As Far as Jane’s Grandmother’s by Edith Olivier

April 28, 2015 By Fleur in her World in Book Reports, Fictional, it came from the past and pulled me back there Tags: Edith Olivier 10 Comments

Edith Olivier’s first novel, ‘The Love Child’, published in 1927 is a small masterpiece; telling the story of a woman who has led a cloistered life, who reaches for something more, something that maybe she cannot quite reach.

I love it, I know other who love it too, and it is one of those books that I know I would rescue from a burning building or take with me to a sojourn on a desert island.

‘As Far as Jane’s Grandmother’s’ was published a year later; it tells a very similar story in a quite different way; it’s as odd and as distinctive as its title, and it’s another story that I want to hold close to my heart.

Objectively it isn’t nearly as good a book as its predecessor; but. subjectively, I did like it.

As a child Jane was expected to be good and quiet, to read and to help with her mother’s needlework; because her mother played the role of an invalid and had her whole household spin around her, even though she had no real infirmity. Jane’s one touch of freedom came on the weekly walk to her grandmother’s with her friend and their nurses:

“Jane’s delight was to linger till the nurses had disappeared round the curve in the road, and then she had her own way of swinging herself up the gate and on to the top of the wall. Taking the handle in her hands, she kicked vigorously, then, with a sudden leap she stuck her feet into the handle, and at the same time threw her hands over the gate. One more swing of her body brought her out onto the top, in a curve like a caterpillar making a journey. A cat climbs in much the same way. Then Jane was happy. She ran and danced along the wall. She made an unforgettable picture against the sky – a thin little figure with very long legs and very short skirts. Her hair, the colour of honey, tossed about her face, which was always strangely pale, like a little white flame, vivid for all its pallor”

Jane was is such trouble when she was spotted on the wall but she carried out; keeping her naughtiness secret and playing the good girl; learning how the world worked from novels.

I had to feel for her; and to fear for her.

When Jane’s parents were killed in an accident she went to live with her grandmother, and then she really had to be good; Jane’s grandmother was a formidable woman who held firm to her Victorian values and had no time for anyone who didn’t do the same, who centred her life on her family estate and expected Jane, her heiress, to do the same.

As time passes life presents Jane with possibilities: marriage, friendship, wartime service, convent life …. but they never grew into more than possibilities, because Jane could never find the courage and strength to face uncertainties, the approbation of others, and most of all the disapproval of her grandmother.

Jane told herself that those things weren’t important, that she had enough of a life:

“I don’t think my life has been empty. I was content. But perhaps I like emptiness.”

But she was lonely, she was fearful, and she was horribly resentful of anyone who had more in their life than she did,

This probably isn’t sounding like a book to love, and it certainly isn’t a book for everybody. I can understand why many people would find her infuriating. But as a Jane who was a painfully shy bookish child I understood, and I cared.

And there were things that illuminated the story.

The tone was lovely; it was demure but it was also bright and hopeful. So was the prose, especially the dialogue and the descriptions.

There are little hints of the fairy-tale. And there is a touch of autobiography; Edith Olivier’s life was constrained, but she found – she made – a new life for herself.

There are lovely glimpses of the part of the world that she loved; and I suspect that the lives of the social circle that Jane wasn’t a part of echoed the lives of the friends that the author made when she made that new life for herself,

In the end, after her grandmother’s death, Jane has a second chance of marriage when she met the man she had loved long ago.

But could Jane leave behind her grandmother’s principles and catch up with – and enjoy – a world that had moved on without her?

“It struck her as a most indecent spectacle, yet it really was a most a most delicious sight.

The long lean figures of the bathers shot like curved and living arrows through the stream’s uncertain and changing lights. They caught twinkling gleams and shadows. They were clothed in clear green water-colour, unearthly and magic. Beautiful fish they might have been, now diving and moving soundlessly through the water, and then coming to the surface, spluttering and splashing, real ragamuffins after all.”

Jane’s reaction to that scene answers the question, and leads the story to a natural conclusion.

It was a moving ending, to a story that really struck a chord.

The Story of Twenty One Books

March 28, 2015 By Fleur in her World in Bookish Acquisitions Tags: Andrew Forrester, Anna Thomasson, Anthony Trollope, Edith Olivier, Frances Brody, Francis Brett Young, Howard Spring, Jane Gardam, Marcel Pagnol, Margaret Kennedy, Margery Sharp, Mavis Doriel Hay, Nevil Shute, R C Hutchinson, Rex Whistler, Stella Gibbons, Tom Reiss, Virginia Woolf 41 Comments

That’s the sum of this month’s book shopping – it was an exceptionally good month.

