lyzard's list - to 75 and beyond! - Part 2

A new thread for a new quarter!

My January - March thread is over here.




The end of March finds me at 27 books, well ahead of schedule - I'm surprised and pleased!

My roughly chronological examination of the evolution of the novel will continue this quarter, as will my exhumation of forgotten 18th and 19th century novels. I suspect, however, that there will be a preponderence of 1930s literature, as I keep up the struggle to catch up my outstanding blog reviews.

Let's have at it!

April:

28. Family History by Vita Sackville-West (1932)
29. White Fawn by Olive Higgins Prouty (1931)
30. The London Jilt; or, The Politick Whore by Anonymous (1683)
31. The Irish Beauties: A Romance Of The Luck Of The Gunnings by E. Barrington (1931)
32. Secret Lives by E. F. Benson (1932)
33. Bestseller: The Books That Everyone Read 1900 - 1939 by Claud Cockburn (1972)
34. Back Street by Fannie Hurst (1931)
35. Murder In Mortimer Square by Francis D. Grierson (1932)
36. Police At The Funeral by Margery Allingham (1931)
37. The Blanket Of The Dark by John Buchan (1931)
38. Afternoon Men by Anthony Powell (1931)

May:

39. The Novel And The Oxford Movement by Joseph Ellis Baker (1932)
40. The Haunted Room by "A.L.O.E." ("A Lady Of England" aka Charlotte Maria Tucker) (1876)
41. Retribution; or, The Vale Of Shadows. A Tale Of Passion by E.D.E.N. Southworth (1849)
42. Brief Seduction Of Eva by Mathilde Eiker (1932)
43. The London Bully; or, The Prodigal Son by Anonymous (1683)
44. Four Frightened People by E. Arnot Robertson (1931)
45. The Crime At Black Dudley by Margery Allingham (1929)
46. Rookwood by William Harrison Ainsworth (1834)

June:

47. Mystery Mile by Margery Allingham (1930)
48. Cynthia: With The Tragical Account Of The Unfortunate Loves Of Almerin And Desdemona: Being A Novel by Anonymous (1687)
49. Look To The Lady by Margery Allingham (1931)
50. The Jade Of Destiny by Jeffery Farnol (1931)
51. Joan!!! A Novel by Matilda Fitz John (1796)
52. The Destroyer by Ernest Poole (1931)
53. Queen Lucia by E.F. Benson (1920)
54. Roman Holiday by Upton Sinclair (1931)
55. Poor Caroline by Winifred Holtby (1931)

Now reading White Fawn, the first of the "Vale" novels by Olive Higgins Prouty.

I have never heard of the "Vale" novels, Liz, so I cannot wait to see what you think of them.

She's back!! Huzzah!!

The "Vale" novels are best known nowadays as the source of the supreme Bette Davis vehicle, Now, Voyager, which was based on (I think) the third of five novels that Prouty wrote from the '30s into the 50s about the Vales, a prominent Boston family.

Now, Voyager I am familiar with, although I never knew it was based on a novel. Now I am more anxious to see what you think of the Vale books!

Olive Higgins Prouty was also the author of Stella Dallas, which got turned into the supreme Barbara Stanwyck vehicle. :)

I am going to have to check Prouty's books out! See what I am learning my first day back :)

I have posted a blog review of Wilkie Collins' The Law And The Lady, which a few of us did as a group read. (And thanks again, guys!)

Family History - Vita Sackville-West's follow-up to the immensely popular The Edwardians and All Passion Spent was a comparative failure, possibly because it is at all respects an uncomfortable read - although an acute and insightful portrait of an England undergoing social revolution.

Organised into a series of "portraits", this is overtly the story of the Jarrold family, whose head (soon to be enobled in the New Year's honours) rose from the coal pits of northern England to wealth and prominence. Typically, the second generation of Jarrolds is leisured, entitled and smug; but in the young Dan, the oldest of the third generation and his grandfather's heir, there is a hint of a wind of change. Unhappy at Eton and uninterested in hunting and sport and other such acceptable past-times, Dan nourishes ideas about social conditions which alarm and disgust his aunts and uncles, by whom he is tagged "a bit of a bounder".

Dan's only ally is his mother, Evelyn, who while not sharing his concerns, admires the stirrings of an unexpectedly independent spirit. Since the death of her unsatisfactory husband in the early years of their marriage, Evelyn has been the perfect daughter-in-law, living a comfortable but superficial life devoted to clothes, bridge, family gatherings and social engagements, and detached from any deep feeling other than her love for Dan. All that changes, however, when she meets the rising young Labour politician, Miles Vane-Merrick, who is fifteen years her junior...

Sackville-West's account of the affair between Evelyn and Miles is as much political as passionate, and is shot through with irony. Ostensibly, Evelyn represents conservative Old England, and Miles, the new generation; the gap in their ages is symbolic, as well as a practical obstacle. However, as is slowly revealed, Evelyn has in fact "married up", and her adherence to the Jarrolds' code is an act of conscious effort; while Miles, in spite of his progressive politics, lives a thoroughly aristocratic private life, with an estate peopled by workers who "know their place". His comfort with his surroundings and employees is a matter of hereditary, not fellow-feeling.

The uncomfortable quality of Family History stems from an unmistakable sense that, in writing it, Vita Sackville-West was sharply divided against herself. There is no doubt that despite the focus upon Evelyn, Sackville-West's identification figure in this story was Miles - not least in his devotion to his work and, once the initial, obsessive stage of his affair with Evelyn has begun to recede, in his exasperation with her demands upon him, which interfere with that work. Similarities also appear in the contradictions between their public stances as "advanced" and their personal beliefs, which are not so much conservative as they are feudal.

But Miles certainly does not escape without criticism. If his political tenets are progressive, his attitude to women is archaic. He dislikes "clever" women, preferring that they be "idle and decorative" instead; while we can only cringe when he advocates rape as the cure for one woman's personal woes. There is an undercurrent of great bitterness in this book about a society that demands of women that they be beautiful and useless, creatures of emotion and not of the mind - and then sneers at them when they are.

At times, Sackville-West's writing in this novel approaches psychological horror. Her account of the disintegration of the affair between Evelyn and Miles is marked by a terrible understanding of the way in which two people who love can nevertheless destroy one another - and themselves. The break-up is a torturous business, marked on her side by self-destructive behaviour, the commission of acts which she knows will provoke anger and frustration, and on his by calculated cruelty, as he sets out to demonstrate "who's in charge". In this respect, Sackville-West leaves neither her characters nor the reader with anywhere to hide. Though its initial failure is understandable, Family History is absolutely worth reading - but don't expect an easy ride.

I have not read anything by Vita Sackville-West although I have read of her. I own All Passion Spent and expect I will get to it eventually.

You should. :)

I find Sackville-West an interesting but rather difficult writer, though not in a bad way. Her books never quite go in the direction you might expect, which keeps you on your toes.

Finished White Fawn.

Now reading the anonymous 1683 novel, The London Jilt; or, The Politick Whore.

OK, where is the review for White Fawn, Liz? I am waiting! :)

Ummm...percolating?

Tomorrow, I swear!

Promises, promises. . .

White Fawn - prominent, wealthy, steeped in tradition and rigidly class-conscious, the Vale family of Boston prepares for the coming out its oldest daughter, Fabia: a girl her anxious, loving mother thinks of as her "white fawn" - a unique and precious creature, different from its fellows, that must nevertheless learn to run with its herd.

On the night of her debut, shy, sensitive young Fabia Vale receives two tremendous shocks, the first when she catches a glimpse of her adored mother, Lisa, being kissed by a man other than her husband. Running from the house in a state of panic, Fabia suffers the horror of seeing her dog hit by the car of a driver who does not stop. Unable to find help, Fabia eventually returns to the house late for her own party. Her father, Rupert, unsympathetic to her situation, demands that she dress and go through with "her public duty". Fabia is finally compelled to obey.

The evening passes in a daze until Fabia is confronted by a stranger who tells her he knows what happened to her dog and might be able to help. Against her father's stern injunctions, Fabia slips down into kitchen with the stranger, who introduces himself as Daniel Regan, a doctor. He confirms that the dog is dying, and offers to use morphine to end its suffering. This final blow sends Fabia into a state of shock, for which Daniel applies an extremely unorthodox remedy...

Determined to find the driver and make him pay, Fabia uses the car's license plate to track its owner to a bungalow in a poorer section of Boston, where she finds herself confronting Daniel Regan. He admits his culpability but explains he was rushing to a patient when the accident happened. The confrontation between Fabia and Dan ends as did the previous night's, with Fabia in Dan's arms.

It is impossible, of course. Fabia is a Vale of the Boston Vales, her destiny implacably before her: marriage with a suitable partner, wealthy, Boston-born, Harvard-bred. But as she goes through the motions of her debut season, a ceaseless whirl of teas, dinner parties, dances and theatre trips, Fabia cannot quite forget the brusque and unpredictable young doctor. As for Daniel, with a career to build and only his intelligence and skill to rely on, marriage is the last thing on his mind, least of all marriage with a Vale. Except that as he goes about his work, his few leisure moments are haunted by a vision of a girl in a silver dress...

The relationship between Dan and Fabia is stormy and uncertain. Fabia, although she chafes against the rigidity and emptiness of the Vale way of life, has absorbed her family's sense of entitlement, and reacts with outrage whenever it is made clear to her that she is not always Dan's first priority. As for Dan, doggedly determined to be a success in Boston in spite of Boston, too often his resentment of the Vales and what they represent drives him to acts of deliberate rudeness - even cruelty. And over it all hangs the knowledge that should these two young people have the temerity to defy all objections and marry, the Vales and their ilk will go out of their way to make sure they regret it...

White Fawn was the first of Olive Higgins Prouty's five novels about the Vales of Boston. Much of the novel is a critique of their world, although certainly not an unsympathetic one. Prouty clearly understands the privileged life she describes and its attractions and pleasures - and its responsibilities and demands - but the quietly wry humour in her presentation of the Vales indicates her allegiance with aspiring rebel Fabia.

Here, having passed a night with Dan downstairs in her grandmother's house purely in conversation, Fabia is confronted and accused of the grossest impropriety - until her Aunt Charlotte (future heroine of Prouty's Now, Voyager) steps in with a kind lie, suggesting that if Fabia was doing something outrageous, she was at least doing it with a highly desirable party - which of course makes all the difference:

Before Fabia could answer, Charlotte, standing on the other side of the bed, interrupted.
"It was Nichols's roommate, mother---Thacher Brookes. He took Fabia to the dance."
What a brick Aunt Charlotte was!
"Thacher Brookes---Thacher Brookes," repeated the old lady. "You mean Sibley Brookes' son---Hamilton Brookes' grandson?"
"Yes," Charlotte assured her. "Percival Brookes' great-grandson..."

Much of the interest in this novel lies in its divided consciousness. Lisa Vale, having passed twenty years in a loveless marriage, has found compensation in absorbing and living up to the Vale tradition; and when she becomes aware of Fabia's involvement with Dan, she reacts like a true Vale, her first impulse being to break it up by planting tiny poisoned arrows of doubt in Fabia's mind and heart.

But Lisa, at the age of forty, has for the first time fallen in love herself, and is suffering through an intense but determinedly chaste love affair with her husband's business partner, Barry Firth, himself unhappily married. Increasingly, Lisa's secret colours her reaction to Fabia's situation; and when in despair the girl begins to drift towards marriage with a "suitable" man whom she does not love but who she expects will be "awfully kind to her", Lisa begins to contemplate a kind of rebellion of her own:

There was a taut, determined expression about his mouth, as if he were feeling more than he wanted to show, that shot through Lisa with a sharp twinge of familiarity. It was almost as if Barry himself was there before her!...How strange, she thought, as she entered her rooms a few minutes later, that Dan in those brief five minutes in the hall downstairs had touched two tender spots in her heart---her mercy (how like a troubled boy he had looked), and a dear memory...

Thanks for the review, Liz! I am going to check to see if my local library has any of Prouty's books.

I have several more wishlisted, so I'll be getting to them, uh, sooner or later... :)

The preface to The London Jilt; or, The Politick Whore promises a brutal and condemnatory exposure of the tricks and strategems of London prostitutes, in order to serve as a warning for men, but the reality of the text is very different. In a rare example of 17th century first-person female narration, this short novel is a pragmatic account of life at a time when women had very few options and only their wits and their bodies to rely on; when marriage was more likely to be a scene of violence and exploitation than a refuge; and when disease, poverty and starvation were imminent realities.

I will be posting a full review at my blog.

Now reading The Irish Beauties: A Romance Of The Luck Of The Gunnings by E. Barrington (aka Elizabeth Louisa Moresby aka Lily Adams Beck aka L. Moresby), an historical novel from 1931 about the beautiful Gunning sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, who took English society by storm in the 1750s.

