Category: Fiction

Back in the 70’s I discovered a copy of Mrs. Tim in a used book store — the war-time diary of the delightful Hester Christie—or ‘Mrs. Tim’ as she is called after her officer husband. The author, D.E. Stevenson, based this series from her own wartime diaries:

There is so much War News in News Bulletins, in Newspapers, and so much talk about the war that I do not intend to write about it in my diary. Indeed my diary is a sort of escape from the war . . . though it is almost impossible to escape from the anxieties which it brings.

I was so enthralled with Mrs. Tim’s daily happenings. I quickly found more in the series, and read them all with sighs of happiness. We see the war through the diary of this delightful wife and mother, her husband away at war, coping with domestic battles of her own.  Mrs. Tim carries on with humor, wit, and a bit of snark. 

There’s the daily routines of collecting gloves for soldiers overseas, making do with wartime rationing, and adjusting to an influx of Polish refugees. But Mrs. Tim also deals with an unwanted suitor, deftly handles a self important Air Raid Warden, and moving house.  She tries to mask her fear when her husband goes missing in war-torn France, and shows bravery encountering a downed German aircraft (while shooting grouse in the Scottish countryside no less!).  A rich aunt visits with inappropriate gifts and unwanted judgements, the cook is always in a bad temper, and she wrestles with a cranky old car. 

So there you have it.  A brave woman making a life during WWII.  

Quietly fascinating domestic drama.

My old copies still live on my copious bookshelves — battered, worn, and with cracked spines.  They’re written in diary format, so over the years I’ve found it easy and comforting to open a copy, at any place, to visit with Hester for a day. 

Enter Scott over at Furrowed Middlebrow. An extraordinary fellow, with a keen interest in documenting and publishing largely forgotten British women writers from the early to mid-twentieth century.  As a result, he launched Dean Street Press which has a delightful list of titles with sigh-worthy and (warning) very tempting covers.

And look what they’ve done — Dean Street press have just reprinted the Mrs. Tim series .

Just look at these covers — the artwork is lovingly reproduced from early editions.

Dean Street Press (and Scott) kindly sent me the digital edition of Mrs. Tim Carries On so I could talk about it here.  I re-read it on my Kindle during the past few rainy days/nights and it still delights. 

If you haven’t read D.E. Stevenson, be sure get yourself a couple of these beauties.  This new edition of Mrs. Tim Carries On has a wonderful introduction by Alexander McCall Smith which will give you background on Mrs. Tim and D. E. Stevenson.

It’s awfully nice sometimes to treat yourself to fine books which, if you’re like me, you’ll enjoy and re-read for many years to come. 

I may just join you – I keep sighing over those covers and isn’t it time to upgrade my broken old copies?

(Rationalizing is my own special super power.)   

I’ve decided I need to venture out of my safety zone and read more widely acclaimed books. You know, those books getting media attention, the runners-up, and the actual prize winners.  Don’t get me wrong, I often read notable books and have reviewed them here – but the experiences are often checkered.

Less won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2018

When we meet Arthur Less he is young, his writing talent is still embryonic, and he’s bumbling in the gay scene in San Francisco.  We follow him into early middle age, when he faces heartbreak moving from his one long-term relationship into a second one. In the beginning, it’s not clear the importance of these two relationships, but with time, it becomes clear they were everything.

As Less struggles with his relationships, he is also struggling as a writer.  He is published but largely unknown, his main claim to fame was his relationship with an older man — a Pulitzer Prize winning poet. 

Aptly named, Less is a man facing middle age who has not quite figured things out — life just seems to catch him off guard, he is often confused, and easily hurt. Going through life not quite paying attention.

Here, all this time, Less thought he was merely a bad writer. A bad lover, a bad friend, a bad son. Apparently the condition is worse; he is bad at being himself.

One day Less receives a wedding invitation — his younger lover from his latest long term relationship is getting married to an equally younger man. He can’t go, he just can’t, so he books himself on a trip around the world.  He goes through his stack of pleas for his attendance at various writers conferences, teaching assignments, interviews, publicity junkets and cobbles together an exotic itinerary.  These are not big name events, but those offered to middle tier authors — many are unpaid, some will pay only his expenses.  It matters not to Less, he can now legitimately reply to the wedding invitation saying he will be out of the country at the time of the dreaded wedding.

