A Work in Progress

July Prompt: A Day at the Beach

I could use a day at the beach, but it would have to be a cool weather sort of beach, maybe more rocky than sandy.  Not being anywhere near a beach of any sort, however, it is hard to imagine really what would be most appealing.  Somewhere with coolish breezes and a bonfire at night.  Or, the next best thing in my case--a book set in a seaside setting.  I do love this theme and return to it quite often.  So this month's prompt, and ready for the summer holiday is a day at the beach! 

I had quite the original pile and had to winnow it down a bit or I would never have been able to choose.  It's funny what first appeals and then gets cut, and now this pile has little in common with the mental list I jotted down in my notebook (and sometimes it is a matter, too, of just not being able to find the book on my shelves).  So, the final five.

A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor -- "Blindness and betrayal are Elizabeth Taylor’s great subjects, and in A View of the Harbour she turns her unsparing gaze on the emotional and sexual politics of a seedy seaside town that’s been left behind by modernity. Tory, recently divorced, depends more and more on the company of her neighbors Robert, a doctor, and Beth, a busy author of melodramatic novels. Prudence, Robert and Beth’s daughter, disapproves of the intimacy that has grown between her parents and Tory and the gossip it has awakened in their little community. As the novel proceeds, Taylor’s view widens to take in a range of characters from bawdy, nosey Mrs. Bracey; to a widowed young proprietor of the local waxworks, Lily Wilson; to the would-be artist Bertram—while the book as a whole offers a beautifully observed and written examination of the fictions around which we construct our lives and manage our losses."

From a Distance by Rafaella Barker -- "Bruised and brutalised by war, Michael returns to England on a troop ship, unable to face the life that awaits him at home. Impulsively he boards a train heading to the western tip of Cornwall. In doing so he changes his destiny.  More than fifty years later, Kit, a charming stranger, arrives in a coastal Norfolk village to take up his inheritance - a decommissioned lighthouse, half hidden in the shadows of the past. Meanwhile Luisa falters in the flow of her life as her children begin to fly the nest and she is left suspended, without direction. When Kit and Luisa meet, neither can escape the consequences of Michael's split-second decision made all those decades ago."

As Close to Us as Breathing by Elizabeth Poliner -- "In 1948, a small stretch of the Woodmont, Connecticut shoreline, affectionately named "Bagel Beach," has long been a summer destination for Jewish families. Here sisters Ada, Vivie, and Bec assemble at their beloved family cottage, with children in tow and weekend-only husbands who arrive each Friday in time for the Sabbath meal.  But when a terrible accident occurs on the sisters' watch, a summer of hope and self-discovery transforms into a lifetime of atonement and loss for members of this close-knit clan. Seen through the eyes of Molly, who was twelve years old when she witnessed the accident, this is the story of a tragedy and its aftermath, of expanding lives painfully collapsed. Can Molly, decades after the event, draw from her aunt Bec's hard-won wisdom and free herself from the burden that destroyed so many others?"

The Invitation by Lucy Foley -- "An irresistibly entertaining and atmospheric novel set in some of the world's most glamorous locales, The Invitation is a sultry love story about the ways in which the secrets of the past stay with us--no matter how much we try to escape them."

The Silver Dark Sea by Susan Fletcher -- "The islanders of Parla are still mourning the loss of one of their own. Four years since that loss, and a man - un-named, unclothed - is washed onto their shores. Some say he is a mythical man from the sea - potent, kind and beautiful; others suspect him. For the bereft Maggie, this stranger brings love back to the isle. But as the days pass he changes every one of them - and the time comes for his story to be told..."

Finally a long weekend is ahead of me--four blissful (though perhaps undesirably hot) days stretch out ahead of me.  I want to read all of these, of course, but I will start with one and go from there!  A "beach" book is going to be perfect reading.

Short Story 'Monday': Good-Bye, Good-Bye

Two stories by Elizabeth Taylor this weekend and two left for this coming week and that will be it for her wonderful story collection, The Blush.  I do have a number of new and interesting (and calling-out-to-me) collections that I am trying to decide between for my next choice, but I also feel very tempted to just grab another collection by Taylor (I think I have about three plus a hefty complete stories collection) and keep going with her work.

In "Good-Bye, Good-Bye" Taylor juxtaposes two 'love affairs'-one a new and burgeoning love and the other a melancholic look at an impossible love, an affair long past and assumed put to bed.

"On his last evening in England he broke two promises--one, that he would dine with his brother, and another, older promise he made to a woman whom he loved."

The more significant promise that Peter breaks is to call on Catherine, this woman he still loves and once had an affair with.  They parted and Catherine made him promise that it was over and he would not contact her again.  She is a married woman and with nearly grown children and is spending the summer holidays at the place where she and Peter had once saw their passion come alive.  Peter sees her husband, busily working in the City, as someone only worried about making money and babies. 

The seaside summer holiday is not just a holiday for her eldest daughter who had invited her first beau and now nurses a broken heart as his expected arrival has come and gone and the train brought only Peter.  For Catherine Peter is not a welcome guest however much she might still have feelings for him.  When Sarah's guest turns up after all Catherine reflects that his tardy arrival will only be worse for her daughter now--as it is worse for her, too.  ". . . all that carefully-tended hatred has vanished in a few seconds."

