A Work in Progress

Teaser Tuesday: Memories from Moscow

I may have fallen behind in writing about my NYRB subscription books (must write about Patrick Modiano and Jean Giono still), but more importantly I am on track with my reading.  This is good as May's book just arrived in the mail last week.  I had never heard of Russian author, Teffi, before, but now I will get the pleasure of being introduced to her work.  Memories from Moscow to the Black Sea was originally published in installments between 1928-1930.

I've only barely started to read the introduction, so I don't have much to say about it yet, but I can at least share a teaser, which will literally be a teaser for me as much as for you.  Teffi is the pen name for (big breath here) Nadezhda Alexandrovna Lokhvitskaya.  It would seem she was quite famous in her day (her day being the early 2oth Century). 

"Teffi was at the time one of the most widely read and beloved of Russia's writers.  As one émigré commenter asserted: 'There was scarcely ever another writer in Russia who had such an enormous circle of readers as Teffi.'  He added that, although she published almost exclusively in the liberal press, 'both Russias' read her and she was a favorite of the last Tsar, Nikolai II (as she was of his Bolshevik successor, Vladimir Lenin.)  Her celebrity reached such heights that there even existed Teffi perfume and Teffi Candies."

And that's about as far as I have gotten in my reading so far, but I shall be continuing on and perhaps will skip the introduction in favor of simply diving into her memoirs.   A few biographical facts just to get oriented.  She and three sisters all became writers.  She wrote across the genres--everything from "political feuilletons" (during the 1905 Revolution) to Symbolist poetry, plays and short stories which are said to be some of her best work.  This book of memoirs covers her last months in Russia and Ukraine during the aftermath of the Revolution of 1918.  She had been invited to speak in Ukraine, and while she had every intention of returning home to Russia her journey ended some four years later in Paris.  She spent the rest of her life in exile.  I guess I will find out as I read.

"Danger and death threaten throughout Memories, even as the book displays the brilliant style, keen eye, comic gift, and deep feeling that have made Teffi one of the most beloved of twentieth-century Russian writers."

I've not read any Russian Lit for some time, so I am looking forward to this.  Turning to chapter one and the very first page I begin reading:

"Moscow. Autumn.  Cold."

"My Petersburg life has been liquidated.  The Russian Word has been closed down.  There is, it seems, no possibility of anything."

"Or rather, there is one possibility; it appears, day after day, in the shape of a squint-eyed Odessa impresario by the name of Gooskin, who is trying to persuade me to go with him to Kiev and Odessa and give public readings there."

What We Talk About When We Talk About the Tube: The District Line

Well, moving right along in the Underground . . . I'm on a little roll.  Already I've hopped from the Metropolitan Line over to the District Line with John Lanchester's What We Talk About When We Talk About the Tube (and now have the Central Line at the ready), and so to keep all those Lines straight I had better tell you about what I've read before taking in yet more information.  Did I already say how much I am enjoying these little bites of social history via the London Underground?  Whoever came up with this idea for a series, which is in honor of the 150th anniversary of the Underground, should get a raise.  Or at least an enthusiastic pat on the back.  They may be slight little books, but they are so interesting and informative (and I mean that in a good way, not in a dry-imparting-of-rote-facts-only sort of way) and my list of books, movies or new subjects to explore seems to grow more with each new read. 

Did you know that there is a difference between the Underground and the Tube?  I thought the words were interchangeable, but there is actually a distinction.  Like me, Lanchester, who did not grow up in London, wasn't sure if the Tube was something other than the Underground, or if it was simply another word for it.  His impression was that the Tube was some other thing--more modern and cooler-sounding.  Londoners might use the terms interchangeably,  but upon doing research for the book he learned that there is indeed a difference.  The first Underground Lines--the Metropolitan (1863), District (1868) and Circle (1884) Lines were not actually Tubes.  

Here's where it gets technical.  They weren't Tubes because they weren't tunnels.  Tunnels being a hole carved out of the ground for a certain distance which opens back out again.  The first Lines were made using the 'cut and cover' method--"a hole dug straight into the ground, laid with tracks and brick walls, and then covered back up."  So these lines are not even all that far underground and are called 'sub-surface' lines.  Now the Tube uses a very different digging technique. 

"It features a shield, a huge frame, on which the twelve 'navigators' who dug the tunnels stood: the frame advanced gradually through the earth while the men dug, and then the other navigators bricked up the tunnel walls and roof behind them as they went."

***

"This was the birth of the Tube: the deep tunnels which were dug using the shield technique, and which run through the clay subsoil underneath London, are in the strict sense the Tube.  The Underground includes the Tube, but the Tube does not include the Underground."