And so off we go with Less to Mexico, Morocco, Berlin, Japan, India – a sort of Eat Pray Love journey filled with typically uncomfortable ‘Lessian’ travails.   (Side-note:  Less believes he speaks fluent German and his translated conversations had me giggling out loud, knowing that’s how I must sound when I speak my long-studied-but-never-mastered French.)

There, I’ve told you about the basic plot of this slim novel, but wait — wait there’s so much more.

You may have to barrel through the first few chapters — this is where Mr. Greer’s writing feels a bit uneven and disconnected — I almost gave up, but happy I didn’t.  By the time you (and Less) are in Morocco — the writing meshes and starts to soar.

The prose goes from being sharp and insightful ~~

“Strange to be almost fifty, no? I feel like I just understood how to be young.” “Yes! It’s like the last day in a foreign country. You finally figure out where to get coffee, and drinks, and a good steak. And then you have to leave. And you won’t ever be back.”

His brain sits before its cash register again, charging him for old shames as if he has not paid before.

~~  to poignant

How can so many things become a bore by middle age — philosophy, radicalism, and other fast foods — but heartbreak keeps its sting?

…the time when any couple has found its balance, and passion has quieted from its early scream, but gratitude is still abundant; what no one realizes are the golden years.”

~~ and this gets my nomination for best sentence ever:

He kisses—how do I explain it? Like someone in love. Like he has nothing to lose. Like someone who has just learned a foreign language and can use only the present tense and only the second person. Only now, only you.

Not gay, you say, well neither am I– but no matter who you are, you’ll recognize a little (or a lot) of Less in yourself. As he travels he tries to write but instead muses back his life, his loves, his mistakes – all the regrets.   Mr. Greer, himself gay, has written a humorous yet gentle novel all about the all-too-human fear of aging, and discovering that middle-age can bring grace and even love.

I won’t give away the ending, but let it be said – I cried…

A digital review copy was kindly provided by Hachette Book Group via NetGalley

—————————————-

As much as I enjoyed Less, I wondered about this slim, comic novel’s qualifications to win the Pulitzer and did some research – turns out Pulitzer’s guidelines are amazingly loose.

The winning book, be it a novel or short-story collection, must have been written by an American, and should, ideally, be in some way about American life.

HERE’S a list of other Pulitzer prize winning fiction. Still not sure it ranks up there with some of the others I’ve read, but then again, no one asked me to be a judge.

And, as Less learns it’s pronounced PULL-it-sir, not PEW-lit-zer.

Once Upon A River

by Diane Setterfield

Ms. Setterfield’s The Thirteenth Tale is one of my all-time favorite novels – it holds a place of honor on my shelf, so I was excited to receive an advance reading copy of her newest novel, Once Upon A River.  

What a journey I’ve been on, what a tale I’ve been told.  Pull up a chair here by the fire and let me tell you more

It was solstice night, the longest night of the year… And as the borders between night and day stretch to their thinnest, so too do the borders between worlds… Unexpected things can happen. Did the solstice have anything to do with the strange events at the Swan? You will have to judge for yourself.

The novel opens on the winter solstice of 1887 at The Swan, a pub on the Thames River in England.   The Swan is where drinking patrons gather to tell and hear stories. The stories are suddenly interrupted by the appearance of a badly injured stranger at the door, carrying a dead little girl.  When the child, who had no signs of life, hours later begins to breathe again, everyone wonders who or what she is. A miracle? A river sprite? A magic being? Who is the injured man, not the father, but carrying the little girl? Whatever she may be, once revived, three different people claim her as their own lost little girl.

But in describing the basic premise, I am short shifting Once Upon a River.  This is a rich and complex novel.  A lyrical fairy tale steeped in the art of story telling and painted with its river setting symbolism. I was completely enveloped in this fascinatingly entwined story of the little girl, the mysterious injured man, the families, and the various patrons who witnessed the miracle.  Like any good fairy tale, we’re never sure what’s myth or reality.    A woman with an patch over an eye that has the power to see deep into people’s souls and there’s Quietly – the river’s mythical guardian who watches over all who cross or boat upon it.

