My Friend Says It's Bullet-proof

My Friend Says It's Bullet-Proof / Penelope Mortimer

London: Virago, 1989, c1967.

224 p.

I need to remind myself more often that English novels from the 60s don't agree with me. I read this one because it was in my Virago collection on my shelf, and because it's set in Canada, most unusually. However, while there was a fair bit of interest in it, it didn't quite satisfy me. 

It features Muriel Rowbridge, a woman who is having an existential crisis about her life as a woman, due to having breast cancer and having one breast removed. This is a major deal for her, causing her SO MUCH distress and difficulty. I guess it's the time period that makes this into such a major trauma; it seems like it is destroying her ability to exist in the world. 

She's a journalist, and has been sent on an unexplained press junket to Canada with a group of male journalists - her beat, of course, is for the 'women's pages'. She slacks off though, and skips out on many of the press events to go off on drives and outings with a man she met the first night in Canada. Of course she ends up having an affair with him although it happens rather suddenly and instantly and there's no real explanation of how or why this comes to pass so quickly. 

While nowhere is named in the book, besides Montreal, it seems clear that she's travelling around the Montreal and Ottawa areas. She goes out to the country, to a lake, to small roadside cafes and so forth. It's quite a realistic setting in that way. 

The question she's grappling with is whether to stay in Canada with this new man and start over again, or return to England and deal with the end of her relationship with the married man she's been living with and all her old surroundings and their expectations again. Should she run away from her past, or face up to it as a new person? Mortimer really digs into Muriel's inner monologue thanks to her journalistic habit of writing everything up; we get to see the evolution of Muriel's thoughts and feelings. It's a good basis for a story, but it felt far too louche, vague, and 60s for my own tastes. 

I've read a number of titles from the 60s, by English writers, over the last while for the Century of Books, and I don't know what was going on exactly but they are all pretty dark on the subject of women's agency in their own lives. I haven't really enjoyed many of them at all. I'll have to try some titles from another place and see if that 60s feel carries over outside of England. 

The Crowded Street

The Crowded Street / Winifred Holtby
London: Virago, 1981, c1924.
288 p.

I have a large collection of Viragos picked up over the years. This one was a more recent find, and I decided to read it recently when I was going through my bookshelves during lockdown. It's quite an interesting story, if perhaps a bit slow paced. 

Muriel Hammond lives in Marshington, in Yorkshire, and her family is a middle class one -- after her schooling she's expected to stay home and do as her mother wants, until she gets married, of course. Muriel, however, doesn't seem to be a hot commodity on the marriage market, and year after year she makes the rounds with her mother, feeling more dull, bored and stultified. One of her lively neighbours returns home from her city life with a fiance in tow -- he isn't handsome or rich, but he's a good and intelligent person, one who sparks Muriel's awareness that you can find another person who is both interesting and interested in you.

But her routine life is broken up by the arrival of WWI. This changes a lot, though not quite as much as you'd think in this little country town. Muriel, however, makes a big leap and goes to London to be a roommate to her old friend, who is active in political activism. She feels a breath of freedom and the expansion of her mind as it starts working again.

A thread that runs through the novel right from the early pages when Muriel is a shy 11 year old at a local children's party is the presence of Godfrey Neale, the son of the local landowners. He appears and reappears, falling in love with one of Muriel's schoolmates who comes down to stay, joining up during the war, and then reappearing at the door of her flat in London not knowing she's now living there. He is the biggest matrimonial prize of Marshington and is still single, not having decided on who might be good enough for him and his property. Seeing Muriel's new independence, he becomes interested in her -- but is it too late, now that Muriel has a sense of a life outside conventional Marshington? 

The moments of Muriel's life are small and quiet, almost non-existent from the outside. But Muriel's experience of them, her inner life, are much stronger. Seeing her evolve from her learned helplessness into a real person, but not until she's into her 30s, is fascinating and feels very authentic. There are very emotionally dramatic moments -- the war, her sister's ill-advised marriage (that chapter feels like Emily Bronte sat down to contribute a scene) -- and Muriel's view of it all shaping the story. 