How's that for sheer nerdiness?  You never know, you might just need this for a trivia question someday.  You can thank me (and Mr. Lanchester) later!  He notes that this difference is most useful to those who don't like being deep underground.  The Tube Line the author uses most often, the Northern Line, is also the oldest of them and is often called 'the Misery Line' as it was for some time the longest train tunnel.  It "disappears into the earth at Morden and then not popping up above ground again until Finchley, seventeen and a half miles later."  Now that is quite a stretch. 

I very much enjoyed reading about the District Line.  John Lanchester gives all sort of interesting facts yet he couches them in interesting stories and anecdotes.  And he throws in lots of the personal, too, which all overlaps with the Mabey book about the Metropolitan Line.  It's part history, part memoir, part social history and maybe even a little science thrown in for good will.  So the books tend to build on each other nicely.  Going back to the beginning and to share something of significance about the District Line--it stretches across very different social and geographical ends of London.  It goes from the poor East of the city to the rich West.  And it sounds like the areas it crosses is quite diverse, too.  I like the way one of the Underground workers described the demographic differences between the two ends. 

"Put it like this, if they're annoyed about something, at this end of the line--we were at Dagenham (East)--they yell at you.  You know about it straight away.  At the other end, they write letters."

Just like the Metropolitan Line helped create Metroland--those suburbs outside the city, a place for Londoners to enjoy the countryside yet still able to commute in to their jobs, the rest of the Lines did their part to create the city of London as we know it now.  That iconic London Underground map, which I am sure you can easily bring to mind makes you think that those lines were simply drawn as if superimposed on top of the city.  You would think that the city came before the map, whereas in reality "London as it exists today would not be the same place without the Underground."

"The Underground is what gave the city its geographical spread, its population growth, its clusters of spaces and places.  The new Underground stations became the places around which the city grew; they were the first gravitational mass, like the clusters of debris in the nascent solar system, which agglomerated and grew and thickened and became planets."

One other little bit of trivia, before I leave the District Line (and I have really barely scratched the surface of what Lanchester writes about), did you know the word Commute (as in your daily commute, or commuter) is an American thing?  The original meaning of the word commute means "to give something in exchange for something else, or to change one thing for another."  In the US regular travelers "began to swap day tickets for better-value season tickets; they 'commuted' their daily tickets into season tickets."

"The Oxford English Dictionary gives the first instance of the modern, dragging-your-weary-bones-to-work sense as in the American magazine the Atlantic Monthly, which defined a commuter as follows: 'one who purchases a commutation-ticket'.  A commutation-ticket was the American term for a season ticket.  Commuters commuted 'commute'."

Hah!  Anyway, Lanchester has a very engaging way of drawing you into this wonderful and lively little book!  I have once again switched lines and now will be stepping onto the Central Line with Danny Dorling's The 32 Stops.  I wonder where my journey will take me next.

In case you are wondering--yes, these books are great fun!  So far, I've ridden the Victoria Line, the Circle Line, the Metropolitan Line and here the District Line.

In Honor of Shakespeare: 400 Years!

Today, April 23, marks the 400th anniversary of the death of Shakespeare.  It seems like there should be some sort of fanfare, don't you think?  Imagine what the world would be like had there not been a Shakespeare.  It's almost impossible to do really, so ingrained is he and his work in our culture.  Not just Western culture either.  I've got a celebratory treat to share and one that so very fittingly marks this day and his worldwide importance. 

I've just received a copy of the newly released Worlds Elsewhere: Journeys Around Shakespeare's Globe by Andrew Dickson to add to my reading pile.  Actually I have two copies.  One that I shall be eagerly dipping into this weekend and one to share.  So, if you are a US resident and would like to throw your name into the virtual hat to win a copy, just leave me a comment.  To get into the spirit of things, if you have a favorite work or sonnet or movie adaptation or literary retelling or a visit to the Globe Theater, or any other Shakespeare story, please feel free to share.  

The book has an interesting and unusual take on Shakespeare as Andrew Dickson traveled across continents and through the centuries to tell Shakespeare's story, so to speak.  While the Bard never traveled, his work has certainly made its way far and wide.  Worlds Elsewhere is both a cultural history and a literary travelogue that attempts "to understand how Shakespeare has become the international phenomenon he is--and why".

