Short Story Sunday

Time for Short Story Sunday again, and I will start by saying I absolutely hated this week’s offering, and had it been the first tale in The Persephone Book of Short Stories I doubt I would have read any further. Fortunately it’s story number two, and ahead of me lie Dorothy Whipple, EM Delafield, Edith Wharton, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Mollie Panter-Downes and a host of other wonderful authors, so it’s onwards and upwards as Eric Robson might say, and I’m certainly not giving up. By the way, for anyone who never listens to Radio 4, Eric Robson is the presenter of Gardeners’ Question Time (one of the best things about Sunday afternoons) and that’s his catchphrase, which I always find rather comforting – almost on par with Julian of Norwich who said: “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

Anyway, as usual I am digressing. I hear you ask what it is that I do not like, and the answer

Katherine Mansfield

is Katherine Mansfield’s The Black Cap. She’s an author I always feel I ought to read partly, I suspect, because she was a cousin of Elizabeth von Arnim, whose books I love. Over the years I’ve picked up work by Mansfield on several occasions, and browsed through a page or two, but it’s never appealed enough to make me buy or borrow, and this story hasn’t made me change my mind. Dated 1917, it’s written as if it were a script for a series of short scenes in a play or film, and despite the fact it’s so short it’s obviously a complete work, with a very clearly defined beginning, middle and end, which is fine, because I was always taught that every good story should have these qualities, in the correct order. Of course, literary rules like this are frequently broken very successfully, but the format works OK here – it’s that scripted style I don’t like, which is odd, because I enjoy reading plays, so that can’t be the only reason I don’t like this.

And it can’t be the fact that we never get to know the characters’ names, because there are plenty of books with anonymous central characters which I read over and over again - Daphne du Maurier’s ‘Rebecca’ is one of my all-time favourites. Nor can the subject matter be to blame: after all, there are lots of great stories which hinge on a woman meeting her lover.

Here the twist is that the woman then abandons him – because he has lost his hat and is wearing an appalling black cap which looks absurd. From this moment it’s obvious the assignation won’t go according to plan, because the black cap is more than a fashion or lifestyle faux pas: it seems to reference the black cap worn by judges announcing the death sentence, but in this case it heralds the end of the affair. The woman decides it highlights their differences in outlook, and feels it is impossible to love a man like that because he is not her style. So she heads back home to her husband (who we last saw over breakfast), looking forward to a meal of cold fowl and orange jelly.  It shows how small, unimportant things can change perceptions and alter lives, but I disliked the lady intensely, and couldn’t feel any kind of sympathy for her. I would go so far as to say I thought she was a shallow, small-minded, self-satisfied, selfish bitch, and her lover was well out of the relationship, and I felt really sorry for her husband. But I didn’t like the two of them either. And I found the dialogue stilted.

Reading this through, none of my comments sound like a coherent critique of ‘The Black Cap’, and I suspect my attempt at an appraisal is very much an emotional response. It’s just one of those stories that didn’t gel with me, largely because I didn’t like that script format or Mansfield’s writing style. But, mad though it sounds, I might have enjoyed the same plotline written by a different author. Currently I’m trying to think who would do it justice!

Teatime Treats!

Teatime treats!

Help yourself to a cake or biscuit people! And you needn’t worry about the calorie count as these little morsels are certainly not fattening – because they’re made from wool. I was so delighted with the Blooms and Bunnies I produced for Easter I thought I would try and make something each month so, since the Man of the House and I both celebrated birthdays at the start of May, I got my crochet hooks out, and rummaged around in my stash of wool oddments, and this is what I’ve come up with for today’s Saturday Snapshot. 

Creative cupcakes.

I had great fun decorating them with beads and ribbons, and although my efforts to produce a crochet fruit for the top of one cake were not at all successful, I left it on, as a record of my work. 

Fondant fancies and an iced party ring biscuit . The
butterfly candles look pretty, but I don't think it
would be sensible to light them.

