Balcombe Street home – Inigo Estate Agency (via rightmove.co.uk)
Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Sharlene from Real Life Reading that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries.
New Zealand Inheritance by Essie Summers – my encounters with Summers have bounced around through her five decade career but I’ve finally got my hands on this, her very first novel from 1957.
Mr Finchley Discovers His England by Victor Canning – the 1934 bestseller about a middle-aged clerk trying to take his first holiday. Barb reviewed this a few years ago and it’s been at the back of my mind since.
Borders by Thomas King, illustrated by Natasha Donovan – a graphic-novel adaptation of an old short story by King, about a boy and his mother who get caught in limbo at a quiet border crossing between Canada and the US when they assert their identity as Blackfoot instead.
Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan – Sharlene’s library was WAY faster to add this to their collection – she reviewed it back in March but I’ve only just got my hands on it.
After the Romanovs by Helen Rappaport – a new release from Rappaport is always something to be excited about and this look at Russian exiles in Paris is no exception.
The Meet Cute Method by Portia MacIntosh – I thoroughly enjoyed my first encounter with MacIntosh (Will They, Won’t They) and look forward to reading more of her romantic comedies.
What did you pick up this week?
Posted in Library Loot | 4 Comments »
Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Sharlene from Real Life Reading that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries.
Sharlene has the Mr Linky this week.
What did you pick up this week?
Posted in Library Loot | 4 Comments »
On the basis that done is better than perfect, I thought I’d share some short thoughts on books I read last month.
2022 has been an exhausting year so far, particularly with the war in Ukraine stirring up lots of difficult emotions among Czech family and friends who remembered what it was like when their country was invaded by Russians (with far less deadly results but two further decades of repression). Between that and the usual work chaos and the first significant easing here of Covid restrictions and ongoing health tests to rule out scary things (result: scary things have been ruled out), it’s all been a bit much and I’ve found myself reaching for lighter and lighter comfort reads. Thank goodness for books.
Donut Fall in Love by Jackie Lau (2021) – I kicked April off by finishing this cute Asian rom-com set in Toronto about an actor (Ryan – the default name for handsome Canadian actors as the characters joke) who, preparing to compete on a celebrity baking show, solicits local baker Lindsay into giving him some lessons. Both have lost parents – Ryan very recently – and I loved how much their relationships with their families were part of the story.
Iona Iverson’s Rules for Commuting by Clare Pooley (2022 – alternate title The People on Platform Five) – this was an ARC from NetGalley and kept me happily occupied during my flight from Vancouver to Palm Springs at the start of the month (my first plane ride in more than two years!). I love Pooley’s debut novel, The Authenticity Project, and have read it multiple times since Covid hit so was delighted to find this to be another wonderfully warm story about community and connection.
Here she looks at what happens a group of commuters, startled after an incident on their train one morning, dare to actually speak to one another (Londoners, are you cringing at the thought?). At the heart of the group is stylish, flamboyant, and unapologetic Iona, who soon sets the example that draws sweet Emmie, helpful Sanjay, bullied Martha, and burnt-out Piers together. Following them as they help one another and end up changing their own lives over the course of several months made me long for the end of work-from-home and the chance of making lucky, life-changing connections of my own over the morning commute.
This is being released at the end of this month in the UK and early June in North America.
Girl, Unframed by Deb Caletti (2020) – Caletti was recommended in Nancy Pearl’s Book Crush (focused on children’s and YA books) and I’m still making up my mind about her. This thriller-like novel follows sixteen-year-old Sydney as she leaves her Pacific Northwest boarding school to spend the summer with her actress mother in San Francisco in a mansion by China Beach. The house is shared with her mother’s new boyfriend, Jake, who, like all men, is suddenly paying Sydney far too much attention that she doesn’t know how to respond to. There is a body at the end (hence me calling this a thriller) but the focus is on Sydney trying to make sense of how her now adult body is perceived and how she feels about that. The emotions and confusion ring true but it all feels a bit after-school-special-like.
