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Archive for the ‘Eva Ibbotson’ Category

Reading List: October 2022

Posted in A.P. Herbert, Anne Tyler, Bess Streeter Aldrich, Elizabeth McCracken, Essie Summers, Eva Ibbotson, Fantasy, Fiction, Fredrik Backman, Graphic Novel, Helen MacInnes, Kate Atkinson, Kate Beaton, Louise Perry, Lynn Johnston, Maggie O'Farrell, Mimi Matthews, Mystery, Naomi Novik, Non-fiction on December 1, 2022| 5 Comments »

It is indeed December but, operating as usual on the concept of better late than never, I wanted to share thoughts on some of the books I read in October.  October was dominated by my trip to Europe and my two weeks there hiking in the mountains, wandering through galleries, and eating absolutely delicious food left little time for reading, but I made up for it once I was home.  It was a great reading month and there are a few contenders here for my year-end top ten list:

The Star of Kazan by Eva Ibbotson (2004) – a comforting reread of one of Ibbotson’s best children’s books.

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell (2022) – there is always excitement around a new release from O’Farrell and this is solid storytelling, but not to the excellent level O’Farrell is capable of.  It is the story of Lucrezia de’ Medici, who became the duchess of Ferrara and died at sixteen – of illness, or was it poison at the hands of her husband?  Lucrezia is a distant personality but the only fully-formed character in the book, which proved challenging for me to engage with the story.  The ending was very frustrating and felt cheap, making for an unsatisfying experience all round.

The Winners by Fredrik Backman, translated by Neil Smith (2022) – Powerfully concluding the trilogy which began with Beartown (one of my favourite a few years ago), I fell deep into this book, even dreaming about it, in part because the characters are so well known to me now but mostly because this hockey-mad northern community has always felt so real.  Backman told us in the first book the fates of several characters and it was immensely satisfying, if heartbreaking, to follow them on that journey.

Horizon by Helen MacInnes (1945) – MacInnes’ thriller focuses on a British PoW who, after escaping from his camp, finds himself living in the Dolomites and helping Tyrolean resistance fighters who, despite a common language, feel only hatred for the Germans.  It’s a flimsy plot with shallow characters and usually I wouldn’t have bothered finishing it but MacInnes does a good job of evoking the stunning setting and the fierce sense of a regional identify separate from either Austria or Italy.  Reading it while in the South Tyrol, only a short distance from the plateau where much of the story is set, also added to my enjoyment.

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler (1982) – a typically excellent Tyler novel about a Baltimore family, told from the perspectives of various members and tracking them from the children’s youths to middle age.  And, as usual, bleak.  I feel like Tyler has relented a little as she’s aged but I’m not sure that she believed happy families existed when she was younger.

Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson (2022) – a new book from Atkinson is always a cause for rejoicing but this exceeded even my expectations.  Set in the 1920s, Atkinson focuses on missing girls, London nightclubs, and the people caught up on both sides of the law.  She turns phrases so easily and artfully that you can’t help but be delighted and knows how to manage a large cast amidst tangled plot threads better than any other modern writer I can think of.  I loved every word of this.

The Trials of Topsy by A.P. Herbert (1928) – a comic joy.  Full review here.

A Company of Swans by Eva Ibbotson (1985) – what better to turn to while jetting home than an old familiar favourite?  For someone who hates airplanes, this was the perfect distraction and comfort.  Here’s a proper review from ten years ago.

The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik (2022) – I was so excited to see how Novik would conclude her “Scholomance” trilogy after loving the first two books, but had to force myself through this.  With graduation now behind her, our heroine El finds herself travelling the globe and Novik loses the world and constraints she built up so well in earlier books set within the school.  Without that tight focus, the story sprawls in every sense of the word, with new characters introduced every few pages as El journeys from one magical community to another.  There are altogether too many dramatic “twists” and, in a series that has always felt mislabelled as adult rather than YA, the entire approach felt geared towards juvenile readers with its neat and bloodless tidying up.  Disappointing.

The Belle of Belgrave Square by Mimi Matthews (2022) – Matthews has been a relatively recent discovery for me (thanks to other book bloggers) and I’m loving her gentle historical romances.  This is the second in her “Belles of London” series, which started enjoyably earlier this year with The Siren of Sussex.  I liked that book but I loved this one about a marriage of convenience.  Our heroine Julia, the quiet daughter of demanding invalid parents, and hero Captain Blunt, a veteran of the Crimea who is scandalously raising his bastard children, were introduced in the earlier book and immediately intrigued me but this still managed to exceed my expectations.  The secrets are obvious from the start, so there’s no real Gothic tension (just as I like it), and the story is full of the tenderness Matthews does so well.  If you haven’t tried Matthews yet, her North and South-inspired novella, A Holiday by Gaslight, is perfect seasonal reading.

