Poor Caroline by Winifred Holtby is Poorly Titled

I only have one book left to finish for the TBR Pile Challenge, a massive omnibus of short stories by Katherine Anne Porter. (I keep buying short story collections but find them really overwhelming and unwieldy to read in omnibus collections; also, I never know how to review them.) So I thought I would take the easy way out and read an alternate, Poor Caroline by Winifred Holtby, a mere 266 pages in paperback. However, it took me nearly three weeks to finish this book, compared to a mere five days to zip through the nearly 500 pages of South Riding, Holtby's most famous work.

Published in 1931, Poor Caroline is Winifred Holtby's fourth novel, and was an instant success. Unlike her other novels centered around life in Yorkshire, Poor Caroline is a satire set in London, and follows the lives of several people who become attached to the fictional Christian Cinema Company, devised to create "clean" British cinema for the masses (this is just before color films became popular; I can't remember if the films in question are talkies or not). 

Nevertheless. The corporation is basically started by a Caroline Denton-Smythe, a 70-ish spinster living in genteel poverty who has decided it his her lot in life to find causes. She is joined in this endeavor by Basil Reginald Anthony St. Denis, a dilettante war veteran and minor aristocrat; Joseph Isenbaum, Jewish businessman looking to get his young son enrolled at Eton; Hugh Macafee, a curmudgeonly film inventor; Eleanor de la Roux, a distant cousin from South Africa who's inherited a little nest egg. Other side characters include Caroline's vicar, Roger Mortimer, and Clifton Johnson, a somewhat shady scriptwriter. 

The book begins and ends with two cousins who have just returned from Caroline's funeral. The rest of the chapters alternate between the characters, giving the reader back story about how each of them become involved in the project. Every chapter ends with someone saying, "Poor Caroline," from whence the title came, but I think it's a terrible title. 

This book seemed to take forever -- I almost felt like the chapters were short stories, rather than a single narrative. It also didn't help that I kept putting the book down because I really wasn't that interested in the characters, or quite frankly, the idea of Christian cinema. (As a former librarian, I'm not a big fan of public censorship). Taking so long to read the book really made it hard to keep the characters straight, and I found Caroline herself to be really depressing -- my favorite characters were the South African cousin and the vicar. The cranky film scientist was interesting, but he was such a sexist jerk that I wanted to throw the book across the room. 

I so wanted to like this because I loved South Riding and really enjoyed the other Yorkshire novels.  Overall I think it was just OK -- maybe I just didn't get the satire. I just have one more of her novels unread, Mandoa, Mandoa! which is another satire, set in a fictional African country. I'm a little hesitant because I think I prefer the Yorkshire novels. Well, it's one more Virago crossed off the list. 

The Long View: A Marriage in Reverse

Elizabeth Jane Howard's Cazalet Chronicles is one of my favorite discoveries since I began book blogging.  I knew she'd written other books, so I was really pleased to find one a couple of years ago while on a trip to London (I think I bought ten books on a that trip in less than seven days). I was determined to read it this year, so I put it on my TBR Pile Challenge list for this year. 

Though I didn't love it as much as the Cazalets, The Light Years is still engrossing and the story is ultimately heartbreaking. Published in 1956, it's the tale of the marriage between Antonia and Conrad Fleming. The interesting twist of the story is that it's told in reverse. The book begins about 1950, on the evening of a dinner party held in honor of their son Julian's engagement, to a sweet but rather silly twenty-ish girl named June. 

Just as Antonia and Conrad's marriage is breaking down, Julian and June's marriage is about to begin, and Antonia suspects that history will ultimately repeat itself. As the book progresses, we go back through different periods of Conrad and Antonia's marriage, where we learn about love, jealousy, infidelity, and betrayal. The book traces Antonia's life with Conrad and we see how she developed from a shy young girl to the sophisticated yet jaded woman she becomes. 

