Tag Archives: Maura Laverty

Alone We Embark by Maura Laverty

March 26, 2015 By in Book Reports, Fictional, it came from the past and pulled me back there Tags: 7 Comments

A few years ago I picked up a small beige book in a second-hand bookshop. It was a wartime edition so it was plain, simple and unadorned, but I picked it up because I had spotted the name of a Virago author Maura Laverty. I hadn’t read any of her books before, though I had the two that were reissued as Virago Modern Classics on my shelves, but I decided it was worth taking home.

Not long after that I picked up the first of those two green Viragos – Never No More – and I fell in love. I saved up the sequel for a while, but not so very long after that I fell in love with that sequel – No More Than Human – too. Those two books – and their lovely heroine, Delia Scully – became particular favourites.

That was the end of that particular story, but  Reading Ireland Month, felt like the right time to read the third novel in my Maura Laverty collection.

It opens in 1928 in the Irish village of Tullynawlin, at a time when excitement was in the air.

“The Bohemian Concert Party, fresh from their successes in all the principal towns in Ireland, pledged themselves to appear in the Temple, Tullynawin, for two weeks, commencing June 3rd. Admission one and six, one shilling and ninepence. Children half-price”

“For weeks before they came, children saved their pennies, boys issued invitations, husbands were cajoled into making promises, and those who let lodgings scrubbed floors and aired sheets.”

Julia Dempsey was one of those landladies. She didn’t make much money from the players, but she loved to cook and entertain and so she was happy. It was said that she had been a cook in Dublin in her youth, before she came home to look after her aged parents, that she was a fine woman who could have had a fine job or a fine husband; but she chose to stay in Tullynawlin because she loved the place and she loved the people.

I loved Julia!

When she saw Mary, the daughter of her good friend Peggy Sheehy, talking with one of the players Julia was concerned. She was right to be concerned: Mary abandoned her childhood sweetheart when she was swept off her feet by Rowan O’Keefe. They ran away together, but they would not live happily ever after. It was not long before Mary found herself back in Tullynawlin, a widow with a young child.

Julia supported Mary as she re-established herself; going out to work while Peggy watched the shop and her little boy. But Julia was away, visiting another friend who was expecting her first child, when Peggy fell ill Mary struggled to cope, and because she couldn’t bear to leave her mother in an institution far from home, she accepted the offer of middle-aged businessman Johnny Dunne, to provide a home for her other and her son if only she would marry him.

Mary accepted his offer, but she would regret it when she found that her husband was jealous and controlling, when her mother died not long after their marriage, and when Denis Dunne, her childhood sweetheart came home from America and they found that there was still a spark between them.

Julia counselled Mary to tread carefully, but because she felt for her she helped the lovers to meet.

Both women knew that  Johnny found out the consequences could be terrible.

Other stories weave in and out of this sad tale. Young lovers are separated when one takes action to support the Republican cause.  Julia takes in the young daughter of a friend who has died and whose father is struggling to cope, and does what she can to bring the unhappy child out of herself.

All of this comes together in the end, and a chain of events will lead to a terrible tragedy.

This is an unhappy story, but it is made  readable by Maura Laverty’s wonderful grasp of character and community, by the care she gives to the small details and the characters with smaller roles to play, and by the compassion and warmth in her writing.

She understands that word and actions have consequences; that lives have joys and sorrows; and that things are rarely black and white.

She drew me into Tullynawlin; she made me feel involved; she made me care about the people who lived there.

.I could even feel for Johnny, and realise what he was as he was, why he behaved as he did..

I have to say that the structure of this book is a little odd, but as a study of lives  it is both moving and memorable.

There are so many details of character, of plat of dialogue that I could pull out to share; but there are so many of them and they are so well woven together that I can’t quite do it.

Maeve Binchy wrote introductions to the Virago editions of Maura Lavery’s novels, and in this book I saw that Maura Laverty influenced her writing. I’m also reminded that Maeve Binchy described Maura Laverty as a ‘food pornographer’. There’s a lovely chapter near the end of the story when Julia makes a cake she knows is very difficult to make perfectly because she understands how important it is for Teedy, the young girl she took in to have something really special on her birthday.

