Over lunch with Dovegrey Reader a month or so ago, I was reminded of Persephone, and, not knowing where to start with their prodigious list, asked her for a recommendation. DGR suggested I start with Dorothy Whipple, so off I popped to The Book Depository later that day, and brought up a list of her books. Given that I’d not even heard of her until about 2 hours previousily, I’m afraid to say I based my decision purely on which had the nicest jacket. I ended up buying the Persephone Classics edition of Whipple’s 1953 novel Someone at a Distance.

The story is very simple. Ellen and Avery North are a happily married couple with two children, Anne, who is 15 and spends much of her time at boarding school, and the older Hugh, who is doing his National Service at the time the novel is set. Avery’s elderly mother lives nearby with her exacting standards and nitpicky ways. She one day announces she has employed a young French woman, Louise, to come over to England for some time to act as a companion and to help her improve her French. Avery and Louise go on to have an affair, discovered when Ellen and Anne (home for the holidays) walks in on them embracing. Avery flees with Louise, unable to face his family but not particularly wanting to be with his mistress either. The rest of the novel follows Ellen as she tries to come to terms with the collapse of her marriage and begins to plan for the future, and Avery and Louise as they travel between England, France and America.

For all the plot is straightforward, the emotions that Whipple skillfully describes and narrates are complicated, raw, and heart-rending. Her prose style is unadorned but she manages to say a great deal about the break-down of a relationship. The simplicity of her writing makes the emotion stand out, all the focus is on the characters and what they are coping with; the reader is spared none of it. The whole thing is utterly captivating, and I read all 413 pages in two sittings, staying up till 2am (and I had to go to work the next day!) to finish it.

Simon has reviewed this book over at Stuck in a Book, and he says he has very definite ideas about who the ’someone at a distance’ is. I was thinking about this all the way through the novel, and I have to say that there are several candidates for me. The most obvious ’someone’ (I think) is Louise, who is revealed to be at a distance from everyone in her life, not to mention the physical distance she has crossed to come to England. Perhaps, though, it could be Avery, who has to distance himself from his family after his affair. But what about Ellen, who is struck out on an emotional limb in the fall-out from the deception. It could be any or all of those people. Maybe it’s none of them at all. I would be interested to hear the thoughts of anyone else who has read this.

Oh, and the cover. The cover! How beautiful it is. The cover painting is, the back of the book tells me, Pauline by Sir James Gunn. Is it just me who thinks Pauline looks like a young Queen Elizabeth II?

Any other Persephone recommendations gratefully received in the comments below…

In the end, I retreated to the comfort of crime fiction, and found solace with Ian Rankin. I normally rattle through his novels within a day, but I took Strip Jack very slowly indeed, eventually finishing it in around five days. Agonisingly slow for a 216 page book by an author whose writing I usually find so delightfully devourable that it barely touches the sides on the way down. Ian Rankin is a really good writer. Forget genre fiction snobbery, he knows what he’s doing, and no mistake. Detective Inspector John Rebus was a fully-rounded character from the very first volume of the series (Knots and Crosses) and he matures nicely with age. Well, maybe not ‘nicely’, but you take my point. The plots are well structured, and well thought out. The Rebus novels make for very satisfying reading indeed. I don’t think Strip Jack is his best, but it certainly isn’t bad at all, and it’s a million times better than the vast majority of contemporary crime fiction.

So, now that I’m feeling buoyed up by books again, here are my most recent acquisitions:

Once again, the photo is not of the best quality, but let me run you through what’s there. Let’s go from the bottom up, starting with the latest volume of Mole Diaries by Sue Townsend, Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years. I have loved the Adrian Mole books since I was given the first one for my thirteenth birthday (the timing was not coincidental). I’ve honestly never been let down by a Mole book, and I’m now rather wishing that I’d had this at the beginning of my reading block. I might hold it in reserve in case I have another one. No, of course I won’t, I’ll be reading this really soon.

Then we have a paperback reprint of Mona Caird’s The Morality of Marriage and Other Essays on the Status and Destiny of Woman. Published in 1897, it is an anthology of the women’s rights essays by Mona Caird in the 1880s and 1890s. I read it for my dissertation, but I really wanted my own copy. For one, I didn’t manage to get through every single essay, and secondly I really want to chance to read it slowly and thoroughly without specifically searching for things relevant to what I was working on at the time. I completely love Mona Caird, I wish more of her work was widely available, but she has rather been forgotten outside of academia. While my British Library card is still valid, I’m planning to go and read as much of her other work as I can.

I have Dovegrey Reader to thank for the next book up the pile. She was in Oxford last week, and we went for lunch. We mostly talked about things to do with my publishing day job, but of course there was time for some general book chat too, and I happened to mention that I had never read anything from Persephone. I know, I know, I can hear the collective gasp from the blogosphere from here. I wondered where I should start, and DGR recommended I try Dorothy Whipple. I was straight onto The Book Depository website that afternoon, and not knowing anything about Dorothy Whipple (other than the fact that her name is AMAZING), I made my selection purely on the basis of my favourite cover. Someone at a Distance it was.

The next two books are by Penelope Lively. Boyfriend and I went to a local cafe for breakfast on Saturday morning, and after a disappointing run-in with an undercooked sausage (as it were), I decided that the only thing that would cheer me up was a browse of the books in the local Mind shop. For the princely sum of 50p each, I spotted two novels by Ms Lively – of whom I have of course heard a great deal, but never read myself – Perfect Happiness and Judgement Day. I immediately started Perfect Happiness when I got home and oh my word, what a revelation. She is an astonishing writer, and I can’t believe I’ve never read her before. A separate post enthusing about this novel will follow this week sometime.

The Rain Before it Falls by Jonathan Coe was another 50p bargain from the Mind shop. I have read nearly everything else by him, and I absolutely loved his later novels. Even Boyfriend – who doesn’t “do” fiction – loves Jonathan Coe. But… I’ve had my reservations about this, his most recent novel. I can’t pinpoint why, exactly. Maybe because he’s writing from a female character’s perspective, and that seems so different from the books of his I have enjoyed that I’m worried I’ll be massively disappointed. Is that ridiculous? Well, for 50p, it’s worth the risk.

Next up, and thanks again to DGR, because Towards Another Summer by Janet Frame was a present from her. I must confess that I had never even heard of Janet Frame before I read DGR’s posts on her last year. I’m not sure I ever would have got around to picking up anything by her despite intrigued. This, though, is apparently Frame’s most autobiographical novel, originally written in 1963 but only published posthumously because it was considered so very personal. There are tinges of Plath, apparently, and that’s recommendation enough for me.

And then, finally, at the top, another second-hand buy: The Bell by Iris Murdoch. This came strongly recommended by Susan Hill in Howard’s End in on the Landing, and for £1.20 who can argue? This is a TV tie-in edition from at least two decades ago – I had no idea it had ever been filmed – and so looks quite odd as a physical object, but no matter. I’m hoping its words don’t disappoint.

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