Harriet Devine's Blog

Girl Reading

This painting is by Sigmund Walter Hampel (1868-1949), an Austrian artist about whom I know nothing. If you know anything, please do let me know in the comments.

The Cemetery of Secrets

This novel is subtitled 'A Venetian Mystery' -- in fact it is really two Venetian mysteries as it is one of those books that divides itself between two different time frames, though of course they are connected. The novel starts in the present day, and starts rather well, with the illicit opening of a coffin in a Venetian cemetery: inside is not only the body of a young woman, buried there ten years ago, but also a hugely valuable eighteenth-century violin. In this strand of the story, Daniel Forster, a young Englishman, arrives in Venice to catalogue the library of the last descendants of the ancient Scacchi family. Soon he gets involved in a complicated web of intrigue and deceit in which that same violin, the discovery the score of an anonymous 18th century violin concerto, and a couple of beautiful women all play their parts. Meanwhile in 1733 young Lorenzo Scacchi, also newly in Venice, meets a beautiful young woman violinist whose Jewish identity must be concealed so that she can join the brilliant female orchestra who play (behind a screen) for the composer Vivaldi. You can probably see how these two stories overlap, but there are many unexpected twists and turns along the way and I did not see the final twist coming. If you like a good thriller, and enjoy reading about far flung places, this should suit you down to the ground, and, apart from anything else, it will leave you longing to get to Venice as soon as possible. I'm not sure if Vivaldi really did have a female orchestra, and at just twenty Daniel seems a bit young to have started his PhD at Oxford University, but hey, let's suspend our disbelief, shall we?

Be warned, though -- if you are fan of David Hewson and have read his other books, you should know that this was originally published under another title, Lucifer's Shadow. So if you bought that, don't buy this!

Wonderful Cake -- thanks to Cornflower

I am not good at making cakes. In fact in general I am not crazy about cakes -- apart from anything else I try to avoid wheat, but in any case I prefer puddingy, moist, sqidgy sort of desserts. But yesterday I wanted to make a cake for my daughter's birthday and I thought the perfect place to look for a recipe would be Cornflower's lovely blog. And indeed there I found just the cake I wanted. It is originally from Sarah Raven's Garden Cookbook. It is made from ground almonds rather than flour, and the top is covered in summer fruits, which I bought frozen. The recipe was really simple -- my seven year old grandson did most of it -- and we ate it warm, with creme fraiche, though what's left will be delicious cold. Take a look at Cornflower, who has written about it several times and even posts the recipe. Thanks many times to her, and I hope she will not mind my using the photo -- we had eaten most of it before I thought of photographing it myself. .

Goldengrove Unleaving

I've read and very much enjoyed several novels by Jill Paton Walsh -- all four of her Imogen Quy crime novels, her early autobiographical Lapsing, Knowledge of Angels, and possibly others I have forgotten. So when I saw this in a charity shop the other day I thought I'd try it. Although it was republished in 1999, this started life in the early 1970s and was originally two short books written for the young adult market. But, JPW says in her introduction,  as the characters and settings are the same, they now get published as a single novel. OK -- though I must say the tone of the second is very different from that of the first.

Both books take place in Cornwall. Goldengrove is the name of a house which is somewhere in or near St Ives, with a view of Godrevy Lighthouse. Readers of Virginia Woolf might know that this was the lighthouse that inspired To the Lighthouse, though VW placed it somewhere else. I used to spend all my summers near here, and a wonderful part of the country it is. In the first part of the novel Madge, aged about sixteen, is spending the last weeks of summer here with her grandmother and her younger cousin Paul. This part of the story is gentle, meandering -- Madge is drawn to a middle-aged academic who has taken a cottage nearby. He has gone blind and is struggling to keep going in very difficult circumstances. She offers to read to him, and continues to do so despite the boring books he wants to hear -- Seven Types of Ambiguity by William Empson is one, if that means anything to you! Paul meanwhile is very jealous and restless in her absence. There are lovely scenes of the two young people enjoying the beach and the countryside -- I was reminded of the Colette novel about Brittany, Ripening Seed, which I read a few months ago. This is very gentle, intelligent writing and the relationship between the children beautifully done.

