The Magic World by E. Nesbit

10 January 2012 23:12

When I was in the kitchen at Christmas (when was I not in the kitchen, I’m definitely going to make it all easier for myself next year) I had the radio on as usual and I was listening to Radio 4 extra which usually has something entertaining and different along the lines of vintage comedy or classic fiction. This time I realised it was E. Nesbit’s Five Children and It which I read some years ago as I never did get around to it as a child.

If you like Edwardian fantasy/fairy tale type things then you’ll enjoy Nesbit, her writing is quite humorous. She was writing at a time when life seemed to be so much simpler and more wholesome – if you didn’t get consumption or typhoid and you weren’t a ‘slavey’ in service.

As it happened I was in the middle of reading a book of Nesbit short stories called The Magic World – a collection of twelve stories involving magic. Perfect for children of all ages and I’m going to be passing my copy of this Puffin Classic on to a ten year old girl I know. I’m not sure if she’ll like it, it might be a bit too old fashioned for a modern miss but she did love the omnibus book of Little House on the Prairie which I passed on to her as part of my decluttering efforts.

Edith Nesbit lived from 1858-1924 and she was a bit of a shocker in her day. She lived a very Bohemian life as a member of the socialist Fabian Society. They were a fairly loose moralled bunch for the times – well for any times really and as I recall she had an affair with H.G. Wells amongst others. It was a bit of a toss up as to who fathered the children involved. But although she was a very successful writer her charitable deeds almost led to her becoming bankrupt, so her heart was in the right place!

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Perfect Lives by Polly Samson

6 December 2011 23:11

I was lucky enough to be sent a copy of this book by Virago for review. I hadn’t read anything by Polly Samson before, apparently she’s a lyricist too having written songs for Pink Floyd and she’s married to Dave Gilmour, she certainly has a way with words which is quite poetic at times and the stories involve music in some way, whether it’s musicians or piano tuners.

I’ve been told that some people dip into books of short stories at random, which I think is completely mad because authors and editors usually put a lot of thought into the order which stories appear in anthologies, just as record producers do with music. If you are of that ilk – cease and desist forthwith as these stories need to be read in order.

Perfect Lives is a book of short stories which are all loosely linked because the characters live in the same town. You see their lives from different aspects and nothing about them is as it seemed to be in the beginning. True to life in that way I suppose as people are multi-faceted and always surprising.

I love description in books and there are so many visuals given, but here are just a few which I enjoyed to give you a flavour of it:

Milk bloomed in their mugs of tea on the table between them…

Strips and streamers in storm-blues and mauves hung in clumps like particularly beautiful seaweed from a Sheila Maid hitched over the bath.

Impossibly tall hollyhocks, shimmery-stemmed, silver leaves of artemisia and roses, roses, roses, geraniums and lilies, rubies,garnets and pearls.

Colour,plants and jewels – luscious.
I will certainly read her previous books when I get a chance.

By one of those many spooky coincidences in life this book came through my letterbox at exactly the same time that I was dealing with a piano tuner and boudoir grand piano, not something which you do every day of your life. So it seemed a bit like I was inhabiting the pages although thankfully that was as far as the resemblance with my life went.

Perfect Lives is full of recognisable moments though and I’m sure that other readers will have their own parallel experiences and observations echoed in it. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this previously but I’ve had the experience in the past of being told by at least three women seperately that they felt sorry for me because I had to share my children with my husband. Those single mothers wanted their children all to themselves! I couldn’t help thinking that their children might have something to say about that attitude when they grew up especially as I could imagine the mothers’ reactions when the kids started having relationships with other people. This is the first time that I’ve come across that sort of attitude in fiction though.

I usually read short stories at bedtime because then I can read one and put the light out and think about it while I hopefully get to sleep. I found myself reading these stories one after the other though and I sometimes didn’t put the light out until 2 a m. So I’m going to re-read them singly at some time in the future and I’m sure I’ll enjoy them even more.

Perfect Lives was a Sunday Times Fiction Choice of the Year.

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Selected Stories by Anton Chekov

25 November 2011 23:42

I bought this wee paperback book from a local second-hand bookshop which has sadly closed down now – such is the way of the world. I used to love browsing in it and almost always found at least one treasure to take home.

Anton Chekov had quite a short life, being only 44 when he died and he had no idea that people would still be reading his work over 100 years after his death. He thought his work would be read for only seven years after his death, how wrong he was! Obviously he’s better known for his plays but this book of his early short stories is well worth reading. It’s sad to think that he was already ill with the tuberculosis which eventually killed him when he was writing them.

