Paperback Reader » Virginia Woolf

Goodbye 2010, Hello 2011

Paperback Reader — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 08:30:48 +0000

Happy New Year! I hope you have all been having an enjoyable and indulgent festive period; may you have been bestowed with books and grey ones for those of you still awaiting your Persephone Secret Santa gift.

Santa Claus did not -sadly- bring me reinstated internet access so I am still limited at home for the time-being, which is frustrating me. Posts at Paperback Reader will continue to be somewhat sporadic although I have scheduled another and will post from my iPhone where I can; I am hoping for a painless resolution but it looks like it will be the end of January before I am back online.

However, I could not see 2010 end without posting my favourite reads of the year. Due to an extended reading slump from May onwards (which impacted my blogging) I managed to read 40 books less than I did last year and did not break the 100 books mark, which disappoints me. These things cannot be helped though and I read some wonderful books throughout the year. For 2011 I am following no set plans but will continue to read on a whim and hopefully manage to read more than three or four books a month as I have done recently (the amount of books read is not a competition, by any means, but I really can’t help but believe the adage: so many books, so little time).

The books I did read though were of outstanding quality and I revisited some favourite authors (and reread some beloved books) along with discovering some new ones that I will explore further next year and beyond.

My top ten books were (titles link to my reviews):

The Blue Castle by L. M. Montgomery

Still Missing by Beth Gutcheon

Love by Toni Morrison

Memento Mori by Muriel Spark

Les Liaisons dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos

Blindness by José Saramago (not yet reviewed)

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

The Still Point by Amy Sackville (not yet reviewed)

Paper Towns by John Green

The City and the City by China Miéville (not yet reviewed)

Honorable mention must be made to: The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham; Room by Emma Donoghue; To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf; Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde and A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood.

There you have it: some cracking good fiction.

Books, Red Wine and Chocolate

Paperback Reader — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 12:25:30 +0000

When I’m reading I do like doing it with a cuppa and some chocolate; I have also been known to have a glass of wine in one hand and a book in the other. When I was given the opportunity to review chocolate with red wine, it was an offer I could not decline. I feel that books and chocolate are very similar in their packaging/cover; both work towards attracting you and compelling you to pick up the chocolate /book in the first place and make you want to buy it. Also a good chocolate bar, just like a good book, should excite and have an interesting beginning, middle and end with different levels of intensity, texture and enjoyment. Moreover, I think that on bottles of wine, where it tells you what meals it is best to drink with, chocolate packaging should cover which books are best to read or films to watch whilst eating… marketing departments, take note. Wine labels should extend to sharing that information too: full or medium-bodied, with hints of, best read with…

As for my review itself: I was kindly sent a bar of Zotter Chocolate Schönberger Red Wine by Lee of Chocolate Reviews. This Fairtrade alcoholic chocolate from an Austrian company is given the following description “A premium red wine from Burgenland. The Blaufränkisch (Burgundy) grapes form a complex taste spectrum, which give the exquisite dark chocolate a soft aftertaste” and retails at £3.00 a bar. More expensive than a regular bar of chocolate it tastes rich; it is potent truffle-filled bar that is not moulded into segments but is one slab. A fine bitter chocolate with red wine and chocolate inside, it is a chocolate bar with a filling as opposed to a bar of chocolate infused with red wine. The bitterness prevented me from being able to eat this bar in the one sitting -and therefore is not one to eat on the run for energy- but I enjoyed it in small nibbles and thought it worked well with a glass of wine to bring out its notes. I was impressed by how authentically like wine the chocolate tasted although that’s not surprising as it is made with red wine as opposed to artificial flavoring; the alcohol content of the bar is 2% and yet manages to be heady and taste strong. The aroma is of cocoa as opposed to wine and the packaging something of a let-down (the gold foil reminded me of the inside of cigarette packets, which instantly cheapened it for me). This chocolate was a rare treat and more decadent and rich than I am used to but if you enjoy truffles (and, of course, red wine) then this is recommended, or is perfect for a special occasion.

Whilst I prefer my chocolate less rich I do love richness in my reading; I like my wine full-bodied and the same can be said of my literature. This post and photograph also serve to contribute to Simon of Stuck in a Book’s meme. Simon called for a photograph that summed up my reading taste that didn’t include a book in it (am I ineligible as this one does, even though it is only for decoration?) and I ruminated long and hard before I realised that the photograph above was perfect. My reading taste is eclectic and difficult to fully surmise but liking my taste in books to my taste in red wine is accurate; both are great loves of my life (as are cats) and share many elements. My favourite writers -Angela Carter, Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie, Gabriel García Márquez, Colette, Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, Sarah Waters- all write rich prose that I become drunk on and then require a little break from; their language, imagery, and stories are lush as am I… Like the most heady of red wines, these writers are at the top of the grape varieties and they mature with age, with hidden notes and subtle flavours detected upon further tastes. Reading a book by one of these writers is like drinking a fine wine, something I appreciate, savour, and look forward to, and yet try to do in moderation.

