Palladian

I have a bit of a chequered history with Elizabeth Taylor novels. I found Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont to be an utterly depressing portrayal of ageing and I've often found an underlying unpleasantness in Taylor's characters, yet I loved Blaming.

Palladian is a variation of Jane Eyre with orphaned Cassandra Dashwood going to work as a governess in a ramshackle mansion house with a romantic idea that she will fall in love with her widower employer and indeed she does. The mansion is populated with her employer's bossy sister, hypochondriac mother, brother with a drink problem, the girl he believes to be his daughter and a know-it-all Nanny who bullies the cleaner. The dialogue between Nanny and the cleaner is highly amusing and cleverly written but I found the rest of the novel pretty bleak.

I'd like to read the Beauman biography because I'm always interested in the life of writers but I think I'm done with Taylor's novels.

On a more positive note I popped into the lovely Foyles bookshop at St Pancras station last week and found a biography I've wanted to read for a long time -clue is my author of the month. I also managed to resist the temptation presented by the Cath Kidston shop next door!

Two good things on a Tuesday

A pristine Elizabeth Taylor right there on the library shelves without me having to order it.

A very pink potted African Daisy - think the proper name is gerbera but I prefer African Daisy.

Happy Tuesday everyone!

Taylor and Howard

The hydrangea by the front door faded through innumerable shades of blue.

There are some similarities between Elizabeth Taylor's A Game of Hide and Seek and Elizabeth Jane Howard's Love All. Both feature upper middle-class families who live in a kind of genteel poverty, both have characters who are fond of reading Jane Austen and both examine the hopelessness of unrequited love.

In A Game of Hide and Seek, Harriet falls in love with Vesey one summer when she is just eighteen. She continues to love him when she goes to work in a department store, meets the wealthy but dull Charles, marries him and has a daughter. Flippant and overconfident, Vesey is seemingly uninterested in Harriet and his life spirals downward. He is expelled from Oxford and becomes a poverty stricken actor. He and Harriet meet again in middle age and try to re-ignite their relationship. I was less interested in the strange relationship between Vesey and Harriet than the minor characters in this novel - Harriet's wonderful mother who went to prison for women's rights and Julia, the mother of Charles, a former actress who retains her theatrical affectations well into old age.

The focus in Love All switches between different characters, but my favourites were Persephone Plover - known as Percy - who is abandoned by her parents and bought up by her Aunt Floy and her beloved black cat, Marvell. When Aunt Floy, who designs gardens, is commissioned to restore the gardens of a country house Persephone goes with her and takes on the organisation of an arts festival in the village. There she receives two proposals of marriage and accepts neither! At 450 pages this novel briefly flagged a little for me about half-way through and then I got interested again and read straight through to the end.

Holiday reading

Aunt Alberta, to save her dinner, plunged into an account of how a dog had bitten her recently, Uncle James, to back her up, asked where the dog had bitten her.

"Just a little below the Catholic Church," said Aunt Alberta.

At that point Valancy laughed. Nobody else laughed. What was there to laugh at?

"Is that a vital part?" asked Valancy?

The Blue Castle is funny, irreverent, romantic and more than a little far-fetched. I loved it. It's difficult to review without spoilers, so no peeking if you're planning to read it!

***spoiler***

Valancy is 29, unmarried, and treated as a joke and a failure by her extended family. After suffering pain in her chest she visits her doctor who tells her she has one year to live. She decides to make the most of her final year and rejects her family, leaves home to nurse a sick school-friend and proposes to the local bad boy, Barney Snaith. Marriage to Barney brings her happiness - her own 'blue castle' - until she starts to wonder about the diagnosis from her doctor ...

***spoiler***

Lucy Maud Montgomery did not set The Blue Castle on Prince Edward Island. It is set in Muskoka in Ontario, Canada, where Montgomery spent a holiday which inspired the novel.

I also read Elizabeth Taylor's A Game of Hide and Seek in Brighton last week. It is a beautifully written novel and I couldn't put it down, but I think Blaming is still my favourite. This Virago Modern Classics edition has an introduction by the novelist, Elizabeth Jane Howard. Anybody read her?

