Books do furnish a room

Rainsplitter in the Zodiac Garden by Penelope Shuttle This novel fits firmly within the definition of the experimental novel. Shuttle is a poet primarily, but wrote several novels in the 1970s (this is the third of them). The primary character is Faustina and most of the novel takes place during her pregnancy. Also prominent is her husband Micah. The imagery used is unusual and often difficult to follow; much of it is rooted in nature and the natural world. Faustina sees herself as many different women throughout history. The timescale is past, present and future; often simultaneously. There is often a sense of dislocation about the landscape and settings. Faustina steps in and out of the fetters placed on her by marriage and her relationships and conflicts with Micah play an important role. Shuttle herself says that the story tells of a quest for a hera (not hero) escaping from stereotypical female roles to the underlying individuality. Victoria Glenndinning in her review says that the novel is “an invitation to trace the mythology of a mind that has left the scheduled tracks and timetables”. The dreamlike nature of Shuttle’s prose has been compared to Anna Kavan. To give a flavour of the nature of the prose; “I ate the wheat of the dead. I had one fear, small shaped like a fir-cone, hard as a stone. I folded my hands around my fear once a day, usually in the half light of the winter afternoons, its coldness flowing into my imitational flesh: and I heard the fear speaking, calling to me, hagseed, hagseed ….. But I never answered. I am afraid of becoming his executioner.” “There are trip-wires stretched across every day. I walked through a series of identical and aged rooms in a footfall house, a permanent retirement from the sea, my true skin’s temperature just above zero.” There are images and metaphors that are thrown at the reader on every page; it’s a remarkable piece of work, not easy to find and not easy to read; but fans of experimental novels should feel very much at home with it. 6 and a half out of 10 Starting Shadow Box by Antonia Logue

Clarise Cumberbatch Want to go Home by Joan Cambridge This is another book found through Daughters of Africa by Margaret Busby. It is the story of Clarise Cumberbatch. Her husband of thirteen years, Harold, has abandoned her for another woman, leaving her with the children in Guyana and moving to America. Clarise saves money and after three years goes to America to look for him; staying with her longsuffering friend Mavis. The themes are universal; the strangeness of a foreign land, a longing for home, loneliness (even among friends), relationships, the nature of men, living under the radar (Clarise has no green card and is therefore trying to work illegally) and not realising what you have until it’s no longer there. The novel is written in Guyanese dialect, which can take a little time to read easily, but it does with a little concentration. Clarise is a wonderful character both comic (and there is a strong comedic strain in the book) and poignant. Clarise realises over the year she is in America that she misses her homeland, that she actually doesn’t need Harold (although that takes some time) and she can thrive in Guyana. It would have been easy to make Clarise into a victim but Cambridge gives her space to grow develop and learn. The men in the novel are rather a dodgy lot and even the kinder ones have a distinctly creepy edge. There is a good twist close to the end in relation to Mavis and the last two chapters are quite dramatic. Clarise struggles to make herself understood in New York and its foreignness to her comes across very well, as does the sense of culture shock; new food, social conventions, new experiences (the subway for example). Clarise learns self-reliance and the reader ends up believing Clarise will be better off supporting herself and what seems like defeat at the end is really triumph. Tracking down information about the author Joan Cambridge isn’t easy and this appeared to be her only novel. She was married to Julian Mayfield writer, academic, actor and civil rights activist. They met when Mayfield spent time in Guyana (c1971) and worked as an advisor to Forbes Burnham. In 1974 they moved to the United States where Winfield died in 1984. There is mention of them writing together and working on a novel. Mayfield has a couple of novels published, so it is possible Cambridge may have had some hand in them. A bit of persistence led me to a letter in a Guyanese newspaper about Maya Angelou (whom Cambridge knew through her husband) in 2014 at her death. I’m reproducing the letter as it is fascinating; Dear Editor, What more is there to say about that ‘phenomenal woman,’ our sister Maya Angelou… just transitioned to join the ancestors? As the world bids farewell to this exceptional icon of our time with kudos flowing from fans everywhere, I am remembering her in a few very personal ways. There’s that time I returned to the USA after a long time away; Maya Angelou was not gentle about rapping me over the knuckles demanding – “Where have you been all this time? Since Julian’s death no one heard from you.” Julian Mayfield was Maya’s dear friend and my husband. I can still see her now as she stood almost 30 years ago, on the Howard University Andrew Rankin Chapel pulpit delivering the eulogy at his funeral service. Maya Angelou’s tears flowed as she stressed over and over again – “He was my Brother, he was my Very Brother!” Here was a woman grieving for a compassionate friend, a buddy; a man who respected her womanhood. I recall, even when there was a brief falling out between them over a story Julian Mayfield wrote in the anthology Ten Times Black that fictionalized a real life romantic episode Maya felt clearly identified her as the protagonist, there were no serious daggers drawn; the rift quickly repaired. I tried to explain my reason for “escaping” a scholar’s desk at the Library of Congress to make my way to the source of all those captivating accounts of Marches of El Dorado; expeditions through Guyana’s Rainforest, the least spoilt of the two pristine tropical forests left on Planet Earth. That move meant losing touch with Maya and most of Julian Mayfield’s and my own friends. There were no mailboxes anywhere closer than twenty miles from Yukuriba Falls and in those times, the Internet was definitely not an option. “…but I wrote you, Maya…have letters in a file I call ‘Letters That Never Got Sent’…I plan to… ” “We all have those,” Maya Angelou snapped. She was scolding, a teacher accustomed to instilling her vision, instructing the way forward; she had no patience with drop-outs. I bristled a little and we lost touch again. The night before his funeral, Maya Angelou had sat in a rocking chair in our apartment in Maryland, I on the floor beside her. That was when she asked me to turn over Julian’s papers to her Wake Forest University for a generous financial offer. I declined. “You work for a white university Maya, what would become of Julian’s papers if you were to drop dead?” I’ve always regretted putting it so bluntly (don’t believe Maya ever forgave me either), but never have I regretted my decision to choose the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library; especially since The Schomburg assured me that at one point The Julian Mayfield Papers were the most widely read among their collections. My choice of Schomburg was influenced by a vision of widespread dissemination of information and education about that epoch in which Maya Angelou with Julian Mayfield and their African American brothers and sisters played a significant role; those historic years in Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana when they rallied behind the African leader’s policy of nonalignment and his vision for the unification of Africa. Maya Angelou wrote for The African Review; Tom Feelings, the late great African American artist, was illustrator and Julian Mayfield, Editor. My personal memory of Maya that’s full of regret, is of the time just before his death when she called her friend to invite us to her home in Winston Salem, North Carolina. She wanted Julian to hear her read from her just completed manuscript. I should’ve been there with him, but, consumed with my work on the novel: Clarise Cumberbatch Want to Go Home, chose not to go. Julian returned home enthusing about meeting Dizzy Gillespie at a thoroughly enjoyable breakfast gathering in Maya’s kitchen. I had missed an invaluable opportunity to share with the gifted and prolific writer Maya Angelou, the first flush of her joy in completing the manuscript of her book: Heart of a Woman, as well as the chance to meet a phenomenal musician. Another fond remembrance of Maya Angelou is of being with Julian Mayfield, a guest at a dinner party she hosted. Maya was married to Paul de Feu, and (it seemed to me) very much in love. They were living in San Francisco. Her other guests at the party were the political activist Angela Davis, Nobel Prize Author, Toni Morrison, at that time an Editor at Random House, and the late Jessica Mitford, author of The American Way of Death. Without a doubt, I was too much in awe to be anything more than speechless. Apart from those two occasions – Julian Mayfield’s demise, and at that dinner party in San Francisco – I’ve never met Maya Angelou in person, but have kept up with her illustrious career the best way I could from here in Guyana. All our interaction beside has been by telephone; most recently (less than a year ago), to suggest she write a Foreword to the unpublished: Tales of the Lido, a manuscript in the Schomburg’s Mayfield collection. The Lido, as it was described to me, was a club, a Ghanaian watering hole where African Americans mingled with other members of the international community in that momentous epoch of African history. WEB Du Bois was there; so was Malcolm X on a mission to establish the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and a guest in the Mayfield home when Julian was married to Dr Ana Livia Cordero. Herman Bailey, Alice Windom, the Doctors Calvin and Eleanor Sinnette, Leslie Lacey, Jim Lacey and Curtis Morrow were there also, and Dr John Hendrik Clarke passed through. These are some of the names that peopled the stories I recall, stories that Julian Mayfield loved to tell of that euphoric time when, according to Jim Lacey, “We could not wait to get up in the morning.” And Maya Angelou was with them all. This from an email I sent her before we spoke on the phone: “… I recall Julian describing times you shared with the rest of the African American community that surged to Ghana to energize Kwame Nkrumah’s thrust to unify the continent… the bouquet of those heady times of The Lido and Ghana/Africa still lingers in my imagination. A foreword… introduction (or whatever you choose to name it) in your inimitable voice, made even more effective by its empirical tone…would be an exquisite distillation. This is my personal conception of your contribution to this publication of Tales of the Lido.” I believe Maya Angelou has written the Foreword to Tales of the Lido because she promised me she’d write it, declaring emphatically – “…I will do it for Julian!” Maya’s assistant Mrs Bettie Clay will know…perhaps Raphael Mayfield, Julian’s elder son, with the co-operation of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, will ensure that Tales of the Lido is published. It ought to be; it represents a slice of the colourful life that was Maya Angelou’s. Maya Angelou! I see her now united again with her “very brother” Julian Mayfield; joining her own in unison with his and other significant ancestral voices addressing the condition of our people throughout Global Africa/Guyana still fighting for freedom, justice and basic survival on these endless plantations – then on to now; voices with “too much to claim” that will not be stilled. Yours faithfully, Joan Cambridge-Mayfield aka Bassidy Dolly D Guyana Rainforest Bag-Lady This is a good and intelligent novel full of compassion and great humour. 9 out of 10 Starting Meat Market by Laurie Penny