The Hero of This Book by Elizabeth McCracken (2022) – Nancy Pearl put me on to McCracken and I’ve read three of her books this year, impressed each time with her style and readability.  This is autofiction, which is strange to me at the best of times, but if anyone can convert me it is McCracken with her excellent and entertaining writing.  I especially loved this description of her grandmother:

My grandmother was a nonpracticing lawyer, not the first woman to graduate from Benjamin Harrison Law School in Indianapolis but the only one in the class of 1927.  She was president of her sisterhood, traveled as a public speaker, needlepointed, knit, took photographs and developed them, was a small-business consultant, silk-screened tablecloths, once built a table, and still had time to worry too much.  Somewhere there’s a picture of me in a sweater set of such burlappy awfulness, steel wool to the eye as well as the skin, so cunningly unflattering to every proportion of the short, plump 1980s teenager I was, you would have thought it had been designed as a specific punishment, not knit out of love, though she did love me, which is why the photo exists: She wanted me to pose engulfed in proof.

Ducks by Kate Beaton (2022) – a superb graphic memoir about Beaton’s time working in the oilsands of Northern Alberta.  She does a wonderful job of evoking the strangeness of the camps – where everyone is from somewhere else and no one particularly wants to be there – and how it alters people, rarely for the better.  It is a hard place to be a woman and this may be the best account of sexual assault I’ve read.

The Case Against the Sexual Revolution by Louise Perry (2022) – such an interesting book to read following Ducks – an unintentional pairing but a very appropriate one.  Perry, who has spent time working in rape crisis centers in the UK, lays out the ways in which women have been disadvantaged by the sexual revolution.  Well-researched, well-argued, and full of common sense, she’s not delivering a particularly new message but one that we clearly need to be reminded of over and over again.  There is an excellent review of it in the Guardian if you want further enticement.

Miss Bishop by Bess Streeter Aldrich (1933) – I don’t think Aldrich can be called neglected but would under-appreciated be the right word?  Her books aren’t very hard to find, A Lantern in Her Hand remains a standard in school libraries, and Miss Bishop was adapted fairly loyally into the film “Cheers for Miss Bishop”, and yet I don’t think she’s as popular as her excellent stories of Midwestern pioneers warrant.  Here, she gives readers a wonderful account of the life of Ella Bishop, from her entry into a brand new midwestern college at the age of sixteen until her retirement from that same school fifty years later.  Aldrich handles all the joy and sadness beautifully, as Ella’s life evolves very differently from what she had envisioned.  As always with Aldrich, the sense of community is excellent.

The Forbidden Valley by Essie Summers (1973) – what a very dramatic title for a quintessential Summers romance.  Our heroine Charlotte is shocked to hear her cousin Phyl has disappeared, leaving her two children without explanation as well as her new husband, who, unbeknownst to her, was injured the day she left and is lying unconscious in hospital.  Charlotte takes up the post of housekeeper to keep an eye on the children and figure out what is actually going on, though she hadn’t accounted for the immediate rapport with Edmund, Phyl’s brother-in-law who rushed home after his brother’s accident and is ill disposed towards the feckless Phyl, whom he has never met.   There are far, far too many secrets – when in doubt of how to create conflict, always add another secret! – but it was still a fun story to pass an afternoon with.

I’ve Got the One-More-Washload Blues by Lynn Johnston (1981) – I came back from vacation to discover the paper has entirely changed the comics section but one happy result is that they have brought back “For Better or For Worse”, which ran for almost thirty years from 1979 to 2008 and chronicled the lives of Elly, Anthony and their children.  This collection took me back to the comic’s early years when the children were young and their parents were losing their minds.

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Reading List: April 2022

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 on May 9, 2022| 6 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.

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Top Ten Books of 2020

Posted in Allan Jenkins, Ann Stafford, Annual Review, Bernard Ollivier, Eileen Alexander, Eva Ibbotson, Fredrik Backman, Jane Oliver, Margaret Kennedy, Nino Haratischvili, Rory MacLean, Ursula Buchan on December 31, 2020| 30 Comments »

2020 is a strange year to look back on.  In some ways it was the year that felt like a decade, with so much happening so quickly and headlines changing every minute.  But in other ways I look back to things that happened in January and February and they feel so recent, largely because there was so little to fill the time memorably since then.

Reading, as always, has been a saviour and with limited opportunities to socialise there was more time than ever for it this year.  I made it through a ridiculous number of books, which provided comfort, distraction, entertainment, education, and companionship through this odd year.  Here are my ten favourites:

10. Plot 29 (2017) – Allan Jenkins
Not the book I thought it was going to be when I picked it up, but instead far more powerful and memorable.  Jenkins set out to write about gardening and his relationship with his foster family but instead undergoes a very emotional journey, unravelling the mysteries of his troubled birth family.

9. Beyond the Thirty-Nine Steps (2019) – Ursula Buchan
I loved this biography of the ever-fascinating John Buchan.  He was a man of such purpose, energy and loyalty and his varied accomplishments and loving legacy are a testament to these increasingly rare virtues.  His biographer is his granddaughter and she paints a rounded portrait of him both at home and at work throughout his too-short and extraordinarily busy life.

