The Greengage Summer by Rumer Godden

The first thing I had to do was to research exactly what a greengage is.  And when I found this recipe for greengage chutney and I wished very much they were something I could get my hands on!

The Greengage Summer by Rumer Godden is a gem of a book.  I only knew of her from reading her childrens' book The Story of Holly and Ivy to the girls when they were little, but was introduced to her many novels at Leaves and Pages where you will find numerous reviews of her books. (Thank you, Barb!)

Initially, I was reminded very much of Edith Nesbit's The Railway Children.  Perhaps it was the circumstances of the absent father (this one in Tibet on a botanical expedition) and the mother and her children walking from the train station in the dark with their baggage in a cart that did it, but that resemblance soon faded, and The Greengage Summer took me to a very different time and place altogether.

Fed up with their behaviour at home, the mother has decided to take her five children to France for an exploration of sites of wartime self-sacrifice, and the martyrdom of Joan of Arc.  They barely arrive in the country when Mother becomes very seriously ill and is taken to a nearby hospital.  The children are forced upon the begrudging matron of the pension who only allows them to stay without adult accompaniment at the insistence of an Englishman also at the pension who agrees to act as their guardian.

Narrated in the first person by the second eldest of the five children, Cecil (who must surely be a boy... but no!) records their adventures in this village in France. Written in a self-conscious storytelling manner, Cecil begins with a summary of the whole summer, written from a point in time in the future.  Conversations interject the text as the characters at the time of writing discuss the details, and Uncle William, who wasn't there at all, makes comments on the events, almost as though he is reading the book along with us.  To start, it is all a jumble of past, present, and future overlapping and doubling back on itself.  The familiar tone and use of nicknames and shorthand for events makes you feel that you've just walked into the middle of a family story... which we have.  Joss (the eldest, and surely a boy... but no!) decided that it must be Cecil who tells the story, but it is a shared story really, parallel coming-of-age narratives for both girls.  Even with all this layering of time and space, Rumer Godden so cleverly crafts the story that there is never any confusion about when and where everything occurs.  Soon the chronology smooths and we are given the whole story in the order in which it happened.

Favourite aspects of The Greengage Summer were in the cast of well-rounded characters, the vivid evocation of time and place, the slow and steady building of suspense. Rumer Godden's ability to combine Cecil's more mature perspective - the point in time when she records the story - with her innocent child-like awareness of the events as they occurred without sounding an artificial or false note is striking.

A working knowledge of French would be very helpful when reading this novel, as there is frequent untranslated dialogue by the French characters, and without an understanding of what they are saying I'm sure there would be a great possibility of confusion.  This is my one and only caveat.  Otherwise, I whole-heartedly recommend The Greengage Summer.

Rumer Godden

 author image from here

Thirty Acres by Ringuet

Published in 1940, and translated from the French by Felix and Dorothea Walter, Thirty Acres by Ringuet is a classic of French-Canadian literature.

We are first introduced to the Laurentian farm setting through Mr. Branchaud and Euchariste Moisan as they sit smoking their pipes on the Branchaud's porch. These two French-Canadian farmers talk about ploughing and the weather and the challenges of farming stony soil ("the unfeeling and imperious land was the lordly suzerain* whose serfs they were..."), but there is an undercurrent of words left unspoken. The conversation circuitously makes its way to Alphonsine, the daughter of Mr. Branchaud whom Euchariste has been courting. Euchariste Moisan and Mr. Branchaud agree on an engagement with no more emotion than if a transaction over a piece of farm equipment, or livestock were changing hands... which, in a way it is.

Euchariste is a practical man out of necessity, and his choice of a wife is entirely pragmatic. The idea of love does not enter the picture when he acknowledges to himself that Alphonsine would make a suitable wife for him, as a farmer, and would "breed him healthy sons." He wants her more than he cares for her, and his description of her as "firm, full-breasted, with a rather heavy mouth, wide hips swaying with a motion like the rocking of a cradle..." tells us all we need to know about his values, his desires, and his vision for the future.  Alphonsine Branchaud is a commodity, an economic necessity, and her value is based on her production of both children and meals.  Every mention of Alphonsine links her to a monetary transaction.  Even her sexual purity is seen in these terms: "she was a farmer's daughter and knew that no one will buy something later on if they've had it for nothing the first time."

Euchariste's main interest in Alphonsine is as the means of producing sons who will work on the farm.  He imagines a brood of children; he will allow one to be trained for the priesthood, and he foresees this raising his status in the community, but his sons will work the land just as he works the land. The link between marriage and fertility is implicit, and strangely foreign in our culture in which marriage equates more directly with love.  But this marriage is not an emotional event; it is following the laws of nature.

Branchaud seemed to be gazing at the earth, all decked out in gold and purple for its own wedding in the spring, when the sun would fertilize it once again, after it had waited patiently all through the long winter under a white bridal veil of snow.

Neither is the fertility that follows the marriage a reason for emotion:

He accepted these births without enthusiasm, but also without regret.  The farm could support as many Moisans as were likely to arrive.  If there were to be ten of them, well, there'd be ten; if fifteen, then fifteen.  Just like everybody else.  What would be must be.  Alphonsine would have to bear her appointed number.

Poor Alphonsine!

Marriage between people is seen as merely replicating what is happening in the natural world.  We see this comparison made often in the novel.  The French-Canadian farmers are living in harmony with their surroundings.  When Euchariste's Uncle Ephrem sways to and fro in his rocking chair he is keeping time with the clock which mechanically "cut up the hours into minutes" and the autumn rain which taps "undecipherable messages on the panes."  These are people who live to the beat of Nature and their environment.

When Uncle Ephrem hears Euchariste's plan to marry Alphonsine, he tells Euchariste that he will retire to the village, leaving his thirty-acre farm to his nephew as an early inheritance. But Uncle Ephrem is not one to retire from the farm - he "died pressed close to this farm of his that could not consent to a divorce." But his uncle is barely cold when Euchariste has emotionally moved on:

His thoughts turned back to living things and were borne down the wind towards the waiting animals and towards the patient earth, that was indifferent to the death of the man it nourished and who was now to unite with it.

