Lark Rise to Candleford; and my pastoral life in Germany

I finally tackled one of the books I've had on my owned-and-unread pile the longest -- Lark Rise to Candleford. I bought this more than ten years ago, around the time the TV series was first broadcast, but I've been putting it off forever, put off by the sheer size of it, and by the first couple of pages which are mostly descriptive. (It's also one of the books from my original Classics Club list that I never read). It's a little tough if the first page doesn't grab you. I had watched a bit of the TV series and enjoyed it, so I thought I should give it another go. 

For those who aren't familiar, Lark Rise is a fictionalized memoir of Flora Thompson's childhood in rural England, during the late Victorian period. It's classified as fiction but definitely reads like a memoir, and most libraries and bookstores shelve it in the fiction section. There isn't really any plot, it's really a lot of vignettes and memories of Thompson's childhood in Oxfordshire, and she places herself in the story as the main character, Laura, oldest child of a stonemason and his wife who live in a poor but comfortable house in the little hamlet of Lark Rise. It was originally published as three volumes, and I read the edition pictured above which includes all of them: Lark Rise [1939], Over to Candleford [1941], and Candleford Green [1943]. Since 1945 it's been available as an omnibus and there are many beautiful editions. 

A Penguin edition of the first volume.
My copy had woodcut illustrations similar to the one on the cover, 
though they're black and white

Each chapter has a theme, so it isn't told in a specifically linear fashion. It jumps around a bit, but it's easy enough to follow. There were chapters on May Day, hog butchering, school, churchgoing, and so on. Bits of it reminded me a bit of the Little House on the Prairie series, just in the descriptions of daily life in that era. Life was hard for Laura's family and the other families in Lark Rise, but she seems to have very happy memories. It's a really lovely portrait of rural life towards the end of the Victorian era, with hints of what's to come in the new century. 

It's fairly long book, more than 500 pages and 39 chapters. I finally got around to picking it up when I was looking for something soothing to read, and it fit the bill perfectly. Most of the chapters are short, and I thought I'd just read one or two a day, but I found myself turning to it more and more often in the past week. It is just the thing to read before bedtime, to crowd out all my other thoughts of world events. I can see why it was so popular when first published during WWII. 

After reading a few chapters I was wondering how they adapted it into a 40-episode TV series (I've only watched the first season so far). Eventually, though, I began to recognize characters from the series. Some of them have much more screen time than you'd expect from the book, and a couple of them have been combined into one family. They've definitely kept the spirit of the book in the series. It's a bit like Cranford in that the TV creators have taken the essence of the characters and place and extrapolated from there. If you're expecting it to be a novelization of the series, you'll be disappointed. For example, Dorcas, the postmistress, has nearly as much screen time in the TV series as Laura, but she doesn't show up in the book until more than halfway through. 

The beautiful Folio Society edition. I would love to take a look at this one. 

I really enjoyed this book, though it wasn't what I'd call a quick read, It's definitely a leisurely read, well suited to reading in bits in pieces, and it felt more like a memoir than a novel. In the past I've described books as 'nonfiction that reads like fiction' but this was the opposite. And if you love a sense of place, this is the book for you, with lovely descriptions of the countryside and just the slowness of everyday life. It made me want to move to a cottage and cook on an open fire. 

I'm a suburban kid and the idea of living in a village surrounded by countryside has always appealed to me. Our house in Germany was in a village, though nothing like Lark Rise, though we were at the end of a street on the edge of farmland and I could literally see cornfields and livestock right outside my door. I used to walk my dog through farmland and there were cows, horses, and chickens within a short distance, and in the spring, I'd take the scenic route to see if there were any lambs. I did enjoy how peaceful it was but there wasn't much to do close by, if you wanted to do more than a movie or basic shopping we had to drive pretty far. 

So here are a few photos of the countryside near my former house in the village of Steinwenden, a tiny village in the Rhineland-Pfalz, near Ramstein air base.

Just some cows in the neighborhood.

A field of canola. Every spring the countryside would be bright yellow. 

Pasture on the hill just behind our house, I could see these sheep from the second-story window. 
Sadly they weren't permanent residents, just visiting.  

In the summer this field was normally wheat or corn, 
but one summer it was all sunflowers and sweet peas, to help enrich the soil.

Sunset over the wheat field, just beyond my house. 

Hay all bundled up at the end of the season. I took this photo from my driveway. 

I loved the peace and quiet of the countryside but I was happy to move closer to a major city. Right now I'd be really happy to be on the edge of the farms, I'm sure it would be more relaxing right about now! Well, every place has its advantages. 

Bloggers, which are your favorite books about rural life? And does anyone else feel like moving out to the country about now? 

I'm counting this as my Adapted Classic for the Back to the Classics Challenge. 

Crossriggs by Jane & Mary Findlater

Not a great cover image, but the only one I could find.

I don't know who I can credit for recommending Crossriggs -- I'm sure it was someone in the blogosphere, and I wish I knew so I can thank them. (Updated: it was Furrowed Middlebrow!) This book is exactly in my wheelhouse, including : 

1. A Victorian(ish) time period 
2. Set in Scotland
3. A strong female protagonist 

Basically, a trifecta of all the things I love in a book. Published in 1908, Crossriggs is the story of Alexandra Horn, a woman in hear late twenties/early thrities, living with her father in the village of Crossriggs which is "about an hour's train ride from Edinborough. Besides the Horns, there are three or four other families of note around which the story is centered. Alexandra, known as Alex, has been living rather quietly with her father, an educated man with interesting and progressive ideas (but not much money) when her recently widowed sister Matilda arrives in tow from Canada with her five (!) children. The eldest daughter is 13, then there are three boys in a row, and finally a baby girl. 