8. The Eighth Life (2014) – Nino Haratischvili (translated by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin)
A brilliant saga tracing the lives of the members of one Georgian family across almost one hundred tumultuous years, from the Russian Revolution to the early years of the 21st Century.  I loved every page.

7. Madensky Square (1988) – Eva Ibbotson
I think we all struggled with our reading at some point this year, a frustrating process when we know how helpful books can be in times of stress and uncertainty.  I read mindlessly for most of March and April but picked this up at the beginning of May and it broke the curse.  Ibbotson is always comforting but serious times called for serious measures and nothing but Madensky Square, the best of her novels, would do.  I wrote about it years ago and my love for its heroine Susanna and her friends and neighbours on Madensky Square in pre-war Vienna only grows with each rereading.

6. Love in the Blitz (2020) – Eileen Alexander
What a delight!  This collection of Second World War love letters written by a young Cambridge graduate to her future husband bubbles with humour, lust, and anxiety, tracking their romance from its infancy through declarations, separation, engagement and marriage.  I shared a few of the letters (here and here) and had to restrain myself from sharing dozens more.  Alexander is remarkably frank in her letters and they make for very refreshing reading.

5. Out of Istanbul (2001) – Bernard Ollivier (translated by Dan Golembeski)
This story of one man’s journey along the Silk Road was just what I needed in this travel-free year.  In the spring of 1999, the sixty-one-year-old Ollivier set off from Istanbul intending to hike several months each year in the quest to reach his ultimate destination: China.  This volume covers the first leg of that journey, when he made it almost to the Iranian border before being felled by illness.  It’s a fascinating journey and Ollivier is refreshingly free of the arrogance of so many male travel writers, who set out convinced of their invincibility.

4. Beartown (2017) – Fredrik Backman (translated by Neil Smith)
Set in a small hockey-obsessed town in Sweden, Beartown thoughtfully looks at how a horrible event splits the community.  When the town’s hockey star rapes a girl at a party, the majority of the town immediately rallies around him.  It’s an incredibly powerful story about the dangers of group identities, told simply and with great empathy, and deserves every bit of hype and praise that has been heaped upon it.

3. Pravda Ha Ha (2019) – Rory MacLean
A chillingly important journey through today’s Russia and other increasingly authoritarian Eastern European states.

2. Where Stands a Wingèd Sentry (1941) – Margaret Kennedy
Kennedy’s memoir of the first spring and summer of the Second World War is a wonderful record of a strange time and reading it through our own bizarre spring was perfect timing.  When everything felt uncertain, it was reassuring to be reminded that people had reacted the same way eighty years before (and ignored the same good advice that was being doled out both then and now).

1. Business as Usual (1933) – Jane Oliver and Ann Stafford
Business as Usual was the happiest discovery for me this year, and for many others, thanks to its spring reissue by Handheld Press.  And if ever there was a year where we needed happy books, 2020 was it. This epistolary novel about an optimistic young woman’s move to London and work at a large department store is enchanting and I delighted in Hilary’s determined progress.  It is that rare book that suits me in most moods, giving me something to laugh over when I am down, to comfort me in times of stress, and to inspire action when I am feeling daunted by the world.

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The Serious Business of Being an Aunt

Posted in Bookish Thoughts, Eva Ibbotson, Fay Weldon, Jane Austen, P.G. Wodehouse, Personal on December 8, 2017| 15 Comments »

After months of anticipation, a very great event occurred last Sunday: I became an aunt.  Arguably, that was the least of the changes: my brother and sister-in-law became parents, two sets of existing parents became grandparents, and a small and rather wonderful girl came into being.

But as I am unable to comment on any of their mindsets with confidence, let us focus on me.

I am rather adrift as to what it means to be an aunt.  Literature provides few useful guides.  If I wanted to be a terrifyingly despotic aunt, or a meek spinster aunt, or an emotionally withholding aunt, I am overwhelmed with bookish inspiration.  Children’s literature runneth over with aunts you would never want to expose your children to.  But what about the kindly aunts?

Eva Ibbotson offers a few: the aunts in Magic Flutes are wonderful, as are the equally supportive aunts in The Dragonfly Pool, but they are a bit timid.  Perhaps more suitable inspiration lies with the suffragette aunts in A Song for Summer, who love their niece even if they can’t understand why she would throw away an education to work at an eccentric boarding school.  That sounds much more like me.

But Ibbotson also offers up some joyfully awful aunts in A Company of Swans and in some of her children’s books.  She was, she admitted, a fan of using aunts in her books and deployed them in all their various facets.

And, of course, P.G. Wodehouse created aunts so terrifying I run from them as quickly as their lily-livered nieces and nephews ever did.  There are some nice ones mixed in but who remembers them?

Jane Austen certainly had a flurry of memorable aunts floating around in her books, from the very, very bad (Mrs. Norris in Mansfield Park or Lady Catherine de Bourgh in Pride and Prejudice) to the very good (Mrs Gardiner, an excellent source of motherly counsel for Elizabeth Bennet) to the undefinable (Miss Bates – doubtlessly a good woman but who doesn’t pity Jane Fairfax for having to deal with her tiresome fussings and rather vocal timidity?).

