Appointment with Venus

~ Jane ~ 9 Comments

Jerrard Tickell was staying on the island of Sark when he wrote Appointment with Venus in 1950. Just over five miles long and 2 miles wide, the island is self governing, with a semi feudal system under the Seigneur; and like the other Channel Islands was under German occupation from 1940 to 1945. The calm, curtesy of the Seigneur Dame Sybil Hathaway towards the German soldiers, the efforts of British commando raids, the lives of ordinary islanders under restriction, all provide a setting that’s bursting with the ingredients of a story; and Tickell weaves these facts through his fictional island of Armorel, where Captain Hans Weiss and his Panzer Grenadiers arrive at the seaweeded entrance of Havre des Mouettes to claim the island.

Taking Le Manoir as their headquarters, the islanders are put under lockdown; no boats, no alcohol, no radios, no patois, no going out after dark – a wary coexistance forms, moving along at island pace. But chewing the cud outside Le Manoir is Venus de l’Abbaye, an elite Guernsey cow pregnant with a calf sired by Mars. She’s the last in the line of a valuable dynasty and Captain Weiss, a cattle breeder in his former life wants to take her back to Germany. The War Office is having none of it and Operation Venus begins.

Continue reading “Appointment with Venus” →

The Ha-Ha

~ Jane ~ 26 Comments

Josephine Traughton is 23, after her mother died she gave up her studies in English, with a particular interest in Anglo-Saxon, at Oxford University, and was admitted to hospital. From the window sill in her room she watches the hill on the horizon; she describes college life to the sister, the essay-crises and coffee-parties, tennis and afternoons on the river; she walks to Colonel and Mrs Maybury’s house everyday and helps them catalogue their library from an attic room; it’s on her walk that she finds she can jump the wall of the hospital quite easily and land on the soft green of the ha-ha and this becomes her favourite place. Alone among the poppies she can spend hours in the safety of the hospital grounds and in the safety of her own mind.

And then Alisdair finds her in her spot and joins her, he enjoys her refreshingly original way of thinking, her unwillingness to play the game of joining in and getting ahead. And then on a walk she meets a contemporary from university who says things like ‘let’s catch up’ and ‘I’m having a party, you must come’; and suddenly she has an invitation and Alisdair encourages her to go and the summer seems possible. It’s not that anyone is actually horrible, Josephine at pains to be honest, tells us, it’s just that she doesn’t know how to play the game, what should she say when Mrs Maybury kindly invites her into the garden should the attic become too stuffy? What are the girls in the corner at the party talking about so animatedly? She can hear the rhythm of the conversation but when does she say something?

Continue reading “The Ha-Ha” →

Six Degrees from The Correspondent

~ Jane ~ 21 Comments

The first Saturday in the month and time for Six Degrees of Separation hosted by Kate at booksaremyfavouriteandbest. This month we begin with The Correspondent an epistolory novel that I loved the sound of from Kate’s review here, but haven’t read yet. But I did think, what a lovely cover, so that’s my first link to a book I’ve read where first of all I just loved the cover

Ishmael’s Oranges begins in 1948 when Salim Al-Ishmaeli is 7 years old, growing up in Jaffa, Palestine. Judit Gold is born in 1948 in Sunderland, England into a Jewish family and the story follows their lives and Arab and Jewish heritage until 1988. Which includes some delicious food, steaming spicy cabbage, figs, flatbreads, and lots of roast lamb; food that shares its history, provides my next link to The Bible.

Continue reading “Six Degrees from The Correspondent” →

This Is Happiness

~ Jane ~ 15 Comments

Noel Crowe, called Noe, looks back over 60 years to a summer when he was 17 and staying with his grandparents in the village of Faha in West Clare. He arrives in March, Easter time, a time of rebirth and renewal; and for the first time that anyone can remember the rain has stopped and the sun shines.

