The Tapestry of Love is Rosy Thornton’s fourth novel, and is about Catherine Parkstone, a divorcee with grown up children, who decides the time has come for her to upsticks from England and move somewhere new. Inspired by childhood holidays in the region, she moves to the Cévannes mountains in France. There she enjoys (though occasionally battles with) rural living and starts her tapestry and upholstery business, supplying locals with new curtains, covering divans, and even repairs the church’s processional banner.

Of course it’s not all quite as idyllic as it suggests. French bureaucracy and extreme weather are difficult to cope with, and then there is the mysterious neighbour Patrick Castagnol to contend with… not least when he starts sleeping with Catherine’s visiting sister Bryony.

This book isn’t just another English-woman-struggles-with-French-life novel. Rosy Thornton instead makes Catherine’s occasional travails humorous without mocking anyone, and the result is a warm, affectionate, and gentle story that manages to be simple and easy to read without insulting anyone’s intelligence (and that, I find, can be surprisingly hard to do). The latter chapters of the book – I won’t go into detail for fear of spoiling it – are written particularly well, dealing as they do with Catherine’s emotional state as she finds herself torn between England, where she has to return for a time, and her new home in the Cévannes.

Two years ago I read Rosy’s second novel, Hearts and Minds, and loved it, although I had harsh words for whoever chose the cover. This time round, though, they’ve got the cover pretty well bang on. I do have one (minor) complaint though: the title. I mean, it works, it says what the book is about, but I can’t help feeling that it doesn’t quite do the novel justice. It sounds too much like a chick-litty book for my taste, and the novel really is so much more than that. I’m afraid I have no better suggestions, so perhaps I should stop being so picky, but there you go.

But yes, perfect summer reading. A simple, straight-forward story, but written so very well. It’s gentle and lovely but still compelling (I want to know more about Tom and Mo! I think I want to hang out with them) and what’s more, it’s made me want to keep bees. Don’t think it’d work as well in the middle of Oxford and it does in the French mountains, but a girl can dream, right?

These are the two newest releases from Victorian Secrets, the small publishing house set up by my friend Catherine to bring forgotten 19th century books back from bibliographic obscurity. Not only is it a friend that has (re-)published these titles, but I also proof-read them. So, if in the interests of balance you now think that whatever praise I heap upon the books is irrevocably skewed and biased, then possibly best to look away now, even though I hereby give my word that the following is my own honest opinion.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Sitting comfortably?

Then we will begin.

Henry Dunbar was Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s eighth acknowledged novel, originally published in 1864, two years after the 3 volume publication of her most famous novel, Lady Audley’s Secret. It is the story of the eponymous Henry Dunbar, who returns to England from India after having been banished there decades previously after some dodgy dealings with questionable cheques. Waiting for revenge after all this time is Joseph Wilmot, the young man severely wronged in the process by Dunbar. When, after a confrontation, Wilmot’s dead body is discovered, his daughter Margaret begins a campaigned of retribution upon Henry Dunbar.

Of course, it’s not all quite as straight-forward as that, being as this is a classic example of mid-Victorian sensation fiction. Murder! Intrigue! Mistaken identity! Train crashes! Fraud! It’s all terribly exciting, and if you’re looking for a rip-roaring read then I absolutely recommend it. It’s the kind of book that will certainly get you through a long train journey (though I hope yours doesn’t end up like the one in the novel…).

My favourite of the two novels, though, is Florence Marryat’s The Blood of the Vampire. Here’s the blurb:

Harriet Brandt is the daughter of a mad scientist and a mixed-race voodoo priestess. Brought up on her parents’ Jamaican plantation, she is forced to flee to Europe after the slaves revolt. Although everyone is initially attracted to Harriet, people who get close to her seem to sicken and die.

