Classics Club Spin #24

It's Classics Club Spin time again! Each Clubber has a personal list of 50-100 classic books that we have chosen to be our challenge list. For the Spin we pick 20 of those titles and put them into a numbered list. On August 9th the Club moderators will draw a number from 1 to 20 and we have to read that book on our list by the end of September and report back to the Club.

I failed completely for Spin #23 - I just could not read anything in April and May. But I'm hoping to be in a reading mood now, so here's a list of books that I think I have on my shelves or can get for my Kindle. First publication date is in parentheses.

1. At Swim-two-birds, Flann O'Brien (1939)
2. Billy Budd and other Tales, Herman Melville (~1891)
3. Candide, Voltaire (1759)
4. The Dubliners, James Joyce (1914)
5. Emma, Jane Austen (1815)
6. Enemies, A Love Story, Isaac Bashevis Singer (1966)
7. Eugénie Grandet, Honoré de Balzac (1833)
8. Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain (1884)
9. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë (1847)
10. The Man in the Brown Suit, Agatha Christie (1924)
11. Oroonoko, The Rover and Other Works, Aphra Behn (<1689)
12. The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas, Gertrude Stein (1933)
13. The Rainbow, D. H. Lawrence (1915)
14. The Reef, Edith Wharton (1912)
15. A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens (1859)
16. Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe (1958)
17. This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald (1920)
18. Three Men in a Boat, Jerome K. Jerome (1889)
19. The Vicar of Bullhampton, Anthony Trollope (1870)
20. Wives and Daughters, Elizabeth Gaskell (1864)

I'm looking forward to reading them all eventually, but I think I'd like to tackle Gertrude Stein's "The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas". Go #12!

UPDATE: The spin is #18, so I have a date with "Three Men in a Boat" by Jerome K. Jerome. Everyone tells me it's great fun, so I'm happy. Cheerful books are easier for me to concentrate on during these trying days.

Book Beginning: Enemies, A Love Story by Isaac Bashevis Singer

Book Beginnings is a weekly meme hosted by Rose City Reader. We share the first sentence (or so) of the book we are reading, along with our initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.

Herman Broder turned over and opened one eye. In his dreamy state, he wondered whether he was in America, in Tzivkev, or in a German camp.

Isaac Bashevis Singer always wrote in Yiddish and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978. That's all I really know about him. I was a bit skittish about reading his work, fearing it would be about the Holocaust and too dark. But this is described as humorous, so I'm hoping for the best. It's my #6 for the Classics Club Spin #23.

Book Beginning: Richard Walden's Wife by Eleanor Mercein Kelly

Book Beginnings is a weekly meme hosted by Rose City Reader. We share the first sentence (or so) of the book we are reading, along with our initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.

For a long time after the great family hegira - indeed, at intervals for the rest of her life - Emmeline would wake shivering in the solid security of her bed, reliving portions of it.

It's not often that I have to look up a word in the very first sentence of a novel, but "hegira" was not a word I really knew. I had fuzzy thoughts that it was something religious and perhaps Middle Eastern. Wikipedia tells us: "The Hegira is the migration or journey of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and his followers from Mecca to Yathrib, later renamed by him Medina, in the year 622."

So now we know that Emmeline's family made some sort of long journey. Intriguing! But who is Richard Walden, who is his wife, and where does Emmeline fit in?

The Debut of M. Hercule Poirot

The Mysterious Affair at Styles
Agatha Christie
William Morrow, 2020 Kindle Edition
Originally published 1920
269 pages

I read a classic Agatha Christie for the 1920 Club, presented by Simon at Stuck in a Book and Karen at Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings. Years ago I listened to the audiobook version of this, the first in the Hercule Poirot series, but I had no memory of the story.

Reading this book now, I took delight in the many details of M. Poirot's appearance, mannerisms, and quirks. Of course I was comparing them to the wonderful TV portrayal of Poirot by David Suchet, and I think the shows were faithful to the original character, always an important issue for me.

Not to give away the plot, but Poirot does solve the murder, which involves a poisoning in a locked room and lots of suspicious relatives. This was Christie's first mystery, and it was turned down by six publishers before being published in 1920. I was quite surprised that this was her first published novel. The characters seem well-defined and the plot logical without annoying loose ends. She had, however, written one earlier novel that was rejected and never published.