We haven't gotten inside the head of the character yet, so who knows... is he just shy? or is he another Caleb Gare in the making?

I have a soft spot for the use of figurative language, and Ringuet delivers in spades!  Here is an example - a random paragraph from the end of the fourth chapter:

The sun sank low on the horizon, hesitated there for a few days, and then began to climb back towards the zenith.  February heaped the snow still higher on the roads.  The farm-buildings wrapped themselves in snow-flakes, like a sick man in a woollen blanket, while day and night the breath of the house issued white from the chimney.  Sometimes the whole country-side was seized in the grip of a snow-storm, driven by a fierce wind rushing down from the north; eddies of fine snow swirled about like smoke, sealing the doors and windows and shaking the black skeletons of the trees until they creaked.

Similes, metaphors, personification, prosopopeia... it's all there in one paragraph! 

Thirty Acres offers a view into the life of Euchariste Moisan, a farmer in the Laurentian region of Quebec.  A simple man, bonded to the land, we follow him from young adulthood to old age, but we must infer his motivations and his personality from his behaviour.  Ringuet allows this reticent character slowly unfurl over the years as he builds his farm, and family, and interacts with his neighbours and family.  Ringuet does not tell us how to respond to Euchariste, but allows us to see the very human man with strengths and foibles who is at least in part a symbol of parochial rural Quebec society.  Euchariste is just one link in a long chain of generations who have worked the land, who, when young, push for progress and when old scorn the calls for progress from the youth.  This is a story of the cyclical nature of families, of the history of the province, of the place of Quebec in Canada and the world.  So many themes are explored.  This is an important book.

I enjoyed reading this Thirty Acres for its glimpse into a time and place not so far removed, yet a world away from my own life.  However, I was horrified by the reality of life for Alphonsine.  Not only is she treated like livestock, but, *she's treated like livestock.*  This book makes me even more thankful for the women's movement (and birth control).

I was often reminded whilst reading of my Great Uncle Jack, now 84, who, last summer took us to the old family homestead in the Ottawa Valley (not so far from Quebec) where he and my grandmother had lived when they were children.  He showed us a stand of trees and told us that he had ploughed that with a hand-plough when he was a lad; he showed us the plot of land where my grandmother had tended the potato plants, also now a small forest.  I returned to these thoughts about my Great Grandparents working their plot of land in the Ottawa Valley frequently when reading Thirty Acres, and perhaps it gave me a sympathy for the characters I would not otherwise have felt.

Philippe Panneton (pseudonym Ringuet)

From the McClelland website:

Ringuet, the pseudonym of Philippe Panneton, was born in Trois-Rivières, Quebec, in 1895. Educated at Laval University and later at the University of Montreal, he graduated from the latter's medical school in 1920. After three years of postgraduate study in Paris, he returned to Montreal, where he set up his medical practice and later rejoined the medical faculty of the University of Montreal.

Ringuet’s distinguished career in medicine complemented his deep commitment to literature. His first book, Writing…in the Style of…, was a series of literary parodies of famous writers. His first novel, Thirty Acres, a panoramic portrait of Quebec’s traditional agrarian society in the process of change, won immediate critical acclaim and was translated into Dutch, English, German, and Spanish.

Ringuet’s later fiction often explores the discontent that confronts his character in their urban settings.

In 1944 Ringuet was a founding member of L’Académie canadienne-française and served as its president from 1947 until 1953. He was appointed Canadian ambassador to Portugal in 1956.

Ringuet died in Lisbon in 1960.

Bibliography:

• Trente arpents / Thirty Acres (1938)
• Un Monde était leur empire / Their Empire Was a World (1943)
• L'Héritage et autres contes / The Legacy and Other Stories (1946)
• Fausse Monnaie / Counterfeit (1947)
• Le Poids du Jour / The Burden of the Day (1949)

* I had to look up the word suzerain, a word used more than once in Thirty Acres, and in the process discovered that there is a board game of the same name!

Pauline's Passion and Punishment by Louisa May Alcott

Pauline's Passion and Punishment

When Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper offered a one hundred dollar prize for a story, Louisa May Alcott anonymously submitted, and won the contest with her story Pauline's Passion and Punishment.  Originally published one hundred and fifty years ago, in January 1863, this was the first of Louisa May Alcott's "blood-and-thunder" tales to be printed. 

Pauline Valary is a scorned woman who has just received a rejection letter from her lover, Gilbert Redmond.  Securing the assistance of Manuel, a young man devoted to her, she vows to take her revenge on Gilbert, and privately plots a path to his destruction.  She shares her plans with Manuel: 

If you think that this loss has broken my heart, undeceive yourself, for such as I live years in an hour and show no sign.  I have shed no tears, uttered no cry, asked no comfort; yet, since I read that letter, I have suffered more than many suffer in a lifetime.  I am not one to lament long over any hopeless sorrow.  A single paroxysm, sharp and short, and it is over.  Contempt has killed my love, I have buried it, and no power can make it live again, except as a pale ghost that will not rest till Gilbert shall pass through an hour as bitter as the last.

And when Manuel suggests that he should seek out and kill her false lover, she responds:

Why should you?  Such revenge is brief and paltry, fit only for mock tragedies or poor souls who have neither the will to devise nor the will to execute a better.  There are fates more terrible than death; weapons more keen than poniards, more noiseless than pistols.  Women use such, and work out a subtler vengeance than men can conceive.  Leave Gilbert to remorse - and me.

A character-driven story, this is a psychological thriller, although the plot becomes more central as the story develops. Pauline has an understanding of human nature and uses it to her advantage.  She dons a mask behind which she can conceal her true motives and feelings, revealing only what she wants other to see.  To Manuel, she admits: "I see a future full of interest, a stage whereon I could play a stirring part.  I long for it intensely..." and like so many of Louisa May Alcott's protagonists, she plays her part well.  The ambiguity in the title is reflected in the story's message - is the punishment of the title what Pauline exacts, or is it what she brings on to herself?  But Louisa May Alcott leaves us to form our own conclusions.

