Back to the Classics Challenge 2017 Wrap-up Post

Back to the Classics 2017

Hosted by Karen @ Books & Chocolate

1.  A 19th Century Classic - any book published between 1800 and 1899.

Home Education by Charlotte Mason (1866)
 

2.  A 20th Century Classic - any book published between 1900 and 1967.

The Keys of the Kingdom by A.J. Cronin (1941)


3.  A classic by a woman author. 

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie (1926)

 
4.  A classic in translation.  Any book originally written published in a language other than your native language. 

Cancer Ward by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn (1966)



5.  A classic published before 1800. Plays and epic poems are acceptable in this category also.

The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare ( 1599)
 


6.  A romance classic. I'm pretty flexible here about the definition of romance. It can have a happy ending or a sad ending, as long as there is a strong romantic element to the plot.

My Love Must Wait  by Ernestine Hill (1941)



7.  A Gothic or horror classic. For a good definition of what makes a book Gothic, and an excellent list of possible reads, please see this list on Goodreads. 

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818, 1831)
 

8.  A classic with a number in the title. Examples include A Tale of Two Cities, Three Men in a Boat, The Nine Tailors, Henry V, Fahrenheit 451, etc.

The House of the Four Winds by John Buchan (1935)
 

9.  A classic about an animal or which includes the name of an animal in the title.  It an actual animal or a metaphor, or just the name. Examples include To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, The Metamorphosis, White Fang, etc. 

 My Family & Other Animals by Gerald Durrell (1956)

 

10. A classic set in a place you'd like to visit. It can be real or imaginary: The Wizard of Oz, Down and Out in Paris and London, Death on the Nile, etc.

The Small Woman by Alan Burgess (1957) - set in China

11. An award-winning classic. It could be the Newbery award, the Prix Goncourt, the Pulitzer Prize, the James Tait Award, etc. Any award, just mention in your blog post what award your choice received.

The Forgotten Daughter by Caroline Dale Snedeker (1933) Newbery medal


12. A Russian Classic. 2017 will be the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, so read a classic by any Russian author. 

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (1924)

Linking to Final Wrap-up at Books & Chocolate

 

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1797-1851)

My Initial Impression:

The Preface and the first few chapters of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley seemed quite promising but the story just went pear-shaped after that. What a miserable novel, full of rambling prose, implausible situations and occurrences, but after reading some biographical information on the author, it isn’t surprising. She made some lousy life decisions, went through some serious traumas, and the book is a mirror of her ravaged personality, her own personal nightmare.
A book that deserves pride of place on my list of least-liked books!

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley was first published in 1818 when the author was twenty-one years of age, and was subtitled, The Modern Prometheus. It was revised in 1831 and her husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, made some changes so he may be to blame for the rambling, florid writing. It is found on many high school reading lists, is included in a wide range of school curriculum, and is regarded as the classic horror novel. It is an epistolary novel related three different narrators and has sometimes been called the first science fiction novel.

A short synopsis:

The first narrator, R. Walton, is on a voyage of discovery in the Arctic Circle and he writes to his sister telling her about a man he takes onboard his ship after finding him on a sledge with one dog, adrift on a large fragment of ice.
The second narrator is the rescued man, a scientist by the name of Victor Frankenstein, who recounts his story to Walton in an effort to warn him of the dangers of acquiring knowledge at any cost.
Frankenstein relates the process by which he discovers how to animate lifeless matter and his assembling of a patchwork of cadaver parts, of larger than life proportions, that he brings to life - his unnamed Monster.
Then, duh! He is horrified - as if he hadn’t seen how this creature would turn out - and rejects his ‘child.’
The Monster disappears and later we hear his side of the story:
Basically, ‘I was born good, and because I was cruelly rejected, and everyone hated me, I turned out bad.’
Monster begins to take revenge on Frankenstein by knocking off his loved ones over a period of time.
He gives Frankenstein an ultimatum:

'I am alone and miserable; man will not associate with me; but one as deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me. My companion must be of the same species, and have the same defects. This being you must create.'

Frankenstein feels he has no choice but to comply but then changes his mind, provoking the Monster to more works of revenge. His creator then decides to return the vengeance and goes off in search of the Monster in order to kill him. This brings us back to the beginning of the narrative where Walton finds him.
I don’t know whether Shelley wanted us to sympathise with Victor Frankenstein, but he was a coward in many respects and ultimately a villain. The monster was portrayed in an aspect that stemmed from the teachings of Rousseau and I think we’re meant to feel that he was hard done by.

Harold Bloom said that:

'...all Romantic horrors are diseases of excessive consciousness, of the self unable to bear the self.'

Anyhow, I’ve read it, but unlike some other classics, I don’t know that I’d bother re-reading it.

I did like this reference to Plutarch by the Monster:


'The volume of Plutarch's Lives, which I possessed, contained the histories of the first founders of the ancient republics...I learned from Werter's imaginations despondency and gloom: but Plutarch taught me high thoughts; he elevated meabove the wretched sphere of my own reflections to admire and love the heroes of past ages...I read of men concerned in public affairs, governing or massacring their species. I felt the greatest ardor for virtue rise with me, and abhorrence for vice...'





Linking to Back to the Classics 2017: Gothic or Horror Classic

The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare (1599)

 The Death of Julius Caesar by Vincenzo Camuccini (1798)

Shakespeare’s play, Julius Caesar, is basically a tragedy, although, like many of his other plays, the distinctions are often blurred, and so this play is partly a history and involves civil war and the politics of Ancient Rome.
Shakespeare used Plutarch’s Lives as his source for Julius Caesar but he altered some of the historical account as he was wont to do.
I read Plutarch’s Life of Julius Caesar before I read this play which helped fill in some background not present in Shakespeare’s account. Plutarch began his Life of Caesar in 75 BC with Caesar’s capture by pirates and he shows some facets of Julius Caesar’s personality that Shakespeare omits.  Shakespeare focussed on the conspiracy and the subsequent assassination of Caesar in 44 BC and then the repercussions of his death. Brutus is actually more prominent than Caesar in the play.
The Tragedy of Julius Caesar opens with Caesar’s triumph over Pompey in Act 1, Scene 1 and by Scene 2 Cassius’s feelings towards Caesar are out in the open as he confides in Brutus.