I also enjoy Earl Grey tea reading -Persephone Books- or Champagne reads that are bubbly and effervescent, that go straight to my head, like The Art of Keeping Secrets by Eva Rice, but I will always return to my favourite tipple of all: red wine.

Vanessa and Virginia

Paperback Reader — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 14:30:20 +0000

The Not the TV Book Group brought to my attention the novel Vanessa and Virginia by Susan Sellers, published by Two Ravens Press, so thank you to them and to Simon of Stuck-in-a-Book who reviewed it back in 2008. The short novel was far denser than I expected and to begin with I read it slowly, too slowly to participate in the discussion last weekend.

There are some books that I read for entertainment and others for education, some for both and this was one of those books. I had expectations of the subject matter teaching and engaging me simultaneously and these were met. Before going into this novel I knew a lot about Virginia Woolf but little of her sister, Vanessa Bell. Overshadowed by her more critically-acclaimed writer sister, Vanessa Bell, an artist, lived in the shadow of her sister’s talent and success; posthumously she is overshadowed by Woolf’s work reputation and her infamous suicide. Vanessa and Virginia interestingly gives us Vanessa’s story, which isn’t immediately obvious as the assumption is that it will be a narrative given from the perspective of Virginia, the more famous sister. I learned more about the Bloomsbury Group, or those members immediately surrounding Bell, than I had previously and was provided with more insight into the bohemian lifestyle of Modernist artists who lived in opposition to societal convention.

In addition to the historical context, we are given an invaluable insight into the tragic life of Vanessa Bell. Through my knowledge of Virginia Woolf I knew that the sisters were touched by a lot of death in their young lives with the loss of their mother; half-sister, Stella; father; brother, Thoby; all in close succession. Vanessa and Virginia covers these events in the early narrative but Vanessa’s own life, with Virginia in periphery, contained its own share of personal tragedy with a miscarriage and the death of her oldest son, Julian, in the Spanish Civil War; additionally there were the losses of Roger Fry, close friend, Bloomsbury Group member and former lover, and Lytton Strachey, another set member and cousin to the Stephen sisters (their maiden names). Of course, the shadow of another great loss, the suicide of her younger sister, Billy (Vanessa’s pet-name for Virginia), exists in the novel from the outset; with the novel comes a certain degree of reader expectation, early on the denouement of Virginia Woolf’s suicide is mentioned and is only to be expected in the closing pages.

With every shadow, however, comes light and the former does not exist without the latter. The relationship between the sisters is shown in stark relief with its closeness, at times suffocating, and its petty and more insidious rivalries. There is a definite conflict and inextricable attachment between the sisters and this is evoked in the novel’s tenses: the narration is told in the first-person, narrated by Vanessa who is writing her story, and Virginia is always referred to as “you”, the addressee; what is interesting is that Vanessa is writing, where that was the art excelled by at her sister and in her absence she takes up her pen to express herself and tell her own story. Sellers is an expert in the life and work of Virginia Woolf but does not portray her in that sympathetic a light but a shadow over Vanessa’s life. Vanessa’s marriage to Clive Bell began to break down when she gave birth to their first child; Clive was jealous of the attention given to baby Julian, as was Virginia, and the two developed a bond that grew into an inappropriate affection that was never physically acted upon. Sellers’ illuminating fictionalisation of Bell and Woolf does place Bell in the role of tragic victim who had her own inner demons and neuroses similar to those of her sister’s; she suffered from her own mental breakdowns and even had her own suicide attempt subsequently making a pact with Virginia never to repeat it, a promise that later came back to haunt her when she hinted at rescinding it.

The novel mainly concerns -following vignettes covering the formative years and early tragedies- the idyllic life Vanessa lived at Charleston, a farmhouse in East Sussex, with her sometimes-lover and life companion, the artist Duncan Grant. Vanessa and Clive remained married and they, Duncan, and the children lived a bohemian existence, which, for a period of time, included Duncan’s lover, Bunny; Bunny is also known as David Garnett (a writer, some of whose work I reviewed last year) who later married Angelica, Vanessa’s illegitimate daughter with Duncan. The lifestyle that Vanessa lived, specifically its damaging effect on her daughter who married the ex-lover of her biological father, was an element that I found disturbing but it was not a creation of Sellers, but a relay of fact. Sellers’ account intrigued me to learn more detail about the relationship between Vanessa, Clive and Duncan and I went on to read the chapter of Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Marriages in Literary London 1910-1939 by Katie Roiphe dedicated to their menage. The additional information illuminated me further and sated some of my curiosity; Roiphe describes a drugged-like innocence to the Bell children’s childhood that reminded me of the bohemian childhood of the Wellwoods depicted by A. S. Byatt in The Children’s Book (reviewed here) and I wonder whether Byatt was attempting to recreate the damaging and incestuous undertone of the Bloomsbury Group in the children and adults she created.