I have a little teaser to whet your appetite:

"The theatre was packed, people jostling for position. As I watched, three men detached themselves from the crowd and began slowly to climb the steps. A ripple of applause washed over them as they came up on to the stage. Acknowledging it, they glanced around – surprised, bemused to find themselves here in the flat grey light of an English summer afternoon. They were decently dressed, if perhaps a little shabby: long perahan tunics in grey and mud- brown, loose trousers, jackets, rubber sandals. Orange security lanyards flapped at their necks. They carried bags; one had a rug slung across his arm. They looked fresh off the plane, and dusty with tiredness."

You can read more about the book here and check out Andrew Dickson's website here.

I've not read nearly enough Shakespeare, but my own favorite is Twelfth Night.  You know how fond I am of female characters dressing up as boys.   Mistaken identities, adventure, romance, what's not to love?

I'll drop the names into a hat next Friday and pull a winner out, so make sure you leave a comment if you want to join in the celebratory reading.  While I can only pick a winner for a US reader, do check out Andrew's Twitter feed as there are other giveaways and competitions where you can try your luck.

A Good Parcel of English Soil, Richard Mabey

It's amazing how chock full of interesting information, engaging stories, and even reading suggestions these slim little Penguin Lines (which celebrate the 150th anniversary of the London Underground in 2013) are filled with.  I am now embarking on the fourth book in a set of twelve (one for each Underground Line), so it is time to tell you about Richard Mabey's A Good Parcel of English Soil which I read a month or so ago before the Lines begin to get muddled in my mind.

Mabey, a nature writer who I've read and enjoyed before, takes as his subject the Metropolitan Line which was the first "urban railway to burrow underground".  Mabey points out that the Metropolitan Line opened the same year as Jules Verne's novel Voyage to the Center of the Earth came out.  Seems fitting, don't you think.  London's Underground is "an expression of nineteenth-century futurism."  The more I read about the London Underground the more I marvel at both the ingenuity of it (and more about that in my next post about the book I am reading right now) and the social history surrounding it.  It is iconic in so many ways.

I was particularly happy to read about the Metropolitan Line (and Mabey whose writing I like very much) as its history of why and how it came about is so very interesting. 

"The Metropolitan line does at least have a destination, and a mission.  It exists to take people out of a working city to live in a greener place.  The irony is that in doing so it has succeeded in wiping out, or at least dramatically changing, many of the green places that it used as bait for its customers.  So it's also ironic, I guess, that as a boy naturalist and then would-be Romantic scribbler, I've been endlessly enthralled by the strange and not always pretty negotiations between human and natural life that it brought into being."  [Mabey grew up in the shadow of the Metropolitan Line.]

And so we have the famous Metroland which has inspired books and stories and films.  You have probably heard the term, just as I had, but I didn't realize the significance or meaning behind it.  Back in its early days the Railway Company had bought up those vast stretches of land on which to build houses, which they hoped to sell to potential customers.  Genius in its way really, even if it didn't quite work out in the way they hoped and intended.  Mabey puts it so wonderfully descriptively--the Railway Company provided the "honeytrap" of land to lure Londoners out and then provided the beeline to the destination in the form of the Metropolitan Line. 

We're talking classic suburbia here.  Was it real or just faux-rural is the question. 

"Metroland was a grandiose and sometimes cynical concept designed to encapsulate the urban worker's dream of a country retreat, wreathed by wild flowers and birdsong but not too far from the office."

Mabey calls it Arcadia for profit.  What it ended up being is a margin between city and real open countryside.   Here's an early pitch (from a 1927 brochure) by the Metropolitan company to draw people out from the city.

"There is a good parcel of English soil in which to build a home and strike root, inhabited from old, as witness the lines of camps on the hill tops and confused mounds amongst the woods, the great dyke which crossed it east and west, the British trackway, the Roman Road aslant the eastern border, the packhorse ways worn deep into the hillsides, the innumerable fieldpaths which mark the labourers' daily route from hamlet to farm.  The new settlement of Metroland proceeds apace, the new settlers thrive amain."

I can imagine this Metroland, though I am not sure I am visualizing it quite as it is or was.  Suburbia holds a different image in my own mind, more city and less rural and I get the idea that this British Metroland was far more rural, or at least had hoped to be.  The creation of Metroland, which was meant to be a sort of rural destination in the end destroyed large sections of "ordinary farming countryside".  While it might have offered relief from being cooped up and packed into the city it only ever became "sub-rural".     

I think I could easily read this again and pull more information from it, but Mabey has provided me with further reading material.  One book leads to another, or in this case one book leads to a novel, a short story and a film.  In setting the tone and introducing his subject matter Mabey refers to a classic science fiction short story by A.J. Deutsch published in 1950 called "The Möbius Strip".  The story premise is that a Boston Tube train vanishes with more than 400 passengers and rematerializes some ten weeks later as if nothing happened at all.