Nina Hamnett; Queen of Bohemia by Denise Hooker This is the only biography of Nina Hamnett. I feel like I know her quite well now having read her autobiography earlier this year and come across her in various compilations and analyses of the time. Hamnett is first and foremost a Welsh artist; well respected, but her art didn’t make her rich. However the list of people she worked with, was friends with and drank with is very impressive. Hamnett’s childhood was dominated by a brutal father who was infuriated by his daughter’s headstrongness and independence of thought. She was a free spirit and lived life to the full. A closer examination might reveal reveals that her art was an escape from the difficulties of her childhood. She attended art schools in London and split her time between London and Paris moving in Bohemian circles. Her friends and mentors included Gaudier-Brzeska, Modigliani, Sickert, Roger Fry, Augustus John, Jean Cocteau, Erik Satie, Igor Stravinsky, Picasso, Diaghilev, Vanessa Beel, Dylan Thomas, Aleister Crowley, the Sitwells, Raymond Radiguet, Lytton Strachey to name only a few. She was promiscuous with both sexes and eccentric in habits and dress; “I wore in the daytime a clergyman’s hat, a check coat, and a skirt with red facings … white stockings and men’s dancing pumps and was stared at in the Tottenham Court Road. One had to do something to celebrate one’s freedom and escape from home” Marriage was generally a disaster and Hamnett spent most of her life living alone, or more exactly tied to no one. Her approach to sex was straightforward as she told a friend; “Can’t see anything in it myself ….. But they seem to like it so I let them get on with it” She wasn’t a romantic and said in relation to one particular suitor; “(so and so) said the other day, “You love me with your body, I wish I could think that you loved me with your soul” … What the hell do you think he meant?” Hamnett did have more of an extended affair with Roger Fry and she worked on and off for a number of years on projects at the Omega workshop, putting her at the heart of Bloomsbury. She was fascinated by life and took her work very seriously; “‘My ambition is to paint psychological portraits that shall represent accurately the spirit of the age’” Her ability to live life to the full and more particularly to drink life to the full did affect her work and in the last thirty years of her life there was a tension between creativity and alcohol. Hamnett was a pragmatist knowing that the alcohol sometimes drove her on and fueled her creativity and sometimes held her back. As she grew older it held her back more and more. The fund of stories about Hamnett is endless; many are amusing, like her propensity to sing sea shanties of a rather rude nature at the drop of a hat. More poignant and telling is a comment about her promiscuity and in particular her liking for sailors in her bed. When asked why she responded “they go away”. Her time in Paris in the twenties brought her into contact with people like Djuna Barnes, Stein, Hemingway, Ford Madox Ford and others. She was taken to tea with Rudolf Valentino. She didn’t really know who he was as she did not often go to the cinema and wasn’t star struck. She entertained the company with some of her racier sea shanties and got on very well with Valentino. Hamnett was also friends with James Joyce; who referred to her as one of the few vital women her had ever known (That I think is rather an indictment of Joyce and a rather trite dismissal of half the human race). Soon after meeting Valentino she bumped into him again at a social function. Joyce was also there; Nina had the bright idea of introducing them, even though they had nothing in common and she thoroughly enjoyed the social awkwardness that followed. The tale of her last years is heart-rending and sad and her reputation as a bon vivant has obscured her artistic talent. She sent much of her last years in the pubs and bars of Soho and Fitzrovia, especially the Fitzroy tavern. I enjoyed my time spent with Hamnett, but I’m not sure I could have kept up with her indefatigable energy, not to mention her drinking. Hooker’s biography is good and there are plenty of reproductions of Hamnett’s art too. This review does feel rather disjointed and chaotic and this is probably a reflection of Nina Hamnett’s busy life. 8 out of 10 Starting Charlotte Mew: Collected Poems and selected prose

Two Women of London by Emma Tennant This is a late 1980s take of Stephenson’s Jekyll and Hyde, set in the Ladbroke Grove area of London. Emma Tennant gives it a feminist twist. The novella is not set out in a conventional way, having a narrators who use a variety of sources; journals, accounts from a variety of sources, interviews etc. Tennant is known as an author whose work has a post-modern edge. She is a member of the Glenconner family (Stephen Tennant was her uncle) who have long added a bohemian streak to the British establishment. Tennant has also written a sequel to Pride and Prejudice, a novel about Adele, the daughter of Mr Rochester (Jane Eyre) and Faustine, a feminist retelling of Faust, which sounds intriguing. The tale of Jekyll and Hyde is well known and one of the most filmed novels. The double life/double psyche idea is very well used here with Ms Eliza Jekyll and Mrs Hyde. Ms Jekyll is an art dealer who is beautiful and fashionable, attracting sophisticated men. Mrs Hyde appears older, shapeless, a single mother, abandoned by her husband and damaged by prescription drugs. Of course they are the same person. Tennant says of the novel: “the frequently intolerable pressures for one woman today—single parenthood, need to compete in the marketplace, a Manichean split between ambition and ‘caring’—can lead to disintegration and murder” The news of the day is intertwined in the novel and the Notting Hill Rapist is in the background. Mrs Hyde becomes an avenger murdering a man who appears to be the rapist. Tennant handles the material in a clever way. When Eliza Jekyll hires a cleaner her name is Grace Poole (Bertha Mason’s keeper in Jane Eyre). Tennant examines the nature of female anger and violence and I’m going to quote her comments again because they are apposite: “Of course every single woman has had those very violent feelings, just like every man. It’s just odd to think that where we are today, what’s going on – I’m amazed that so many women seem to have given up on any form of expression of those violent feelings. The anger has been siphoned out into consumerism – it’s a cliché, but that’s what happened. Women today who are told they must be like dolls – what can they be making of it? What do they think as they slide down the lap-dancing pole? ‘I am a very angry woman’…? Maybe this is just one’s generation. But to me the point of everything is to get those feelings out and make something of them, not to conceal their existence or to allow what will happen if you leave them bottled up. Perhaps some new form of fiction could deal with this.” The entire cast is female and the mix of different character types works well. Mrs Hyde is a victim whose deed is an act of self-defence and an act which is an attempt to free from the oppression which surrounds all women. This is a good retelling of Stephenson’s original story from an interesting perspective and it is thought provoking. I really don’t understand why it isn’t better known and the retelling of Faust looks interesting as well. 8 out of 10 Starting A Golden Age by Tahmima Anam

Revolving Lights by Dorothy Richardson This is the seventh instalment of Pilgrimage and I’m getting used to having Miriam around. Miriam continues to spend time with Michael Shatov and his friends and continues to ponder the ideas and philosophies she meets and attends a socialist meeting. There is a description of a house party she attends and the figure of Hypo Wilson is prominent. He is, of course based on H G Wells, with whom Richardson had an affair. The interplay between the two is fascinating and it is interesting to compare her relationships with Shatov and Wilson. Again the city of London is central to this instalment; its public spaces and its lodging houses. The variety of experience on offer in a big city and the cultural breadth available are notable in this novel. This also ties in with my reading about the fin de siècle and the changes in the status of women. Miriam is single. This was the time when the Victorian idea that the appropriate space for women being the private domestic sphere was being eroded and women were moving into universities, the professions, demanding the vote and legal equality. Miriam is positioned as being part of this in her own small way. As her romantic attachment to Michael Shatov ends Miriam’s thoughts are quite telling; “to-night the spirit of London came to meet her on the verge. Nothing in life could be sweeter than this welcoming […]. What lover did she want? No one in the world would oust this mighty lover, always receiving her back without words, engulfing and leaving her untouched, liberated and expanding to the whole range of her being” Her real lover is the city of London itself; it represents her freedom and her individuality. The cosmopolitanism of London encompasses the foreign and the other in an unrestrictive way. Also the city provides a space for women like Miriam to live and function; it gives Miriam agency in a way the men in her life (though well meaning) do not; “her untouched self here, free, unseen, and strong, the strong world of London all round her, strong free untouched people, in a dark lit wilderness, happy and miserable in their own way, going about the streets looking at nothing, thinking about no special person or thing, as long as they were there, being in London” Miriam has been in London a few years now and it is her backdrop. Richardson’s writing when describing the cityscape is of the highest quality; “Oxford Street opened ahead, right and left, a wide empty yellow-lit corridor of large shuttered shop-fronts. It stared indifferently at her outlined fate ... Oxford Street, unless she were sailing through it perched in sunlight on the top of an omnibus lumbering steadily towards the graven stone of the City, always wrought destruction ... Stay here, suggested Bond Street” I enjoyed this particular outing in Pilgrimage and look forward to the rest. 9 out of 10 Starting The Trap by Dorothy Richardson (eighth novel in the series)