“”With a knife she loosened the spun sugar around the lower rim of the bowl. Very, very carefully she lifted off the feather-light mesh and put it over the flummery. It slipped into place, fitting as perfectly as the hull fits the hazel-nut. The creamy flummery showed through the web as the shoulders of a Spanish girl will gleam through a lace mantilla. Julia realised that the golden web was a complete success.. Only then did she look at Teedy.

The child stood before the blue dish as before an altar. Her face was pale and her dark eyes were enormous.

“Well Teedy? Do you like it love?”

The sensitive mouth worked, but Teedy did not speak. She made a little whimpering sound and rushed straight into Julia’s ready arms.”

What do I have on the shelves for Reading Ireland Month?

February 5, 2015 By in Lists Tags: , , , , , , , , , 26 Comments

picmonkey-collage-2

My first thought when I read about Reading Ireland Month was that it would would beautifully with the TBR Dare, because I know that there are Irish books to be read on the Virago bookcase and at various other places around the house.

There are more than I’ll read in March, but I do like to make a list and to have choices.

* * * * * * *

The first name that came to mind was Molly Keane. I love her writing but there’s something about her books – a sharpness, a distinctiveness, I don’t know quite what to call it – that makes me inclined to space them out. I haven’t read one for a while though and I think it’s time. Maybe ‘Mad Puppetstown’:

In the early 1900s Easter lives with her Aunt Brenda, her cousins Evelyn and Basil, and their Great-Aunt Dicksie in an imposing country house, Puppetstown, which casts a spell over their childhood. Here they spend carefree days taunting the peacocks in Aunt Dicksie’s garden, shooting snipe and woodcock, hunting, and playing with Patsy, the boot boy. But the house and its inhabitants are not immune to the “little, bitter, forgotten war in Ireland” and when it finally touches their lives all flee to England. All except Aunt Dicksie who refuses to surrender Puppetstown’s magic. She stays on with Patsy, living in a corner of the deserted house while in England the cousins are groomed for Society. But for two of them those wild, lost Puppetstown years cannot be forgotten ….

* * * * * * *

 Mary Lavin is best known for her short stories, but she also wrote novels and I have two in my Virago Collection. I most like the look of ‘The House on Clewe Street’

Theodore Coniffe, austere property owner in Castlerampart, looks forward to the birth of an heir when his third and youngest daughter, Lily marries. A son is born, but the father, Cornelius Galloway, is a spendthrift who dies young, leaving the child to the care of Lily and her sisters, Theresa and Sara. Their love for Gabriel is limited by religious propriety and his youth is both protected and restrained. At the age of twenty-one Gabriel runs away to Dublin with Onny, the kitchen maid. Here they tumble into bohemian life. But Gabriel is ill-suited to this makeshift freedom and finds the values of Clewe Street impossible to evade.

* * * * * * *

I absolutely love Kate O’Brien‘s writing and I have read all of her books that were published by Virago, but I have one other sitting on a shelf on the next bookcase along. ‘Of Music and Silence’ looks lovely, I’ve been saving it, but I think its moment might have come.

It is the story of two penniless Irish girls who are sent to the Continent to become opera singers. Lovely, vulnerable, unaware, they are first flung into a regime of rigorous training and then released into the fantastic, exacting world of Italian opera in the 1880’s, with its dedicated striving, love, jealousy and passionate friendships.To Clare and Rose, student life and their fellow-students at the pension are as great a revelation after the green quiet of Ireland as the sun-drenched atmosphere of Rome, the picnics on the Campagna, moonlit suppers in trattorie above the sea.Thepension is followed by some of the world’s great opera stages as the girls sing their way upwards towards prima donna roles and fame. And alongside their development as singers the author traces compassionately their development as women, loving and desired, in this forcing house of emotions, where all are obsessed by song, and love is heightened by the spendour of music.