As I was reading Vanessa and Virginia I continually examined my response to it and my pleasure in identifying the allusions and nods to Virginia Woolf’s work, especially on the back of recently reading To the Lighthouse for Woolf in Winter, that are cleverly and subtly done and at other times obviously; I was very aware that reading this novel as somebody unaware of Woolf’s work and legacy, the same level of understanding and appreciation would be severely lacking. I often thought that perhaps the novel would only be of interest to fans and academics or Woolf, Bell or both, and doesn’t work as a piece of fiction own its own but as a study of art with biographical element and imagined experience. I was also conscious of the fact that other readers would view Sellers’ interpretation of the life of Vanessa Bell and her interior monologue as a literary conceit; I found it a bold but interesting premise but then I do find Virginia Woolf and all that relates to her fascinating.; ultimately though Vanessa and Virginia is a literary interpretation of events and where Sellers may envisage certain discussions (e.g. the one below, middle quote, which I’m not sure is real) that impose meaning on art and life, it is a vision of what could have been rather than what occurred, although the body of the novel itself is meticulously researched and realised. Where I believed that my own experience in reading the book was somewhat lacking was in my poor knowledge of Vanessa Bell’s artwork; there are several passages devoted to the creation of numerous paintings, describing this, and perhaps if I had known the paintings being referred to then I would have understood the detail more. Somebody with an appreciation of art and knowledge of Bell’s paintings as well as an interest in Virginia Woolf’s writing would gain more from this novel. Despite this reservation, Vanessa and Virginia taught me a lot, it engaged me and I found it beautifully written; it was hauntingly evocative of a emotionally-charged sibling relationship and an invaluable insight into the life of Vanessa Bell.

Some favourite passages:

You were the one with words. You were the one who knew how to take an event and describe it so that its essence was revealed. I do not have your talents. If you were here you would know how to tell this tale. You would find a way of penetrating to the truth and enclosing what you found in words of such poetry that one’s heart would sing, even as it wept.

‘So if you weren’t thinking about a particular seascape, what did you intend this mark to be here?’ You draw your finger along a straight black line down the centre of the tile. ‘I had assumed it was a lighthouse.’

I look at the line. I remember painting it, sensing that the swirl of blues required an anchoring point.

‘I’m not sure I meant anything in particular by it, though of course I’ve no objection to you seeing it as a lighthouse.’

It is your gardener who telephones. I hear his voice as if from a great distance. I replace the receiver and stare at the jug of flowers on the hall table. I do not know what to do with these words. They ricochet round my head, yet they make no sense. Things are slipping away from me: the hall table and all the objects on it are careering out of reach. I lean back against the wall to steady myself. I see you standing on the river bank, casting about for stones to fill your pockets. I feel the paralysing cold as you wade in, the weight of your wet clothes as you force yourself forward. The water is in my mouth, my lungs, as the river drags us under. This time I cannot escape. The darkness has engulfed the picture. I have no will to defeat it.

Claire's Corner

Paperback Reader — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 14:23:45 +0000

With the miscellany links that a number of bloggers indulge in weekly I have been inspired to begin my own feature, which will be called “Claire’s Corner” (I love alliteration!) I have had this in mind for a while but I didn’t want to launch it until I had unveiled my new living space. Like others, I wish to use this time to highlight some things that I have found online or comment on other literary things that wouldn’t warrant their own post.

This week’s visual is of one of my beloved book-bags and notebooks (I collect both); in this post I mentioned my love for both the text of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own and for the merchandise imitating the iconic Penguin edition. I am sharing this because a) I couldn’t resist showing off two of my favourite things (like raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens) and b) it was a representative image for the first thing to be featured on Claire’s Corner. Almost a month ago, Mae of Mad Bibliphile drew my attention to this article by Rachel Cusk in The Guardian; the title, “Shakespeare’s Daughters” is an allusion to A Room of One’s Own, in which Woolf created Judith, Shakespeare’s sister. This excellent piece discusses “Women’s Writing” in relation to the two texts that “shaped the discourse of 20th-century women’s writing, a shape that is still recognisable today”: A Room of One’s Own and The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir; one is a book/essay that I could read over and over and always glean something new and the other is a title that so far I have only ever read extracts from but has been chosen as next month’s book for my feminist book group. Following the two recent Woolf in Winter discussions and my re-acquaintance with Virginia Woolf, I found this illuminating; I regularly engage with Women’s Writing, literature written by women, and I find the subject as pertinent now as it was eighty years ago. Reading a “book of repetition”, of domesticity and family life, interests me and I was not aware that modern women writers where being prevented the choice to write about issues of their sex that interested them.