I really liked this one. I was drawn in by the deliberateness of Muriel's life, and by the structure, which jumps from year to year, leaving great gaps in which it's apparent nothing has changed at all meanwhile. It is a thoughtful look at self-determination, choice, and the role of women in this Edwardian and then interwar England. And the ending was a satisfying one, always appreciated. 

My Career Goes Bung

My Career Goes Bung / Miles Franklin
London: Virago, 1981, c1946.
234 p.

I just finished this book, after reading My Brilliant Career,the first one in this set, nearly three years ago. This second book was finally published in 1946, but it was written in 1902, shortly after the first book had made such a splash. I am counting it for 1902 in my Century of Books reading, as the theme and context is so much of its written era -- in the intro, Franklin says that she has not altered or updated her original manuscript but has left it in its original state. 

She also says that the reason it was not published in 1902 was because the publisher balked at the feminist and irreligious nature of the text. And those threads run throughout the whole book, in what was to me the most delightful part of this story. As she notes:

I hung on secretly to my faith that the greatest nations would always be those where women were freest.

This book is a fairly complicated piece of metafiction, too -- after the first book was published, there was a furor, with many readers thinking that the novel was autobiography. Franklin eventually withdrew publication, so bothered by this assumption she didn't want any more notoriety. But this second book, written hard on that experience, relates the character Sybylla's career after her first book: Sybylla withdraws publication and tells the 'truth' about her life and what this sudden literary success meant for her. It's a marvellous mix of biography and a fictional character's standing in for it, very postmodern indeed. 

While the plot is a little meandering and the ending quite unsatisfying in some respects, the writing is as lively and amusing as ever. Sybylla is a little less naive but she still has a clear eye on Australian society. She goes into wider society in Sydney for a while so has a bigger scope for her commentary as well. A lot of her asides deal with the way that men assume they are better than women, or the way in which religion has created an old man god to supplement these feelings of male superiority. She has no time for all that. 

I can never understand why men are so terrified of women having special talents. They have no consistency in argument. They are as sure as the Rock of Gibraltar that they have all the mental superiority and that women are weak-minded, feeble conies; then why do they get in such a mad-bull panic at any attempt on the part of women to express themselves? Men strut and blow about themselves all the time without shame. In the matter of women's brain power they organise conditions comparable to a foot race in which they have all the training and the proper shoes and little running pants, while women are taken out of the plough, so to speak, with harness and winkers still on them, and are lucky if they are allowed to start at scratch. Then men bellow that they have won the race, that women never could, it would be against NATURE if they did.

This book is fascinating in form, powerful in statement, and enjoyable as an entertaining read that is still terrifyingly relevant in its social commentary even today, after more than 100 years. 

Olivia by Olivia

Olivia / by Olivia (Dorothy Strachey)
London: Virago, 1987, c1949.
112 p. 

This slim novel was the only one that Dorothy Strachey, sister of Lytton Strachey, ever wrote. Told as a reminiscence, in the immediate first person, it takes place in a girl's boarding school in France the year that Olivia is 16. A shy English girl, she's overwhelmed by the passion and freedom of her new life there.

But she soon begins to understand that it's a hothouse, with emotional connections forming and unforming, jealous taking of sides going on, and multiple loyalties to negotiate.

Olivia herself falls hard for one of the headmistresses, Mademoiselle Julie. Her love for Julie is much stronger and uninhibited than that of her friend Laura, another student who is generous and kind to all, but not at all as histrionic about her loyalties as Olivia.

While this is known as an early lesbian novel, the love is more charged emotionally than physically. There are a few embraces and kissing of hands, but it is more about the emotional state of young Olivia's teenage obsession, and Mademoiselle Julie's comfortable playing off of her students against one another and against Madame Cara, the other headmistress. Where do all their loyalties lie? Olivia can only see her own desire, and this does become a bit tiresome after a while. It's a good thing that this is so short, as I'm not sure I could have taken too much more of her florid idolization of Mademoiselle Julie. 

As a school novel I think it both highlights and exaggerates the way this closed community of women becomes keyed up by the dysfunction at the top. When the conclusion comes, one of them is dead and one is heading to Canada -- almost as bad?  