* * * * * * *

I found Tana French on the same bookcase, on the next shelf down. I’ve read her first three novels, and I’ve been meaning to read her fourth – ‘Broken Harbour’ – for quite some time.

In the aftermath of a brutal attack that left a woman in intensive care and her husband and young children dead, brash cop Scorcher Kennedy and his rookie partner, Richie, struggle with perplexing clues and Scorcher’s haunting memories of a shattering incident from his childhood …

* * * * * * *.

The Collegians by Gerard Griffin is on the same shelf, and it’s on my Classics Club list.

A romantic melodrama set in rural Ireland in the early 19th century, this complex story of love, rivalry, secrecy, and betrayal, based on a real case of 1829, was one of the most successful thrillers of its day

* * * * * * *

I’m a little wary of ‘There Were No Windows’ by Norah Hoult, which I know is waiting on the Persephone bookshelf, because it deals with ageing and dementia and the stage of life where my mother is now. But there’s a voice in my head saying that maybe that’s why I should read in now.

Set in London during the blackouts of the Blitz, this 1944 novel describes the last months of Claire Temple, a once-glamorous woman who is now losing her memory. Divided into three ‘acts’, beginning with Claire’s own experience of her dementia, the rest of the book is told through the characters who work for or visit her. As Claire struggles with her memory, the reader must reconstruct not only her life but her identity.

* * * * * * *

‘The Wild Geese’ by Bridget Boland is another book I could pluck from the Virago shelves. It’s an epistolary novel – which is always a good thing – and it touches on an aspect of Irish history that I don’t know much about.

In eighteenth-century Ireland, Catholics are forced to practice their religion in secret, they cannot buy or improve their land, nor enter any profession or trade. In this climate a lively underground traffic develops between Ireland and Europe–young boys are smuggled to Catholic schools abroad and many eventually join the armies of foreign princes. If they return to their native land, these “Wild Geese” are in danger of their lives. Through the story of the Kinross family and their letters to one another, we learn of these desperate times: of Brendan’s struggle to maintain the Kinross estate; of the dangers Maurice faces as an outlaw in his own country, and of their sister Catherine and her love for Roderick O’Byrne, a soldier recruiting for Irish regiments in France.

* * * * * * *

Maura Laverty is another author I discovered through Virago. I’ve read the two of her novels that Virago published, but I have another novel that hasn’t been reprinted that I found in a second-hand bookshop a year or two ago. ‘Alone We Embark’ is another book I’ve been saving. It’s a plain little hardback, I haven’t been able to find out much about it, but I loved the two books I’ve read more than enough to take this one on trust.

* * * * * * *

I’ve been reading to read Somerville & Ross for ages, and I have just one of their books in the house, somewhere upstairs – ‘In The Vine Country.’

The Irish pair tour Medoc country at the time of the vine harvest. During their stay they dance with the harvesters, drink freshly trodden wine, stay in a barn with dubious bedlinen and visit a grand chateau.

* * * * * * *

Also upstairs is a proof copy of ‘Black Lake’ by Johanna Lane. I started reading last year, but when the story went in a quite different direction to the one I expected I put it down again. I meant to pick it up again, and I really don’t know why I haven’t.

* * * * * * *

The last book I bought in December, before the TBR Dare began, was a newly reissued Victorian novel – ‘The Quest for Fame’ by Charlotte Riddell  – it’s waiting on my bedside table.

After the death of her mother and the loss of her family’s fortune, it falls to young Glen Westley to do what she can for herself and her ailing father. Determined to make her own way in the world, she moves from the West of Ireland to London and works tirelessly to succeed as a novelist, despite the limitations her sex and nationality represent. Having struggled so long for fame, it is at last thrust upon her – but fame always comes at a price.
* * * * * * *

There’s just one more book that I can think of, and it’s in the virtual TBR. I read Niall Williams’ early novels and I liked them, but I haven’t read anything of his for years. When I save ‘The History of Rain’ on the Man Booker long-list I thought it was time to try his work again.

