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Virginia Woolf – The Voyage Out
I do not know much about mothering a newborn, but I am fairly certain that tiny people + Virginia Woolf do not mix. Virginia needs silence and contemplation and time to think deep thoughts. Tiny people need feeding. I hear they are not much with the silence either. So. If I want my yearly Virginia fix, I’d better get it now.
What I wanted to read was Mrs Dalloway, but the library did not have it. So I chose The Voyage Out, because Mrs Dalloway appears in it. This was not a success. It was a bit like finding The Empire Strikes Back is out of stock at the video shop and so renting The Phantom Menance instead, just because Anakin Skywalker is in it.
Ok, it is not really like that. But if you and I were characters in a Virginia Woolf novel, that is probably the sort of non-sequiter I would come out with. We would be having tea, and talking about the nature of truth and I would say something completely random, and you would be like, that is absolutely not what we were discussing, but ok, because we are characters layered with meaning and through this disconnected conversation we will convey to the reader how people constantly fail to understand one another.
Though perhaps we Woolf people would find it easier to understand one another if we made an effort to actually listen to what the other person is saying, instead of just coming out with whatever is in our heads? Example. Mrs Thornbury says to Mr Hirst “I’m sure you read everything” and he says “The worst of coming from the upper classes is that one’s friends are never killed in railway accidents.” Or Mr Hewett asks Rachel if the vote will do her any good – and she replies, “Not to me – but I play the piano”. Rachel, what? These are not mutually exclusive things. You can put an x in the box and still tinkle away to your heart’s content.
Right, so the story. Rachel Vinrace has been raised in almost total ignorance, reaching the age of 24 without knowing how babies are born. On The Voyage Out to South America, she becomes enchanted with Mr and Mrs Dalloway; even though Mr Dalloway is the King of Smug. He gives her a massive snog and she is all, MEN KISS WOMEN, what? Her Aunt Helen decides to rescue her from this ridiculous innocence by showing her some Real Life. Real Life means living in a very nice villa in Unidentified South American country, where they hang out with the Brits from the local hotel. Every man that Rachel meets also wants to rescue her from the ridiculous innocence, though their idea of doing so is to force-feed her their favourite books. Rachel spends most of her time wondering what love is. She may or may not find it. She cannot decide because it does not feel like Wuthering Heights or Man and Superman. So they go on another voyage instead.
There are obviously Woolfy type ideas in early form here – especially the differences between men and women, and the tensions between art and life. ‘Think of the human beings first and let the abstract ideas take care of themselves’ says the rather clunky Evelyn. But they are not as subtle or as well-expressed as in other Woolfs. The men were so overbearing and self-important as to be caricatures, and say patronising things like ‘It’s awfully difficult to tell about women, how much, I mean, is due to lack of training and how much is native incapacity’. Which I suppose is the sort of thing that they might have said in Edwardian days, but I found it surprising that none of the women offer so much as a squeak in response.
Mostly, though, I didn’t like The Voyage Out because Rachel is so unbelievably blank. The men find this exciting; they see her as full of possibilities, just waiting to be uncovered. I just find her baffling. Mr Hirst asks ‘Does she reason, does she feel, or is she merely a kind of footstool?’ I say, footstool. Her Aunt Helen is far more interesting. In her own way, she is just as vague as Rachel, but Helen’s vagueness is borne out of the confidence of not caring what people think and sailing on serenely through life. Rachel’s vagueness is plain vagueness.
Also, you should not take advice on child-rearing from Rachel. ‘Their daughter should be required from infancy to gaze at a large square of cardboard, painted blue, to suggest thoughts of infinity, for women were grown too practical’. Again, what?
Daphne Du Maurier – Jamaica Inn
Dear Daphne,
I feel like we should be better friends than we are. You are definitely a sister, and you enjoy the wry asides, and you frequently use the word ‘mizzling’. It’s mizzling here today, and I know exactly what you mean.
