MAYSIE GREIG, Dark Carnival (1950)

On Saturday, I'll be posting the fourth and final (thank heavens!) update of Edwardian writers added to my Overwhelming List, and will soon after be able to do an update of some very interesting writers from the later parts of my date range, which I've come across here and there while being a bit bogged down in Edwardians.  But in the meantime...

I wrote a couple of days ago about my shopping expedition in Oakland, my discovery of a cache of Maysie Greig novels, and how I've gradually gotten in touch with my inner romantic.  Since not many of you are likely to have experienced a Maysie Greig firsthand, I figured I should give you a briefing.

Apparently, Greig wrote two kinds of novels—straightforward romances and light romantic suspense.  This one, as you might have guessed from its cover, falls into the latter category—a sort of poor man's Mary Stewart (though I was hopeful at first that it wouldn't be just for poor men).

The book does have a certain charm.  It's set in Nice and in the nearby hill town of Trione in the days before, during, and after Carnival.  Shirley McFriend has been sent to Nice by her eccentric Aunt Cleo to recover from a broken engagement to Walter Haldon, who works at the U.S. Embassy in Paris.  Walter has broken their engagement in part because he has discovered that, four years earlier, when he and Shirley had just met, she was still enamored of Robert Revenau, a patient of her surgeon father's.  (And perhaps in part because, honestly, Shirley seems to possess all the intellect and wit of the average canteloupe?)

The plot revolves around Shirley's reunion with Robert, who lives with his mother, the dizzy, fretful Countess de Revenau, in the ominous town of Trione.  The Countess has been renting rooms and giving French lessons to pay the bills, and two tourists staying with them have recently plunged to their deaths in the ravine next to the Revenaus’ château.  

There is a jewel theft.  There are questions about whether Robert was really cured by Shirley's father or whether he remains disabled to the extent that he can barely walk.  There is a reporter investigating the tourists' deaths, and the brother of one of the tourists, who is determined to get to the bottom of it.  All of the plot twists are made rather painstakingly obvious (though what isn't spelled out, and is perhaps the greatest of the novel’s mysteries, is why any of the men—let alone all of them—would be enamored of the dim-witted, humorless Shirley).

All of that said, however—since I usually try not to be negative about books I review here (figuring that, if my focus is on largely forgotten writers, a bad review would be flogging a dead horse)—I have to confess that I read this novel in one day and felt distracted and impatient when I had to put it down now and then.  Which is honestly a bit inexplicable—particularly in someone who used to look down a bit condescendingly on romances in general.

It's not that Greig is a bad writer.  Here is her description of the bus ride Shirley takes on her first visit to Trione:

There were so few passengers in the bus Shirley couldn't help noticing them. Evidently Trione wasn't an overpopular place. A fat woman in black had three shopping baskets and two bags. She alternated between retrieving oranges which were rolling around the bus and refastening the snaps which kept coming undone at the side of her dress. There was a thin, despondent-looking woman with three children. They sat sucking sweets, looking equally despondent. There were two elderly women sitting together dressed in black. They looked as maiden aunts are supposed to look but rarely do. There was a man who looked like a farmer and one other man, a man who seemed so out of place that she found herself looking at him with interest.

He was an American, she guessed, from the cut of his suit which was obviously expensive. He was dark-haired, intense-looking, almost fantastically handsome. He looked to be the type one associates with Hollywood stars of the more brutal type, who ill treat their women but the women come back for more.

This is a pretty vivid picture.  It makes me intrigued about the lives of all of the women on the bus—to such an extent that I wish Shirley could have followed one of them home instead of striking up a conversation with the fantastically handsome American, whom she perhaps hopes will be brutal to her.

But the dialogue is desultory at best:

He leaned forward. "Shirley, what happened up at the chateau? You don't look exactly as though you enjoyed yourself."

A slight shiver went through her. "I didn't. It's rather a dreary place and Robert being crippled…" Her voice died away.

"That's all?"

"What else could there be?" Her voice was edged.

"Nothing, I suppose."

Or how about this scintillating passage?

"Anything on your mind, Shirley?"

"No, nothing," she said quickly.

"All the same, I wish you wouldn't go up to the chateau," he said presently. "Somehow I don't think it's a healthy place."

"You don't? For what reason?"