52 Ways to Walk by Annabel Streets (2022) – such a fun book to dip in and out of! Streets proposes 52 different inspirations for walkers – one to try each week. Whether that is walking backwards, at altitude, in the dark, in the rain, while singing, or while staying silent, Streets is full of interesting ideas and, more importantly, all the reasons why its beneficial to give each option a try. I loved this and am certain other walkers would be equally fascinated. Annabel Streets also publishes as Annabel Abbs and her recent memoir/group biography Windswept: Walking the Paths of Trailblazing Women is high on my wishlist.
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus (2022) – an amusing, sweet novel set in the 1960s about a female chemist turned unconventional television cooking show host and unlikely empowerment icon.
French Braid by Anne Tyler (2022) – I always forget how much I like Anne Tyler until I read one of her books again. This wonderful short novel follows the members of the Garrett family from the 1950s – when April, Lily, and David are children on a family vacation – until the summer of 2020 when they are grandparents dealing with Covid lockdowns. Tyler pops us in and out of the lives of them, their parents (Robin and Mercy), and their own children. The result is a novel that feels composed of wonderfully rich short stories, full of incredibly relatable family dynamics and miscommunications.
I especially loved this passage:
What nobody understood about David, with the possible exception of [his wife] Greta, was that he had suffered a very serious loss in his life. Two losses, in fact. Two very dear children: Emily and Nicholas. It was true that these days there happened to be two very dear grown-ups who were also named Emily and Nicholas, but they weren’t the same people. It was just as if those children had died. He’d been in mourning ever since.
Again, Rachel by Marian Keyes (2022) – Rachel Walsh is back! (As are all the other Walshes, which made me remember how much I dislike most of them.) Rachel’s Holiday is Keyes’ most iconic book and we meet up with Rachel twenty plus years after. She is now a counsellor at the same addition clinic where she was treated, having moved home to Ireland from New York after splitting from her husband, Luke. But Luke’s mother has just died and he is home, bringing up questions of why their marriage fell apart and forcing Rachel to face up to what happened. The genius of Rachel’s Holiday was the revelation of Rachel as an unreliable narrator so to find her unreliable again is not entirely a shock. Keyes handles it cannily but the overall impact was good, not great.
A Song for Summer by Eva Ibbotson (1997) – I am alarmed to realise that this is the Ibbotson novel I have reread the most over the last few years, though I consider it the weakest of her adult books (see earlier review). But like all of her books it is such satisfying escapism and there is something about the setting – an eccentric boarding school in a pink schloss on the sunny shore of a Carinthian lake, surrounded by fragrant flowers and staffed by an earnest but largely incompetent group of dreamers – that I find irresistible. Our Czech hero Marek remains absurd – handsome and good at everything – but I don’t care. It’s still a delight.
Which Way is Home? by Maria Kiely (2020) – speaking of Czechs (and when am I not, really?), I was terribly intrigued when Constance mentioned this children’s novel in her March reading round up as it follows a family fleeing Czechoslovakia in 1948 (inspired by the author’s mother’s experiences). My mother left in 1968 but several family members were part of the exodus in 1948 so I was interested to see how Kiely handled it. The result was disappointing and showed no storytelling skill at all – we hear exactly what Anna, our young heroine, feels without ever seeing her feel it. It’s the cardinal sin: too much telling and no showing. The use of punctuation is also confusing inconsistent. Czech words are used with proper accents but names are presented without the needed accents – very annoying.
Wild Child by Patrick Barkham (2020) – an interesting and deeply personal look at how children relate to and need nature in their lives, blending research with observations of Barkham’s own three children and his experiences volunteering at a local forest school.
Madame de Pompadour by Nancy Mitford (1954) – something I actually managed to review!
Bachelors Galore by Essie Summer (1958) – those who caught this in my “Library Loot” post were deeply entertained by the title – and who wouldn’t be? Our heroine Marty is emigrating from England to New Zealand when she clashes with Philip Griffiths, who misunderstood a joke he overheard her making and is convinced she is coming out to find one of the fabled rich bachelor farmers the papers are full of. As per usual with Summers, there’s needless misdirection and silliness but also an enterprising, hardworking heroine and a happy ending. I especially loved the section where a number of the characters go on holiday to the Marlborough Sounds as this area is on high on my to-visit list when I eventually make it to New Zealand and Summers is so good at beautiful descriptions of the country.
