A Work in Progress

Poor Cow by Nell Dunn

The first book I read last year was Nell Dunn's Up the Junction, a short novel published by Virago in 1963 consisting of a series of vignettes about the Battersea neighborhood in London which must at the time have been remarkably colorful gauging by the tone of the storytelling and of the characters portrayed.  It seemed only fitting that I end the year with another Virago Classic by Nell Dunn, Poor Cow published in 1967.  An equally colorful story, which coming so close on the heels of the very comforting and very innocuous Little House books, made me feel slightly disoriented and a little shocked even, so raw or visceral are the events that occur.  It is again a no holds barred portrayal of a young woman who makes all the wrong choices in an era when 'anything went'.

In the introduction to the book it's noted that one critic said of the book: "I was disgusted, I was nauseated, I was saddened but I was not bored."  Curiously so many years later when little raises eyebrows I had a slightly similar reaction.  Disgusted or nauseated might be words too extreme for my feelings, but Joy's life is indeed something of a train wreck.  You want her to succeed, but in a way she doesn't even try.  That's not entirely true, but you can't help but shake your head by her actions and her naivety.  Is it naivety or laziness or something else?  Even decades later she makes you think and wonder.

Dunn was a Chelsea girl who moved to Battersea and worked in a sweets factory.  She seems a little like a fish out of water, but from the sounds of it, she was very much at home in this other side of London.  She was unencumbered by a formal education and all the baggage that comes with it.  But books were her refuge, and Battersea was a world that freed her from a more conventional and rigid upbringing and obviously inspired her writing.

"Nell Dunn felt she had discovered a world where women did not depend on male patronage, where they went their own ways, sexually and financially, where there was plenty of work, so much work they could afford to be cheeky, rebellious, loud-mouthed.  If they lost one job, they got another.  If they lost one man, they got another.  The humor and energy, the violence and the freedom were exciting.  Nobody pretended, nobody was pretentious.  It seemed a real world, where women could lead real lives.  They did not seem oppressed, despite their low pay.  There was a sense of matriarchy.  Women were strong, openly strong, rather than deviously influential."

Joy is a curious character and you wonder how many "Joys" Dunn must have met or known in those days.  She is unapologetic and her name actually very much fits her, but she is also the "poor cow" of the title.  You get the sense she is happy in her own way and utterly vivacious and fun loving.   She may make poor choices, but she knows it and does it anyway-hence the 'poor cow'.  

At the start of the novel twenty-two-year-old Joy has just had a baby, a week-old son clinging to her as she toddles down Fulham Broadway from the hospital, skint but starving hungry.  She and little Jonny return home to Tom, who is a thief by trade.  She knows better--"never marry a thief", because inevitably he'll get caught, which he does.  And sent to jail for four years.  And so the scene is set and Joy must fend for herself.  She takes up with Tom's colleague, Dave, with whom she clicks in a happy and satisfying way until he, too, is caught thieving.  It's almost comical that she and Dave are together after his heist, when the cops arrive and he makes a dash for freedom she calls out, 'don't leave me, Dave', and he comes back only to be taken away.     

Joy always seems to manage be it through barmaiding or modeling (in the nude . . .) or taking money for favors.  Her idea of achievement is getting a car, the ultimate wish come true. She even takes her driver's test sure she can seduce the instructor into passing her and surprised when he resists.  Whatever happens, good or bad, she is always a good mother, and Joy's joy is her son Jonny. 

This is such a 60s-ish, Virago-ish book.  I like the way Dunn captures the feel of the time and place through use of language and Joy's personality shines through her conversations with her aunt and friend and her letters to Dave (and his replies back on the same letter).  It's a fascinating slice of life from an endlessly fascinating period of history.

The First Four Years, Laura Ingalls Wilder

If you are a Little House fan and perhaps watched the TV adaptation, and wondered about Laura Ingalls's "ever after" you can get a glimpse of her life in The First Four Years.  It is a slender book and picks up directly where These Happy Golden Years leave off.   The novel has an interesting history and a different feel to it than the other eight books.  It came with my boxed set, but for myself I think I will always consider the Little House books as beginning with Little House in the Big Woods and ending with These Happy Golden Years.  Those stories are told very much in the same spirit.  According to the introduction Laura Ingalls Wilder had penciled the story in three orange-covered school tablets like the other books.  She may have written this last Little House book in the 1940s but when her husband Almanzo died it's possible she "lost interest in revising and completing it for publication."  It was not published until the early 1970s after her death.  There is definitely a very different feel and tone to the storytelling this time out.

I thought it very interesting that in the story Laura distinguishes between being a pioneer girl and a farmer's daughter.  She is the former and has her doubts about the life of a farmer's wife.  Just before their marriage Almanzo built their little home for which she has much pride.  It's nicely proportioned and "cannily" furnished meeting all their needs.  She is especially delighted with the long narrow pantry, which is Almanzo's pride and labor of love for his new young wife.

"The pine floors of the front room and pantry were painted bright clean yellow.  The walls of all the house were white plaster, and the pine woodwork was satin-smooth and oiled and varnished in its natural color."

