This is a quick blog about the books I’ve been reading while recovering from my latest cancer surgery. That’s far too dramatic for days just lying on the couch reading but there you go. These were all easy reads.
Stephanie’s Journal, Stephanie Alexander
Meredith came to see me and brought this book with her. She’d not read it and didn’t think she ever would, but after she went I read it through all at once. A very easy read and interesting. This is a diary she kept during 1997. A very full year – she was opening Richmond Hill Larder, splitting up with her restaurant partner Duré Dura, running a cooking class in Tuscany with Maggie Beer and finally at the end of the year closing her famous eponymous restaurant (at which I once fell asleep over a boned pig’s trotter). I enjoyed this a lot. It’s now out of print so if you want to read it, you’ll have to get it from the library although she notes on her website that you can sometimes find it in a secondhand bookshop. It makes me want to read her and Maggie’s Tuscan Cookbook – which is still in print. Which came after the cooking classes she describes here. There are also recipes. She writes really well, this is the first of what’s become a whole lot of books. She was encouraged by the success of her book The Cooks Companion to close the restaurant and has obviously gone on to do lots of other things. Although I liked it I didn’t feel inclined to keep it and so put it in the bag of books we were donating to the North Fitzroy Primary School Fete
Goodbye To Berlin, Christopher Isherwood
Which is where I bought this – and all the remaining books on this blog. I’ve read about this book in lots of different places and was aware that whilst it is sometimes described as the basis for the movie Cabaret it is a very different Sally Bowles you find here. Which is true. But you can see the bones of the film in the characters of Sally, Fritz and Bobby in the short story about Sally Bowles. The other stories were okay and interesting because we’d just been in Berlin and seen the sorts of places he describes. The other stories describe his experience teaching English to different sorts of Berliners – spoiled schoolgirls, bored wives. The emerging horror of Nazism is only glancingly referred to. All a bit dated.
The Birds and Other Stories, Daphne du Maurier
I was interested in this because I’ve only recently seen the Hitchcock movie, The Birds. It’s very interesting to see what Hitchcock did with it. This is a very flat but very effective description of the horror of the birds turning into deadly attackers. All through the eyes of a man who recognises the danger as soon as it emerges and who battles to save his family whilst others pooh pooh the idea the birds could be dangerous – and so meet their gruesome fate. The story certainly evokes how horrible it would be if birds did suddenly start acting like this. So the film is quite faithful to the book in that respect, only there is no romantic dalliance in the story and no attack like the one on poor Tippi Hedren! I only read one of the other stories which was a bit silly – about a woman being lured to a remote monastery and the men who attempt to follow her, all a bit supernatural for me. Then I started but then glossed over another one about an apple tree that was really horrific – a dead wife avenging herself on a self satisfied husband. Awful!
Portrait of a Marriage, Nigel Nicolson
One way or another I’ve read bits and pieces about the people in this book so I was interested to have a look. It’s a bit of a mish mash. There are two bits written directly by Vita herself, about her passionate love affair with Violet Trefusis. She’s a very good writer -as is Trefusis, whose novella Echo I’ve read and talked about here. But it was all a bit melodramatic for me – women swearing eternal love for each other, husbands pursuing them and bringing them back, parents concerned about scandals. It was all happening in 1920 so with the passage of time it’s all a bit dated. I found the bits written by Nigel more interesting. The background of both families but in particular the Sackville-Wests; lots of skeletons in the closet, illegitimate children, inheritances, court cases about same. The lives of British aristocrats are really something! Snobs and anti-semites and appallingly misogynist inheritance rules. So, not interested in the love story at all but found the family story absorbing – a bit like some disaster unfolding on the telly!
The Sea Change, Elizabeth Jane Howard
This was the best of the books I bought at the fete and makes me determined to pick up any book by this author I see anywhere. I’ve talked about her famous series The Cazalet Chronicles, and her autobiography and biography in this blog here and and about one of her other books, After Julius, here. It’s a scandal she is not recognised as a brilliant British writer; like her former husband Kingsley Amis. She’s so much better than him!!! And completely undated – her books could be written now. And her themes of personal growth and relationships are universal. She gets right into her characters who are all psychologically true! I loved this, although it took me a little while to get into it. Playwright husband, successful, feted, awarded, in demand but worn out with it all. Wife completely given up on life since their daughter died – a long time ago. A factotum – the fellow who organises everything for everyone both work-wise and personal-wise, picking up the pieces, soothing egos, arranging hotels, flights, excuses. Into this mix comes a sweet young thing, inexperienced in the world but full of homespun wisdom from her saintly – no other word will do – father. He’s a village parson and a beautiful character. The sweet young thing changes the lives of all around her, and is changed herself. We move from London to New York to Hydra (thoughts of Leonard Cohen intruded). All beautifully done.
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