Sexual Anarchy: Gender and culture at the fin de siècle by Elaine Showalter This is a really fascinating analysis of the ends of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, looking at culture of all types and varieties, written in 1991; the main focus is on the late nineteenth century. Showalter is wide-ranging and her analysis is thought provoking. The topics include what Showalter terms Odd Women, those who did not marry, partly due to population pressures in the late nineteenth century, partly choice and partly the inability men who were self-aware enough not to be threatened by modern women. There is a chapter on the New Women writers and the influence of Eliot, Darwin and socialism; with a separate chapter on Eliot’s inheritance. Another chapter covers the male action romance type novel as written by Haggard, Henley, Stephenson, Kipling and their ilk; not to forget an emerging author by the name of Conrad. A whole chapter is devoted to Jekyll and Hyde and the sexuality contained within and this moves across the century looking and film representations as well. A further chapter looks at female sexuality and the portrayal of the female body, followed by another chapter on Wilde’s Salome and the veiling of women. 1890s decadence and the relationship between homosexuality and feminism are covered and the book ends with an interesting comparison between AIDS and syphilis. There is too much to cover in one review, so I will pick out a few things which struck me. It is easy to forget how significant syphilis was at the end of the nineteenth century; there was no cure and no effective treatments at that time and the language written about syphilis is reminiscent of the language used about AIDS, especially in terms of judgement and punishment. The chapter on the New Women writers was an eye-opener and so was the fact that more than 60% of novels being written at that time were written by women. If you look at the novels still widely read they tend to be primarily by men. Many of the novelists who wrote about women’s issues were collectively referred to as New Women. Writers such as Ella Hepworth Dixon, Margaret Harkness, Annie Holdsworth, Isabella Ford, Netta Syrett, Mona Caird, Charlotte Mew, Sarah Grand, Olive Schreiner to name a few. Many of these writers were following in the tradition of George Eliot or reacting to her influence. Her death in 1880 was a watershed. Showalter also includes a hilarious description of a 1980 academic anniversary conference to commemorate her death (the book is worth reading just for that). Some of these writers are now little read outside academic circles whereas their male contemporaries (Kipling, Conrad, Stephenson, Conan Doyle, Wells, Haggard and even Wilde) are at the top of many reading lists relating to this period. One does have to ask if this is because the male writers were so much better or if their message fitted better with the ruling zeitgeist. Showalter’s analysis of some of the popular male writers is incisive and at times very funny. In late nineteenth century fiction there was valourisation of male creative generation and a denigration of female powers of creation and reproduction. The poet Gerald Manley Hopkins saying “the begetting of one’s thoughts on paper is a kind of male gift”, sums up a particular and widely held viewpoint. The powers of creation and procreation were imagined into a male preserve; “In numerous texts, male writers imagined fantastic plots involving alternative forms of male reproduction or self-replication: splitting or cloning as in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; reincarnation as in Rider Haggard’s She; transfusion as in Dracula; aesthetic duplication as in The Picture of Dorian Gray; or vivisection as in The Island of Dr Moreau” This made me look at some well-known novels in a new way. This was writing for boys and often women were largely excluded to combat fears of “manly decline in the face of female power”. It’s also the first time I’ve heard Heart of Darkness described as a masculine quest romance. Showalter describes a quest romance as an “allegorized journey into the self”. One of the more interesting examples is Kipling’s The Man who would be King, made into a film starring Michael Caine and Sean Connery. More interesting because it is also a satire on political and literary power. Then, of course, there is Heart of Darkness. Showalter argues that Heart of Darkness is not only an attempt at an expose of imperialism (not to mention racism), but also an allegory of male bonding and a flight from women. Marlow says, “It’s queer how out of touch with the truth women are. They live in a world of their own.” Showalter points out it is easy to see Marlow as Kurtz’s double. Orson Welles had planned to film the book in the late 1930s and he had intended to play both Kurtz and Marlow (might have made an interesting film). Showalter also provides an analysis of Apocalypse Now. There is a fascinating analysis of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (which Showalter refers to as Gay Gothic) which is really about a personality that splits and of course about the repression of homosexual desire and the inevitable conclusion that it is better to die than let it loose. Not an unusual thought process. Remember what A E Housman said in the poem A Shropshire Lad; “Shot? So quick, so clean an ending? Oh that was right, lad, that was brave: Yours was not an ill for mending, ‘Twas best to take it to the grave” This was in contrast to the attitudes of the decadents of the 1890s (Wilde etc) There really is a great deal in this book, especially if you are a fan of this period of history. What I appreciated most was the introduction to many writers I had not known before. 9 out of 10 Starting Phoenix Fled by Attia Hosain

In Darkest London by Margaret Harkness This summer I’m reading some of the “New Women” writers of the late nineteenth century. Margaret Harkness is an interesting one; she has no wiki entry for herself. She was the daughter of a clergyman who trained to be a nurse, but instead of going on to marry well as her family wished, she opted to remain single and go into journalism and writing. Initially she wrote about historical topics, but in the mid-1880s she became influenced by socialism and feminism and began to write about the state of those who were living in the slums. She also became very interested in the work of the Salvation Army, who were one of the few organisations living and working in the heart of the slums. She wrote articles and a number of novels on the subject. She also worked with other like-minded women such as Eleanor Marx (daughter of Karl), Olive Schriener, Annie Besant, Amy Levy, Beatrice Potter (later Webb), Clementina Black and Olive Birrell; all mostly forgotten today. Harkness often wrote under the pseudonym John Law and some of her books on GR are still recorded as John Law. At the time Harkness was writing her more radical novels feminism and socialism were quite closely linked in Britain as social equality and gender equality were seen as inextricable. Therefore categorising Harkness as one or the other is not helpful as Sally Ledger points out; “If Harkness can be described as a socialist and a nonconformist, then she also has considerable credentials as a feminist novelist, not least in her portrayal of the seamstress, Nelly Ambrose, in A City Girl. The tensions between feminism and socialism in late Victorian Britain are unresolved in Harkness’s novels, and it is for this reason, I would claim, that she is celebrated neither as a full-bloodedly socialist nor a whole-heartedly feminist writer, her fiction refusing to conform unequivocally to either paradigm.” Harkness’s later life is shrouded in some mystery; she travelled extensively from the 1890s onwards, going to Australia, India, the US, New Zealand, Sri Lanka amongst others. She continued to write, but her later works are even less known than her earlier works. In Darkest London focuses on conditions in the East End slums and primarily on the work of the Salvation Army and their slum workers, who lived and worked in the same conditions as the residents. Consequently there is a good deal of religion of an evangelical flavour in the book as the thoughts and motives of Captain Lobe, the main male character are laid bare. Harkness doesn’t pull her punches though and there are plenty of death bed scenes and all beliefs examined are questioned, as here in an exchange between a Salvation Army slum worker and a working man she is talking to; ““You must give up your sins; then God will send you food,” was the reply. The man shook his head, and said, “The Bible calls God a father, and no father could starve his son for sinning. He would give him food first, and speak about his sins afterwards.” “Gold and silver have I none,” was the girl’s reply; “but what I have, that I give unto you.” “Then, my lass, you can carry your preaching somewhere else. Don’t come here to talk of salvation to a man like me. I’m hungry.” “ The capitalist factory manager is suitably wicked and sexually predatory. The woman who looks after the factory girls, Jane Hardy is an interesting character, well nuanced, flawed, but ultimately strong. She argues for socialism, sees men as the enemy and will constantly ask where people stand on the woman question. She works only to keep her elderly mother from the workhouse. Her strength at the end of the novel is telling. The whole thig revolves around Ruth, who is an interesting character who appears to be acted upon, but a careful reading indicates otherwise. This is a good novel which combines sharp social commentary and description of the slums and an examination of the validity of socialism and feminism. There is even a little romance. Harkness’s writing at times is fragmented and the telling of the conditions of the poor is the most important factor. There are also references to all sorts of other issues which are sharp and to the point. A nameless East End doctor who Harkness refers to as “The Modern Prometheus” (a Frankenstein reference) who cannot gives his patients the drugs they need because they are so weak and undernourished that they would be killed by them. The title is a direct reference to a book just published by Henry Stanley called In Darkest Africa; the point being, that horror can be found just down the road, look what we are doing to the poor. The novel is set exactly at the time of the Ripper murders and in exactly the same area. They are not mentioned, a deliberate decision I believe. There is horror enough in normal daily life. There are also expressions of the view that it is all the fault of the foreign influx from Eastern Europe, using terms that I suspect were taken straight from the streets; very prescient for today. Death is desired and suicide is often the remedy for despair. It’s grim at times, but Harkness infuses the whole with humanity and passion. 8 out of 10 Starting Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain

Millennium Hall by Sarah Scott This is an interesting novel published in 1762. It isn’t easy to read because it has that irritating eighteenth century habit of needing to be didactic and morally improving. It was written by Sarah Scott and describes a female run and populated community run on what might be described as utopian lines. Sarah Scott was a well-educated woman from a good family. Her sister, Elizabeth Montagu is better known for setting up a female literary salon which became known as the Blue Stocking Society. Sarah Scott was married in 1751. This was short-lived and her family removed her from the marital home in 1752. She then lived with Lady Barbara Montagu where they pooled their resources and became active in helping the poor. Scott wrote primarily to provide an income, writing several novels and some histories. Millennium Hall is partially based on her life with Barbara Montagu. The novel revolves around a community of women who hold their goods and income in common and whose primary pastime is education. Two gentlemen are touring the area (in East Anglia) and as one is distantly related to one of the women, they visit. They are given various guided tours and hear the histories of several of the women who reside there and how they came to move to the community. There are educational pastimes, music, education for local children, work for those with disabilities, local industrial enterprises, charities and much more. There is no challenge to society’s structures. There is help and work for the poor and underprivileged, but according to their station. There is education for all children, but the lower orders are directed to appropriate manual work. However there is an interesting approach to disability. Those who are disabled are educated and there is a rehabilitative element to the approach and it is emphasized that they should be treated with respect and care and if they are they will contribute to society. It is also remarkable in that it welcomes older age and deformity in women as positives and bringing benefits. Running through the novel is an element of divine providence/retribution which is active in favour of the women in the history. A striking example is in the history of one of the women where a man about to commit an act of rape has a stroke and is dies. This illustrates the nature of the men in the novel. Most of them are unscrupulous, self-centred, sexually predatory and generally unpleasant. There are some notable exceptions, but they tend to be older, having learnt from life. There is a redemptive element and for the two men visiting the community it is mediated through the community itself. This novel has been rediscovered in this century, but is still little known and read. Admittedly it is not an easy read being couched in the sort of language used in novels like Clarissa and there is an irritating piety present. But it is striking and quite revolutionary. 7 out of 10 Starting Two Women of London by Emma Tennant

Witness against the Beast; William Blake and the Moral Law E P Thompson is one of my favourite historians and this was his last book. It is an analysis of the poet William Blake. Thompson looks at the origins of his thought and attempts a different approach to most academic studies of Blake. Thompson believes that the roots of Blake’s thought can be found in the seventeenth century radicalism that flourished in the Civil War period in England. The book is in two parts; the first looks at the backdrop to the radical ideas of the time Blake lived and their historical roots. The second half examines Blake’s poetry in the light of this. Thompson treats the reader to a whole array of seventeenth and eighteenth century sectarians with some wonderful names. Anyone remember Behmenists, Swedenborgians, Muggletonians (this is not a Harry Potter reference!), Hutchinsonians, to name but a few. These along with more traditional dissent are examined to establish the origins of Blake’s thought. The Muggletonians are particularly interesting and the account of Thompson meeting the last living Muggletonian, Philip Noakes, in the 1970s and being given access to their archives (which date back to the seventeenth century) is quite moving. He describes their thought as “highly intellectual anti-intellectualism”. Thompson moves easily amongst these rather odd and strange groups. As he says, he is an atheist and the ideas they propound seem to be him to be no more ridiculous than the beliefs of established religion. Thompson goes on to examine the origins of Blake’s strong antinomian tendencies which underlay his strongly negative views about established religion and the state. This tendency is amply illustrated by the poem Garden of Love; I went to the Garden of Love, And saw what I never had seen; A Chapel was built in the midst, Where I used to play on the green. And the gates of this Chapel were shut, And ‘Thou shalt not’ writ over the door; So I turned to the Garden of Love That so many sweet flowers bore. And I saw it was filled with graves, And tombstones where flowers should be; And Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds, And binding with briars my joys & desires Blake moved amongst the radicals and revolutionaries that grew when the ideas around the French Revolution crossed the channel He knew people like Paine, Bewick, and Wollstonecraft amongst others. Blake was a radical, but he was also very anti-reason, opposing the lines of thought from Locke, Hume and Newton, which set him apart from many of the radicals who were essentially Deist. One thing that Thompson does make clear is the complexity and sometimes contradictoriness of Blake’s thought. This is not an introduction to Blake’s work or an interpretation of his poetry; Thompson is setting Blake within his historical context, the London of 1780 to 1820, showing how his roots in a radical intellectual tradition informed hid thought. Blake was a lifelong radical; many of his contemporaries turned to Toryism when the French Revolution went wrong; Blake remained radical. This book emphasizes the importance of dissent and in a world where the forces that dominate are unjust and unfair, maintaining radical dissent is very important. Thompson was never an armchair historian (one of the reasons I like him) and this analysis of Blake adds a good deal to the history of radical dissent. 9 out of 10 Starting Nina Hamnett, Queen of Bohemia by Denise Hooker

It is a good read bobblybear. Frangipani House by Beryl Gilroy First book read as a result of Daughters of Africa edited by Margaret Busby. I had been meaning to read Beryl Gilroy for some time and this was the impetus I needed. Gilroy was a Guyanese author with an interesting background. Qualifying as a teacher and moving to Britain in the 1950s she was initially unable to get a job as a teacher because of racism. Eventually following a series of unskilled jobs she returned to teaching in the 1960s and became the first black head teacher in London. She did a good deal of work in the area of education in the days of the Greater London Council (GLC); developing a psychotherapy practice principally for black women and children. She also founded the Camden Black Sisters Group. It is easy to forget how much good the GLC did until Thatcher abolished it. Gilroy turned to writing quite late and this, her first novel was published in 1986; she addressed family issues (the treatment of elders being particularly important to her) and went on to write about the African and Caribbean diaspora and the experience of slavery. Frangipani House is a home for older people in Guyana. Mama King has been placed there by her family, who now live in America. Mama King does not like the home and finds it oppressive. The concept of house and home is very important in Caribbean literature, often representing cultural identity. Home as a space is used in a variety of ways, but here it is a space of confinement for the old. It is often only home for a short space of time before death and a number of strong and well-drawn characters move briefly through its pages. After working hard all her life Mama King finds the rules and restrictions stultifying and plans to escape; firstly through losing her sanity and then by physical departure. Mama King escapes and spends time with a group of beggars, who although very poor treat her as an equal and appreciate her. Eventually she is beaten up and is in intensive care. Her family travel from America and have to decide what to do with her. One of the issues highlighted is that Mama King’s family are westernised in the US and their solution to the problems of age is a western one; a nursing home. The main antagonist of the novel is the matron of the nursing home, Miss Trask. Although she comes across as unsympathetic and uncaring, the reader does come to understand her over the course of the novel. Gilroy gives a voice to the voiceless; the old and poor and uneducated. Although Mama King is uneducated in a Western sense, she has knowledge, alternative knowledge and has brought up many children and survived an abusive husband. This novel finds a place for someone who society has no place, a role for a black, poor grandmother. The care home is supposed to be a haven, but is not; it is a place of memories, partly because the boring routine ensures people are drawn into the past and recollection. The real heart of the novel is the wonderful character of Mama King, who tells us her story. The ending is left a little open, which is good. It is really a novella, so do try it. 8 and a half out of 10 Starting Clarise Cumberbatch want to go home by Joan Cambridge

Wedlock by George Egerton George Egerton is the pen name of Mary Chavelita Dunne Bright. She was born in Australia and spent early years there and in New Zealand, Chile and Ireland. She identified herself as Irish. She spent time in New York and Norway. Egerton married three times and moved in literary circles. She was the first person to translate Knut Hamsun into English. She has been credited with being the first person to mention Nietzsche in English Literature; in her book of short stories and essays, Keynotes, she mentions Nietzsche. This was in 1893, three years before he was translated into English. Her novel The Wheel of God was an influence on Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Egerton also influenced Hardy who used her when creating the character of Sue Bridehead in Jude the Obscure. There was a breadth to Egerton’s learning and reading which is impressive and she packed a great deal into her early years. Egerton was one of those writers who were part of the “New Woman” movement; a term invented by Sarah Grand, but taken up by others and holding ideas that women might want to do unheard of things like vote, get educated, have a career and even have sexual desire. She had work published in The Yellow Book and Wedlock dates from 1894. It is more a short story than novella and also appears in one of her collections. I can do no better at this point than copy some of the reactions at the time; “Neurotic and repulsive” Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine “A deliberate outrage” Athenaem “Crazy and offensive drivel” Saturday Review Encouraging isn’t it! The title gives an indication; it is not titled marriage, but wedlock with the emphasis on lock. It has been described as proto-modernist and there is a fluidity in the narration which passes easily between unnamed characters. The plot is simple Susan Jones lives with her husband and his three children from a previous marriage (today that would point towards divorce, then death would most likely be the reason). Susan has a child born out of wedlock; the reason she married her husband is because he promised that her child would be able to join the family rather than live with Susan’s sister. This promise he has broken and Susan has descended into despair and alcoholism and she resents her husband’s children. Then she discovers, quite by accident that her daughter is dying and her husband has been intercepting letters and a telegram informing her. There is no happy ending. The ending is horrific and delivered in a rather gothic way. It was published in the same year as Jude the Obscure, but earlier in the year. The serialisation of Jude did not start until December. There is one very striking similarity, so striking that it makes me think that Hardy must have been influenced by this. The working class slang is hard work at times and it feels a little forced. The shock engendered in the reader is still there today; it must have been much sharper when it was written. The work explores power and control and the nature of matrimony, broken promises, depression and apathy and its effects. Egerton’s particular interest was to explore what she saw as the wilder and more savage spirit in women which society tried to tame; she saw the structures of marriage and the family as being part of the problem. There is some contradictoriness in her views, but she is a fascinating character and far too little known. 8 out of 10