Dedicated by Pete Davis (2021) – a soundly supported plea for people to commit themselves – to people, places and causes – rather than indulge in endless browsing, both to better their own lives and society as a whole. Definitely a case of preaching to the choir but it’s stayed in my mind as I’ve been reading and watching programs since and thinking about the years people have dedicated to pursuing things they are passionate about (especially true watching the documentary “Navalny” recently on CNN).
Will They, Won’t They? by Portia MacIntosh (2021) – two rom-coms in one month featuring famous actors! In this case, our heroine is an actress returning home to Yorkshire after her character is killed off on a Game of Thrones-esque show. She’s soon drawn into family and community life and finds herself headlining the local Christmas panto. This was on Jo Walton’s March reading list and just as fun as she promised.
To Bring You Joy by Essie Summers (1985) – Monique is gifted a significant amount of money by a dear aunt with the only condition being that Monique use it in a way that will “bring you joy”. Rather than set out on world travels, she leaves Christchurch for the Banks Peninsula (also high on my to-see list!) to help two old ladies turn their home into a museum of the peninsula’s early French settlers. After working in antiques for almost a decade, Monique is knowledgeable – and driven by the private knowledge that her dear grandfather was the beloved younger brother of these ladies who ran away after a fight with their father and eventually started a new life in Australia.
There is – of course – a love interest (Eduoard – because everyone in this book has French heritage and if you have French heritage you MUST have a French name. No exceptions allowed) and too many silly secrets. The silliness rating was higher than usual here, making it one of my less successful encounters with Summers.
The Blue Bedroom and Other Stories by Rosamunde Pilcher (1985) – I’ve had only unsuccessful experiences with Pilcher’s novels (I consistently want to throw them against walls. Or perhaps out to sea) but recently picked up A Place Like Home, a collection of her short stories, and was surprised how much I enjoyed them. That encouraged me to track down this earlier collection, which, ultimately, felt frothier and less memorable but still pleasant.
Posted in Annabel Streets, Anne Tyler, Bonnie Garmus, Clare Pooley, Deb Caletti, Essie Summers, Eva Ibbotson, Fiction, Jackie Lau, Maria Kiely, Marian Keyes, Nancy Mitford, Non-fiction, Patrick Barkham, Pete Devis, Portia MacIntosh, Rosamunde Pilcher | 6 Comments »
Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Sharlene from Real Life Reading that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries.
Goblin Hill by Essie Summers – I have literally no idea what most Essie Summers books are about when I beg the ILL folks to track them down for me (New Zealand! Romance! This is generally enough) but that’s okay because 90% of them are all the same story, just with minor variations! This definitely sounds like one of the 90%: On the death of her parents, Faith discovered that she was not their real daughter at all, but adopted, and her real parents were still alive. Her father was now in New Zealand, and Faith could not rest until she had gone in search of him. Yet Gareth Morgan, her father’s grim stepson, could not forget the old family scandal that had almost ruined his own parents’ life – and he could not forgive Faith for it either.
A White Bird Flying by Bess Streeter Aldrich – I read and enjoyed A Lantern in Her Hand for the first time this year and was intrigued to discover it had a sequel.
We Don’t Know Ourselves by Fintan O’Toole – a personal history of modern Ireland
Free by Lea Ypi – I read this memoir about growing up in Albania in the 1980s and 1990s as soon as I picked it up on the weekend and it’s excellent. The writing is very good (as you’d expect from a professor at LSE) and it was fascinating to hear about life during and after communism in a country I know far too little about.
The Authority Gap by Mary Ann Stieghart – Wonderful look at how and why women are taken less seriously than men and what can be done about it. Just as enraging as it is informative, I wish I could press copies of this onto everyone I know (certainly most of the men – for the women there won’t be many surprises, but lots of validation).
And then a lot of books that make it look like I’m planning a trip to Europe. I am! I have even booked it! Except I am going to Northern Italy. But trip planning is so much fun that I thought I’d get started on planning future travels and France is a lovely large country that I’ve visited far too little. One More Croissant for the Road by Felicity Cloake is a favourite and I dived right into rereading it while I’m enjoying flipping through the rest.
What did you pick up this week?
