A Book Blog by Books do Furnish a Room

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Thanks Alexi and Kylie

Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton

 

This is the journal of a year in May Sarton’s life; 1972-3 when she was 58. Sarton is known as a poet and novelist, but also as a writer of journals periodically and this is one of those. These journals are very honest accounts of her life and cover relationships, lesbianism, her periods of depression and melancholy, solitariness (hence the title), emotions of all types and most especially nature.

My prior knowledge of May Sarton was limited and picked up on her via  a book called 500 great books by women.

One of the things I really enjoyed about the journal were her descriptions of the natural world, most especially of her garden and the flowers and creatures in it. Flowers and their scent were clearly very important to Sarton;

"The garden is growth and change and that means loss as well as constant new treasures to make up for a few disasters."

“A gray day . . . but, strangely enough, a gray day makes the bunches of daffodils in the house have a particular radiance, a kind of white light. From my bed this morning I could look through at a bunch in the big room, in that old Dutch blue-and-white drug jar, and they glowed. I went out before seven in my pajamas, because it looked like rain, and picked a sampler of twenty-five different varieties. It was worth getting up early, because the first thing I saw was a scarlet tanager a few feet away on a lilac bush–stupendous sight! There is no scarlet so vivid, no black so black.”

“When I am alone the flowers are really seen; I can pay attention to them. They are felt as presences. Without them I would die. Why do I say that? Partly because they change before my eyes. They live and die in a few days; they keep me closely in touch with process, with growth, and also with dying. I am floated on their moments.”

She also writes with great compassion about the wild creatures who inhabit her world and the stories about the feral cat who makes a home nearby are heart rending.

Sarton writes her prose as only a poet can and with great honesty and vulnerability and pulls no punches about her own faults and frailties, her worries about her work and its reception and her love affairs.

She also periodically makes comments about current affairs (like the death of De Gaulle) and will then drop in a sentence or two about meeting Virginia Woolf!

It reads very easily, despite feeling fragmented at times. Sarton is engaging and thoughtful. It was a real pleasure to read.
8 and a half out of 10

Starting The Waves by Virginia Woolf

[Janet]

I really like the sound of the Sarton book.  That's going on  my wish list. 

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I loved it Janet; a real change.

The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark

Spark at her best; acerbic, bitingly funny, satirical, unsettling, great use of language, numerous interesting and well-crafted characters, layers of meaning and it captures a moment of social history to boot. It captures the brief period of 1945 between VE day and VJ day, a period of three to four months.

The novel (well novella really) centres on the May of Teck Club in Kensington. The club is

“for the Pecuniary Convenience and Social Protection of Ladies of Slender Means below the age of Thirty Years, who are obliged to reside apart from their Families in order to follow an Occupation in London”

It is written from a later perspective (1963) by one of the girls from the club, Jane Wright. She is prompted to look back by the death of Nicholas Farringdon, who in 1945 was an anarchist, but had become a Jesuit priest. He has been martyred in Haiti and now his writings from 1945 are suddenly of interest. Spark introduces him to the reader in her own inimitable way;

“We come now to Nicholas Farringdon in his thirty-third year. He was said to be an anarchist. No one at the May of Teck Club took this seriously as he looked quite normal: that is to say, he looked slightly dissipated, like the disappointing son of a good English family that he was.”

One of the strengths Spark has is her characterization and this novel is no exception; even the minor characters are well drawn and some of Spark’s descriptions are really sharp. For example the warden of the club who “drove a car as she would have driven a man had she possessed one”.  

Spark employs the trick of muddling the chronology and she gives away bits   of the plot as she goes along, using an omniscient third person. Although on the surface the dialogue and plot can appear shallow and rather inconsequential, there are layers of meaning and there is also an impending sense of threat. It will come as no surprise to regular Spark readers that farce turns into tragedy. The word Slender in the title has a double meaning. As well as meaning financially limited, it refers to the toilet window on one of the upper floors. The slimmer (slender) girls are able to get out of this window onto the roof. The roof was accessible to the building next door which was being rented by the Americans and amorous assignations were open to those slim enough to get through. It also plays a pivotal role at the end of the book.

The layers of meaning are also fun. The religious connections are clear (Spark was a Catholic, though not a dogmatic one). One of the pivotal characters is Joanna Childe (her in initials are no coincidence; a female Christ figure!) an elocution teacher. Throughout most of the book you overhear her reciting to her pupils (usually The Wreck of the Deutschland, a poem by a priest, Hopkins, about a group of drowning nuns). There is a Satan figure (not obvious at first); the Paul figure is easier to spot. The role of the Schiaparelli dress is also fun to contemplate; a posh frock owned by one of the girls, but lent out for dates.

The tragedy towards the end of the book is surprising, but not unexpected. However, at the very end of the book during the VJ day celebrations there is an act of violence perpetrated by a man on a woman (neither characters in the book) that is so shocking and surprising that it hits the reader almost physically. Spark is saying; ok so we have peace, it’s all over, but is the world a better place? Will things be better?

It’s a great novel by in my opinion, one of the better writers of the twentieth century. It’s a snapshot of a bygone time, a spiritual novel with a comic tone that becomes ever bleaker and almost gothic. Spark was admired by her contemporaries. Evelyn Waugh wrote to her and said;

“'Most novelists find there is one kind of book they can write (particularly humorous novelists) and go on doing it with variations until death. You seem to have an inexhaustible source”

As William Boyd said; “We are in the hands of a great artist: the experience is both unsettling and exhilarating”. I heartily agree.

9 and a half out of 10

Starting Sister Kate by Jean Bedford

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Nina Balatka by Anthony Trollope

This is one of the three novels Trollope published anonymously. As with the other two, it is set on the continent; in Prague to be precise. It is also uncharacteristically brief. Normally Trollope gives all the main characters a chapter each to introduce them; here he manages it in a couple of pages. As is often the case with Trollope, the female characters are stronger and more interesting.

What is unusual about this novel is its theme. It is a simple love story of a Romeo and Juliet type. The heroine, Nina, is a Catholic Christian. The man she loves and who loves her is a Jew. This is before Eliot wrote her examination of the same subject in Daniel Deronda. Trollope examines all the prejudices related to Christian/Jewish relations and marriage across cultures. He was particularly attracted to those he felt were outsiders; something he felt himself to be, especially at school.

It has been criticised for being a formulaic romance, which it certainly is and it has none of Trollope’s usual comedy. However there are some interesting and slightly unusual aspects to the novel. Towards the end of the novel we are admitted to Nina’s interior monologue as it is in extremis and as her thoughts meander, revolve and disintegrate. It is almost stream of consciousness, although limited to one person.