There are fondant fancies (round rather than square like the real thing) with roses on the top, and cup cakes with lots of swirly ‘icing’, and some cream sponges topped with fruit, some jam tarts and bakewell tarts, and lots of biscuits. There are chocolate digestives, and jammie dodgers, and scrummy party rings with icing on the top, and pink wafers sandwiched together with vanilla cream, and those lovely, curranty biscuits with crunchy sugar on the top. I’m not sure what they are called – I’ve seen them referred to as currant biscuits, Easter biscuits, and Shrewsbury biscuits. Whatever their name, the edible ones are delicious and really easy to bake, but having lost weight on my walking/not eating between meals campaign, I’m reluctant to start cooking teatime treats in case I put weight on again! 

Biscuit bonanza: pink wafers, jammie dodgers and
sugary currant biscuits.

I used scraps of double knitting wool, with a 3mm (British sizing hook), and the patterns mostly came from http://www.normalynn.info/ which has some really ambitious culinary crochet, much more intricate than mine. I changed some of the patterns, and altered the sizes, and even though self-praise is no recommendation I think they are quite effective. 

Tasty 'pstry' tarts - jam, lemon curd, and bakewell
(with a cerry on the top).

Now I have to think about a project for June! Any ideas anyone?

Alyce at At Home With Books is taking a break, so Saturday Snapshot is now being hosted by Melinda of West Metro Mommy.

Library Briefs

I've been particularly well organised with my last library haul - I surprise myself sometimes! I've read all four of them, and resisted the temptation to go in and get more every time I passed the building, and kept them altogether on a shelf, and not lost them, or forgotten them, and not kept them too long. I really enjoyed two of my selections, but didn't like the other two at all. I was especially disappointed with Jeanette Winterson's 'The Daylight Gate' because I usually admire her work. Anyway, I've written a brief review on each book, and found it an interesting exercise - it's a while since I've written to length, so I set myself a limit of 300 words for each volume, and only went over on one. 

Recipe for Love, Katie Fforde: You’re always in safe with Katie Fforde. This, as ever, is light, fluffy and very enjoyable.  It owes a lot to reality TV cookery shows, and even more to Jane Eyre, but is none the worse for that. Zoe Harper comes to the rescue when a grumpy, arrogant (but very desirable) man puts his car in a ditch. He turns out to be Gideon Irving, a judge for the cookery competition where our heroine is a contestant... There is an instant attraction between the pair, but misunderstandings must be sorted out before true love can prevail.

The plot moves along at a nice pace and the setting of Somerby House (which can be found in several other Fforde novels) is delightful, as are the recipes dished up for the televised contest, which is part Great British Bake-Off and part Master Chef. The cooks themselves are a nicely balanced mix of people, including Zoe’s room-mate, the splendidly nasty Cher, an airhead who is more interested in fame than food, and will do anything to win.

I could be critical and point out that there is certain similarity in many of Fforde’s plots and characters, but the same could be said for Jane Austen, who I love dearly, so I’m really not complaining – after all, Fforde knows her strengths, and is one of the greatest exponents of the romantic fiction genre. However, despite that, and despite the fact that I like comfort reading and happy endings, I can’t help feeling it might be nice if she ventured into new territory.

The Thoughtful Dresser, Linda Grant: Difficult to know how to describe this.  Definitely not a novel, although it was on the fiction shelves – more a series of reflective essays on the importance of what we wear. There are interviews and historic research alongside Grant’s own thoughts. For many women, it seems, having the right outfit is an empowering and uplifting experience, and it was interesting to learn that for some dispossessed women (like the concentration camp survivor) the acquisition of even one pretty, colourful garment is something really special.

I can quite understand that wearing something nice can make you feel better – having lost weight over the last few months I’m currently working my way through  things I haven’t been able to wear for four years and yes, that makes me feel good.

But Grant’s view of clothes is an alien concept as far as I’m concerned, and I really can’t get that excited about garments, shoes and accessories, let alone the designer names she mentions.

I’ve never believed people should be judged by what they look like or what they wear because it’s who you are as a person that really matters, and I’m much more likely to spend money on a book than something to wear, so I guess I’m the wrong person to appreciate this volume.

The Daylight Gate, Jeanette Winterson: A novel about the Pendle Witches which I picked it up because a) I normally like Jeanette Winterson and b) she presented a fascinating programme about the witches on Radio 4, but I was not at all keen on the book. Winterson throws everything into it – child abuse, a Gunpowder plotter, William Shakespeare, astrologer and occultist Dr John Dee, and a Catholic priest (remember, this was a time when Popish practices were banned, and some scholars now think the ‘coven’ may have been a small congregation of Catholics).

