The Poet, His Girl and Her Brother

Ever since reading "The Line of Beaty", I have been an avid admirer of the beautiful prose and the twisted characters of the author Alan Hollinghurst. With regards to the prose, at times, it is more like poetry. He writes the way I wish I could. The way most authors wish they could. As a first class magician he takes normal words, shuffles them and transforms them into art, making us believe that it is not about skill or talent but about pure magic. In "The Stranger's Child", Alan Hollinghurst has taken this gift for magical writing, honed it, fine-tuned it, so that we are left with not a book but a work of art. However, as magical as the writing is, the story is even better. 

 In 1913 George Sawle is home from Cambridge on a visit and with him, he has a friend, the semi-famous poet Cecil Valance who, it turns out, is more than just a friend. At George's childhood home Two Acres, his mother and sister welcome Cecil and for the 16-year-old sister Daphne, the meeting with Cecil comes to change her life. At the end of the weekend, Cecil writes a poem, a romantic celebration of love and the English garden, in Daphne's autograph book and in the decades following, this poem comes to symbolize England on the brink of war while shaping the destinies of several of the characters in the novel. 

Hollinghurst's ability to make small parts of the history of England come to live is astonishing. The first story takes place in 1913, in a still innocent Edwardian England, full of fragrant country gardens. The next takes us to the 1920s, the innocence has been stolen by a World War and families are left amputated as the trenches in France claimed the lives of their sons. Then years pass and we are in the late 1960s, the second World War still fresh in memory and the English still feeling the pinch. Then a short jump to the late 1970s where the world has changed and the fortunes of the great and the good have transformed - gone are the servants and the grand houses, surburbia is on the rise.  

It is without doubt one of the best books I've read this year. Actually more than just this year, in a long long time. It is an absolutely wonderful story, told with elegance, humour and a feeling for passing of time and the evolving of history. 
The characters are interesting and easy to sympathize with and every time the story jumped to another era, I found myself searching the pages for my favourite characters, eager to find out what had happened to them. It's immmensely satisfying to follow the characters for so many years, even the ones whose development disappoints and whose flaws become more and more apparent. For me, that is one of the real strenghts of Hollinghurst's book - that he keeps the reader engaged (to the point of blocking out the rest of the world) without losing the integrity of the characters and the story.

Read it if: You haven't already read it.

Review: "The Best of Everything" by Rona Jaffe

Some books  retain their freshness decade after decade, never losing their relevance. "The Best of Everything" by Rona Jaffe is one of those books. It is truly special. Published in 1958, it was written during the 1950s when women wore smart skirt suits to the office and only worked to fill the time until they could get married. Preferably to a man with a good enough job to fund a house with double-garage and school fees for two children. Last year, apparently, the book got a bit of a renaissance because it was featured on Mad Men - however, I found it thanks to you wonderful people in the blogosphere!

Every day young women flood out of the subway stations in central New York making their way to the city's offices. One of them is Caroline, a young graduate from a good college, who discovers that she has ambitions and slowly starts to work her way up in the world of publishing. While working for a publishing company in the glamourous Rockefeller Center, she meets the obsessive actress Gregg who becomes her flatmate, the beautiful April who is as terrible with men as she is with personal finance and the successful single mother Barbara, divorced at the tender age of 21.

As chapter after chapter weaves their stories together into one story, I felt like these girls became my friends. Their world absorbed me completely and as they experienced bad romances, difficulties in their careers and worry about families and futures, I became more and more enthralled to the story. When the last page turned, it felt completely wrong. I just did not want to let go. I craved knowledge of what happened next and the last few days, I have been thinking about all of them, especially about Caroline and Barbara.

It is a story of looking for love and finding instead sex, friendship or rejection. Of trying to figure out whether to pursue a career or while away the hours until a walk to the altar. It is absolutely fascinating and many of the observations are as relevant today as they were then. Like the lecherous senior executive who will grab any female thigh when he's had a bit too much to drinks or the girl who brings even her bridal underwear to work in order to get the approval and envy of her colleagues. It resonates with me as a modern office girl and I found the office politics very familiar, just as the trouble that these girls experience with prioritising family, work and boyfriends is just like the stuff that my friends and I talk about today.

The beauty of this book is in its relevance, in the way that all girls will recognize something of themselves in these girls even though the books was written over fifty years ago. Also it is beautifully written with every girl's voice being distinct and characteristic.

Read it if: You enjoyed "The Rules of Civility" by Amor Towles" or "Valley of the Dolls" by Jacqueline Susann. You prefer a good book to a re-run episode of Sex & The City.

Review: "Seventh Heaven" by Alice Hoffman

I can't remember the first time I read "Seventh Heaven" by Alice Hoffman but I have a feeling that it must be approximately 13 years ago. It was definitely when I was in my early teens and I loved loved loved Alice Hoffman. She was my favourite writer. Every week I would go to the school library or convince my parents to take me to the library in our village and the best days were when I borrowed an Alice Hoffman novel. 
Alice Hoffman does magical small-town America in a way that no other writer can. She imbues the small everyday things with a magical, beautiful qualities and remind us that even the most ordinary things are sometimes more magical than what we call miracles.


"Seventh Heaven" was one of my favourite books at the time and the other day I decided to revisit it and see if the magic would still work on me and it did. Though I was not as enthralled as I was when I first read it, I still thoroughly enjoyed the story. 