Bedbound in her attic room beneath the falling rain, in the margin between this world and the next, Plain Ruth Swain is in search of her father. To find him, enfolded in the mystery of ancestors, Ruthie must first trace the jutting jaw lines, narrow faces and gleamy skin of the Swains from the restless Reverend Swain, her great-grandfather, to grandfather Abraham, to her father, Virgil – via pole-vaulting, leaping salmon, poetry and the three thousand, nine hundred and fifty eight books piled high beneath the two skylights in her room, beneath the rain.

* * * * * * *

That’s pretty much all I can find, and that’s probably the right number of books form me to have a choice and not waste good reading time dithering.

Are there any you would recommend – or any that you’re particularly curious about?

And who are your favourite Irish authors? What are your favourite Irish books?

A Box of Books for 2013

December 28, 2013 By in Lists, Looking Backwards and Forwards Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 24 Comments

I have a love-hate relationship with year-end lists.

I have loved lists – writing them, reading them, studying and analysing them – since I was a child. And yet I find it difficult to sum up a year of reading in a list or two. I know that it’s for the best of reasons: I have learned that there are so many wonderful books out there, and so I have learned to read the books that call; the books I want to read, rather than the books I ought to read.

So I’m going to do what I did last year. I’m going to assemble a virtual box of books to capture all of the things that I’ve loved in this year’s reading. It might sound like a list, and maybe it is, but to me feels like I’ve pulled some great books from the shelves because those are the books I want to pull from the shelves right now. It’s not quite so definitive.

And here it is – in the order that I read them:

2013-12-28

Serving Victoria: Life in the Royal Household by Kate Hubbard

“What a wonderful idea: the story of the sixty something years when Queen Victoria reigned, told through the experiences of the men and women who served her. The experiences of high-ranking courtiers, who were close enough to see how the queen and her family lived, who were not overawed by the world they found themselves in, and who, of course, left letters and diaries to speak for them.”

The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham

“I must confess that, though I loved the recent film adaptation of The Painted Veil, I have been circling my copy of the book for a long, long time. Because for years Maugham lived in my box marked ‘A Great Author But Not For Me.’ Wrong, wrong, wrong!”

The Love-Charm of Bombs by Lara Feigel

“I was smitten with ‘The Love-Charm of Bombs’ from the very first time I read about it. The prospect of seeing London in the Second World War through the eyes of five remarkable writers – Elizabeth Bowen, Graham Greene, Rose Macaulay, Hilde Spiel and Henry Yorke (who wrote under the name Henry Green) – was simply irresistible.”

A Pixy in Petticoats by John Trevena

“Some people look at a hedgerow and see just that. A hedgerow. But others see more: a network of different plants, signs of the wildlife that live there, evidence of what the weather had been doing. John Trevena saw those things and he was able to bring that to life on the page, to pull his readers into his village and over the moors.”

The Pinecone by Jenny Uglow

“In 1869, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, staying with friends near Carlisle, reported in a letter to his mother that he had come across ‘some most remarkable architectural works by a former Miss Losh. She must have been really a great genius,’ he wrote, ‘and should be better known.’ She should.”

2013-12-281
Mariana by Monica Dickens

“Now it has to be said that Mary is not the most sympathetic of characters. She is often awkward, thoughtless, selfish even. But she was real, and for all her failing I did like her, I did want her to find her path in life, her place in the world. Sometimes fallible heroines are so much easier to love.”

Death of Lyndon Wilder and the Consequences Thereof by E.A. Dineley

“It’s a lovely period piece, full of lovely characters, pieces of history, references to beloved books, clever plotting, well-chosen details … and it’s utterly, utterly readable.”

Excellent Women by Barbara Pym

“Barbara Pym constructed her story so cleverly and told it beautifully. There is wit, intelligence and insight, and such a very light touch and a natural charm. A simple story, but the details made it sing. It was so very believable. It offers a window to look clearly at a world that existed not so long ago, but that has changed now so completely.”

