Clarissa Group Read: My thoughts so far

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Throughout 2012 I’m taking part in the group read of Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa, hosted by JoAnn of Lakeside Musing and Terri of Tip of the Iceberg. I probably won’t be posting an update every month but I thought it would be a good idea to at least post at the beginning, at the end and a few times in between.

For those of you not familiar with Clarissa, the book was published in 1748 and has over 1500 pages. The story is told in the form of 537 letters, the first being dated 10th January and the last 18th December. The idea of reading Clarissa over an entire year is so that the letters can be read on or close to the dates mentioned in the book.

January’s letters form a series of correspondence between Clarissa Harlowe and her best friend Anna Howe. In the first letter we learn that Clarissa and her family are involved in some kind of scandal and Anna wants her friend to tell her the truth about what has happened. Clarissa then replies to Anna with an account of the events that followed her family’s introduction to Mr Lovelace. At first Mr Lovelace had been interested in Clarissa’s sister, Arabella, before turning his attentions to Clarissa herself. It seems that Clarissa’s entire family disapprove of Lovelace, particularly after her brother James gets into a fight with him and is wounded. In the last of the January letters Clarissa has been given permission to visit Anna and stay with her for a few days.

I love the concept of reading each letter on the correct date, but I’ll admit I haven’t been sticking exactly to the schedule. I’m concerned that although January and February have a manageable number of letters (6 in January and 5 in February) some of the other months have a lot more to read (61 letters in March, for example). I don’t want to fall behind later in the year so I’ve been reading slightly ahead of schedule to make sure that doesn’t happen. I know this isn’t quite the idea of the group read but I think it’s the only way I’m going to have time to read the whole book before the end of December.

As I didn’t already have a copy of Clarissa I considered buying the paperback for the readalong, but in the end I downloaded the Kindle edition of the book, which is divided into 9 volumes. There are a couple of advantages to this, I think. I know from my experience of reading other books with 1000+ pages that they can be physically difficult to hold, so at least I don’t have that problem with the ebook version. And it also seems less daunting somehow to be reading 9 separate shorter volumes instead of one thick book.

I was expecting Clarissa to be a difficult book to understand as I haven’t read a lot of 18th century literature, but I actually haven’t had too much of a problem with the language. I wouldn’t describe it as an easy read and I certainly haven’t understood every word, as there are some that are no longer in use or that had different meanings in the 18th century, but I’m trying not to worry about that as long as I can still follow what’s happening. I’m enjoying the story so far and looking forward to continuing with it throughout the rest of the year!

Treason by Meredith Whitford

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Treason is the story of Richard III, beginning with his childhood as the youngest son of the Duke of York and moving on through the various battles of the Wars of the Roses, the reign of his brother Edward IV, Richard’s own time as King and his eventual defeat by Henry VII at the Battle of Bosworth. The story is narrated by Martin Robsart, one of only a few fictional characters in the book. As Richard’s cousin and closest friend, Martin is present at some of the most important moments in English history.

I thought telling the story from the perspective of Richard’s fictional cousin and best friend worked very well and I could almost believe Martin had really existed. He has his own storylines, including a romance with Innogen Shaxper (another fictional character), but his main role as narrator is to share with us his observations on Richard, Edward and the others.

In Treason, Richard is not portrayed as the evil, scheming hunchback he is often believed to be, thanks to Shakespeare’s play. Instead, he is shown as being brave, intelligent, loyal to his brother, respected by his men, and a loving husband to Anne Neville. And although his reign is so tragically cut short at Bosworth, during his brief time on the throne he proves himself to be a good king. He does have a few faults, but nothing that would make me think he was a man who was capable of murdering his own nephews or committing all the other crimes he’s been accused of. On the subject of the disappearance of the ‘Princes in the Tower’, by the way, the author offers an interesting and believable theory, though not one that I personally think is very likely.

I was impressed with the depth given to the other characters too. I thought Richard’s brother George, Duke of Clarence, was portrayed more sympathetically than in other books I’ve read. He did some terrible things, but I see him more as a person who was weak and easily led, and his eventual fate was, for me, one of the saddest moments of the story. Elizabeth Woodville (Edward IV’s wife) and her family are shown in a very negative light, but it’s worth remembering that we are seeing everybody through Martin’s eyes and as his loyalties lie firmly with Richard it’s understandable that his opinions of other characters aren’t always going to be completely unbiased.

The dialogue is quite modern – too modern at times, maybe – but I know this is something which is very difficult to get exactly right in historical fiction. I find that when an author tries to make the language sound more authentic, it can either work very well or very badly! I didn’t have a problem with the dialogue in this book and I could tell that Meredith Whitford had given a lot of attention to period detail (food, clothing etc) which made the descriptions of fifteenth century life feel very convincing. Battle scenes are an aspect of historical fiction that I sometimes find difficult to follow, but there are only a few in Treason and the author makes them easy to understand by concentrating on Martin’s emotions and personal experiences of the battle rather than giving us pages and pages of military tactics.

