Random Jottings

Current reading and recently received

Books piling up again as per. I do not know why I worry and fret as I came to terms with the fact yonks ago that I am NEVER going to be able to cope with everything that comes my way. However, when lovely publishers sent me books I feel terrible pangs of guilt if I do not at least mention them even if I do not get round to reading every single title.  So, to that end here we go...

Jane Austen Teenage writings - another one of those Oxford World's Classics which I love and all classic paperbacks on my shelves are in these editions as they are far and away my favourites. I have been having an Austen binge recently, see my post on two versions of her unfinished fragment, The Watsons, and then Jane Fairfax by Joan Aiken which is an interesting take on this character from Emma.

But nothing beats the originals and in this anniversary year Jane will be celebrated worldwide and this arrival goes to the top of my pile and will be read.

And another from OUP - Love, Madness and Scandal by Johanna Luthman which I have been dipping into. The life of Frances Coke Villiers, Viscountess Purbeck. Forced into a political expedient marriage which failed, she then separated from her husband, became involved in scandal, had an illegitimate child and was convicted of adultery.  If she were alive today she would be perfect fodder for Hello magazine.....

Great stuff and, as always with OUP, beautifully produced and illustrated.

Crimson and Bone by Marina Fiorato. I have read several of this author's historical novels and enjoyed them very much and this looks promising, set in Victorian London and Florence.   Near the top of my pile.

Les Parisiennes by Anne Sebba. How the Women of Paris lived, loved and died in the 1940s. I am halfway through this and finding it fascinating. How did women survive during the Occupation?  Some of them collaborated (Coco Chanel being just one)  but many quietly defied the Germans working underground and running huge risks. But even in the darkest moments of the Occupation, glamour was ever present and French women wore lipstick - so it says on the blurb and I am prepared to believe it!

Ok that is it for the moment. I have also read a couple of George Bellairs on my Kindle, both of which I feel must have been written towards the end of his writing career as, I have to be honest, they are not very good, but I still enjoyed them.

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And in response to requests I am giving you a picture or two of my wonderful new bookshelves which now line one long wall of my living room. They were made specially to my specifications and I am totally in love with them. This is where my core library is shelved and it is wonderful to be able to see all my books.

However, double stacking is already on the cards but these are much deeper than my old ones so that will not be a problem.

The Watsons - Jane Austen. Two endings

I have recently read two versions of The Watsons by Jane Austen and have found it very amusing to see how they differ and how the authors of both completions have diverged so widely in so many ways.

The story is told from the viewpoint of Emma Watson who, like Jane Fairfax, had been sent away from home as a small child to live with her aunt. The Austen family seem to have been quite happy in happily dispatching children willy nilly to various relatives though it seems rather odd to modern sensibilities. One wonders what the children thought of it all.  Emma was brought up in a comfortable household with all the niceties and is a refined ladylike character. But now her aunt, a widow, has remarried and what is more has married an Irishman, Captain O'Brien and carried her off to Ireland. It is clear from the tone of the Austen fragment and the consequent writing that the Irish are viewed as being little less than savages and her remarriage is strongly disapproved of. Emma is sent home as the new husband has no desire to have her around and Emma meets her family for the first time since a child.

The two different versions I have read make for interesting reading. One is by Joan Aiken, very well known, who has also written other Austen sequels, Mansfield Revisited, Jane Fairfax, to name but two. I have my doubts about these I will admit. The author just fails to capture the essence and the language of Austen and also veers wildly off-piste with the story line at some stage which I always find a tad irritating.

The second is by John Coates and was written in 1951. I came across this book in a jumble sale about three years ago and bought it for the princely sum of £1 and it has been languishing on my shelves every since. I recently had wonderful new bookshelves built for me and was able to sort out all my library and actually see some books which I had forgotten about, as everything was double stacked. So it was rather a nice surprise to find this title and I sat down and read it, and then re-read the Aiken which I already had, immediately afterwards.

After doing a bit of research I was delighted to find that John Coates wrote Patience, which was published by Perspehone books a few years ago and which I reviewed here. That was totally unexpected. According to their website he was born in 1912 into a Yorkshire engineering family. He went to Haileybury and then read English at Cambridge, where he spent most of his time acting and writing plays and became President of Footlights.