Of course this throws the whole house into turmoil, but Alex and her father take it all in stride until they realize they will be more financially strapped than ever. Her father borrows some money from a close neighbor, Mr. Maitland, but Alex is aghast and vows to find a way to earn some ready cash. She begins by reading every day to a blind neighbor, the retired Admiral Cassilas, who is kind but somewhat gruff and snobbish. The admiral's only living relative is his grandson, Vanbrough, who has just finished school and is about twenty-one. 

A better image of the cover artwork. 

It's "Lady in Grey" (1859) by Daniel Macnee, National Galleries of Scotland

Young Van is bored staying at gloomy Foxe Hall with his grandfather, and the two don't always see eye to eye. He quickly strikes up a friendship with Alex and spends more and more time with the loud and boisterous Hope family. Eventually, his grandfather starts parading a succession of eligible young women around Van, and Alex's sister is pressuring her to accept the hand of James Reid, who is good steady but whom Alex finds dull. And Van is jealous of her friendship with their neighbor Mr. Maitland, who seems excessively fond of Alex, who is married with a sickly wife. Eventually this love triangle (or quadrangle?) comes to a head, and after a dramatic turn of events, there is a tragedy.

I really enjoyed this book -- it reminded me a bit of Jane Austen, but also a little bit of Anne of Green Gables. I really liked that Alex was trying to make her way in the world without just husband hunting -- she seemed like a new modern woman. The plot moved along nicely, and though it's almost 400 pages long, it seemed shorter, probably because the Virago edition had very wide margins. 

This book had some interesting plot twists. There was a lot of foreshadowing about the three men who seemed interested in Alex, so I had strong suspicions about how it would all end up -- and I was right about some of the events, but not the characters I was expecting, if that makes sense. And I was amused by Alex's father, who was a "fruitarian" -- basically, a vegetarian who made the family eat crazy things like nuttose, an early meat substitute developed in the late 1890s. They were also forced to eat carrots, of all things! Apparently this was a vegetable only fit for horses. 

Aside from some cringey racism, I liked this book very much, though the ending was a bit rushed. I did like how Alex's story was wrapped up, which was not how I expected. I would like to read more by the Findlater sisters, who wrote books individually and together. Sadly, I don't think any of their other books are readily available. Crossriggs is currently out of print, but there are used copies of the Virago Modern Classic edition available at a reasonable price online. And I've just discovered it's available as an audio on BBC Radio 4!  

I'm counting this as my Classic with a Place in the Title for the Back to the Classics Challenge and for my UK Classic for the European Reading Challenge. 

Alas, Poor Lady by Rachel Ferguson

 The governess. The spinster. The Aunt Sallies of life and standbys of British serialized humor. Submerged in other people's garments. 

I had really hoped to read two or even three books this past week for the Persephone Readathon, but I'm sorry to say that the events in the news were so upsetting, I could hardly focus on the book that I had chosen -- and I really wish that I had picked a more uplifting book. I'd been putting off Alas, Poor Lady for years -- it was so long and seemed rather depressing. It did take rather longer than I expected, as I normally zip through a Persephone in a couple of days, but I'm very glad to have read it.

Alas, Poor Lady is the story of a Victorian family with seven daughters, ultimately focusing on the youngest, Grace Scrimgeour, born in 1869. Her father, a retired army officer, is forever disappointed that he has no son (who finally arrives two years after Grace); he takes little interest in his daughters other than providing them a perfunctory education and assuming eventually some man or other will take them off his hands. After nine pregnancies in more than 20 years, her mother blithely assumes the same, without preparing her (or her elder sisters) with the means to find a husband or learn to support her self -- it just wasn't done. 

A Honiton Lace Manufactury. Frederick Richard Pickersgill, 1869.

Some of Grace's elder sisters snag husbands and even have sons, but Grace and her unmarried sisters are doomed to spend their lives doing needlework and Good Works appropriate for middle-class ladies. One of the sisters, Mary, suggests higher education or even teaching as a profession; another, Queenie, the nerve to suggest opening a needlework shop. Both of these ideas are immediately rejected as being unsuitable -- what would people think? 

 Her stillborn love affair, her spinsterhood she might forget if they would let her, the loss of her shop never. It was her real broken romance. 'I could have made a success in business but they wouldn't let me.'
   That would be her story in all the years to come.

Eventually, through bad money management, bad investments, and just bad luck, the unmarried Scrimgeour sisters enter a slow downward spiral to genteel poverty, becoming a burden on relatives and living from hand to mouth.  I'm always interested in the lives of the Victorian, but this book was a tough read in parts, with, as always, women having few choices. The eldest sister, Gertrude, has a rude awakening from her own marriage and childbirth (nearly the same time as Grace's birth); but at least she has financial security. It's a very well written book, but I did have to stop several times because I was so distressed at the mistakes and injustices that these spinster sisters faced. Grace's multiple attempts to catch a husband were especially distressing. 

Author Rachel Ferguson

This book reminded me a bit of Pride and Prejudice, just from the aspect of getting so many daughters married off. (Imagine if Bingley hadn't rented out Netherfield Hall -- would Jane have been forced to marry Mr. Collins? Ew.) Mrs. Bennet is normally the object of ridicule, but if you think about it, Mr. Bennet hasn't done diddly squat to find his girls suitable husbands, and hasn't put any money aside for dowries. He hides in his study and never even thinks about their education, or the suitability of having all five girls out in society at once. It was more difficult for the older girls to find husbands after several seasons -- and if their sisters came out, they would be even more competition. How awful would it be to have season after season and remain unmarried, then see your younger sisters married off before you? At least one of Bennet parents cared about what would happen to them. The Scrimgeour parents basically stick their heads in the sand and just assume everything will take care of itself eventually. And the ending, thankfully, wasn't as depressing as I expected. 