The racial prejudice of the Catholics is much more marked that that of the Jewish community, who whilst still opposing the marriage, were much less condemnatory. One of the stronger and more sympathetic characters is Rebecca who had been brought up to believe she would marry Anton before he falls in love with Nina.

The two main characters are at times rather irritating and very traditional and Trollope still does not stray far from conventional boundaries. However it is an interesting and unusual novel for the time despite its limitations.

7 out of 10

Starting A Visit to Don Otavio by Sybille Bedford

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Never No More by Maura Laverty

Another find from my favourite book haven and I can never resist a second hand virago modern classic. It portrays village life in Ireland in the 1920s; set in a village on the edge of the bog of Allen. It is a strongly autobiographical novel.

I had barely heard of Maura Laverty before this, but she wrote a number of novels, children’s books and some very popular cookery books. She was also involved in journalism and broadcasting in Ireland in the 1960s. Some of her novels fell foul of the Irish censor and were banned for a while for being a little too open about female sexuality.

The novel is the story of teenage Delia Scully, who after the death of her father, having an uneasy relationship with her mother, goes to live with her grandmother on her farm. The novel has great charm, can be rather sentimental, but is a sharp and amusing description of country life in 1920s Ireland. Laverty is a great storyteller and observer of human nature. The countryside and its characters really do come alive, life and death go hand in hand with religion and politics. The political struggles are referenced indirectly as they affect the lives of some of the characters. The Catholic Church is central although the religion of many of the villagers is a mixture of Catholic superstition and what is clearly earlier pagan folk tales, remedies and traditions.

The novel most comes alive with the descriptions of food and cookery and you can certainly tell that the author also wrote cookbooks. The whole book revolves around gran’s kitchen and her baking. The descriptions of the breads, hot griddle cakes, ash cakes, freshly picked and cooked mushrooms, fresh blackberries, cream (oceans of cream), pools of butter, potato apple cakes oozing with butter and sugar. As Maeve Binchy says in the introduction to the virago edition, her descriptions of food could cajole the dying to eat. The descriptions of how the pig was turned into such a variety of dishes (the slaughter of a pig was an annual event) is not for the squeamish.

The character of gran is a remarkable creation; providing physical and emotional sustenance to all those around her, even the travellers on the edge of society and those on the edge of village life for one reason or another. She is the local wise woman and that covers several meanings of that word.

I thoroughly enjoyed this; the writing really is three dimensional and the characters, descriptions of the countryside and especially the food just jump off the page. An inmate of the Arbour Hill Military Prison in Dublin wrote to Laverty to thank her for the book and to say how much he and the other prisoners had enjoyed it. That prisoner was Brendan Behan, no mean writer himself.

9 out of 10

Starting I is a long memoried woman by Grace Nichols (a bit of poetry for a change!)

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Pointed Roofs by Dorothy Richardson

My first dilemma is how to review this. Richardson’s classic has 13 novels. I have the four volume virago edition. Richardson did call the novels chapters. It seems to be a choice between reviewing the whole lot as one novel, reviewing each of the virago volumes or reviewing each novel separately. I have gone for the latter option mainly because it gives me a chance to meander a little and go off on tangents, which I am prone to do.

Dorothy Richardson is not as well-known as she should be, even reading the first of this series has shown me that. Pointed Roofs was written in the same year that Proust published Swann’s Way and just before Joyce published Dubliners. That is pertinent because the work of the three has been increasingly compared. One of the reviewers of Pointed Roofs used the term “stream of consciousness”; it was coined to describe Richardson’s work, although it appears that she preferred the term “interior monologue”.

The protagonist for all 13 novels is Miriam Henderson; the novels starting in March 1893 and continuing to late 1912. This first one covers a mere 4 months in 1893. Miriam is moving to Germany to take up a position as an English teacher in a small German girl’s school. Interestingly this was partly written and published during the First World War, which may have been the reason for the lack of attention, because it is certainly not anti-German.

I think my first thoughts about the book focussed on the overall title. Why pilgrimage? We are familiar with the idea of pilgrimage as a spiritually significant journey to a place a special significance. This is the journey of a life, not a religious pilgrimage, so I suspect it may be all about the journey; time will tell. It is interesting to compare with Joyce and Proust. Proust is looking back over a life and looking at the passage of time. Joyce’s Ulysses, set in one day mirrors the Odyssey. There is a sense of journey in Pointed Roofs as Miriam at 17 fresh from school leaves her home and country at a time when more conventional possibilities would have been available.

Even though this is the beginning of a journey, there is also a strong sense of the end of something as well. Richardson   perfectly   captures something that I recognise from when I first left home. Miriam is thinking about how life will continue without her when she has gone;

“That summer, which still seemed near to her, was going to fade and desert her, leaving nothing behind. Tomorrow it would belong to a world which would go on without her, taking no heed. There would still be blissful days. But she would not be in them. There would be no more silent sunny mornings with all the day ahead and nothing to do and no end anywhere to anything; no more sitting at the open window in the dining room, reading.”

I remember that feeling that nothing would ever be the same again for me as I prepared to go to university; Richardson captures the feeling very well.

This is not an all action novel, it is about everyday life and interrelationships. Miriam is not a particularly sociable protagonist, but she is a sharp observer of those around her and the subtleties of human feelings and jealousies.

Although Richardson is not as well-known as she should be, there is a whole industry around her and a journal devoted to studying her. There is no doubt that Richardson was breaking new ground in trying outline and construct a female consciousness. A good start to what, I think, will be a fascinating series of novels.

I am also reading The Waves at the   moment and it will make an interesting comparison.

8 and a half out of 10

Starting the second novel in the series, Backwater

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I Is A Long Memoried Woman by Grace Nichols

A very powerful set of poems written in the first person; a chronology of slavery from a woman’s perspective.