"It was a bright and shining little house and it was really all theirs, Laura thought.  It belonged to just Manly and her."

Almanzo's first appearance in the stories came all the way back in Farmer Boy when he was living with his family in New York. But it is in the Dakota Territories where he has come to take advantage of settling the land with his brother that he meets the Ingalls family and eventually begins courting Laura.  In every situation he shows himself immensely capable and now he is hoping to make a go of farming the land and raising the trees that will hopefully enable him to keep their property.  Of course we all know how precarious it is to live the life of a farmer.  They are reliant on cooperative weather and just how often does all go as hoped and planned.  And Laura is hesitant about this lifestyle.  She knows how fortunes can be reversed or lost all in the drop of a hat.  She shares her reservations with Manly, but ever the hopeful optimist he convinces her to give it three years and if they do not succeed he'll do whatever else she likes.  So what follows are the first four years of their marriage.

The story is filled with adventures but now of a very different sort.  Laura is a fine housekeeper, but all the things Ma did seemed so very easy.  Now it is nerve racking to have to cook for the threashers who come to the farm to help.  How mortifying to serve beans not quite cooked through or a pieplant pie without a spoonful of sugar added in under the crust.  And then there is the day a group of Indians come to her doors while she is alone and eye her horses in their stalls.  One even makes overtures and receives a hearty slap in return.

A new mowing machine makes life so much easier for Almanzo.  Even though it is not paid for outright a good crop will make the payment easy enough.  Except for a horrible hailstorm that flattens their wheat in a matter of moments.  Most worrisome for Laura is that the house is mortgaged.  She had no idea how much money was owed from the cost of building it.  But the arrival of their daughter Rose brings both happiness and maybe a little parental fear.  The familiar refrain becomes "the rich have their ice in the summer but the poor get theirs in the winter."If the planting, and the growing and the harvesting go well they can make a success of their lifestyle. 

So the question is what is success.  Those first four years are filled with happiness but equally with hardships. Lots of hardships.  Laura always remains the optimistic pioneer girl who can understand Manly's love of the land and its appeal. 

It's truly been quite a journey through these nine books of the life of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family.  From the little house in the big woods of Wisconsin all the way, albeit somewhat roundabout at times, to the Dakota Territories.  These stories are a real delight.  I will say that this last book is tinged with a feeling of melancholy.  To me it was palpable between the last book and this one.  The last book ends on such a happy optimistic note.  While this one does as well, there is a little something more that hovers just in the background. 

Somewhere in those intervening years between the publication of the last book and this one a more mature and worldly tone takes hold.  It is a woman of experience, and perhaps not all easy or happy, who has penned this last story.  I was just a little anxious after reading the first dozen pages or so as a cloud seemed to float above this little house in a way I hadn't seen before.  But it all ends well despite the hardships.  I will revisit the Ingalls and Wilder families again someday happy to relive their adventures.  Now I will take a break from the Prairie, though I did indulge in a YA book about the life of Laura Ingalls Wilder as well as two books of her letters home on travels that took place after her marriage.  I need a little time and distance before seeing her again as wife and mother rather than little Half-Pint.

These Happy Golden Years

If I was feeling a tad bit bereft upon finishing Little Town on the Prairie, I have to say I am feeling downright sad to have finished These Happy Golden Years.  They are happy years and of course the story ends on a most satisfying and happy note, but that is essentially the end of the story of the Ingalls family and their many adventures.  While I am now reading the last book, The First Four Years, it is somewhat different in tone, which I will explain in greater detail when I write about it.  At the end of These Happy Golden Years, Half-Pint is an eighteen-year-old young woman, earning money, betrothed and then married.  This series of books is so immensely endearing and they really do feel like a life lived (and lived well and happily), but so many changes occur in the last two or three books, it is a reminder of how time flies by and how the world changes and what growing up does to a person and a family.  Or maybe as the year winds quickly down, I am just feeling a little maudlin.

Both Mary and Laura left their childhoods, those years of simple work and simple pleasures, behind them several stories ago.  Mary is away at college, and will she ever permanently return?  Perhaps.  It is alluded at, yet she has a new life in Iowa where she is attending college and learning how to be self-sufficient despite being blind.  Laura is both still a schoolgirl and studying and going to school, but she has also earned her teacher's certificate and at the beginning of the book she has been offered her first teaching position.  And oh my, what an eye-opening experience is that. 

The world of these books is mostly idyllic, but every once in a while the reader is shown the harsher side of life on the prairie.  It was an opportunity for so many people to come west.  There was the possibility of starting a new life, a life of adventure and the possibility to build a new place to live and to have many acres of land.  There was a real freedom in coming west, but there was also a cost.  The weather was unreliable.  Winters might be long and harsh and quite deadly, and then there is the chance of losing crops and the livelihood and putting an entire family in danger.  Laura's first teaching position is not a happy one.  She has a small schoolhouse with few students, but she must live in an unhappy situation.  What happens when a husband brings his family west and his wife, so used to Eastern ways, finds the difficulties and the solitude too much?  Laura experiences some harrowing moments in this new environment.