Free download of Pauline's Passion and Punishment from Gutenberg.

I found this story in my copy of Behind a Mask: The Unknown Thrillers of Louisa May Alcott (Madeleine Stern, ed.)

The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood

Already well established as a poet by 1969 having won the Governor General's Award for The Circle Game and published several other poetry collections, Margaret Atwood's The Edible Woman was her first published novel. I first read it in the last years of secondary school - I was perhaps 18 at the time, and as one might expect, a great deal of it went flying straight over my head. Hopefully, my experiences in the intervening years have helped in my appreciation and understanding.

An office worker newly graduated from university, Marian McAlpin, the protagonist, works for Seymour Surveys, assessing the appeal of various consumer products on the public. She shares living quarters with her friend Ainsley, a free-spirited girl, and is engaged to Peter, a lawyer. Marian, although an intelligent and likeable person, is put upon by everyone in her life; her boyfriend takes advantage of her emotionally, her roommate takes advantage financially, her employer takes advantage of her by forcing her to work during her off-hours, and her married friend Clara just takes her for granted. Marian is drifting through her life without clearly delineated desires or goals and so is easily manipulated and imposed upon by those around her.

It is such a shock to encounter some of the thinking that went on without question before the arrival of Second Wave Feminism. There are little hints that this was a different world from today; a world in which it is just assumed a woman will relinquish her employment when she got married, or in which higher education for woman was still treated with suspicion. The infantilising nature of the treatment of women in the novel (especially by Marian's landlady and boyfriend) was striking, and (fortunately!) dated. Reading The Edible Woman felt less like a treatise on the state of women's issues, and more a reminder of how much the position of women in (Canadian) society has changed in forty years.

Marian is something of an Alice in Wonderland character. Just as Alice falls down the rabbit hole into a topsy-turvy world where nothing makes any sense, Marian is a sane woman living in an upside down world where an educated, intelligent woman must find her place in a society that is incapable of seeing women like Marian as individuals. Marian must forge a path for herself through the maze of confusing messages and examples before her.

One of my very favourite sections of the novel is the Mad Hatter's Tea Party-like episode in which Marian eats dinner at her friend Duncan's house. He and his roommates are graduate students in English Literature, and the way they look at the world made me laugh with remembrance about my own university years. Trevor says [sorry, it's a long quote, but so central to the core message of the book, I think]:

Of course everyone knows Alice is a sexual-identity-crisis book, that’s old stuff, it's been around for a long time, I'd like to go into it a little deeper though. What we have here, if you only look at it closely, this is the little girl descending into the very suggestive rabbit-barrow, becoming as it were prenatal, trying to find her role, [...] her role as a Woman. Yes, well that's clear enough. These patterns emerge.[...] One sexual role after another is presented to her but she seems unable to accept any of them, I mean she’s really blocked. She rejects Maternity when the baby she’s been nursing turns into a pig, nor does she respond positively to the dominating-female role of the Queen and her castration cries of ‘Off with his head!’ And when the Duchess makes a cleverly concealed lesbian pass at her, sometimes you wonder how conscious old Lewis was, anyway she's neither aware nor interested; and right after you’ll recall she goes to talk with the Mock-Turtle, enclosed in his shell and his self-pity, a definitely pre-adolescent character; then there are those most suggestive scenes, most suggestive, the one where her neck becomes elongated and she is accused of being a serpent, hostile to eggs, you'll remember, a rather destructively-phallic identity she indignantly rejects; and her negative reaction to the dictatorial Caterpillar, just six inches high, importantly perched on the all-too-female mushroom which is perfectly round but which has the power to make you either smaller or larger than normal, I find that particularly interesting. And of course there's the obsession with time, clearly a cyclical rather than a linear obsession. So anyway she makes a lot of attempts but she refuses to commit herself, you can’t say that by the end of the book she has reached anything that can be definitely called maturity.

Trevor's interpretation of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland gives us a hint about how to interpret Marian's adventures in her own story which is The Edible Woman.  Clever, non?  Marian even states, in a very Alice-like manner, '"So I'm finally going mad," she thought, "like everybody else. What a nuisance. Though I suppose it will be a change."'

There is all of Margaret Atwood's distinct cleverness and wordplay in abundance here, and although there is evidence that this is an early work compared to her more mature novels, this is a masterful creation.  Her ability to interweave so many threads to deftly produce the final product always leaves me marvelling at her skill.  I highly recommend The Edible Woman. 

Margaret Atwood

author image from here

March 2013

The Mistress of Nothing by Kate Pullinger

Winner of the 2009 Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction, The Mistress of Nothing is a fictionalized first person account of the real-life Miss Sally Naldrett, lady's maid to the actual Lady Lucie Duff Gordon.  It is 1862, and Sally is in England, and preparing to travel to Egypt in search of relief or cure for her ladyship's lung disease:

I work hard but my Lady is a most rewarding employer; everything I do for her is exactly right, or so she would have me believe.  On my day off - one per month, when we're at home, unless my Lady is too unwell for me to leave her - I put on my bonnet and take the train up to London: my Lady always says that a woman my age has a right to travel up to London by herself and I couldn't agree more.  The train up to London, a walk through the city - just saying those words makes me smile with pleasure - the noise, the smells, the people.  Up the steps of the Museum in Bloomsbury, through the exhibition rooms, the corridors lined with glass cases, past the giraffe whose neck is so long you injure your own neck looking up at it, past the knives and coins and cups and urns in their crowded display cases, until I reach the room that is my destination: the Egyptian Sculpture Gallery.  I take a seat and close my eyes before I've seen too much - I don't want to spoil my anticipation by seeing it all too quickly.  I've come all this way to look and yet, once I'm there, I can hardly bear to see.  I open my eyes and there they are: the Pharaohs, their gods, and the hieroglyphs - the secrets of that ancient land encrypted in stone.

I have my favourite.  The first time I saw his shapely long face I thought he was a woman.  But no, he's a man, a colossal Pharaoh.  Almond eyes, kohl-rimmed like a cat's; I would run my hand along his cheek if I could reach that high, over his lips, down to his great chin, feeling the stone bones beneath the smooth cool stone skin.  I stare at him, and he stares back at me.  I laugh at myself: he's the man of my dreams.

