Review: The Flight of the Maidens by Jane Gardam

I really enjoyed this book.  Within a few pages it created a sense of anticipation about the direction of three young lives, which I looked forward to resolving as I read.

It begins with a scene in a graveyard in the late summer of 1946 where three young women — Hester ‘Hetty’ Fallowes, Lieselotte Klein and Una Vane – have gathered following the news that morning that each of them has been awarded a state scholarship, an important award because it finances their place at university, which they can now take up.

Hetty is to read Literature at London, Una is off to Cambridge to read Physics and Lieselotte is to Cambridge as well to read Modern Languages.  As the girls lounge among the gravestones, their feet on a tomb, Gardam gradually introduces us to their lives.

We learn that Hetty’s father is a former intellectual, ruined by the effects of World War 1 and not suitable for much besides gravedigging; her mother is an anxious individual, constrained by her husband’s lack of ambition, and one of those characters that sets the restrictive moral tenor for the small town in which they all live.  Una’s father was a doctor who committed suicide when Una was young so Una’s mother tries to make ends meet running a hair salon.  Lieselotte is a Jew from Hamburg, who arrived in England in 1939 ‘on the last train full of refugee children, the Kindertransport’, and as a consequence has no parents.  She has lived with a childless Quaker couple for six years after losing her papers that would have seen her united with a relative.

The book follows the group in the couple of months before they begin university in October: Hetty takes herself off to the Lakes District to study, Una bicycles around the countryside with her friend Ray, and Lieselotte vanishes to London following a bureaucratic breakthrough in finding her relative.

What I liked about this book was the strong, feisty, multi-dimensional characters –- from the three young women to their parents, and other adults in their lives.  In the cases of Hetty and Una, I enjoyed the exploration of the relationships each had with their mothers — a type of exploration I haven’t really encountered before in much fiction.  Mothers tend to be characterized as foils, as others, as objects to be defined against, or just plain perfect.  But in The Flight of the Maidens this bond is examined, looking at how it’s maintained and valued despite its imperfections.

Review: Franklin & Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage by Hazel Rowley

I don’t know quite where to start this post.  Even though this book was incredibly enjoyable and highly uplifting, I’ve avoided writing anything about it because it was so darned good and I fear that anything I have to say about it is going to do it little justice.  But as Franklin Roosevelt himself said: ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.’   My fear is off to the kitchen to make me a cup of tea so while it’s away, here goes.

I’m Australian and American history is not taught here in schools though it does occur at some universities.  When I was at university, I chose British politics and Middle Eastern politics to study so I know zip about American history.  I’d heard of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President of the United States in the 1940s or thereabouts, but only in the context of his visit to Australia during the war and that was about it.

But over the last few years, I’ve become greatly interested in American political history and the cause is rather an unusual one.  A few years ago I read a brilliant biography of Mary Wollstonecraft, the English feminist, educator and thinker of the late eighteenth century.  The biography was by Lyndall Gordon, called Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft, a passionate and highly-researched account of Wollstonecraft’s life.

In her book, Gordon outlines how Mary in her early twenties started a school in the North London suburb of Newington Green.  It was the 1780s and Mary’s neighbours were dissenters and radicals, most notably the preacher Dr Richard Price, a radical intellectual and supporter of the American War of Independence who was to have a significant influence on Mary’s thought.  His published pamphlets on Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty and Observations on the Importance of the American Revolution were highly influential, the last being written for American revolutionary leaders such as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin (an old friend of Price), John Adams and others.  Through her exposure to Price and his ideas, Wollstonecraft was able to develop her own ideas on education for children and women’s rights.

Thoughts on the TBR Double Dare

I’ve read five books from my TBR Double Dare pile, which is great, of course, but what I’ve read has caused me to think about all the other books crammed around the house and how long some of them have been crammed around the house.

You see, with the exception of Drusilla Modjeska’s Stravinsky’s Lunch, the books I nominated for the TBR Double Dare are all relatively recent acquisitions, occurring within the last couple of years, mainly from BookMooch.  There are other books around the house that have been with me for much longer – in some cases, almost twenty years or so.

While I’m pleased to have knocked a few intended books off my list, I feel as though I could take this reading challenge a bit deeper.  In other words, figure out which books have been around the longest and either read ‘em or ditch ‘em according to my level of interest in ‘em.

Three examples:

The Confessions of Aubrey Beardsley by Donald S. Olson

 According to the docket still in this book, I bought it from the Electric Shadows Bookshop in Canberra on 28 February 1995 for the princely sum of $32.90.  I liked the idea of this book – a dramatization of the life of artist Aubrey Beardsley – but I could never find a way into it when I tried to read it.  Am I interested now?  A bit.