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Attwood The words Booker Prize winner don’t always fill me with confidence and I haven’t read any Attwood for some years; but I thought it was about time I tried. This one is quite hefty at over 600 pages. The narrative is complex and has a number of strands; a bit like those wooden dolls from Russia that fit inside one another. I disagree with the reviews that say it is badly written and too long. It reads very easily and keeps the attention and I’m always a sucker for good historical novels. The plots revolve around sisters Iris and Laura Chase and their family history during the first half of the twentieth century. The backdrop is Iris in old age looking back on her life and back to her sister Laura’s suicide just after the end of the Second World War. There is a novel within the novel, the story of a love affair; but who is having an affair with whom? There is a science fiction novel verbally told. Iris relates her present life in old age and tells the Chase family history. A privileged childhood until the depression and the collapse of her father’s business. An arranged marriage to a cold and brutal man to save the family and the machinations of his sister. There are twists and mysteries before it is all played out. Attwood covers the joys and cruelties of childhood, the turbulence of adolescence, the perils of the status of women in marriage, the playing out of dramas within the space created by family, revenge and much more. It is a real saga type tale, beneath it all it’s a good story told by a good storyteller. It is, of course, a story about storytelling. The heroic characters, although flawed are suitably heroic (not in an all-action sort of way) and the villains truly villainous. Loose ends are tied up beautifully. This being Attwood, there is of course more going on. The use of power and its outworkings; both of the primary male characters, Richard and Alex are abusive. The capitalist and the socialist. There is an endless war of all against all and the balance of power shifts and moves. Elaine Showalter points out that the family nature of the saga over a couple of generations enables one to track the way women are treated over time and in the context of family. Iris is the survivor and puts it all together to pass onto her granddaughter, who isn’t known to her but who will inherit the saga. 8 and a half out of 10 Starting Frangipani House by Beryl Gilroy

Master Georgie by Beryl Bainbridge An interesting historical novel which won loads of prizes and accolades and is a brief and straightforward read. Bainbridge uses the medium of photography to hang the novel on; six photographic plates. The first two plates are set in Liverpool in 1846 and 1850 and the rest in 1854 in the Crimea. The Master Georgie of the title is George Hardy, a surgeon and amateur photographer. His story is told alternately by three other characters. Myrtle is a foundling brought up by the Hardy’s after being found by George. The exact circumstances are unclear, but Myrtle idolises George. By 1854, when Myrtle is 20, they have a sexual relationship, despite George’s marriage. Dr Potter is married to George’s sister Beatrice and is a Geologist; he is verbose and a little pompous, but does notice things. The last narrator is Pompey Jones initially a street urchin who crosses George’s path a number of times and by 1854 he is a photographer’s assistant in the Crimea. He is straight out of Dickens, overcoming his humble beginnings. George is a complex character who is attracted to women and men and has the associated Victorian guilt in large amounts. Both Pompey and Myrtle have been on the receiving end of his attentions. The different narrative voices don’t disrupt the flow and it is interesting to have the change of perspective on a regular basis. There are some points made by the author. At the beginning of the novel it seems that fate and destiny are in some degree under the control of those with some power and privilege. By the end with the horror and carnage of the Crimean war it is clear events are completely random. The satirical aspect is also clear. Tennyson glorified aspects of the campaign, remember the poem The Charge of the Light Brigade; there is no glorification here as we see what surrounds the occupation of surgeon. There is also a caricature of the British abroad with wander around the Crimean peninsula as though it was a Sunday School outing, and, of course the sheer stupidity of war is there for all to see. There is also a blurring of memory. When George is drunk and makes a pass at Pompey Jones, early in the book, their later recollections are very different and Bainbridge makes the point that we all construct our own past history. This is a deceptive novel which seems quite simple, but has a number twists and turns and it could easily be managed on a wet afternoon. 7 and a half out of 10 Starting In Darkest London by Margaret Harkness

Deadlock by Dorothy Richardson This is the sixth novel in the Pilgrimage series and for me it raises some more challenging issues. Richardson deals with race, empire and politics to some extent, although I think this may be the starting point for ongoing developments in later novels and Miriam is beginning to engage with a variety of ideas; her feminism also grows apace as well. The bulk of Deadlock revolves around Miriam’s relationship with Michael Shatov, a Russian Jew. They become quite close and spend time at the British Museum where Shatov introduces Miriam to Russian literature. They discover a mutual love of philosophy and as they get closer marriage is clearer under consideration. Most of the misgivings are on Miriam’s side! There are some interesting moments; such as the first time Miriam hears a phonograph and the descriptions of London are again quite vivid. However race and imperialism are central. There was little questioning of imperialism in late Victorian novels, but the development of the modernist novel combined with the effects of the war began a process of examination and questioning. There is a movement in this novel. Early in the novel Miriam and Michael argue about individualism and Englishness and Miriam tries to express what she means by being English in ways which are quite traditional. By the end of the meeting she is attending a socialist meeting and struggling with their ideas. I am avoiding something. There was a time when I used to avoid unpalatable facts about people I admired. I don’t do that anymore. There is a passage in Deadlock which I have a real problem with; it runs as follows: “Miriam sat frozen, appalled by the presence of a negro. He sat near by, huge, bent, snorting and devouring, with a huge black bottle at his side. Mr. Shatov’s presence was shorn of its alien quality. He was an Englishman in the fact that he and she could not sit eating in the neighborhood of this marshy jungle. But they were, they had. They would have. Once away from this awful place she would never think of it again. Yet the man had hands and needs and feelings. Perhaps he could sing. He was at a disadvantage, an outcast. There was something that ought to be said of him. She could not think what it was. Every time she sipped her bitter tea, it seemed that before she should have replaced her cup, vengeance would have sprung from the dark corner. Everything hurried so. There was no time to shake off the sense of contamination. It was contamination. The man’s presence was an outrage on something of which he was not aware. It would be possible to make him aware. When his fearful face, which she sadly knew she could not bring herself to regard a second time, was out of sight, the outline of his head was desolate, like the contemplated head of any man alive. Men ought not to have faces. Their real selves abode in the expressions of their heads and brows. Below, their faces were moulded by deceit. … While she had pursued her thoughts, advantage had fallen to the black form in the corner. It was as if the black face grinned, crushing her thread of thought.” I am aware that part of the point of the passage is that Miriam was finding Michael Shatov in some sense alien and in contrast here he is not; the juxtaposition is the point. I have read a couple of closely argued, complex and detailed articles by Richardson scholars which attempt to explain this and Richardson’s attitude to race and conclude Richardson is questioning attitudes to race. Here is an interesting passage from Shawn Loewen’s thesis; “Miriam is not truly representative of the late nineteenth-century emancipated woman. Richardson has grafted the context of the 1920s onto her heroine of the past, allowing Miriam to be conscious of her racial assumptions in a way that would not have been possible at that time. Deadlock ultimately reveals how a pioneering writer of the early 1920s could still be profoundly influenced by imperialism even, as she was breaking away from its worldview. Like Miriam herself: Richardson could only perceive imperialism and its assumptions from the inside.” Yet contrast this passage when Miriam is walking down the street with Shatov and he begins to sing in Russian, They are passing a group of English workmen; “'Go 'ome,' she heard, away behind .. .'Blooming foreigner'; close by, the tall lean swarthy fellow, with the handsome grubby face. That he must have heard. She fancied his song recoiled, and wheeled sharply back, confronting the speaker, who has just spat into the middle of the pavement. 'Yes,' she said, 'he is a foreigner, and he is my friend. What do you mean?' The man's gazing face was broken up into embarrassed awkward youth. Mr Shatov was safely ahead. She waited, her eyes on the black-rimmed expressionless blue of the eyes staring from above a rising flush. In a moment she would say, 'it is abominable and simply disgraceful,' and sweep away and never come up this side of the road again. A little man was speaking at her side, his cap in his hand. They were all moving and staring. 'Excuse me, miss,' he began again in a quiet, thick, hurrying voice, as she turned to him 'Miss, we know the sight of you going up and down. Miss, He ain't good enough forya.” This assumption of racial superiority extends to Michael Shatov, who is her friend. The juxtaposition of Shatov’s Jewishness to Miriam has been compared to that of Bloom in Ulysses to Stephen Dedelas. An interesting direction of thought. Loewen goes on to argue that Richardson at the same time challenges and endorses imperialism’s approach to race. Miriam at the same time seems to believe that foreigners should in some way assimilate into society, but also seems to believe they cannot. Feminism at this time still had issues with extending the ideas to all races, although Miriam does recognise at the end of the novel the unfairness of the seating arrangements in the synagogue in terms of men and women. She seems to struggle more with the contrast of her own growing sense of emancipation with the situation of the Jewish woman; as yet there is no link made to the struggles of women in other cultures. Shatov is a foil to Miriam’s thoughts here as he points out to her that many of her prejudices are unconscious. This is a work in progress and Richardson has set many plates spinning; time will tell how she manages them all. I am still left with the unpleasant feeling I had when I read the quote above. I know Richardson saw each of these novels as chapters, so I will leave my conclusions on race until the end. 7 out of 10 Starting novel seven; Revolving Lights