The Sea Change by Joanna Rossiter

“In ‘The Sea Change’, Joanna Rossiter spins her story around a mother and daughter, both caught up in life changing events – real, historical events – that are very different and yet have similar consequences. She does it so very well that I can scarcely believe it is her debut. But it is.”

The Young Clementina by D E Stevenson

“I was so sorry to have to say goodbye to Charlotte and her world, after being caught up in her life and her world from start to finish. That points to very clever writing and plotting. Charlotte’s world, the people in it, all of the things she lived through were painted richly and beautifully. Her story lived and breathed.”

2013-12-282
The View on the Way Down by Rebecca Wait

“That I felt so deeply for these three siblings, that I was so upset, is a measure of what Rebecca Wait has achieved in her debut novel. I never doubted that she really knew, that she really understood, and that her accounts of depression, of bereavement, of grief, were utterly, utterly credible.  And the simplicity and the clarity of her story and her writing allowed that understanding to shine.”

Lady Rose and Mrs Memmary by Ruby Ferguson (re-read)

“Lady Rose was the only child and the heir, thanks to the good graces of Queen Victoria, of the Earl of Lochule. She was pretty, warm, bright,  and her open heart, her boundless curiosity, her love of life, charmed everyone she met. And she grew into a proud Scot and a true romantic, inspired by the writings of Walter Scott, the history of Mary Queen of Scots, and, most of all, her beloved home and lands.”

The Golem and the Djinni by Helene Wecker

“Best of all, the story of the golem and the djinni spoke profoundly of humanity, of its strengths and weaknesses, and of what it is that makes us human.”

No More Than Human by Maura Laverty

“She set off for Madrid,  to become a ‘professora’ – a free-lance tutor and  chaperone. It was an independent lifestyle that suited Delia very well, but it wasn’t easy to establish herself when she was so young, and maybe her reputation would follow her. But Delia was determined, and soon she was setting her sights even higher …..”

Lucy Carmichael by Margaret Kennedy

“There was no wedding: Lucy was jilted, and of course she was devastated. She knew she had to carry on, and she knew she had to get away. She hated watching people being tactful, knowing she was being talked about, seeing reminders everywhere. And so, when she saw on opening for  a drama teacher at an arts institute, she grabbed it with both hands.”

2013-12-283

The Vet’s Daughter by Barbara Comyns (re-read)

“Barbara Comyns tells all of this so well, at times painting pictures with every sentence, and balancing the commonplace and the highly improbable so well that I was completely captivated by a story that was somehow dark and colourful at exactly the same time.”

The Misbegotten by Katherine Webb

“I was captivated by ‘The Misbegotten’, a wonderfully readable, utterly compelling story, set early in the eighteenth century. It is story of dark secrets, terrible losses, devastating lies, of the lives that they affect, and of truths that may be brought to light at a very high price.”

Penmarric by Susan Howatch (re-read)

“The story is told in six volumes, by five different narrators: Mark Castellack, his wife, one of his illegitimate sons, and two of his legitimate sons who would, in their turn, be master of Penmarric. Sixty years pass – from the later years of Queen Victoria’s reign to the end of World War II full of every kind of family drama you could imagine. In the wrong hands it would be a mess, but Susan Howatch made it work.”

Nearest Thing to Crazy by Elizabeth Forbes

“It was all so horribly believable. And it was unsettling, seeing how easily a life could be knocked off course, a mind knocked off balance. The story built , slowly and steadily, never losing it’s grip, towards a very clever ending. An ending that I really didn’t see coming, but an ending that made perfect sense.”

Frost Hollow Hall by Emma Carroll

“Frost Hollow Hall is more than a ghost story; it’s a story that lives and breathes, and paint wonderful pictures, and it’s a story about love, family, loss, regret, and learning to let go, told beautifully, with both subtlety and charm.”

2013-12-284

The Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Penman (re-read)

“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.”

