Paperback Reader » Themed Reading

Claire’s Corner

Paperback Reader — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 13:55:21 +0000

So, I’ve been blogging rather sporadically of late; all I can offer as a reason is that I’ve been busy and London was in the sweaty grips of a heatwave (the operative word being “was”). Pedicures and Pimm’s have been more appealing than posting, to be honest, but I do miss conversing about all things bookish. Anyway, I’ve been remiss in replying to comments and reciprocating but I shall try to catch up. First of all, though, I am off home to Glasgow for an extended visit. I’ll be mainly spending quality time with my boyfriend, family and friends but I do plan on some essential reading time (hopefully in the garden with a little bit of sun … a girl can dream, right?) Above are the books that I’ll be taking home with me this weekend.

Couples by John Updike is my choice for the next meeting of the Riverside Readers. It’s a book I’ve had and been wanting to read since last summer and there’s something about a New England settingthat seems summery to me; I can easily see myself reading this with a cocktail in hand waiting for the BBQ to heat up. I suspect that it’s also going to complementary the choice I made for my other book group, Peyton Place by Grace Metalious.

Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood is a book I have been wanting to read for around thirteen years (seriously, I remember wanting to borrow it from my school library and the librarian refusing; apparently the book wasn’t “appropriate” for me even though my English teachers were giving me copies of Sons of Lovers and Lolita to read at the time. Hmph). Anyway, I should really have read it by now and have been requiring more Atwood in my life recently so the long overdue opportunity presents itself.

The Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle is another one I’ve been meaning to read for some time, especially after I enjoyed Drop City so much. Kim of Reading Matters reminded me of my desire to read it and describing it as a meaty summer read with lots to chew over sealed the deal!

Crow Lake by Mary Lawson was a gift from my sister-in-law who always chooses and recommends the best books to me. Living in Canada she has introduced me to several Canadian authors (Ann-Marie MacDonald, Camilla Gibb) that may have passed me by otherwise and Mary Lawson will be another. I’ve had this on my TBR since last year saving it for the perfect reading opportunity.

Looking for Alaska by John Green is a very recent acquisition and one I couldn’t resist adding to my holiday pile; after enjoying Paper Towns so much I relished the idea of immediately acquainting myself with more of Green’s work.

Mariana by Monica Dickens made it into my final selection because what summer is complete without a Persephone book, preferably of the lighter persuasion? It was between this and Miss Buncle’s Book but the cover alone of my Classic edition evokes summer to me.

A library book or two will also make it into my case but these are the books that I am itching to read whilst I relax at home. Although there a couple of lighter, absorbing reads, the bulk are books I’ll be able to sink my teeth into. Recently I’ve been reading quickly (and somewhat obsessively but more about that in another post) and I am craving longer books that I can lose myself in and some of the books I have selected should provide exactly that.

I have a major backlog of reviews so some are scheduled for when I am away and I will endeavour to be on top of things once I return at the end of July.

In the meantime, have you read any of these and what holiday reading do you have planned, if any?

All the Miss Havishams

Paperback Reader — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 23:03:18 +0000

This weekend I will be at home in Glasgow for the wedding of a dear friend and I thought it appropriate to schedule a wedding-themed Angela Carter post. Being Carter, of course, it’s not happily-ever-after; she had a penchant for depicting daughters wearing their mothers’ wedding dresses, as a Gothic symbol for loss-of-innocence. I opted to feature the Roxanna Bikadoroff illustration for the US edition (Penguin) of The Magic Toyshop because it shows Melanie in the wedding-dress that is so central to the plot. The Magic Toyshop is a coming-of-age novel that focuses on the pubescent Melanie and celebrates her burgeoning sexuality and the loss of her innocence. The first chapter of the novel is about her the trying on of the dress, her mother wore on her wedding dress; the subsequent spoiling of the dress when she is locked out in the garden and has to climb a tree, spilling blood in the process; the eventual blame upon herself for her parents’ deaths, putting it down to the wearing of the dress.