This Kindle version of the William Morrow paperback includes two short articles by Christie where she explains how Poirot came to be and her relationship to him over the years. Very interesting!

Now I think I will continue to read more of Poirot. There are 33 novels, 2 plays, and more than 50 short stories in the Poirot canon. Plenty to keep me busy.

The is my entry in the Classic Adaptation category for the 2020 Back to the Classics challenge. It was adapted as part of the long-running Poirot TV series.

Book Beginning: Plum Bun by Jesse Redmon Fauset

Book Beginnings is a weekly meme hosted by Rose City Reader. We share the first sentence (or so) of the book we are reading, along with our initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.

Opal Street, as streets go, is no jewel of the first water. It is merely an imitation, and none too good at that. Narrow, unsparkling, uninviting, it stretches meekly off from dull Jefferson Street to the dingy, drab market which forms the north side of Oxford Street.

After reading "Quicksand" and "Passing" by Nella Larsen last month, I read an article about women writers of the Harlem Renaissance, and learned of Jessie Redmon Fauset's book,  "Plum Bun: A Novel Without a Moral". The quote on the book cover says "A fine example of the hidden Harlem Renaissance - where the women were writers too." I'm eager to read this book.

Industrial Poverty

Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life
Elizabeth Gaskell
Penguin, 1986 (first published 1848)
487 pages


"Mary Barton" tells the story of four Manchester families, but ultimately it's the story of the industrial poverty in Manchester, England, during a period that later came to be known as the "hungry forties". During the 1840s bad harvests, economic depression, and other issues led to severe poverty and hunger for the working class in Manchester, the heart of England's Industrial Revolution.

Mrs. Gaskell gives a very realistic portrayal of the impoverished workers and their families as they struggled to survive in squalid slums: very little clothing, shacks that were damp and drafty, little firewood for heat or candles for light, almost no food, children starving to death or freezing to death. Her scenes of everyday life are quite detailed and quite often grim. In this urban realism style she also shows us the prisons, courts & lawyers, the hostile relationship between workers and factory owners, and the nascent trade union movement.

The main plot follows the lives of two families of mill workers, John and Mary Barton and their daughter Mary; and their friends George and Jane Wilson, son Jem, and George's sister Alice. Another family is also important, young Mary's friend Margaret Jennings and Margaret's grandfather, Job Legh. All three families are beset by poverty, disease, and death during the story. A fourth family is less talked about but pivotal to the plot: the wealthy mill owner John Carson, Mrs. Carson, and their son Harry.

In the first half of the book we see the extreme conditions in Manchester's poor neighborhoods and learn about the grievances of the workers against the mill owners. It's mostly the story of John as he becomes more and more bitter about his life and joins the trade union. A murder happens and the second half of the book is the tale of young Mary's efforts to prove the man she loves is innocent of the crime. The first half is taken up with lots of atmosphere and the plight of the poor. Then, having established the background, the rest is more of a murder mystery. There is a happy ending for some of the characters, although it involves a rather contrived plot device, pretty much a deus ex machina.

Like many other Victorian novels, it is long with a complicated plot. Is has lots of those long, involved sentences that were in vogue then, the type that require re-reading to understand. But it was not difficult to read and I enjoyed the story. Mrs. Gaskell was very gifted in the way she wrote about the characters' feelings. Sometimes I had to take a break because I was so caught up in the story and was anxious about what would happen next.

Luckily this large book does not have a cast of thousands like some. I found it easy to keep track of who was who, unlike in Anthony Trollope's "Can You Forgive Her" when I had to draw family trees to follow the many characters. Because the British historical background is pertinent to understanding the story, I was happy to have an annotated edition that explained the cultural references which are opaque to us today.

Elizabeth Gaskell is a writer that is perhaps overlooked by today's readers of classic novels, and I think that is a mistake. This was the first of her six novels and was very well-written. She also wrote a biography of her friend Charlotte Bronte, which The Guardian named one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time in 2017.


The is my entry in the 19th Century Classic category for the 2020 Back to the Classics Challenge and it's also part of my reading for the 2020 Mount TBR Challenge.

