Books I read in March 2012

Posted on April 1, 2012 by Margaret

I read some good books in March, four of them are crime fiction, indicated below by *, and one is a memoir (Testament of Youth). The others are all fiction. (The links are to my posts on the books).

My Book of the Month has to be Pride and Prejudice and my Crime Fiction Book of the Month is a close call between the books rated 4/5, but on balance I think Peter Robinson’s Before the Poison comes out on top.

So far this month I’ve read 24 books, 22 of them fiction (12 of which are crime fiction), and 2 non-fiction. I’ve been making inroads into my TBR books, with 10 of the 24 books being books I’ve owned since before January 2012.

The Labours of Hercules* by Agatha Christie 4/5
Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain 4/5 (from TBR books)
The Victorian Chaise-Longue by Marghanita Laski 3/5 (library book)
The Messenger of Athens* by Anne Zouroudi 4/5 (Kindle from TBR bks)
Before the Poison* by Peter Robinson 4/5 (library book)
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 5/5 (re-read)
The Inspector’s Daughter* by Alanna Knight 3.5/5 (library book)
The Parasites by Daphne du Maurier 3.5/5 (from TBR bks)
Daphne by Justine Picardie 4/5 (from TBR bks)

Book Beginnings on Friday

Posted on March 30, 2012 by Margaret

This is the opening sentence of the book I’m going to read next:

The night the war ended, both Mrs Trevor and Mrs Wilson went on duty at the Red Cross post as usual.

from The Village by Marghanita Laski. As this sentence indicates the setting is at the end of World War Two – in fact, the very day it ended. It seems to me as though Mrs Trevor and Mrs Wilson don’t want to give up the routine they had during the war and I’m keen to see what effect the end of the war will have on them.

This opening reminds me a bit of One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes, also set in 1946 and chronicles the changes the Marshall family encountered, a book which I loved.

Book Beginnings on Friday is now hosted by Gilion at Rose City Reader.

The Parasites by Daphne du Maurier: a Book Review

Posted on March 29, 2012 by Margaret

Daphne Du Maurier has been one of my favourite authors ever since I read Rebecca as a young teenager. I’ve read quite a lot of her books, some more than once, but this is the first time I’ve read The Parasites.

This is different from the other books by Du Maurier that I’ve read. There’s no real mystery, no dramatic suspense, no need to hold your breath and wonder what comes next. In some ways it’s a family drama and in others it’s a psychological study. The characters, for the most part, are not likeable – they’re selfish and self-centred, the ‘dreadful Delaneys‘. They’re from the theatrical, artistic world and they mix with the rich and the upper classes. They are siblings, with famous parents – Pappy, a singer who is a larger-than life character and Mama who is a dancer. Between them they have three children – Maria, who is Pappy’s daughter; Niall, who is Mama’s son; and Celia who is their daughter.

At the beginning of this book Charles, Maria’s husband accuses her and her stepbrother, Niall and half-sister Celia of being parasites:

… that’s what you are, the three of you. Parasites. The whole bunch. You always have been and you always will be. Nothing can change you. You are doubly, triply parasitic; first, because you’ve traded ever since childhood on that seed of talent you had the luck to inherit from your fantastic forbears; secondly, because you’ve none of you done a stroke of ordinary honest work in your lives, but batten upon us, the fool public who allow you to exist; and thirdly, because you prey upon each other, the three of you, living in a world of fantasy which you have created for yourselves and which bears no relation to anything in heaven or on earth. (page 5)

The narration alternates between the past and the present and between the first person narrator and third person description, which I found rather odd at first. The narrator could be any one of the three – Maria, Niall or Celia – or is it Daphne Du Maurier herself? I read Margaret Forster’s biography of Daphne a while ago and checked what she had to say about The Parasites. I wasn’t surprised to find out that this book is semi-autobiographical. Daphne had written to a friend in 1957 explaining that these characters were her ‘three inner selves’ and Margaret Forster considers that Pappy was modelled on Gerald, Daphne’s father.