Endpapers from the Persephone edition of Alas, Poor Lady, a detail from an early 20th century tapestry.
The Scrimgeour sisters spent a lot of time doing needlework.

Alas, Poor Lady is the only Persephone by Ferguson; however, the Furrowed Middlebrow imprint of Dean Street Press has reprinted three more of her novels: Evenfeld; A Harp in Lowdnes Square; and A Footman for the Peacock, which is the only Furrowed Middlebrow left on my TBR shelves. Bloggers, have you read any of these? Which do you recommend? And did you enjoy the Persephone Readathon? Thanks again to Jessie from Dwell in Possibility for hosting!

The Lacquer Lady: Victorian Intrigue in Mandalay

A few years ago I was spending a weekend in Austin, Texas, just about a 90 minute drive from our home in San Antonio. It was a rainy Friday night, and my idea of fun is poking around bookstores. Just a short drive from my hotel was a massive Half-Price Books. If you are not familiar with HPB, it is a family-owned chain of used bookstores that started in Dallas, and it's all over Texas and quite a few other states. There are several locations in San Antonio but this one in Austin was the biggest I've ever seen, with an amazing selection. There were really nice collectible books and classics, and the fiction section had a whole bunch of Viragos, some in green covers, some in the original black. That's where I found The Lacquer Lady by F. Tennyson Jesse, first published in 1929.

Set in the late 1800s, the story begins with a young woman named Fanny Moroni, who is at a boarding school in Brighton. Having made a reputation for herself at school as being a teller of tall-tales, she leaves school to return to Upper Burma, where her family live. Her mother is half English and half Burmese, and her father is Italian and has a weaving business. He had once been a favorite of the king but had recently fall out of the circle. Fanny takes the long boat ride back to Mandalay with her schoolmate Agatha, who is also going to Burma to live with her missionary father. (At the time, Lower Burma was a British colony, and Upper Burma was still under royal control). 

While Agatha joins her father and his curate saving souls, Fanny's social circle moves among the community of foreigners who are occasionally allowed into the inner circle of the Burmese royals in Mandalay, and becomes close to one of the princesses, Supaya-lat, eventually becoming one of the ladies-in-waiting. Fanny isn't a terribly likable heroine -- she's very selfish and self-serving, and has been compared to Becky Sharp from Vanity Fair. 

Fanny was very aware of what people were like; she couldn't read through a book of Dickens, she couldn't have picked up newspaper and understood was anything about except the police-court cases, she couldn't have held an impersonal conversation on any subject whatsoever, but she had a sensitiveness, within her limitations, to human beings, that amounted to a talent, whenever her judgement was not obscured by her personal wishes. She was aware that she knew what the three men in the room were like far better than did Agatha, who had been seeing them for several days past. (Ch. V)

The royal court is thrown into turmoil when King Mindoon dies, leaving many sons by various wives and no definite heir to the throne. Fanny is sometimes in and sometimes out, but her fate is intwined with her friend Supaya-lat, and eventually, she unwittingly becomes a key player of the British invasion and takeover of Upper Burma. 

This book started out rather slowly, but it really picked up about a third of the way after the king died and there were a lot of palace intrigues, some of them quite bloody and horrifying. This book is loosely based on actual events, and I didn't realize until I read the afterword Fanny isn't just a made-up character -- she's actually based on a real person, though the circumstances are not exactly the same. I'm also really intrigued by the writer -- F. Tennyson Jesse was not only a great-niece of the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson, she was a criminologist and journalist and was one of the few women to report on WWI. Her most famous novel is A Pin to See the Peepshow, which is based the notorious 1920s murder case of Edith Thompson and Frederic Bywaters. (I bought of copy after listening to Simon and Rachel's Tea or Books? podcast from last year; naturally, I still haven't read it!)

I was particularly interested in this novel because I've actually been to Burma, albeit very briefly. Years ago we were stationed in Japan and I met a friend in Bangkok who was visiting her son who worked at the consulate. After a few days in the city, we drove with her son and his friend up to Chiang Rai, where the friend had bought a retirement home. It's near the Golden Triangle, where Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar meet, and we were actually able to walk over the bridge to Myanmar and shop in the market. We couldn't stay very long because the border crossing closed at 5 p.m., but I can say that I've actually been there. 

This is my eighth book for the TBR Pile Challenge 2018! I'm making great progress on my list. 

Never Get Involved in a Land War in Asia

No, this is not a blog posting about The Princess Bride, probably the most quotable movie ever. (Though I really should reread it someday -- does Vizzini actually say the line in the book? I can't remember. And I didn't realize until after I'd written this post that it's the 30th anniversary of The Princess Bride!!)

Anyway. After a solid month of reading (with some other audiobooks mixed in), I have finally finished the 950-page behemoth that is The Far Pavilions. Written by M. M. Kaye, in 1978, this is an epic story about an Englishman, raised as an Indian, who falls in love with a half-Indian princess against the backdrop of the Second Anglo-Afghan War in the late 1800s. (Did you know there was a second Anglo-Indian War? I never knew there was a first, but I'm a Yank and we are not taught such things in school. I barely learned about the British Raj and the East India Company).

So. The book start with the birth of young Ashton Pelham-Martin, born in the Himalayas in the 1850s to English parents -- an eccentric academic father and a young mother who dies in childbirth. His father then dies of cholera during the Indian Rebellion of 1858. Fearing for his safety as a foreigner, little Ash is then raised by his Indian nurse Sita as Hindu boy whom she renames Ashok. (He has dark hair and eyes and can pass for a native). He spends much of his childhood knowing nothing of his family history and ends up as a servant in the local prince's household, until palace intrigues force his adoptive mother to reveal his true parentage and return him to his ancestral home in England.

