Diana Athill and Susan Hill

These two books (Midsummer Night in the Workhouse and other stories by Diana Athill and Black Sheep by Susan Hill) have very little in common, other than that (a) the authors have 'hill' in their name, and (b) they are the final two books for my Reading Presently project and this is the last day of the year.  So I shall consider them in turn, and only if I'm very lucky will I find anything to link them...

Mum gave me Midsummer Night in the Workhouse as a cheer-up present a few months ago, and a Persephone book is (of course) always very, very welcome.  One of my very favourite reads in 2013 was Diana Athill's memoir about being an editor, Stet (indeed, I claimed in Kim's Book Bloggers Advent Calendar that it was my favourite, but while compiling my list I remembered another which beat it - full top ten to be unveiled in January, donchaknow) so I thought it was about time that I read some of her fiction.  Turns out there isn't that much of it, and she speaks quite disparagingly of the whole process in Somewhere Towards The End (which I'm reading at the moment; spoiler alert, it doesn't compare to Stet in my mind).

As my usual disclaimer, whenever I write about short stories - they're very difficult to write about.  But they do seem the perfect medium for the expert editor, depending - as they do, more than any other fiction - upon precision and economy.  And I thought (says he, being very brief) that Athill was very good at it.  My favourite was probably 'The Return', about a couple of young women who are taken to an island by local 'tour guide' sailors - it was just so brilliantly structured, managing to be tense, witty, and wry at the same time.  But the last line of 'Desdemona' was exceptionally good (and you know how I like my last lines to stories...)

My only complaint with the collection is that they are a bit too samey occasionally - which might be explained by the new preface, where Athill explains that she mostly wrote from her own experience.  And her own experience seemed to be observing a fair amount of unsatisfactory marriages, and having a rather casual attitude towards marital fidelity (more on that when I get around to writing about Somewhere Towards The End.)

Her character and voice seem better established in her non-fiction, but this collection is certainly very good - and Persephone should be celebrated for collecting and publishing something which had been largely ignored in Athill's career.  Hurrah for Persephone!

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Colin (yes, he blogs too, and apparently will be doing so more regularly in 2014) gave me Susan Hill's latest novella, Black Sheep (which was on my Amazon wishlist) for Christmas, and I read it on Boxing Day while laid up with that cold.  I'm always so grateful that I gave Susan Hill's writing a second go, after being underwhelmed by the children's book I read first - and I have a special soft spot for the novellas which have been coming out over the past few years.

Those of you who follow Hill on Twitter, or remember her erstwhile blog, will know that she seems to finish a book in the time it takes most of us to boil a kettle.  Well, more power to her, say I - and I've been impressed by The Beacon and A Kind Man.  I hadn't realised that I read those in 2009 and 2011 - well, time flies, and perhaps Hill does pause for breath between books.  Black Sheep is not only being marketed in a similar way, with equally lovely colours/image/format, but does - whether Hill has done this deliberately or not - belong in the same stable.  The three novellas have definite differences, and possibly started from very different inspirations, but they also share a great deal - all three concern remote, almost isolated communities, the complicated lives of simple folk, and (it must be conceded) a fair dose of misery.  Or perhaps just a dose of hardship, because the three novels all seem to come near to gratuitous misery, and then duck away.

Black Sheep takes place in a mining community in the past... I'm not sure how far in the past, or if we're told, but definitely an era when people rarely left their village and almost no outside-communication took place.  The village (called 'Mount of Zeal') is divided into the pit, Lower Terrace, Middle Terrace, and Upper Terrace (known as Paradise).  We follow the fortunes of one overcrowded family home as the children grow up.  Who to marry, whether or not to get a job in the mine, how to cope with illness and grief - these are the overriding concerns of the different children and their parents - but these topics are less important than the way in which Hill writes about them, and the community they live in.

It is such a brilliant depiction of a village.  Setting the community on the side of this hill, leading from Paradise to the hell of the mine, may seem like a heavy-handed metaphor - but more significant is the claustrophobia of the village from any vantage, whether in the pit or in the fanciest inspector's house.  We follow perhaps the most important character, the youngest boy Ted, when he emerges from the village into the sheep-filled fields above - a journey seldom made by anybody, for some reason - and there is a palpable sense of narrative and readerly relief.  Even while giving us characters we care about, Hill makes the whole atmosphere suffocating and, yes, claustrophobic.

