Book Beginnings

 Each week Rose City Reader hosts Book Beginnings:

Share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author’s name.

I've just started a book I've had for a while: The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman, which was published in 1962. Tuchman was a superb writer, and for this work she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1963. The book concentrates on the first month of World War I and opens with this paragraph:

So gorgeous was the spectacle on the May morning of 1910 when nine kings rode in the funeral of Edward VII of England that the crowd, waiting in hushed and black-clad awe, could not keep back gasps of admiration. In scarlet and blue and green and purple, three by three the sovereigns rode through the palace gates, with plumed helmets, gold braid, crimson sashes, and jeweled orders flashing in the sun. After them came five heirs apparent, forty more imperial or royal highnesses, seven queens - four dowager and three regnant - and a scattering of special ambassadors from uncrowned countries. Together they represented seventy nations in the greatest assemblage of royalty and rank ever gathered in one place and, of its kind, the last. The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history’s clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again.

In the Foreword of my copy of the book, Robert K. Massie said that the paragraph above took her eight hours to complete.

Barbara Tuchman had a sardonic sense of humour which she used to describe some of William II, the German Emperor (Kaiser)'s antics. He hated his uncle and had come to England to 'bury Edward his bane; Edward the arch plotter, as William conceived it, of Germany's encirclement...'

He flew into one of his rages and scolded (King Leopold) for putting respect for Parliament and Ministers above respect for the finger of God (with which William sometimes confused himself).

Back to the Classics 2020 Challenge: Final Wrap Up

Well, this is the earliest I've ever posted my final wrap-up for the Back to the Classics Challenge! I've managed to fit in a lot of books so far this year, thanks mostly to Covid! I'm very happy to have finally read The Lord of the Rings...and to have enjoyed them so much. They were just the right books to read as we went into lockdown here. I also watched the movies, which I'd put off viewing until I'd read the books.

A pleasant surprise for me out of this list was Martin Chuzzlewit. I've read just about all of Dickens' novels, and wasn't busting to read any of his others but by chance I found this book, had no idea of its storyline, and had never seen it reviewed. I decided to read a chapter and if I found it too rambling I'd give it a miss, but I fell into it headlong and continued. A great read!

A book that made me cry (which doesn't happen very often) was The Death of Ivan Ilyich. A perfect (short) book to pick up for a first introduction to a Russian writer.

Saplings was very different to anything else I'd read by Noel Streatfeild - definitely not for children like many of her other books; a tragic tale of the impact of WW2 on a family.

Sadly, Miss Pym Disposes is the last of of Josephine Tey's crime/detective noels I had left to read. I've thoroughly enjoyed her books.

The only book I didn't really like was The Island of Doctor Moreau. There was a reason it was my abandoned classic!

19th century Classic: Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens (1843-5)

20th Century Classic: Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak (1957-8)

Classic by a Woman: The Making of a Marchioness by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1901)

Classic in Translation: The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy (1886)

Classic by a Person of Colour: To Sir With Love by E.R. Braithwaite (1959)

Genre Classic: The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie (1930)

Classic With a Name in the Title: Miss Pym Disposes by Joesphine Tey (1946)

Classic With a Place in the Title: Pilgrim's Inn by Elizabeth Goudge (1948)

Classic With Nature in the Title: The Scent of Water by Elizabeth Goudge (1963)

Classic About a Family: Saplings by Noel Streatfeild (1945)

An Abandoned Classic: The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells (1896)

Adapted Classic: The Lord of the Rings by J.R. Tolkien (1949)

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak (1957-8)

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak (1890 - 1960) is an epic Russian novel that takes place during the socialist revolution of 1905 and the years up to World War II. Philosophical and beautifully written, it is sometimes difficult to follow as it has a cast of thousands and everyone is known by about three or four different names. Ah! Russian novels!

Doctor Zhivago was first published in the West in 1957 but was banned in the Soviet Union. Pasternak won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1958 'For his important achievement both in contemporary lyrical poetry and in the field of the great Russian epic tradition.'

Pasternak initially accepted the award but after a brutal denunciation by the Soviet regime he reluctantly renounced it. It was either that or be banished from the country he loved. It wasn’t until 1988, twenty-eight years after his death, that the book was published in Russia for the first time. From what I’ve read about the author, the book is partly autobiographical. 

Yuri Zhivago, the main character, is a physician and poet. Pasternak was born into an artistic family and had a classical education. He went on to study music and philosophy but gave them up to devote himself to poetry. Zhivago’s life reflected that of the author’s in his relationships with women also.

Zhivago was an intellectual and as such, an enemy of the people in the new Communist regime. In many ways he was a victim of the times: forcibly taken by the partisans to work in hospitals on the battlefields, he was removed without notice from his wife, Tonya, and young family, who could only guess at his whereabouts. Given an opportunity to escape his forced detention, he basically walked across Siberia to his old home but found his family had relocated. 

Throughout the novel there are threads of long-term friendships and a vast network of relationships that intertwine and separate throughout. One of these relationships was in the person of Lara whom Yuri had met when he was a boy and later on as he was working in the hospital in town. He had just begun a relationship with her before he was taken by the partisans and they came together again after his escape. He was a complex, sensitive man but his actions at times demonstrated a lack of moral feeling. Although at times he pined for knowledge of his wife and children, he didn’t make any great effort to find them. Zhivago’s internal world reflected his external circumstances:

'Everything established, settled, everything to do with home and order and the common round, has crumbled to dust and been swept away in the general upheaval and reorganisation of the whole of society...'