As is only expected with Elizabeth Taylor she creates a story that is pitch perfect.  Those emotions once so carefully contained and bottled up now well to the surface once again.  Catherine just barely keeps her anguish from the children and holds Peter, figuratively anyway, at arm's length.  It's so easy to imagine the love affair, perhaps the result of the war, the passion and then the parting.  But no matter how much she might still feel love she can think only now of the well-being of her children and then watches her daughter already falling into that trap of loving a man and perhaps being at the mercy of his whims.

I can't find where I must have written about it, but I am sure I read Taylor's brilliant nod to Henry James's "The Turn of the Screw" some time in the past.  "Poor Girl" is a wonderful ghost story.  Is it a ghost?  Perhaps.  There is certainly something or a trace of someone in the schoolroom.  Or maybe it is the precocious little boy Hilary that awakens something.  Is he some strange conduit or past experiences coming to life once again in the here and now?  Florence Chasty is a respectable and modest young woman.  Miss Chasty, please, to Hilary who is only too quick to take the familiar with her.

The story begins innocuously enough at the start.  It's an earlier time, but not so very long ago.  She has come to act as governess to a little boy who seems the elder of the two. 

"Miss Chasty's first pupil was a flirtatious little boy.  At seven years, he was alarmingly precocious, and sometimes she thought he despised his childhood, regarding it as a waiting time which he used only as a rehearsal for adult life.  He was already more sophisticated than his young governess and disturbed her with his air of dalliance, the mockery with which he set about his lessons, the preposterous conversations he led her into, guiding him skillfully away from work . . ."

Hilary might push the boundaries of propriety, but Miss Chasty is reasonably good at getting him to settle into his work even if he flirts and messes about--calling her Florence, or Poor Girl, asking her to wait to marry him.  He is a seven year old dandy who when he is old enough to grow a moustache will surely look the spitting image of his papa.

Oh dear.  His papa.  Even Hilary's mother, while indulging her husband in his "little joke to make him feel youthful" by comparing son to father, inwardly thinks--please God let it be only in looks and not in action be like his father.  There's a warning there.  Because dear papa has a fondness for young maids and governesses.  And then another warning that not all is right in the household . . . the red lipstick smudges on poor Miss Chasty's teacup or the sweet scents that seem to hover in the schoolroom.  Surely Mrs. Wilson's first impressions of Florence were not wrong. But what is that rustling of skirts about Miss Chasty's person?  Surely not silken undergarments?! 

There is something not quite right in the schoolroom.  It's hinted at and there is an aura about the place.  What happened here so long ago?  What is happening now?  What is coming over poor dear Miss Chasty?  If you have a chance, do give this collection a go.  I've not yet read a story in it that I didn't like.

Next up "Hare Park" and "You'll Know It When You Get There".

Short Story: Perhaps a Family Failing

Like father, like son?  The acorn never falls far from the tree?  Describe it any way you like, in Elizabeth Taylor's short story "Perhaps a Family Failing", from the collection Blush, the men in the Midwinter family leave much to be desired!  I think Mrs. Midwinter already knows that.  However young Beryl Cotterell is finding out the hard way.

Another very good short story by Taylor.  This one is told from different perspectives, or rather moves from character to character and family to family to show a young, just-getting-married couple.  The wedding has just come and gone and the fact that Mrs. Cotterell, the mother of the bride, in the opening paragraph of the story says right off the bat that Mr. Midwinter, the groom's father, is a man she "detested" pretty well sets the tone.  However, it is the further implication of what that means for Beryl.  It's what comes at the end of the story that makes you shake your head and imagine what her life will be like. 

I suppose it is just the tiniest bit comic, and there is a knowingness about the story.  Taylor turns her razer-sharp eyes towards domesticity and the idea that happily ever after so very often isn't really happy after all.  There is no need to read on or wish for more story to see what happens after the wedding, since it is easy to imagine what's going to come next.  What's impressive about Taylor's writing is the fact that she doesn't just assign blame in a clichéd manner.  There is always more at play in her work.

Maybe Geoff and Beryl are actually made for each other, though when Beryl says she is sure she can "break him of the habit" of his obsession with public houses you just know it is not going to be as easy as she thinks it will be.  As a matter of fact, she will likely learn the hard way that you can't break someone else's bad habits.  The wedding goes off without a hitch.  Mrs. Cotterrell is happy that the reception is her affair and she can keep a close eye on the details (the Cotterell's being teetotalers so there will be no drunken nonsense).  Mr. Midwinter in all his obnoxiousness has tied a sardine can to the back end of the married couple's car (to be removed at the first opportune moment). 

The only thing to come even close to mar the day is the sudden shift of weather.  A seaside honeymoon is marked by a bleak stretch of promenade from the bedroom window as a strong gale blows in.  The clash of family preoccupations is evident, though with Beryl she is perhaps a bit more worried about appearances and the desire that everything should be "just so" including her dress, hair and makeup.  The Cotterell's seem a reasonably nice, upstanding, moral sort of family whereas the Midwinters are headed by a somewhat belligerent, overbearing father with several sons who probably ride roughshod over all and sundry and a poor mother who is shoved to the background hampered by her meekness.  Beryl castigates Geoff for his teasing and wish for a little hanky-panky before dinner ("Oh don't be so silly.  It's broad daylight.").  And Geoff's father tellingly notes that he's like his dad ("Not given to asking anybody's by-your-leave when he feels like a pint."). 