But you are constantly beating me with the macabre sledgehammer and to be honest, it is a bit tiring. I like my suspense in increments, with pauses for tea and to give the old nerves a break. Jamaica Inn was too relentless for me. You started off emotionally fraught and got more and more and more feverish until I WAS BEING SHRIEKED AT IN CAPITAL LETTERS WITH ALL THE HYSTERIA FOR A HUNDRED PAGES.
I liked Mary Yelland, your main character, very much. She was resourceful and calculating and practical, and never stuck for an idea. I felt you didn’t give her enough credit. Surely she would have noticed that the Reverend was Not All He Seemed? You laid on the clues thick enough. I also didn’t believe that she would have got so mixed up with Jem so quickly, even though you did go on about his graceful hands. Why make her into an independent heroine only to have her magnetised and hypnotised by a rugged horse thief?
Still, I liked the way that you were not afraid to write about general creepiness and the most horrible things you can imagine. I imagine that you raised some eyebrows in 1934. You are a little bit Wuthering Height-y, and a little bit Lord of the Flies-y but you are also scarily original.
Also, I have learned that the song ‘Jamaica Inn’ by Tori Amos is nothing to do with your book. Her song is all twinkly and gentle and even though she wakes up to find the pirates have come, they are no way as bloodthirsty and drunken as your characters.
Lets hang out again soon and see if we get on better.
Lyndsey
In Which I Meet Some Heroes and Make an Idiot Out of Myself
So I was going to write a post called ‘How I Live Now’ and then I realised that it would not be fair to rip off Meg Rosoff without telling you about that time when I met her and acted like a moron.
First, who is surprised by that? No one? That’s what I thought.
Second, this was actually just one in a serious of embarrassing author related encounters I had at the Hay Festival.
There was Michelle Magorian – and we were the last people in the queue, so I’m sure she could really have done without three awkward twenty somethings, having just signed approximately four million Goodnight Mr Tom’s for kids. I offered to buy her an ice cream. (It was hot). She politely declined.
Then there was Meg Rosoff. She said ‘but you aren’t a child!’ – which threw me a bit, because that is self-evident. Also, isn’t hello a generally accepted beginning? So I replied in confusion ‘no, but I am growing a child’ – which was also self-evident. And graphic. And WEIRD. She was gracious.
Then there was Melvyn Bragg, which was the worst one of all. There is something about meeting seriously clever and admirable people which just makes me turn into a blithering blatherer. (See also, that time I met Peter Mandelson and didn’t realise he was talking to me).
I don’t even KNOW what I said to him, but now when I think about it, I get hot round the neck, which is a bad sign of repressed embarrassment. Though the guy in front of me said to him, ‘your programme is the highlight of my week’ which is both stalkerish and a sign of needing to get out more, so I probably seemed relatively normal in comparison. I do at least appear sane when encountered after the more blatant lunatics. Um, hooray?
Oh good, I’ve just looked up my review of the event and this was when I forgot how to spell my own name. I need to re-block that out. See how he’s written HAY in big capital letters because I probably can’t read joined-up handwriting? Seems like a fair assumption.
Right, so you’ve got to tell me either the most ridiculous thing you’ve said to an author, or how you manage to remain cool/original when you’ve stood in a queue for an hour.
Alison Weir – Elizabeth the Queen
When you are madly pregnant and on an epic painting spree, it is natural to fall back on old favourites, which means Ye Olde Tudor Tymes. But it was a mistake to think that Any Tudor Will Do, like some medieval Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. Instead of bodices and feasting and jousting, instead I have been reading Proper Historical Information, and more often than not, falling asleep and then waking up with the Spanish Armada stuck to my face. Elizabeth the Queen is pretty good, but timing is everything.
