Tag Archives: classic literature

The Sinful Priest/Abbe Mouret’s Transgression/La Curee

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The Sinful Priest/Abbe Mouret's Transgression cover

The Sinful Priest which also goes under the name Abbe Mouret’s Transgression is the third book in Emile Zola’s Rougon Macquart series, quite a lot of which I’ve enjoyed in the past, but sadly I can’t say the same for this one.

It begins with a young priest called Serge who has a very dilapidated church in a country area. He really has no congregation at all but is helped by young Vincent, his server. Serge’s younger sister Desiree lives with him, but she is lacking mentally, is very childlike and lives for her animals – chickens, rabbits and a cow. Serge does have a housekeeper, an old woman La Teuse from the village.

Serge is very devout and is particularly attached to the Virgin Mary, in fact the local Christian Brother/Jesuit? named Brother Archangias has warned Serge about what he sees as an unhealthy obsession which he says is “veritable robbery of devotion due to God.” Archangias seems to think that all females lead to sin.

There follows a long section of the book which is about Serge’s – what I think nowadays is called Marianism. I thought it would never come to an end and I found the endless parade of adjectives and purple prose to be tedious in the extreme.

Then Serge goes to visit an estate called Paradou and while there he becomes ill. Nursed back to health by the landowner’s daughter the inevitable happens. This section is so obviously the Adam and Eve story, with Brother Archangias getting involved. Things do not end well, but there is a lot more purple prose.

It’s hard to believe that the same author who wrote Germinal wrote this one, but as I’ve been reading the Rougon Maquart series over the years I would have got around to this one eventually, so I don’t feel that it was wasted time.

My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin

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My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin was first published in 1901, it’s an Australian classic and I’ve been meaning to get around to reading it for years. I kept seeing copies of it in secondhand bookshops but something else always seemed to be shouting louder at me to buy it so I’ve been passing it by for years, that turned out to be really silly as it is a great read. It was a total surprise to me to discover that Miles Franklin was actually a woman Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin, she was born in 1879. She wrote this very autobiographical novel when she was just 16, which seems amazing to me.

Sybylla is not quite nine years old when her father decides to move his large family away from the sheep station where she had been living since she was born. Her father thinks that he has a better chance of making a living on a one thousand acre farm in the flat countryside of Goulburn. But he isn’t any more successful there and his drinking gets worse and worse. The mother is worn out, she had come from a fairly well off genteel family and life hasn’t gone the way she expected it to. She takes her frustrations out on her eldest daughter Sybylla who gets the blame for everything while her younger sister (all of 11 months younger!) is her mother’s darling pet. Sybylla is exhausted with all the farm and house work that she has to do, not that she gets any thanks for it.

As you would expect she dreams of a better life, but things go from bad to worse and even their clothes are in rags, there has been no rain for years and there are animals dying for want of water and grass. Sybylla isn’t going to marry a poor man like her father, she wants to write, and when her mother sends her to live with her grandmother in what had been her mother’s family home Sybylla can hardly believe her luck. They even have books! She has never seen such comfort and she quickly becomes a favourite of her grandmother, aunt and others. She even has a rich young man who is interested in her, but she’s torn away from everything she loves as her feckless father has borrowed money, and Sybylla is expected to work in the home of his creditor in lieu of the debt’s interest. She’s just a slave to a large and dirty family.

Throughout this book the author’s love for the Australian land is obvious although I suspect that unless you have grown up with that sort of landscape it’s difficult to imagine and appreciate the beauty of it.

This book has an unexpected ending, but then Miles Franklin had an unusual life and she stuck to her independent spirit throughout it all. She was a feminist, during WW1 she worked for the Scottish Women’s Hospitals in the Serbian campaign and endowed the Miles Franklin Prize for Australian literature and the Stella Prize was named after her too.

A Certain Smile by Francoise Sagan

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A Certain Smile by Francoise Sagan was first published in 1956, I seem to have bought a first edition very cheaply, when I was in Orkney. This one is a very quick read at just 132 pages.