While intriguing for its historical content (and there is a long note that expands on the author's experiences in the Virago edition, which adds a lot of colour and interest to the story) this was a worthwhile read for her examination of character and desire. The student/teacher aspect is disturbing, but not unusual; and as the story comes from Strachey's own life there is probably a lot of verisimilitude to the way she presents it. 


Readalike:

Another school novel, certainly not as passionate, though it also has angelic students who set examples for the rest, Gwethalyn Graham's Swiss Sonata delves a bit more into the social conditions of a girl's school in the 30s. It does not shy away from talking about the political conditions in Europe in the 30s either, which makes it quite powerful.

A Game of Hide and Seek

A Game of Hide and Seek / Elizabeth Taylor
London: Virago, 2008, c1951.  
306 p.

It was Simon's 1951 Club that finally got me reading this book, which has been on the TBR for longer than I can remember. For some reason, I'd got the feel of Elizabeth Bowen's House in Paris mixed up with my impressions of this novel by Elizabeth Taylor (oh, those many Elizabeths) and so had been a little resistant to picking it up. Fortunately I had this lovely Virago classics edition to read this week.

The book does have the same sense of a doomed love affair though; it opens with young Harriet & Vesey, who've known each other since childhood but are now in late adolescence and suddenly aware of one another. Harriet falls hard but they are both awkward and inarticulate, and can't express their new feelings at all. The book is coloured by their inability to be open, by the habit of both of stifling all expression. He leaves; they are separated for the next fifteen or twenty years. 

Harriet eventually shows some spine and gets a job in a dress shop. This is where some of the funniest bits come in, elements which may play into a comparison with Barbara Pym. Taylor describes each of the "ladies" that Harriet works with so amusingly, their situation quite funny (until much later when we learn the fates of a few of them). Harriet herself seems to expand in this milieu, but then she becomes involved with Charles, a lawyer twice her age, and marries as a good girl should. Jump cut -- part two -- Harriet is now in middle age, with a 15 yr old daughter (though she must in reality be only in her mid-30s, hardly into decrepitude). In any case, Vesey returns.

And they start a mild affair. I can only say mild because they are both as uncertain and awkward as ever. Vesey is a poor object of affection, but Harriet carries that torch. It's at the end, an uncertain and endlessly interpretable end, that he seems to show a spark of unselfish redemption in his character. 

This novel reflected the culture of suburban British life in the 50s effectively -- its strictures and norms, the stifling expectations, the strange modern habits like adults drinking excessively at local dances nearly weekly, the gossip. It's a sad and pinched kind of story, but the writing itself is very fine. Taylor can capture a character in a gesture, in a phrase, whether a main character or an incidental one. She is darker than Pym but with the same eye for social interaction. I found it started slowly, throwing the reader into the midst of things and thus feeling a bit muddled at the start, but by the time I was partway through I was completely involved. 

Aside from Harriet and Vesey, the story moves into the present/future with Betsy, her daughter, and a Dutch girl, Elke, who lives with Harriet's family and observes, though understanding little. There is quite a lot to observe in this novel, and the compression of time between Harriet's suffragette mother's youth and her own modern daughter's teen years is startling. Definitely a social novel worth the effort, with many quotable bits. I'll leave you with one about the vagaries of time:

If we do not alter with the times, the times yet alter us. We may stand perfectly still, but our surroundings shift round and we are not in the same relationship to them for long; just as a chameleon, matching perfectly the greenness of a leaf, should know that the leaf will one day fade. 

See more 1951 books and reviews at Simon's 1951 Roundup Post

Crewe Train

Crewe Train / Rose Macaulay
London: Virago, 1998, c1926.
256 p.

This odd little book has been waiting for me on my shelves for a long time. It's the tale of Denham Dobie, who is plucked from her backwater life in a little village in Andorra when her father dies, and moved to London to live with her deceased mother's family.

It's a story of opposites, and how Denham finds all the habits of civilized, literary London pretty much incomprehensible. Why? she asks again and again, why do this and not that? Why can't people just stop talking and leave one another alone? All this fuss about the smallest things -- for example:

With these Greshams life was like walking on a tight-rope. The things you mustn’t do, mustn’t wear. You must, for instance, spend a great deal of money on silk stockings, when, for much less, you could have got artificial silk or Lisle thread. Why?  Did not these meaner fabrics equally clothe the leg? Why had people agreed that one material was the right wear and that others did not do? Why did not anything do?