Book Beginning: Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell

Book Beginnings is a weekly meme hosted by Rose City Reader. Share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.

There are some fields near Manchester, well known to the inhabitants as 'Green Heys Fields', through which runs a public footpath to a little village about two miles distant. In spite of these fields being flan and low, nay, in spite of the want of wood (the great and usual recommendation of level tracts of land), there is a charm about them which strikes even the inhabitant of a mountains district, who sees and feels the effect of contrast in these common-place but thoroughly rural fields, with the busy, bustling manufacturing town he left but half an hour ago.

I don't know anything about this story, but have seen it on lists of classic books. Wikipedia tells me: "The story is set in the English city of Manchester between 1839 and 1842, and deals with the difficulties faced by the Victorian working class." One thing I can see is that I'm going to have to concentrate when reading this because of the long, involved sentences so common in Victorian tomes.

HRH Takes a Break

The Uncommon Reader: A Novella
Alan Bennett
Picador, 2008
120 pp.


Mrs Queen Takes the Train
William Kuhn
Harper, 2012
374 pp.

For a lighter look at the British Monarchy, I recommend these two delightful books! Both have Queen Elizabeth II as the main character, although in highly imaginative tales with no basis in real life. In fact, HRH literally escapes that real life in each one.


In Bennett's novella, the Queen becomes "The Uncommon Reader" after she chases her runaway corgis around the back of Buckingham Palace and comes upon the travelling library or what we in the US call a bookmobile. Never having done much pleasure reading herself but wanting to be polite, she selects a book with a familiar author's name, Ivy Compton-Burnett. When the librarian tells her Ivy is not a popular author, she muses "Why, I wonder? I made her a dame."

The Queen also meets another travelling library patron, Norman, a young palace kitchen worker who loves reading. She makes him a page and then becomes an avid reader with Norman as her guide. In a series of funny events that are both political and literary satire, her reading upsets the Palace routines and her government. I won't spoil the fun of reading the book, but it is very charming.



The second book, "Mrs Queen Takes the Train", I read several years ago and thoroughly enjoyed. Reading "The Uncommon Reader" reminded me of it, however I can't really summarize the plot, so here's the publisher's blurb:

"An absolute delight of a debut novel by William Kuhn--author of Reading Jackie: Her Autobiography in Books--Mrs Queen Takes the Train wittily imagines the kerfuffle that transpires when a bored Queen Elizabeth strolls out of the palace in search of a little fun, leaving behind a desperate team of courtiers who must find the missing Windsor before a national scandal erupts. Reminiscent of Alan Bennett's The Uncommon Reader, this lively, wonderfully inventive romp takes readers into the mind of the grand matriarch of Britain's Royal Family, bringing us an endearing runaway Queen Elizabeth on the town--and leading us behind the Buckingham Palace walls and into the upstairs/downstairs spaces of England's monarchy."

Both of these books are fun, light reading for a long winter day or even a day at the beach!

Growing Out of Bachelorhood

Bachelor's Bounty
Grace S. Richmond
A. L. Burt Co, 1932
306 pages

I bought this book at a used bookstore because it was by a woman author in the 1930s. As a regular reader of Scott's Furrowed Middlebrow blog, I am intrigued by reading novels by female authors between WWI and WWII. It's an interesting time in history as many parts of everyday life had recently changed or were just about to change. So these novels show us the way things were at that time.

Our titular bachelor (confirmed) is Scott Farrington, a New York City native with enough money to live the high life without working: drinking to excess throughout Prohibition, partying, carousing, travelling first class on ocean liners. In his thirties he was hospitalized for months with a serious illness and almost lost his eyesight.

As the story opens, Scott is moving to the country for a year on his doctor's orders, to dry out and calm his nerves. He settles in a small Connecticut hamlet in an old rundown house on the river, planning on writing a play. His next door neighbors are a 45-year old invalid and his 24 year old daughter-caretaker. Unlike the rest of the country folk, Jeremiah and Barbara Keane are well-educated, thoughtful, and very engaging people.