That’s because our Harriet is a psychic vampire who feeds off the life-force of those around her! Now, there is much that is distasteful to the 21st century palette, mostly notably some quite stonking racism. It is no coincidence that Harriet, this prime example of the ‘other’, is half-Jamaican, and much is made of her mixed race-ness. That aside, though, she is also loaded with the attributes of the New Woman, those nasty feminist sorts who seemed to want independence (gasp!). From my point of view as someone who did their Masters dissertation on motherhood and the New Women, there is much to academically chew on here. The representative member of the established patriarchy, Dr Phillips, makes it very clear that no good can come of Harriet given her parentage, and she should never marry or procreate for fear of passing along her curse.

The Blood of the Vampire  is also very interesting due to the year in which is was published, 1897. As some of you may know, a rather more famous vampire novel was also published that year. Some similar themes appear in both, and I’ve been pondering re-reading Dracula since finishing the Marryat novel a few weeks ago.

Do pop over to the Victorian Secrets website and have a look at the other published and forthcoming titles. I think it’s a tremendous and very useful venture. But I would say that, wouldn’t I?

Anyway, recently kimbofo asked me to take part in her Triple Choice Tuesday feature, and yesterday my selections were posted. Do head over to Reading Matters to find out about my favourite novel, a book that changed my world, and which novel I think deserves a wider audience.

Set in the first decade of the 20th century, mostly in New York, Ragtime is a closely-woven tapestry of the lives of people in various parts of the massive social strata of the city. There are the uber-rich (Henry Ford and JP Morgan), the middle class (characters only known as Mother, Father, Younger Brother, etc), the very poorest immigrants (Tateh and his nameless daughter), as well as underground radicals like Emma Goldman. Real life characters – Goldman, Ford, Morgan, as well as Henry Houdini – are interweaved with their fictional counterparts, taking central roles in the characters’ stories. The first half of the book is really a build-up, setting the scene (both on the large and small scales) for the introduction of Coalhouse Walker, Jr, a black man who becomes friendly with Mother and Father. Racially abused one day by the local firechief, he grows progressively more angry until he wreaks murderous revenge.

But it is so more than one man’s story. The skillful scene-setting and the panorama of the social landscape transforms it into something much bigger than the sum of its parts. It becomes a parable, a warning of the dire consequences of inequality in general, and racism in particular.

At the time of publication, The Economist said:

‘Bitter, often funny, admirably and economically graceful, intelligent, passionate and sad, this is one of the best American novels for years. One is at once transported, compelled to a kind of greedy, gourmandising engulfment, for it is a splendid novel.’

I’m not sure I can add anything to that, because that’s exactly how I feel about it. It’s a relatively short novel – only236 pages in my edition – but so much is packed into it without it feeling forced, and that takes real skill in itself. It’s also a slowish read, but that’s in its favour. There is so much to take in, that I felt I needed to take a few breaths between chapters. Regular readers will know how much I value good characterization, and this book has it in spades. But to be able to make a reader genuinely care about both the individual characters and what they represent is something all to rare, I fear. What a tremendously clever book, but it wears its cleverness lightly.

You know those books that you end up “experiencing” rather than “just reading”? That’s Ragtime. I know I’ve been woefully ineloquent about it but… Oh, just read it. I can’t say anything else.

This small anecdote has nothing to do with Stone in a Landslide by Maria Barbal, other than the fact that this short novel (written in 1985) has recently been translated from Catalan into English for the first time thanks to Peirene Press, who kindly sent me a review copy.

Conxa is a 13 year old girl who is sent to live with her childless aunt (Tia) and uncle (Oncle). She works hard on the land, and eventually marries Jaume and has three children – Elvira, Angeleta, and Mateu. They all live and work together on the same land, in the same village, until Jaume becomes politically involved in the Spanish Civil War. After the Republicans are defeated, Jaume is killed, and Conxa – now middle-aged – has to adjust to life without him.

The story is just the story of a woman, and that is where much of the beauty of Stone in a Landslide lies. As Peirene publisher Meike Ziervogel says on the inside cover of the book,

‘I fell in love with Conxa’s narrative voice, its stoic calmness and the complete lack of anger and bitterness. It is a timeless voice, down to earth and full of human contradictory nuances. It’s the expression of someone who searches for understanding in a changing wold but senses that ultimately there may be no such thing.’

