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“The Pre-Raphaelite Tragedy is part of a loosely connected trilogy. This volume happened to be written first, but it hardly matters in which order they are read. First published in the 40s and 50s, these curious and humourous biographical studies have become minor classics. Gaunt’s style is without an imitator. The books read like novels, full of incident and vividly recreated scenes of the daily lives of the circle of Pre-Raphaelite painters. The best known of them -Rossetti, Holman Hunt, Millais, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones -side by side their now forgotten but no less interesting friends. Charles Howell, for example, liar and kleptomaniac, who organised the exhumation, some years after her death, of Lizzie Siddal, Rossetti’s wife. Rossetti was regretting not having made copies of the poems he had buried with her.”

This book’s enduring popularity is probably due to its ability to tell the story of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood is a very readable and accessible way. Somehow the author manages to make the scenes come alive and the people walk around as though they were well-drawn characters in a novel while not abandoning or pushing to one side the factual, historical telling of the story.  However, I would say that the chronology was a tad chaotic and I did lose the thread a few times. I couldn’t tell you the dates of events and paintings too well but I can picture John Everett Millais in his luxurious home, Rossetti on the balcony of his London home, the first meeting of the brotherhood… and I think these images (created for me by this book) will stay with me for a long time.

The personalities involved are what drives the book. William Morris who became disenchanted with socialism and slowly lost faith in the working class he was trying to defend. Holman Hunt who was consumed by an obsession with accuracy and truth, who surprisingly came out of it all pretty well and lived into the twentieth century. Rossetti the idealist who died a premature death. Millais the one calm and successful figure among them but with a hint of sadness, a feeling that maybe he had slightly sold his soul, had compromised higher and nobler aims in the name of painting safe and popular subjects to make money and maintain his popularity. It made me think less of him although I know it shouldn’t. The contrast of his chosen path and subsequent fate with those of Rossetti and Madox Brown is particularly poignant though.

I found their philosophy very interesting too, as I always have, although it is very difficult to pin down, and fitting William Morris, founder of the Kelmscott Press,  into his Pre-Raphaelite context was most interesting. He was really a man who knew what was wrong and tried to fix it but who could only realise his dreams through art and not through politics. As the author concludes he was, as they all (except Millais) were,  out of time and opposed to to the age in which they lived.

Overall I had a sense that this was always going to be a confused and short lived brotherhood with so many egos about and so many artists at the early, naive, stages of their career. The extent to which it did destroy most of those involved is fascinating although for some of them I expect such things might have been their destiny anyway, with or without the Brotherhood.

This was a very readable introduction and has left with me with plenty more avenues I would like to pursue.  Can anyone recommend a good book about the Rossetti family?

“A story of ’spoils and stratagems’, The Aspern Papers is set in a crumbling Venetian palazzo, where an old woman treasures up some letters sent to her by the great American poet Aspern. When a zealous literary historian arrives and attempts to prise the letters from her, he finds his charm, ingenuity and morals stretched to breaking point.” 

 Wow, wow, and wow again. This is such a short story but there’s so much in it and I admit I was really sucked into its vivid world with all its complexities and contradictions.

The writing, of course, was magnificent, depicting Venice, the hot days, the garden, and the big empty house, perfectly. There were also some wonderful observations, each of which would set me off on my own train of thought. In particular I loved the moments he had when thinking about the very old lady and how she must have been young once, her hands must have touched Aspern’s, her eyes must have met his, and that she belonged to a long gone age that seemed so out of his grasp. I admit, too, that I was fully convinced by his obsession with Aspern and the single mindedness that resulted.

In this story James is extremely clever in that he manages simultaneously to make the reader understand and therefore sympathise with the narrator while at the same time making it clear that his actions are morally dubious and dangerous. There were occasions when I had every sympathy with him and was willing him to succeed and others where I was furious with him and horrified by his behaviour. Sometimes I even felt both these things at once.

***spoilers ahead ***

The author is not without some judgement here and even in the (unnamed, by the way) narrator’s telling of the tale we can see enough of the other characters to understand more about them than he himself does and we see into his mind enough to censure him. Hence at the end Miss Tina’s behaviour is far more comprehensible to the reader than it is to the narrator who has been too blinkered to see what we could see. The final outcome is more the narrator’s fault than anyone else’s and I admit I was very upset about the loss of the papers and felt like shouting aloud to them all not to be so stupid and destroy such a valuable resource simply because of their own whims and egos.

