Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Susan Coolidge’s Eyebright, which among its other endearing qualities contains a scene where the delighted heroine discovers a stack of books that have been chosen especially for her. (Naturally I took note of all the titles, and moved right on to A. D. Whitney’s We Girls, about which more anon.) I quite enjoyed many parts of this book - Eyebright’s visit to the Shakers, and her island home off the coast of Maine, and her visit to the tide pools in a cave that are like little fairy gardens - but sadly I don’t think it ever quite comes together as a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

I also finished Barbara Pym’s Excellent Women, which I liked more than Some Tame Gazelle, although I’m still not sure I’ll read more Pym because her books are just so sad. Pym is writing about single women in mid-20th century Britain leading lives of quiet desperation, which are all the sadder for their very uneventful quietness, endless lives stretching forward in an unbroken string of gray days. At the end of the day I’d prefer to read about Miss Read’s spinsters and their lives of quiet contentment.

And I read Daphne du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn, which is deliciously atmospheric. Twenty three-year-old Mary Yellan, recently orphaned, has just moved to Cornwall to live with her aunt and uncle in their crumbling on on the barren coast, where the sea booms and the wind rushes across the empty moor.

But I didn’t like it as much as Rebecca or My Cousin Rachel; Jamaica Inn has a sense of looming sexual menace which those books mostly lack, which is not so much bad as not to my taste. And I quite disliked the endgame pairing, and it really detracts from the reading experience shouting “NO DON’T DO IT!” at the heroine as she goes ahead and does it. You’ll be better off alone, Mary! And I’m not sure why she thinks this dude and SPINSTERHOOD FOREVER are her only options anyway; she’s young and pretty and clearly well able to attract men.

Oh! And I completed my June challenge, “a book you can read in a day,” with Ian Fleming’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Which was moderately amusing.

What I’m Reading Now

I suspect I’ll be reading A. D. Whitney’s We Girls for the rest of June, not because of any flaw in the book, but because summer reading has began and therefore I have less time to read at work. That’s probably a good thing but a bit frustrating from a reading perspective.

What I Plan to Read Next

No firm plans as yet. I’m turning over possibilities for my July challenge, “a book that’s more than 500 pages.” Leaning toward Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, but I’ve still got a month in which to decide.

Comments

[asakiyume]

I always wonder about books where people's lives of quiet desperation stretch on in a long dreary vista ahead of them why exactly they're stuck. I understand not being able to change things when life is full of very real immediate desperation (like you're barely earning enough to pay the rent and eat), but I get the impression that Barbara Pym's heroines aren't in those desperate straits. So what holds them back? What is it that keeps people stuck in lives they they could change--at least a little, at least as a beginning--when there aren't external barriers? ... I guess it could be depression--depression robs people of the feeling that anything they can do will make a difference. Is that the impression you get? That it's depression?

I had to go back and check my reactions to Jamaica Inn after reading yours. Apparently I didn't find the romantic lead as unappealing as you did!

[osprey_archer]

I think it's something cultural about mid-twentieth century Britain (and possibly Britain at other times, although the spinsters in Cranford didn't seem to suffer from quiet desperation). The idea that a woman's life gains meaning when she gets a man and until then she's just stuck in a holding pattern seems to be so strong that Pym's heroines just can't break free even though there's no real barrier (either in terms of money or depression or whatever) stopping them from making a life that is at least a little more satisfying.

But again, Miss Read was writing at about the same time and her spinster heroines are generally active happy people who enjoy their lives, so however strong this cultural imperative, clearly not everyone buckled under its weight.

[thisbluespirit]

Susan Coolidge’s Eyebright, which among its other endearing qualities contains a scene where the delighted heroine discovers a stack of books that have been chosen especially for her.

Funnily enough, though I'd never heard of this, Lucy Mangan read it in Bookworm!

[osprey_archer]

WOW. I really have to read that book! My birthday is coming... I might see if I can get it as a present.

[kore]

I keep meaning to read Jamaica Inn! Every time I want to read one of her other books I wind up rereading Rebecca instead, hah.

[osprey_archer]

Her other books are worth reading, but at the same time it's hard to argue with the choice to reread Rebecca.

[kore]

It sucks me in EVERY TIME. It's so hypnotic. The other book of hers I reread when I was younger was the biography of Branwell, which is also pretty much a novel, LOL. And I know I read Frenchman's Creek? or Scapegoat? no, was it House on the Strand? a while ago, but obviously can't remember it....

Her short stories, on the other hand, DAMN. Those are brilliant tales of unease. A lot are quite like Shirley Jackson.

[sovay]

Her short stories, on the other hand, DAMN. Those are brilliant tales of unease.

+1. I just got my father Don't Look Now because he read the original short story of "The Birds" and was blown away.

[kore]

Ooh nice, I hadn't seen that edition.

Aww.... https://www.nyrb.com/products/the-haunted-looking-glass?s=recomatic&variant=1094932021

[sovay]

And I read Daphne du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn, which is deliciously atmospheric.

I keep meaning to read that because I have only seen the 1939 Hitchcock film which has some great things going for it, but one of them is not its fidelity to du Maurier's plot. I rather like the romantic lead in the film, but he's played by Robert Newton.

[osprey_archer]

I imagine an appealing actor could make the romantic lead more - I was going to say likeable, but the problem is not that he's not likeable exactly, it's that he's all too likeable so I do understand why Mary ends up with him even though he's practically got a flashing neon sign over his head that says "I WILL BEAT MY WIFE."

[sovay]

even though he's practically got a flashing neon sign over his head that says "I WILL BEAT MY WIFE."

Yeah, Robert Newton—despite some of his later roles—as Jem Trehearne does not suggest that at all. Yikes.

[rachelmanija]

I never even heard of Eyebright. How much did Susan Cooper write, anyway?

[osprey_archer]

Susan Coolidge was a 19th century novelist who wrote approximately a bajillion things, the most famous of which is What Katy Did, in which young Katy falls out of a swing and is left bedridden for a couple of years. So far none of her other heroines have suffered similar misfortunes, but possibly I just haven't found the right book yet.