Getting to know you...

I think a few different people have done this quiz over the past few weeks, but I spotted it on Simon S's blog, and it looks like fun.

1) What author do you own the most books by?
That would be AA Milne, I think, or perhaps Agatha Christie pips him to the post. I've spent so long trying to find Milne's books, whereas you stumble across Christies whenever you go into a charity shop, so it feels like I have more by Milne.

2) What book do you own the most copies of?
Hmm... probably Diary of a Provincial Lady by EM Delafield, of which I have four copies. I have three copies of Miss Hargreaves by Frank Baker, which will become four when the Bloomsbury edition comes out.

3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?
Yes, quite a lot.

4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with?
Wouldn't be a secret if I told you, would it?

5) What book have you read the most times in your life (excluding picture books read to children; i.e., Goodnight Moon does not count)?
Alway I re-read all the time as a child, it's only the last few years that I've started re-reading again. Once more I think Diary of a Provincial Lady has been read the most. And I've never heard of Goodnight Moon.

6) What was your favourite book when you were ten years old?
Gosh. I didn't list them in the way I do now. Ten years old... at that age I loved Goosebumps and Point Horror, actually, so it would have been something awful like The Girlfriend, which I'd be far too scared to read now.

7) What is the worst book you've read in the past year?
Looking at the books I've read in 2009 so far, there's actually only one that I've really not liked - Blasted by Sarah Kane. Vile, graphic, disgusting, violent and horrible.

8) What is the best book you've read in the past year?
Excluding books I've re-read in 2009 - and there have been a lot this year - I think it's The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim.

9) If you could force everyone you know to read one book, what would it be?
I don't really like the idea of forcing everyone to read a book... but I would encourage everyone to read the Bible (or at least some of it) and Pride and Prejudice.

10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature?
Goodness, I know so little about living authors... I literally can't think of anybody I think is worthy of it. All the authors I revere are dead.

11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie?
Is it boring when I answer every question with Miss Hargreaves? I just see Maggie Smith in the title role, so vividly. Other than that, I think We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson would make an amazing film. Apparently it's been almost filmed many times.

12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie?
Whilst I love Diary of a Provincial Lady, I don't think it would work at all as a film. And I don't want my cookbook to be made into a film.

13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.
What a strange question! I can't remember any, but I'm sure I've dreamed about meeting Jane Austen.

14) What is the most lowbrow book you've read as an adult?
High School Musical: The Book of the Film, I think. I've never been tempted to try those awful celebrity autobiographies or cheap romances. I'm middlebrow through and through.

15) What is the most difficult book you've ever read?
That would be Ulysses I think, which was a real slog. There are quite a few books which aren't technically 'difficult' but I've found too dull to get through quickly.

16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you've seen?
Is there such a thing as an obscure Shakespeare play?
I've not seen any obscure ones... All's Well That Ends Well? One I want to see when I can is Cymbeline, which doesn't seem to be produced much.

17) Do you prefer the French or the Russians?
I've read two short books by 'the Russians' and one by 'the French', so I feel completely unqualified to answer...

18) Roth or Updike?
I've not read a word of either.

19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?
I've not even heard of these people! Wow, I feel badly read.

20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?
Ah, this is more like it. Definitely Shakespeare. I admire Chaucer, was a little bored by Milton, but love so much of Shakespeare - though the comedies and 'problem plays' more than the tragedies.

21) Austen or Eliot?
There wouldn't be many names to stand up to our Janey, so she is an easy winner of this category!

22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
This questionnaire is providing quite a few... The more I read, the more I feel poorly read. To take a smattering, Great Expectations, Middlemarch, anything by Proust or Tolstoy or Hemingway or... so many.

23) What is your favourite novel?
Miss Hargreaves, Diary of a Provincial Lady and Pride and Prejudice continually fight it out.

24) Play?
Much Ado About Nothing or AA Milne's Mr. Pim Passes By

25) Poem?
'The Listeners' by Walter de la Mare

26) Essay?
Something by AA Milne. Or Ginny's A Room of One's Own, if that counts as an essay.

27) Short story?
'The Garden Party' by Katherine Mansfield

28) Work of nonfiction?
AA Milne's autobiography, It's Too Late Now.

29) Who is your favourite writer?
Mr. Milne to the fore once more. I think. Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf are coming up on the inside track.

30) Who is the most overrated writer alive today?
Louis de Berniere, though I've only read one of his books, so perhaps the others aren't so awful. Lionel Shriver also dreadful.