What saves her, no, who saves her, is Almanzo Wilder.  It's a nod to Laura's humility and earnestness that she doesn't quite realize that she is being wooed by the young man.  She wishes more than anything when she is away that Pa will come and bring her home for the weekends, but it is too far to come and too hard for the horses.  But not so for a bachelor and fine horseman like Almanzo.  She never complains or lets on entirely of her unhappiness but they know and each week Almanzo comes for her--horse bells jingling each Friday announcing her reprieve--no matter how cold.  She is both ecstatic to go home but slightly mortified to think she is taking advantage of Almanzo, so one weekend she tells him he needn't come for her--she wouldn't go riding with him otherwise.  And then is mortified that she says so in such a direct way.

Part of the loveliness of this story is the gradual understanding by Laura of what sort of person Almanzo is and that she would indeed like to spend time with him.  And he is really her perfect match.  His passion and abilities are working with horses.  Not so very long ago Laura found herself galloping away on a horse bareback and it was exhilarating for her.  Not just once does Almanzo show up on her doorstep with a new pair of horses that need to be broken and Laura is a willing partner in his work and escapades.  Even while Ma is inwardly cringing and Pa just trustful enough of Almanzo's talents to keep the horses restrained and Laura safe.  She learns just how to carefully jump into his buggy between those wheels without tilting the seat and upsetting the horses.  And on more than one occasion (and with increasing deftness) she even takes the reins.  They are surely a match made in heaven.

So Laura is coming into her own--still learning and teaching and sewing.  She earns enough to keep Mary at school and is even able to help buy an organ for when Mary returns so she can practice her playing.  Carrie and Grace must help pick up the slack and Carrie comments that surely they can and are just old enough--Mary and Laura had already been helping out long before when they were little. 

Some moments of surprise for me--surely this is not the first book (though I think it is) where something akin to a tornado is experienced.  Laura is most decidedly not suffragette material but she balks at the idea of having to say "obey" (and Almanzo agrees) in a marriage ceremony.  The book covers not just one year but three.  Whereas Christmas holidays were always so special, they seem to be less so (maybe because Mary is not there to celebrate with the family?), but the Fourth of July is happily celebrated.  There is still hints of Ma's delicious meals--popcorn balls made with molasses, fresh bread and eggs and new potatoes, and just what exactly is a pieplant pie and what does a two-egg cake taste like anyway?

I don't want to give all the best bits away, though I don't think you need to have read the books to know how the story will end.  I will just end with one thing.  I had to smile when Laura had this conversation with Mary:

"I [Mary] am planning to write a book some day," she confided.  Then she laughed.  "But I planned to teach school, and you are doing that for me, so maybe you will write the book."

"I, write a book?" Laura hooted.  She said blithely, "I'm going to be an old maid schoolteacher, like Miss Wilder.  Write you own book!  What are you going to write about?"

Books Read in 2015: A Catch Up Post

Once again time has completely gotten away from me when it comes to writing about the books I've read, so a catch-up post with a few brief mentions is going to have to suffice.  I have set aside three novels that I really do want to write about and will get to those in the first week or so of the new year.  So there will be more tidying up in 2016 before I am ready for a fresh 'fresh start'.  I never feel completely satisfied when I have finished reading a book until I have in some way written about it or shared my experience. Unfortunately in a few cases too much time has passed for me to do more than give a very very brief mention, but better a mention than nothing at all.

With Jamilti and Other Stories I have now read all of Rutu Modan's graphic novels (published in book format that is--she has some other comics online that I have tagged in my mind to read at some point).  Jamiliti is Modan's first book and her earliest work.  It is a collection of  seven short stories--all interesting, some a little quirky--dealing with family and identity, relationships and love.  The stories seem to be presented chronologically, so it's cool to see how Modan's work and style developed over time.  The first story, the titular "Jamiliti" is quite brief and almost a little bit simplistic in the way it is drawn and presented.  But by the last story,"Your Number One Fan" the comic is recognizably mature Rutu Modan.  It's almost curious to me how very descriptive those latter comics are in the way they are drawn.  You almost forget that this is a comic and those are not real people.  I am eagerly awaiting another book by Modan!  And in case you're wondering--Jamiliti is an Arabic word meaning "beautiful one".

Edna Ferber's So Big was my choice for the 1924 Club, which I enthusiastically picked up even knowing I wouldn't likely finish at the time everyone else was reading and writing about their 1924 books.  I've always wanted to read Ferber and have long had this book on my reading pile.  Not least I wanted to read an early Pulitzer Prize winner.  If I am entirely honest with you--I am glad I read the book, but it was a story I enjoyed reading when I was reading it, yet I was not as enthusiastic about reaching for it as often as I should have.  It is a completely satisfying story (and I put down my reaction mostly to just timing and the wonky reading year I have been having) of one woman and her desire that her son- Sobig, would have a better life than she had.  Selina Peake is the daughter of a gambler who ends up as a farmer.  It's not the life I expected for her.  I thought it would be more elegant or easy perhaps.  But she ends up marrying an immigrant farmer who then dies young and so she continues on, and she manages to make more of a success of it (willing to take more risks) than he ever did.  I'd like to give her books another go.  They were hugely popular and many were adapted to film.  I think I was expecting something light and maybe even a little frivolous, but then there is a reason she won a prestigious award--popular she might have been but she crossed over that line from entertainment to literature.