Because of his upbringing, Ashton's loyalties are forever divided between his Englishness and his love for India, and eventually he joins the military and returns to India, where his knowledge of Indian language and culture make him both invaluable and suspect to the British Raj. There is romance, there are intrigues, there are battles and action scenes galore. Also, lots and lots of war strategy and politics which I wasn't expecting. It's a very dense read so I definitely couldn't zip through it. (But I did learn that the Soviets invading Afghanistan in the 1980s wasn't a new idea).

Overall, I really enjoyed the book but darn it all, my edition was 955 pages with tiny print and very narrow margins, and honestly, I think M. M. Kaye could have used some more editing. Naturally, there are amazing coincidences and lots of exposition where characters are explaining political and military history and I do feel like there was a lot more telling of events than showing. Plus, the book is so huge, I really feel like it could have been split into three stories: Ash's childhood, the love story with the Indian princess, Anjuli; and the Afghan war story.

Also, I found Anjuli's character to be incredibly undeveloped and there are chapters upon chapters when she's barely mentioned, which I found irritating. She's hardly in the final third of the book at all. One of the blurbs on the back cover describes it as "a high-adventure love-story" but if you're looking for a sweeping romance, this isn't it. I was expecting Gone With the Wind in the Himalayas, but there's far more war and politics than character development in this book, which I found disappointing. Also: NO MAPS, which is a pet peeve when characters are traveling in books, and there is a lot of traveling in this one. I am unfamiliar with Indian and Afghani geography, so I found this especially irritating. (However, they do include a diagram of a military compound).

However, I did like that Ashton really was supporting the Indian and then the Afghani viewpoint, rather than blindly following the British Colonial idea that White People Know Best. I'm debating now as to whether I should watch the 1980s TV adaptation, which turned a book of nearly a thousand pages into a six-episode mini-series starring lots of white people, including Amy Irving as a half-Indian princess. Seriously.

That's Ben Cross as the adult Ashton, and Amy Irving in brownface as Anjuli. Really.

I'm still planning on reading The Raj Quartet (also turned into a mini-series), which is thankfully divided into four different books since it totals nearly 1800 pages. And A Suitable Boy, because it would be nice to read an epic book set in India actually written by someone Indian. It won't be for a while because I'm not quite sure if I can dive right in to another epic doorstopper.

The Quincunx by Charles Palliser

"It's all so complicated that I don't know if I can ever make it clear," the old lady began with a droll smile. "My poor head begins to ache when I start to think about it. I believe I understand it until I start to ponder on it and then the explanation goes flying off in a thousand different in a a shower of words: codicils and judgments and instruments and orders and all those other ugly terms associated with the law and Chancery that have cursed our family for more than half a century. . . ."

Basicallly, this quote explains Charles Palliser's The Quincunx in a nutshell. It is a big, fat (781 pages!) historical novel that is the closest thing that I have ever read to a Dickens novel without actually being Dickens; it's kind of like a cross between Bleak House and Oliver Twist with a little Downton Abbey thrown in. In other words, it is EXACTLY my kind of book and I absolutely loved it.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Set in the early 19th century (I'm guessing 1820s or maybe very early 1830s -- there's no mention of railroads or Queen Victoria so it must be a bit earlier), this is the story of John Huffam, a young boy who is ostensibly the heir to a vast estate, but when the story begins he and his mother, a young widow, are living modestly in a rural village called Melthorpe. The book begins when he's a small boy, and he begins to learn the mysterious history of his family, who are connected to other families fighting over an estate called Hougham (the original spelling of his name). Altogether there are five families involved, which relates to the title; a quincunx is a heraldic figure with four points at the corners and one in the middle, like the five side on a die.

It's somewhat confusing, but years ago, John's great-grandfather secretly entailed the estate in a codicil to his will; meanwhile, his spendthrift son had already sold the estate to another family, the money-grubbing Clothiers. Currently, a family called the Mompessons are in possession, but if young John and his mother die without heirs, the entire estate will be transferred to the Clothiers. John and his mother are living under an assumed name and his mother has the original of the codicil which is her most treasured possession. Everyone involved wants to get hold of it so they can establish their rights to the estate.

Over a period of about ten years, John and his mother are subjected to burglaries, threats, escapes, and schemes to bilk them out of the small income they have, forcing them into worse and worse circumstances in order to force them to give up the codicil. They don't know whom to trust, and things get about as bad as they can be until John finally learns the truth about his family and needs to protect his own life.

This novel is a huge, epic roller coaster of a ride, with lots of 19th century characters: sleazy lawyers, thieves, bankers, servants, and even subterranean scavengers. I loved all the history and atmosphere. It's very like a Dickens novel or a Victorian sensation novel, much like Wilkie Collins or Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Charles Palliser really nails the writing style as well (there are also what I will call alternate spellings of words to keep it in the 19th century style.)

My only quibble with the novel was that it is so focused on the will and the codicil. Even the epic Bleak House had a multitude of side characters that gave the reader a break with some comic relief, but The Quincunx never lets up on John's story with the exception of the history of the families entangled; also, there are so many characters that sometimes I got them confused. There is a family tree in the back at the end of each section, plus a list of characters, but eventually I decided not to worry about which ancestor was feuding with whom, or which marriage they were trying to prevent. I didn't realize until I was nearly at the end there were multiple family trees that filled in as the book progressed (to prevent spoilers, for which I'm grateful) -- another advantage to reading the print book instead of the electronic version, which doesn't include them.

