Tag Archives: Elizabeth Berridge

10% Report: Reading the 20th Century

December 1, 2013 By in Reading the 20th Century Tags: , , , , , , , , , 14 Comments

My 20th Century Reading Project is nearly over!

This is my ninth update, so I’ve read and written about ninety books, and I have the final ten lined up. One is read, two are in progress and so the century will be complete by the end of the month

My previous reports are here and the full list is here.

I’m so pleased that I’ve reached the point where the difficult years have been dealt with, and I’m even more pleased that I saved some particularly lovely books and authors for the very end of the project.

Edith Wharton, Angela Thirkell, Elizabeth Goudge, Dorothy Whipple …..

But, for tonight, here are those last ten books:

1901 – My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin

If you took equal amounts of Becky Sharp, Cassandra Mortmain and Angel Devereaux, if you mixed them together, with verve and brio, and you might achieve a similar result, but you wouldn’t quite get there, because Sybylla Melvyn is a true one-off. She’s also nearly impossible to explain; a curious mixture of confidence and insecurity, tactlessness and sensitivity, forthrightness and thoughtfulness …. She’s maddening andshe’s utterly charming …

1903 – The Daughters of a Genius by Mrs George Horne de Vaizey

Philippa was sensible and practical, but she struggled in stressful situations and needed her sisters to help her through; Theo was the confident one, the one who went out and made things happen; Hope was quiet and thoughtful, doing her best to support her sisters, while she pursued her own goals; and Marge was the bright bubbly sister, determined to hold things together and to sell her art and pay her way. They all had their ups and downs, and it was lovely to watch them. I was drawn into their home and into their lives, because so many moments, so many details, were captured so beautifully.

1916 – Come Out of the Kitchen! by Alice Duer Miller

Mr Crane and Miss Falkener were inclined to be entertained, but Mr Tucker and Mrs Falkener were inclined to be severe. After a number of wonderful incidents – including the escape of the cook’s cat, a rather pushy suitor and a dispute over a fashionable hat – three of the servants had been dismissed and the house party fell apart. Only the host and the cook were left, and that was most improper …

1917 – Painted Clay by Capel Boake

A new friend drew her into a Bohemian circle of aspiring artists. She was painted, and she was drawn into a relationship with the man who bought her portrait. Helen loved the freedom, the independence, the joy in living, that she found in her new world, but she had a nagging fear that she was becoming ‘painted clay’,  just like the mother who had abandoned her.

1970 – The Young Ardizzone by Edward Ardizzone

The pictures in words were lovely, and the sketches, so distinctively Ardizzone echoed them beautifully. But there were only hints of emotions, because this is a book of memories as pictures. And, as that, it works beautifully.But this isn’t a book to explain, it’s a book to love for what it is.

1979 – If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino

An intriguing story began in the next chapter, and the chapter after that came back again to address the reader searching for the right book, and searching for understanding of the writer and his writing. And the story kept bouncing back and forth. Reader. Story. Reader. Story. Reader. Story ….. I started going back and forth too, happy to read the wonderful words addressed first to one and then to two readers over and over again, and trying to work out how the different chapters of the story fitted together. I couldn’t make the pieces fit together, but in time I learned that I wasn’t meant to. I was reading openings, turning points, from a wealth of different stories.

1982 – The Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Penman

The story begins with Richard as a small child and follows him through the course of his life, in exile when the House of Lancaster is in the ascendancy, and at court when the House of York rises. He becomes a formidable battlefield commander; he becomes a trusted lieutenant of the brother, Edward IV; he becomes the husband of Anne Neville, daughter of Warwick the Kingmaker, who he has loved since child; and eventually, of course, he comes king.

1988 – The Upstairs People by Jennifer Dawson

It speaks profoundly of the damage that families can do, the damage that war can do, and, most of all, of the damage that a damaged mind can do. The first part of the story is most effective, with the children aware that something is wrong but not at all sure what, or what they could do; the latter part of the story drives the point home, but it is a little too chaotic. Though there are moments of utter clarity, that shine all the more against that chaos.

1995 – Touch and Go by Elizabeth Berridge

The story of Emma’s mother, Adela, was quietly heart-breaking. Adela’s marriage had been happy and strong, but since her husband’s death she was struggling with a future that she hadn’t planned for, that she didn’t want. She knew she had to make changes, but she wanted things to stay as they were; she was troubled but she knew that she had to keep going, that she had to so the right thing. I saw elements of my mother in Adela, and I was sorry that maybe she was so very real, so very alive, because Elizabeth Berridge became a widow a few years before this book was published.

