What are you reading the week of September 19, 2015?

Angela Margaret Thirkell (née Mackail, 30 January 1890 – 29 January 1961), was an English and Australian novelist. She also published one novel, Trooper to Southern Cross, under the pseudonym Leslie Parker.

She was the elder daughter of John William Mackail (1859–1945), a Scottish classical scholar and civil servant from the Isle of Bute who was the Oxford professor of poetry from 1906 to 1911. Her mother was Margaret Burne-Jones, daughter of the Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones, and through her, Thirkell was the first cousin once removed of Rudyard Kipling and Stanley Baldwin. Her brother, Denis Mackail (1892–1971), was also a novelist and they had a younger sister, Clare. The three Mackail children were, in their youth, treated first-hand to the fairytales of Mary de Morgan

Angela Mackail was educated in London at Claude Montefiore's Froebel Institute, then at St Paul's Girls' School, Hammersmith, and in Paris at a finishing school for young ladies.

Soon after her return from Paris, Angela Mackail met James Campbell McInnes (1874–1945), a professional singer, and married him in 1911. Their first son was born in January 1912 and named Graham after McInnes's former lover, Graham Peel. He became a diplomat and writer. Their second son was the novelist Colin MacInnes. A third child, Mary, was born and died in 1917, and Angela then divorced her husband for adultery, in a blaze of publicity.

In December 1918, Angela married George Lancelot Allnut Thirkell (1890–c. 1940), an engineer of her own age originally from Tasmania, and in 1920 they sailed for Australia together with her sons. However, the Thirkells led a lower-middle-class life in Melbourne and to Angela it was all deeply unfamiliar and repugnant. Their son Lancelot George Thirkell, later Comptroller of the BBC, was born there, but in November 1929 Angela left her husband without warning, returning to England on the pretext of a holiday, but in fact quitting Australia for good. Lacking money, she begged the fare to London from her godfather, J. M. Barrie, and used the sum intended for her return ticket for two single passages, for herself and her youngest son. She claimed that her parents were ageing, and needed her, but she certainly also preferred the more comfortable life available with them in London. Her second son, Colin, followed her to England soon after, but Graham stayed in Melbourne.

Thereafter, her "attitude to any man to whom she attracted was summed up in the remark: 'It's very peaceful with no husbands,'" which "was quoted by the 'Observer' newspaper in its column 'Sayings of the Week'

Thirkell began writing early in her life in Australia, chiefly through the need for money. An article appeared in the Cornhill Magazine in November 1921 and was the first of many articles and short stories, including work for Australian radio. On her return to England in 1929, this career continued with journalism, stories for children, and then novels. Her success as a novelist began with her second novel, High Rising (1933). She set most of her novels in Anthony Trollope's Barsetshire, his fictional English county developed in the six novels known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire. An alert reader of contemporary fiction, Thirkell also borrowed freely from such now-arcane titles as John Galsworthy's The Country House, from which, for example, she lifted the name 'Worsted' which she used for the village setting of her novel August Folly (1936). She also quoted frequently, and without attribution, from novels by Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, and Elizabeth Gaskell. Thirkell published a new novel every year, which she referred to in correspondence with her editor, Jamie Hamilton of Hamish Hamilton, as new wine in an old bottle. She professed horror at the idea that her circle of well educated and upper-middle-class friends might read her fiction: she expected them to prefer, as she did, such writers as Gibbon, Austen, Dickens, and Proust. She drew the epigraph to T 1951 from Proust: "Les gens du monde se représentent volontiers les livres comme une espèce de cube dont une face est enlevée, si bien que l'auteur se dépêche de 'faire entrer' dedans les personnes qu'il rencontre" ("Society people think that books are a sort of cube, one side of which the author opens the better to insert into it the people he meets.")

Her books of the 1930s in particular had a satiric exuberance, as in Pomfret Towers, which sends up village ways, aristocratic folly and middle-class aspirations. Three Houses (1931, Oxford University Press; repeatedly reprinted) is a short childhood memoir which simultaneously displays Thirkell's precociously finished style, her lifelong melancholy, and her idolisation of her grandfather, Edward Burne-Jones. Trooper to the Southern Cross (1934; republished in 1939 as What Happened on the Boat) "is concerned with the experiences of a number of English and Australian passengers aboard a troop-ship, the Rudolstadt, on their way back to Australia immediately after World War I. It is particularly interesting for its depiction of the Australian 'digger'; his anti-authoritarianism, larrikinism, and, at the same time, his loyalty to those whom he respects."

In the 1940s, her work was coloured by the war and the war efforts. The home front figured particularly in Cheerfulness Breaks In (1940), showing how women saw their loved ones off to the front, and Northbridge Rectory, which showed how housewives coped with the annoyances of wartime life. These books include Marling Hall, Growing Up and The Headmistress, and provide a vibrant picture of the attitude, struggle, and resigned good cheer, of British women during the war. Even a book which did not deal exclusively with the war effort, Miss Bunting, addressed changes in society the war had wrought, as the title character, a governess, grows to middle age and wonders how to live out her life, and where her ambitions might take her as the world turns upside down. These books provide a time capsule of the age.