The stories are:

The Confession
He Understood
At Sea – A Sailor’s Story
A Nincompoop
Surgery
Ninochka – A Love Story
A Cure for Drinking
The Jailer Jailed
The Dance Pianist
The Milksop
Marriage in Ten or Fifteen Years
In Spring
Agafya
The Kiss
The Father
In Exile
Three Years
The House with the Mansard
Peasants
The Darling

Some of the stories are very short indeed, just four pages or so whilst the one called Three Years is very long, I would call it a novella really as it’s ninety pages long.

Anton Chekov wrote about the lives of the peasants of Russia, the grim reality, which didn’t always go down well with those in authority but I’m glad that he gave us this peek into the lives of ordinary Russians, although it can be a bit grim, but life was grim for all ordinary people in the 1880s which is when these stories were written.

Once again, I have to say that it’s thanks to The Classics Circuit that I read this book. Until its Russian literature tour I had only read modern Russian literature, and not much of that either.

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Crime by Ferdinand von Schirach

11 September 2011 23:48

This is one of the books which I got from my last trip to my library. Sadly I’ve given up on reading it, it’s a compilation of short stories and I think short stories are especially good for bedtime reading but these ones just didn’t fit the bill.

I think they’re really well written and translated from the original German but the author is a criminal lawyer and as you would expect he has had a lot of experience of the things that most of us are lucky enough to avoid in life. Murder, torture and general mayhem abound.

I’m not against the odd wee bit of mayhem now and again but I really don’t feel like it at the moment. It’s not conducive to a good night’s sleep either, I just didn’t enjoy trying to get to sleep whilst having torture on my mind. I know – silly me!

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Heart Songs by Annie Proulx

18 July 2011 00:21

Heart Songs cover

Heart Songs is a compilation of eleven short stories which are all set in the depths of rural New England. It’s hill and wood country so hunting, shooting and fishing feature in most of the stories. This is quite alien to me because although angling is supposedly the most popular hobby in the UK hunting is not popular at all. Guns are just not a part of our culture and it isn’t possible just to go into a wood and shoot something, you need permits and if someone sees a person with a gun nowadays then they are likely to call the cops.

A lot of the stories are about rich city people who have moved into a poverty stricken area and are really playing at being good old country folks. They tend be summer inhabitants only or they give up and leave for the city again after a year or so. The new people are treated with disdain by Proulx so I suppose they’re a pet hate of hers. They’re similar to the people in Britain who buy second properties in rural areas in the UK and so make it impossible for the locals to buy anywhere to live. Let’s face it, that annoys the hell out of us all! Universally, they seem to look down their noses at anyone not from a city. It has to be said though that some of the rural folks in Heart Songs are peculiar to say the least and there’s one woman who has slept with her half-brother! So possibly these stories aren’t for those of us who are a wee bit squeamish about such things or don’t fancy the idea of men going about shooting animals.

But, I love Proulx’s descriptions, the first story begins: Hawkwheel’s face was as finely wrinkled as grass-dried linen, his thin back bent like a branch weighted with snow.

People breathe air as heavy as wet felt – that’s not something which I’ve ever experienced but I can imagine what it must be like now. I think some people think that descriptions equal ‘purple prose’ but I like to know what people, places and objects look like.

I loved The Shipping News and I really enjoyed these short stories too. Previously I had only read Fine Just the Way it is-The Wyoming Stories and now I only have Close Range in the house still to read, that’s the one which has Brokeback Mountain in it and I was less than impressed with the film so I’m going to leave it a while before reading that compilation.

I’ve read that some people really dislike Annie Proulx’s writing style. Is she one of those love them or hate them writers?

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The Popular Girl by F. Scott Fitzgerald

25 April 2011 00:23

I’ve been neglecting to read anything from my 2011 Reading List over the past few weeks, which is not good because I had aimed to read one book from the list every week. So I’ve got a wee bit of catching up to do.

The Popular Girl is a book of short stories and was a very quick read. I know quite a few people who aren’t at all keen on F.Scott Fitzgerald but I enjoyed the two which I had read previously, the ubiquitous The Great Gatsby and The Last Tycoon. I read them for school, getting on for a shocking 40 years ago. I’ve just had to re-read that and re-calculate and shockingly I was correct the first time – 40 YEARS!

My two sons also read those ones for school, about 10 years ago for them I think, which seems a bit strange to me, you would think that there would have been some changes in the curriculum over all those years.

Anyway, back to the book. Apparently these short stories are amongst his lesser well known ones, which is a surprise to me because I really enjoyed them. Again Scott Fitzgerald is writing about class and money.

The five stories in the compilation are:

The Popular Girl
Love in the Night
The Swimmers
A New Leaf
What a Handsome Pair

I think my favourite one is Love in the Night which is about a young Russian prince who flees to the south of France after the Russian Revolution and has to eke out a living as a taxi driver there. A meeting with someone from his past changes everything.

