain. Woolf is clearly touched by the friendship between the two women (and Jewsbury’s situation as a frustrated lesbian), but she’s a bit snooty about Zoe: the history of two lives:

But what indecency there was pungent enough to shock the roués of the Reform Club, what genius there was brilliant enough to impress the shrewd intellect of Mrs. Carlyle, it is impossible to guess. Colours that were fresh as roses eighty years ago have faded to a feeble pink; nothing remains of all those scents and savours but a faint perfume of faded violets, of stale hair-oil, we know not which

>154 dchaikin: I'm not quite sure I understand the Virago obsession myself, but there are some truly interesting writers there, and then there are...
I have been enjoying the chronological read as it is still back in the nineteenth century, so there is a comfort zone there.

>155 thorold: I'll have to track that one down. Harriet Martineau was another discovery for me through this chronological read, and then I found her three volume political economy in Glasgow this summer, but sadly did not buy it.

Back again after a month and desperately trying to catch up, but still in June reading.

During the first weeks of June, I was packing like crazy, saying good-bye to long time friends, and just generally wearing myself out. Another Bernie Gunther adventure was exactly what was needed.



21. The Lady from Zagreb by Philip Kerr
first published 2015
finished reading June 26, 2015

Bernie too was looking back, in his case on a major love. It was 1956. Now safely out of Germany and working in the south of France, he was killing a winter afternoon at the movies. There on the screen was Dalia Dresner. During WWII, Goebbels had sent Bernie on a mission to convince Dresner to be in his next film. Hoping to delay any entanglements with Goebbels, she countered that meant first discovering her father's whereabouts. This is what Bernie had to do.

Dalia's real name was Sofia Brankovic, although she told Bernie it was Dragica Djurkovic. The search took Bernie to Zagreb, Banja Luka, and the infamous camp Jasenovac. Kerr always integrates real history into his novels and this background story in the former Yugoslavia is no exception. However, this being a Bernie Gunther book, there are always fictional murders to solve too.

The afternoon at the films took Bernie back to his time with Goebbels and that awful trip. It also brought back thoughts of Dalia and his genuine love for her. Was it returned?

Kerr is back in fine form here. This is one of the better Gunther novels, if you are willing to accept that Goebbels did not know about Bernie and Dalia. It also opens the door for more Gunther novels in a post war Europe full of spies and bad guys.

Time to move on to another thread