Oh, I'm curious if The London Jilt had anything to do with The City Jilt. I mean, "Jilt" was clearly a more common word 300 years ago than it is now (plus, it had a different meaning), but those are awfully similar titles. Well, the subtitles are a bit different - The Politick Whore vs. The Alderman Turn'd Beau.

I'll have to add it to my long list at any rate - you had me at "first-person female narration". ;)

It's available in a Broadview Press edition, Keri, so there's lots of supporting discussion of the novel's historical placement, as well as text excerpts to explain the many meanings of the word "jilt" - including one from The City Jilt. The editor, Charles Hinnant, posits the work as a forerunner to Moll Flanders and Roxana, although being written some fifty years earlier, its heroine doesn't feel any particular need to repent. :)

It's an interesting book and would fit nicely with some of your recent reading, but it is at various points quite brutal and graphic, so caveat emptor.

I have posted a review of John Bennett's 1921 novella, Madame Margot: A Grotesque Legend Of Old Charleston, at my blog. Drawn from black folklore, this is a poetic and disturbing tale of a mysterious Creole woman who will do anything - literally anything - to protect her beautiful, innocent daughter.

*********************

After a varied life filled with travel and adventure, Elizabeth Louisa Moseby settled in Canada in 1919 and, at the age of sixty, took up writing. Over the following ten years she published no less than thirty books, using a range of pseudonyms for a range of topics: travel, spirituality, fantasy and historical novels amongst them. The latter, which she published under the name "E. Barrington", were generally romanticised accounts of famous love stories.

So it is in The Irish Beauties, which tells the tale of the beautiful but penniless Gunning sisters, Elizabeth and Maria, who during the 1750s married the Duke of Hamilton and the Earl of Coventry, respectively. The sisters are familiar figures to anyone with an interest either in actual 18th century history, or in novels set at that time, where they act as aspiration figures for many poor but beautiful girls, generally to their ultimate doom.

I confess that I know little about the reality of the Gunnings, but even so it is not hard to see where in this novel the story has been "prettied up". A book about two nasty little schemers who succeeded in trapping rich men into marriage might have been closer to the truth - and might even fly in these revisionist days - but Barrington chooses to balance ugly truth with romance by pitting a sensitive and fine-natured Elizabeth against the foolishness of Mrs Gunning and the brazenness of Maria. The girls' beauty attracts many men, but Maria's behaviour makes them believe that marriage is hardly necessary. So it is for the Duke of Hamilton, strongly drawn to Elizabeth but determined to have her on his own terms...

As with all such novels, part of the fun is the name-dropping. Prince Edward and the Princess Emily wander by. Horace Walpole plays a major role, befriending Elizabeth and showering her with invitations to Strawberry Hill; but while Barrington chooses to refute it, she also repeats Walpole's famously malicious account of Elizabeth's wedding, "a half-drunk bridegroom, a Fleet marriage, a curtain ring for a wedding-band".

In Ireland, the Gunnings are befriended and helped by the actress George Anne Bellamy, who won fame for her Juliet in 1750, the year of the novel's opening, but who later (beyond its scope) lost her popularity and reputation with a number of too-open affairs. Mrs Bellamy is part of the company of Thomas Sheridan, who appears, and whose brilliant son Richard rates a mention in passing - but alas, not his mother, for whom this novel came too soon; and indeed, it is only recently that Frances Sheridan, another of the many "lost" women novelists, has been reclaimed by feminist academia.

Now reading Secret Lives, by E.F. Benson.

I love your reviews, Liz, since they introduce me to authors I might not otherwise have heard. The John Bennett novel is a book I will look for.

And I very much enjoy discovering new authors, although it does tend to limit conversation. :)

(Yoo hoo! Look, everyone! - E. F. Benson! You've heard of him, right??)

Madame Margot was reprinted in 2004, Stasia, and it is also available for download at Open Library, if you're into that kind of thing.

Yes, I have heard of E.F. Benson.

I will see if I can download Madame Margot to my Nook, once I get home from work. Thanks for the heads up on that!

Welcome!

I've only read Benson's "Dodo" novels before, and I have to say I didn't particularly enjoy them because I didn't much like Dodo herself - I kept wondering what all those nice men (and, for that matter, not-nice men) saw in her. But I know that many of Benson's other novels are very popular, and I'm looking forward to knowing him better.

Secret Lives - After struggling with my only previous exposure to E. F. Benson, the Dodo books, due to my inability to warm up to their heroine, I found this 1932 novel much more to my taste. It focusses upon the residents of Durham Square in London, a quiet, highly desirable cul-de-sac. Many years previously, Durham Square was notorious for the dubious character and occupations of many of its residents, until the Reverend Mr Bondfield made it his mission to cleanse this "Augean stable", purchasing the houses as their leases expired and replacing the questionable tenants with ones of higher character - and making a bundle in the process.

These days Durham Square is ruled by one Mrs Mantripp, the late Reverend's widowed daughter, who as the landlady of many in the Square does not always wield her power with grace. Mrs Mantripp has a reputation as a literary lady, due primarily to her projected biography of her father, of which she likes to speak to her friends, but which somehow never progresses any further than some well-selected chapter headings. But even as she presents herself to her friends as a "highbrow", Mrs Mantripp has a secret, which she vigilantly guards: that she is a passionate admirer of Britain's leading popular novelist, the critically-scorned but fabulously successful Rudolph da Vinci; and many an hour supposedly devoted to Papa and his "Augean stables" is in fact spent in an emotional daze, evoked by the re-reading of such stirring fictions as Apples Of Sodom and Heart's Queen.

Mrs Mantripp makes it her business to inspect and approve - or disapprove - all new tenants in Durham Square, and in this capacity calls upon Miss Susan Leg, who she finds difficult to "place": her house is richly furnished, her servants first-class - yet the lady herself, small, plain and ordinary. Honour-bound to hold a luncheon for Miss Leg, Mrs Mantripp comes away from it convinced that the newcomer is underbred and ignorant and, in short, not worth bothering about.

Unbeknownst to her new acquaintances, however, Miss Leg too has a secret - a tremendous secret that will rock Durham Square to its very foundations...

In Secret Lives, every aspect of the literary world - writers, publishers, critics, publicists, the reading public - takes a beating, and it is hard not to come away from a reading of this novel without the feeling that the only thing about the British publishing scene of 1932 that E. F. Benson did approve of was his own contribution to it. Nevertheless, this is a book for any reader to love - even if we occasionally wince at a satirical dart that strikes too close to home. This is a consistently funny work, indeed at times quite hilarious; although there is no denying that the humour sometimes strays into the realm of "bitchy" - perhaps not more than the characters deserve, however. This is, in the end, a rich comedy of pretensions and misapprehensions, of secret lives, secret identities, and secret ambitions - and a salutary reminder that sometimes, no matter what we do to prevent it, The Truth Will Out...

Now reading Back Street by Fannie Hurst. So far interesting, although not particularly good.

I guess it's true that any publicity is good publicity.

I was trying to find some information on Fannie Hurst, whose Back Street I'm currently reading, and I came across an old interview with F. Scott Fitzgerald, who in his novel This Side Of Paradise dismisses Hurst as a writer, along with Edna Ferber, Gouverneur Morris and Mary Roberts Rinehart. Interviewed about this passage, Fitzgerald stands by his words. He is kinder to Dorothy Canfield, Ernest Poole, Harold Bell Wright and Zane Grey, but deplores their lack of a sense of humour.

So guess whose books I've been steadily wishlisting all afternoon? Here's a hint: they weren't F. Scott Fitzgerald's.

Bestseller: The Books That Everyone Read 1900 - 1939 - I was a bit hesitant to add this one to the read list, because I only ended up reading about half of what was between its covers. I was expecting this book to be a fairly wide-ranging examination of popular literature in the first half of the 20th century, but instead it provides in-depth analyses of 15 British bestsellers and places them in their sociological and political context. Huge chunks of the novels under consideration are quoted (so much, I began to worry about the "Fair Use" rules), and since as it turned out I hadn't read any of them - yet - my reading of this book consisted of repeatedly jerking my eyes off the page and trying to refocus on the non-fiction content between the quotes. I did add it to my read list, in the end, because I figured that at least I'd read everything in it written by Claud Cockburn.

The text itself is a bit of a mixed bag. Cockburn starts out contending that a bestseller list is a glimpse into the psyche of a nation at a given point in time, and while his subsequent examination of the novels in question supports that, there is a certain sense of, well, snottiness about his tone, as if he can't quite conceal his feelings of contempt for "the nation", for having enjoyed these particular books.

Still, parts of this study are excellent, particularly that dealing with the period immediately prior to WWI, which Cockburn contends found Britain not oblivious as is often believed, but in frightened denial. There is likewise a horrible poignancy about the apparent welcoming of the conflict by certain sections of British society, in that it prevented what was looking very much like an imminent homegrown revolution, a literal class war. And after all, it would all be over by Christmas - right?

The novels considered in this study (and I must say, it's interesting to note their relative LibraryThing popularity these days) are: When It Was Dark by Guy Thorne, The Garden Of Allah by Robert Hichens, The Blue Lagoon by H. de Vere Stacpoole, The Riddle Of The Sands by Erskine Childers, The First Hundred Thousand by Ian Hay, The Long Trick by "Bartimeus", The Broad Highway by Jeffrey Farnol, If Winter Comes by A. S. M. Hutchinson, Sorrell And Son by Warwick Deeping, The Sheik by E. M. Hull, Beau Geste by P. C. Wren, The Beloved Vagabond by W. J. Locke, The Constant Nymph by Margaret Kennedy, The Green Hat by Michael Arlen, and Precious Bane by Mary Webb. Various other novels are mentioned in passing (oh, my aching wishlist!); the book closes with a brief consideration of the enduring popularity of National Velvet.

(Footnote: I was not surprised to discover, from various quotes used, that Claud Cockburn was an admirer of Ian Watt and his seminal but deeply flawed study, The Rise Of The Novel. The attitudes of the two are distressingly similar, as we see from this assertion in Cockburn's introduction:

The author of a bestseller must not only be a man possessed of literary craftsmanship, but also a man more than usually aware of the needs of the potential customers.

---besides which, someone - not me, I swear! - has scribbled in the margin, or indeed a woman!! You can almost hear the sarcasm.)

Great posts, Liz, about the Benson and this analysis of bestsellers! It's too bad the latter is what it is and not what you'd hoped. I'd be much more inclined to want to read the book you wanted to read rather than the one you actually read, if that makes any sense.
Back in the 70's, Mrs. Kitten and I spent many pleasant summer Saturdays bidding on and usually winning box lots of books at rural auctions and estate sales in upstate New York. The titles Cockburn writes about made regular appearances in these collections. It was the rare box that did not contain a Warwick Deeping or an E.M. Hull. Both always proved impossible to sell when we offered our new treasures at the flea market the following day.

Thank you! Yes, the Cockburn is a book I could certainly see myself coming back to later on, but as it is I found it frustrating, although very informative in flashes.

It's funny, I'm finding lately I'm getting drawn more and more to the writing - I won't necessarily say "Literature" :) - of this period, I think because the world changed so rapidly during those few decades; when you read novels from that time, you can almost feel it happening.

And, ooh, I do envy you your boxes of books!

I own a copy of Sorrell And Son, though I haven't actually read it. As for The Sheik, well, that's a bullet with my name on it! (But...but...it's a Virago! That makes it okay, right??)

Finished Back Street - thankfully; that was a bit of a struggle! - review to come. Now relaxing with Murder In Mortimer Square, a mystery by Francis D. Grierson from 1932.

Back Street - In turn-of-the-(20th)-century Cincinnati, Ray Schmidt's zest for life and taste for good dinners and bright lights earn her a reputation that she does not deserve. Unmoved beyond friendship for the men to whom she gives her time, Ray is nevertheless convinced that if she ever really fell in love, there would be nothing she would not do for the man. She is proved right when she meets Walter Saxel, a young Jewish banker. Although conducting a thoroughly proper courtship of a thoroughly proper Jewish girl, Walter is drawn as strongly to Ray as she to him. To Ray's astonishment, at length Walter suggests an "accidental" meeting with his mother, to whom she can be introduced in passing as a friend. Realising by this that Walter is considering a profound break from the ordered path of his life, Ray counts the seconds until the encounter - but a family crisis makes it impossible for her to go. She does not see Walter again for seven long years...

A series of personal calamities sends Ray to New York where she ekes out a living, her old passion for life seemingly gone forever - until a chance encounter with Walter, now married and a father, and a rising figure in the world of finance. But the old feelings are still there for both, and finally Ray agrees to become Walter's kept woman, and to live her life in the back streets of his increasingly successful and public world...

The blurbs on my copy of Back Street compare Fannie Hurst to Zola, which I find reasonable inasmuch as both writers tend to leave me profoundly depressed. This novel was a huge critical and commercial hit, a success I'm inclined to attribute to the daring nature of its subject matter, with its portrait of a good bad girl. From the novel's famous opening line, in which Ray is "accused of being innocent", Hurst paints her heroine as being everything that a woman should be - except a wife.