"A mathematician brought in to advise the tube company believes the subway has become a four-dimensional version of the Möbius strip, the mathematical device in which a length of material is given a single twist and its ends are then joined, so that it has only a single surface, leading to all kinds of mysterious space-time anomalies." 

So of course I had to go out and find the story, which I photocopied and now must pull out to read.  And to really visualize Metroland there is the novel by the same name by Julian Barnes, which I found a copy of to read. 

"His first novel is a wryly funny and evocative account of what it felt like to be a self-styled existentialist teenager living in this suburban motherlode.  He also gives an exact description of how the 1960s trains still echoed, in their ornamentation, the fixtures and fittings of the rural dreamland they were bound for."

I can't wait to read it.  And for real visuals, there was "an eccentrically funny film" called Metro-land made in 1973.  I have taken a peek and it does look eccentrically funny and it can be viewed online here.  As you can see one small book (and I didn't even mention all the books he makes note of) is leading to a whole new (though related) reading path, which I do plan on undertaking.  For now, though, I have moved on to John Lanchester's What We Talk About When We Talk About the Tube, which promises to be equally as interesting and informative. 

I've written about the Victoria Line and the Circle Line.  The Lanchester is about the District Line.   

My History by Antonia Fraser

If all nonfiction, particularly memoirs and biographies could be as engaging and amusingly told as Antonia Fraser's My History: A Memoir of Growing Up, I might just read a steady diet of it (rather than the very skimpy smattering I seem to be doing lately).  Likely it is thanks to Fraser's marvelous book that I am now having such a hard time settling on a new nonfiction read.  Where will I find one as breezy and entertaining yet filled to the brim with wonderful insights?  I know they are out there, but she is a hard act to follow. In theory I should have struggled with this far more than I did (which is to say not at all).  She does talk a lot about her family, her parents especially.  And there are a lot of political references that I am sure just floated by over my head.  But she tells her story so very confidently that I didn't mind any of those little 'would-be' obstacles that might well exasperate me with another author. 

There is so much of interest to share, as is always the case with nonfiction, that I am not sure where even to begin and it is impossible to give you all the most interesting details of her life.  I'll try instead to just share a few highlights and excerpts--things that really struck me that I would like to remember (and can use this post as a reminder of all the goodness of Fraser's memoir).

It's interesting that there are some parallels between Fraser's life and the lives of others I have been reading about--both in my nonfiction reading but also in some of the novels I have been spending time with.  I rarely have trouble distinguishing books from one another, but I did have to orient myself a bit (despite the periods each was writing about being different) when I would move from the Fraser memoir to Lucy Wadham's Underground book I just wrote about.  Two young women growing up in London/Britain, post-WWII, smart, Bohemianish with interesting families.  Antonia Fraser's family also converted to Catholicism like the fictional Clara Batchelor in Antonia White's quartet of books, which I am also reading at the moment.  Antonia Fraser specifically mentions White's book Frost in May, which she also read with great interest when young.  Lots of crossing of paths with my reading right now.

So, Antonia White is the eldest of eight children and her parents were both deeply and dedicatedly involved in Labour politics and always felt their political leanings must be imbued with idealism.  Her own first husband was also an MP, but she was drawn to something else as a young girl--History.  

"There were various elements involved but from the age of four and a half, until the coming of teenage romance altered the balance, by far the most important element was History--my History.  I can date the arrival of this great constellation in my life exactly according to the copy of Our Island Story which is inscribed Christmas 1936 . . ."

History was always the driving force in her life, it seems, but she was a very bookish girl and her parents didn't scrimp on her education.  She actually attended a 'very good' school when living in Oxford--a boys' school!  Curiously the school was called the Dragon, and the handful of girls who attended were known as She Dragons.  They all played rugger and participated in school theatricals.  She might not have felt privileged at the time (though, "what an exciting and unusual education, compared to our contemporaries, we had received."), but it was a rigorous education and it prepared her in many ways for her later studies and career.  Interesting, though not surprising, that it's thanks to a Boys education, that she did so very well for herself.  Later on she would find herself well ahead of the other girls she encountered yet in other (social) ways rather far behind.

"To know three Shakespeare plays virtually by heart, to love them, before the age of twelve, to realize there was a whole Shakespearean world and it was part of History--these were inestimable gifts."

She did all kinds of reading as a girl and young woman--everything from Georgette Heyer to Anthony Trollope.  She even was a fan of history fiction of the type written by Margaret Irwin (I've read her, too!), though later it was 'real' history she came to prefer reading rather than historical romances.