Virago Modern Classics

First published in 1918 The Return of the Soldier demonstrates Rebecca West's gift for writing. Chris Baldry, charming, handsome and wealthy, returns from the war with amnesia caused by shell-shock. He has forgotten about his beautiful, spoilt wife Kitty, and devoted young cousin, Jenny. Instead his memory resides 15 years ago with his first love, Margery Allington, a woman now grown shabby, tired and poverty-stricken. Told from the perspective of Jenny, this is a brilliant short novel. If you are new to Rebecca West I also recommend The Fountain Overflows. After reading it this novel will haunt you for days - in a good way!

I wasn't sure whether I liked Elizabeth Von Arnim's Elizabeth and her German Garden at first. It seemed a lot like a gardening manual and I'd been hoping for a novel. However, as it progressed I started to enjoy it. A little like Diary of a Provincial Lady without quite the same wit and warmth.

Blaming

Amy organises a cruise holiday to help her husband recover from major surgery. While sight-seeing in Istanbul, Amy is bored with the domes and minarets, fed up with the dust and heat and irritable because Nick lingers so long they are always late back to the coach. The final straw for Amy is when her sandal breaks forcing her to shuffle along behind everyone else for the rest of the day. Nick and Amy are befriended by a younger American woman who writes novels and loves all things English. While Nick finds her good company, Amy is not so keen and this causes a furious row ending in a passionate reconciliation. In the night Nick dies and Amy is left devastated. The American woman, Martha, takes control and flies Amy back to England. While Amy is coming to terms with the loss of her husband an unlikely friendship develops between the two women.

I think this is Taylor's finest novel. Although the theme of love and loss is sad, Amy's internal monologue is wickedly funny. Many things irritate or bore her. She doesn't pretend to enjoy babysitting for her spoilt five-year old granddaughter and goes to great lengths to avoid it. Although this doesn't make Amy a necessarily likeable character she is always true to herself which is immensely appealing.

Published in 1976, Blaming was Elizabeth Taylor's last novel and she knew it. There is a nice afterword by her daughter in this edition. Don't make the mistake I did and read it before the novel because it gives away a shocking event which happens towards the end.

Girl Guides Jumble Sale

Last week I was helping my daughters to run a stall at the annual Girl Guides Jumble Sale. Usually I insist on running the book stall but I was beaten to it this year. Guess what somebody donated to the book stall. Ten brand new Virago paperbacks still wrapped in polythene! Must've been part of some competition prize or promotion. Of course, I bought them and when I unwrapped them found I actually already owned seven of the titles so I just kept the three I hadn't got. I couldn't have wished for a better selection, Rebecca West, Elizabeth Taylor and Elizabeth Von Arnim.

I started Blaming at the weekend and I think this is the first time I've truly appreciated Taylor's gift for comedy. I'll post a review as soon as I can put it down.

More Elizabeth Taylor

A View of the Harbour focuses on the inhabitants of the unfashionable end of a small seaside town. Beth writes novels which absorb her to the extent that she fails to notice her husband's affair with her best friend Tory who lives next door. The beautiful Tory's main pre-occupation is her wardrobe and her immaculate hyacinth-scented house. Prudence is Beth's highly-strung teenage daughter who is obsessed with her Siamese cats. Mrs Bracey is a loud-mouthed busy-body who likes to bully her daughters and observe the goings-on in the town. Just when you think that there is a fundamental unpleasantness to most of the characters in this novel they present their human side. Tory sobs when she sends her young son off to boarding school. Beth's maternal nature asserts itself over her writing career and Mrs Bracey is wracked with pain and ill-health. My favourite character is Beth's five-year old daughter, the adorable Stevie, who loves to give home-made presents made from flowers, feathers and broken jewellery threaded with wool. An absorbing and enjoyable read.

Trying again with Elizabeth Taylor

I read In a Summer Season last year and quite liked it but it doesn't stand out in my memory. I found Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont very well-written but a little depressing. I enjoyed Angel very much but it's not a favourite novel which I'll want to read over and over again.

However, I'm not ready to give up on Elizabeth Taylor yet! I can't decide to whether to try Blaming or A View of the Harbour. Any suggestions?