Soon his life gets complicated when Caroline, the glamorous widow of his best friend, abruptly decides to go off to Egypt and leave her 6-year-old son with Scott. An interesting new neighbor, a small and gossipy hamlet, a small boy who must be accounted for, and various people from his New York City social set flitting in and out of his house set the stage for the drama. Not to give away the story, but in the end Scott realized he has grown up a lot, plus there's a happy ending for him.

As for the title, it doesn't refer to Scott having several women in his life as I first thought. Somewhere he muses about the phrase "bachelor's bounty" and says it means that as a bachelor he is committed to a life of giving presents to all his married friends' children. I can't find that quote now, of course.

Last Page

Despite rather mediocre writing, I enjoyed the book. After a few chapters it suddenly seemed like the script for a 1930s movie. I saw Cary Grant in the lead, Audrey Hepburn as the ingénue next door, maybe John Barrymore as her dad, Jean Harlow as Caroline. It really should have been made into film back then.

Grace S. Richmond wrote 27 novels between 1905 and 1936, some of which my library has, so I might try out another one. I'd like to see if she makes other independent women out to be heroines. This book would not be mistaken for feminist literature, but the sensible, intelligent woman is shown as much more desirable than the flighty one who trades on her looks and is a drama queen.

The is my entry in the Classic by a Woman category for the 2020 Back to the Classics challenge  and it's also part of my reading for the 2020 Mount TBR Challenge.

Book Beginning: Bachelor's Bounty by Grace S. Richmond

Book Beginnings is a weekly meme hosted by Rose City Reader. Share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.

At a window facing the north side of the little old Derby house, a hundred feet away, Barbara Keane was eagerly gazing out. A man was standing at the sagging gateway in front of the neighboring house.

I found this book at a used book store and bought it because it had an intriguing title and was by a woman author in the 1930s. As a reader of Scott's Furrowed Middlebrow blog I am intrigued by finding novels by lesser-known women authors from before WWII. Plus this one has a nicely printed cover from back in the day when books might have a paper cover but also had nicely designed images on the coverboard itself. One can easily and inexpensively indulge one's whims in a used bookstore!

I am hoping to enjoy this novel because I need a 50+ year old classic by a woman for the 2020 Back to the Classics challenge.

Book Beginning: Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak

Book Beginnings is a weekly meme hosted by Rose City Reader. Share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.

Olivia knows what they are doing is stupid. If seen they will be sent home--possibly to a tribunal. Never mind that to touch him could be life-threatening.

This is January's pick for our library's book club and it looks interesting. The librarian has picked some rather depressing or disturbing books lately, so this is a relief. The grown children of the Birch family are all home for the holidays for the first time in many years. And they are confined to the house for seven days of family bliss. Maybe.

A Gothic Bath Visit

Northanger Abbey
Jane Austen
Penguin, 1995 (originally published 1817)
231 pages

I think this is my first Jane Austen novel! Hard to believe, I know, but it just never came up; not in high school and not as a chemistry major in college. This was the first novel written by Austen, apparently around 1799, although it wasn't published until after her death in 1817.

"Northanger Abbey" is divided into two nearly equal parts, 98 &103 pages. In part 1 our heroine, Catherine, is introduced as a sweet, unworldly girl from a country village who is introduced to high society in Bath, England, sometime during the early part of the Regency period, which lasted from 1790 to 1820. Fashionistas from all over England travelled to Bath to see and be seen, in addition to drinking the famous curative waters. We follow Catherine as she takes in the scene and meets some new friends.

In part 2 Catherine visits some people she has met in Bath, Eleanor and Henry Tilney, at their father's estate in Gloucestershire, Northanger Abbey. Having read numerous gothic romance novels, popular in the late 1700s, Catherine lets her imagination run away with her at the abbey. Creepy sounds, dark passageways,  seemingly odd events, a dead wife, all bring her terror, sleepless nights, and misery. Never fear, there is a happy ending!

I was not fond of this book. I know it's satire and things are overblown on purpose, but it was a bit boring. I did not like the writing style, either; it seemed a bit too coy. Austen herself lived in Bath from 1801 to 1806 and her contemporary account of what Bath was like during the Regency Period was very enjoyable, though. I knew that people visited the Pump Room to drink the waters, and that there were festive gatherings, but I didn't understand how it all worked before reading this.

This is my entry for the Back to the Classics 2019 Challenge, in the Nineteenth Century Classic category.