1998 – 253 by Geoff Ryman

A train on the Bakerloo line can seat 252 passengers, and so, if there is nobody standing, the driver makes 253. This is the story of those 253 souls, at one particular moment on one particular day.  Or rather it is 253 stories, each told in 253 words that explain how they appear, who they are, and what they are thinking.  It was a remarkable feat, to create 253 different stories, to show so many different aspects of life, and to show how many different threads linked different passengers, sitting in different seats.

Touch and Go by Elizabeth Berridge

November 24, 2013 By in Book Reports, Reading the 20th Century Tags: 9 Comments

‘Touch and Go’ was published in 1995, by Black Swan, and I suspect that if I had seen in back then, in a bookshop or in the library, I would have passed it by, seeing a cover that suggested it was probably just another ‘aga saga.’ I remember that Black Swan published a lot of those sort of books …..

But since 1995 I have seen Persephone Books reissue Elizabeth Berridge’s wartime short stories, I have seen Faber Finds reissue a number of her post-war novels, and so, of course, when I spotted a copy of that paperback book from 1995 I reached out for it.

995601I did find a hint of the ‘aga saga’ – and two agas in the first chapter – but I found much more, and I found qualities that elevated this book above many similar works.

Emma was at the centre of the story. She was nearly forty and she was nearly alone: she was newly divorced, her daughter was travelling the world in her gap year, and her mother was dealing with widowhood by filling her life with journeys and activities. And so when Emma was, quite unexpectedly, left a house in the Welsh border country – in the village where she had grown up – she decided to move there, to start a new chapter in her life.

That chapter came about as the result of a childhood illness. The local doctor had asked Emma what she would like as a treat, and she told him that she would love his shell house. He admired her taste, he told her that it would be hers one day, and he kept his word; years later he left her the shell house and the house in which it stood. That made me think a little of another book where a legacy leads to a new life – Elizabeth Goudge’s ‘The Scent of Water’ – but I was soon to find myself drawn into a very different story.

I watched Emma meeting old friends, and others she had known as a child; I watched her settle into a new way of life; and I watched her putting so much energy into that art that was her livelihood, and into restoring her somewhat dilapidated inheritance. There were moments when I thought that everything was falling into place rather easily, but the author’s wonderful understanding of the world she was writing about, of her characters and their relationships and interactions, and the beauty of her prose, made that seem unimportant. Sometimes in life things do work out nicely, and Emma did have concerns about how her daughter was coping, so far away from home, and about her mother.

One incident – a burglary at Emma’s London flat – changed the story, and took it to another level. Emma went back to London, and when she contacted her estranged husband to tell him that some of his possessions had been lost, the response made her realise that her marriage was truly over, and that she was glad. She couldn’t stay in the flat, and so she went to stay with her mother.

The story of Emma’s mother, Adela, was quietly heart-breaking. Adela’s marriage had been happy and strong, but since her husband’s death she was struggling with a future that she hadn’t planned for, that she didn’t want. She knew she had to make changes, but she wanted things to stay as they were; she was troubled but she knew that she had to keep going, that she had to so the right thing. I saw elements of my mother in Adela, and I was sorry that maybe she was so very real, so very alive, because Elizabeth Berridge became a widow a few years before this book was published.

Emma and Adela came to understand each other a little better; Adela gained strength from being needed as a mother, and she helped Emma to come to terms with her relationship with her absent daughter, Charlotte. There were some wonderful moments, some happy and some sad, and I was particularly taken with Adela’s perception of Emma’s situation.

Emma persuaded Adela to come to Wales with her for Christmas, but she didn’t quite realise how difficult that would be, that Adela’s life as a young mother in the same place that she lived now had not been quite as simple as she thought.

The later chapters of ‘Touch and Go’ work quite beautifully as a study of mothers and daughters, of love and loss. I was sorry that there were distractions from that story – a little too much country life, one or two loose or undeveloped plotlines – because they made a story that was both beautiful and profound feel just a little fuzzy.

‘Touch and Go’ was Elizabeth Berridge’s last book, and though it has weaknesses that detract only a little from a very fine novel. And a final novel this good leaves me eager to read her earlier novels, and her short stories.