Category: Non-fiction

Book Notes

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

I’ve recently finished reading two books:

It’s taken me several weeks to read Eden’s Outcasts and at one point I nearly abandoned it because I thought it was too much about Louisa May Alcott’s father. I’m glad I persevered because the second half of the book  concentrates much more on Louisa and I realised that the title does convey the subject matter very well as it reveals the relationship between them. Bronson Alcott was a complicated person who appeared to have mellowed as he grew older. Louisa, well known and loved for her children’s books never achieved her ambition to write serious books for mature readers, enduring debilitating illness in her later years.

I learnt a lot from this book about their lives and their relationships with other writers such as Emerson, Thoreau and Hawthorne. It’s a very detailed book and there is no way I can summarise their lives in a few words and a double biography is even more difficult to deal with. In the final  paragraph Matteson sums this up very well:

To the extent that a written page permits knowledge of a different time and departed souls, this book has tried to reveal them. However, as Bronson Alcott learned to his amusement, the life written is never the same as the life lived. Journals and letters tell much. Biographers can sift the sands as they think wisest. But the bonds that two persons share consist also of encouraging words, a reassuring hand on a tired shoulder, fleeting smiles, and soon-forgotten quarrels. These contracts, so indispensable to existence, leave no durable trace. As writers, as reformers, and as inspirations, Bronson and Louisa still exist for us. Yet this existence, on whatever terms we may experience it, is no more than a shadow when measured against the way they existed for each other. (page 428)

Turning to Climbing the Bookshelves by Shirley Williams,  I thought an autobiography would maybe include more personal recollections and descriptions of events. It starts off very well with her descriptions of her early childhood – her earliest memory from 1933 when she was three and fell on her head from a swing at the Chelsea Babies’ playground. I was very impressed by her memories of the time she spent in America as a young girl during the Second World War and her self-reliance and independence.

However, much of the book consists of her accounts of her political life, making it very much a political history of Britain, rather than a personal account of her life. There are some personal memories and I particularly liked her descriptions of her fellow politicians – Harold Wilson, Jim Callaghan, Roy Jenkins and so one – very little about Margaret Thatcher and a few pertinent comments about Tony Blair. Having said that she comes over as a very honest, genuine person who cares deeply about being a good politician. And maybe it is more personal than I originally thought because in the last chapter she writes these words:

Being an MP is like being a member of an extended family. You learn to love your family with all its knobbliness, perversity, courage and complexity. You learn respect and build up trust. …

To be a good politician in a democracy you have to care for people and be fascinated by what makes them tick. … The politician whose eyes shift constantly to his watch, or to the apparently most important person in the room, feeds the distrust felt by the electorate. It is a distrust born of being manipulated, conned, even decieved and it is fed by a relentlessly cynical national press. (page 389)

A side effect of reading this book is that I’m going to read her mother’s book, a best seller published in 1933 – Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain. Shirley describes it as

… an autobiography of her wartime experience as a nurse and her personal agony in losing all the young men she most loved … (page 13)

In the preface to Testimony of Youth she wrote:

Testimony of Youth is, I think, the only book about the First World War written by a woman, and indeed a woman whose childhood had been a very sheltered one. It is an autobiography and also an elegy for a generation. For many men and women, it described movingly how they themselves felt.

This looks like a much more personal autobiography.

Library Loot

Published on by Margaret14 Comments

This is a sign that I’m a hopeless bookaholic. Despite listing books I’ve had for ages and still haven’t read – not mentioning all the to-be-read books all around the house – yesterday I went to the library and came home with these books:

  • The Fanatic by James Robertson is historical crime fiction, described on the back cover as ‘an extraordinary history of Scotland: a tale of betrayals, stolen meetings, lost memories, smuggled journeys and disguised identities.‘ I’d enjoyed his second book The Testament of Gideon Mack a few years ago. And how could I resist bringing this book home when I saw it began in Bass Rock, which is just up the coast from us – see my photo here.
  • Stories of the Railway by V L Whitechurch. From the book cover I learnt that V L Whitechurch was a celebrated crime writer and an expert railway enthusiast. He wrote a large number of crime short stories set in the golden age of Britain’s railways – this selection was originally published in 1912 as ‘Thrilling Stories of the the Railway‘. I’d read about him on Martin Edward’s blog and was pleased to find a copy on the library shelves.
  • The Oxford Murders by Guillermo Martinez. I’d read about this book, a mix of murder and maths and wondered whether my elementary grasp of maths would be enough for me to follow the equations  and cryptic symbols involved in solving this mystery.
  • The London Train by Tessa Hadley. There seems to be a theme here in my choice, following on from the Stories of the Railway. In this book, the London train between Wales and London, connects two stories that are interlinked through ‘a single moment concerning two lives stretched between two cities’.