She examined the wedding dress more closely. It seemed a strange way to dress up just in order to lose your virginity. She wondered if her parents had sexual intercourse before they were married. She felt she was really growing up if she had started to speculate about this … Symbolic and virtuous white. White satin shows every mark, white tulle crumples at the touch of a finger, white roses shower petals at a breath. Virtue is fragile. It was a marvellous wedding-dress. Did she, Melanie wondered for a moment, wear it on the wedding night?

The title of this post refers to Miss Havisham from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Jilted on her wedding day, humiliated and heartbroken, Miss Havisham never removes her wedding dress -which she was already dressed in- and leaves the wedding cake uneaten on the table. Miss Havisham is a haunting female character and I think that Carter is acknowledging her standing in literary tradition as a scorned female and significant character. Melanie, of course, is a young girl, blossoming into herself, whereas Miss Havisham is a woman whose life has been lived in resentment at a broken heart; the decaying image of a woman living in the similarly ruined mansion, with all the clocks stopped at the hour of her betrayal, contrasts to the heightened life-blood of Melanie. The vampiric eponymous lady of “The Lady of the House of Love” in The Bloody Chamber is even more reminiscent of Miss Havisham:

Wearing an antique bridal gown, the beautiful queen of the vampires sits all alone in her dark, high house under the eyes of the portraits of her demented and atrocious ancestors, each one of whom, through her, projects a baleful posthumous existence; she counts out the Tarot cards, ceaselessly construing a constellation of possibilities as if the random fall of the cards on the red plush tablecloth before her could precipitate her from her chill, shuttered room into a country of perpetual summer and obliterate the perennial sadness of a girl who is both death and the maiden.

All day, she lies in her coffin in her négligé of blood-stained lace. When the sun drops behind the mountain, she yawns and stirs and puts on the only dress she has, her mother’s wedding dress, to sit and read her cards until she grows hungry.

First of all, he saw only a shape, a shape imbued with a faint luminosity since it caught and reflected in its yellowed surfaces what little light there was in the ill-lit room; this shape resolved itself into that of, of all things, a hoop-skirted dress of white satin draped here and there with lace, a dress fifty or sixty years out of fashion but once, obviously, intended for a wedding. And then he saw the girl who wore the dress, a girl with the fragility of the skeleton of a moth, so thin, so frail that her dress seemed to him to hang suspended, as if untenanted in the dank air, a fabulous lending, a self-articulated garment in which she lived like a ghost in a machine.

Read the beautiful prose in the above passages; Carter has re-envisaged Miss Havisham as well as loosely using the premise of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale.

The character too of Tristessa in The Passion of New Eve is a type of Miss Havisham, négligéed and forced into marriage; however, to reveal how Carter subverts the notion of Tristessa as a reclusive Miss Havisham is to spoil the novel.

I don’t pretend to offer any profound insights in this post but I did want to highlight Carter’s progressive use of similar images, themes and her use of intertextuality in her work. Previously I have mentioned Carter’s wealth of literary allusion but she also relies on the images and reputation of classic texts to shape her own, which makes her intricately crafted prose all the richer.

The Love is Here

Paperback Reader — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 11:33:38 +0000

Happy Valentine’s Day! Above is an insight into how I shall be spending my day. My boyfriend bought me a box of delicious Valentine’s cupcakes and I shall be curled up beside him today eating those and reading about love (and feeling it).

Mid-week I received a wrapped package from the lovely Alice at Bloomsbury; inside were a copy of Aphrodite’s Workshop for Reluctant Lovers by Marika Cobbold, a bar of Green & Black’s chocolate, and a note to say that Valentine’s Day is a day to indulge in guilty pleasures. I could not agree with the sentiment more. I am thoroughly enjoying Cobbold’s quirky tale of a Romance novelist who has fallen out of love and incurred the wrath of Aphrodite and her son, Eros, whose career has been brought into disrepute. I also have Love by Elizabeth Von Arnim to immerse myself in; after being enchanted by The Enchanted April last Spring, it is about time that I sought out some more of this wonderful author.

