No, today's title doesn't suggest a foray into the world of female impersonation (for the record, Simone is my preferred equivalent) but rather the beginning of what I will whimsically call Hesperus Week!
Hesperus have been mentioned a few times on here before, but it's worth doing again. A while ago they sent me four books, and I gobbled up Jerome K. Jerome's The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow very speedily, loving every word. It's taken me a while to read the other three, since I decided I'd finish them all before I wrote about them individually. Before I get onto the first of those, I'll remind you a little bit about Hesperus Press. They specialise in reprinting the neglected works of famous authors, and also translations of modern foreign novels. It is the former in which I am especially interested, with authors including Austen, Woolf, Bronte, Alcott, Pope, Balzac, Dickens, Defoe... etc. etc.
On the train to London I read L. P. Hartley's Simonetta Perkins. My first experience with LPH was The Go-Between, which I read last year and was a very close contender for my favourite ten books of 2007. Simonetta Perkins was also an absolute delight, told with panache and a wry wit. The novella opens with Lavinia Johnstone perusing a book in Venice, a book which makes bold statements such as "Love is the greatest of the passions; the first and the last". She cannot agree, having turned down several suitors and felt little more than irritation towards them. It is not long, however, before the romance of Venice persuades her otherwise - but she is attracted in an inconvenient and unsuitable direction. Through this slim volume Hartley explores a hypothetical relationship of unequal power, obsession and self-exploration. Think the scenario of Lady Chatterley's Lover in the hands of an author who is Lawrence's opposite.
What of Simonetta, you ask? Well, she takes a while to appear in her own novella, but is quite significant and intriguing when she does.
Hartley's work is subtle, sensitive and, above all, extremely funny. We can laugh at Lavinia because she laughs at herself, and not compromise pathos. For example, Lavinia's proper, dignified, insensitive and gently xenophobic mother warns her against letting any situation, especially of the male variety, get the upper hand of her: '[Lavinia] sighed, realising from past experience how improbable it was that any situation would put itself to the trouble.'
Do go and enjoy Simonetta Perkins - there is a wonderful novella waiting for you.
Well, I sort of cheated, because I've already talked about this book this week - but not a I've-finished-it review yet. The book was...
The Go-Between. It was rather hiding on the shelf too, wasn't it. This split posting gives me a chance to answer some of the questions you lovely people put earlier! The anonymouses are confusing me rather, as I try and work out which is whom... would help if anonymous people signed their name, though of course they may prefer the intrigue and mystery... your prerogative! So, anonymous numero uno, yes I do shelve my tbr (to be read) books and my read books together... well, since most of my books are in Somerset I've brought tbrs, favourites, and books I want to blog about. I know it's methodical to shelve them separately, but I like the idea of them mingling - the books I've encountered jumbled up with ones which are yet foreign countries.
Which leads me nicely to the opening line of The Go-Between: 'The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there'. As I read somewhere else this week, what makes this sentence so memorable and evocative is the present tense for the past - 'they do', not 'they did'. Clever, LP Hartley.
And from the first line onwards, this novel was a delight. 
Hartley breaks all sorts of rules - don't have the main action of your novel take place after a huge preamble; don't have it all as flashback etc. etc... and he still produces a wonderful novel. The prologue begins with a man finding his old diary, and reminiscing from there, remembering more and more of what happened decades ago. I knew vaguely what the plot was, so I knew that the schooldays bit couldn't last for very long - from the picture of Julie Christie on the front, if nothing else. And soon enough Leo heads off to Marcus' for the holidays, in a very upper class house and family to which he feels foreign and inferior. Gradually he finds his role in the web - as the go-between, taking notes between Marian and her two love interests; Hugh (think Mr. Bingley) and Ted (think Mellors without the accent).
Shan't spoil the ending of the main novel for those who don't want to know, but will just say that it manages to be a big surprise without sacrificing emotion to sensation. Ditto the epilogue. Throughout Hartley writes so well - that quality which I can't put my finger on, but can only describe as thick, treacley, substantial... Oh, and there is documenting of a cricket match which Ian McEwan should have read before he wrote the interminable squash match in Saturday.
Carole askes why I love this sort of novel so much - well, the 1900-1950ish domestic novel, I suppose. Ermm... Good question. The period was the first when ordinary lives and ordinary incidents became fodder for novels, and good domestic novels tread the line between whimsy and common sense perfectly, and often very wittily. Ideal.