But that does put me in mind of Fay Weldon’s excellent Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen.  If I could be the kind of aunt who dispenses sensible, non-binding advice while discoursing on Jane Austen I think I should be very happy indeed.  We may need to wait a few years for that though.  Until then, I will be content with cooing over her and buying obscene numbers of children’s books and looking forward to the day we can read them together.

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The Right Balance of Russians

Posted in Bookish Thoughts, Eva Ibbotson, Fiction, History, Non-fiction, Simon Sebag Montefiore on September 26, 2016| 6 Comments »

the-romanovsI started reading The Romanovs by Simon Sebag Montefiore yesterday afternoon and it is, as every single reviewer assured me, wonderful.  But, like all things Romanov-related, it is also rather overwhelming:

The Romanovs inhabit a world of family rivalry, imperial ambitions, lurid glamour, sexual excess and depraved sadism; this is a world where obscure strangers suddenly claim to be dead monarchs reborn, brides are poisoned, fathers torture their sons to death, sons kill fathers, wives murder husbands, a holy man, poisoned and shot, arises, apparently, from the dead, barbers and peasants ascend to supremacy, giants and freaks are collected, dwarfs are tossed, beheaded heads kissed, tongues torn out, flesh knouted off bodies, rectums impaled, children slaughters; here are fashion-mad nymphomaniacal empresses, lesbian ménages à trois, and an emperor who wrote the most erotic correspondence ever written by a head of state.  Yet this is also the empire built by flinty conquistadors and brilliant statesmen that conquered Siberia and Ukraine, took Berlin and Paris, and produced Pushkin, Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky and Dostoevsky; a civilization of towering culture and exquisite beauty.

The sheer level of violence is extraordinary and the drama of the dynasty is completely absorbing.  I fell into the book for a few hours and emerged able to think of nothing else but the blood-thirsty early Romanovs and their supporters.

n33964With impalements by the dozen fresh in my mind, I decided something a little – a lot – gentler was needed before bed.  I wanted something that was all the things the Romanovs were not: peaceful, good-humoured and non-homicidal.  But I wasn’t quite ready to leave Russia so I turned to that most comforting of authors, Eva Ibbotson, and her first adult novel, A Countess Below Stairs.  Its fairy-tale like beginning was the perfect antidote:

In the fabled, glittering world that was St. Petersburg before the First World War there lived, in an ice-blue palace overlooking the river Neva, a family on whom the gods seemed to have lavished their gifts with an almost comical abundance.

It was back to The Romanovs this morning but, I suspect, it will be back to Ibbotson tonight.  A perfect balance.

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A Company of Swans – Eva Ibbotson

Posted in A Century of Books, Eva Ibbotson, Fiction on December 2, 2012| 20 Comments »

A Company of SwansAs a child, there was no activity I hated more than my dancing lessons.  Ballet, Jazz, Hip-Hop, Highland…I loathed all those classes I was forced to take when I was too small for my preferences to matter.  My mother tried – goodness knows she tried – to instill in me a love of ballet, taking me to as many performances as she could, but though I enjoyed watching others performed I never understood why anyone would want to be a dancer.  I never understood, that is, until I was eleven and read A Company of Swans by Eva Ibbotson for the first time.

Set in 1912, A Company of Swans is the tale of Harriet Morton, the sheltered and bookish daughter of a Cambridge professor.  Withdrawn from school after showing alarming bluestocking tendencies, Harriet lives under the control of her strict father and humourless aunt.  Facing the prospect of marriage to an ambitious but terribly dull young zoologist, Edward Finch-Dutton, and with no friends to confide in, Harriet is quite miserable.  Reading alleviates her loneliness somewhat but it is no substitute for human interaction:

Loneliness had taught Harriet that there was always someone who understood – it was just that so very often they were dead, and in a book.

Her only joy comes from her dancing lessons, where she excels.  When the opportunity comes for her to join a touring ballet company, she does just that, running away from her joyless home and setting off with the company for South America.  In the Amazonian capital of Manaus, where its culture-starved citizens built a truly extraordinary opera house and where they enjoy nothing better than going there to see touring ballet, opera, and theatre companies from Europe and America, Harriet blossoms, enchanted by her exotic surroundings and warmed by her new friendships with other members of the company.  She also falls in love for the first time, with Romain Verney, an Englishman who has made his fortune in Brazil.  But Harriet’s father is determined to track down his runaway daughter and has sent Edward Finch-Dutton after her…

Like all of Ibbotson’s adult/young-adult novels, this is a romantic fairy tale and to my mind there are few people who can write such stories as well as she.  The exotic setting, the tantalizing glimpse into the outwardly glamourous world of ballet, the aristocratic love interest…she does all this perfectly and no matter how many times I read this book (and I have been reading it frequently for fifteen years now) it never fails to captivate me.  I love her descriptions of the Amazon – its sounds, its smells, its sights – and could so easily relate to the Europeans who fell in love with it, even as they longed for the refinements of home.  Ibbotson does the little details well and her description of the ballet’s opening night and the feelings of those about to attend is perfect: the young English wife who will, at least for a few hours, be able to forget her grief over the son who has recently been sent to boarding school; the Russian balletomane count, longing to see at least a little bit of home in Swan Lake; the Prefect of Police, who can gaze on the beautiful dancers before returning home with his sour wife; or the German doctor and his wife, who come out of the lonely wilderness to enjoy the gossip and company as much as the performance.  These aren’t characters who are important to the plot of the book but including them makes the story so much richer; even though we never see most of them again, we know they are there, some of them very happy, some of them not.

