2012 has got off to a rather lovely start books wise. Unable to commit to just one blissful new book on my love of my life kindle I have instead plumped for lots. I have made inroads into them all but am nowhere finishing any of them, striving as I am to read so many at once!
'American Gods' by Neil Gaimen is shaping up very nicely and I am enjoying having him take a more serious and less shallow interaction with his topic matter. For once it is also a lot less of a fantasy novel for while it utterly is so, it is still set loosely within our world, rather than entering another world as 'Neverwhere' and 'Stardust' do. I already like it a great deal more than his other books.
'Death at Pemberley' by 'P.D. James is also most interesting. She is a prolific crime novelist and up until now I had never read her work, preferring my crime to be of the middle-class lacking in blood variety that dear old Agatha Christie was so perfect at. In this book she has taken 'Pride and Prejudice' (definitely in my top ten all time favourite books) and sets her novel 6 or so years after the marriage of Darcy and Elizabeth. The premise still being the solving of a crime, however, for one night Lydia comes screaming into Pemberley claiming Wickham has been murdered. The book so far is just readable but frankly after the first few pages which were a delight, conjuring up as they did the magic of Austen, the style in which James is writing becomes very irritating. She is clearly trying to write in the style of Austen but it lacks the humour and the ease and feels very stilted and heavy-handed. This is a shame as the actual plot is rather good.
'The American Senator' by Anthony Trollope is absolutely marvellous. I have read a great deal of his work but up until now (barring perhaps the excellent 'Lady Anna') I haven't felt he came anywhere near his magnum opus 'The Way We Live Now'. But 'The American Senator' is proving to be jolly good and almost in the same sort of way. There is an excellently scheming heroine who reminds one a good deal of Rebecca Sharp in 'Vanity Fair', a real heroine who as always is a bit of a milk sop, engagements, love interests, battles over ethics, an American who challenges the way of life of the English upper classes... it is a joy to read and so delightfully long that it can accompany me for a good long time.
'Westwood' by Stella Gibbons which is okay... I loved 'Cold Comfort Farm' and adore 'Nightingale Wood' but so far this is not living up to expectations. I was half expecting this for when an author is so universally known only for one book it takes a bit of a leap to bother with the others, but 'Nightingale Wood' I loved so much I thought perhaps her other work had been unfairly looked over. I will stick it out but the pleasure in her words, her usual witty turns of phrase do seem to be lacking.
Also 'Service with a Smile' by the ever charming P.G. Wodehouse. It is his usual best and is a delightful Blandings book. I do love Wodehouse, he really takes a lot of beating and I have never read anything remotely like him in style or content.
The utter joy of the kindle is that one can also download samples of books so for my perusal I have 'A Game of Thrones' by George R.R. Martin and 'Rangarok: The End of the Gods' by A.S. Byatt.
Showing posts with label Stella Gibbons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stella Gibbons. Show all posts
Tuesday, 17 January 2012
Tuesday, 28 December 2010
The power of creation.
A great favourite of mine, and one of the best modern classics, is 'Cold Comfort Farm' by Stella Gibbons. It is a delightfully whimsical book which manages to subtly combine wit, humour and beautiful insights into what darling Miss Marple always referred to as human nature. Stella Gibbons is rightly remembered for this masterpiece and highly praised for it but her other masterpiece, 'Nightingale Wood' tends to be totally dismissed and forgotten yet for me although not absolutely reaching the great heights of genius that 'Cold Comfort Farm' gives us, the former is probably my favourite.
'Nightingale Wood' is a delicious modern fairytale in a way that reminds me very much of another great favourite of mine, 'Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day'. It has wonderfully true and poigniant insights into the human character, has an achingly romantic soul without being in any way cheap or maudlin about it, and by relating the character's lives in such a way as to incorporate their boredom and their longing for more it strikes a deep cord within me. It is the delightful story of a young widow called Viola (named after Shakespeare's for her father was a great devotee of the great man) who goes to live with her desperately dull in-laws and harbours vague and unlikely dreams about the local handsome young squire. It is perfectly splendid and so much more than a silly romance, though it always sounds suspiciously like one when one relates the general plot, but it is filled with such sharp insights into the characters and their desires and ultimately whether when they do all get what it is they thought they wanted, whether their previous desires give them fullfillment. I adore it and it fits delightfully inbetween my love for 'Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day' and the books of Nancy Mitford whose 'Don't Tell Alfred' I am also re-reading, along with 'The Provincial Lady in London' by E. M Delafield. Though sadly the latter is pretty awful and the poor woman only wrote one good book, 'Diary of a Provincial Lady' which she then attempted to ruin by cashing in on her creation and writing another four books about, all of them perfect rotters.
I love the feel of Stella Gibbon's books, or rather of the two already mentioned s I have not read any of her others since they are so hard to get hold of and not meant to be much cop. And the specific feel she creates is why 'Cold Comfort Farm' works so well for in one's ordinary live you can imagine what the protagonist would advice and instruct you to do and even hear her voice imperiously suggesting to you. In 'Nightingale Wood' the feel is also there and one becomes totally submerged in the characters and their lives, to such an extent that the feeling and the people live on with you for some time after the book has been read. It is not often that an author makes me feel like that, but the most powerful and memorable time was after reading 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' which lived with me for an age afterwards and is one of the most powerful books I have ever read. Interestingly there seems to be no particular type of book or author for this to happen as the only other example that was striking enough for me to remember off the top of my head is 'The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring'.
'Nightingale Wood' is a delicious modern fairytale in a way that reminds me very much of another great favourite of mine, 'Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day'. It has wonderfully true and poigniant insights into the human character, has an achingly romantic soul without being in any way cheap or maudlin about it, and by relating the character's lives in such a way as to incorporate their boredom and their longing for more it strikes a deep cord within me. It is the delightful story of a young widow called Viola (named after Shakespeare's for her father was a great devotee of the great man) who goes to live with her desperately dull in-laws and harbours vague and unlikely dreams about the local handsome young squire. It is perfectly splendid and so much more than a silly romance, though it always sounds suspiciously like one when one relates the general plot, but it is filled with such sharp insights into the characters and their desires and ultimately whether when they do all get what it is they thought they wanted, whether their previous desires give them fullfillment. I adore it and it fits delightfully inbetween my love for 'Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day' and the books of Nancy Mitford whose 'Don't Tell Alfred' I am also re-reading, along with 'The Provincial Lady in London' by E. M Delafield. Though sadly the latter is pretty awful and the poor woman only wrote one good book, 'Diary of a Provincial Lady' which she then attempted to ruin by cashing in on her creation and writing another four books about, all of them perfect rotters.
I love the feel of Stella Gibbon's books, or rather of the two already mentioned s I have not read any of her others since they are so hard to get hold of and not meant to be much cop. And the specific feel she creates is why 'Cold Comfort Farm' works so well for in one's ordinary live you can imagine what the protagonist would advice and instruct you to do and even hear her voice imperiously suggesting to you. In 'Nightingale Wood' the feel is also there and one becomes totally submerged in the characters and their lives, to such an extent that the feeling and the people live on with you for some time after the book has been read. It is not often that an author makes me feel like that, but the most powerful and memorable time was after reading 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' which lived with me for an age afterwards and is one of the most powerful books I have ever read. Interestingly there seems to be no particular type of book or author for this to happen as the only other example that was striking enough for me to remember off the top of my head is 'The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring'.
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