Recent reading, etc.

[regshoe]

I have had a bit of a week of it. Very busy and somewhat stressful at work early in the week, to the point that by Friday my brain had basically given up and refused to do anything very substantial at all (I think the next time this happens I should just take the day off sick—it'd be much simpler, and not inaccurate). However, I now have a three-day weekend, and spent this morning going for a walk along the river in the lovely early morning sunlight—the first proper walk I've managed in a while—and picked some blackberries, which I shall look forward to putting in my porridge for the rest of the week. And, of course, reading.

South Riding by Winifred Holtby (1936). I was looking forward to re-reading this one, and it did not disappoint. For all that a >500-page novel about local government in 1930s Yorkshire might not sound very appealing (idk, it sounds appealing to me, but it is perhaps a bit of a niche concept)—anyway, it is a truly brilliant piece of work. Holtby portrays in vivid detail the wide variety of people affected by, and effecting, the policies and decisions of the county council of the South Riding of Yorkshire (a thinly disguised version of the East Riding, on whose real county council Holtby's mother was an alderman). She has a beautiful, incisive way of showing the human thoughts and motivations of otherwise rather unsympathetic characters—from the reactionary feudal-holdout landowner working to thwart progressive reforms even as he and his farm sink deeper into debt and ruin, to the teenage girls bullying the teacher who only stays in her position so she can support her ailing mother—and of showing the background and human story of both sides of a conflict, without either obviously taking sides and caricaturing anyone or falling into a real 'both sides have a point' fallacy (ultimately, she is clearly on the side of progress—but she takes its enemies seriously and doesn't dismiss them). The main character, insofar as the book has one, is Sarah Burton, the new headteacher at the local girls' high school, a determined progressive reformer and a highly interesting and multi-faceted character—I think I appreciated her more, in all her complexities and contradictions, this time round. It's a very wide-ranging book and overall an incredibly impressive achievement. And the language is beautiful—Holtby clearly knows the place she's writing about, the wide flat fields and the windswept cliffs and the marshes of the Leame Estuary (the fictionalised Humber), and there are some memorable bits of description as well as of philosophy. (Also, the agricultural politics are surprisingly still pretty relevant, which was interesting). Very, very highly recommended.

The Snow Goose by Paul Gallico (1941). A short book (I read it in one sitting) about an artist living a lonely life on the Essex marshes, cast out from society because of his physical deformity, and his relationship with a local girl and the injured vagrant goose they rescue. (Snow Goose is an American species and not normally found in Britain—I've seen one once, though chances are it was an escapee from captivity rather than a real vagrant). It's a heartwarming story, and of course full of lovely descriptions of nature—it gets across just the wonderful atmosphere that the setting deserves, and I loved all the stuff about Rhayader caring for birds in his little proto-WWT sanctuary. I do, however, feel it would have been much better if the author hadn't tried to make it romantic, and the story is oddly devoid of social context—perhaps that was deliberate, given the focus on isolated outcasts, but I suspect a British author would have made more of the class difference between the main characters, for instance.

Comments

[theseatheseatheopensea]

I hope you managed to get a good rest and feel better now, busy+stressful weeks are exhausting. A three-day weekend sounds excellent, and so do nature walks and reading and blackberries! <3

"South Riding" sounds very good (I have added it, along with "The crowded street", to my infinite to-read list)

And heh, even as a slow reader, I usually read "The snow goose" in one sitting too ;) The nature stuff is really lovely, isn't it? I also feel it would have been better if the romance had not been expressly there, and if it had just stayed as a friendship bond (but, to be fair, I feel this about 99.9% of romance content in books) I think the isolated feel and lack of context might come from it trying to be a "legend" (Gallico liked doing that in his writing--for example, he has a whole novel inspired in the Gibraltar monkeys legend) *but* he is a bit better at social context and different types of characters in other books, so it could have also worked here, and it would have been interesting to read. Maybe he was satisfied with the humane context, and the idea of an outcast finding a place to belong, and ultimately sacrificing himself for it?

[oursin]

There is a brilliant 1974 (I think: around then) Granada TV version of South Riding which is slow and spacious and does it justice - ignore the more recent version which was ridiculously curtailed in length, plus, adapted by Andrew Davies (no, Carne is not a Lawrentian figure, srsly - I bailed after episode 1).

[luzula]

South Riding sounds a little bit like Naomi Mitchison's Lobsters on the Agenda, which is about local government in a Scottish Highlands fishing village in the 1950's. There are lots of meetings. : )

Anyway, South Riding does sound like an interesting book, thanks for the rec! I see that my library has it in Swedish, but nope, would rather read in the original.