So, I've told you everything except the best part, which is what happens (or doesn't) in the bridal suite on the honeymoon of this very "happy" occasion.  You're just going to have to read the story for yourself.

Four stories left in this collection, which I plan on finishing in April (several contenders for May short story reading already).  Next up is "Good-Bye, Good-Bye").

Short Story (Monday): The Rose, the Mauve, the White

Yesterday was a little too nice outside (and I guess I was a little too lazy) to sit in front of a computer and compose a post.  But I did read a short story and a few other books as well, so my posting schedule will be a little off this week, but I'll catch up eventually.  Many thanks for the 'coming of age, beachy-setting' reading suggestions that have been offered.  I have two books on hand already and I know I can find the others at the library so I will be exploring them this week (and will let you know what I come up with in time for next weekend) and seeing which other books I can come up with--perhaps a list to follow.  How fitting since I want a coming-of-age story that the Elizabeth Taylor short story I read was about three young women going to their first proper dance. 

Elizabeth Taylor is so talented at capturing those domestic scenes that ring entirely true.  She moves from character to character to tell her story, inside the minds of the Pollard family--Myra the mother who likes to be around the young people as "they keep one young oneself".  Charles is the eldest sibling who finds it impossible to find a quiet place to practice his calling for three cheers that he must undertake later at the dance, as his youngest twin sisters take great pleasure in following him about and teasing him mercilessly. 

It's sixteen-year-old Katie, however, the middle child whose best friends from school are soon arriving, whose moment as a blossoming young woman is the focus of the story.  The three share a bedroom where they go to school and Katie dreads how her family will appear to them.  Obnoxious younger sisters who are such nuisances and a bore of an elder brother.  (Though maybe not such a bore since one of the girls asks after him the moment they descend from the train.  Seeing ones family through the eyes of others is always most illuminating.

"It was now that she began to see her home through their eyes--the purple brick house looked heavy and ugly now that the sun had gone behind a cloud; the south wall was covered by a magnolia tree; there were one or two big, cream flowers among the dark leaves: doves were walking about on the slate roof; some of the windows reflected the blue sky and moving clouds.  To Katie, it was like being shown a photograph which she did not immediately recognize--unevocative, as were the photographs of their mothers in the dormitory at school--they seldom glanced at them from the beginning of term to the end."

There is nothing especially shocking about this story.  No earth shattering twist, just the essence of life, a slice of a slightly more than average day in a middle class family.  Each member contributing a little more color to the story, moving it along just a little bit, shedding a little light on some other family member, friend upon friend. 

It's this one somewhat more special moment than all the rest that Taylor paint so vividly yet so simply.

"But they were coming downstairs.  They had left the room with its beds covered with clothes, its floor strewn with tissue-paper.  They descended; the rose, the mauve, the white.  Like a bunch of sweet-peas they looked, George [the father] thought."

She gets all the details down just right, to the girl who ends up being a wallflower (you can tell by looking at her that she'll be left on the shelf), the one who is experiencing having her first beau and the one who catches her friend's brother's eye.  Down to that last blissful moment of knowing, being a little more aware of life and the world as she lays awake in bed after all is said and done.

Even the seemingly mundane is exciting in Elizabeth Taylor's hands.

Next week "Summer Schools".

Short Story Sunday: The True Primitive

I love reading short stories but sometimes I worry that when I am reading, especially with someone like Elizabeth Taylor, that I am not reading them carefully or slowly enough.  When reading something so short--less than twenty pages in most cases--it is almost like making sense of a bite size work of art.  It's easy to take stories for granted and sometimes they are fairly simple, but sometimes they are layered and there is more at play than what meets the eye.  Of course sometimes in the simple act of just writing about a story, telling someone what happened helps make it clearer.  I've actually got two stories to share today as last week's story fell by the wayside here.  So first the story I read this weekend and then a little catch up for last week's story.

In today's story, "The True Primitive", it's hard to say really just who is the real primitive.  Is it Lily, the young woman who never "considered culture" until she fell in love.  Or her the father of her young man, Mr. Ransome who seems to throw at her all the books he had read one after another--not literally, of course.  I think Taylor took a serious pleasure at skewing her subjects, particularly those who seem most self-absorbed.  Harry, Lily's boyfriend, and Harry's brother are willing participants in his high-brow cultural proclamations, but there is something honest and earnest about Lily that I like.  Painters names where often mentioned, too, but they seemed gentler somehow to Lily. 

"She felt a curiosity about someone called Leonardo when first she heard him mentioned about had wondered if he were Harry's cousin.  When she asked Harry he laughed and referred her to his father, which meant three-quarters of an hour wasted, sitting in the kitchen listening, and then it was too late for them to go for their walk.  Trembling with frustrated desire, she had learnt her lesson; she asked no more questions and sat sullenly quiet whenever the enemy names began again."