PREVIOUSLY ON YE OLDE TUDOR TIMES: after Henry was done with his wife-massacring, Prince Edward reigned for all of five minutes before going to the great Tudor palace in the sky. Then Queen Mary was all, hurrah, now I can restore Catholicism by burning lots of people and marrying a hugely unpopular Spanish dude who doesn’t love me. And then promptly dies as well.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth has been shipped off to the countryside where she may or may not have been endlessly plotting against Mary and may or may not have been entertaining herself by flirting with her stepmother’s husband (keep up, won’t you?).
When Mary dies, the people are all, ick, another woman, it’s not natural, we like wife-murderers better. So Elizabeth has a tough job on her hands to win them over. Luckily, she is as clever as a clog, and blessed with perhaps the greatest rhetorical ability in English history. When told Mary is dead, for example, she doesn’t just sob or even say ‘about bloody time’ but comes out with ‘this is the Lord’s doing, it is marvellous in our eyes.’ Never stuck for a nice turn of phrase, our Liz.
So, Alison Weir didn’t really tell me anything I didn’t already know, because my Tudor obsession is deep and long lasting. But it’s all covered comprehensively and nicely here. The endless ‘will they, won’t they’ of her relationship with Robert Dudley. Every man and his dog constantly nagging her to marry, until it looks like she might actually do so, and then they are like, woah, we didn’t mean him. Mary, Queen of Scots, lurking ominously in the background, flattering with one hand and plotting with the other. The bad Spanish King Philip on his high horse and moral crusade against the harlot/Queen.
What I found most interesting was Elizabeth’s relationship with the men she liked. She is all YOU MUST LOVE ME AND ONLY ME and they are all – OF COURSE YOUR MAJESTY. Then they immediately run off and get mistresses and heirs and there is weeping and throwing in the Tower, and this happens fifty million times. Seriously, guys, you need to learn from other people’s mistakes.
I could have done with a bit less non-Elizabeth background detail, as I’m more interested in individuals rather than facts about palaces and diet and population changes, but some people like all that. Also, I do not need to be told several times in a chapter that the people saw Elizabeth as a second Deborah or Judith. I heard you the first time, thanks. And a bit more editing wouldn’t have gone amiss. I understand that Elizabeth lived her entire life between a rock and a hard place, but there are other ways of conveying that than with poor sentence structure: ‘Yet Elizabeth had yet to sign the death warrant’. Other words exist.
It took me a month to read 484 pages which is unprecedented, but that is a sign of my current mental state and not a sign of how enjoyable and informative the book is.
Elizabeth Gaskell – Cranford
I have been put off reading any fictional Gaskell for a long time because The Life of Charlotte Bronte is so silly. Oh those motherless children! Isolated on that heathen moor! With that dreadful father and that naughty brother! No wonder Emily grew up a dog-beater with mad staring red-rimmed eyes. Don’t read their books, they couldn’t help themselves!
Erm, what?
Also, there was a time when everyone and their dog was watching the BBC adaptation and for some reason I didn’t.
So I have been MISSING OUT AGAIN.
So, Cranford is a little village in Cheshire in the 1840′s, swarming with genteel women deeply concerned with etiquette and gossip. They are sweet and kind and loyal but they are also FIERCE. You would not mess with a Cranford lady and her cap.
Sometimes there are jolly japes – is this a petticoat or a parrot cage? Oh dear me, the laughs! – and sometimes there are serious breaches of social rules – BREADANDCHEESE in the living room, what is the world coming to? But also there is much poignancy and lost love and family secrets and precarious living. And there is death, all the time. In fact, after about three chapters I was wondering if there would be anyone left by the end, because people catch colds and pop their clogs practically every four pages. These ladies might seem silly to you, Gaskell says, but they are resilient and brave and what else do you want?
Perhaps what I like most is that unlike almost any other novel written before, say, 1964, Cranford does not assume that every single woman is in need of a husband. The men in Cranford are twinkly gents, but they are mostly seen as an inconvenience or a distraction from the real business of living – and marriage itself is positively dangerous.