Dominique is a 20 year old student, studying law at the Sorbonne. She’s getting a bit tired of her boyfriend Bertrand, a fellow student. When Bertrand introduces her to his Uncle Luc Dominique is attracted to the older man. Luc is middle-aged and supposedly happily married to tall blonde and beautiful Francoise, who becomes something of a mother figure to Dominique, buying her clothes and advising her. Dominique really likes her and they become good friends, but when Francoise leaves to spend a fortnight with her mother, Luc and Dominique take the opportunity to go to Cannes in the south of France.

Dominique is sure that she can have a relationship with Luc without becoming too embroiled, but inevitably she can’t. Unknown to Dominique Francoise knows what is going on, no doubt she has been in this situation with her husband before and is very sanguine about it all.

What can I say other than this is all very French and it was mildly diverting.

It was translated from French by Irene Ash.

The Shuttle by Frances Hodgson Burnett 20 Books of Summer 2022

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The Shuttle by Frances Hodgson Burnett was first published in 1907. Sir Nigel Anstruthers has travelled to New York from his impoverished estate in England, in the hope that he can bag a young and rich American wife, and he succeeds. Despite being arrogant and charmless, he manages to get Rosalie Vanderpoel to marry him, her father is a multi millionaire, but Rosalie is a quiet, meek young woman, the pretty one of the family, but she doesn’t have much in the way of brains, unlike her much younger sister Bettina. She can see right through Nigel and dislikes him intensely.

Roalie is whisked over to England by Nigel and she’s shocked at the poverty of Nigel’s estate, the place is falling apart. Nigel had expected to have control of Rosalie’s money when he married her, so he’s deeply disappointed when he realises that he doesn’t. Soon he’s abusing her and manipulating her and he even intercepts letters from her family in America, she’s completely isolated from them, they think that she has forgotten about them – and vice versa. Apparently this was something that the author had experienced herself in her second marriage.

This book is also about the differences between American and English society with the Americans tending to be held up as wonderfully ambitious go-getters, and the English mainly being so depressed that they can’t do anything for themselves. Time and time again the reader is hit over the head with the differences between the societies, it all got very wearing for me.

This book really should have been edited down, I found it quite tedious a lot of the time and I did think that it must have originally been published weekly in a magazine with the author being paid by the word, as Dickens was, but it seems that it wasn’t.

Apart from that I just couldn’t believe that very wealthy American parents would just wave goodbye to their beloved eldest daughter and not do anything about the lack of letters from her, for years and years. Thankfully Bettina rides to the rescue.

The Master of Ballantrae by R.L. Stevenson

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The tale is told by Ephraim McKellar, the steward of the estate belonging to Durie of Durrisdeer in Scotland. The laird of Durrisdeer has two adult sons and as the 1745 Jacobite uprising is about to begin sides have to be taken. It’s a dangerous time for landed estates as supporting the losing side will mean that they will lose everything. To avoid this disaster familes with two sons have one son, usually the younger one supporting the Jacobites while the eldest one supports the status quo, King George. But James Durie the eldest is keen to leave home for the more exciting prospect of the rebellion and decides to toss a coin to do so, of course he wins the toss which leaves his brother Henry at home.

Henry is very much the ‘spare’ heir as far as his father is concerned. The father can’t stop talking about James as if he’s some sort of hero whereas in reality he’s a ‘right bad yin’. When the Jacobites lose the Duries eventually get word that James has been killed and the father persuades Henry to marry James’s fiancee, and that’s as far as I’ll go with this one.

I can’t say that it’s one of my favourites by Stevenson, I really disliked the whole idea of the father favouring his eldest son to such an extent, and the younger brother ending up more or less being mentally tortured by him, but that’s my problem. I felt so sorry for Henry that I really couldn’t enjoy the story and it has a really sad ending.

I could definitely have been doing with something more uplifting, but don’t let me put you off reading this one! You might really enjoy it as so many people seem to have done.

Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

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Catch 22 by Joseph Heller  is a book that I had been meaning to read for absolutely yonks, since one of my sons read it at school and loved it. Surprisingly I really loved it too, but I can see that a lot of people wouldn’t get on with it, above all it’s really funny. Heller managed to out-Kafka Kafka. Catch 22 was first published in 1961.

The setting is Italy during World War 2 and at the beginning Captain John Yossarian is in hospital, supposedly with a liver problem which has the doctors baffled but really he’s just there trying to stay alive and dodge having to fly into enemy areas and engage with enemy planes. He’s really incensed that he is still having to go on flying missions, every time he gets close to his last mission according to the rules, his boss extends the mission limit. It was originally 25 but soon it might be 80 missions. He fears he’s not going to survive the war at this rate. He would be able to get home if he was insane, but the fact that he wants to survive is proof of sanity – that’s the catch.

All of the high ranking officers despise each other, there’s really an internal war going on between them which is far more important as far as they are concerned than the actual war. As ever though (or so it seems to me) the craziest one is the one to be promoted. He’s only interested in getting the men to march in their off-time. That won’t be at all appealing to the men who obviously spend their time in Rome when they can, enjoying the charms of the local women.

There’s so much in this book, but it’s a difficult one to write about. It’s anti-authority, religion, bureaucracy and anti-war, and the main character Yossarian better known as Yo-Yo is so likeable, which always helps. In fact there’s even a cat in my extended family who has been named in honour of the character!

It seems that some people have a problem with this book, I didn’t have but I must say that the more you read, the better it gets.

Back to the Classics Challenge 2021 – the wrap-up.

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I’ve completed six books in the Back to the Classics Challenge 2021 which is hosted by Karen at Books and Chocolate.

1. A 19th century classic: any book first published from 1800 to 1899. The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope. This one is a cracker, a real page-turner.

3. A classic by a woman – The Corn King and the Spring Queen by Naomi Mitchison. I felt this one dragged, it is very long and wasn’t really a page-turner for me.

5. A classic by a BIPOC author; that is, a non-white author. Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin. I didn’t enjoy this one as much as I thought I would, but I will try more by the author.

5. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. This one is a heart-breaking read, but I’m glad I read it.

7. New-to-you classic by a favorite author — a new book by an author whose works you have already read. A Maid in Waiting by John Galsworthy This seventh book in the Forsyte Chronicles was good, just two more books to go.

9. A children’s classic – Pinocchio by Carlo/Charles Collodi. I’m glad I caught up with this children’s classic at last.

Thank you Karen for hosting this challenge.

The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope

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The Way We Live Know by Anthony Trollope was first published in 1875 but some aspects of the tale and the characters are so recognisable nowadays. As with most of Trollope’s books it’s a real chunkster but if you have the time – as I have – then you’ll probably find that you manage to read it fairly quickly as it’s a real page-turner.

Lady Carbury is a widow with a son and daughter who are more or less out in the world, or they would be if her son Felix had any gumption, sadly he chooses to spend his time at his club gambling and drinking, and his mother has to write history pot-boilers which are dubious factually to try to make some money to keep body and soul together for her and her daughter. Even so, Lady Carbury just can’t say no to her son when he wants money for gambling, and she gives it to him despite needing the money to pay the household bills, and having to deny her daughter a fair chance in life.

Felix needs to marry a wealthy young woman and with this in mind an invitation to Madame Melmotte’s ball is needed. The Melmottes have arrived in London only recently but they’re reputed to be fabulously wealthy, having made lots of money in France. Lady Carbury wants their daughter Marie for her son. There are rumours though that all might not be as it seems in the Melmotte household. In Paris Mr Melmotte is regarded as a swindler and his business dealings aren’t orthodox. He’s described as being purse-proud and a bully. Melmotte likes to talk about how wealthy he is and throws money around to entertain royalty, but he’s definitely up to no good.

Melmotte is so like the so-called tycoon Robert Maxwell who bought companies just to plunder their pension funds, and he also reminded me of ‘the Donald’. Human beings don’t ever change I suppose and there are only so many different types.  I love Trollope’s writing so I can’t understand why it has taken me so long to get around to reading this one, I suspect that I thought it might not be good pandemic reading – but it was.