We the women who toil

 

unadorn

heads tie with chaep

cotton

 

We the women who cut

clear fetch dig sing

 

We the women making

something from this

ache-and-pain-a-me

back-o-hardness

 

Yet we the women

whose praises go unsung

whose voices go unheard

whose deaths they sweep

aside

as easy as dead leaves

 

It tells the tragic story of slavery in short and powerful poems with memories of rape, infanticide, the slave trade, European cruelty and complicity from other Africans. It follows the plantations and psychological abuse. Yet the pomes are sensual and there is a thread of strength and pride femininity and motherhood running through them with a tone of rebellion and reawakening; strength and dignity. I can only continue with a poem;

 

This Kingdom Will Not Live Forever

Cool winds blow softly

 

in brilliant sunshine

fruits pulse

flowers flame

 

mountains shade to

purple

 

the great House

with its palm and orange

groves

sturdy

 

and the sea encircling

all

is a spectrum of blue

jewels

shimmering and skirting

 

But Beware

Soft winds can turn

volatile

can merge with rains

can turn hurricane

 

Mountains can erupt

sulphur springs

bubbling quick

and hot

 

like bile spilling

from a witch’s cauldron

Swamps can send plagues

dysentery, fevers

 

plantations can perish

 

lands turn barren

 

And the white man

no longer at ease

with the faint drum/

beat

 

no longer indifferent

to the sweating sun/

heat

 

can leave exhausted

or

turn his thoughts

to death

 

And we

the rage growing

like the chiggers

in our feet

 

can wait

or

take our freedom

whatever happens

 

This Kingdom Will Not Reign Forever

 

These are great poems which powerfully depict the lives of women slaves with great poignancy.

Worth looking out for.

9 out of 10

Starting A Woman Unknown by Lucia Graves

[woolf woolf]

Are these books depicting stories occurred in the european continent? It'd be a bit of fresh air, after so many art portraying north-american slavery. I'm with the impression it occurs in Africa, because of the mentioned complicity from other africans.

Edited February 21, 2015 by Sousa

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Sousa; the poems move from Africa to the Caribbean (Nichols is from Guyana) 

Sister Kate by Jean Bedford

 

Not being Australian, I haven’t grown up with the mythology of the Kelly gang, although I know the outline of the story. This novella approaches the myth from a different perspective. Jean Bedford has taken the story and told it from a female and feminist perspective. The Sister Kate of the title is Kate Kelly, Ned’s sister and lover of one of the gang (Joe Byrne). The first part of the novel is told in the first person and concerns the history up to the demise of the Kelly gang. The second part tells Kate’s story in the third person and takes the reader from the end of the first part to the end of Kate’s life.

The Kelly mythology taps into anti-British, anti-Empire, anti-imperialist themes and into centuries old tensions between the British and Irish. Added to this is the anti-authoritarian element of working class culture. Along with the bushranger mythology it all combines in a sort of romantic/revolutionary way to go into roots of Australian identity. Of course there are also other elements too, which are white male, heterosexual and also misogynist as Bedford shows.

Throughout Bedford’s retelling there is a clear focus on the notion of the outsider. This holds for all of the Kelly family male and female and they were aware that the police saw them as little better than vermin. Kate, however is aware of another level of being an outsider as a woman. Constable Fitzpatrick takes every opportunity to sexually harass Kate and to take advantage of his position.  

Bedford, throughout the novel, looks at the construction of masculinity; through the gang, through the authorities and later through marriage; and looking at the way this construction excludes not only women but those who are non-white (who are even more invisible).

The second part of the novel charts Kate’s life after the violent end of the gang and her gradual decline into alcohol and laudanum. There are clear lessons. When Kate is living with two other women she is safer and less mentally unwell. They care for her when she is ill and they create space for each other; the development of women’s space was her only chance of survival. In the institution of marriage she is doomed.

This is a clear and convincing retelling from a female perspective. The change from first person to third person is very effective and illustrates Kate’s alienation and marginalisation and her decline.

7 and a half out of 10

Starting The Ghostly Lover by Elizabeth Hardwick

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Unbridled Spirits; Women of the English Revolution 1640-1660 by Stevie Davies

 

This is a very powerful piece of historical research and writing and covers one of my favourite periods of history, the English Civil War. It focuses on women writers and preachers of the period.

Davies acknowledges a debt to historians like Christopher Hill. Hill and other radical and Marxist Historians of his ilk developed “history from below”; however she does point out that the male historians have tended to leave out women in their analyses of the period.

There was a massive increase in the printed word during the civil war. The Reformation led to the notion that anyone could read the Bible in their own language. It’s then a short step to the point where anyone can interpret it as well. This book covers a wide variety of women who spoke out, wrote, printed, prophesied and preached. There are Quakers (the more radical argued for class and gender equality), Fifth Monarchists (one of the many millenarian groups), Levellers (early socialists), women who were opposed to the war, women who were opposed to tithes, women who had founded their own churches and even women on the opposing side who supported the King. The civil war period produced all sorts of radical movements which harried and upset the established order. These women were certainly a minority as most women were mute through illiteracy or oppression.

Davies also outlines what these women went through as a result of their determination to speak out. They were imprisoned in appalling conditions, whipped or flogged (usually semi naked through the streets), fitted with a scold’s bridle, put on a ducking stool, publicly humiliated; some lost their lives. The price of speaking out was great; Katherine Evans and Sarah Cheever, two Quaker women travelling together, were imprisoned by the Inquisition on the island of Malta for three years. The Inquisitors attempted to convert them to Catholicism without success, using a variety of means, some very brutal. They withstood all efforts to undermine them. Davies says she wants to “haunt readers with the revolutionary women’s stories”; she succeeds.

The research is meticulous and Davies allows the women to speak for themselves. Much of the writing is, of course, religious, but there is a focus on equality and the pulling down of established authority and some writing feels very modern.

If you are interested in the social history of the civil war, this is a must read. If you are interested in the development of women’s voices and want to read about women who were determined to be heard and just would not be quiet then this is also for you.

9 out of 10

Starting A very close conspiracy; Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf by Jane Dunn

[willoyd]

Some fascinating reviews with some great insights.  You've certainly confirmed my intention of reading The Girls of Slender Means (like you, I'm a bit of a Spark fan), but I was particularly intrigued by Women of the English Revolution.  Like you the Civil War is one of my favourite periods, and so much about women is hidden in history.  I've just picked up a novel by a Stevie Davies called Four Dreamers and Emily, the Emily being the Bronte sister, based on a recommendation somewhere here.  Presumably the same one?

 

I'm looking forward to your review of the Jane Dunn book, Woolf being possibly my favourite writer (nip and tuck with Jane Austen), and the book being on my shelves.

Edited February 28, 2015 by willoyd

[Books do furnish a room]

Thank you Willoyd; yes they are the same Stevie Davies(I'm now a fan, she writes very well).

 

A Woman Unknown by Lucia Graves

 

Whilst reading about the First World War last year, Robert Graves inevitably crossed my path. I discovered that one of his daughters, Lucia, was also a writer and a translator. So, knowing very little about her, I ordered this on a whim and I am very glad I did.

