October books
Nov. 1st, 2023 11:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
callmemadamThe Body in the Blitz (The ministry of Unladylike Activity), Robin Stevens
Unforgettable, Unforgotten, Anna Buchan
The Progress of a Crime: a Fireworks Night Mystery, Julian Symons.
The Setons, O Douglas
Went to London Took the Dog , Nina Stibbe
The Elephant to Hollywood, Michael Caine
Achachlacher, Emma Menzies
Uncle Paul, Celia Fremlin
I loved the Wells and Wong detective series and the first book in this new series: The Ministry of Unladylike Behaviour, in which May, Eric and Finula (Finnuala) try to get taken on by the Ministry to do war work and find themselves solving a murder case in a country house instead. I wrote then: Robin Stevens has ended her Murder Most Unladylike series and The Ministry of Unladylike Activity is the first in a new series, set during the Second World War. Hazel Wong’s younger sister May is still at Deepdean, which she hates, and is cut off by the war from her home in Hong Kong. Her aim is to be a spy, so that the war will end quickly. She teams up with a bright boy called Eric and they then join forces with a girl called Nuala. May and Nuala take an instant dislike to one another, so it’s only towards the end of the book that the three really work together. Daisy and Hazel were already a team at the start of the first series and I think this new series will improve now that there is a team of three working as spies and detectives. I was right and the three are now a team. As a result of their success at solving mysteries, they have been taken on by the Ministry, where Daisy and Hazel have important jobs. The children (yes, it is unlikely) are set to work learning codes and how to decipher them. It’s important work and Eric is especially good at it.
While in London, in the middle of the Blitz, they are living in a mews house (Stevens’ nod to Agatha Christie’s Murder in the Mews). The end house in the row has been destroyed in the blitz, making the next house dangerously unstable. Breaking all the rules, the children enter the house and discover a body in the basement. But whose body? The house had been thoroughly searched by wardens after the bomb fell, so had been put there afterwards. Is it missing Anna, whose parents and brother live in the mews? Our heroes are not convinced. Their investigations involve a lot of dangerous crawling about in roof spaces and they both see and overhear some strange things. They conclude that the body is that of an unpopular woman who is said to have gone away to the country. As their investigations continue, they start to wonder if every person in the street is involved in some way and they’re not far wrong. The mystery is a good one, the street is full of interesting and suspicious characters and the three children are quarrelsome yet brave and supportive of each other. I loved it.
Caveat. I’m not sure about the morality of the book’s ending. Bad things happen in war and the children are told that sometimes a bad thing must be done so that good can come of it. But cold-blooded murder of someone who was not actually a traitor? I also found the author’s acknowledgements very irritating. I don’t need to be lectured about black, Jewish, disabled or trans people and read the book as a child might, barely noticing all these carefully placed characters. After enjoying the book so much, I found all this very off-putting and wished I hadn’t bothered to read the author’s comments. I have to add that I discussed this with my daughter and she disagreed with me, so I guess I’m just too old.
Unforgettable, Unforgotten was a re-read for me, to complement my bedtime
O Douglas reading. Doesn’t she look like her brother John, with that long nose? Note the smart dress and the jewellery. Clothes were very important to her and she thought women had a duty to look as attractive as possible, for the sake of other people, who had to look at them. She nearly always tells you what her characters are wearing. Wealthier women, like Nicole Rutherford, could afford to buy their clothes in London. ‘She was wearing a dress of gold brocade with long tight sleeves, very becoming to her slim figure and bright hair.’
The book was written during the second world war of her lifetime and she says, ‘It was written in an effort to lighten dark days by remembering happier ones.’ The book is mostly about her own family members, almost all of whom were dead by the time of writing. Her greatest loss was obviously ‘JB’, as she always refers to John Buchan. She obviously adored him, both as her childhood companion and as the distinguished and incredibly hard-working man he became. Looking at the rather grim photographs usually seen of him, it’s hard to imagine the jokey man, full of nonsense, whom she remembers. He once said to her, ‘When I write, I am inventing. Your books are about remembering.’