Curiously I am more keen on Lily than on Mr. Ransome despite his piles of books.  He's a self-taught painter as well as a great reader and his sons respect his opinions.  He just seems so stuffy.

"Mr. Ransome wondered how Harry and Lily could prefer the sodden lanes to a nice fire and a book to read beside it.  He read so much about great passions, of men and women crossing continents because of love, and enduring hardship and peril, not just the discomforts of a dark, wet night--but he could not see Harry and Lily go out without feeling utter exasperation at their fecklessness."

I admit I would like a book in hand sitting in front of a nice fire, but Mr. Ransome is such a "type".  I'll happily read Balzac, too, but I like a good mystery or comfort read and I imagine Mr. Ransome scoffing at my reading choices.  Maybe, though, I like Lily as she gets the best lines in the story.  When Harry tells her sadly that his father has been so good to them since their mother died.  He  no longer has anyone to read to in the evenings and he misses that.

"'She did the best thing, dying,' Lily thought."

Sorry, a little inward chuckle especially when later he is thinking of those evenings when he would read aloud and his wife would sit and sew and her look of "humble gratitude" when their eyes met across the room. 

". . . something, he thought, must have seeped into her, something of the lofty music of prose, as she listened, evening after evening of her married life."

Hmm.  I wonder.  Little hints at what might with time come if she dares to stick it out with Harry, but the best moment (inward cringe for the reader) is what comes at the end and what makes her literally turn around and run in the other direction!

****

Last weekend's story is a longish one and one of my favorites so far, "A Troubled State of Mind".  In this wonderful story, two friends, contemporaries must reassess and rework their friendship after one marries the widowed father of the other.  It took a number of paragraphs to work out what was happening between the two and what their relationship was.

Sophy has returned from school in Switzerland to meet her new step-mother Lalage.  Only the two are long standing friends, Lalla being an orphan, has spent so much time with Sophy on school breaks rather than travel to distant relatives.  An orphan and a widow might have much in common thanks to their loneliness only age does sometimes make a significant difference in the end.  The girls decide to try and live as more formal daughter and step-mother rather than try and simply continuing being schoolgirl friends. 

There is a comfort and security being with an older and established man who can take care of a young woman all on her own.  But it is brought home to her just what she is missing when Sophy returns from school for a vacation.  An invitation that Sophy might have brought her friend to all of a sudden becomes a minefield and a place not to bring her much older husband.  And how awkward, as an invitation is not forthcoming since to bring the older man would put everyone else in a difficult situation.

These new circumstances make everyone just slightly self-conscious and Sophy finds it exhausting to play this new role that everyone has been pushed into.  If only her mother had not died, she and her father would be downstairs together and Lalla would join her in her room as young friends ought to be. 

It's almost like a divorce and who will maintain friendships now that a pair has been split into two.  Only now one has left the group and moved into a new sphere where her own contemporaries can't easily join her.  It all comes into sharp focus when Sophy's father realizes that life will be so much easier when his daughter returns to Europe, the chasm is so great between those her age and his own life.  The saddest of all, however, is Lalla's realization that she no longer fits into either world comfortably.  And to see her old friend in a new romance, ah the envy poisons her blood and spills over into despair. 

Elizabeth Taylor's stories can be so very quietly devastating.  Next week I will be officially halfway through the book and will be reading "The Rose, the Mauve, the White".  The thrill of a new story and what it might be about . . .

Short Story Sunday: The Letter-Writers

If you have any inclination whatsoever to read Elizabeth Taylor (and I think she is one of the most marvelous writers I have ever encountered--yes, really, she is that good--and I bet I say that every time I read her and write about her), or if you like short stories (or want to like short stories if you could just find the right author), go find a copy of this book, The Blush.  Three stories in and I am hooked.  I am already ready to read the next story now rather than wait until next weekend. 

I've actually read two stories, but let me start first with "The Blush" which is the title taken also for the book.  Either Elizabeth Taylor herself or the editor who put together the collection thought this the best of the batch, but I think I have found another one to call my favorite (so far that is), but I'll tell you about that one in a moment.

"The Blush" is a story about two distinct women who are quite different in situation and temperament yet whose lives are intertwined.  Each envies the other just a little bit, one takes advantage of the other and the other discovers the deception in a most embarrassing manner.  Yes, that's what causes the Blush.

"They were the same age--Mrs. Allen and the woman who came every day to do the housework.  'I shall never have children now,' Mrs. Allen had begun to tell herself.  Something had not come true; the essential part of her life."

Mrs. Allen has everything--a nice middle class lifestyle, nice home with nice things and a trim figure and even someone to come in and take care of the cleaning.  But no children.  She wanted them so much she could imagine them and would even cry just a little bit thinking about her eldest son going away to school.  But slowly over time those dreams fade away.

Mrs. Lacey, however, is the lady to cleans up and when the two women are together Mrs. Allen listens to her grumbles about her children.  The children who mope and glower and are too lazy or too dainty to help out.  Mrs. Allen can't help but think her own children would never do anything like that.  Worse, village gossip has Mrs. Lacey as a regular visitor to the local pub, a place Mrs. Allen has never entered on her own or with anyone else, but then she thinks that with Mrs. Lacey's troubles she probably deserves a bit of a break.  The lives of the two women couldn't be more different--one with a life so full of tasks she is tired out and the other with nothing to fill her life but endless pacing waiting for something to happen, which never does.