I wish I had written about Anne Wiazemsky's My Berlin Child right when I finished it.  I think I was conflicted about it and so put it off, though I did share a teaser while reading, which has a brief description.  It's based on a true story of a Frenchwoman (the daughter of Francois Mauriac) who was an ambulance driver during WWII.  It is a fictionalized biography of her experiences during the war and after and about the love affair she had with a Frenchman of Russian birth.  It was another story I struggled with. While I liked the use of letters and diary entries as part of the narrative, I found Claire's 'voice' hard to warm up to.  Maybe someday I will try and tackle it again and a second reading will be more satisfying.

Oh, Winston Graham's Ross Poldark, A Novel of Cornwall 1783-1787 was a delight to read and maybe eve more of a delight to watch on PBS.  Now the two--book and film have become inextricably linked in my mind.  The Adaptation actually tells the story of the first two books in the series of novels, though I only managed to read the first.  This is a historical saga that you can really sink your teeth into (and how nice know to have such attractive visuals).  This is a story that has it all--drama, love, revenge, unrequited love, new love, adventure and sweeping visuals of Cornish countryside (oops--thinking as much of the film as the book on that note).  In case you haven't read the books or seen the adaptation--Captain Poldark returns home from the War in America only to find the love of his life (the one thing that kept him going when he was at war) about to be married to his cousin.  His home is in ruins and now he must start from scratch.  He is a decent and admirable man, or as much so as any 18th century man would be.  He takes in this ragamuffin of a girl, who had been dressed as a boy, and over the years they end up falling in love.  Cut to the next book, which I still look forward to reading (even though I have seen it and know how it ends).  Typically . . . now that I am thinking of the story again I am in mind to pick up the next book.  I wonder if there will be a new season of Poldark next summer?  And how many books were there in this saga?  (Quite a few I think).

I think Giorgio Bassani's The Garden of the Finzi Continis was the first classic I read this year.  I was off to such a good start--not only a classic but a book translated from Italian and one set during WWII.  What happened.  I jinxed myself by not writing about it apparently, because it's been a poor showing this year in terms of classic literature.  This is a book I would like to read again some day.  It is a melancholy story for a number of reasons--a war story told from the perspective of a Jewish young man who falls in love with the daughter of his rich neighbors, a love which is doomed to fail.  Of course you know what's coming but you watch as this way of life comes to an end.  It's one of those perfectly told stories that grasps you around the middle and you can't turn away and don't want to but are left feeling bereft in the end even when you expected it.

I've got three more books to tell you about (and a further two or three more that I am finishing up this week), so there will be a few more loose ends to tidy up and maybe next year I will manage to write about my books in a more timely manner?  Or there is always wishful thinking.

Justice Hall by Laurie King

In Laurie King's O Jerusalem Mary Russell narrates a story, a mystery, from her early days with Sherlock Holmes when she was still his apprentice.  The year is 1919 and the place is Palestine and the pair have been secreted into the country on business for Holmes's brother Mycroft.  There they join a pair of Bedouins on covert business.  It is a messy, dusty and dangerous affair and not helped much by their guides who would prefer not to have this British pair as baggage.  O Jerusalem is a backtrack in the series, the fifth book, a look back on a mystery long resolved.  It makes sense that Mary's editor, Ms. King, would insert the book just there as the sixth installment, which takes place in 1923, in Mary's adventures involves the same Bedouin pair, who, as it turns out, are not Bedouins at all.  Now there's a teaser for you.

I think Justice Hall might well be my favorite book so far in the series, though I have thoroughly enjoyed each and every book and Mary Russell easily rivals Maisie Dobbs as my most favorite sleuth.  They are both very different characters yet both are smart, savvy, independent and likable women.  I think Mary, however, has perhaps a slightly more wry sense of humor.  I could picture myself bantering with her more easily than with Maisie.

There are some very interesting twists and turns in Justice Hall, which is the name of a family seat--a great estate and home to a Duke.  The Duke happens to be one of the above mentioned Bedouins.  You wouldn't have known it in the previous story, though there were a few hints dropped, that the pair were not born and bred in Palestine.  So akin to the country and the way of life, they easily passed for Arabs.  They exuded the culture--the dress, the language, the history and social mores of the place and time.  They may not have been born there but they were at home there--more so than their native England.  The pair are cousins Alistair (Ali) and Marsh/Maurice (Mahmoud) who have been called back to England to take their rightful place as heir (and spare, I suppose--though several spots down the line of succession) of Justice Hall after the death of the next in line to the dukedom.