Via Caustic Cover Critic and Frances of Nonsuch Book, I became aware of the forthcoming (April in the UK) Penguin Decades series, which consists of re-issues of “[f]ive seminal novels from each decade from the 1950s to 1980s inclusive, with cover artwork by high-profile artists and designers” to celebrate Penguin Books’ Seventy-Fifth birthday. The Zandra Rhodes textile designs for the 1970s titles are stunningly eye-catching and the titles (or their authors) appeal more to me; perhaps this appeal is because the authors are still well-known and one of the titles has been coincidentally longlisted for The Lost Man Booker Prize. Of course the title that immediately pops out at me is The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman by Angela Carter, one of only two of her works that I haven’t yet read and a book that has been out-of-print in the UK for some time; seeing as the series is being issued the day after my birthday, I have pre-ordered a copy as a gift to myself as the copy I do own is old and battered. Virago issued eight beautiful hardback editions with textile cover designs in 2008 to commemorate Thirtieth birthday of Virago Modern Classics; I own five of the eight and think they make a beautiful addition to my bookshelves; I wonder how many of the Penguin Decades series will find a place on our shelves and feature on our blogs.

Tonight with I a friend I am off to see Wicked: the Musical, which I first saw in 2006 and adore. I have never read the book by Gregory Maguire that it is based on so I picked it up at the weekend fully intending to read it but regrettably I developed a headache and put the book away for another day; are there any fans of the book reading to tell me that I must attempt it again in the near-future? I may not have managed my themed reading this time around but I know that I will have occasion to again. In the meantime I will be defying gravity tonight and share with you a clip from the delightfully cheesy show Glee and my favourite song from the musical.

Glee – Defying Gravity

Library Loot

Paperback Reader — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:00:00 +0000

I really must stop requesting books from the library … but there are so many that catch my eye and it is better than buying them!

In this week’s visit I collected:

Bone Black by bell hooks: a memoir by the famous feminist, I’m interested in hooks’ thoughts on her growing up during racial segregation.

Vanessa and Virginia by Susan Sellers: as soon as the Not the TV Book Group reading list was announced, this title caught my eye and I was delighted that my library had it in stock (I was able to pick it up from the stacks as opposed to requesting it, which happens less often than I would like). Published by the Two Ravens Press, this looks like a book that I will love and I’m excited to read it, being a fan of Virginia Woolf.

White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi: I enjoyed The Icarus Girl and had Oyeyemi’s follow-up novels on my wish-list but when Eva compared the psychological horror of White is for Witching with Shirley Jackson, I knew I had to read it immediately.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett: who hasn’t raved about The Help? It’s about time that I read this one.

Have you read any of these or intend to?

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Eva and Marg encouraging library use and its promotion.

Defined by Books

Paperback Reader — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 13:42:00 +0000

Simon of Stuck-in-a-Book tagged me in his ten books meme three weeks ago and I am only now getting around to posting; both another cookie crumbles and JoAnn of Lakeside Musings tagged me in the honest scrap “ten things” award so this is also a response to them with ten bookish things about me.

Simon’s rules:

1.) Go to your bookshelves…
2.) Close your eyes. If you’re feeling really committed, blindfold yourself.
3.) Select ten books at random. Use more than one bookcase, if you have them, or piles by the bed, or… basically, wherever you keep books.
4.) Use these books to tell us about yourself – where and when you got them, who got them for you, what the book says about you, etc. etc…..
5.) Have fun! Be imaginative. Doesn’t matter if you’ve read them or not – be creative. It might not seem easy to start off with, and the links might be a little tenuous, but I think this is a fun way to do this sort of meme.
6.) Feel free to cheat a bit, if you need to…

Seeing as Simon fully sanctioned cheating … I did. To be fair, I instinctively know where all of my books are so I couldn’t have picked them unknowingly blind but I did choose them at random by looking at the bookshelves and quickly choosing ten books from ten different shelves, one or two of them as intentionally representative of something about me.