Cassius: 
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars 
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
Brutus and Caesar: what should be in that ‘Caesar’?
Why should that name be sounded more than yours?

I am glad that my weak words
Have struck but thus much show of fire from Brutus.

The main characters:

Julius Caesar - powerful, skilful, arrogant. Physically, he suffered from epilepsy; Shakespeare exposes some of his more undesirable characteristics in the lead-up to his death.

Brutus - idealistic and honourable, he appears to act for the common good but is also manipulated by Cassius. Antony was later to declare that Brutus was the only conspirator who acted honourably:

Antony:
This was the noblest Roman of them all:
All the conspirators, save only he,
Did that they did in envy of great Caesar.

Cassius - intense, choleric; lean and hungry. I’ll let Caesar describe him:

Caesar:
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look, He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
Antony:
Fear him not, Caesar, he’s not dangerous, He is a noble Roman and well given.
Caesar:
Would that he were fatter!

Antony - loyal to Caesar, ruthless. He manipulates the mob during his funeral speech for Caesar and unleashes his anger and revenge over the assassination.
When he captured Lucillius who had posed as Brutus, he treats him with respect, saying:

This is not Brutus, Friend, but, I assure you, A prize no less in worth. Keep this man safe, Give him all kindness. I had rather have Such men my friends than enemies...

Octavius - a cool character who first appears in Act 4. He didn’t come across as very likeable except where he defends Lepidus against Antony’s scorn:

Antony:
This is a slight, unmeritable man,
Meet to be sent on errands...

Octavius:
You may do your will,
But he is a tried and valiant soldier.

Antony:So is my horse, Octavius, and for that
I do appoint him store of provender.

Calpurnia - Caesar’s wife who has a dream about his death and tries to persuade him not to go to the Senate. She and Caesar were unable to have children.

Portia - the wife of Brutus. They are portrayed as having a loving relationship. She discerned changes in her husband and was concerned about him.

This play ends tragically, with suicide one of the main causes of death:
Portia, Brutus, Cassius, Titinius, all end their own lives at various points in the play.

Favourite scenes:

Act 4, Scene 3 - this almost reads like a comedy. Cassius and Brutus have a heated argument in Brutus’s tent when he was camped near Sardis in Asia. Brutus basically tells Cassius he’s acting like a madman and asks why he should give way to ‘rash choler.’
Cassius becomes melodramatic and offers his dagger to Brutus telling him to strike but the situation is defused by Brutus admitting blame:

Brutus:
When I spoke that, I was ill-tempered too.

Cassius:
Do you confess so much? Give me your hand.

Brutus:
And my heart too.

Cassius:
O Brutus!

Brutus:
What’s the matter?

Cassius:
Have you not love enough to bear with me 
When that rash humour which my mother gave me 
Makes me forgetful?

Brutus:
Yes, Cassius, and from henceforth
When you are over-Ernest with your Brutus, 
He’ll think your mother chides, and leave you so.




And of course, the funeral speech by Antony.

Summary

The central idea of the play considered as a tragedy is that Good cannot come out of Evil. "Brutus is noble, wise, valiant, and honest," but he made shipwreck of his life by one great error. He committed a crime to prevent, as he thought, a greater crime, and by so doing he brought upon himself and his country greater evils than those he had sought to avert.

Julius Caesar by F. A. Purcell & L.M. Somers (1916)

Linking to Back to the Classics 2107: Classic Published Before 1800

Finding Plutarch in Unexpected Places: The Forgotten Daughter by Caroline Dale Snedeker - Newbery Honor Book, 1934

The Forgotten Daughter is an outstanding book by an author who was well-known for her dedication to historical accuracy. Caroline Dale Snedeker (1871-1956) wrote numerous books for children and this book is a fine example of the research she undertook to produce an historically authentic work of fiction.

The Forgotten Daughter is a captivating story, an adventure, and a powerful tale of love, loss and forgiveness. It plunges the reader into the Ancient World; into the second century before Christ when Tiberius Gracchus was Tribune in Rome.
As I was reading this book, I felt a certain familiarity with the background historical narrative but I couldn’t remember where I’d heard it before. And then the author mentioned Plutarch. Yes! We’d read about the Gracchi and Cornelia, their mother, who devoted herself to her sons’ education:

Those she so carefully brought up, that they [became] more civil, and better conditioned, than any other Romans in their time; every man judged, that education prevailed more in them than nature.

We’ve been reading two to three selections from Plutarch’s Lives each year for the past six years, although at first I wasn’t convinced he was worth it. I wrote a post for Afterthoughts: 31 Days of Charlotte Mason relating to this and we have continued with studying the Lives because Plutarch really is worth it. Reading Snedeker's book, which was published in 1933, just made me all the more aware of how highly regarded Plutarch has been in the past.
Plutarch’s Life of Tiberius and Gaius (Caius) Gracchi is the basic material out of which The Forgotten Daughter is fashioned, and Snedeker intertwines Plutarch’s observations into her narrative to flesh out her story. This makes for a high interest story with a sense of authenticity.

The Forgotten Daughter tells a beautiful story that concerns a young girl named Chloe, the daughter of a noble Roman. Chloe’s mother and her companion, Melissa, both Greeks, had been captured by Laevinus, a Roman centurion, when their town was raided. Laevinus was so taken by Chloe’s mother that he was willing to marry her, and afterwards took her to live on a farm in the country as his wife.
Everything went well for a time, but one day Laevinus left for Rome to take some produce to market, and he didn’t return. Chloe’s mother was certain he would return and worried that he had become ill or had been involved in an accident. She was later informed that her husband had married another woman in Rome, and before long she was reduced to servitude and banished to a hovel with Melissa as her only company.

Inside the hut all the hill beauty was quenched like a candle - windowless, dim...

There, unknown to Laevinus, she gave birth to his daughter, Chloe, and not long afterwards she died, leaving Melissa to take care of the child.
Melissa and Chloe were mistreated by the supervisor of the farm and suffered a great deal.
As Chloe grew, Melissa passed on in song their Greek origins, the meeting of her mother and father, his desertion and her mother’s anguish. Chloe imbibed the atmosphere of her mother's homeland and a rich cultural heritage through these songs. This was to serve her well in time to come.

