Month: October 2008

Lock 14 – Georges Simenon

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

I used to enjoy the TV series Maigret with Rupert Davies in the title role and when I came across this book I thought it was time to renew my acquaintance. Lock 14 was originally published in 1931 as Le Charretier de la ‘Providence’ and translated as Maigret Meets a Milord in 1963. It’s a short book of 124 pages which didn’t take me very long to read.

The main action is in the world of canals and barges with Maigret cycling up and down the canal in his efforts to discover who had murdered a woman found in a stable at Dizy alongside the canal from Epernay to Vitry-le-Francois. I was a little puzzled at first about what was going on but I wasn’t the only one as Maigret himself had to familiarise himself in a world that was very different from the one he knew.  At first I found the names of the places, boats and characters confusing but really the story is quite simple, once I’d worked out who was who, which boat they were on and that horse-drawn barges had stables on board.

The murdered woman we soon discover was Mary, the wife of Sir Walter Lampson, a retired colonel of the Indian Army, who is sailing on his yacht The Southern Cross, with the seaman Vladimir, Willy Marco his friend and Gloria (Madame Negretti) the widow of a Chilean politician. When Willy is also found strangled in the canal the mystery thickens. Also travelling along the canal is the horse-drawn barge the Providence – the skipper, his wife ‘a fat Brussels woman with peroxided hair and a shrill voice’ and the carter, Jean who looks after the horses.  Just who was Mary and why was she killed?

In the end I did enjoy this mystery, with its description of the gloomy canal world, as the rain pours down incessantly and Maigret gets increasingly grumpy, exasperated and tired.

Booking Through Thursday – Favourite Couples

Published on by Margaret13 Comments

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Monica suggested this one:

Got this idea from Literary Feline during her recent contest:

‘œName a favorite literary couple and tell me why they are a favorite. If you cannot choose just one, that is okay too. Name as many as you like’“sometimes narrowing down a list can be extremely difficult and painful. Or maybe that’™s just me.’

I nearly didn’t do this post as my mind went completely blank when I read the question, and apart from  Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy, I couldn’t think of any couples I particuarly liked. As it’s been years since I read Pride and Prejudice I thought that was rather sad.

Then I thought of Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester, but I haven’t actually read the book! They came to mind because as a child I saw a TV dramatisation of Jane Eyre. I was terrified by the mad woman in the attic and admired the way Jane coped with it all and ended up with her hero.

Another couple from my reading at school is Lucie Manette and Sydney Carton in Tale of Two Cities – because he sacrificed himself for love of her. I must re-read this book sometime.

Going even further back in my reading as a child great favourites are Jo and Laurie in Little Women. they never actually made it as a couple and stayed as friends. I still think she should have married him instead of Professor Bhaer.

A more recent couple are Cecilia and Robbie in Atonement – denied of happiness by a terrible mistake and by war.

A real life literary couple is Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Their love story is so romantic as told in both Margaret Forster’s biography of Elizabeth Barret Browning: a biography and in her novel  Lady’s Maid.  Although not a couple in the usual sense I’m also very fond of Elizabeth and Flush (her dog) – dogs are such faithful friends. Their story is told in Virginia Woolf’s novel Flush: a biography.

Teaser Tuesday

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

The rules are:

  • Grab your current read.
  • Let the book fall open to a random page.
  • Share with us two (2) ‘œteaser’ sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
  • You also need to share the title of the book that you’™re getting your ‘œteaser‘ from ‘¦ that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’™ve given!
  • Please avoid spoilers!

    • Today’s teaser is from Friday’s Child by Georgette Heyer (page 165).

    He arrived in excellent time to see Lord Wrotham, one hand under Hero’s chin, plant his kiss on her pretty lips. One moment he stood transfixed, the next he uttered a crashing oath, and took a hasty stride forward.

    The Sunday Salon

    Published on by Margaret10 Comments

    This week I’ve been travelling in time and place in my reading.

