Hmm. I'm not sure I have much to update you with to be honest. I will make this short so I can go do a little of this myself tonight. Although I have the Persephone Classics edition of Good Evening, Mrs. Craven, the endpapers to the dove grey edition look like the illustration above. I'm always interested to know where textile came from/what the inspiration was for each book. In this case the textile is called 'coupons' from 1941. It "shows women's clothes against a repeat of '66', the number of clothes coupons allowed a year during the war, with the number needed per item." Very fitting for this collection of stories. I guess the fancier the clothes the more coupons needed. Imagine wantingsomething that costed a year's worth of coupons!
In case you're not taking part in this challenge but you'd like to learn more about the various Persephone titles that are being read and discussed, do check out Paperback Reader and B Files for updates and links to reviews. Both ladies were kind enough to organize this weeklong challenge and surely have spent lots of time rounding up the links and keeping up on their own reading. However, beware--like me you might start contemplating buying even more Persephones. I always think I've carefully and thoroughly perused the catalog and surely have those books that are of most interest to me. Apparently there are more I had not considered and now feel the need to do so. Order them, that is. I've been very bad with book ordering this week, however, so I have to try and keep my mind on my own 'not yet read' stack!
While some readers (and not just Simon--there are others as well) have been reading their books at a nice respectable clip, I'm moving along at what you might term a more sedate pace. That's okay, though. As Paperback Reader notes, some books are meant to be savored slowly. Actually the stories in the Panter-Downes collection could easily be read in a week (and a more ambitious reader could easily tackle them in a day). They are short, compelling and carefully constructed stories about the daily lives of men and women(mostly women) 'keeping the home fires burning' so to speak. I could easily read them one after another like devouring a bag of m&m candies. It really is hard to stop at one, but I like to contemplate what I've read and I'm afraid in the case of stories they will all simply run together if I don't give myself time to properly 'digest' them.
One theme that often runs through Persephone novels is that of disappointment, disaffectation and disillusion with life, or maybe more specifically a woman's place in the world--due to both external forces and internal reasons. It's something I felt when reading Princes in the Land. I find women's lives, particularly of this era so fascinating. In many ways things have changed vastly for women, but in others not so much. One of my favorite stories in the collection so far is called "As the Fruitful Vine", which was dated 31 August 1940.
"Lucy Grant had to admit that none of the big moments of her life had really come up to expectations. Something had always missed the fire somewhere. When she thought back to all the memorable occasions of her twenty-five years, they greeted her with the identical damp, depressing fizzle of squibs which hadn't performed quite according to schedule. Her childhood was littered with these disappointments, her adolescence offered example after example of the budding and wilting bright hopes."
(A few spoilers here). It doesn't help that Lucy is is often overshadowed by her older and more successful sister. At every turn she seems faced with bitter disappointment rather than the expectation of happiness or esteem. Even at what might be considered the happiest moment of a married woman's life--the announcement of the birth of a first child. Rather than accepting congratulations she finds she's the object of some reproach even amongst her family. It's bad enough to marry when there's a war on but worse to choose to have a child in such a time of uncertainty. Lucy comes to the realization, however, that there might be more at work in the criticisms she's received--at least from her sister. Married longer, Valerie puts her childlessness down to planning and not simple bad luck. While Lucy literally blooms, Valerie becomes all angles, lean and thin. Lucy has this wonderful epiphany that turns into contentment for her situation at last.
All the stories in this collection relate some aspect of life during war, most are simply about the daily business of living, but living with evacuees or with the sound of gunfire over the channel or the drone of German bombers overhead and explosions in the distance. So, maybe not exactly business as usual. The stories are poignant without being syrupy sweet, they don't ask for the reader's sympathy simply tell their own story.
So much for a short post. I shall save House-Bound for another day.