Everything I Needed to Know about Being a Girl I Learned from Judy Blume: this title is self-explanatory and true. I could have shared one of my Judy Blume books but instead I thought this was far more revealing about me. I loved Judy Blume as a girl and still hold a soft spot for some of her books (Just as Long as We’re Together, Here’s to You Rachel Robinson, Tiger Eyes, Deenie …)

Trumpet by Jackie Kay: there are several books that I could have used to tell you that I am from Glasgow but none quite as beautiful as this one, in which the 1960s sections are set in my home-city (Kay also grew up there).

The Collected Stories by Katherine Mansfield: I was first introduced to Katherine Mansfield by a beloved English teacher at school who gave us “The Doll House” to read, which remains one of my favourite short stories because of its apparent simplicity yet also inexplicable quality. This book reveals not only a cherished bookish memory from school but also that I own a replica Victorian dollhouse (I used to own two, but my sister now has my first one) and collect miniature furniture, including books, a Swan Lake screen, a tiny Tiffany lamp (post-dating Victoriana but too cute to resist). Furthermore, it reveals my obsession with silver Penguin Modern Classics, of which this one is a favourite.

Bold Girls by Rona Munro: another set text from school (for Higher English), Rona Munro is a Scottish playwright although this play concerns four women in war-torn Belfast. I loved this play when I studied it and a friend bought me my own copy and wrote a dedication inside likening me to one of the characters (whose part I had read in class). I am a huge fan of drama; I don’t read or see as many plays any more as I used to but I have a full shelf on my bookcases dedicated to plays and that doesn’t include my numerous books by and about Shakespeare. I forget that readers of my blog probably don’t know that I am an English Literature graduate (I also have my Master’s) but it is an intrinsic part of me.

Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter: I couldn’t define myself using books and not include Angela Carter. Anyone who doesn’t know that I am a Carter devotee hasn’t been reading my posts closely enough! Nights at the Circus was the first book of hers that I read and hence meaningful.

Mog’s Christmas by Judith Kerr: along with Dogger by Shirley Hughes this was my favourite picture book as a child. My much-loved and dog-eared copy was handed down to my sister and is still at home but my boyfriend bought me a lovely mini hardback copy a few Christmases ago.

Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them by Francine Prose: another perfect gift choice by my boyfriend, this book is indispensable and I love close-reading a chapter at a time over and over. The subtitle is revealing as I am both of those people; the book sits on my writing shelf, where I have writing style handbooks, creative aids, and a number of short story volumes by writers included in the book.

The Brontës Went to Woolworths by Rachel Ferguson: I began to consciously collect the original green-spined Virago Modern Classics in April 2008 and very early on I coveted an elusive copy of this book. Shortly after looking at expensive copies online, I went into an Oxfam Books in Glasgow, purposefully seeking a copy; I instantly honed in on a green spine (a skill known by all that collect these editions) and it was the one I was looking for! Priced at a wonderful £2.49. Very surreal and quirky, this book bears re-reading but I know that I am never going to part with it, even if Bloomsbury have re-issued it in a particularly lovely ice-cream copy.

A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf: I adore this essay by Woolf and love to pick it up and luxuriate in her words and thoughts. As a feminist I love to read about Woolf walking on the lawn of Oxbridge and adore her creation of Judith, Shakespeare’s sister. Although I am attached to this Penguin edition I am somewhat obsessed with the earlier purple and cream striped one; I own most of the Penguin merchandise that imitates the iconic edition: the bookbag, the notebook and poster and I covet the postcard and mug.

Love by Toni Morrison: this is the book I’d rescue from a burning building, not because of the book itself but the inscription inside; my boyfriend bought me this for our first Christmas together and wrote something beautiful to me. This is one of several books that have something meaningful written to me inside but this one, above the others, is incredibly special; if I shared it online, it would betray my boyfriend and I would never do that.

Did you learn anything new about me from this meme and did you notice that all of my books are written by women?

To the Lighthouse

Paperback Reader — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 13:30:00 +0000

I meant nothing by The Lighthouse. One has to have
a central line down the middle of the book to
hold the design together. I saw that all
sorts of feelings would accrue to this but I
refused to think them out, and trusted that people
would make it the deposit of their emotions – which they
have done, one thinking it means one thing another another.
I can’t manage Symbolism except in this vague, generalized way.

So said Virginia Woolf of her novel To the Lighthouse. “[O]ne thinking it means one thing another another” is the essence of the Woolf in Winter read-alongs, where we read a Woolf novel (or two, or three, or all four) and “make it the deposit of [our] emotions”. To say what Woolf means is reductive, I find, and I approach her emotionally; I savour her beautiful prose and I connect to the words, the representative -as opposed to symbolic- images and the tone. I don’t read Woolf to understand but to appreciate; her books are not the type that are easy to review and I’m not going to attempt to but give my impressions instead.

