Sunday Poetry - Thomas Hardy

For the next few weeks I'll be featuring the poetry of Thomas Hardy in Sunday Poetry. He's always been one of my favourite authors of novels & poetry. I love that melancholy streak in his writing even though sometimes, as in Jude the Obscure, it becomes a little overwhelming. I'll never forget reading the crucial scene of despair in that novel (I won't describe it for fear of spoilers but if you've read the novel, you know the scene I mean, I'm sure). I was sitting on a train, coming home from university, on a gloomy, wet evening in the middle of winter. Maybe that was more appropriate than reading it on a gloriously sunny day but it was so overwhelmingly sad. Mostly I enjoy Hardy's realistic but grim view of human nature & the workings of Fate but Jude is such a sad book. I would like to reread it one day & see if I can find any optimism in it the second time around.

This week's poem is called He Fears His Good Fortune, which reminded me of Jude & of Hardy's whole outlook on life, really. It was published in his collection, Moments of Vision, in 1917.

There was a glorious time
At an epoch of my prime;
Mornings beryl-bespread,
And evenings golden-red;
Nothing gray:
And in my heart I said,
"However this chanced to be,
It is too full for me,
Too rare, too rapturous, rash,
Its spell must close with a crash
Some day!"

The radiance went on
Anon and yet anon,
And sweetness fell around
Like manna on the ground.
"I've no claim,"
Said I, "to be thus crowned:
I am not worthy this:-
Must it not go amiss? -
Well . . . let the end foreseen
Come duly!--I am serene."
--And it came.

By the Book - Ramona Koval

What is the right moment to read a book? Is it when the book reflects the story of our own lives, so that we recognise the characters and what happens to them? Or is it before our own story takes the path of characters? Do we read to show us how to avoid the events within? Has a book read at the right time saved any of us from certain doom?

I think this quote sums up the way Ramona Koval reads & why she reads. I think it's probably true of everyone who can't imagine a life without books.

Ramona Koval is a well-respected & much-loved broadcaster & journalist. For many years she hosted Books & Writing, a weekly radio show about all aspects of literature. She has also interviewed hundreds of authors at writer's festivals from Melbourne to Edinburgh & Toronto. Unfortunately her radio career came to an abrupt end last year after some changes at the ABC but she has now written a book about her love of reading & the kinds of books she reads.

Koval grew up in Melbourne in the 50s & 60s, the daughter of Polish Holocaust survivors who had lived in Paris after the war before emigrating to Australia. Both her parents were the only survivors of their families & their marriage wasn't always a happy one. They didn't talk about their experiences & had very little in common. Ramona's mother was a voracious reader who already knew several languages & taught herself English through her reading. Ramona was encouraged to read but she never discussed her reading with her mother & now sees that as a lost opportunity to know her mother better.

Ramona was a good student & had her sights set on a scientific career until, as she puts it, she married her own Charles Bovary & found herself married & pregnant at the age of 20. All her reading of Flaubert, Mary McCarthy's The Group & Betty Friedan hadn't made her any wiser. Eventually she began a career in radio, first science journalism with the Marie Curiosity Show & eventually Books & Writing on Radio National.

This book is structured around Koval's life & the books she was reading at each stage. So she moves from Enid Blyton to Colette & Simone de Beauvoir. She reads Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Kafka & George Orwell. A fascination with anthropology leads to Margaret Mead & then the books debunking Mead's theories. There are the books she reads about Poland to try to understand more about her parents' early lives. Sometimes the memory of a book or a story leads to the recollection of an interview with the writer as when she meets Grace Paley & Oliver Sacks. I would have liked more about the writers Koval has interviewed although I realise this isn't that kind of book. There are already a couple of collections of interviews, Speaking Volumes & Tasting Life Twice, that were published some time ago. What I enjoyed here was the more informal recollections & Koval's own recollections of reading the work & then meeting the author. As an interviewer she is always intent on keeping the spotlight on her subject.

My favourite chapter, probably because I share the obsession, was about the memoirs of polar explorers. She reads Scott, Shackleton, Cherry Apsley-Garrard. She shares my fascination with the efforts of these men, venturing into the unknown in inadequate clothing & risking their lives for a handful of penguin eggs. She wants to know what they read during the long polar nights & discovers their love of poetry, reference books to settle arguments & cookbooks to feed their fantasies when all they had to eat was seal meat & blubber.

By the Book is a walk through the life & library of an intelligent, inquiring woman. I know Ramona Koval's voice so well that I could hear her voice as I read & I enjoyed learning about her life as well as about the books she's read. I could only agree when she wrote, "A library is a kind of autobiography of interests, fads and life stages."

