regshoe | Entries tagged with author: miss read

Hello! It's been a bit of a time with me lately, but I am back here again now. Have some books.

Fräulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther by Elizabeth von Arnim (1907). After I read Crossriggs and lamented Alex's lack of significant female relationships,

edwardianspinsteraunt suggested the main character of this book, Rose-Marie Schmidt, as a possible girlfriend for her, and so of course I had to read it and see the speculative crossover femslash potential for myself. It's a one-sided epistolary novel, made up entirely of Rose-Marie's letters to her English briefly-fiancé and then friend Mr Anstruther, whom she met while he was lodging with her family in Jena on a year abroad in Germany. This is a fun structure—we learn a lot about Mr Anstruther and what he's saying without ever getting to read his words directly, and in the meantime enjoy Rose-Marie's accounts of her life in Jena as a spinster living with her obscure-book-writing father, her neighbours, her emotional ups and downs, her rather colourful and varied thoughts on life in general. On the whole I found the emotional shape of the book and the central relationship kind of uncomfortable—no, I don't think it was a good idea to stay friends and keep writing to him after they broke up—but Rose-Marie's character and narration are enjoyable, and yes, she certainly would make a good match for Alex, they have a lot in common.

Tyler's Row by Miss Read (1972). The next in the Fairacre series. Not one of the best, I think—the occasionally doubtful period-typical attitudes seemed a bit more in evidence here than they've been before—but still a good comfort read, and it's interesting to see Miss Read and Fairacre advancing further through time: somewhere between the 1950s beginning of the series and where we've got to now is the divide between 'recent history, but history' and 'just the old days', a vague line but a definitely different feeling.

Witchfinders: A Seventeenth-Century English Tragedy by Malcolm Gaskill (2006). I spent a few hours in the library to escape noise at home and decided to take pot luck from the shelves while I was there. This was in a display, I went, 'ooh, seventeenth-century England, I like that' and it looked reasonably sensible/rigorous (on a subject about which a lot has been written and believed which is neither, hence wanting to be a bit careful), so I picked it up. It proved a really interesting read. It follows the big witchfinding campaign in East Anglia in 1645-6 led by Matthew Hopkins (the notorious 'Witchfinder General'—apparently a self-styled and unofficial title) and his associate John Stearne, placing it in the context of the Civil War and all the sense of social disorder, the world turned upside down etc. that was going on at that time, with some various background on the development of beliefs about witchcraft and witch-hunts. Really fascinating stuff. I was especially interested in how opposition to the witchfinders developed—doubt about whether witches existed at all was not particularly important, it seems, but there was a lot of more specific scepticism and criticism of the witchfinders' methods and the adequacy of their evidence, and the financial burden that witch-hunts placed on local governments and taxpayers was apparently a major source of opposition!

In Memoriam by Alice Winn (2023). Also found at the library; I'd been aware of it for a while but thought it would probably not be that much my sort of thing, but finding it now I decided to give it a try. I was right, it's not that much my sort of thing, but I'm glad I read it anyway. Various thoughts:

The historical language: Not as annoyingly choppy and ungrammatical as some modern writing, but definitely modern. Some of the period language and dialogue felt quite convincing, some of it definitely not so, and the narration had a kind of jarring tendency to discuss its themes in exactly the same terms you'd use to talk about them in a blog post.
The way the central relationship developed was not to my tastes—it usually isn't in this kind of thing, not a great fault—but I also didn't really like or get on with either of the main characters, which was more of a problem.
The tone was kind of uneven—it's a pretty dark book in general, but with moments of humour and lighter adventure which didn't seem to sit well alongside the rest. And related to this, I suspect the book didn't develop or integrate its influences well enough—i.e. when bringing together lots of different influences into a story you need to do more than just cut bits out and stick them together in a new shape, and I think this book didn't, and hence you end up with weirdly-choppy, tonally-dissonant pieces everywhere. I say I suspect, because I'm not actually that familiar with any of the influences Winn describes in her afterword, but I could look at her accounts of them and see, ah, that's why that part of the book feels so different all of a sudden. (I did recognise some of the humour from 'Blackadder Goes Forth', which is a great show and very good at combining comedy with darkness, but it's not at all doing what this book tries to.)
I liked the epistolary and in-universe document bits of the book. I thought the opening contrast between two issues of the school magazine—one from June 1914 with light-hearted accounts of school events, poetry and silly chatty editorial comments, then one from October which opens starkly with a list of the school's recent dead and wounded—was great (although it would have worked even better without the newspaper announcing the beginning of the war in between—the reader already knows that, or can infer it), and the Rolls of Honour are used to good effect later on too.
And I liked some of the side characters and relationships. Gaunt/Sandys was messy in an interesting way, and I really liked Devi (and the whole prisoner-of-war camp section of the book in which he appears, jarringly different in tone as it is from the rest) and Maud, and would have liked to see more of them and their perspectives.