However, the nature of the relationship between Ray and Walter becomes harder and harder to bear. Ray makes a career, a life, out of being Walter's "refuge": his needs, his likes, his priorities rule her world; until as his self-absorption and selfishness grow ever more monstrous, so does her abjectness, until it tips over into outright masochism. So culpable is Ray in her own exploitation that it even becomes hard to feel sorry for her - except as you would feel sorry for anyone in an awful situation. And the fact that a great deal of the time Ray doesn't think her situation is all that awful is the worst part of all.

She thought, sitting there in the crib his arms made for her, how unbearable life would be without him, and how much, after all, there was to be grateful for, in a life that contained him, and how ennobling the whitening hair was to his face... The passion of the springtime of their love, perhaps, had quieted, but the passion of her surrender to his every conviction, wish, desire, spoken and unspoken, continued to lash and dominate her unabated throught the years---a slavery that was precious to her, a subservience that exalted while it abased.

Finished Murder In Mortimer Square, an easy read and a nice palette cleanser after Back Street - review to follow.

I've now moved on to another mystery, Margery Allingham's Police At The Funeral. This is my first Allingham - and, I now gather (a little too late!) one of a series. Any Allingham fans out there?

33- I read the first Campion mystery by Allingham. I liked it...although there was a surprising amount of action and adventure for a cozy mystery. But I admit to being a little confused about who Campion was. There was very little explanation or background given. I guess the idea was to make me curious so I'd come back to the series. I haven't read another book in the series yet, so I can't really be called a fan yet. But I'll try another Allingham, definitely.

Police At The Funeral is about a double homicide in a very unlikely family. There's a suggestion that there's a maniac at large, but I Have A Theory... :)

This is the fourth Campion novel, and we've had all sorts of hints about him but nothing definite. I need to go back to the preceding three novels and see what I've missed.

Francis D. Grierson seems to have been a very popular mystery writer during the 1930s, but to have fallen out of the public eye since. He wrote three main series of mysteries featuring different police inspectors, but Murder In Mortimer Square, published in 1932, is a stand-alone work.

Dining with her cousin, Richard Furlong, a criminologist, Jean Murreye recounts a disturbing experience in a small tea-shop in the countryside, where she overheard an argument in a back room in which a young man was being threatened with violence. Richard introduces her to a friend of his, Noel Aylston, whose voice a startled Jean recognises from her adventure in the country.

Soon afterwards, Hubert Dale, Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard, asks Richard to quietly draw Aylston away from his table, where he is a guest of the Baron Karnst, a world-famous financier, and bring him to a private room. Richard does so, and Noel Aylston is arrested for the murder of his father, Sir John, a high-ranking official in the Foreign Office. The murder assumes still greater importance when it is discovered that some critical national defence plans are missing from Sir John's safe.

Noel is able to prove an alibi, although he cannot explain why his father's servants insist they saw him at the house that night. Angry with the police, Noel retains Richard to investigate his father's death. From a series of details, Richard begins to wonder about Baron Karnst's recent interest in Noel. It soon becomes clear that the murder was not about the defence plans at all - and Richard must discover both the significance of Jean's strange adventure, and what secret about the Baron was concealed in Sir John's safe: a secret the Baron was apparently willing to kill to keep...

Murder In Mortimer Square is a decent mystery and - just at this moment, more importantly to me - a breezy read, with short paragraphs and lots of dialogue of the, "I say, old chap---" variety. The investigation of the mystery is divided between the professionals and the amateur, although it is invariable Richard's ideas that bring about the breakthroughs. (In this respect, Richard is just a little too infallible for comfort.) Most of the characters belong to the leisured class, so they are quite free to sip cocktails and investigate murders; and there are lots of scenes set in nightclubs and country houses. There is a definite (and in context, amusing) sense of xenophobia about this story, however: all the terribly upright English people must find ways of dealing with various "foreigners", for whom violence, intimidation, whips across the face, poison-tipped daggers and life-long blood feuds are the usual way of life.

Another amusing touch: I can only assume that in England in 1932 there were an infinite number of bad drivers, as Francis Grierson repeatedly marvels at the driving skills of his characters. Indeed, he seems to find it worthy of comment whenever someone actually arrives at their destination.

Oh, how I do love a day off!

First up, I have posted at my blog a review of the anonymous 1797 novel, Milistina; or, The Double Interest. On the surface this is a straightforward didactic novel about a young girl following the path of virtue and being rewarded for it, but the various subplots comprise a vigorous protest against women being forced into loveless, interested marriages.

I am now only two reviews behind at my blog - whoo!

And whoo! again: today I also finished Margery Allingham's Police At The Funeral.

This is both my first Allingham and my first Albert Campion, and I enjoyed it enough to be sure I'll be looking for more. The mysterious Campion (not his real name) is called in by a solicitor acquaintance, Marcus Featherstone, over the disappearance of his fiancee Joyce Blount's Uncle Andrew Seeley. Featherstone is sure Seeley has simply gone off on a spree and that the girl is in a fuss over nothing; but Joyce's fears prove grounded when her uncle's body is dragged from the River Granta, bound hand and foot and shot through the head.

Travelling down to Cambridge with Joyce, Campion is introduced into the household of her formidable great-aunt Caroline Faraday, who though very old rules her weak-minded and weak-charactered children, nieces and nephews with an iron fist. Campion is struck by the contradictory feel of the household, its stultifying Victorian respectability at odds with a certain sickness of atmosphere. To Campion's relief, his old friend, the newly promoted Stanislaus Oates, is assigned by Scotland Yard to the case - and his relief grows when a second Faraday, the bad-tempered spinster, Julia, is also found dead, poisoned.

It becomes increasingly clear that the person responsible for the murders must be a member of the household - but which? Uncle William, with his bluster and his drinking - and his blackouts? Tiny Aunt Kitty, whose religious fervour borders on hysteria? The single-mindedly devoted housemaid, Alice, whose loyalty to her mistress is boundless? Or Caroline Farday herself, coolly intellectual and quite devoid of emotion..?

This is an entertaining, bizarre and finally quite disturbing mystery, a "cozy" if you like, but one with very dark undercurrents. I may say that I took to the not-nearly-such-an-ass-as-he-seems Campion at once, and was happy enough to go where he led me. While the police are well in evidence, this is definitely a case of the amateur triumphing, which appears to have been the norm in 1930s mysteries.

And I wonder if that had something to do with changes to legal procedure? - and a perceived "hamstringing" of the police? There are passages in this book that suggest that cautioning suspects, allowing them to have representation during questioning and an embargo on violence, or the threat of it, during interrogation were quite new concepts - or perhaps that their enforcement was. Uncle William's blaming of a Labour government for the police's right to search a house just because there'd been a murder may not have been a joke after all...

Now reading The Blanket Of The Dark, an historical novel by John Buchan.

I've just realised it's my first ThingAversary!

Current damage status:

Wishlist: 8,608
Non-fiction wishlist: 271

Eep!

Just saw that you'd read Police at the Funeral on the Murder and Mayhem thread so thought I should come and check out the thread of a fellow Margery Allingham fan.

I've read books 1, 2 & 4 in the series and I still don't think it's been made clear who Albert Campion is unless I missed it.

And happy first Thingaversary! Your wishlist must be almost as large as Stasia's!

Nice review of the Allingham! Oh, and Happy Thingaversary!

40- Ah, I see. Maybe we never find out who Campion is. Good to know. :)

Thank you both! It's been a great reading year. (My wishlist is approximately two-thirds the height of the Eiffel Tower! - though I'm sure Stasia's must reach to the moon!)

I gather Campion gets married at some point in the series, so someone must know who he is. :) Police At The Funeral has references to "your grandmother, the dowager" and him having a responsible older brother to shoulder the family obligations - that's as far as I've got with him!

I'm very much an "in order" person, whether it's strictly necessary or not, so I think I might put Look To The Lady aside and hunt down the two earlier books for reading in May.

Finished John Buchan's The Blanket Of The Dark, an historical novel about an attempted revolt against Henry VIII.

Now reading Anthony Powell's first Novel, Afternoon Men.

I have posted a review of the anonymous 17th century novel, The London Jilt; or, The Politick Whore, at my blog.

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The Blanket Of The Dark - Peter Pentecost, reared in a forester's cottage and trained as a scholar at Oxford, becomes aware of a growing discontent with his confined and purely intellectual life. Across England, there are stirrings of rebellion against the king, Henry VIII, who has just acquired his third queen, and whose agents are the terror of churchmen and commoners alike. Peter begins to dream vaguely of a life of action and glory - and gets a great deal more than he bargained for when suddenly confronted by the Lord Avelard, a powerful nobleman from the west of England, who reveals to him that his father was the Duke of Buckingham, executed for treason in the early years of Henry's reign. Peter is still reeling from this shock when a far greater one follows: as a Stafford, Peter has Plantagenet blood in his veins; and it is the plan of Avelard and his followers to bring about a revolt against the king, and place Peter on the throne of England.

With a soaring vision of himself as the church's champion, Peter takes a dizzying journey from the towers of Oxford to the rogues' court of "Little Greece" to the mansions of the great; from scholars' robes to beggar's rags to silk and velvet. However, confronted by the lovely Sabine Beauforest, Peter's dreams begin to take on a more secular aspect, until he is almost consumed by ambition for wealth and glory. But as he comes to understand the men who plot revolt against the king, Peter begins also to understand that to them he is merely a figurehead, a pawn; and that the price that will be demanded in return for the crown may be more than he is willing to pay...

I know that as far as novels and screen adaptations go, the Tudors are very "sexy" these days; but nevertheless, I'm afraid this isn't a period in history I'm very well-informed about, other than the obvious stuff relating to Henry and Elizabeth. (The Stuarts, now...) However, I do know enough to know that The Blanket Of The Dark features, on one hand, a little too much assumed knowledge about the period in question, and on the other, too much tampering with the time-line*, to make this a completely successful historical novel.

(*In fictional terms, if this is just after Henry's marriage to Jane Seymour, then Peter ought to be able to remember his life before he was hidden in a forester's cottage under a false name, following his father's execution. And in real-life terms, the elder brother whose death here forces Avelard and the others to seek out the fictional Peter died 16 years after Henry.)

So while I'm not really in a position to judge John Buchan's novel beyond its entertainment value, I can say that this is considerable. This novel offers a vivid sketch of 16th century England, supported by the fascinating and bewildering details of religious reformation at this time, with Henry attacking the church with one hand and heretics with the other: heretics whose main crime is the spreading of the Gospel. Of course, from the early stages of The Blanket Of The Dark it is evident that this is not an "alternative history" novel, so we know in advance that the rebellion must fail. The question is how, and what will happen to Peter when it does? Buchan creates considerable suspense around these issues, while building to a climax involving an unforgettable meeting between Peter and Henry, and a spectacular - and rather ironic - Act of God.

Ooh! I am at exactly 37 1/2 books read, and it's only the 29th of April!

(Of course, as I hug myself smugly about my reading, I'm also pushing away thoughts of all those things that are getting neglected. You know, work, cleaning, general responsibilities... But that stuff doesn't really matter, right?)

Finished Afternoon Men, and am therefore officially better than halfway home!

Now reading The Novel And The Oxford Movement from 1932, an account of fictional reaction to the Catholic revival in England in the mid-19th century.

Afternoon Men - Prior to WWII, Anthony Powell wrote about half a dozen novels which didn't garner too much attention at the time, but which naturally enough came in for reassessment following the enormity of his Music Of Time series. His debut novel is a short, satirical work dealing with artists and other fringe-dwellers in the London of the 1930s, and presents a rather dismal view of a drifting way of life, where caring about anyone or anything just seems like a bit too much trouble.

The keynote of the novel is struck early, as William Atwater, as much of a central character as this novel has, reflects upon his sort-of-friendship with Raymond Pringle, a struggling artist who can only be comfortable around people who don't like him:

From the first they had felt a certain mutual antipathy, but, by contrast and comparison, fellow-countrymen had seemed more nearly tolerable that evening than might actually be the case in other surroundings. But for some reason the acquaintance had persisted, and quite often they went out together when Pringle was in London, long after the earlier reason for putting up with each other's vagaries had been forgotten.

"Putting up with" seems the best way to describe the relationships in this book. A loosely-knit group of acquaintances spends their time looking for parties to attend, although no-one seems to have a good time once they've found one. They talk a lot about getting married, although no-one seems to be in love - and anyway, the person they might marry isn't the person they might love. They have sex, but mostly out of habit, and don't particularly enjoy it. ("With a sort of heavy-fisted dexterity the mutually adapted emotions of each of them became synchronised, until the unavoidable anti-climax was at hand.") And it would be too much to say that the suicide of their host disrupts a country-house gathering:

"Of course, anyone might get drowned," said Mrs Race.
"Anyone."
"Did you say that to his sister?"
"More or less."
"You destroyed the note?"
"Yes."
"I suppose we ought to report this some time."
"We can do that when we go into the town tomorrow. We can't go tonight. The car isn't working."
"Anyway, there's nothing to be done when we do tell them."
"Who do we tell?" said Atwater. "The policeman on point duty?"
"What are you doing for the rest of your holiday?"
"I was going back to work tomorrow, in any case..."

