Life must be filled up

Lord Roworth’s Reward, Carola Dunn
The World of Arthur Ransome , Christina Hardyment
A Room Full of Bones, Elly Griffiths
Dying Fall, Elly Griffiths
The Brother of Daphne, Dornford Yates
The Third Wife , Lisa Jewell
Captain Ingram’s Inheritance, Carola Dunn
Striding Folly, Dorothy L Sayers
The Vet’s Daughter, Barbara Comyns
Blood Count, Robert Goddard
A Place for Us Part 1, Harriet Evans
The Courts of Idleness, Dornford Yates
( a few comments )

Oh dear, now I’ve given up on Dorothy as well. The book is so slow; how one longs for something to happen. What a contrast with recently discovered Barbara Comyns, who describes the most astonishing events in a laconic, matter of fact way and in very short books. My current failure to find any book which pleases me will no doubt drive me back to Bleak House or Mansfield Park.

What is interesting about Pilgrimage is the description of a German school in, I suppose, the late nineteenth century. The Saal, the good food, the mending sessions, the hairwashing (with egg!), the times set aside for fancy work. The visiting masters, including an irascible music teacher. Then there’s the German girls: so placid and well behaved, so musical, so well practised already in housewifely arts. Ring any bells?

We all know that dreary feeling of ‘nothing to read’ when there are hundreds of books around we could read, if only they were the very thing one wanted to read that minute. What a pleasure it is then, to find something one just can’t wait to read. Browsing the books in the local Oxfam shop I homed in on a familiar green Virago spine and Sisters by a River, by Barbara Comyns. I started reading at random. Harrumphed to myself at the price they were asking for a beat up paperback. Read some more. Walked round the shop, picked up some more books, dipped into Sisters again: I had to have it.

The book was first published in 1947 and is a memoir of childhood, a pretty horrifying childhood, told in an episodic, apparently random manner, in the first person and with the spelling and punctuation of a person never properly educated. If you can imagine a mixture of I Capture the Castle, Stevie Smith’s Novel on Yellow Paper and Molesworth you might just come somewhere near the extraordinary, strangely compelling style of this book. I absolutely loved it.