Ibbotson also acknowledges that not all the dangers in the Amazon came from nature, describing the mistreatment of native workers by European masters, which sicken Verney when he comes across them:

He had believed that he knew of all the cruelties which men had inflicted on the Indians in their insane greed for rubber […] Workers flayed into insensibility with tapir-hide whips for bring in less cahuchu than their master craved; hirelings with Winchesters dragging into slavery every able-bodied man in a village […] He himself had been offered – by a drunken overseer on the Madeira – one of the man’s native concubines, a girl just nine years old…

I find the story of Harriet’s affair with Verney quite satisfying, even more so now that I am an adult and can appreciate that not every author who writes such good and wholesome heroines can also allow them to go quite naturally to bed with a lover, but it is Harriet’s experiences in the ballet company that truly fascinate me.  She takes her dancing very seriously and all the rigour and pain that entails is recorded here.  But Ibbotson also manages to capture the beauty of dance and the joy that it brings to performers.  I hadn’t noticed on previous readings the references to War and Peace but now having read the book myself, I can see why other characters compare Harriet to Natasha.  Harriet’s improvised performance in front of a room full of rowdy men –charming them when they had come to be titillated – has all the enchantment of Natasha’s unexpected peasant dance:

She danced naturally and with a perfect innocence, making no attempt whatever to match the gestures of Marie-Claude, but to the men watching her she purveyed an extraordinary sense of happiness, of fun.  It was the delight of a young girl allowed to stay up for a party that Harriet shared with her audience – the excitement, the wonder of being awake in this glittering grown-up world – and the leader of the orchestra, getting her measure, quietened his players so that the showy, exuberant music revealed its charm and tenderness.

But it is really through the supporting characters that we come to understand the world of the ballet.  Ibbotson was always good at writing superb secondary characters and I think she was at her best in A Company of Swans.  I adore Marie-Claude, a dazzlingly beautiful French dancer with a hard head for business, who is Harriet’s closest friend in the company.  She is what ballet-mad men dream of when they think of ballet dancers, the kind of girl they would like to pick from the corps as their next mistress.  Marie-Claude knows this and exploits it but remains devoted to her fiancé back in France, protecting her virtue with a combination of cleverness and a long, sharp hat-pin.  She is the perfect companion for Harriet: worldly and confident, she gives her friend all the encouragement she needs.

The heart of the ballet company, though, lies with Dubrov, the ballet master, and Simonova, the aging prima ballerina whom he has loved for years.  Simonova is emotional and demanding, not to mention jealous of her understudy, but her fragility always touches me.  After so many years at the peak of her profession, her body is in constant pain and though she may threaten to retire to an alpine village to grow vegetables (a plan that has Dubrov shuddering, knowing how ill-prepared the champagne and cavier-fed Simonova is for rural life), as long as she can still move she will continue to dance.  No matter how much it hurts, it is her life.  Dubrov, who has been devoted to her since she was just a dancer in the corps, has focused his whole life around her; when she exiled herself to Europe after a fight with her company in Russia, he sold his business interests there and followed, setting up a new ballet company for her.  It is a tumultuous but tender relationship and one that always brings tears to my eyes, especially when – feeling tired and defeated – Simonova whispers her fondest memories of St Petersburg, still denying – but not convincingly – that she has no desire to return to Russia.

A Company of Swans is not my favourite of Ibbotson’s adult novels, but that means nothing.  I may prefer The Morning Gift or Madensky Square but I love all of these books, whether they be sent in Austria, England or Brazil.  Ibbotson is romantic and humourous, and has a sensibility that is an intriguing combination of nostalgic and modern.  There is no one quite like her and when I am in need of a comfort read, she is the first author I turn to.

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A Glove Shop in Vienna and Other Stories – Eva Ibbotson

Posted in Eva Ibbotson, Fiction, Short Stories on December 22, 2011| 4 Comments »

A Glove Shop in Vienna and Other Stories by Eva Ibbotson is an interesting (though difficult to obtain) book, a volume of short stories first published in 1984.  They were written early in her career as she was still developing an authorial voice, so while many of the themes and characters are classic Ibbotson, her style and skill can vary widely between stories. While I loved the most Ibbotson-esque stories, I think what I most enjoyed about this volume was reading some of her early experiments, seeing how she played with different stories, different characters, and different perspectives while developing herself as a writer.

