The Captive Reader

It is the Thanksgiving long weekend here in Canada and I have been putting it to good use.  Errands have been run, rooms have been cleaned, volunteering hours have been logged, walks have been taken, pies have been baked (and consumed at Sunday’s family dinner), and, most importantly, books have been read.  There was an unintentional theme to my reading this weekend so that even as I was enjoying the stunning weather here in Vancouver, my thoughts were in Scotland keeping company with the characters in my books.

I started with Katherine Wentworth by D.E. Stevenson.  I have officially decided that I am a D.E.S. fan but I find her books vary widely in quality and this one did not impress me.  Published in 1964, it is the story of a young widow (Katherine Wentworth), living in Edinburgh and raising her two young twins and teenage stepson.  I really, really wanted to like this book but whether it was the clumsiness of the first-person perspective or just the dullness of Katherine herself, I could not find it in myself to care about the heroine.  She was nice but, for a book that is written from her perspective, strangely distanced from the reader.  There is a predictable love story between her and the brother of an old school friend that is complicated only by his sister’s bizarre behaviour.  Still, the reader is never in doubt that Katherine will end up with her “solid and sensible” suitor, even though Katherine is remarkably mute about her feelings towards him for most of the book.  The only real tension in the story comes from a decision Simon, Katherine’s stepson, has to make about reconciling with his father’s family and, for that reason, Simon comes across as the only really interesting character as he struggles to figure out where he belongs and what he wants.

On the other hand, I loved Stevenson’s Listening Valley, which I read next.  Growing up in Edinburgh during the 1920s and 1930s, Antonia Melville lived happily in the shadow of her elder sister, Lou.  But when the teenage Lou elopes (with, it must be said, a very nice and quite unobjectionable man), Tonia is left alone and insecure.  She finds happiness and confidence in a marriage to a much older man who adores her but she is left a widow a few years later.  Still only in her early twenties, she is horrified when her husband’s relatives try to bring her under their control and so runs away to an old family house she inherited in the small Scottish Borders’ town of Ryddelton (one of D.E.S.’s favourite settings).  Here, in the house where her great-aunt Antonia had lived, Tonia begins to settle down and create her own life.  She becomes friends with Celia Dunne (of Celia’s House) and with a number of the R.A.F. officers stationed nearby, including one whom she had known as a child in Edinburgh.  The romance is well-handled and satisfying but the real pleasure of the story comes from seeing Antonia grow in confidence.  This begins with her marriage but she really blossoms once she takes over Melville House and realises how well she can manage on her own.  Published in 1944, Listening Valley is recognizably a wartime novel.  Most of the time it is relatively subtle: there is a detailed description of an air raid during Tonia’s time in London and the war becomes even more present once she arrives in Ryddelton and comes to care for the flyers who visit her home.   But there is also the most laughably awful spy I’ve come across in a while, whose dastardly plans are uncovered by Tonia’s vigilant housekeeper/neighbour.  That particular part of the story I could have done without.  Still, it is a lovely, cosy read and a perfect example of why I am drawn to D.E. Stevenson’s work.

I then moved on to Sunshine on Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith , the most recent installment in his never-ending Scotland Street series.  This was a real disappointment.  I felt that he rambled more than usual, at the expense of character development.  Even Bertie, frustrated to still be six when he feels that he has been that age for years and years now (as he has), failed to delight in his usual manner.  Oh well, better luck next time.  That said, I was charmed by the idea of Big Lou becoming an overnight internet sensation after a Danish documentary filmmaker discovers her.

I am quick to recover from disappoint though and  am now half-way through The Proper Place by O. Douglas and loving it.  My reactions to O. Douglas’ books have been all over the place (which you would already know if I’d gotten around to reviewing the ones I’ve read in a timely manner – bad Claire!) but the delight I get from her good books far outweighs my frustration with the less impressive ones – rather like my feelings about D.E. Stevenson, really.  This, the story of Lady Jane Rutherford, her daughter, and her niece, who have to relocate after her husband’s death and the sale of their family home, definitely counts as a good one.  How could I not love a book that has characters who share my own literary tastes?  When, among a small gathering of friends, Nicole Rutherford proposes that everyone share an amusing story or joke, one of the guests won my approval by remembering a piece by A.A. Milne (one, as it happens, that I haven’t yet come across in my reading):

‘But I do remember one thing, Miss Nicole,’ Simon said, ‘one of A.A.M.’s Punch articles on how to dispose of safety-razor blades.  The man had been in the habit of dropping worn-out blades on the floor, and his wife protested that the housemaid cut her fingers and dropped blood on the blue carpet.  ‘Then’ said the husband, ‘we’ll either have to get a red carpet or a blue-blooded housemaid…’ I always think of that when it comes to discarding a razor-blade, and laugh!’

It has been a busy weekend, especially when you consider that I’ve only had a few hours each day to read between all my other activities.  And I still have a few hours of freedom left to enjoy this evening before it is back to work tomorrow – plenty of time to finish off The Proper Place!