Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead by Barbara Comyns

Posted on July 27, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Thank you so much to Simon from Stuck in a Book for this recommendation. Your future recommendations will be heeded!

Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead is an odd book, a short book, a unique book, and a very enjoyable way to spend an hour or two of your time. The setting is Warwickshire, “about seventy years ago” – published in 1954, so call it the 1880’s. We are mostly concerned with the Willoweed family. The grandmother is rather hateful and gluttonous and deaf; her son, Ebin, is cowed and unsympathetic as well. He has three children who are not in school, but who drift through the Willoweed estate trying to avoid unpleasantness. The town at large plays a role, as well as the Willoweeds’ domestic servants.

The book opens with a flood that disrupts normal life – “the maids pinned their skirts up high and splashed about in the water trying to prepare breakfast.” There are deaths, and then there are more deaths, and then it becomes clear that a plague of sorts has descended upon this sleepy town, which gives Grandmother Willoweed great pleasure. These deaths are treated less as tragedies than as facts of life, no more or less important than the deaths of the hens in the flood at the beginning of the book.

I haven’t given you much of a plot synopsis here, but that’s because the plot isn’t really the point. Things happen to the various characters, rather than them initiating action. But the unique thing about Comyns’ writing is that this book is not necessarily about Things Happening To People, as is usually the case in books. Rather, every event, large and small, and every observation, is treated with equal weight. The descriptions are brief and striking and evocative. The tone is really something different and special; I appreciate this writer’s ability to bring real interest and consideration to items and events that are mundane, or in other cases, horrifying, but in a democratic fashion.

An odd but fascinating book, short and easy to read: I started it in the airport in San Diego and was finished less than halfway into the flight home to Houston. I recommend it, and will be seeking more Comyns. Thanks Simon!

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Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Posted on May 9, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Here’s yet another book I can’t believe I waited so long to read! I struggle to categorize this book. I think I thought it was genre romance, and I still tend to shelve it that way, but I also feel that sells it short. (Sorry, romance readers. Bear with me. I’m not trying to be ugly.) Of course, categorization is often problematic, and often doesn’t do a book justice. But we persist in trying to do it, for several good reasons. Labels are helpful in describing a book to your friends, and grouping like items together on a shelf assists browsing. So, I thought Rebecca was romance, or romantic suspense, as it says right on the cover of my paperback copy. And to me, this sounds like genre fiction: readable, easy, even “light”, entertaining, and in accordance with a known structure or format. Not a bad thing – I love a lot of genre fiction (although mostly mystery, and not romance). But I’ve also heard this book referred to as a classic. I’ve seen it written about and referred to repeatedly as a standard of sorts. My curiosity grew, and I had to pick it up.

And what a delicious little treasure it is! From the first page, I was transfixed. The mood is outstanding. I had only the vaguest of notions that something bad happened in this book, and I could feel the ghostly mist creeping unseen around my shoulders from literally the first few sentences. There is an air of foreboding that is absolutely unexplainable, as the plot proceeds in an outwardly staid and steady fashion. How does she do it?

Our narrator, who I believe remains unnamed throughout, is living a painfully awkward underprivileged youth when she meets a striking and tragic widower who abruptly proposes to her after a brief quasi-courtship. (This is not a spoiler, I don’t think, or not a very bad one. It is fairly well known from the first pages.) Anticipating this proposal was great fun for me. She accompanies him back to his famous (or infamous?) estate, and the legacy of the dead first wife looms.

Now I shall stop telling you the story. I might have known this much going in (at a maximum) and it was a real pleasure to breathlessly turn pages in ignorance of what was to come. It is suspense, people, as the cover says! If you haven’t read this, avoid spoilers with great care! And go get yourself a copy immediately! Here, you can borrow mine. (The library has several.)

The suspense is outstanding. The narrator’s awkwardness occasionally gets a little frustrating but it’s so REAL – my frustration is entirely realistic because she is realistic. The bad-guy characters are infuriatingly, in a juicy-delicious fictional way. The striking husband remains tragically striking, sort of admirable and obnoxious by turns, but I suppose the romance part drew me in, because I was right there with the nameless wife, wanting him to love us. And the background moodiness, the ghost-story feel, the gothic mists about my shoulders were entirely pleasurable.