The author must have been a brave man to try to publish a book like this in Soviet Russia. It is certainly not a glowing account of the rise of the Soviet state. Yuri was at first an admirer of the Communist cause but that admiration dissipated as the book progressed:

‘...he found that he had only exchanged the old oppression of the tsarist state for the new, much harsher yoke of the revolutionary super-state.’

‘Revolutions are made by fanatical men of action with one-track minds, men who are narrow-minded to the point of genius. They overturn the old order in a few hours or days … but for decades thereafter, for centuries, the spirit of narrowness which led to the upheaval is worshipped as holy.’

‘...it turns out that those who inspired the revolution aren’t at home in anything except change and turmoil: that’s their native element; they aren’t happy with anything that’s less than on a world scale.’

He was to ask himself later:

‘Was it possible that in one short moment of over-sensitive generosity he had allowed himself to been enslaved forever?’

Pasternak’s poetic ability shines through his writing so brilliantly that it was difficult to choose what to share here. He also digresses into much philosophical meandering but it is so well-written that I think it adds to the story. Some of these philosophical reflections reminded me of Tolstoy’s writing in Anna Karenina - actually, Tolstoy was a friend of Pasternak’s parents.

‘Marxism a science?...Marxism is not sufficiently master of itself to be a science. Science is more balanced. You talk about Marxism and objectivity. I don’t know of any teaching more self-centred and further from the facts than Marxism. Ordinarily, people are anxious to test their theories in practice, to learn from experience, but those who wield power are so anxious to establish the myth of their own infallibility that they turn their back on truth as squarely as they can. Politics mean nothing to me. I don’t like people who are indifferent to the truth.’

‘Men who are not free...always idealise their bondage.’

I loved this description:

‘Now the front is flooded with correspondents and journalists...linguistic graphomania and verbal incontinence.’ 

And this one:

‘Everything had changed suddenly - the tone, the moral climate; you didn’t know what to think, who to listen to. As if all your life you had been led by the hand like a small child and suddenly you were on your own, you had to learn to walk by yourself. There was no one around, neither family nor people whose judgement you respected. At such a time you felt the need to entrust yourself to something absolute - life or truth or beauty - of being ruled by it now that man-made rules had been discarded.’

‘How intense can be the longing to escape from the emptiness and dullness of human verbosity, to take refuge in nature, apparently so inarticulate, or in the wordlessness of long, grinding labour, of sound sleep, of true music, or of a human understanding rendered speechless by emotion!’ 

‘There was something in common between events in the moral and the physical world, between disturbances near and far, on earth and in the sky.’

Pasternak was a master of simile and metaphor:

‘The gunfire had died away behind him. There, behind him was the east. There the sun had risen in a drift of mist and was peering dully through floating shadows, like a naked man through a cloud of steam at the baths.’

‘Grief had sharpened Yuri’s vision and quickened his perception a hundredfold. The very air surrounding him seemed unique. The evening breathed compassion like a friendly witness of all that had befallen him. As if there had never been such a dusk before and evening were falling now for the first time in order to console him in his loneliness and bereavement. As if the valley were not always girded by woods growing on the surrounding hills and facing away from the horizon, but the trees had only taken up their places now, rising out of the ground on purpose to offer their condolences.‘ 

An extract from Yuri’s diary in happier times with Tonya and her father who lived with them:

‘At the beginning, during the spring and summer, we had a very hard time. It was all we could do to struggle along. But now we can relax in the winter evenings...The women sew or knit, Alexander Alexandrovich or I read aloud...We read and re-read War and Peace, Eugene Onegin, and Pushkin’s other poems, and Russian translations of Stendhal’s Rouge et Noire, Dickens’s Take of Two Cities and Kleist’s short stories.’

At the end of Doctor Zhivago the Bezprizornaya, homeless children whose parents were killed in the civil war, are mentioned. There is an article here about this: 

My copy of Doctor Zhivago pictured above was published by Vintage in 2002 and was translated from the Russian by Max Hayward and Manya Harari in 1958. 

Linking to Back to the Classics 2020: 20th Century Classic

Pilgrim’s Inn by Elizabeth Goudge (1948)

Pilgrim’s Inn (also published as The Herb of Grace) is the second book in the Eliot Family Trilogy. Its best to read it after The Bird in the Tree as most of the characters are introduced in the first book and the central theme continues into the second book. I read both books one after the other.

The Bird in the Tree introduces the Eliot family and the history of Lucilla, the matriarch of the family, who purchases the house at Damerosehay, which she intends to establish as an inheritance and a place of refuge and beauty for her grandchildren.
Lucilla had very noble intentions but when her beloved and favourite grandson, David, entered into a relationship that was the antithesis of all she had planned and hoped for, she took some matters into her own hands.
The Bird in the Tree has the rumblings of WWII in the background and ends with on a shaky note regarding this relationship. Pilgrim’s Inn picks up the pieces at the end of the war and continues to work through the ramifications of the various individual decisions.

What I liked about this book:

• The setting (the coastal area of eastern England) and the descriptions of the countryside
• The theme - a moral dilemma; the choice between feelings/emotions and duty
•       Goudge doesn't offer quick fixes. Her characters feel pain and hopelessness but there is always a redemptive pathway
• The sensitivity shown by the author to the effects of marital breakdown on children
• Goudge’s lovely reflective writing:

‘Hers was the unconscious tyranny of inexorable great expectations.’

‘She knew how worrying, even how agonising sometimes, the questions of grownups can be to children whose capacity for experience so far outstrips their capacity for talking about it. And in afterlife it it’s the other way round...adult and educated folks seemed to experience so little of any consequence and yet to say such a vast and wearisome amount about it.’