This may be a long post, but I resolved to record all of my purchases this year.

* * * * * * *

These were ‘library building’ purchases. I have a dozen or so authors whose books I am gradually collecting as and when affordable copies appear.

I knew that I wouldn’t be able to give back the library’s copy of The Flowering Thorn back until I had a copy to keep – that’s always the way with Margery Sharp – and I spotted a Fontana edition that was if not cheap then at least much less expensive than many. I do like Fontana paperbacks, but I have to say that in this instance the image and the tagline suggest that the artist and the writer haven’t read the books.

And the rather nondescript book that one is resting on is an first edition of ‘Return I Dare Not’ by Margaret Kennedy!

* * * * * * *

The next round of shopping was not at my expense – because I won £50 of books from Harper Collins! At first I was overwhelmed by the choice, but when I saw Vintage on the list of imprints my path became clear.

‘A Long Time Ago’ filled another gap in my Margaret Kennedy collection.
Remembering Darlene’s words of praise, I picked ‘Here Be Dragons’ to add to my Stella Gibbons collection
‘A Street Haunting and Other Essays’ by Virginia Woolf looked too lovely to resist
Several people recommended ‘The Black Count’ by Tom Reiss after I fell in love with The Count of Monte Cristo’ so I took their advice.
And of course I was going to have a copy of Victoria Glendinning’s much lauded biography of Anthony Trollope!

I’d say that was £50 very well invested.

* * * * * * *

Visits to two charity shops I hadn’t been into for a long time paid dividends.

I remember my parents reading Nevil Shute and Howard Spring, I loved the books from their shelves that I read years ago, and so I was delighted to find two titles I didn’t know in lovely editions.

I saw ‘Death of an Avid Reader’ by Frances Brody in the library and though I liked the look of it I didn’t pick it up because I knew that I had copies of earlier books in the same series at home unread. But when I spotted a like new copy I had to bring it home.

I was always going to pounce on a book by Francis Brett Young that I didn’t have on my shelves. I love his writing. I hesitated over this one because it’s a history of England in verse, but in the end I decided that I didn’t pick this one up I might never see another copy and I might live to regret it. When I came home I remembered that I loved the extract I knew, and I knew that I had made the right decision.

* * * * * * *

I picked up two more books when I dropped off several bags of books to another charity shop.

A lovely hardback edition of the collected stories of Jane Gardam that was only published last year for £2 was a wonderful bargain.

I don’t know much about R C Hutchison – and the dust jacket of this book doesn’t give much away – but I picked the book up because it was in condition and it clearly dated from one of my favourite eras. I found some 1950s leaflets from the reprints of society, that somebody must have used as bookmarks inside, adverting authors including Winifred Holtby, Somerset Maugham, Howard Spring and Margery Sharp. I too that as a sign that I should buy the book. When I got home and looked up Hutchinson I found that he had been reissued by Faber Finds and by Bloomsbury Reader, which has to be a good sign.

* * * * *

And then there was the Oxfam Shop.

I can only assume that someone with very similar taste to me had been clearing out, because among lots of books I already own I found:

Two more by Jane Gardam
Two British Library Crime Classics I I hadn’t meant to start collecting but now I have four and I think maybe I am.
Childhood memoirs by Marcel Pagnol, whose books inspired two of my favourite films – ‘Jean de Florette’ and ‘Manon Du Source.’

I looked in again next time I was passing, just in case there were any more. There weren’t, but I found this.

I know the library have copies, but it was such a nice set.

* * * * * * *

Just one more – a brand new hardback that I just had to run out and buy – another ‘library building’ purchase.

“The winter of 1924: Edith Olivier, alone for the first time at the age of fifty-one, thought her life had come to an end. For Rex Whistler, a nineteen-year-old art student, life was just beginning. Together, they embarked on an intimate and unlikely friendship that would transform their lives. Gradually Edith’s world opened up and she became a writer. Her home, the Daye House, in a wooded corner of the Wilton estate, became a sanctuary for Whistler and the other brilliant and beautiful younger men of her circle: among them Siegfried Sassoon, Stephen Tennant, William Walton, John Betjeman, the Sitwells and Cecil Beaton – for whom she was ‘all the muses’.

Set against a backdrop of the madcap parties of the 1920s, the sophistication of the 1930s and the drama and austerity of the Second World War and with an extraordinary cast of friends and acquaintances, Anna Thomasson brings to life, for the first time, the fascinating, and curious, friendship of a bluestocking and a bright young thing.“

* * * * * * *

I’ve stayed out of bookshops today, so that is definitely it for March.