I wish I could read this book again for the first time! I know du Maurier has written much else. I hope it is up to this standard because I thought it was outstanding. Genre fiction? I don’t know, I’m stumped, but whatever it is, it’s worth reading.

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Three Lives and Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein

Posted on May 6, 2011 by pagesofjulia

I have this Digireads edition, see

I’m cheating a touch, because I read Three Lives some time ago. But it is bound with Tender Buttons in my edition and I’m going to write about them together. It is my hope that my writing about two Stein conundrums will distract you from the fact that I’m confused.

I found some unexpected free time one evening, and knew that I had reading commitments to fulfill, so I didn’t want to start anything of any significant length. I’ll try Tender Buttons, I thought. It’s all of 30 pages, I thought, how hard could it be? HA! Maybe I should have turned back to one of the stories out of The Things They Carried or a chapter of This Book Is Overdue! Either one of those would have been easier options.

So my interest in Gertrude Stein is entirely born of my intense interest in Ernest Hemingway. As we know, Stein was an early friend and mentor, with whom his relationship later soured; he greatly admired, then denigrated, her work, which is famously… er, unique.

When I read Three Lives I was a bit dismayed at my failure to appreciate it. I didn’t find it as difficult as Faulkner, thank goodness, but she certainly doesn’t follow anyone’s model structure for story-telling. Three Lives is made up of three novella-style life stories, of three women in a fictional small town. Their stories don’t go anywhere particular, nor do they join for any greater purpose, although they are evocative and poignant in their moments. I suppose they are vignettes, and well-done at times in their own way; but unorthodox and a little unsettling.

Tender Buttons is a wholly different proposition. It’s a long free-verse poem of sorts, presented sort of as a series of descriptions or discussions of random nouns. For example.

A MOUNTED UMBRELLA.
What was the use of not leaving it there where it would hang what was the use if there was no chance of ever seeing it come there and show that it was handsome and right in the way it showed it. The lesson is to learn that it does show it, that it shows it and that nothing, that there is nothing, that there is no more to do about it and just so much more is there plenty of reason for making an exchange.

or

A NEW CUP AND SAUCER.
Enthusiastically hurting a clouded yellow bud and saucer, enthusiastically so is the bite in the ribbon.

At first this bothered me very much, because I was trying to make sense of it. Her sentences are not sentences; they do not seem to have meaning, or if they do, I am too dense to find it. Unlike the poetry I am familiar with (and I’m no scholar of poetry, but I have read some, and even free-verse generally has some structure – some clues as to how to read it, like line breaks or, hello, punctuation!), there is no guide for where the natural breaks are in language – where a person would draw breath when reading aloud, for instance. (I tried reading this out loud to the Husband while he worked on our deck and he was NOT tolerant.)

But then I decided that Gertrude Stein’s poetry is like Cirque du Soleil or Cats, in that there is no plot or point to speak of, but there is poetry. Read Tender Buttons aloud; it makes music. This is the best way that I can find to appreciate Stein. She is a challenge, make no mistake. And perhaps there is great depth of meaning and I’m missing it because I’m simple. If so, please do comment here, being gentle and kind about it, and explain what I’ve missed. I’m willing to make an effort to appreciate Stein, for Papa’s sake (unlike Faulkner, who I’ve given up on, I think) but she does require an effort. On the other hand, with effort, I find Tender Buttons an intriguing puzzle and it does stimulate and entertain me; just not in the way I usually expect books to do!

I am claiming this one for credit in the Classics Challenge. I think I’ve earned it. Please don’t make me write a book report as I remain a little baffled. But, I’m also excited at the prospect of reading Janet Malcolm’s Two Lives (a biography of Stein and her lifelong partner Alice B. Toklas. notice the play on Stein’s Three Lives), which has patiently resided on my shelf for years now. Look for that one to come. Perhaps Ms. Malcolm will help me understand Ms. Stein!

