The 1947 Club: Sisters By a River by Barbara Comyns

In honor of The 1947 Club I bought not one, not two, but three books published in 1947. I hope to complete all three of them this week, but let's start with Sisters By a River by Barbara Comyns.

Sisters By A River is a semi-autobiographical story narrated by the middle of the sisters growing in a rather odd household. They live in a country house near the River Avon, in the early part of the century, I'm guessing between the wars though it never really specifies. Their father is quite a lot older than their mother, who married him quite young and then went deaf when the girls are fairly young. There are a succession of servants and governesses, but overall these children seem to run quite wild.

It's not so much a story as a series of vignettes about their lives as seen through the eyes of a child, with all the misunderstandings and misspellings you'd expect if she was telling you her life stories in bits and pieces. Many of the tales are just a couple of pages long, and some of them start out as amusing stories but wind up finishing with a sentence that's quite dark and sometimes unnerving. I couldn't figure out the point of the book until after I'd finished it and went back to read the introduction, which I normally leave until last for fear of spoilers. It all made sense when it explained that this is based on her own life; hence, the lack of plot. It also mentioned that Comyns was a terrible speller in real life (obviously due to her sketchy education) and the publisher left that in and even added to it to make it seem more childlike. 

Sisters by a River is Comyns' first novel, but it's the fourth of hers I've read so far. I think it's safe to say her novels could be described as quirky.  All of her books are quite short, and some of them have surreal elements. I think I've read all of them simply based on recommendations from other bloggers, mostly Simon of Stuck in a Book and Thomas from Hogglestock. So far my favorites by Comyns were Our Spoons Came from Woolworths and The Skin Chairs. I've also read The Vet's Daughter which is definitely surreal, but I didn't like it nearly as much as the others since it has a much darker tone.

With the exception of The Skin Chairs, those books are all still in print, but it's not difficult to find Comyns' other books online as some of them were published by Virago. She wrote eleven books altogether and I'm definitely hoping to read more of them, though it might take a little searching.

Bloggers, have any of you read anything by Barbara Comyns? Which do you recommend? And are you enjoying The 1947 Club? 

The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family by Mary S. Lovell

Sometimes when I read books off my TBR Pile Challenge list, it's kind of a slog, and I wonder why I bothered keeping this book around.  However, more often than not, I've been so pleasantly surprised by a book I'm annoyed at myself for waiting so long to read it.  The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family is the second type of book -- a sheer delight and one that I couldn't stop reading.  

I'd never heard of the Mitfords until I watched the BBC adaptation of Love in a Cold Climate around 2006.  I was so enchanted by the story that I quickly bought the book (a combined volume with The Pursuit of Love.)  I loved them both so I was delighted to find The Sisters, which I promptly put on my to-read shelf and then ignored, though I moved it from house to house.  I'm really glad I finally read it -- it's both a chatty tell-all and a fascinating biography of a the intertwining lives of six sisters from an eccentric aristocratic English family.  

This is one of those stories that is truly stranger than fiction.  The eldest sister, Nancy, became a bestselling author; the third sister Diana was a reowned Society beauty who married an heir to the Guinness fortune and then left him for Oswald Mosley, a right-wing politician who became an infamous Fascist (both were imprisoned without trial for three years during WWII); another sister, Unity, was one of Hitler's groupies and was rumoured to have been his lover.  The next-to-last sister, Jessica (nicknamed "Decca") eloped with a distant cousin Edmond Romilly, a nephew by marriage to Winston Churchill.  Romilly had fought against fascism in Spain and they were both Marxists.  The youngest sister, Deborah, became Duchess of Devonshire.  So, you can just imagine that this book is just packed with interesting characters and history, mostly set during my favorite period, the inter-war years in England.  I will note that there's quite a focus on Unity's friendship with Hitler, which is really quite creepy.  There's also a lot of discussion as to whether or not some of the sisters were anti-Semitic. I know that this wasn't uncommon among the upper-class British at the time, but it sometimes makes for some uncomfortable reading. 

