I've just started reading Emma Smith's The Great Western Beach: A Memoir of a Cornish Childhood Between the Wars. It always amazes me when someone writes a memoir about their childhood and can remember so much and in such detail. I recall bits and pieces of my own and then wonder just how much is accurate and how much has been embellished over the years inadvertantly. Smith's authorial voice is very charming despite writing about an unhappy father (who wouldn't allow either pets or dolls in the house). It seems to have gotten rave reviews and I'm looking forward to working my way through the book. She presents her story in a series of vignettes, each more interesting than the last. I hope to write more about this as I progress.
I don't usually write about the books I read for my postal reading group. There are about a dozen or so of us and each has chosen a book for the rest of the group to read. The books steadily make their way around the circle until we each get a chance to read them all. The books are meant to be a surprise (hence my desire to keep mum about them here)--I love watching the mail every other month for the next unknown book. Anyway, I do at least want to mention the book I'm reading now, so if you happen to be in the group and don't want to spoil the surprise, please skip the next paragraph.
My current postal book read is really good and extremely thought provoking and it might be of interest to readers here so please check it out. Set in colonial Rhodesia in the late 1960s, Tambu is a young girl living in a rural village who dreams of an education. When her brother dies suddenly she's chosen (by default really) by her uncle to take his place in the mission school outside her village. Tambu's uncle is headmaster and believes it the duty of at least one child from each unit of his extended family to study and help his respective family better themselves. Her uncle had lived and studied in England along with his wife and children. When they returned Tambu finds her cousin Nyasha utterly changed--anglicized really, not even able to speak her native tongue, Shona, anymore. Although the novel purports to be about "the colonization of one culture by another", it's really about so much more than that. It's about family dynamics and a woman's place in a patriarchical society, about what an education does and how it makes one question one's surroundings. This would be a perfect book group book--I'm sure it would elicit an excellent discussion. Tambu is a great narrator--her education opens her eyes to the ways of the world--the ways of her world and those in it yet she's caught between two different cultures. Not entirely buying into everything that Nyasha embraces (or struggles against), she also can't go back to her rural village either once she's been exposed to the broader world. She's a wonderful observer and thinker. I suspect I'll be pondering this one long after I've turned the last page.
I hope to finish my postal book sometime today and then will move on to Georgina Harding's The Solitude of Thomas Cave, which I had meant to read for Cornflower's book group, but am now very tardy for the discussion. I began reading it a while back but then got distracted so I may start from the beginning again (it's a fairly slender novel). I will, however, skip one rather harrowing passage (this is in part a whaling novel) that turned my stomach. Although entirely fitting with the period of the story, it was ugly nonetheless. Have I intrigued you? More later on that one, too.
Once I finish the Harding book I've given myself leave to read at whim. I'm waiting for A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book to arrive in the mail. As it's not due to be published in the US for a while yet, I was trying to ignore the virtual chatter about it that I've been coming across. When I discovered it's set in the Edwardian period I changed my mind and am now waiting for my copy with eager anticipation. I've read four or five books by (or about) Georgette Heyer so far this year, so I was ready to end my binge and save my unread books for later, but now I find I'm now eyeing them again after enjoying The Corinthian so much. And I'm also finding that I'm in the mood for some good historical fiction (maybe a little further back in time than my usual early twentieth-century choices). I was thinking of Shakespeare (to get back in the mood for reading a play later on) and had Faye Kellerman's The Quality of Mercy in mind.
It's nice to have so many good choices. I'm not sure which ones I'll end up actually picking up to read (my night table pile also beckons), but I'm sure I'll let you know!