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Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner

Posted on April 30, 2011 by pagesofjulia


Announcing International Anita Brookner Day! Coming up on July 16, which this year will be her 83rd birthday, and co-hosted by Thomas at My Porch and Simon at Savidge Reads. The idea is to read at least one novel by Brookner before IAB Day, and then go check out Thomas’s blog to link to your blog post or comment there on his page.

I am grateful to these gents for suggesting that I check her out. I was not familiar before, and am now absolutely a big, big fan, after reading Hotel du Lac. Thomas called her books each “brilliant in its own quiet, often depressing way” and also says that they are all “so similar in theme and tone that it is a little hard for me to keep them straight” but also “each of her novels, regardless of plot, is a perfectly wrought gem of introspective genius.” These comments seem somewhat mixed; depressing and all running together? not quite so complimentary; but then again, he’s organizing a whole Day around Brookner, and uses words like “brilliant,” “perfect(ly),” and “genius.” I was intrigued. And, they’re short books. 🙂 So I found this one and gave it a go.

I will use Thomas’s word and say brilliant, indeed. This is a book about a woman named Edith Hope, who at the start of the novel, arrives at the titular hotel for a medium-length stay on the coast of Lake Geneva in Switzerland. She seems to have been sent away from her home in some disgrace by friends and cohorts, but it’s not altogether clear why. She also seems to have a very passive role in her own indefinite exile. It’s odd.

Edith’s new life at the hotel is quiet and slow, which is not unlike her home life; she works on writing a romance novel (her umpteenth) and socializes by listening to women with larger and not entirely attractive personalities who are also ensconced. She writes letters home to a married man who was or is her lover – it seems to be past-tense – but it’s not clear that she mails them. She’s generally a passive and quiet person. I felt it was so descriptive of her that

…the action startled her, as if her plans had been made final without her having reached any conscious decision.

It’s a generally quiet book. There’s very little action, just musing. And it is depressed, if not depressing. But it is insightful and very funny, too. Brookner’s choice of words is extremely cutting, articulate, and rare. I point you towards a recent post in which I marvel at the line, “not drowning, but waving.” Indulge me with one or two more:

[The schoolchildren] were not given to excess or noise, and once the ship had left the shore they were summoned into the glassed-off observation lounge by their teacher for some sort of lesson. Obediently, they turned like swallows and left Edith and Mr Neville alone on deck.

Only one of many instances in which silence is discussed. It’s a theme. Or, how curious is it that such a coldly civilized man as Mr Neville would say,

Please don’t cry. I cannot bear to see a woman cry; it makes me want to hit her. Please, Edith.

It’s a strange, calm, quiet, leisurely, literary novel in which not much happens, but it’s such a luxurious joy to read it slowly, and go back and re-read. I failed to note where Brookner wrote that

The company of their own sex, Edith reflected, was what drove many women into marriage

and had to go back looking for it; and re-reading 50 pages was pleasurable, not at all a chore. The book might be read as a statement on love or marriage, but I feel like this subject matter is incidental; to me, it’s more of a book of tone, of language, and of character sketches. (How fascinating is Mrs. Pusey as a creature?) It could be about anything.

This book is beautiful. I want to read more Brookner. Will I do so before IAB Day? Who knows; there’s lots to read in my world. But I will definitely read more, eventually. She’s a real treasure. Thanks for the into, Thomas.

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Main Street by Sinclair Lewis

Posted on April 4, 2011 by pagesofjulia

This is a real star. I’ve been so pleased to take in this witty, bitingly satirical story of small-town life. The setting is the fictional town of Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, based on Lewis’s hometown of Sauk Centre; but as he says in the introduction, “the story would be the same in Ohio or Montana, in Kansas or Kentucky or Illinois, and not very differently would it be told Up York State or in the Carolina hills.”

This is my first experience with Sinclair Lewis, and I’m sorry I waited so long. Certainly his other work is now on my long list TBR.