Betrayals by Charles Palliser

Charles Palliser’s Betrayals has been with me as long as the Donald S. Olson.  I’m put off by the reference to Italo Calvino on the back, who I’ve always thought of as a tricksy post-modernist and while I appreciate tricksy post-modernism, I’m currently more in love with plot and highlighting historical injustices towards women.  Am I interested in this one today?  Not much.

Immortality by Milan Kundera

This last was a present from my dad in 1993 – he inscribed it for me.  I used to like Kundera’s work, particularly The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.  I think I just never got round to reading this one.  Do I want to read it still?  Yes.

It’s only a vague thought at present but I feel as though continuing on with the TBR Double Dare after April and focusing on books like those I’ve mentioned could make a very real and valuable contribution to my TBR pile.  While making me feel incredibly virtuous in the process.

Hmm, worth a thought.  There’s nothing quite like feeling virtuous.

Review: Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan

I think I was too old for this book.  I think I would’ve appreciated it when I was in my twenties at university when the world was newish but I’m old and jaded now so the story of a 17 year old girl plotting to ruin the life of her libertine father’s new fiancée seemed all a bit fanciful, a bit yawn-making.

Set on the French Riviera, Cécile is living a high and hedonistic life with her forty-something-year-old father Raymond and his girl of the moment, redheaded Elsa.  They live a life of drinking, gambling, staying out late and not thinking too much.  When Anne, the seemingly level-headed and intellectual forty-something-year-old family friend comes to visit, her presence changes the louche dynamic forever.  Raymond proposes marriage to Anne, Elsa is forced to find comfort in the arms of someone else, while Cécile has to study daily for an exam she has failed previously.

Cécile dislikes these changes so with the help of Cyril, her 26 year old boyfriend in the next villa, and using Elsa’s continuing feelings for Raymond to further her own ends, she concocts a plan to destroy Anne.

Sagan has created a morally ambiguous character in Cécile.  By turns young and old, wise and stupid, tragic and ridiculous, she embodies the flightiness of youth, with its penchant for melodrama and a narcissistic appreciation of its developing talents.  Cécile is also that thing that fails to recognise when it’s being cruel or callous and if it does, continues in the same way anyway.  Sooo, like, adolescent.

Apparently this book caused a stir when it was published in the 1950s.  And with the sexually and morally emboldened Cécile at its core, I’m not surprised.  In 2012 it’s a bit passé.

Book details:
Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan, published by John Murray books 1954, Penguin 1958, 108 pages, personal copy mooched from BookMooch.

Review: The Magician King by Lev Grossman

Having enjoyed Lev Grossman’s The Magicians last year, I was keen to follow it up with The Magician King, its sequel. And I think The Magician King is better. It’s faster-paced, it knows where it’s going and there’s a strongly imagined magical world to marvel at and think about.

That magical world is Fillory, the land that Quentin Coldwater and his friends learned about from a series of children’s books. As young magicians at the the secret college Brakebills, they discovered Fillory was real. What happened to them after that discovery is best read in The Magicians.

In The Magician King, however, Quentin, Janet, Eliot and Julie are now twenty-something and are the Kings and Queens of Fillory, living in castle Whitespires, and enjoying the perks of living in a wealthy, magical land.

Except for Quentin, who is bored.

So when there are rumours that the Seeing Hare has been seen thereabouts, Quentin and his friends ride into the forest to find it.  As one of the twelve Unique Beasts of Fillory – creatures that are thought to be immortal and in possession of a unique gift – the Seeing Hare’s gift is to predict the future of anyone who catches it.

The hunt – ultimately unsuccessful because tragic – turns out to be the preliminary quest to a more extended quest, one involving the attempt to save magic itself. From the gods, no less.

There are many things to like about Grossman’s book, not the least of which is a thoroughly 21st century approach to tone and character. The Magicians books might have started out on similar foundations to C.S. Lewis’s Narnia series but its characters could be from nowhere else except here and now. They drink a lot, swear a lot, and have the kinds of close/distant, slightly abusive friendships that rely on the overuse of irony. Grossman is aware that he’s talking to a net-savvy, lit-savvy audience so his characters are au fait and up-to-date on fiction classics such as Harry Potter as well as contemporary developments in science and IT.

