This month’s starter book for our fun series of literary links, as hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best is The Correspondent, an epistolary novel by Virginia Evans. I haven’t read it, but am quite a fan of epistolary novels, which feel like such an 18th century thing, back when people could only express their thoughts and concern for each other through writing lengthy letters. However, I wanted to go with a spring/Easter theme, since it’s Easter Sunday in the Western tradition today. Making it really hard for myself, right?
OK, I had to do some mental gymnastics to get to my first sort of Easter link via epistolary novels, but it’s The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, because it’s got a religious theme. These are letters written by a senior devil to his less experienced nephew, who is trying to corrupt a human. I haven’t reread this recently, but I remember thinking it was quite funny in my irreverent teens, but it shows the author’s strong Christian values.
These are values he also shows, albeit indirectly in his Narnia series, particularly perhaps in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, my second link, which I liked for Lucy and its blue-turquoise cover. The religious references went completely over my head at the time but there is something about Aslan’s country and resurrection in there, so it fits the Easter theme.
It is also the time for Jewish Passover celebrations and the only book with Dawn in the title that I could find that I’ve heard of is Elie Wiesel’s Dawn, second in the so-called The Night Trilogy, about the crisis of conscience of a Holocaust survivor who has settled in Palestine and is tasked with executing a British officer.
From a divided Palestine to a divided Britain but with a tiny strand of hope in Ali Smith’s novel Spring, part of her Seasonal Quartet. It’s been a while since I read her books, and I want to read the entire quartet again in order and without long gaps between them.
A far more escapist view of Brits travelling, this time abroad, and set in the spring months is my oft-mentioned The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim, one of the few ‘gentle’ reads which I really like.
The Vintage edition cover of The Enchanted April has that cool 1920s feel which fits with its publication date of 1922, and the final link is to this particular cover of The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, which also fits perfectly with its publication date of 1911. Another book about the redeeming power of nature and flowers, beautifully illustrated by Inga Moore.
So I’ll close off with a magnolia and cherry tree that I saw yesterday on the outskirts of Berlin (see the top of the post), wishing everyone celebrating a Happy Easter, and a beautiful spring if it’s the season in your part of the world.
findingtimetowrite 