The cast of characters are the same in both books with the odd addition, but both authors give them totally different attributes and feelings. I actually had to draw a table so that I could sort out who was who and how they different as I got a bit muddled after my two day Watson blitz. This is what I came up with:

Elizabeth Watson - eldest daughter who looks after the invalid Mr Watson, runs the house, does her own washing and some cooking, dismissed as being an old maid who lost a lover in the past, and rather ignored by everyone, except the returning Emma who sees her as she really is, a lovable, kind and warmhearted woman. Both John Coats (JC) and Joan Aiken (JAK) do not change this at all.

Mr Watson - in both books he is ill and feeble but a tad more with it in the JC version. Mr Woodhouse comes to mind without the self indulgence.

Mary Watson - now she stays the same as well. Whiny, moany, self pitying and desperate to find a husband. Makes slighting and contemptuous comments about everyone and is a bit of a snob. Think Mary Elliot in Persuasion, only worse.

Penelope Watson - now here the authors wildly diverge. In the JAK version Penelope is, quite frankly, an absolute cow. Domineering, unpleasant and foul to her sisters, she has managed to trap an elderly doctor into marrying her and then proceeds to make his life a complete misery. Jealous of Emma's 'refinement' and upbringing.

JC gives her a totally different slant. She and Emma (who he calls Emily in his version) form a loving friendship. Penelope is witty and amusing and not afraid to give her opinion.  Think Mary Crawford in Mansfield Park.

The other peripheral characters in The Watson, the neighbours and friends etc are more or less the same but the local family that everyone looks up to and wants to have on their guest list, is the Osbornes who live in Osborne Castle and are very rich and very proud. And here, once again, the two versions are totally different in their treatment of this family.

JAK makes Lady Osborne a positively ogre, Lady Catherine de Burgh comes to mind most strongly, and a widow who has her eye on Mr Howard, the castle chaplain, despite the fact he is some fifteen years younger than her.  Her son, George, is stiff and proud and awkward - Mr Darcy anyone? (The pleasure of reading these books is spotting how the author has lifted characteristics from other well known Austen heroes and heroines).

JC makes her a lovable and slightly eccentric character not unlike Mrs Jennings in Sense and Sensibility (I do apologise for constantly referring to other Austen creations but it gives an idea of the way each author has chosen to portray them). She is fond of Emma/Emily and makes no secret of the fact that she would be quite happy for her son to marry Emily even though she has no fortune.

It is clear from the fragment that Jane Austen wrote that Mr Howard is the choice of husband for Emma Watson but Joan Aiken chooses to ignore this, pitches him into this slightly dodgy relationship with Lady Osborne, and introduces a new character toward the end of the novel to whom Emma becomes engaged. This really does not ring true at all and one gets the impression that by this time JAK did not know how to wind everything up after the story line she had pursued and brought him in at the last minute.

JC follows Jane Austen's lead and unites Mr Howard and Emma, but only after the usual misunderstandings and upsets, as in all true love stories. I rather like Mr Howard - think Edmund Ferrers but with a lot more oomph and you will have got him just about right.

There is another character, Tom Musgrave, who is the same in both versions. Charming, amusing, flirts with all the ladies and is Not to be Trusted (sorry I am off again, think Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility and you get the idea).

Well I have meandered on long enough and it is time for my boiled egg and soldiers (I am writing this at 7 am) so off I hie. I really enjoyed reading these two books. The Joan Aiken one is easily available and after a check on Amazon found that the John Coats one is gettable, and there is a Kindle availability as well. I really recommend this version and think it is closer to realising Jane Austen. I could not put it down whereas the Aiken I could leave easily.

Has anybody else out in Random Space read either of these, and if so, would love to have your thoughts.

PS have just discovered another version by Jennifer Ready Bettiol, a member of JASNA, the North American JA society. 99p on Kindle. So no surprise that I have just bought it....

The Dead shall be Raised & the Murder of a Quack - George Bellairs

More from the British Library Classic Crime series and more from this author who I discovered last year. Delightfully old fashioned, the inspector catches the bus to appointments, uses the telephone to ask for information and, even more daring, occasionally uses a fax machine (but only in the later novels). I really enjoy them and I do like Inspector Littlejohn with his pipe smoking sensible character - he is a bit Inspector Wexford, a bit Lewis and I think he is lovely.

The British Library have issued two stories in one volume here so you are getting good value for money. The Dead Shall be Raised is set in the winter of 1940. The Home Guard discover a skeleton on the moor above the Yorkshire town of Hatterworth where Inspector Littlejohn is staying with his wife as guests of the local police superintendent. An earlier crime had taken place in exactly the same spot and when this body is identified as a man who has been missing for years and assumed to be the murderer, then it is clear that the murderer is still at large.