Quentin Coldwater is somewhat atypical of the fantasy genre as well. He wants to be part of something big, he wants to be a hero, but he overthinks things and never manages to ‘get amongst it’ as he believes he should or could. There is a bit of the Jean Paul Sartre about him with his ennui and low expectations of life: I think therefore I am sick of everything.(1) This kind of central character almost didn’t work for me – his presence in the book felt like a dash of coldwater … – but once I worked out that that’s the point and Quentin is something of an unreliable narrator as a consequence, I began to wonder what the book held in store for Quentin.

And his story is actually counterbalanced beautifully by Julia’s story. Julia was Quentin’s high-school friend who didn’t pass the test to get into the Brakebills magic school but who learned and attained a level of magic off the streets that might be ugly and clumsy in parts but is as powerful as much of Quentin’s establishment magic. In The Magician King we learn her story and the difficulties she faced in trying to become a magician on her own. It’s riveting stuff.

I have to mention one section of the book where my heart took a turn. It’s a tribute to Grossman’s endless and clever imagination that it was able to re-turn. There is a section towards the end of the book where Julia has become involved in a quest for the gods. As I started to read these pages about gods and their histories, a tide of disappointment started lapping at my toes. I was being reminded of Philip Pullman’s somewhat clumsy attempts at skewering Christianity in the last of the Golden Compass series which, in turn, led me on to thoughts of the Narnia books with their strong allegorical Christian thread.

Not another fantasy novel that has to revert to Christianity as an integral plot device, I thought.

But no, thankfully, no. For me, Grossman cleverly found an alternative and it’s one for which I’m profoundly grateful.

The Magician King is a wonderful read written by a talented author. Go read it.

This book was on my TBR list even though it’s a library book, so yippee and yay for me.

(1.) I doubt I’m even paraphrasing Sartre, but you get the drift.

Book details:
The Magician King by Lev Grossman, William Heinemann London, 2011, 400 pages, library copy.

And we’re away in the TBR Double Dare

Well, I’ve read my first book for the year and one which was earmarked for the TBR Double Dare: One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes, a gently drifting book about the deprivations and changes affecting life in post-war Britain.  I’m not sure if I’ll review it but it was very pleasant read if a little slow, offering many insights into how the middle class dealt with the social effects wrought by WW2, the most significant being the changes to their daily lives caused by the almost complete lack of servants.  Without Nanny to look after the children, for instance, it fell to mother to pick up the reins and their is some doubt about her suitability.  Hmm, perhaps I will write about it in depth at some stage because there really are some great insights which I’d like to record, particularly in relation to the changing roles of women.

As to my next read, I’m not quite sure what to do because four of the library books I reserved have come in all at once.  I may sacrifice a couple because the loan period is 3-6 weeks depending on whether or not someone else wants them, but the one I think I’d like to read next is Lev Grossman’s The Magician King, a continuation of his first book, The Magicians, which I very much enjoyed.  The Magicians subverted a number of fantasy cliches in an intelligent way and I expect the same from The Magician King; I’m also keen to hang out with a group of characters with whom I’m already familiar.  So perhaps it will be my next read.  But things change on a whim around here so until I’ve actually started it, who knows?

Taking up the TBR Double Dare

I might not be blogging much but I’m still reading.

I’ve been inspired by recent posts at My Porch and Book Snob to put together a list of books I’d like to read next year.  My Porch is participating in the TBR Double Dare at Ready When You are, C.B. and given the large number of unread books around the house, I’m going to join in.  The idea is that for the period 1 January 2012 – 1 April 2012 I can only read books in my To Be Read stack.

It’s a good opportunity to put together a list of books I’ve been wanting to read for a long time and which have been forgotten on the shelves.  I’m also hoping that it will give my reading a bit of focus instead of being seduced by all the new misses that walk in the door and demand to be read first.

Research / Reading-for-Pleasure Stack

I’m working on a writing project set in the 1930s and these are books that either contain elements relating to that era or to the art of writing itself.

From the bottom up, Stravinsky’s Lunch (1999) by Drusilla Modjeska explores the relationship between life and art vis-à-vis the lives of twentieth century Australian artists, Stella Bowen and Grace Cossington-Smith.  Steering the Craft (1998) is Ursula le Guin’s instructional writing book while Aspects of the Novel (1927) is E.M. Forster’s take on the novel.  Ruth Adam’s A Woman’s Place (1975) is a non-fictional account of what it was like to be a woman in the twentieth century while Vere Hodgson’s Few Eggs and No Oranges (1976) documents life during WW2.  I’m very excited to be finally reading the latter as I’m a Persephone virgin so this will be my first proper Persephone title, grey cover and all.  Lastly, The Tivington Nott (1989) by Australian author Alex Miller is a fictionalization of his life as ‘a young labourer swept up in the adventure of riding second horse in a west country stag hunt’.

