Random Jottings

Anne Bronte - Happy Birthday

It is 200 years since Anne was born - it was in January 1820 so my birthday thoughts are somewhat late.  This year we were due to have a visit by Nick Holland, author of a superb biography of Anne, at the Felixstowe Book Festival but that never happened as along with other festivals, it had to be cancelled.

I was looking forward to his talk very much as I love Anne and think she is under appreciated and in this video I try to explain why.

I know some of you have difficulty with the sound of the videos which are filmed on my ipad and I tried to record this on my laptop. Unfortunately the video quality is not good and I looked like Morticia Adams so I reverted back to the ipad.  I have ordered a  microphone as the last one I had was useless so, let us hope next time is better.

In the meantime I do hope you enjoy listening and please leave thoughts and comments.

 

 

P D James- An Appreciation

Just recently I have been rediscovering Josephine Tey and I had forgotten what a wonderful writer she was. It is difficult to convey the sheer pleasure of such lucid, elegant and seamless prose which makes reading such a joy.  It is no surprise that after this rediscovery I decided to return to another writer whose writing falls into the same category as Tey, the kind of writing which flows, seemingly so easily, not a extraneous verb, adverb, comma or full stop. 

I came late to PD James, picking up one of her books at a book fair for 50p years ago and thinking that it looked interesting.  It was A Taste for Death and opened with the discovery of two bodies in a church in London, both with their throats cut, one of them being a Cabinet Minister who had recently resigned from the Government. So an intriguing premise.

I should have read the books in order but I never do, I just grab them when I see them but last week I read her first Dalgliesh Cover her Face (if I remember rightly this is a quote from the Duchess of Malfi and Agatha Christie uses it in Sleeping Murder.  I am just showing off here.....).

This title was published in 1962 and it has dated somewhat with class distinction a central theme. The victim, Sally Jupp, is an unmarried mother and, of course, back then such a person was regarded as a pariah.  While I feel PD James wants to feel sympathy with her she does portray Sally as a sly manipulative piece of work and her murder hardly comes as a surprise.  But this was the first in the Dalgliesh series and as the author became more certain of her ground and her characters they grow and expand.

A Certain Justice was next. Venetia Aldridge, QC is a distinguished barrister with a knack of arousing dislike in her colleagues and friends.  Her fierce drive to be the best and her ambition has led to an estrangement from her daughter and conflict with her fellow barristers in Chambers.  On the retirement of the current Head of Chambers, Venetia will take over, an event that is not greeted with any joy by Dyysdale Laud, who thinks it should be him, by the Clerk Harold Naughton who Venetia wish to be rid of and replace with an office manager, by the timid secretary who Venetia despises and other colleague who wish her ill.  Venetia's intolerance and impatience with them all is exacerbated by the crisis with her daughter Olivia who has become engaged to a young man, Ashe, who Venetia has just defended in a murder case.  He was acquitted because of her brilliant defence but it is clear that he is guilty.  For the first time in her life Venetia is powerless to act.  No surprise then that she is the victim.

The Private Patient was the last Dalgliesh and I think it is one of her best.

Rhoda Gradwyn is an investigative journalist, who has booked into a private clinic for the removal of a disfiguring scar on her face, inflicted upon her by a drunken father during her unhappy childhood. She has kept this scar as a badge of her determination not to let life defeat her, but now feels it is time to rid herself of this unsightly mark and to face up to her past.  She is looking forward to a successful operation and a convalescence at the beautiful manor house in Dorset which is the clinic's headquarters. 

Her operation takes place, all is well and she settles down to sleep in her bedroom.  In the middle of the night she awakes, she knows somebody is in the room and looking up she sees a dark masked figure coming towards her....

Dalgliesh and his team are called in and there follows the usual complex, beautifully plotted narrative which leads us to a denouement which is not quite the end of the story, as there is an added twist in the final chapter which is not totally cleared up, leaving the reader to wonder.

I remember posting on this some years ago and highlighted this paragraph which is so beautifully descriptive and made me feel in great sympathy with Rhoda and I insert it here again with no apology for so doing:

"Eight years ago she had taken a lease on a house in the City, part of a narrow terrace in a small courtyard at the end of Absolution Alley near Cheapside, and knew as soon as she moved in that this was the part of London in which she would always choose to live........many generations had lived in it, born and died there leaving behind nothing but their names on browning and archaic leases.........although the lower rooms with their mullioned windows were dark, those in her study and sitting room on the top storey were open to the sky, giving a view of the towers and steeples of the City....an iron staircase led from a narrow balcony to secluded roof which held a row of terracotta pots and where on fine Sunday mornings she would sit with her books or newspapers as the Sabbath calm lengthened into midday and the early peace was broken only by the familiar peals of the City bells"

I found myself liking Rhoda, probably because I too find it essential to find time to myself and to be on my own.  We are given the background to Rhoda's life and how she was scarred; her friends, not many, she was essentially solitary person, her desire to finally come to terms with her disfigurement.  Not necessarily an immediately lovable character but PD James tells us enough about her that we feel sadness that her life came to a sudden end and, what is worse, knowing in her last few minutes, that this was it, this was death coming towards her....

