A Work in Progress

Lost in the Stacks: So Big

For quite a while now, Edna Ferber has interested me.  She was one of the members of the Algonquin Round Table, which met at the New York City Hotel in the 1920s.  It sounds like the members were witty and acerbic and I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall to listen to their banter.  Ferber began her career as a reporter before turning to writing full time.  She wrote more than thirty novels and was hugely popular in her day even garnering a Pulitzer in 1924 for So Big, the book I brought home with me today.   And if having your books optioned for a film is the way to show "you've arrived", well Ferber not only arrived but moved on in and made herself comfortable.  Half a dozen were either made into movies or musicals for the stage--some winning awards.  Not too shabby for the single lady Ferber remained throughout her life. 

I wouldn't mind knowing more about Ferber as I imagine she had an interesting life being part of a literary circle in the first half of the twentieth century, already a fascinating era but all the more so considering her popularity as a writer.  My library has a whole shelf of her books, and not being sure which to choose I opted for So Big, which I already own as I've been looking forward to reading it.  So Big concerns a woman of indomitable spirit living in turn-of-the-century Chicago and follows her through youth, marriage and widowhood.  The story begins:

"Until he was almost ten the name stuck to him.  He had literally to fight his way free from it.  From So Big (of fond and infantile derivation) it has been condensed into Sobig.  And Sobig DeJong, in all its consonantal disharmony, he had remained until he was a ten-year-old schoolboy in that incredibly Dutch district southwest of Chicago known first as New Holland and later as High Prairie. At ten, by dint of fists, teeth, copper-toed boots, and temper, he earned the right to be called by his real name, Dirk DeJong.  Now and then, of course, the nickname bobbed up and had to be subdued in a brief and bitter skirmish.  His mother, with whom the name originated, was the worst offender.  When she lapsed he did not, naturally, use schoolyard tactics on her.  But he sulked and glowered portentously and refused to answer, though her tone, when she called him So Big, would have melted the heart of any but that natural savage, a boy of ten."

A number of Ferber's books are in print, and some are available free online.  I suspect she's not at all an unknown author, though I wonder if she is still read very widely these days?  I'm certainly planning on exploring some of her books.

The Lady Vanishes by Ethel Lina White

It's easy to see why Ethel Lina White's first novel The Wheel Spins was snapped up by Alfred Hitchcock as movie material.  It's a mixture of mystery and suspense which verges on horror as a young Englishwoman's very sanity is questioned.  The movie was called The Lady Vanishes and the novel later followed suit when it was reissued under the same title.  It has all the right elements to create a perfect suspense story--a speeding train crossing Europe filled with holidaymakers returning home, a woman who mysteriously disappears, and a lone witness whom none of the passengers believe.  What I liked most about the story is that it takes place almost entirely on a train, turning it into a locked room type of mystery, which is the perfect setting for this claustrophobic tale.

Iris Carr is a beautiful socialite with no fixed address who has been vacationing with a group of friends in an unnamed Eastern European country (mostly likely the Balkans).  It's a rather rowdy group which has managed to aggravate most of the rest of the proper English guests in one way or another.  Iris is cool, calm and collected and very prickly.  She has knack for rubbing people the wrong way, and not caring a jot that she's done so.  Just before boarding her train home to England she's struck with a violent pain and loses consciousness waking barely moments before her departure in a state of confusion and anxiousness.

The train, one of the last leaving the resort at the end of the season, is crammed with travelers, and Iris is stuck in a compartment with unfriendly natives who don't seem to speak or understand any English.  She finds an unlikely ally, however, in a middle aged woman of vague coloring wearing tweeds--Miss Winifred Froy.  Miss Froy is returning to England, too, after working as governess in the home of a high ranking family.  She may be a spinster, but she has a great sense of adventure.  Mild mannered and gregarious she can hold her own in any conversation and is comfortable speaking the language.  Despite Miss Froy's blandness Iris takes a liking to her even though she is a chatterbox.   She speaks with a deep affection for her elderly parents and her dear little dog named "Sock" (short for Socrates!) who she already envisions racing to the station to meet her.