For these two there were no books or the knowledge to read them. So the sweet source of song was open to them. That source from which all books are taken, but from which no book is able to gather all the living sweetness. Melissa’s song was rude and simple, but it had that power.

Chloe grew up with a seething hatred of the father she never knew. She was beaten by the farm supervisor and lived a life of misery, and all the while Melissa strove to comfort and protect her for the sake of the friend she had loved.

In such a life there was no hope; no use to save or build up. Why they lived at all is strange. They simply awoke, worked, ate, slept, and awoke again. They were indeed the machines which the Romans thought them.
Forever besetting mankind is this temptation - to make other men into machines. Always in a new form it comes to every generation, and always as disastrous to master as to slave...

The life of a slave in the Roman Republic was keenly portrayed and Snedeker had some very insightful observations to make on Rome and Roman philosophy.

...in Roman days, after every victory, thousands of slaves were sold on the battlefield to speculators for the equivalent of eighteen cents each. They were cheap because so many of them died on the long march to Rome. So many committed suicide. So it was with slaves. But in the end Rome died itself because of them - rotted to the heart.

And this gem:

Despair in the old is a grievous thing, but not so bad as despair in the young. The young have no weapons, no remembrance of evils overcome, nor of evils endured. They have no muscle-hardness from old battles. They see only what is present, and they believe it to be forever. And they are very sure.

The Forgotten Daughter is recommended for ages 12 years to adult. I’d add, a mature 12 year old, not so much for content but Snedeker’s style is so lyrical and her comments on human frailties and philosophy are likely better suited to a young person who is thoughtful about this type of thing. But then again, the story also has action, danger, suspense and romance, which would appeal to a wide audience.

It is strange how people will try to mend their lives when the garment is torn to shreds. It is strange, too, how life’s garment, unlike human weaving, grows whole with the mending. It is as if some invisible kindness out of the air had set to work with you - here a little and there a little.

If your child has been studying Plutarch’s Lives, this is a wonderful book to further expand their pleasure in looking at the lives of the Gracchi, Crassus, Scipio, Marcus Octavius and also Ancient Rome.


The Forgotten Daughter by Caroline Dale Snedeker is my choice in Back to the Classics Challenge 2017 for an Award-winning Classic

An Australian Classic & a Living Book - My Love Must Wait: The Story of Matthew Flinders by Ernestine Hill (1941)

'If the plan of a voyage of discovery were to be read over my grave, 

I would rise up, awakened from the dead.'

 

Matthew Flinders (1774-1814)

My Love Must Wait is a book I've known about for years and if it had been published under a more auspicious title I might have read it long before now. The title just doesn't represent the contents well enough. Yes, it is a poignant love story and this thread is woven throughout but it is so much more than that. It is also a wonderful account of the early life and influences of Matthew Flinders, the man who circumnavigated, mapped and named Australia, the fifth continent, and it details his driving ambition, his engaging personality and his great navigational skill. It is an account of a great tragedy, where a young man's life's work was cut short, his achievements forgotten for a century. A young man who gave his all and lost everything.

In the early 1930's, Ernestine Hill's knowledge of Matthew Flinders was on par with the average Australian. Everyone knew that Bass and Flinders sailed along the coast of New South Wales in a little tub boat called Tom Thumb, that Bass discovered Bass Strait and that Flinders made other explorations that were important but vague, but that was about the extent of common knowledge.
In the 1930's, the author sailed a thousand miles in a lugger from Thursday Island to Arnhem Land with a Torres Strait Islander as skipper, and was amazed to discover that the chart Matthew Flinders made of the area in 1802 was still in use.
Poring over that chart by the light of a hurricane lamp in the evenings, and later in library research, Ernestine Hill came to know Matthew Flinders as a friend as she pieced together fragments of his life. One day she hoped to write his forgotten story, a living book, that would speak to Australians and bring this 'most exact and accomplished of the cartographers of all time, a genius in navigation' to life.
The author certainly did this. My Love Must Wait is a superb achievement using scenes and situations created from written records: logs, journals, letters and private diaries, to present an accurate portrayal of the man, the lover, and his considerable accomplishments.
Flinders left an immense amount of detail about his work, his friends, his impressions, the surroundings he found himself in, and his associations, but it was in his passionate, poetic letters to his wife, Ann, that he revealed his heart.
Matthew and Ann had known each other from childhood, and were married in 1801. Ann had been prepared to travel to Australia with Matthew and stay with friends in Sydney while he did his explorations of the coast, but this was the era of Napoleon and Nelson, and the Admiralty had recently clamped down on women aboard ship due to Lord Nelson's indiscretions which had made the Navy a laughing stock.
Matthew was forced to choose to sail without Ann, or forfeit his voyage of discovery.
Ann was supportive of his going even though he would be away for four years and he was willing to leave her to undertake his great task. He told Sir Joseph Banks:

'I will give up the wife for the voyage of discovery.'

Pretty harsh! Although Ann was severely disappointed she made no complaint. She must have been an unusually selfless type of woman to have done this as graciously as she did. It wouldn't have been my response!
Matthew completed his work but a cruel twist of fate made him a prisoner on the Ilse-de-France (now known as Mauritius) for over six years as he was on his way back to England. By the time he returned home he was a broken man, almost destitute, and forgotten, or worse, pitied.
He had been separated from his wife for nearly ten years and was to die only four years after his return to England, a direct result of the conditions he endured in captivity. Only forty years of age, he died just a day after the book he wrote about his explorations was published, leaving behind his faithful and loving wife and an infant daughter they had named Anne.