Reading Treason was proof, if I needed it, that it’s worth looking beyond the more popular names in historical fiction and taking a chance on a book I had never heard about before. It’s a shame this book is not better known as I’m sure many readers who enjoyed books like Sharon Kay Penman’s The Sunne in Splendour or Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time would probably enjoy this one too. And for anyone new to Wars of the Roses fiction, this would also be a good starting point – it makes a very complicated period of history both easy to understand and fun to read about. I loved it!

War Horse by Michael Morpurgo

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Despite being an avid reader as a child, I somehow missed out on Michael Morpurgo. The only one of his books that I read was Twist of Gold, at an age when I was starting to consider myself ‘too old’ for the children’s section of the library, and all I can remember is that it was about two children from Ireland who go to America to find their father during the Irish potato famine, and that it made me cry. But last week I read my second Michael Morpurgo book, War Horse, because I had decided to go to see the new Steven Spielberg film and wanted to read the book first. And War Horse, like all the best children’s books, is a book that can be enjoyed by people of all ages.

War Horse has a strong anti-war message and shows us the horrors of World War I from a very unusual perspective. The story is narrated by Joey, a young thoroughbred horse, who is bought at auction by a poor farmer from Devon. The farmer soon regrets this decision but his son, Albert, forms a special bond with Joey and trains him to work on the farm, determined to prove to his father that he hasn’t wasted his money. However, the family are struggling to pay their rent and when war breaks out in 1914, Joey is sold to an army officer as a cavalry horse. The rest of the story follows Joey’s experiences in France, first with the British cavalry and then pulling ambulances and artillery for the German army, but will he survive the war and will he ever be reunited with Albert?

Being an animal lover, I’m ashamed to admit that I had never given much thought to the suffering of the horses involved in the First World War or what happened to them after the war was over. Seeing things through Joey’s eyes gave a fascinating new perspective and has helped me to learn a little bit about an aspect of the war I had never really considered. Many of the horses serving with Joey are killed in their very first battle (the thought of leading a cavalry charge into a line of machine guns is so horrible to think about) and more of them die of hunger, illness or exhaustion after being forced to pull guns that are too heavy for them up hills and through deep mud.

I couldn’t help comparing this book to Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, another book narrated by a horse and one of my absolute favourites from my childhood. I should point out that Joey is not a talking horse and although he does interact with other horses, including his best friend Topthorn, he never actually ‘speaks’ to them in the way Black Beauty does. And yet I found Black Beauty a much more convincing horse narrator than Joey. I kept forgetting that Joey was supposed to be a horse as I thought he sounded very much like a human narrator would. But to be fair, this is a different type of book and Joey is telling his story in a different way.

War Horse has a reputation for being very sad and emotional, and yes, I did have tears in my eyes a few times. The story never becomes too sentimental, but poor Joey does go through a lot of traumatic experiences, and of course the war itself is always distressing to read about. However, because the book is so short (it can easily be read in an hour or two) many of the characters we meet are only around for a few chapters and for one reason or another don’t appear again. This made it difficult to really form a connection with them and so the story didn’t have quite the emotional impact on me that I had been expecting. I’m sure though that if I’d been reading this book at the age of nine or ten I would probably have cried from beginning to end!

One of the things I really loved about the book was that Joey, being a horse, doesn’t ‘take sides’; he doesn’t see the British as good and the Germans bad, for example. Instead he is able to tell the story from a neutral viewpoint, something that is very rare in a novel about war. Joey meets and makes friends with soldiers in both armies and also with a French civilian and his granddaughter. And although he witnesses a lot of cruelty and destruction, he also experiences kindness and compassion from people on both sides. There’s a wonderful moment when a British soldier and a German soldier leave their trenches to meet in no man’s land. I won’t tell you why they do this, but this scene and others like it are what made this book such a powerful read.

This is my first book for the War Through the Generations challenge, which has a World War I theme this year. For anyone else participating in the challenge, I would highly recommend War Horse as a quick but very moving read.

Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters

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Crocodile on the Sandbank is the first of Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody books, a series of historical mystery novels set in Egypt and following the adventures of a Victorian lady with a passion for archaeology.

When we first meet Amelia at the beginning of the novel, she has recently inherited a fortune following her father’s death and is planning to use some of her money to visit Egypt. Passing through Rome on her way to Cairo, Amelia rescues a young woman, Evelyn Barton-Forbes, who has been abandoned by her lover and the two become friends and travelling companions. After they arrive in Egypt, Amelia and Evelyn meet archaeologist Radcliffe Emerson and his younger brother Walter, who are working on a dig at Amarna. The two women soon team up with the Emerson brothers to tackle a mysterious mummy who seems to be stalking them at night!