Whether you are being spoiled today or indulging yourself, enjoy your Valentine’s Day.

Hogfather

Paperback Reader — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 16:15:00 +0000

My Christmas-themed reading mainly consisted of Hogfather by Terry Pratchett as I have less reading time over the festive period than I had imagined. However, it was the perfect holiday reading as I could pick it up here and there and be amused for forty so pages before eating and being merry and then return to it for a few more pages in those exhausted moments before I fell asleep to dream of Santa.

I have previously waxed lyrical about Pratchett’s anthropomorphic personification of Death and how much of a literary achievement I believe it to be. Hogfather concerns other anthropomorphic personifications that are believed in by humans to creatively explain natural and festive occurrences e.g. the Tooth Fairy and Father Christmas, or in this case the Hogfather who delivers gifts on Hogswatch Night on the Disc. However, something entirely non-festive is afoot, the Hogfather is kind of … dead, and Death is adorned in a red suit, false beard and attempting to say HO. HO. HO. If Death, along with his granddaughter Susan’s assistance, doesn’t save Hogswatch by impersonating the Hogfather then the sun will not rise the following morning or thereafter.

As always, Pratchett is pithily wise and witty and observes the traditions of Christmas/Hogswatch with an ironic and observed pen. On Christmas Eve I read “The Little Match Girl” by Hans Christian Anderson and then serendipitously came to this section in Hogfather when I resumed reading it afterwards:

‘But … little match girls dying in the snow is part of what the Hogswatch spirit is all about, master,’ said Albert desperately. ‘I mean, people hear about it and say, “We may be poorer than a disabled banana and only have mud and old boots to eat, but at least we’re better off than the poor little match girl,” master. It makes them feel happy and grateful for what they’ve got, see.’

Hogfather is about believing as much as it is about suspending belief and is also a story about storytelling. It was ideal themed reading during the festive period as I was engaged and amused as well as absorbed without being so immersed that I forgot to eat a mince pie or two. I have always maintained that Pratchett makes perfect reading for those in book slumps and recently I haven’t been reading as much as normal so it was an ideal choice for Christmas. As I also prepare my review post for the year, I discovered that I have read seven Terry Pratchett books this year (six of the Discworld), which is far more than any other author, so it was also a treat to return to him at the tail-end of the year.

A few other examples to demonstrate why this book is read to be jolly fa la la la la la la as Pratchett is so much better described in his own humorous words :

But it was much earlier even than that when most people forgot that the very oldest stories are, sooner or later, about blood. Later on they took the blood out to make the story more acceptable to children, or at least to the people who had to read them to children rather than the children themselves (who, on the whole, are quite keen on blood provided it’s being shed by the deserving), and then wondered where the stories went.

The Death of Rats nibbled a bit of pork pie because when you are the personification of small rodents you have to behave in certain ways. He also piddled on one of the turnips for the same reason, although only metaphorically, because when you are a small skeleton in a black robe there are also some things you technically cannot do.

LET’S GET THERE AND SLEIGH THEM. HO. HO. HO.
‘Right you are, master.’
THAT WAS A PUNE OR PLAY ON WORDS, ALBERT.
I DON’T KNOW IF YOU NOTICED.
‘I’m laughing like hell deep down, sir.’
HO. HO. HO.

Ridcully sat in horrified amazement. He’d always enjoyed Hogswatch, every bit of it. He’d enjoyed seeing ancient relatives, he’d enjoyed the food, he’d been good at games like Chase My Neighbour Up the Passage and Hooray Jolly Tinker. He was always the first to don a paper hat. He felt that paper hats lent a soecial festive air to the occasion. And he always very carefully read the messages on Hogswatch cards and found time for a few kind thoughts about the sender.