When the body is discovered a performance of the Messiah is taking place at the Chapel, it being Christmas, and Inspector Haworth, a fine bass baritone as well as being a policeman, is performing.  A message regarding the discovery of the body is sent to him via a local constable "Now don't go and upset him in the middle of Why do the Nations but give it to him as soon as you can"

When I reviewed my first Bellairs book I sprang to the defence of the author who has not been regarded as a great writer, and I daresay he isn't, but he has a warmth about his narrative and description which I find rather endearing  "As the lovely overture filled the air, Littlejohn was transported from the hall filled with strangers to the little chapel of his childhood. In his mind's eye he saw the singing pew filled with old familiar old faces; many now long dead, the amateur organist with his work cut out in keeping up with the choruses....the unpretentious but worthy soloists.  The ghost of Christmas Past stood by his shoulder.....there was not a vacant seat in the church, the walls streamed with moisture and the place was like an oven. The chapel-keeper opened one of the doors leading from the vestibule into the main street and the exquisite aria floated out into the still Christmas night and seemed to ring across the moorland beyond. "Every valley shall be exalted" echoed challengingly in the quiet hills and valleys"

Now I think that is rather lovely. Don't you?

I read this story when lying on a sun bed on a beach on tiny little island off the coast off Fiji with the sun blazing down, glorious blue sky and turquoise sea in front of me and this description of the chapel and the Messiah reminded me of home and I thought it was beautifully done.

The second story in the volume The Death of a Quack tells of a local bone setter, not a qualified doctor but who has a large practice in Norfolk. He is found hanging but from examination of the body it is soon clear that it is a murder disguised as a suicide.

Not one of this author's best I feel and yet it has its own charm as we meet all the local villagers, including a drunk doctor who is losing his patients left right and centre to the so called Quack, and who is clearly top of the list of suspects, but in Bellairs books there are always eccentric and odd local worthies who all have a motive as well one way or the other.

Two books well worth pursuing. I always link to my earlier post on Bellairs when I review a new title as I really do want you to check him out and see what you think and with the British Library producing a publication with one of its delightful covers then really what are you waiting for?

Bellairs has written dozens of books featuring Littlejohn so I know I have many more happy hours ahead of me.

 

The Poisoned Chocolates Case - Anthony Berkeley

By now everyone who visits Random knows I love crime novels. I have done all my life and it is such a joy to have the British Library reprinting so many of the classic stories and making them available again. The Poisoned Chocolates Case by Anthony Berkeley is one of the most famous classic who dun its. I have read about it so many times, not least in the wonderful book The Golden Age of Murder by Martin Edwards, reviewed here, and yet I am ashamed to say I had never read it.

Well I have now.

And it is as brilliant as they all said it was.

Graham and Joan Bendix are a happily married couple. They have visited the theatre and they have a bet with each other as to the outcome of a play, the loser to buy the winner a box of chocolates.  Well Joan wins and Graham mentions the fact that he has to buy a box of chocolates for his wife to a fellow member of his club, Sir Eustace Pennefather. Sir Eustace has just been sent a box of sample chocolates from a confectionery firm asking for his opinion on their product and, Sir Eustace, having no interest in so doing hands them over to Graham to give to his wife.

He eats a couple of them himself but leaves the rest of the box to Joan. Later on in the day he is taken ill with pain and vomiting and rushed to hospital. He survives but his wife who has scoffed quite a few of the chocolates, does not.   When the police are called in and test the chocolates they find they have been poisoned.

Roger Sheringham, who has appeared in other books by the author, hosts a club, the Crime Circle, and they all get together and decide to see if they can come up with a solution to the crime, which has baffled the police. In turn each of the members of the Circle come up with a solution and a culprit and, as the reader will find, every single opinion put forward is workable and could be the right one. I fancied that I had got the right answer and was getting a bit above myself as nobody else had come up with this idea when, bang, the next member to promulgate his theory pinched mine. So I was nicely brought back to earth.

There was a hint in the above mentioned book by Martin Edwards, that Anthony Berkeley and E M Delafield were 'close' friends and one of the Circle members, Alicia Dammers seems to bear some relationship to the author of Diary of a Provincial Lady:

"Alicia Dammers, with her good looks, her tall slim figure and her irreproachable sartorial taste, had satisfied the very fastidious requirements so far as feminine appearance was concerned".

I shall view EMD in a different light the next time I re-read her Provincial Lady books......

A gem, a total gem, and there seems to end to the lost and now newly discovered books that the British Library are publishing. Long may this continue.