Anglo-Saxon Art - Leslie Webster

This is a beautifully-produced book on a fascinating subject. I've been interested in the Anglo-Saxons ever since I first read about the Sutton Hoo ship burial. The gold & garnets, the mix of Christian & pagan objects, that helmet with the distinctive, mustachioed face looking back at me, were all captivating. Since then I've read about the Sutton Hoo dig & many other archaeological discoveries, all of them adding to our knowledge of this period. The glorious Staffordshire Hoard, discovered only a few years ago, has added to our knowledge & posed more questions at the same time.

The Anglo-Saxon period begins in the 5th century, after the end of Roman occupation of Britannia & ends with the Norman Conquest of 1066. Leslie Webster's book is divided into thematic chapters describing the different influences from Europe & beyond that created the distinctive style known as Anglo-Saxon. The Germanic tribes who settled in Britain after the Romans, the Christian missionaries sent by Pope Gregory in 597, the Celtic Christianity of Iona & Lindisfarne, the trading routes bringing influences from eastern Europe & Byzantium & the Vikings & other Scandinavian raiders & settlers.

What we think of as the characteristic features of Anglo-Saxon art is dependent on what has survived. This seems an obvious point but it's worth making as Leslie Webster does in her book. What has survived is only a fraction of what must have originally existed. If you think about the Viking invasions, the religious upheavals, the periods when Anglo-Saxon manuscripts & artwork wasn't valued, the random events such as fires & floods where so much was destroyed, it's amazing that we have as much as we do. Sometimes objects survived in Europe because they were taken there by missionaries from England. Sometimes, as with the Staffordshire Hoard, objects were buried & only rediscovered centuries later. Sometimes, the objects were grave goods. Imagine how much more could still be buried, waiting for rediscovery.

I wish I could show you every page of this book. There are over 200 illustrations in a book of just over 200pp. Almost every object described in the text is illustrated. There is magnificent gold & garnet jewellery, illuminated manuscripts decorated with interlace & animals in the initials, carved ivory caskets, stone crosses, intricate metalwork & embroidery like the Bayeux Tapestry. Webster describes the objects in detail, explaining the symbolism & imagery used & comparing it to other objects of the same period & style. Looking at the manuscripts, personal possessions & jewellery of the Anglo-Saxons is an excellent way to begin to understand the people.Webster weaves enough history into her narrative to set the scene but the focus is always on the objects. All the iconic objects are here from the Sutton Hoo helmet to the Alfred Jewel, the Lindisfarne Gospels, & the Franks Casket. There are also many objects that were new to me. This is a beautiful book written by someone who knows her subject intimately & can convey her knowledge easily.

Back to Work

Back to work this morning after a lovely week off. The tomatoes, basil & lettuce have been planted, the vegie garden mulched, the Christmas cake made & lots of reading, walking & playing with the cats has been done. A perfect holiday, in fact.

At one point last week, I had four books on the go, which is a lot, even for me. I reread Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers & then realised that it's less than a year since I last reread it. I finished two other books that I'll be reviewing later this week. And I've been dipping into Persephone no 100, The Persephone Book of Short Stories. This is a celebratory collection of short stories because one of  the specialties of Persephone Books is the short story collection. About a third of these stories have been published in short story collections in the Persephone collection, another third have featured in the Persephone Quarterly & Biannual & the rest are stories by authors not published by Persephone. The authors include Persephone favourites Dorothy Whipple, E M Delafield, Mollie Panter-Downes & Dorothy Canfield Fisher. The "new" authors include several who would be perfect for Persephone's list in the future - Phyllis Bentley, Malachi Whitaker & Helen Hull (who is about to become a Persephone author when her book, Heat Lightning, is published next year).

Two of my favourite short stories are in the collection. Good Evening, Mrs Craven by Mollie Panter-Downes is the title story of the WWII short story collection that was one of Persephone's early successes. I love this poignant story of a woman who is a mistress, not a wife. She has met her lover every Thursday night but when war breaks out & he's posted overseas, she realises that she will have no right to be told if he's wounded or killed. Roman Fever by Edith Wharton is a story of secrets & misunderstandings between two women who meet again after many years on a visit to Rome. It's a beautifully subtle story with an ending that you will never forget. I've read it many times & I'm always moved by the last few lines.

I've bought several cookbooks lately & this lovely book about baking was one of them. I couldn't wait to try a recipe so I chose the Marbled Chocolate Crumble Cake.

Whether it looks like the picture in the book will have to wait until morning tea time when I see if I followed Rachel's directions properly or overdid the swirling! The recipe called for two bowls of cake batter, one plain & one chocolate. Spoonfuls of each mixture are placed in the tin & then it's swirled together with a skewer to give a marbled effect when it's cut. It's so easy to give the mixture one more swirl but it looks alright from the outside. Fingers crossed!

Sunday Poetry - Remembrance Day

A quiet, reflective poem for Remembrance Day. Futility by Wilfred Owen. Lest We Forget.

Move him into the sun—
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds,—
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,
Full-nerved—still warm—too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
—O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth’s sleep at all?