Double Drink Story; my life with Dylan Thomas by Caitlin Thomas This is Cailin Thomas’s account of her life with Dylan Thomas, written many years after his death and after she had given up alcohol. This is really an account of their lives with alcohol. Neither of them come across as likeable and one’s sympathies are inevitably with their children. This isn’t a traditional biographical account, but focuses rather on Caitlin’s feelings about and reactions to Dylan; which were powerful and unpredictable. The myth of Dylan Thomas is exploded, in terms of how he was to live with. Drink, particularly beer was dominant. He was a raconteur and utterly charming of course. He was also constitutionally incapable of fidelity and totally selfish. There is a lengthy analysis on the effect of drink and its impact on the pair of them. This account is much more impressionistic than Thomas’s previous accounts of her life and not published until after her death. There is a madness and desperation to it which reminds one of books like Leaving Las Vegas; only this isn’t fiction. Her son to her second husband has edited this and she wrote with his help; he draws similarities with Sylvia Plath. She tried to commit suicide several times and her life in Dylan’s shadow meant that her own talents were neglected. She has been portrayed as drunken (that part is true), irresponsible in relation to her children, unloving and unfaithful to Dylan in her turn. The book illustrates that her attempts at infidelity were a total disaster. She was expected to look after her famous husband and put up with his moods and infidelities and they were certainly violent towards each other. Alcoholism does not lead to good parenting. The real problem is that Dylan was at the same time much more and much less than she expected. It is a searingly honest account of the effects of alcohol, madness and genius; written by a survivor. The brief account of Caitlin’s childhood are charming and such a contrast with the madness that came after. 7 out of 10 Starting Master Georgie by Beryl Bainbridge

One Way of Love by Gamel Woolsey Sonnet by Gamel Woolsey When I am dead and laid at last to rest, Let them not bury me in holy ground – To lie the shipwrecked sailor cast ashore – But give the corpse to fire, to flood, to air, The elements that may the flesh transform To soar with birds, to float where fishes are, To rise in smoke, shine in a leaping flame – To be in freedom lost in nothingness, Not garnered in the grave, hoarded by death. What is remembrance that we crave for it? Let me be nothing then, not face nor name; As on the seagull wings where bright seas pour, As air that quickens at the opened door: When I am dead, let me be nothing more. Gamel Woolsey was an American poet and novelist who most people will never have heard of and her story is poignant. She was born in South Carolina in 1895. Following family bereavements she moved to New York hoping to be an actress or writer. Her first poem was published in 1922. She met and married Rex Hunter, a journalist from New Zealand in 1923. One Way of Love is an account of their marriage and separation. In 1927 she met John Cowper Powys whilst living in Greenwich Village and through him, his brother Llewelyn and his wife Alyse Gregory (another interesting character). Gamel had an intense affair with Llewelyn and remained lifelong friends with Alyse Gregory. Woolsey moved to England in the late 1920s and met Gerald Brenan with whom she spent the rest of her life, mostly in Spain. Brenan was part of Bloomsbury. This is Woolsey’s first novel and it is rather good; written in the early 30s, it was ready to be published in 1932. She had showed the draft to Brennan who professed to be impressed by it. David Garnett and Frances Partridge both thought it was wonderful and the publisher Victor Gollancz was prepared to publish. However th prosecution of The Well of Loneliness had made people cautious and at the last minute Gollancz halted the publication because of the novel’s sexual explicitness. The print run was destroyed and Woolsey kept a couple of copies for herself. It was not published in her lifetime. On her death Brenan sent a copy to the British Museum explaining the background and pretty much saying it had no literary merit; entirely untrue and very much a betrayal. Virago (bless them) published in 1987, over 50 years after the first intended publication. The novel is not explicit in the way that modern audiences would understand the word. There is a consideration of female arousal and orgasm which would have unusual at that time, but it is more an analysis of the emotions and experience rather than a physical description. Woolsey tries to analyze what both parties are feeling at the time and how male and female approaches can be on an entirely different wavelength. The main character Mariana is clearly based on Woolsey herself and much of the novel focuses on her marriage to Alan; her feelings of loneliness and apartness, even in a relationship, the boredom and drudgery and the bullying. It isn’t a one sided description and Woolsey carefully describes the positives and negatives; but the reader is left in no doubt that we can never really know the core of another, in essence we are alone. After leaving Alan, Mariana has two brief affairs towards the end of the book. One is with Jack Holworth and this is clearly Llewelyn Powys. Their physical descriptions are very similar and Holworth was the name of the nearest village to Llewelyn’s home in Dorset. When I realized this I began to wonder if the cancellation of publication was really accidental. Jack Holworth in his first sexual encounter with Mariana, rapes her. She doesn’t physically fight him, but she is unwilling and unhappy. He is entirely wrapped up in his own urges and his own perception of her and does not see her unwillingness and the fact that she might not be consenting does not cross his mind. Even more powerfully and explosively; “Mariana attracts you so much because she is decently grown up, has even been married so that your desires are possible and lawful, and yet you can think of her as a child who could be raped – without really hurting her.” Woolsey analyses the thoughts of all the men Mariana has relationships with, the otherness of them and their thoughts about her. Alan is interested in the idea of being in love, but his ideal of what Mariana should be is not matched by her reality. Mariana ends the book alone and her thoughts are summed up; “Happy — I will never be happy with anyone … In all our crazy, twisted, besotted heads there's nothing with which to make people happy. I am as bad as the rest. I am only different in knowing it. They are complacently self-satisfied in the thought that they can make anyone happy — they are sure that they are good, that they are successful. How stupid we are! And how can we help being so? Each one of us is a small bit of animated consciousness enclosed in a bone case, separated by air and space from its fellows with no way of knowing what goes on in any other mind” Mariana is pessimistic about the ability of men to meet her needs while hoping to meet one that will. This is a work of brutal honesty, which at its heart is about loneliness; there is a lyrical quality about it, which you would expect from a poet. It is remarkably good, especially for a first novel. The sonnet I began with has a prescience as Woolsey was written out of Llewelyn Powys’s autobiography; her first novel was almost lost and only rescued by the good offices of Virago Press. Her second volume of poetry was rejected by T S Eliot and as she became older Woolsey retreated increasingly into the past as her literary ambitions were thwarted (although she did write an account of the civil war in Spain as it affected her village). Some lines of her poetry sum it up; “Oh, must we always live with the fixed past? Is there no future in which we can alter the sunken day” Gamel Woolsey was destined to be defined by the men around her when she should have been an author in her own right and judging by this novel, would have gone on to write a great deal more. 8 and a half out of 10 Starting Millenium Hall by Sarah Scott

The Ladies of Llangollen by Elizabeth Mavor The Blurb from the back of the book: “Lady Eleanor Butler was 29 when she first met Sarah Ponsonby, a sensitive retiring girl of 13. Ten years later the two ladies eloped. Amid scenes of scandal and havoc they settled in an idyllic cottage in Llangollen where their unorthodox relationship blossomed, and their generous, civilised way of living became a legend.” They lived together for over 50 years and were only parted by death. The story of Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby has long been one that has fascinated and Elizabeth Mavor has done a good job of cutting through all the myths and telling their story in a competent and scholarly way. Both women were members of the Anglo-Irish upper class. Both were women and therefore not going to inherit and so a good marriage was what was expected of them. Eleanor was bookish and was interested in literature and language (much to the annoyance of her family) and as she was 39 in 1778 and was now unlikely to marry her family planned to place her in a convent. Sarah was 16 years younger and had been friends with Eleanor for ten years; they lived only two miles apart. Sarah was orphaned and living with her guardian Sir William Fownes and his family. Sir William’s wife was ailing and he saw Sarah as a ready-made replacement and Sarah was suffering from his unwanted intentions. Both had good reason to want to be somewhere else. They hatched a plan to live together in England and dressed in men’s clothing they set out for Waterford and the ferry. They were captured and endured a period of detention by their families. Eleanor escaped again and was hidden in Sarah’s bedroom for ten days. Eventually and reluctantly the families gave way and the two women left Ireland and settled in Llangollen in Wales in a cottage called Plas Newydd. Here they lived for over 50 years. The story of their elopement and their new way of life became well known. They developed their cottage and their garden, kept a very detailed journal, corresponded voluminously, studied literature and languages and very rarely spent time away from their retreat (two nights in 17 years according to Mavor). Their fame spread and their list of visitors is impressive: Wordsworth, Southey, Byron, Shelley, Sir Walter Scott, the Duke of Wellington (a longstanding friend), Josiah Wedgwood, Lady Caroline Lamb, Dr Johnson, various assorted members of the royal family and several continental princes and princesses. Their fame has continued and they influenced the suffragettes; one suffragette, Mary Gordon wrote a biography of them based on the new psychotherapeutic ideas. Colette wrote about them in Ces Plaisirs in 1932 and Simone de Beauvoir mentions them in The Second Sex. Inevitably people have speculated about their relationship; they shared a bedroom and a bed; their relationship was private and its nature is not really known. There was a tradition of romantic friendships between women in the eighteenth century with novels like Millennium Hall by Sarah Scott portrayed a feminine utopia. This sort of literature was almost certainly known to both women. They referred to each other as My Beloved (shortened to My B) or my Better Half and often entwined their signatures. They created scandal in some circles, but were accepted by most. They were rather traditional in their political views, quite conservative, worried by the French Revolution and the spread of radicalism (and Methodism, which also worried them). 8 out of 10 Starting Rainsplitter in the Zodiac Garden by Penelope Shuttle