Marsh's brother has recently died and so he feels a sense of responsibility to the family and the title.  To see the men at home in England is like night and day.  As Arabs they could be ill-tempered and unfriendly.  Men you would not want to encounter in a dark alley at night and less would you want to cross either of them.  They took on Holmes and Mary in Palestine only as necessity required but would give no more, but in the end they earned the respect and brotherly love (keeping in mind that Mary had been dressed as a young Arab boy!) of the two Bedouins.  Ali has come now to Mary and Holmes in Sussex asking for their help in convincing Marsh to let Justice Hall take care of itself and return to the country he loves--Palestine.

This is a tricky case.  On the surface it's not really a case at all, rather friends helping to convince a friend that duty is not everything.  What's tricky is that there is indeed murder involved--a crime done so clandestinely, so insidious in its execution that it takes much peeling away of layers of secrets and lies (and lots of tedious footwork, too) to get at the heart of the matter.  I really do like twisty turny mystery novels and Laurie King is quite adept at pulling them off, which is one of the things I like about these books.  I like the characters who feel so flesh and blood, but I like the intellectual aspects (would I expect anything less of a Sherlock Holmes story--keeping in mind this is as much Mary Russell's novel--actually more Mary than Holmes really) of these books, the complexity of the storytelling and the mystery and the solving.  Truly the books have it all, and this story in particular.

If it isn't enough that Marsh and Alistair lead double lives in a sense, Marsh in particular has a complicated history in England, a complicated personal life.  I won't give it away, as the pleasure is in the revelations, but I can tell you that this mystery hearkens back to WWI, still fairly fresh in the minds of the characters, and will take Mary from Sussex to Justice Hall and as far away as Canada.  And I loved every minute of it. 

I have already pulled out the seventh installment, The Game, which will take Mary and Holmes all the way to India!  I don't tend to read mysteries in one series back to back so I have been reading a Bess Crawford novel (and am quite enjoying it, too), but thinking about Justice Hall makes me eager to dive right in and not wait any longer.  I think 2016 might see me reading my way through as many of the remaining books (nine more--one of which is forthcoming next year) as I can squeeze into twelve months.

An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir

I've discovered a few things while reading An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir.  I have tagged this as 'dystopian fiction', but I think it is technically not dystopian.  I am not even sure what this genre of books is called--it is reminiscent of The Hunger Games--so, alternate history maybe?  It is a YA novel that has won a number of awards, and I can see why.  What I have discovered about it is--this is not a genre that I am especially drawn to.  That said--and the other thing I have discovered--despite it not being my preferred sort of story, it was still immensely enjoyable and if there is a sequel (and this story really screams for a continuation) I will happily read it.   So, yes, it is a good thing to sometimes read outside one's comfort zone as you might well discover a really good read.

The setting--future?  Past?  I'm not really sure.  The society in this story is modeled on Ancient Rome with soldiers, Legionnaires, Centurions and slaves making up the different echelons. It's not a happy society, and it is a society where the reader will need to suspend disbelief somewhat to accept the things that happen.  There is some magic, but not really of the happy sort.  There are Augurs and efrits and people who can heal simply by singing.  Much like Ancient Rome, this Empire is controlled with an iron fist and it is hugely regimented.  Violence is expected and strength rewarded.

Like all good YA novels, the story is peopled mostly by young people.  They are in situations where they must live independently of their families either by choice or situation.  For Laia and Elias, it is not by choice.  Laia is a slave, or to be more specific, she is of the scholar class, but her parents were in the Resistance and have been murdered.  She and her brother have been raised by their grandparents, who are brutally killed at the start of the story.  Laia's brother is mixed up with the Resistance in some way.  He is caught with a notebook filled with drawings that he should not be making.  The Martials have swept their house and either murdered or taken prisoner everyone but Laia manages to run and escape.  This is something that burdens her throughout the story and drives her on.  She is certain that she should have stayed and fought and perhaps could have saved her brother, or simply died trying.  

Elias is a student, a Senior Skull actually, at Blackcliff, which is a community in and of itself.  It is the place where soldiers are trained.  By the time you are a Senior Skull, you are nearly finished.  You are one of the elite soldiers who will become a leader in the Empire.  Not everyone makes it.  As a matter of fact it is through all sorts of training and hardships that the crowd of students in thinned out, so those remaining are really the cream of the crop.  And Elias is one of the best students, one of the strongest and most talented.   And also one of the most unhappiest.  He also happens to be the son of the Commandant, a leader without an ounce of humanity, a mother who would have left her son to die given the chance.  No one escapes the Empire.  But Elias, at the beginning of the story is planning to make a break from Blackcliff.  He has everything prepared and only must begin his journey through the tunnels beneath the school to make it to a free land.  