She went on to study at Oxford, though not History (every young woman seemed to want to study it and to get in she had to follow a slightly different track), but she knew from early on that she would some day write History.  It was just a matter of figuring out how she would do it.  It is almost a given that she would go into publishing.  It's thanks to her mother, and her mother's assurance that Antonia could speak other languages (which was something of an exaggeration, but it got her the job) that George Weidenfeld took her on where she worked for some years at Weidenfeld and Nicholson.  She calls her work with George her 'last university' and indeed it was educational and offered her an entry into the literary world. 

And dream realized, she does go on to write History.  I love publishing-world stories and all the anecdotes she shares a vivid and interesting and if her History books are equally as interesting as her memoir, I really must go in search for something soon.  I have barely told you anything and to me it all feels very disjointed, but if you enjoy memoirs, books on British history or politics, women's lives, coming-of-age stories in the 1930s and 40s onwards, I think I can fairly confidently press this books into your hands. 

Two little asides, that I found fascinating, but that don't quite fit in elsewhere in this post--Antonia was named for Willa Cather's My Antonia (how utterly cool is that--from a Nebraskan and great fan of Cather's novel), and I think I knew this, but during the 40s it was highly unusual for young people to travel after finishing school--impossible really as 'large' amounts of currency could not be taken into foreign countries--essentially prohibiting that travel abroad year (she got around it--as others did at the time--by becoming an exchange student). 

Antonia White had a very happy second marriage to Harold Pinter and wrote a memoir (I think it actually consists of diary entries) about their happy lives together that I will be looking for.  An absolutely lovely read.

A Careful Matron, I am Not!

I have no idea where I bought this book or when, but The Housekeeping Book of Susanna Whatman, introduced by Christina Hardyment is turning out to be quite the little gem.  Little indeed, since it is a slim sixty-page book that has all sorts of helpful advice for the 18th-century housewife.  I use the term loosely considering the housekeeping book was written by the lady of the manor for her servants!  I don't imagine women were called housewives back then, however since in the last quarter of the 1700s women certainly were not working outside the home.  I love books like this that show some aspect of life and how people lived so long ago.  And I am sure this is pretty accurate, too, since it is a primary resource more or less.  

It is interesting and very illuminating, too.  I already more or less knew this, but the book is just affirming how I would not then (and probably don't now either) fit the picture of respectable, genteel womanhood.  I would have frowningly been looked upon as a failure to my sex, I'm afraid.  I'll tell you more about the book next week, since I have a bit more to finish this weekend, but this is what would have been expected of a proper lady per a "Housekeeping" book early in the twentieth century.

"The modest virgin, the prudent  wife, and the careful matron are more more serviceable in life than petticoated philosophers, blustering heroines, or virago queans."

Blustering?  Well, now that just puts me in my place.  Do I perceive someone feeling a little inadequate?  Or maybe just a little too full of themselves and perhaps a little pompous?  It's always a little disconcerting, however, when another woman shares the same sentiments as her closed-minded male counterpart.  Marion Harland was a domestic expert born in Virginia and writing in the 1870s.  Here's her two cents:

"The chief end of woman is home-making.  After all the study of her capacities and capabilities, after all the proofs she has given of her power to rule the wide empire, master the abstruse sciences and write the great book, the final conclusion of the thinker is synonymous with the earlier judgement of nature.  Her first duty is to be a wife and mother and make a house.  Other walks are open to her if for any reason she is unable to fulfil the purpose of her being, but in so far as the opportunity to do this is denied to her, she is, in a sense, a FAILURE." (Modern Home Life, 1902).

My.  It would seem I am a FAILURE (Ms., oops Mrs. Harland's emphasis on the word by the way).  That's okay, though.  I can honestly say I do not feel deprived in the least.  I rather relish my freedom!  Dust bunnies may lurk beneath my bed and piles of books may accumulate where they shouldn't, but I feel in no way a failure because of this.

Teaser Tuesday: Mrs. Robinson (Again!)