The Progress of a Crime is another British Library Crime Classic. A group of yobs on motorbikes cause trouble in a village, then return on Bonfire Night. The unpopular man who threw them out before is stabbed to death but by whom? One person, or two? Oh, who cares!
More wit and wisdom from Michael Caine in The Elephant to Hollywood. Some of the same old stories and they change slightly but it’s the way he tells them. I believe this is the second of his autobiographies and the first, What’s It All About? is supposed to be the best, so I’ll look out for it. One of the most interesting sections of the book deals with the filming of Harry Brown in the area he grew up in. He concludes that the poverty of his own childhood, genuine enough, was less difficult and dangerous than for today’s poor boys, who live in tiny high-rise flats, have given up on school and whose lives are dominated by gangs, drugs and knives. ‘In my day, it was alcohol and fights.’
Uncle Paul, first published in 1959 and now reprinted, has been hailed everywhere as a masterpiece of suspense and terror. Hmm. Sisters, sisters, never were there three such bonkers sisters … (younger readers may have to look this up). Yes, the book is about three sisters. Meg, the youngest, is also the most sensible, except that she’s at the beck and call of the other two. A telegram from her sister Isabel has her dashing off to the seaside. Typically, Isabel’s holiday caravan is a ramshackle affair, always in a mess because she’s really hopeless: always muddled, never getting on top of things, worrying about her two small boys and needlessly frightened of her second husband and his fussy ways. She tells Meg that the problem is their much older half-sister Mildred, who has left her husband (again), has rented a dilapidated old cottage nearby and seems very frightened about Something. Since Mildred is rich, a townie who lives in high heels and likes her comforts, this seems ridiculous and she is persuaded to move into a hotel instead. When Isabel’s husband Philip arrives, there’s no room in the caravan for Meg, so she moves to the cottage and that’s when the fun begins. You see, Something Really Terrible happened years before, involving ‘Uncle Paul’. Things that go bump in the night, mysterious footsteps, isolation (no mobiles), damp; all lead up to a surprising twist at the end. As it didn’t frighten me at all, I felt rather let down by this book. Its saving grace is a boy called Cedric who is staying at the hotel with his mother. He has an annoying habit of contradicting any fact presented by an adult and is made even more annoying by being always right. In real life I suppose he’d be unbearable but in the face of all the hysteria and madness around him, I found him refreshingly normal and took quite a shine to him.
I think The Setons will be the last of my O Douglas bedtime re-reading for the moment. It’s an early book and not a favourite of mine, about a widowed minister (saintly, as they mostly are), his daughter Elizabeth and much younger son Buff, who live in Glasgow. I don’t find Elizabeth an attractive heroine; as her father is always telling her, she talks too much. Buff and his friends, though, are a joy. O Douglas loved writing about little boys and their extraordinary behaviour. Poor Elizabeth is twenty-eight and might as well be a minister’s wife because of all the work she does for the church. The family spend the whole of every Sunday in church and Elizabeth toils in all weathers climbing tenement stairs and visiting and for what? To take shillings from those who can ill afford it to give to foreign missions to convert ‘the heathen’ and to deliver tracts which she well knows will probably not be read. This while there are barefoot children in Glasgow. The Calvinistic style of religion which is present in all O Douglas’s books (and her own life) is not a religion which can ever appeal to me. Elizabeth also runs the household i.e. tells the maids what to do. Health issues force Mr Seton (only sixty) to retire and the family decamp to a house they own in the country, previously used only for holidays. When at last Elizabeth meets a man she thinks she can marry, in spite of his Englishness and his monocle, the First World War breaks out and she has to promise to wait for him, each knowing that he may not come back. So, not a happy ending, yet in Unforgettable, Unforgotten, O Douglas says that a soldier wrote to her from the trenches saying that the book was ‘balm of Gilead’ to him because as soon as opened the pages, he could feel himself back in Glasgow. Poor lads.
I stayed with a minister’s family for a re-read of Achachlacher, which is set in the Highlands and makes a clerical household seem like fun, if hard work.