But Elias and Laia are going to cross paths.  A soldier and scholar, who is soon to be slave.  This encounter is going to change both of their destinies.  Laia is determined to find her brother and help him break out of prison.  Elias plans on escaping Blackcliff until the Trials are announced and he is chosen one of the competitors.  The winner, chosen from the best students who will compete in a series of nearly impossible trials, will become Emperor.  He decides to stay and compete with the hope that he may still find a way out of Blackcliff.  Elias wants out, and Laia wants in.  She joins the Resistance and infiltrates the Commandant's household as a slave and a spy.  The two are about as different from each other and about as far apart in this brutal Empire but will find each needs the other to survive.   

This was quite an adventure story, an edge of your seat thrill ride, because of course you have to find out whether either succeeds and what the cost to each will be along the way.  Ah, and I see that there is indeed a sequel in the works, A Torch Against the Night, due out next fall.  And so the story will continue.

Little Town on the Prairie

It's a little hard to get used to Laura as a young woman, but here she is in Little Town on the Prairie (how far the Ingalls family has come from the big woods of Wisconsin!)--fourteen years old, nearly finished with school, earning money by sewing in the summer months, becoming the "older" sister, and even catching the eye of a young man.  Still, even as she presses Ma to allow her to cut her hair so she has bangs, she still snaps out at the ever-trying Nellie Oleson!  She may well be becoming a proper young lady, but she still has a streak of the tomboy in her as well.

I'm convinced now that as a child I never read the whole series of Little House books.  I'm not sure that I ever got past Plum Creek, and surely I would have remembered that very long winter.  Laura remains always a school girl in my mind, but now she must take the lead--while Mary had always wished to be a school teacher, it falls to Laura to teach.  It's all the more important as Mary must have the chance to go to school in Iowa, so Laura is driven to help out.  These stories are charming and remain as fresh in the telling as when they were first written (or at least from my own youthful recollections of them) without feeling dated, but that thread of self-sufficiency and propriety flows throughout the stories.  I can see why they are classics and why parents would happily press them into the hands of their children.

"In two more years she would be sixteen, old enough to teach school.  If she studied hard and faithfully, and got a teacher's certificate, and then got a school to teach, she would be a real help to Pa and Ma.  Then she could begin to repay them for all that it had cost to provide for her since she was a baby.  Then surely, they could send Mary to college." 

The family remains in De Smet.  In winter they live in town and in summer they move out to the claim to grow their crops and work the land.  Finally there the family is properly settled and De Smet is growing up around them.  They may have not been as prepared in the last story to survive such a long, hard winter (barely managing), but now life is becoming somewhat easier.  It's not all hardship and difficulties.  As a matter of fact, the Ingalls family is flourishing somewhat.  When Laura takes a job (much to the chagrin of Ma as a proper young lady would wouldn't work in town) she is able to earn money, but more this is an eye opening experience for her in a couple of ways. 

"The more Laura saw of the town, the more she realized how well off her own family was.  That was because Pa had got a whole year's start ahead of the others.  He had broken sod last year.  Now they had the garden, the oatfield, and the second planting of corn was growing quite well in the sod."

She must also turn a 'blind ear' to some of the more colorful language of the men of the town  . . .  ahem.  As the town grows the newcomers must begin from scratch, as the Ingalls family begins to prosper.  Even Nellie Oleson must live out on a claim.  Her pride isn't wounded from having been set back, however, she is as odious as ever, and even though she would never admit it, she has a jealous streak running through her.  And she is always eager to show Laura in a bad light or make her life difficult.  When the new school teacher arrives, Almanzo Wilder's sister as a matter of fact, Nellie becomes her confidante and spins tales about Laura. 

I think the rivalry between the two girls was always more pronounced in the TV show, but Nellie makes herself a nuisance on more than one occasion.  She might be boastful of what she will accomplish, but it's usually--happily for the reader--Laura who takes the day.  What makes Laura such a sympathetic character is her ordinariness and modesty.  Sometimes she surprises herself by her accomplishments.  Though I am with Laura on the question of corsets--

"Her corsets were a sad affliction to her, from the time she put them on in the morning until she took them off at night.  But when girls pinned up their hair and wore skirts sown to their shoetops, they must wear corsets."

You know you are entering new ground when a beloved character, little Half-Pint, is now wearing corsets.  Part of me is shaking my head thinking no-let Laura continue frolicking in the fields barefoot or shimmying down branches over streams or racing on a horse bareback.  But then when Almanzo begins walking Laura home at night from the town's 'Literaries', life takes on a new hue, a new path that might be interesting in other ways.

So much happens in this story.  It is both exciting and bittersweet because there are only two books left to read and life for the Ingalls family and Laura in particular is changing quickly.  The cover shows school girls, but not for much longer.  Spoiler alert--though nothing I will be sharing is likely to be earth-shattering.  Mary does go away from home.  The illustration in the book shows quite a young woman--almost startling in her maturity.  The family is both happy yet a little bereft.  I mentioned the town Literaries--finally a little bit of culture is introduced.  You know the town is growing and prospering when they move from just a Main Street and a few families settling to being able to introduce evenings of music and literature.  The latest trends have even arrived--the Easter 'Thing' is to have calling cards, and then there is the confusion of Almanzo.  Why does Mr. Wilder show Laura so much attention?  She mistakenly thinks he is older--someone who would be part of her father's circle, perhaps, since he has his own claim--so why then does he pay her such attention?