I know I already shared a teaser from Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace just last week, but the more I read the more disturbed I get in thinking about a woman's situation in Victorian England.  It is both fascinating reading and slightly repellent.  I can only shake my head in dismay when reading some of the things I have read.  I can't help but share one more excerpt, which I shall not comment on.  It stands on its own and you can make up your own mind.  You will probably have a good idea just what I think about all this:

"The treatments for sexual monomania were various.  Some physicians, following the phrenologists, targeted the cerebellum: the Scottish alienist Sir Alexander Morison claimed to have cured an erotomaniac governess aged twenty-two by applying leeches to her shaven head, then douching the back of her skull with cold water.  Bennet recommended injecting the vagina with a pump syringe, and subjecting the whole body to hip baths, deep baths and showers.  Storer suggested that the sufferer should be treated with sponge baths, cold enemas and borax douches, refrain from sexual intercourse and literary pursuits, sleep on mattresses and pillows stuffed with hair, and abstain from meat and brandy.  Locock advised the application of electricity to the pelvis of the afflicted woman, or of leeches to her groin, labia, uterus or feet.  A London surgeon relieved at least one patient of her sexual feelings by removing her 'enlarged' clitoris, an operation reported in the Lancet in 1853."

I wonder what the pillows and mattresses stuffed with hair were supposed to do?  No wonder women went "mad".  Subjected to this sort of treatment I would go a little mad, too.  I find reading about the period really interesting and then thank my lucky stars to be born now rather than then.  Whatever would those Victorians think if they caught a glimpse at Fifty Shades of Grey and the movie and the spin-offs . . . 

I'm nearly finished reading.  Part of me wants to read something more about the period and part of me wants to choose something entirely different.  I am coming up to the last couple of chapters, including the verdict of the trial.  Dare I wish for a happier outcome for Mrs. Robinson?  I hope to write about the book soon.  There is certainly lots of interesting things to share with you!

Teaser Tuesday: Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace

I remember now why I don't keep a diary.  Granted, my life is pretty boring and I have no hidden crushes on married men that I would likely have a desire to write about, so maybe it wouldn't matter in any case.  Did I catch your attention?  Diaries.  Married men.  Desires to write about.  How could I pass up a book that claims to be a true-to-life Madame Bovary, a nonfiction tale chronicling a "scandalous trial that rocked Victorian England"? 

I have been trying to read more books from my own bookshelves and this one caught my eye over the weekend, Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady by Kate Summerscale.  Victorian England sounded appealing as a subject matter at the moment and I don't mind adding another nonfiction to my (rather poor this year) list of books read.  Besides, I've read and enjoyed Summerscale before with The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher.  She tells a good 'story' when it comes to this era.  And as nonfiction goes, I tend to be a very slow reader, but this reads very much like a novel. 

In 1858 English courts began granting divorces to the middle classes.  Previously only an an act of Parliament could sever a marriage (at least legally).  In June of that year a very scandalous case was brought forth.  Henry Robinson petitioned the court for divorce from his wife for committing adultery.  The main piece of evidence?  Her diary, in which she wrote about her secret longings and passions for a family friend, a married man.  It must have been quite juicy considering Gustave Flaubert's novel Madame Bovary had been banned from being published in England, yet poor Isabella Robinson's diary (nearly in its entirety) was being read out in court.  Talk about painful and humiliating!

I've only read the first few chapters of the book, which is lots of scene setting, and Summerscale is very gifted at scene setting.  We all know Victorian England's reputation for being an oppressive place, particularly for women.  Add to that the misinformation (well, based on what little they knew scientifically) Victorian had about the health and psyche of women, and this is a scandal just waiting to happen.  I say poor Isabella, and that's how I think of her at the moment anyway, though I suspect my opinion won't change much as I read on into the book.

Isabella Robinson was a widow and remarried.  It was not an especially happy marriage.  What money she had her husband demanded she turn over to him (her father had settled some on her in particular so she would not be completely at her husband's mercy, yet in the end she still was) and as the years pass she believes Henry married her only for her money.  She was a deeply unhappy wife and mother and began keeping a diary to be a "friend in loneliness and in sickness, a companion and confidant."  It is hard not to be sympathetic towards Isabella as my teaser will show:

"Isabella, like many nineteenth-century women, used her journal as a place in which to confess her weakness, her sadness and her sins.  In its pages she audited her behaviour and her thoughts; she grappled with her errors and tried to plot out a path to virtue.  Yet by channelling her strong and unruly feelings into this book, Isabella also created a record and a memory of those feelings.  She found herself telling a story, a serial in daily parts, in which she was the wronged and desperate heroine."

I think we all know where this is going to lead, but I am quite happy to let Summerscale be my guide in this journey.  I wonder what happens to a woman in this situation?  Simple divorce (well, nothing simple about it at that time) and the loss of her children to her husband?  Loss of her money.  What else?  Surely it wasn't a crime what she did, though it is surely a crime what happened to her.  I expect this will be a most illuminating (and likely maddening, too) read.  I am hoping to make quick work of this book, and indeed it is a page-turner.  I'll report back my findings!

