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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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Where Stands a Wingèd Sentry – Margaret Kennedy

Posted in Margaret Kennedy, Memoir/Biography, Non-fiction on December 28, 2020| 6 Comments »

Back in May, when the world felt like it was changing every single day and even the calmest of us had anxious jitters, there were endless parallels being drawn between our era and the Second World War. The fear of an uncertain future and the urge for solidarity certainly felt familiar to readers of history. It was at that moment that I finally picked up Where Stands a Wingèd Sentry by Margaret Kennedy, which I’d providentially checked out before the libraries closed after years of wanting to read it, and found an eerily perfect book for our times.

Published in 1941, Where Stands a Wingèd Sentry is Kennedy’s memoir of the spring and summer of 1940, between the fall of France and the start of the Blitz, when she left Surrey with her children (and nanny) for a Cornish village. Already a successful novelist, this account was written not for her countrymen, who knew Kennedy’s experiences first-hand, but for the still neutral Americans. I’m not sure how well it worked as a piece of propaganda but as a record of the quickly changing times by an unusually literate recorder it is excellent.

In May and June [1940] “the whole world was in a state of chassis” to quote the Paycock. Everything was slipping and sliding and changing, and one never knew what was going to happen, or what to think, and the lifebelt of today became the straw of tomorrow. I felt bound to slap every day’s impressions and reflections down onto paper for fear I should forget them, as one tries to remember and fix a dream. Even now [August 1940], re-reading the May entries, I am astonished to find how much I have forgotten already, and how far we seem to have travelled since then.

Kennedy chronicles the everyday things – evacuees, the Home Guard, all the usual stuff of home front books – but that is not what resonated for me on reading this. Those details are too familiar from dozens of other wartime books. What is captivating here, reading this book in these times, is how well Kennedy captures people’s feelings, her own included, and how familiar they are to what we have all felt this year:

All my life I have had a great curiosity to know what it felt like to live through history. I have wondered how ordinary, everyday people, like myself, felt and thought while they were waiting for the news of Waterloo, or when they saw the beacon fires which told them the Armada had sailed. Were they horribly frightened or were they always quite sure they would win? Did they realise all that was at stake or did the little commonplaces of life still hold the foreground in their minds? Could they sleep and, if they slept, what kind of dreams did they have? What kind of jokes sustained them and what sort of prayers did they say?

Kennedy’s assessment of the government’s feelings towards its wartime citizens, desperate for information, could just have easily applied to the arrogance with which today’s British government responded to the coronavirus:

We had this whim, this caprice, to know how the war was getting along, which was a great nuisance when they were all so busy, and so a few facts were flung to us at random, and we were left to make what we liked of them.

They tried to run the war in the manner of good civil servants, and nobody has a greater contempt for public opinion than a first-rate English civil servant. Perhaps it is because we are all so meek and law-abiding. We pay our taxes promptly and without grumbling, and we fill up correctly all forms sent to us and post them on the right date. Therefore they despise us, as servants despise easy-going masters, or as children despise a father who always uncomplainingly foots the bill. Hitler understands that total war cannot be waged in that manner. He does not dare to flout public opinion, but takes the greatest pains to lie to it and flatter it. But he is not a civil servant. Our civil servants take the stand that if we have no confidence in them we can oust them, since we are a democracy. But in the meantime pray do not speak to the man at the wheel.

As with any piece of history, it is both reassuring and frustrating to see how consistently people respond in times of stress. We are predictable but we never learn. All of the responses Kennedy witnessed or saw herself exhibiting could be seen this year again, and the good, practical advice being dispensed was just the same – and just as likely to be ignored:

I still cannot sleep so I went to Dr Middleton to ask for a bromide. He used to attend all our family in the old days. He asked:

“Are ye worrying about anything?”

When I said I was worrying about Hitler coming, he said, “He won’t,” so firmly that I almost believed him. He looked me up and down very crossly and said:

“I suppose ye’ve been reading the newspapers?”

I pleaded guilty.