Lady Duffy Gordon and Sally arrive at the Alexandrian home of Mrs. Ross, the grown daughter of her ladyship.  The extroverted lady becomes subdued and melancholic with lack of society.  The women have trouble adapting to life in a foreign city.

 There was no real sightseeing to be done, as Alexandria's historical monuments consist of mere rumour and conjecture - phantom monuments, as my Lady said, no more, no less - this might have been where Alexander the Great's tomb lay; Pharos lighthouse, one of the Wonders of the Ancient World, probably stood here; but there was nothing to see.  Instead there was the wildest mix of cultures imaginable, all attempting to see something - a slick Italian barber next door to a Syrian baker with a mud oven, a gorgeous French patisserie with a gaggle of peasant women buying and selling oranges right outside its polished glass doors.

Their transition is eased with the help of two gentlemen who suggest to them a dragoman, or guide, who reminds Sally of the sculpture in the Egyptian gallery in London.  Mr. Omar Abu Halaweh, the Father of the Sweets teaches Sally to speak Egyptian, makes their food purchases and takes care of both of the women.  Sally, Omar and her ladyship form a trio - a pyramid of sorts with the Lady Duff Gordon at the peak.

Initially I saw a great number of similarities to E. M. Forster's A Passage to India, and even A Room with a View, but this is in no way derivative.  A period novel about two women, of different age and wealth, travelling in a foreign land, and an ensuing entanglement is bound to provoke this literary connection.  The theme of travel as self-revelation is explored in each of these novels as well:

What happens when you leave everything behind?  When you leave everything familiar, not just houses and streets and wet windy winter-time, but husbands, children, friends?  For me: the train into London on my day off; the arriving back home again.  The branch of the oak tree that knocks against the roof of the stable.  The postman who comes down the lane.  None of these things have followed me to Egypt.  Does this mean I am no longer the same person?  Does this mean that I too have changed?

Lady Duff Gordon is also transformed by her life in Egypt; her acceptance and rejection of the European mores and conventions set the tone for what is acceptable in her household.  She discards the outerwear of the European lady of status and adopts the more practical and comfortable attire of the Egyptian man, yet she rigidly holds firm to the code of conduct she uses to define an acceptable woman.  Omar becomes a study in contrasts: a virile, yet emasculated man, and a further exploration of gender, status and ambition. And watching Sally transform through the novel is exciting.  She develops from a model of servitude to a fully-realized woman.

Although the book retained my attention right to the end, I did have some issues with the author being too oblique with some of the actions and motivations of the characters.  There were many elements that felt unresolved and missed opportunities for more cohesion.  I am somewhat surprised that it won the GG, but it was still a very enjoyable read.

Here is a link to an excerpt from Kate Pullinger's website.

Kate Pullinger

 author image from here

Behind a Mask; or, A Woman's Power by Louisa May Alcott

Behind a Mask; or, A Woman's Power

Into the peaceful and affluent household of the Coventry family comes a nineteen-year old governess to oversee the education of the sixteen-year old daughter Bella.  Jean Muir is a poor, pale, black-cloaked little Jane Eyre without friend or family.  She ingratiates herself into the family by her gentle manner, her kindness, her gift for entertaining and performing with music and story, and through her humble servitude.  Although there are some hints that all may not be exactly as it seems, it is not until she retires to the privacy of her own room that we see the full extent of her deception.

Still sitting on the floor she unbound and removed the long abundant braids from her head, wiped the pink from her face, took out several pearly teeth, and slipping off her dress appeared herself indeed, a haggard, worn, and moody woman of thirty at least.  The metamorphosis was wonderful, but the disguise was more in the expression she assumed than in any art of costume or false adornment.  Now she was alone, and her mobile features settled into their natural expression, weary, hard, bitter.  She had been lovely once, happy, innocent, and tender; but nothing of all this remained to the gloomy woman who leaned there brooding over some wrong, or loss, or disappointment which had darkened all her life.  For an hour she sat so, sometimes playing absently with the scanty locks that hung about her face, sometimes lifting the glass to her lips as if the fiery draught warmed her cold blood; and once she half uncovered her breast to eye with a terrible glance the scar of a newly healed wound. 1.

The comparisons with Charlotte Bronte's creation are striking, and go far beyond the protagonists themselves.  Jean Muir is adept at playing the part of Jane Eyre, for she is a consummate actress with an eye on the prize... Mr. Rochester!  While Jane Eyre ("air") is ethereal and spiritual, Jean Muir ("moor") is earthy and practical in her worldliness.  Jean Muir has both feet firmly planted in the here and now, and unlike Jane Eyre who strives only to do the right thing without thought of personal gain, Jean Muir is the living embodiment of ruthless ambition.

Louisa May Alcott, as the author, never judges Jean Muir's actions and the conclusion of the story lends support to the argument that her actions were justified because society offered so few solutions to women to live independently.  The choices available to Jean Muir were marriage, servitude and poverty, or death.  She uses all her powers, and embraces her inner "Madwoman in the Attic," clothes her in the appearance of an "Angel in the House" and serves tea with humility and grace, soothes the agitation of each family member, entertains and knows her place as governess while at the same time scheming a diabolical plan to capture status and wealth using only her quick wit and cunning.  As the madwoman, she goes after what she wants with a single-minded passion.  She is a witch who casts her spell on all the men she encounters.

The full text of the novella can be found at the University of Virginia's site here.
A full guide to Louisa May Alcott research can be found here.

I found "Behind a Mask; or, A Woman's Power" in these editions from my shelves:

1.  I remember my father singing a little ditty when I was a girl - a parody of an old song called "After the Ball" in which Katie (here, Jenny) is déshabillé in the same manner as the protagonist of the story.

After the Ball (Dismantled Bride)

After the ball was over
Jenny took out her glass eye.
Stood her false leg in the corner,
Corked up her bottle of dye.
Put her false teeth in the tumbler;
Hung her false hair on the wall.
All the rest went to the bye-bye,
After the ball.

