This week I read A Long Way from Verona, newly released by Europa Editions, having previously read and loved seven other Jane Gardam novels, and I was puzzled as I read this one because it seemed unusual, and while not out of character, a lot less sophisticated in terms of structure than her usual. Though I knew from its description that it was a “coming of age” novel, it was not until I finished both the book and my review that I discovered, to my great surprise, that A Long Way from Verona was also Jane Gardam’s first novel, originally published in 1971. Here, the as-yet-unpublished author examines the growth of a writer from her days as a thirteen-year-old schoolchild in a small British village during World War II to the publication of her first poem, providing insights into the “mania” of writing, what impels it, and the frequent agonies which accompany it, especially when the writer is an enthusiastic adolescent. Like many other debut novels, it is sparkling and insightful, though not perfect, and though it will not completely satisfy every reader, especially those who are fans of her later, more mature and successful novels, it becomes especially significant because one recognizes just how much of the realistic adolescent angst of this novel must be autobiographical. Jessica Vye, the richly described main character, tells her own story, however, filled with the confusions of a thirteen-year-old who is trying to figure out who she is. Throughout the novel, Jane Gardam shows her now well known-wit and her ability to choose exactly the right words and images to covey Jessica’s feelings and her seemingly psychic insights into the people around her. In the later part of the novel, Gardam also creates strong feelings in the reader, many of these feelings related to insights she gives into the creative process.
Read Full Post »
This unusual novel by British author Jonathan Grimwood opens with a child of six, “sitting with my back to a dung heap in the summer sun crunching happily on a stag beetle and wiping its juice from my chin and licking my lips and wondering how long it would take me to find another.” As repulsively specific as the image is, it is not included in the opening scene gratuitously or merely to gain the reader’s instant attention (which it does, anyway). It is part of this character’s obsession with tasting every possible flavor in the world, no matter where it might be found, and no matter how revolting the “food” might be to the rest of the world. At the same time, however, Jean-Marie d’Aumout’s everyday life in eighteenth century France is so fascinating for other reasons – historical, cultural, and political – that even the most squeamish reader is likely to become so caught up in his story, that the food-tasting becomes merely one more aspect of his unusual life. Beginning in 1723 and ending with the “Barbarians at the Gate” in 1790, the novel traces the life of an orphaned young noble as he navigates the political perils in France up to the Revolution, while also pursuing his senses, especially that of taste.
Read Full Post »
Halloween and spooky novels in general come roaring to life in this Dickensian melodrama, set outside of Norfolk, England, in 1867. Eliza Caine, who has suffered a series of personal disasters which have left her an orphan, has made a sudden decision to leave the family “home” in London, in which she has spent her life, to accept the position of governess for a family she does not know in a city she has never seen. She is anxious for change, however. Just one week past, her father had ignored her pleas that he remain at home to nurse his cold and had, instead, attended a reading by Charles Dickens on a miserable, rainy night. He succumbed to fever shortly afterward. Almost immediately after her father’s death, Eliza is informed that the family home is not, in fact, owned by the family, and that she will have to vacate the house. Seeing an advertisement in the newspaper for a governess, signed by “H. Bennet,” she has chosen to leave her current teaching job at a girls’ school and move elsewhere. From the beginning of the novel, Irish author John Boyne draws parallels between Dickens’ work and his own, with some direct references to characters from Dickens’s novels. All the clichés of Victorian plot appear here, and the dramatic and inexplicable actions by ghosts create an atmosphere of doom which will keep a smile on the face of readers familiar with the novels of the period.
Read Full Post »
Posted in 8-2013 Reviews, Biography, Book Club Suggestions, England, Historical, Humor, Satire, Absurdity, Jamaica, Literary on Oct 3rd, 2013
A professional dancer from the age of eleven, Noel Coward (1899 – 1973) spent the rest of his life in “show business” as a playwright (of thirty-nine plays), composer (of over three hundred songs and sixteen musicals and operettas), film maker (of fifteen adaptations of his plays), and actor-director-producer connected with two dozen additional productions. Now, however, it is 1971, as this novel about his life opens, and he is seventy-two and dealing with an endless series of heart and lung problems, no doubt exacerbated, if not caused, by his persistent smoking. As the narrative evolves, impressionistically, Coward’s mind is seen wandering, and he frequently dozes off. He dreams of the Jazz Age and Gertrude Lawrence, and he sometimes relaxes by reading one of several children’s books by E. Nesbit which he loved as a child and still enjoys reading. He drinks too much, eats too little, refuses to see many people, and becomes annoyed if his life partner Graham Payn is not at his immediate beck and call. Often Payn is with Cole Lesley, “Coley” (formerly known as Leonard Cole), who began his association with Coward as a British valet, then became his secretary, manager, and occasional cook. At a time in which rap music is popular and raves are ubiquitous, the witty and clever lyrics for which Noel Coward was so famous, and which depend so much on word play and the rhythm of educated (British) speech, may be completely unfamiliar to readers of this book. Indeed, Noel Coward himself, once a household name, may also be an unfamiliar name to many readers of this book. Fame is fleeting, and never more obviously so than with an author/writer/composer/screenwriter like Noel Coward, who was also brilliant, articulate, and gifted beyond measure.
Read Full Post »
Fay Weldon, author of thirty-four novels at the time this book was written, strikes such a fine balance as she alternates between narrative, perfect dialogue, and metafictional commentary, most of it very funny, that the reader cannot help but become involved on many levels. She makes her writing life sound so intriguing that I found myself playing along, imagining myself as the creator of the dysfunctional characters in “this tale of murder, adultery, incest, ghosts, redemption, and remorse.” Weldon focuses not just on four generations of one family, from seventy-seven-year-old Beverley, three times a widow but not averse to marrying again, to her estranged daughter Alice, her adult grand-daughters Cynara and Scarlett, and her teenage great-granddaughter Lola, along with all their many lovers and husbands. She also focuses on the invisible spirits which have come with Beverley to England from New Zealand, where she grew up (as did the author). These kehua are the Maori spirits of the wandering dead, “adrift from their ancestral home,” charged with “herding stray members of the whanau (extended family) back home so the living and dead can be back together in their spiritual habitation.” They are particularly concerned, in this case, with something that happened to Beverley when she was three years old. Walter, her father, killed Kitchie, her mother, in New Zealand, leaving Beverley an orphan. Despite the novel’s impressionistic structure and lack of predictable chronology, the story moves quickly, at the same time that it also presents a vivid portrait of the author at work. Filled with ironies and understatements, and often hilarious in its dialogue, this novel has something to say about people and their need for connection to the past, at the same time that it can (and should) be read for the pure fun of its characters and point of view. A new addition to my Favorites list. Highly recommended to lovers of literary fiction.
Read Full Post »