Unforgettable, Unforgotten, Anna Buchan
The Progress of a Crime: a Fireworks Night Mystery, Julian Symons.
The Setons, O Douglas
Went to London Took the Dog , Nina Stibbe
The Elephant to Hollywood, Michael Caine
Achachlacher, Emma Menzies
Uncle Paul, Celia Fremlin
I loved the Wells and Wong detective series and the first book in this new series: The Ministry of Unladylike Behaviour, in which May, Eric and Finula (Finnuala) try to get taken on by the Ministry to do war work and find themselves solving a murder case in a country house instead. I wrote then: Robin Stevens has ended her Murder Most Unladylike series and The Ministry of Unladylike Activity is the first in a new series, set during the Second World War. Hazel Wong’s younger sister May is still at Deepdean, which she hates, and is cut off by the war from her home in Hong Kong. Her aim is to be a spy, so that the war will end quickly. She teams up with a bright boy called Eric and they then join forces with a girl called Nuala. May and Nuala take an instant dislike to one another, so it’s only towards the end of the book that the three really work together. Daisy and Hazel were already a team at the start of the first series and I think this new series will improve now that there is a team of three working as spies and detectives. I was right and the three are now a team. As a result of their success at solving mysteries, they have been taken on by the Ministry, where Daisy and Hazel have important jobs. The children (yes, it is unlikely) are set to work learning codes and how to decipher them. It’s important work and Eric is especially good at it.
While in London, in the middle of the Blitz, they are living in a mews house (Stevens’ nod to Agatha Christie’s Murder in the Mews). The end house in the row has been destroyed in the blitz, making the next house dangerously unstable. Breaking all the rules, the children enter the house and discover a body in the basement. But whose body? The house had been thoroughly searched by wardens after the bomb fell, so had been put there afterwards. Is it missing Anna, whose parents and brother live in the mews? Our heroes are not convinced. Their investigations involve a lot of dangerous crawling about in roof spaces and they both see and overhear some strange things. They conclude that the body is that of an unpopular woman who is said to have gone away to the country. As their investigations continue, they start to wonder if every person in the street is involved in some way and they’re not far wrong. The mystery is a good one, the street is full of interesting and suspicious characters and the three children are quarrelsome yet brave and supportive of each other. I loved it.
Caveat. I’m not sure about the morality of the book’s ending. Bad things happen in war and the children are told that sometimes a bad thing must be done so that good can come of it. But cold-blooded murder of someone who was not actually a traitor? I also found the author’s acknowledgements very irritating. I don’t need to be lectured about black, Jewish, disabled or trans people and read the book as a child might, barely noticing all these carefully placed characters. After enjoying the book so much, I found all this very off-putting and wished I hadn’t bothered to read the author’s comments. I have to add that I discussed this with my daughter and she disagreed with me, so I guess I’m just too old.
Unforgettable, Unforgotten was a re-read for me, to complement my bedtime
O Douglas reading. Doesn’t she look like her brother John, with that long nose? Note the smart dress and the jewellery. Clothes were very important to her and she thought women had a duty to look as attractive as possible, for the sake of other people, who had to look at them. She nearly always tells you what her characters are wearing. Wealthier women, like Nicole Rutherford, could afford to buy their clothes in London. ‘She was wearing a dress of gold brocade with long tight sleeves, very becoming to her slim figure and bright hair.’
The book was written during the second world war of her lifetime and she says, ‘It was written in an effort to lighten dark days by remembering happier ones.’ The book is mostly about her own family members, almost all of whom were dead by the time of writing. Her greatest loss was obviously ‘JB’, as she always refers to John Buchan. She obviously adored him, both as her childhood companion and as the distinguished and incredibly hard-working man he became. Looking at the rather grim photographs usually seen of him, it’s hard to imagine the jokey man, full of nonsense, whom she remembers. He once said to her, ‘When I write, I am inventing. Your books are about remembering.’
The Progress of a Crime is another British Library Crime Classic. A group of yobs on motorbikes cause trouble in a village, then return on Bonfire Night. The unpopular man who threw them out before is stabbed to death but by whom? One person, or two? Oh, who cares!