Some Characters:

Lucilla, a grandmother who was quite manipulative at times. Yes, she loved her family, but her actions were often quite selfish towards some of them, especially her unmarried daughter, Margaret. I cringed a few times to read how she advanced her own (noble as they were) plans. She was a praying woman but perhaps felt the Lord needed some help from her!

Hilary, the eldest of Lucilla’s five children - a bachelor and a parish priest - on the other hand, was not in any way manipulative. Placid, patient, wise, utterly unselfconscious, utterly happy, much loved and popular within his parish. He did know when to speak out and did so when the time came.

Annie-Laurie, a gifted young lady with a dark past and a secret she dare not disclose.

Nadine, a beautiful woman who made a decision to put duty before passion but is now faced with working this out in daily life.

‘In even the smallest of selfless decisions there is a liberation from self...’

David, a young, sensitive man devastated by loss and only capable of ‘tattered loving.’

'Till whatsoever star that guides my moving
Points on me graciously with fair aspect,
And puts apparel on my tattered loving,
To show me worthy of thy sweet respect:
Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee;
Till then not lift my head where thou mayest prove me.'
- William Shakespeare

Pilgrim’s Inn is a slow, worthwhile read; descriptive and thoughtful with a satisfying outcome. I haven’t yet read the last book in the trilogy but this one didn’t leave me with a sense of unfinished business so unless the book falls into my hands I probably won’t read it.
Or should I? Have you read the last book in this trilogy? I’d be interested to know whether it really adds anything more to the story.



Linking to 2020 Back to the Classics: Classic with a Place in the Title

Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens: A Study of Selfishness

‘My main object in this story was, to exhibit in a variety of aspects the commonest of all the vices; to show how Selfishness propagates itself; and to what a grim giant it may grow, from small beginnings.’ 

This book isn’t one I’d planned to read & it’s not a Dickens’ title that had come to my attention at any time, but I saw it at a book sale and bought it because I hadn’t read anything by Dickens for a while.
It sat unread on my book shelves for some time until one night when I was considering which book I should start reading next but couldn’t make up my mind. I’d just finished The Lord of the Rings, which I’d put off for years (and found to my surprise that it was hard to put down) so when my eyes came upon Martin Chuzzlewit, I thought, ‘I’ll just read the first chapter and if I can’t get into it, I’ll choose something else.’
Well, I kept going and that was that. From memory, it usually takes me a few chapters to engage with Dickens so I was surprised at how quickly it happened with one of his books that doesn’t seem anywhere near as popular as many of his others.

Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-4) first came out in monthly installments but unlike Dickens’ previous books, The Old Curiosity Shop, and even Barnaby Rudge, sales were low for various reasons: he had abstained from novel-writing for a time and this caused him to lose ground with the public; when he did return to publishing he released the chapters monthly as opposed to weekly, which was his previous practice; his reputation declined after the public’s disappointment with Barnaby Rudge.
After the poor reception of the first instalments of Martin Chuzzlewit, Dickens decided to change some aspects of the story and set parts of it in America where he had recently spent some time. (He wrote a record of that journey in American Notes.)

Dickens himself considered Martin Chuzzlewit his best work and when it was published in book-form it proved to be one of his greatest successes.
Not only is Martin Chuzzlewit a study in selfishness, it also concerns itself with how suffering shapes character. Oswald Chambers said that ‘Sorrow burns up a great deal of shallowness, but it does not always make a man better’ and Dickens’ demonstrates the effects the same circumstances may work for better or worse in different people. Chambers also observed that if you yield in childhood to selfishness, you will find it the most enchaining tyranny on earth. Some of the characters in Martin Chuzzlewit never broke free of those chains.

Dickens’ satire on the Chuzzlewit family portrays ‘the poison of selfishness as transmitted within a family,’ and the ‘false notions of family grandeur and the parasites which they breed.’

As usual, there is a large cast of characters in the story but I thought there were many more likeable persons here compared to some of his other books and more redemptive aspects in the characters’ lives.
I really enjoyed the developing friendships between some of the young men. The loyalty and unselfish regard they had toward one another stood out in comparison to the opportunistic relationships in the greater Chuzzlewit family.

Some Notable Characters:

Martin Chuzzlewit: the young protagonist of the story; he had fallen out with his Grandfather, of the same name, who had brought him up, and now struck him out of his will. Martin junior was frank and generous by nature but his upbringing had allowed him to grow selfish. Circumstances opened his eyes to see others he had taken for granted and used.

‘How was it that this man who had had so few advantages, was so much better than he who had had so many?’

'Martin - for once in his life, at all events - sacrificed his own will and pleasure to the wishes of another, and consented with a fair grace. So travelling had done him that much good, already.'

Mr Pecksniff: an absolute hypocrite and selfish to the core. 

'He was a most exemplary man: fuller of virtuous precepts than a copy-book. Some people likened him to a direction post, which is always telling the way to a place, and never goes there.

(His) detractors thought he bore a fanciful resemblance to his horse, not in his outward person but in his moral character - full of promise, but of no performance.
He was a kind of animal who infused into the breasts of strangers a lively sense of hope, and possessed all those who knew him better with a grim despair.’

His comment on seeing a beggar on the street: ‘If everyone were warm and well-fed, we should lose the satisfaction of admiring the fortitude with which certain conditions of men bear cold and hunger.'