I'm sure if I had taken notes it would all make sense, or if I decide to read it again. (Even Bleak House didn't go into too much detail about the disputed wills; it's just assumed that years ago Jarndyce made a bunch of conflicting wills and it's up to the Chancery courts to decide. Enough). Nevertheless, this is really worth reading if you love a big, fat, Victorian sensation novel. I was recently on a long journey and had time to read in airports, planes, and trains; luckily I was also able to download the e-book on both my phone and a tablet, so I was able to read it in bits and pieces, which was easy since it's 125 short chapters, just like a real Victorian novel. I haven't read anything else by Palliser but I loved this --it's one of my favorite reads of the year and will definitely look for more of his works.

The Children's Book by A. S. Byatt

"Three or four families in an English village is the very thing to work on."  -- Jane Austen

It's probably quite unfair of me to begin this review by comparing it to another book.  I'm sure it was probably unwise for me to read The Children's Book almost immediately after reading and reviewing what appears to be a similar book, The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton.  Honestly, it just worked out that way -- I'd actually started The Children's Book first, then realized I might not finish it in time to start The Forgotten Garden which was a book group selection.  (Since I run the book group, it would have been inexcusable for me to not to have finished it in time).  But as usual, I digress.

Anyhow, at first glance both of them are historical fiction, mostly set during the Victorian and Edwardian periods. Both of them heavily feature English fairytales, and have central characters who are female writers and storytellers, and include entire sections with examples of the aforementioned tales, which are original to the books.  Both of them are long -- The Forgotten Garden is just over 550 pages, and The Children's Book weighs in at 675.  But almost immediately, I realized they are actually vastly different.

I can only give the bare bones of the setup for The Children's Book, because there is so much packed into it.  It's the story of four loosely connected families in Kent and London, set around the Fabian and Arts and Crafts movements in England around of the turn of the 20th century.  The story follows the parents and children against the backdrop of the end of the Victorian Era, the Edwardian Era, and finishes during WWI.

The story begins in the South Kensington Museum, which will someday be known as the Victoria and Albert Museum.  Two young teenage boys, Julian Cain and Tom Wellwood, are watching a third boy sketching in the museum.  They discover the boy, Philip Warren, has been hiding out in the museum's basement, having escaped poverty and dire conditions of the pottery works in the Five Towns area.  Tom's mother is Olive Wellwood is a writer of fairy tales, who brought her son to the museum while she was consulting about her book with Julian's father, a curator at the museum.  Olive is not only a writer, she's a socially progressive do-gooder type, and she decides to take Philip under her wing.  She brings him home to her ramshackle farm in Kent, where he is exposed to artistic and socially conscious people who change his life, including the family of Benedict Fludd, a brilliant and eccentric potter.

Through Philip, the reader is introduced to a whole network of socially progressive people, artists, writers, craftspeople, and puppeteers who make up Olive's world, in England and on the Continent.  However, the novel is not so much about Philip -- we meet a whole generation of children who are growing up in a rather bohemian lifestyle.  The Children's Book basically a really great history lesson about English society as it transitions from the Victorian Era to the horrors of the Great War, with these families as a microcosm, if that makes any sense.

Where The Forgotten Garden is narrowly focused on one family's mystery, The Children's Book is about the upheaval of an entire generation from childhood to adulthood.  You could easily read The Forgotten Garden on a long flight, but The Children's Book took me well over a week of serious reading.  It is jam-packed with characters (seriously, I wish I'd made a chart when I started), fictional and real, plus history and commentary, which sadly, I think is to its detriment.

I loved learning about these families and their world, but Byatt packs so much into it, the narrative thread of the characters tends to get lost.  I could seriously have imagined this book split into two or even three volumes.  I loved learning about the Arts and Crafts movement, and the changing role of women, and the Suffragettes (to name but a few of the topics), but I felt like she was so into writing about the history that sometimes the characters were shoved aside.  Byatt often ends up telling us what the characters are doing and saying to get through the historical context, and less showing.  Some of the historical and political tangents were actually rather dry and sometimes preachy, and at the end, I wasn't even sure what happened to some of the most important characters.  I do wonder if she just ran out of steam or needed to finish on deadline.

I really enjoyed most of this book but I seriously think it could have used some editing.   Still, I'm sure it will make my list of Top Ten Reads of 2013.

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton

This book has been on my radar forever, but somehow, I'd never gotten around to reading it.  It seems to be one of these books that a lot of book groups are reading.  I have to confess, sometimes I'm a bit snobbish when it comes to book group books.  There are certain books that become extremely popular with book groups, but when it comes time to choose books for my two groups at the library, I'm sometimes leery -- there are some books that absolutely everyone loves, and I end up hating them.  I hated, hated, hated The Memory Keeper's Daughter, which was really popular a few years ago; in fact, I hated it so much I demanded a refund from Target.  I also disliked Water for Elephants and I was really underwhelmed by The Paris Wife, which we discussed last month. (Everyone else loved it). 

But people kept raving about The Forgotten Garden, so I gave it a shot, even though it's more than 550 pages long.  So, if you are one of the 12 other people in the world who has not read this book yet (there are more than 83,000 reviews on Goodreads), here's the setup.  Basically, this is a historical mystery, which jumps back and forth between three main characters, following their lives across two continents and more than 100 years.

The book starts about 1905, in Australia.  A little girl, about four years old, is found all alone on the docks after a ship has docked -- somehow, she's come all the way from England and no one seems to know her name or who she belongs to.  The only clue is a white suitcase with a book of fairy tales.  The port master takes her home, and he and his wife (who have been unable to have a child of their own) end up keeping her.  The little girl eventually forgets all about this and on her 21st birthday, the young woman, now renamed Nell, learns of her mysterious origins.