 Flinders chose to title his book 'A Voyage to Australia,' but Sir Joseph Banks changed it to 'A Voyage to Terra Australis. However, Flinders' choice was later vindicated: 

 

Although Matthew Flinders only lived for forty years, he accomplished so much and lived through a time of great upheaval and change. My Love Must Wait reflects this and so the book encompasses a significant amount of history, culture and geography.
There is a lively account of Flinders' early life and influences and his developing love for the sea and exploration. We see his friendship with George Bass, a surgeon, who was to go exploring with Flinders later on; his budding relationship with Ann, his childhood friend; his father's opposition to his going to sea and his later acquiescence.
Matthew joined the Navy at a time of national fervour but he chose exploration over war and one of his first journeys was with Captain Bligh (of Mutiny on the Bounty fame) to Terra Australis. This was a lively account of life at sea and displays Flinders' personality so well. He was a skilful communicator and showed wisdom and humour in his encounters with the Aboriginal people, once diffusing a potentially explosive situation by giving the natives haircuts.
Their return to England coincided with England's war with France and Flinders took part in what was to become known as the the Glorious First of June, the first great naval engagement of the French Revolutionary Wars, fought between the French and the British in the Atlantic.
After this Flinders departed on a voyage to the new colony at Sydney with Captain John Hunter and while there he and Bass did their exploring in Tom Thumb. This was a very enjoyable and interesting part of the book. It was upon his return to England after this trip that he and Ann were married.
About a quarter of the book details Flinders' stay on the Ile-de-France where he was held on house arrest and it has quite a different feel from the rest of the book, sombre and introspective with less action. His six and a half years on this island gave him much time for reflection and he was tortured with thoughts of his wife, wondering if she were still alive, and whether others such as Nicolas Baudin, the French explorer, would take credit for the work he had done.
Later when the war between England and France ended, he was released by the French and was reunited with Ann in England:

The woman covered her face with her hands.
He went forward swiftly, and put his arms about her - sombre brown against the faded blue. With cold hands he lifted her face to his.
This sober little body his lovely, laughing Ann. They kissed, and the kiss seemed formal, empty.
Then in long shivering sobs she clung to him, the helpless tears staining the shoulder of his frayed uniform coat. Haggard eyes looking out on the grey, he might gave been a man of fifty years.

All through that dreary forenoon they sat there, clasped in their joy and sorrow, now and again to find dear remembered caresses of reawakening love, telling the sad litany of their loneliness, feeling their way, as a blind man feels, back across the years.

This is a warm, lively, enjoyable, but an ultimately sad look at the life of Matthew Flinders and Ernestine Hill's writing style is lyrical and descriptive. There are so many connections with historical figures and the early days of colonial life in Australia, such a broad sweep of characters: Sir Joseph Banks, Captain William Bligh, Captain Hunter, John Macarthur (the pioneer of the Australian wool industry), Lord Nelson, and Nicholas Baudin, for example. I learnt so much about Australian History and what was happening elsewhere at the time.
The only disappointing part of this book is that it didn't contain any maps! I used the maps in a book we used in Year 4 to follow along with Flinders' journeys but there are online maps showing the places he navigated and charted.

I  highly recommend this book for high school history and geography or as a biography for about ages 14 and up, even if you're not Australian, as it features worldwide events and high profile characters. Chronologically it fits well into AmblesideOnline Year 9 (1800's) and would be enjoyed by both boys and girls. Flinders is certainly someone a young person could admire.

'All the time Matthew could spare from his nautical  and mathematical studies he spent in reading discovery, "peering in maps and charts", chasing the evolution of exploration from Ptolemy again down to Cook. He took the soundings, in fancy, of a myriad islands sprawled in seas of unruffled blue. He kept imaginary journals with scrupulous exactness, assimilated the various styles of the great English navigators, and grieved that he did not know Dutch.

For light relief, propped beside him at mess, or beneath a ship's lamp in his hammock at night, he read Dampier's Voyages...finding within those yellowed pages entertainment and inspiration.
This William Dampier was a man after his own heart, a farmer's boy who loved he blue furrows of the sea better than the brown of earth, and became a pilgrim of the winds and high adventure.'
Matthew Flinders was honourable, a man of his word, and he had an ability to get on with crusty personalities such as William Bligh. Here he comments to a fellow-midshipman as they were going to report to 'Bully Bligh' for duty on his ship:

'"I think we need have no fear. Lightening never strikes in the same place twice. Bligh knows that all England is watching him this time. To please him may be impossible, but a record of no complaints with such a man is worth more than the praise of others. Our commanders hold our future in their hands. Let's try, Bob, just for the fun of it, to see if we can make him smile upon us. Let's draw the old serpent's fangs, and tame the lion."

After they met Bligh he said to his friend, "I think I like him...A lot of pepper, but good red meat beneath." He was to like old Bligh, with the usual reservations, to the end of his days.'



My Love Must Wait is my choice for the Back to the Classics 2017, Romance Classic. It was re-printed by Angus & Robertson in 2013; the copy pictured above is an out of print hardback I've had for some time. The cover is taken from a painting "The Battle of the Glorious First of June," 1794 by P.J. de Loutherbourg. 

My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell (1956)

Gerald Durrell, (1925-1995) a pioneering naturalist, conservationist, and author, was born in India in 1925, the youngest of four children. Both his parents were of British descent but were also born in India, and having a limited experience of England, considered India to be their true home.
When Gerald was three years of age, his father died of a cerebral haemorrhage and his mother took the family and moved to England.
My Family and Other Animals is Gerald's account of his family's five year stay on the Greek island of Corfu.  He was ten years of age at the time, his eldest brother Larry was twenty-three; Lesley, nineteen, and Margo, eighteen.
From an early age Gerald possessed an ardent interest in the natural world and was obsessed with animals and all sorts of living creatures. During his time on Corfu he made a special study of zoology and kept a large number of various creatures as pets, much to the disgust and dismay of some of the other members of the family. My Family and Other Animals is one of the numerous books he wrote about his animal adventures and various exploits, but it is also a highly entertaining portrayal of his family and how they interacted. We enjoyed spending some time with the Durrell family as I read this book aloud although some editing was required for my 12 year old as we went.
We had a good laugh at his description of his mother's bathing costume which one of her sons said looked like 'a badly skinned whale,' and which inflated like a balloon when she went into the water...'an airship of frills and tucks.'