It’s been a bit mad – some lovely review copies have landed too – but there won’t be many months like that.

Though we’ll be visiting one or two bookshops when we have a week’s holiday in Devon next month …..

Ten Authors Whose Books I Seek

February 26, 2013 By Fleur in her World in Book Reports, Lists, Thoughts & Ramblings Tags: Angela Du Maurier, Edith Olivier, Elizabeth Goudge, Elizabeth Jenkins, Francis Brett Young, G B Stern, Leo Walmsley, Margery Sharp, Oriel Malet, Sylvia Townsend Warner 8 Comments

I’ve spotted a few lists of ‘must buy’ authors today, inspired by a meme at The
Broke and the Bookish. Now I could come up with a few, of course I could, but the thing is, I know new books and mainstream reissues will go on being there, maybe not for ever but for long enough that I can pick them up when I’m ready.

My true ‘must buy’ books are out of print and hard to find titles by authors I have come to love, and books I know I must seize as soon as I see, because if I don’t the chance may never come again.

It seemed like the moment to pull out ten authors whose books I seek:

Oriel Malet: I spotted a book called Marraine by Oriel Malet in the library and I recognised her name from the Persephone list. That book was a lovely memoir of her godmother, the actress Yvonne Arnaud. Once I read it I had to order Margery Fleming from Persephone, and it was even lovelier; a perfectly executed fictional biography of a bookish child. Her other books are out of print and difficult to find, but I found one and I was thrilled when my Virago Secret Santa sent me another, all the way across the Atlantic.

Margery Sharp: I read much praise for The Eye of Love in the Virago Modern Classics group on LibraryThing and so I picked up a copy. I loved it too – romance with a hint of satire and a hint of subversion. I was so disappointed that her other books were – and still are – out of print. But I’m slowly picking them up, used copies and library books, and I’m hoping for more.

Leo Walmsley: Looking back, it’s strange to think that when I picked up Love in the Sun in the library it wasn’t with the intention of reading the book. I remembered a local family called Walmsley and I was simply looking to see if there was a connection. But once I had the book in my hand I fell in love with the cover and with a warm introduction by Daphne Du Maurier. And I fell in love with the book, thinly veiled autobiography written with such honesty and understanding. The library fiction reserve provided copies of the three that follow chronologically from this one. The Walmsley Society has recently bought these books back in to print, and others too, but I was thrilled when I stumbled across lovely old editions of Phantom Lobster and The Sound of the Sea.

Angela Du Maurier: Talking of Daphne Du Maurier, did you know that her sister was a successful author too? I didn’t until I found two novels and one volume of autobiography that Truran Books have in print. It was the anecdote that gave the autobiography its title that made me love Angela – she was stopped by a woman she didn’t know who was convinced that she knew her. As she spoke Angela realised she had been mistaken for Daphne, and when she explained the woman said loudly to her companion, “It’s only the sister!” and stormed off. Angela treated the incident as a great joke, and though it wonderful that her sister was held in such regard. And she wrote of her family and her life with such love and enthusiasm that I had to look out for her other books. They’re out of print and its hard to find out much about them, but I liked the one I found in the library fiction reserve – The Frailty of Nature – and I’d love to find more.

Edith Olivier: I had no idea who Edith Olivier was when I picked up my copy of The Love-Child, but it was a green Virago Modern Classic and I have great faith in those. It is a wonderful tale of an imaginary friend, and I’m afraid I really can’t find the words to do it justice. The library gave me a two wonderful works of non fiction, and there are some diaries I plan to borrow one day, but I would love to find another novel. Sadly though, they seem as rare of hen’s teeth.

Elizabeth Goudge: My mother mentioned four authors she though I’d like when I first moved up to the adult library: Agatha Christie, Daphne Du Maurier, Mary Stewart and Elizabeth Goudge. I only picked up me first Elizabeth Goudge – The Scent of Water – last year, and when I did I realised that she had been right about all four authors. It was simple story but it was so very well told, with both emotional and spiritual understanding. Her books all seem to be out of print, but I have tracked down copies of the Damerosehay novels that I have heard so much good about, and I found one or two others in a charity shop a while back.