Then we flash-forward 90 years and Nell is on her deathbed, with her beloved granddaughter Cassandra.  Her final words are something about "The Authoress."  Cassandra, who was raised by Nell from the age of ten when she was ditched by her own feckless mother, starts asking questions.  Who is the Authoress?  Is she Nell's mother?  Did she kidnap Nell and put her on the boat?  What happened to her?

The story then jumps back and forth between the Victorian and Edwardian eras, explaining the origins of the mysterious Authoress, the book of fairy tales, and, ultimately, the mystery of Nell and how she wound up in Australia alone.   We also learn about Cassandra's childhood and her own personal tragedies.

The book jumps around a lot, so I was a bit confused at first about the various characters.  However, after the first couple of chapters, which are broken up between the main characters, I was hooked.  Morton does a really good job of creating distinct characters and histories, and she's especially good at setting the scenes.  I especially liked the earliest time frame, when we learn all about the Authoress -- her back story is really quite Dickensian.

Morton's plot is also really well developed; in fact, I would almost say it's a little too perfect, if that makes sense.  There are plot points and characters that are so convenient that some parts are rather contrived, but I'm being nitpicky; also, there were some plot twists that I could spot a mile away.  Nevertheless,  I really got hooked on the story and wanted to find out how what happened.  It's well over 500 pages long, but I hated putting it down and read the last 200 or so pages in a stretch, staying up waaaay past my bedtime the last night.  It's long, but it's actually a very quick read.

I can definitely see why it would be popular for book groups -- there's a lot to discuss, and it's not difficult as long as you can keep all the characters straight.  I actually coordinate two different book groups for my library, so I'm already planning on putting one of her other books on the list next year for the other book group.

Has anyone else read this?  What about Morton's other books?  Which one should I read next?  And are there any book club favorites that everyone loves that you just hated?

Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens

Well.  It's been more than a month since I posted anything -- I haven't fallen off the face of the earth, I've just been busy, work and travel and the Jane Austen Society Annual General Meeting, which was fabulous.  I've really been wondering if I need to give up blogging for awhile.  But fear not, I have been reading!

Before I give up on blogging, I need to make a case for Barnaby Rudge, probably Dickens' most least-popular work -- yes, less popular even than Martin Chuzzlewit or Dombey and Son, both of which I've read in the past two years.  It's a shame really, because after I finally gave it my full attention, I actually liked BR better than the other two.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Barnaby Rudge was published in 1841, just after The Old Curiosity Shop (one of the most popular) and before Chuzzlewit, one of the least popular.  Dickens was inspired by the works of Sir Walter Scott to write a sweeping historical story -- his only other historical work is A Tale of Two Cities, and I can definitely see in BR glimmers of the great writing to come.  Barnaby Rudge is "A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty," but it's not just a historical novel.  It's about fathers and sons, a double murder, two feuding families, divided lovers, an abduction, even a talking raven -- tons of great stuff, right?

The real Grip the Raven, Dickens' pet, now on view at the Free Library of Philadelphia

It starts out in 1775, in a small village about ten miles or so from London, and much of the action centers around a inn called The Maypole.  John Willet is the proprietor and his son Joe is much-maligned and dissatisfied; there's also another unhappy father and son, the rich and sleazy Mr. Chester and his noble son Edward.  Edward is in love with the local beauty, Emma Haredale, but a long-time feud between the Chesters and the Haredales threatens to separate them forever.  Also, Emma's father was murdered years before under mysterious circumstances, along with his faithful steward Mr. Rudge, father of the eponymous Barnaby, the local village simpleton with a heart of gold, who owns a talking raven, Grip.  We also meet another family, the Vardens.  Gabriel Varden is a locksmith with a shrewish wife, a beautiful, coquettish daughter Dolly; a scheming apprentice, Simon Tappertit; and a shrieking maidservant, Miggs, who provides most of the comic relief.

The first half of the book sets up all these different characters and gives some back story, along with a mysterious stranger.  Then, about halfway through the novel, the action jumps forward in time five years, to the beginning of the "No Popery" riots of 1780, also known as the Gordon Riots, which I'm sorry to say I knew nothing about.  My sincere apologies to any British readers, but is this a subject that anyone ever learned in school?  My shoddy Yank education regarding the 18th century was much more centered on the American Revolution.

If you didn't know either, the Gordon Riots were a backlash against Catholics, that culminated in anti-Catholic mob violence and riots, including a mob of at least 40,000 that marched on Parliament in June of 1780.  Churches, embassy, and prisons were burned, including Newgate.  (If you want to read more about it, click here).

I really think that's one reason Barnaby Rudge isn't popular -- honestly, a lot of people know enough about the French Revolution and the guillotine to make ATOTC a much more compelling subject.  And Barnaby Rudge is a terrible name, right up there with Martin Chuzzlewit.  I know Dickens has a talent for giving his characters goofy names to reflect their personalities, but surely he could have come up with something better!  Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, and even Edwin Drood have mystery, romance, or some other interesting qualities to entice readers.

My biggest problem with this novel is how it shifts.  The first half sets up the mystery and the characters -- there are so many, it's confusing and there really isn't that much development of any of them -- and then -- ta-da!!!  The story jumps forward in time five years, to just before the Gordon Riots, and we get very little information about what's happened to most of the characters.

Don't get me wrong, the part about the riots and the mobs are extremely well-written, and I was riveted -- and I'm normally bored by big action scenes.  Dickens is really good at describing the mobs and the violence, and it's pretty scary.  But I really wanted more about the characters, and the story itself was kind of all over the place.  After the riots, things wrap up very quickly, and I just felt it was uneven.  Having read most of the Dickens canon, I can see hints of all the great stuff to follow -- Bleak House is a great murder mystery, and so many of his later novels have complex plots and multiple characters, plus there's all the great history in A Tale of Two Cities.  (Barnaby Rudge even has a little shout-out to Oliver Twist, with mention of a pick-pockets' gang).