It’s the story of Carol Kennington (née Milford), who as a college student has some vague and lofty ideas of improving small towns, before she marries and settles in Gopher Prairie. This small town (patently representative of small towns everywhere – Lewis all but beats us over the head with this statement) does not want to be improved, does not believe it needs improving, and disapproves of Carol on every level. It’s a painful story, and it drags along, not becoming boring, but definitely oppressive in Carol’s pain. She’s no pristine heroine, repeatedly distracted from her lofty goals of uplifting Gopher Prairie and the human race; she’s decidedly flawed. And yet I don’t think the reader can help but sympathize with her.

She tries to implement her idealized improvements but is rejected in her theater group, her improvement of the town library, her crossing of social, economic, and class lines. She tries to escape in a few cheap flirtations, but none is consummated – her choices of love are disillusioning. She finally makes her husband take her on a trip to leave behind the doldrums, but her relief is temporary. From page 393:

Yes. She was back home! Nothing had changed. She had never been away. California? Had she seen it? Had she for one minute left this scraping sound of the small shovel in the ash-pit of the furnace? But Kennicott preposterously supposed that she had. Never had she been quite so far from going away as now when he believed she had just come back. She felt oozing through the walls the spirit of small houses and righteous people. At that instant she knew that in running away she had merely hidden her doubts behind the officious stir of travel.

Finally, just when I thought we were going to wallow forever, Carol up and leaves town with her three-and-a-half-year-old son for Washington, D.C., where she starts a new and relatively satisfying life. But she is still not ultimately fulfilled… Relatively quickly, she ends up back in good ole GP with good ole Will Kennicott. The book ends with Carol resigned to GP, with an oddly comfortable but not entirely content feeling. I found this a ending a little strange. So much of the book had been writhing discomfort and dissatisfaction and dreaming and planning for something different. Then we finally – very late in the game (by which I mean the book) – saw Carol go to DC for a life that I do see was not entirely suited to her, but also seemed very much an improvement. And then she went back… home? Do we call it home? She makes a few final defiant statements at the end of the book; but her defiance is in spirit and not in action or even, I feel, in emotion. I’m not disappointed with the ending. I suppose I’m a bit surprised. I’m awfully removed from Carol’s world. I will see my 30th birthday a good 95 years after hers; and I’m if anything a bit independent in my own time. Her life in DC looked pretty interesting to me but I realize that I am not Carol. And who on earth could I have been in her day? But I digress.

Lewis’s criticism of Gopher Prairie and by extension, all of the U.S., is almost cruelly biting, but also wonderful, witty, and funny. I was entertained from the first page. Besides American hypocrisy, or maybe even before it, its largest social issue is definitely feminism and women’s place in the home. But there is also tangential treatment of war (World War I), communism, workers’ rights, religious hypocrisy, class structures… and Carol doesn’t escape criticism, either. Lewis reserves a sneer for the out-of-touch artsy do-gooder in her. But in the end I think he retains something of a loving touch for most of his characters at the same time.

The writing was delightful. I laughed out loud and I felt Carol’s pain, and I felt for the ridiculous Will Kennicott (who mostly, I did not like) when he stoically handled Carol’s infidelity-in-spirit. But I also gloried in the turns of phrase. I loved “that amiable contempt called poise” and that Carol “picked [the book] up carelessly, with a slight yawn which she patted down with her fingertips as delicately as a cat.” Does that not paint a portrait?

I was interested to find, in the Afterword (by Mark Schorer of the University of California, in my Signet Classic paperback edition of 1961), discussion of this book in relation to Madame Bovary. Apparently my repeated comparison of the two, while I was reading, has a strong precedent. Schorer writes,

Madame Bovary is more than a study of provincial manners in a certain time and place in France; that much is only the setting for a highly dramatic presentation of human catastrophe. But Main Street cannot be lifted out of its historic setting, which is, in effect, the whole of it.

Perhaps this is what I was saying above, about trying to put myself in Carol’s shoes. At any rate I found the Afterword to be a few thoughtful pages, worth the time I spent on it.

I picked this up as a casual read and it was very enjoyable and worth my time and interest. I’m going to apply it towards the Classics Challenge at which I am so miserably far behind, so there we go. More to come!

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