Elizabeth Jenkins: I found The Tortoise and the Hare thanks to Virago. I found Harriet thanks to Persephone. I found A Silent Joy and her autobiography, The View from Downshire Hill in the library. I found used copies of Doctor Gully and The Phoenix’ Nest on my travels. I’ve been lucky I know, but I also know that Darlene and Anbolyn both found copies of Brightness and I so want to find one too. And, of course, there are others.

Sylvia Townsend Warner: I first met Sylvia Townsend Warner in a Virago anthology years ago. I forget which anthology and which story, but she stuck in my mind and a picked up Virago’s collection of her short stories. I loved it, and I still think there are few authors who hold a candle to her when it comes to short stories. One fortunate day I found six of her original collections of short stories and a couple of biographies in a second-hand bookshop. I’m looking out for the others, and for her letter and diaries too.

G B Stern: A couple of years ago I spotted a book called The Ten Days of Christmas in a second-hand bookshop. I picked it up, because I recognised the name G B Stern as belonging to a Virago author and because I wanted to know why there were ten days of Christmas rather than the more traditional twelve. It looked lovely, and so I bought it. It was lovely, and when I picked up Monogram, a sort of memoir, I really warmed to the author. Since then I’ve picked up The Matriarch and A Deputy Was King in Virago editions and Debonair as an orange numbered Penguin, and I’d love to find more.

Francis Brett Young: Last year I spotted a book called White Ladies by Francis Brett Young in the very same second-hand bookshop. I knew the author’s name, because one of his books was in a list of titles readers had suggested to Persephone that Nicola Beauman included in a Persephone newsletter. It looked wonderful, but I couldn’t justify the price – it was a signed first edition. But when I arrived home I checked LibraryThing and I found that Ali and Liz both came from the same part of the country as Francis Brett Young and they loved his books. I found White Ladies in the library’s fiction reserve, and fell in love with rich prose, wonderful characters, and good old-fashioned storytelling. I’ve ordered a couple more books from the library, I’ve picked up a trio of old out of print titles, and I’m hoping to find more.

And that’s ten!

So now tell me, whose books are you hoping to find?

Night Thoughts of a Country Landlady: Being the Pacific Experiences of Miss Emma Nightingale in Time of War presented by Edith Olivier and illustrated by Rex Whistler

December 7, 2009 By Fleur in her World in Book Reports Tags: Edith Olivier 6 Comments

A very big title for a very small book!

I must have walked past it umpteen times in the library. A small elderly hardback on a high shelf. But one day I ascended the library steps to look at something else the name of Edith Olivier caught my eye. I was charmed by her novel, The Love-Child, and I was charmed by her memoirs. and so I thought that this might be something rather special. I was right – it is!

It is a wonderful tribute to Edith Olivier’s friend and neighbour.

So who was Miss Emma Nightingale?

“She was one of those cultivated and country ladies to be met in most villages – supremely interested in local affairs, generous to the poor, stern to the evil doer, pardoning to the penitent. She was a leading spirit in all local activities – Church Council, Conservative association, Women’s Institute. Girls’ Friendly and Brownies. She also “lived her own life”, as they say, for she did not consider herself to be altogether of the village. She had moved in wider circles. During the summer Miss Nightingale still entertained at the weekend, in the little house put at her disposal by the Squire, those of the friends of her youth who were still alive. she was not well off but had never thought of taking in “Paying Guests”, and only a European war could have driven her to such a revolution.”

During a salvage week in 1942 Miss Nightingale arrived one afternoon weighed down with more than fifty cloth books. The journals she had kept all her life.

“Can you part with them ?” I asked. “Aren’t they valuable for reference?”

“Not now, I think. Everything is changing so much that we never need to refer to the past. It doesn’t apply. The last three years are the only ones that count, and even with those, the Council Clerk gets so many new instructions that the notes in my diary about what we did two months ago are now completely out of date. It has no value except as salvage.”

Miss Olivier saw that it cost Miss Nightingale something to surrender her journals , and asked if she might view her records of the war years. Miss Nightingale assented.

“I watched Miss Nightingale go down the garden path and through the little gate, and she seemed to be changed. She had lost something from her youthful walk. She had left a part of herself in my house with her diaries.”

Miss Nightingale died that night.

Sometime later Miss Olivier read the journals for the war years, and then she assembled extracts for publication in this book.

The emotions of this one woman speak, I think, for a generation. A generation who had lived through what they thought was the war to end all wars. Only to find out that it wasn’t.

She wonders if the world and the life that she knew has gone for good.

She feels a deep admiration and respect for a younger generation who are showing such courage and determination, and who are giving so much of their young lives to the war.

And, though she is loath to admit it, she is afraid of what the future may hold. A sign, she thinks that she is growing old.