Anyway.  I'm really glad I finished Rudge;  I'm nearing the end of my quest to complete all the works of Dickens -- only three left to go of the major works:  The Old Curiosity Shop, The Pickwick Papers, and The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

Has anyone else read Barnaby Rudge?  What did you think?  Am I crazy to want to complete all of Charles Dickens' works?

The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles

This was one of the books I chose last year for my TBR Challenge, and since it's a neo-Victorian, I thought it would fit in very well with the Victorian Celebration.  Well, yes and no.  It's set in the Victorian era, though it was written 100 years later, in 1969, and even though Fowles does a very good job of writing in the Victorian style, it's definitely a modern novel, or post-modern one.  In other words, it's very meta and the ending just confused the heck out of me.

I suppose I'm getting ahead of myself.  Ostensibly, this is the story of a love triangle between Charles Smithson, an idle gentlemen in his early thirties, the heir apparent to a title and grand estates; his fiancee Ernestina, the sweet but spoiled only daughter of a rich tradesman; and the eponymous French Lieutenant's Woman, Sarah Woodruff (the French Lieutenant himself is only mentioned in passing, so don't worry about him).   Ernestina is staying with her aunt in Lyme a few months before her marriage to Charles, and he's come down to Lyme to visit her and poke around looking for fossils (the same ones discussed at length in Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier, which I read several months ago).

One day while Charles and Ernestina are out walking out on the famous Cobb, Charles sees a beautiful and mysterious woman, staring at the sea.  She's a local eccentric known as the French Lieutenant's Woman -- apparently the Lieutenant was a shipwreck survivor and she fell in love with him while nursing him back to health.  She had planned to run off with him, but instead he left without her and ruined her reputation.  Sarah is employed as a companion by a nasty and pious rich woman who likes to torture the less fortunate, and she's forbidden to go out walking to the sea or the woods, but she defies her mistress and keeps running into Charles.  Charles then becomes obsessed with her, which complicates his engagement, as you can well imagine.

This story starts out as a fairly straightforward Victorian melodrama, but after a few chapters, it becomes apparent that it's more than that.  The omniscient narrator becomes more and more involved in the story, addressing the reader directly and reminding us that this is a modern book, with references to the present day and how Victorians were so different, unable to imagine television and computers and whatnot.  He starts putting in witty asides and footnotes and whole histories of other people, to try and show us how the Victorian mind worked and how different things are in the present (that is, the late 1960s).

The famous Cobb at Lyme Regis

I liked this book but at some points I did get very annoyed by the narrator, who seemed rather smug and condescending to the reader.  I assume Charles' attraction to Sarah was supposed to symbolize the break with traditional repressive Victorian society and desire for freedom.  (He's also a lazy snob, and I don't think he's ever worked a day in his life.)

One thing that really bothered me was I found the novel extremely sexist -- nearly all the female characters were either manipulative, gold-diggers or looking for husbands, with the exception of Ernestina's aunt who seemed genuinely kind.  There's a lot of discussion about hysterical females which I found really off-putting -- I'm sure Fowles is trying to show how modern he is, but since it was written  during the late 1960s, during the women's movement, I can't help but wonder if he's taking shots at feminism.

Also, I found the ending rather confusing.  I guess post-modern meta-fiction is just not my thing.  Still, overall I liked this book, though I wasn't what I expected at all.  I'd seen the movie years ago but I barely remembered anything about it, which I suppose is a good thing.

Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham

"Insensibly he formed the most delightful habit in the world, the habit of reading: he did not know that thus he was he was providing himself with a refuge from all the distress of life; he did not know either that he was creating for himself an unreal world which would make the real world of every day a source of bitter disappointment." 

Of Human Bondage is one of the very first classics I ever read for pleasure, and I still love it.  I first read it when I was eighteen, a freshman in college.  It was forced upon me by a boy in my dorm, who lived down the hall and on whom I had an enormous crush.  He insisted I take it home over Christmas break and read it.  How could I refuse?  Well, I did end up loving the book, though things never worked out between the two of us.

Years later, I've read lots more classics for pleasure, including several by Maugham, but I never picked it up again -- I had so many other books I wanted to read!  It's actually been so long since I read it that I could barely remember the story any more.  I didn't even remember how it ended!   Finally, I decided it was time for a reread.  Last fall we nominated books for 2012 our classics group at the library, and I put this on my list -- I wanted so much to discuss it with other people!  Well, wouldn't you know it, things came up and I had to miss the discussion, but I couldn't resist reading the book again anyway (I also added it to my Classics Club and Chunkster Challenge lists).  And I am pleased to report that I still loved this book the second time around, maybe even more so than the first time.

For those who aren't familiar with the book, it's a bildungsroman, a coming-of-age story, loosely based on the life of the author W. Somerset Maugham.  (It's a long book, so I'll try to give the setup without too many spoilers). The main character is Philip Carey, a young man growing up with a clubfoot in the late Victorian period.  He's orphaned as a small boy and sent to live with his uncle, a strict vicar in a small town in Kent.  His aunt is kind but doesn't know much about raising children.  Philip is a bright boy but mostly bullied by his schoolmates because of his disability, and his teachers seem pretty heartless.

However, Philip is a bright boy, and when he's older, he goes off to boarding school, and his teachers expect great things of him.  His uncle expects him to go off to Oxford and then take orders, but Philip has doubts about religion.  Instead, he goes to Germany for a year to study before returning to England.  Philip has a small inheritance, and tries various professions. He spends two years as an art student in Paris before he realizes he'll never be anything but a mediocre artist, so he finally decides to follow in his late father's footsteps and become a doctor.

