No Fair Maidens by Kim Willis

August 6, 202615 Comments

I’ve read a lot of Greek mythology but very little British mythology, so when I came across No Fair Maidens on NetGalley it seemed like a good opportunity to rectify that. However, I don’t think I read the description of the book properly as it wasn’t quite the exploration of British goddesses that I’d expected but more of a memoir of the author’s own personal journey. Looking at other reviews, it seems a lot of people made the same mistake, but I think as long as you know what kind of book it is before you start, there’s still a lot to enjoy here.

Kim Willis begins by telling us about a time in her life when she began to struggle with mental health issues. She had just been told (wrongly) that she would never be able to have children and was left feeling depressed and empty. It was then that she took a trip to the mouth of the River Severn and drew inspiration from the story of the goddess Sabrina (or Hafren in Welsh), whose name over the centuries became Severn. Sabrina and her two sisters fell to earth in the form of single raindrops and then each chose her own route to the sea, growing and swelling as they went. Willis found it motivating to think of these three women charting a path for themselves with no maps to show the way – and this led her to investigate the stories of other mythical British women.

I had heard of some of the women featured in the book; Morgan le Fay, who appears in the Arthurian legends usually as King Arthur’s half-sister, is probably the most famous, but I was also already familiar with Melusine, the water spirit who turns into a snake for several days each month. The others I knew little to nothing about – Coventina, Arianrhod, Scáthach and my two favourites, Cerridwen and Gwendoline. I won’t say too much about any of the individual women as you may prefer to discover their stories for yourself, but all of them are fascinating and, interestingly, they are all associated with water in some way.

However, relatively little time is spent on the actual myths; most of them are told in just a few pages embedded into each chapter. Much more attention is given to the author’s own reactions to learning about the myths, how she found them inspiring and healing and how they gave her the strength to move forward. Although I appreciate her courage in being so open and honest with the reader about her life and her mental health, I didn’t personally find any of this particularly interesting and struggled to identify with her personality and way of life. I’m sure other readers will like this aspect of the book and find it helpful; it just depends on what you’re looking for, I think.

I did enjoy reading about the author’s travels around England, Scotland and Wales to get to the source of each of the stories and stand on the land where our eight mythological women may once have stood. I’ve been left wanting to know more about these myths – and maybe I’ll actually get round to reading The Mabinogion one of these days!

Thanks to Doubleday for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Book 13/20 of 20 Books of Summer

The Tower by Thea Lenarduzzi – #ReadIndies

February 12, 20266 Comments

This month Karen of Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings is hosting #ReadIndies, celebrating books from independent publishers. I’ve never read anything published by Fitzcarraldo Editions before, so this seemed a good opportunity to read one of their books.

The Tower is a difficult book to describe. It’s not quite fiction, but it doesn’t feel like non-fiction either. It’s a memoir but it’s also an essay and an ode to the power of storytelling. The book follows an author known only as ‘T.’ – presumably Thea Lenarduzzi herself – as she becomes obsessed with the story of a young woman, Annie, who developed tuberculosis in the early 20th century and, according to local legend, was locked away by her father in a tower specially built on the family estate. After living there in isolation for several years, she is said to have died from the disease and although the house has since been demolished, the tower still remains.

T. becomes completely fixated on Annie and her tragic life, determined to find out everything she can about her illness, her imprisonment and her death. She spends a lot of time researching the history of TB, its symptoms and the various treatments, also looking at the lives of famous sufferers such as the author Katherine Mansfield. She visits the now abandoned tower, speaks to historians and archivists and listens to tales told by local residents. All of this is covered in the first two sections of the book and I found most of it fascinating. T. goes off on a lot of lengthy tangents and meanders from one subject to another, but in general Annie’s story was very compelling…

Until, suddenly, we discover that everything we – and T. – thought we knew about Annie may not necessarily be completely accurate after all. In the third section of the book, Lenarduzzi switches from writing in the third person to the first person and becomes herself again, instead of a character known as T. This final section takes the form of a long discussion of storytelling, raising lots of intriguing questions. What is a story and who chooses how it should be told? What is it that draws us to certain stories and not others? As Lenarduzzi explains:

Perhaps for now I should simply say that we don’t always tell the story we want to tell. We can’t always choose our place in it, nor how it ends, or even if it does. That, reader, is the stuff of fiction.

The Tower, then, wasn’t quite what I expected, but it’s a book that surprised me several times and left me with a lot to think about at the end! Thea Lenarduzzi has written another book, Dandelions, inspired by her family history, which sounds equally interesting.