Not quite recovered from her touch of sunstroke, Iris falls asleep and when she wakes Miss Froy is no longer in her seat.  As a matter of fact she's nowhere to be found on the train, and Iris has looked up and down the corridor and in all the compartments.  No one admits to seeing her and when Iris demands something be done, she's neither believed nor supported in her accusation of foul play.  As a matter of fact her fellow travelers believe she's something of a trouble maker since her bad behavior at the hotel did little to endear her to them.  As for the rest they think she's simply had too much sun and needs a nice rest. 

What makes this such a great read is White's plotting.  From the first page the reader anticipates something awful, as premonitions abound.  She sets the perfect tone, creating in Iris a character who is ultimately friendless and alone which makes her fruitless search so harrowing.  Even those few passengers who are 'on her side' are still not convinced that Miss Froy exists.  White gets into the heads of the other passengers, so the reader sees their secrets and motivations.  Most just want to get home, each having their own reason for not wanting the train to be held up en route.  The tension mounts as Iris becomes ever more distressed about Miss Froy, while the other passengers begin to lose their patience with Iris and her seemingly erratic behavior.

I love a good suspenseful novel, and I totally enjoyed this one.  White turns a satiric eye on travelers abroad and their foibles in a way that helps move this story along at a good clip.  Now that I've finished reading the book, I'm due for another viewing of the movie, which I recall enjoying though a few liberties were taken with the story.  The novel was published in 1936 and the film made in 1938 which has a slightly more political/espionage slant than the book had.

This is the first book I've finished for Carl's RIP Challenge.  I'm also working on Ruth Rendell's A Demon in My View, Nicci French's The Memory Game and I've just started Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None.  I'm planning on reading Deborah Lawrenson's The Lantern as part of a group read as well.  I had hoped to read three books, so we'll see what I manage by the end of October.

Vipulat at Shades of Words also read The Lady Vanishes.  Check out her post here.

The Last Letter from Your Lover

The cover illustration of The Last Letter from Your Lover by Jojo Moyes both drew me in and made me wary of the story.  That intense bluish tone, the longing gaze between lovers against the vivid London skyline caught my eye.  I admit I'm a sucker for those old-fashioned sepia-tone (or tinted in this case) photos, because they make me curious to know who those people were.  I will at least look twice and then a story about separated lovers and lost letters is something of a hook for me.  However, I don't do well lately with mushy love stories.  I like happy endings as much as the next person but there has to be a dash of reality there as well (preferably reality with a dash of romance).  So I was pleasantly surprised by this story.  Okay, it is a love story, actually two as there are parallel/intertwined stories going on, but it also had a little something extra which made it feel weightier than your garden variety romance.

Moyes juxtaposes two love affairs that take place forty years apart with interesting and satisfying results.  In 1960 Jennifer Stirling wakes in a hospital room battered and confused.  Her short term memory is hazy, so she doesn't recall the circumstances that put her there, but her husband assures her she'll be okay.  It's better not to talk about the car accident and simply put it behind her and move on.  She's a society wife with an elegant home, a closet full of beautiful clothes, a housekeeper and a tight knit circle of friends with whom they often socialize with.  Laurence is a successful businessman who has a string of productive mining companies and certain expectations from a wife to keep up appearances.  When Jennifer returns home, she feels almost as though she is starting from scratch, so foreign does Laurence and her life feel to her.  As she explores her house to try and reorient herself she discovers a number of letters, passionate love letters, addressed to her but signed simply B.  But she has no memory of this B. and what he meant to her.

From there the story moves forward and backward in time between what happened before and after the accident.  While vacationing on the French Riviera with their friends, Laurence agrees to be interviewed by a reporter from a British newspaper.  Anthony O'Hare is a hardened reporter, more comfortable covering a bloody anticolonial uprising in Africa than dealing with rich businessmen and their selfish wives.  He calls Jennifer a spoiled tai tai, not realizing she's overheard him.  When she calls him on it later he at least has the grace to apologize and begins to realize that behind her perfect facade there is an unexpected depth to her.  She's graceful and dignified but perhaps a little unhappy, too, in her life--a life so smooth and perfect on the surface but not at all lovely underneath.  So begins their ill-fated romance filled with misunderstandings, crossed letters and missed opportunities.  The story moves rapidly to a climactic denouement, where the reader discovers just what happened during Jennifer's accident, but that's not the end.  