But Miss Nightingale sets too and does her bit.

First she takes a lead in the welcoming of evacuees. There is complete chaos. two hundred children arrive. Then another two hundred. Then another. Where will they all go? Just as they are all settled, news comes that one group was misdirected. And off they go again!

Miss Nightingale is a shrewd and compassionate observer. And thoughtful. She takes pains to ensure that children are suitably placed and is acutely aware of how unsettled they must be. How different country life is, full of unfamiliar sights, sounds and smells.

A social club is arranged for mothers evacuated with their children, to give them a space of their own, away from their hostesses, Two women in the same kitchen! Imagine!

In time though most of them drift back to London. But Miss Nightingale has many more house guests. Soldiers at first, and later refugees as well.

It comes as a shock having men in the house. And men sleeping in nearby rooms. they snore, toss, turn, and make all manner of noises in the night! Who knew?!

Miss Nightingale worries about them and takes pains to entertain them. she is a dab hand at arranging dances, parties, games and all manner of activities to divert them.

But it wasn’t all high jinks. One young soldier after getting rather carried away in the kitchen was sentenced by Miss Nightingale to write one hundred lines.

“Miss Emma Nightingale is always right.”

And he did it! So clearly she could be a bit of a tartar. But the portrait that emerges is of an perceptive, compassionate and practical woman.

Sadly Miss Nightingale did not see the war come to an end, And many of those she cared for did not have the chance to thank her. But she could not have a finer memorial than this lovely little book.

Without Knowing Mr Walkley by Edith Olivier

June 19, 2009 By Fleur in her World in Book Reports Tags: Edith Olivier 3 Comments

I fell in love with Edith Olivier’s first novel, The Love Child, when I read it last year. And so I was thrilled when I found this volume of autobiograpy tucked away on a high library shelf. But I was also a little worried.

The Love Child was, like many first novels, partly autographical and behind its enchantment there is a certain sadness. And who was Mr Walkley. Did his absence define Edith Oliviers’s life?

I am pleased to say that I need not have worried.

Mr Walkley was a drama teacher. The young Edith briefly harboured ideas of studying with him and becoming an actress, but those ideas soon slipped away. Edith was happy with her home, her family, the world she was born into.

That place was Wilton in Wiltshire. She was born in its rectory, the youngest of ten children of the rector and, except for four terms at St Hugh’s College in Oxford, she would spend her whole life in its environs.

She was an officer in the Women’s Land Army in the first war and three times mayor of Wilton in the second.

Her circle included David Cecil, Siegfried Sassoon, Stephen Tennant and Osber Sitwell. All are recalled with great warmth – as is Charles Dosgson (Lewis Carroll), who Edith met at university – but they are not the stars of this book.

Neither is her writing. She began writing relatively late in life, after the death of the sister she shared a close bond with, and refers to her books only briefly at the end of the book.

And neither is Edith herself. She is ever-present, but attention is focused on the places where she spent her life and the people who lived there.

First we visit the rectory. It was clearly a wonderful place to grow up and it is quite wonderfully evoked.

And then there is the Wiltshire countryside and the people who lived in it. Those people – not the great and the good, but ordinary country folk – are recalled with such warmth and love so that you cannot help but take them to your heart.

Edith write so beautfully of the events and patterns of ordinary lives – making calls, visits to church, gathering the harvest, births marriages and deaths – that you feel you are there too, part of her community.

So many wonderful stories fill the pages of this book, and it shines through that Edith Olivier was a woman who found her place in the world and was happy with it. Who could ask for more than that?

Teaser Tuesdays / It’s Tuesday, where are you?

May 5, 2009 By Fleur in her World in Quotations, Poetry & Art Tags: Edith Olivier 8 Comments

teasertuesdays

Just quote a couple of spoiler-free sentences the book you’re reading to tempt other readers.

Here is mine:-

“There were a number of cupboards in the walls, in which we spent our afternoons when it was too wet to go out. In every house an immense amount of space is lost to the grown-up people who never sit in cupboards.”

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by MizB

tuesdaywhereareyou

I’m at home in Wiltshire, writing my memoirs. I’ve been thinking about my childhood so much. We lived at Wilton rectory, just twenty miles from where I live now. Such a wonderful place. My father was strict, but we were so happy.

It’s Tuesday, where are you? is hosted by raidergirl3.

This all comes courtesy of Without Knowing Mr Walkley by Edith Olivier.