I really liked this book thought it was harder to get into than the Cazalet series, which has a much more straightforward narrative. There's a lot more psychological insights into characters in this book; also, the characters aren't quite as likable, though they're very realistic. Conrad in particular is quite horrible -- basically, he only marries Antonia so he can mold her into someone he can admire and show off. I realize this is the first half of the 20th century when most wives were considered possessions, but he is particularly condescending to women. 

Here is an exchange between Antonia and Conrad about books and reading: 

"You do not want a well informed wife?"

"I am not an information addict. No. I want you to be informed about your pleasures. I do not like the people who read fifteen books by a man who was written three worth reading."

"But if one enjoys reading, one must be resigned to many disappointments."

"Disappointments -- certainly. But if you read a book and are disappointed, it is because you intended to be pleased." (pp. 262-263)

OK, not sure about this last statement -- frankly, I always intend to be pleased by a book, Even if I don't necessarily enjoy them overall, I usually appreciate them for some reason. I suppose that's not necessarily the same as being pleased, but at least I don't feel like I've wasted my time. But I digress.

I really like this cover from the Italian edition. 

Here is another insight that Antonia has about Conrad soon after their marriage: 

The trouble was that they were not now leading a married life. She was not certain what she meant by this, but essentially she felt that Conrad was not treating her as an equally responsible person. . . . He was kind, he was charming, but she felt like a child, or like that song that her mother's friends had hummed and whistled while they marked the tennis court, or prepared the bridge tables: a great big beautiful doll. He was deliberately preventing her from taking on those responsibilities which she felt should be hers -- or even discovering what those responsibilities were. . . (p. 270)

So, we learn eventually that Conrad isn't really interested in Antonia so much for herself, as much as he's just looking for a trophy. This section of the book is set nearly 90 years ago and clearly times have changed, but I still found it horribly offensive. Conrad is just toxic and I'm sorry Antonia put up with it for more than 20 years. However, it is an interesting character study, and I liked the reverse time structure. I have since bought another one of Howard's earlier novels called The Sea Change, and her memoir, Slipstream. Apparently she had a very interesting life -- she was an actress and model before she became an author, and was married three times; one of her husbands was Kingsley Amis and she ran in literary circles. 

This is my eleventh book for the TBR Pile Challenge 2018 -- only one left to go and I'm finished!

Another Trip to the UK: London and Windsor

I'd made two trips to London so far since we moved overseas, and I hadn't planned on going back to the UK for a while, but I'd been dying to see Hamilton and last November I found out more tickets to the West End production were going on sale. They are far, far easier and cheaper to get than tickets in New York (since scalping of tickets is strictly forbidden in the UK!). Seven months ago my husband and I  anxiously hovered over our laptops the minute the tickets went on sale and we scored four seats for June! Sadly, my oldest daughter had to miss it (she had an amazing internship opportunity that she just couldn't pass up), but my mother had been planning to visit so we combined a trip to London with a Jane Austen pilgrimage.

After a very early morning flight, we wandered around Hyde Park since our hotel room wasn't ready yet. I'd never been to any of the royal residences so I walked over to Kensington Palace. There was a nice display of some of Princess Diana's dresses, and you can tour the rooms where Queen Victoria lived when she was a girl. I think my favorite part was the Sunken Garden.

The gardens at Kensington are free to the public. 

As I walked back to my hotel, I found this statue of Queen Victoria:

We had tickets the first night to The Play That Goes Wrong which is HILARIOUS (it's also playing in New York and is touring the US starting in the fall). But first we had a pre-theater meal at a wonderful Italian restaurant near Covent Garden called Cicchetti. It's all small plates, similar to Italian tapas. Everything was wonderful but the desserts (for two) were the highlight:

The next day my Mother and I went to St. Paul's Cathedral, which is truly impressive. Sadly, no photos are allowed inside the cathedral, so I had to be satisfied with shots of the outside and from the top of the dome. 

I didn't ride any red London buses this trip but I do love them. So iconic.

I've gotten pretty good at climbing stairs since I moved to a four-story house on a hill. I feel justified in eating more gelato if I've climbed 47 flights of stairs. You can just see the London Eye near the bend of the Thames. 