My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me

Imagine growing up in a happy family but knowing you were adopted.  Then one day, out of the blue, while browsing in a bookstore you come across a book written by your birth mother and discover she is the daughter of a Nazi war criminal who was hung for his crimes.  This is what happened to Jennifer Teege, whose mother is German and father is Nigerian.  Being biracial means she would have been just the sort of person her grandfather would have murdered during the war.  She coauthored the book, My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers her Family's Nazi Past with Nikola Sellmair about her experiences.  While I am reluctant to say I 'enjoyed' reading this mixture of memoir, biography and history, it was very compelling. 

When Teege made this discovery it was utterly devastating.  She had always sensed there was something not quite right in her history.  Her mother gave her up for adoption when she was very young and they lost touch with each other.  I think she sensed this was a rejection by her mother and grappled with feelings of unworthiness and confusion, though she was not to learn until much later that her adoptive parents thought she would adjust much easier if ties were cut between the two families.  Teege was married and had children of her own when she learned that her grandfather was one of the most notorious war criminals, Amon Goeth, made even more infamous by the scene in the film Schindler's List where he stood on his balcony and shot Jews with a rifle as if for sport.

Teege had lived, worked and studied in Israel as a younger woman and loved the country and the people.  Some of her closest friends were Jewish and had lost family during the Holocaust.  How could she possibly reconcile her life now with her notorious grandfather, and not just that--her grandmother, whom she loved and had been very close to, not only lived with this man and had a daughter, but almost until the end of her life denied knowing what was happening despite living with Goeth close by the concentration camp he commanded.  How could she admit to her family and friends her own grandfather was one of the worst criminals of the war.  He had shown an utter lack of humanity and she is a direct descendant.  Dealing with this knowledge she had what amounts to a breakdown. 

This memoir chronicles how she found out about her history and how she has tried to "recover" from it.  It is also an exploration of her family.  She begins with Goeth and then in turn writes about her grandmother (Goeth's mistress), her mother (Goeth's and Ruth's child) and then her own life.  It was both disturbing and fascinating reading.  It's good to read about the perpetrators of these horrendous crimes in order to know and remember so that it cannot happen again (though time and again history repeats itself--just in different ways and in different places, but we still don't seem to learn the right lessons), but it is also painful reading.  It's painful to think that people ignored what was happening or excused it--particularly those who lived through it.  It's interesting to learn how second and third generation Germans dealt with the guilt and the feelings of betrayal and being betrayed.  I've always been curious how as a culture Germany has responded to history--what happened, and what was allowed to happen.  When does the guilt stop.  How is it studied in school now.  Someday I'll find a book about this.

For Teege it seems as though she has made peace with her history.  She was in touch with her mother, though it sounds as though they are somewhat estranged now.  Jennifer always felt closer to her grandmother, so it was especially hard to find out she was Goeth's mistress and deeply in love with him even after his death.  Jennifer's mother, Monika Knauss has battled her own demons and it sounds as though it took a long time to reject her notions of what could be excused or the many misperceptions she had about Jews.  There was a documentary made about her mother's wish to learn about her father called, Inheritance, which my library owns and I would like to watch at some point. 

I really liked the style in which the book was written.  It was coauthored by Jennifer Teege and Nikola Sellmair.  Often in a book like this the 'second' author's voice is just integrated into the main text.  Here the type changes when Jennifer speaks as opposed to Nikola.  Often Nikola would offer additional information or explanation, historical detail or would write about Jennifer and this discovery process as an observer.  I thought it worked really well and was nice to be able to distinguish voices and know where one left off and the other picked up.  Included is a bibliography with titles of books, films and websites used in research.  This was at times a really harrowing read, but a very worthwhile read, too. 

Reading the Spanish Civil War, Part 2 (& a giveaway)

I did say that Hell and Good Company: The Spanish Civil War and the World It Made by Richard Rhodes has captured my interest and attention in a variety of ways.  One good book almost always leads to another, especially a nonfiction book like this.  It is as much a social history as a straightforward history of the war.  I love the sort of nonfiction that is heavy on anecdotes and narrative and this is strong on both counts.  It also has an extensive bibliography which I have already started to comb for reading suggestions.  It is heavy on history and memoirs and there are even a few titles that I recognize as I have copies on my own shelves. 

One of the nice things about buying books (and not weeding them as regularly as I probably should) is having a ready-made personal library where I can often reach for a book on a number of different subjects.  I did a little survey of my own stacks to see what I have on hand and thought I'd share them here.  Some I've read and others I am now looking forward to picking up sooner rather than later.  Most of mine are novels where the war plays a prominent role or is something that weighs heavily on the story in the background or recent past. 