However, even as I felt this I couldn’t shake the feeling that James was somehow laughing at me for feeling so, as if he was saying to me ‘don’t think those papers are a true representation of the man, and what gives you the right to pry anyway?’. That said, the characters and themes are interwoven so masterfully that it’s impossible to see him as coming down firmly on one side or the other. For all I can decipher he may have been bewailing the loss of the papers as much as I was!

A thoroughly brilliant novel, I might even venture to say one of the best I’ve read (and the best of James’s that I’ve read so far), I will definitely keep a copy of this in my permanent collection to go back to.

“A book that comes straight from the heart of a girl involved in a dangerous game to wreck her father’s plan to re-marry.” 

This is an intelligent and chilling psychological tale, written in a sharp, clear style that may be due to the translation -anyway, it made the story very fresh and readable. It’s about a young woman, 18 I think, who has a very close relationship with her father.  When her father plans to marry this not only is a threat to young Cecile as regards the supremacy of her relationship with her father but she also sees her future step-mother Anne as representing a different philosophy, a different way of doing things, that Cecile does not want imposed on their lives.

 Admittedly I thought Cecile and her father were absolutely horrible from start to finish and the other characters a little too shallow and unappealing. That said, I could understand Anne quite well and had a lot of sympathy for her by the end and I also liked Cyril, even if he was a tad pathetic. But generally I felt as though I was detached from this book. I felt that it was a neat, intelligent, well put together piece of entertainment but it didn’t touch me as a human being in any way*.  It left me exactly the same as I would have been had I not read it.

I do have a feeling, though, that had I read this as a teenager it might have made an impression and I might (though I’m not sure) have been able to muster a tiny bit of sympathy for Cecile. Sagan was only 18 when she wrote it and while it is a very accomplished piece of work for someone so young it definitely has that stamp on it of someone very in tune with what it feels like to be a confused and selfish teenager.  That in itself is a valuable insight, I think, even if it leaves the rest of us cold.

*I have been told I should stop demanding that from books but I think I’ll stick to my guns! A healthy 70% of what I read manages so I don’t think I’m asking too much.

“How did Shakespeare go from being a talented poet and playwright to become one of the greatest writers who ever lived? Here at last is an intimate history of Shakepeare, following him through a single year that changed not only his fortunes but the course of literature.”

I really loved this book and spent the Christmas holiday carrying it around with me everywhere. It’s a fascinating depiction of a year in Shakespeare’s life that covers everything from life at court, the wars in Ireland, the threat of Spanish invasion, censorship, publishing and the colourful world of the theatre. I have gained a more vivid understanding of the late Elizabethan era from this book than from any other.

Shakespeare himself still remains an enigma as (the author admits) we can know so little about him. Drawing conclusions about the man through his plays is incredibly difficult and there are relatively few other sources. On a number of occasions the author says that he would love to know how Shakespeare reacted to such-and-such or behaved in response to so-and-so but admits we have no idea.

What is fascinating is that the book focuses on the four plays Shakespeare wrote this year. They are four very different plays and I admit at first I was sceptical as to how they could be linked together. What this book offers is a broader picture of a versatile writer given at last more freedom to experiment (due to being a part-owner of the newly constructed Globe Theatre) and to push himself and his audience. It is the year in which he dispenses with jigs and clowns and moves to deeper, wordier, more complex plays. He treads the line between crowd-pleasing and boundary-pushing perfectly and it is this new found freedom that enables him to become the playwright capable of creating Hamlet, King Lear, Othello and Macbeth.

The four plays written in 1599 that this book focuses on are ‘Henry V’, ‘Julius Caesar’, ‘As you Like It’ and ‘Hamlet’ (which he was completing at the year’s end). Through exploring these plays in depth the author is able to demonstrate how rapidly Shakespeare changed and how rapidly things changed in the world around him. The plays are examined firmly in the context of their time focusing on their presentation of heroism and war, the ideals of chivalry and a romanticised past, and the consequences of revolution and ambition. The greatness of Shakespeare, the reader comes to feel, is in his ability to make any story and any setting speak directly to the experiences and feelings of his Globe audience and also across four centuries to communicate the same ideas and feelings to us today.

