Recent and Current Reads

Catching up as I am falling behind as always.   So many books, so little time!

Harriet Evans - Not without You. 

You take a look at this book and check out the cover and what is your immediate reaction?   Same as mine - chiklit.   I do think this genre damns with faint praise as we all assume that the book is going to be of a certain type and a girly read with not much substance.  Which is a shame as I have read all of Harriet's books now and have thoroughly enjoyed them all finding them well
written and full of interesting characters.

This one is, in my opinion, her best so far and it employs one of my favourite narrative devices, two stories, on in the present and one in the past, but which are linked and we hop backwards and forwards until all is tied up nicely and sorted out at the end.

Sophie Leigh, formerly Sophie Sykes of Swindon, is now a movie star living in LA. She is the queen of light comedy and yet yearns to prove that she is capable of more than rom com movies, but her agent is determined she will not take such a risk with her career.   She is fascinated by an earlier movie star, Eve Noel, who had a breakdown, disappeared one night and left her career behind and has never been seen since. 

Whereas Sophie has confidence in herself and the will to try new paths, Eve did not. She was a product of the studio system, told what to do, what to say and all decisions, even the choice of her name, were taken out of her hands.

When reading this book I was reminded very much of Jacqueline Susann's Valley of the Dolls which was regarded as so much dross when it was first published but is now a Virago classic, heaven help us.  This book is a compelling and readable story about the Hollywod system and how it uses and discards its stars, very similar to the theme of Valley, but this is better than and I found it totally unputdownable.    Harriet Evans is a good writer and a writer of more substance than the cover of this book would lead you to believe.

The Wry Romance of the Literary Rectory - Deborah Alun-Jones.  This is not a book to be rushed, but to be savoured and I have been reading a chapter a night for the last few weeks. We all know the pleasure of a story set in a rectory - Jane Austen is perhaps the first we think of followed swiftly by the Brontes whose well documented life in Haworth has brought this village world wide fame. Having visited the parsonage on a dark, rainy and miserable day it seems a miracle to me that the Brontes survived their enclosed world 'One day resembles another' said Charlotte.

Jane Austen's rectory/parsonage seems a lighter place, more in sunlight than shadow and shot through with humour (a commodity Charlotte Bronte was singularly lacking though hardly surprising in the light of her life marred by tragedy) and most of us who love Austen will immediately think of Mr Collins who wanted to marry one of the Bennett girls to please his patroness, Lady Catherine de Burgh whose living was in her gift.

In the introduction to this very interesting and well written book, we learn of the importance socially of the rectory in village life. In a well to do parish the vicar, if he was unmarried, was an extremely eligible parti for the local ladies (Mr Elton in Emma being such an example); the poorer the parish the less chance the rector/vicar had of being regarded as an acceptable husband.

Many parsonages nowadays are more modern and up to date buildings and the charm of the old parsonage has vanished, they are now more likely to be bought by private owners and any country village will have The Old Parsonage as a desirable property.

The long introduction sets the background for the main body of the book which has chapters about Parsonages and those who lived in them: Alfred Tennyson at Somersby, Rupert Brook at Grantchester, John Betjeman at Farnborough and Dorothy L Sayers at Bluntisham amongst others.

A delightful and engaging read.    

Yale UP have been very generous to me and have sent me several books recently. I am totally enthralled by the Diaries of Richard Burton and will be giving a full review in due course. I still have a little way to go but can say already that they reveal a man, not necessarily the tortured genius that the tabloids love to depict, but a warm and loving man well aware of his failures and foibles, but someone that I think I would not be afraid to meet and talk to.   Yes, despite his great celebrity.

I have just started The Woman Reader by Belinda Jack, one of those that arrived alongside Burton. This book covers the complete history of women's reading from prehistoric caves to digital bookstores.   This is going to take some concentration on my part as it is scholarly and simply packed full of marvellously interesting views and I am going to have to take it slowly a chapter at a time and may have to give you my thoughts at intervals.

Lots of Christmas books appearing in the shops at the moment and, as usual, many ghosted biographies and autobiographies of so called 'celebrities' who think that as they have appeared in a soap on TV or have a drink and/or drug problem we are interested in their incredibly boring lives. I think these are purchased as presents for people you do not know very well and have no idea what they would like. They inevitably appear in charity shops throughout the land in the New Year.

I hope to be bringing some more interesting titles to your attention in the next few weeks so watch this space.