Mother was vague and incredibly mild for all she had to endure and tended to be dominated by her eldest son, Larry, a writer. It was he who decided the family needed to leave the miserable English climate and head for the Continent:

...Larry was designed by Providence to go through life like a small, blond firework, exploding ideas in other people's minds, and then curling up with cat-like unctuousness and refusing to take any blame for the consequences. He had become increasingly irritable as the afternoon wore on. At length, glancing moodily round the room, he decided to attack Mother, as being the obvious cause of the trouble.
'Why do we stand this bloody climate?' he asked suddenly, making a gesture towards the rain-distorted window. 'Look at it! And if it comes to that, look at us...Margo swollen up like a plate of scarlet porridge...Leslie wandering around with fourteen fathoms of cotton wool in each ear...Gerry sounds as though he's had a cleft palate from birth...And look at you: you're looking more decrepit and hag-ridden every day.'
Mother peered over the top of a large volume entitled Easy Recipes from Rajputana.
'Indeed I'm not,' she said indignantly.
'You are,' Larry insisted; 'you're beginning to look like an Irish washerwoman...and your family looks like a series of illustrations from a medical encyclopedia.'

Life sounded pretty idyllic for Gerry, and his naturalist bent had plenty of scope with scorpions, toads, snakes, various birds, bats, butterflies, geckos, sea creatures, tortoises and porpoises making their appearance during his stay on the island.  His education was conducted at home by various interesting & eccentric tutors. One of them, Peter, was more interested in Gerald's sister, Margo, than in his young charge, but I thought this description of the tutor's own education on the island was delightful:

'With the summer came Peter to tutor me, a tall, handsome young man, fresh from Oxford, with decided ideas on education which I found rather trying to begin with. But gradually the atmosphere of the island worked its way insidiously under his skin, and he relaxed and became quite human. At first the lessons were painful to an extreme: interminable wrestling with fractions and percentages, geological strata and warm currents, nouns, verbs, and adverbs. But, as the sunshine worked its magic on Peter, the fractions and percentages no longer seemed to him an overwhelmingly important part of life and they were gradually pushed more and more into the background; he discovered that the intricacies of geological strata and the effects of warm currents could be explained much more easily while swinmming along the coast, while the simplest way of teaching me English was to allow me to write something each day which he would correct.'

Durrell had a way with similes. These are a few that took our fancy:

'The plane, like a cumbersome overweight goose, flew over the olive-groves, sinking lower and lower.'

'...the three dogs hung out their pink tongues and panted like ancient, miniature railway engines.'


'The Magenpies had been through the room as thoroughly as any Secret Service agent searching for missing plans. Piles of manuscript and typing paper lay scattered about the floor like drifts of autumn leaves...The Magenpies could never resist paper. The typewriter stood stolidly on the table, looking like a disembowelled horse in a bull ring...'

'Then came Mother, wearing an enormous straw hat, which made her look like an animated mushroom...'

'They squatted there like two obese, leprous Buddhas, peering at me and gulping in the guilty way that toads have.'

One day, Mr Kralefsky, one of Gerald's tutors, informed Mother that he had taught Gerald as much as he was able and the time had come for him to go somewhere like England or Switzerland to finish his education:

'In desperation I argued against any such idea; I said I liked being half-educated; you were so much more surprised at everything when you were ignorant.'

Mother was adamant and so the family returned to England with the words of a border official, 'One travelling Circus and Staff' written on their 'Desription of Passengers' document.





Linking to Back to the Classics 2017, Classic about an Animal and The Classics Club 

Cancer Ward by Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1966)

Russian author and Nobel Prize winner, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, completed his book Cancer Ward in 1966. English translations were published in 1968, and although book was banned in the Soviet Union, unauthorized Russian copies were distributed in samizdat.
The story takes place in a male cancer ward of a Soviet hospital in the mid-1950's and revolves around a number of characters, the central one being Oleg Kostoglotov. Kostoglotov's life mirrors that of Solzhenitsyn in that he was imprisoned for his criticism of Stalin, and after being diagnosed with stomach cancer, was transferred from the concentration camp to a cancer ward. And like Solzhenitsyn, he later recovered.
I was totally absorbed by this book's 570 pages and despite the fact that Russian literature is often notoriously hard to read, this book definitely wasn't.
The most fascinating aspect of Cancer Ward for me wasn't so much the allegorical links to the Communist regime and the descriptions of life in a dictatorship. As interesting as they were, there have been other books I've read that addressed this, one of them also written by Solzhenitsyn. (See One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich)
What was so interesting to me was the medical treatment of cancer and the attitude of the medical staff to patients and treatment.
Kostoglotov believed that he had the right to choose what form and how much treatment he should have. The medical profession believed that information should be withheld from patients, 'for their own good.' They didn't understand the technicalities and should leave the decisions to those who do. This is really no different to what used to happen in Australia, for instance. It wasn't uncommon to leave a patient ignorant of their impending doom. Relatives could make the call on whether to let a member of their family know that their disease was terminal. Even now, to question the standard method of treatment for something like cancer is to bring down the ire of the establishment upon yourself, as a friend of mine recently found out when she decided not to undergo chemotherapy after her cancer surgery.
The medical staff in that Russian hospital were conscientious and sincere and believed they were doing the right thing by Kostoglotov. They were tight-lipped about the hormonal therapy he was receiving and its long-term effect of impotency, but he didn't want to be saved 'at any price.'
Kostoglotov also did some of his own research and discovered that concern was beginning to surface in medical circles regarding the long term effects of radiotherapy.

The gist of it was that X-ray cures, which had been safely, successfully, even brilliantly accomplished ten or fifteen years ago through heavy doses of radiation, were now resulting in unexpected damage or mutilation of the irradiated parts.

...ten, fifteen or eighteen years ago when the term 'radiation sickness' did not exist, X-ray radiation had seemed such a straightforward, reliable and foolproof method, such a magnificent achievement of modern medical technique, that it was considered retrograde, almost sabotage of public health, to refuse to use it and to look for other, parallel or round-about methods.

Solzhenitsyn explores the relationship between doctors and patients and between fellow cancer sufferers as they go through their various forms of treatment.
There are numerous Translator's notes throughout the book that explain some of the historical background needed to understand the context of the author's writing, such as this:

Khrushchev had just become Party leader. He believed that wide cultivation of maize in the north of Russia would solve grain and fodder problems. He called upon Young Communists to fight those who didn't believe maize could be grown there. His scheme, however, was defeated by the climate.

