I don't think I'm the only one who, with all the time in the world for reading this year, perversely lost the urge - but it's creeping back, and the library has re-opened because - although I'm sure I could fill a bookcase with books I've bought, new and secondhand, and never got round to reading - nothing is ever as enticing as the book that's newly-acquired. This week I have romped through this book of essays that has left me feeling slightly sad that
Ann Patchett isn't moving next door to bake cookies and be my new BFF - she just seems so nice! And I'm sooooo sorry, Ann, that I always get you mixed up with Anne Tyler!
The essay of practical advice for would-be writers should be required reading for aspiring novelists - essentially, sit down and don't get up until you've written something. And the word game in 'The Paris Match' had me tearing my hair out - until I got it!
This was a real page-turner and the post-apocalyptic theme seems all too believable after a year that has proved that anything really can happen. The characters are cardboard - the American naval commander is such a stuffed shirt that no hot-blooded Aussie young woman would fancy him if he were the last man on earth! And 60-odd years after it was written, I can't imagine a world that would face obliteration with such stoic good manners. No looting - no orgies in the streets ... just planting bulbs for a spring that will never come, working one's way through the best port (I'm all for that!) and bizarrely signing up to learn up to shorthand and typing. Well, I've still got my certificate for 120wpm with the wind behind me - so I guess I'm ready for anything! It was a good read, though - and I do like a proper story.
This has been my most disappointing read recently - and
I was so looking forward to it! It's one side of the correspondence between Eileen, a young Cambridge graduate from a wealthy and well-connected Jewish family and the boyfriend - eventually her husband - who has been posted to Egypt. There is very little of the Blitz in these letters .... it's all about Eileen, the neediest, whiniest, whingiest young woman and oh, how I longed to conscript her into the ATS or the Land Army which might have been the making of her. Reading between the lines, her darling solace - feel free to make sick noises - seems to have been lukewarm about her to start with - and I was rooting for him to chuck her and make his escape. Reader, she married him. Poor bloke. In fairness, the love letters turned up at a house clearance sale and were never intended for publication and I should think Eileen would have the grace to be mortified if she knew how her privacy been betrayed.
In a way, the letters reminded me of the
Romantic Journals of Jean Lucey Pratt - another plain-as-a-boot young woman yearning for love - but somehow a more sympathetic, if exasperating character.
This, on the other hand, was simply riveting - a compelling account of daily life on the home front through that summer of 1940, from Dunkirk to the start of the Blitz, when the phoney war became all too real.And how could I resist a book that has been described as 'Mrs Miniver with the gloves off?'
Hmm, I never feel that Ann P could be my best friend since reading her memoir of Lucy Grealy, which seemed a bit ... opportunistic. But I like her writing and must try this one. Anne Tyler, by contrast, is my favourite novelist - though I would feel a bit daunted by the idea of her being my best friend! Also I want her to keep writing, not having coffee with the likes of me.
ReplyDeleteI'd be very interested to have coffee with *you*, though, Mary. I know nothing about you except that you live in London. I imagine you living somewhere posh, though my ignorance of London is extreme apart from the Victoria line to Walthamstow, where my daughter (alas) lives. And I assume you're retired, so about my age. I see you as being slim, very smart in an understated way - just one of those people who always looks neat, with the kind of thick hair that never moves in a wind, and clothes that never look creased. Am I anywhere near??? (Sadly, I am none of these things except retired (and about my age).)
Oh, Pam - you have that so wrong! If only! I would dearly love to be smart in an understated way but dragged though a hedge backwards would be a more honest appraisal! I don't do ironing!
ReplyDeleteThough I'm loving the idea that I can pass as posh and soignée in print!
I think you probably have a point about the Lucy Grealy book, though I haven't read it - Ann P touches on it in a couple of the essays and is maybe being a bit disingenuous when she says it was memorial of a friendship. There is a kind of ruthlessness in latching onto someone else's story, especially when the friend has written a book of her own.
ReplyDeleteI love Ann Patchett as a writer and have only one novel of hers left to read which is waiting for me on my Kindle. I haven't read this one but I read another of her non-fiction books about her best friend and it was riveting! I remember 'On The Beach' by Neville Shute being on my 5th Form reading list and thoroughly enjoying it.
ReplyDeleteYou are so right about newly acquired books being the most enticing; I've learnt to stack them on my TBR pile and not consign them to my bookshelves immediately. That way once the TBR pile has got dangerously high and wobbly I have to start reading from that pile or there might be an almighty collapse...
xxx
5th form reading list is probably its level, Vronni - but it was a pageturner and that's what I needed! Right now, I'm in the middle of clearing a bookcase - this is a wholly undeserved sit-down as so far only one book has to be consigned to the Oxfam bag; an anthology that has been sitting there for 30 years was flicked through - fatal! - and has been reprieved - and as I chucked everything on the floor to begin, it all looks a whole lot worse than when I started.
ReplyDeleteHow far g=have you got since you posted this comment, Mary? Further, I hope!
ReplyDeleteHangs head in shame!
ReplyDelete