 

Maid in Waiting by John Galsworthy

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Maid in Waiting by John Galsworthy is the seventh book in the Forsyte Saga which should really be called the Forsyte Chronicles, and it continues with some of the characters from the previous book and features the Charwell family (pronounced Cherrell). They’re not nearly as well off as the Forsytes as they’ve mainly opted to become church minsters in slum districts, joined the army or become academics.

While Herbert Cherrell, an academic was on an expedition in Bolivia he had had to shoot a muleteer, he got into that position because he had taken to flogging the muleteers for continuing to ill-treat the mules despite his complaints about it. As you can imagine they didn’t take well to being flogged. There’s a possibility that he’ll be extradited to stand trial in Bolivia and at this danger to one of their own, his very clannish family is incensed and set out to pull strings – or in the case of the women to ‘vamp’ men they think might be able to help.

Meanwhile another of them, Diana, is in trouble. Her husband who has been in a private mental hospital for some years suddenly appears back home, claiming to be fine. But he had been violent to her in the past and she’s terrified of him. Again the family comes to her aid. Mental health is quite a theme, was it hereditary or did his experiences during World War 1 turn his mind?

I really enjoyed this one which is quite topical, humans never really change. The Cherrells, some of whom seem very decent, do however have a sense of entitlement and strangely a feeling that they are being held up to higher standards than others simply because of their connections. They see having friends and relatives in high places as a bit of a disadvantage!

It ended a bit abruptly for my liking and I hope that the next one in this trilogy which is called Flowering Wilderness, features Dinny Cherrell as I became quite fond of her, she’s the young mainstay of the family.

The Corn King and the Spring Queen by Naomi Mitchison

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he Corn King and the Spring Queen cover

The Corn King and the Spring Queen by the Scottish author Naomi Mitchison was first published in 1931 but my copy is a Virago reprint from 1989, I think I might have owned it since then, the chunkiness of it put me off reading it. I think this book would have been improved if it had been edited down to about 500 pages instead of the 719 that it is. It dragged terribly at times.

The setting is Marob, a small state on the Black Sea, and Greece, the story switches between both places – between the years 228 BC and 187 BC. Some of the incidents are fictional while others are historical. In Marob the society revolves around the Corn King and Spring Queen as they and their ceremonies are most important in making sure that there will be a good harvest. Tarrik, the Corn King chooses Erif Der to be his wife and Spring Queen. Her father doesn’t want Tarrik to be Corn King as it’s a position he wants for himself. Erif in common with many of the women can perform magic and her father expects her to use it against Tarrik.

When Tarrik rescues Sphaeros a Greek philosopher from a shipwreck he is wooed by all the new ideas that Sphearos has and decides to sail with him to Greece. In Greece they meet King Kleomones of Sparta, he has decided that he wants a more equal society and so the rich are persuaded to give up their jewellery, money and possessions and to free their slaves. They will be given some land of their own. But everyone becomes poor and eats black soup as the peasants had to before. The previously rich people aren’t happy. King Kleomones seems to have kept all the wealth that had been given up so that he could pay for wars against his neighbours, using the money to pay the wages of mercenaries.

This is very much just the bare bones of the book which goes into detail about the ceremonies, particularly the fertility ones which end up with the Corn King ‘ploughing’ the Corn Queen and everyone else joining in in what was basically an orgy, to ensure a good harvest of course! It struck me that this was very racy for the original publication date of 1931. No doubt the mythological aspect of the book helped in that regard.

The book is split up into nine sections and at the end of every section there’s a shortish summary of what happened in that section. Just in case you didn’t understand it I suppose. I don’t think there’s anything particularly difficult about the writing style, it’s just rather wordy, but it is mainly an interesting read.

Mitchison came from a fairly aristocratic family, she was born in 1897 and had a long writing career, as you will see here. She died in 1998. I read a Virago edition of the book which was first published in 1983 and has an afterword from Mitchison.

Jack read this a few years ago. His thoughts are here.