Tom Pinch - unpretentious and noble-souled; his Grandmother had skimped and saved to allow him to enter Pecksniff’s service as a student of architecture after he had dazzled her with prospects of Tom’s happiness and advancement. ('Pecksniff’s genius lay in ensnaring parents and guardians, and pocketing premiums.') And poor Tom was completely take in by the man.

One of the characters who undergoes a transformation of character (but I won’t spoil the story by mentioning names):

‘I never thought at all; I had no thought, no heart, no care to find one; at that time. It has grown out of my trouble. I wouldn’t recall my trouble, such as it is and has been - and it is light in comparison with trials which hundreds of good people suffer every day, I know - I wouldn’t recall it tomorrow, if I could. It has been my friend, for without it no one could have changed me; nothing could have changed me.’

I agree with Dickens that Martin Chuzzlewit is one of his best stories and I highly recommend it.
Moozle, who is 15yrs of age and has never taken to Dickens (I think The Old Curiosity Shop turned her off!) was hunting for something to read and agreed to try MC after I said how I enjoyed it. I’m very happy to say that she actually liked it!!

Linking to the Back to the Classics Challenge 2020: 19th Century Classic 

The Lord of the Rings by J.R. Tolkien (1949)

I've just remedied the possibility that I was perhaps one of the few people on the planet who had never read (or even watched) the The Lord of the Rings (LOTR). I did read The Hobbit aloud to my daughter a few years ago and enjoyed that and it was my plan to read the LOTR some years ago after we bought a lovely boxed Folio edition but although I don't mind reading fantasy, I'm not a big enough fan of the genre to let it edge out other books I'd like to read.
The main reason I did actually start reading this about two months ago was because I knew I’d have more leisure to read an epic story with the coronavirus restrictions and also because my daughter-in-law was re-reading the trilogy and suggested we watch the movies at a later date. I always like to read a book before seeing the film version so that was the prod I needed.
I’m not even going to attempt a review of such a well-known book but I would like to share some general thoughts.

The LOTR comprises three books: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King. They follow on from each other and were intended by the author to be one volume but for various reasons his publisher didn’t allow this.
Tolkien began writing LOTR soon after he’d finished writing The Hobbit and before its publication in 1937, but between his many other duties and pursuits as well as the outbreak of WWII, it wasn’t completed until 1949.

Tolkien created a whole new world with its own intricate history, peopled with diverse creatures: hobbits, elves, dwarves, wizards, orcs, trolls and men. While it was a sequel to The Hobbit, it became much more than that; it is darker, more challenging to read, and while some characters from The Hobbit re-appear and there are some similarities, LOTR is much more developed plot-wise. It is full of wisdom, mystery, humour, and many unlikely heroes.
Tolkien specifically said in the foreword to LOTR that he didn’t intend any inner meaning to the story and that he disliked allegory in all its manifestations. He preferred readers to use their own freedom of applicability (I'd interpret that as their 'moral imagination') rather than allowing the author's purpose to dominate.

Bilbo, the main character from The Hobbit, returned to his home in the Shire with a Ring in his possession. For many years he had kept this Ring safe and only his nephew, Frodo, and the wizard, Gandalf the Grey, knew about it and its power to make its wearer disappear.
One day Gandalf paid Bilbo a visit and was concerned to observe that the Ring seemed to have a strange power over his hobbit friend. Bilbo had been restless and planned to leave the Shire so Gandalf persuaded him to leave the Ring behind with Frodo when he did.
Years after Bilbo had departed, Gandalf had made a number of journeys investigating the history of the Ring, which was one of many that were forged in the distant past. During this time of Gandalf's absence, Frodo received strange tidings from dwarves and other travellers passing through the Shire and he grew increasingly restless. When Gandalf eventually returned to the Shire he was certain in the knowledge that Frodo’s Ring was The Ring of Power, the One that ruled over all others. He also brought news that the evil Lord Sauron of the Land of Mordor knew now that the Ring he presumed lost was to be found in the possession of a hobbit in the Shire.

'Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

One Ring to rule them all,
One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all
And in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.'

Now that Frodo’s life was in danger, Gandalf urged him to leave the Shire and travel to Rivendell where the Elves dwelt. The Ring needed to be destroyed, that was understood, but Frodo did not want to be the one take it to Mordor and thought he could pass it on to another.

'I wish it need not have happened in my time,' said Frodo.
'So do I,' said Gandalf, 'and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.'

Frodo did not go alone as was originally intended but was accompanied by three hobbits: Sam, Merry and Perrin. Sam was Frodo’s gardener; simple, practical, a faithful companion, the most unlikely hero, and one of my favourite characters in the story.

On their way to Rivendell they met a character by the name of Strider, a Ranger of the North, a recluse and a wanderer, who was not who he seemed to be, but who nevertheless joined them in their journey.

'All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
the old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken;
The crownless again shall be king.'

Frodo gained Rivendell by the skin of his teeth in an unconscious state and awoke in a room with Gandalf beside him. A Council was held to decide on what should be done with the Ring and after much discussion, Frodo said, 'I will take the Ring, though I do not know the way.'
The Company of the Ring was to be nine and the remainder of the story tells of the adventures, dangers, and disappointments of this Fellowship as they fought for Middle Earth against the spreading evil that threatened to overwhelm all they knew and cared about.

One of the major themes of the book is the examination of power and its effects on those who possess it.
The Master-ring that came into Frodo’s possession had the power to consume and control its possessor. Although it extended the life of the bearer, it burdened that life, stretching and straining it. A mortal who kept one of the Great Rings did not die, but merely continued and grew wearier. If he often used the Ring to make himself invisible, he faded and eventually became permanently invisible, and in the end was devoured by the dark power.