Don’t be put off by the size of this novel – it’s a chunkster – but Ms. Setterfield has carefully woven the stories together so that you’re eager to visit with each character to hear their side of the story — their version of the history. The stories swirl along the river and back and forth in time.   The river itself, the Thames, is not just a setting, it serves both as character and metaphor — the reader and the story follow its twists, ebbs and flows — straining to see what’s around the next bend…

It finds its way into wells and is drawn up to launder petticoats and be boiled for tea. It is sucked into root membranes, travels up cell by cell to the surface, is held in the leaves of watercress that find themselves in the soup bowls and on the cheeseboards of the county’s diners. From teapot or soup dish, it passes into mouths, irrigates complex internal biological networks that are worlds in themselves, before returning eventually to the earth via a chamber pot. Elsewhere the river water clings to the leaves of the willows that droop to touch its surface and then, when the sun comes up, a droplet appears to vanish into the air, where it travels invisibly and might join a cloud, a vast floating lake, until it falls again as rain. This is the unmappable journey of the Thames.

Admittedly, there are lots (and lots) of characters, but even this poor old brain was able to keep them straight – a testament to the writing.  Ahhh, the writing – Ms. Setterfield is the master chef of storytelling — mixing folklore into a mystery and sprinkling in some magical happenings. I found it impossible to rush this novel — and fair warning, some may find it tedious — but not I. I deliberately slowed down my usual rapid reading to savor many beautiful sentences…such as this:

They were collectors of words the same way so many of the gravel diggers were collectors of fossils. They kept an ear constantly alert for them, the rare, the unusual, the unique

and this:

There are stories that may be told aloud, and stories that must be told in whispers, and there are stories that are never told at all.

Once Upon a River had me spellbound for days (and nights).   Ms. Setterfield shows the import of stories to shape and define lives.  How stories change the past, hide secrets, form resentments, teach us how to love and be loved — and in the end, to flourish as humans.

I’ll leave you with this from the ending (and a recommendation to also read The Thirteenth Tale):

And now, dear reader, the story is over. It is time for you to cross the bridge once more and return to the world you came from. This river, which is and is not the Thames, must continue flowing without you. You have haunted here long enough, and besides, you surely have rivers of your own to attend to?

A digital advanced readers copy was kindly provided by Atria Books via Netgalley.

Our Souls at Night is a beautiful, hopeful book – but alas, not everyone’s cup of tea. 

Set in a small town in Colorado, Louis and Addie are neighbors, both in their 70’s and both widowed.  They know each other, chat when they see each other — just neighbors of the same age.  

The book opens with Addie visiting Louis and proposing they spend their lonely nights together – sleeping in the same bed,  companionship, no sex, also with the hope they will both be able to sleep better.

The characters Louis and Addie unfold naturally through their nightly conversations telling about their lives—the happy and sad moments, their regrets, the unfulfilled dreams. They discuss their late spouses and their children. They talk about life. But most of all, they find comfort in each other’s company.  They are achingly human in their loneliness and need for companionship and they ignore what the townspeople have to say about their arrangement.

When Addie’s troubled grandson comes for the summer, their relationship deepens (yes, that’s just what it means) as they give the little boy a special summer filled with softball games, overnight camping, and the responsibility of his first dog.

Many readers are put off by Mr. Haruf’s spare writing style – his lack of quotation marks and sometimes clipped dialogue. But I admire his deceptively simple language which conveys complicated relationships, heartbreak, and humor.  Every word is essential. There is nothing extra. Our Souls at Night uses elegant, almost poetic, prose to move the story forward quickly — it can be read in one evening — yet there’s a leisurely sense of time.

The ending is sad and, for me, a bit unsettling as Addie is portrayed as a capable woman who isn’t afraid to make her own choices, yet she conceded to her controlling son, and gave up a relationship that was bringing joy to her life.  But then again, Our Souls at Night is all about humans, their frailties, and the way life really is. 

All Mr. Haruf’s books are worth reading and re-reading on so many levels, for their simplicity and accessibility — but especially their literary qualities, an unfortunately rare combination. You know you have read “literature” when you have read Haruf, but the experience is effortless.