This is an autobiographical work, but told in an interesting way. The first two thirds of the chapters pick out a particular woman in Lucia’s early life and focuses on her and does so very effectively. Graves was brought up on the island of Majorca, where her father and mother moved in 1946, after the war. Lucia consequently learnt English, Spanish and Catalan, which she has used to great effect in later life as a translator. Graves also writes about her own mother, who was Robert Graves’s second wife and 19 years his junior; she devoted herself to him and her family so he could write. Lucia describes her as “standing back to make room for others”.

Graves grew up during the Franco regime and at a time when the Catholic Church was powerful and influential. She recalls the nuns who taught her and the pressure put on her to become a Catholic (her parents were firmly agnostic and she was the only non-Catholic in the school); particularly the fact that she had not been baptised which meant that if she died she would burn in eternal fire. She was reminded of this regularly. One priest even went as far as to say that she ought to be baptised without telling her parents.

We meet a series of colourful and inspiring women, the local midwife (Blanca, a remarkable woman who married in a civil ceremony during the Republic, which meant that under Franco her marriage was not recognised), a prima ballerina, numerous villagers and Graves also tells a few historical tales about Catalan history and culture. The shadow of Franco looms large though and negative effects the regime had on the role of women;

"Over the years I saw them fight to become the individuals they'd have been had they not been submitted to that prudish upbringing, long repression and clipping of their wings. Unlike their mothers, who had a memory of the Republican days when women were encouraged to fight for equality, Spanish women of my generation had no memory of freedom."

Graves outlines the struggles and makes them real with the vignettes of the women she knew.

Graves also says some interesting times about her father. These are asides and tend to relate to how she experienced him; as a child and later as an adult when she translated his works into Spanish. Robert Graves had spent much time studying classical mythology. He had concluded that in preclassical times in Europe there was a matriarchal system in place. This, he believed was replaced by the Greek patriarchal system, which was still in place and was the cause of most of our problems. Male logical and scientific thinking had taken over from female instinctive system, changing the world from the way it was meant to be. Interesting theory which I wouldn’t have expected from Robert Graves. Lucia Graves says her father’s theories helped her to move towards the feminist movement of the 1960s.

Graves writes in a lucid and poetic style drawing together the links between memory and emotion. She has the ability to view Spain in a particular way; both as an insider and outsider. Beautifully written and moving and a fascinating insight into the lives of women in Franco’s Spain.

9 out of 10

 

Starting Briar Rose by Robert Coover.

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Backwater by Dorothy Richardson

 

Book two of Dorothy Richardson’s epic thirteen volume Pilgrimage. In this novel Miriam is back in London teaching at a small school for girls run by the Misses Perne. It is important to remember that Miriam is still in her teenage years at this point; she is not a qualified teacher.

Miriam’s life is still very much a typical life that a young middle class Victorian woman would have experienced. She goes to parties and dances, spends some time at the seaside, goes boating and even has a toboggan ride. She mixes with eligible young men. Miriam finds a cure for her isolation in the reading of sensational novels, which she hides and reads in secret. One of these is Ouida, a rather unconventional English Victorian novelist (Maria Louise Rame). There are accounts of Ouida when she lived at the Langham Hotel in the 1860s of her writing in bed by candlelight, curtains drawn and with lots of purple flowers. She held soirees whose members included Wilde, Swinburne, Browning, Collins and Millais. She wrote over 40 novels and Miriam discovers her and the descriptions of her initial purchases done rather guiltily are amusing.

What makes the novel interesting is the filtering through Miriam. She can be irritating (what teenager isn’t) and at times there are assumptions relating to race and class which do not sit easily; but on the whole she is engaging and her questioning of conventions is always interesting. There are some interesting reflections on Englishness and sentimentality and as usual Miriam questions religion. It has been noted that the Pilgrimage novels are an account of the slow move from the Victorian era to the modern age and Richardson seems to have a good grasp of character development which makes the progression interesting.

An interesting aside I found is an article called The Urban Observer by Deborah Longworth (you’ll find it in the Camden Town Group section on the Tate website) which examines the tradition of London observers, especially through the medium of the artist-flanuer. She pays particular attention to female observers with an interesting section on Richardson’s Pilgrimage; one of the sections she focuses on is the omnibus ride in this novel where Miriam reflects on the monotony of the London landscape. There is an extensive quote;

“They lumbered at last round a corner and out into a wide thoroughfare, drawing up outside a newly-built public-house. Above it rose row upon row of upper windows sunk in masses of ornamental terra-cotta-coloured plaster. Branch roads, laid with tram-lines led off in every direction. Miriam’s eyes followed a dull blue tram with a grubby white-painted seatless roof jingling busily off up a roadway where short trees stood all the way along in the small dim gardens of little grey houses ... The little shock sent her mind feeling out along the road they had just left. She considered its unbroken length, its shops, its treelessness. The wide thoroughfare, up which they now began to rumble, repeated it on a larger scale. The pavements were wide causeways reached from the roadway by stone steps, three deep. The people passing along them were unlike any she knew. There were no ladies, no gentleman, no girls or young men such as she knew. They were all alike. They were ... She could find no word for the strange impression they made. It coloured the whole of the district through which they had come”

The horror of the suburbs is eventually replaced by London proper (for Miriam) Regent Street and Piccadilly.

It’s a fascinating picture of a particular time and place.

8 and a half out of 10

 

Starting Honeycomb; novel three of the series.

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Briar Rose by Robert Coover

This is a sophisticated, post-modern and very adult take on the old fairy tale Sleeping Beauty. Coover plays with and subverts the genre, but the question that occurs to me is; does he go far enough and why only in one direction?

The tale is retold many times with numerous variations on the theme. Coover has in fact amalgamated Perrault’s Sleeping Beauty in the Wood and the Grimm’s Little Briar Rose. The cast of the good fairy, an evil old crone, a sleeping princess and rescuing prince are all present. Coover gives us access to the thought processes (and dreams) of all those involved. The good fairy and old crone are two parts of the same whole. The princess and the prince are also more nuanced, both questioning their roles. The happy ever after myths are exposed as false. The vignettes where there is a possibility of a happy ever after have one or both parties thinking “Is this it?”

Everyone questions their roles. The prince wonders whether he really is the one and if he is up to the job. The good and bad sides of the fairy battle with each other. The princess struggles with a lack of memory and how she got there and with whether she is briar or rose, whether she is waiting silently for her prey (An interesting take on the idea of the woman being passive, beautiful and evil can be found in Andrea Dworkin’s Woman Hating). In all of the outcomes explored the princess never finds a happy or fulfilling ending; sometimes the prince does.

Coover doesn’t play with the gender roles. The prince attempts to rescue and the princess waits. There are times when the prince wants the princess to act “Don’t just lie there! Get up! Come help!”