Denham is a physical creature; she loves hiking and sailing and maps, secret places, games, and eating. And doing all of it without taking much trouble about it. Unfortunately for her, this is just not the way things are done in London, and the ceaseless talking and reading and social expectations wear on her.

But just like her father before her, even in her quest for freedom, she is drawn back into human connection through physical desire, or perhaps let's call it love. Denham meets one of the young men in her uncle's publishing house, and they fall in love and marry. Two more different people can not be imagined. Arnold believes that Denham is natural and unspoiled; Denham thinks that Arnold makes a wonderful playfellow but she is tired of the need to socialize for the sake of his career.

She leaves Arnold in London for an extended stay in a ramshackle Cornish cottage they've bought, cycling around the countryside, sailing, and generally rusticating. It seems like their marriage is on the rocks, and it certainly isn't helped by all the gossiping and talk going on about them in their literary social circles. Denham has an absolute disgust for the gossip of others, and to find herself the topic is annoying. But she can't even get annoyed enough by that feeling to confront the gossipers.

And of course, there were some bits in which racism rears its ugly head. I think that this is often to be found in books from earlier eras, but it doesn't make it a pleasant read. 

And that is the main reason that I didn't fall in love with this book. It's clever, and has a satirical edge, with some funny commentary on literary London. However, Denham's position is not exactly an appealing alternative. She is selfish, lazy, self-centred, anti-intellectual, slovenly, and to me, quite dull.  If she had held out some alternative for a meaningful way to interact that differed from Arnold's world, I may have been more intrigued. As it is, I found Macaulay's writing fluid and excellent, but the relentless mockery of books and literature and talkative people, from the perspective of someone who is just as easily satirized and stereotypical, was a bit much; it just kept on and on. The middle of the story was a bit draggy and I did feel like Macaulay was forcing the point home just a little too much. 

The ending is the most interesting bit; Denham returns home to Arnold, having found that she's pregnant. His mother is helping them set up their new home, and starts talking of useful days full of scheduled housewifely duties. The final line is ambiguous as to whether the pull of love and human connection will be enough to keep Denham from kicking over the traces once again. She is certainly one of the most unusual heroines I have come across in recent reads. 

Macaulay's writing is sly and clever, though, and generally entertaining. Her thoughts on Christmas in London are still quite recognizable today (especially so close to the holiday):

Every year, in the deep mid-winter, there descends upon this world a terrible fortnight. A fortnight, or ten days, or a week, when citizens can not get about the streets of their cities for the surging pressure of persons who walk therein; when every shop is a choked mass of humanity, and purchases, at the very time when purchases are most numerously ordained to be made, are only possible at the cost of bitter hours of travail; a time when nerves are jangled and frayed, purses emptied to no purpose, all amusements and all occupations suspended in favour of frightful businesses with brown paper, string, letters, cards, stamps, and crammed post offices. This period is doubtless a foretaste of whatever purgatory lies in store for human creatures. 

But it is only the naturally idle who find Christmas terrible. The active and industrious enjoy scrambling about streets and shops and doing up parcels and waiting in post offices and giving pleasure by their gifts. They are exhilarated by the bustle and the scrum, and by the thought of the Little Children's Joy. They find Christmas a season of cheer and goodwill, and welcome it each year with a brave and generous smile.

The Tortoise and the Hare

My own photo; I couldn't find this '83 pbk
anywhere else. Love these red tights!

The Tortoise and the Hare / Elizabeth Jenkins
London: Virago, 1983, c1954.
252 p.

I've taken ages to review this one, even though it's a really good read. Not a happy one, but a really thought-provoking, well done story.

Imogen, youthful, beautiful, elegant and all that a wife should be, is married to an older and far more brusque person than herself. Evelyn Gresham is a barrister, successful, rich and a very, very strong personality; one might even say he is a bully.