A Distant View of Everythig - Alexander McCall Smith

I have given up trying to keep pace with this author's output. At one stage in my reading career I was chasing up the No 1 Ladies Detective Agency,  the 44 Scotland Street Series and  ditto the Corduroy Mansion books. It all got a bit much and so I retired from the field.   I have to be honest and say that I was beginning to find the books a bit 'samey' and rather meandering.

But I have stuck with the Isabel Dalhousie books and I have hardback copies of all of them on my shelves and I so enjoy them and buy each one as soon as it is published. I don't want the Kindle editions, I want the hardback. 

Isabel Dalhousie lives in Edinburgh with her husband Jamie, fourteen years younger than her which gives her pause now and then, with their son Charlie and, in this latest novel, she has had a second son Magnus. Charlie is not too enamoured of his new little brother and insists he should be 'put down the drain'. They live in a splendid house with a general factotum or housekeeper, Grace, who Isabel inherited from her father when he left her the house and here they all live in domestic harmony and it is all rather life affirming and balm to the soul to read.

Isabel is a philosopher and part of the joy, for me at any rate, of these stories is the wandering off into various tangents and discussions arising from the subject in hand. Now here I have no problem with the meandering which I found slightly tedious in McCall Smith's other books and the leisurely pace of the narrative is most pleasing.   The story line is almost incidental in this series though obviously there is a plot, as such. Isabel has a reputation for 'helping' people, problems are brought to her to solve and in a quiet way and taking a long slow path to the solution, she manages to resolve them, though not always in the way she expects.

In A Distant View of Everything, an old school friend, Bea Shandon contacts her.She is worried. Bea loves matchmaking and pairing people off and she feels that a recent successful meeting between a woman friend and a well known plastic surgeon may have been a mistake. She has heard that the man in question has a bad reputation with women and tends to attach himself to those with wealth and then, having extracted money from them, leaves them. One has even tried to commit suicide.

So Isabel sets out to investigate and finds all is not as it seems.....

If you are a lover of the Dalhousie novels than I need say no more. If you are new to them, be warned they are not full of blood and guts and exciting crime, they are gentler and kinder than that but always to the point and real. For me the pleasure in reading them is the prose, the elegant fluid writing, not a superfluous dot or comma or exclamation mark anywhere. beautifully clean writing. On my first introduction to Isabel I skipped paragraphs as I got a bit impatient with the sliding off topic, but no longer. Now I find a quiet sit down with the latest in this series is good for me. It makes me sit quietly and relax and when I close the book up I feel calm and rested.

This week on my return from Australia when I am feeling unsettled and a bit emotional at missing my Oz based daughter, it was just what I needed.

Singapore Airlines - Way to Go!

I am back and writing this at 5 am as jet lag is still with me though receding fast thank goodness. I had seven hours sleep last night which is more than I usually get so am happy with that.   Difficult to realise I am home, it feels odd and I have got used to being with Kathryn, seeing her and speaking to her every day and cooking meals for her, and going out to lovely restaurants together (Sydney has fantastic eateries) and to find myself in the kitchen the other morning boiling an egg and being on my own reduced me to tears.   However, I will not repine and know that it will soon get better.

As I have had trouble with my left knee the last couple of weeks and found it very painful and difficult to walk, asked for assistance at the airport when I checked in. I was flying Business Class which was such a terrific experience, and the service I received from Singapore Airlines was incredible Nothing was too much trouble and the help and support I experienced made my journey so much easier. I also never felt that it was just a professional service, everyone seemed to be glad to help and they looked after me so well. Taken in a wheelchair to the Business Class lounge where I was brought food and drink, then collected and wheeled to the very door of the plane and helped to my seat. Stay over at SIngapore for four hours, collected, taken to lounge again, collected and once more taken to plane. When I wanted to sleep they converted my seat into a bed, gave me blankets and made sure I was comfortable. Woke up after a few hours thinking I would love a glass of water and found a bottle perched by my side.   Later on when I was wide awake, pressed my call button and I was brought tea and biscuits. Oh I could go on and on but it was a terrific experience and though nothing will make flying long haul a non tedious experience, Singapore airlines certainly made it bearable. I shall be flying with them again.

And if you think this picture is only posed, which of course it is, I can assure you that at one stage when I was drifting off to sleep I felt myself being tucked in!

Came back to find my flat newly decorated, my new bookshelves up which are so beautiful I keep sitting and gawping at them, and a lot to do rearranging pictures, furniture etc so that will keep me busy.   I will be going up to Kew next week to see my gorgeous girls and then i will feel much better.

Au reservoir for now