It is the area of sex and sexuality that is most problematic. The princess is raped as she sleeps fairly routinely by her father, her father’s knights, a group of the castle’s peasants, bear (and is then bitten by the bear’s mate), by the prince (of course the prince is married and his wife takes her revenge by killing and cooking the princess, feeding her to her husband) and there is even a sexual assault by a monkey. Sexuality is implicit in this tale and I have no problems with that, but all the sexual scenes have a strong element of violence in them (implicit or (more often) explicit). This reminds me of two feminist critiques of fairy tales; Brownmiller saying that fairy tales trained women to be rape victims and the idea that humiliation and powerlessness are central to the female role in these stories. I would have thought that playing with the genre would have involved more sexual variety and switching of roles. By staying with the concept of the female as the penetrated victim (even though the prince is not a heroic figure) is Coover missing a trick or is he trying to do something else?

This is a sophisticated and clever novella and the cutting back and forth between the prince and princess works well. The varying motives of the prince and the focus on duty with an element of dumb stupidity is also very effective. There is also a motif of eternally frustrated youth; never fulfilled, always seeking. Youth is caught by vermin and decay.

That leaves me with my dilemma in relation to the violent nature of the sexual interactions. Coover is a clever writer and, of course, he may be trying to highlight this particular aspect of the fairy tale genre by highlighting the problem in a sharp and obvious way. The action is repetitive and maybe Coover is showing how dull the genre can be. And yet I can’t help wondering whether the result is just to emphasize the princess’s (women’s) victim status. What would be wrong with adding a bit of playfulness, variety (or even tenderness)? That might have stretched the boundaries even more. I wonder if I’ve missed the point, but the unremitting rape and there being no move away from the woman as a victim (or prey) and both the prince and princess being trapped in their roles was a point I got very early on. I didn’t go anywhere else. Is it me?

6 out of 10

Starting The Purple Violet of Oshaantu by Neshani Andrews

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The Purple Violet of Oshaantu by Neshani Andrews

 

I noticed this in the feed of a friend and here we are. This is a first novel and the author is Namibian. It is set in the village of Oshaantu in a rural area of Namibia and is told by Mee Ali about her neighbour and friend Kauna. They are both women whose husbands work away in the mines whilst they look after the homestead and work the land. The two women have contrasting husbands. Mee Ali’s husband (Michael) treats her well and does not abuse or beat her, but Kauna’s husband (Shange) is very violent and abusive; he also keeps mistresses and stays with them. One day he returns home and dies very suddenly. The story is told in part flashback, part present. The novel revolves around the preparation for the funeral. It is a story of friendship between two women, but it is also an examination of the power of patriarchy. Patriarchy partly built on indigenous culture and traditional practices and partly on colonial Christianity and its firm view of the place of women.

Kauna decides she is not going to follow traditional mourning, she is not going to weep and she is not going to give a widow’s speech at the funeral saying how wonderful he was. It’s a good story, powerfully written which challenges the traditional place of women and the expectation that men can do what they wish as women are property. The novel is realistic about the struggle and about the fact that many women accept their roles, as Kauna did when her husband was alive. Andreas however does subvert the role of victim into which women are placed, by creating a community of women and supportive friendships and in characters like Mukfiddleala, an older woman who shames Shange in front of his friends.

Andreas explores the themes of women’s agency and victimhood in the context of her novel; challenging traditional values and imposed colonial ones at the same time. Interestingly the one male character known not to beat and abuse his wife (Michael), is regarded as weak and controlled by his wife as a result. Even he does not challenge tradition and does not criticise the men who do beat their wives. The tensions between traditional culture and the modern world are explored. The whole is full of tenderness and humour and is well worth looking out.

Sadly this is Neshani Andreas’s only novel; I liked this one enough to look for more only to discover she died within the last couple of years.

8 out of 10

Starting The Albatross by Susan Hill

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A Visit to Don Otavio by Sybille Bedford

 

One of the great travelogues and in Bruce Chatwin’s opinion “the greatest travel book of the twentieth century”. It helps a great deal that Bedford can write well and has a gift for observation and description. Living from 1911 to 2006, Bedford had a long and colourful life and is not appreciated as a writer as she should be. Bedford had escaped from France in 1940 and spent the war in the US. After the war she decided that before returning to Europe she would travel for a while in Mexico. She went with a travelling companion referred to as E throughout. E was in fact Esther Mary Arthur (at that point married to the grandson of the US president Chester Arthur). Bedford and Arthur were having a love affair at the time.

As Chatwin says in his introduction, they approached their adventure “without an itinerary, without preconceptions, and with their senses wide open”. That propensity to go with the flow makes for an entertaining read. As I mentioned, Bedford has great descriptive powers, this is about a bus journey;

“A well-grown sow lies heaving in the aisle. My neighbor has a live turkey hen on her lap and the bird simply cannot help it, she must partly sit on my lap, too. This is very hot. Also she keeps fluffing out her surprisingly harsh feathers. From time to time, probably to ease her own discomfort, the bird stands up. Supported on six pointed claws, one set of them on my knee, she digs her weight into us and shakes herself. Dust and lice emerge. On my other side, in the aisle, stands a little boy with a rod on which dangles a dead, though no doubt freshly caught, fish. With every lurch of the conveyance, and it is all lurches, the fish, moist but not cool, touches my arm and sometimes my averted cheek.”

The book moves between pure travelogue, descriptions of Mexico’s bloody history (from Cortes to the nineteenth and twentieth century dictators), detailed descriptions of food and meals (always a plus), the vicissitudes of travel, he varying quality of hotels and of course, Don Otavio and his extended family and servants. Bedford, in an interview late in her life described it thus; “It is a travel book written by a novelist. I wanted to get across the extraordinary beauty of Mexico, the allegro quality of its climate, with the underlying panic and violence inherited from a long and bloody history.”

Don Otavio is a slightly down at heel aristocratic type with a colourful family and some interesting neighbours who are similarly middle class with a smattering of those escaping Europe. Bedford has a sharp wit and excellent sense of humour. It does have to be noted that the travelers were middle class as were most of the people they stayed with and the lives of ordinary people are at a distance. That may have been inevitable, but there are many good vignettes and descriptions of customs and tradition (especially relating to the Catholic Church). All in all and excellent read by a very good writer.