Personally, the bit liked best was the focus on Hamlet towards the end, the soliloquies quoted reminding me of the brilliance of my favourite play. Hamlet is a magnificent creation and one of the most ‘real’ characters in literature mainly because he is complex and multi-faceted but also because he is given the words to express the turmoil and chaos inside. What was most fascinating of all in this book was the tale of how different versions of Hamlet came into existence and how both have been merged ever since. When I get home I am definitely going to check my copy and try to work out which one it is! I also feel a great urge to go and read Montaigne’s Essays and that’s not something I’ve been motivated to do before…

Anyway, I could go on for some length about this wonderfully interesting and stimulating book but I had better end it here. I do recommend it though. It’s a very readable book and I rate it highly amongst my non-fiction reads.

When I heard that this was going to be dramatised in the run up to Christmas I decided to read the book. The only novel of Gaskell’s I have read is ‘North and South’ and considering I thought that was absolutely superb it’s strange I never got round to reading any of her others.

Though ’Cranford’ did not quite reach the heights of ‘North and South’ (and I missed the majority of what has by most accounts been a superb TV adaptation) I did nevertheless really enjoy it. As I have now returned it to the library I can’t give you the back cover blurb.

Nor can I give you the bit I was going to quote as an example of her fine writing, when Mary goes to post a letter to Miss Matty’s long lost brother who is now in India and as she posts it she thinks about her humble writing on this piece of paper and how it will travel across the sea into a different land. It was exquisite. As I intend to buy my own copy I will give the quote in full when I do.

Anyway, to the main review… ‘Cranford’ is novel which has at its core a village whose population is mostly spinsters. Though their lives seem idyllic there is a great deal of sadness and regret and though they may appear to be respectable and well off in most cases this is just show and they’re only a step away from financial ruin.

It is also (like ‘North and South’) a depiction of a world in transition with the coming of the railways and the encroachment of the world of commerce on their quiet country lives. ‘Miss Matty’ who is one of the best and most loveable characters I’ve come across in literature is very much of the old world and there is a sense that her innocent nature is a product of it. Nevertheless when needs must she condescends to enter trade and sell tea, something unthinkable for a respectable lady not many years before.

The changing climate is also indicated by the blurring of what were previous rigid social ranks with Martha and Betty, both domestic servants, rising to heights they would not have reached before. It is also reflected in Lady Glenmire’s marriage to the village doctor Mr.Hoggins.

It is not a typical novel in terms of having a central chronological storyline. It is more a set of interwoven events and characters through which a bigger story about society at that time is told. However, though it may sound insubstantial it is anything but.

What I can’t describe here is the superb quality of the writing, its depth and breadth. Everything about it seemed so much a part of the real world and I felt as though I had stepped into ‘Cranford’ and that while I was reading it everything and everyone in that world made sense. There were some marvellously observant and witty asides, and the narrator, Mary, is often a great source of amusement herself. There’s one particular bit towards the end where she says something about how she is rarely wrong and as her father is never wrong either it must be a hereditary trait. It came up so suddenly in the narrative and brought out such a moment of uncontrolled laughter that I spilled my tea!

This book is a gem, a classic. I wish I had read it sooner so that I could have enjoyed the TV series properly.

 ”‘Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamourous blonde Ukrainian divorcee. He was eighty-four and she was thirty-six. She exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade, churning up the murky water, bringing to the surface a sludge of sloughed-off memories, giving the family ghosts a kick up the backside.’

Sisters Vera and Nadezhda must put aside a lifetime of feuding to save their emigre engineer father from voluptuous gold-digger Valentina. With her proclivity for green satin underwear and boil-in-the-bag cuisine, she will stop at nothing in her pursuit of Western wealth. But the sisters’ campaign to oust Valentina unearths family secrets, uncovers fifty years of Europe’s darkest history and sends them back to roots they’d much rather forget…”

This book is supposed to be a comedy, albeit one shot through with bitterness, but I admit it actually felt to me like an overwhelmingly sad tale. There was nothing redeeming about the horrid Valentina who might have started out as pathetic and absurd but quickly became a thoroughly nasty piece of work. Enough evidence was given of her supposed suffering and towards the end she is presented as a victm but I’m afraid it just didn’t wash with me. She was simply too nasty.