FURTHER READING

Jane Austen's World
"This Jane Austen blog brings Jane Austen, her novels, and the Regency Period alive through food, dress, social customs, and other 19th C. historical details related to this topic."
https://janeaustensworld.wordpress.com/tag/regency-bath/

Book Beginning: The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers

Book Beginnings is a weekly meme hosted by Rose City Reader. Share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.

The war tried to kill us in the spring.

I approach this book with caution and a bit of fear. It is definitely out of my comfort zone; if I want sad stories, I just watch or read the news. However my library book club is reading this, so I am trying to be a team player by reading it and showing up. It's a small club.

The blurb tells me Mr. Powers is a veteran of the Iraq war and a poet. I am hoping for the best - no nightmares.

Book Beginning: Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis

Book Beginnings is a weekly meme hosted by Rose City Reader. Share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.

The towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist; austere towers of steel and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver rods. They were neither citadels nor churches, but frankly and beautifully office-buildings.

I'm reading "Babbitt" again, although I use that word advisedly as I cannot remember a single thing from 56 years ago. The back cover commentary claims that in Mr. Babbitt, Lewis "created one of the ugliest, but most convincing, figures in American fiction - the total conformist." Sounds intriguing!

Book Beginning: The Other Side of Everything by Lauren Doyle Owens

Book Beginnings is a weekly meme hosted by Rose City Reader. Share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.

Her shoes had come off during the struggle.

The next few sentences of this murder mystery have been a bit more gory than I like. But the reviews I've seen haven't used any of my NOT SAFE words, like "dark", "bleak", "raw", so I think I'll enjoy it.  Just not a fan of depressing books. I can read the news for that sort of mood.

Book Beginning: An Irish Country Village by Patrick Taylor

Book Beginnings is a weekly meme hosted by Rose City Reader. Share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.

Barry Laverty -- Doctor Barry Laverty -- heard the clattering of a frying pan on a stove and smelled bacon frying. Mrs. "Kinky" Kincaid, Doctor O'Reilly's housekeeper, had breakfast on, and Barry realized he was ravenous.
      
Feet thumped down the stairs, and a deep voice said, "Morning, Kinky."
       
"Morning yourself, Doctor dear."

"Young Laverty up yet?" Despite the fact that half the village of Ballybucklebo, County Down, Northern Ireland, had been partying in his back garden for much of the night, Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, Laverty's senior colleague, was up and doing.

Thus begins this novel of rural Northern Ireland in 1964, which is part of a series about the village of Ballybucklebo, the two doctors, and the people of the village. The writing and the story are simple. It might not win any literary prizes but it's a fun summer read. Plus there's a glossary in the back to translate the Ulsterisms.

Book Beginning: The Girls at 17 Swann Street by Yara Zgheib

Book Beginnings is a weekly meme hosted by Rose City Reader. You are asked to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.

I call it the Van Gogh room. Just a different color scheme. Hazy peach blanket, hazy peach walls. Pastel-green carpet on a cherrywood floor. White blinds and shutters, the window and closet creak. Everything looks pale and tired, a little like me.

I look around and think, This is where it starts. In Bedroom 5, on the east side of a pink house at 17 Swann Street. As good, as bad a setting as any, I suppose, for a story like this. Plain and mildly inviting, dubiously clean. At least there is a window; I can see the driveway, the edge of the street, bits of garden and sky.

My library book club is reading this novel about a young woman with anorexia who has been admitted to a residential treatment facility. It's part diary and part omniscient narrator, and the tone is rather dreamlike. So far it's very interesting and not too intense.

Vonnegut on Wealth Inequality

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
Kurt Vonnegut
Dial Press, 1965
275 pages

Another book read for #1965Club. Thanks to Kaggsy and Simon for hosting! I read some Vonnegut back in the 60s and 70s, during and after college, and I remember liking his offbeat vision of the world, especially in light of the large anti-war protests going on then at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Recently I started thinking about reading more of his novels and was pleased to find one from 1965 for the club reading week.

The story centers around Eliot Rosewater, a very wealthy man, and how he handles the funds of his family's tax-sheltering foundation. There's not much to the plot. The book is more about the various characters in the Rosewater family, past and present, plus the impoverished citizens of Rosewater County, Indiana, which is pretty much owned by the family, lock, stock, and barrel.