The Time of Women - Elena Chizhova

Elena Chizhova's novel, The Time of Women, won the Russian Booker Prize so when Glagoslav Publications offered me a review copy, I was definitely interested. It's the story of a group of women living together in mid 20th century Moscow.

Antonina is a single mother. She & her daughter, Suzanna, live in a communal apartment with three older women who become Suzanna's "grannies". Of course, they rename Suzanna Sofia & have her secretly baptized. Antonina was lucky to find such a home. She works in a factory & has told the authorities that her daughter is at home with her own mother. She also has to keep secret the fact that Sofia is mute. If her disability was discovered, she would be put into an institution.

The grannies - Glikeria, Yevdokia & Ariadna - love Sofia & soon get used to asking her questions & answering them themselves. As Sofia grows up, she shows talent in her drawings but she is still mute. Through the grannies she learns the history of the Soviet Union & the times before the Revolution. The hard times of war, famine & starvation. The many ways in which the grannies lost their husbands & children until they are now alone except for each other.

Antonina is also essentially alone & struggling to keep food on the table for herself, Sofia & the grannies. The mysterious man who fathered her daughter left her life long ago & Sofia & the grannies are her only family. There's a lot of fascinating detail about life in Soviet times, from the intrusiveness of the factory supervisors who have the right to inquire into the worker's personal lives & report any misdemeanors to the amount of buckwheat flour Antonina can claim as a mother. There are the struggles to afford material to make a dress or buy a TV. When Antonina becomes ill, the grannies realise that they will lose Sofia if her mother dies. She will be sent to an orphanage. They decide that what Sofia needs is a stepfather but that will inevitably bring the time of the women to an end.

The narrative moves from one character to another as we learn the stories of the grannies & watch them scrimping & maneuvering to make ends meet. Sofia's viewpoint is the most fascinating as she observes everything, understands some of what she observes & draws pictures to communicate her thoughts. The final section of the books gives us Sofia's voice as she looks back on her childhood & tells of the grannies as they grew older & more dependent on her. The book has been adapted for the stage in Russia & has been a bestseller. The Time of Women is a fascinating look at Soviet society.

A Necessary End - Hazel Holt

Hazel Holt is one of my favourite writers of traditional English crime. Her books are set in Taviscombe on England's south coast, & the town is a perfect setting for mystery & murder. Our detective is Sheila Malory, a retired teacher; a widow with a married son & much loved granddaughter. Sheila also has two extremely spoilt pets; a dog, Tris and a Siamese cat, Foss. I can always empathise with Sheila as she opens yet another can of food to tempt fussy Foss or gives up & cooks some chicken for him instead.

Sheila is a kind woman with a wide circle of friends & very involved in her community. Her kind nature also leads her to be imposed upon & when her friend, Monica, asks her to help out at a local charity shop while she's away for a few weeks, Sheila reluctantly agrees. Her best friend Rosemary, who would never allow herself to be imposed upon, thinks she's mad but Sheila has promised to help & is reluctant to let Monica down. The shop is run by Desmond Barlow, a bossy, unpleasant man who completely dominates his wife, Wendy, who also works in the shop. Newcomer Norma Stanley has aspirations to take over the shop as she has every other committee she's joined since she & her quiet husband, Marcus, arrived in Taviscombe. The other women working in the shop observe the clash of wills & try to keep the peace while dodging Norma's superior remarks & Desmond's sarcasm.

It's no real surprise when Desmond is discovered dead in the shop one morning, stabbed with a knife that was last used to open a box of donations. The till had also been robbed so the motive for the murder isn't straightforward. Apart from Norma & Wendy, there are several suspects. His son, John, had been bullied into a university course he hated & wanted to do something completely different. He had supposedly left for college before the murder but is it true? Wendy seems completely unmoved by her husband's murder. She immediately makes plans to move to Birmingham to be near John & adopts a stray cat that Desmond had hated. There's also the mysterious man who was seen talking to Desmond several times in the weeks leading up to the murder. Or was it whoever stole the money from the till?

Sheila is confused by Wendy's attitude & surprised to discover that several people had been seen entering the back of the shop on the night of the murder. Sheila's knowledge of human nature & her sympathetic manner enable her to discover a lot about the main suspects & her investigations take in the past lives of everyone involved to untangle the events that led to the murder.

I always enjoy Hazel Holt's books. Sheila is a lovely character. Warm & sympathetic but also determined to get to the truth. I've read the whole series over the years & I especially enjoyed the early books where Sheila was still writing & reviewing in her specialty, 19th century literature, particularly the work of Charlotte M Yonge. Still, there's always the animals & her best friend, Rosemary. There's also my favourite character, Rosemary's formidable mother, who usually manages to enlighten Sheila on some aspect of the case usually through her remarkable memory of local gossip stretching back over 50 years. This lovely series is still in print as paperbacks or ebooks & it's perfect for lovers of the traditional English mystery.