There's some sharp writing here, and what feels uncomfortably like an accurate, albeit satirical, sketch of a certain section of London society, circa 1930; but in the end there is not quite enough humour in this tale to cover up the sour taste it leaves in the mouth. These really are some very unpleasant people...

Wow, some great reviews of The London Jilt, The Blanket of the Dark and Afternoon Men. I've enjoyed John Buchan's Richard Hannay books (although I still haven't read the later ones) so I'll add The Blanket of the Dark to my list.

Thanks, Heather! I've got a bunch of Buchan's books on The Wishlist but The Blanket Of The Dark was the first of his novels that I've read. It wasn't quite what I was expecting, but I very much enjoyed it.

I have posted a review at my blog of Romance Of The Pyrenees by Catherine Cuthbertson, a highly enjoyable Gothic novel from 1803.

And with that, I have now caught up all of my outstanding reviews, both here and at my blog!

OH YEAH!!!! OH YEAH!!!! OH YEAH!!!!

(Cue outbreak of the kind of dancing that people mean when they say "dance like nobody's looking".)

Finished my pick for TIOLI #13, The Novel And The Oxford Movement by Joseph Ellis Baker. This is an examination of the factionalisation of Christianity in England during the Victorian era, and how this was reflected in the novels of the time. I will be blogging about this one, as this is a subject which impacts very much upon my reading.

I have now moved onto my first selection for my Authors' Gallery TIOLI challenge, The Haunted Room by "A.L.O.E." (A Lady Of England, aka Charlotte Maria Tucker).

I recently read Barchester Towers, so I'm looking forward to reading your comments on The Novel and The Oxford Movement. I found your blog and have it bookmarked.

Thank you - that's great to hear! Trollope gets a section of Baker's book to himself, but in fact comes in for some criticism because Baker thinks his clerics are too social and insufficiently religious. (Which Trollope himself admitted, of course.)

How did you like Barchester Towers?

I loved Barchester Towers, especially the hen-pecked bishop and the scheming Obadiah Slope. Mr. Harding and Arabin seemed to be the only two clerics who practice what they preach.

I don't know why I've neglected Trollope for all these years. I enjoy his wit, and I need to make room in my reading for more of his works.

I love the awful Stanhopes, myself! Have you seen the BBC adaptation? If not, you must - it absolutely captures the spirit of the novel - novels, it includes The Warden - and has the most incredible cast. (Think you could never get a crush on Mr Slope? Think again! :) )

Edited to add: I've just seen your review in your thread - nice work! I love the way that Trollope lets us know that in fact, Susan rules the Archdeacon almost as completely as Mrs Proudie rules the Bishop. It's okay, though, because she doesn't do it in public!

I watched the first 4 episodes (1 disc) of Barchester Chronicles over the weekend, and I've got the last disc in my Netflix queue. If the timing works out like it should, I'll be able to watch the last part of the series over the weekend.

Good point about Susan and the Archdeacon!

I have completed the first of my reads for TIOLI #6, The Haunted Room by "A.L.O.E." Charlotte Maria Tucker was a deeply religious woman and a prolific writer of predominantly children's fiction dealing with Christian themes. This novella was intended more for an audience we would today call "young adult"; and although there is an actual haunted room in it, the title refers rather to those dark corners of the human heart where we hide our sins and weaknesses, even from ourselves.

I will be blogging this one.

Now reading my pick for TIOLI #12, Retribution by E.D.E.N. Southworth.

Tearing through my TIOLIs!

I have finished my pick for Challenge #12, Retribution, E.D.E.N. Southworth's first novel from 1849; a weird mix of sensation novel and abolitionist tract...although mostly sensation novel. A pure and pious young woman is unknowingly betrayed by her husband and her best friend, who are doomed to become one another's punishment. Meanwhile, the young woman only waits to turn twenty-one to free the slaves she has inherited from her family, and until then works to demonstrate to her neighbours the dignity and productivity of fairly-paid labour.

I'll be blogging about this one, too.

Now reading my second pick for Challenge #13, Brief Seduction Of Eva by Mathilde Eiker.

Finished Brief Seduction Of Eva, a drawing-room comedy that I ended up liking a lot more than I thought I was going to at the outset - sharply observed and in parts very funny. I'll write a proper review shortly.

Now reading my pick for Challenge #19, The London Bully; or, The Prodigal Son, an anonymous picaresque from 1683 which may have been written by the same person who wrote The London Jilt.

I am well behind on threads once again, Liz, so I am just checking in!

And I'm very glad to have you here! Sorry you've been having a rough time lately - take care, and drop in when (if?) you can.

Finished The London Bully; or, The Prodigal Son, a short, anonymous picaresque tale from 1683 about a young man who spends his time chasing women and money and---that's about it, really. I'll be blogging this one.

I've had Four Frightened People at home from the library for weeks, but it kept getting TIOLI-swiped by other books. Now, however, I can read it for Challenge #20 - thank you, Mike!!

I have posted a review of Joseph Ellis Baker's The Novel And The Oxford Movement, which outlines the different causes and waves of religious controversy in England from the 1830s to the 1880s, and takes a quick look at some of the novelists who entered into the fray.

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Brief Seduction Of Eva - Eight years a contented widow after ten years of being a bitterly unhappy wife, Lyddane Seymour's pleasant if placid existence is overturned by an unexpected encounter with Hilary Ervine, returned to America after many years of travelling. The two had once been strongly attracted, but Lyddane's marriage and the principles of both had forbidden a relationship. So thrown off balance is Lyddane by this chance meeting that she forgets a piece of pressing family business - namely, to remind her brother Frederick Bronson that it is his wife's birthday. The strangely beautiful Eva, who has the temperament of a spoiled child - and the intellect to match - lives for the chance of creating scenes. Lyddane tries to avert one by sending Eva flowers in Frederick's name, but her gesture precipitates the very crisis she was trying to avoid when Frederick's daughter, Annette, has the same idea.

Before long, Lyddane finds herself at the centre of an emotional vortex, as not only she and Annette, but also Hilary and Hugh Ardmore, Annette's almost fiance and a junior partner in Frederick's law firm, get sucked into the Bronsons' spiralling marital crisis - a crisis that climaxes with Eva eloping with a man she doesn't love, and who is in love with another woman, in order to drive to desperation a husband only too glad to be rid of her. Under the circumstances, it is perhaps not to be wondered at that the elopement lasts approximately thirty-five minutes...

Brief Seduction Of Eva is, finally, a sharp and well-observed drawing-room comedy. It is a little slow to get going, as we are introduced to the appalling Bronsons, each in their own way quite as selfish and exasperating as the other; but from here the novel builds into a piece of richly constructed social comedy, which avoids tipping over into farce chiefly because of the emotion carefully hidden beneath its brittle surface. It's as if the novel itself were as ashamed of its deeper feelings as the characters in it; those that have them.

There's an interesting balance here, which dismisses both the callous sensuousness of Frederick (he has sex with his wife occasionally, and tries to ignore her existence the rest of the time) and the shallow incomprehension of Eva, seeing the world in terms of scenes from plays and movies. We get the feeling that Mathilde Eiker herself, while disapproving both these extremes, nevertheless felt a certain cynicism about romance, and favoured practicality in the relations of the sexes...although that said, perhaps the capacity to appreciate the sight of a full moon behind some pine trees isn't entirely without value...

The other interesting aspect of this novel, perhaps even more apparent today than it was when it was published, is its sense of a generation gap. The point is made that while Eva, Lyddane and Hilary are of the pre-war generation, Annette is post-war with a vengeance: there is a gulf between the mores of the two eras. Eva, married young, knows only the behavioural code of 1915, when the standard "good girl" approach was to pretend (or in Eva's case, not pretend) to be ignorant and helpless. Annette's sharp confidence, her self-sufficiency, her directness in her dealings with men and the cool clarity with which she weighs up Hugh Ardmore as a marital prospect contrasts sharply not only with Eva's little girl mannerisms, but with the painful but mercifully brief sketch of Lyddane's marriage, her total ignorance of life brutally shattered by an habitual sensualist. As for Hilary, when a man with a sincere code of honour meets a woman without an idea of one---well, you know what they say about nice guys finishing last...

"Eva is magnificent. Who on earth but Eva would have the sheer audacity to leave you cold on that train and come back here and read the riot act to Frederick and put both of you in the wrong, and get away with it?"

#62: I read Four Frightened People last year. I will be interested in seeing what you think of it, Liz.

I'm about a third of the way through it and feeling rather---of two minds.

#65: I was the same way all the way through.

Finally managed to finish Four Frightened People.

I....shall have to think about that one.

Now relaxing with Margery Allingham's first novel, The Crime At Black Dudley.

#67: I....shall have to think about that one.

For how long? :)

I have never read The Crime at Black Dudley. It sounds like one I would enjoy though.

Possibly until tomorrow. At the moment I feel like I could write a book on it; I'm trying to prune my thoughts into something manageable. :)

The Crime At Black Dudley is rather interesting. It starts off like a Christie-ish cozy with a murder at a country house party, then takes a real left turn. I'm about two-thirds through.

Off to see if my local library has The Crime At Black Dudley. . .

I believe it was published in the US as The Black Dudley Murder. But whatever the title, I have now finished this one, too, and moved onto my final pre-declared TIOLI, Rookwood by William Harrison Ainsworth, for Challenge #6.

Four Frightened People opens on a very slow boat to Singapore. Although it is primarily a cargo ship – and its cargo predominantly Chinese “coolies”, being shipped for cheap labour – also on board are a handful of European travellers forced onto this uncomfortable means of transport because they can’t afford better or faster – although only one or two of them are prepared to admit that distasteful fact. Among the passengers are Judith Corder, an English doctor called to the region to settle her father’s estate; Stewart Corder, her cousin; Arnold Ainger, a socially awkward yet intelligent man with an aptitude for languages; and Mrs Mardick, a garrulous middle-aged woman who drives her companions to despair with her relentless cheerfulness and determination to make the travellers one big happy family.

Slowly, Judy and Ainger become aware that something is very wrong on the boat. Its doctor is taken ill, and although the official explanation is cholera, Ainger overhears a conversation that makes him suspect that there is bubonic plague amongst the Chinese. One night, while talking together in the darkness on deck, Judy and Ainger see the boat’s crew throwing certain dark bundles over the side – one of which is still moving... As their suspicions harden, Ainger makes a startling proposition: that he, Judy and Stewart slip off the boat at its next stop and make their way on foot to a port some thirty miles away, where they can find alternative transport. Ainger’s fear is that when the boat reaches its destination it will be quarantined, with everyone held on board – and in that case, there will be little hope of survival for anyone. Despite the watchfulness of the captain, who has a vested interest in maintaining silence, the three succeed in making a deal with the local owners of a small boat, who row out to trade with the passengers. When the boat returns under the cover of dark, Ainger, Judy and Stewart try to slip away unobserved, only to be caught by Mrs Mardick, who is determined to force everyone to attend a party she has planned. In a moment of desperation, Ainger seizes her, hastily explains the situation, and almost compels her to accompany them. The four succeed in reaching the shore, where they spend an uncomfortable night. As day dawns, they watch the boat disappearing down the coast – and then must confront a difficult and increasingly dangerous overland journey...

Four Frightened People first came to my attention via the review of Elaine (Liz1564) – or rather, the discussion that followed her posting of it. The fact that this novel had provoked a member of the eminently civilised Virago group into going medieval on it (in an eminently civilised way) was enough to get me interested. However, I put off reading the review in question until I had read the novel itself, so that my own reaction wasn’t too coloured by it. Having now finished both, I’m in a slightly odd position. I find that I like this novel more than Elaine did – while at the same time hating it even more.

My overriding feeling about Four Frightened People is that it was written deliberately to shock. Challenging and provocative fiction can be a powerful mean of confronting society’s shortcomings and hypocrisies, of course; and while there is a measure of that here, for the most part this book struck me as being more like a small child who says rude words in public in order to embarrass its parents. Four Frightened People is, inarguably, a novel with a point – up to a point – but beyond that point, what it has to say is either ridiculous or appalling, and occasionally both. I don’t know: perhaps this is a satire so cleverly disguised, you can’t tell it is a satire. If so, Novel 1, Reader 0. For myself, I can only confess that I got no sense at all of an intended gap between what Judy, our narrator, was saying, and what the novel itself was saying...which made reading it a thoroughly unnerving experience.