8 out of 10

Starting Coming up for Air by George Orwell

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The Ghostly Lover by Elizabeth Hardwick

I have read reviews of Hardwick’s last novel (Sleepless Nights) and these have been positive. So when I saw this one in my favourite book repository for a couple of quid, I couldn’t resist. This is Hardwick’s first novel, published in 1945 and is a coming of age tale. The story of Marian who is sixteen at the start of the novel and living in Kentucky at the time of the depression. The story switches between Kentucky and New York. Marian lives with her grandmother and brother. Her parents move around and are too disorganised and irresponsible to look after children. Marian meets Bruce a 26 year old divorcee and a relationship develops. Marian goes to college in New York and then returns to look after her grandmother during her final illness. The novel ends with Marian returning to New York.

The novel is introspective, with Marian being a rather critical narrator and the focus is very much on her. The ghostly lover of the title is Bruce, who appears in the first couple of chapters, but is pretty much absent from then on, although he pays for her year at college. There is something of a Southern Gothic feel to parts of it and Marian’s grandmother at times reminded me of Miss Havisham (Great Expectations), especially during her final illness. An interesting vignette portraying a dementing illness. The minor character studies are very sharp and telling. The men are mostly absent (or hopeless) and Hardwick clearly identifies freedom as being alone (untrammelled by family or lovers). Race relations in the South are tangentially addressed and Marian asks questions about her own attitudes; particularly in relation to the family cleaner, Hattie.

It is a first novel and Hardwick herself looked back on it with a little ambivalence. There is little in the way of plot, but the novel drifts along well and Marian is an interesting narrator and not so easy to second guess. I enjoyed this.

7 and a half out of 10

Starting On Beauty by Zadie Smith

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The Waves by Virginia Woolf

 

This is a wonderful novel; Woolf herself referred to it as a play-poem. Often when I’m thinking about a review I will read what others have written, do a bit of research about the context or author. In this case, that approach is not really possible because there is a whole industry around Woolf and her novels and people spend academic lifetimes on all this!

Woolf said she was writing to a rhythm and not to a plot and the novel is a series of interludes and episodes revolving around six characters Susan, Jinny, Rhoda, Bernard, Louis and Neville. There is also Percival who does not feature in the novel, but is a focus for the others and whose early death in India has a significant effect on the others. Each character speaks over nine parallel episodes from childhood to late middle age. The wave metaphor appears and reappears and gives structure. Woolf tends to base her characters on people she knew and The Waves is no exception. Susan is Woolf’s sister Vanessa; Louis is most likely part Leonard Woolf and part T S Eliot; Neville is Lytton Strachey and possibly part Duncan Grant; Bernard creates some disagreement amongst critics who are split between Desmond McCarthy and E M Forster; Jinny is clearly part Woolf herself (Jinny was her father’s nickname for her), but also may be Kitty Maxse or Mary Hutchinson); Rhoda is also partly based on Woolf herself. The elusive and charismatic Percival around whom the group revolves is probably based on Thoby Stephen, Virginia’s brother, around whose memory the Bloomsbury group formed. Of course, this being Woolf, there are other views and some have argued that each of the voices/characters are actually part of Woolf herself and she is holding them in tension throughout, examining different parts of herself. She is certainly looking at the collective aspects of identity and the way the boundaries of identity merge and coalesce with that of the wider world.

I think Woolf is in some ways thinking in a more musical or even symphonic way; as though each character were a different musical instrument, all combining to produce a greater whole. This fluidity and movement is also reflected in the descriptions of the waves, which are italicised and separate the nine parts of the novel. The sections relating to the waves cover one day, which is the whole lifetime of the characters. Percival represents solidity and reliability. The sort of certainty that the Empire, the upper middle classes and the Victorian and Edwardian era represented. It is no coincidence that Percival goes to India. His death represents the whole edifice crumbling and the innate uncertainty of life itself. It may represent Woolf’s feelings about the loss of her brother, her own distress at the abuse she endured at the hands of her step-brother, the cataclysm of the war, her own mental illness; nothing is sure. There have been critics who have argued that Woolf is being over mystical and visionary; but close reading does indicate that Woolf is making some political points as well; this is not far in time from A Room of One’s Own. She mocks the all-male public school system, particularly as it produces figures like Percival and is critiquing colonialism at the same time.

The Waves is also Woolf’s reflection on the inexorable nature of death as Bernard sums up the whole thing in the closing pages. The end reminded me of Don Quixote astride Rocinante tilting at a windmill; the windmill being death. We all fling ourselves against “unvanquished and unyielding” Death; Woolf eventually chose how rather than wait for it.

In “A Sketch of the Past” Woolf said “that the whole world is a work of art; that we are parts of the work of art … we are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself.” In The Waves Woolf expresses these ideas in her play-poem in a beautiful and lyrical novel laden with images and reflections that dazzle, stretch the mind and ask difficult questions. I loved this; as broad in scope as the sea and intensely personal; written with great craft and style.

9 and a half out of 10

Starting The Margrave of the Marshes by John Peel

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Honeycomb by Dorothy Richardson

 

This is the third of the Pilgrimage novels. Miriam changes place of work again and becomes a governess for the Corrie family. In contrast to work is her family situation. Her two sisters marry and there are weddings to be endured. There is also the deteriorating mental health of her mother and this does closely reflect Richardson’s experiences with her own mother. It is worth recalling that Richardson was staying with her mother when her mother committed suicide (Richardson had gone out for a walk at the time). This must have had a profound effect and no doubt the working out of this will follow in later novels (the death takes place at the end of the novel). The description here is oblique, but very powerful; random impressions from Miriam, but no description of the death. Her mother’s state of mind is illustrated by this passage;

“It is too late” said Mrs Henderson with clear quiet bitterness, “God has deserted me.” They walked on, tiny figures in a world of huge grey stone. “He will not let me sleep … he does not care.”

Miriam is clearly out of her depth and her sheer inarticulateness in the face of her mother’s misery is a great piece of writing. Richardson is reflecting many years after her own mother’s death and has clearly read Freud and I think there is a classic description of repression of trauma at the end.

I felt that Richardson was now getting into her stride in this third outing. The stream of consciousness sections were more prominent, especially later in the book and there were more gaps in the narrative.  Miriam is clearly beginning to reject marriage as an option, having seen her sisters marry and clearly finds men very predictable and boring. The descriptions of life at the Corrie’s are interesting. There is a wonderful and brief vignette when Mrs Corrie and her friends are clearly fascinated by a scandal in London (the Oscar Wilde trial), but will not let the rest of the household into the secret, nor let them see the papers. Miriam finds something of an ally in the house in Mr Corrie, a rather dry and ironic lawyer who recognises Miriam’s sharp mind.