It’s the relationships between the three siblings that forms the core of The Parasites. After Charles’s outburst the three of them discuss what he meant and go back through their lives. There are poignant moments as they remember the joys and difficulties of growing up and that strange realisation that you’re no longer a child:

Grown-up people … How suddenly would it happen, the final plunge into their world? Did it really come overnight, as Pappy said, between sleeping and waking? A day would come, a day like any other day, and looking over your shoulder you would see the shadow of the child that was, receding; and there would be no going back, no possibility of recapturing the shadow. You had to go on; you had to step forward into the future, however much you dreaded the thought, however much you were afraid. (page 61)

Like all of Du Maurier’s books I could visualise the scenes, almost as though I was really there. I may not have liked the characters but they are convincing – I wouldn’t want to have to spend much time with any of them. But it’s not all intense. There is also humour to balance the drama, such as the hilarious scene where the Delaneys visit the Wyndham family soon after Maria has married Charles.

Even though this does not rank with my favourites of Daphne’s books I did enjoy it and it spurred me on to read My Cousin Rachel, which I’ve been meaning to read for years, and Justine Picardie’s novel, Daphne – more about both books another time.

Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Virago Press Ltd; New edition edition (5 May 2005)
Language English
ISBN-10: 1844080722
ISBN-13: 978-1844080724
Source: I bought it
My Rating: 3.5/5

The Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Margaret

Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain is based on her diaries, telling of her life up to 1925, concentrating on the World War One years.

It is an absolutely fascinating account of the war and all its horror and sufferings, and very moving. Vera was a VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) during the war, nursing casualties both in Britain and France. The conditions were appalling.

During the war her fiance, Roland Leighton, her brother, Edward, and two friends, Geoffrey Thurlow and Victor Richardson, were all killed. Roland was killed the day before he was due home on leave at Christmas 1915 and Edward was killed just a few months before the Armistice – all heart-breaking. Vera’s life was irrevocably changed – as were those of so many others.

For me, her account of the war years is the most outstanding in this book, the most personal and vivid. The preceding years are about her childhood and youth and bring to life the social conditions and her struggles for education. By the outbreak of war she was an undergraduate at Somerville College, Oxford. But I found the final section after the war to be more detached. It’s about her work as a speaker on the League of Nations and International Relations, about the development of the peace ideal. The language in this section is more formal and so does not come across as fresh and immediate as in those on her childhood and war years.

I read this book as a result of reading Climbing the Bookshelves by Shirley Williams, Vera’s daughter. It slots nicely into the War through the Generations Challenge – World War One and into the Tea and Books Challenge (books of over 600 pages).

Paperback: 640 pages
Publisher: Virago; New Edition with new cover edition (2004)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0860680355
ISBN-13: 978-0860680352
Source: borrowed from a friend – I’ve now bought the e-book version
My rating 4/5 (it would have been 5/5 apart from the change in writing in the last section)

Recent Reading

Posted on March 21, 2012 by Margaret

I’ve read some books recently and haven’t written about them – ‘real life’ keeps getting in the way! So here are a few brief notes on three of the books I’ve read this month:

The Messenger of Athens by Anne Zouroudi 4/5 – the first in the Hermes Diaktoros, Greek detective series, set on a remote Greek island. Hermes investigates the death of a young woman. It’s great on location and characters, but a bit slow in parts. Each of the books in the series features one of the Seven Deadly Sins – in this one it is the sin of lust. I’ve read the third book in the series – The Doctor of Thessaly - and have the fifth one, The Whispers of Nemesis. I just need to find the second and fourth books to complete the series.

Before the Poison by Peter Robinson 4/5. This is a stand-alone book, about Chris Lowndes, a widower who has bought a house in the Yorkshire Dales. Sixty years earlier a man had died there and his wife Grace was convicted of his murder and hanged. Chris wants to discover whether she really was guilty. This is a convincing mystery, told alternating between the present day and the past. Another book well grounded in its locality and with great characterisation.