Moving forward to 2003 thirtyish Ellie Haworth is involved with a married man and her affair is engulfing her life.  Her friends know it's not good for her, and maybe in the back of her mind she knows it, too, but she can't and doesn't want to untangle herself from it.  But it affects her work as a  journalist.  Her work suffers due to her preoccupations with her love life putting her job in jeopardy.  When she finds a love letter in a file she's working from, which has sat hidden away in the paper's library for four decades she's drawn into this secret affair--compelled to find out whether the woman left her husband and met her lover to run away with him.

This is a story that sounds like it could easily have fallen into a trap of sentimentality, doesn't it?  Moyes, however, places her characters in difficult positions without always letting them take the easy way out.  She convincingly creates a world of claustrophobia for Jennifer.  As little more than a trophy wife, and raised to be so, there are few opportunities for her.  She finds she must choose passion or practicality, but following her heart will come at a steep price.  And Ellie's life is filled with complications, mostly of her own import.  She, too, learns that matters of the heart come at a cost.  Moyes is adept at portraying life in the 1960s very vividly.  The story is wrapped up in the events of the day with its restrictive attitudes and double standards for women as well she touches on the tragic events of the Congo and bad business practices which caused illnesses that were subsequently covered up.

I was interested to read that the UK edition of this book includes actual love letters--the US edition does not.  As well the format was slightly changed.  Ellie's story is not introduced until after Jennifer's and Anthony's is told, though the two plotlines do eventually come together at end.  The UK edition also has quite a different feel with a very different cover illustration.

This was a very enjoyable read for me.  It makes me all the more anxious to pull out my copy of Foreign Fruit, which I bought years ago.

Iris at Iris on Books read this earlier this year.  You can also check out a review at Vulpes Libris and Ted's very insightful post at Bookeywookey.  Jojo Moyes won the 2011 Romantic Novel of the Year for The Last Letter to Your Lover.  Next time I show my face at the public library I'll be paying a fine on this book, which I dropped into the return bin three days late.  It's a fine worth paying, but I promise to try and be better next time.

Recent Book Acquisitions: Part One

I've been so bad about new book buying it's going to require not one but two posts.  I'll save the rest of the books for next week.  I can't decide whether that's a good thing or bad.  More books surely is a good thing, but considering I'm having problems finding books I already own, maybe in reality (as I try and find space for these) it is in reality a bad thing.  But hey, they're here now, so let me show you what I have. 

You probably already know how much I love Ruth Rendell, and as I am reading one of her earlier books I thought I should try and fill out my collection so I bought The Killing Doll, which was published in 1984.  This story includes a doll and "the uses to which it might be put".  Sounds kind of creepy to me.

Stefanie is to blame for me buying George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones.  I don't usually read fantasy stories, but it's always good to try new things.  And I do love epic stories that include swordplay.  And I hope women get to wield swords, too.  Fair is fair.

It's sad when you start shopping for books in the supermarket, but that's where I bought both the Martin and Stacy Schiff's Cleopatra: A Life.  I've heard many good things about this--like it reads like fiction, which is a good thing since I can't seem to finish any actual nonfiction books this year.  There's still three months left, and a lot can happen in three months. 

I didn't realize that Beverly Jensen's The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay is a series of interlinked stories, but I've just been thinking lately how much I like interlinked stories.  And this has the added benefit of being set in 1916, part of a period I love reading about.

More Italian literature, Dacia Maraini's Train to Budapest caught my eye a while back.  This is a post-WWII story about a journalist writing about the East-West political divide.  She's also trying to find out what happened to a friend (her soulmate) from before the war.

Earlier in the summer I read Grace Brophy's first mystery and liked it so much I meant to dive right into her next Commissario Cenni story, A Deadly Paradise.  Now I can take my time with it.  Hopefully, though, that won't mean it can now languish forever on my reading piles.

Someday I would love to have enough shelf space so that I could sit orderly and alphabetized.  Isn't that a nice thought?

My Brother Michael by Mary Stewart

I often think timing is everything when it comes to books (in some cases anyway).  An otherwise well written and well plotted story read at the wrong time, or in the wrong company, (for me) means a missed opportunity.  I think that was the case with my first Mary Stewart novel several years ago, The Ivy Tree.  It was enjoyable, but.  But I read it at the same time as I read the spectacularly wonderful Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.  When one book floors you, a follow up book will likely pale in comparison, no matter how good it might be.  My Brother Michael didn't suffer any unwelcome comparisons to other books this time around and I found it to be an engaging, suspenseful and entertaining story that I was sorry to turn the last page on--always a good sign. 