And then one day Mrs. Lacey tells her she is expecting a baby, even with three nearly grown children another is on the way (and she craves pickled walnuts--and as an aside, I have never heard of such a thing and it sounds like something maybe only a pregnant woman might actually crave?!).  The twist is when Mrs. Lacey's husband comes knocking on the door to complain about Mrs. Allen's late hours keeping Mrs. Lacey from home at night as she looks after another woman's children while the couple is out on the town.  I'll let you read between the lines, or better yet, nudge you to go read the story.

***

I absolutely loved "The Letter-Writers".  This is one of my favorite stories I have read in a long time (and I have read some very good stories so far this year).  There is a certain melancholy to Elizabeth Taylor's stories, but there is a knowing, too, of our foibles and shortcomings, our desires and fears.  I sometimes feel like she has peeked inside my own windows or maybe even inside my mind.  I can so sympathize with Emily in this story who is so assured on paper and so interesting and forthcoming, but faced with meeting the recipient of her letters finds that knowing someone in person can be a little bit disastrous.

As she crosses the village on a warm, sunny day she takes in all the bustle and activity, mentally taking note so she can later put it all into a letter to Edmund.  The pair have been writing letters back and forth for a decade but not yet have met.  He is a writer living in Italy and she an admirer of her work.  It would never have occurred to her to write to him, but when she reads an article on Tennyson he had written where he made some conjectures on the poet's life, Emily knows that amongst her father's papers is a letter written by Tennyson that would clear the matter up.  Her kindness in sharing is followed by a happy correspondence. 

He rarely returns home to England and when Emily travels to Italy she cannot bear looking him up to meet him.  "In Rome, some instinct of self-preservation kept her from giving him her aunt's address there."

". . . her letters were a relaxation to him; to her, his were an excitement, and her fingers often trembled as she tore open their envelopes."

I love this quote and I have to share it just because, because I feel much the same way about someone else's writing.

"She was sensitive to what he wrote, that she felt her own reading half created it."

To meet now would be a frightening prospect--"he knows too much about me".  How could they start a conversation, or a relationship when she had shared so many personal things with him.  Her letters almost feel as though they are a sort of confessional and at a distance all is safe.  How would she feel if on first meeting her he might say she is so different than he imagined her.  

". . . or their eyes might meet and they would see in one another's nakedness and total loss."

But it is going to happen. Her walk across the village at the start of the story is to buy a fresh lobster for his visit.  He has come to England on business and wants to meet her.  Her careful preparations are all thrown to the wind when her cat, the moment when she leaves the room, makes a leap for their dinner.  She hears the crash and trying to save the last vestige of her careful planning ends up a wild mess when the doorbell rings and she opens it to Edmund!

This is such a wonderful story.  And this crushing failure of a visit is so perfectly described and brought to life. 

"She shrank from words, thinking of the scars they leave, which she would be left to tend when he had gone."

Elizabeth Taylor lifts the lid off this fearful (frightful) situation and exposes it in all its pain and maybe even possibilities.  I won't tell you how it ends, but in Taylor's hands it is always perfectly and satisfyingly done.

***

This week's New Yorker story by Fiona McFarlane, "Buttony" (you can read it here-it's quite short) is about a children's game that plays on fears of being left out by your young contemporaries or being taken advantage of or tricked.  Buttony is a game where a group of children get in a circle and one stands in the middle with a button.  They close their eyes and the child drops the button into someone's hands.  Then it is a matter of the rest of the children trying to guess who has it.  Who will be picked, and who will be names first as the new possessor or the button--and who will be last.  And what happens if no one gets the button.  What makes this all the more intriguing is the child in the middle is a sort of golden boy so the story speaks to all sorts of interesting issues.  All the more impressive that it took so few pages to tell this story.  You can read her Q&A here.  McFarlane has a collection of stories coming out this spring, The High Places.

And a few other short story opportunities--you can read James D. McCabe's "Impostors" here thanks to Library of America.  If you want something with a technology slant, you can read a free short story by Michelle Richmond called "The Last Taco Truck in Silicon Valley" here.  And a new acquisition by me, Miss Grief and Other Stories by Constance Fenimore Woolson.  She is new to me, but during her lifetime (1840-1894) she was "considered one of the finest writers of her generation".  Her "strong characters, indelible settings, and concerns with passion, creativity and the demands of society are timeless."  The description already had me hooked but the fact that Colm Toibin wrote the introduction reassures me just a little bit more.

Maybe I will dip into the Woolson collection for next weekend, but I have "A Troubled State of Mind" by Elizabeth Taylor to look forward to as well.

Short Story 'Monday': The Ambush

While I am quite tempted to continue on with reading Tove Jansson (I have several of her other books including more short stories), I decided I was in the mood for stories that are in some way about domestic situations.  I had a pile of books to choose from (mostly Viragos to be honest), but in the end Elizabeth Taylor's The Blush called out to me.  I want to read everything she has written and I know I am always in good hands with her writing.  One story in and I think I have made a good choice.  Her writing is always superlative and she does 'domestic' very well--she writes about ordinary people leading ordinary lives in such a way that you never feel like average simply equals boring.