Rosie: Scenes from a Vanished Life by Rose Tremain

October 9, 2019October 8, 201917 Comments

I don’t think I’ve read enough of Rose Tremain’s books to really describe myself as a fan or as any kind of expert on her work, but I’ve enjoyed the little I’ve read by her – Restoration and Merivel, her two novels set in 17th century England and France, and The Gustav Sonata, set in Switzerland before, during and after the Second World War – so I decided to give her recent memoir, Rosie, a try.

Judging purely by the cover and the subtitle Scenes from a Vanished Life, I was expecting something light, charming and nostalgic, but the reality was very different and the book left me feeling quite sad. It’s a slim book covering only the first eighteen years of the author’s life and I think it’s fair to say that Rose – or Rosie, as she was known when she was younger – didn’t have the happiest start to life. Born into an upper-middle-class family, with all the privilege and opportunity that comes with that, the one thing Rosie lacks is parental love. She is ten years old when her playwright father, Keith, leaves her mother, Jane, for a younger woman. Jane quickly remarries and sends Rosie and her sister, Jo, to boarding school, an incident Tremain thinks of as ‘The Great Casting Away’ and which she describes with both resentment and an attempt to understand:

When we were safely away in our cold dormitories at Crofton Grange, she and her friends could forget all about their children’s future. Instead, they could go to plays, go to films, go to restaurants, get drunk at lunchtime, flirt, shop, swear, take taxis, waste money, go dancing, have sex, and wander through London in the dawn light, laughing, determined to forget the war that had stolen their youth and so many of the people they’d loved.

The child Rosie is often hurt and confused by her mother’s actions, and not much has changed by the time she reaches adulthood; when her first play is broadcast on BBC radio in 1976, Jane says she is too busy to listen as she is going out to lunch that day. Rosie does acknowledge, however, that her mother’s lack of affection for her could be partly due to her own upbringing. Many of Rosie’s childhood memories revolve around holidays spent at her maternal grandparents’ home, Linkenholt Manor, but it quickly becomes clear that it is the house that holds a special place in her heart and not her grandparents themselves. Mabel and Roland Dudley, Jane’s parents, are depicted as cold, stern people who have struggled to move on from the loss of their two sons and see their daughter as a poor substitute; their granddaughters interest them even less. I found this so sad because my own childhood relationship with my grandparents was completely different – warm and loving and full of fun. The only love Rosie seems to receive comes from her nanny, Vera Sturt, and I was glad that she had at least one person who cared about her, although even this relationship was lost when she was sent away to boarding school.

As the title of the book suggests, the world of Tremain’s childhood is a world that has now largely vanished. Her account of her school days, of beliefs and attitudes and of society in general could only have been written by someone growing up in the 1950s and belonging to a certain class. As Rosie becomes a young adult and sets her sights on attending Oxford University, she sees her dreams shattered yet again when her mother insists on sending her to a Swiss ‘finishing school’ instead. Jane doesn’t see the need for her daughter to continue her education when all a woman needs to do to succeed in life is to find a rich husband.

Despite her privileged background then, Tremain still had obstacles to overcome as she grew from Rosie into Rose and embarked on her writing career. Because her memoir ends before the publication of her first book, she doesn’t spend a lot of time discussing her writing, but she does give us a few insights into how incidents, people and places from her early life later found their way into her novels. I’m sure this would have meant more to me if I had read more of her work! The book ends very abruptly, which was disappointing as I would have liked to have continued to follow Rose through her adult years. Still, it was interesting getting to know the young Rosie and her world. I will have to read more of her books soon; if there are any you would recommend please let me know.

Thanks to Vintage Publishing for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

The Oaken Heart by Margery Allingham

April 11, 201818 Comments

Having read several of Margery Allingham’s detective novels, I was intrigued to come across The Oaken Heart, an account of life in her small English village during the Second World War. Originally published in 1941, it was apparently based on letters written to some American friends and expanded into a book at the suggestion of her publisher. It’s interesting to think that she was writing this while the war was still taking place and when nobody knew how much longer it would last or what the outcome would be.

Allingham’s village was Tolleshunt D’Arcy in Essex, but she refers to it in the book as ‘Auburn’ after a line from the poem The Deserted Village by Oliver Goldsmith. She is obviously very proud of Auburn and the way the people who live there work together to cope with whatever the war throws at them; it’s true that all towns and villages have their own unique characteristics, but I think it’s also true that the wartime experiences of the residents of Auburn will have been similar to the experiences of people in other parts of Britain.

Like many other villages, Auburn, in 1938 when the book opens, is still suffering from the effects of the previous war which ended just twenty years earlier. There’s a sense that Allingham and her friends are putting all their faith in Neville Chamberlain, not really believing or wanting to believe that war could possibly happen again. Of course, it does happen again – after a year of preparations, gas mask distributions and discussions of who should take in how many evacuees. The subject of evacuees is an important one to the people of Auburn; at first they are excited at the thought of groups of little schoolchildren from London arriving in the village (since the First World War there has been a shortage of young people in Auburn), but the reality is very different – hundreds of young mothers and babies! Allingham’s descriptions of the newcomers, the culture differences and how the villagers dealt with all of this are quite funny to read about.