Mary Stewart seems to have a very loyal following from what I can tell, and I can easily see why.  Although she is probably best known for her Merlin books, she wrote a number of works that (though I really hate to categorize) I suppose you could call romantic suspense.  Her first was published in the mid-1950s and she was particularly active through the next couple of decades, though her most recent book was published in 1997.  In the case of Stewart, her books often have exotic settings with plucky, intelligent heroines, and yes, there is an element of romance but it seems to be fairly low key.  I'm not sure what it is about suspense/adventure stories written in the mid-twentieth century, but I'm very fond of them.  They have a certain attitude or atmosphere about them.  Maybe it's the lack of ultra modern day technology and the fact that life was in many ways slower.  A mystery may need to be sorted out, but it has to be done without all the clever little tools we have nowadays.  And there is a slowness or thoughtfulness to the stories as well.  Stewart takes her time unraveling the mystery, which I like.

It's Murphy's Law that if you wish for something, you had better be careful as you may just get it.  As My Brother Michael opens Camilla Haven, a twenty-something Englishwoman on vacation, sits in a café in Athens writing a letter to a friend lamenting the fact that nothing ever happens to her.  Apparently the gods were listening as in walks a dark little man in shabby dungarees with a key in his hand ready to deliver to her an automobile he is sure she ordered.  She's Simon's girl, right?  The car is for Delphi, to be taken to Monsieur Simon as it is a matter of life and death.  It's obviously a case of mistaken identity and miscommunication, but as Camilla had been sorting out her money to go to Delphi, and as she is on a tight budget and driving the car there will allow her to stretch her cash out just a little longer...  She does try and find the right owner, but when no one steps forward or seems to know anything about it, she decides it's a favor to drive it there herself.

She, of course, gets more than she bargained for in more ways than one.  The car proves difficult to manage on the tight, narrow streets and in tiny villages, and when she gets wedged into a shop doorway while trying to reverse (more like back down) from a large truck, a group of locals attempt to direct her out her predicament with amusing results.  In the end she's aided by a man who might pass as a local, but is obviously a fellow Englishman--by the name of Lester, Simon Lester.  Despite the coincidence in names he didn't order the car but offers to help her try and locate the right Mr. Simon.  As he is staying in Delphi also, they travel together in a companionable manner.

Camilla has come to Greece after her engagement fell through, though it's probably a lucky escape as her former lover had little faith in her abilities and was all too ready to keep her safely tucked at home.  Michael has brought Simon to Delphi.  Michael was Simon's older brother who died during the war and is buried in the hills overlooking the city, though the circumstances surrounding his death aren't clear and his last letter home hinted at something mysterious which had happened while he was serving in Greece.  Untangling the mystery of the letter and the events that led to Michael's death turn out to be a deadly adventure for Simon and Camilla.

The setting really makes this story.  It is, in its own way, a sort of Greek tragedy.  The rugged countryside peppered with classical ruins and the weight of history creates a vivid backdrop against which the war still reverberates giving an intensity to the events that take place.  I'm already looking forward to picking up my next Mary Stewart novel.  

An American Tragedy: Book One!

I bet you thought I gave up on poor Theodore Dreiser?  Not a whisper of him here since early summer, I think?  I must admit that the thought crossed my mind that I would like to read a classic--something shorter perhaps (and I even have a stack of possibilities by my bedside at the moment).  But I knew that if I picked up a new book, An American Tragedy would likely end up back on the TBR pile with barely a dent made in it.  It's not that I hadn't been enjoying it, but it is a really long book (well over 800 pages) and it has a bit of a slow start.  I think I give up too easily sometimes on books that are really worth the effort if I would just stick it out until the story really begins to move, and that has been the case with this one.  I'm glad I picked it up again as now I don't want to put it down.  I'm only about a fourth of the way in, however.  The novel is broken up into three books and as I recently finished the first book it seems like a perfect moment to give a little update on my reading to keep the momentum going.