And then the most surprising moment is at the end, which I won't give away now, but I am reading about the next path in Laura's life in These Happy Golden Years.  I should finish the book in the next day or so.  And then Laura's and the Ingalls's family story will be complete.  A happy sigh for me, but a little bit bereft as well I suspect.  And where will my own reading path take me next?

Lanterns Across the Snow by Susan Hill

So that dusting of snow I was expecting . . .  It looks like we are going to have a white Christmas after all.  I still enjoyed a nice walk this afternoon and managed to squeeze in a few errands and a most delicious lunch despite the heavy snowfall.  And then it was time to read, and how fitting since I read Susan Hill's Lanterns Across the Snow.  It is, I think, going to be a perfect holiday read that I will happily return to again.  The refrain in this novella is "last night, the snow fell.  And then I began to remember.  I remembered all the things I had forgotten.  Or so it had seemed."  Last night the snow fell, and today the snow fell, too.

Lanterns in the Snow is a reminiscence in more than one way.  It is the narrator's remembrance of one magical, perfect Christmas--the sort of Christmas that only happens in those years of childhood that are so full of wonder.  It is also a story that loosely recalls the Nativity.  It is filled with gorgeous descriptions of nature and food and family.  You can easily read it in one sitting (best enjoyed with a hot drink and maybe some gingerbread).  If you plan ahead you might even read it in three short sittings since the story is broken into three chapters--Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and St. Stephan's Day. 

The narrator looks back on the childhood of her ninth year when she lived with her family in the vicarage of a small village.  Her brother is her best friend and also her, at times, biggest annoyance.  She both admires her father who is so important to the community and bemoans the fact that even on the most loved of all childhood holidays he must work.  Death and birth take no holiday and so her father must attend to those most in need.  This underlying message of hope is quite nicely presented and not heavy handed, but I especially appreciated the descriptions of the natural world, which make the story quite vivid.

"She stood at the window, looking out.  Christmas Eve; and the snow fell like goose-down."

That sounds oddly familiar to me today!  I just need a lantern to make it complete.  Lanterns, and perhaps the light or the illumination from them can do double duty both as a feeling of warmth and beauty but also hope.  And lanterns are threaded through the story--from the carolers on Christmas Eve to the lanterns on the ice where Fanny watches her parents happily skate hand in hand. 

Another youthful reminiscence I read recently is Dylan Thomas's A Child's Christmas in Wales, which is another gorgeous story.  Since Thomas is a poet you can imagine how lyrical his prose is.  Another snowy story, which is what I imagine for Wales at this time of year. 

"Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed.  But here a small boy says: 'It snowed last year, too.  I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea."

A Child's Christmas in Wales is much shorter and more impressionistic.  It is less a story than another child's observation of Christmas Day and all the treats and wonders that it contains.  

Both books have beautiful illustrations and both will grace my shelves permanently.  I had only read Hill's stories of suspense and the macabre, so this was quite a change, and I have never read Dylan Thomas, but now I will certainly seek out his poetry.  As holiday celebrations are taking place, I'll leave you with a few happy images and hope your holiday is equally as lovely.

"I sit here, beside the window, and watch the snow, and the blackbird who comes and sits under the flowering bush, and after a while hops out further, to find the food that I have thrown.  The yellow flowers of the bush are dusted with snow, and the bare branches of the tall tree are outlined delicately in white.  And I sit here, beside the window, and my lamp throws its light in a pool onto the ground below, but there is no snow so close to the building, the overhang of the roof above deflects it."

"And all last night, and all today, I have sat here quietly and remembered.  Remembered joy and sorrow, nights and days, summer and winter, in that perfect place."

"I remember my room at the very top of the tall old house, and the view out over the churchyard, and the gravestone of my two dead brothers.  Remember the stone church and the fields beyond, remember the wood and the lanes and Ladyman Barrow."

Teaser Tuesday: At the Source (again!)

Yes,  here I am once again sharing something more that I read in Gillian Clarke's At the Source.  There is so much to love about this book.  So much that she writes resonates with me that I am constantly dog-earing pages and underlining or starring or otherwise noting all the interesting and worthy (and there is lots that is worthy here) bits that I would like to remember.  I think I need to resurrect my paper journal (but then this online space here is really my reading journal these days) so I can write down and remember more passages that catch my eye. 

I have finished the monthly essays and now just have a few general essays (am reading one on poetry at the moment!) to finish the book.  I read "December" yesterday and found myself mentally agreeing with everything she has to say about the holidays.

"I try to ignore Christmas.  It all starts too soon.  I hate the bling, the cheap glitter, the unremitting materialism, the waste, the flashing lights, the destruction of rural darkness by the spreading disease of giant Santas and snowmen, and God help us, flashing inflatable cribs.  I want an airgun for Christmas so that I can shoot Santa Claus and watch him deflate with a hiss.  Lights fidget on houses all the way from Ceredigion to Cardiff, eating the ozone layer and melting the Greenland glaciers.  Where is the romance of the one lit tree in the window we used to count on winter walks with the kids?  Bah!  Humbug!"