Most of the stories are plain, simple Ibbotson romances and family tales and most are carried off with her usual charm, though lack the conviction and joy she was able to infuse into her novels.  But they are entertaining, the perfect light tales to dip into before bed.  There is “This Beetroot is Not Screaming” about how an earnest young agricultural student upsets the faculty with her soft-hearted attitude towards animals, ultimately gaining the affection of the narrator, one of the teachers; “Osmandine” about a free-spirited actress who assumes a position as a pharmacist while the real one is hospital and cures the ailments of his customers  without resorting to silly things like their doctor’s prescriptions; and the excellent “The Little Countess” about an uncompromising young English governess and her struggles to sort out the needlessly but humourously complicated lives of the Russian family she works for.  “The Little Countess” also added something a bit different in how it was told, giving us the limited perspective of an essentially comic character, related by yet another character. This was probably my favourite story, the one that came closest to creating the vivid places and people I’m used to from Ibbotson, as well as including all of her excellent humour:

It was only in the evenings that my grandmother began to feel the strain.  For just when she began to think of a light supper and an early night after the day’s work, everyone at Yaslova woke up.  The Count came in from the stables.  The Countess, a devout and dedicated hypochondriac, left her bed.  Petya abandoned his books, neighbours arrived by troika or on horseback and the samovar was carried out on to the veranda which ran the length of the house.

And there, drinking interminable glasses of tea with raspberry jam and being bitten by mosquitoes, everybody, said my grandmother sadly, just sat and sat and sat.  Sometimes they talked of the hopelessness of Russia’s destiny; sometimes they discussed the total uselessness of their beloved ‘Little Father’, the Tsar.  Occasionally, the old tutor would read aloud from Pushkin and everybody would explain to my grandmother (in the French they all spoke, even to say their prayers) how much more beautiful, inflected and sensitive the Russian language was than any other language in the world.  And no one, said my grandmother sighing, ever went to bed.

The Amazon, Vienna, Russia, Paris, England…Ibbotson’s favourite locations are all present and accounted for but she bounces gleefully between decades.  I’m so used to reading her historical novels that when I came across the first of her stories set post-World War II, I couldn’t quite believe it.  Mentions of mini-skirts, bikinis, etc may have momentarily thrown me for a loop but it was enjoyable to see her handle more modern subject matter (including a hilarious international beauty competition in “This Year’s Winner”).  That said, not all of her modern stories worked: there are two first-person narratives about adultery that are particularly unoriginal and unconvincing.  But I did still enjoy reading them, seeing how she tried to approach a topic, characters, and a style so different to what she was generally drawn towards.

I read this at the end of November and it is the perfect book to read before Christmas, not just for its generally warm, comforting tales but because it contains no less than three Christmas stories.  Persephone Biannually readers may remember “A Question of Riches” from the Autumn/Winter 2010 edition.  There are also “Vicky and the Christmas Angel”, about a young Viennese girl’s discovery of who really brings the children’s presents, and “The Great Carp Ferdinand”:

The role the Great Carp Ferdinand was to play in the life of the Mannhaus family was simple, though crucial.  He was, to put it plainly, the Christmas dinner.  For in Vienna, where they celebrate on Christmas Eve and no one, on Holy Night, would dream of eating meat, they relish nothing so much as a richly-marinated, succulently roasted carp.  And it is true that until you have tasted fresh carp with all the symphonic accompaniments (sour cream, braised celeriac, dark plum jam) you have not, gustatorily speaking, really lived.

…But the accent is on the word fresh.

The story follows the impact Ferdinand the Carp has on the Mannhaus family in the days leading up to Christmas, while he occupies the maids’ bathtub and endures frequent visits from members of the household, who come and pour out their thoughts to him.  Growing up terrorized by stories of bathtub-dwelling carp and the amazing effort that it took to kill them (the first Christmas after she was widowed was the only year my grandmother ever tried to kill the carp on her own.  It, to say the least, did not go well.  Every year after, she compromised on freshness to spare herself the battle) I was highly entertained by all aspects of this story, particularly the arsenal of weapons the men folk armed themselves with when preparing to do battle with Ferdinand.  There is a romance here too and a rather charming family but it is Ferdinand who steals the show.

And, in the last, busy few days before Christmas, I am feeling particularly drawn to this description from “Vicky and the Christmas Angel”:

But the angel in the household of Herr Doktor and Frau Fischer had help.  In the kitchen Katrina, fat and warm and Czech like all the best cooks in Vienna, produced an ever-growing pile of gingerbread hearts and vanilla crescents; of almond rings and chocolate guglhupf.  Vicky’s mother, pretty and frivolous and very loving, helped too, whispering and rustling behind mysteriously closed doors.  As for Vicky’s father, erupting irately from the green baize door of his study shouting, ‘Bills!  Bills!  Nothing but bills!’, he possibly helped most of all.