“What d’ye want to do that for?”

“I like to know what is happening.”

“Aw! The newspapers don’t know.”

He said if I must read a newspaper I should stick to The Times because I would find there any news there was, put in a way that would send me to sleep instead of keeping me awake. He said that when a war broke out once in the Balkans and there were scare headlines in all the streets, The Times headline said: ACTIVITY IN EUROPE.

He asked me how often I listened to the wireless.

“Four times a day.”

“And that’s three times too often. I’m sure I wish that infernal contrivance had never been invented. When I think of all the insanity that’s poured out over the ether every minute of the day, I wonder the whole human race isn’t in a lunatic asylum. And what good does it do ye to know what’s happening? Ye aren’t responsible. Ye don’t like it. Ye can’t stop it. Why think about it? Go home and fly kites with your children.”

“How many other patients have you said all this to?”

“You’re only the twenty-seventh this week.”

Despite being focused on the events of 1940, this truly felt like the most relevant thing I read in 2020. By focusing on human reactions to upheaval and uncertainty, Kennedy’s memoir is able to resonate outside of times of war and suit any period of mass turmoil. I found it deeply comforting to know how little people change, how predictable we are, and, ultimately, how resilient we can be. I’m delighted that Where Stands a Wingèd Sentry is being reissued in March by Handheld Press and can only hope that, with vaccines being rolled out across the world, reading it in 2021 will be a very different experience than it was reading in the tumultuous spring of 2020.

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Top Ten Books of 2014

Posted in Angela Thirkell, Annual Review, Anthony Trollope, Christabel Bielenberg, Deborah Kellaway, E.H. Shepard, Hermione Ranfurly, Jane Gardam, Margaret Kennedy, Mathilde Wolff-Mönckeberg, P.G. Wodehouse on December 30, 2014| 40 Comments »

Another odd reading year for me, as my reading – and certainly reviewing – continues to take a backseat to the other goings on in my life. But it was a wonderful year by any measure: I embraced a new and challenging job, travelled to some beautiful countries, explored my own city and its wild surroundings, and, amidst all this, managed to read some very good books. Here are my ten favourites from 2014:

10. The Virago Book of Women Gardeners (1995)
An inspiring and eclectic collection of garden writing from the 17^th Century to the 20^th.

9. On the Other Side (1979) – Mathilde Wolff-Mönckeberg
I have had a number of underwhelming encounters with Persephone books this year – but this was not one of them. On the Other Side, a collection of letters Wolff-Mönckeberg wrote for her adult children to explain what it was like to live in Germany during the Second World War, is one of the most thoughtful and important books I have read in a long time.

8. Lucy Carmichael (1951) – Margaret Kennedy
I swore up and down from February to November that I was going to review this but it never quite happened. I have made my peace with that now but still feel it is a shame that I wasn’t able to do justice to this delightful novel about a young woman who, when jilted at the altar, sets about making a new life for herself. I think it is too long and wanders about a bit during the middle but, nevertheless, I could easily see it becoming one of my favourite comfort reads in years to come. It is full of nice people and everyday intrigues, written in an effortlessly entertaining style, and all neatly tied up with the perfect happy ending. And it contains the most winning piece of advice for a trouble soul I have ever come across: “Read a nice book. Read Emma.”

7. Drawn from Memory (1957) – E.H. Shepard
A very charming, very poignant childhood memoir from the beloved illustrator. The sequel, Drawn from Life, was also very good.

6. To War with Whitaker (1994) – Hermione Ranfurly
A wartime memoir unlike any other I’ve read – and goodness knows I’ve read too many. Ranfurly’s wanderings during the Second World War as she was posted through the Middle East, North Africa, and Southern Europe made for absolutely fascinating reading. They exposed me to a theatre of war I’ve read far too little about and focused on the sort of details I love best: fascinating people, major world events, and behind-the-scenes insights.