Other books read on holiday and since...

The Happy Return/Beat to Quarters by C. S. Forester (1937; different titles when published in different countries). My first attempt at getting into Age of Sail fandoms! I can't say I enjoyed this one hugely, but I have only myself to blame for that, because I had heard from Hornblower fans that reading the books in publication order is a bad idea and then decided to start with the first-published anyway. (I read the Discworld books in publication order when I was twelve and it didn't do me any harm...!) However—this is a very detailed story of sailing, imperial politics and highly questionable personal decisions set in/off the coast of Central America during the Napoleonic wars; Our Hero, Captain Horatio Hornblower, has to navigate commanding his crew, following difficult orders from the Admiralty, negotiating with some very strange local rulers, more than one suitably dramatic sea battle and an encounter with the strong-willed and somewhat improper Lady Barbara Wellesley (a fictional sister of the future Duke of Wellington). Hornblower would very much like to be a human person with feelings, idiosyncrasies and weaknesses, but he is absolutely convinced that this would be the most unpardonably un-captainlike thing he could possibly do, and so he tries his utmost to conceal his entire character beneath a facade of hard, featureless naval perfection. All his crew love him for it; my reaction to the extremes of this was a sort of cringing horror mixed with annoyance. I think the worst/best bit for me was where Hornblower thinks about how he hasn't discussed his orders with his officers, even though he isn't required to keep them a total secret, because he loves talking and gossiping about everything and is terrified of saying too much and spoiling his reputation. I feel sorry for him, but he does make it difficult! There were also some hints of where people get their slash shipping for this fandom from (I gather that the popular pairing is Hornblower and Bush, the first lieutenant with whom he can't possibly discuss his orders), which was entertaining, but not more than a few hints as yet.

sanguinity tells me that the mood of the books and the portrayal of Hornblower as a character shifted considerably over the course of Forester's writing career, and that the later books are much better. I'm planning to try Lieutenant Hornblower, her recommendation from the later books, next, and then if I like it I may go back and read the rest. I'm also going to try the Aubrey-Maturin books, which I gather are better-written and have some natural history in them.

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1911). A classic which I somehow managed to miss out on reading as a child—I think I saw a film adaptation of it at some point, but I can't remember the details. Anyway, I think this book is basically the idea of 'oh, go and get some nice fresh air, you'll feel better!' incarnated as a novel, an impressive achievement. Ten-year-old Mary Lennox, having grown up in the stultifying climate of India, loses her parents to cholera in one of the more horrifying opening sequences to a children's book I've read in a while and then finds herself sent to Yorkshire to live with her uncle in a big house next to The Moors. She is moody and unpleasant, but gradually transforms under the influence of Good Yorkshire Fresh Air and, most importantly, the garden of the title. This belonged to her uncle's wife, and he heartbrokenly abandoned it after her death years before; Mary is shown the door to the garden, all overgrown with ivy, and the key, buried in the earth, by a helpful local robin who befriends her, and sets to work restoring the garden alongside Dickon, the young brother of Mary's maidservant and a sort of local slightly-magical-nature-spirit friend to all animals (it's just occurred to me to compare him to Thomas Godbless, which seems like an interesting idea). Her cousin Colin, who has spent his life being hidden away in the house and convinced that he's hopelessly ill and surely won't live to adulthood, also joins in and is restored to perfect health. I thought all the Wholesome Fresh Air stuff was, er, just a little bit OTT—apparently it originated from Hodgson Burnett's Christian Science beliefs, which perhaps explains the sense of religious fervour in it. But I did enjoy the book overall, and especially all the nature descriptions, magical friendly animals and slightly absurd adulation of the general concept of Yorkshire. The attitudes to health in this context were certainly wobbly, however—I thought Hodgson Burnett convincingly argued that Colin's illness in particular was the result of persuasion and expectations rather than an actual physical disability and could plausibly be 'cured' by fresh air etc., but I was left with a certain suspicion that she wouldn't be especially ready to accept the idea that many disabilities are not that. Also, I remember

ethelmay commenting on one of my posts about Juliana Horatia Ewing that a lot of the stuff in this book was ripped off from Six to Sixteen, which, yes, it totally was!