Netflix made a film based on this novel starring Jane Fonda and Robert Redford, and after you’ve read the book it’s well worth watching — these two actors do a wonderful job of capturing the characters and their relationship.

Trailer HERE

Sadly, this was Mr. Haruf’s last book as he passed away in 2014. 

“Pick up an Elizabeth Goudge novel and from the first page you will feel your shoulders drop.”

The above quote comes from from Cornflower Books, one of my favorite book blogs.  Cornflower hails from somewhere in Northern England and her two blogs are filled with the joy of books such as this, but also gardening, knitting, cooking and art — a kindred spirit.  Click above or on the blog list to the left to see for yourself.

Based on Cornflower’s review and in a desperate mood for an old-fashioned read, I got The Bird in the Tree –with this dreadful cover — from the library.  (I much prefer the vintage cover above).

Elizabeth Goudge is a British writer, probably best known for her novel Green Dolphin Street (nope, haven’t read it). The Bird in the Tree is set in 1938 and is the first in a trilogy about the Eliot family and their beloved home, Damerosehay on the Hampshire coast.

Nothing better than a British house setting I thought as I opened the book, trying not to form images of the characters from the tacky 1980’s cover.

The first thing to strike this reader is that Ms. Goudge is verbose.  She obviously loved nature and takes pages to describe the beauty in her settings — from the gardens, to the sunsets, grand water views, and even   the individual birds.

Soon, however, as the quote above predicted, my shoulders lowered and I relaxed into the slow rhythm and realized I was enjoying some very nice writing.

Early in the novel there’s a flashback to when Lucilla and her young grandson first discover the house that would become Damerosehay.  The descriptions (there’s pages of them) of the abandoned home and its gardens makes for some enchanting reading.  Here’s just a taste:

…for it was such a garden as neither of them had seen before.  It was a wild, crazy garden, the kind of garden in which the sleeping beauty and her court lays sleeping for a hundred years.  Once it had been planted with orderly care and neatness, but now all the flowers and trees and bushes had gone mad together with a sort of jubilant madness that was one of the loveliest things Lucilla had ever seem. The rose trees, bright with their new green leaves, were running riot everywhere, climbing up over the old wall, festooning themselves over the cherry trees and oak trees, cherry trees to the east and oaks to the west that grew in the tangle of wild grass that had once been lawns and flowerbeds …

Lucilla,with the help of her children, purchase the house and it is transformed into the warm and beautiful place she wants as a safe haven for her children, their children and generations beyond.

Lucilla and her family are far from perfect.  The characters are revealed through both their actions and innermost thoughts and thus, we discover the Eliots share heartbreak and wounds — not to mention the art of manipulation and resentment — all bubbling just beneath the surface.  There’s an ill-advised love affair that threatens the Eliot family relations.  Some past secrets are revealed and others stay – well secret.  But mostly this is a novel about people and a home they love.

Lucilla’s son Hilary (don’t you just love British names) although the least clever of the Elliot family, turns out to be the happiest, in his role as village vicar:

…Fairhaven liked to hear the [church] bell tolling out every morning, sounding through the winter darkness as though to tell them that the night was over or ringing through the spring and summer birdsong like another bird calling in the sky.  The ungodly, rousing from sleep, set their watches by this bell, and the godly whilst also setting their watches, remembered that, at this hour Hilary was praying for them.  They were glad of that, for they liked Hilary.

Hilary as expected does give deliver advice and counsel, but it’s nothing compared to the morale high ground voiced by Lucilla and her long time ladies maid, Ellen (yes, there’s a lady’s maid).  I shook my head in amusement and dismay at their self assurance when weighing in on other people lives.

But in the end, the Eliots love each other and while they suffer from an excess of contemplation, they are good people who do the right thing – and yes, there’s a neatly-tied-up-fairly-happy ending.

Old fashioned, overly sentimental and, at times, melodramatic —  The Bird in the Tree was just what the doctor, or in this case, Cornflower Books recommended – I felt better having read it.

The second in this series – Pilgrim’s Inn is on my list for the next time I’m in need of a restorative read.

This book has languished on my shelf for years, and for some reason the other day I decided to give it a try…and got lost in it for days.

I didn’t just read this book — I inhabited it.