The story is based on an actual murder that occurred in upstate New York in 1906.  A young woman was found drowned in a lake.  Her lover denied that he murdered her, claiming that she died as a result of an accident.  She was pregnant at the time.  Dreiser was at a low point in his career when he began working on this book.  He had previously published four novels to some acclaim, but then nothing for five years.  He had an interest in Sigmund Freud's ideas, which he called "a strong, revealing light thrown on some of the darkest problems that haunted and troubled me and my work."  He was drawn to the Gillette/Brown case because he felt it was representative of the social ills besetting America at the time--calling it "a particularly American crime."  Here he found inspiration for a new novel.

The first book of An American Tragedy introduces Clyde Griffiths.  He's one of several children of a missionary family who are living in Kansas City.  They don't have much money as his parents spend most of their time proselytizing on the street while the children play hymns and sing and pass out leaflets.  His father supplements his meager income by working as a door to door salesman but earns very little.  Clyde is about fifteen at the opening of the story and is unhappy with his family's lifestyle, which reflects how little they have in comparison to everyone else and the fact that nothing will ever change if they continue on this same path.  One day the family discovers that Esta, the eldest daughter has run off with a man and this gives Clyde the idea that he can also make other choices outside the family in order to better himself, which is always on his mind.

He begins working in an elegant hotel as a bell-boy where his wages are increased with tips guests pay for small extra services he renders.  It's almost a shock for him to learn that he can make so much money and buy so many nice things that he had only dreamed of owning.  Perhaps it's the lifestyle he lived so long, which made him feel deprived, or perhaps he simply has a selfish streak, but he doesn't admit to his mother just how much money he earns--keeping extra back to buy nice things for himself.  Working in such an opulent environment, seeing how other people live and particularly mingling with the other young men whose morals are looser than he is used to is eye-opening to Clyde and he receives an entirely different sort of education. 

Although he's still somewhat conservative, his desires extend toward a young woman he meets who works as a clerk in a store, and who also desires nice clothes and other little treats.  She has a string of boyfriends, but it's obvious she pays attention to most of them for what she can get from them (without actually giving anything of herself) rather than from any real attraction or good intentions.  She doesn't actually like Clyde very much, but he has cash and he's so enamored by her that it's easy to manipulate him.  At the end of book one something awful happens, which will lead Clyde to move to New York where relatives live.

And this is only in the first 160 or so pages.  I did mean to be brief in my description, but it seems important to know what sort of person Clyde is, what his environment is like, and what might make him commit an act of violence.  Dreiser published An American Tragedy in 1925.  Aside from being rapt by Dreiser's storytelling, I'm fascinated by the portrait he paints of America in the 1920s, which I am sure must be fairly accurate.  Post-WWI America is a land of good and plenty.  The 1920s roared you know.  Women were beginning to work and take on new roles in society, and this was an era of rampant consumerism (which has only gotten worse).  Everything must have been so shiny and new and who wouldn't want to buy into that American Dream--the idea that anyone can better him- or herself.  And Clyde certainly wants to.

I'll let you know how book two goes.  It's the longest part of the novel, but hopefully there won't be as long of a hiatus reading it as there was when I started book one. 

Lost in the Stacks: The Fire-Dwellers

Many years ago I worked in a public school and one of the teachers highly recommended the work of Canadian author Margaret Laurence me.  It wasn't until years later that I finally got around to reading one of her books, The Stone Angel, a novel I hugely admire and consider one of my own personal favorites.  Anyone who can make the prickly Hagar Shipley a sympathetic character is a talented author indeed.

I believe Laurence is a well respected and noted author in Canada, so she likely doesn't need me to save her from the library stacks, but as I don't often see her name when I am out and about surfing on the web, and I came across this lovely Virago edition of The Fire-Dwellers, I didn't think twice about pulling it off the shelf and bringing it home with me.

The story, written in 1969, is about a woman in an unhappy marriage in which she feels inadequate.  Nearing forty she believes if only she were thinner or smarter or prettier she would feel more satisfaction.  (Familiar thoughts I suspect for many women--certainly they have on occasion crossed my mind).  Faced with these emotions she begins an affair with a younger man, which doesn't solve her problems any more than drink does.  Of course happiness is something that can only happen when a person looks within to try and understand, which is what Stacey must do to solve her problems.

This is one of five novels that makes up the Manawaka sequence of books--Manawaka is the fictional town in the province of Manitoba based on her actual home town of Neepawa.  The books that make up the sequence are: The Stone Angel, A Jest of God, The Fire-Dwellers, A Bird in the House and The Diviners. 