Amelia is the book’s first person narrator, but I wasn’t sure at first if I was going to like her. She has a very sharp, witty narrative voice and for the first few chapters I found her alternatively amusing and irritating. Luckily though, after I got to know her better I started to warm to her. As well as being outspoken and sarcastic she’s also brave, intelligent and loyal to her friends – and definitely not a conventional Victorian woman! Emerson is a very strong character too and I enjoyed watching his relationship with Amelia develop.

Although I am interested in history, Ancient Egypt has never been one of my favourite subjects to read about, but Amelia and Emerson are so enthusiastic about Egypt and archaeology that I ended up with more enthusiasm for the subject too. The adventures they have exploring tombs, discovering mummies and deciphering hieroglyphics all sound so fascinating!

The mystery itself wasn’t one of the novel’s strong points though. It was hard to believe that someone as intelligent as Amelia wasn’t able to immediately work out what was happening and who the villain was. But like Alan Bradley’s Flavia de Luce mysteries, I think the charm of this book was in the setting and the characters (or Amelia and Emerson, at least – the other characters didn’t have a lot of depth) rather than the mystery.

The overall tone of Crocodile on the Sandbank is light and entertaining and although I’m not completely convinced about this series yet, I did like this book enough to want to read the second one. I’ll remember to pick up The Curse of the Pharaohs next time I want to relax with another fun Egyptian adventure.

The Girl on the Cliff by Lucinda Riley

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I read this book just after Christmas but it’s been one of those reviews that I’ve found difficult to write. Not because I didn’t enjoy the book, but because it was a complex story and hard to summarise or to write about without giving too much away.

The Girl on the Cliff begins in the present day and follows Grania Ryan, who has returned to her parents’ home in Ireland after having problems in her relationship with her boyfriend, Matt, in New York. One day Grania meets an eight-year-old girl, Aurora, standing on the edge of a cliff. As she gets to know the girl and her father better, Grania begins to discover how Aurora’s family, the Lisles, are connected with her own family, the Ryans.

Grania’s mother, Kathleen, is worried when she hears about her daughter’s new friends. Kathleen knows what problems the Lisles have caused for the Ryans in the past and is afraid of history repeating itself. As we go back in time, first to wartime London and then to one summer in 1970, we gradually learn the truth about the two families and why Kathleen has come to see the Lisles as enemies.

As we move through the generations, we meet lots of different characters but the most memorable is Aurora. In many ways Aurora seems much older than eight, though in others she still behaves like the child she is. Some short sections narrated by Aurora herself are interspersed with the main story, which I thought was very effective. There’s something almost otherworldly about her narration and at times I found myself wondering whether she was supposed to be a real child or some kind of ghost or fairy!

This is yet another of those novels with multiple time periods that I’ve been reading so many of recently, but this book is an example of how this structure can work very well – I found all the threads of the story equally interesting and cared about the characters in each one. So many things happen throughout the pages of this novel and I’ve only mentioned a few of them here – each time period contains its own set of surprises and secrets and I wouldn’t want to spoil anything for any future readers! I will say that the 1970s section was particularly moving and took the story in a direction I hadn’t expected at all. But whether I was reading about London in World War I or World War II, a farmhouse in rural Ireland or Grania and Matt’s fashionable loft apartment in New York, every time and location came to life.

The book wasn’t perfect – there were a few plot developments towards the end that I found difficult to believe and some parts of the story were too predictable – but there were plenty of surprising twists that I didn’t see coming and enough suspense to keep me turning the pages to see what would happen next. After enjoying this one so much, I’ll be looking out for Lucinda Riley’s next book and would also like to go back and read her previous one, Hothouse Flower.

The Professor by Charlotte Brontë

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The Professor was Charlotte Brontë’s first novel. She was unable to find a publisher for it during her lifetime and it was eventually published posthumously in 1857. Like Jane Eyre and Villette, this book is written in the first person, but with one difference – the narrator is a man. This is interesting as it shows us Charlotte’s views on how a man would think and behave and what his feelings towards women might be.

The narrator’s name is William Crimsworth, and at the beginning of the novel he is starting a new job as a clerk, working for his brother Edward, a rich mill-owner. However, William finds Edward impossible to get along with – he’s cruel and cold-hearted and treats William badly. Finding himself out of work again, William takes the advice of another businessman, Mr Hunsden, and goes to Belgium to teach English at a boys’ school in Brussels. Here he becomes involved with two very different women: one is Zoraide Reuter, the headmistress of the neighbouring girls’ school, and the other is a poor friendless student-teacher, Frances Henri.