‘But where shall I find courage?’ asked Frodo. ‘That is what I chiefly need.’
‘Courage is found in unlikely places,’ said Gildor. ‘Be of good hope!’

The themes of courage, companionship, duty and loyalty running through the book are multilayered and inspiring.
Tolkien’s linguistic genius and the complexities of plot, may be appreciated more by mature readers and such is the descriptive power of Tolkien’s writing that it is difficult to believe that his imagined world: the Shire, Mordor and Gondor, didn’t actually exist.

For me it was an ideal read during the weeks of uncertainty with the virus lockdown and restrictions. There were many challenges and disappointments for the Fellowship but hope kept resurfacing and seemingly insignificant characters played major roles and helped turn the tide in many instances.

‘There is a seed of courage hidden (often deeply, it is true) in the heart if the fattest and most timid hobbit, waiting for some final and desperate danger to make it grow. Frodo was neither fat nor very timid; indeed, though he did not know it, Bilbo (and Gandalf) had thought him the best hobbit in the Shire. He thought he had come to the end of his adventure, and a terrible end, but the thought hardened him. He found himself stiffening, as if for a final spring; he no longer felt limp like a helpless prey.’

‘Indeed in nothing is the power of the Dark Lord more clearly shown than in the estrangement that divides all those who still oppose him.’

‘...we put the thought of all that we love into all that we make.’

‘Don’t leave me behind!’ said Merry. ‘I have not been of much use yet; but I don’t want to be laid aside, like baggage to be called for when it’s all over.’

‘...it is best to love what you are fitted to love.’

'The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make: not real new things of its own.'

We watched the DVD’s over three evenings after I’d finished reading the trilogy and I annoyed everyone by saying, ‘That wasn’t in the book!’  However, I did enjoy watching them. My youngest also watched them for the first time although she’d read the books a couple of years ago and was waiting impatiently for me to hurry up and read them so we could watch together.

I think the story would be best appreciated by anyone aged 12 years and up, if they are a confident reader. It feels like it was written for around that age group in some respects but like any well written classic it has universal appeal. I don't know that I'd want to read this aloud with the plethora of names and places but it would be a great family read if you didn't mind wrapping your tongue around it all.
Graphic and detailed screen images are hard to put aside in order that your imagination may form its own, so I think it's important that the books be read before the movies. I feel that way with every book but this one more so!




Linking to Back to the Classics 2020: Adapted Classic

The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy (1886)

The Death of Ivan Ilyich is a powerful and intense story that Tolstoy wrote when he was in his late fifties, almost a decade after his masterpiece, Anna Karenina. It is the story of a man whose main aim in life was to be comfortable, to enjoy life, and to be approved by society - and how this man had to come to terms with his own humanity.
Ivan Ilyich married well because that was agreeable to him and looked upon as correct thing to do by those persons of higher standing. At first everything about his marriage fitted well with his ideas of a light-hearted and agreeable life - up until his wife’s pregnancy when a new element arose to disturb his peace. His wife became exacting and jealous and they fought over everything.
Ivan Ilyich decided that he needed to free himself from the unpleasant aspects of domestic life therefore he spent less time at home and poured himself into his office as a public prosecutor.

‘His official pleasures lay in the gratification of his pride; his social pleasures lay in the gratification of his vanity.’

As time went on, Ivan Ilyich rose in the world, the family moved in the best circles and everything carried on nicely. Even his marriage proved agreeable at times, but as he began to experience symptoms of the disease that was to take his life, he became irritable and broke out in gusts of temper.
Eventually he went to see a doctor, who directed him to take some medicine but gave him no specific diagnosis.
One day, about two months later, his brother-in-law paid a visit from out of town and one shocked look from him confirmed what Ivan Ilyich suspected. Something was seriously wrong but no-one would actually admit it.

The rest of the story so poignantly details Ilyich’s coming to terms with the truth of his condition, his loss of dignity as he is forced to accept the help of others, and most of all, the agony of knowing that everyone is acting falsely by not acknowledging that this disease is going to take his life.

‘This falsity around him and with him did more than anything to poison Ivan Ilyich’s last days.’

For such a short book, this story packs a powerful punch. It lays bares the inner workings of a man whose life was shallow and self-promoting, his struggles between hope and despair, his anger as he thought of ‘all the correctness of his life,’ until finally he comes to the point where he asks himself,  ‘Can it be that I have not lived as one ought?’
I cried through the last chapter of this story.


Linking to Back to the Classics & The Broken Spine Challenge for A Classic in Translation 

The Making of a Marchioness by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1901)

Emily Fox-Seton is the thirty-four year old protagonist of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s novel, The Making of a Marchioness. She is single, good-natured and hard-working and now that her mother is dead and the few relatives she has left have no intention of being burdened by her penniless state, she is making her own way in the world.

‘She was such a simple normal-minded creature that it took but little to brighten the aspect of life for her, and to cause her to break into her good-natured childlike smile. A little kindness from any one, a little pleasure, or a little comfort, made her glow with nice-tempered enjoyment.’

As one of the ‘genteel poor,'  Emily has connections to some wealthy people who sometimes provide her with work in return for a modest remuneration but she faced an unknown future and expected to remain unmarried.

‘No one knows what the Future is to poor women. One knows that one must get older - and one may not keep well, and if one could not be active and in good spirits - if one could not run about on errands - and things fell off - what could one do?’