31) What is your desert island book?
The Bible, though that's usually a given, isn't it? I could read Diary of a Provincial Lady over and over again and never tire of it.

32) And... what are you reading right now?
At the moment I'm reading Jane's Fame by Clare Harman, The Other Elizabeth Taylor by Nicola Beauman, The Paris Review Interviews vol.1. That's it, actually. Only three and they're all non-fiction.


I won't tag anyone, but it's a fun quiz and I recommend you have a go! Let me know in the comments if you have done so.

A Shot in the Dark

The other day I mentioned, amongst my goods from Liverpool, A Shot in the Dark by Saki. This is a beautiful Hesperus edition, which initially I bought just because my collected Saki is unwieldly, and I wanted to have some in a pocket edition. (I should add that it's actually Mum and Dad's collected Saki, which I've 'borrowed'... call it short-circuiting my inheritance) But then I discovered, upon reading the introduction, that A Shot in the Dark is a collection of works discovered after the Complete Ed. was published - i.e. they're not in there.

A few are familiar. 'The Miracle Merchant' is essentially Clovis story 'The Hen' dramatised; an earlier published version of 'Tobermory' is included; 'A Sacrifice to Necessity' is very, very similar to 'The Stake'. But A Shot in the Dark isn't just for Saki completists - some stories have lain undiscovered. 'Dogged', which was published in St. Paul's magazine in February 1899, is thought to be the very first story Saki had published - and has never been anthologised or collected before. And, what's more, it's probably the best one in this collection. To be quite so witty and brilliant from the off is a little astonishing, not to say irritating to us lesser mortals.

'Dogged' is about a mild-mannered man being cajouled into buying a dog at a church bazaar: 'A rakish-looking fox terrier, stamped with the hallmark of naked and unashamed depravity, and wearing the yawningly alert air of one who has found the world is vain and likes it all the better for it'. The dog manages to take over his life, and the story is representative of Saki's merciless style and exaggerated incident.

I've already eulogised about how wonderful Saki is - see this post - but I never got around to writing about Beasts and Superbeasts, which I read last year. I can't imagine why it didn't make my Top 15 of 2008 - I must have been feeling serious when I composed that list, as it is the funniest book I've read in a long time. His tales dabble in the absurd, the commonplace, the mystical, the down-to-earth - but always with a great understanding of humanity (especially children) and a fondness for hyperbole which I love. If PG Wodehouse had written short stories, and had a very slightly crueller sense of humour, these would be the result.

If you've never tried Saki, do so immediately. Even if you don't like short stories usually, I can't imagine anyone disliking these - if you're the sort of person who keeps a book in the loo (and I am) then Saki could work a treat. If you think you've got a Complete Saki, then you're missing this selection - which comes with an interesting Introduction by Adam Newell and Foreword by Jeremy Dyson. Rectify the omission as soon as possible.

Sisters By A River

Continuing my Barbara Comyns interest, I spent my train journey back from Liverpool reading her first novel Sisters By A River. I bought the novel in Somerset, but there are loads available on Amazon. I say 'novel', but there is no structure to this book, really - lots and lots of little essays or vignettes or really just anecdotes. They're vaguely chronological. I was especially interested by this novel as it's openly based in Bidford-on-Avon in Warwickshire, where my very close friend Lorna was brought up, and I've been several times.

I can't stand books which use incorrect spelling to reproduce the mind of a child (which put me off Our Spoons Came From Woolworths a bit) but I discovered in the Introduction that Barbara Comyns couldn't actually spell as an adult, and the publishers decided not to edit her manuscript (the Intro says she couldn' spell because her mother went deaf when Barbara was young... I couldn't really see the connection).

This book is actually autobiography - never sure how accurate, and it certainly has all the surrealism I've grown to expect from Comyns. Her childhood makes the Mitfords seem dull. Quite similar, actually - six daughters in her case, in a rambling old house with an angry, mad father. The mother is also pretty mad, and the children are fairly uncontrolled, running riot over the house and area, making their own rules and creating their own world. This is representative of the insanity (spelling mistakes intentional! ):