Proust’s masterpiece (and it is a masterpiece) is still at the centre of the literary canon. There is also a great fuss at the moment about Knausgaard’s My Struggle (or My Saga, or Min Camp) novels which describe the minutiae of daily life in detail. He is the current literary darling. Yet it seems to me that women have been writing novels like this for decades. Richardson is a case in point. She is little known outside academic circles and died virtually unknown. They even got her name on her headstone wrong. Her middle name was Miller and on her headstone it says Miriam (I am assuming this was an error, but given that her heroine in Pilgrimage is Miriam, it may be rather an apt one.) This is turning into a brilliant series.

Starting The Tunnel by Dorothy Richardson

[willoyd]

The Waves by Virginia Woolf

 

This is a wonderful novel.....written with great craft and style.

Fascinating review, which told me a lot that I hadn't picked up when I read it myself, so many thanks for this! Even so, I gave it a similar score: a very demanding but utterly enthralling read.

[Books do furnish a room]

Thank you Willoyd

Margrave of the Marshes by John Peel and Sheila Ravenscroft

 

John Peel is something of a national treasure in Britain and in the world popular music for his unceasing promotion of new music and unknown artists. Peel (real name John Ravenscroft) was a DJ for many years; in the US in the early 60s and then on pirate radio and finally the BBC form the late 60s until his death in 2004. Peel always promoted the odd, obscure and aspiring. He famously championed punk rock on his show after hearing the Ramones and was the first BBC DJ to do so. He was also a champion of reggae, hip-hop, garage, grime; the list is endless. He worked for the World Service and went on trips around the world where he picked up local music to promote on his shows.

The list of bands that Peel supported and assisted to fame is enormous and impressive from Pink Floyd in the 60s to White Stripes in the early 2000s. He was a great supporter of live music and toured endlessly all over the country. I remember him from my university days turning up and playing stuff that you would not normally find on the radio. In later years he also had a radio programme on Radio 4 called Home Truths which was not musical at all. It gave a platform to ordinary people to talk about all sorts of aspects of their lives; funny, eccentric, poignant. Peel (despite his reservations) was a great interviewer and knew how to put people at their ease.

This is part autobiography and part biography as Peel died before he finished it and it was completed by his wife Sheila. Peel’s part (by far the best part of the book) ends whilst he is in America and before his first marriage. The book does feel disjointed and the second part is rambling and overlong.

Peel is very honest about his early years He was sent to public school (Shrewsbury) and describes (with the self-deprecating humour he is known for) the horrors he and others underwent. The sexual abuse of younger boys by older boys was routine and institutionalised and in Peel’s case went as far as him being raped by an older boy. There has been a good deal of soul-searching about the various child abuse scandals in Britain recently. The origins and history must be partially linked to what we have put our children through in times past; linked, of course to the nature of male sexuality.

I must admit that Peel was a hero of mine; these days I don’t do heroes as everyone has feet of clay, as we all do. That brings me to the issues I have been skirting around. Peel married his first wife when she was 15 (he reportedly said he was misled about her age). He married in Texas and so the marriage was legal, Peel was ten years older. Peel also reports that because he was from Liverpool, when the Beatles broke in America he suddenly became very attractive to local teenagers. I know that in the 60s there was a much more lax attitudes to boundaries, but some of the stories and reports I have problems with. I know Peel married again and settled down to become a national treasure. It leaves me with questions about redemption; how do you atone for past misdeeds; what about the victims. It is a pity that Peel did not live long enough to answer some of these questions himself. All in all this feels like a very unsatisfactory review partly because I don’t have the answers. All I do know is that parts of this left a nasty taste and in some ways I wish I hadn’t read it.

6 out of 10

Starting Living, Loving and Lying Awake at Night by Sindiwe Magona

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Starting The Albatross by Susan Hill

 

A brief novella and four short stories from Susan Hill in her pre Woman in Black days. They all have an edge to them and are quite chilling and a little Gothic. They certainly are not cheerful. They are all, in one way or another about loneliness and isolation.

Two of the stories, The Elephant Man and Friends of Miss Reece concern children, both about small boys. The Elephant Man concerns a small boy’s attempts to please his distant nanny, who was a Dublin Protestant who believed in the   integrity of Unionism and the fact that all the worlds ills could be laid at the feet of men. Friends of Miss Reece concerns another small boy who often stays with his aunt who runs a nursing home. Miss Reece is a resident who the boy feels particularly attached to. He watches the ministrations of a particularly cruel nurse and observes the life and death of the residents as seen through the eyes of a child.

Cockles and Mussels is set in an English seaside town with a rather genteel north bay and a somewhat racier south bay. It is clearly Scarborough, Hill’s home town. Avis Parson, a lonely spinster, lives in a genteel and fading guest house. She dreams of a trip out to the south bay to see more life. The guest house cook, Mrs O’Rourke, meanwhile goes out on the town most nights. The moral of this tale; beware of dodgy seafood!!

Somerville concerns a man living alone in retirement in a rather splendid house in the country. He first sees the house as a small boy through its gates and decides he will one day buy it. After a successful career and planning retirement he sees the house is for sale and buys it; returning to it for the first time since childhood the day he moves in. He lives entirely alone. When a letter arrives (not a bill) he does not open it, remembering a previous letter many years ago which told him of the death of a friend. Into his life comes a young woman who is pregnant and has a grandmother who is dying in a local hospital. Somerville begins to realise how selfish and “wicked” it is to enjoy being alone as much as he does. What does he have to do to expiate for his selfishness.

The novella, The Albatross is also set in a seaside town; this time it is clearly Aldeburgh. This being the case you cannot avoid Benjamin Britten and the whole thing is clearly loosely based on Peter Grimes. Duncan is 18 and lives with his mother. He knows nothing about his past or his father because his mother refuses to tell him. Duncan has a learning disability. His mother tells him he is useless and orders him around all the time. He has clearly been bullied at school and most of his contemporaries treat him with contempt or as a bit of a joke. He has a job at the big house, working in the gardens, where his boss does treat him with some respect. As does Ted Flint, a local fisherman, who tries to persuade Duncan to go out in the boats. A stormy night, a lifeboat disaster and an act of kindness leaves Duncan feeling he can now act for himself; what does he choose to do.

Five interesting stories, a little slight, but looking at human isolation. They are very English and as you would expect form Hill, atmospheric. The novella was too formulaic for me, too predictable a rope to attach to the main character. However they read easily and it was fun spotting locations.

7 out of 10

Starting The Vet's Daughter by Barbara Comyns

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Coming up for Air by George Orwell

One of Orwell’s less well known novels; it is a rather bleak comic novel written and set in 1938/1939.  It is a well written novel about nostalgia, the lower middle classes, relationships between men and women and middle age. Orwell is primarily a political writer and as he said himself, “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism.” Given works like 1984 and Animal Farm, it isn’t surprising that this one can be forgotten.