Starting in medias res, Mrs Ramsay tells her son, James, that they will go to the lighthouse tomorrow if it is fine; a page later Mr Ramsay says that it will not be fine and by the end of the first volume they do not go to the lighthouse; in the third volume, years later, James and his father and his sister take a boat trip to the lighthouse. A basic premise, the lighthouse itself signifies nothing but is representative of so much emotion and history; the first volume, ‘The Window’, is a glimpse into one day of the Ramsays’ lives and those of their guests; the lighthouse is one single memory (of various people) acting as a cohesive idea holding it all together. With its occasional twenty-seven line sentences containing such resonant images of beauty, “so that the monotonous fall of the waves on the beach, which for the most part beat a measured and soothing tattoo to her thoughts and seemed consolingly to repeat over and over again”, the stream-of-consciousness ‘The Window’ volume was by far my favourite and a reminder of why I love Woolf.

To the Lighthouse is an elegy to Woolf’s parents and contained in it is such a sense of palpable, heartrending grief and pain. At many points, I found rage in the tone, in the pounding of the waves (the recurrent water imagery of Woolf at play), and the bitterness of the characters. There is a violent potency to the masculinity presented in the novel, a hyper-sexed desire to produce and a fear of barrenness and failure, and the calming, maternal, female influence at its centre; To the Lighthouse is a precursor to Woolf’s feminist polemic, A Room of One’s Own and in it I see a man who is lost without the strength of his wife and the feminist Lily Briscoe who rails against Tansley’s accusation that as a woman she cannot write or paint, both lost without Mrs Ramsay and one finding her way.

I read “The Fisherman and his Wife” by the Brothers Grimm, the story Mrs Ramsay read to James, in an attempt to find some illumination; I wonder if the tale of a bullying, greedy wife who railroads her husband was arbitrarily chosen or is another of Woolf’s representations … can it be reduced to the age-old phrase that behind every great man there is an equally great woman?

Structurally I found the first volume the strongest and I preferred its style; I would have enjoyed To the Lighthouse more -as opposed to enjoying the first volume and appreciating the second and third- if it had all been in the stream-of-consciousness style of the first but, as it was, the technical ‘Time Passes’ stunned me in its beauty and mastery and ‘To the Lighthouse’ resolved the novel for me. It wouldn’t be Woolf though if it was a simply an enjoyable novel, something profound is always at work and I come away wowed. Of the Woolf in Winter choices, To the Lighthouse was the one of the four novels that I hadn’t yet read and had always wanted to; I also intended to read it for my Bucket List and for the Women Unbound challenge. It has been some time since I have read any Virginia Woolf and I have missed her; I am now wondering where to now … do I reread Orlando for the next volume of the Woolf read-along or do I attempt one of the three novels of hers I have not yet read, the early The Voyage Out and Night and Day or the later The Years? Alternatively I could read A Writer’s Diary or the Hermione Lee biography, both of which I have only dipped in and out of so far.

The Woolf in Winter discussion for To the Lighthouse is being hosted by Emily today.

Some favourite passages:

For the great plateful of blue water was before her; the hoary Lighthouse, distant, austere, in the midst; and on the right, as far as the eye could see, fading and falling, in soft low pleats, the green sand dunes with the wild flowing grasses on them, which always seemed to be running away into some moon country, uninhabited of men.

Never did anybody look so sad. Bitter and black, half-way down, in the darkness, in the shaft which ran from the sunlight to the depths, perhaps a tear formed; a tear fell; the waters swayed this way and that, received it, and were at rest. Never did anybody look so sad.

It was sympathy he wanted, to be assured of his genius, first of all, and then to be taken within the circle of life, warmed and soothed, to have his senses restored to him, his barrenness made fertile, and all the rooms of the house made full of life – the drawing-room; behind the drawing-room the kitchen; above the kitchen the bedrooms; and beyond them the nurseries; they must be furnished, they must be filled with life.

She praised herself in praising the light, without vanity, for she was stern, she was searching, she was beautiful like that light. It was odd, she thought, how if one was alone, one leant to things, inanimate things; trees, streams, flowers; felt they expressed one; felt they became one; felt they knew one, in a sense were one; felt an irrational tenderness thus (she looked at that long steady light) as for oneself. There rose, and she looked and looked with her needles suspended, there curled up off the floor of the mind, rose from the lake of one’s being, a mist, a bride to meet her lover.