The Inspector’s Daughter by Alanna Knight 3.5/5 – the first in the Rose McQuinn Mystery series. Set in Edinburgh in 1895, Rose, recently returned from America’s Wild West, steps into the shoes of her father, DI Faro (another series of books features this detective). Her friend Alice ask her to investigate her husband’s strange behaviour as she is convinced he’s having an affair. Meanwhile there is also the mystery of the brutal murder of a servant girl to solve. Rose lives in an isolated house at the foot of Arthur’s Seat and is helped by a wild deerhound who appears just when she needs him. An interesting historical murder mystery, convincingly set in the late 19th century, when Edinburgh was developing and the Forth Railway Bridge had just been opened.

March Prompt – A Classics Challenge

Posted on March 20, 2012 by Margaret

The focus this month in the Classics Challenge is on Setting.

I’ve just finished re-reading (for the umpteenth time) Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Each time I read it I still enjoy it immensely. I think knowing what happens next adds to the pleasure. I read it this time looking out for information about the settings – something I haven’t done before, although Pemberley always stands out!

There are many locations, but for this post I’ve chosen Longbourn.

Pride and Prejudice is a novel based on character, plot and is a study of society in the late 18th/early 19th centuries, but above all it is a love story. The settings provide an essential backdrop but in most cases leave a lot to the reader’s imagination; dialogue takes precedence over description – place is really unimportant.

The book begins with no indication of its setting, or time of day, with a conversation between two characters – Mr and Mrs Bennet. And it is only in the third chapter that the location is revealed and then all we learn is that that the family lives in the village of Longbourn, where they are the principal inhabitants. More information about Longbourn is scattered throughout the book. It’s one mile from the village of Meryton, in Hertfordshire, where the militia are quartered for a while, and twenty four miles from London.

Longbourn House is the family home of the Bennets. There is little description of the house. It must be quite large, it has land – an estate, including a farm. The family have the use of a carriage and horses, when they are not needed for farm work. There are servants – a butler, housekeeper, cook and maids, a drawing room, dining-parlour, and dressing rooms as well as bedrooms. There are gardens, with gravel walks, a shrubbery, a hermitage, and what Lady Catherine de Burgh called ’a prettyish kind of little wilderness on one side of your lawn.’

Reading the book I haven’t formed a definite picture in my mind what Longbourn House looks like, although I like this one from the 1995 TV series.

Luckington Court the 1995 TV location of Longbourn House © Copyright Paul Ashwin and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

The Alphabet in Crime Fiction

Posted on March 19, 2012 by Margaret

Kerrie’s community meme – The Alphabet in Crime Fiction – is back for 2012 – for full details see her blog, which includes a schedule showing the date that the week’s page will be posted and the letter of the week. It begins on May 21, with, of course, the letter A. Could that be a post about Agatha Christie, or one of her books, I wonder?

The rules are that each Friday you write a blog post about crime fiction related to the letter of the week.

Your post MUST be related to either the first letter of a book’s title, the first letter of an author’s first name, or the first letter of the author’s surname, or even maybe a crime fiction “topic”. But above all, it has to be crime fiction. It is ok to skip a week.

I’ve signed up and will be posting each week where possible – some letters are always tricky!

Happy Mother’s Day

Posted on March 18, 2012 by Margaret

Today is Mother’s Day, or Mothering Sunday. My son knows what I like and sent me this book:

Oak Oak by Stephen Taylor

It’s a beautiful book telling and showing how British artist Stephen Taylor has painted the same oak tree in a field in Essex, England, dozens of times over a period of three years in extremes of weather and light, at all times of the year and hours of the day.

I’m fascinated by how artists create their pictures and this book is excellent. Not only is it full of illustrations, but Stephen also describes his methods of painting, outside and in the studio and explains what he was aiming to achieve.

I hope to write more about this book when I’ve had more time to study it. One thing that struck me immediately was this fact stated in Alain de Botton’s introduction:

The oak is estimated to be 250 years old. It was therefore already home to skylarks and starlings when Jane Austen was a baby and George III the ruler of the American colonies.

I love such connections! Thank you, Paul.