This is the original version of the song "After the Ball," sung by the writer, Charles K. Harris, here.
and the parody here.

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

I know that, along with Mansfield Park, it is probably the least appreciated of Jane Austen's novels, but Northanger Abbey is so charming and funny that I love it.  It seems that whichever Austen novel I am reading is my favourite.

As much as I aspire to Elizabeth Bennet's quick wit and vivaciousness, and Elinor Dashwood's steady, practical stoicism, I have to admit that Catherine Morland is probably the Austen heroine I most resemble.  Or, did resemble when I was a teenager.  Jane Austen perfectly captures the wide-eyed wonder of a girl of seventeen who has lived her life in the comfortable confines of an intimate village, and is now introduced to the fast-paced life in society.

On one level, the story is a few months in the life of Catherine Morland, the fourth of ten children of a country clergyman and his wife, and the eldest daughter of the family, who is invited to Bath by a neighbouring, childless couple, the Allens.  In Bath she is exposed to more fashionable society than has been usual for her.  There she meets a young man and his sister who, along with their father invite Catherine to spend time with them at their home, Northanger Abbey.

But on another level, this is an exploration of novel reading.  Several of the main characters in Northanger Abbey, including Catherine, are fascinated by the thrilling novels of the period, especially those by Ann Radcliffe such as The Mysteries of Udolpho.

Jane Austen defends the reading of novels and asserts that in them you will find that "the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language."  Yet, while defending novel-reading as a means of understanding human nature, she presents us with a heroine who appears not to have absorbed any of the lessons therein.  For Catherine is blind in her naïveté to the foibles and faults of others. She continues to interpret the behaviour of everyone else through the lens of her own good nature, attributing to their bad behaviour invented redeeming justifications.

And now I feel that I really must read some Ann Radcliffe and Horace Walpole!

The Unknown Thrillers of Louisa May Alcott

I was introduced to the "unknown thrillers" of Louisa May Alcott during a women writers course in university, and was captivated by the "blood and thunder tales" written by this author who was revered for her gentle, moral tales such as Little Women and Eight Cousins, and was known as "The Children's Friend."  She produced these "potboilers" anonymously, and pseudonymously as A. M. Barnard, out of economic necessity: at times her family struggled with poverty, and like Jo Marsh wrote to sustain her family. She wrote these dark, lurid Gothic tales of deceit, violence and revenge with a subtle feminist twist, and although less likely than her sweet tales to engender devoted fans, these thrillers have shed light on the complex life of the writer.

~

I found this quote from the Introduction of Behind a Mask: The Unknown Thrillers of Louisa May Alcott (Madeleine Stern, editor) fascinating:

I think my natural ambition is for the lurid style.  I indulge in gorgeous fancies and wish that I dared inscribe them upon my pages and set them before the public... How should I dare to interfere with the proper grayness of old Concord?  The dear old town has never known a startling hue since the redcoats were there.  Far be it from me to inject an inharmonious color into the neutral tint.  And my favourite characters!  Suppose they went to cavorting at their own sweet will, to the infinite horror of dear Mr. Emerson, who never imagined a Concord person as walking off a plumb line stretched between two pearly clouds in the empyrean.  To have had Mr. Emerson for an intellectual god all one's life is to be invested with a chain armour of propriety...  And what would my own good father think of me...  if I set folks to doing the things that I have a longing to see my people do?  No, my dear, I shall always be a wretched victim to the respectable traditions of Concord.

~

The introductory segment of the documentary "Louisa May Alcott: the Woman Behind Little Women" can be found here.  (Did you know that Louisa May Alcott was a runner?  She ran up to 20 miles at a time!  Without wicking fibres and seamless socks).

~

I have decided to work my way through the three volumes of stories I have on my shelf; I plan to read a new story every couple of weeks.  I believe there have been at least thirty stories now discovered to have been anonymously or pseudonymously published.  I have access to twelve of these, some more aptly described as novellas.  I would love to have some company reading these if you are interested to see this darker side of Louisa May Alcott's writing.

The collections I have are:

Behind a Mask: The Unknown Thrillers of Louisa May Alcott, edited by Madeleine Stern, Morrow, 1975.

• Behind a Mask; or, A Woman's Power e-text
• Pauline's Passion and Punishment e-text
• The Mysterious Key and What It Opened e-text
• The Abbot's Ghost, or Maurice Treherne's Temptation e-text
  

Modern Magic: Five Stories by Louisa May Alcott, edited by Madeleine Stern, Modern Library, 1995.

• A Pair of Eyes; or, Modern Magic
• The Fate of the Forrests
• Behind a Mask; or, A Woman's Power
• Perilous Play
• My Mysterious Mademoiselle

A Marble Woman: Unknown Thrillers of Louisa May Alcott, edited by Madeleine Stern, Avon, 1976

• V. V.: or, Plots and Counterplots
• A Marble Woman: or, The Mysterious Model
• The Skeleton in the Closet
• A Whisper in the Dark
• Perilous Play

Earth and Ashes by Atiq Rahimi

The first thing you notice about Earth and Ashes is that it is written in the second person present and you say to yourself, "It is a clever writer who can make this point of view work well!"  You see that the book is only eighty-one pages so you tell yourself that even if it fails it's a short book.

But you are very quickly drawn into the story: you become an old man sitting by a bridge in Afganistan with your deaf grandson trying to keep the dust from the apple he eats.  You wait for a car to take you and your grandson to the Karkar coal mine where your son Murad works.  You confirm with the guard in the hut that there have been no cars past but he is iritable and does not ease your loneliness.

So far, you think, this book is promising.  It has a clearly imagined setting.  You can see the dust on that apple, feel the heat from the sun, and see the greyness of the dry landscape.  You are curious to learn more about the old man and the boy.

You keep reading.

Then you begin to wonder, "Where is this going?"  Oh, no!  The book has suddenly gone all surreal with erupting mountains and rivers of flowing fire.  And then with a sigh of relief you see that the old man has just dozed off from exhaustion and had a nightmare.  You can see that he has a challenging life, that he struggles with loneliness, but is reluctant to discuss his experiences, and the destruction he has seen as a result of the war with the Russians.