I have never read anything about Margery Allingham as a person before, so I don’t know what she was supposed to be like or what impression the people who knew her had of her, but based on her own words in The Oaken Heart, she seems very likeable and down-to-earth. She makes a few references to her writing career now and then (she was working on Traitor’s Purse at the time), but there is never any sense of self-importance or superiority over anyone else in the village. Her writing style is warm, conversational and, as you would expect, very readable.

This is a wonderful book, which I would recommend to anyone who enjoys reading about life during the war. The fact that it is a first-hand account written in 1941 rather than a memoir written years later gives it another layer of interest. As we reach the final page, there is still no end to the war in sight and nobody has any idea if or when it’s all going to stop. I was sorry that the book ended when it did, as I would have liked to have continued reading about the people of Auburn and to find out how they fared later in the war.

A Chelsea Concerto by Frances Faviell

November 24, 20166 Comments

I had a nice surprise a few months ago when I unexpectedly received two ebooks from Dean Street Press who were launching their new imprint, Furrowed Middlebrow (in conjunction with Scott from the Furrowed Middlebrow blog). The first one I chose to read was A Chelsea Concerto, a Second World War memoir originally published in 1959.

Frances Faviell lived at 33 Cheyne Place in Chelsea – one of the most heavily bombed areas of London during the war due to its location, close to the Royal Hospital and to several bridges over the River Thames. Her memoir opens in the early days of the war, a period known as the Phoney War because it seemed as though very little was actually happening. During this time, as well as continuing her work as an artist, Frances becomes a Red Cross volunteer, taking part in air-raid drills and trying to ensure that the people of Chelsea are as fully prepared as they can possibly be for whatever may follow.

What follows, of course, is the Blitz, which Faviell describes in vivid detail. Night after night, people living in Chelsea are subjected to one bombing raid after another, emerging from the shelters each morning in fear of what they might find: their home destroyed; a friend or neighbour dead; the roads blocked; an unexploded bomb in the street. With her work as a volunteer, Frances is often at the centre of the action, experiencing and witnessing the most horrifying things, while throughout it all, the Green Cat – her most treasured possession – sits in her window as a symbol of safety and prosperity.

Serene and aloof he sat in the window in the sunlight, surveying with contempt the activities in the street. Everyone begged me to put him down in the cellar with some of the paintings which I had stored there now. But I would not move him. Was he not the Guardian of the Home? He must be treated with respect.

Before the war, Frances had travelled widely and learned to speak several languages, something which enables her to offer help and support to the refugees who have fled to Britain as the Nazis sweep across Europe. There are some real characters amongst the refugees – in particular ‘The Giant’, a large and outspoken Belgian fisherman – and some funny moments, such as the story of Monsieur D, who is suspected of being a spy when mysterious lights show from his window during a blackout. Many of these people, though, are frightened and traumatised and look to Frances for advice and protection. She becomes particularly close to Ruth, a Jewish refugee from Germany, who attempts to kill herself, leaving her young daughter in need of Frances’ care. Nineteen-year-old Catherine, who arrives in London pregnant and unmarried, is another troubled young woman whom Frances finds herself taking under her wing.

Despite the terrible things going on around her – and the terrible things she experiences herself – Frances keeps her sense of humour and often manages to see the funny side (when she remembers a government information leaflet on what to do if German parachutists land, for example, or when she talks about her dachshund, Vicki, known as Miss Hitler).

The wording of the pamphlet which we knew was designed to try and avoid the same panic flight as in Belgium and France caused such hilarity everywhere that every current show included some skit on the arrival of parachutists. In the FAP we went about chivvying one another with the words of the clauses about seeing anything suspicious and “Be calm, be quick, be exact” became a joke in every place of work or exercise which we had to carry out with the Civil Defence.

Most of her memories are quite harrowing, though, such as when she describes the horrors of trying to reassemble pieces of bodies blown apart by bombs and the time she was lowered headfirst into a hole in a collapsed building to assist an injured man. But the most vivid and dramatic episode of all comes near the end when Faviell’s own home is bombed – and although we know that Frances must have survived to be able to write this book, the tension and the sense of danger come across so strongly in her writing that we worry for her anyway.

I haven’t read many wartime memoirs and I couldn’t help comparing this one to the few that I have read. It didn’t have quite the emotional impact that Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth had on me, for example, but I still found it a fascinating and moving read. Frances Faviell wrote several other books which are also available from Dean Street Press; has anyone read any of them, and if so, which would you recommend?

Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee

May 9, 2014May 9, 201414 Comments

Laurie Lee was a British novelist and poet most famous for his autobiographical trilogy which begins with Cider with Rosie and continues with As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning and A Moment of War. Published in 1959, this first volume looks back on Lee’s childhood in the small Cotswold village of Slad in Gloucestershire. Lee moved there at the age of three with his mother and siblings at the end of the First World War. In Cider with Rosie he writes about his family and friends, his school days and the eccentric characters who lived and worked in Slad.

I had never considered reading this book until now, partly because it reminded me of being at school (we never actually read the whole book, but I remember having to study excerpts from it for English comprehension exercises) and I think that was enough to put me off! The scene that I particularly remembered was the one where Laurie’s sisters send him off for his first day at school wrapped in scarves with a hot potato in his pocket. When he comes home he tells the family about his disappointing day:

“They never gave me the present!”
“Present? What present?”
“They said they’d give me a present.”
“Well, now, I’m sure they didn’t.”
“They did! They said: ‘You’re Laurie Lee, ain’t you? Well, just you sit there for the present.’ I sat there all day but I never got it. I ain’t going back there again!”

I’m glad I waited until now to read this book, as I don’t think I would have appreciated it when I was younger. It’s not the most exciting book to read – it doesn’t seem that anything particularly dramatic happened to Lee in his early years and being an autobiographical work (or semi-autobiographical, as Lee admits at the start that “this is a recollection of early boyhood and some of the facts may be distorted by time”), it is not a book with a ‘story’ or a plot. However, it is still worth reading for the beauty of Lee’s descriptions and imagery and because it paints a portrait of a world that has gone and will never come back again.

The book has quite an interesting structure with each chapter devoted to a different theme with titles such as ‘Village School’, ‘The Kitchen’ and ‘Mother’. Laurie does age gradually throughout the book, so that the earlier chapters are seen through the innocent eyes of a small child and the later ones are more mature (including the famous scene drinking cider under a hay wagon with the Rosie of the title), but otherwise the book doesn’t follow strict chronological order.

Some chapters are more enjoyable than others (I loved ‘Grannies in the Wainscot’, which describes two of the Lees’ elderly neighbours) but my favourite is actually the final chapter, which shows how life in the village starts to change with the coming of progress. With the arrival in Slad of cars and electricity, for example, the world suddenly becomes a different place and the simple life Laurie Lee has always known begins to disappear forever.

Cider with Rosie has been reissued by Vintage Classics in a beautiful new edition and I received a copy for review via NetGalley. The book includes drawings by John Ward and although I don’t think you really get the full benefit of them when you’re reading an ebook version, it’s always nice to see illustrations!

Review: Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

July 20, 201012 Comments

This is the first graphic novel I’ve read. There, I’ve admitted it. I can’t explain why it has taken me so long to read one. It’s not that I think they’re childish or ‘not real literature’ or anything like that; it had just never occurred to me to read them and until I started blogging I didn’t even realise how popular they were. When I did decide I’d like to try one I thought a graphic memoir might be the best to start with and as I’d seen Persepolis reviewed on so many blogs it seemed a good choice. And it was, because I loved it.

This edition is actually two books in one: The Story of a Childhood and The Story of a Return. They can be bought separately but you really need to read the first book before the second.

These two books are the memoirs of Marjane Satrapi. In The Story of a Childhood she tells us what it’s like to be a child growing up in Iran during the 1970s and 80s. Due to the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War, Iran becomes an oppressive and often dangerous place to live, particularly as Marjane develops into a rebellious teenager. Her concerned parents eventually decide that the safest option is to send their daughter away to start a new life in Europe.

Before beginning this book, I didn’t know very much at all about Iranian history and politics. I found that seeing things through a child’s eyes was fascinating and informative. Marji is an intelligent, imaginative girl and like all children she’s always curious and full of questions, so for someone who knows very little about Iran, this book offers an opportunity to learn along with Marji.

In the second volume, Marji is living in Austria, struggling to adapt to life in a country with an entirely different culture. This second book is more about the personal problems she faces with relationships, drugs and money and although I had a lot of sympathy for the situation she was in, I didn’t enjoy reading this book as much as the first one. I did find it more interesting towards the end when she finally returns to Iran several years later and finds she has as much trouble fitting back into her old life as she’d had fitting into life in Austria.

Although this was definitely a new experience for me, I was quickly able to forget that I was reading a ‘graphic novel’ and become absorbed in Marjane Satrapi’s story. The simple, stark black and white drawings were perfect and made it easy to understand what was happening. Rather than just illustrating the text, the pictures played an equally important part in telling the story.

I enjoyed this book much more than I expected to. It was a powerful and moving story, with some moments of humour too. So, if you are also new to graphic novels and unsure where to start, I have no hesitation in recommending this one to you!