Of these three novellas, I still think The Beacon is the best - but the setting of Black Sheep is probably the most accomplished.  It lacks quite the brilliance of structure which Hill demonstrates elsewhere, and comes nearest to a Hardyesque piling on of unlikely misery, but that can't really dent the confident narrative achievement readers have come to expect from Hill.  As a follow-on read from Ten Days of Christmas, it was a bit of a shock - but, if you're feeling emotionally brave, this triumvirate of novellas is definitely worth seeking out.

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And there you have it.  No noticeable link between the two - but my Reading Presently challenge is finished!  I realise it isn't as interesting for vicarious readers as A Century of Books, because (presumably) it makes no difference to you whether a reviewed book was a gift or a purchase, but I've enjoyed seeing what people have recommended over the years.  At the very least, it has assuaged a fair amount of latent guilt!  I still have at least 30 books people have given me, and I'll be prioritising a few for ACOB 2014, but I'll also enjoy indulging my own whims to a greater extent.

Appropriately enough, five of my Top Ten Books were gifts, and five were not - considering this year I read 50 books that were gifts and just over 50 that were not (finishing, because of DPhil, headaches, and new job, rather fewer books than usual).  All will be revealed soon, as promised...

A Little More Than Kin

You know how I love novellas - the shorter and punchier the better - and might have noticed that I was impressed by Susan Hill's The Beacon. Indeed, it's my Bloggers' Book of the Month choice for February, at the Big Green Bookshop in Wood Green.

That made me pretty excited when Hill announced that her latest novella was coming out - A Kind Man is obviously being marketed in a similar style to The Beacon (although, tut tut Chatto and/or Windus for putting an apostrophe in Howards End is on the Landing on the dustjacket. You win back some of those points for Mark McEvoy's cover image. And for sending me a review copy - thanks!) If it could be as good as The Beacon, then I was very keen to read it. Also, fact fans, A Kind Man was published fifty years to the day after Hill's debut novel. Gosh!

A Kind Man is something of a deceptive title, for most of the novella, as we actually see the world through the eyes of that man's wife, Eve. In fact, the narrative opens with Eve making a solitary trip to an isolated graveyard - as the reader soon suspects, to visit the grave of her daughter, who died at three years old. We then move back to Eve's family, and her courtship with Tommy - the kind man of the title - is outlined, as is their marriage. Tommy's kindness is almost his only attribute, and certainly the most distinctive. He is made almost characterless in his ordinariness - rarely do we see anything from his perspective. This, of course, makes it all the more striking when we do; for instance, this excerpt from towards the end of the novel, retelling an event we had already seen from Eve's perspective very early on:

As he had grown up he had watched the young men around him find girls and make them wives and start families and had naturally felt that he would do so too but not understood how to choose. He had looked at some and they were pretty, at others and they were pert, at the ones with kind faces and the hard ones, the laughing ones, the sad and those old before they had had time to be young, but walking by the canal he had seen Eve and she was different. How she was and why and what made him know it, he had wondered every day since.

I do not want to spoil this novella. Too many reviews give too much away. Plot is not the only reason to read fiction, far from it, but the novella which spins on an axis around a central point should not have that point disclosed from the outset; it tips the story off-balance. Suffice to say that is outside of the ordinary, although Hill wisely does not allow it to change the style or genre of the work. If the event would have performed better in a novel by Barbara Comyns (oh, how I would love to have read Comyns' take on it!) then that is not Hill's fault; I can't think of any novelist who can approach the outlandish in so calm and involving a way as Comyns. Hill, however, finds the moral dilemmas caused by the strange and unusual (a thing Comyns would never do) and these form a central force of this beautifully forceful book.

Although this strange event would dominate most novels, and lingers longest in the mind, I think Hill is actually rather stronger at the more simple depictions of grief and mourning. These are emotions she dealt with brilliantly in In the Springtime of the Year, and in A Kind Man they play central roles, and are again shown convincingly and movingly - although (as is right) with a different slant from that previous novella. Everyday life and the dynamics of Eve being a wife, a sister, a daughter, a villager - these are the bread-and-butter of any work of fiction, and Hill is expert at them. I love Hill's appreciation of the countryside, which comes through in occasional unusual and evocative phrases.

As she rounded the peak, she looked up and ahead to the far slope where the sheep were with their lambs, dozens of them scattered about the hillside like scraps of paper thrown up in the air and allowed to settle anywhere.