A Burnt Out Case by Graham Greene Greene writes books which require thought, because he puts his own struggles with faith and philosophy into his novels. The principal character is Querry, a famous architect who is disillusioned with his work, his faith, relationships and life in general. He travels to the Congo, to a leper colony deep in the interior and run by a Catholic monastic order. Here he makes himself useful and even safes the life of one particular resident, by rescuing him when lost at night. Querry has travelled to what he perceives to be the end of the world; bur he is still recognised, by the monks who are quite worldly (apart from one brother) and by a local plantation owner Ryker, who is very strictly religious. An English journalist arrives (there’s no escape from the press!!) and chain of events is set off which ends in tragedy. Greene sets up philosophical discussions between Querry and the mission doctor, Dr Colin, who is an atheist and is the most sympathetic character in the whole book. Greene did go to a leper colony in what was then the Congo (Yonda to be precise) to stay for a while. There is a fascinating article about his stay by the doctor there, Michel Lechat; in the London Review of Books. The issue I have been avoiding up till now is Conrad and Heart of Darkness. The journey downriver that Querry takes is the same one made in heart of darkness (indeed the same one Greene made and also Conrad in 1890). Greene was reading Conrad on his journey. There are links between the journeys in both books, the centrality of the rivers and the quest for salvation/redemption. Although Greene works much harder to make the reader like Querry than Conrad does Kurtz. Then the question arises as to whether Chinua Achebe’s objection to Heart of Darkness is pertinent to Greene as well: ‘Can nobody see the preposterous and perverse arrogance in thus reducing Africa to the role of props for the break-up of one petty European mind.’ I think it does. Greene’s choice of location for his novel was a little anachronistic even when he wrote it and he was considering I think a Schweitzer type of approach to faith. Conrad’s novel is more politically motivated and contains a great deal more metaphor. Greene is more concerned with the “human soul” and I think he does as Achebe suggests, use Africa as a prop for the discussion. Orwell’s criticism of an early Greene novel, The Heart of the Matter; that it could have taken place in Surrey rather than Sierra Leone holds for this novel too. It could really have taken place anywhere. The time when the novel is set was just before independence and there was a great deal going on politically (The Poisonwood Bible is set at the same time). None of this finds its way into the novel. There is a good deal of melodrama and farce about the tale. One senses Greene identifies somewhat with Querry and there may be some self-justification going on; especially in relation with Greene’s relationships with women. Nevertheless Greene can certainly write and the novel reads very easily. This however makes the shortcomings more frustrating. The religious and philosophical discussions are interesting, but I enjoyed The Power and the Glory more. 6 out of 10 Starting Double Drink Story: My Life with Dylan Thomas by Caitlin Thomas

Train Dreams by Denis Johnson This is a brief novella, easily readable in one sitting; well written and lyrical. It is a third person historical tale about the life of Robert Grainier spanning the period from the 1880s to the 1960s with the depression of the 1930s standing out in the background. Grainier is a manual worker who works over the years on the railroads, logging, transporting; but generally earning from the sweat of his brow. Grainier is an ordinary man with hopes and dreams, a decent man who suffers loss and tragedy, but who refuses to let life beat him down completely. Strikingly, he is a kind man with a conscience. There is also a sense of the pioneering spirit and the proximity and wilderness; a sense of great space. This, I think is what taps into a particularly American sensitivity; you don’t get the same feel on this small island. It is also a novella about masculinity; there are very few female characters. At a surface level it is about building things, making stuff and machines and machinery. For some reason I never really myself got that supposedly masculine feel for building, taking apart or putting back together. I don’t have a shed or “man-cave”; give me a book lined room every time. The wilderness doesn’t appeal (where are the bookshops and libraries?) and machinery is purely functional. I have a car to get from A to B, not for any other reason and being in charge of a roaring great hulk of machinery has never really appealed to my aesthetic sense. That side of the novel doesn’t appeal, but the prose is wonderfully lyrical and the landscape is a character in its own right. There is a good deal of American myth in this; the odd ghost, a feral child, half-dog half wolf pets, frontier tales and Grainier himself almost becomes mythical as a woodsman himself towards his end. I was reminded of Woody Guthrie’s autobiography, “Bound for Glory”. I think there is also a longer novel here trying to get out. 8 out of 10 Starting Sexual Anarchy; Gender and Culture at the Fin de Siecle

Thank you Pixie House Mother Normal by B S Johnson B S Johnson was an experimental English novelist who is too little known and who took his own life when aged only 40. I was drawn to this particular novel first because of its subject matter; a care home for older people. It follows a portion of the day for the residents and the House Mother (or matron) who is in charge of their care. The time period (its length isn’t clear) includes a meal and clearing up, the house song (truly awful) some “work” (including sticking together Christmas crackers and putting stuff in bottles), pass the parcel and dancing; although I’m not convinced dancing is what is being described in some cases as it seems to involve mops and wheelchairs and resembles jousting. Each of the residents has allotted 21 pages; the events happen at exactly the same point in each narrative so that comparisons can be made. At the very beginning there is a description of each resident’s medical conditions and capabilities, including a score relating to a set of questions meant to assess cognitive abilities. The residents are given their say starting with the younger and more cognitively able and ending with those who have little or no verbal ability (and much of the last two or three resident’s pages are virtually blank). The House Mother has her say last of all and has an extra page. Johnson himself described what he wanted to do with the novel; “What I wanted to do was to take an evening in an old people’s home, and see a single set of events through the eyes of not less than eight old people. Due to the various deformities and deficiencies of the inmates, these events would seem to be progressively "abnormal" to the reader. At the end, there would be the viewpoint of the House Mother, an apparently "normal" person, and the events themselves would then be seen to be so bizarre that everything that had come before would seem "normal" by comparison. The idea was to say something about the things we call "normal" and "abnormal" and the technical difficulty was to make the same thing interesting nine times over since that was the number of times the events would have to be described. … Each of the old people was allotted a space of twenty-one pages, and each line on each page represented the same moment in each of the other accounts; this meant an unjustified right-hand margin and led more than one reviewer to imagine the book was in verse. House Mother’s account has an extra page in which she is shown to be the puppet or concoction of a writer (you always knew there was a writer behind it all? Ah, there’s no fooling you readers !) Nor should there be.” It is described as a “geriatric comedy”, but the comedy is very bleak indeed. There is more of a growing sense of horror as the petty tyranny and brutality gradually come across to the reader. There might be a temptation to say that all the abuse is the invention of the writer; but unfortunately I can assure you that it is not. Whilst there is an oddity in some of the abuse here, most of it is plausible and has been done. It is only necessary to recall the Winterbourne view case (this will be familiar to those in the UK), which was quite recent. As Johnson says this is a study of what is normal and abnormal, but it is also a study in the use and abuse of power; exercised over the weak and vulnerable. Johnson manages to make the voices of the residents poignant and human as they look back over their lives and loves. He also captures the disconnectedness of cognitive deficit very well. He doesn’t in my opinion quite get advanced dementia right; communication may be very limited, but I don’t believe the mind is as blank as he indicates. This is a brave and interesting novel. There have been some critics who have noted that this could be seen as a deeply unpleasant book and calling it a comedy is not appropriate. This misses the point; Johnson does try to make the reader laugh with his descriptions of some of the events. However because of the poignancy and humanity of the pen portraits the reader realises what they are laughing at is the abuse and brutalisation of a vulnerable human being. There is also a sense of the writer reminding the reader that this could be where they are headed too and will it be any better then? 9 out of 10 Starting One Way of Love by Gamel Woolsey

Afternoon of a Good Woman by Nina Bawden From the back cover; “Penelope has always tried to be a good woman: as wife, mistress, mother and magistrate. But today – the day she has decided to leave her husband – she sits in the Crown Court listening to a short, sad case of indecent exposure and a long, involved incident of theft, and mentally reviews her own convoluted private affairs. And wonders how they would stand up in court.” The novel takes place over the course of one day in the life of Penelope with lots of flashbacks and internal musings. There is a good twist at the end and a couple of diversions which might fool the unwary. We learn about her childhood and depressive illness that her stepmother Eve suffered from. Her step siblings, Steve and April figure heavily. Penelope has had a relationship with Steve before she married and is now having an affair with him. Then there is her husband Eddie, a successful playwright (for TV) and novelist. He has a first wife who is in an asylum (shades of Jane Eyre), but he is kind and considerate. He does however have some unfortunate bedroom habits; like putting his wife’s lipstick on his face and chasing her round the bedroom with a real hatchet whooping (I’m not even going to try to analyse that!). He is however well off. Penelope does not love him, but has stayed with him and brought up her own rather boring children. This is well written and focuses on different ways in which relationships are damaging and abusive and poses the question as to whether women are better off alone. One answer is in the ending. There is a parallel theme relating to guilt and judgement and what the difference is between those in the dock during the day and those (including Penelope) who are on the bench. The male characters are a little two dimensional (and weird). Nina Bawden is a clever writer and this novels explores the psyche of one woman and her relationships with men; and her reasoning as to why she had done what she has done and why she is leaving her husband. Penelope has flaws, Bawden is not interested in creating noble and altruistic characters. This makes the novel all the more convincing. It is also very funny at times, despite dealing with such topics as domestic abuse, mental illness, sexuality, guilt and judgement. 7 and a half out of 10 Starting Train Dreams by Dennis Johnson