Here too is a clip from the television adaptation of Hogfather that aired a few Christmases ago:

"A Christmas Memory"

Paperback Reader — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:01:00 +0000

I had been planning on finally reading “A Christmas Memory” by Truman Capote for a few months, ever since reading this post by Mee. I also knew that it was one of Nymeth’s favourite stories and this would finally be the year to read it. I settled during this festive period fully prepared to be heart-warmed and I was but I realised from the opening paragraph that I have actually read this short story before! Possibly last Christmas or the Christmas before, I don’t recall, but I have read it. Has this happened to you? It never happens with novels but there are short stories that have escaped my memory, which is ironic considering this one is entitled “A Christmas Memory”; it is a reminder why I blog because I have a hopeless retention for all that I have read.

Anyway, second time or not, “A Christmas Memory” is a sweet and touching story about a young boy named Buddy, our narrator, and his friend, an older woman and distant cousin, who live together along with a household of other relatives, none of whom they really care for. This unconventional but touching relationship is joyful to read about, especially during the festive seasons which is essentially about spending quality time with our loved ones. Buddy recalls one Christmas -their last spent together- in which they made fruitcakes together, up to thirty-one of them, which they sent to passing acquaintances and even one to President Roosevelt. The making of fruitcakes for Christmas gifts is one of their traditions and on a morning in November Buddy’s friend wakes to declare “It’s fruitcake weather!”

This is a gently affecting story that serves as a reminder of the true nature of Christmas. Even though I happened to have read it before I was happy for the reminder as it served as a festive reinforcement. Apparently autobiographical, you can watch Truman Capote read the story here (thanks to JoAnn for the link).

Cassandra at the Wedding

Paperback Reader — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 17:05:00 +0000

Dorothy Baker’s entrancing tragicomic novella follows an unpredictable course of events in which her heroine appears variously as conniving, self-aware, pitiful, frenzied, absurd, and heartbroken—at once utterly impossible and tremendously sympathetic. Cassandra reckons with her complicated feelings about the sister who she feels owes it to her to be her alter ego; with her father, a brandy-soaked retired professor of philosophy; and with the ghost of her dead mother, as she struggles to come to terms with the only life she has.

First published in 1962, Cassandra at the Wedding is a book of enduring freshness, insight, and verve. Like the fiction of Jeffrey Eugenides and Jhumpa Lahiri, it is the work of a master stylist with a profound understanding of the complexities of the heart and mind.

I wrote last week that I was intending to indulge in some themed reading at the weekend as I was attending a wedding (two friends – beautiful day) and I did; I opted for Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker. I decided on this one because it was the title that most intrigued me, I had been tempted by it since reading Verity’s review this summer and, moreover, it had been some time since I read any of my green Virago Modern Classics (or non-green, come to that). So, Cassandra at the Wedding it was. I felt it worthwhile to include the synopsis again to firstly recount the key plot points and also for the comparison with Jhumpa Lahiri that is given; after also reading Lahiri recently, I can testify that Dorothy Baker is likewise a “master stylist”, skilled at evoking emotion.

Cassandra at the Wedding is a novel of heightened emotion; it is intense. The narrative is written in a conversational style that is inclusive and yet also overwhelming; Cassandra’s narration is so emotionally-charged that it is a relief when Judith narrates a section in the second half, before a calmer, more focused and less passionate Cassandra resumes the telling. The intensity of the novel is employed also through the short time period of events -two days- and a stifling heat is described that also evokes a sense of claustrophobia within the text; these literary devices are highly effective as we are taken on an emotional rollercoaster of a ride with Cassandra. Also indicative of Baker’s sheer talent is that never once is the word “twin” used yet Cassandra and Judith are twins and that is very much conveyed without using the term, for example, “I looked … in a blue mirror …. It was the face of my sister Judith” and “It was on our birth cerificates that way. The one named Cassandra was two ounces heavier and eleven minutes older than the one named Judith.” This is a novel about the struggle for identity especially when you have someone who looks identical to you and who you sometimes think is you; it is about familial and emotional dependence and an exceptional study of jealousy. Cassandra at the Wedding will resonate with anyone who has a sister, not necessarily a twin, who understands the sense of moving on and moving away and grieving for a childhood that was so much simpler.