After St. Paul's we walked through the City to Ye Old Cheshire Cheese, a historic pub that Charles Dickens frequented. I forgot to take a photo outside, but after lunch I decided to visit the Dickens House Museum which was just a short walk away at 48 Doughty Street. 

This is the home where Dickens moved in 1837, just before Queen Victoria acceded the throne. While he lived here, he wrote The Pickwick Papers, Nicholas Nickleby, and one of my favorites, Oliver Twist. 

Many of the original furnishings remain, including his desk:

One of the top floor bedrooms has a display of items relating to Dickens' childhood, including some bars from the window of the Marshalsea prison and a window from his childhood home. I was struck most by this display of blacking bottles. As a child, Dickens had to leave school and work in the blacking factory, pasting labels on the bottles of blacking. He worked twelve hours a day, six days a week, when he was only twelve years old. 

The Dickens house is only a five-minute walk from Lamb's Conduit Street so I couldn't resist popping into Persephone books for a quick look round! I visited two years ago and there was scaffolding covering the front, but now you can see how pretty it is. I especially love the boxes of geraniums. I could have happily bought a stack of books but I knew I'd be moving my suitcase around a lot for the next week, so I practiced self-restraint and bought just one dove-grey book, The Godwits Fly, and one from their table of "Books We Wish We'd Published" -- The Greedy Queen: Eating with Victoria by Annie Gray.

Then it was time to go home to eat and change before Hamilton !!!!

I really wish I'd taken a photo from the front of the theater. Once you go inside, you can't leave until the performance is over and by then it was dark. The theater inside is newly refurbished and absolutely beautiful. I did get this lovely photo of the ceiling interior. 

I'm no theater critic but Hamilton is probably the best musical I've ever seen, and I've seen quite a few in the past ten years. I'm not really a fan of rap but it's so much more than that -- it's got all types of music, dancing, drama, humor -- it has everything. All the performers were brilliant, but one of the stand-by performers did the role of Aaron Burr and he was absolutely mesmerizing. I cannot say enough great things about this play and I would love to see it again someday. 

The next day my mother and I checked out of the hotel and made our way to Slough where we picked up a rental car, then drove over to Windsor for lunch and to see the castle. 

It has everything you'd expect -- turrets, towers, and a moat which is now a beautiful garden. 

We also saw the church where Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were recently married. It's really beautiful but the interior is different than I expected (naturally, no photos allowed.) 

I especially liked the lion and the unicorn guarding either side of the steps out front. The unicorn is on the right and the lion on the left. 

We had a little time to walk around in Windsor before heading out towards Bath. Outside a souvenir shop I was particularly amused to see this historic marker:

Several years ago I read H. G. Wells' Kipps, the story of a young draper's apprentice who unexpectedly inherits a fortune. It was also adapted into a musical called Half a Sixpence which I saw on my trip to London in 2017. 

And finally I couldn't resist taking photos of this massive hat display in a department store -- it was a few days before the Ascot races and the hats were gorgeous. 

Next stop: Bath and Lyme Regis!

Back From a Blogging Break and Literary London

View of the Rhine valley and Bacharach from Stahleck Castle.

It's been several months since my last post.  We did move to Germany, near Kaiserslautern, which is in the Rhineland-Palatinate in the southwest part of the country. The transition has been more complicated than I expected, especially since we didn't have internet in our new house for two months. The one upside was that I had lots of time for reading; hopefully now I'll get caught up with my book blogging.

Before I start posting reviews again, I thought I'd share a few photos. I haven't done too much traveling around Germany yet, but we did make a quick trip to beautiful Bacharach, along the Rhine.

I also had two amazing trips with my girls, one to Paris (just over 2 hours by express train from Kaiserslautern!) and London. I thought I'd include some photos of literary landmarks. 

One of our first stops was the V&A and we thought we'd stop by Harrod's. Walking along Cromwell road I realized I was passing Brompton Square, where Lucia lives in E. F. Benson's Lucia in London, which I'd finished just a few weeks before. I googled the address and lo and behold, there it was with a blue historical marker:

Closer inspection revealed this was Benson's own house!