Brilliant.

In the last two weeks I have read Death of an Expert Witness, Death in Holy Orders and have now embarked on The Lighthouse.   It has been so long since I read them that I had actually forgotten the identity of the murderer though a glimmer of memory towards the end of one of them alerted me. One I had so forgotten it was a wonderful surprise to discover Who Dun It if that is an appropriate description. Perhaps not...

I still have another eight or nine to re-read and am looking forward to enjoying them all over again. Today is a windy, wind and leaf swept autumn day and is just perfect for staying indoors, keeping warm and reading.

Adam Dalgleish is in the tradition of elegant, fastidious detectives from Ngaio Marsh's Roderick Alleyn to Sayers Lord Peter, vulnerable and at times capable of great sensitivity.  Odd how the British detectives (I count Ngaio Marsh as British as the vast majority of her stories are set in England), despite multiple murders and gory details, manage to maintain this air of tea on the lawn, and servants in the kitchen below stairs, even though Adam certainly doesn't fit into that category.

 

Difficult to convey to you just how much I love her writing. The word mellifluos comes to mind the definition of which is  "(of a sound) pleasingly smooth and musical to hear".  Reading her prose and hearing it in your inward ear this description is perfect. Here is an example of her writing which I hope shows what I am trying to say in my muddled way:

 

"London had laid its spell on him and though his love affair with the city, as with all loves, had had its moments of disillusion, disappointment and threatened infidelity, the spell had remained ..... the panorama beneath him never failed to enchant. He saw it always as an artefact, sometimes a coloured lithograph in the delicate shades of a spring morning, sometimes a pen and ink drawing, every spire, every tower, every tree lovingly delineated, sometimes an oil, strong and vigorous. Tonight it was a psychedilic water colour, splashes of scarlet and grey latering the blue black of the night sky, the streets running with molten red and green as the traffic lights changed, the buildings with their squares of white windows pasted like coloured cut outs against the backcloth of the night"

 

Isn't that just perfect?

 

PS at the moment many of these titles are on Kindle at a silly price - do take advantage!

 

 

 

 

The Private Patient was the last Dalgliesh and I think it is one of her best.

Rhoda Gradwyn is an investigative journalist, who has booked into a private clinic for the removal of a disfiguring scar on her face, inflicted upon her by a drunken father during her unhappy childhood. She has kept this scar as a badge of her determination not to let life defeat her, but now feels it is time to rid herself of this unsightly mark and to face up to her past.  She is looking forward to a successful operation and a convalescence at the beautiful manor house in Dorset which is the clinic's headquarters. 

Her operation takes place, all is well and she settles down to sleep in her bedroom.  In the middle of the night she awakes, she knows somebody is in the room and looking up she sees a dark masked figure coming towards her....

Dalgliesh and his team are called in and there follows the usual complex, beautifully plotted narrative which leads us to a denouement which is not quite the end of the story, as there is an added twist in the final chapter which is not totally cleared up, leaving the reader to wonder.

I remember posting on this some years ago and highlighted this paragraph which is so beautifully descriptive and made me feel in great sympathy with Rhoda and I insert it here again with no apology for so doing:

"Eight years ago she had taken a lease on a house in the City, part of a narrow terrace in a small courtyard at the end of Absolution Alley near Cheapside, and knew as soon as she moved in that this was the part of London in which she would always choose to live........many generations had lived in it, born and died there leaving behind nothing but their names on browning and archaic leases.........although the lower rooms with their mullioned windows were dark, those in her study and sitting room on the top storey were open to the sky, giving a view of the towers and steeples of the City....an iron staircase led from a narrow balcony to secluded roof which held a row of terracotta pots and where on fine Sunday mornings she would sit with her books or newspapers as the Sabbath calm lengthened into midday and the early peace was broken only by the familiar peals of the City bells"

I found myself liking Rhoda, probably because I too find it essential to find time to myself and to be on my own.  We are given the background to Rhoda's life and how she was scarred; her friends, not many, she was essentially solitary person, her desire to finally come to terms with her disfigurement.  Not necessarily an immediately lovable character but PD James tells us enough about her that we feel sadness that her life came to a sudden end and, what is worse, knowing in her last few minutes, that this was it, this was death coming towards her....