The book is published by Hammer, which should provide a clue that this is a horror story in the tradition of those old films. Magic and the supernatural rub shoulders with religion and the everyday, and some of the action is very nasty indeed, but you wouldn’t expect a story on this topic to be anything but gruesome. However, all those magical elements and the blurring of the margins between fantasy and reality really didn’t work for me. I think I would have preferred less mumbo jumbo and a greater exploration of people’s motives and relationships (but then, of course, it would have been a completely different book).  

Sadly, nothing pleased me about ‘The Daylight Gate’ – even Winterson’s prose seemed to lack its usual power and dexterity. I was disappointed, but I kept comparing the novel with ‘The Crucible’, Arthur Miller’s great play about the Salem Witches. It’s an unfair comparison, since Miller’s work is also an allegory about the political situation in America at the time he was writing, but I couldn’t help myself, and Winterson didn’t match up to this masterpiece.

A Red Herring Without Mustard, Alan Bradley: This was my first encounter with child sleuth Flavia de Luce, and it was absolutely brilliant! If you’ve never read any of the mysteries featuring the 11-year-old prodigy and her trusty steed (a bicycle called Gladys) then I suggest you do so. Immediately, if you please. Flavia is precocious and opinionated (as well as being a genius at chemistry), and I can well understand how irritating her sisters find her. But for all that she’s very engaging and it’s hard to dislike her. Most of the time you (and Flavia) forget she is an 11-year-old girl, until the turns of the plot make you (and her) remember just how young and vulnerable she is. Pitting your wits against the characters in a bid to reveal who dunnit, and why, is one of the great pleasures of any good detective novel – and you can do that no matter how old the investigator is.

The novel opens as Flavia accidently sets fire to a gypsy’s tent at the village fete. Hours later she discovers the old gypsy lying barely alive in a pool of blood in her caravan, which is parked up on the de Luce family’s land. Then Flavia finds a body suspended in the fountain. Are the attack and the murder connected? And is there a link to a child who disappeared? And what about the Hobblers, a strange religious sect who are convinced the Kingdom of God lies a few feet above the ground? And why do the de Luces’ antique fire dogs vanish and reappear – in three different places?

Inspector Hewitt and his team of policemen are called in to solve the crimes but, needless to say, it’s Flavia who finds the answers. As you might expect from the title, red herrings abound, and there’s a strange, fishy smell that keeps cropping up. If you like taut, psychological crime thrillers then this is not for you. But if you like your crime novels to be ‘cosy’ and rather quirky then I’m sure you will enjoy this.

Let's Hear it for Older Women (The Winds of Heaven)

I’m still with Persephone, but today’s thoughts are about a novel rather than a short story. I’ve been reading The Winds of Heaven, by Monica Dickens, which meets my current craving for happy endings. But don’t get the idea this is fluffy, because it’s not. Dickens highlights the difficulties faced by an older woman, her role within the family, the way she is perceived by others – and the way she sees them.

Recently widowed Louise Bickford has been left homeless and almost penniless following the death of her domineering husband. With no skills, and no means of earning a living, she must now divide her summers between her three daughters, staying with each in turn, while in winter she has a cut-price room in a hotel run by an old schoolfriend. Then the friend suffers a heart attack, Louise is forced to leave, and it seems no-one wants her...

I think they all see her as a bit of an encumbrance – they certainly make her feel that way – and they have a tendency to ignore her, which is easily done because she is so self-effacing. She has absolutely no confidence, and no self-esteem. She has few friends, hates social occasions and meeting people, and rarely expresses an opinion on anything. She’s been squashed by life or, more likely, by her husband and is so anxious not to do or say the wrong the thing and not to cause any bother to anyone that she seems almost to have erased herself. She is one of the most unnoticeable people you are ever likely to meet in literature or in real life.

Monica Dickens

Louise sounds an unlikely heroine, but it’s her very ordinariness that makes her so appealing, and she doesn’t deserve to be overlooked, and should never be under-estimated.  As the story progressed and I got to know her thoughts and feelings, her likes and dislikes, her fears, the things that make happy, I warmed to her because she’s kind and caring, and has her own views, but few people take the trouble to listen to her. Those who do value her tend to be other outsiders, like her eldest grandchild Ellen, or Gordon Disher, the fat, quietly spoken, unassuming bed salesman who leads a double life as author Lester Drage, penning thrillers which are full of shocking crime, sex and violence – which are, surprisingly, exactly the kind of novels that Louise enjoys reading.