Posted in Library Loot | 9 Comments »
photo credit: Owen Gale (via House and Garden UK)
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Once you’ve proven yourself as a novelist, what do you do next? Do you turn out novel after novel, perhaps improving, or perhaps churning out forgettable fodder? Or do you try something entirely different, striking out into the unknown and – to your readers – the unexpected? I know which sounds like more fun to me.
In 1954, Madame de Pompadour by Nancy Mitford was released to indulgent – and no doubt frustrating for the author – praise from the critics. With seven novels already behind her, Mitford had a fine reputation but, intoxicated and in love with her new home in Paris, she was eager to write about something other than the romantic trials of the English. She threw herself into researching Louis XV’s famous mistress and the result is something between the froth of a novel and the impartiality of a biography.
My first encounter with Mitford the biographer was her last book: Frederick the Great. Published in 1970, it’s a wonderful book, full of colourful anecdotes skillfully threaded through a well-structured and well-researched account of a difficult man’s fascinating life. From the very first chapter of Madame de Pompadour, it was clear how much Mitford had learned about the art of biography in the period between those two books.
The approach to the codified world of Versailles is, paradoxically, familiar and affectionate. Individuals are described as dears (or the opposite) in a chatty tone, with Mitford enjoying a good gossip over their foibles despite most of them having been dead for the better part of two hundred years. She is particularly critical of Louis XV’s queen, a Polish princess who, “though an exceedingly nice woman, was dowdy and a bore.” Mitford believes “[she] might have played the part of mistress as well as that of wife, if she had had more character.” Instead, her husband was forced to go find new bedmates and friends to keep him constantly entertained. The Queen, having given birth to 10 children in the first 12 years of their marriage, seems to have been completely at ease with that – and who (except Mitford) can blame her?
The character of Louis XV is the gap at the center of the book. He sounds to have been a man of extraordinary energy, thoughtless selfishness, and enormous appetites. But what actually attracted people to him is less clear. He suffered immense losses as a child, after which he “retired into a world of his own, concealing all his thoughts and feelings from those around him, and nobody every knew much about them for the rest of his life.” No one woman ever seems to have held his attention sexually – Madame de Pompadour was his chief mistress for a time, but there were others before and after, not to mention the girls of no significance who were procured for a bit of bed play, most never even knowing the identify of their lover. (Which of course makes Mitford’s criticism of the Queen ever harder to accept.)
But what of Madame de Pompadour herself, a woman who would go down in history for her exquisite taste, her intelligence, and her support for the artists and thinkers that modern France continues to revere? As a child, a fortune teller predicted she would one day rule the heart of a king and within the family she was then nicknamed Reinette and given all the education and training a king’s mistress would need, however unlikely it seemed that a young bourgeois would ever be picked for such a role. She grew up, she married, she became a mother…and she met the King.
Mitford paints a very romantic picture of the attraction and whirlwind that kicked off the relationship, with countryside cavorting and masked balls, obvious to the entire court, before she was officially installed in the palace. She was far from the first mistress but she was the first from outside the court, so a crash course in the bizarre intricacies of Bourbon etiquette was required. But she found her feet quickly, cunningly (innocently?) made herself appealing to the Queen, and was soon established in the world where she would live for the next twenty years until her early death, firmly first in the King’s affections if not always in his bed.
Indeed, she was, Mitford states, “physically a cold woman. She was not strong enough for continual love-making and it exhausted her.” Since Louis XV seems to have liked nothing more than continual love making, it must have been a great relief when the relationship turned away from the physical, as it did within 5 or 6 years due to her poor health, leaving them as companions. All Madame de Pompadour’s early training, her talents, and her charms had combined to make her a delightful companion – one who could not be parted with even when the obvious purpose of the relationship had been extinguished. It was, Mitford notes with some amusement, quite like a normal marriage.
I enjoyed reading this but it felt too much like a romantic biography rather than a true biography to me. And yet how do you assert the individualism of a woman’s whose goal was to be an appendage? For most mistresses, the chase, the conquest, and the victory might be the full story. But I don’t think it was for Madame de Pompadour. Mitford does look at Pompadour’s championing of Voltaire (always so hard – he did not make life easy for his supporters), her gifts as an actress, her establishing of a porcelain factory in Sèvres, and her involvement with politics during the Seven Years War, but I would love to see how Mitford would have approached this with more experience behind her. It’s still a very enjoyable book but not as good an example of biography as she would eventually prove capable of.