The For-So-Long Stack

These are some of the books or authors I’ve been wanting to read for ages including firstly, Penelope Fitzgerald.  I chose Human Voices (1980) on the strength of a review by My Porch and the recent tv series, The Hour, (about the making of a current affairs tv show at the BBC during the 50s).  L.P. Hartley’s The Go-Between (1953) and E.M. Forster’s Howards End (1910) have been with me a very long time and it’s time to finally read them.  I enjoyed Forster’s A Passage to India and the film adaptation of Howards End so I can’t go wrong really, can I?  Elizabeth Bowen’s The Heat of the Day (1948) , E. Arnot Robertson’s Four Frightened People (1941) and Rachel Cusk’s The Lucky Ones (2003) have been chosen because I want to read more books by these authors.  I had a particular infatuation with Rachel Cusk in 2009 and 2010 but I’m not sure why I stopped reading her books thereafter.

The Easy-Reading Stack

These books are what I want when I’m either sick or want to rest my brain.  I’ve read all of Mary Wesley’s books except Second Fiddle (1988) and A Sensible Life (1990).  I’ve been saving these two up for the last few months because her books are so enjoyable but I might need to read them as part of this challenge to lighten the mood.  The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters by G.W. Dahlquist is a book I picked up from an op shop and which I know nothing about.  The quote on the front of the book says “Fantastic.  Somewhere between Dickens, Sherlock Holmes and Rider Haggard.  I was in seventh heaven”  Kate Mosse, author of Labyrinth.  Was it silly picking up a book by an author I don’t know with a recommendation by an author I don’t know?  We’ll see.  And finally, Mansfield Park by Jane Austen was thrown in because I was intrigued by Iris on Books’ staunch defence of Fanny Price as a character and because Billie Piper played Fanny in a recent movie adaptation and Ms Piper, as an actor, can do no wrong in my book.

The Panic Stack 1

I put this lot together at the last minute because I looked at the books I’d lined up for the challenge and thought “Is that enough?  Have I given myself enough choices?  What if I don’t have the right book to fit my mood?”  So I quickly grabbed the half-finished One Fine Day (1947) by Mollie Panter-Downes and Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man (1928) by Siegried Sassoon, the very small Bonjour Tristesse (1954) by Francoise Sagan, the historical My Cousin Rachel (1951) and Frenchman’s Creek (1941) by Daphne du Maurier and the post-war set The Flight of the Maidens (2000) by Jane Gardam and Tea at Four O’Clock (1956) by Janet McNeill.

Other books that may make an appearance are those at the library I have on reserve or on loan: Time to be in Earnest (2000) by P.D. James, Franklin and Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage (2010) by Hazel Rowley, Father and Sons (2007) by Alexander Waugh, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? (2011) by Jeanette Winterson, All That I Am (2011) by Anna Funder and The Magician King (2011) by Lev Grossman.

And then I had another little panic and threw into the mix:

The Panic Stack 2

From the bottom up: Company Parade (1934) by Storm Jameson, Miss Mole (1930) by E.H. Young, All the Pretty Horses (1992) by Cormac McCarthy, Non-Combatants and Others (1916) by Rose Macauley, The Anubis Gates (1983) by Tim Powers, Spinster (1958) by Sylvia Ashton-Warner and The Gypsy’s Baby (1946) by Rosamond Lehmann.

And that, I hope, is that.  My only qualification for reading books that are not part of these stacks is that I may need to extend the scope of my research to follow up sources as, and when, they are uncovered.  Other than that, it should be sweet.

Bring on January!

Meme of Four

So.  This blog has been inactive for a number of months.  Forget about finishing a bunch of half-written reviews.  What better way to resurrect it than with a meme?   For some reason, I liked this one that has been appearing on a number of blogs, so I thought I’d fill it out myself.

________________________________

Four Jobs I Have Had in My Life:
1. Corporate Video Producer
2. Exec Assistant
3. Public Servant
4. Mummy

And many more besides.

Four Books I Would Read Over and Over Again:
1. Possession by A.S. Byatt
2. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
3. Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft by Lyndall Gordon
4. Anything by Virginia Woolf (she didn’t write a book called ‘Anything’ — I just mean I’d re-read most of her work, particularly her fiction because it’s so rich).

Interesting question to answer because, apart from children’s books I read in childhood and texts set for university, I don’t re-read books — there are too many more waiting in the wings to be discovered.  So these four are ones that I’d like to read if I ever set aside the time to do so because I thought they were fantastic when I read them.