A Glove Shop in Vienna and Other Stories is far from perfect but I loved it nonetheless.  A number of the stories are truly excellent, balancing humour and drama, creating interesting plots people by intriguing characters.  Other tales only hit one note, but, generally, it is an unobjectionable one that hardly distracts from the reader’s enjoyment of an excellent story.  Indeed, my main problem with this book is how difficult it is to find!

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The Dragonfly Pool – Eva Ibbotson

Posted in Children/Young Adult, Eva Ibbotson, Fiction on December 8, 2011| 11 Comments »

Sometimes after reading a book, I become incoherent with delight and utterly incapable of forming a response much beyond “this is the greatest book ever and you must read it now.”  When these moods strike, I try to wait a while in the hope that I will eventually be able to better articulate myself.  Well, I’ve waited a few weeks since reading The Dragonfly Pool by Eva Ibbotson so let’s see if I am now able to lucidly explain why this book is amazing.  It is delightful in so many ways and very recognizably Ibbotson’s work, from the doting aunts to the domestically-minded heroine to the scientific interest shared by her most admirable male characters.

The book begins in 1939, in the spring.  Tally Hamilton has been awarded a scholarship to Delderton Hall, a boarding school in Devon, under the influence of one of her father’s grateful patients. And though Dr. Hamilton and his sisters, who have helped raise Tally since her mother’s death, and all the neighbours and patients who love the kind, cheerful and very considerate eleven-year old, are upset to be losing her, the threat of war hangs over the city and everyone agrees that the country is the safest place for their beloved Tally.  Everyone, that is, but Tally herself.  Tally is terrified by the prospect of boarding school, especially after hearing what her priggish cousins have to say about the many rules at their own schools.   Even Tally’s aunts are a bit anxious, after reading a number of girls’ boarding school novels to prepare themselves for Tally’s future, causing them to worry “about how Tally would get on, having to say ‘spiffing’ and ‘ripping’ all the time, and shouting, ‘Well played, girls!’ on the hockey field.”

But then Tally sets off for Delderton and, meeting her new school mates on the train, realises immediately that this is not going to be the kind of school written about in books and certainly not the kind her cousins attend.  It is a school without uniforms, where you are not required to attend classes if you don’t wish to, where biology lessons can start at four in the morning and where teachers are as likely to cry themselves to sleep with homesickness as the students.  Tally settles in wonderfully, making eccentric but close friends.

And then one day at the cinema, she sees a newsreel about the little kingdom of Bergania, whose king has just defied Hitler, refusing to let the German army move through his neutral country.  She feels an immediate connection to the beautiful, alpine country and its brave leader so when the chance comes to attend an international children’s folk dance festival there, she is determined to go.  For Tally, whose selfless father and kind aunts have taught her to believe in man’s responsibility to stand up for what is right, to defend the weak against the strong, to champion good in the face of evil, Begania is a symbol of those values.  So, after gaining the headmaster’s permission, convincing her friends to form a dance group, and somehow teaching the group a sort-of Morris dance, off the children go to Bergania, with their much-adored and mysterious biology professor Matteo uncharacteristically volunteering as one of their adult escorts.

Meanwhile, in Bergania, crown prince Karil spends his days inside the palace, surrounded by stuffy adults and no children.  Even his adored father doesn’t seem to have much time for him anymore, always being pulled away by one crisis or another.  When children from around Europe begin arriving for the festival, all Karil can do is watch them play and laugh through his telescope since he is not allowed to go play and laugh with them himself.  But Karil and Tally stumble across each other in the hills one day and instantly form a crucial bond that will change their lives in the days to come.

This book has everything.  It begins as a boarding school novel, and I always love those, and then turns into a first-rate, old fashioned adventure novel, which I adore.  With assassins, the Gestapo, and a race across Europe, the book is far from dull.  The final section of the novel, with Karil once again separated from his new friends, is much quieter and can’t match the earlier bits for intrigue or excitement, but is no less interesting or satisfying.

But mostly, I love Ibbotson’s optimistic view of the world.  Have faith in your fellow man, she implores, and they will help.  There are definite baddies here – what would a children’s novel be without villains? – but they are outnumbered by those who want to help.

I would have adored this book as a child, perhaps even more than I did now as an adult reader.  I would have adored the Prisoner of Zenda-esque adventure but, more than anything, I would have adored Tally.  Indeed, when I started reading Ibbotson’s adult novels when I was eleven or so, a huge part of the appeal was her heroines.  I’ve read so many stories with heroines who are too passive and many, many more that are cursed with the dreaded spunky heroine, the kind of girl who spends all her time talking back, who always wants to do what the boys are doing, and who is supposed to win your affection by being more than a bit offensive.  I always longed for someone who fit in between those extremes and that is the kind of heroine Ibbotson writes.  Her girls and women are clever and brave and loyal and would generally rather be helpful and of some use than rush into a dangerous or upsetting scene.  They worry about how to solve other people’s problems since, being loving, loved sorts, they don’t usually have many personal problems of their own – until, inevitably, they do and all the people who’ve helped come back to assist.  An Ibbotson heroine is capable of great adventure and drama but would be much happier making cocoa, studying her favourite subject and counselling friends.  She is recognizable as someone who we would like to know and as someone we would rather like to be.