I liked the way a tentative friendship grows between Gordon and Louise, and I liked the portrayal of her relationship with her daughters, who are not really cruel or heartless, just thoughtless, and unable to see their mother as a person in her own right, or to understand how she has reached this point in her life, or how she feels about it.

Endpaper from a 1950s furnishing fabric in
a private collection.

For they are young, and have their own problems. On the face of it they seem very different from each other, but beneath the surface all three are dissatisfied with their lives. There is Miriam, tall and slim, well dressed and well organised, with her three children, and her nice house, but she’s as brittle as her marriage. Then there’s Anne, who doesn’t seem to care about anything or anyone, and especially not her house and her kindly, market gardener husband. And finally there’s Eva, a bright, bubbly actress who is in love with a married man. I found their contrasting relationships with their menfolk interesting, especially in the light of Louise’s unhappy marriage, and deepening friendship with Gordon. ‘The Winds of Heaven’ could be seen not just as a novel about the way women age and how they cope with changing roles and circumstances, but also as a novel about marriage, and the dynamics between the various couples. In that sense Dickens reminded me a bit of Jane Austen, and there’s the same attention to the small, everyday details of life, and ironic comments about social pretensions and aspirations. I’ve read reviews which compare Dickens’ work to that of her great-grandfather, but personally I think she’s closer to Austen. And, like Anne Elliott, Louise is offered a second chance at life and happiness – but only after she’s dealt with a near tragedy. 

PS: I'm adding a postcript, with Links of the Day, because older women seem to be on my mind at the moment, what with my mother's move and my recent birthday. I really enjoyed a Saturday Sally from Nan, over at Letters from a Hill Farm, which is a brief but lovely celebration of three amazing women who have tremendous zest and enthusiasm for life - writer and activist Maya Angelou, novelist Edna O'Brien, and an amazing lady who was still driving her car at the age of 101.

And today  Dove Grey Reader (aka Lynne Hatwell) has written a thought provoking piece where she takes a more serious look at the issues surrounding aging and the way we care for our elderly and deal with dementia. She touches on grief and loss, and the nature of memory,  as she explores Melvyn Bragg's 'Grace and Mary', considers the BBC TV series 'The Village', and thinks about her own experiences working with  elderly patients during her nursing career. 

Short Story Sunday

I have here a copy of The Persephone Book of Short Stories which I’ve been reading very slowly and haven’t yet finished, but now I’ve moved my Mother into her new home – a snug and comfy little ‘sheltered’ flat, close to the town centre, so she can get out and about again and be a bit more independent – life should settle down again, and I’ll have more time for reading. So, as part of my catch-up plan (I know, I keep saying I’m going to establish a regular reading/writing routine, and I haven’t succeeded yet, but I live in hope) I’ve pinched an idea from Danielle at A Work in Progress (I hope she doesn’t mind) and I’m aiming to post a weekly Short Story Sunday piece.

It’s a genre I’ve never really explored, until last year, when I had the pleasure of discovering short stories by Dorothy Whipple, Mollie Panter-Downes, Mary Norton and Alice Munro. Before that I think the only other collections I came across were the Penguin Books of Short Stories, Volumes 1 and 2, which I read when I was at school or college, so many years ago I can’t remember which. And, as you can tell from that, they obviously didn’t make any impression on me at all! Oh, and I nearly forgot, I also read ‘A World of Difference:  An Anthology of Short Stories from Five Continents’, as part of an Open University course I studied for a couple of years ago, before I ran out of cash, and I thought some of them were very odd indeed.

Anyway, I’ve just had a birthday, and consequently decided that over the next year I’ll try to try do at least one new, enjoyable thing each week, and I think being more adventurous with reading definitely falls into that category.