Published back in 1998 (which may be how long I’ve had it), One Thousand White Women is a fictional re-imagining of a true event. In the author’s note, Mr. Fergus writes that he came across an interesting historical record.  In 1854 at a peace conference, a Cheyenne chief made a request to trade white women for horses. The Cheyennes astutely saw the future and were looking for a peaceful solution. The women would become brides and their children would allow easier assimilation into the white man’s society.   The request was soundly rejected by the US government. 

But, Mr. Fergus wondered, what if it did happen?  What if the government agreed to this absurd proposal and sent white women to marry into the Cheyenne tribe?  The result is this wonderful and devastating book.

The novel imagines that the government recruited women volunteers from brothels and institutions under a so-called BFI (Brides for Indians) program to “assimilate the heathens”.  One Thousand White Women centers on May Dodd whose story is told through her journals and letters. 

May Dodd comes from a prominent Chicago family. When she runs off with a common laborer and has two children out of wedlock, her influential father has her committed to an insane asylum and has taken her children away to educate properly.  With nothing left to lose, May volunteers for the program:

Frankly, from the way I have been treated by the so-called civilized people in my life, I rather look forward to residency among the savages.

And so we’re off with the first trainload of white women bound for the Great Plains and their new lives as brides of the Cheyenne nation.  On the train are a troupe of vulnerable women and these supporting characters start out predictably stereotypical.  We have Irish twins out to scam everyone, a fallen Southern belle (who hates blacks and uses the N word), a large homely Swiss woman — well the list goes on. I must admit, here the writing became clunky. But as the novel goes on, we learn each woman has their own reasons to want to start new lives.  During their long journey the women get to know each other, reveal their various sad backgrounds, and as Fort Laramie draws closer, they grow more frightened and are drawn closer.

Eventually, they reach Fort Laramie where they are told to take only what they can carry and continue their journey on horseback.  Once they arrive at the Cheyenne camp, there are nowhere near 1,000 women, merely 40-50 total and the women question their decision.

So what is our position then — officially speaking?  Are we nothing more than sacrificial lambs?  An interesting, but unsuccessful political experiment? Missionaries stranded in the line of duty?  Or perhaps easiest to explain, white women gone astray, taking up with savages of our own volition? 

After they are left behind, the women inevitably have to adapt to the camp and its inhabitants.  They are eventually paired off with Cheyenne men and wedding plans are made.  May is pleased to marry the chief, Little Wolf, some of the other women are less fortunate.  But all make the best of the situation. 

And here is where I fell headlong into the wonderful descriptions of the challenges, beauty and even the drudgery of daily life with the Cheyenne. The wild landscape, hunting for game, bathing in ponds, cozy teepees, and the Cheyenne wedding ceremonies.  But all is not idyllic, there are battles with other tribes, violent rapes (yes that’s plural), and the Cheyenne’s first experience with whisky (not good).  Mr. Fergus has done some fine research on 19th century native American culture, and his writing shows both compassion and insight.  

There’s a poignant turning point when, after six months, the women return with their husbands and tribe to visit Fort Laramie.  Wearing deerskin dresses and many now pregnant, they are not welcomed but rather met with revulsion and horror by the residents.  They now look, act, and smell like squaws and bear no resemblance to the white women they once were.

How strange to recall that six months ago we departed Fort Laramie as anxious white women entering the wilderness for the first time; and now, perhaps equally anxious, we leave as squaws returning home.  I realized anew as we rode into the cold north wind on this morning that my own commitment had been forever sealed by the new heart that beats in my belly; that I could not have remained even if I so wished.

Some readers may have trouble with the plausibility of this story and many other reviewers found One Thousand White Women ludicrous.  My only quibble was the modern day insights and actions that leaked into the journals and letters of what was supposed to be a typical 19th century woman. There were even some thoughts on global warming, which I doubt was on the minds of anyone living in the late 1800’s.

But still, I found One Thousand White Women captivating and completely different.  I often forgot reality and the fact that I was reading a novel.  I was living in a different world — in a different time. A stay-up-late adventure story filled with action, humor, romance, insight and beauty.

BookBarmy Warning: there is graphic sex and violence – this is not a book for the faint of heart or prude. Nonetheless, I’m passing it on to my mother – as she is neither.