I also disliked the father though as the book went on and more of his background was fleshed out I came to feel that he was much more human and I had a great deal of sympathy for him even if the whole horrid situation was largely his fault. I also came to like Vera, even if she too could be nasty she was still human and I could understand her. Nadezhda I liked and she is the reason this book works. A likeable and sympathetic narrator was definitely needed and she fills the role well.

What this book did give me, and a lot of the sadness I felt comes from this, was an insight into modern Ukraine. It’s an ancient country with much in its past to be proud of but, if the conversations towards the end of the book are anything to go by, it has totally lost its way. Valentina is held up as an example of the rampant capitalism and obsession with all things Western that has engulfed it. I felt the discussions of Ukraine were done well and presented in a balanced way even if they sometimes bordered on the simplistic.

I would recommend this, especially to others who have an interest in the region and its history, but a word of warning -it may be marketed as a hilarious romp but it is nothing of the sort. It is an intelligent, penetrating and overwhelmingly sad book that’s very well worth reading.

 This is a funny, charming and observant tale of the down and outs of California, the general message being that people at all levels of society have merit and worth and that joy and meaning can be found in lives that have nothing to do with money, property, success or power. The people in Cannery Row have ducked out of ‘society’ in a way, given up on having a job and a mortgage, and while they are not wealthy they have friendship and the beautiful Californian coast and they are happy.

Doc is the most interesting character in that he’s an educated man, someone who has been part of that other world and has chosen to leave it, bringing with him his poetry books, his classical music and his love of marine wildlife. He is the one who straddles the two worlds and it was him I felt I liked the best and could identify with.

The other characters, although not always as likeable, were vividly drawn and I felt I knew them well. What I love about Steinbeck is the vividness of his writing. It isn’t waffly or overly descriptive but the reader knows exactly how the air feels and tastes, how the various characters see their lives, and how the world of Cannery Row operates and is held together.

Into this arena he throws seemingly small lives and seemingly little events and through them tells us so much. What I loved best of all were the little quirks, especially the people sleeping by the pipes, the ice skater, and the bits with the frogs. The scene with the frogs in the pool will stay with me for a long time. It was funny but it was also haunting, there being more behind it than there at first seemed. I also loved the way that the frogs were used as currency, a currency that unfortunately managed to escape during a particularly wild party!

This was a very entertaining book and very readable though its apparent lightness is deceptive. Another recommended read.

I still don’t know what to make of this and as I had to take it back to the library I can’t give you the back cover blurb.

In summary, Gabriel Syme is a policeman sent undercover into a group of anarchist terrorists. It starts out as a political thriller with plenty of theological and philosophical ponderings thrown in but very quickly it becomes so much more. There are some scenes that chill and disturb and others that are downright hilarious as Syme discovers that no-one is who they say they are and nothing is what it seems. It’s a world turned on its head -rather like anarchy. I wonder if this is the point Chesterton’s making. He is certainly hostile to anarchy but in ways with which I sympathise so I don’t really see him as equating anarchy with atheism.

There is lots of religious imagery (and of course the ‘man’ in charge of it all is called Sunday) and certainly in the final scenes the religious themes come out more strongly but I don’t see it as a redemptive or moral tale. It’s supposed to be a nightmare and it seems that way to me. There’s nothing benevolent and admirable about Sunday. I was left with a vague sense of nausea and hopelessness though, perhaps getting the feeling that the enemies of anarchy had been worn out and ground down by the randomness and chaos of it all and were going to retire quietly and give up the chase. But I would want to re-read the ending again to fully coment on that.

I feel bad that I can’t say any more about it. I wish I’d made the time to write this review straight after I finished reading it but as it was now some weeks ago I still remember the story well but not necessarily the impressions it made on me. Anyway, it’s certainly one to read again in the future and I will probably revisit it one day.