The Labours of Hercules by Agatha Christie: a Book Review

Posted on March 17, 2012 by Margaret

The Labours of Hercules is a collection of 12 short stories featuring Hercule Poirot, first published in 1947. Poirot is thinking of retiring, but before he does he wants to solve 12 more cases and not just any cases. These have to correspond to the Twelve Labours of Hercules, specially selected problems that personally appeal to him.

Most of the stories are quite easy to work out, but that doesn’t detract from the pleasure of reading them. And so that he can complete his twelve cases, Poirot does some uncharacteristic travelling around the world – he can’t rely solely on his ‘little grey cells.’

The labours of Hercules were set for the classical Greek hero by King Eurystheus of Tiryns as a penance. On completing them he was rewarded with immortality. On the face of it, Poirot and Hercules are vastly different, both in character and appearance and after immersing himself in classical lore, Poirot decides he is definitely superior, as he looks at himself in the mirror he thinks:

Here, then, was a modern Hercules – very distinct from that unpleasant sketch of a naked figure with bulging muscles, brandishing a club. Instead a small compact figure attired in correct urban wear with a moustache – such a moustache as Hercules never dreamed of cultivating – a moustache magnificent yet sophisticated.

Yet there was between this Hercule Poirot and the Hercules of Classical lore one point of resemblance. Both of them, undoubtedly, had been instrumental in ridding the world of certain pests … Each of them could be described as a benefactor to the Society he lived in … (page 14)

The first case is my favourite of the twelve. It corresponds to killing the Nemean lion a frightful beast. It’s a mystery concerning the kidnapping of a Pekinese dog. At first Poirot is reluctant to take on the case, disapproving of such dogs – ‘bulging-eyed, overpampered pets of a rich woman.’ But there is one small detail that is unusual and he is curious. And as one of the characters tells him. ‘according to the legend, Pekinese were lions once. And they still have the hearts of lions.’
The Lernean Hydra was a monstrous snake with many heads. In the second case Poirot’s modern equivalent is malicious gossip, spreading rumours of murder, which he ‘kills’ by discovering who the real culprit was.
The Arcadian Deer - Poirot helps a young mechanic, who is ‘a simple young man with the outward appearance of a Greek god’ reminding him of a ‘shepherd in Arcady’ to find a beautiful young woman who has disappeared – the Arcadian deer.
Poirot’s equivalent of the fourth labour of Hercules in the Erymanthian Boar is to capture a violent murderer. Set high in the Swiss Alps, Poirot is in great danger as he contends with an infamous gang leader and in doing so he is uncharacteristically physically active!
In the Augean Stables Poirot gets involved in politics, averting a scandal using a force of nature, as Hercules used a torrential river to cleanse the stables belonging to King Augeas. Poirot’s equivalent is a sex scandal to divert attention from political chicanery.
The Stymphalean Birds - man-eating birds. In this case Poirot is in Herzoslovakia where Harold Waring is having a restful holiday when he meets a delightful English couple – an elderly woman and her pretty daughter. Also staying at the hotel are two other women – who are not English and who seem to him to be ‘birds of ill omen’. Harold soon finds himself a victim and it is up to Poirot to chase away the ‘birds’ from their hiding place.
The Cretan Bull - in the legend Hercules captures the bull, which was possibly the father of the Minotaur. Diana Maberley appeals to Poirot for help after her fiancé breaks off their engagement as he fears he is going mad. The connection with the legendary story is very slight.
The Horses of Diomedes - the eighth labour of Hercules was to capture the wild horses that were fed on human flesh. Poirot’s equivalent are human beasts who supply drugs – ‘the person who deliberately profits from the degradation and misery of other people is a vampire preying on flesh and blood.’
The Girdle of Hyppolita was captured by Hercules after he had defeated the Amazons and either killed their Queen or had captured one of her generals. Poirot’s ‘Girdle’ is a Rubens masterpiece, stolen in broad daylight. Initially it doesn’t interest him very much, but it brought the case of the Missing Schoolgirl to his attention – and that interested him much more. She had apparently disappeared off a train, leaving a pair of shoes on the railway track.
The Flock of Geryon – in the legend Hercules kills the monster, Geryon, to gain control of the flock. Poirot, of course, doesn’t kill anyone. He meets Miss Carnaby (who is also in the first story, the Nemean Lion) who tells him how worried she is about her friend who she believes is being victimised by Dr Andersen, the leader of a religious sect, The Flock of the Shepherd.
The Apples of the Hesperides. There are several versions of this. The apples grew on a tree guarded by a dragon – Hercules either killed the dragon, or sent Atlas for the apples, in the meanwhile holding up the world on his own shoulders. Poirot’s apples are emeralds on a tree around which a dragon is coiled, on a missing Italian renaissance goblet. It seems that Poirot may have to go on a world tour to retrieve the goblet – to investigate locations in five different parts of the globe.
The Capture of Cerberus – a three-headed dog guarding the gates of Hades, or Hell. In Poirot’s final case Hell is a nightclub run by the Countess Vera Rossakoff, an old friend of Poirot’s. This nightclub is guarded by the ‘largest and ugliest and blackest dog’ Poirot has ever seen. Entrance to the club is only after throwing a ‘sop’ to Cerberus from a basket of dog biscuits. The police believe it’s the headquarters of a drug racket involving the fencing of stolen jewellery. Poirot can’t believe that Vera, for whom he has a soft spot, can be involved. I liked the ending of this story when Miss Lemon queries a bill for roses sent to the Countess. He responds:

‘There are moments,’ he said, ‘when one does not economise.’

Humming a little tune, he went out of the door. His step was light, almost sprightly. Miss Lemon stared after him. Her filing system was forgotten. All her feminine instincts were aroused.

‘Good gracious,’ she murmured. ‘I wonder … Really – at his age! … Surely not…’

I enjoyed this book both for the linking of Poirot’s cases with the Labours of Hercules and for the personal snippets of information about Poirot, scattered throughout the text.

The Victorian Chaise-Longue by Marghanita Laski: Book Review

Posted on March 14, 2012 by Margaret

After I finished reading Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski I wanted to read more by her and borrowed The Victorian Chaise-Longue from my local library. It’s very different from Little Boy Lost and although it’s described as ‘a little jewel of horror’, I didn’t find it very horrifying, or even the slightest bit frightening. It’s about Melanie, a young woman who falls asleep on a Victorian chaise-longue in 1953 and wakes up in a different body, that of Millie, in 1864. No one believes that she is anyone other than Millie, a very sick young woman.

Melanie is a spoilt, pampered young woman, who is recovering from tuberculosis and the birth of a baby. She is indulged by her husband and although she affects a silly, giggly manner she is not stupid. Her doctor observes to himself after hearing a conversation between Melanie and her husband, Guy:

But Melanie isn’t the fool he thinks her, not by a long chalk, she’s simply the purely feminine creature who makes herself into anything her man wants her to be. Not that I’d call her clever, rather cunning – his thoughts checked, a little shocked at the word he had chosen, but he continued resolutely - yes, cunning as a cartload of monkeys if ever she needed to be. (page 5)

It is Melanie’s cunning that helps her in the nightmare situation in which she finds herself, trapped and powerless inside Millie’s body. The book is not really about the paranormal, or time-travel, but more a study of morals, of identity and the changing attitudes towards women, illness and death.

The Victorian Chaise-Longue is an extraordinary little book, but for me it was nowhere nearly as good or as satisfying as Little Boy Lost. The characters are somewhat shallow and insubstantial, although there is a feeling of claustrophobia and suspense as the end drew near and Melanie’s fate is in doubt – would she too die? I go along with P D James, who writes in the Preface of how Marghanita Laski went alone to a remote house to induce the fear she needed to write the book, but thinks:

What precisely she was trying to tell us is unclear; there may be a clue in the lines of T S Eliot which she reprinted at the beginning of the novel: ‘I am dying in my own death and the deaths of those after me.’