And last but by no means least two books on watercolour painting, because this is now taking up some of my reading time. On Thursdays I go to a local art group and dabble in paint. I mentioned this a while ago on my blog and people asked to see some of my paintings. Here are two I don’t feel too embarrassed to show:

The Sunday Salon

Published on by Margaret2 Comments

Today I’ve been reading more from Eden’s Outcasts: the story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father. At long last, as I have been reading this book for ages, I have arrived at the time of Louisa’s life where she has written and published Little Women. Up to this point (about 60% of the book) most of it has been about Bronson Alcott, her father and it is Louisa who I find most interesting.

Louisa wrote in vortices – completely engrossed in her writing, with barely time for anything else, so intense was her concentration. Mostly she wrote in her bedroom at a desk Bronson had built for her, but sometimes she sat on the parlour sofa. Her family knew that if the bolster pillow next to her stood on its end they could speak to her, but if the pillow lay on its side they couldn’t disturb her. In two and a half months she had completed writing 402 manuscript pages and at the end of it she had briefly broken down.

Little Women was an instant success, the first printing of 2,000 copies sold out within days of the book’s release and another 4,500 copies were in print by the end of the year (1868). Three months later she had written the second part of Little Women – the book I know as Good Wives. She had

… plunged back into a creative cortex on November 1, vowing to write a chapter a day. She worked ‘like a steam engine’, taking a daily run as her only recreation and barely stopping to eat or sleep.  Falling behind the ambitious schedule she had set for herself, she spent her birthday alone’writing hard.’ (page 345)

She put her heart and soul into her writing.

Both Louisa and her father were complex characters and Matteson’s biography is detailed and in depth. It’s not a quick read, but then biographies never are in my experience.

Crime Fiction Alphabet – Letter I

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Rebus’s Scotland: A Personal Journey by Ian Rankin is my choice to illustrate the letter I in Kerrie’s Crime Fiction Alphabet.

If you like the Rebus books, like me, then you’ll also like this book. It is fascinating to read, with insights into Ian Rankin’s own life and that of the character he has invented, along with his thoughts on Scotland and the Scottish character. It’s partly autobiographical, blending his own life with Rebus’s biography. It also describes many of the real life locations of the books, in particular Edinburgh, Rebus’s own territory.

I particularly enjoyed Ian Rankin’s views on writing – how writers mine their own experiences, reshaping their memories to create fiction and the similarities between novelists and detectives:

Both seek the truth, through creating a narrative from apparently chaotic or unconnected events. Both are interested in human nature and motivation. Both are voyeurs. (The Edinburgh-born Muriel Spark says that she and her fellow novelists ‘loiter with intent’ – playing on the idea of a criminal activity.) I certainly enjoy dipping into other people’s lives, giving fresh texture and tone to them, while Rebus has his own reasons for prying into everyone else’s secrets. (page 31)

He went on to quote from The Hanging Garden and then The Falls giving Rebus’s reasons – which were ‘to stop him examining his own frailties and failings.’

I’ve read all the Rebus books – links to my posts are in the Author Index (the tab at the top of the blog). Some of these are brief and last year I decided to make a page on each one to flesh them out a bit more. So far, that just remains an intention, although the parent page has a list of all the books. In preparing to write Rebus’s Scotland Ian Rankin re-read all his Rebus books. Here is his own analysis:

Authors seldom read their own work: by the time a book has been published, we’re busy with our next project. When a story is done, it’s done – reading it through would only make most authors want to tinker with it. Having said that, I enjoyed the majority of the Rebus novels. Knots & Crosses I thought wildly overwritten – definitely a young man’s book. Dead Souls possesses too many characters and story-lines: at points it confused even its author! But several books which had seemed real chores to write surprised me with their deftness – Set in Darkness and Let it Bleed especially. (I think they probably seemed chores because of the amount of political detail they had to embrace – it’s never easy to make politics seem exciting to the layman.) (page 125)

Throughout this book Ian Rankin quotes liberally from his books to illustrate the points he makes. He begins with a chapter on the place where he was born and grew up, which was in the same cul-de-sac as John Rebus – even in the same house. But really, of course, Rebus was not born there. He was created in a bed-sit in Edinburgh where Rankin was living and writing. He deals with Rebus’s ‘prodigious intake of alcohol‘, the Oxford Bar, his taste in music, the city of Edinburgh (Rebus’s territory) and Fife, where Rebus and Rankin have shared memories. I like the way he writes about Rebus as though he were a real person, sometimes admitting that he’s not sure what Rebus will do, but at the same time acknowledging that he is his creation.