You notice there are no women in this story.

You read this sentence:

You know, father, sorrow can turn to water and spill from your eyes, or it can sharpen your tongue into a sword, or it can become a time bomb that, one day, will explode and destroy you,

and you think, "Oh, that poor, sad man!"

You wonder what a jujube is, and you google it.  (Turns out it's not just a candy, but an apple-like fruit that when mature resembles a date, and has a stone like an olive, and the wonderful botanical name of Ziziphus zizyphus).  You marvel at the ability of children to make toys out of what surrounds them, even jujube fruit stones.

You wonder if Atiq Rahimi has ever read Waiting for Godot because the old man and his grandson sure are having to wait a long time at the side of that road.

But you learn more about the old man (including hat his name is Dastaguir) and you feel that he has indeed suffered great loss in this war.  You see that he is on a quest to find his son, and you worry about what he will find when he arrives at the mine.

You have to come care for this dusty old man from Afganistan and you can hardly believe the sorrow that he has had to bear.  But you wonder, "Will this sorrow turn to tears, a sword, or a bomb?"  You come to the end of the book and you breath out.  So much heart-break so skilfully rendered.  You think, "Atiq Rahimi, you rock the second person present."

Atiq Rahimi
On location filming "Earth and Ashes"
Fall 2003, Afghanistan

Author image from here (along with an interview with Atiqu Rahimi)

From the book jacket:

[Born in Kabul in 1962 Atiq Rahimi was 17 years old when the Soviet Union invaded Afganistan.  He left the country during the war, eventually obtaining political asylum in France.  Rahimi now lives in Paris where he makes documentary films.]

February 2013

Mad Shadows by Marie-Claire Blais

The 

train 

was 

leaving 

town.

     Lying back with his head against his mother's shoulder, Patrice followed the dappled countryside with a melancholy expression.  Behind his forehead everything grew confused, like a billowing stormcloud on a screen.  He watched in silence and did not understand, but his idiot face was so dazzling that it made one think of genius.  His mother caressed the nape of his neck with the palm of her hand.  With a gentle slip of her all-too-supple wrist she could lower Patrice's head to her bosom and hear his breathing more easily.
     On the other side, aloof and motionless, her daughter Isabelle-Marie sat pressing her sharp features against the window.  Louise often said to herself, "Isabelle-Marie never really had the face of a child... But Patrice... Oh, Patrice!"
     Isabelle-Marie was thirteen.  She was tall and emaciated; her alarming eyes, so often full of anger, seemed glued to black bone.  When she scowled, the lower part of her face twisted into a look of fierce contempt.  It was almost frightening.

 So begins the first novel of Marie-Claire Blais (translated from the French by Merloyd Lawrence), written when she was just twenty years old and entitled, in the original French, La Belle Bête.  Isabelle-Marie, the neglected, unattractive daughter represses a ferocious and anguished desire to repay her mother for emotionally abandonning her.  Patrice is her ten-year old brother, the "beautiful beast" to whom their mother Louise is devoted.  He is is so beautiful that strangers cannot help but stare, but he is intellectually vois with "large green eyes as empty as the night."  Marie-Claire Blais creates this family full of real psychological pathology but sets it in a fairy tale-like setting full of symbolic meaning.

While evidently a social commentary on parochial Quebec society, an important theme in Mad Shadows for me is the soul-destroying indulgence in superficial attributes such as beauty and riches.  This is a cautionary tale of what happens when the dark side takes over and revenge overshadows forgiveness, kindness to others is overwhelmed by self-interest, and the pursuit and adoration of beauty and money come before the nurturing and loving of children.  Each character is lacking a crucial element to their personality; Patrice has no conscience, no intelligence, no memory; Louise has no compassion and no feelings for others beyond their use in fulfilling her own desires; Isabelle-Marie lacks the ability to control her rage.  Rather than acknowledging their failings and reaching out to one another for support, each character is ruled by them and remains isolated and ultimately destructive to themselves and everyone else.

This is a dark and at times disturbing story, a gothic tale of festering, diseased souls eating away from within and, finally, bursting forth in all-encompassing destruction.  I enjoyed the skill of the writer and the depth of her character-building.  This is an astounding first novel, and I am looking forward to reading Tête Blanche which was her second novel, published in 1960 which is sitting on my shelf.

Marie-Claire Blais

author image from here

Marie-Claire Blais in the Canadian Encyclopedia

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Handmaid's Tale begins in Margaret Atwood's typically understated style.  We begin in the middle, and slowly the past and the present unfold like the drawing back of curtain to reveal the complete diarama.

This is the story of one woman in a society that has recently transitioned very quickly from the contemporary American reality of 1985 (the publication year of the text) into a totalitarian regime now called Gilead.  The narrator, unnamed at the beginning of the story, has been forced into the role of handmaid, or surrogate child-bearer, for a high-ranking Commander and his wife.  The position of a handmaid in a household in Gilead is ambiguous.  For, although these women fill an essential role because of the declining fertility rates, they are scorned members of society.  The narrator cautiously makes her way through each day, attempting to remain below the radar, for there are spies everywhere in Gilead.  Fear is the method of ensuring complete obedience, and death or exile is the punishment.

The narrator's behaviour is guided by the dictates of the dystopian society, but her inner voice has a morality that fights everything she sees and does.  In her first person narration, she records her attempt to walk a fine line between staying out of trouble and following her conscience.  The repressive message of Gilead is to "blame the victim" and the indoctrination, isolation and lack of human connection allows the narrator to doubt herself even while feeling unsettled about what surrounds her. It is through her thoughts that she keeps alive her connection with the past, recalling the life she had before Gilead.

Gilead is a theocracy, but the religious dogma is hollow.  When religious rhetoric is used solely for political means, it loses its spiritual dimension and is just another empty tool of the powerful to gain more power.  The religious observances in The Handmaid's Tale are hollow words, spoken only out of fear and conformity, never reflecting any true Christian teaching of compassion and forgiveness.  So, Margaret Atwood is not condemning religion in this novel, but exploring how the rhetoric of religion can be used for the purpose of mass conformity.  She is making a distinction between, for instance, the Quakers and the Baptists and the others who do not identify themselves as Christian who risk their own lives to save others, and go to great lengths to sacrifice themselves for others.