In Part Two, Unleaving, many years have passed, and Madge is now a grandmother. She has inherited Goldengrove and is spending the summer there with her daughter and grandchildren. This story is told in flashbacks, through which we learn not only the circumstances of her acquisition of the house but also, and mainly, the story of a summer she spent there not long afterwards. She had agreed to rent the house to a small summer school of two philosophy dons and their families plus a handful of young male students. Madge is growing up and is increasingly drawn to Patrick, the son of one of the dons -- but Patrick has a young sister with Down's Syndrome and much of the plot is concerned with the very differing attitudes of the various friends and family members to this little girl. For the philosophers she creates an interesting point of discussion, and Madge is shocked by the coldness with which they debate the nature of the human mind. The plot really turns on the difficulty of deciding on questions of right and wrong, and everything turns rather dark towards the end.

I haven't really written very well about this novel -- it is such a subtle work in some ways that it's hard to give you the sense of why it is so good. I was surprisingly enthralled by it, though -- the quality of the writing helped, and it is refreshing to find a book for young people that really stretches the mind. 

Woman with a Book

Remember Vilma? Last time we saw her, here, she was lying on her bed reading a book. Well, here she is again -- it looks as if she has gone to the shelf to choose another and got immediately caught up in something she has picked up from the shelf. I think she is in her dressing gown and I like to imagine that she has just got up and has a great deal to do -- housework, shopping, cooking -- but that she would be much happier if she could take that book and go back to bed with it for the rest of the day. I'm identifying with her like mad, of course.

If you missed the last post on this artist, he was Tatvik Frantisek Simon and you can see a great many more of his drawings and paintings here.

The Good Soldier

I well remember who first told me about this novel -- it was in about 1985, and my friend, whose opinion I respected hugely, said it was one of the great novels of the twentieth century. But he didn't tell me any more about it, and the title led me to think it was probably a war story, a genre from which I generally run a mile. Of course I have heard it mentioned from time to time over the years since then, but it was only a few weeks ago that I was in the library and spotting on the shelves thought it was time I gave it a go. I have to tell you that he was quite right. This is a truly extraordinary book. Published in 1915, it shows, I suppose, the influence of Ford's great contemporaries Conrad and James, but to say that is rather to diminish the novel when in fact I enjoyed it a great deal more than anything I have read of Conrad's or even James's.

So who was Ford Maddox Ford, and why did I know so little about him? Well, you can click the link to answer the first part of the question -- as for the second part, put it down to my ignorance, lack of curiosity, and the fact that I am not particularly well up in early 20th century literature. One thing I did know was that Ford was the lover of Jean Rhys, whose first novel Postures is said to be based on their relationship. I now know that he was the lover of a great many other people too, a fact that some people have seen as relevant to the plot of The Good Soldier.

Famously the novel begins: "This is the saddest story I have ever heard". But -- apart from the fact that it is often quite comic --  the narrator, Dowell, an American millionaire, is in a way misleading us right from the start, as, far from just hearing the story, he turns out to be a participant in the events he tells us about. He is trapped in an unhappy marriage with the rather vulgar, flirtatious Florence, whose supposed heart condition means they do not have a physical relationship. It is also the reason for their visit to a European spa, where they meet an English couple, the Ashburnhams. Edward is a retired military man, the good soldier of the title, and his marriage to the beautiful Leonora is a sham. Edward is unable to resist women, and has several affairs, all well known to Leonora, though Dowell is for a long time ignorant of this, and is shocked when he finally discovers that his wife Florence has been Edward's mistress for nine years. If you had any idea that people in 1915 behaved respectably, think again -- this is not subtitled A Tale of Passion for nothing.