Although Solzhenitsyn insisted that his book was simply about cancer, there are seemingly allegorical statements that contradict this:

A man dies from a tumour, so how can a country survive with growths like labour camps and exiles?

I highly recommend this book, especially if you have some sort of  medical background. Solzhenitsyn was perceptive and prophetic and his insights into human nature were superb.

Some favourite passages:

It is not our level of prosperity that makes for happiness but the kinship of heart to heart and the way we look at the world. Both attitudes lie within our power, so that a man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy, and no one can stop him.

Nowadays we don't think much of a man's love for an animal; we laugh at people who are attached to cats. But if we stop loving animals, aren't we bound to stop loving humans too?

Soon it will be summer, and this summer I want to sleep on a camp-bed under the stars, to wake up at night and know by the positions of Cygnus and Pegasus what time it is, to live just this one summer and see the stars without their being blotted out by camp searchlights- then afterwards I would be quite content never to wake again.

As the two-thousand-year-old saying goes, you can have eyes and still not see.
But a hard life improves the vision. There were some in the wing who immediately recognized each other for what they were...It was as if they bore some luminous sign on their foreheads, or stigmata on their feet and palms...The Uzbeks and the Karakalpaks had no difficulty in recognising their own people in the clinic, nor did those who had once lived in the shadow of the barbed wire.


The Penguin translation I read was first published by The Bodley Head in 1968.





Linking to Back to the Classics 2017: Classic in Translation; The Classics Club and Books You Loved

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie (1926)

Something I don't often do these days is stay up late to finish a book, but the truth was, I couldn't put this one down. I fully intended to read just one more chapter, but I was hooked and had to finish it.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a Hercules Poirot novel. I wasn't all that enamoured with the two previous Poirot stories I read and so I've leaned towards Christie's Tommy & Tuppence series and others that don't include either Poirot (or Miss Marple for that matter.) However, this book changed my mind on Poirot. I loved it and was not surprised to read that Christie's career took a decided turn for the better after it was published.

 

Dr James Sheppard, a middle-aged bachelor lives with his older sister Caroline in a small English village and is the narrator of this story. He is a self-deprecating, logical sort of fellow, while Caroline is a self-appointed amateur sleuth and an inveterate gossip:

The motto of the mongoose family, so Mr Kipling tells us, is: 'Go and find out.' If Caroline ever adopts a crest, I should certainly suggest a mongoose rampant. One might omit the first part of the motto. Caroline can do any amount of finding out by sitting placidly at home. I don't know how she manages it, but there it is. I suspect that the servants and the tradesmen constitute her Intelligence Corps. When she goes out, it is not to gather information, but to spread it. At that, too, she is amazingly expert.

Their interactions were some of my favourite parts of the book:

Caroline pushed her spectacles up and looked at me.

'You seem very grumpy, James. It must be your liver. A blue pill, I think, tonight.'

To see me in my own home, you would never imagine that I was a doctor of medicine. Caroline does the home prescribing both for herself and me.

 

Hercule Poirot, a private detective, had moved into the village about a year before, ostensibly to retire from active work. He is the Sheppard's neighbour, but they believed he was a hairdresser because of his two immense moustaches. His identity only became known to them when Flora Ackroyd, the dead man's niece, asks Poirot's assistance in solving her uncle's murder. Suspicion is upon everyone and Dr Sheppard finds himself closely involved in the investigation as Poirot's unofficial assistant: 'I played Watson to his Sherlock.'


 'Mark my words, James, you'll see that I'm right...Roger Ackroyd might easily have been poisoned in his food that night.'
I laughed out loud.
'Nonsense,' I cried. 'He was stabbed in the neck. You know that as well as I do.'
'After death, James,' said Caroline, 'to make a false clue.'
'My good woman,' I said, 'I examined the body, and I know what I'm talking about...'
Caroline merely continued to look omniscient, which so annoyed me that I went on:
'Perhaps you will tell me, if I have a medical degree or if I have not?'
'You have the medical degree, I dare say, James - at least, I mean I know you have. But you've no imagination whatever.'
'Having endowed you with a treble portion, there was none left over for me,' I said drily.

In an obtuse sort of way, this book reminded me of Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. It's bears no resemblance really, but rather it was the narrative device that both Christie and du Maurier used that made me think of them having a similarity.

Warning! Don't read the link below until you've finished the book!

This article explains the source of the idea which Agatha Christie based this book upon.

'The truth, however ugly in itself, is always curious and beautiful to the seeker after it...'

Hercule Poirot

Linking up with Back to the Classics 2017: A Classic by a Woman Author and The Classics Club

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin - 'a study of the Machine, the genie that man has thoughtlessly let out of its bottle and cannot put back again.'

Dystopian or anti-Utopian literature is a genre that has always interested me. I can't really describe this type of reading as enjoyable but I'm attracted by the ideas and thoughts suggested by these types of books and the implications there might be for today's society.
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin was completed in 1920-21 before Stalin's rise to power so it was quite prophetic for the time but it also feels prophetic nearly a hundred years later with its themes of a technological and utilitarian world.
We is written in a first person narrative and is fragmented and oblique in places because of this. It wasn't until I was about three quarters of the way into the book that I really began to connect with the story and I think that was largely due to this intentional device the author used. It suited the overall theme of the story but it wasn't an easy read.

I'm not going to attempt to 'review' this book as I don't think I'd do it justice, but I'd like to focus on some of Zamyatin's ideas that stood out to me as relevant to our present culture.

A quick, very basic outline of the story:

It is the twenty-sixth century A.D. Many years ago, there was a two-hundred year war between the City and the Country and only a fraction of the world's population was left alive. Since the war, OneState, ruled by the Benefactor, and overseen by the Guardians, has vanquished Hunger and Love, the previous rulers of the world, and established a regimentation of mankind where everything is mathematically precise, each citizen functioning like a machine.

D-503 is the narrator of We. He is a mathematician and the builder of the INTEGRAL, a technologically advanced space ship that OneState is going to use to spawn the perfect society through the rest of the solar system.
Through D-503 we are introduced to the citizens of OneState (identified only by Numbers) and their collective society as he documents his thoughts in a diary. D-503 becomes infatuated by I-330, a leader of the Mephi, an underground group of revolutionaries. This messes with his rational, precise mind and he becomes sick. In fact, according to the doctor, he seems to be developing a soul:

"You're in bad shape. It looks like you're developing a soul."

