Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

A few weeks ago troisoiseaux mentioned reading Boris Pasternak’s I Remember: Sketch for an Autobiography, and of course upon hearing that it was full of tidbits about writers and artists that Pasternak knew, I just had to read it. The tidbits truly are tidbits; the book is, as it says, a sketch, and overall I just wanted more detail about everyone (particular Marina Tsvetaeva), but still it was fascinating to catch this glimpse of Russia before the Revolution.

I also finished E. M. Delafield’s The War-Workers, and boy, does Delafield have a lot of Feelings about women war workers and how women’s war work is SO important but also not MORE important than fulfilling women’s traditional sphere in the home, and also that work (particularly war work) should be done for the sake of the work itself and not for self-aggrandisement, which I don’t disagree with, but it feels uncomfortably gendered here.

This is one of Delafield’s earliest novels, which may account for the occasional clumsiness with which it hammers its themes. It already displays Delafield’s deft grasp of character, however. I particularly enjoyed Char Vivian’s devoted secretary Miss Delmege, who frequently drives her fellow workers mad with her superior airs and delicate sensibilities, like the evening that she retreats upstairs in genteel dismay when one of the girls brings her camisole into the parlor to mend: "Well," she said gently, "underwear in the sitting-room, you know!"

This is the sort of person who is MUCH more enjoyable in fiction than real life, but it’s a lot of fun to see her pretensions gently skewered.

Oh! And I also finished Mary Stewart’s This Rough Magic. What a good read. I am happy to inform you that our heroine is rescued from drowning by the dolphin she saved earlier in the book (actually I guess there is no proof it is the same dolphin… but it IS the same dolphin, come at me bro), in the very best tradition of a fairy tale heroine who helps an animal and later is helped in her turn.

What I’m Reading Now

I’ve begun Dinah Mulock Craik’s John Halifax, Gentleman, recommended by philomytha as an extremely slashy Victorian novel. It’s narrated by the titular John Halifax’s bff Phineas Fletcher, and by the end of the very first chapter Phineas is making David & Jonathan comparisons, so this is absolute gold.

Also, I realized I could make the characters in one of my projects Golden Age mystery aficionados (only for the early Golden Age, though; the book is set in 1927), so I’ve dived into Agatha Christie with The Man in the Brown Suit. The book is narrated primarily by Anne Bedingfield, a recently orphaned girl who is determined to become an adventuress and/or a detective, rather like the heroines of her favorite action-adventure serial, in the style of The Perils of Pauline or The Hazards of Helen. I love her.

What I Plan to Read Next

This is not so much a “what I am reading next” as I’ve already read it, but I just HAVE to brag: yesterday I found a copy of Jill Paton Walsh’s Fireweed at Half-Price Books and now it is MINE, ALL MINE.

Comments

[oracne]

What a happy book post.

OF COURSE IT IS THE SAME DOLPHIN.

[osprey_archer]

Sometimes a week just comes together with a lot of good books.

And it HAS to be the same dolphin. Perhaps there is no proof but who needs proof when the proof is in our HEARTS.

[troisoiseaux]

I'm so glad you enjoyed I Remember! Did your edition include his essay on translating Shakespeare?

[osprey_archer]

It did! I read it but I'm afraid I don't retain much memory of it; I must have been mulling over his musings on Marina Tsvetaeva or something.

[troisoiseaux]

It's always interesting to see the different things that different readers get out of the same book! The bits that left the deepest impression on me were the Shakespeare essay, the chapter on Scriabin/how he wanted to be a composer rather than a writer in his youth, and just, like... how Pasternak was really the One Who Made It Out Alive, of his Russian literary contemporaries.

[osprey_archer]

The shift from composer to writer was so interesting! Just... IDK, the fact that he was SO into music, and then just moved to a completely different medium, apparently without looking back.

There's a chapter where he's musing on his many literary contemporaries who committed suicide, on the agony of soul that drove them to it. and it's just so sad. More so in a way because he's so accepting of it - like he's gone beyond sadness to just, like, "This is life."

[sovay]

I am happy to inform you that our heroine is rescued from drowning by the dolphin she saved earlier in the book (actually I guess there is no proof it is the same dolphin… but it IS the same dolphin, come at me bro), in the very best tradition of a fairy tale heroine who helps an animal and later is helped in her turn.

It has never occurred to me that it wasn't the same dolphin!