One of her patrons, Lady Maria, asks her come to entertain guests and be general dog's body at her country residence for a short period and Emily is delighted with the idea. While there she meets Lady Maria’s cousin, the Marquis of Walderhurst, a widower in his early fifties, and a rich, unsentimental man of the world. Lady Maria said that it amused her to see women flocking around him, trying to attract his attention, thinking he might marry one them, while he ignores them all.
Lady Maria is a selfish old woman. She likes Emily but has her running around doing all sorts of errands without much thought for her workload or comfort. Walderhurst notices the amount of work being required of her and when another guest remarks on Emily's good nature and the way she accepts her fate without resentment, he asks,

'What is her fate?'

The answer: 'It is her fate to be a woman who is perfectly well born, and who is as penniless as a charwoman, and works like one. She is at the beck and call of any one who will give her an odd job to earn a meal with.'

His response to this information was,

'Good skin...Good hair. Quite a lot,' and 'Looks quite decent.'

A man of few words, but when he hears later that Emily has walked some distance in the heat to purchase some fish for the evening meal at Lady Maria's request, he is appalled and takes his carriage out to meet her.
There follows an interesting little scene in which he asks the equally unsentimental Emily to marry him. Of course, everyone is shocked, but mostly pleased, by this turn of events.

The book is divided into two parts and the first is a fairytale/Cinderella type of romance while the second part is quite different and has some sinister undertones.
When Walderhurst makes Emily his wife, the man who would have been his heir, Captain Osborn, is furious. Osborn, a brutish, self-indulgent man, is stationed in India and marries there. Hester, his wife, is from a poor and barely reputable family and nurses dreams of the wealth they would inherit upon Walderhurst’s demise.
Now that these dreams are thwarted, a plan is made to return to England in the hope that Walderhurst will take pity upon them and possibly provide for them.
But Walderhurst is no fool and so Osborn and Hester change tactics to take advantage of Emily’s innocence and good will. When Walderhurst goes out of the country for work, Emily becomes their target and her husband is unaware of the danger she is in.

Francis Hodgson Burnett's reputation as a writer has been built mostly on her children's books: The Secret Garden, A Little Princess, and Little Lord Fauntleroy. The Making of a Marchioness, although a favourite years ago, was overshadowed by her best-selling children's books and is now published in a lovely Persephone edition.
The second part of the book is more suitable for older readers (I'd recommend it for around age 15 years and over) as Osborn's behaviour to his wife is obnoxious and violence is alluded to. It also includes descriptions of a racist manner in regard to Hester and her ayah.



This is my entry for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2020: A Classic by a Woman &
Reading Classic Books Challenge (No. 9)

Saplings by Noel Streatfeild (1945)

Saplings is the story of the Wiltshire family: Alex and Lena and their four children, Laurel, Tony, Kim and Tuesday, who are by all accounts a successful middle class family, well off and happy. That is, until the war began.
With the bombing of London imminent, the Wiltshire children were evacuated to the country to stay with their grandparents. Alex was involved in special war work and had to stay in London. He wanted Lena to go to his parent's home with the children but she refused to leave him.

‘The children were darlings, but she was not a family woman, she was utterly wife, and, if it came to that, a mistress too, and she meant to go on being just those things.’

As the war progressed, the grandparents had to give up their large home to the military and move to a smaller place. There was a change of schools for the older ones and the children were farmed out to different relatives creating much unrest and misunderstanding.
Lena had unshakeable poise and was pretty and narcissistic.

‘There was nothing she liked better than to be envied and admired.’

‘For all her perfection you couldn’t help feeling that Lena was more blown together than built on a foundation.’

Bit by bit the family disintegrates and Lena loses her control over the life she had built for herself. She was unable to cope with the changes forced upon her by the war and with no inner resources to call upon, she was extremely needy and neglected her children.

In Saplings, Streatfeild examines the effect of trauma and separation on children. Her ability to view the world from a child’s perspective is just superb. I was reminded in some ways of Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s book, The Homemaker. They are very different books (I think Fisher’s is the better written one) and Saplings is definitely a much darker story, but both authors display very astute insights into how children interpret their experiences of the world and the attitudes of those around them.

It was interesting that while there were a number of kindly and warm-hearted people in the lives of the Wiltshire children, Streatfeild often concerned herself with the seemingly small comments, attitudes and decisions that can impact children who are already insecure. She uses the thoughts of these people to highlight their concerns about each of the children's inner struggles and does this very well.

This is definitely an adult book, unlike many of her others which were written for children.
It felt unfinished to me. I really wanted a more decisive closure but I think that was possibly Streatfeild’s way of showing the nature of trauma and its lingering effects.
This book has been republished by Persephone Books. I love their covers!

London Blitz, 1941

Linking to Back to the Classics Challenge 2020 for a Classic About a Family;
Reading Classic Books: 3) Read a classic that takes place in a country other than where you live & to the Classics Club

A Reading Challenge List for 2020

Well, I wasn't going to join in any challenges this year but I changed my mind. I have a range of books I'd really like to read which includes classics, non-fiction (I've been a bit slack with these in recent years), and unusual for me, I'd like to tackle some modern titles, my 'uncomfortable' reads.

I also have some 'slow cooker' reads that will probably take me all year to get finished. They're either whoppers, need to be read methodically and lingered over, or are books that are designed to be read at certain times of the year or over the course of a year. The books below are what I'm planning to read slowly:

War & Peace by Leo Tolstoy 

Shakespeare for Every Day of the Year, edited by Allie Esiri

At The Still Point, compiled by Sarah Arthur

God in the Dock by C.S. Lewis; compiled in 1970

I decided to go with this new Classic Book Challenge at The Broken Spine:

These are the Challenge Prompts I'd like to use with some ideas of what I might read:

* Read a classic over 500 pages - War & Peace by Leo Tolstoy

* Read a classic that takes place in a country other than where you live - ?