Coming up for Air is narrated by George Bowling; a man living in the suburbs with a wife and two children, in his late 40s and in an unexciting but stable white collar job. Orwell has always created his male leads with a strong sense of inadequate masculinity; some self-awareness, many and obvious faults. In terms of plot, at the beginning of the book George is bemoaning his lot, his wife, job and life. We then have the nostalgia where he recalls his childhood pre 1914 in the Edwardian era in a town called Lower Binfield. Later in the book George takes some holiday and without telling his wife goes back to Lower Binfield after a gap of 25 years to search for his past, which, of course, has disappeared. Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.

Some people have found George Bowling endearing; he isn’t. Orwell draws his caricature sharply. He is human, not a grotesque. But consider the point where George is laid on his bed and considering how women let themselves go after marriage; conning men to get to the altar and then suddenly rushing into middle age and dowdiness. This is from a man who is 45, fat, has false teeth and bad skin and wears vulgar clothes. Orwell is laying on the irony with a trowel. Late in the book George sees an old girlfriend from nearly 30 years previously. She has changed greatly and he barely recognises her (he inwardly reflects that she has aged badly without making the jump that she has not recognised him). George does have moments of clarity when he almost grasps how ridiculous he is, but not quite.

The female characters are not well drawn and are feminine stereotypes, although Orwell does capture the monotony of suburban life. Usually Orwell’s female characters are more rounded (Julia in 1984), but the focus here is firmly on George Bowling and he certainly perceives the women around him in two-dimensional ways.

Orwell is also satirising suburbia, he describes the road on which Bowling lives as a “line of semi-detached torture chambers”.  Although Bowling dislikes his lot, he accepts it reluctantly, despite his brief foray into his past.

Ever in the background is the threat of war; by this time war with Hitler was seen as inevitable and there is a sense of impending doom. George is aware that a good deal of what is around him will be destroyed, as the 1914-1918 war swept away the world of his childhood. Orwell also lets his own political feelings slip in occasionally and his description of a New Left Book Club meeting is very well drawn.

It is a good read and has a deep vein of humour in the face of coming destruction. Not Orwell at his best, but certainly a different aspect of his work.

7 and a half out of 10

Starting Laughing Torso by Nina Hamnett

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Living, Loving and Lying Awake at Night by Sindiwe Magona

 

“My great hope for African women is that one day they will come into their own. That is why I chose to write” Sindiwe Magona

Sindiwe Magona started her writing career in her late 40s. In an interview she says that in the late 1980s she realised there were very few black women writers in South Africa (she counted 5 at the time) and she recalls being angry that other people were writing about what she and her people were going through. She decided that she must bear witness. You can find the interview in the Feminist Africa journal issue 13 (2009).

This is a powerful collection of short stories which illustrate the experience of black women under the apartheid regime. They are written with strength and humour, but they have a very sharp edge and depict hope and tragedy in equal measure. Some are bleak and heart-breaking. There is a great (but controlled) ferocity in the anger at the injustice being described.

The first group of stories are about a group of maids who work in domestic service in the homes of white South Africans. It reminded me a little of The Help, but much more powerful. Each of the group of maids speaks and imparts some of the particular habits of their own “Medem”. This is clearly written from experience, as Magona worked in domestic service when she was young.

The rest of the stories are more diverse, but are all centred on Cape Town. Magone writes her characters really well, making it easier to highlight the systematic brutality of apartheid without having to put the political arguments into their mouths. This is well illustrated by the last story about the abolition of the pass laws (which occurred a little before the fall of the regime), when a family who are celebrating are pulled up by the mother of the family who tells a story which illustrates that the pass laws are merely a symptom; the roots of the injustice still exist. Magone is also very good at portraying children. She also tackles the issue of the abuse of women and how deep-rooted it is; a point she emphasizes in the interview I mentioned earlier.

“The abuse of women is linked to our broken-ness, our de-basedness. I don’t know why we thought that just because we could vote in 1994, the de-basedness would vanish. The psychological wounding of racism and of the accompanying sexism will take a long time to heal. But we have to begin that journey.”

When you read a great deal it takes something special to take your breath away and to shock (not in a negative way), but a couple of these stories are truly harrowing. This is a great collection of stories that deserve to be read and to be better known.

9 and a half out of 10

Starting W h o r e s for Gloria by William T Vollmann ( I had to spell out the title like that because I kept getting the first word changed to "ladies of the night"!! Very strange and not the title of the book)

Edited May 3, 2015 by Books do furnish a room

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Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf: A very close conspiracy

 

This is a very interesting book about Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf; it isn’t a joint biography. Dunn is looking at their relationship with and influence on each other over the years the rivalry and competitiveness as well as love and support. The relationship was certainly complex and as Dunn points out, symbiotic. This relationship was at the centre of Bloomsbury and to understand the whole Bloomsbury phenomenon you have to look at Vanessa and Virginia.

The book is very informative and Dunn has accessed the mountains of letters and correspondence that surround the sisters. There are of course many lines of thought and areas of consideration and Dunn follows up some of them better than others.

Dunn does consider Virginia’s sexual abuse at the hands of George Duckworth (her step-brother) and its effects over the years. There is some analysis, but I do wonder whether given the depth and intensity of Virginia’s depression, Dunn has underestimated its effect. She seems to think that the abuse certainly affected Virginia’s sexuality and sexual relations, but there seems to be too little connection made with the rest of life. Others have made this criticism as well and I think this could have been examined and interpreted in a wider way.

Throughout the book Vanessa is portrayed as someone who is centred on maternal virtue and sexual fulfilment, especially in the 1910s and 20s; whilst Virginia is seen as the embodiment of the intellectual life. Dunn argues they each had these areas and when the other seemed to be encroaching on their own particular area, tensions ensued. This seemed to me to be an over-simplification.

Dunn does explain and illustrate well the artist/writer relationship that the sisters had. Woolf’s writing style has been described as ekphrastic (the weaving in of descriptions of art or artwork which then becomes part of work of literature) and this works in tension with Bell’s visual aesthetic. The work of the Hogarth Press and Vanessa’s illustration of Virginia’s work is well outlined.

Dunn does draw the portraits of those surrounding the sisters very well and there is quite a procession over the years. The importance of Duncan Grant to Vanessa and Virginia’s relationships with women like Vita Sackville-West are all explored. On the whole the book is interesting and there are lots of lines of thought to follow for those interested in Woolf and Bloomsbury. There are flaws (in my opinion), but it is interesting and informative.

7 out of 10

Starting The Stories and Essays of Mina Loy