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Baking with Eva

Posted in Cooking & Baking, Eva Ibbotson on November 28, 2011| 7 Comments »

There needs to be an Eva Ibbotson companion cookbook.  Really.  All of her books are full of the most delicious sounding meals and sweets, many of which I have not the slightest idea how to recreate.  The snow-white meringue swan from A Countess Below Stairs? The unnamed but lovingly described Brazilian delights from A Company of Swans and Journey to the River Sea? No idea where to start. But, thankfully, when it comes to one of her most frequently mentioned treats, vanilla kipferl, I know exactly what to do. Theoretically. I mean, I’ve eaten enough over many Christmases that I should know exactly what to do! In practice, they’re not quite as I had remembered them but they are very, very close (I used store-bought vanilla sugar rather than homemade, which I think is difference I’m tasting and I had a lot of trouble making them as small as they really should be).  Ibbotson’s are always made with almonds whereas our family recipe calls for walnuts but I’m willing to overlook her misguided preference (not that almonds wouldn’t also be delicious).  For now, these are the perfect accompaniment to my reading of A Glove Shop in Vienna and Other Stories.

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A Countess Below Stairs – Eva Ibbotson

Posted in Eva Ibbotson, Fiction on January 13, 2011| 32 Comments »

Does my pleasure in reading A Countess Below Stairs by Eva Ibbotson come from the story itself or from the warmth I feel towards that which I know so well?  Having read four of Ibbotson’s other adult novels so recently I thought this might suffer by comparison, particularly as it was her first book for adults, but it really doesn’t.  It’s just as entrancing as all her other works and easily ranks as my second favourite of Ibbotson’s novels, after The Morning Gift.

All Ibbotson plots are rather silly but this one is sillier than most.  Countess Anna Grazinsky fled her native Russia with her mother, brother, and English governess in 1919, her father having been killed in the war and the family’s assets seized by the Bolsheviks.  Now, penniless in London, the practical Anna seeks out a position as a housemaid at Mersham, the seat of the Earl of Westerholme.  Armed with The Domestic Servant’s Compendium by the redoubtable Selena Strickland, Anna takes to her new work with determination, earning her place among the other servants at Mersham, even if they suspect that the new housemaid would be more naturally suited to life above stairs.  But then Rupert, the young Earl, returns with his fiancée and it does not take long for him to discover his odd new servant who curtsies like a ballerina and is fluent in three languages.  Things, as always, spiral from there.

I love Anna.  Yes, she has the Disney Princess-esque traits that Ibbotson imbues all her characters with (beauty, goodness, effortless charm, and most likely the ability to call small animals to dress her in the mornings) but so strong are these characteristics that I am powerless to resist them.  And because she’s Russian she is much more fun than any of Ibbotson’s other heroines.  Slavs do things with such style, even fictional ones.  While all of Ibbotson’s characters are generally gifted with sharp tongues (thereby redeeming them from their otherwise unrelenting perfection) Anna’s is also coupled with the extreme confidence of one who has had a position of authority and who has been obeyed all her life.

Rupert might tie (or perhaps best) Quin Somerville as Ibbotson’s best-written hero.  He’s modest and quiet, loyal and intelligent, and scientifically-minded (why must she taunt me this way?).  Unfortunately, he’s stupidly noble when it comes to refusing to jilt the odious (but hilarious) Muriel.  The relationship between Rupert and Anna also feels closer and more real than those found in any of her other books.  There is genuine warmth between them that grows not just from their mutual attraction but through conversation and interaction.

But it’s the secondary characters who steal the show.  This is usually the case with any Ibbotson novel but here they are truly magnificent.  The various poverty-stricken Russian émigrés are delightful but Ibbotson is unusually brilliant with her upper-class characters as well.  The Rabinovitches, who play such a small role, are intensely memorable though they of course pale in comparison with the Honourable Olive Bryne.  The butler Proom is most deserving of all the praise heaped upon him when he emerges as the hero of the most pivotal hour of the novel but the true genius went into the creation of Rupert’s fiancé Muriel and her hero, Dr. Lightbody.  Muriel is fabulously narcissistic, obsessed with her appearance and her status.  The perfect compliment to these obsessions is the study of eugenics, of how to make her family just as perfect as she, which is how she became associated with the charlatan Lightbody.  He’s amazing.  As his wife is dying in hospital, he asks a nurse if she thinks his wife might be able to handle a bit of sewing since he needs a costume for a ball at Mersham.  As for his title, it is an honorary one that he generously bestowed on himself.

For many years this has been the only Ibbotson novel that I’ve owned (this should change soon, provided a certain package ever arrives – it’s been two and half weeks already).  I’ve read it so many times that I’ve lost count but yet I never grow tired of the story, the characters, or the genuine contentment I feel when that last page is turned and the tale ended in a more than satisfactory manner.

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