It seems fitting that I read this book immediately after Brooklyn. In that novel, the heroine’s passivity is a central aspect of the character, and so it seems to be in Conxa too. Take these beautiful, evocative lines from the section where Conxa and her daughters are temporarily imprisoned because of Jaume’s political leanings despite the fact that Conxa has no political opinions, the Civil War being something that happened far away, almost as if in a dream:

‘I feel like a stone after a landslide. If someone or something stirs it, I’ll come tumbling down with the others. If nothing comes near, I’ll be here, still, for days and days…’

But in contrast to Eilis Lacey in Brooklyn, passivity does not lead to internal battles for Conxa. Rather she is content and trusting that life will take her wherever she is meant to go; that direction comes not so much from within, but from God. She is happy working the land in the mountains. She feels it is where she belongs, so why change anything? Of course, change is forced upon her after Jaume’s death and as her children grow up and marry, but rather than being bitter, Conxa takes the change without anger. The very last lines of the novel convey that more than anything – but I’ll leave you to read them for yourselves.

Barbal’s other main skill in the novel is the way in which she marks the passage of time. To cover a woman’s whole life in 126 pages in no mean feat, and a lesser writer would end up with something that felt rushed. Not so Maria Barbal, who skips whole decades between chapters yet never once leaves the reader feeling that they have missed something. She carefully yet subtly lets the reader know when a particular chapter is either by marking the passing of seasons, by mentioning the year, or by telling us how old the children are. None of this is intrusive, and it was only after having finished the whole thing that I appreciated just how much she had packed into relatively few words, and just how cleverly she had done it.

Stone in a Landslide is, by all accounts, a modern Catalan classic, and has apparently reached its 50th edition. I can see why.

‘With this elating and humane novel, Colm Tóibín has produced a masterwork.’ Sunday Times

‘The most compelling and moving portrait of a young woman I have read in a long time.’ Zoe Heller

‘Brooklyn moved me more than any other book this year.’ Nicholas Hynter

‘In Brooklyn he creates the purest form of fiction.’ USA Today

Blimey. How do you argue with all that? Well, I’m not sure I necessarily do want to argue. What I will say is that my reaction to the book is tempered by the fact that I haven’t read anything else by Colm Tóibín, other than a handful of short stories from his collection Mothers and Sons. I make that point because having this morning revisited two blog posts on the book – by John Self and KevinfromCanada, both bloggers whose opinions I particularly respect – they make similar points about Brooklyn lacking the ambition of Tóibín’s previous work, and that for those unfamiliar with his writing, this might not necessarily be the place to start. Well, too late to worry about that now, I suppose, because here I am having finished Brooklyn (in almost a single sitting, I might add) without first having read The Master, or The Blackwater Lightship.

The storyline of Brooklyn is a simple one: in 1950’s Wexford Eilis Lacey is a nice, diligent girl with aspirations towards book-keeping and accountancy, but who isn’t having much luck finding work. A Sunday job in a local shop is all she has, much to the disappointment of her mother and, particularly, her elder sister Rose. Rose introduces Eilis to Father Flood, who is an Irish-American priest who offers to find her a better job in his parish (is parish still the word in Catholicism?) in Brooklyn. Without being sure whether she wants to go or not, she’s soon battling sea-sickness in a third class cabin on her way to New York.

The homesickness is terrible at first, but within a year or a so, she has settled in with her motley crew of fellow lodgers at Mrs Kehoe’s boarding house, and has a lovely Italian boyfriend called Tony. Then, though, something happens that takes her home to Ireland, and (the book blurb says) ’she will be confronted by a terrible dilemma – a devastating choice between duty and one great love.’

Eilis’s passivity has been much remarked upon elsewhere. It appears to be her central characteristic. She just sort of goes along with things without really knowing how she feels about them until she has time to go over things in her head later, and even then she seemingly vacillates between the positive and the negative. It’s a frustrating aspect of the character, but one which Tóibín writes with great skill and clarity. Indeed her passivity becomes an important aspect of the plot, particularly towards the very end of the novel.