"Seventh Heaven" takes place over a year from the summer of 1959 to the summer of 1960 and this timing has been chosen for a reason - it symbolizes the end of an era and the arrival of a new time. 
Nora Silk is a divorcee and single mother of baby James and eight-year-old Billy. She has been left by her charlatan of a husband and in an attempt to give her boys a stable, traditional, middle class upbringing, she moves from New York to the New Jersey suburbs to a newly built neighborhood. This is small-town America in the 1950s, full of white picket fences, newly mowed lawns, kids with clean teeth and ironed clothes and mothers who cook, clean and gossip. To them, the newcomer is a disturbance, an unwelcome interruption in the Stepford Wives-ish, surburban paradise so of course they shun her. Nora's insistence on fitting in, her attempts at making friends and making Billy part of the community are all in vain as she is increasingly isolated by her cold neighbors. 


The turning point comes when Nora begins to remember her roots and stops attempting to be like the other women, when she recalls the wisdoms of her grandfather, things start to change. Not only for Nora but also for the people around her. The prom-queen-wannabe Rickie Shapiro and her valedictorian-to-be brother; Jackie McCarthy the bad boy and aspiring criminal; Donna Durgins overweight and unhappy housewife and not least policemen Joe Hennessy and schoolboy Ace McCarthy. 
Their lives weave in and out of each and they are all changed by the magic Silk family just as Nora and her children are changing as they adjust to life in suburbia.


Read it if: You are nostalgic after 1950s, headbands and white picket fences. You grew up in suburbia. You like the movie "American Beauty". 

Review: "The Franchise Affair" by Josephine Tey

Jospehine Tey is one of the perfect author names and when I read "The Franchise Affair", I kept thinking "What a lucky lady to be born with such a beautiful name!" Then I googled her and realised that she actually wasn't - her real name was Elizabeth Macintosh but she published her crime fiction under the name Josephine Tey and used the name Gordon Daviot for publishing historical novels. I had never come across her novels before until I saw mentioned on a blog as a master of classic crime fiction. For some reason coming across "a master" that I have never heard of always provokes me a bit so I ended up buying "The Franchise Affair" to explore her writing.


"The Franchise Affair" starts in the provincially distinguished offices of a lawyer in a smaller, English provincial town. Robert Blair, partner and solicitor, is finishing up for the day and is halfway out the door - going home to dinner served by his lovely, motherly Aunt Lin - when the phone rings. Two ladies, a elderly mother and her unmarried daugther, have been accused of a horrible crime. A young, fresh-faced girl is accusing them of having abducted her, beaten her and tried to force her to be their servant. The women deny everything and beg Mr. Blair to represent them in the horrible case. Mr. Blair reluctantly agrees and thereby shatters the quiet rhythm of his daily life.


Everything points to the guilt of the two women living in the big, shabby house "The Franchise" but as Robert becomes more and more involved with them and with the case, he also becomes more and more desperate to prove their innocence.


I liked "The Franchise Affair", I didn't love it and I might not read it again but I did enjoy it. Not because of the crime story which was quite predictable really and not that exciting. Robert Blair, however, is absolutely adorable in his own, bachelor-ish, parochial way and the two women at The Franchise are a breath of fresh air. Actually I would have loved to have read another story but with the same characters because they were the story for me.


The Britain in "The Franchise Affair" is the stern, make-do-and-mend post-war Britain full of gossiping  old ladies and - oh horror - unmarried independent women and men being looked after by their aunts. It is charming really so read it for the setting and the characters but note for the excitement.

Read it if: You love E.F. Benson's Lucia or Dorothy L. Sayer's Lord Peter Wimsey or adore Agatha Christie novels.

Review: "Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady" by Florence King

One of the strongest American stereotypes most be the Southern Belle. If you have ever read "Gone With the Wind" by Margaret Mitchell, you know exactly what I mean. It is a way of life, an identity oozing overpowering feminine charm and delicately wrapped female vile. It is the exact opposite as being one of the boys.


"Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady" is Florence King's tale of growing up in a Southern family, ruled by the soft and well-manicured yet steely hand of her grandmother. Granny has aspirations to be a grand lady and she dreams of raising a Southern belle - however, her own daughter is more of a man than a woman really, loving baseball and suits, so when a granddaughter comes into the world, Granny does everything in her power to turn her into a real lady. Growing up in a bohemian household with Granny, mama and a book-loving Englishman for a father means that Florence has a childhood far away from the norm. From day one the three main adults in her life has three very different agendas and Florence has to find her own identity from a young age.


I read about "Confessions..." at one of the blogs I follow and loved the sound of it. I wasn't really sure what to expect but from the first line of the first page, I loved it. Absolutely loved it. Florence King has a talent for observing the awkward and funny, the little humorous gems of an extraordinary life. Her observations on the American female of the 1950s are both disturbing and hilarious - I was appalled and fascinated at the fact that all of the other girls in her sorority at college took a marriage prep class. Homework involved washing their boyfriends socks!


To describe these girls who are forever worrying that no-one will marry them and depend on guys to give them self-esteem and self-worth, Florence and her father comes up with the word "malkin". A fantastic word that I will definitely keep in my vocabulary. Is is bound to come in handy.
Florence herself was far from a malkin - though she looked like the perfect young Southern lady, inside her there was a real academic mind hungering for books as well as a sexual creature hungering for, well, sex. The story follows her battles to study French (she ends up studying history instead) and to lose her virginity without falling pregnant. Quite rebellious pursuits in the South in the 1950s but Florence has courage and is not afraid to go after the things in life as she wants.


The book is written with intelligence and personality, it is full of anecdotes and scattered words of wisdom and it poses questions about femininity and the role of a woman that are as relevant as they were in the 1950s. Because what defines you as a lady? They way you look or sound? A ring on your finger or who you sleep with? It is probably a question that each of us have to answer for ourself just as Florence King did. And as she herself says in the book - she may have gone to bed with both men and women but she never ever smoked on the street.