[osprey_archer]

It didn't occur to me till the moment I was writing about the book that it was even POSSIBLE it might be another dolphin. But of course it can't be. Fairy tale logic means it must be the selfsame dolphin our heroine saved.

[rachelmanija]

Very jealous over Fireweed. Please review it.

I had thought I'd read This Rough Magic but it seems impossible that I could have and not recall the dolphin rescue.

[osprey_archer]

I wrote about Fireweed last year when I read it! Let's see if I can dig up the review... Yes, here.

The dolphin rescue takes only half a page, so I suppose it's possible you did forget it? But it's also possible that in fact you haven't read This Rough Magic, and discovering an unread Mary Stewart is kind of like discovering a long-forgotten twenty-dollar bill in a coat pocket, IMO.

[asakiyume]

Here's Osprey Archer's review! I was curious to read it too!

(Oh whoops; I missed that she'd already given you the link!)

[regshoe]

I agree about The War-Workers and its attitudes to work and gender—I remember being torn between thinking the points the book was making about Char Vivian were true, but also sometimes pretty unfair in an uncomfortably gendered way. But I also enjoyed the interactions between the other war-workers, Miss Delmege's snobbishness included!

John Halifax, Gentleman is indeed a lot. :D I love how that first chapter just gets right into it with the instant intense devotion and David & Jonathan references. Interested to hear what you make of the rest of it.

[osprey_archer]

Yes, I think there are moments when the book is Making an Example of Char Vivian, and it feels unnecessarily harsh, even though she really does sound like a terrible boss. The part where she just DECIDES her workers are going to start working evenings in the canteen, without even asking them! Gracious.

The part that really got me is the part where Char's father has a stroke, and her mother thinks that Char should just give up her work indefinitely till he dies, even though she doesn't need Char's help nursing and Char's father only rarely asks to see her. It's impossible to imagine her making that demand of a son (the army would surely not have allowed it!), and it's hard as a modern person to see it as anything but unreasonable. Why should Char give up her work (which everyone agrees is useful, even if she's officious about it and probably doesn't ACTUALLY need to stay at the office till nine every night) to sit at home where they have no actual need for her?

[regshoe]

Yes, that part about her father's illness was one of the things that got me, too! Very true that that would never have been asked of a son.

I do wonder how much of that harshness was 'making an example' from the perspective of an outsider, though—Char did occasionally remind me of Alex in Consequences, a book which is also very harsh in its way but much more personal and—I don't think 'sympathetic' is quite the right word, but. The way the book puts so much emphasis on the good, happy people finding happiness by shutting Char out made me feel that perhaps Delafield intended a bit of sympathy there, in a slightly twisted sort of way.

[osprey_archer]

I think Delafield has a complicated attitude toward Char: she's not sympathetic to her, but also far from wholly condemnatory. And she gets off quite lightly for her sins, such as they are: at the end of the book Char's still in charge of the Supply Depot, and the Supply Depot still has its finger in most of the important pies in the county, and although her staff as a whole may be less adoring, she still has the unceasing admiration of her secretary Delmege AND her former governess Brucie, who will now be keeping house for Char, because she no longer has to live at home with the parents with whom she frequently clashed.

Of course it's not a storybook happy ending with a wedding and happily ever afters, but there's no indication Char wants that anyway.

[regshoe]

Yes, very true—'complicated' is about right! Delafield's writing can be really interesting in that way—I must read a few more of her books sometime...

[skygiants]

IT IS FOR SURE THE SAME DOLPHIN.

I'm so glad you're enjoying The Man in the Brown Suit! Anne Bedingfield is a Force of Nature and she's incredible.

[osprey_archer]

I had actually forgotten that you recently reviewed this, but then I got to the scene where she's like "I'm sure the guy who busted into my cabin and was super rude to me is NOT a murder because I love him, but if he IS a murderer I still love him," and then lightbulbs went off in my brain and I remembered.

Normally this trope would bother me but I feel that Christie realized it is ridiculous and is enjoying the OTT ridiculousness alongside us? And that makes it all right and in fact delightful.

[asakiyume]

Has to be the same dolphin--I mean probably the dolphins were jostling to save her, and then the one she rescued just went, "'Scuse me; 'scuse me, I got this one--yeah, sorry, 'scuse me, if you'll just move aside--that's the way" and then there it was, buoying her up and pushing her shoreward (or however it was accomplished in the story).

[osprey_archer]

The dolphin probably sensed the nefarious intentions of the bad guy and was hanging around just in case its human friend needed rescuing. It knew!!