The collection includes twelve short stories and was published in 1958 (the Virago edition is from 1987).  In the introduction the editor calls Taylor's writing effortless (and it does seem to appear that way to me, too), yet he also says the short story form cannot accommodate effort, and "its finest practitioners are wary of cleverness".  He goes on to say that the stories in this collection are neither effortful or obviously clever which is how they retain their freshness for so long.  Indeed while the details do reflect the era somewhat, ultimately the emotions and motivations remain much the same today.

It isn't until the final paragraph that the meaning of the title "The Ambush" in the first story becomes clear, and then all the elements are tied nicely together giving it all a deeper meaning.  Catherine, a young woman and artist, has come to stay with Mrs. Ingram and her elder son, Esmé.  It has been a few weeks since the younger son, and Catherine's--not quite fiancé--significant other (to put it into today's terms) has been buried.  He died in a car accident.  In the weeks since the funeral Catherine has been stunned and jolted, unable to even open the drawer where Noël's letters sit.

She's met at the train station by Esmé, so very like his brother in looks yet another person entirely.  At home everyone treats her almost as an invalid to be touched not at all or with kid gloves.  But in the Ingram home Noël's mother speaks to her directly about his death and how Catherine is coping. 

"Strangeness and the physical beauty of the place overtook her.  She was under this roof again, bu the old reason for being there was gone.  Listening to the weir, lying in the flower-scented room, between the cool sheets (Mrs. Ingram's linen was glassier than anyone else's, she thought), she fell under the spell of the family again, although the one of it she loved was dead.  Missing him, it was in this place she wanted to be, no other."

What's so interesting about this story is the interplay between characters and their relationships with each other.  Esmé has, it is revealed, always been Mrs. Ingram's favorite, and she would love for him to stay in England, but he spends most of his time abroad living the expatriate life.  Mrs. Ingram seems to be trying to push Catherine and he together in hopes of perhaps keeping him closer to home, though it's not Esmé Catherine wants to be with (and there seems to be nothing in his attitude that seems as if he has fallen for her either).  For Catherine, there is something enchanting about the life the Ingrams lead in this home so close to the weir.  It's not Esmé she is attracted to but she would like to be the daughter-in-law and remain under this 'enchantment'.

In the space of just two dozen pages Elizabeth Taylor drops the reader into this situation, already in progress so to speak, and moves them along to a realization of their feelings and manages to 'grow them' to an understanding and acceptance.  There is nothing particular earth shattering or a twist at the end to cause surprise over than a feeling of having arrived at a destination that is comfortable. 

It feels good to settle in so quickly with a collection of short stories and a happy anticipation of what is coming next.  I might well try and read two stories a week just because I am eager to read her writing.  Next weekend is the titular story, "The Blush".  Curiously, I feel like Catherine to be under her 'enchantment'.

I've even managed to read this week's (February 29) New Yorker story (I have two month's worth of catching up to do now) by Luke Mogelson, "Total Solar" which is about as far as you can get from domesticity as it is set in modern day-war torn Kabul.  There is a very dreamy quality to the story, a feeling of unreality in the horrors of what is reality for the people who live there.  It is a reporter who tells this story of a bomb attack.  One minute he is interviewing someone and the next is a total disorientation of what is happening, one minute he is talking to someone and the next they are dead.  It's especially curious since it's hard to tell if the narrator is only being affected by the attack, of if it's simply his personality coming through despite the situation.  It this gives you a hint of his personality (actually I kind of relate to him in this case) when he describes a 'naked in a dream" dream where the embarrassment is not the nakedness but the fact that he managed to get himself into that situation in the first place.  You can read the New Yorker's Q&A with Mogelson here.  His first book of short stories will be published in April.

Short Story Sunday: Flesh

If you've read Elizabeth Taylor already you are going to know exactly what I mean when I say--Elizabeth Taylor's writing is why I love reading so much.  If you've not read her, find one of her novels or pick up a short story and give yourself a treat.  She is an absolute master of the written word.  She is so assured and eloquent.  I knew from the first book I read by her that I would want to read everything she has written and I have certainly collected most of her work.  Why I've not yet raced through the pile is beyond me, but she is someone you want to read slowly and thoughtfully and appreciate her gorgeous prose and styling. 

I'm always ready for an excuse to pick up one of her works, so I was happily anticipating this weekend's short story, which is Taylor's "Flesh".  It was originally published in The Devastating Boys in 1972.  It is a story firmly planted in the domestic arena (though perhaps this one has a bit of a twist on the usual themes), which is what Taylor excelled in writing about.  Also why she was largely forgotten and pushed to one side.  She deserves to be read and Virago (and now NYRB Classics, too) has reissued most of her work. 

There was a time in my life I would have been exceedingly critical of anyone who strayed outside the boundaries of their marriage or even a serious relationship.  I still cringe at the idea, but in the hands of someone like Elizabeth Taylor, so capable of eliciting understanding and sympathy, I realize that life is rarely simply black and white.  There is something almost tender and sweet in the amorous (and extracurricular) adventures that the pair in this story embark upon.