One fateful night in a cafe, Philip meets a waitress named Mildred, and it's the beginning of an obsessive relationship.  Mildred is really toxic, one of the most obnoxious characters I've ever met in literature.  The book deals with their relationship and Philip's personal growth along the way.   Will Philip marry this horrible woman?  Will she put him in the poorhouse with her greed?   "He did not care if she was heartless, vicious and vulgar, stupid and grasping, he loved her.  He would rather have misery with one than happiness with the other."

Bette Davis as Mildred and Leslie Howard as Philip in the 1934 film adaptation

This book is more than 600 pages, but I breezed through it in about five days.  I couldn't wait to find out what was going to happen, though I did have to grit my teeth and power through a few times -- Mildred is so awful, I really wanted to reach into the book and throttle her!  And Philip deserved a few good smacks upside the head a couple of times too.  But I really did love this book.  Philip's personal journey is really interesting and I got really caught up with it emotionally, I was really on the edge of my seat.  And I found the writing to be just wonderful and insightful.  Apparently Maugham considered himself among the best of the second-rate writers, but I disagree.  I kept finding passages throughout the book that I loved, and kept marking them with sticky notes (since I hate writing in my books).

I also loved reading about Philip's year in Germany, and his attempts to be an artist.  A couple of times Philip mentions a stockbroker fellow who chucked it all to be an artist in the South Seas, which is obviously Paul Gauguin -- who shows up in his 1919 novel, The Moon and Sixpence -- another Maugham novel which I read years ago and have essentially forgotten.  I'll have to reread that one again as well.

Has anyone else read this book?  Did you love it as much as me?  Any more Maugham you can recommend?  And have any of you reread a favorite classic after a long period?  Did you still love it or was it just not the same?

The Victorian Chaise Longue by Marghanita Laski

So, another Persephone, but also, a neo-Victorian, and it counts for the RIP Challenge!  I'm killing three birds with one stone, plus it was only 120 pages!

But seriously, this is one creepy little book.  Our protagonist Melanie is a young married woman living in London, I'm guessing about 1950.  She has a young baby, but has hardly seen him because she is recovering from tuberculosis.  However, her prognosis is good, and until her husband can take her to Switzerland, she is recovering at home.  In fact, her doctor has said it's okay for her to get out of bed and move into another room.  Melanie is finally going to be able to look out the window, lying on an ugly Victorian chaise-longue she bought at an antique store when she was newly pregnant, shopping for a cradle.  She never actually used the chaise longue because she became ill.

However, things take a turn for the bizarre -- on her first afternoon lying on this antique piece of furniture, Melanie closes her eyes for a nap and awakens in Victorian England, lying on the same hideous chaise longue.  She's being attended by her bitter, cold sister Adelaide, and her name is now Milly.  She is upset and confused and her sister is angry and hateful, and though she doesn't understand what's happening, she recognizes pictures in the room, and names, and has snippets from memories of people she doesn't even know.

A Victorian Chaise Longue, not so ugly

This book is strange and unsettling -- without giving too much away, Milly's sister is angry with her and she doesn't know why, but Milly's life has strange parallels to Melanie's.  She doesn't know if she's been reincarnated or remembering a past life or if she's dead.  Some secrets are revealed at the end, but there are a lot of unanswered questions.  Though I was lucky to get a 1953 edition through interlibrary loan for free, I really wish I'd bought a copy of the recent Persephone edition because it has an introduction by P. D. James.  Persephone Books is now hosting an online discussion group, and if they continue in order of publication, The Victorian Chaise Longue should be the November read and hopefully someone in the blogsophere can answer all my questions.  It's a creepy little read and I highly recommend it if you can get your hands on a copy.


Have you reviewed this book on your blog?  Please tell me in the comment section and I'll link to your review.

The Old Wives Tale: A Forgotten Treasure for BBAW

Sorry for the late posting, but I have a book I really want to share:  The Old Wives' Tale by Arnold Bennett.  Okay, how many of you have heard of this book?

(crickets chirping)

See, I was right.  I'd never heard of it either, and then a few years ago I decided to try and read all the Modern Library Top 100 books (which is a misleading title:  it's actually the Top 100 Books of the 20th Century. Though it was selected in 1990s.  Go figure).   Anyway, this book made the list at #87 (above Call of the Wild and Midnight's Children!) and I was poking around the library one day before a Christmas trip and, on a whim, I decided to take it along.

I was so pleasantly surprised, it was wonderful!  Published in 1908, it spans 70 years from the mid-1800s to the early 1900s in England and France.  It's the story of two sisters, Sophie and Constance, who are raised in an industrial town in the north.  (Bennett wrote other books in his fictional Five Towns, which are based on the Pottery towns near Stoke-on-Trent).  Their mother owns a draper's shop, and the story follows the very different lives of the two sisters from their youth through old age.

I expected this to be a difficult Victorian-style read, but it wasn't, not in the least.  It was quick and absorbing, with none of the flowery language or convoluted plots I was anticipating.  I suppose it would be considered an early neo-Victorian since most of it is set during that period.  It was an easy and fast read -- it's about 600 pages long and I think I read it all in two days (though I did spend a fair amount of time in airports).

Arnold Bennett wrote quite a few books, including a non-fiction work called How to Live on 24 Hours a Day, an early self-help book,  but most of them are out of print.  Well, at least this one is still available though I doubt many bookstores carry it on a regular basis -- if you wanted to buy it you'd probably have to order it online.  My library here in Texas doesn't even have this book, sigh.  However, the nearby community college has several of Bennett's other works, which I have just added to my ever-growing to-read list.  If you're interested in the Victorian period but have fear of Victorian writers, I highly recommend this book.