If these strengths fade into the background once the twist of the novella arrives, that is to be expected - but we should not forget how rare it is to find a novelist who excels at both unexpected, and more predictable, narrative events. Far too rare.

A Kind Man is sombre and wise; it is almost delicate in its subtlety, but at its depth is a fable as sturdy as they come. Sorry to be vague about it, but you'll thank me once you've read it. No other pen but Susan Hill's could have written this novella in this way - and I hope there will be more in the same mould.

In The Springtime of the Year - Susan Hill

In the run up to Christmas, we briefly discussed Festive Reading, and I was relieved to see that I wasn't the only one who didn't prepare that much, and had never really thought about it. It doesn't get much more unseasonal than the book I was reading in late December - Susan Hill's In the Springtime of the Year. Look, another season is right there in the title... and, do you know what, I rather wish I had read it in Spring now. (I also rather wish I knew whether or not seasons should be capitalised, so answers on a postcard please. Or, alternatively, in the comments box.)

I've made no secret about my love of Susan Hill's Howards End is on the Landing, and shortly after reading that I made my first acquaintance with one of her novels, the captivating and unsettling The Beacon (more here) - I can't remember who recommended I try In The Springtime of the Year next, but thank you whoever it was - it's another short, sad, and often rather brilliant book. Published in 1974, it's theme is eternal - the loss of a loved one. In this instance, it is the sudden and accidental death of a young man called Ben, killed by a falling tree in the opening pages of the novel. The novel follows his wife Ruth, in her early twenties, coping with his death, and coming to terms with it.

I daresay that sounds quite slight as a synopsis, but some of my favourite writers are those who can weave an involving narrative without huge set pieces or plot turns. The biggest event having happened in the first few pages, this novel is more a study of grief than a rollercoaster of events. From the immediate aftermath; the funeral; Ruth's difficult relations with Ben's family; closer kinship with Ben's younger brother; dealing with Ben's possessions; moving onwards to the future without him - each stage is subtly and intimately shown - never too much introspection, and always writing of so high a standard that it doesn't feel like cliche. This sort of writing (especially in the days of soap operas) must be incredibly difficult to do, for the path is so strewn with cliches, but Hill makes it look easy.

She thought suddenly, I am alone, I am entirely alone on this earth; there are no other people, no animals or birds or insects, no breaths or heartbeats, there is no growing, the leaves do not move and grass is dry. There is nothing.


And this was a new feeling. No, not a feeling. Loneliness was a feeling, and a fear of the empty house and of the long days and nights, and the helpless separation from Ben - feelings. This was different. A condition. A fact. Simply, being absolutely alone.

My one problem with the novel was that everybody in the village seemed to feel Ben's death incredibly deeply - the novel states that even those familiar with death were especially affected by his. I suppose that isn't a problem, but it might have been more realistic to contrast Ruth's deep grief with those around who, though sad, cannot feel it to the same extent. For that is how such deaths affect neighbourhoods, is it not?

Nobody very close to me has ever died, not yet, and I still found this novel incredibly affecting. I also felt - though, again, I cannot support this from my own experience - that In the Springtime of the Year could be a huge comfort to anyone going through that. Or perhaps to those around them, to help them understand. I'm in danger of getting emotional here, aren't I? And I shouldn't forget that Susan Hill hasn't set out to write a grievance counselling book - though there may be overlap, this is primarily a very well written, subtle, and touching novel, and that is certainly achievement enough.

Hilly Region

As you'll have read, I'm rather a fan of Howards End is on the Landing - and it sent me off in pursuit of other Susan Hill books. I had read The Battle for Gullywith, which was ok, but nothing to set my reading pulse into overdrive... but now I want more and more. Spotting that The Beacon was just coming into paperback, I gave Vintage Press an email... well, they didn't reply, and I gave up the idea, but then the book arrived so somebody must have read the email... thank you Mysterious Lovely Person at Vintage Press.

I'd had my eye on The Beacon for a while, mostly because of the stunning cover (Susan Hill does have some good fortune with these, does she not?) and because the premise sounds interesting. Essentially, it's a response to the vogue for childhood misery memoirs. Made famous by David Pelzer and his A Child Called It, the genre has seemingly thousands of titles, all with more or less the same cover - a white background with a sepia-child on it. Three were written by people from a family who grew up in my village, in fact. Frankly, I haven't the smallest idea why anybody publishes or reads these. I completely understand why people write them - it must be a great catharsis - but my only experience, with Pelzer's first book, left me feeling voyeuristic. Many of them have been written, but I think Susan Hill's novelistic response is unusual, maybe even unique.