I did say I liked some aspects of Four Frightened People. There is certainly some powerful writing here, and some sharp observation. It is evident that Robertson set out to do a calculated de-romanticising of the adventure tale, and the physicality of her descriptions of the jungle, with its relentless heat and dirt, creates an oppressive atmosphere that is almost palpable. Others may feel differently, but I have to say I admired the fact that Robertson was willing to deal with the practicalities of the situation, having her characters make toilet stops and, at one point, be stricken with diarrhoea. She even dares have Judy get her period during the jungle trek, something that even to this day writers (whether for print or screen) tend to be absurdly coy about; but having raised the subject, Robertson fails to reveal how Judy copes – so again, finally there is a disappointing sense of an inclusion for shock value rather than realism.

It is not hard to imagine that, as a young woman writing in 1931, Robertson provoked a great deal of harrumphing with her frank discussions of sex, and female sexual desire. Here, too, the modern reader might rather be inclined to admire her honesty – but again, only up to the point of Too Much Information. Judy’s smugly complacent assertion that it is only a matter of time before Stewart and Ainger start fighting over her, and her cool weighing up of which of them will have the privilege of having sex with her, possibly marks the point where our already unlikeable “heroine” becomes intolerable. And when, despite being disease-ridden and unwashed for weeks, Judy and Ainger do Get Down To It, this novel crosses over into a territory best described as “squick”.

(Of course, some of you might find my squeamishness on this point inconsistent with my admiration of toilet stops. I suppose it’s a question of the Unavoidable vs the Avoidable. I might also say that my response to Judy’s preening over being the sexual prize in a primitive battle was to indulge a fantasy about Stewart and Ainger ending up together, with Judy left out in the cold. Alas, it seems that this was one area too “shocking” even for Robertson.)

A post-WWI English novel, the early stages of Four Frightened People simmer with anger against those who, too old to go to war themselves, unhesitatingly drove others to do so, and who look back upon the slaughter as “glorious”. (Both Stewart and Ainger are veterans.) One of Robertson’s main targets here is English hypocrisies and pretensions – the kind of things about which it might be said, It just isn’t done or It isn’t cricket. This is where the novel gets itself into disturbingly muddy waters. Robertson takes great pleasure in having her civilised English characters express the most uncivilised opinions, and commit the most uncivilised acts; demonstrating how thin the veneer is, and how we’re really all just savages underneath. The problem is, this attack on “civilisation” sits cheek-by-jowl with a frank and unconcealed hatred of the “uncivilised”, with not only the Malaysian people but the land itself condemned as "poisonous" and "loathsome".

Even for an English novel of this vintage, the racism in Four Frightened People is ubiquitous and profound, from its sneering attitude towards the “coolies” on board the boat (whose mostly-naked bodies Judy ogles even while expressing how disgusting she finds Asian people), to its contempt for the half-caste guide, Deotlan, with his white-blood pretensions, to its cheerful anticipation of the “inevitable extinction” of the jungle tribe that captures the adventurers. But there’s something in this book that goes beyond even racism: a sense of loathing of humanity generally that grows increasingly chilling. Reading Four Frightened People is like being trapped in a confined space with a professional cynic, the kind of person who enjoys nothing more than explaining why life is pointless. There’s an amazing negativity about this novel, a slow accumulation of odium that ultimately wears down the spirit – particularly, I think, for the female reader, as it grows increasingly clear that for all her many and various prejudices, there was nobody that E. Arnot Robertson despised more than her own sex. That this novel has some strengths and virtues is undeniable; but in the end they cannot hold back the inrushing tide of misanthropy.

One last thought: who exactly is the fourth person of the title? The novel really isn’t interested in anyone outside of its central triangle. It barely accepts that non-Europeans are people at all, and not even Deotlan’s white blood is enough to save him from tacit dismissal. Of course, from my synopsis up above, you’d probably assume it was Mrs Mardick - and maybe you'd be right. She may not know it herself, but as things turn out Mrs Mardick has more reason than anyone else in the novel to be frightened...

Great review!!! Well done. I'm almost tempted to part with $8 just to read the rotten thing myself :)

Oh, no - I'm not having that on my conscience!! :)

Great review, Liz!

ETA: You did not post it! I want to give it a thumbs up!

I've fallen out of the habit! Thank you - I will.

Well, fall back into it! :)

Done as ordered! :)

Did my opinion coincide with yours, or do you think I've been too hard on it? Too easy??

No, I do not think you were too hard on the book or too easy. It is not a book that is easy to love, but easy to dislike and your review was more than fair.

Thank you. When you asked the other day where my review was, I was still at simmering point. I thought I should do the reviewing equivalent of counting to ten before I put anything down.

I'll say this for Four Frightened People - I can't imagine anyone being indifferent to it. :)

That is true!

Hi Liz. Brilliant review of Four Frightened People. Although I enjoyed your review I am very firmly going to avoid the book itself.

Hi, Heather - thank you! Always feel a bit divided about putting someone off a book...but I guess a review that lets someone know they won't enjoy a book is as valuable as one that lets them know they will.

The Crime At Black Dudley (US title: Murder At Black Dudley) - George Abbershaw, a brilliant young pathologist with ties to Scotland Yard, has his ordered life disrupted when he falls in love with Meggie Oliphant. Learning that Meggie is to be one of the party, Abbershaw accepts an invitation to spend a weekend at Black Dudley, the isolated country estate of his friend, Wyatt Petrie, who shares the house with his invalid uncle, Colonel Gordon Coombe. While most of the house party are Wyatt's acquaintances, Coombe has as his guests three foreigners who seem strangely out of place.

After dinner, Petrie shows his guests some of the family relics, including a jewelled dagger. He explains that a ritual is attached to the object, which over many years has degenerated into a game, wherein the lights are turned out and the dagger is passed from hand to hand: the person caught with it when the lights go on must pay a forfeit. The party begin to play, but the game is abruptly broken off when Colonel Coombe suffers a heart attack. In the disturbance that follows, Meggie takes Abbershaw aside and whispers to him that when the dagger was pressed into her hand in the darkness, its blade was wet and sticky – and that before she could do anything, it was snatched from her grasp. Shortly afterwards, Michael Prenderby, a young doctor, confides to Abbershaw that the Colonel is dead and that he was pressured by Coombe’s friends to sign the death certificate at once, which he refused to do, using Abbershaw’s seniority as an excuse. Sure enough, Abbershaw is soon summoned to the Colonel’s room. A single glance is enough to tell Abbershaw that the cause of death was not heart failure. However, recognising that Coombe’s friends are in deadly earnest, he plays along and signs the certificate, trusting that he can get word to Scotland Yard before the intended cremation is carried out.

Dawn is breaking after this eventful night when there is the sound of a violent altercation. The visitors rush upstairs to find Coombe’s butler in a fight with another of the guests, a young man called Albert Campion. In the struggle, one of the two drops a wallet which Abbershaw, unseen, picks up. The fight is stopped, with the butler sent away to sober up. A suspicious Abbershaw questions Campion about what he was doing up and dressed so early, but the young man laughingly deflects his inquiries. Alone, Abbershaw inspects the papers stored inside the dropped wallet, and realises instantly that Coombe’s murder is only part of a much larger criminal enterprise. Although at first Abbershaw’s suspicions fall upon Coombe’s foreign guests, they soon turn to Albert Campion, as it becomes evident that no-one brought him to the house party – he simply invited himself...

Although not her first novel, The Crime At Black Dudley was still a very early work by Margery Allingham; and although it is an entertaining read, it lacks the polish and conviction of her later works. Perhaps the most interesting thing about it (or at least, one of two) is the sharp sudden turn it takes, from the world of the “cosy”, with a murder at a country house party, into the realm of international crime. I can only assume that the 1920s were a time when internationalised criminal activity was a genuine public concern. A surprising number of mysteries from this time stray into this territory, including several of the early Christies. The Crime At Black Dudley fits the mold, inasmuch as it suffers equally from the improbabilities of its plot, and from a sense that one of the main attractions of this genre was the chance to play Plucky English vs Nasty Foreigners.

Otherwise, the novel's flaws include an over-reliance on coincidence, particularly with regard to the explanation for the murder, and an annoying “Protect the wimminfolk!” attitude to its female characters - who, granted, are collectively useless. Much is made of Meggie Oliphant’s courage, but when you get right down to it, that just means she cries a little less than the others. On the positive side, this novel boasts quite a number of well-constructed suspense sequences; while the fact that the murder is solved almost as an afterthought is an intriguing touch – as is the killer's fate.

But of course, the importance of The Crime At Black Dudley goes well beyond its virtues as a novel. It was here that we are first introduced to one Mr Albert Campion, a supporting character who got away from his creator and subsequently took on a life of his own, when Allingham’s American publishers pressured her into bringing him back in her next novel. Coming to the character with hindsight, this novel is equally amusing and unnerving: one wonders if anyone could really appear to be as much of a blithering ass as Albert Campion is written in this novel, without, well, actually being a blithering ass. This is clearly a character written as a one-off, a situation which in time forced Allingham to retrieve some of her ground: although the references to Campion’s “vacuous” face and “fatuous” chatter do not go away, in later works she tones it down, as well as leavening Campion’s rather painful conversation by letting the reader know what is going on in his head while he’s talking.

But in the end, it was really all Allingham’s own fault. If she really intended this to be our first and last encounter with Albert Campion, she shouldn’t have written him such a perfect exit scene – the kind of exit that just begs for a curtain-call:

”I say, Campion,” he said, “who the hell are you?”
Mr Campion paused on the running-board and there was a faintly puckish expression behind his enormous glasses.
“Ah,” he said. “Shall I tell you? Listen---do you know who my mother is?”
“No,” said Abbershaw, with great curiosity.
Mr Campion leaned over the side of the car until his mouth was an inch or two from the other man’s ear, and murmured a name, a name so illustrious that Abbershaw started back and stared at him in astonishment.
“Good God!” he said. “You don’t mean that?”
“No,” said Mr Campion cheerfully, and went off striding jauntily down the street until, to Abbershaw’s amazement, he disappeared through the portals of one of the most famous and exclusive clubs in the world.

I ordered a copy of Black Dudley from PBS since my local library does not carry it. Nice review once again, Liz. I look forward to reading the book!

Nice review indeed - I agree that one of the best things about this early work is seeing the first introduction of Campion.

Thank you both! Hindsight certainly does change the reading experience here, although I guess it also makes it interesting in an unplanned way. I wonder how readers reacted to Campion the first time, and whether they bought into him as a suspect?

Of course, this is always a danger with any long-running series. I remember reading two Christies out of order (spoiler evasion!), where a character in one was a suspect in the other, written earlier, and therefore obviously didn't do it.

Well, after a protracted and repeatedly interrupted read (blecch! - stupid Real Life!), I have finally finished Rookwood, by William Harrison Ainsworth. This 1834 novel tells the story of the ill-fated Rookwood family, wealthy and powerful, but with a dark history marred by hatred, violence and murder. An important bridge between the Gothic novel and the modern horror story, Rookwood was a huge success in its day; although typically, it was popular and criticised for the same thing: its alleged glorification of the highwayman Dick Turpin, who plays a significant supporting role. The novel's most lasting claim to fame is its breathless, chapters-long account of Turpin's legendary overnight ride from London to York.

I will be blogging about this one.

Well, that's my last TIOLI read for the month, in under the wire - and in fact, while my overall reading was down this month, all eight books finished were TIOLI reads, which is a new record for me.

My next read will be Mystery Mile, by Margery Allingham, the second of her Campion novels, and (since it was sitting on the floor), my first pick for June TIOLI #1, "a low book".

#88: Rookwood looks like a book I would enjoy. I will have to give it a go some time.

Congratulations in getting it into May under the wire, Liz, and kudos on the record-setting TIOLI reads that month!

It's funny, my TIOLIs tend to cycle up and down between months - probably because one month I go on a reading binge and the next I get into a panic over unwritten reviews!

In other words, this will be a down month. :)

Rookwood is a book that, if anything, is too full of action and melodrama: a bit overcrowded, if you know what I mean. Very much a young man's overenthusiastic first novel - but certainly not dull!

Mystery Mile - The American Judge Lobbett, having survived several attempts upon his life by the notorious Simister gang, travels to England by boat with his children, Marlowe and Isopel. After another unsuccessful attempt, averted it seems only by a lucky chance, a young man named Albert Campion slips his card into Marlowe Lobbett's hand. Having been told frankly by Scotland Yard that there is only so much they can do to protect the Judge, Marlowe does seek out Campion, explaining that his father has stumbled across a clue to the real identity of the mysterious Simister, a secret that has defied the best efforts of law enforcement world-wide. Hired by Marlowe to devise some scheme for the Judge's protection, Campion rents the ancestral home of his close friends, Giles and Biddy Paget, which is the manor house of the Suffolk village known as Mystery Mile. A small community sitting off the coast and attached to the mainland only by a narrow pass, Mystery Mile is impossible for strangers to infiltrate. Welcomed by Giles and Biddy and their lifelong friend, the Reverend Swithin Cush, the Lobbetts allow themselves to relax for the first time in months.