What I don’t like about my edition is that without warning or explanation, Cranford disappears half way through and instead the town is called Dunford and a doctor is narrating. What? Where’s Miss Matty gone?
Also, why is Mrs Gaskell called Mrs Gaskell? I don’t call Charlotte Bronte, Miss Bronte or Charles Dickens, Mr Dickens. (Perhaps I should?) Is it just because she was the only 19th century married novelist?
Margaret Atwood – Alias Grace
About eight years ago, I read pretty much everything Margaret Atwood had written and loved it all apart from one book.
Ever since, I have been periodically thinking, must read that again and see what I was missing. So I took it with me to the Hay Festival, sat down in the deckchair, started reading and then….Oh. This is not the one I meant. What I MEANT to re-read was Cat’s Eye. Oops.
But never mind, Alias Grace will be fine too.
Alias Grace is based on the true story of a double murder in the 1840′s. A servant called James McDermott went at his employers with an axe and a gun: chop, bang, done. But did Grace Marks help him? Did she egg him on? Did she make him do it?
The public wants to think so, because a salacious housemaid misusing her feminine wiles is a much sexier proposition than a boring old servant going off his head. But other people want to believe in feminine innocence and unspoiledness and purity. Grace isn’t telling what happened, because she conveniently can’t remember. So they bring in Dr Jordan to use his new-fangled modern scientific methods to try and dig up the truth using vegetables as suggestive props.
Alias Grace is perfectly readable; full of multiple layers and ambigiuity and feminist social critique, as you would expect from the Goddess Atwood. But it is not my favourite Atwood. It’s just not as subtle as some of her other books. Not one single man is able to see Grace without falling in lust and wanting to fiddle around with her petticoats. Yes ok, this is a stuffy society riddled with sexual hypocrisy and double standards, I get it already.
There are a few too many portentous and meaning-stuffed dreams for me – and the denouement/explanation is a little on the ludicrous side. Perhaps that’s the point – you are never supposed to be quite sure what happened – but I’m not that interested in mystical, spiritual seances and hysteria. Alias Grace reminds me a little of Sarah Waters’ Affinity, but I much prefer that book. It was more spooky and thrilling.
On the back of this book, a critic has written ‘this is surely as far as a novel can go.’ What is this supposed to mean? Rubbish.
Wilkie Collins – The Moonstone
I am on something of a mystery-suspense-investigatey roll at the moment; so might as well go straight to the source: the Grandaddy of All Detective Fiction, the Godfather of All The Genre. Also, extreme enjoyment potential beckons, because, blimey, did I ever love The Woman in White last summer.
So, go Victorian melodrama go! First we are in India, where a bad and evil dude has stolen the priceless and sacred Moonstone in a theiving colonial way and has carried it off to Blighty. Unfortunately, the precious jewel comes complete with three relentless Diamond-worshippers who will STOP AT NOTHING to get it back (which is obviously meant to be scarey, but at the same time, you are a bit like….well, it is theirs, and it was stolen from them in a murderous rampage, so fair enough.) In a final act of random revenge, the evil colonel bequeaths it to his innocent and beautiful niece. Then – this is not a spoiler because otherwise there would be no story – the Moonstone is stolen again. And then the rest of the book is whodunnit. Very Elaborate and Long-Winded whodunnit.
This being the Victorian times part one: you have to get past all the references to anyone who isn’t white being automatically suspicious, and all women being flaky and without principles. Wilkie does manage to break free of his cliches long enough to have an ominous looking character turn out to be a hero, which was a minor triumph of stereotype-smashing.
This being the Victorian times part two: there are lots of cousins falling in love with each other. We have to accept this as part of the Victorian deal rather than just thinking, ick.
One thing that does irritate me – this is not a Collins-specific complaint, but a general genre-flaw – is when a character says: ‘the only thing I could do was….’ and your immediate thought is – no it wasn’t. Then your brain spends five minutes thinking of other things they couldn’t have done, while your eyes continue to automatically read. Now, not only are you irritated with the character, you also have missed out important plot points.