5. Mike and Psmith (1953) – P.G Wodehouse
I chose to start 2014 off in style, with the story in which P.G. Wodehouse introduced his finest creation, Psmith, to world. My great dilemma in life is whether I wish to be taken under the wing of a Psmith-like creature or to be Psmith-like myself. I struggle with this daily.

4. Cheerfulness Breaks In (1940) – Angela Thirkell
Not Thirkell’s best Barsetshire novel but, nevertheless, one of my personal favourites as it follows my favourite Thirkell characters (read: Lydia) through the first months of the Second World War. Structurally it has some obvious flaws and its un-Thirkell-like jingoism is jarring but it has more than enough emotional heft to make up for these shortcomings. I am willing to forgive a lot – including Thirkell’s patriotic sentimentality – for the sheer joy expressed by Mrs. and Mr. Birkett in the opening pages as they prepare to offload their featherbrained daughter Rose. A book that never disappoints no matter how many times I reread it.

3. A Long Way from Verona (1971) – Jane Gardam
Reading this back in January started off an obsession with Gardam. Though some of her other novels are equally excellent (God on the Rocks and Old Filth in particular), this was my first and remains my favourite. The story of a precocious school girl during the Second World War, it is inventive, terribly funny, and more than a little bit bizarre. I adored it.

2. The Past is Myself (1968) – Christabel Bielenberg
Bielenberg’s chilling, thriller-like memoir of life in Germany during the Second World War.

1. The Small House at Allington (1864) – Anthony Trollope
The penultimate Barsetshire book, I fell in love with The Small House at Allington as soon as I started reading it. This is Trollope at his most masterful, deftly juggling multiple storylines and a handful of equally-compelling central characters. I am fascinated by Lily Dale, anxious for Johnny Eames, and wildly conflicted over the fate of Aldolphus Crosbie, who I liked far more than any reader is supposed to like the man who jilts the heroine. Brilliant and perfectly executed, this was the uncontested highlight of my reading year.

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Jane Austen – Margaret Kennedy

Posted in Jane Austen, Literary Criticism, Margaret Kennedy, Memoir/Biography, Non-fiction on February 6, 2012| 9 Comments »

I had never heard of Jane Austen by Margaret Kennedy, published in 1950 as part of a series called ‘The European Novelists’, until Simon reviewed it last month but when I did, I knew immediately that I had to read it. In just over one hundred pages, Kennedy absorbingly describes Austen’s literary predecessors, her life, her novels, and her place in literature. It may lack the depth of other more definitive Austen books but it is a wonderful addition to any Janeite’s collection.

Kennedy never pretends to be anything other than a Janeite herself, which is part of what makes this such an engaging book. She cares. She not only wants to tell us what happened in Austen’s life but wants to know how it impacted Austen, imagine how she must have felt. Examining the letters, Kennedy looks at the abrupt change in their author after the move to Bath, contrasting the joyous girl of the pre-Bath letters –one Kennedy could cheerfully imagine and love – with the more subdued, enigmatic woman she quickly became:

The pre-Bath letters were written by a girl with an enormous capacity for enjoying life. Her high spirits dance through every line. She can cry with joy at a sailor brother’s promotion. She prefers that people should not be too agreeable, as it saves her the trouble of liking them very much in a world which is full of things to like. She shares a bed with another girl and they lie awake, gossiping and giggling, until two o’clock in the morning…And then, after one or two letters describing the removal, the long silence descends. We never meet this girl again.

For me though, the absolute highlight was reading Kennedy’s thoughts on Austen’s novels. As you know, I can never read or hear enough of other people’s reactions to Austen. Kennedy manages to be affectionate yet insightful, to voice her admiration as well as her criticisms. I didn’t necessarily agree with all of her opinions but her points are well-considered and intelligent – I could always see the appeal of her argument, even when it didn’t win me over.

Considering the early novels, Kennedy adores Elizabeth Bennet and has a fair amount to say on Pride and Prejudice, is quite brief on Sense and Sensibility (though I deeply enjoyed her distaste for Edward Ferrars, ‘a poor stick’), and admires Henry Tilney and the technical skill of Northanger Abbey. These are the ‘fun’ novels, the bright, exuberant stories from Austen’s youth, and Kennedy is happy to treat them as such, saving her more detailed consideration for the later novels.