All of the sisters (with the possible exception of Pamela, the second sister) were real characters, and they were all smart and witty -- sadly, they had very little formal education (some of the sisters never forgave their parents for denying them higher education).  Most of them had writing talent, and besides Nancy, Decca and Deborah also published books -- Deborah published a memoir called Wait For Me! back in 2010.  

I really enjoyed this book -- it's just chatty and gossipy enough to be fun, and includes enough history and politics to be informative, without getting bogged down in too much politics and jargon.  And I was surprised that I never had any trouble distinguishing between all six of them -- they had such distinct personalities.  I only had a few quibbles with the book -- there's not much about the second sister, Pamela, for one thing; also, I did have trouble keeping track of all the many houses the families lived in -- a map would have been incredibly useful, to go along with the family tree and extensive endnotes.  

Overall, though, it's a great biography and I'm very interest to read more of Lovell's books.  She also wrote a biography of Beryl Markham called Straight on Till Morning; The Churchills: In Love and War, plus several others.   The book has really piqued my interest about the Mitfords.  My TBR shelves still include  Hons and Rebels, Decca's memoir; Nancy's book Wigs on the Green, a satire about the fascist sister Unity; and a 700-page volume of Decca's letters.  Hopefully I'll get to some of them before the end of the year.  And now I'm halfway through my TBR Pile Challenge -- I've finished six books in six months, so I'm right on track. 

The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizaki

Set in the late 1930s, this is the story of the four Makioka sisters who are from an affluent family, originally successful merchants in Osaka.  The parents have passed away and the family's fortunes are somewhat in decline.  The two eldest are married (both the husbands have taken the Makioka name, which surprised me), and the two younger, in their mid- to late twenties, are still single.  Most of the story centers around the second sister, Sachiko, and her relationship with her two younger sisters, Yukiko and Taeko.  Yukiko is nearly thirty and the family is anxious to marry her off.  She's had several proposals, mostly men she hardly knew, but either she didn't like the man or the family has found something unsuitable about him.  The youngest, Taeko, has a suitor, but she seems more interested in a career than marrying.  Also, the family is traditional and would prefer she wait to marry until her older sister has a husband.

The story spans several years of the sisters' lives.  Much of the action involves Sachiko's attempts to find a suitable husband for Yukiko, but it's really a story about the day-to-day life of an upper-middle class family in the 1930s.  It's mostly a domestic novel, but there are more and more hints about the war to come.  Sachiko's family has neighbors who are a German family, and their children are playmates.  Eventually they move away and we learn from letters aspects of the coming war in Europe; also, towards the end of the book there are more and more mentions of the "China Incident" -- the second Sino-Japanese war that began in 1937.

I kept hearing that this book was a sort of Japanese version of Pride and Prejudice, but I honestly did not make that connection at all while reading it.  If I hadn't heard it earlier, I would never have compared the two.  In the beginning of the book, the only things they have in common is that they are about families with unmarried sisters trying to find husbands, and a backdrop of imminent war (though wars are barely mentioned in Jane Austen). Later, I did find that one of the Makioka sisters has a pretty strong resemblance to one of the Bennet sisters, but I won't say which one since I don't want to spoil it for anyone.  But I really couldn't find any other parallels between the plot nor the characters.  Sorry, no Japanese Mr. Darcy!

I liked learning about the minutia of daily life in Japan during the era, and I especially liked that it was by a Japanese writer contemporary to the time.  I lived in Japan for more than two years, but sadly, I've read very few books by actual Japanese writers, and none of their classics.  I thought the characters were really well developed and I got a lot of insight about what it must have been like in that time.  However, I couldn't help thinking that the Makioka family members were so wrapped up in their own domestic troubles they couldn't see the war looming ahead of them; I couldn't help wondering which of the characters would survive WWII and how life would change for them.  I'd really like to read a Japanese novel about life in Japan during the war, so if anyone could suggest one I'd love a recommendation.

This book counts as the third read for my TBR Pile 2013 Challenge; my 20th Century Classic for my Back to the Classics Challenge; my second read for the Chunkster Challenge; and my 24th book from my Classics Club Challenge.