I must say that I enjoy short stories, they’re good for journeys or times when you don’t feel up to plunging into anything which you might have to concentrate on. I hate it if I have to keep picking up and putting down a novel and only get the chance to read small amounts at a time.

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A Dedicated Man by Elizabeth Taylor

28 March 2011 14:08

A Dedicated Man cover

This is a Virago publication and another one from my 2011 Reading List which I hadn’t realised until I started to read it is actually a book of short stories. I’ve only read novels by Elizabeth Taylor previously and really liked her writing and her short stories are equally good.

It’s usually her cousin Katherine Mansfield who is held up as a great short story writer and I have a copy of her stories which have been reprinted by Folio Books. I used to be in the Folio Book Club mainly because their books are always so beautifully produced. But I would say that Elizabeth Taylor is just as good as her cousin.

In common with Mansfield and Daphne du Maurier quite a lot of the short stories are set at holiday locations and I hadn’t noticed it until now but I suppose it is a good subject for writing about – people watching on holiday.

The blurb on the back says:
‘Like Jane Austen, like Barbara Pym, like Elizabeth Bowen – soul-sisters all – Elizabeth Taylor made it her business to to explore the quirky underside of so-called civilisation.‘ – Anne Tyler

The introduction is by Joanna Kingham, Elizabeth Taylor’s daughter and it also contains an interview of her mother which appeared in her local paper The Bucks Free Press in 1971.

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Gothic Tales by Elizabeth Gaskell

5 October 2010 23:46

I thought that I had already read just about everything by Gaskell but on my last visit to my local library this one was sitting on the ‘new books’ shelf, so I had to borrow it.

This is a collection of nine short stories, although two of them are long enough to be described as novellas. I think that most writers hone their skills on short stories and I quite enjoy them. Sometimes the stories stick in your mind for 20 or 30 years, but I don’t think that will be the case with any of the stories in this book.

One of the novellas is called Lois the Witch and is the story of the Salem ‘witches’. I’m wondering when the first fictionalised version went into print.

Some of them are what I would call ‘fireside tales’ which would have been brought out and dusted down from the mind of the resident family tale teller on dark winter nights. I’m sure every household had one, even in more recent times (it was my mother in our family). They certainly have a feeling of folk lore about them, but I have read quite a few Celtic folk tales in my day.

Which brings me to what I found to be the most interesting thing about the stories, which was the language used. Elizabeth Gaskell uses quite a few words which are still used north of the border in Scotland. But I had an interesting comment from Joan in Pennsylvania about the phrase ‘redd up’ which Elizabeth Gaskell used, it means to tidy up or clean up. It seems it’s used by people from all different ethnic backgrounds there, but particularly by those of Dutch/German descent. Wherever it originated from I’m happy knowing that it continues to be used and makes the language richer. In future I’m going to ‘redd up’ instead of tidy up.

Anyway, I’m glad that I read Gothic Tales but I much prefer Gaskell’s longer works. If you want to read more about her work you might like to pay Austenprose a visit as a celebration of the 200th anniversary of Gaskell’s birth is being marked by people reviewing her work.

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The Best of Saki/Hector Hugh Munro

7 August 2010 23:56

This is the book which I should have taken with me on our recent jaunt in the north-east of England.

It’s a book of 49 short stories by Saki and I know that a lot of people just don’t like reading short stories but after the disappointment of The Man Who Was Thursday by G K Chesterton, this was just what I needed.

The cover has this comment by Graham Greene: “They dazzle and delight” – and I agree with him. Saki had a great talent for writing entertaining and funny stories which are sometimes only two and a half pages long but it’s amazing what he was able to do with so few words.

It’s a shame that even although he had suffered from ill health his whole life and he was 44 years old, he still felt the need to join up during World War 1 to “do his bit” and of course, he didn’t survive.

He was born in Burma as his father was in the Burma Police, but as you can imagine, with his real name being Hector Hugh Munro there is obviously a lot of Scottish blood there – another Celtic storyteller!

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Not After Midnight by Daphne du Maurier

30 June 2010 09:07

This is a book of five short stories:

Don’t Look Now
Not After Midnight
A Border-line Case
The Way of the Cross
The Breakthrough

I like to try to read my way through an author’s complete works eventually, which is why I read this book.

I do quite enjoy short stories and these ones reminded me a bit of Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected with their unpredictable endings.

Part of the reason that I started reading du Maurier again is that after reading Rule Britannia I was intrigued by her attitude to Americans and I wondered if this was something which was a feature of her later books.

I’ve come to the conclusion that she just wasn’t a fan for some reason as so far she seems to take any opportunity to be disparaging. The research continues!

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