Four Places I Have Lived:
1. Adelaide, South Australia
2. Chiswick, London
3. Canberra, ACT
4. Sydney, NSW

Four Books I Would Recommend:
1. Drylands by Thea Astley (intelligent Australian writing)
2. The Country Girl by Rachel Cusk (very funny and beautifully written)
3. The Assassin Series by Robin Hobb (engrossing and gripping!)
4. Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce (kid’s book that’s ageless in more ways than one)

Four Places I Have Been:
1. Wilpena Pound, Flinders Ranges, South Australia
2. St Davids, Wales
3. Top Ryde Shopping Centre, Ryde, NSW
4. In a tent, in the snow on Mt Kosciusko, NSW

Four of My Favorite Foods
1. Chia bread toast with avocado, lime and salt
2. Tomatoes
3. Kettle chips
4. Almond and honey yoghurt

Four of My Favorite Drinks:
1. Tea, milk no sugar
2. Water
3. Ginger beer
4. Hot chocolate

Four Places I Would Rather Be Right Now:
1. Blackheath, Blue Mountains
2. In a job I enjoy doing
3.
4.

Four Things That Are Very Special in My Life:
1. My daughter
2. My partner
3. My computer
4. My new mandoline – makes slicing potatoes and fennel soooo much easier

Four Bloggers I Hope Will Do This Meme:
Anyone really.

The Australian Tennis Open – a mismatch of metaphors

From an article this morning on the Sydney Morning Herald website in which Roger Rasheed, former coach of Australian tennis player Lleyton Hewitt, comments on Hewitt’s chances of winning his upcoming match against world no. 1 Roger Federer in the fourth round of the Australian Open:

Lleyton’s a person who’s on heat during a grand slam, and there’s not quite the stigma that surrounds Federer that there was at his peak, when he was untouchable,” Rasheed said. ”A few more guys have got wings, and Lleyton’s just got to find a way to get in his kitchen.

On heat?  Peaks?  Wings?  Leaving well alone the notion of Hewitt on heat, there’s nonetheless a strange kind of alpine sense to Rasheed’s comments — that is, until he brings it crashing down to the domestic level with his reference to Lleyton finding his way into Federer’s ‘kitchen’.

What the?

Pursue this metaphor of Rasheed’s and you’re left with ludicrous images of Lleyton in Roger Federer’s (possibly Swiss-style) kitchen having a cup of tea, or maybe a sandwich, or perhaps even admiring the possibly-Swiss-style interior design.

Rasheed provides further fuel for thought when he comments that Lleyton’s “always brought something to the table at some stage.”  Do tell, Roger Rasheed, do tell!  A packet of biccies?  A cheesecake from The Cheesecake Shop?  Maybe some left over Christmas cake and some rumballs?  What?  What?

It might be the start of a new year but it’s the end of the old one that I can’t forget

A new year, a new wordpress theme.  Ditched the previous 3-column theme for this rather pleasing-looking simpler one.  Hoping it will hang around a bit longer than the last.

I’ve been keeping a list of the books I’ve read each year for the past 10 or so years.  And each year there have been one or two books that stand out from the others.  I read some good books in 2009 but nothing that really stirred my soul and made me glad to be a reader or a human being.  Sebastian Barry’s The Secret Scripture was stimulating at the time of reading but it didn’t survive the months after it.  Yes, the writing is wonderful but I now conceive of it as a triumph of style rather than substance – only just, but a stylistic victory nonetheless.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s The Purple Hibiscus was looking like the frontrunner for taking out my prize, with its warm tone and humanistic content, but then, in the last week of the year, I read Rachel Cusk’s The Country Life.  I’ll review it in the next few weeks but it’s fair to say it’s My Book of the Year.  It bowled me over with its subtle wit, and elegant, lengthy sentences but what I liked most about it was its bravado in portraying a young woman in an odd yet totally sympathetic way.

It’s going to be very difficult to do Cusk’s book justice, I fear — it’s going to be very difficult to convey its tone.  But by way of illustrating its greatness, these are the effects it had on me — I didn’t want it to end, I kept thinking about its characters, I began re-reading it once I finished it but had to stop because it was far too soon for a re-read, and I moped about wailing inwardly and outwardly that I would never read another book as quite as good as it for the rest of my life.

I am now extremely keen to read the rest of Rachel Cusk’s work.  I’ve ordered Arlington Park and hope to have it in the next week or so.  It was shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 2007, as was Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, but it was Adichie who took the prize.  I’ve also got a copy of Saving Agnes coming to me, Cusk’s 1993 novel that won for her the Whitbread Prize for Best First Novel in the same year.

I think 2010 is going to be a great year!