What really stuck out for me was the straightforward but beautiful and perceptive way that Tóibín writes about the strangeness of a new place:

‘She was nobody here. It was not just that she had no friends and family; it was rather that she was a ghost in this room, in the streets on the way to work, on the shop floor. Nothing meant anything. The rooms in the house on Friary Street [in Ireland] belonged to her, she thought; when she moved in them she was really there… Nothing here was part of her. It was false, empty, she thought… It was as though she had been locked away.’

However, by the time she is back in Wexford a year or so later, she realises how little her childhood bedroom now means to her; how much Brooklyn has become her life. It’s a simple idea, but one which Tóibín writes so perfectly that I was instantly reminded of my first few weeks in Oxford. I did have a couple of friends here, and I had been desperate to leave Glasgow, but I was shocked by how much I missed not Glasgow itself, but the familiarity of it. Now, five years on, I can’t imagine Oxford not being familiar, and I feel a bit like a fish out of water whenever I visit my home city.

Other themes are touched upon: the uneasy dynamics between Irish and Italian immigrants in Brooklyn; America’s race issues; and strikingly for me, the manipulation by those left behind. I’m thinking here of Eilis’s mother who, when Eilis returns ostensibly for a month, seems to quietly engineer ways for her to stay longer and longer so that she, the mother, won’t be left alone.

Without having the rest of his body of work, I can’t say whether Brooklyn is Colm Tóibín’s ‘masterwork’. What I can say is that I loved this book. The writing is simple and unadorned but conveys so very much and I certainly don’t want to argue with Zoe Heller when she says that Brooklyn is ‘the most compelling and moving portrait of a young woman I have read in a long time,’ because that’s exactly what it is for me too.

Three cheers for Brodeck’s Report by Phillipe Claudel, which has won the Independent Foreign Fiction Award! A worthy winner, in my opinion, and I’m ever thankful to the Not the TV Book Group for prompting me to read it. As you may remember, it was the subject of our first discussion all those weeks ago. We commented then that John Cullen’s translation of the original French was superb, so I’m delighted to see it formally recognized.

Remember it is the final NTTVBG discussion a week on Sunday, over at Reading Matters. We’ll be talking about Fledgling  by Octavia E. Butler.

On Saturday night we had the inaugural UK Book Bloggers Meet Up, in London Town. Everyone was super-lovely, and Simon T did a sterling job of organizing things. We even had name badges, which were exceedingly helpful! There was also a book swap, and I snagged a copy of The Famished Road by Ben Okri. This is a book I’ve been thinking about reading for ages, so I’m pretty chuffed. Our next meet up is looking like it might well be in Oxford – how convenient!

In reading news, I spent much of yesterday (when I wasn’t NTTVBG-ing) with my nose stuck in Lorrie Moore’s A Gate at the Stairs. Over halfway through now, and keen to get back to it. I can see why it has been gathering the plaudits it has, and there have been some gorgeous lines in it, but I am obviously reserving full judgement until I finish it.

In other news… anyone else left distinctly cold by the new Waterstone’s logo? Why did they have to change it? The old one was just fine!

This photo looks up Byres Road in the West End. While I actually grew up in a town called Barrhead, about 10 miles away from here, this area of Glasgow is really what I consider to be home. I was born in the maternity hospital 10 mins walk from this very spot (though it is now, very sadly, closed), and from the age of six I spent every weekend around here visiting my dad. I did my undergraduate degree at Glasgow University, which is very close to where this photo was taken. I lived in various flats around this area from the age of 17 until I moved to Oxford when I was 23. In fact my last Glasgow flat was pretty much straight behind where the photographer is standing. I’m sure the new owners wouldn’t mind us taking the place over for the day.

But enough of my old haunts, onwards to our book today, A Short Gentleman by Jon Canter.

