A Work in Progress

Reading Notes

Although I've pretty much known it all along, I'm definitely a more than one book at a time sort of reader.  This past vacation reminded me just how much I prefer spending time reading several different stories rather than just one.  I finished five books during my time off, though four of them were books I had been working on for a while (so nothing to be impressed about there!).  There were several that I wanted to finish before the end of the year, so I would just pick up one and read it through to the end.  As much as I love escaping into a story (and sometimes you just get so involved you can't put it down), I sometimes would feel a little constrained and look longingly at my pile thinking a break was in order--just a chapter or two of something completely different.  So now that I've got my books in some semblance of an order, I've spent a good few hours today dipping into whatever sounded good.  A chapter here, a few pages there.  For me, that's bliss!

I had an all day reading fest on the 31st to finish Cynthia Harrod-Eagles' The Black Pearl.  I've mentioned  this series before.  It begins in the early 1400s and follows one Yorkshire family, the Morlands, through history.  There are something like 30 books so far, and The Black Pearl is only #5.  At the rate I'm going it is going to take me until I retire to get through the rest of the books.  I seem to only be managing one a year, so I'll have to try to squeeze in a few more this year.  They are very quick, enjoyable reads, however, so I don't expect that to be a problem.  The Black Pearl begins in 1659 just before Charles II is restored to the throne.  I must say that the 1600s were a messy period in British history.  The books are a mixture of history and family drama and each book focuses on part of the family tree.  I like that women are strong characters in these books and you get a taste not only of court life, as the characters are intermingled with real historical figures, but there are also details of how people lived at the time.  So while the books aren't exactly highbrow literature they are a great jumping off place to learn about a particular point in history or an event and entertaining as well as it is easy to get wrapped up in the trials and tribulations of family life.    

I've also had a chance to finally get into Sarah Waters' Affinity.  It's set in a Victorian prison where Margaret Prior, a lady of a good family though suffering from nervousness, has become a Lady Visitor.  She hopes her visits will be of some benefit to the prisoners (and to herself as well).  One of the more intriguing women she encounters is Selina Dawes, a spiritualist and medium.  The book opens with one of her readings where things go horribly awry and she is sentenced to jail for fraud and assualt.  I expect there might be ghosts involved? 

Elizabeth Jane Howard's Slipstream continues to be an engrossing read.  I recently read a passage about the birth of her first child.  It's frightening what women had to go through when giving birth.  Howard married very young and seemed a little on the naive side.  Her worries were completely dimissed by the medical staff.  How awful to want to know 'what's going to happen' and have the nurse complain 'how many times is she going to have to answer this darn question, anyway'.  Ack. 

I have to also mention the movie, The Duchess with Keira Knightly and Ralph Fiennes, which I watched last night.  It was a gorgeously filmed movie and well acted, I thought.  I love good costume dramas, though, so perhaps I'm an easy sell?  I had read Amanda Foreman's biography, Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire, which is excellent as well, and I immediately went and dug it out after watching the film.  Georgiana was quite a women of her times.  She married into money and a title, but her marriage was an unhappy one.  Still she became the darling of fashionable society setting styles all the women followed, and was involved in high politics.  She was a remarkable woman for the times and I'd love to reread the biography.  I usually only can handle one nonfiction at a time, but perhaps I might try two (as this is my year to read more NF, right?).  

Knut Hamsun's "Victoria"

Knut Hamsun's Victoria reads a little like a fairy tale.  The lovely young maiden who lives (literally) in the castle, and the young lover endlessly trying to prove himself and his love to her and her family.  Only Johannes is a poor young man, and Victoria is the wealthy landowner's daughter, and people do things differently in the countryside.  For a slim novel, really only a novella, Hamsun manages all sorts of things in his story.  There is a dreamlike quality to it at times with interior monologues filled with hungry imaginings, and there are moments when it seems like nothing more than a meditation on love.  I think you know how real fairy tales end, though.

Johannes and Victoria have always known each other, but they are from different levels of society.  Johannes is the miller's son who knows the countryside like the back of his hand and basks in its beautiful nature.  Everyone calls the manor house The Castle, and every summer Johannes is called to row the Castle Children to an island where they explore and amuse themselves, but he's never invited to partake in the fun.  Johannes is always only on the edge of things.  He loves Victoria from afar, but Victoria is almost an ice maiden.  She's interested in Johannes, but you're never quite sure how deep her intentions or affections run.  As her family's wealth diminishes, so the pressure increases for her to make an advantageous match.  And you know what that means for Johannes.  

Eventually Johannes is sent off to school in the city and returns only in the summers when he encounters Victoria.  His love for her never fades, and though flirtatious moments pass, Victoria can never forget her responsibilities to her family or their expectations of her.  Perhaps to exorcise his demons, Johannes begins writing.  First poems, and then books which bring him some success and notoriety.  They're all for Victoria who is both his muse and his prison.  But this is a love story, remember, even if our lovers are star crossed, Johannes and Victoria are thwarted at every turn.  The two fly into and out of each other's orbits even as they are betrothed to others.       

This is really a very beautiful love story despite the emotional roller coaster ride it at times became.  I was attracted by the story and hadn't really thought of looking for any of Hamsun's other works, but he seems like such an interesting author I might just change my mind.  He himself was born into a poor peasant family and his own literary efforts were also thwarted by having to work what seemed like every imaginable job known to man to support himself (everything from near indentured servant to his brother-in-law to streetcar conductor in Chicago, IL!).  He had high literary aspirations, too.

"Finding the contemporary novel plot-ridden, psychologically unsophisticated, and didactic, he aimed to transform it so as to accomodate contingency and the irrational, the nuances of conscious and subconscious life as well as the vagaries of human behavior." 

He eventually did become a literary success and won the Nobel Prize in 1920, however lost his considerable fortune after WWII due to his "openly expressed Nazi sympathies during the German occupation of Norway." (It might be interesting to read more about that).  So, a new year, I had to pick a new book.  It may be quickish read, but it's also an excellent read to start things off.