Mr Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood This is one of Isherwood’s Berlin novels; almost an historical novel of the last years of the Weimar Republic and was published in 1935. Isherwood was part of a group of young English writers and poets who found England repressive and sought a form of exile (hi is also partly a novel of exile); the group included Auden and Spender as well. Berlin was the choice for Isherwood, mainly because an elderly relative had warned him against it, saying it was the vilest place since Sodom. Of course for gay men, such as Isherwood and Auden Berlin was much more liberal and less repressed than England. The two main characters are thinly disguised. The narrator is a young man called William Bradshaw (Isherwood’s middle names) who is travelling to Berlin to be a private tutor. Because Isherwood wanted to put the main focus on Norris, he makes Bradshaw a voyeur who watches what goes on and provides commentary. This makes Bradshaw seem morally neutral (and sexually neutral). Isherwood later thought this might have been a mistake, making it seem as though he was lying about himself. Bradshaw’s moral neutrality also gives the impression that he does not care about what is going on around him. The main character, Arthur Norris, is a very thinly veiled Gerald Hamilton. Hamilton was a complex character who at various times was imprisoned for theft, bankruptcy, gross indecency (he was gay) and he was interned during the second world war for being a threat to national security. He ran guns for the IRA, shared a flat with Aleister Crowley, was a communist sympathiser and had his hands in numerous other schemes. Hamilton wrote three volumes of autobiography, all three had different biographical details. He called one volume Mr Norris and I (Isherwood wrote the forward). He was a conman and raconteur with a good deal of charm. Norris in the book is exactly that, charming and endearing but always up to something and keeping many secrets. There are some genuinely comic moments; such as the party Norris and Bradshaw attend. Bradshaw hears Norris screaming in a bedroom and bursts in assuming he is being attacked, only to find him being soundly whipped by a dominatrix called Anni. The various rituals surrounding Norris’s wig and daily toilette are hilarious. There is also a great supporting cast of minor characters who all add something to the whole. The real star of the book is the underbelly of Berlin in the early 1930s which is marvellously drawn. The various communists and the rather disorganised party machine contrasting with the well run and rather sinister Nazis, who most people seem to think don’t stand a chance of power. This is the tail end of Weimar and a look at the sleazier side of Berlin. It is beautifully written and is a joy to read. The ending outlines the Nazis taking power and the destruction of the communist party. I read the folio edition with some wonderful illustrations by Beryl Cook. 8 out of 10 Starting The Ladies of Llangollen by Elizabeth Mavor

The Modern Woman Revisited: Paris between the wars by Whitney Chadwick and Tirza True Latimer This is an interesting set of essays that looks at women artists/writers/performers in Paris between the wars, exploring the relationship between gender, sexuality and modernity. There are essays on Colette, Romaine Brooks, Radclyffe Hall, Claude Cahun, Lee Miller, Barbette, Djuna Barnes, Tamara de Lempicka, Sonia Delauney, Augusta Savage and several general essays. The general essays include a look at African Americans in Jazz Age Paris, the politics of fashion, sexual identity and photography and the politics of embodiment. All the essays were fascinating and there were copious notes which have done my to be read list no good at all. The black and white illustrations are excellent. The essays relate modernity to class, race and sexuality in a particular time period when there was a resurgence of experimentation and thought. The end of the war was a watershed and the change from a wartime economy towards a more consumer oriented society produced many interesting trends of thought and creativity. The war had also caused a shift in the perception of women and there were tensions between those who wanted to move forward in new and interesting directions and those who wanted to go back towards more traditional roles. The freedom available in Paris meant it became a melting pot for new ideas. All of the essays are interesting and well-argued and there is much to provoke thought. I knew very little about the African American sculptor Augusta Savage and her move to Paris where she could have freedom to work (a freedom she could not so easily have in the US). The chapters on identities includes one on Claude Cahun (born Lucy Schwob) and her partner Marcel Moore (born Suzanne Malherbe) whose photographic and illustrative work was ground-breaking. Their later story and resistance to the Nazis also piqued my interest and their seminal work “Disavowed Confessions” is one I will look out for. Some of the subjects I was already somewhat familiar with (Djuna Barnes, Romaine Brooks, Colette), others like Sonia Delauney and Tamara de Lempicka I knew very little about. Modernism and modernity and the role of women within it is an underlying thread. There is so much in this book and anyone with an interest in Paris in the 20s, women and modernism, Sexual identity, surrealism, decadence, the history of fashion, the politics of fashion, the politics of embodiment, Jazz and the African American community will find something here. 8 and a half out of 10 Starting House Mother Normal by B S Johnson

Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age by Bohumil Hrabel This novella is in fact a single sentence, which gives it a breathless feel. It is the recollections of a man in his 70s told to a group of young women who are sunbathing. It is a telling of stories, most of them bawdy. They are about the narrator’s profession (shoemaking), his time in the army, but most of all his love life. There are lots of references to the European Renaissance, but if you are expecting references to Da Vinci or Michelangelo you’d be out of luck; it’s a euphemism for sex! Hrabal has the reputation of being one of the great Czech writers of the twentieth century and he has influenced many who have followed such as Kundera and Havel. Many of his characters are “wise fools” delivering their profundities in story form. One of Hrabel’s favourite occupations was telling tales in his local inn; the book reads like that as well. There is humour in the tale, but it is repetitive. It did remind me of some of the flights of conversation you get from those with dementia (in the middle stages). A tale from times past (sometimes a fragment) that is disassociated from what came before or after. I think whether you enjoy this book depends on how you feel about the narrator. If you find him irritating (like Holden Caulfield) you will quickly get bored. Admittedly some of it was amusing. The question is do you want to spend time listening to some old bloke telling you about the amorous adventures of his youth. If the answer is no, best to avoid I think! 6 out of 10 Starting Witness Against the Beast by E P Thompson

The Love Child by Edith Olivier This is an oddity by another female writer who is little known. It is Olivier’s first novel (1927) and was well received at the time. Olivier was one of ten children, a daughter of a clergyman; she read history at Oxford, but most of her life was spent in Wiltshire. In the First World War she was an officer in the Women’s Land Army. Olivier had a circle of friends in the late 20s and 30s which included Rex Whistler, Siegfried Sassoon, Osbert Sitwell, Brian Howard, Stephen Tennant, David Cecil and Cecil Beaton. Although socially conservative (she regretted the passing of the “regulated existence” of Victorian Country families, felt that the “domestic education” of women made them more cultured and disliked the pace of modern life) Olivier wrote fiction that was distinctive and odd. She stretches what is meant by reality and often a traditional moral surface is covering something distinctly stranger. Agatha Bodenham lives a reclusive and sheltered life with her mother. She is 32 when her mother dies and alone in the world. She remembers she had an invisible friend as a child called Clarissa who disappeared when she told her governess about her and was ridiculed. Agatha starts to think about Clarissa again and starts to see her and play games with her. So far, so predictable; a study in loneliness and isolation. The oddness starts when other people start to see Clarissa. Clarissa gradually becomes part of the life of the house and the servants see her all the time. Agatha has to explain her presence. Not only does Clarissa now spend time with Agatha and play games with her; over time she also ages. Clarissa is comfortable with Agatha but much less so with other people and children initially. Periodically you have to pinch yourself to remind yourself Clarissa is not real. During the book Clarissa moves from about 11 to about 17. Inevitably the real world intrudes in the form of the daughter of a local family and horror of horrors even a young man. The ending is not unexpected, but the whole is not straightforward. I think we are in Turn of the Screw territory here, but this is better because it is so understated. The novel takes a bit of a Gothic turn at times and there is shade of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein here. The young man in question is called David and he falls in love with Clarissa and he wants to possess Clarissa for himself, which means he becomes Agatha’s rival and both seem to be aware of the situation. Here things seem to become more complex; it isn’t clear how self-aware Clarissa is, but there ae veiled hints. Clarissa is objectified by both parties, who both want to own her. The objectification is very different; for Agatha, Clarissa is a buffer against loneliness, isolation and possibly madness, something/one which is solely hers. Similarly for David, although his objectification relates to desire and possession. Clarissa herself towards the end of the novel appears more distant from both parties and perhaps the message is that no one can be the possession of another. The ending is poignant although it doesn’t feel to me like a fairy tale. It was only written a couple of years after the publication of Mrs Dalloway; her name was Clarissa, so there may be a link. Hermione Lee in her introduction (virago edition) suggests other influences are Austen (Agatha being a female version of Mr Woodhouse) and Hawthorne; Clarissa being very similar to Pearl (I can see that). It is a novel that is difficult to categorise and very memorable; worth reading. 9 out of 10 Starting A Burnt Out Case by Graham Greene