The Prime family live in a small North Country village, in an old farmhouse called The Beacon. The narrative moves between two time frames - we see Colin, May, Frank, and Berenice as they grow up - and we see May, still living at The Beacon years later, dealing with the death of their mother. As one strand follows the children's gradual maturing, moving away from home to marriage or college or the city, the other strand shows the same family on the other side of a life-changing event. Not the death of their mother Bertha - that is simply the catalyst for the novel's action - but the book Frank published about their childhood. The Cupboard Under The Stairs tells of his childhood or neglect, torture, and misery - at the hands of his parents, and even his siblings.

Except none of it is true... or is it? Though the other children - now grown-up - come together in horror and denial, yet the doubt which spreads throughout their community is also planted in all of their minds. A very faint doubt, but doubt nonetheless. But for the most part, when the doubt does not assail them, they cannot understand the motives their brother had:

How can you grow up with someone from birth and know nothing about them, she thought, share parents and brother and sister with them, share a house, rooms, a table, holidays, play, illnesses, games and not know them?

The Beacon is a very clever, subtle novella. Like many short books, it packs a more powerful punch than a longer book could have done. The emotions of the characters are never over the top, but understated and quietly devastating. Hill wisely doesn't ruin the effect by dwelling on Frank's imagined torture - it is not that kind of book. Instead it is a novella driven by characters' relationships with one another, and how much in them is unvoiced and unvoiceable. Hill also has the power to make the final few pages of a book - indeed, final few words - make you gasp out loud, and want to start the book all over again. Though I don't love this book in the way that I love Howards End is on the Landing, that is because The Beacon is a book to be admired and appreciated, rather than loved - I'm definitely pleased I revisited Susan Hill, as I feel there's a lot more for me to discover. Next up is In the Springtime of the Year.

Suggestions for more, please?

Now where was it....

29. Howards End is on the Landing - Susan Hill

I've teased you long enough, and now I am going to write about Howards End is on the Landing by Susan Hill. I'm not sure of the exact publication date, but apparently it's already being shipped by some, er, depositories of books. So will be hitting shelves soon, if it's not there already. As you can see, it's gone straight into my list of 50 Books You Must Read But May Not Have Heard About - though I suspect *everyone* will have heard about it before long. It's just too good not to put into the list.

To set the tone: this is my favourite book of the year so far. It's everything bookish and literary that you could possibly ask for - basically, if you sigh happily when glancing at the cover (which Hill herself thinks is the best one she's ever been given) then this is the book for you.

The premise is that Susan Hill will spend a year reading only books she has on her shelves. Not just unread books, but revisiting those from the past - much-read favourites alongside ones she's always meant to read. As she beautifully writes: 'a book which is left on a shelf is a dead thing but it is also a chrysalis, an inanimate object packed with the potential to burst into new life.'

And so the year begins. Hill avoids spending much time on the internet - explaining the sudden disappearance of her blog - since it can 'have a pernicious influence on reading because it is full of book-related gossip and chatter on which it is fatally easy to waste time that should be spent actually paying close, careful attention to the books themselves.' I find this chatter wonderful, of course (for what is Stuck-in-a-Book but book-related chatter?) and a great resource for finding more books - but I think Hill's decision is a dream a lot of us have. Wouldn't it be lovely to retreat into our bookshelves, finally tackling those tbr piles, having everything spontaneous and undecided?

In truth, most of Howards End is on the Landing is speculative, wondering which books might be read, and remembering her experiences with them, rather than reappraisals of the re-reads and newly reads. Is this an autobiography through reading? In a way, perhaps. But it is much more embracing than that - personal anecdotes, yes (her meeting with Iris Murdoch is quietly heart-breaking), but also chapters on how books can be shelved, whether or not to write in them, what constitutes a funny book... It's a bit like a very well-edited, and selective, blog. And I mean that as a compliment. Individual authors treated to their own chapter include Virginia Woolf, Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming, WG Sebald, Penelope Fitzgerald, Anthony Trollope... a huge range, for Susan Hill is no book snob. How cheering to hear her say:

Adults may say what they like - parents, teachers and other know-alls. Enid Blyton excited us, took us into worlds of mystery, magic, adventure and fun. Yes, her prose is bland, yes, the vocabulary is not particularly stretching. But Blyton had the secret, the knack.