Brilliant.

In the last two weeks I have read Death of an Expert Witness, Death in Holy Orders and have now embarked on The Lighthouse.   It has been so long since I read them that I had actually forgotten the identity of the murderer though a glimmer of memory towards the end of one of them alerted me. One I had so forgotten it was a wonderful surprise to discover Who Dun It if that is an appropriate description. Perhaps not...

I still have another eight or nine to re-read and am looking forward to enjoying them all over again. Today is a windy, wind and leaf swept autumn day and is just perfect for staying indoors, keeping warm and reading.

Adam Dalgleish is in the tradition of elegant, fastidious detectives from Ngaio Marsh's Roderick Alleyn to Sayers Lord Peter, vulnerable and at times capable of great sensitivity.  Odd how the British detectives (I count Ngaio Marsh as British as the vast majority of her stories are set in England), despite multiple murders and gory details, manage to maintain this air of tea on the lawn, and servants in the kitchen below stairs, even though Adam certainly doesn't fit into that category.

 

Difficult to convey to you just how much I love her writing. The word mellifluos comes to mind the definition of which is  "(of a sound) pleasingly smooth and musical to hear".  Reading her prose and hearing it in your inward ear this description is perfect. Here is an example of her writing which I hope shows what I am trying to say in my muddled way:

 

"London had laid its spell on him and though his love affair with the city, as with all loves, had had its moments of disillusion, disappointment and threatened infidelity, the spell had remained ..... the panorama beneath him never failed to enchant. He saw it always as an artefact, sometimes a coloured lithograph in the delicate shades of a spring morning, sometimes a pen and ink drawing, every spire, every tower, every tree lovingly delineated, sometimes an oil, strong and vigorous. Tonight it was a psychedilic water colour, splashes of scarlet and grey latering the blue black of the night sky, the streets running with molten red and green as the traffic lights changed, the buildings with their squares of white windows pasted like coloured cut outs against the backcloth of the night"

 

Isn't that just perfect?

 

PS at the moment many of these titles are on Kindle at a silly price - do take advantage!

Adam Dalgleish is in the tradition of elegant, fastidious detectives from Ngaio Marsh's Roderick Alleyn to Sayers Lord Peter, vulnerable and at times capable of great sensitivity.  Odd how the British detectives (I count Ngaio Marsh as British as the vast majority of her stories are set in England), despite multiple murders and gory details, manage to maintain this air of tea on the lawn, and servants in the kitchen below stairs, even though Adam certainly doesn't fit into that category.

 

Difficult to convey to you just how much I love her writing. The word mellifluos comes to mind the definition of which is  "(of a sound) pleasingly smooth and musical to hear".  Reading her prose and hearing it in your inward ear this description is perfect. Here is an example of her writing which I hope shows what I am trying to say in my muddled way:

 

"London had laid its spell on him and though his love affair with the city, as with all loves, had had its moments of disillusion, disappointment and threatened infidelity, the spell had remained ..... the panorama beneath him never failed to enchant. He saw it always as an artefact, sometimes a coloured lithograph in the delicate shades of a spring morning, sometimes a pen and ink drawing, every spire, every tower, every tree lovingly delineated, sometimes an oil, strong and vigorous. Tonight it was a psychedilic water colour, splashes of scarlet and grey latering the blue black of the night sky, the streets running with molten red and green as the traffic lights changed, the buildings with their squares of white windows pasted like coloured cut outs against the backcloth of the night"

 

Isn't that just perfect?

 

PS at the moment many of these titles are on Kindle at a silly price - do take advantage!

 

 

Dropping in

Hi everybody just to let you know that I am alive and plodding on though have been laid low with a bad back in the last week.  Life is just getting a bit tedious and  dreary at the mo and I know we are all in the same boat but now we have this Rule of Six which is just so flattening.

I have a friend staying with me (we have formed a bubble over the last few months) and we had a lovely day in Frinton where the sun shone and we had a lovely cuppa in Fred’s Cafe (I mean how could you not want to eat in a place with such a wonderful name?) and pottered around Connaught Avenue which was lively and cheerful. I have visited several times over the past few months and it was good to see it so happy.

The next day we visited Perrywood at Tiptree, a wonderful garden centre where I have to be restrained from spending vast quantities of money on their superb plants and flower. A new little cafe open, the Greenhouse Cafe, where we had coffee and a scone and the staff were smiling, cheerful and chatty.