(Looking it up now, FHB not only never lived in Yorkshire, she was actually born in Lancashire. Who'd have thought! o_O )

Emily Davis by Miss Read (1971). Read towards the end of my holiday, when I was getting tired and wanted some comfort reading—the next Fairacre book is always a reliable choice for that. This one begins with the death of Emily Davis, one of the older generation of teacher characters, and shows various friends, former pupils and other members of the community reacting to the news and reminiscing about Emily and her influence on their own lives—helping them, guiding them in their choices, reacting to and wisely overlooking various transgressions and generally being a good influence. It's solidly good in the way of Miss Read books—gentle, perceptive and sympathetic. I especially liked the significance which Emily Davis's life as a single woman gets to have—her fiance left her due to his WWI trauma and she never married, living happily in retirement with her lifelong best friend Dolly Clare, and the portrayal of this situation is lovely; regretting what didn't happen, but living a full and happy life nonetheless. I also sympathised especially with one of Emily's former pupils, who's now living in London for work and, thinking about her old teacher, realises how awful the city is (crowded, noisy, unbearable in a heatwave, etc.) and decides to go back home to the country.

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers (1940). I had been meaning to read this one for ages—the library's copy was bizarrely determined to evade me, but it does prove to exist after all—and I'm glad I got round to it now. It's a more or less plotless novel following the lives of various characters in a mill town somewhere in the US South just before the Second World War; the central figure is John Singer, a deaf and mute man who becomes the unlikely friend and confidant of several very different characters variously hurt and unsatisfied by their lives. Basically it's a story about the human longing for connection and meaningful purpose, as the other main characters seek in Singer someone who will understand their troubles: a thirteen-year-old girl from a poor and overcrowded family who cherishes a passion for classical music and dreams of becoming a composer; a doctor striving to improve the lot of his fellow black Americans, who ultimately fails to make the changes he wants even in his own family; a young man who comes to the town as a sort of vagrant and finds work at a carnival while determined to spread the word of his Marxist ideals to the workers of America; the owner of a cafe (incidentally, defined in the same oddly broad way as in The Ballad of the Sad Cafe) which the other characters frequent, who deals with various personal troubles and lonelinesses surrounding the death of his wife. But Singer is not really the friend the others all seek in him—his muteness and the resulting lack of actual communication between them impede real understanding while allowing them to project whatever they need onto him. And Singer too has an ideal friend, another deaf-mute man who is carted off to an asylum at the start of the book; his loss is a source of great pain to Singer throughout, and none of the other characters ever understands or even, I think, actually knows about it, but Singer's relationship with his friend ultimately seems as self-created and unreal as the others' friendships with him. The whole thing is an oddly dislocated book. It's very, very good! McCullers portrays highly varied and complicated situations, emotions and reactions in brilliantly precise detail, and sums up her characters' predicaments with understanding and sympathy; but it is somewhat grim and very pessimistic about the potential for real connection between people, and I think this gloominess was a bit too much for me in the end.

Not quite the last reading post of the year, because I read a few books in connection with one of my Yuletide fics which I shall write about after author reveals... but, other than that, I think this is it for the end of the year.

Fairacre Festival by Miss Read (1968). I wanted something nice and easy and comforting to read on the train, and Miss Read seemed an ideal choice. Good stuff, as always. This one is about Fairacre's collective efforts to raise funds to repair the church roof after it's damaged by a falling tree in a storm—all very heartwarming, with much community spirit and international friendship and generosity. The narrative perspective is a bit weird—it is ostensibly narrated in first person by Miss Read, except that much of the narration describes events for which she is not present, and then it seems to shift into third-person omniscient before returning to Miss Read herself.

Anderby Wold by Winifred Holtby (1923). This one definitely gives a strong sense of being the first novel by the author of South Riding! It tells the story of Mary Robson, who owns a farm in the Yorkshire Wolds and exerts absolute autocratic-philanthropical power over the local village; this is challenged by the arrival of the young socialist David Rossitur, who sets off a wave of trade union organising amongst the labourers on Mary's farm and who also develops a powerful and unexpected relationship with Mary. Holtby's skill in portraying the opposed sides of a conflict in a sympathetic, complicated and very human way is all here, although with somewhat less nuance and complexity and much less ambitiously broad a scope than in South Riding, and a rather over-dramatic ending. Regardless of that, the story and characters are endlessly interesting, and I enjoyed the setting of the East Riding of the early twentieth century. Thoroughly worth reading. Now if only I could find first editions of Holtby's early novels, so I could digitise them for Project Gutenberg...

I'm also working my way steadily through Fight for a Throne: The Jacobite '45 Revisited by Christopher Duffy (2015)—slowly, because it is a bit of a brick, and I won't quite finish it before the end of the year. It's great—all fascinating history, and in even more exhaustive detail than his previous version of the book. I'm really appreciating the military history perspective this time, particularly the geographical detail and the realities of armies marching over such and such a distance, this sort of terrain, to this place and so on. Duffy also makes some historical judgements, deciding (for instance) that Charles might or might not have succeeded had he advanced on London instead of turning back at Derby, but he absolutely should have tried. And the book is full of interesting historical details—I enjoyed the recruiting activities of Margaret Murray of Broughton and Rachael Erskine; was interested to learn that a small number of Native Americans, of all people, fought in the '45 (on the Hanoverian side); and had not before appreciated that the David Ferrier of Flemington was a real person, amongst other things. Unfortunately the book is oddly poorly edited, sometimes to the point of actually making it difficult to understand, but nevertheless it's a very worthwhile thing to read.