But even in this isolation, there are intruders. An art dealer called Ali Fergusson Barber arrives with his eye upon a possible Romney owned by the Pagets, while Anthony Datchett, a celebrity palmist who performs at society functions, turns up offering to do his act. While Datchett's reading of Isopel promises her all happiness, his private conversation with the Reverend Cush brings about a ghastly outcome... But this is only the beginning of a series of shocking events. First, Judge Lobbett disappears, although there seems no way that anyone could have carried him off the island. Then, even as Campion and his friends try to come to terms with the Judge's fate, Biddy Paget is kidnapped - a blow that strikes close to the heart of both Marlowe Lobbett and Albert Campion himself...

Like its predecessor, The Crime At Black Dudley, Mystery Mile is a crime thriller rather than a whodunnit. The Simister gang - previously Albert Campion's employers - emerge here as fully-fledged villains, prepared to resort to kidnapping, torture and murder in order to protect their leader. The novel's story-line is no less incredible than that of the earlier work, and the racist overtones that showed itself in various remarks about "Krauts" in The Crime At Black Dudley are more blatant here, with various uncomfortable passages dealing with "the Turk", the "Jew" and "the Chink" - all of them, clearly, guilty of the heinous crime of not being English. However, this is a sadly common feature of novels of this period, a punch that simply has to be rolled with. On the other side of the scale, Allingham is more in control of her material here, making it easier to go along with the extravagances of the plot. The characters are generally better drawn, and there are some strong and suspenseful scenes - none more so than the novel's climax, which takes place amongst the dangerous mud flats surrounding Mystery Mile, and which is a powerful and indeed disturbing passage of writing.

But of course, the overriding importance of Mystery Mile is that for the first time it places Albert Campion front and centre. Allingham had to retrieve quite a lot of ground to make this possible, and if anything she goes too far in one jump, giving us a Campion comfortably hand-in-glove with Scotland Yard and England's criminal element alike, the blithering idiocy now as much a tactic as a mannerism, and with a razor-sharp mind behind the surface vacuousness. The game-playing with the reader over Campion's true identity begins in earnest here, with Allingham even revealing his real first name...although amusingly, it is rather late in the game before it is made quite clear it is actually his real name, and not just another alias. All this is absurd, of course, but entertaining enough that the continual straining of credibility is hardly an issue. (That Campion's failure in his mission during the events of The Crime At Black Dudley leads the gang to underestimate him here is a nice touch.) But then Allingham pulls off a coup. The closing events of the novel see Campion putting his life on his line for his friends, and suffering both physically and emotionally - and, at last, emerging as a character believable as well as likeable.

One last thing. It is often said of mystery writers that they figure out their endings first and work backwards from there. On the strength of The Crime At Black Dudley and Mystery Mile, I'm beginning to suspect that for Margery Allingham, it was a case of working out Albert Campion's exit scene first, and going on from there:

After the first moment or so the stranger produced a letter, a massive grey-white envelope, sealed and bound with crimson tape. He bowed and withdrew a pace or two as the Englishman cut it carefully open. The single sheet of paper within was crested with the arms of a famous European royal house, but the few lines were scribbled in English:

"Salutations. My dear fellow, I am in despair. State Trip to Indo-China indicated. Fed to the teeth. Could you impersonate me, as before? Ever yours, R."

Now reading Cynthia: With The Tragical Account Of The Unfortunate Loves Of Almerin And Desdemona: Being A Novel, an anonymous novel from 1687, which I have slotted in for TIOLI #21, "read a short work" (180 pages including a preface that does go on and on, large print and narrow margins).

#91 A fine review of Mystery Mile. One of Allingham's strengths is indeed in the depiction of the often rather eerie salt-marshes and isolated creeks which are a feature of Essex and Suffolk, where many of the books are set.

Thank you! I enjoyed Allingham's physical descriptions of the Suffolk area, so I'm glad to hear there's more to come. I'll be reading Look To The Lady shortly, which will catch me up with the early Campions.

I have posted a blog review of the interesting but unpleasant The London Bully; or, The Prodigal Son, an anonymous rogue's biography from 1683.

I have also finished reading my TIOLI #21 "a short work" pick, Cynthia: With The Tragical Account Of The Unfortunate Loves Of Almerin And Desdemona: Being A Novel, an anonymous tale from 1687 that is a mixture of the enjoyable and the amusingly bad. Using the framing device of the abduction by pirates of a princess and her devoted and courageous but lower-born lover, the main body of the story is the head pirate, Almerin, telling his life story, which involves embarking at the age of sixteen (!) upon a career embracing seduction, unwanted pregnancy, marriage, murder, piracy and a deal with the devil.

I will be blogging about this.

Now reading Look To The Lady by Margery Allingham, my selection for TIOLI #18, "same number of letters in the main title words".

I have not read Mystery Mile either so hopefully I will get to it some time. Thanks for the review of that one, Liz. I did get in a copy of Black Dudley the other day and hope to read it in the next month or so.

I'll be very interested to hear your opinion of it, Stasia.

I am currently re-reading Sayers' Peter Wimsey books. I think Allingham is up after those.

Heh! I'm putting off the Sayers on the opposite philosophy!

LOL

I started my re-read of Sayers before I'd quite finished re-reading all the Allinghams, but only just! In both cases there were/are some I've not read before, more in the case of Allingham. The only one I've not re-read now is one that I read for the first time fairly recently anyway. Plus a semi-fictionalised memoir of hers called The Oaken Heart about a village in Suffolk during WWII, which is a rather different kind of work from her mysteries, but I'm looking forward to that one to finish off my Allingham experience.

After more or less accidentally stumbling into Police At The Funeral, I went back to catch up just the Campions; but I do have all of Allingham's works in the wishlist, I think. I might seek out her pre-The Crime At Black Dudley novels, but after that I will probably just let the others crop up naturally, as it were.

I have added an awful lot of 20s and 30s mysteries to The List lately. It was an amazing time for that sort of literature.

I've finished Look To The Lady (TIOLI #18), and after initially having shocked and appalled my OCD by reading a book out of series order, I'm now caught up with the Campions.

Now reading The Jade Of Destiny, an Elizabethan historical novel by Jeffery Farnol from 1931, which amusingly enough on the heels of Look To The Lady also deals with the loss of the prized artefact of an aristocratic family. This is another for TIOLI #1, "a low book".

#103: after initially having shocked and appalled my OCD by reading a book out of series order

My system would not be able to handle it!

It was purely an accident, of course.

(To which the correct response is, "Ignorance is no excuse!")

Finished The Jade Of Destiny (TIOLI #1), a rather enjoyable historical romance about a Spanish / Catholic conspiracy to assassinate Elizabeth I - review to follow.

Now reading Joan!!! A Novel by Matilda Fitz John, from 1796, for my TIOLI "exclamation mark" challenge.

Look To The Lady (US title: The Gyrth Chalice Mystery) - A series of unhappy events, a falling out with his father and a lot of stubborn pride have left Percival St John Wykes Gyrth - Val for short - homeless and destitute. One evening, while looking for a corner in which to spend the night, Val comes across a discarded envelope from a letter addressed to himself, although at an address unknown to him. Bemused, he follows this lead first to a disreputable cafe and then - after a slight diversion caused by an attempted kidnapping - to the rooms of Albert Campion. Campion tells Val of a certain international syndicate, fabulously wealthy and socially above reproach, whose hobby is the collection of rare artefacts that aren't actually for sale. Their next target is the Gyrth Chalice, a priceless article held by the Gyrth family in trust for the Crown since the Restoration, which is regarded by its owners with a literally religious devotion. There is a grim secret attached to the Chalice, which is confided to the eldest son during a secret ritual conducted at the family estate, known as the Tower, on his twenty-fifth birthday - which for Val is only a few weeks away.

The Chalice has always been kept under lock and key and behind bars in a converted chapel known as the Cup House, with access to it tightly restricted. To Val's horror, he learns that recently his eccentric aunt, Lady Diana Pethwick, has not only allowed the Chalice to be photographed for the first time, but has become involved with a group that calls her its High Priestess and conducts ceremonies in the woods. Val and Campion travel to the Tower, where Val is reconciled with his father and reunited with his sister, Penny. Meanwhile, Campion, who is staying at the local inn while Val joins his family, learns from his man, Lugg, that he saw one of those in Lady Diana's crowd, supposedly an artist who has come to sketch the Chalice, talking to a dangerous criminal called Natty Johnson. Campion has barely begun to plan his next move when word comes from the Tower that Lady Diana has been found dead in the woods, apparently from heart failure, and with an expression of absolute terror on her face...

The third in Margery Allingham's series of novels about Albert Campion finds her, after his enforced reappearance in Mystery Mile, apparently fully reconciled to her accidental hero and settled into the job of fleshing him out. We get more hints of his background, of a younger son severed from his aristocratic family: a situation that lends a certain poignancy to Campion's mediation of the reconciliation between Val Gyrth and his family. Again we have Campion positioned midway between the forces of law and order, and those of crime and chaos - the latter generally being of more use than the former - while his circle of acquaintances has now expanded to embrace an American professor of archaeology, also an expert on arcane lore; an elderly Jewish jeweller; and an entire tribe of gypsies. Indeed, except for a few unnecessary remarks passed on a "half-caste Japanese" cat burglar, Look To The Lady is thankfully free of the xenophobic nastiness of the earlier novels. That said, it is no less class-conscious, being rather too comfortable with its ruling aristocracy and its humbly dependent peasants.

Look To The Lady is generally a stronger work than its predecessors, although it again asks the reader to believe in a powerful and well-nigh untouchable secret society, vulnerable only to the amateur agent whose hands aren't tied by the processes of the law. Despite this, it is more serious in tone than the earlier novels, with more actual violence in place of merely the threat of it, and with Albert Campion only narrowly escaping an extremely ugly death. For most of the story, Campion is keeping secrets from the Gyrth family - and from the reader - chief amongst them the identity of his real employers, who have hired him to preserve the Chalice at all cost. As a consequence, Campion must keep his own counsel more, and talk a lot less. The battle for Chalice becomes increasingly grim, with plot and counterplot, a perfect willingness to kill on the part of the Gyrths' main adversary - and, unexpectedly, just a soupçon of the supernatural. It is stated at the outset that only the death of the syndicate's agent can relieve the threat to the Chalice: a situation that at least leaves Albert Campion confronted by the fact that the only way he may be able to succeed in his mission is by committing deliberate murder...

Another very thorough review, thanks! I'm enjoying reading your thoughts on this series. I didn't manage to write anything very sensible about most of them when I was reading my way through last year/earlier this year.

"Thorough" - how polite of you! :) I envy the ability of some people around here to write really concise, to-the-point reviews. I always end up running on and on... (I'm the Albert Campion of reviewers!)

I have never mastered the art of conciseness myself either - one reason I often don't get many reviews written at all, because when I start what is meant to be just a brief couple of sentences it soon turns into several lengthy paragraphs, which take me hours to write and there is no time left to write any more... But I like thorough, so it was meant as a compliment even if it sounded politely damning with faint praise, sorry! It's a fine art to be able to summarise enough of the plot to delight the memories of those who've read it and just enough to whet the curiosity of those who have not without giving away spoilers. And the more analytical approach of your concluding paragraphs are very interesting, looking at themes, tone and character development, articulating some thoughts I had myself and some that had not occurred to me - so I do genuinely look forward to your next thorough review in the Campion series!

when I start what is meant to be just a brief couple of sentences it soon turns into several lengthy paragraphs, which take me hours to write and there is no time left to write any more...

Sister!

Actually, I'm a bit ambivalent about this tendency of mine, I guess, because although I'd like to be able to write more concisely, the process of really thinking about what I like (or not) in a novel - which I find often does require writing it down - is part of my overall enjoyment. As I was saying to Stasia, my impulse to read "in order" is partly neurotic, but also I love watching authors develop over time - although I'm not sure that always happens now. These days we often get the spectacular first novel, followed by the rushed and unsatisfactory second novel, and then a career that can go in either direction. I think authors used to be given more time to evolve their style and learn from their mistakes; and I find it particularly interesting to watch in writers with long careers, who were successful over decades: whether they continue to grow, and experiment, or whether they find a popular formula and stick to it.

#111: I love watching authors develop over time

That is the primary reason that I read series in order. I love to see them mature. One of the most interesting books I read either last year or the one before was by Irene Nemirovsky. It contained four of her short stories written at various times throughout her writing career. It was neat to be able to see the progression.