They have an 11 yr old son, a beautiful home in the English countryside, an influential social circle. And they have a neighbour, the "elderly" (in her 50s!!) Blanche Silcox. Blanche is the quintessential country woman. She's stout, chummy, loves shooting and riding, and wanders about in tweed. She and Evelyn have a lot in common -- they are about the same age, have the same habits, and come from the same sort of background. But Blanche is a stout, middle-aged lady -- there's no way she could steal Evelyn away from the elegant Imogen. Or is there.....?

The title of the book is a kind of litmus test as to your reaction to this story. Who is the tortoise and who is the hare? That really depends on how you decipher this rather heart-breaking tale. Is Evelyn the prize to be won? Or is one's freedom the prize? Has Blanche slowly won her race, over the dreamy but expected winner, Imogen? Or has Imogen won by being herself and not changing just to win the final contest? Lots of questions, and lots to think about.

I found the writing really compelling. There is a strong sense of place and time (written in 1954) and the characters, especially the two leading women, are complex, and fascinating in their contrasts. Imogen is very bookish, and all the bookish references are a joy to read and figure out -- they always signify something.

The pace of the story is quiet, but a bit relentless: the conclusion seems inescapable, even as you hope something will change the course of this relationship. It's very sad, but also holds a glimmer of something perhaps hopeful in the final lines, given to Imogen:

‘I must improve [...] There is a very great deal to be done’

I'm including this book in my Christmas review roundup as there is a scene set at a country Christmas - not necessarily a happy one, given the circumstances, but traditions must be followed, and the event must go on.

The Christmas holidays were not favourable to riding. For a week before Christmas there were heavy falls of snow. This froze at night and was renewed the next day for several days, and though when Gavin came home, the weather had become milder, the depths of frozen and fresh snow would lie for some time...

The holidays went by very fast, with the two boys as the centrepiece of the household. The Greshams had now dropped any pretence of consulting the Leepers with regard to arrangements for Tim. They simply told Tim what time he must be ready to be motored up to town to the pantomime, to the skating rink, when the picnic would be held. Evelyn had kept from his boyhood the custom of picnics in the snow. On a bright, still morning, the party under his guidance walked over the downs to the edge of the valley of yew trees. Blanche Silcox came with them; what could be pleasanter?

But despite their own crumbling family at this Christmastime, others -- like the Leepers -- have things a bit more dishevelled, at least in appearance.

The Christmas preparations in the Leeper household were of an ambitious nature but they did not seem to have been made with any view to children's amusement. The walls of the atelier were studded with greeting cards, both dashing and sophisticated, and there was a Christmas tree at the back of the room, but its ornaments were wire mobiles and tiny bottles of liqueurs, and little boxes containing objects that suggested a horrible adult parody of a schoolboy's vulgar joke. There was, strewn about, a wealth of foreign confectionery in elaborate, sticky boxes and the company had the air of having drunk a good deal at lunch... Varvara...hung back, looking cross and dispirited, and frequently kicked the base of the Christmas tree so that the objects on it swayed and jingled. As one of them seemed about to fly off, Evelyn put out a hand to it, glanced at it and let it go. 

Jenkins' writing is this coolly observational throughout the book. The various families and the emotional derangements that are occurring are all described with a certain detachment. This perhaps echoes Imogen's way of perceiving her world; but at what point does she realize that she must indeed pay attention? It's a book that can stand up to rereads and many discussions. It's recommended, but perhaps not when you'd like to feel jolly about your reading. 

Lehmann's Ballad and the Source

The Ballad and the Source / Rosamond Lehmann
London: Virago, 2006, c1944.
332 p.

Another Virago off my shelf for Virago Reading Week, hosted by Carolyn at A Few of my Favourite Books and Rachel at BookSnob.

I've read quite a few of Lehmann's books and have enjoyed most of them -- I began with Dusty Answer, and was an immediate fan (even though Lehmann said herself that she couldn't stand the over-romanticized character of Judith years after writing it).