    I’ve been in Pennsylvania and Connecticut with Gladys Taber and Barbara Webster reading their letters to each other from Stillmeadow and Sugarbridge over one year in the 1950s (the book was published in 1953; there’s been no mention of the Second World War so I’m guessing the letters were written in the late 1940s or early 1950s). Stillmead and Sugarbridge is a book to savour and read slowly. I’m limiting my reading to a few letters each time I pick up the book. Stillmeadow is the house in Southbury, Connecticut where Gladys Taber lived and Sugarbridge is the house where Barbara and her husband Edward Shenton lived in Pennsylvania. Edward’s drawings illustrate the letters. Between the letters and the illustrations I’m getting a good picture of their lives. Their letters are full of the love of the countryside and their families. When I’ve finished it I’ll write more fully about it. For now here is a quote from Barbara’s first letter in the book, writing in January about what she likes about living at Sugarbridge:

    A broken-up day is to me a lost day, and social and business dates, no matter how delightful or important, hang over me with a sense of doom. So I am particularly grateful for those long intervals of country peace when we see no one, nor stir from our studio except for an afternoon ramble over the hills. We no longer live by the clock, slaves to time; we make our own.

    She thought that this would not be everyone’s ideal. It sounds good to me.

    I first read about Gladys Taber on Nan’s blog and was really pleased when she sent me this book. I would like to know more about Gladys and Barbara and so far I’ve found these websites –  Stillmeadow Friends and also Stillmeadow, where I read that the farm was in danger from development. This was in 2002 and I can’t find out what happened – does anyone know? There is also a website for Edward Shenton, but I can’t find out how Gladys and Barbara met.

    Then I’ve jumped back in time to France in the 1820s with Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. I am only too glad that I don’t live in post revolutionary France. The Battle of Waterloo is now over and Jean Valjean has at last escaped from prison and rescued Cosette from her pitiful life with the cruel Thenardiers. Poor Cosette:

    Fear emanated from her so that she might be said to be enveloped in it. Fear caused her to draw her elbows in at her sides and her feet underneath her skirt, to take up as little room as possible and to draw no unnecessary breath; it had become so to speak, the habit of her body, impossible of alteration except that it must grow worse, In the depths of her eyes there was the haggard gleam of terror.

    Jean and Cosette are currently on their way to Paris and a better life I hope, but I don’t expect it will be as I still have about 800 pages left to read.

    Over next to Regency England in the early19th century with Georgette Heyer’s Friday’s Child. Dialogue makes up a large part of the book, full of 19th century slang. I mentioned this in my last post and in the comments Geranium Cat explained what a “Tiger” is and pointed me to this site – http://www.heyerlist.org/slang.html for more explanations. This book is a mixture of romance, a whirl of social events – balls, masquerades, theatre-going, duels and farce. I’m about halfway in the book and this morning read about the duel between George, Lord Wrotham and Sherry, Anthony Verelst, Viscount Sheringham after Sherry saw George kissing his wife, Hero.

    Last and my no means least I’ve popped over to America again. This time to New York with Dodie Smith in 1939 just before the start of World War Two as described in Dear Dodie by Valerie Grove. Dodie and Alec (who she marries) arrive with Pongo, the dalmatian who inspired her to write 101 Dalmatians after leaving England because Alec was a pacifist and a conscientious objector. Dodie was soon cast into gloom, unable to like America and forecasting

    years of exile, a world war in progress, losing her audience-sense by being away from England, and possibly also losing all her capital. On three out of four counts her forecast was absolutely correct.

    I knew very little about Dodie before and am learning a lot about England at the beginning of the 20th century and theatrical history as well as about Dodie herself – an unsuccessful actress, then a shop assistant at Heals furniture store and then a playwright. It’s fascinating reading about her relationship with people such as Noel Coward, John Gielgud, Gladys Coper, Jack Hawkins and Jessica Tandy, to name but a few.