Persuasion and Emma are both intelligently discussed (though there was not enough on Emma for my tastes, but then there never is) but Kennedy saves her energy for another book. She is an admirer of Mansfield Park. Which, in and of itself, is unexceptional. But I think where we disagree is in Kennedy’s assertion that:

It is the most important of the novels, the most ambitious in theme, and the best example of her powers. She put all that she had into it. As a work of art it heads the list, and if it is not the universal choice, that is because so many people do not ask that a novel should be, primarily, a work of art.

That statement alone almost sent me back to my bookshelf to grab it for a reread. ‘The best example of her powers’? Admittedly, it has been a few years since I last read it but…no. Not for this reader. For me, there is a bitterness at the heart of Mansfield Park that saw Austen create a singularly unbalanced cast of characters. She divided virtue and wealth so that they were never distributed equally and were always, unsubtly, in opposition, with the virtuous, impoverished Fanny’s moral superiority clearly on display. It is a forceful, effective message but I think too forceful to match the skilful, balanced execution of either Persuasion or Emma. This is one argument Kennedy was not able to sell me on.

But she did persuasively discuss the merits of Fanny Price. Now, I’ve never hated Fanny as some readers do; I’ve just been generally indifferent towards her, though on some readings my feelings warm to border on mild fondness, mostly for the reasons Kennedy highlights:

In every way she is of finer grain that Edmund, her guide and mentor. He recommends books to improve her mind: she reads them for pleasure. He tells her the names of the stars: she finds them beautiful. And to her exclamations on the glories of a summer night he can only rejoin, with patronizing indulgence: ‘I like to hear your enthusiasm.’ He is pitched in too low a key for her, and it is one of the subtleties of the book that Henry Crawford, had he been a better man, would have been the right man. With him she would have developed her latent capacities more fully and they might have read Shakespeare together for a better reason than self-improvement. With Edmund she secured happiness at a cost, the sacrifice of certain possibilities in her nature. For Mansfield Park is not a fairy story.

The final section, dealing with Austen’s place in the literary world, her importance to readers from her time until Kennedy’s, is wonderful for how Kennedy contrasts the reception Austen received from 19^th Century female readers intent on breaking out of their homes with happily domesticated mid-20^th Century ones:

Jane Austen described the life of women who must live at home, quiet and confined. The women of the nineteenth century were occupied in claiming the right to live elsewhere, if they liked, to be heard, to be free, to possess other privileges than that of hopeless love. They could have little patience with girls who were so well content to dance and wait for husbands. Even so late as 1915 the Principal of an Oxford women’s college was heard to condemn Jane Austen ‘because all her women were so trivial.’ The women of our own time are, perhaps, more sympathetic. A home in which to live quietly is often, now, the object of their highest ambitions.

She also intriguingly remarks on the abundance of male champions Austen has, in comparison to the disdain she often received from influential female readers:

Her best supporters have always been men. The leading women of the Victorian age, occupied in the struggle for the liberation of their sex, found less to appreciate in her. Even where they praised, they did so with a touch of patronage, a frequent suggestion that she was a little old-fashioned. She was ‘dear Jane Austen,’ a favourite maiden aunt, a relic of yester year. ..And this notion of a lavender-scented, unsophisticated day-dreamer in a vicarage still persists, thanks to the motion pictures and the dramatic critics.

Some things don’t change, do they?

Kennedy has so many fascinating thoughts and so much clever analysis to share, the kind that can only come from a passionate reader. She clearly finds her topic endlessly engaging and exciting, which makes for a truly enjoyable reading experience and one that any other Austen fan will find easily relatable. There is no distance here between the author and the reader: we are all Austen admirers. Kennedy’s passion is the same as ours. There are better biographies out there and more thorough volumes of criticism but, as a compliment to those, as an expression of one reader’s love of Austen and her work, this is perfect.

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