I can think of no better way to start off February than by taking part in Karen and Lizzy’s Reading Independent Publishers Month. Independent publishers should always be celebrated – and thankfully often are in our corner of the blogging world – and I’m looking forward to seeing what others choose this month.
To start off the month a little early, I settled down yesterday afternoon with A House in Flanders by Michael Jenkins from Slightly Foxed (now sadly marked as “permanent sold out” on their website). In addition to their peerless literary quarterly, Slightly Foxed reissues wonderful memoirs in gorgeous small hardback editions. They have superb taste and have introduced me to new favourites as well as providing me with beautiful editions of old ones. To me, a Slightly Foxed title is always an indication of quality, both in the writing and in the production of the physical book. I will doubtlessly return to celebrate them further this month and it felt only reasonable to start with them.
At the beginning of the summer of 1951, fourteen-year-old Michael was sent by his parents in England to spend several months with “the aunts in Flanders.” Despite not being actual relations – or having been seen by his parents since they visited on their honeymoon in the 1930s – the aunts are delighted to welcome this young man into their rural chateau, where Michael is quickly infatuated by the close-knit family:
…as I passed through the brick gateway perched on the front seat of an ancient black Citroen beside Joseph, the gardener who doubled as chauffer, and saw behind the trees the long façade of the house, I believe I had some premonition that a new life was about to unfold. And if after only a day the world I had left behind seemed already remote, within weeks I no longer knew which was reality, the coldness and austerity of my existence in post-war England, or the dense fabric of extended family by which I was embraced, and within whose lives I had become entwined.
Each chapter focuses on a different character, beginning and ending with the formidable Tante Yvonne. Then in her eighties, Tante Yvonne had taken charge of her five siblings when their parents died of typhoid when she was a young woman of twenty. More than sixty years later, she remained at the heart of the family and of the village, always able to provide order where needed and deft counsel to those in need. She never married and the story behind that is how Michael comes to understand his family’s link to the aunts.
Throughout the summer, Michael learns much of life. He sees how the family cares for the mentally disabled illegitimate son of a brother who died in the First World War, he passes messages between an unhappily married nephew and his kind lover, and he lives amidst the tensions of a house containing six adult women who have somehow – mostly – learned to live with one another. For him, coming from a chilly home with parents who have drifted apart without choosing to seek happiness elsewhere, it is an irresistible world and one he can’t imagine wanting to leave. But there are those who want to, like the beautiful young Madeleine, who lives with her mother and aunts and is engaged to a handsome neighbour but is nonetheless unsettled and longs for something more.
Michael lives closely with two generations and it is fascinating to see how different events have shaped their lives. For Tante Yvonne and her siblings, the First World War was the defining event. Brothers and lovers were killed and maimed and nothing was ever the same for them after that. For those born after that war, like Madeleine and her brothers, it was the more recent German occupation. The wounds of that conflict hadn’t fully healed for anyone – the entire village remembers who collaborated and who was in the Resistance, and German tourists are far from welcomed when they appear.
Jenkins wrote the book fifty years after that first summer, looking back on a time and place that had remained vivid in his memories – as the best moments of our youths tend to do. He conjures up an idyllic summer where he found a whole world of complicated people to care about and family histories – his own included – to unravel. When, come September, he must return to England, the reader can easily understand his reluctance to leave.
I seem to make a habit of reading memoirs by famous authors before I ever read any of the books that made them famous. And you know what? I like it. It’s an interesting way to approach a new author, learning first about them and then their works. And it can make you so, so much more eager to read their other books than you would otherwise have been. At least, that was the case for me when I read When I Was a Little Boy by Erich Kästner. Kästner won fame for his many successful children’s novels (most notably, Emil and the Detectives and Lottie and Lisa, the inspiration for The Parent Trap) and it is for children that he wrote this beautiful memoir of his own childhood in Dresden. Recently reissued as a beautiful 
With a mother like Ida, it is no surprise that Erich had a carefully planned life: he studied hard and was to become a teacher, inspired by the teachers who had boarded with the Kästner family. But when he actually stood in front of a class for the first time in his mid-teens, he (and they) realised he had no aptitude for it. And so a new and rather extraordinary plan was hatched: he, the son of a saddlemaker and a maid, would go to the university. And, after serving in the First World War, he did. To his mother’s extreme pride, naturally.
10. 
7. Lassoing the Sun (2016) – Mark Woods
4.
1. 
Every December, I attend an Old Girls reunion and Christmas carol service for my old school. It’s a fun event and I always meet the most interesting women. There’s the Olympian with stories about her time in Brazil this summer, the children’s book author who I adored growing up, the researchers doing amazing work in their labs, and the retirees who now travel the world after lives spent in law, medicine or academia. It’s a circle I take for granted much of the time but always appreciate reconnecting with around the holidays. It is also a chance to cuddle babies of younger alum while eating cookies with the school logo on them – a win-win, really.
A few weeks ago, to reward myself after reaching a professional milestone, I placed a massive book order from Slightly Foxed. And now it has arrived!
The Captive Reader 