Let's Call the Whole Thing Off

Paperback Reader — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 08:00:00 +0000

Let’s Call the Whole Things Off: Love Quarrels from Anton Chekhov to ZZ Packer (notice what the title cleverly does?) selected and compiled by Kasia Boddy, Ali Smith and Sarah Wood brings together some of the best short story writers on the topic of lovers’ quarrels. Some of the writers I am very familiar with (Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf and Colette), others I had met but didn’t know intimately or had been intending to seek out their work (Jhumpa Lahiri, Dorothy Parker and Natalia Ginzburg) and others I was completely unfamiliar with (ZZ Packer, Arnold Bennett and A.M. Homes). Some of the stories were in translation from Russian, Italian and Welsh, amongst others, and they were cleverly edited into sections -first quarrels, daily arguments, breaking up and the aftermath- and didn’t quarrel but compromised and complemented each other.

The stand-out stories for me were “This Blessed House” by Jhumpa Lahiri, “He and I” by Natalia Ginzburg, “Lappin and Lapinova” by Virginia Woolf and “You Go When You Can No Longer Stay” by Jackie Kay; it was difficult to narrow it down in such a strong anthology but these four stories were particular powerful and evocative of the soul-destroying nature of quarrels or a relationship’s demise. “This Blessed House” (taken from Lahiri’s Pulitzer Prize-winning collection Interpreter of Maladies) is unique in that it takes a newly married couple -Twinkle and Sanjeev- who barely know one another as their marriage was arranged and examines their early days quarrels through which they grow to understand each other. Natalia Ginzburg is an Italian writer whose work I became aware of through the book group that Simon and Kim run; Ginzburg’s A Place to Live: And Other Selected Essays of Natalia Ginzburg is a favourite book of one of our members, Armen, and now that I have had a taste of her writing I shall be seeking out more. Ginzburg has a unique style that I instantly admired from the opening lines:

He always feels hot, I always feel cold. In the summer when it really is hot he does nothing but complain about how hot he feels. He is irritated if he sees me put a jumper on in the evening.
He speaks several languages well; I do not speak any well. He manages – in his own way – to speak even the languages that he doesn’t know.
He has an excellent sense of direction, I have none at all. After one day in a foreign city he can move about in it as thoughtlessly as a butterfly. I get lost in my own city; I have to ask directions so that I can get back home again.

One could argue that this is a description of opposites attracting or of couples growing estranged and no longer having anything left in common, they are so different.

Woolf’s “Lappin and Lapinova” is brutal in its portrayal of a married couple once the honeymoon period is over. The sweet, affectionate way the newly married couple engage with one another is endearing; they liken one another to rabbits named Lappin and Lappinova, which they use as pet-names, and when this is lost, only a few years later, it was “the end of that marriage”, a closing line that seems to be at odds with the nuanced writing of the story and yet I found it to be flippantly fitting.

“You Go When You Can No Longer Stay” very funny also brutally truthful. I know Jackie Kay’s work from her beautiful novel, Trumpet, which I highly recommend; of the writer I know that she used to be in a relationship with Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy. “You Go When You Can No Longer Stay” is about the demise of a long-term lesbian relationship which opens humorously “It is not so much that we are splitting up that is really worrying me, it is the fact that she keeps quoting Martin Amis”; Amis is used effectively for comic relief throughout.

Other highlights in the anthology were stories all by writers familiar to me; “The Gilded Six-Bits” by Zora Neale Hurston is a story in Ebonics that tells of a married couple’s quarreling as foreplay until the wife’s infidelity ceases their quarreling; “Pillow Talk” by the fabulous Alasdair Gray is short and bittersweet -a husband awakes to accuse his wife of leaving him and after she confesses that she wishes he could, he realises it was a dream; “Mr and Mrs Dove” and “A Letter” are written by two of my favourite short story writers -Katherine Mansfield and Colette- and, although not my favourites, each are perfected as always and evocative of playful quarreling; “Here We Are”, written by the delightful Dorothy Parker, tells of the petty arguments and jealousies played out between a new couple on their wedding day.

I recommend this volume for its versatility in storytelling, its collection of highly-accomplished writers of the short-story form and its compelling subject matter of lovers’ tiffs. This was one of the few short story anthologies that I have been able to read cover to cover without becoming frustrated by its contents.

Katherine Mansfield

Paperback Reader — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 08:10:00 +0000

During Persephone Reading Week I started to read Katherine Mansfield’s Journal and realised that to truly appreciate it I needed to reread those Katherine Mansfield short stories I have loved and read those that are to me. Mansfield has been a popular blog topic in the last couple of weeks and I was inspired to pick up one of my volumes of her stories. Upon doing so I wanted to reread “Bliss”.