Cassandra at the Wedding is not a plot-driven novel but an emotion-based one that has wonderful moments of wit and wryness. Cassandra is both an unreliable narrator and a sympathetic one; she was an intriguing character and one that I enjoyed immensely. The rapid and pithy dialogue between Cassandra and Judith is like an energetic, competitive game of tennis and a joy to read, if a little difficult to keep up with as they parry back and forth. This book is engaging as well as a great study in writing.

A favourite passage and example of the style:

I’m not, at heart, a jumper; it’s not my sort of thing … I think I knew all the time I was sizing up the bridge that the strong possibility was I’d go home, attend my sister’s wedding as invited, help hook-and-zip her into whatever she wore, take the bouquet while she received the ring, through the nose or on the finger, wherever she chose to receive it, and hold my peace when it became a question of speaking now of forever holding it.

I Take This Book

Paperback Reader — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 17:13:00 +0000

I am attending a wedding this weekend and I have some wedding-themed literature lined up to read. I’ll probably only manage to read one of the following but I thought I would share the ones that I have in mind. Do you like to theme your reading around things you are doing or places you are going? It isn’t something that I do frequently but I thought it would be fun and weddings make me happy.

The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers: With delicacy of perception and memory, humour and pathos, Carson McCullers spreads before us the three phases of a weekend crisis in the life of a motherless twelve-year-old girl. Within the span of a few hours, the irresistible, hoydenish Frankie passionately plays out her fantasies at her elder brother’s wedding. Through a perilous skylight we look into the mind of a child torn between her yearning to belong and the urge to run away.

Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker: Cassandra Edwards is a graduate student at Berkeley: gay, brilliant, nerve-wracked, miserable. At the beginning of this novel, she drives back to her family ranch in the foothills of the Sierras to attend the wedding of her identical twin, Judith, to a nice young doctor from Connecticut. Cassandra, however, is hell-bent on sabotaging the wedding.
Dorothy Baker’s entrancing tragicomic novella follows an unpredictable course of events in which her heroine appears variously as conniving, self-aware, pitiful, frenzied, absurd, and heartbroken—at once utterly impossible and tremendously sympathetic. Cassandra reckons with her complicated feelings about the sister who she feels owes it to her to be her alter ego; with her father, a brandy-soaked retired professor of philosophy; and with the ghost of her dead mother, as she struggles to come to terms with the only life she has.
First published in 1962, Cassandra at the Wedding is a book of enduring freshness, insight, and verve. Like the fiction of Jeffrey Eugenides and Jhumpa Lahiri, it is the work of a master stylist with a profound understanding of the complexities of the heart and mind.

The Wedding by Dorothy West: Set on the Elysian isle of Martha’s Vineyardm among an insular community of proud and prosperous black families, Dorothy West’s first novel for nearly fifteen years centres around the marriage of Shelby Coles, daughter of the community’s foremost family to a struggling white jazz musician. Not just the story of one wedding, but of many, this thought-provoking and deeply interesting novel offers insights into issues of race, prejudice and identity while maintaining its firm belief in the compensatory power of love.

I also have The Robber Bridegroom by Eudora Welty and The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood to hand but those are only wedding-themed in their similar titles only. I want to read all three of the books detailed above but I am leaning towards the one pictured and the one I know most about, Cassandra at the Wedding. Verity read this thematically over the summer and I have been saving it to read until I had a wedding to attend also.

Of course, it being the first weekend in December, I am also preparing a pile of Christmas reads but more on that another day…

The Enchanted April

Paperback Reader — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 07:58:00 +0000

I read The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim aptly in April and was thoroughly enchanted by it. I have waited until now to review it because I didn’t want to until I had watched the film adaptation. I have now watched it and again have been enchanted by April in August.

