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

[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...