Eunice Fleet (Tobias)

I mentioned last week that Honno books had kindly sent three of their books for me to look at, and I wrote about two of them. I subsequently read Eunice Fleet by Lily Tobias, which was the book which had initially piqued my interest in Honno Books, and proved to be quite a different book to the other two.

The reason I was so interested in this book was because I wrote my undergraduate dissertation (back in 2005!) on the experiences of two Oxford undergraduate conscientious objectors during the First World War. The conclusion I reached by doing my research was that it was impossible to lump conscientious objectors together into a single mass - each objectors' experience was unique, due to the way that their objection had come about, due to the support (or lack thereof) by their friends and families, and due to their treatment by the authorities which was in no sense uniform. I found it fascinating to explore the stories of two men and gained a huge insight into the sort of perspectives that led to conscientious objection.

Eunice Fleet tells Eunice's story as she prepares to face the Second World War. However, her life has been strongly influenced by her experiences during the previous war, when her life was turned upside down by the fact that her husband, a teacher, decided to make a conscientious objection to fighting in the war. Eunice fails to understand why Vincent feels so strongly, and finds it hard to come to terms with the fact that he would rather go to prison, completely abandoning his family, rather than compromise his beliefs. The book is built around a tragedy that arises from this situation, and to say any more would be to spoil it. But what I do want to say is how fascinating this book is as a piece of social history. Apparently the book builds on personal experiences of Tobias, and reading it feels deeply personal and seems to give a real flavour for a perspective that is often ignored - the feelings and emotions of the friends and families of those who refused to fight.

Ruby's Spoon (Pietroni)

Another review from me today - I started a new job on Monday, and so am using this week as a catch-up from Christmas reading while I get to grips with managing my time again! I received a copy of this incredibly quirky book from Vintage, and had to start reading it straight away because the plot sounded so intriguing. A young girl, named Ruby, becomes caught up in the story of a witch, a mermaid, and a missing woman.
Ruby, the main character, helps out in a chip shop, and encounters Isa Fly one night - on a hunt for the missing woman. Ruby becomes involved in the hunt, hoping that she will get the adventure at sea that she longs for, but ends up antagonising the local residents. I found the story a little difficult to follow at times because it was so unusual and unlike anything that I had read before, but I what I liked most about the book was that it was unusual.
Set in the Black Country, one of the highlights of the book for me was the use of local dialect which almost had to be read out loud to make sense:
"I cor stay long. I cor leave the vats unwatched. Catch the fat could, and then we'd all be fried"
Similarly the wonderful descriptions of the surroundings enabled me to imagine a region that I have never visited and added to the sense of mysticalness around the book.
I would not be surprised if this book is a big hit when it comes out next year and would not be surprised to see it on a prize list or two.

A house unlocked (Lively)

I picked up A house unlocked in the charity shop just before Christmas because I have enjoyed a number of novels by Lively, and this looked like a fascinating voyage into social history.

The book is about the history of Golsoncott, the house owned by Lively's grandparents in Somerset, which Lively often used to visit. Taking as a starting point various objects that she remembered seeing around the house, Lively then in later life decided to piece together the history of the family and the house. Through a sampler, which features the pictures of six evacuees, we learn about the role of the house in the Blitz. The potted meat jars remind Lively of helping to do flower arrangements in the church, and we learn about the importance of religion and the social hierarchy of the church to her family. She refers a lot to literature, both books that she read there, and ones which places the experiences being described into context.

Lively concludes:
"This book has tried to use the furnishing of a house as a mnemonic system. I have always been excited and intrigued by the silent eloquence of the physical world - past events locked nto the landscape or lurking in city streets. Every house tells a story. Golsoncott's story spans much of the century; it is personal, but also public. Historical change determined how life was lived there; objects can be made to bear witness. In the process, a maverick form of social comment seems to emerge - the house becomes a secret mirror of the times, arbitrary and selective, reflecting shafts of light from unexpected directions"

I thought this was a wonderful book. It combines twentieth century social history, focussing particularly on the domestic, with the stories of the lives of Lively's family, and Lively's own reminiscences. Lively writes well, and the book is entirely captivating.

There is a very good review of the book here.

A wonderful day out

The snow proved passable, and despite a couple of delayed trains and extreme cold I made it to London ok in time for a fantastic day of bookshopping and bookchatting! The primary purpose of the day was to visit the Persephone bookshop, to celebrate the Persephone Reading Week that Paperback Reader (who writes about the trip here)and I held on our blogs at the end of August last year. However, Claire and I managed to squeeze in a visit to a very cheap second hand bookshop in Notting Hill that I could have spent all day in, in order to seek out Virago Modern Classics for my Virago Venture, and we also had a quick trip to the V and A for tea and cake with BookSnob Rachel and BloomsburyBell Naomi; it was lovely to meet the girls, particularly as Rachel had managed to get hold of the Penguin postcards for me - hurrah!