Library Loot

April 1, 2009 By Fleur in her World in Library Talk Tags: Beatrice Colin, Edith Olivier, Edward Hogan, L C Tyler, Sharon Penman 2 Comments

I have found some wonderful library books this week:

devils-brood

Devil’s Brood by Sharon Penman

“Devil’s Brood has at its heart the implosion of a family, a story of devastating betrayal as King Henry II’s three eldest sons and his wife Eleanor enter into a rebellion against him, aligning themselves with his most bitter enemy, Louis of France. But it is also the story of a great king whose brilliance forged an empire but whose blind spots led him to make the most serious misjudgement of his life. Sharon Penman has created a novel of immense power and range, bringing Henry and Eleanor to life in a uniquely vivid way. As two strong-willed, passionate people clash, a family divides and a marriage ends in all but name, an unforgettable trilogy reaches its conclusion. “

Years ago, when The Sunne In Splendour was first published in the UK my father gave my mother a copy. She didn’t like it and passed it on to me. I loved it and have been a devotee ever since. So I ordered this as soon as it appeared it the library catalogue and now, at last, it’s here.

blackmoor

Blackmoor by Edward Hogan

“Beth is an albino, half blind, and given to looking at the world out of the corner of her eye. Her neighbours in the Derbyshire town of Blackmoor have always thought she was ‘touched’, and when a series of bizarre happenings shake the very foundations of the village, they are confirmed in their opinion that Beth is an ill omen. The neighbours say that Beth eats dirt from the flowerbeds, and that smoke rises from her lawn. By the end of the year, she is dead. A decade later her son, Vincent, treated like a bad omen by his father George is living in a pleasant suburb miles from Blackmoor. There the bird-watching teenager stumbles towards the buried secrets of his mother’s life and death in the abandoned village. It’s the story of a community that fell apart, a young woman whose face didn’t fit, and a past that refuses to go away.”

I read a glowing report about this book at Savidge Reads, added it to my wishlist and it appeared on a library shelf the same evening.

hering-seller

The Herring Seller’s Apprentice

“Ethelred Tressider is a crime writer with problems. His latest novel is going nowhere, mid-life crisis is looming and he’s burdened by the literary agent he probably deserves: Elsie Thirkettle, a diminutive but determined individual who claims to enjoy neither the company of writers nor literature of any sort. But however bad things look they can always get worse, as Ethelred discovers when his ex-wife, Geraldine, vanishes close to his Sussex home. When the disappearance becomes a murder enquiry, the police quickly decide that Geraldine Tressider has been the victim of a local serial killer.Elsie begs to differ, on the grounds that the killer’s other victims had been Sad Cows, whereas Geraldine was a Scheming Bitch – another species entirely – and no serious serial killer would murder one in mistake for the other …Soon the indefatigable Elsie has bullied Ethelred into embarking upon his own investigation, but as their enquiries proceed, she begins to suspect that her client’s own alibi is not as solid as he claims.”

Another book I read about on a blog (I’m sorry, I forget whose) and spotted shortly afterwards at the library. I’m not usually a lover of “cosy mysteries” but I’ve read the first couple of pages and this looks as if it could be something special.

lilly-aphrodite

The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite by Beatrice Colin

“As the clock chimed the turn of the twentieth century, Lilly Nelly Aphrodite took her first breath. Born to a cabaret dancer and soon orphaned in a scandalous murder-suicide, Lilly finds refuge at a Catholic orphanage, coming under the wing of the, at times, severe Sister August, the first in a string of lost loves. There she meets Hanne Schmidt, a teen prostitute, and forms a bond that will last them through tumultuous love affairs, disastrous marriages, and destitution during the First World War and the subsequent economic collapse. As the century progresses, Lilly and Hanne move from the tawdry glamour of the tingle-tangle nightclubs to the shadow world of health films before Lilly finds success and stardom in the new medium of motion pictures and ultimately falls in love with a man whose fate could cost her everything she has worked for or help her discover her true self. “

I’ve wated to read this ever since I first saw it on a Richard & Judy promotional stand. I tend not to buy those books because I’ve had disappointments in the past and they always turn up in large numbers in the library and in charity shops a few moths after the initial promotion. It looks good and I’ve read a very positive report at Farm Lane Books Blog, which encourages me.

Without Knowing Mr Walkley by Edith Olivier

No picture and no blurb for this one. It’s a 1938 hardback. I absolutely loved Edith Olivier’s The Love-Child when I read it last summer, so I was thrilled to find this memoir. I have found some wonderful old books by climbing ladders at the Morrab Library!

library-loot