We also saw THREE West End plays while we were in London, two of them classics:

I loved all the plays, each was completely different. I had to include The Mousetrap which I saw as a child while visiting Toronto. I was delighted to find this marker honoring Agatha Christie in the theater district:

The Mousetrap played for years at the Toronto Truck Theater, a converted church. It's no longer running in Toronto but it's still going strong in London. This counter in the lobby shows exactly how many performances:

Of course I knew the ending but it was still a great show and my girls loved it. 

Naturally, we visited multiple bookshops. We went to Waterston's at Trafalgar Square and in Piccadilly Circus; Daunt Books in Marylebone, and Foyle's near Charing Cross. I can't remember exactly how many books I bought but I wanted ALL OF THESE classic mysteries:

And I couldn't have missed a pilgrimage to Bloomsbury where I finally got to visit the Persephone Book shop. It's covered in scaffolding but still open. 

I arrived on a Saturday morning and my heart dropped when I saw the shop was closed! However, we double-checked the hours and it didn't open until noon that day, so I wasn't disappointed. I bought three more books, some bookmarks and a lovely Persephone tote bag. 

And no literary trip to London would be complete with out a trip to Platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross!!

People line up to have their photos taken and sometimes it's quite a long wait. We went the first day of our trip and the lines were long, so we tried again the last morning of our trip and were pleasantly surprised by how quickly it moved. The employees were delightfully enthusiastic and of course there's a Harry Potter shop full of all sorts of souvenirs. (Also a great restaurant close by with a delicious Full English Breakfast.) I adored London and there's so much I didn't see, so I hope to go back soon. 

I hope to post more photos soon and actual reviews of books I've been reading this summer! 

New Grub Street by George Gissing

I'm really trying no read as many as my own books as possible this year, so I picked New Grub Street by George Gissing as my Classic the a Place Name in the Title for my current read. (Also one of the last nine books on my Classics Club list -- a win/win!).

Basically, this is the story of how awful it was to be an unsuccessful or mildly successful writer in late 19th century London. Published in 1891, it follows several families: Jasper Milvain, a somewhat cynical and opportunistic journalist and writer, and his two sisters, Dora and Maud; the bitter Alfred Yule and his wife and grown daughter, Marian; and Marian's cousin Amy Reardon, and her husband Edwin, a semi-successful novelist on a downward spiral.

All three of these families are dealing with the financial difficulties of supporting one's family as a writer, to varying degrees. Alfred married a woman he considered beneath himself, and blames her for his not getting ahead among the society of writers. His daughter Marian is talented and does a lot of her father's research and some writing of her own, but rarely gets the credit for it. Alfred dreams  of editing his own literary journal, but lacks funds or connections. 

Edwin Reardon showed early promise, and after a legacy left him temporarily flush with cash, married the beautiful Amy. Now that they have a small child and money is tight, Amy doesn't want to economize and the subsequent stress over finances is causing Edwin to lose focus on his writing. 

Jasper is attracted to Marian, who seems his intellectual match, but he cynically believes that he needs a wealthy wife to help him get ahead in literary society. His sisters have become friendly with Marian but are also aware of their brother's character and ambition. Also, Alfred Yule is convinced that Jasper wrote an unflattering piece about him, so he is persona non grata. Their lives all intertwine in the literary London of the early 1890s, and the action really picks up after Alfred's brother dies, and his will changes the lives of these three families. 

I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this book. George Gissing isn't nearly as popular as Dickens or Hardy or even Trollope -- he wrote 23 novels but as far as I can tell, only three of them are in print anymore. Gissing's writer is quite easy to read, and his characters were really well developed -- I found myself really rooting for some and booing others as the story progressed. Parts of it were quite sad, as these starving writers struggle to churn out enough pages to keep from being thrown into the workhouse and splitting up their families. Gissing makes some really good points about women writers. There were some really dramatic bits and in the end, I wanted to strangle one of the characters (though I wasn't surprised one bit how his story was going to shake out). 

Overall, a very satisfying book, and it's giving me courage to try reading some of the more obscure Victorian writers.