Tag Archives: Faber and Faber

Marjory Fleming by Oriel Malet

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Marjory Fleming by Oriel Malet was first published in 1946 by Faber and Faber, but it has more recently been reprinted by Persephone Books, it’s their number 17.

Marjory was born in 1803 in Kirkcaldy and buried there too at the age of just eight. We lived in Kirkcaldy for 26 years and her grave is in Abbotshall Church, near where we lived. After her death she was regarded as a bit of a child prodigy because she left behind her quite a lot of her writing which is now housed in the National Library of Scotland. Robert Louis. Stevenson wrote  “Marjory Fleming was possibly – no, I take back possibly – she was one of the noblest works of God.”

Oriel Malet has written a fictional account of Marjory’s short life. The family lived above a bookshop in the High Street, but from the age of 6 she was taken to live with her much wealthier cousins in Edinburgh. Cousin Isabella was keen to take on Marjory as a bit of a project and strangely Marjory’s parents were happy to giver her up to that branch of the family – for three years!

No doubt Marjory was very happy to be in a much wealthier and more sociable household, it’s thought that she may have met the young Walter Scott there as he was a friend of the family. I can’t help thinking that as she seemed to be the life and soul of her own family (maybe too much for her mother to handle) it must have been a wrench for her father whom she seems to have most resembled in personality.

Anyway, we don’t even know for sure what it was that killed Marjory but it was probably some form of meningitis. The memorial to her in Abbotshall Church was only erected in 1930. I did read Pet Marjory by Dr John Brown some years ago which had more of her actual writing in it as I recall.

Sadly my copy doesn’t have the dust jacket.

 

The Feast by Margaret Kennedy

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The Feast cover

The Reverend Bott of Cornwall is having a tough time writing a funeral sermon, so he’s unable to entertain his friend who is visiting for his annual holiday. It’s an unusual situation as it’s a multiple funeral for people who had been in a nearby hotel when the cliffs above it had collapsed on the building. With tons of stone obliterating the hotel there was no way anyone could have survived, or been extricated for a normal burial. Then the tale slips back to the run up to the disaster, featuring a large cast of characters in the shape of the hotel guests, including children.

The hotel had been the Siddal family home but with Mr Siddal’s career as a barrister having come to a halt for some reason, they just can’t afford to live in the house, so Mrs Siddon decides to turn it into an hotel. Her rather feckless husband and adult children help to run the place, along with a few locals, particularly the much put upon Nancibel (she hates her name). Mrs Siddal is a strange mother – favouring her son Duff over everyone else, seemingly because he is handsome. She has nothing but disdain for her son Gerry who is a doctor and is actually supporting his younger brothers via education fees.

This is a great read with characters that you love to hate, including Hebe, a truly ghastly child, but it did take me a while to get really into it. Given that the reader knows what happens within the first few pages I inevitably spent my time hoping that the horrible people would get their comeuppance and the ‘good guys’ would survive. It was a very satisfying read considering that I hadn’t been all that happy knowing about the fate of the hotel so early on in the book, it turned out to be a good strategy by the author, it added a lot of suspense – for me anyway.

Thank you to Faber and Faber who sent me a digital copy of The Feast via NetGalley.

This was my fourth 20 Books of Summer read.