The power in The Handmaid's Tale for me is in the exploration of the effects of the removal of all human interaction in a society.  Individuals in Gilead are forbidden to look one another in the eye, to touch one other (except in specially sanctioned impersonal "ceremonies"), or to interact with anyone else on a personal level.  What happens when this basic human need is denied?  In small ways, the narrator sees evidence of the break down of the society, of cracks in the very foundation because of this inhuman condition.  People are willing to take great risks to have these needs met.

I loved this book.  Every single time I read a book by Margaret Atwood I remember once again how much I enjoy her view of the world. Even when it is this dark and horrifying.

Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood at the Canadian Encyclopedia (including video of her interview with Alan Gregg on the topic of her 2008 Massey Lecture entitled Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth)

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.  In the first forty days a boy had been with him.  But after forty days without a fish the boy's parents had told him that the old man was now definitely and finally salao, which is the worst form of unlucky, and the boy had gone at their orders in another boat which caught three good fish the first week.  It made the boy sad to see the old man come in each day with his skiff empty and he always went down to help him carry either the coiled lines or the gaff and harpoon and the sail that was furled around the mast.  The sail was patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat.

The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck.  The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks.  The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords.  But none of these scars were fresh.  They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert.

Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.

So begins Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, a work of brilliant contrasts; a novel of staggering complexity hidden in simple prose, of a poverty-stricken old man who is rich in love and confidence in the future.  He has faith in the Yankees, and in Joe DiMaggio, and even after a string of fishless days, "his hope and his confidence had never gone."  On the eighty-fifth day Santiago sets out diligently determined to try his luck again because, he says, "eighty-five is a lucky number." 

The Old Man and the Sea is an allegorical tale of suffering and redemption.  Santiago is marked as a Christ-like figure by his occupation as fisherman, by his scarred and bleeding hands - his stigmata, by his disciple Manolin who has faith in him, serves him, and ministers his wounds, by his call to God for help, and by the images depicted in the scenes of him carrying his mast on his shoulders.  I was most intrigued by the behaviour of the Old Man.  He is humble, well-mannered, lives in harmony with nature and he is full of encouragement for himself when things are not going well despite his poverty.  He never falters in his positive self-talk.  He never complains about his situation, no matter how dire, but is appreciative for every small favour given to him.  He has a beautiful attitude toward life, work, and friendship.

The Old Man has an empathetic understanding of the suffering of all the creatures in the ocean, and the air.  The challenges of the small birds to capture fish to eat excites his compassion, as does the hook in the mouth of a fish.  The Old Man pits his wits and endurance against the fish he catches.  He considers fish his worthy opponents because "man is not much beside the great birds and beasts."  His victory comes not in the way one might expect - with riches and fanfare - but quietly and subtly and his victory is a redemption.

Ernest Hemingway by Yousuf Karsh [1957]

Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) by Ann-Marie MacDonald

You've heard of fractured fairy tales?  Well, Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) is like that - except with Shakespeare's plays.  Ann-Marie MacDonald has created a witty and clever and hilarious exploration of the characters and themes in Romeo and Juliet and Othello.  I really, really wish a theatre company would stage it right now so I could see this live.

The play begins in the office of Assistant Professor Constance Ledbelly at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario (my alma mater!) where Constance is working on her Ph.D. dissertation.  She is working to analyze an old manuscript which, she believes, contains the two source comedies that Shakespeare used to write his tragedies. Constance is warped into the Shakespearean world where she needs to find the author of the manuscript.  In the process, she must also find her own true identity, in a Jungian voyage of re-birth.

In an interview with Melanie Lynn Lockhart in 2005, Ann-Marie MacDonald stated:

I think [Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet)] ended up as a tribute to Shakespeare. It’s a testimonial. Because it was done in the spirit of ransacking –and that’s what Shakespeare did. And I think the greatest thing you can do for an author is to make free with them, ultimately, or they won’t survive. If they’re going to survive, they have to survive all kinds of things.

Drawing not just from Romeo and Juliet and Othello, Ann-Marie MacDonald uses characters and lines from other works by Shakespeare often for comedic purposes.  Here is an example of how she plays with the original Romeo and Juliet:

SAMPSON. Nay, as they dare. I will bite my thumb at them; which is a disgrace to them, if they bear it.
ABRAHAM. Do you bite your thumb at us, sir? 
SAMPSON. I do bite my thumb, sir. 
ABRAHAM. Do you bite your thumb at us, sir? 
SAMPSON. [Aside]  Is the law of our side, if I say ay? 
GREGORY. No. 
SAMPSON. No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir, but I bite my thumb, sir. (1.1. 33-40)

And here is the corresponding section from Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet):

TYBALT. [laughter – CONSTANCE nervously bites her thumbnail] Do you bite your thumb at me sir?!
CONSTANCE. No! I just bite my nails, that’s all. 
TYBALT. Do you bite your nails at me sir? 
CONSTANCE. No I swear! Look, I’ll never bite them again. This’ll be a great chance for me to quit once and for all. Thanks.
[Pause. The boys tense. Will there be a fight?]
TYBALT. You’re welcome. (51-52)

Ann-Marie MacDonald uses not just Shakespeare's words, but his themes and symbols and his love of gender-bending and mistaken identities to great comedic effect.

Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) is full of intelligent fun.  I would highly recommend this play as a wonderful read.  Now... does anyone know if there is a dvd available of a stage performance?

Ann-Marie MacDonald

author image from here

Recipient of the Governor General's Award for English Language Drama, the Floyd S. Chalmer's Canadian Play Award and the Canadian Author's Association Award, Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) is the much lauded play by the much lauded over-achiever, Ann-Marie MacDonald. 