“Bliss” reminds me of Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. ‘I was jealous of her writing. The only writing I have ever been jealous of,’ so said Virginia Woolf of her friend, contemporary and rival Katherine Mansfield, but only as a posthumous accolade; before Mansfield’s death their relationship was fraught with bitterness and envy. Such a self-deprecating and modest admission to make when one is the female writer at the forefront of the Modernist movement. To read now, that Woolf was jealous of a contemporary’s talent, is as startling as reading the same of Shakespeare. Woolf was the most innovative in style, influential in feminism and literary mode, and as equally famous and infamous of all female writers from the twentieth-century, if not the literary canon. Yet, she was envious of Mansfield; perhaps if the latter had lived to realise her potential , instead of dying tragically young, she would now have held this mantle.

She would certainly be worthy of doing so; her writing and use of language is stunning and her stories each perfected pieces of art. I love her short stories and I have a love-hate relationship with the medium; Katherine Mansfield see-saws heavily on the love side.

I was first introduced to Katherine Mansfield by a beloved English teacher at school who gave us “The Doll House” to read, which remains one of my favourite short stories because of its apparent simplicity yet also inexplicable quality. Mansfield often features details and symbols that resonate within the reading but elude definition; the reader is unable to full grasp the significant meaning of the symbol as with the pear tree in “Bliss” and the little lamp in “The Doll’s House”, not strictly symbolic as they are not representative of a specific thing but freely open to interpretation, like Woolf’s lighthouse, which she meant “nothing by”.

Mansfield often employs abrupt beginnings that jar – the reader has to be alert and questioning from the outset, sometimes they even begin with a conjunction. She disposes of tedious descriptions/back story and launches into the midst of the action. Mansfield prompts examination at level of the word: semiotics, word choice and syntax. In “Bliss” she begins in medias res:

Although Bertha Young was thirty she still had moments like this when she wanted to run instead of walk, to take dancing steps on and off the pavement, to bowl a hoop, to throw something up in the air and catch it again, or to stand still and laugh at-nothing-at nothing, simply.
What can you do if you are thirty and, turning the corner of your own street, you are overcome, suddenly by a feeling of bliss-absolute bliss!- as though you’d suddenly swallowed a bright piece of that late afternoon sun and it burned in your bosom, sending out a little shower of sparks into every particle, into every finger and toe? …

Immediately I questioned who is Bertha and why is she so blissful? The word bliss and its derivatives are repeated and emphasised throughout the story and begin to describe a sexual awakening and longing for her husband, her best friend. Bertha is brimming over with emotion, desire and the search for fulfillment, a rite of passage that comes to realisation “For the first time in her life Bertha Young desired her husband.” Mostly I hoped Bertha would remain in her blissful state but predicted that in the denouement she would be crushed and she is… by an ironic blow.

You can read “Bliss” online here. Please do or alternatively read a volume of her stories.

Flush

Paperback Reader — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 19:42:00 +0000

Persephone Books are the types of books that go wonderfully well with a cup of tea in the other hand and this afternoon I curled up with Flush by Virginia Woolf (the first sitting occurred in bed this morning -another indulgence) in my cosy grey top and a mug of Earl Grey.

Flush is a biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s (the Victorian poet) cocker spaniel, Flush, so not what you would expect from Virginia Woolf and yet also radical in its own way in her characteristic stream of consciousness style. Woolf was inspired by a 1930 edition of the love letters exchanged between the Brownings and the appearance of “their dog made me laugh so I couldn’t resist making him a Life.” Comedic and charming, the novella is far removed from Woolf’s Modernist and seminal texts, but I love both. It is an illuminating insight into Woolf’ lighter side and her mocking sense of humour, attributes that are often overlooked when considering such a great writer.

We first meet Flush in 1840 when he belongs to Mary Mitford, who then presents him to her friend, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, whom he lives with as a companion until his death in 1854. The narrative follows the relationship between Flush and his owner through courtship, kidnap, and a move to Italy, with many amusing incidents including a bad case of fleas. On the surface an absorbing and lovely tale of a dog it is also an allegory of class and the status of women (and female poets) in Victorian society; Flush is a shameless snob, absurdly obsessed with breeding, and he is also tamed and house-trained. The ways in which Woolf draws comparisons are very subtle and she employs Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s only biographical history in order to do it; the feminist slant the work begins to take is hardly surprising in relation to Woolf. Experimental and progressive, Woolf considers the relationship between [wo]man and her best friend and the communication barriers; she also observes the Modern world and city through the eyes of Flush.

Flush is entertaining, cleverly creative, and wonderfully written with passages of distinct beauty, typical of Woolf.

The passage that amused me most:

They entered the bedroom. There was a faint bleating in the shadowed room – something waved on the pillow. It was a live animal. Independently of them all, without the street door being opened, out of herself in the room, alone, Mrs Browning had become two people. The horrid thing waved and mewed by her side. Torn with rage and jealousy and some deep disgust that he could not hide, Flush struggled himself free and rushed downstairs.