This one is a bit different than her other works; for one thing, it is her only work not set in her own time. It is set slightly earlier, from the mid/late Victorian Era to the First World War. Like my first read this week, Elizabeth Taylor's Angel, this book features another strong, self-contained, domineering central character, that of Sybil Anstley Jardine. Mrs. Jardine is considered quite elderly by the little girls who are invited up to the neighbouring big house for tea when Mrs. Jardine returns to residence there. Although their parents exchange a dubious look at this invitation, sisters Jess and Rebecca are taken by their governess to meet Mrs. Jardine, whose charms immediately win over Rebecca, a ten year old who later becomes the unlikely confidante of the infamous Mrs. Jardine.

While I enjoyed reading this, and was intrigued by many of the over-the-top plot incidents, it was rather melodramatic. In other overviews of Lehmann's work, this book has been mentioned as the most melodramatic of her works and I must agree. We have a fallen woman, family madness, sexual power trips, possible incest, kidnapping, and so on and so on. That this history is basically told out to a ten year old is a strain on the reader's belief, but the absolutely self-absorbed and self-justifying nature of Mrs. Jardine makes it just possible that this could have occurred.

The middle section of the book is essentially one character telling the story to another, which does begin to pall just a bit. But, I was driven to continue, to try to figure out this very messed up family and discover just what was going to happen to Mrs. Jardine's suddenly orphaned grandchildren, who she takes in and sees only then for the first time. At the end of this section, the Jardines move to another estate in France.

The book then jumps about five years, to return to England after WWI: the family had been stuck there during the war. When they return, granddaughter Maisie (who had become a particular friend of Rebecca's in the first instance) picks up the story and continues filling in the now teenage Rebecca on the rest of their family history, and the sudden return of her mother whom they'd thought dead.

There was much drama and angst and innocence destroyed in this book. Rebecca, as a young girl hearing all these things that she doesn't quite understand, gives us the story as she'd heard it, without any of her own inferences to cloud our judgement of the situation. Mrs. Jardine is a fright, an utterly self-absorbed woman slavishly attached to the idea of herself as a femme fatale; she can't even stand her own daughter, who is as beautiful as she is. Even as an "elderly" woman she needs to know that every male in her vicinity prefers her over all other women, even if the man and other woman in question are both twenty years younger. It was quite a portrait of an unusual personality.

The flaws in the book, for me, were simply that there was a lot of "telling". Everyone seemed to want to go over details of their past and all their intimate feelings in Rebecca's hearing. I felt as if Rebecca was simply a static receiver, nothing happening in her own life to speak of, simply present as a conduit for the Jardine family's tales. However, Lehmann wrote a later novel, A Sea Grape Tree, which follows Rebecca after a failed love affair as an adult (a favourite theme of Lehmann's) so perhaps I'll read that one for more about Rebecca -- although it was written after Lehmann's conversion to spiritualism so I'll have to see if it is readable.

Nonetheless, Virago Reading Week has been a lot of fun, and an encouragement to pick up a few of the volumes on my shelf which were awaiting a read. Check out Carolyn & Rachel's review round-ups to find a large number of Virago readers talking about what they've read...it may encourage you to pick up one that you haven't read yet.

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A bonus: something I found while looking around at information on Rosamond Lehmann online.... a look at Lehmann's views of her own writing and her life in a very interesting 1985 Paris Review interview discussing various aspects of her life story in relation to her works.

Elizabeth Taylor's Angel

Angel / Elizabeth Taylor

London: Virago, c2006.

256 p.

I've finally taken up this book which I've had on the shelves for ever so long, in honour of the blog world's Virago Reading Week, organized by Rachel at Book Snob and Carolyn at A Few of My Favourite Books -- it is so much fun to read this book, and then read a whole bunch of other reviews of Virago reading. There are already round-ups at Rachel and Carolyn's blogs so be sure to take a look at everyone else who has been reading this week.

Now, on to my impression of Angel. This is the second Elizabeth Taylor I've read -- the first was Palladian, and I'm sorry to say it made such a pale impression that I read it twice without realizing until the last chapter that I'd read it previously. So I was hoping that this one would strike me a little more. And it did.