"Surely there's reason enough. Two deaths took place there." He spoke angrily. "Besides there's something about the setup I don't like. I'm not specially intuitive, but when I was up there I smelled danger."

She laughed unnaturally. "What are you trying to do?  Scare me off going? […] If you knew them … You haven't met either of them, have you?"

He shook his head. "No. I've never set eyes on either of them. At least," he added more slowly, "I don't think I have."

"Why the qualifying comment?" she asked sharply.

Even when a third-grader reading the novel would be ready to scream the novel's "secrets" to Shirley, she goes on ploddingly asking, "What do you mean?  What are you suggesting?  Why would you think that?  What could it mean?"  A little of which goes a long way.  When I reached the inevitable happy ending, I found myself expecting Shirley to say, "Marry you?  Why, what do you mean?  Why do you ask me that?  What are you implying?"

[For those of you who are D. E. Stevenson fans, I can't help but wonder if this is the type of heroine that Janetta Walters must have created so successfully.  What do you think?]

And yet, I read Dark Carnival in one addictive gulp.  I am even looking forward—heaven help me—to Honeymoons Arranged, one of the other Maysie Greigs I picked up last weekend, which looks to be a straightforward romance about Celia, who "planned happiness—for everyone but herself."  Oh, dear.

I don't think there's any real danger of me becoming a romance novel junky—or at least not a Maysie Greig junkie.  The book I put down for a day to read Dark Carnival was Elizabeth von Arnim's Mr. Skeffington, and when I picked it up again I felt like I was eating filet mignon after a week of ramen noodles.

But I'm still glad I got a chance to sample Greig's wares. Sure, I wished at times I could abandon Shirley to her befuddlement and follow one or more of the women of Trione to their homes, or—better still—track down Shirley's adventurous Aunt Cleo, a Cadell character just waiting to happen.  But an occasional foray into a simpler world is a good thing.

I won't mind, though, if Celia turns out to have a slightly less simple perspective than Shirley…  

A "romantic" shopping spree

In the realm of romance, I may have my moments, but I have never exactly been an addictive fan of "romance" novels per se.  I admit that a few years ago I might even have sneered at the idea of reading anything labelled a romance.  However, there has been a considerable evolution in my reading habits over the past few years. First, Persephone introduced me to D. E. Stevenson's lovely, humorous, lightly romantic novels a few years ago, and I found it surprising to learn that she had often been marketed as a romance writer.  Stevenson in turn led me to Elizabeth Cadell, whose books are a bit zanier—perfect brain candy—and have also been labelled "romance," though they too seem to be something more.  Gradually, I started to realize that the field of romance is as widely-varied and has as many types of "brow" as any other genre.  And before I knew it I was reading and really enjoying Noel Streatfeild's disowned Susan Scarlett novels and the likes of Frances Turk's The Five Grey Geese, a quite silly, yet charming, novel about five impossibly chipper Land Girls finding adventure and love during World War II.  

It's a slippery slope.

And I seem to have slid a bit further during our first-ever book shopping expedition to Oakland this past weekend. 

It is obviously true that Oakland, across the Bay from San Francisco, gets a bad rap.  It's on the news almost every day for yet another shooting tragedy in its rougher neighborhoods, and even after more than a decade in San Francisco, and frequent visits to Berkeley for book shopping, dining, and visits to the University of California, Berkeley, I had barely set foot across the border into Oakland.

Which, it turns out, was a shame, because, exploring the Piedmont Avenue neighborhood on Saturday, it was clear we've been missing out on some very cool places—not least of which are four second hand bookstores within a two block radius.  It must be one of the few places left in the world where such a thing is possible (happily, Berkeley is another).  And since the rents are (a bit) lower in Oakland, it's still possible to have bookstores with a funkier feel, as if they're run by folks who just really love old books and whose shops may be as much an excuse for sorting through them and enjoying them as they are a way of making a living.  This was the vibe of three of the four bookstores, and even the fourth—a bit larger and commercial-looking and with a far less dusty array of books—had a relaxed, friendly charm.

The trouble is, although I still love going to bookstores, my interests have gotten so obscure that it's not often I find something I really must have.  (Most American bookstores, for obvious reasons, just don't make it a priority to stock British women writers that almost no one has heard of and even fewer people would want to buy.)  So, I made it out of the first two shops unscathed.