The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton (re-read)

“Now I find myself wanting to do what Alice did at the end of ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I want to throw you in the air and say, “You’re just a fictional character!” But I can’t. Because you are so utterly real; not a heroine, not a villainess, but a vivid, three-dimensional human being, with strengths and weaknesses.”

The Goddess and the Thief by Essie Fox

“I loved the way that the story of Shiva and Pravati, and stories of her family, were woven into Alice’s own story. The contrast between India and England was very, very effective, and there were so many lovely things to notice along the way: bookish references, period details, real history – everything you could want.”

High Rising by Angela Thirkell

“It’s a simple story, but it plays out beautifully, because it is adorned with so many lovely dialogues, so many interesting incidents; and because everything works beautifully with the characters and their situations.”

Maidens’ Trip by Emma Smith

“It is a wonderful adventure for three young women  – Nanette, Emma and Charity – all from conventional, middle-class backgrounds, who have completed basic training and have been dropped into the very different world of the boating fraternity.”

*******

And that is very nearly the end of my reading year.

All that remains is to tell you about the very last book I read for my Century of Books, and to wind up that project …..

Never No More by Maura Laverty

August 22, 2011 By in Book Reports, Virago Modern Classics Tags: 11 Comments

“You were the purple bog and ripe wheat-field and a crab-tree in May. You were good food, and songs in the night. You were a welcome for my coming and a prayer for my going out. You were Gran.”

Never No More tells the story of  Delia, as she grows up in the 1920s, in the Irish countryside in the care of her beloved Grandmother.

Delia hadn’t always lived with her grandmother, but things had changed when her father died. Her mother, a skilled dressmaker, decided that the family should move to a bigger town where she could trade so much more profitably than she had in a country village.

An eminently sensible plan. But Delia was desperately unhappy at the prospect of leaving, and so her grandmother, unhappy at the prospect of losing all of her family, offered Delia a home with her until the time came for her to be sent to school.

That allows Maura Laverty write much rich, descriptive prose. And she catches everything. There are the rites of passage – births, the marriages, the deaths – that draw the whole community together. There are big events – the ritual that accompanies the slaughter of a pig, the annual cutting of the turf, the visit to the new family home –  and there are the small, important details that make up lives.

Of course, it is the characters that bring all of that to life. So many wonderful characters, so many lives are caught. Because Maura Laverty is one of those special writers who knows that each and every person has their own particular story, and because she has the skill to draw them all out.

At the centre of it all is Delia, a girl with a warm heart and a bold spirit that would sometimes lead her into trouble. She is utterly believable, and oh so easy to love.

Her relationship with her grandmother – a woman so wise, so practical, so compassionate – is maybe a little too perfect, but it was so lovely that I was happily swept along.

Delia’s mother played a minor role, but she was such an interesting woman. Her marriage had not been happy and she struggled with motherhood, but she found her role in life as she built up her dressmaking business and was able to support her family.

That was when I understood why this book was a Virago Modern Classic.

It is a gem: an utterly charming story of a place and of its people, laced with laughter, tears and love.

What more could you need?!

All Virago All August

July 3, 2011 By in Virago Modern Classics Tags: , , , , , 10 Comments

I visited this thread in the LibraryThing Virago Modern Classics Group, and I was inspired.

I can’t quite do All Virago All August, because I have other reading commitments, because I can’t stay out of the library for a whole month, and because I just don’t like feeling that I can’t pick up and read whatever book appeals.

But there will be a good number of Viragos in the mix, and they will be books that aren’t read or written about as much as others.

I’ve pulled out six possibles, most of which are out of print but all of which are “gettable” at a reasonable price:

The Wild Geese by Bridget Boland

“In eighteenth-century Ireland, Catholics are forced to practice their religion in secret, they cannot buy or improve their land, nor enter any profession or trade.  In this climate a lively underground traffic develops between Ireland and Europe–young boys are smuggled to Catholic schools abroad and many eventually join the armies of foreign princes.  If they return to their native land, these “Wild Geese” are in danger of their lives.

