Jennifer Bassett

Haystacks nudge warm and gilded memories to the front of my mind: building dens of hay on my grandparents’ farm, Monet’s series paintings, and Laurie Lee’s Cider with Rosie (written nearly 50 years after this). Golden scrumpy, too, which segues into student daze.

How could anyone not love haystacks? So making love in them is not much of a mental leap. Practice might be pricklier, but would be out of place in this bucolic idyll: a double coming-of-age, with brotherly rivalry, and a show more background of class differences.

Better to Come

This is a straightforward and rather tidy early Lawrence story. The Nottinghamshire dialect is rather strong, and some of the farming detail a little heavy handed. It reminded me of The Archers on BBC Radio 4.

But the writing bears promises of what was to come in later works.

“As he dried himself, he discovered little wanderings in the air, felt on his sides soft touches and caresses that were peculiarly delicious: sometimes they startled him, and he laughed as if he were not alone. The flowers, the meadow-sweet particularly, haunted him. He reached to put his hand over their fleeciness. They touched his thighs. Laughing, he gathered them and dusted himself all over with their cream dust and fragrance… Things never had looked so personal and full of beauty, he had never known the wonder in himself before.”

“The furtive glitter of raindrops through the mist of darkness.”

“He was a very seedy, slinking fellow, with a tang of horsey braggadocio… Small, thin and ferrety… He was all slouching, parasitic indolence.” A tramp (AmE “hobo”).

“She gave an impression of cleanness, of precision and directness.”

“There was a dense mist, so that the light could scarcely breathe.”

Read as part of Selected Short Stories.

Image source for Monet haystacks:
http://mclaughlindrums.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/monet-haystacks.jpg show less

I pick up "The Rubbish Dump".
Joey is a boy in Africa.
He goes to airport because he likes to see airplane.
He comes across Mazambezi, the name meant "rubbish collector".

After I read this story, I considered my life in Japan.
Rich country people throw away garbage, while poor country people
pick up it and sometimes eat it.
I was shocked about that.
I think that thing I can do is not to waste food.

In The Lady in the Lake Raymond Chandler immediately tosses Philip Marlowe, and the reader, into a mystery that’s as complicated and dangerous as a bucket of snakes. Lady starts off strong, and never flags, as Marlowe sets out to find a businessman’s missing wife, and soon is tangled up in a mess of adultery, drugs and killings. The only knock: there’s a plot twist you’re likely to see coming. On the whole, though, the plot here actually hangs together better than in most of show more Chandler's Marlowe mysteries, and is unraveled in a more complete and satisfying way. Very highly recommended. show less

This is the story of a rich girl named Sara. She goes to an expensive private school for girls in London and is like a princess. Then her father suddenly dies and Sarah is suddenly poor, and she has to become a maid at the school. I liked this story, but I thought that Sara was too perfect. She is nice to everyone, always kind, always tries her best and never complains. To me, she didn't seem like a real person.