So, back to ‘The Persephone Book of Short Stories’, which was the 100^th book published and features two different endpapers – one, at the beginning, has a design with flowers and things that look like arrows but might be plant stems and leaves, all in shades of brown, taken from a roller-printed cotton twill weave manufactured in 1911 at the Arnold Press Print Works in North Adams, Massachussetts. It’s not at all the kind of thing I like – I think it looks very sombre and faintly sinister. However, the design on the inside of the back cover is fantastic. It’s a picture of a lovely screen-printed furnishing fabric, obviously based on a Mediterranean scene, with sun and sea and balconies and canopies and shutters and birds, all in vibrant colours and patterns. It was designed in 1983 by Susan Collier and Sarah Campbell for Fischbaker Ltd.  You could argue that none of that really matters, because the appearance of a book has no bearing on the contents and you would, of course, be quite right – but nevertheless, I have to disagree. Most of my books are cheap, tatty, old paperbacks, but I really enjoy   beautiful books – they are things of joy, to be loved and treasured, and personally I feel they add immeasurably to the reading experience, offering food for the soul as well as the mind. 

Anyway, I digress (again). The book contains 30 stories by 27 female authors, some of whom I have read and loved in the past. Others have produced work I failed to engage with, while a few are completely new to me, including Susan Glaspell, who wrote From A to Z, the first piece in the collection. Written in 1909, it tells of Miss Edna Willard, who has just finished her senior year at university and dreams of a job in publishing.

Her conception of her publishing house was finished about the same time as her day-class gown. She was to have a roll-top desk – probably of mahogany – and a big chair which whirled round like that in the office of the undergraduate dean. She was to have a little office all by herself, opening on to a bigger office – the little one marked ‘Private’. There were to be beautiful rugs – the general effect not unlike the University Club – books and pictures and cultivated gentlemen who spoke often of Greek tragedies and the Renaissance. She was a little uncertain as to her duties, but had a general idea about getting down between nine and ten, reading the morning paper, cutting the latest magazine, and then ‘writing something’.

The reality, of course, is very different (but, generally speaking, I find it always is). She obtains a position in a publishing house in Chicago, on run-down Dearborn Street. The company rents a penned-off space in a bleak, dirty building – the other side of the partition, which only extends part-way up the room, is a patent medicine company dealing with Dr Bunting’s Famous Kidney and Bladder Cure. It’s not only the location and surroundings which are all wrong, but the work itself, for she and her colleagues are engaged in the making of a dictionary, which involves poring through old dictionaries and modernising and expanding the definitions, whilst ensuring the copyright of the originals is not breached.

It’s not what she hoped for, but she works diligently and gradually falls in love with the older man at the next desk, who is ill and down on his luck, and has ‘the voice the prince used to have in long-ago dreams’. As they work on the dictionary they pen little notes to each other, based on definitions, which is all rather sweet and charming, but you know the burgeoning relationship is doomed, that dreams are dangerous things, and fairy tale princes do not exist in the real world.

Edna’s new-found friend realises he is on a crash-course to destruction, but cannot – or will not – grasp at the chance of redemption. For him, as the song says, happiness is just an illusion.  But he refuses to drag Edna down with him, and when they reach the end of the alphabet he bids her farewell. Distraught, she wanders the streets in the pouring rain, searching for him, but fate intervenes in the shape of Harold, the boy she liked most at university, who ‘rescues’ her and takes her home, whether she will or not.

Susan Glaspell

It’s a deceptively simple tale of lost love which stayed in my mind after I read it. I liked the way Glaspell built her characters, and her description of the cityscape, and the understated tone of the piece, and I found myself wondering about the people. What happened to Mr Clifford (the man at the next desk) to make him so bitter and disillusioned with life, and was he right to reject the chance of happiness? And if he had taken that chance, would he have continued on his downward trajectory, and would Edna have become equally dissatisfied as her dreams were shattered? And what about Harold, a bit part player, who appears on the scene by accident – how come he was in that place, at that time? And is he the hero, carrying Edna away to where she belongs – or a villain, blocking her escape to the place she longs to be? And what about Edna? Is she really in love? Or just in love with the idea of being in love, an image as unrealistic as her picture of what work would be like?

As I said earlier, Susan Glaspell is new to me, but according to the potted biography at the back of the book, she was an American ‘born of pioneer stock’ in 1876 and died 1948. She worked as a society and political reporter, and wrote plays and novels, two of which are published by Persephone, and I would like to read them.