Angel Deverell is fifteen at the beginning of this book, and is notable for her wild, passionate romanticism in the arena of her imagination, unleavened by any sense of humour at all, especially when it comes to herself. When she tells lovely, elaborate stories about her 'true home', Paradise House, and all its glories, she is called out as a liar and an embarrassment to her hardworking mother, who owns a corner grocery store. Angel is outraged, not by her actions but by the lack of understanding and admiration that she expects. Deciding that she will never return to the school that was the site of her humiliation, she writes, in a white heat, a torrid romantic novel. Sending it off randomly to three publishers, Angel has an unbelievable stroke of luck and has her book accepted. To her this makes perfect sense and is not a sign of luck or fortune, but only natural.

The book, laughed at by many in the publishing house, captures the public imagination and sets Angel on the path of a wildly successful writing career, writing overblown romantic sagas featuring aristocrats and huge houses and melodrama.

The novel skips the years between Angel's first book and her established career. When we meet her again, after her astonishing debut, she is living in a much more respectable area of town, where her mother feels out of place and lonely. Angel, however, is as much of a self-centred diva as always. It's Angel and her strange, domineering personality that this book centres around. In all the situations she finds herself, reality is never as important as her belief in how things should be. This chutzpah carries her through for a long, long time -- along with various meek women, like her mother, who act as her prop and support in relation to the real world.

Along the way, Angel must encounter and puzzle out various human relationships, unable to see them in their true state. Her vanity is enormous and is the root cause of all her difficulties. Only near the very end, when she is finally broke and nearly forgotten in her crumbling Paradise House, does the possibility of light dawning arise. Alas, it is too late. She is left with only two people to mourn her.

I can't say I enjoyed this, exactly. It was painful reading at times, with the reader complicit in the embarrassment of those watching Angel in her element. Her personality, while vitally strong and able to sweep all before it, wasn't exactly endearing. Only one or two of the characters in the book were able to see the desperate longing and fragility beneath her vast ego -- and I don't think that Angel was one of them. I couldn't really see where the story was going, either. What was the reader intended to take away from this? I am still not sure. There is something about Elizabeth Taylor's writing that seems to elude me. While I found this one much more intriguing and memorable than Palladian, I don't think it will be one I'll read again. I'm going to give a couple of her other books a try and see if I can find a way in.

There was also a 2007 movie made from Angel, starring Romola Garai, which I may watch someday. I am curious as to how they could portray this book on screen. Has anyone else read this? What do you think of it?

Ship of Widows

Ship of Widows / I. Grekova ; translated by Cathy Porter.
London: Virago, 1985, c1981.
179 p.

I remember way back in January, thinking that I'd sign up for Emily's TBR Challenge, as the idea of reading 20 of my own books before buying any more sounded great. Well, I have failed miserably. I've already bought a ton of new books this year, but I am not giving up on the idea of getting the 20 books I put on my list for the Challenge read before too much longer. I've read a couple that I haven't talked about yet, and one such book is this novel, a Russian translation republished by Virago.

This is the story of a 'ship of widows', a Moscow apartment in which a group of five widows each inhabit a room and share the common spaces. The balance of the household is disrupted first when one of the supposed widows has a child, her husband returns from nowhere and eventually dies knowing he is not the father. The presence of the troubled, spoiled boy upsets the other women and drives the story forward. Later on another of the widows moves a man into her room, sparking arguments about how much of the household expenses she should now be covering. It always seems to be men at the root of these women's problems, whether domestically, societally or politically. Either they are too much there, or not there at all. The setting is post-WWII so there is a shortage of men and life is hard.

The book's genius, in my view, is how Grekova presents the details of living communally, the constant wrangling over territory and resources. The widows' lives are enmeshed due to their living situation, but that doesn't mean they are all best friends. They make it work, and each has their own quirks and makes their own contribution. Even the primary narrator Olga allows that she herself is not so easy to live with. The ways in which they struggle to make their lives work, both within the home and in the greater society, are drawn clearly but without any feeling of whining or complaining. It is just the way it is. The interwoven stories of each of the women (all different people - an intellectual, working class, religious peasant, etc.) provide a wide view of Moscow society of the time and all the small details fill it in so that you can truly feel what life must have been like.