Through the story of the Kinross family and their letters to one another, we learn of these desperate times: of Brendan’s struggle to maintain the Kinross estate; of the dangers Maurice faces as an outlaw in his own country, and of their sister Catherine and her love for Roderick O’Byrne, a soldier recruiting for Irish regiments in France.”

This one has been waiting on my bedside table for a while now. I know little about 18th century Ireland, and learning a little by way of a family saga told through letters is very appealing.

Bid Me to Live by Hilda Doolittle

“It is 1917 and Julia Ashton lives in a shuttered room in Queen’s Square, Bloomsbury. A young wife, no longer happy, she mourns the loss of her baby, and lives that war-time lie of love and death as her poet husband, Rafe, comes and goes from the trenches of the first world war. In this “Other Bloomsbury,” a world of part make-believe, where the actors play at life and sex, Julia refuses to come to terms with her husband’s infidelity, her failing marriage, and her private world of pain. Then into her trance-like state breaks Frederick, the writer with the flaming beard and the driving volcanic genius. Only when she flees the fog and fever of London to seek a new calm in the wild countryside of Cornwall, can Julia face the truth about herself, her marriage, and her future with the forceful Frederick …”

I pulled this one out a couple of weeks ago, when Hilda Doolittle was the answer to a clue in my fiance’s crossword that he just couldn’t get it. He thought I had made up a name to fit the letters he had, and so I pulled this book off the shelf to prove my point. When I noticed that it was autobiographical, that part of the story was set in Cornwall, and that the real life writer with the flaming beard lived for a time just a few miles from my home, I realised that I should read it sooner rather than later.

Susan Spray by Sheila Kaye-Smith

“Born in 1834, Susan is the eldest daughter of a poor Sussex field labourer, Adam Spray, and his wife Ruth.  Her large family belongs to the Colgate Brethren, an obscure religious sect which takes Susan to its bosom the day she declares, at the age of six, that she’s seen the Lord.  But the Spray children are soon orphaned; thrown helpless upon the world Susan and her younger sister, Tamara, find themselves working on a Sussex farm.  Tamara spends her time in dalliance with young men, while for Susan, destined to become a preacher, the Ten Commandments, the Burning Bush and Ezekiel’s temple are her daily–and nightly–fare.  Yet Susan can sin and fall in love like any mortal; and when she does it is as glorious as a vision of God and his cherubim, and as consuming as the fires of hell.”

I loved Joanna Godden last year, and I have been meaning to read more of Sheila Kaye-Smith’s work ever since. I do like a little rural melodrama!

I’m Not Complaining by Ruth Adam

“Madge Brigson is a teacher in a Nottinghamshire elementary school in England in the 1930s.  Here, with her colleagues – the beautiful, “promiscuous” Jenny, the ardent communist Freda, and the kind, spinsterish Miss Jones – she battles with the trials and tribulations of their special world: abusive parents, eternal malnutrition, inspectors’ visits, staff quarrels and love affairs.  To all this Madge presents an uncompromisingly intelligent and commonsensical face: laughter is never far away as she copes with her pupils, the harsh circumstances of life in the Depression, and her own love affair.  For Madge is a true heroine: determined, perceptive, warm-hearted; she deals with life, and love, unflinchingly, and gets the most out of the best – and worst – of it.”

It occured to me that Madge Brigson and Sarah Burton, who I love, must have been teaching at the time. That made me very curious …

Painted Clay by Capel Boake

“Helen Somerset feels stifled by her loveless home with a repressive father who fears that, like her absent mother, she may be only “painted clay.”  She wants to know life beyond the confines of Packington, a Melbourne suburb overlooking Port Phillip Bay.  And when she is sixteen her father dies, releasing Helen to seek the affection and independence she has been denied.  With a clerical job and a room in a lodging house Helen launches herself into the excitement of Bohemian life and free love–only to discover that this liberation has a double edge.”

I’m planning on reading Conditions of Faith by Alex Miller for Paris in July, and this might be a good companion piece. And even if it isn’t the period, the place, and the story are all calling.