‘Rain there on the western seaboard was a condition of living. It came straight-down and sideways, frontwards, backwards and any other wards God could think of. It came in sweeps, in waves, sometimes in veils. It came dressed as drizzle, as mizzle, as mist, as showers, frequent and widespread, as a wet, as a damp day, a drop, a dreeping, and an out-and-out downpour.’

Continue reading “This Is Happiness” →

Death and Mary Dazill

~ Jane ~ 15 Comments

Superintendent Mallett and two friends Dr. Fitzbrown and Dr. Jones are threading their way through the grave yard, after the funeral of a police colleague, stopping every now and then to read an inscription. As they reach the lych-gate, the vicar invites them in for tea with his wife and this is when they notice two elegantly dressed ladies placing a wreath on an elaborate column of white marble, the grave of their father, Ralph de Boulter and their brother Leonard. For they are the Miss de Boulter’s of Chetwode Lodge, Lindy and Arran, and they lay a wreath on the grave every week of the year. Their brother died when he was 20 and their father six months later, the mystery surrounding their deaths left unsolved. And some way off, in a corner of the graveyard, is a neglected headstone, sunk into the grass, that bears the name of Mary Dazill.

The three men are intrigued, is there a connection between Mary Dazill to the family at Chetwode Lodge and what is the mystery surrounding their deaths? ‘Bring the old photo album, my dear,’ says the vicar to his wife, Mrs Barrett. For Mrs. Barrett’s mother, quiet Lucy Brown, was a close friend of Lindy and Arran and a frequent visitor at the lodge.

It all happened so long ago, some 50 years ago or so in the 1890’s when Lindy and Arran were teenagers and their widowed father, newly arrived home from Burma thought they needed a governess. As Mrs Barrett begins her story she turns over the thick cardboard pages of the album

‘The day she arrived . . . was a lovely day in spring. Chetwode Lodge was like a fairyland in those days.’

And then we dive straight in to the household of 1890 and witness Mary Dazill’s strange hold over the family; the way she plays with the affections of Leonard (who Lucy loves), his friend John, (who Lindy loves) and even Ralph. The way John plays with the affections of Arran, and how Mary comes between Leonard and John, and then between Ralph and his children. Lucy, sitting unnoticed, watches and builds up the clues that lead to her belief that it was murder.

Continue reading “Death and Mary Dazill” →

The Red and the Green

~ Jane ~ 20 Comments

It’s Reading Ireland month with Cathy at 746 Books and this year is A year with Iris Murdoch hosted by Cathy and Kim at Reading Matters so it seemed like the right time to get back to Iris Murdoch who I last read in a huge rash in the 90’s. The Red and the Green is one that I didn’t read then and I’m surprised I didn’t because it felt much less dense than some of her other novels. Set in Dublin in the week leading to the Easter Rising of 1916, the historical setting gives the plot a clear focus, energy and tension that I wasn’t expecting.

The novel begins on a sunny Sunday afternoon in April with Second-Lieutenant Andrew Chase-White in the garden of Finglas, the home of his fiancée in Sandycove, ‘in one of those bright little roads of multicoloured villas which run down to the sea‘, at the start of 10 days leave from his regiment of King Edward’s Horse. His mother is with him as she intends to give up the London flat and settle in Dublin, surrounded by her large, extended family. Andrew possesses an irritated rivalry for all these Irish cousins, feeling a superiority to their uncultivated outlook and yet jealous of their noisy, athletic gang. In particular he has an uncomfortable admiration for Pat Dumay, older than him by a year, he’s a natural, casual rider, known to his family as ‘the iron man’ and the reason Andrew joined a cavalry regiment in spite of his fear of horses. Pat is as Catholic as Andrew is Protestant and with Andrew fighting in the Great War and Pat an Irish Patriot, the two cousins are set on opposite sides and against each other as plans for the rebellion take shape and tension mounts, in the struggle for Home Rule.

Continue reading “The Red and the Green” →

Just Watching: We Are The Best!