Of course if ever I found myself in a situation where the temptation of straying from a happy or comfortable relationship occurred, this is exactly what I imagine would happen to me (just my bad luck).  This is a story of an adulterous relationship--for grownups.  This is exactly what I can picture happening in the real world.  Two people meet by chance while on vacation, find they have an attraction and decide to do something about it.  It's the sort of thing that happens on vacations away from real life.  It's an artificial situation where anything, really, is possible.  Where two people can connect knowing that they will return home to their regular lives and will pick up and go on after a brief interlude of 'passion'.

But wait a moment.  This is domestic fiction and Taylor is writing about real life.  It's fiction but it's not fiction and let me explain.  Not everything goes quite as planned for Phyl and Stanley.  The two meet on a sunny foreign island.  It's the end of the tourist season but there are other British tourists about forming a little community away from home.  Phyl's husband has sent her off on her own to recuperate after an operation of a female nature.  The two never had a proper away-from-home vacation, even for their honeymoon.  She and her husband Charlie are pub owners and Phyl thinks to herself what a wonderful story her adventure would make for those back home, if only she could ever share it.  Which, of course, she can't.  Stanley is a widower, who's on his holidays as that's what's expected of him.  It's his first time abroad and it's obvious he misses his wife, but he admires Phyl, too, and thinks what a lucky (and probably unappreciative) husband she must have. 

Very discreetly the two, Phyl and Stanley, begin a brief holiday romance.  I said this is fiction but it's not?  It is fiction.  But this is not a romanticized and unrealistic story, a fairy tale.  Discretion means their little interlude must be furtive and on the sly so as not to set tongues wagging.  They decide to spend a day away from the hotel where they can be together without fear of being caught in compromising circumstances.  And this is where reality and sweetness come into play.  I want to tell you all about it, fill in all the lovely details, but I don't want to spoil it either.  I much prefer you try and find the story and read it for yourselves!  let's just say things don't exactly turn out as the pair hoped and expected. 

This is yet another brilliant story in the collection Infinite Riches.  I've yet to come across a story I didn't like and this one is so far my very favorite.  I love that Elizabeth Taylor captures all the little nuances of a holiday romance that goes subtly awry.  It's not a "happily ever after" story, but a story that is happy in its way despite the little blunders and bad luck.  And I liked it all the more for that reason.

Next week another favorite, Willa Cather.

* * * * *

The story appearing in this week's (February 9 issue) New Yorker is by Toni Morrison, a writer I have not read in years.  It explains a lot that "Sweetness" is not actually a short story but an excerpt from Morrison's forthcoming novel, God Help the Child.  It felt both heavy (in terms of content) and slight while reading--if that makes any sense at all.  It was more a narration of a life than a story about a daughter who is born with skin the color of a deep blue-black to parents who are fair enough to "pass" and so was therefore resented, and, if not mistreated, then not loved and cherished like every child needs to be.  This was too much of a teaser since there are so many unanswered questions to be a short story I can feel comfortable inhabiting.  it does make me curious about the whole story, so I might have to look for it when it comes out in April. 

Have you read any good short stories recently?  You didn't think I have forgotten to ask, did you?  Nudge, nudge.

Halloween Goodness, or a Ghost Story

What's Halloween without a good ghost story concerning a governess?  Of course the classic is Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, which I read several years back.  Edith Wharton wrote a fair few ghost stories, too, and her The Lady's Maid's Bell reminded me of the James story.  Did you know that Elizabeth Taylor also wrote a ghost story (and maybe even more than one--I'm not familiar with all her stories unfortunately), and one that has a governess at its center.  It has been anthologized in a few places, but I read it in The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century Ghost Stories edited by the late Michael Cox (a book I've dipped into before and should really own).

I should know that in Taylor's very capable hands to expect something good, but I was impressed by how she took a common-enough story and made it into something fresh and her own.  She turns the tables a bit and offers the unexpected, which took me a little by surprise.  It begins very ordinarily (as governess-ghost-stories go) but then the story turns on its head just a little bit.

"Poor Girl" is Miss Chasty the governess, whose first pupil is a flirtatious seven-year-old.  He must be something of a shock to her as she comes from a respectable family.  She's the daughter of a vicar and it's hoped and expected that her brothers will follow suit.  Hilary, her charge, is a precocious young boy whose lively eyes were often "fixed cruelly" upon his governess, "smiling faintly . . . but measuring her timidity."  Miss Chasty is just one of a string of governesses.  He's not too keen on going away to school, but seems sure that he can avoid leaving home.

"He would answer her questions correctly, but significantly, as if he knew that by his aptitude he rescued her from dismissal."

He knows too much for his age and is wont to lean in towards her, breathing in her scent.  His behavior worries her.  More worrisome, however, is what Hilary's parents, Mrs. and Mr. Wilson, think of her.  Whatever Mr. Wilson lacks in authority (especially in moments of amatory weakness), his wife more than makes up for.  And Mr. Wilson has had moments of weakness with previous governesses, though Mrs. Wilson seems favorably impressed by Florence.  At least initially.  Her first impression of the governess is that she is a plain, pious young woman befitting that of a clergyman's daughter and governess.  