It was great to visit the Persephone shop again and have the chance to chat to Nicola, Lydia and Fiona. Conversation covered all sorts of things, from exclusion diets, to current reading material, and the typesetting of Persephone books. At the end, Claire and I were invited to look at the damaged books shelf in the basement to see if there was anything that we wanted - Claire and I tried not to fight over the ones that we both wanted. I was excited to get among other things, a copy of The Hopkins Manuscript (Sherriff), the Julian Grenfell biography, and some Dorothy Whipples (which I have read but would love to reread as didn't have my own copies), along with The country housewife's book. Very many thanks to Nicola for her kindness and hospitality.


As you can see, I came home with rather a lot of books...and in fact had to take a taxi from the shop to Paddington Station as I wasn't sure I could manage them all on the underground! At least if I had been delayed I wouldn't have suffered a shortage of reading material! As it was, I started The closed door and other stories by Dorothy Whipple. I thought I didn't like short stories but this is the collection that has changed my mind - each story is complete in itself, and they tend to keep you gripped right up until the last pages.

Now that I have 55 of the 86 Persephone titles I am determined to complete my collection, and will be treating myself to some more from the shop in due course, asking for some for my birthday and looking out for others on Amazon marketplace.

I accidentally picked up two copies of Katherine Mansfield's Journal, and so I am holding a giveaway to celebrate the trip. The copy lacks a dust wrapper, but is otherwise a fine reading copy. If you would like to enter this competition, please comment on this post, and tell me which Persephone book you would most like to read and why. (There is a complete list of the books here)

So - a good day out - books, friends, tea, and now a giveaway - what more could one want?!



PS: For those of you who have asked, the next Persephone Reading Week will probably be the first week of May this year - watch this space!

Honno Books - Dew on the grass (Lewis) and Travels with a Duchess (Gallie)

The day before I went on holiday, my packing was slightly compromised by the arrival of a parcel of three books from the Honno Press. Honno are a publisher devoted to the publication of Welsh women's writing; within that remit they have a "classics" series which, like Persephone books, or the Bloomsbury Group books, republishes "forgotten" Welsh classics. Honno books have been at the back of my mind for a while, so I was extremely grateful when they kindly offered to send me three books to read. (They also sent a catalogue, which made me realise that I'd be interested in some more of their modern books too, as well as forced me to create a wish-list of other items that I'd like to read!).

The first book I read was The dew on the grass by Eiluned Lewis. In some ways, this was like a Welsh Cider with Rosie - a charming, semi-autobiographical description of a rural childhood in Montgomeryshire at the beginning of the twentieth century seen through the eyes of nine year old Lucy. I found this utterly delightful, giving an insight into everyday life as well as describing other incidents, such as the day Lucy gets to spend by herself while the family is away - she enacts the plots of various books, and enlists her small baby sister into being a hostage! I had no familiarity with Wales at this time so found it really interesting to read.

I followed that almost immediately with Travels with a duchess by Menna Gallie. This was quite different! The blurb on the back sums up the story by asking "Just how much trouble can a Welsh Shirley Valentine get into on a foreign holiday?". The book is the tale of Innes Gibson. Her husband Mike's holiday has been postponed, so she decides to go on holiday - to Yugoslavia - alone. On arrival, she teams up with another lone female traveller, Joan, and the pair have a wonderful series of misadventures as they travel around the country. I thought it was hilarious and didn't know WHAT would happen next. Absolutely brilliant.
(Isn't it a wonderful cover by the way, illustrated with cut-out dolls?)

I am planning to read the third book Eunice Fleet by Lily Tobias at some point this week and shall write about it in due course. Suffice to say I am looking forward to reading very many more books published by Honno in 2010.


*edit* Honno books had a Christmas discount that was still on on 4/01/10 so I did buy myself four more classics...

Library loot

Having staggered back to the library on Monday with over 20 books read during the Christmas period, I obviously had quite a large bag to fill with library books. I had three reservations to collect (the middle three books, all of which I have read about on blogs during 2009), and wanted a book about knitting (re-learning to knit, and learning to cast-on is one of my 2010 projects, inspired by blogging friends who knit!), but I just could not find anything else that I wanted which was frustrating as my TBR piles are at the lowest that they have been for a while. I did manage to pick up this wintery sounding Wodehouse for my partner.


I LOVED Brooklyn, and was gripped right until the final pages, waiting to find out how the story would resolve itself. I am very keen to read more Toibin, so if anyone has read anything else by him I'd love some recommendations. I was very excited to see that it has won the novel category of the Costas.

