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

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 composed of several short stories, so I was able to read and understand easily. I didn't feel reality from this book. Because the story was different from my life extreamly in Japan. One girl in the book had troubles with school, study and private life because of luck of money. I was made to think "Different Culture". Even now, there are many people suffering from hunger and other problems.

I was expecting to read something complex and difficult to understand and utterly boring, like a couple of classic books I've previously read. I'm glad to say I was utterly wrong. I'm pleasantly surprised with this book. I am, really. It felt pretty much like reading one of Anne Rice's books. And the best part of it is that you can either read it as it is, an interesting, elegant fiction, or like a study about the human behavior.