Ann-Marie MacDonald is an actor, a playwright, a novelist (Fall On Your Knees, and The Way The Crow Flies), television host of Life & Times for seven years, and currently for The Doc Zone on the CBC.  She's written an opera libretto based on Jungian theories (Nigredo Hotel), and won both Genie and Gemini Awards and a Dora Award, and her novel Fall On Your Knees was chosen by Oprah's Book Club.

Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay

Many years ago I read the first book in Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar Tapestry trilogy entitled The Summer Tree (1984).  What I remember most clearly about that book was how much I enjoyed the introduction.  Five students at the University of Toronto attend a lecture and find out that the guest lecturer is actually a magical person from the land of Fionavar.  He invites them to travel with him back to his country.  The U of T setting being so familiar to me I was really excited by the book.  However, when they left Toronto and arrived in the magical kingdom I was reminded why I never read fantasy.  This is the same reason I've never been able to get through more than 30 pages of Lord of the Rings (and I am determined to give it my best shot this year!).  I appear unable to concentrate as soon as the characters start wearing cloaks or sprout horns.  Suddenly, the laundry needs doing, my in-box needs sorting, some string needs winding...  So, I'm really not sure why I picked up Guy Gavriel Kay's Ysabel.  Perhaps it was the compelling and gorgeous cover.  Yes.  I'll admit it.  It was the cover that did it.

The setting of the novel is Aix-en-Provence, France, and fifteen-year-old Canadian Ned Marriner is accompanying his famous photographer father, Edward, while he captures images of the area for his latest book.  Ned enters the Saint-Sauveur Cathedral in Aix while his father is attempting to capture the facade, and there meets an American exchange student named Kate Wenger.  Together they have a strange encounter with a bald, scarred man who rises up through a grate in the floor.  Ned and his family and friends appear to be at the vortex of a dangerous upheaval when the past and present begin to collide and old animosities spill over into the present.

I enjoyed the book for the first 150 pages, and then came the supernatural spirit wolves and the cloaked druids and the horned man-beast and I had to fight to keep my focus. I was determined to forge on to the end, and luckily it did pick up again after another 200 pages.  That still left another 150 pages to go (and trust me, I was counting!).

I wasn't expecting this to be a Young Adult book which it most definitely is.  I have nothing against Young Adult books if they are well written, but this fell into the trap of starting with the smart alecky, angsty teenager with an iPod and a bad attitude in predictable and uninspired prose.  I never came to care for any of the characters in the novel and continued to be confused about the objective, other than placing Ned in a situation where his coming-of-age is accelerated by pitting him against mythological bad guys with horns.  I would have liked to have spent more time with the exchange student, but she seemed to disappear when the action heated up, along with Melanie who had a lot of promise as a character that was never realized.

Clearly, I was not the intended audience.  Sorry GGK.

Guy Gavriel Kay

author image from here

The Double Hook by Sheila Watson

The Double Hook is a book that requires a lot from its readers.  It's not the kind of book one can read casually, and it's not the kind of book you can read whilst doing anything else.  There must be no holding it in one hand whilst making a sandwich.  There can be no letting the mind wander for even a sentence or two, for it requires total dedication.  It is the kind of book that ensures the security of tenured professors of Canadian Literature.  While I disagree with Earle Birney calling it  “monotonous, self-conscious, artificial, and lacking in real fictional interest, ” I do concur with his confession: “I just don’t know what the damned novel is about.”

The publication history of The Double Hook is epic and obstacle-strewn!  Rejected by a Who's Who of the 1950s publishing world: Cecil Day-Lewis, T. S. Eliot and Rupert Hart-Davis all turned it away, along with American publishers Random House, Harcourt-Brace, Knopf, New Directions and Atheneum.  The consensus seems to have been that although not without merit, The Double Hook would be virtually unsaleable.  Canadian Jack McClelland took a chance and against the odds The Double Hook has never been out of print since its 1959 publication.

Written in a poetic prose style in short sentences and phrases, this novel is stylistically experimental and unique.  Disregarding the literary conventions of quotation marks, identifying new characters with name or motif, and establishing new settings, the reader must infer from subtle clues the details in the story.  This is the first page of the novel - the first section in Part One:

In the folds of the hills

under Coyote's eye

lived

the old lady, mother of William

of James and of Greta

lived James and Greta

lived William and Ara his wife

lived the Widow Wagner

the Widow's girl Lenchen

the Widow's boy

lived Felix Prosper and Angel

lived Theophil

and Kip

until one morning in July

Greta was at the stove.  Turning hotcakes.  Reaching for the coffee beans.  Grinding away James's voice.

James was at the top of the stairs.  His hand half-raised.  His voice in the rafters.

James walking away.  The old lady falling.  There under the jaw of the roof.  In the vault of the bed loft.  Into the shadow of death.  Pushed by James's will.  By James's hand.  By James's words:  This is my day.  You will not fish today.

The Double Hook begins with the murder of "the old lady, mother of William of James and of Greta," after which various neighbours see her in the river during the day.  A large cast of characters people the novel, each with a story - a true ensemble cast - and they move in and out of the scenes interwoven and entwined with each of the other characters. At times, the writing seems to be depicting life in a dream in which only certain scenes and symbols are evident, and we have to piece together the characters' motivations, and sometimes even the plot, like a puzzle.

I have to admit that for me, this novel would require more attention than I feel compelled to give it right at this moment.  It is not that I didn't like it.  It is just that, for me right now, it is less a story to enjoy reading, and more a novel to study with a notepad and highlighters (perhaps multi-coloured) to fully appreciate its complexity and weight.  When the mood is right and I do feel in the mood for digging deeper, this will be the book I pull off the shelf.  

image from here

I very much enjoyed this description of the author by John Grube in his introduction to The Double Hook:

Mrs. Watson is a small, bird-like creature who lives on coffee and cigarettes.  Charming, sly, humorous, she deals like Eliot's Madame Sosostris "a wicked pack of cards."  The reader must pick up his hand and play it with intelligence and perception, and if he does will find her writing among the most rewarding ever produced in this country.  With The Double Hook she indubitably takes her place in the forefront of Canadian literature.

Here is an article about the publication history of The Double Hook; Sheila Watson's bibliography; and a fascinating glimpse at a contemporary review here.