Eliot, who may or may not be insane for most of the book, gives a lot of philosophical musings/speeches about wealth in America and the plight of the poor. The whole story is farcical, satiric, a bit slapstick, take your pick of adjectives. I found it overblown and too snarky for my taste, and therefore more tedious than funny. It's not that I don't agree with Eliot, I just don't like the tone.

I think it's terrible the way people don't share things in this country. I think it's a heartless government that will let one baby be born owning a big piece of the country, the way I was born, and let another baby be born without owning anything. The least a government could do, it seems to me, is to divide things up fairly among the babies - Eliot Rosewater, page 121

Fifty-four years after Vonnegut wrote it, the book seems extremely relevant to today's world, where wealth inequality is a hot topic for the country. A publisher should re-issue it with a foreword by some current politician, scholar, or activist.

This is my entry for the Back to the Classics 2019 Challenge, in the Twentieth Century Classic category.

#1965 Club: A Classic Police Procedural Novel

Roseanna: a Martin Beck Mystery
Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö
Pantheon Books, 1967 translation by Lois Roth
Swedish original "Roseanna: roman om ett brott", 1965
212 pp.


Mysteries have never been at the top of my reading list. I do like the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series by Canadian author Louise Penny, and when I'm not in the mood for more serious Literature, I have a few cozy mystery series on tap. (Hello, Amelia Peabody!) I think the common thread here is that I like mysteries without a lot of blood and gore, graphic violence, serial killers, or misogynistic violence.

But I needed books for the #1965Club and quickly. So I followed the hashtag and found a few blogs with lists of books published in 1965. One review that caught my eye was for a Swedish police procedural called "Roseanna". As it didn't seem too bloody or dark, I got the Kindle version and plunged into 1960s Sweden.

I really enjoyed this story. The main character is First Detective Inspector Martin Beck of the Swedish National Police, Homicide Bureau. He seems like a very ordinary person, although "There were people who thought that he was the country's most capable examining officer." As such he was called out to a small town where dredging of the navigation channel near the locks had scooped up a naked female body.

The emphasis is on the police procedures as they attempt to solve the murder of the unknown woman, which eventually takes them over six months, all in a rather short book. The language is quite plain, without long passages of description. Conversations between the policemen often consist of short phrases or single words, a very realistic depiction of co-workers communicating. The inevitable government bureaucracy gets in the way. The story is about determined, even obsessed policemen working a difficult case, no heroes in sight. This is most assuredly not an action novel!

Ten books - Ten letters in the character's name

"Roseanna" is the first of 10 Martin Beck mysteries by Sjöwall and Wahlöö, often considered the "godparents of Nordic Noir". The series has greatly influenced writers in Sweden and around the world, especially for police procedural mysteries. Check out the web sites below for more information about the authors and Nordic Noir.


Further Reading

"The couple who invented Nordic Noir"
Maj Sjöwall and her late partner paved the way for Stieg Larsson and Jo Nesbø. Jake Kerridge meets her
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/authorinterviews/11741385/The-couple-who-invented-Nordic-Noir.html


"The queen of crime"
When Maj Sjöwall and her partner Per Wahlöö started writing the Martin Beck detective series in Sweden in the 60s, they little realised that it would change the way we think about policemen for ever
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/nov/22/crime-thriller-maj-sjowall-sweden


"Nordic Noir: Consider this home base for all things Scandinavian crime fiction."
http://crimebythebook.com/expert-witness-nordicnoir

A Single Woman's Dilemma

Lolly Willowes, or the Loving Huntsman
Sylvia Townsend Warner
Grosset & Dunlap, 1926
252 pages


Often when I pick a book from my TBR list I wonder how it got there. However this time I can say with certainty that I first heard about "Lolly Willowes" from Scott at the Furrowed Middlebrow book blog. When someone states that this is their favorite novel of all time, someone who shares my taste for novels from the 1920s-1950s and has 2,000+ books in his database, I think it behooves me to read that book!

"Lolly Willowes" was British author Sylvia Townsend Warner's first novel, and it was an immediate success both in England and America. It even became the inaugural selection of the Book of the Month Club in April 1926.