A soul? That strange, ancient, long-forgotten word. 

We sometimes used expressions like "soul-mate," "body and soul," "soul-destroying," and so on, but soul...

"That's...very dangerous," I murmured.

The Mephi have plans to get control of the INTEGRAL. A revolution is brewing and D-503 is instrumental in allowing them to achieve their aim.

Some ideas expressed in the book:

A rigidly controlled society
Conformity - the victory of all over one, of the whole over the part
The individual personality is subjugated to the collective
The mathematical precision of life in a controlled environment
The regimentation of mankind

 ...the Table of Hours - it turns each one if us right there in broad daylight into a steel six-wheeled epic hero. Every morning, with six-wheeled precision, at the very same hour and the very same minute, we get up, millions of us, as though we were one. At the very same hour, millions of us as one, we start work. Later, millions as one, we stop. And then, like one body with a million hands, at one and the same second according to the Table, we lift the spoon to our lips...

Scientific utopia
The Benefactor is all powerful, a god-like being who desires sacrifice
The State was above everything - loved ones, friends, the individual
The total surrender to Technology and Utilitarianism

The mechanism has no imagination.
When you were at work did you ever happen to see a distant, idiotic, dreamy smile spread across the physiognomy of a cylindrical pump? At night, during the hours designated for rest, did you ever happen to hear the cranes toss restlessly and heave sighs?
...But you are not to blame. You are sick. The name of your illness is:
IMAGINATION.

Controlled & selective reproduction
The idea that the natural world is ugly and the technological society is pure

Man ceased to be a wild animal only when he built the first Wall. Man ceased to be a wild man only when we built the Green Wall, only when by means of that Wall, we isolated our perfect machine world from the irrational, ugly world of trees, birds, and animals...

A belief that everything in the past was primitive and absurd
Happiness and freedom are incompatible
Freedom is regarded as 'disorganised wildness'

At the same time as I was reading this book, I'd started reading through Norms & Nobility: A Treatise on Education by David V. Hicks. He observes that:

'The ancients, unlike us, expected science to enhance the their understanding of the material world without particularly helping them to transform it. Their real interest was man, and wherever possible, they tried to turn Science away from matter to man...
Because the ancients regarded man as free...and not as determined by a material universe, there was little reason to turn science and mathematics into tools with which to mold nonliving matter and man's future...
But modern science...would change the world and, if we accept the dominant ideological creeds of the nineteenth century, it would change man...
A fundamentally political ideology dedicated to the reform or the anticipated progress of material conditions uprooted the ancient insistence upon a personal ideal.'

Hicks goes on to say that the modern world has rules of analysis that 'increasingly govern our understanding and appreciation of art, poetry, history, and even religion.'

It is not concerned with what ought to be done, but what can be done.

Taken to its extreme, the end result of this way of thinking is the starting point for D-503's world.

'There are books of the same chemical composition as dynamite. The difference lies only in the fact that one stick of dynamite explodes once, but one book explodes thousands of times.'

Yevgeny Zamyatin

Further reading

George Orwell's review of We

Short biography of Zamyatin - interesting that he was a naval engineer and had a technical  background.




Linking to Russian Literature Challenge, Back to the Classics: Russian Classic and The Classics Club.

The House of the Four Winds by John Buchan (1935)

There are three outstanding heroes to be found in the novels of John Buchan. Richard Hannah is the most famous of them all and is the central figure in The Thirty-Nine Steps, Greenmantle, Mr. Standfast, The Three Hostages and The Island of Sheep - all fantastic stories well worth reading.
Sir Edward Leithen is another hero and apparently the narrator of John Macnab, one of Buchan's books I haven't yet read, but it comes highly recommended by a few of my kids.
The third outstanding figure in Buchan's novels is Dickson McCunn, the respectable, retired Glasgow grocer who is introduced in Huntingtower along with the Gorbals Diehards and they re-appear in Castle Gay and The House of the Four Winds.
The three McCunn books are best read in order as there are a number of references to events that happened in previous books.

The House of the Four Winds is a little more fanciful and has a less serious tone than many of Buchan's other tales - our hero gets into the plot when someone appears at his upper window on the back of Aurunculeia the elephant, for example. The action is centred in the fictional country of Evallonia in Central Europe where the Republican Government of the country is in disarray and on the verge of revolution. Prince John, the rightful heir to the vacant throne, is in hiding and is regarded as a puppet by Juventus, the Nationalist movement made up mostly of Evallonian youth.
Complicating the situation is Mastrovin the Communist who is determined to get rid of Prince John in order to prevent the Monarchists taking government.

Great events, says the philosophic historian, spring only from great causes, though the immediate occasion may be small; but I think his law must have exceptions. If the not inconsiderable events which I am about to chronicle, the occasion was trivial, and I find it hard to detect the majestic agency behind them.

Trivial incidents introduce Dickson McCunn, Alison Westwater and John (Jaikie) Galt into the intrigues of Evallonia where great events are unfolding and where they each play an important role. The House of the Four Winds hasn't the depth of most of the Buchan novels I've read so far, but it is still a good story and I think Buchan's development of the character of Jaikie Galt, the true hero of this story, makes up for any lack in other areas.
Jaikie is introduced in Huntingtower as one of the Gorbals Diehards, a group of orphaned street boys roaming the slums of Glasgow, and since then Dickson had basically adopted him as his son and put him through Cambridge.

His future - what was he to do now that he was done with Cambridge? Alison - his need of her grew more desperate every day, but what could he offer her worthy if her acceptance? 

Only his small dingy self, he concluded, with nothing to his credit except a second-class degree, some repute in Rugby football, and the slenderest of bank balances. It seemed the most preposterous affair of a moth and a star.

Jaikie is a courageous young man but he struggles with his identity at times. In earlier days he'd been humiliated by the formidable Mastrovin and again he finds himself subject to the man's malevolence and his own self-abasement:

The formidable eyebrows were drawn together, and the whole man became an incarnate menace. Jaikie, empty, headachy, sitting in his shabby clothes on the edge of the bed, felt very small and forlorn. He sometimes felt like that, and on such occasions he would have given all he possessed for another stone of weight and another two inches of height.