More wit and wisdom from Michael Caine in The Elephant to Hollywood. Some of the same old stories and they change slightly but it’s the way he tells them. I believe this is the second of his autobiographies and the first, What’s It All About? is supposed to be the best, so I’ll look out for it. One of the most interesting sections of the book deals with the filming of Harry Brown in the area he grew up in. He concludes that the poverty of his own childhood, genuine enough, was less difficult and dangerous than for today’s poor boys, who live in tiny high-rise flats, have given up on school and whose lives are dominated by gangs, drugs and knives. ‘In my day, it was alcohol and fights.’
Uncle Paul, first published in 1959 and now reprinted, has been hailed everywhere as a masterpiece of suspense and terror. Hmm. Sisters, sisters, never were there three such bonkers sisters … (younger readers may have to look this up). Yes, the book is about three sisters. Meg, the youngest, is also the most sensible, except that she’s at the beck and call of the other two. A telegram from her sister Isabel has her dashing off to the seaside. Typically, Isabel’s holiday caravan is a ramshackle affair, always in a mess because she’s really hopeless: always muddled, never getting on top of things, worrying about her two small boys and needlessly frightened of her second husband and his fussy ways. She tells Meg that the problem is their much older half-sister Mildred, who has left her husband (again), has rented a dilapidated old cottage nearby and seems very frightened about Something. Since Mildred is rich, a townie who lives in high heels and likes her comforts, this seems ridiculous and she is persuaded to move into a hotel instead. When Isabel’s husband Philip arrives, there’s no room in the caravan for Meg, so she moves to the cottage and that’s when the fun begins. You see, Something Really Terrible happened years before, involving ‘Uncle Paul’. Things that go bump in the night, mysterious footsteps, isolation (no mobiles), damp; all lead up to a surprising twist at the end. As it didn’t frighten me at all, I felt rather let down by this book. Its saving grace is a boy called Cedric who is staying at the hotel with his mother. He has an annoying habit of contradicting any fact presented by an adult and is made even more annoying by being always right. In real life I suppose he’d be unbearable but in the face of all the hysteria and madness around him, I found him refreshingly normal and took quite a shine to him.
I think The Setons will be the last of my O Douglas bedtime re-reading for the moment. It’s an early book and not a favourite of mine, about a widowed minister (saintly, as they mostly are), his daughter Elizabeth and much younger son Buff, who live in Glasgow. I don’t find Elizabeth an attractive heroine; as her father is always telling her, she talks too much. Buff and his friends, though, are a joy. O Douglas loved writing about little boys and their extraordinary behaviour. Poor Elizabeth is twenty-eight and might as well be a minister’s wife because of all the work she does for the church. The family spend the whole of every Sunday in church and Elizabeth toils in all weathers climbing tenement stairs and visiting and for what? To take shillings from those who can ill afford it to give to foreign missions to convert ‘the heathen’ and to deliver tracts which she well knows will probably not be read. This while there are barefoot children in Glasgow. The Calvinistic style of religion which is present in all O Douglas’s books (and her own life) is not a religion which can ever appeal to me. Elizabeth also runs the household i.e. tells the maids what to do. Health issues force Mr Seton (only sixty) to retire and the family decamp to a house they own in the country, previously used only for holidays. When at last Elizabeth meets a man she thinks she can marry, in spite of his Englishness and his monocle, the First World War breaks out and she has to promise to wait for him, each knowing that he may not come back. So, not a happy ending, yet in Unforgettable, Unforgotten, O Douglas says that a soldier wrote to her from the trenches saying that the book was ‘balm of Gilead’ to him because as soon as opened the pages, he could feel himself back in Glasgow. Poor lads.
I stayed with a minister’s family for a re-read of Achachlacher, which is set in the Highlands and makes a clerical household seem like fun, if hard work.
no subject
Date: 2023-11-02 10:05 am (UTC)I hope storm Ciarán is missing you!
no subject
Date: 2023-11-02 01:38 pm (UTC)We've had both storms but are not so badly affected as some places. It's frightful today.