I could go on. But honestly any amount of telling the plot would not give you any idea of why this is such a wonderful novel. It is much admired as a modernist text, mainly, I suppose, because of Ford's brilliant narrative technique. Dowell is naive to the point of foolishness, and his inability to perceive the raging passions that are going on right under his nose is both funny and deeply pathetic. His admiration for Edward knows no bounds, even after he has finally understood that Edward is an incorrigible philanderer. As for his method of telling the story, it is quite remarkable -- he rarely goes in a straight line, backtracking when he feels like it or jumping forward, and is well aware of it, as he says at the beginning of Part Four:

I have, I am aware, told this story in a very rambling way so that it may be difficult for anyone to find their path through what may be a sort of maze. I cannot help it. I have stuck to the idea of being in a country cottage with a silent listener, hearing between the gusts of the wind and amidst the noises of the distant sea, the story as it comes. And, when one discusses an affair -- a long, sad affair -- one goes back, one goes forward. One remembers points that one has forgotten and one explains them all the more minutely since one recognises that one has forgotten to mention them in their proper places and that one may have given, by omitting them, a false impression.

It's taken me quite a long time to read this book because of the richness of it -- I couldn't manage and didn't want to rush through it. I'm tempted to start again at the beginning straight away, though, something I very rarely do. I feel like saying -- if you only ever read one more novel again in the course of your life, let it be this one. A bit over the top, maybe -- but do please give it a go.

A Shilling for Candles

Josephine Tey is one of those so-called Queens of Crime who flourished in the middle years of the twentieth century. Why this period should have seen such an explosion of talented women writing crime novels I do not know, though I'm sure there are theories to explain it. But you only have to think of Christie, Sayers, Marsh, and my own favourite Margery Allingham , to get the idea. Anyway, Josephine Tey was not in fact called Josephine Tey at all -- her real name was Elizabeth Mackintosh, though she never used this name for publication. She also sometimes wrote as Gordon Daviot, and it was this name she used for her massively successful play, Richard of Bordeaux, in 1932. But she is best remembered now as a crime writer, and her best novels, The Franchise Affair (which Sarah Waters has said was part of her inspiration for The Little Stranger) and the wonderful Daughter of Time, which, if you have not read, you really should. A Shilling for Candles, first published in 1936, begins with the discovery of a body, that of a young and famous film actress, Christine Clay. The chief suspect is a young man, Robin Tisdall, who has spent the past week with Clay in a remote cottage close to the beach where her body is discovered. Various other possibilities present themselves: Clay's husband Edward Champneis ("pronounced Chins"), a wealthy English aristocrat is one, and an American songwriter another. But Inspector Grant puts his money on Tisdall, who manages to escape and go on the run, aided by Erica Burgoyne, the young and sparky daughter of the local Chief Constable. Needless to say the final denouement is a surprise, and some might say not a wholly convincing one. But this hardly spoils the enjoyment, or it didn't spoil mine, anyway.

Generally speaking when you read these classic detective novels you are called upon to suspend all thoughts of what is so hideously called political correctness. So I was rather pleasantly surprised to find the following expostulation in the mouth of Jason Harmer:

"Oh yes, you don't have to say it all again. England's a country of complete tolerance. She makes no difference between races. It doesn't matter to an Englishman what creed you believe in or what the shade of your skin is....Did it ever occur to you, Inspector, that you're the only people who've really kept us out? Kept us in our place. That's your pet expression and that describes it. No mixing. No marrying. Infra dig to marry a Jew if he has less than a hundred thousand. And not so hot then. You're the only country in the world where a Jew is unmistakable. A German Jew looks like a German as often as not, a Russian Jew looks like a Russian. The countries have taken them into themselves. But an English Jew looks like a Jew. And you call it tolerance".

Hmmm. Interesting, don't you think?

It turns out Hitchcock made a film supposedly based on this novel. It was called Young and Innocent and you can, amazingly enough, watch it for free on The Internet Archive, a website I had no idea existed until this morning. However the plot was hacked about so much that it bears little resemblance to the novel. I wonder what Tey thought about that.

Woman Reading

It's a while since I put up a painting -- here is one I like a lot. It was painted by an artist from Czechoslovakia by the name of Tavik Frantisek Simon (1877-1942). I think the composition is realy interesting -- the figure of Vilma (for that is her name) is actually confined to quite a small part of the whole canvas and yet your eye is drawn to her first -- or mine was, anyway. Then you start looking round the rest of the room -- her little bookshelf, nicely placed so she can just reach up for another book, the comfortable cushions and the lovely wallpaper, the vase of peonies, the view through the open window. I also like the fact that she has been writing a letter but has decided she would rather read a book -- or that is how I'm interpreting it -- a woman after my own heart.