 Once again he felt, sharp as a toothache, his extreme insignificance.

For a moment his heart failed him. Then his sense of feebleness changed into desperation. He knew that the lives of the other three depended on him, and the knowledge stung him into action. Never had he felt so small and feeble and insignificant, but never so determined.

As with Buchan's other books, there are some interesting philosophical comments scattered throughout that are a reflection of the post World War I era. The words below had a touch of G.K. Chesterton, me thinks - maybe it was the street lamps comment??

"...We are now in the midst of the retarded liquidation of the War. I do not mean debts and currencies and economic fabrics, but something much more vital - the thoughts of men. The democracies have lost confidence. So long as they believed in themselves they could make shift with constitutions and parliaments and dull republics. But once let them lose confidence, and they are like children in the dark, reaching out for the grasp of a strong hand. That way lies the dictator. It might be the monarch if we bred the right kind of king...
Also there is something more dangerous still, a stirring of youth, disappointed, aggrieved youth, which has never known the discipline of war. Imaginative and incalculable youth, which clamours for the moon and may not be content till it has damaged most of the street lamps."

John Buchan's books are in the Public Domain and are available for kindle here.


Linking to Back to the Classics 2017: A Classic with a Number in the Title.

The Keys of the Kingdom by A.J. Cronin

Perhaps the greatest strain is thrown upon our moral vision by the spectacle of another's success. 

The dazzle hurts us.

The Keys of the Kingdom is the moving story of the spiritual struggle of a young priest, Father Francis Chisholm. Often at loggerheads with the hierarchy of the church, Francis was unconventional in many ways, although fervent in his faith and its outworking.
Set in both Scotland and a remote region of China between about 1870 and 1938, the story follows his childhood and the events leading to his decision to enter the priesthood. It portrays his hard won successes and his great disappointments; his individualistic tendencies that sometimes won him no friends, and his humility that opened unlikely hearts and doors.
This was a beautiful work of fiction that reached into my heart.
Francis was overlooked and misunderstood throughout his life. Those who had to work closely with him often despised him at the first. One such person was the proud Mother Maria-Veronica who had decided to leave the Chinese mission until Canon Anselm Mealey, a boyhood companion of Francis who 'had made a fine thing of his life,' came to inspect the mission.

After Anselm had left, Father Chisholm was meditating amongst the debris of his church which had been destroyed by flooding just before Anselm's visit.

There was little courage in him now. These last two weeks, the perpetual effort to sustain his visitor's patronizing tone, had left him void. Yet perhaps Anselm was justified. Was he not a failure, in God's sight and in man's? He had done so little. And that little, so laboured and inadequate, was almost undone. How was he to proceed? A weary hopelessness of spirit took hold of him.

As Francis was thinking thus, Mother Mary-Veronica came out to him:

"I have something to say to you...
I am most bitterly and grievously sorry for my conduct towards you. From our first meeting I behaved shamefully, sinfully. The devil of pride was in me...
I have known now for weeks that wanted to come to you...to tell you...but my pride, my stubborn malice restrained me. These last ten days, in my heart, I have wept for you...the slights and humiliations you have endured from that gross and worldly priest, who is unworthy to tie your shoe. Father, I hate myself - forgive me, forgive me..."

"So now you will not leave the mission?"

"No, no..." Her heart was breaking. "If you will let me stay. I have never known anyone whom I wished so much to serve...Yours is the best...the finest spirit I have ever known."

The Keys of the Kingdom shows what really matters in the long run. Francis had asked God to judge him less by his deeds than by his intention and his intentions had always been honourable.
Lovely, lovely book.


The Keys of the Kingdom by A.J. Cronin is my selection for the Back to the Classics 2017 Challenge: 20th Century Classic



 

Back to the Classics 2017

 I love this challenge.  Here are my potential reads:

1.  A 19th Century Classic - any book published between 1800 and 1899.

 The Refugees by A. Conan Doyle (1893)
Sense & Sensibility by Jane Austen (1811)
 

2.  A 20th Century Classic - any book published between 1900 and 1967.

The Keys of the Kingdom by A.J. Cronin (1941)


3.  A classic by a woman author. 

 The Rosemary Tree by Elizabeth Goudge (1956)
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie (1926)

 
4.  A classic in translation.  Any book originally written published in a language other than your native language. 

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (1877)



5.  A classic published before 1800. Plays and epic poems are acceptable in this category also.

On Friendship by Cicero (44BC)
The Iliad by Homer  (c.760–710 BC)
 

6.  A romance classic. I'm pretty flexible here about the definition of romance. It can have a happy ending or a sad ending, as long as there is a strong romantic element to the plot.

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (1948)


7.  A Gothic or horror classic. For a good definition of what makes a book Gothic, and an excellent list of possible reads, please see this list on Goodreads. 

The Hound of the Baskervilles by A. Conan Doyle (1902)
 

8.  A classic with a number in the title. Examples include A Tale of Two Cities, Three Men in a Boat, The Nine Tailors, Henry V, Fahrenheit 451, etc.

The House of the Four Winds by John Buchan (1925)
 

9.  A classic about an animal or which includes the name of an animal in the title.  It an actual animal or a metaphor, or just the name. Examples include To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, The Metamorphosis, White Fang, etc. 

 The Goshawk by T.H. White (1951)
 

10. A classic set in a place you'd like to visit. It can be real or imaginary: The Wizard of Oz, Down and Out in Paris and London, Death on the Nile, etc.

Under the Yoke by Ivan Vazov (1888) - set in Bulgaria. I'd love to visit any of the countries around the Balkans.
 

11. An award-winning classic. It could be the Newbery award, the Prix Goncourt, the Pulitzer Prize, the James Tait Award, etc. Any award, just mention in your blog post what award your choice received.

The Forgotten Daughter by Caroline Dale Snedeker (1933) Newbery medal


12. A Russian Classic. 2017 will be the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, so read a classic by any Russian author. 

Cancer Ward by Alexander Solzhenitsyn (completed in 1966; published in 1968)
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (1924)