~ Jane ~ 7 Comments

Bobo and Klara are two 13 years olds living in Stockholm, it’s 1982 and Punk is Dead or so say the popular girls in neon leg warmers with synchronised dance routines; and the boys thrashing their stuff and making sure they know how ugly they are.

But these two don’t want to join in, they’re a team of two and after a run in with the gym teacher they decide to form a band at the local youth centre, really just to annoy everyone and give those boys in Iron Fist a run for their money. They can’t play and can’t sing but write a song, Hate The Sport, and start to practice.

The team of two becomes three when they realise that Hedvig, a super conventional Christian who’s always being teased is actually very good on her classical guitar. She can teach them some chords!

Written and directed by Lukas Moodysson, adapted from the graphic novel Never Goodnight by his wife Coco Moodysson, this is a joyous rebellious ride against popular culture, seen almost as if we’re spying through the key hole, it’s so natural.

Continue reading “Just Watching: We Are The Best!” →

A Fortunate Man

~ Jane ~ 22 Comments

At the end of the 19th century Johannes Sidenius, a Lutheran pastor, lives with his wife and 11 children in a small provincial town in east Jutland. Stern and pious, curt and inhospitable, Pastor Sidenius is more likely to question his parishioners on their religious inclinations that offer them the expected coffee and sympathy. Set apart from the community by his aloof indifference, his wife, after so many childbirths in quick succession, the strain of living in dire poverty and a reluctance to countenance any sort of secular behaviour has taken to her bed. Their children go to school but otherwise are kept to themselves, there are hymns around the piano, prayers and homework. Their appearance, with their unusual neck collars, long curling hair for the five boys, and hair plastered to their skulls with a plait at each temple running in front of their ears for the girls, sets them apart from their peers. Life is frugal and meagre, and silent unless you’re invited to speak. But they’ve inherited a strict sense of duty and are eager to emulate their parents’.

Not Peter Andreas though. Almost from birth he’s like a stranger in the home. He burns with shame at their odd appearance that keeps him singled out. He climbs out of his bedroom window at night to skate with his classmates and kiss the girls. He dreams of engineering and developing a new canal system which will bring Jutland into contact with the rest of Denmark and bring Denmark into contact with the rest of Europe. Not for him a life of humble gratitude, he wants to be rich, rich and famous.

At last, he’s allowed to leave home for Engineering college in Copenhagan; he drops his apostolic names and becomes simply Per. He says goodbye to his family and sets his sights on a glorious future.

Continue reading “A Fortunate Man” →

The Time Machine

~ Jane ~ 18 Comments

This was my Classics Club spin read and what a fun surprise it was! Written in 1895, a group of Victorian gentleman meet every Thursday for dinner. Only referred to by their professions, one week their discussion turns to Time-Dimension, and the possibility of moving through space and time, when the Time Traveller shows them the Time Machine he’s been working on.

These meetings provide the frame for an extraordinary adventure that the Time Traveller recounts to them the following Thursday – when he arrives late, limping, haggard and covered in dust. After draining a few glasses of champagne he begins his story.

He has travelled through space,

‘the sky took on a wonderful deepness of blue ,a splendid luminous colour like that of early twilight; the jerking sun became a streak of fire, a brilliant arch, in space; the moon a fainter fluctuating band; and I could see nothing of the stars, save now and then a brighter circle flickering in the blue.’

until clumsily landing by a huge white statue in the year Eight Hundred and Two Thousand.

Continue reading “The Time Machine” →

Six Degrees From Wuthering Heights

~ Jane ~ 20 Comments

In celebration of Emerald Fennell’s film adaptation, Kate at booksaremyfavouriteandbest has chosen Wuthering Heights to begin this months Six Degrees of Separation.

I did see the film and on the whole thought it was quite fun, but the first thing it makes me think of is how much I liked Nurse Patsy Mount in the TV series Call the Midwife, played with aplomb by Emerald Fennell. Based on Jennifer Worth’s memoir of the same name, it’s set in 1950’s London.

Continue reading “Six Degrees From Wuthering Heights” →