Oh, I thought I was just being curmudgeonly by feeling the same (and I think the same way when I pass my neighbor's inflatable snowman and Santa every morning--I can hear the 'whiz' of electricity and can only think how cheesy the display looks).  Apparently I am not only not alone but I suspect there are many more like us out there.  I actually would love the holidays if it weren't all so over-the-top and commercial like it is now.  It just feels staged and the pressure to buy and be merry quickly weighs me down.  Give me a little bit of Dickens and one small tree with plain white lights and very, very simple presents, quiet and peacefulness and the holidays would for me be far happier.

Girl Waits with Gun by Amy Stewart

Some books just scream for a sequel.  Either the author just sets up the story to pave the way for another new book or you just like the characters so much you want to revisit them and see how their lives turn out.  I'd say Amy Stewart's Girl Waits with Gun is just such a book on both counts.  I was expecting to like it in any case, but all the more so when it came as a recommendation of "the Crime Lady", Sarah Weinman.  If you like mysteries, thrillers, or good novels of suspense and if you are not already subscribing to her weekly-(ish) newsletter then you should be.  It is rare that I read a weekly installment and don't jot down a title or two to read or give further attention to.  The Stewart novel was already on my mental radar but it got pushed up the pile when Sarah Weinman raved about it.  One good rave by a reader I trust and I'll go grab it from my pile of books to read (sooner or later) no questions asked.

It's kind of a quirky-ish story, but then the characters are sort of quirky so it fits.  I will say it is a most entertaining read, though it does sag a bit on occasion which might be more a reflection of my own impatience to hurry through the action and find out how it all turns out than anything Stewart is or is not doing.  Ultimately this is a story based on or inspired by the first woman to be deputized, but in the actual telling it is about three sisters who have a messy run in with the wrong sort of man--a gangster with a tarnished heart (and reputation) but not the brightest color in the box.

Let's see--the sisters?  Constance is our heroine.  I like her.  She's got a wry sense of humor and a conscience that guides her but that will get her into trouble.  She is also tall and sturdily built and can hold her own when needed.  Norma has a wry sense of humor, too, but enough common sense and cynicism that she uses to try (often with no success) to rein in Constance.  Then there is Fleurette, the youngest by a number of years.  Lovely Fleurette who has a sense of adventure (she wants to be in the movies) that will get her into sticky situations should her sisters fail to contain her exuberance.  There father left when they were younger and their mother has passed away not so long ago.  They prefer to be as independent as three women can be in the early 1920s and so live away from the rest of the town on their own little farm.  Norma keeps carrier pigeons, Constance keeps house and Fleurette keeps bugging her sisters about her wish for adventure.

"Our troubles began in the summer of 1914, the year I turned thirty-five.  The Archduke of Austria had just been assassinated, the Mexicans were still revolting, and absolutely nothing was happening in our house, which explains why all three of us were riding to Paterson on the most trivial of errands.  Never had a larger committee been convened to make a decision about the purchase of mustard powder and the replacement of a claw hammer whose handle had split from age and misuse."

"Against my better judgement I allowed Fleurette to drive.  Norma was reading to us from the newspapers as she always did."

And then it happens.  A black motor car comes barreling down the street broadsiding the sister's buggy and shattering the wood.  It's only luck that saves the horse and the sisters, but the buggy is mostly a loss.  A loss they can't afford and so Constance pursues (figuratively that is) the driver to get their recompense.  It's only too bad the driver is not only a wealthy mill owner, but a disreputable one at that.  And one with nasty friends who begin harassing Constance and her sisters.  First it is only small things to intimidate them into leaving him alone but when she does not back down, Constance is pretty formidable I must say--but in a good way, it becomes violent and frightening. 

Interspersed in the narrative is the story of the sisters (and their older, married and no longer living nearby, brother) growing  up, which helped move the story along nicely.  But there is a lot of harassment, which is where Sheriff Heath comes in. An officer of the law who has the best interest of the sisters at heart but not a law adequate to actually protect them or prosecute the man.  It's his seedy dealings and Constance's persistence that will see the investigation through and the framing of the criminals.  

Girl Waits with Gun is a fun story, mostly very light-heartedly presented, but an interesting look at early modern America.  If you are wary of historical fiction, this is a story that wears its details lightly.  Stewart did her research, but the story doesn't get bogged down by it.  My only criticism is that is really does get a little saggy at times.  How many times can a criminal get away with the things he does to the sisters?  Apparently quite a few in 1914.  So I really cheered when the end and a resolution was in sight.  But Constance does get deputized, right, I kept asking myself.  You find out at the very end and then know that surely there must be more adventures to be had now that she has found the perfect job for her skills.

If you are curious about the real Constance, you can read more about her here.  Fingers crossed that there will be further adventures for the sisters and particularly for Constance.