There are sections on diaries, e-readers (not a fan), detective fiction, and how she doesn't like Jane Austen (intake of breath, but she keeps trying to see what's what with Jane, and at least she's honest...) Oh, and lots more.

Towards the end, Hill tries to decide upon the 40 books she'd read for the rest of her life, if she could have no others. I shan't spoil her list, for the book builds up to it, but it's a great idea for a gradual, contemplative exercise.

Above all - and I am aware that I haven't done justice to Howards End is on the Landing, for it is impossible to put across her tone - Susan Hill has written something delightfully, wisely, enchantingly bookish. I feel I have been around her old farmhouse, with its rooms full of bookcases - I feel her surprise when she happens upon an unexpected old friend on her uncategorised shelves. Mostly, I have fallen even more deeply in love with my own books - with those which have lingered for years unread; with my own personal library as a whole.

She picks and chooses, yet is also somehow comprehensive. She writes subjectively, but - whether or not I agree with her - it feels like the last word has been spoken; the whole spectrum of opinion addressed. And Hill can be sweeping ('Girls read more than boys, always have, always will. That's a known fact.') and naive ('if [some listed Elizabethan plays] were any good we would have heard of them') but that doesn't seem to matter a jot. Perhaps it is her sheer love of books that make her the everywoman - or at least everyreader - even whilst having a determined set of views.

There are some books which are read reluctantly; others so addictive that they are read walking down the street. Then there are those - and this is a rare, wonderful category - that are laid aside often, because the thought of finishing them, of having no more to read, is awful. Howards End is on the Landing is in this category - what higher praise can I offer? This might only truly delight those of us who have hundreds of unread books, lists everywhere of books we intend to read. For us (and if you've read this far, that includes you) this is a treasure, from the pen of a like-minded friend, to which we will often, happily, joyfully, return.

Soft amongst the macabre

A couple of review books I've been meaning to write about, with very little in common except that I want to write about them together. These sorts of posts always remind about my favourite tutor, Emma, who had my friend Chris and me in joint tutorials. We'd often written on completely different texts with completely different topics and themes - and Emma would valiantly spend the tutorial trying to draw out unifying points from the two. Should be fun.

The first is Alternative Medicine by Laura Solomon, a collection of short stories published by Flame Books. They also published The Bestowing Sun by Neil Grimmett (which I wrote about here) and Tru by Eric (which I wrote about here). I was so impressed by these two novels that I had to read more from the publishing house. Perhaps I'd set myself up for a fall - while I enjoyed and admired Alternative Medicine, it has a very different feel to it. Those novels were at the forefront of emotional, real modern literature, exploring relationships between families and the elasticity of feelings - Laura Solomon is doing something quite different.

It's always difficult to summarise a collection of short stories, and it's illuminating to see what the writer of the blurb has chosen to represent Alternative Medicine: 'A couple is torn apart by a renegade duvet, an upstaged Santa takes revenge on his rival, a girl's father is abducted by aliens, a man is relentlessly bullied by his sister on their annual holiday, a manufactured genius turns out to be not so perfect after all'. The next paragraph talks abut the 'entertaining and insightful journey into the shortcomings of being human, and the wonder of our graces'; 'masterful central metaphors, sharp wit, and a beautiful simplcity'. For me, the title to today's post says it all for a theme - 'soft amongst the macabre'. I read each story with foreboding, expecting something strange or grotesque at every corner - to inject the writing with this menace is quite a talent - but alongside this was a soft, sensitive understanding of the characters and their motivations.

The Battle for Gullywith by Susan Hill appeared on more or less every blog known to man a few months ago, but I've only just finished it. It's my first book by Susan Hill, in fact, though I've read thousands of her words in the form of her blog. It is inevitable that any children's book now will be compared to Harry Potter, so I'm just going to use the words and get on with what I was talking about. The plot is probably familiar to you all, if not, pop over to Amazon (this must be the laziest reviewing ever!) I read The Battle for Gullywith in three bouts, and was thus rather confused at times, but that's my fault rather than the book's. I think it's probably a book one has to come to as a child to truly love - I found it an enjoyable romp, with amusing, slightly predictable characters, some inventive plot aspects, and the most ingenious use of tortoises I've ever encountered. A few too many topical references to feel timeless, but enough good old-fashioned adventure to beguile a child who has exhausted JK Rowling and Enid Blyton. Say what you like about those authors, but I don't think a child can do much better than them.