As the story opens, Laura Willowes is moving in with her brother and his family in London after the death of their father in 1902. She is 28 and has lived in their rural family home her whole life, enjoying nature and country life, uninterested in marriage. For the next 20 years she is Aunt Lolly (her niece couldn't pronounce "Laura" properly and it stuck) who helps raise her nieces in London. Then out of nowhere she decides to move by herself to a tiny village called Great Mop, where she is free to be herself, unconstrained by narrow societal norms for single women.

At that point the story takes a turn away from being a nice, conventional tale. Curious events begin to happen: Strange music in the wee hours. Lots of people out walking very late at night. Nothing particularly sinister, just odd things. Laura accepts the villager's easy explanations and happily continues her new life on her own terms.

Then one day her nephew moves to Great Mop and she feels all the old obligations begin to fall on her again. So she makes a pact with Satan and declares herself a witch. The devil in question appears as an older country woodsman, quite civilized, no fire and brimstone. Laura and he have several philosophical chats. Nothing very witch-like happens; she's not like the Wicked Witch of the West from the "Wizard of Oz". She's happy. End of story.

Normally I don't like to give so much away, but I thought that one would need a basic plot outline to understand any comments about the story itself. Don't worry, there's really a lot more to the novel that I haven't touched on here.

After I read the book I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. I enjoyed the story immensely but what was it about? That abrupt turn to the devil was done very calmly. In fact, when she first declares this, I laughed out loud at the absurdity of it! I wondered if she was suffering from delusions or hallucinations. And is she truly free or does she just have a nicer man in charge who leaves her on her own? Looking for some guidance, I found much online analysis of the book, probably due to its reissue by the New York Review Books in 1999 and by Virago Modern Classics in 2012.

In the reviews there are various discussions about a satire of Britain in the 1920s, proto-feminism, under-the-radar lesbian themes, and the "surplus women" problem in England between the wars. To me that was all too vague and theoretical. I simply enjoyed the story of an independent-minded woman who breaks away from society to do her own thing. I did see a suggestion somewhere of a tinge of Magical Realism, and I think that might be an apt way to describe the last section in Great Mop. especially when she's chatting with Satan on a hillside.

Scott's review at Furrowed Middlebrow is one of the best at teasing out possible meanings, some of them contradictory, without imposing any particular Correct Meaning. Of course his whole blog is worthy of your time if you are interested in his specialty: lesser-known British, Irish, & American women writers 1910-1960.

There is a lot to think about in this story, and I can understand why bloggers talk about reading "Lolly Willowes" over and over again, gaining new perspective on it as they grow older. I am going to need to reread it myself to see what I may have missed this time.

Another virtue of the book that I must mention is the lush prose of Townsend Warner! She creates the most extraordinary similes and metaphors. My book has many fluttering flags marking special passages.

Lolly was in a small shop, half florist and half greengrocer, with shelves full of "jars of home-made jam and bottled fruits. It was as though the remnants of summer had come into the little shop for shelter."

When Lolly announces her decision to move to Great Mop, her brother is furious and he argues with her. Then he stops and turns his head away. [Titus is her nephew.] "For some time Titus's attempts at speech had hovered above the tumult, like one holy appeasing dove loosed after the other. The last dove was luckier. It settled on Laura."

Lolly spends an unhappy afternoon sitting in a field and the daylight begins to fade. "The long afternoon was ebbing away, stealthily, impassively, as though it were dying under an anaesthetic."

Thank you Scott for suggesting an excellent novel! I highly recommend it, too. This is my entry for the Back to the Classics 2019 Challenge, in the Classic by a Woman category.



Further Reading

"Hen Wives, Spinsters, and Lolly Willowes"
A very interesting article from the blog Myth & Moor, "a Dartmoor studio on folklore, fairy tales, fantasy, mythic arts & mythic living"
https://www.terriwindling.com/blog/2018/04/sylvia-townsend-warner.html

"Sylvia Townsend Warner: the neglected writer"
An excellent long article by the contemporary writer, Sarah Waters
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/mar/02/sylvia-townsend-warner

The Sylvia Townsend Warner Society
http://www.townsendwarner.com/