Unloveable Narrators

Last month, thanks to Simon of Stuck in a Book, I joined a reading group. We met last night and this was the book we discussed. Written by a distinguished academic and well-known novelist, this is the story of Olivia, who, while still a teenager, has to deal with the death of her committed Quaker mother. Her mother has expressed the wish to be buried in the garden of the house where she and her family have lived for hundreds of years (and yes, if you are wondering, this is legal, as this article explains). While digging her mother's grave, Olivia uncovers a female skeleton, apparently several hundreds of years old, and wearing a cruel metal bridle around her jaw. Olivia grows up to become an academic, and discovers the identity of this woman through her research -- she turns out to be a 17th century Quaker mystic, whose high profile public preaching has made her a threat to the Quaker establishment. The more Olivia explores the history and background to these events the further she gets drawn in to the story, and she finally discovers unexpected links with her own family history.

Sounds intriguing, doesn't it. Certainly it was a nice idea -- in 1999, when Stevie Davies wrote this novel, she had recently finished a non-fictional study, Unbridled Spirits: Women of the English Revolution 1640 - 1660, which clearly formed the basis for Impassioned Clay, written the following year. Sad to report, then, that the novel was not much liked by anyone in the group. I'm not in the business of rubbishing books on this blog and I am not going to do so now, but the discussion did raise an interesting and important point. Primary among peoples' objections to the novel was that everyone intensely disliked the central character, who is also the narrator. Now obviously we must assume that Stevie Davies knew that Olivia was not an attractive personality -- she is intense, angry, frustrated and bitter,  and remains so throughout the novel. But should this have spoiled our enjoyment? Surely there must be lots of books we have all liked and admired in which the central character is unpleasant in one way or another. This is bothering me a lot as in fact I can't think of any off the top of my head though I feel sure that this is a literary device which has been used and is probably well-known to everyone but me. I can of course think of characters who have bad points, but usually they either have redeeming features, or we are invited to feel sorry for them, or they develop in some way as the work progresses -- think of Scrooge, or Emma, to name but two. None of these get-outs really apply to Olivia, though. Can you think of any books you have liked in which the central character/narrator remains resolutely unloveable? If so please put me out of my misery.

Would you give 10% of your earnings?

This man is Dr Toby Ord and he has set up an organisation called Giving What We Can. Maybe you read about him this weekend? Essentially he has pledged to give as much as a third of his income for the rest of his life to help fight poverty in the developing world. As a teacher of Ethics at Oxford University he expects to earn quite a lot of money, and reckons he might be able to give away as much as £1 million. One thing he said that really made me think was that most people would feel they had done something pretty special if they managed to save one person's life -- but he hopes to save the lives of hundreds. Now he is asking others to pledge to do the same, or to give at least 10% of their lifetime earnings.

Of course many people are sceptical about the value of giving to charity, and argue that little of the money reaches the people it is intended for.  Toby Ord's website suggests several charities which offer the best use of donations, and deals with many of the possible objections to foreign aidin a section called Myths About Aid:

• Myth 1.   ‘We already spend a vast amount on foreign aid’
• Myth 2.   ‘We have already spent so much and it has had no effect’
• Myth 3.   ‘Because it leads to overpopulation, aid only increases the problems’
• Myth 4.   ‘Aid is useless due to corruption in the governments who receive it’
• Myth 5.   ‘Aid just makes developing countries dependent on handouts’
• Myth 6.   ‘The problem is so large, my giving can make no real difference’
• Myth 7.   ‘Charity begins at home: we should solve our own problems first’
• Myth 8.   ‘We don't need charity; we need political action’

You can read more about Toby Ord and his plans here and here, but don't judge him and his plans simply on the basis of newspaper articles -- take a look at the website. I'm impressed, but I wonder what others think? And, you may be thinking, am I going to join in? In fact I already give to a charity in India which I know passes all the money that is donated straight to the various causes it is intended for.