The novel concerns one enchanting and life-changing April that four women, strangers, spend together in a castle in Italy. Two of the women, Lotty Wilkins and Rose Arbuthnot, both dissatisfied, childless housewives, meet and connect at their ladies’ club over an adverisement in The Times:

To Those who Appreciate Wistaria and Sunshine. Small mediaeval Italian Castle on the shores of the Mediterranean to be Let Furnished for the month of April. Necessary servants remain. Z, Box 1000, The Times.

On a wet and dismal day in London Lotty and Rose bond over their mutual desire to escape on a wonderful holiday. To offset their indulgence and protect Lotty’s nest-egg they decide to advertise for two more women to join them to share the cost and are joined by Mrs Fisher, a waspish, older lady whose friends are dead writers, and Lady Caroline Dester, a socialite attempting to escape the grabbing hands of men. All of the women seek a respite and sancturary in the sun but instead are enchanted by the magic of San Salvatore; the month spent on the Italian Riviera is revelatory and life-changing for the visitors.

San Salvatore, Lotty would say, San Salvatore working its spell of happiness. She could quite believe in its spell. Even she was happier there than she had been for ages and ages.

Evocative of Italy and of Spring The Enchanted April is a delightful read; it is gentle and quiet and beautiful. It is not all pretty flowers and charming women, however, but contains several moments of witty observation:

‘But there are no men here,’ said Mrs. Wilkins, ‘so how can it be improper?’ Have you noticed,’ she inquired of Mrs. Fisher, who endeavoured to pretend she did not hear, ‘how difficult it is to be improper without men?’

Several of the exchanges between the women, especially between Lotty and Mrs Fisher, are highly amusing and when Mr Wilkins and Mr Arbuthnot arrive (after their wives invite them) there is high comedy, especially when Mellersh takes a bath.

If you are looking for a light but thoroughly engaging and enjoyable book then I recommend this one; it really is lovely and enchanting. I was so enraptured by it in April that I immediately tracked down a few more copies of Elizabeth von Arnim books, all Virago Modern Classics, to read and I still look forward to doing so.

I also recommend the adpatation which is directed by Mike Newell and has a stellar cast of Joan Plowright (nominated for a supporting actress Oscar for her role as Mrs Fisher); Miranda Richardson; Josie Lawrence; Polly Walker; Alfred Molina; Jim Broadbent; and Michael Kitchen. It is curious how characters onscreen can often fit or change your perception of them in the book; I wasn’t sure of Josie Lawrence in the role of Lotty when I recognised her on my cover (I am not a fan of film tie-in covers for the most part but this one doesn’t offend me too much) but her humour carries off the eccentric but very sweet Lotty. Moreover I was more sympathetic of Mellersh, Lotty’s husband (played by Alfred Molina), in the film as he came across as less domineering in the end and quite tender towards his wife; Jim Broadbent played the part of Frederick Arbuthnot to perfection and I found him far more obnoxious in the flesh than in prose, perhaps because his round, red face was visible and not imagined.

The representation onscreen is imbued with beauty in the colour and flowers and peace and implied fragrance described wonderfully in the novel, in stark contrast to the dark, dismal London of earlier scenes. The castle where the adaptation was filmed is Portofino, a castle Elizabeth von Arnim rented one April in the twenties to write “a happy book” and where she decided to set it as the scenery was begging to be described.

She jumped up … and threw open the shutters.
‘Oh!‘ cried Mrs Wilkins.
All the radiance of April in Italy lay gathered together at her feet. The sun poured in on her. The sea lay asleep in it, hardly stirring. Across the bay the lovely mountains, exquisitely different in colour, were asleep to it the light; and underneath her window, at the bottom of the flower-starred grass slope from which the wall of the castle rose up, was a great cypress, cutting through the delicate blues and violets and rose colours of the mountains and the sea like a great black sword.
She stared. Such beauty; and she was there to see it. Such beauty; and she was alive to feel it. Her face was bathed in light. Lovely scents came up to the window and caressed her. A tiny breeze gently lifted her hair.