* Read a classic in translation -  The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy  

* Read a classic by a new to you author - ? Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

* Read a book of poetry - Robert Burns

* Read a classic written between 1800-1860 - ? something by Elizabeth Gaskell

* Read a classic written by a woman - The Making of a Marchioness by Frances Hodgson Burnett   

* Read a classic novella - The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde 

* Read a classic nonfiction - ? something by C.S. Lewis or A.W. Tozer

                                                                 

                                                                               

                     

                                                                     

See Book'd Out for details of this Non-Fiction Challenge. Here are some books I'd like to read:
           

H is For Hawk by Helen Macdonald (2014)

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard (1974)

Atomic Habits by James Clear (2018)

The Body: A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson (2019)

Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister by Jung Chang (2019)

The Story of My Boyhood & Youth by John Muir (1913)

A Philosophy of Education by Charlotte Mason (1925)

The Lives of the Artists by Giorgio Vasari (c. 1568)


Modern fiction I'd like to read this year:

Lila by Marilynne Robinson (2014) 


5th February - Updated to add this challenge which I've done for the past five years. I haven't decided on the books yet but I'd like to include some of these:

* The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy

* Gentian Hill by Elizabeth Goudge

* Sense & Sensibility by Jane Austen

* The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie

Thought by Mikhail Nesterov (1900)

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carré (1974)

'...Mr George Smiley was not naturally equipped for hurrying in the rain, least of all at dead of night...
Small, podgy and at best middle-aged, he was by appearance one of London's meek who do not inherit the earth.'

Control, the commander of the Circus (the highest level of British Intelligence) is eased out of his position and dies not long afterwards. His second in command, George Smiley, is later forced out into retirement after a series of operational disasters and the Circus is restructured.

'After a lifetime of living by his wits and his considerable memory, he had given himself full-time to the profession of forgetting.'

But Peter Guillam, a former colleague whose role in the Circus has been curtailed since the restructure, has evidence that Circus has been infiltrated by a mole over a period of decades. He recruits Smiley to 'spy on the spies.'
As Smiley works to uncover this betrayal in the upper echelons of the organisation, he also faces a  betrayal in his personal life.

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold was the first Cold War novel by John le Carré that I'd read (see my review in this post).
* Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, was the second. The two books have similarities and share one or two characters but they both may be read as stand alone titles.
Betrayal is a dominant theme in both books, but it is more fully explored in the second.
Le Carré writes superbly and his plots are complex. Both novels are psychological thrillers and somewhat dark, which is not surprising for books about espionage.

Normally I'm only attracted to softer vintage espionage - authors such as John Buchan and Helen MacInnes - but le Carré sucked me in with his masterful exploration of character. He made me care about some of these characters. People such as Smiley and Bill Roach, the new boy at school who was considered dull, if not actually deficient, and blamed himself for the break-up of his parent's marriage; Jim Prideaux, the enigmatic hunchbacked teacher who arrived at the school as a temporary replacement:

'Bill had a feeling he could not describe that Jim lived so precariously on the world's surface that he might at any time fall into a void; for he feared that Jim was like himself, without a natural gravity to hold him on.'

And Peter Guillam, who in a moment feels not only betrayed but orphaned by the man who inspired him most: 

'His butchered agents in Morocco, his exile to Brixton, the daily frustration of his efforts as daily he grew older and youth slipped through his fingers; the drabness that was closing round him; the truncation of his power to love, enjoy and laugh; the constant erosion of the plain, heroic standards he wished to live by...
His suspicions, his resentments for so long turned outwards on the real world - on his women, his attempted loves - now swung upon the Circus and the failed magic which had formed his faith.'


This is an excellent, gritty read but I sometimes felt out of my depth with the complexity of the plot, although I found with both of le Carré's books that once I have the whole picture at the end of the book it helps me untangle some of the threads and I can then skip back to sections where I got a little lost and work things out.

* When a movie was made of the book in 2011, the commas were removed for the film title.

Chocky by John Wyndham (1968)

John Wyndham is known for his ‘logical fantasies’ which have been described as modified science fiction. I’ve previously read his The Day of the Triffids and enjoyed that. Chocky is quite a different story. It has a slower pace and doesn’t have much action to speak of but it has plenty of thoughtful and interesting ideas.

Matthew is an ordinary eleven year old boy whose parents begin to get concerned when he starts talking to an imaginary friend. His younger sister, Polly, when she was around the age of five, disrupted the family for some time with her invisible friend, Piff. A family outing for a meal required a mystified waitress to add an extra chair for Piff or Polly would disturb her Dad at a critical moment in a movie by calling out from her room that Piff was in desperate need of a drink of water.
The problem was that Matthew wasn’t a five year old. He was eleven and his imaginary friend, Chocky, was asking him some very complicated questions and causing him to say some startling things.
The situation came to a head when Matthew inexplicably performed a feat that was beyond him and the media got word of it. Reporters started turning up at the family home or waylaid Matthew on his way home from school. Matthew also began to draw attention to himself by the unusual art work he was producing, something he’d never shown talent for previously. His maths teacher quizzed his parents about who was the mathematician in the family who had been teaching Matthew advanced concepts. Matthew had been getting muddled with some teaching on the binary code but when his parents showed their lack of mathematical ability the teacher was perplexed and expressed his concern that this 'new-found knowledge' was confusing Matthew.