I'm curious about this book (and not sure whether the set needs to be read in order) as Laurence supposedly does some interesting things with the narration of the story.  It begins:

"Ladybird, ladybird,
Fly away home;
Your house is on fire,
Your children are gone.

--Crazy rhyme.  Got it on the brain this morning.  That's from trying to teach Jen a few human words yesterday.  Why anybody would want to teach a kid a thing like that, I wouldn't know.  Half those nursery rhymes are gruesome, when you come to think of it.  Here is a candle to light your bed, and here comes a chopper to chop off your head.  Just the thing to make the sprouts sleep soundly, especially if I followed by that prayer  about if I should die before I wake.  Maybe it's okay, though.  Prepares them for what they can expect.  Stacey, you sure are joyful first thing in the morning.  First thing, hell.  It's a quarter to nine, and here's me not dressed yet."

Something I noticed when I read The Stone Angel, and I suspect is also true with this book--it is one I think I will appreciate more as an adult with years and experience behind me, rather than as a younger woman.  Times and circumstances may change, but there are some emotions and feelings that will always remain the same.  Since Laurence writes about universal themes and stories that can be returned to and read more deeply, I'm not surprised she has achieved classic status and certainly she should be more widely read.

The Reading Woman & a Few Notes

"Woman Reading by Candlelight" by Peter Vilhelm Ilsted (Danish, 1861-1933), 1908, Connaught Brown, London

Isn't this a wonderful painting?  It's very fitting somehow for this time of year.  And it's going to be me later as I finish reading Jojo Moyes's Last Letter from Your Lover, which I can't put down--being at the point of no return storywise.  Just as well, that, as it is now officially two days overdue at the library and I am determined to return it tomorrow morning before work.  Racking up library fines once again!

I might not have had to burn the midnight oil had I not spent a fruitless hour last night looking for Muriel Sparks's The Girls of Slender Means.  I really hate it when I know I own a book, but I can't find it anywhere.  My little book room has gotten completely out of control.  I am usually pretty good at knowing roughly where a book is--which pile or bookcase, but my room (and it really is small) has gotten so full of stuff (unfortunately it has become a space for my niece's cast off items--doesn't she know it's only for my books?....) that I can barely navigate it and am constantly tipping over piles or having to move bins around to get to a shelf.  I'm in dire need of some reorganization, and more space for more bookshelves would be nice, too.  And I don't know about you, but when I decide I want a book (and I know it's is just within my reach...somewhere) I have to have it now.  Piles were shifted, books were moved, but it is now MIA, I guess.  Not that I'm necessarily going to start reading right at this particular moment, but I'll obsess about it until I have it safely in my hand. 

Maybe it wasn't a totally wasted hour of searching.  I brought with me to my bedside pile Katherine Anne Porter's Pale Horse, Pale Rider and Anne Tyler's The Amateur Wedding.  Not that I'm going to read those either right now, but I can at least contemplate doing so before they get shuffled back downstairs to my book room.  It's a little game I play with my books.  Some might call it a sickness, but I prefer to think of it as an intellectual hobby with the added benefit of a short cardio workout. 

Happy reading everyone.

One Book Leads to Another

Ever since finishing Mary Stewart's My Brother Michael with its Greek setting and literary references, I've been contemplating the fact that I have read not a single Greek Classic (as in Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles and the like).  Other than Homer (which I did read in school), I don't even own any books.  My best recommendations always come from other readers, so any help on what I might read and where to start would be appreciated.  I don't have any plans simmering, but I'd like to keep the idea in the back of my mind.  It's amazing how reading one book inevitably leads to wanting to learn more about a particular place or time!

By the way that's The Temple of Apollo at Delphi (Delphi was the setting in the Stewart book), and the photo is from this Wikipedia article.

Thanks in advance for any reading ideas.

Ghost Stories by M.R. James & Muriel Spark

When I think of Muriel Spark, ghost story isn't what comes to mind first, but then maybe I'm not as familiar with her work as I thought.  She won a number of awards for her novels, a few of which I have read and enjoyed, so when I saw she has an entry in The Mammoth Book  of 20th Century Ghost Stories edited by Peter Haining, I flipped straight to it.  "The Leaf Sweeper" is one of Spark's first pieces of fiction, which was published in the Christmas 1956 number of the London Mystery Magazine.  It's a quirky rather humorous story which Haining calls "a benchmark in ghost fiction with its portrayal of what can only be described as the phantom of a living person."