Posted in Memoir/Biography, Nancy Mitford, Non-fiction, NYRB Classics, The 1954 Club | 12 Comments »
Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Sharlene from Real Life Reading that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries.
Bachelors Galore and To Bring You Joy by Essie Summers – after a lull, the ILL system is again feeding my great appetite for Essie Summers novels. These travelled over 1,100 kilometers to make it to me!
The Queen of Everything by Deb Caletti – I first heard about Caletti earlier this year, thanks to Nancy Pearl’s Book Crush, and am enjoying sampling her work.
Dedicated by Pete Davis – this came out last spring but I saw it mentioned recently and was intrigued. Davis makes a case for why it is more rewarding and fulfilling to commit to things (and people) rather than keep your options open. Perhaps a case of preaching to the choir, but that’s always satisfying.
Dark, Salt, Clear by Lamorna Ash – I’ve borrowed this look at life in a Cornish fishing village before (back in 2020 when it was released to widespread praise) but didn’t manage to read it. Hoping to remedy that this time!
The No-Show by Beth O’Leary – O’Leary is a bit hit-or-miss for me but I thought I’d try her newest release.
What did you pick up this week?
Posted in Library Loot | 4 Comments »
The 1954 club has arrived! It was a year full of fantastic children’s historical novels – The Eagle of the Ninth! Knight Crusader! – but I’m kicking the week off with a slightly more obscure choice: Banner in the Sky by James Ramsey Ullman, an adventure tale inspired by the first ascent of the Matterhorn.
Set in 1865 in the fictional town of Kurtal (aka Zermatt), we meet our hero, sixteen-year-old Rudi Matt, as a disgruntled dishwasher at the town’s best hotel. Slight and cherubic, Rudi is nothing like the bulk of the town’s hearty men, who make their livings as guides for mountain-climbing tourists. He is, his mother and uncle have decided, to be a hotelier and to train in Zurich after getting experience at home. They want him far away from the dangerous mountains that have taken too many men from their town, his own father included.
But Rudi is a mountaineer in his heart, and escapes the kitchen to climb whenever he can. He may never have known his father, the great Josef Matt who died on an expedition to summit the Citadel (aka the Matterhorn), the last great unconquered peak in Switzerland, but he inherited his spirit.
With a disconcerting comfort in bending the truth (a welcome and clever element that saves the Rudi from being too saccharine), Rudi finds himself slowly gaining the support of some in the climbing community – the intrepid Englishman, Captain Winter, and Teo Zurbriggen, a now crippled climber who was part of his father’s final expedition. Rudi shares Captain Winter’s dream of conquering the Citadel and dedicates himself to being capable of the climb. In the end, he is one of four men who attempt the ascent.
After an exhausting climb and close to the summit, a fellow climber is injured through sheer hubris. Rudi, desperate for the glory of being the first man to ever reach the peak and eager to complete his father’s last journey, is torn. Does he fulfill what he sees as his destiny and summit the peak, or does he follow the code of the mountain guides and care for his incapacitated climbing partner? His own father knew what it meant to belong to the mountains – and died there not from an accident, but of exposure when he stayed with an injured client and was caught in a storm while waiting for help.
The 1950s was a golden era for children’s adventure tales and Ullman exemplifies the best of the tradition, writing suspenseful scenes along with solid character development. The book is full of climbing action and it is wonderfully vivid and tense, carrying the reader along with Rudi through his painful and dangerous exploits. As someone who hates heights, climbing is my idea of torture and I mean it as a compliment to Ullman’s skill that certain scenes made me queasy. What an idiotic pastime – but what good material for an adventure tale.
With conflict like this, you can see why Disney adapted this shortly after it’s publication. It’s a perfect blend of adventure tale and morality tale, with sublime scenery to cap it all off. It was released in 1959 as Third Man on the Mountain with James MacArthur looking cherubic but decidedly more robust than Rudi is described (MacArthur played a Swiss teen again for Disney in Swiss Family Robinson in 1960).
Posted in Children/Young Adult, Fiction, James Ramsey Ullman, The 1954 Club | 10 Comments »
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