After that, it seems, the stars must have aligned themselves for romance…

The third bookstore, Owl & Company (which seems likely to be a regular haunt for me from now on), had a table full of dusty, bedraggled $1 books outside the door, and unlike most bookstores which offload their old pop fiction paperbacks this way, here was a selection of old hardcover obscurities, including several low to middlebrow novels I can't recall now.  (Note to self: make notes to self next time.)  Sadly, nothing British presented itself, but I did find myself seduced by a dust cover:

Faith Baldwin was an American romance writer I came across because she was advertised on the dust cover of the Margaret Widdemer book I wrote about recently (also a romance, I might point out—more slippage), and for the princely sum of $1.00 I couldn't resist at least adding the cover and the advertisement on the back to my collection, even if I never actually read the book.  It was published in a series from Grosset & Dunlap called Madison Square Books, and I'm always interested in finding out more about popular imprints as well:

If anyone is interested in the compelling plot of District Nurse:

And am I the only one confused by the back flap?:

Wouldn't one think that a title and author might be a core part of any book ad?  Unless the title actually is "Four People on a Cruise…"?  Apparently Madison Square Books didn't spring for the very highest quality copy editors…

At any rate, the owner of Owl & Company said he was happy the book had finally found a home.  And the fact that I kept finding things that were almost irresistible suggests that I'll probably adopt more of his books in the future.

Finally, I moved on to the Book Zoo down the street and the romance really began.

Here, I came across not one, not two, but three books by Maysie Greig, a writer I added to my list a while back after reading a contemporary review of one of her "light romances."  Information about her was sparse, but she sounded entertaining—could she perhaps be just a bit Cadell-ian?  All three of the books were hardcover, all with dustcovers intact.  They were priced at $7, $9, and $25, and naturally the most seductive was the $25 one, which was in perfect shape and included an author photo and bio.

Call me crazy, but I usually won't purchase more than one book by an author until I've actually read something by her (and I am also cheap).  So I sternly told myself the $7 one would have to do—I figured I could always come back for the others, as a mad rush for Maysie Greig novels seemed unlikely—and I went to pay.  I just happened—quite innocently (??)—to mention to the owner that there was another of her books that I would have liked, but it was a bit too expensive…

In San Francisco, a comment like that would likely have been greeted with a shrug and a more or less condescending smile, or perhaps an offer to put the other book on hold until I felt capable of affording it.  But by contrast the Book Zoo's owner demanded I show him the other book to see if we couldn't make a deal.  I pointed it out, and happened to note that there was a third one I was tempted by as well.  He did some quick calculating and offered me all three for $20—less than half their marked prices.  He joked that his rent was overdue and he was in the mood for making deals.

Now, I am simply not the kind of person who is comfortable bargaining, so this was a very new experience for me.  Here is a rough approximation of how I looked leaving the store:

And here, for your viewing pleasure, is the whole stack of bounty from my romantic shopping spree:

A romantic haul...

Of course I have to share the covers too.  Why do I find dust covers so enticing?

[For those of you familiar with contemporary pop music, don't you wonder if Katy Perry's grandmother could have been the model for the Winds of Fear jacket art?  I'm just saying.]

Here's the author photo and bio that made Dark Carnival particularly seductive to me:

And Honeymoons Arranged was printed in the Triangle Books series, just as the Margaret Widdemer book was, and the back flap and back cover have advertisements for a few more writers who are new to me:

I love the fact that alongside such masterpieces as Agnes Louise Provost's Honeymoon Wife and Teresa Hyde Phillips's Prodigal Nurse, Triangle also offered Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights.  I wonder if a reader who had just savored Kathleen Norris's Wife for Sale would have had to exert a bit of effort adapting to Brontë's style and mood? I'm sure I would have.

So that was my Saturday shopping spree that turned out to be a bit more romantic than anticipated.  Perhaps I'll do a short post soon on Dark Carnival, which I actually finished by Sunday evening.  Although my feelings about it aren't particularly enthusiastic, I can hardly deny that I found it highly readable.  And I'm actually kind of looking forward to the others as well—even if they are, sadly, not as Cadell-ian as I hoped.

By the way, I've also figured out how to spend my budgeted-but-unspent surplus from the library book sale a while back.  I've ordered several highly-coveted books from Amazon in the past week or so, and I can't wait to tell you about them.  

But I won't spoil the surprise…