It is most distracting.
This was not as absorbing and addictive as The Woman in White, but they are different kettles of mystery-fish. The plot skated too close to utterly absurd in places, rather than being purely heart-stopping, can’t-wait-to-find-out what happens next. I managed to put it down thirty pages before the end, just after a supposedly massive cliff-hanger, which shows that it didn’t completely monopolise my attention.
Also, there are no characters who are quite as crazy-awesome as Count Fosco or Marion. Sergeant Cuff is okay, I guess, though he is not does not quite Define the Detective For-Evermore, in the way that I was expecting. My favourite character was by far the kind-hearted, Robinson-Crusoe-obsessed butler.
Still, kind of fun and a good start to the summer-reading.
Now that I have done the big blockbuster Collins, can someone tell me whether the other mini-Collins’s are worth a go?
Some Thoughts on Willa Cather (Without Having Read Her)
One of the things I enjoy most about reading book blogs is having authors who would otherwise be floating around in the grey bits at the sides of my conscious mind being dragged squarely into my field of vision. Willa Cather is one of these authors.
image from www.willacather.org
She appears to have been required teenage reading for many of you, around the same time that I was being force-fed Jane Austen (I love Pride and Prejudice as much as anyone, but having to study it for FOUR YEARS betrays a huge lack of imagination on behalf of my educators).
So, Willa. I’ve got the Hermione Lee biography but I’m trying to resist reading it until I’ve at least given My Antonia and O Pioneers a try.
However, I’m so excited by my idea of her that I’m worried she may be crushed by the weight of my expectations. To me, she is space, and desolate beauty, and emptiness for miles and miles. My only other experience with these ideas in art is….well, Laura Ingalls Wilder. And ‘Gold Rush Brides’ by 10, 000 Maniacs. Erm, not the same.
These are simply not traditions that I’ve grown up with. Not all of the ‘English’ English literature is repressed emotions at teatime, but there’s definitely a prevailing wind in that direction. When we do take a walk on the wild side, we get Wuthering Heights, which didn’t exactly go down well at the time.
This is about the landscape I recognise as well as the literature I know. Personally, I love the English countryside more than anything – the Lake District, the Peak District, Dorset, Hampshire – and there’s nowhere in the world I’d rather live….but there’s no denying that it’s just Not As Big as all those prairies. They are always going to be more contained and fenced in and safer. There’s not the possibility of getting epicly lost that I imagine about the American mid-west.
So tell me! Should I burden Willa with these high hopes? Or do I have hold of the wrong end of the Willa-stick?
Allegra Goodman – The Cookbook Collector
Intelligent contemporary women’s fiction! You are my thing. And here you are, all wrapped up in this ever-so-slightly misleading cover. I wanted to devour you, which is appropriate considering you are named The Cookbook Collector and there are many ever-so-slightly-naughty descriptions of figs and peaches and cheese in this book.
All the advertising for The Cookbook Collector says that it’s about two opposite sisters, which I find a bit tired. Sisters can like different things and pursue different careers and not have to be set up as rivals. In fact, isn’t it more likely that sisters would be rivals if they pursued the same men and jobs and interests?
Anyway, here are the two sisters, Jess, Miss Tree-Hugger, and Emily, Miss Computer-Brains. Emily has a suitable-on-the-surface boyfriend who is really an arrogant idiot; and Jess has an unsuitable hippy boyfriend and an employer slavering all over her while simultaneously belittling her. There isn’t really a story so much as a ‘here’s how their lives unfold’. But we do not necessarily need a compelling and original plot, because we are talking computers in the late 90′s and so we know that Emily’s apparently unshakeable company is going to end up being the house that was built on sand. Meanwhile, Jess is pursuing the mysterious cookbook collector and working out why he keeps faintly creepy drawings of a naked lady in between the pages of priceless recipes. At heart, it’s about choices and doing the right thing – or not – and there are multiple narrators a go-go to keep things interesting.