Love and Summer was good, but a little disappointing after Brooklyn. I think I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn't read them together.

Knitting would have happened, but for the snow which prevented me from getting to the knitting shop as planned yesterday. On the subject of snow, please keep everything crossed as I try to get to London, despite thick snow, to have tea at the Persephone bookshop today!

The snow cow (Kochanski)

I received The snow cow to review shortly before Christmas, via librarything.com's Early Reviewer scheme. I have often requested their books, but this was the first time that I got lucky. As the book is a short story collection subtitled "Ghost stories for skiers" I thought that I should save it for our skiing trip. I was planning just to read my way through it, but when we were bored with Austrian TV one night, my partner and I decided to read the stories to each other. The experiment was mixed - we liked the idea of reading aloud to each other, but we weren't very impressed by the stories.

The book contains 13 skiing themed stories set in Switzerland; the author obviously knows his stuff about skiing and the area which made them seem pretty convincing to us seasoned skiers. However, I had two major quibbles with the stories. Firstly, neither of us found the stories remotely scary, or even particularly ghostly. Disquieting is about as far as I would go. Secondly, I did not find the writing particularly good; in fact, my partner said "If he skis as well as he writes, then I wouldn't want to be anywhere near him on the piste". I thought it was a bit self-conscious and overly-written. Like another librarything.com reviewer I also found myself wondering what the point of some of the stories was.

Anyway, I liked the idea of reading aloud, and I liked reading stories about skiing. So does anyone have any recommendations for short stories which can be read aloud, or stories about wintersports?

Dear Mr Bigelow (Woodsford)

Fiona from Random House very kindly made my Christmas when she sent me a copy of Dear Mr. Bigelow. I am a big fan of what I would describe as "real social history" - where the lives of people in the past are revealed through their letters and diaries, and where personal stories are combined with descriptions of everyday living conditions.

Dear Mr Bigelow brings together an edited selection of letters written by Frances Woodford in the immediate post-war period to Mr Bigelow. The correspondence arose after his daughter, Rosalind, very kindly sent the Woodfords a number of food parcels; Frances picked up that Mr Bigelow was lonely, and tried to convey her thanks to Rosalind for her generosity by writing to Mr Bigelow each week. Because she wrote on a weekly basis, the letters are almost diary-like and give a wonderful insight into Frances' life; she lived in Bournemouth and worked at the Public Baths, where she was supposedly secretary, but actually seemed to run the establishment.

I absolutely loved this book. I loved the period details, and just the descriptions of everyday incidents such as the potential cost of learning to drive, or the member of staff at the baths who eats treacle on top of his crumpets...which are already covered with toasted cheese. She talks about her reading, which includes the comedies of William Congreve, and "for the third time" Pride and Prejudice. It brings home the deprivations of the 1950s, where rationing was even harsher than during the war, with constant shortages of basics like meat.

There are also a number of wonderful illustrations, which Frances sent to Mr Bigelow - sometimes as part of the letters and sometimes separately, and several are included here, mostly amusing cartoons relating to incidents in her life.

I very much recommend these sorts of books for holiday reading - the letter format means that it can be picked up and put down, or read in a longer sitting. I had to ration myself from my usual gallop through a book to ensure that it didn't end too soon. If you liked Nella Last's diaries, Mrs Milburn's diaries, or Simon Garfield's collection Our Hidden Lives, then I am sure you will like this book - and if you liked this book then do try one of those.

2010 : here I come

Happy New Year to all of my readers. I'm sorry that posting has been a bit sporadic over the last few weeks - the alps below were wonderful, and I am still reeling from having read so many books in 2010. The holiday period was certainly good for reading, and as I have another week until I go back to work I anticipate reading a fair few more books. However, I really must get back to blogging as I have a huge pile of reviews to write, both of books that I particularly want to tell you about and of books which were sent to me by publishers to review. So I hope to get on with that this week!

I haven't yet thought about the things that I want to blog about this year. I hope to keep on writing reviews, and about other bookish things (we are planning a Mitford-themed walk this afternoon!). I am very excited about a trip to a certain bookshop in London on Thursday as a result of the Persephone Reading Week which we held last August, and hopefully we will be announcing another PRW for 2010. I am also looking forward to meeting a couple of Oxford and London based bloggers in the coming weeks. I shall also be continuing with my challenge to read my way through the Virago Modern Classics, so do watch out for my other blog.

I look forward to seeing your new year plans for reading, and hope to drop into your blogs soon.

Christmas bake #5 : Melt in the mouth cranberry biscuits

I came across a recipe from Christmassy shortbread, involving cranberries, and I decided to adapt it slightly, to include nutmeg and orange zest. The result was a delicious spicy and buttery biscuit...