Today we went to Aldeburgh. Crowded and unenjoyable. Getting a coffeewas well nigh impossible with queues everywhere, I went into a bookshop (NOT the Aldeburgh bookshop I hasten to add - that was lovely) and a voice shouted out Put your mask on. I was tempted to walk out but instead showed him my exemption badge, Oh alright he said.

My temper was not improved when walking back to get fish and chips I spotted discarded face masks in the gutter. Final straw was the queue outside the wonderful chip shop where we had planned to buy lunch. All standing about ten inches from each other and half of them not wearing a mask.

We drove home.

The next person who challenges me re my non mask wearing before checking my badge is liable to get a very short and to the point answer.

I am in Cambridge this week as it is Beatrice’s 8th birthday which will cheer me up no end. Thank goodness we will only be five in number.....

OK moan over.

And just to mention I am re-reading P D James. Wonderful. Will be writing about here later on this week.

Recently read and awaiting my attention

My sister came round for tea yesterday and pointed out to me that I had not posted for a week and when was I going to write again.  The usual excuse at the moment, total sloth and generally feeling fed up with life and the world. 

Apropos of nothing I sat and watched Andy Murray come back from two sets and a match point down in the first round of the US Open and win a stunning five setter, the first he has played for two years.  An incentive to beat sloth if ever I saw one.

So thanks to Andy here I am.

Still Life - Val McDermid.  I discovered this author about eighteen months ago and wondered why I had not done so before. I hoovered them all up, all the different series and have enjoyed them all in various degrees of pleasure. The Carol/Tony series now seems to have come to a halt and I feel this is probably a good thing as the pair of them were becoming increasingly irritating (to me anyway). My favourite is the Karen Pirie books.

Karen is a feisty Scot in charge of the cold case department who has suffered personal loss and tragedy and has had to come to terms with it.  This title starts with a dead man fished from the sea who was a prim suspect in a ten year old investigation into the disappearance of a civil servant. It was a Pirie case so she is asked to revisit it.  But she is also involved in another when a skeleton is discovered in an old campervan and it is clear the killer is still out there.

Both stories told beautifullly. I love the relationship between Karen and her sidekick, The Mint, so called because like the Murray Mint he cannot be hurried, who is loyal and faithful and a great guy.

Thoroughly enjoyed this but by the end of it I was aware, if I was not already from reading her tweets, that the author does not like the Tories, thinks Boris is useless, the First Minister is wonderful and she supports Scottish Independence.

I have no problems with anybody holding their political views but I do with they were not shoe horned into fiction. The last two DCI Banks books by Peter Robinson were blatantly anti Brexit and it all gets a tad tedious after a while.

Checkmate to Murder - E C R Lorac.  One of my favourite of all the discoveries of the British Library classic crime series.  Last one I read was Crossed Skis a few months ago and now this one dropped through my letterbox.

A foggy night in Hampstead, Lonndon during the blackout. A party is taking place in an artist’s studio, a civil servant, a government scientist playing chess while Bruce Manaton , the artist, paints a portrait. In the kitchen Rosanne, the artist’s sister preparing tea.   The studio is rented from a miser who lives alone in the hosue next door.

The sitting is interrupted by an officious Special Constable how has arrested a young soldier running from the house where the dead body of Mr Foliner, the aforementioned miser, has been discovered.

Ins and outs and the setting of fog bound London in the blackout beautifully portrayed. The BritLib and publish all of this writer’s book as far as I am concerned - and there are a lot....

The Outsider - Linda Castillo. The latest in the Kate Burkholder series set in Amish country. I do like these book.   The Outsider is a police detective fleeing a corrupt regime and she is running for her life.   It turns out that the fugitive, Gina Colorosa, is an old friend of Kate but she fell out with her years ago over her bending of the rules and is not sure she can be trusted.

Well written as always but I did find this particular title not quite up to the standard of the others in this genre. I think that the author thought it might be a good idea to change up the storyline from the usual internal Amish series of murders. After all, if they keep on killing  each other at the rate they are written the entire populace would be wiped out (as Anne Cleves has given as the reason for not writing any more Shetland novels) but I felt it did not quite work.

Last year I read a terrific debut novel by Harriet Tyce, Blood Orange. Her second book is now out, The Lies you Told and it is just as good, if not better than the first one.  I will be reviewing this more fully for Shiny New Books and will link to it when it is up.

Lots of good reads then and awaiting my attention the latest Strictly Foxed editions of two Rosemary Sutcliff titles of which more later, and a book which is sounding promising after the first chapter Queen Victoria and the Romanovs with the subtitle Sixty years of Mutual Distrust....