It seems to me that there are more authors these days writing long series rather than stand-alone books - or perhaps it is just that I am much more aware of how many there are, especially with the help of LT. With a writer who writes only stand-alone books there is no need to read them in publication order in order to enjoy the development of continuing characters or to avoid spoilers, but I guess one might still prefer to read them in order so as to observe the development (or decline!) of the writer's skill and ideas over time, which includes whether they continue to grow, and experiment, or whether they find a popular formula and stick to it.

I wonder if choosing to write a series, perhaps within a genre like crime fiction, is necessarily a matter finding a formula that works and and sticking to it - I don't think it has to be, and I don't think you were implying so. But perhaps those who write mainly in series find it harder than those who don't to experiment and develop in new directions while continuing within the constraints and expectations set up by the series. And so it is great to find a series - for me the Allinghams and the Sayers both do this - which doesn't simply repeat itself, or (worse) decline, over the years, but which does grow and develop.

Edited to add: thinking of prolific 19th century authors, Trollope wrote both series and stand-alone of course, but I've only read one of the series so far (Barchester) so don't know how his others compare. I'm trying to think if any other of the 19th century greats who are still popular did series as well as stand-alone (Dickens and others serialised, of course, which is not the same thing)...

Yes, that's a fair observation, Genny: series used to be about "formulaic" material such as detective stories, which lent themselves to recurring characters and adventures. Now everything seems to be a series, with overtly standalone works increasingly uncommon; everything finishes with a set-up to a sequel. Novels are not thought of as single entities, which must profoundly affect the creative process.

And yes, good question: was there any 19th century writer other than Trollope either writing actual series or using recurring characters? Off the top of my head - few if any. I think Charlotte Yonge wrote sequels to a couple of her novels, but it wasn't a common practice. I'll stay more alert for that in future; it's a very interesting point - when was the series born? In the short story? Was there a series before the Sherlock Holmes stories? Were the magazines the nursery of the series?

By the way, I should say that my impulse to read "in order" doesn't confine itself to series: my Wishlist is arranged chronologically, and I generally read individual authors that way - or if I don't, I usually end up scuttling back to the beginning anyway, as with the Campions. And of course, most of the reading I do for my blog is strictly chronological.

My OCD owns me. :)

Genny, if you do go ahead with the Palliser novels, I'm more than happy to chat with you about them. I know most people find them harder going than the Barchester novels because of the political content, which is very specific and not just common knowledge.

Edited to add: Louisa May Alcott? Perhaps we should be looking at stories for younger people for the beginning of the series / sequel.

I have now posted a review of The Haunted Room by "A.L.O.E." (aka "A Lady Of England" aka Charlotte Maria Tucker) over at my blog.

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After publishing his first novel in 1907, Jeffery Farnol went on to become one of Britain's best-selling authors of the first half of the 20th century. His earliest novels were written and published while he was living and working as a scenic artist in America, but his commercial success on both sides of the Atlantic allowed him to return to England and settle on the south coast, where many of his novels are set. A prolific author, Farnol all but made the historical romance his own with tales set from Elizabethan through to Regency times. Although his novels have not lasted as hers have done, Jeffery Farnol was, self-evidently, an important influence upon Georgette Heyer - and therefore, indirectly, upon pretty much every writer of historical romances that there's ever been.

The Jade Of Destiny, published in 1931, is from the middle phase of Farnol's career. This Elizabethan tale opens with the Lady Ione Fane hiring down-and-out soldier-of-fortune Captain Jocelyn Dinwiddie to separate her headstrong young brother, Richard, the Earl of Aldrington, from the companions who are leading him down a dangerous path of heavy drinking and reckless gambling. Lady Ione is impressed with neither the Captain's boastfulness, so at odds with his ragged clothes and penniless condition, nor (in spite of her need of it) his willingness to sell his sword; but the Captain's efficiency in exposing Aldrington's companions as cheats out to fleece him, the swiftness with which he returns the boy to his ancestral home and his subsequent, indignant refusal of payment gives her cause to reassess him. Grateful to his rescuer, Richard insists that the Captain stay at Aldrington, where he becomes mentor to the sometimes petulant, sometimes affectionate boy, and attracts the exasperated interest of the Lady Ione, who cannot reconcile the various aspects of the role-playing Captain's character.

Unbeknownst to his host and hostess, Captain Dinwiddie is no mere hired bravo, but a devoted servant of Queen Elizabeth, acting under the direct command of Sir Francis Walsingham to uncover the agents of a Spanish / Catholic plot to assassinate the queen. To the Captain's consternation, he learns that the attempt on her life is to be made during Elizabeth's planned visit to Aldrington - and that the Lady Ione, a Catholic, has been denounced to Sir Francis as a recusant, a holder of secret masses, a supporter of Mary, Queen of Scots - and as part of the conspiracy, whose task is to bring her brother into the plot. Worse still, in one of his drunken stupors Richard was tricked into signing a paper declaring himself a participant in the conspiracy. Declaring to Sir Francis his absolute belief in the loyalty of the Fanes, the Captain must then not only unravel the plot against the queen, but rescue his friends from accusations of treason: a task made no easier by the discovery that the paper signed by Richard is in the possession of the dangerous Lord Riderwood, who not only intends to use it to force Richard into the plot, but to blackmail Lady Ione into marriage...

At the outset, The Jade Of Destiny seems like a fairly conventional, fairly lightweight historical romance, with a young boy being rescued from his own folly and being taught to be a man, and a hero and heroine acting out a typical love / hate relationship with lots of verbal sparring and manoeuvring. But with the revelation of the plot against Elizabeth, the novel lifts to a different level, becoming a strong and quite suspenseful work, with the unspoken but mutual attraction between the Captain and the Lady Ione woven into an intricate dramatic framework. On one hand, the reckless Ione is guilty of holding secret masses and of denouncing Elizabeth's treatment of Mary, making proving her innocent of actual treason no easy matter. Meanwhile, the Captain has himself been secretly denounced to Ione as an agent of the Crown and a spy upon her actions - which is of course true, so we can't really blame her for turning a deaf ear to the inner voice that tells her that she may trust him with her life...

Good as its story is, The Jade Of Destiny is not without technical flaws, the main one being period jargon laid on so thick that at times you have to stop and puzzle out the meaning of certain sentences, which seem to contain three "ifackins"-es to every cogent word. Thankfully, this eases off as the novel progresses - or perhaps we just get used to it, cogsnails! Likewise, the action is if anything rather too full of hairsbreadth escapes and desperate duels.

However, the flaws in The Jade Of Destiny are more than compensated for in the heartfelt characterisation of Captain Jocelyn Dinwiddle, who has devoted himself body and soul to the service of his country and queen, and has, at the age of thirty-seven, absolutely nothing to show for it. It is the Captain himself who is "the jade of destiny", fortune's fool, destined always to fight for lost causes, and to see others win rewards from his own toil and suffering. Penniless and homeless except for army camps, the Captain has become so resigned to his life of solitary wandering that it does not even occur to him to aspire to Ione's hand - so much so that at one point, Cyrano-like, he begins to court her from cover for the benefit of another man.

And balancing the Captain we have the novel's reluctantly admiring portrait of Elizabeth, so cruelly careless of those who serve her, so much more inclined to reward smooth-tongued courtiers than honest soldiers - and yet demanding and receiving absolute loyalty. Though her actions are frequently questionable, Elizabeth the woman, Elizabeth the queen, is grounded for us by a brief but devastating word-sketch offered by Ione's aunt, the tiny but ferocious Countess of Hartesmere, who was kind to her when she was a lonely, neglected, desperately unhappy little girl known to her father's court simply as "the bastard". The novel concludes, fittingly, with Elizabeth managing to sweep away a myriad of injustices and neglects, as if they had never been, with a single generous gesture: "Our Bess - our Gloriana!"

"'Twould seem she does not hanker for your earl, Eliza."
"What matter? Must our policy be thwarted by her whims? Never, I vow to heaven!"
"Why, then you'll beggar her?"
"By God's good light I will so, unless she wed the earl!"
"Hum!" quoth the Countess. "The earl!"
"Indeed. Know you a better match, Gossip?"
"No, Bess, only a better man..."

Another nice review, Liz!

Thank you! It was definitely a case of being pleasantly surprised by a book.

I have finished reading Joan!!! A Novel by Matilda Fitz John for my "exclamation mark" challenge (TIOLI #14). This was an odd but entertaining mixture of satire and melodrama, with a plot encompassing secret marriages, abandonment, bigamy, adultery, deception, fraud, and the 18th-century version of identity theft.

Fun fact: her name isn't "Joan".

To be blogged.

Now reading The Destroyer by Ernest Poole, from 1931, about which I know...absolutely nothing. I'll get back to you when I do. The early pages seem to be sending the protagonist into a career in advertising, so I'm guessing it's either a satire or Deep Social Commentary. We'll see.

With a name like The Destroyer, I am betting on satire :)

Well, I'm not sure: Ernest Poole was quite a political novelist, so it still could tip either way. I'd rather have a satire. :)

Another fun fact: Ernest Poole won the first ever Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1918, for the novel His Family - I did not know that. I guess he subsequently got swallowed up by Booth Tarkington, Willa Cather and Edith Wharton, who won the next three.

Edited to add: Ooh, yay! - just realised The Destroyer fits the "new to you author 2+" TIOLI challenge.

Congrats on being able to fit the book into TIOLI, Liz! I hope it does turn out to be a satire.

Deep Social Commentary...I just knew it.

Although even at about halfway through, I'm not quite sure what the point of the story is; whether the protagonist is going to see the light and find something to believe in, or crash and burn in a sea of cynicism. I do feel the Wall Street Crash coming on, though.

Sorry, Liz.

I'll survive. :)

It's quite an interesting story, actually, but I'm finding the protagonist such unpleasant company that it isn't an easy read.

#124: It does not sound like I will be adding your current read to the BlackHole :)

#91 Great review of Mystery Mile, you've made me want to reread it again!

#93 & 94 I also really enjoyed her descriptions of the slightly eerie salt marshes.

#107 I haven't started Look to the Lady yet so I am going to skip your review until I've read it. But I will come back and read it.

#113 & 114 Those are some really interesting points about series writing. Edgar Allan Poe wrote three short stories in the 1840s featuring Auguste Dupin who was a precursor to Holmes but I can't think of anything earlier than that (although I am by no means an expert!)

Thank you, Heather. I look forward to hearing what you think of Look To The Lady. You ARE going to get through that this month, right?? (nudgenudgesharedreadnudgenudge) :)

I tend to think Trollope's approach to writing was fairly unique. I have an idea there may have been stories for children that featured recurring characters - didactic tales about families getting in and out of trouble. But in adult literature, I think the detective story was the realm where serial writing really evolved, because there was a reason why adventures kept happening to the same person. And in expanding from the short story to the novel, Arthur Conan Doyle was probably *the* driving force.

The Destroyer - His ideals in tatters after his experiences during WWI, the final blow is dealt to Jack Wyckoff's belief in mankind when he returns home to find that his former girlfriend, Leonie, is engaged to his older brother, Blair, a banker and the "sensible" one of the family. After returning to Europe for several years and working as a journalist, Jack reluctantly attends his brother's wedding, annoyed that he is still attracted to Leonie - and that she knows he is. Struck by the contrast between the rebuilding in Europe and the complacent comfort of America, Jack sets himself to understand the country he has returned to, and decides that nothing will give him a better insight into the American psyche than a job in advertising.

Some time later, Jack returns to his writing and uses his experiences to create a jazz revue, a mocking attack upon the advertising industry and the consumerism it fuels. It is a smashing success, but it does nothing to lessen Jack's cynicism. Deliberately, he sets out to become a "destroyer", to build a career upon attacks on American greed and hypocrisy, ignoring his worried mother's contention that he is shutting his eyes to the good in the world. Jack's ugly portrait of modern marriage - his play is called "The Prostitute" - drives a final wedge between Jack and his mother, who unbeknownst to her family is dangerously ill. Her death leaves Jack reeling, and for a time he contemplates trying to change himself and his attitudes; but the rot has gone too deep. Jack then sits down to take on what he perceives to be America's greatest evil - Wall Street, where his brother Blair is a leading figure. But Jack's latest attack may be unneeded: it is October 1929...

Ernest Poole's 1931 novel about the American malaise of the 1920s has some cogent points to make, but in the end it is so uniformly negative in tone and uses such an unpleasant protagonist to tell its story that it defeats its own purpose. Let's face it, when you emerge from a novel that uses Wall Street as a symbol for society's failings feeling most in sympathy with the character who is a leading figure in the world of finance, something has definitely gone wrong.

The novel treats Jack Wyckoff as a casualty of war, and asks us to understand the cynicism that becomes, in the end, the spiritual equivalent of the cancer that kills his mother. There's a scene that should balance the book, when Ann Wyckoff accuses her son of being unable, or unwilling, to see the good along with the bad, society's progress as well as society's failings:

"...the list is endless! The X-Ray and the microscope and all the work of research, Jack---the war on disease and poverty and ignorance and prejudice! You see it in so many ways---in education of all kinds---schools, night schools and colleges packed to bursting! Boys and girls with chances most of us never had before..."