Final checks on my Yuletide fics are done! Not long now...

Besides that, today I have made slightly haphazard plans for the dinner I'm cooking tomorrow, listened to the carols from King's College on the radio (beautiful as ever) and I've been reading some festive books from favourite authors.

Christ Legends by Selma Lagerlöf (1904; translated by Velma Swanston Howard, 1908). A collection of short folktale-style stories about the life of Jesus—the first few stories are set around the Nativity, then there are some from later on. They're written with the same lovely fairytale-ish style as much of Lagerlöf's writing, and it works really well here—the imagery and style of folk-Christianity can be so interesting, and there were moments in these stories that reminded me of the folk song-Christmas carols I like. Favourite detail: at the Creation when God was making birds, ...the colours in our Lord’s paint pot gave out, and the goldfinch would have been without colour if our Lord had not wiped all His paint brushes on its feathers.

Village Christmas by Miss Read (1966). A charming little Christmas story! Miss Read herself doesn't appear in this one—instead it's about two spinster sisters, long-time residents of the village of Fairacre, who have to deal with unconventional new neighbours and eventually discover the value of neighbourly friendship during a crisis at Christmas.

And now, hopefully, my reading for the next few days will be Yuletide fic :D

The Lyon in Mourning, collected by Robert Forbes, volume 2 (1748-50). More very interesting Jacobite historical bits and pieces. I'm really getting to admire Forbes as a historian: not only did he obviously put a great deal of work into his 'collection', he's scrupulous about accuracy and detail, noting where different accounts of the same events contradict each other and stating his increased confidence in points on which independent accounts do agree, and he mentions several times his readiness to hear stories about the good conduct of Hanoverians, because he wants to be fair to his enemies. Highlights of the second volume include accounts kept by Prince Charles's Master of Household, in case you ever want to know how many chickens or how much flour the Jacobites ate on any given day of the march through England; an account of how an attempt to capture the Prince failed due to a small number of people opportunistically pretending to be the entire Jacobite army in defence of him; and a great deal of poetry of somewhat doubtful quality, some of it in Latin.

This volume is less focussed on the Prince and his escape than the first, and there's more information about what happened to everyone else after Culloden, some of it making for frankly difficult reading; but there are also some accounts of miraculous and heroic escapes, and much of kindness amidst the cruelty—Anne Leith, a woman who did a great deal to help the prisoners at Inverness, recounts her experiences there, including what I think is the story that D. K. Broster had in mind when she mentioned an officer court-martialled for showing kindness to the prisoners (he brought them writing materials, allowing them to communicate with Mrs Leith and other friends, and would go on guard when it wasn't his turn to spare them from the attentions of less well-disposed officers). There's also a lot to be gleaned from Forbes's letters about life in and around Edinburgh after the Rising. Jacobitism was clearly very much alive, and apparently the authorities in the city were, amongst other things, repeatedly bothered by the appearance of white cockades and other Jacobite symbols on the statue of a lion adorning the Parliament House. And the letters can be enjoyable for what they reveal about their writers as well. Forbes was apparently in the habit of signing himself by silly fake names when writing to his close friends; 'Donald Hatebreeks, of Tartanhall' colourfully conveys his opinion of the proscription of Highland dress!

Over the Gate by Miss Read (1964). We're back to the usual format of the Fairacre books, with Miss Read as the first-person narrator. This book is all about the local stories she hears from the inhabitants of the village, typically told to her 'over the gate' while stopping for a chat at the end of the garden. Despite the occasional questionable period attitude, and some slight confusion over the timeline (we're now nine years after the publication of the first Fairacre book, and the present-day ones are clearly intended to be set contemporarily, but some of the same schoolchild characters appear in all of them), I enjoyed this one a lot. I love Miss Read's quiet sense of humour, and the strong sense of place that makes Fairacre so memorable was strengthened by all the local folklore in this book. I quite agree with Miss Read when she considers the idea of leaving Fairacre for professional opportunities elsewhere and then decides that she couldn't possibly. The double layer of fiction on the stories recounted to Miss Read is used to good effect, with ambiguity over how much really happened as narrated—some of the stories are mundane, others are decidedly unbelievable (amongst these was what has to be the best interpretation of the idea of 'weight loss' I've ever read).