Now, I’ll be honest, I was nervous about this one. Those of you who have followed all of our meetings so far will know that the last two books haven’t been good experiences for me, and I was worried that if there was another turkey then morale would be low. Not only that, but the book advertises itself as a comic novel, and somehow a disappointing comic novel feels like more of a letdown than a disappointing non-comic novel. Is it just me that thinks that? Goodness knows we’ve needed cheering up… would Jon Canter do the trick? Well, happily, yes he did, for me at any rate.

The book is the memoir of Robert Purcell, who knew from childhood exactly how his life would pan out. Reading his respected lawyer father’s Who’s Who entry at the age of eight, Robert goes on to write his own entry every year until adulthood. But for all his certainty, we readers also know from the beginning that in September 2003, Robert commits a crime that sees him imprisoned for three years. We don’t know what that crime is until very late in the book, however, and thus the vast majority of the novel is finding out how this self-assured man got to such a point.

And at this point in proceedings, I must remind you that there are spoilers in this post. So, if you don’t want to know the scores, look away now.

The novel being written from Robert’s perspective means that not only do we see the colourful cast of characters in his life through his very particular eyes, but we also see first-hand how he seems to other people. It’s a useful dual-perspective for us. Robert is arrogant, insensitive, almost entirely humourless, and more or less a legal machine. The law and his career is his life, and often life events are refracted through a lawyerly lens. He is also obsessed with what is morally and legally Correct, with doing The Right Thing, with being Proper. Take this rather telling passage about his future wife, Elizabeth, as they play tennis:

Elizabeth served. The ball hit the net cord, careered sideways and landed a few inches wide. That was, at least, a new way for Elizabeth’s serve to be out.

‘Out!’ I called, as I always did, dutifully following the proprieties. The poor girl dropped her racquet in despair.

‘Come on, you can do it!’ I said. ‘I know you can. I’m sure you can.’ Her second serve whizzed past my right. In this fashion, varying the ear, Elizabeth held serve. Five-one to me.

What did I ‘feel’? That is the question. That is always the question, is it not? I ‘felt’ proud. I’d helped Elizabeth. For five games, she’d been intimidated by my superiority and inhibited by the need to impress. By stating my faith in her, I’d removed these constraints. I’d allowed her to fulfil her potential.

This reader was pretty certain that Elizabeth held serve by aiming her shots at his head.

Life, though, starts to go a bit wrong for Robert, and that is almost entirely down to his astonishingly analytical nature. Said nature also means that he is all but incapable of coping with life, and, as we see, he does finally crack. Not that he would say that he cracked. He believed his actions to be utterly justifiable, and correct.

What really made this book for me were the characters, all colourful and hilarious in their own ways. Robert’s parents were fantastic, and gosh, wasn’t his father a dark horse? Robert’s unlikely friendship with Mike Bell – built out of Robert’s feeling of duty towards him and also as a way to replicate an aspect of his father’s life, his friendship with Maurice Perlstein – added a touch of the farce to proceedings too. Robert leaving his stag night early so that Mike and another friend can enjoy the stripper without him there! Mike’s abortive film production career!

A Short Gentleman might not be a life-changing piece of high literature, but it’s a funny novel, and dear me I needed a bit of a giggle. Robert was unintentionally hilarious as he tried to fathom his way through life. But it also had tinges of darkness about it, especially as the story progressed. I ended up feeling slightly sorry for him in the event. Am I the only one? Over to you…

]]> http://blog.otherstories.co.uk/2010/05/nttvbg-7/feed/ 37 http://blog.otherstories.co.uk/2010/04/nttvbg6/ http://blog.otherstories.co.uk/2010/04/nttvbg6/#comments Sun, 25 Apr 2010 07:36:16 +0000 Kirsty http://blog.otherstories.co.uk/?p=1167

We’re onto the sixth book in the Not the TV Book Group! Join us as we discuss The Boys in the Trees by Mary Swan over at dovegrey reader scribbles. So far the consensus is that many of us were unconvinced…