Mrs. Wilson often spends time in the nursery watching her son, her "darling boy", in his studies and taking note of Florence.  Her visits become more regular when she sees a crimson smear on the lip of the teacup and smells a heavy perfume hanging in the room.  Perhaps her first impression was wrong.  In this pious young woman, as she looks deeper, she detects an excitability, even feverishness reflecting a crack in her proper exterior.  She catches Florence turning the teacup just so to hide the red smear.

Each woman sees, feels, senses something in the nursery.  Something hangs heavy about the room affecting each woman in turn.

"The schoolroom this evening seemed to have been wreathed about with a strange miasma; the innocent nature of the place polluted in a way which [Florence] could not understand or have explained.  Something new it seemed, had entered the room which had not belonged to her or became a part of her--the scent had clung about her clothes; the stained cup was her cup and her handkerchief with which she had rubbed it clean was still reddened; and, finally, as she had stared in the mirror, trying to reestablish her personality, the affected little laugh which startled her had come from herself.  It had driven her from the room."

Mrs. Wilson sees the room as a product of Florence's true nature.  For Florence the room has something artificial about it.  She feels strange and different when there.  Mr. Wilson is only too happy to sit in on Hilary's lessons with Florence.  At his wife's behest he watches Florence to discover whether she is an immoral young woman.  Yes, he's only too happy to do so. 

Well, you can imagine what might happen to a young governess who catches the eye of her master.  Both will be disgraced.  One sent packing.  There's something about the nursery.  A ghostly presence.  A hint of something happening and Florence plays it out in a sort of shadow action.  There are other things you are meant to imagine in this story.  The last line is a bit cryptic, like other good ghost stories, Taylor leaves a little up to the reader to sort out, but the twist she offers on the tale is satisfying indeed.

Another enjoyable season of RIP reading has now come to an end.  Happy Halloween all. 

A Teaser from A View of the Harbour

I have to say I am very much enjoying reading from my Virago Modern Classics selections.  I only wish this had been a vacation week for me and I could be spending long uninterrupted hours reading my books rather than picking them up and squeezing in my reading at odd moments.  Still, I'm making good progress and loving what I've been reading, so that's what counts.  I wanted to write a little bit about Elizabeth Taylor today, but to be honest I've been spending so much time reading E.M. Delafield's Thank Heaven Fasting that I didn't get as far into Taylor's A View of the Harbour as I would have liked.  More about the Delafield tomorrow (I should easily finish the book tonight--it's hard to put down!), and let me share a little of what I've been reading about Elizabeth Taylor. 

I read my first Elizabeth Taylor novel, The Sleeping Beauty, back in 2007 and knew I was well and truly hooked.  Since then I've managed several more novels as well as a few short stories (she is equally as good at writing short stories as full length novels by the way).  Taylor's friend and fellow author, Elizabeth Jane Howard (who wrote the wonderful Cazalet Chronicle, I should mention), called Taylor one of the most "unfairly underread and underappreciated" authors of the twentieth century.  There was an excellent article in the Atlantic, which I urge you to read if you've not yet come across it.  The article notes her work is often condescended to as "high-class 'women's novels'."

"But, of course, the English novel was born and perfected as a means to explore women’s interiority and bourgeois domesticity, and these remain subjects at the heart of the modern experience, to which the novel as a form is ideally suited. [Kingsley] Amis responded to a critic who submitted 'importance' as a criterion of Taylor’s worth: 'Importance isn’t important. Good writing is'. Her prose was at once effervescent and smooth, and its clarity and precision sprang from the astringency of her vision."

Rachel at Book Snob just wrote about this subject--women's writings and the domestic sphere--do click on through and read what she has to say as it is this very marginalization of women's fiction that brought about Virago Press in the first place. 

My edition of A View of the Harbour has an afterword by Robert Liddell, but the more recent edition is introduced by Sarah Waters.  As my library has this newer edition I had to take a quick peek at it.  Waters is another proponent of Taylor's work, so I look forward to reading her intro in full when I finish the book.  She does say, and I've heard this before, that Taylor is often compared to Jane Austen (an author Taylor also admired).  "...her fascination is with the collision of personalities and the deceptions and self-deceptions practiced between them."  A View of the Harbour is set in a small seaside town where the residents more or less know each other.  This is a novel of infidelity--and perhaps of the worst kind--between a woman and the spouse of her best friend.  I thought I'd share a couple short teasers that describe Tory, the unfaithful friend.

"Tory Foyle unwound the black chenille scarf from her hair.  She was what was once held to be the typical English beauty, her pink face, bright hair and really violet eyes."

"She let herself out of the large, untidy house and into her own beautiful, hyacinth-scented one.  She sat down in the bay-window of her bedroom and combed her hair before the mirror.  She took it all down and built it up again, but there was no one there to see what she had done."

I expect this story is going to be devastating, and as someone mentioned in the comment section of a previous post, not at all light or sunny despite its sandy beach setting!

By the way, do pop on over to Book Snob and A Few of My Favourite Books as both Rachel and Carolyn are not only writing about their own Virago reading experiences, but are kindly doing daily wrap up posts and gathering together links from everyone who is participating in the readalong.  It's really heartening to see so many people reading and writing about these lovely Viragos!