Matthew's parents decided to take Matthew to a psychiatrist. This worthy doctor's opinion (or so he made them believe) was that there was nothing to worry about and he tried to relieve their anxiety by telling them that the fantasy would break up of itself and disperse.
However, the psychiatrist had found the problem fascinating and became excited at what he discovered when he put Matthew under hypnosis (without his parent’s knowledge or consent!). The implications to him were like finding gold.

The little blurb on the front cover of my book stars that the story is ‘disturbing in an entirely unexpected way.’ 
Chocky was first published in 1968 and it has a slightly dated feel in some ways so the part I found most disturbing was the behaviour of the psychiatrist!
Matthew’s father is the narrator and he’s quite matter-of-fact so the story stays on an even keel. I really liked the author's handling of the dynamics between father and son and the interplay between the very ordinary and the bizarre in the story.
There is some suspense, more so towards the end, but there’s also some light relief in the form of family dynamics. I think if the book had been written a few decades later, or if it was made into a movie now, it could really be quite sinister.
The ending was very science fiction-ish and unbelievable but I don’t know that it could have ended any other way. Overall it was a good read with some interesting ideas to ponder.

Chocky was a book I became aware of when I visited the Armitt Museum in Ambleside a couple of months ago and looked at some of the PNEU (Parent's National Education Union) material that had been used for students in Years 9/10.

Back to the Classics 2019: Classic Novella (153 pgs)

Sparkling Cyanide by Agatha Christie (1945)

I've been on a crime spree lately: Dorothy L. Sayers, P.D. James, Ngaio Marsh, and now Agatha Christie.
This is one of Agatha Christie’s books where Poirot and Miss Marple aren’t involved and I’ve tended to enjoy these books more. (See The Man in the Brown Suit, for example.)

A year after Rosemary Barton’s death at an evening party at a high class London restaurant, the six people who were present on the night of her death are gathered together again at the request of her husband, George.
The cause of her death had been put down to suicide but George had reason to believe that this was not the case. On the first anniversary of her death he sets up a similar scenario hoping to bring the cause of her death to light. However, things go horribly awry and another death occurs. Is this a suicide or is there a murderer among them?

Colonel Race, a canny former associate of George’s, becomes involved in the unfolding events and the subsequent investigation, but the actual solution to the mystery is brought about by a most unlikely character.

Sparkling Cyanide shows off Christie’s mastery of misdirection. I really enjoyed this book and was kept in suspense right up to the last few pages. A very satisfying mystery made all the more enjoyable because unlike the last Christie I read, (And Then There Were None) there were a number of very likeable characters in this story that I hoped weren’t murderers!

‘He looked at her with eyes from which the last traces of scales had fallen. A lovely creature with the brains of a hen! He’d been mad - utterly and completely mad. But he was sane again now. And he’d got to get out of this fix. Unless he was careful she’d ruin his whole life.’

‘A wasp was buzzing close at hand. He stared abstractedly. It had got inside a cut glass jampot and as trying to get out.
Like me, he thought, entrapped by sweetness and now - he can’t get out, poor devil.'

I’ve spent some time reading and thinking about the development of the moral imagination so this jumped out at me as I read it:

‘...(She) has the calm practical efficiency that can contemplate and carry out murder, and that perhaps lacks that quality of pity which is essentially a product of imagination.’

I’d never heard of this title, but I have been a late comer to Agatha Christie’s books, so I was pleased that it was an enjoyable read and I’d happily recommend it as a good one to try if you haven’t already read it.

Back to the Classics: Requiem for a Wren by Nevil Shute (1955)

It’s been a while since I’ve read anything by Nevil Shute and this book reminded me how much I enjoy his writing. I thought I’d already read the best of his novels but Requiem for a Wren certainly deserves to be placed on a par with works such as Pied Piper, A Town Like Alice, and Trustee From the Toolroom.
Set partly in the time of WW2 and the years following, it is filled with Shute’s trademark aviation knowledge, which surprisingly doesn’t hinder this non-tech reader’s enjoyment of his writing.
I’ve previously mentioned the author’s ability to get into the skin of his characters who are never ‘standard heroes’ but just very ordinary people whose courage is called upon by unlooked for dilemmas and circumstances; common, quiet folk who rise for a short time, do what needs to be done and go back to their quiet lives. This book is no exception.
From the very first page there is a sense that this story is going to be tragic. There is an inexorable pull in that direction as Alan, the narrator, tells the story of his brother, Bill, and Janet, the young woman he would have married had he survived the war.
All three had met just before the invasion of Normandy but were never to meet again.
The brothers were Australian and the story takes place in Britain and Australia.
After the war Alan sets out on a quest to find Janet, a search that takes him back to England, across to America and then back to Victoria in Australia. What he finds out in his search poignantly reveals Janet’s character and background. Alan is determined to find her and to offer her a home with his parents on their rural property which would have been her lot if circumstances hadn’t intervened to prevent her marriage to Bill.
Unfortunately, Alan always found himself on the back foot in his search. Between Janet’s many moves, the post war confusion, his hospitalisation and rehabilitation after being seriously injured in an air battle, he would arrive somewhere expecting to find her only to discover she had moved on.

'Like some infernal monster, still venomous in death, a war can go on killing people for a long time after its all over.'

This is a sad book with a mix of mystery and WW2 events. Somehow Shute imbues his tragedies with a not altogether bleak outlook. There is some hope within the pathos.
An achingly beautiful read. Highly recommended!

For my thoughts on other books by Nevil Shute see here and here.


Linking up to the 2019 Back to the Classics Challenge: Classic Tragic Novel