This is the third book I’ve read by Charlotte Brontë. I first read Jane Eyre when I was a teenager and it immediately became one of my favourite books, but I didn’t begin to explore her other work until just last year, when I read Villette. Villette, like this book, is set at a school in Brussels and in many ways is a very similar story to The Professor, but with a female narrator and a more complex, layered plot. In both The Professor and Villette, Charlotte was able to draw on her own personal experience of teaching and studying in Brussels. This is obvious both in her descriptions of the city and in the way she could write so knowledgeably about education and the relationship between teachers and pupils.

What I love about Charlotte Brontë’s writing, as I mentioned in my earlier post on the author, is the way she writes about feelings and emotions. In The Professor she perfectly captures the loneliness and isolation a man might feel on arriving in an unfamiliar country with no money and without a friend in the world.

William is not as sympathetic a character as he should be though, due to Charlotte Brontë expressing some of her own views and prejudices through his narration. There’s a lot of racism and anti-Catholicism throughout this story, particularly when William is describing the girls in the school, making assumptions about them based on their nationality and considering them inferior to Protestant English girls. I’m sure it’s not a coincidence that the scheming, manipulative Zoraide Reuter is Catholic, while the quiet, honest Frances is Protestant (and half-English). Even allowing for the fact that the book was written in the 19th century, some of these passages were uncomfortable to read. And because I could never really warm to William’s character, I didn’t find this book as moving as I might have done otherwise.

Brontë also includes a lot of French dialogue in this novel, which it is assumed that the reader can understand. Some editions of the book provide translations in the notes, but the French is not translated in the original text and it can be frustrating to feel that you might be missing out on something essential to the plot. Also, the constant references to ‘physiognomy’ started to really irritate me (physiognomy is the concept of judging a person’s character based on their appearance). The word seemed to appear on almost every page, whenever William met someone new!

I know I’m probably giving the impression that I didn’t enjoy this book, but that’s not true. Charlotte Brontë’s writing is beautiful and for that reason alone I would say this book is definitely worth reading. Just don’t choose this one as a first introduction to Charlotte’s work – my recommendation would be to start with Jane Eyre and then move on to Villette before deciding whether to try The Professor. I can’t comment on her other book, Shirley, as I still haven’t read that one – maybe later in the year!

Ragnarok: The End of the Gods by A.S. Byatt

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In Ragnarok, A.S. Byatt looks at Norse mythology from the perspective of a little girl (referred to as simply ‘the thin child’) who has been evacuated to the countryside during World War II. When the thin child receives a book called Asgard and the Gods, she is fascinated by the myths it contains, including Ragnarok, the story of ‘the end of the gods’. She reads the book over and over again and the myths help to sustain her throughout the war.

In the first half of the book we are introduced to some of the important characters from Norse myth, including the gods Odin, Loki (the thin child’s favourite) and Baldur, Fenrir the wolf and Jörmungandr, the serpent who wraps herself around the world. Byatt uses wonderful, rich prose to bring all of these characters to life and there are some beautiful descriptions of nature and the environment too – I particularly loved reading about Yggdrasil, the World Tree, and Rándrasill, the Sea Tree. Later in the book, when the destruction of the world begins, there are some equally vivid and well written descriptions of how all of these things were destroyed, and it’s difficult to read Ragnarok without noticing some parallels with the world we live in today.

Throughout the book Byatt moves back and forth between the myths and the framing story of the thin child, showing us how various parts of the myths relate to the child’s own life in wartime Britain, how she makes comparisons between Norse myth and stories from the Bible, and how the myths help her to cope while her father is away fighting in the war. When the child is not reading Asgard and the Gods she’s busy discovering the beauty of the world around her, learning the names of the flowers and trees that surround her new home.

In her author’s note at the end of the book, Byatt tells us why she chose to write about Ragnarok, and it seems that the thin child’s story was very autobiographical, which I had already guessed. She also explains the differences between myths and fairy tales and this was interesting to me because I’m not sure I would have been able to define the differences myself! According to Byatt, characters in myth only have attributes and not personalities the way characters in fairy tales do. This means we don’t actually get to experience the emotions and feelings of the gods in Ragnarok; instead the myths are told in a straightforward, factual style.

I am definitely not an expert on mythology and before I started this book I only knew a few of the basic facts of Norse myth. Although this is just a short book, it contains a huge amount of information, most of which was completely new to me, and I did feel slightly overwhelmed but overall I would say it’s an excellent introduction to Norse mythology. I could really feel the enthusiasm of the thin child (and Byatt herself) for the myths she was reading and by the time I’d finished the book I felt some of that enthusiasm too.

This book was a fascinating read and I would recommend it as a good starting point for other people who are also new to Norse myth, but if you already have a good knowledge of the myths I’m sure you’ll enjoy discovering them again through the thin child’s eyes.

I received a copy of Ragnarok through Netgalley