An excellent book. My only criticism is that I would have loved it to have an index – maybe I’ll do one for myself

  • Paperback: 224 pages
  • Publisher: Orion; New Ed edition (1 Jun 2006)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0752877712
  • ISBN-13: 978-0752877716
  • Source: my own copy

ABC Wednesday – G is for George VI

Published on by Margaret12 Comments

We went to see The King’s Speech on Monday, a BAFTA Award winning film based on the true story of how King George VI overcame his stutter.  This had me reaching for an old book that I used to look at as a child – The Coronation Book of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. It’s full of sepia photos and gives details of the coronation on May 12 1937 together with a short history of the ceremony and accounts of the lives of George VI (Prince Albert) and Queen Elizabeth (Lady Elizabeth Lyon) up to the coronation.

The only mention I can find in the book about George VI’s stutter is below this photo of him taken when he was 25, then the Duke of York, stating that ‘he fought, with remarkable courage, his only handicap – a slight hesitancy in speech. Though five years were to pass before complete mastery was achieved the task was well begun.‘

I love this photo taken in 1898 of the Royal family showing Queen Victoria in the centre of a family group on the lawn at Osborne in the Isle of Wight. (Click on the photos to enlarge) George VI who was at that time Prince Albert is  to the right of Queen Victoria standing in front of his father, then the Duke of York.

What is not shown in the film, because it focuses on George VI’s speech problems leading up to his brother’s abdication and his ascension to the throne, is that he was had entered the Royal Navy in 1909. His destiny as the second son of the Prince of Wales was to remain in the Navy for his whole career. He served in HMS Collingwood which was a battleship that took part in the battle of Jutland in 1916. The Collingwood escaped damages and Prince Albert was mentioned in dispatches for his coolness under fire.

After the war he went to Trinity College  Cambridge University. As the son of George V he didn’t take a full-time degree course but took courses in special subjects, in his case Prince Albert took history, economics and civics. He was also a keen sportsman and played tennis, golf and polo. He won the Royal Airforce Lawn Tennis Doubles Championship at Queen’s Club in 1920

As a child I spent hours looking at the photos in this book but I don’t think I actually read much of except for the captions. It begins with these words:

Destiny has had a strange errand for Albert Frederick Arthur George, Prince of the Royal House of Windsor. Within eleven months he served two kings and became himself a king.

All this was history to me, not history I learnt at school, but at home. I don’t know whether the book originally belonged to one of my grandparents, but I have a feeling it could have been my mother’s mother as she was a staunch Royalist. It was the photos of George VI’s children that interested me most as a child – Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret, now I’d like to know more about George himself.

The only colour illustrations are the end papers – a painting of the coronation carriage:

See more illustrations of the letter  G at ABC Wednesday and on my other blog where I’ve written about Gauguin and his relationship with Van Gogh.

Read, Reading, To Read – Sunday Salon

Published on by Margaret13 Comments

I’ve just finished reading Exit Lines by Reginald Hill, a Dalziel and Pascoe novel – my post to follow. I’m almost up-to-date with reviews of books I’ve read recently, just Exit Lines and Molly Fox’s Birthday by Deirdre Madden to do.

As usual when I’ve finished one book I’m not sure what to read next. I’m still reading Eden’s Outcasts: the story of  Louisa May Alcott and Her Father and have yet to get going again on The Matchmaker of Kenmare by Frank Delaney, but I fancy reading something different.

I go to a face-to-face book group and the next book we’ll be discussing is Climbing the Bookshelves by Shirley Williams. I think I’ll start reading it soon. I know very little about her, other than the bare facts that she was a member of the Labour party for years before becoming one of the founders of the Social Democratic Party, one of the ‘Gang of Four’. I particularly like the title of this autobiography, which came about as she and her brother liked challenges; one challenge being her

parents’ bookcases which ran from floor to ceiling like climbing-frames, with the added zest of forbidden books on the top shelf. Soon after I could read, I sneaked Havelock Ellis and Marie Stopes from that top shelf. I had learned from my brother that these were naughty books. They turned out to be very boring, but I was amazed by one illustration, a blurred spot underneath which was written: ‘This photograph of a human egg is several times life-size’. (page 3)

Although we’re not meeting until the last week in April I think I’d better start reading this soon as autobiographies/biographies take me longer to read than novels.

But I’d like to fit in something else as well. I have now built up quite a lot of books and samples on my Kindle and having watched some of the My Life in Books programmes last week I’m quite keen to read some of the books mentioned – such as Black Beauty, Crime and Punishment, The Moonstone, Treasure Island and Nicholas Nickleby, all of which I have at my fingertips. As usual, my wishes run away with me – so many books and not enough time to read all of them. And my reading time has been reduced recently as I have started to go to an art group. Painting, even though I’m terrible at it or maybe because I’m so inexperienced and lacking in talent, is just as time-consuming as reading – but it is so very enjoyable.