Never No More by Maura Laverty

“On the edge of the Bog of Allen with its hedges of foaming May blossom and twisted mountain ash lies the little lost village of Ballyderrig. It is 4th October 1920 and thirteen-year-old Delia looks forward to a new life. Her father dead, her mother, brothers and sisters prepare to move to the town of Kilkenny. But Delia stays behind, going to live with her beloved Grandmother in an old farmhouse outside the village. And thus begin the happiest years of this young girl’s life: years filled with the beauty of the Irish countryside, the taste of Gran’s baked hare, the texture of young mushrooms picked at dawn, the rituals of the turf-cutting season, and much much more. As the seasons come and go we watch Delia grow up until, one cold November day, now seventeen, she stands poised for independence – and Spain. “

I picked it up, I read the opening pages and I was captivated. it’s as simple as that!

**********

It would be lovely to know if you’ve read any of these, and what you thought.

Or if you are particulary curious about any of them – or indeed about any of the titles on this very useful master list of Virago Modern Classics …

Another town, a new bookshop … and now I need more bookshelves …

March 21, 2010 By in Bookish Acquisitions Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 28 Comments

If you have ever visited Cornwall, or if you ever plan on visiting Cornwall, there are a lot of places you might want to see. St Michael’s Mount, The Eden Project, The Minack Theatre, Jamaica Inn, Tintagel, Lanhydrock House, The Lost Gardens of Heligan, The Tate St Ives, The National Seal Sanctuary….

But, unless you have a particular interest in mining history you probably wouldn’t choose to visit Redruth. It’s a grey, inland, impoverished former mining town. But you really, really should go there.

Why? To visit The Redruth Bookshop. I read a while back that it was Cornwall’s largest secondhand bookshop and realised I needed to investigate. Last week I did. It looked unremarkable from outside, but when we went in we discovered that it went, back and back and back, and that it was packed full of wonderful books. I could have brought home a car full, but I was restrained and settled for these:

Recent paperback fiction was at the front of the shop. I picked up Devil by the Sea by Nina Bawden to add to my Virago bookcase, plus the first three novels by Salley Vickers. I knew as soon as I discovered her not so long ago that I would want to read and own all of her work so it was lovely to find three lined up. And older editions with lovely covers. 

And as I went further back in the shop I found the older books. 

Back at the beginning of the year everyone seemed to be reading Daddy Long-Legs by Jean Webster. The library had a copy, but I was in the middle of an ordering ban, and virtuously stuck too it. And maybe virtue was rewarded, because I found a very pretty edition from the 1930s. 

I have an unread copy of Peyton Place tucked away. I remembered Verity writing warmly about it not so long ago, and mentioning that Grace Metalious had written a sequel that was now out of print. So when I spotted a copy of that sequel I had to pick it up. 

And then there was a trio of books by Virago authors that Virago has not seen fit to reissue. The Bridge by Pamela Frankau (in a very pretty 1950s dust jacket), Alone We Embark by Maura Laverty (a wartime economy edition) and Potterism by Rose MacCaulay (a tragi- farcical tract!). All look wonderful. 

I recognised the name Norman Collins, because Penguin reissued his book London Belongs To Me last year. So I picked up Bond Street Story, and the opening paragraphs painted such a wonderful picture of the rush hour in London (I love Cornwall, but sometimes I miss my old London life) that I really couldn’t put it down again. 

Now it probably won’t come as news that I love Margery Sharp‘s writing. So imagine my delight at finding THREE of her books to add to my collection – The Foolish Gentlewoman, Britannia Mews and Cluny Brown. 

Now here is where I was really restrained. There were six books by Monica Dickens that I hadn’t come across before, but I made myself select just one. The Heart of London was the winner and looks absolutely wonderful. 

And finally there was an elderly copy of An Old-Fashioned Girl by Louisa May Alcott. It was only 50p, so of course it came home. It missed the photocall because my mother pounced on it. She says that it is lovely – and I hope to get it back one day! 

That’s it! And I shall be looking for an excuse to visit Redruth again very soon…