'Things at home were getting pretty grim about this time, Daddy was particularly mororse and glum through money worries, then he would drink and try and forget but it only made things worse, he never got jolly when he drank, just miserable, I can't think why he did it. Mammie was always quarreling with him, they were the two best people at agvergating each other I have ever met, she was getting awfully sick of us too, more even than usual, she had got an awful new habit of thinking people were falling in love with her, it was very trying and embarising, we would come on her gazeing into space, her lips moving in an imaginaru conversation with a ficticious lover, she even went so far as to tell Daddy she had lovers and was unfaithful to him, this caused the most frightful rows, usually ending in him throwing all her clothes out of her bedroom window or Mammie running down to the river bank screaming and saying she was going to drown herself, sometimes waving an unloaded revolver above her head, but she never did commit suicide, sometimes the maids, if they were new, would run after her and drag her back to the house, but we would just sit on the chicken pen roof or somewhere peaceful.'

Long sentences, as you see! Everything in the book is told with a child's calm indifference and no sense of causality. Difficult to know how disingenuous the writing is - either way, it is very effective, and this bizarre autobiographical- novel-anecdotal- chat is quite unlike anything I've ever read. At first I thought I'd find it too affected, but in the end I loved it. Would make great reading alongside Mitford stuff.

The tone throughout was rather surreal - 'Daddy very much dislike finding odd human bones about the house, they had a habbit of getting tucked down the sides of the morning-room chairs' is the comment on an archeological dig in the garden - but even more surreal when you realise it's mostly true. Tales of ugly dresses and bad haircuts are told in the same captivating, undemonstrative style as those of Grannie dying and Father throwing a beehive over Mother. If this motley assortment of remembrances were made-up... well, I don't think they could have been. Such a bizarre childhood, so of its time, and yet utterly fascinating. Completely devoid of charm, but somehow, in a way, it charmed me. I still think Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead is Comyn's best book, of the five I've read (standardised spelling for a start!) but Sisters by a River is mesmorising, and a book I'll return to many times from sheer incredulity and amazement.

Thought I'd just finish off these thoughts by quoting the blurb Barbara Comyns wrote herself in 1947:

The river is the Avon, and on its banks the five sisters are born. The river is frozen, the river is flooded, the sun shines on the water and moving lights are reflected on the walls of the house. It is Good Friday and the maids hang a hot cross bun from the kitchen ceiling. An earwig crawls into the sweep's ear and stays there for ten years. Moths are resurrected from the dead and bats becomes entangled in young girls' hair. Lessons are done in the greenish light under the ash-tree and always there is the sound of water swirling through the weir. A feeling of decay comes to the house, at first in a sudden puff down a dark passage and the damp smell of cellars, then ivy grows unchecked over the windows and angry shouts split the summer air, sour milk is in the larder and the father takes out his gun. The children see a dreadful snoring figure in a white nightshift, then lot numbers appear on the furniture and the family is dispersed...

Bits and Bobs

All sorts of bits and pieces which I've been meaning to write about for a while, today...

- Telegram Books emailed me a while ago, wondering whether I'd consider their publishing house as one of my Places of Beauty (which reminds me that it's not been updated for a while, actually). I must investigate them further at some point, but they look like a really fascinating translation press. See telegrambooks.com; they have works from Siberia to Egypt, Pakistan to Belgium. Some of them truly are beautiful, too - my favourite cover is on the right, The Old Man and His Sons by Faroese author Heoin Bru.


- do go and check out Smartish Place, a ten year old literary magazine. The website is really well laid out, and though I don't know much about poetry, there seems to be a lot of potential interest there - interviews, reviews, original work and so forth.


- Alma Books launched, in March 2007, a series of Oneworld Classics, and have also taken over the Calder list, including authors like Duras, Ionesco, Celine and more. They blog at Bloggerel.com, and have books which range from Wuthering Heights to The Decameron, Oscar Wilde to DH Lawrence to some really lovely Jane Austen editions. Most of these editions have some new illustrations, apparatus about the author, and all sorts of other intriguing bits and pieces, and are beautifully produced. I love it when a publishing house puts real effort into the cover images - especially when it's a book that isn't too difficult to track down, this can really make an edition worth having. A couple of my favourites shown on the left, Great Expectations by Mr. Dickens, and The Italian by Mrs. Radcliffe.


- filedby.com emailed me about their website, filedbyauthor, for connecting readers and authors, check it out


- Steve Lee emailed me about his book What If... (which I mentioned back here) - if you buy copies from http://www.ChangingTheWorldToday.com they now give $4 to Save The Children for every copy bought. We used to put on 'fun days' to raise money for Save The Children, so it's a cause close to my heart.