Johnnie Geddes is the leaf sweeper of the story, a skill he learned while living in an asylum.  Johnnie's problem is that he's had Christmas on the brain and can't stop obsessing (and in some cases shouting) about it.  As a matter of fact twenty years earlier he started the Society for the Abolition of Christmas.  He believes in doing away with Christmas and even wrote a pamphlet and books about it.

"Johnnie demonstrates that every human unit in the kingdom faces inevitable starvation within a period inversely proportional to that in which one in every six industrial-productivity units, if you see what he means, stops producing toys to fill the stockings of the educational-intake units.  He cites appalling statistics to show that 1.024 per cent of the time squandered each Christmas in reckless shopping and thoughtless churchgoing brings the nation closer to its doom by five years.  A few readers protested, but Johnnie was able to demolish their muddled arguments, and meanwhile the Society for the Abolition of Christmas increased."

But trouble brews in the kingdom and those moderates within the society become even more moderate and break the whole thing up.  It's enough to drive anyone mad, or at least Johnnie, so into a mental home he goes.  Several years later the narrator of the story returns to his home town where he sees Jonnnie sweeping away.  Still raving about Christmas.  He visits Johnnie's aunt, where things are turned upside down, because there is Johnnie, in the flesh it would seem, dressed in an appropriately festive manner fixing holly behind a picture.  The ghost of Johnnie comes every Christmas to cheerfully pass the holiday in happy spirits (no pun intended, well, maybe just a little bit) with his aunt (who's actually pretty displeased by the arrangement).  It's not just Johnnie's aunt who finds the ghost of a living man creepy and repulsive.  

Definitely this is one of the oddest ghost stories I've ever come across, though certainly one of the more amusing.

For a little more atmosphere I decided to turn to a master of the genre, M.R. James.  I've read a few of his short stories in the past and always mean to get back to his work.  M.R. (Montague Rhodes) James led an interesting life.  A lifelong bachelor, he was not only a distinguished scholar of medieval manuscripts and early Christianity, but he was a professor and administrator at Cambridge University and Eton College, and he also managed to write ghost stories in his spare time.  The perfect background for writing chilling tales of ghostly hauntings, right?  It's his ghost stories that he is known for today.  He traveled widely, which served him well in his writings.  In 1892 he took his first bicycle tour of the Continent, and later he took at least one trip a year to France where he studied Medieval cathedrals, visiting nearly all those there were to see. 

James would often read drafts of his stories to friends and collegians, usually at Christmastime.  Although his earliest couple of stories had been published in magazines, he probably wouldn't have considered publishing them in book format had not a friend wanted to do the illustrations for them.  It seems  as if James's work can be seen as a bridge between Gothic novelists of the 18th and 19th centuries to a more modern tradition of ghost stories.  Writers of Gothic novels liked to set their tales firmly in the Medieval period, but James wrote about more contemporary subjects.  His stories usually are set in a small village or seaside town, or an abbey or university, involve a gentleman scholar (am guessing he drew heavily on his own life experiences?) and there is usually a discovery of an antique book or artifact that is in some way supernatural or menacing.

James's signature style is apparent in "Lost Hearts", which appears in Count Magnus and Other Ghost Stories(the first of two volumes of ghost stories).  The year is 1811 and a young boy, an orphan, is taken in by an elderly cousin.  It's a generous and incongruous offer from a man who is little more than a recluse.  Mr. Abney is a professor of Greek, very learned in mysterious arts as reflected in the many scholarly texts in his vast library.  Oh, and he'd like to discover the secret for immortality  (a little side hobby?).  Mr. Abney has a particular interest in young Stephen's age and is gratified that he's still practically a child.  The housekeeper reveals that the kindly gentleman took in two other children, also orphans, prior to Stephen.  Unfortunately they ran away without a word to their benefactor.  That gypsy blood, no doubt.  Or so we're led to believe.  I'll leave it up to your imagination to wonder what happens on Stephen's twelfth birthday.

If you're really curious to find out, you can read the story here, or even see the film adaptation (the link is the first of four parts) of the story here.