The book moves between Olga's first person narration, and third person sections about the others in the story. Each is quite fascinating, and the young boy Vadim, who is raised by all of them, turns out to be quite a difficult creature. It is unfortunate that Vadim becomes such a focus of the second half of the book, as he was not very likeable (others note that he is a very typical Russian disaffected young man). I would have rather spent more of my time with the widows! But, if you want a clear look at daily life in an era of Russian history that is not frequently written about -- the urban, postwar female experience -- this is a good way to start. I enjoyed reading it, even if much of the tale is sad and dreary. The human spirit triumphs even in these depressing circumstances, in the way that women can get used to anything and survive, if not flourish.

Though Grekova's writing is straightforward and matter-of-fact, I found a few quoteable bits that have stuck with me.

In the past I had always been sustained by my worries about other people, and other people's worries about me. The word 'unworried' is generally associated with the notion of happiness. But how vulnerable and forlorn a life without worries is!

Each person fights for themselves, and for justice. And in this battle for justice people are prepared to sacrifice themselves and suffer, if only in order that evil may be punished. Whose fault is it if everyone has their own interpretation of justice?

So too in our flat, everyone wants justice done, but everyone understands the word differently. Everyone is just in their own way. One of the most painful things life has taught me is that everyone is right in their own way.

Another view: Lisa at Lizok's Bookshelf reviews it with a professional eye

To read a long & insightful essay about Grekova's works, look at the introduction to Ship of Widows

Sunlight on a Broken Column

Sunlight on a Broken Column / Attia Hosain

London : Virago, 1989, c1961.

I had this novel in the house, sitting on a bookshelf, waiting to be read, because it was a Virago and it looked intriguing when I picked it up via Bookmooch some long time ago now. Thanks to Annie's Challenge, I finally had a reason to push it to the top of the TBR list, and I'm glad I had that push, because after all that, I found this book fascinating. (Does this paragraph sound like German is my first language??)

I've been sick with a nasty flu for the last couple of weeks, but the good news is that (after the first 2 days of complete whining inaction) I actually got quite a bit read. This one was first. It was a good choice, because although not exactly a plot driven page turner, it was a look at a completely unknown-to-me culture, that of an upper class Muslim family in India just before Partition. The main character, Laila, is an orphan who is living with her grandfather, along with the rest of the female 'loose ends' in the family; a female cousin, a couple of aunts, and also the 2 sons of one of the aunts. The women are in purdah, meaning they have their own quarters and they don't see men other than their relatives and a couple of servants. Even when they go out, they have curtains covering the windows of their car. The grandfather dies and the household is broken up, with Laila going to live with her liberal, British educated uncle and his family. The story follows her through her schooling, her friendships and her first romance, with a young man of no means for whom she ends up defying her family to marry. The final part of the book is Laila's return from England years later, to see her now abandoned family home before her cousin sells it. The two brothers have been separated by Partition; the elder stayed in India, trying to represent Muslims and his family rights, while the younger moved his family to the new country of Pakistan. In all the political upheaval, they have been effectively isolated from one another for many years, being unable to cross the border back and forth between the two countries. Laila looks back on what their life was like then; a privileged and very different world, though at the cusp of change both politically and socially, especially in terms of women's lives. It is poignant and breathes nostalgia for a lost world.

Though this plot summary is rather perfunctory, the book itself is full of fascinating social commentary, of descriptions of the absolute gorgeousness of the land, of the cultural milieu Laila existed within, of the vastly differing lives of servants vs. Laila's family and also vs. her Hindu friends. It's an absorbing story of a life in 1930's India, which I found utterly irresistible.

Viragos!

Just a quick note; anyone interested may have already seen this, but I've just discovered a list of the complete (hopefully) original Viragos. Anyone noticing a missing title is asked to add it.
I've had quite a bit of fun going through it and marking the ones I've already read. It's an ongoing project, and from the looks of this list, it's going to take me a while to make my way through it!

A Paean to Virago Press

I've just seen a lovely article over at the Guardian by Jonathan Coe, all about the influence that Virago Press has had on his writing career. It's wonderful - and he mentions Rosamond Lehmann, one of the authors I discovered over this last year and adore as much as he seems to! He also talks about the newest editions of the Elizabeth Taylor canon, two of which I bought this summer. I love Virago and it's nice to see it's not just women who appreciate the courage and foresight which led to the founding of this press! Go read the article; it's worth the time.