Liverpool has no books...

...at least it doesn't anymore. I've brought most of 'em back to Oxford with me - a quick list, with reasons for buying them, and do chime in with any thoughts! All of them are secondhand, though quite a few were from the most upmarket remainders shop I've ever seen - Blue Court Books (one in Liverpool, one in Chester)

Sylvie & Bruno - Lewis Carroll
Re-reading Alice books, and hungry for more...

A Shot in the Dark - Saki
Lovely Hesperus book of Saki stories found after The Complete Saki was collected

Prelude - Katherine Mansfield
Another wonderful Hesperus find. Nice to have it separated from the other collections.

Four Frightened People - E. Arnot Robertson
I now have three Robertson novels, none yet read... this one is much mentioned in Nicola Humble's book on middlebrow literature

The Girls - Lori Lansens
I can't resist a novel about twins... my first conjoined twins novel.

A House in the Country - Jocelyn Playfair
A London Child of the 1870s - Molly Hughes
Two Persephone books I've been umming and ahhing about for a while

After the Death of Don Juan - Sylvia Townsend Warner
Terrifying cover of what seems to be a dead woman with butterflies for mouth and eyes... but good for current STW interest

The Millstone - Margaret Drabble
When I wrote about Lynne Reid Banks' The L-Shaped Room, Vivienne mentioned this novel, so I've kept an eye out for it since

Blaming - Elizabeth Taylor
With Nicola Beauman's new biography of Elizabeth Taylor high up on my reading list, I'm stocking up

Sylvia Townsend Warner - Claire Harman
Biography by the author of Jane's Fame, which is also on its way to me.

Yellow Goes To...

Patch stepped forward to help me with this draw, as usual, and he excelled himself - not only a very deserving winner of Janni Visman's Yellow, but one which doesn't even require me to use postage.




Lucy worked with me in the Bodleian library last year, and since we're both still in Oxford, she'll be given the book in person. Hopefully I'll get her to report back...

I'm away in Liverpool until Thursday, so no Stuck-in-a-Booking for a few days!

The House of Dolls

I'm afraid I haven't taken the draw for Yellow yet, and so there's another day to enter the draw.

Good guesses, guys, but nobody got the novel I'm going to talk about - it's The House of Dolls by Barbara Comyns, author of 50 Books... entry Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead. (By the way, I always refer to the list as my 50 Books, but the 26 you see listed are the only ones I've added to it so far... it's ongoing, and suggestions always welcome!)

The House of Dolls has, in the very vaguest way, similarites with The Enchanted April - that is, both are about four women living in a building together. And that's probably where the similarities end. In Comyns' novel the women are middle-aged prostitutes - but ones which didn't enter the oldest profession in the world until they were middle-aged, in response to their rent prices going. They live in the upper portions of a house belonging to long-suffering Amy Doll and her young daughter Hester. The four women upstairs are, like The Enchanted April, distinct - well, Berti and Evelyn are slightly similar: catty, brash, sarcastic and, deep down, desperately needing each other. Evelyn is described as 'inclined to be a poor man's edition of Berti', and doesn't have her brilliant red hair. Spanish Augustina - known as The Senora - is the most successful of the women, and the least emotional. Finally their is my favourite, shy Ivy Rope, who invites a mild dentist to their rooms, and hasn't the heart to reveal her occupation when he believes it to be a date.

Before Our Vicar's Wife throws up her hands in horror at the salacious material I've been reading, this isn't salacious. Despite their lifestyle, absolutely nothing finds its way to the page, and this was from the pen of eighty year old Barbara Comyns whose humour is quirky rather than rude. I've commented with Comyns before that all her books seem to be very different - The House of Dolls is, stylistically, not wholly unlike The Juniper Tree (reviewed here) - but that was a Grimm fairytale updated, and had that air of myth and allegory. The House of Dolls doesn't have the wonderful, frenetic surrealism of Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead, but does hint in that direction with daughter of the house Hester, who bunks off school to make china mosaics with a slightly mad man in an abadoned house - a lovely, entirely innocent, subplot of the novel.

Despite all Barbara Comyns' novels being different from each other, the one thing they have in common is my appreciation. And (hurrah!) they're pretty short. I don't think is her best by any means, but anything from her oeuvre is worth reading - next up for me is her first novel, Sisters By A River. This slightly bizarre author is too underrated, and if her novels are not all great, they are certainly very good.