Later books in the 1950s became more romantic and less contemporary. Among these, The Old Bank House in particular shows Thirkell concerned with the rise of the merchant class, her own prejudices evident, but giving way to grudging respect for industriousness and goodhearted generosity. Later books are simpler romances. The romance The Duke's Daughter deals in a way more directly than some of her others with descendants of Trollope's Barsetshire characters. Her final book, Three Score and Ten, was left unfinished at her death, but was completed later by C. A. Lejeune.

Thirkell showed a keen social sense and a lively eye for the telling detail of everyday life. Many of her books remain in print.

I found the author above in an article about Tory writers in The Guardian. She seemed at least interesting.

I finished up Claire Tomalin's Samuel Pepys: The Unequaled Self an hour ago. (It was a long week teaching a training class with not much time for reading.) I just picked up a copy of C. V. Wedgwood's The Thirty Years War, and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man on the way home from work this evening. I believe that I'll start the Wedgwood first.

Finished The Anodyne Necklace by Martha Grimes and Dragonsong by Anne McCaffrey. Enjoyed both.

Now reading The Old Silent by Martha Grimes and The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett.

I finished a LTER Living Large: Wilna Hervey and Nan Mason which is a biography of Wilma Hervey and Nan Mason done with tender compassion, alluding to their sexual relationship and their psychological challenges but focusing on their love of life, art, and people. It is accompanied by a large number of pictures of them, their friends, art, and houses which greatly enhance the book. The book introduces these two remarkable women to a public that is largely unaware of them or their ground breaking lives.

Just finished the rather disappointing Folks, This Ain't Normal, starting in on Success Made Simple, & am partway through On Killing on audio (which I'm recommending already). I should find something narrative for balance, though.

I just finished reading Finders Keepers by Stephen King, and I enjoyed it greatly. He's left a fascinating hint about the next book in the Bill Hughes series, and already I am looking forward to finding out how King writes that story.

I'm still working on Siddhartha Mukherjee's The Emperor of all Maladies, and am going to start Jo Nesbo's The Devil's Star before bedtime.

I'm about to finish up the last 20 pages of the latest Louise Penny, The Nature of the Beast. It's been a good one!

Finished my two Agatha Christie's for book club: And Then There Were None and After the Funeral.

Now reading The Martian and doing a real time reread of A Discovery of Witches.

6 ahef1963 link goes to a futuristic romance. :) for Finders Keepers made me take a second look when that came up..... :)

Finished The Old Silent by Martha Grimes. Liked it.

Now reading Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers.

Just finished and enjoyed Newbery Award winner Laura Mary Schlitz's newest, The Hired Girl.

I finished and am still wallowing in the wonderfulness of Elena Ferrante's The Story of the Lost Child. This four book series will definitely be the highlight of my reading year. Very powerful writing and she is apparently an early favorite for the Nobel prize.

Now I'm reading Devil in the Grove by Gilbert King.

Just finished reading the book Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer.

just finished Blast Radius by R L McKinney a great read, great characters really enjoyed it

I finished Mary Gordon's The Other Side. It's beautifully written and masterful in its way, but the family at the heart of the book is so mired in a web of anger and contempt and negativity that I grew weary of reading about them.

Next up: Penelope Fitzgerald's Innocence

For LT admirers of J. L. Carr's A Month in the Country:

http://bookhaven.stanford.edu/2015/09/stanfords-another-look-book-club-reborn-wi...

I just finished A Christmas Secret and A Christmas Beginning, both by Anne Perry. I start reading Christmas books in September almost every year. Oh, I also read Rita Mae Brown's, The Litter of the Law.

>16 mollygrace: Thanks for posting that, mollygrace. I loved the book (and recently bought a copy of my own to reread) but I never knew there was a movie!

This week I'm reading Andrea Camilleri's The Paper Moon, Nick Hornby's More Baths, Less Talking, and listening to All the Wild That Remains. All very good!

I started Don't Cry, Tai Lake and just finished Cotillion.

Finished Murder Must Advertise. Kink of meh. Started Strong Poison, also by Dorothy L. Sayers.

Well, life jumped in and kept me away from LT for a while, but not from my books. So, playing a little catch up, I've finished and enjoyed:

Tevye's Daughters by Sholom Aleichem, an astounding collection of tragic-comic stories of Jewish life in the Russian Pale of Settlement during the last years of the tsars.

Before the Machine: the Story of the 1961 Pennant-Winning Cincinnati Reds by Mark J. Schmetzer. For baseball fans only, this is a mostly fun account of the collection of unknowns and over-the-hills, with a couple of young stars thrown in, who surprised the baseball world by taking the National League pennant.

Why You Crying?: My Long, Hard Look at Life, Love, and Laughter by George Lopez, the comedian/TV star. A good account of a hard life.

You can read more about my reactions to all three books on my 50-Book Challenge thread.

OK, caught up! I'm now reading the excellent A Star Called Henry by Roddy Doyle.

Just finished Keigo Higashino's brilliant The Devotion of Suspect X, and still have a "book hangover". My head is still in Japan, brain surrounded with knotty mysteries, while my body is right here in Canada. For this reason, I haven't a clue what I will read next.

The new thread is up over here.