There are some things that can only be properly exaplained in fiction. On so many occasions I have found myself trying to explain to people who aren’t readers what exactly it is that is so engrossing and life changing about reading. I always fail. Nothing I can say on the subject really explains it. It just comes out sounding pompous and inadequate. It doesn’t matter anymore, however, as next time someone asks me I shall simply pass them this book.

This is the best account I have ever come across of the joys of reading. In true Bennett style he takes a real person (‘The Queen’) and imposes a slightly surreal, very funny, and yet somehow convincing scenario onto her life -she becomes an avid reader.

He observes how the reading ‘muscle’ develops, how those things she couldn’t at first understand and appreciate come alive for her later in her reading career, how she is free to ramble through different kinds of books at will with no sense of obligation, how one book may lead her onto another, how literature doesn’t discriminate, it just invites you in whoever you are. He describes how she becomes aware of the inner lives of others and how they may be feeling. There’s one bit I really like where she notices that “previously she wouldn’t have cared what the maid thought or that she might have hurt her feelings, only now she did and coming back to the chair she wondered why (pg.51)”.

She also begins to make observations and notice things about peoples’ physical appearance. She even says things that those around her do not understand and they’re frightened by the unpredictability of it all. She starts jotting down thoughts in a notebook now that she has thoughts worth writing down. She begins to grow tired of the ordinary, predictable and controlled and starts to veer away from approved routes and topics. I loved seeing reading take over her life and her priorities. For some of us it’s just more important to read the next few chapters than pay attention to the condition of our wardrobe!

Other than his wonderfully acute observations about reading there are some equally precise and clever depictions of Monarchy and its role, which those who have seen ‘The Madness of King George’ will recognise. Those around her become rather alarmed, mainly because she’s ‘indulging’ in something they don’t understand but also because she is seeing more, feeling more, knowing more and somehow wanting more too. She’s not this benign, easily controlled person anymore. Seeing the ruthlessness and conniving they go to to rid her of her new found habit also causes some entertaining moments -the Anita Brookner security alert particularly springs to mind. The ending too is unexpected, clever, and suits the Queen’s transformation perfectly. The Queen is ruthless too, Bennett is reminding us, and she will always have her way in the end.

On a personal level this book ticked all the boxes. It mentioned my University (UEA), my former place of work The London Library*, Anita Brookner, Ivy Compton Burnett, Nancy Mitford, mobile libraries and Strictly Come Dancing! It was also very, very funny. I might have mentioned that.

Do go and read this, I urge you. It’s one of those ‘if you only read one book this year make it this one’ books. It will take you no time at all and you will be richly rewarded.

* Where I now realise I was once in the same room as Bennett as I did some shelving but couldn’t for the life of me remember who he was at the time–oh shame!

“Paris, 1792. Each day scores of the French nobility feed the guillotine. They are trapped in the capital. There is no escape.

But rumours whisper of a league of young English gentlemen of unparalleled daring who are risking their lives to spirit aristocats across the Channel. They leave no trace behind them except a note from the ‘Scarlet Pimpernel’.

The ruthless spy master Chauvelin is determined to stop the rescuers by fair means or foul, and, desperately outnumbered, the Scarlet Pimpernel and his men must use all their wits to evade capture and stay alive.”

I really enjoyed this and it helped me through a few difficult days. It’s a classic tale of love and adventure. The scene at the ball and Marguerite’s inner turmoil was particularly well done, I loved the scheming and unpredictability of it all. In fact, right up until they all left for France I was thinking this book was a wow.

I am glad I read this book when I did as the romance was laid on a tad thick for my taste and even in my softened up state I did find Marguerite’s constant wallowing a tad irritating, not to mention her immense stupidity. If she was the cleverest woman in Europe, I really had to worry about the rest of them.

I think, though, that the reader is suppost to know what’s coming and to see the blindingly obvious things that are seemingly hidden from the perceptions of Margeurite and Chauvelin. It creates great excitement in a ‘he’s behind you!’ kind of way!

So, I am not sure what the fully aware and ruthless Abi would have made of it but ill and fed up Abi was greatly entertained and all the jollier for it. Thank you Scarlet Pimpernel for a great trip!