But Ann is crying in the wilderness. Ernest Poole is firmly in Jack's corner, and Ann's optimistic view of life - and the religion that supports it - is regarded as mere delusion. Conversely, Jack's journey into the darkness of his own soul, in a society mired in the scramble for money and the hypocrisy of Prohibition, is treated as a tragedy - but the novel overreaches by grounding Jack's social rebellion in his lifelong hatred and resentment of his brother, Blair, which took root when they were children and Blair was seriously ill, their mother compelled to neglect one child for the other. Although as an adult Jack understands intellectually the reason for that neglect, emotionally he is still that same tantrum-throwing three-year-old - and just as tiresome. Although supposedly he hates Blair because he is the personification of Wall Street and all it represents, it is far easier to believe that Jack's self-righteous loathing of Wall Street is simply a manifestation of his resentment of his comfortable and successful brother - particularly when he deliberately sets out to wreck Blair's marriage.

Of course, these days we can look back over a great many more Wall Street crises than just the "Crash to end all Crashes" of 1929; and the fact that The Destroyer struggles to carry its point to the reader even in an era when Ernest Poole's criticisms should seem even more valid speaks for itself. Ironically, too, readers might find themselves in exactly Jack's position with respect to Blair, that is, suffering from an inability to keep things in place and in proportion. We might remind ourselves that this is a novel written in 1931, in a very different time and place---but try warming up to Jack Wyckoff after this early description of his experiences in the wonderful world of advertising:

"Just now we're concentrating on girls. Dare we sell them cigarettes? If we can, it means millions of dollars a year. But shall we try it? Is it right? The chief has first to convince himself that smoking in moderation would not destroy our womanhood. He now goes further and believes that, through the relief it gives her nerves, it may even help and strengthen the mothers of tomorrow. So the morals are O.K. But dare we risk a picture of her with the vile weed in her mouth? Not at the start. Too much of a shock. But by only gently tapping at first---picturing her with the cig in her hand, not yet in her pure rosy mouth---we've decided to begin our campaign. This is 1924. In another ten years we hope to have forty million female smokers adding to the incense of every happy home in the land..."

And now, faced by the choice between a nice light fun read, and another piece of Deep Social Commentary from 1931---

---oh, you better believe I'm going with the nice light fun read!

Queen Lucia by E.F. Benson, for TIOLI challenge #18 "an equal number of letters".

#127 I've started it!

#129 I hope you enjoy Queen Lucia :-)

Yay for Lucia! I started the series this year and I'm now more than half way through, which is a rather distressing thought. I hope you enjoy them.

I'm about three-quarters through - we've discovered the difficulties associated with the Neapolitan dialect for those who speak the language of Dante, and the Princess Popoffski has just come to Riseholme.

:)

Finished Queen Lucia for TIOLI #18 - review to come.

Now reading Roman Holiday by Upton Sinclair for TIOLI #6, "new to you author 2+".

And yup, more Deep Social Commentary. Eek!!

I have finished Roman Holiday, Upton Sinclair's bizarre fantasy-satire on the America of the early 1930s. No time just now for a proper review, which means I'm two behind here - d'oh!

On the other hand, I have found some time for a little blog-work. I have now posted a review of E.D.E.N. Southworth's Retribution. This one turned out to be a two-parter. The first part deals with the book as a sensation novel, and the second part deals with it as an abolitionist tract.

Now reading Poor Caroline, my first Winifred Holtby. The bad news is, I couldn't get hold of a Virago copy; the good news is, it's another from my set of library books that were scattered on the floor when TIOLI #1 "read a low book" was posted.

Queen Lucia – Emmeline Lucas, known as Lucia, is the self-styled and self-appointed “queen” of the faux-Elizabethan village of Riseholme. Supported and encouraged by her self-effacing consort, Philip – “Peppino” – and her loyal acolyte Georgie Pillson, Lucia regulates the social and cultural activities of the village, her own taste the final arbiter in all matters of music, art and literature. Lucia’s power over her followers is so complete that upon those rare occasions when one of them shows some sign of individuality – such as Daisy Quantock’s embarkation upon a course of Yoga under her very own Guru – Lucia is able to regain control by high-handedly appropriating the Guru and his teachings for her own purposes, leaving Daisy nothing to do but fume. And the fact that the Guru is subsequently revealed to be a professional curry-cook with an appetite for brandy and distressingly light fingers is neither here nor there.

Unknown to and, indeed, undreamt of by Lucia, across Riseholme certain discontented rumblings are becoming more distinct. Matters come to a head when opera prima donna Olga Bracely arrives in the village for a visit and a rest. The locals are at first thrilled by this further evidence of Riseholme’s inherent high culture; although Georgie is entirely taken aback when Olga reveals that for her the attraction of Riseholme is that it a “hole-in-the-corner, lazy backwater sort of place, where nothing ever happens”. But then Olga falls sufficiently in love with Riseholme life to purchase and renovate a cottage there; and before anyone knows exactly how it happened, and quite without either effort or intent on her part, Olga Bracely has usurped Lucia’s throne…

The first novel of what would evolve into E.F. Benson’s “Mapp and Lucia” series is remarkable for its ability to make the reader laugh and cringe at the same time. With her silvery laugh, her extremely limited grasp of Italian and her baby-talk, Lucia herself is a devastating comic creation. So too is Riseholme itself, and the strange, stunted, cul-de-sac existence of its inhabitants, who are necessarily childless and of the leisured class, since keeping up with Lucia and her inexorable social calendar and developing the faculties that allow the most trivial details of the lives of others to become as the very breath of life is necessarily a fulltime occupation.

Of course, the question remains: how far are we expected to like these people? (I did, I confess, develop a real affection for the obsessively circumstantial Mrs Weston; but then Olga Bracely likes her too, so I guess that’s okay.) The slow-moving, early stages of this novel do an amusingly effective job in drawing the reader into the Riseholme way of life, so that it takes the arrival of Olga to reveal just how far down the slippery slope we’ve travelled. The genuinely cultured but even more genuinely good-natured Olga then becomes the yardstick by which we measure the other characters, and Lucia in particular; and if we’re ultimately glad to see “the queen” climb back onto her throne at the end of the novel, I suspect that, like quite a number of the Riseholme-ites, we’re also secretly pleased to have first witnessed her embarrassing tumble from it…

That was sheer Bolshevism, and at that giddy moment, Georgie felt he had the making of a Bolshevist too. Lucia’s yoke was heavy sometimes, and he daringly wondered what would happen if he asked Olga Bracely to dinner, without mentioning to Lucia that she would be here on the afternoon of the garden-party. Georgie was a Bartlett on his mother’s side, and he played the piano better than Lucia, and he had twenty-four hours’ leisure every day, which he could devote to being King of Riseholme… His nature flared up, burning with a red revolutionary flame, that was fed by his secret knowledge about Olga Bracely. Why should Lucia rule everyone with her rod of iron? Why, and again, why?

I really want to try the Lucia books. Thanks for a thorough review. :)

Thank you for dropping by! :)

Finished Winifred Holtby's Poor Caroline last night - I found it very sad, but not without hope. Review to come.

This has turned out to be my best TIOLI month with 9 reads. However, while every book I read this month fitted a TIOLI, only one of them (Joan!!! A Novel, for my own "exclamation mark" challenge) was sought out specifically; the rest were from my shortlist TBR and just happened to fit. The library books scattered across the floor when Madeline posted her "low book" challenge were a big help, too!

#1: Mystery Mile by Margery Allingham
#1: The Jade Of Destiny by Jeffery Farnol
#1: Poor Caroline by Winifred Holtby
#6: The Destroyer by Ernest Poole
#6: Roman Holiday by Upton Sinclair
#14: Joan!!! A Novel by Matilda Fitz John
#18: Look To The Lady by Margery Allingham
#18: Queen Lucia by E.F. Benson
#21: Cynthia: With The Tragical Account Of The Unfortunate Loves Of Almerin And Desdemona: Being A Novel by Anonymous

I like how my short work had by far the longest title. :)

Coming on the back of Ernest Poole's The Destroyer, I wasn't sure I really wanted another grim political novel decrying the America of the late 20s and early 30s, but that's what I got with Upton Sinclair's Roman Holiday: such are the vagaries of my backed-up interlibrary loans. Sinclair had a long career and wrote in a variety of genres, but it is his politicised novels for which he is best known, and which won him both avid supporters and deadly enemies.

Although Roman Holiday might be considered less "serious" than Sinclair's other political novels, it still falls into that category. It's also extremely odd. It deals with Luke Faber, the privileged son of a wealthy family whose personal business / hobby is the building and racing of motor cars. Luke is also deeply involved in trying to fight back against various upheavals amongst his family's employees including a threatened strike, which he blames upon Communist agitators. Luke is the organiser of a vigilante attack upon a local political meeting, during which one of the leaders of the workers' party ends up dead. In the aftermath of the violent clash, Luke finds himself in company with Marcia Penny, a passionate adherent of the workers' cause who decries his ignorance of the very people he is attacking and, for the first time, makes him question his motives and his tactics. Luke recognises that he is legally responsible for the death of the protest leader, but believes his family's wealth and political power will protect him from reprisals. Nevertheless, the possibility of being charged with murder is still preying on his mind when he participates in a motor race, and his distraction proves almost fatal when he crashes his car. Luke is pulled unconscious from the wreckage and taken to hospital, where he awakes from his coma to find himself somehow transported to ancient Rome...and in a society that bears a strange resemblance to the America of the early 1930s...

And not only Luke, but all of his family and friends are found to be living equivalent lives in Rome - and his enemies as well, including Marcia Penny - "Marcia Penna", a supporter of the artisans, who Lucius has removed from prison, expecting gratitude and capitulation, but whose contempt for him stings and intrigues him. The American Fabers morph very easily into the patrician Faber family of Rome, wealthy, privileged and violently contemptuous of the local artisans; while "Lucius" is the designer and builder of chariots, which race at the Circus Maximus. Luke's degree of awareness that something is wrong fluctuates according to his state of consciousness in the "real" world: at times he is entirely Lucius; at others, he is an onlooker with full historical knowledge of the world around him. The story refuses to provide an explanation for Luke's strange experience: his doctors try, but cannot account for Luke knowing what has been going on in the world away from his hospital bed - which he knows because he has been involved in mirror events in Rome. The novel is, therefore, a fantasy - and a cautionary tale - since over all of Lucius's experiences hangs Luke's knowledge that for all its wealth and power and arrogance, before long the Roman Empire would be no more...

Upton Sinclair's paralleling of post-WWI America and the Roman Empire going unknowingly to its own destruction is an amusing conceit, but its hardly enough to hang a novel the length of Roman Holiday upon. The reiteration of Luke Faber's attitudes and actions in the context of two thousand years before - and the irony of how very comfortably they sit in that context - is entertaining, but the point is made well before Sinclair chooses to draw his line. For my money, the most successful part of the novel is its opening chapters in which Luke Faber describes for us his position, his life, and his beliefs: "successful", meaning unnerving.

Luke is the kind of employer who thinks and speaks of himself as "the master", and has only contempt for the notion of workers' rights - including the right to protest. A threatened strike has nothing to do with conditions, or the plan to cut wages, but can only be the result of foreign infiltration. Luke nurses a Madonna / whore view of womankind, and reacts with incredulity to Marcia's political activism, hovering between an opinion that she's just involved to impress "some man" and that she means it and is therefore "a slut". He decries political corruption, justifying his illegal actions on the score of necessity, then embarks on his mission of vigilante violence secure in the knowledge that the local police will look the other way while he and his friends are breaking heads, and that his family's position and wealth will make the threatened murder charge go away.

Like Luke looking at Rome, readers today have a perspective on this novel that its author didn't have. Actually, two perspectives: the younger generation, dismissed by Luke as weak, and selfish, and shallow, is of course the generation that would fight WWII. Perhaps in 1931 Upton Sinclair had an inkling of that; but he could hardly have guessed that some eighty years after he wrote this novel, the language of Luke Faber would be the language of Fox News, right down to the scapegoating and the choice of invective. And as for whether Luke's Roman experience, his new perspective, his suffering, changes him fundamentally---? Perhaps. Only perhaps. There is still the wealth, the ease, the privilege...

We are heartened by this impromptu speech from a great orator, and I accept his authority, like the others. Of course I might say, out of my knowledge as an American : "Grandfather, it happens I can tell you the Roman Republic will be dead in less than a hundred years..."

Ah, bless Arnold Bennett! - I picked up an interlibrary loan today of a volume that binds together his last works, Venus Rising From The Sea and the unfinished novel, Dream Of Destiny. The former fits the "middle initial" TIOLI challenge and the latter (well, both of them, I guess!) fits the "double double letters" TIOLI challenge. :)

I have now started my July - September thread.