I really enjoyed The Cookbook Collector - despite the fact that there were a few too many surplus characters, and a coincidence which was both so implausible and so unnecessary that the whole ending was nearly spoiled.
It is ironic, is it not, that we learned nothing from the dot com bubble and went on to make a new bubble out of housing? I wonder what the next one will be.
Kate Summerscale – The Suspicions of Mr Whicher
In one of those ‘brain, you are barking up the wrong tree’ moments, I have had Stevie Wonder’s ‘Superstitious’ in my head since finishing this book. Brain, wouldn’t ‘Suspicious Minds’ be more appropriate? Mr Whicher isn’t even superstitious: he is a man of Science and Deduction and Logic, though he is not averse to a Good Old Fashioned Hunch either.
This book is yet another reminder of the fact that my own hunches are very often wide of the mark. I can’t remember why I didn’t read this book a couple of years ago when everyone else was reading it – I think some combination of the fact that everyone else was reading it (stupid) I wasn’t a big fan of detection, crime or suspense (stupid) and the fact that I entirely failed to understand what it was about (stupid, stupid, stupid). I also think I thought it was a fictionalised version of a true crime and I like my genres straight up, no mixer. Preconceptions and prejudices, you have stopped me from reading The Suspicions of Mr Whicher for far too long. Will you please just go away?
So here we are in mid-19th century England, where Englishmen are proudly surveying their dominion and twiddling their whiskers; so you know All Unholy Manner of Sin is lurking just below. Cue gruesome murder of innocent child.
This is also the moment in which the science of detection is being invented, and detective fiction fever is sweeping the nation.
Mr Whicher mixes up these two worlds: he’s a highly respected and very successful investigator who influences Wilkie Collins (The Woman in White is this years big hit) and Charles Dickens (Inspector Bucket being the first fictional detective). He goes off to investigate said gruesome murder and uncovers a hotbed of sordidness and a blank-eyed army of creepy children.
What I found most interesting was what the book had to say about women at this time and place: more specifically, how society couldn’t make up it’s bloody mind about them. Are they angels in the house? Are they demons, likely be driven mad at any point by their sexy thoughts? Are they pure-hearted victims, likely to be locked away and exploited by doctors, detectives and other authoritative men? Or are they able to exploit their respectability to manipulate the innocent darling men? One of the most ridiculous moments comes when the police are too embarrassed to look at or even talk about, ladies underwear, incase they go blind or something, and so crucial evidence is lost. Also, there were many moments of hollow laughter. I’m glad we’ve learned so much since the 1850s that we no longer experience vigilante justice, or rumours turning up in the press as gospel, or police incompetance and corruption. Ho ho ho.
As you would expect, the TV adaptation boiled Mr Whicher down to its essence – so it was much more a straightforward whodunnit, less about the meaning of the murder than the murder itself. In many ways, this worked really well, because all the spare children and surplus servants were cut out (Victorians, did you really have to name ALL your daughters Mary?) and the narrative was much more straightforward – there was a lot of finicketing around a nightdress which was a lot easier to follow on TV than in the book. It was much more a battle of wills between your standard, brilliant but flawed TV detective, and creepy, intense anti-heroine. Fewer hidden depths and layers, but very enjoyable, nonetheless.
The appearance of Malcolm Tucker as Mr Kent was a disconcerting at first, as I kept expecting him to start screaming the f-word down the phone at Mr Whicher, a la The Thick of It. But in fact, this turned out to be an inspired bit of casting. Mr Whicher was much less an all-round super-detective and Mr Kent was much more of a quivering lipped, emotions thinly hidden, sympathetic gent; making this a much more nuanced duel of the Victorian gentlemen than in the book. Greater emotional complexity on TV than in a book? Who’d have thought it. Well done, ITV. Keep this up, and I might lose my prejudices against you too.