As always feel free to share a recommendation below.

Nada by Carmen Laforet (I wrote about it here) --  "One of the most important literary works of post-Civil War Spain, Nada is the semiautobiographical story of an orphaned young woman who leaves her small town to attend university in war-ravaged Barcelona."

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway -- "The story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to an antifascist guerilla unit in the mountains of Spain, it tells of loyalty and courage, love and defeat, and the tragic death of an ideal. In his portrayal of Jordan's love for the beautiful Maria and his superb account of El Sordo's last stand."

Winter in Madrid by C.J. Sansom (I wrote about it here) -- "September 1940: the Spanish Civil War is over, Madrid lies in ruin, while the Germans continue their march through Europe, and General Franco evades Hitler's request that he lead his broken country into yet another war. Into this uncertain world comes a reluctant spy for the British Secret Service, sent to gain the confidence of Sandy Forsyth, an old school friend turned shady Madrid businessman."

Death's Other Kingdom by Gamel Woolsey -- "A heart-rending account of a Spanish village torn apart by the coming of the Civil War - A rare humanist and female voice on a war which has otherwise been colonised by political commentary and male voices."  This is a Virago Modern Classic.

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (I shared a few teasers here and here) -- "Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer’s son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julián Carax. But when he sets out to find the author’s other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book Carax has written. In fact, Daniel may have the last of Carax’s books in existence. Soon Daniel’s seemingly innocent quest opens a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets--an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love."

A World Between Us by Lydia Syson (YA novel) -- "An epic romance set against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil WarSpain, 1936. Felix, a spirited young nurse, has travelled to Spain to help the cause of the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. But she is also following Nat, a passionate young man who has joined the International Brigades fighting Franco. And George - familiar George from home - is not far behind, in pursuit of Felix ..."  Decided I had to start something and this is the one . . .

The Starched Blue Sky of Spain by Josephine Herbst -- This memoir contains for autobiographical works including the titular essay -- "an explorative meditation on Herbst's life as a radical; and the title selection, a poignant and lucid evocation of the author's experience during the Spanish Civil War."

Death of a Nationalist by Rebecca Pawel -- "Madrid 1939. Carlos Tejada Alonso y León is a Sergeant in the Guardia Civil, a rank rare for a man not yet thirty, but Tejada is an unusual recruit. The bitter civil war between the Nationalists and the Republicans has interrupted his legal studies in Salamanca. Second son of a conservative Southern family of landowners, he is an enthusiast for the Catholic Franquista cause, a dedicated, and now triumphant, Nationalist."

The Time in Between by Maria Duenas -- "With the Spanish Civil War brewing in Madrid, Sira leaves her mother and her fiancé, impetuously following her handsome lover to Morocco. However, she soon finds herself abandoned, penniless, and heartbroken in an exotic land. Among the odd collection of European expatriates trapped there by the worsening political situation back on the Continent, Sira reinvents herself by turning to the one skill that can save her: her gift for creating beautiful clothes."

Guernica by Dave Boling -- "In 1935, Miguel Navarro finds himself on the wrong side of the Spanish Nationalists, so he flees to Guernica, the most ancient town of the Basque region. In the midst of this idyllic, isolated bastion of democratic values, Miguel finds more than a new life-he finds a love that not even war, tragedy or death can destroy.  The bombing of Guernica was a devastating experiment in total warfare by the German Luftwaffe in the run-up to World War II . For the Basques, it was an attack on the soul of their ancient nation. History and fiction merge seamlessly in this beautiful novel about the resilience of family, love, and tradition in the face of hardship."

Savage Coast by Muriel Rukeyser -- "As a young reporter in 1936, Muriel Rukeyser traveled to Barcelona to witness the first days of the Spanish Civil War. She turned this experience into an autobiographical novel so forward thinking for its time that it was never published. Recently discovered in her archive, this lyrical work charts her political and sexual awakening as she witnesses the popular front resistance to the fascist coup and falls in love with a German political exile who joins the first international brigade."

As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning by Laurie Lee -- "For Laurie Lee, as for much of the world, 1936 was the end of innocence. Lee recalls the first great journey of his young life, in which he walks through Spain and becomes entangled in the passionate, bloody struggle that was the Spanish Civil War. This memoir, written with the excitement and wonder of a twenty-year-old, is also infused with the prescience of a young adult who sees what lies ahead."

I am pressing on with Hell and Good Company and hope to finish very soon.  As you can see I will have lots to explore after I turn that last page.

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Simon & Schuster has kindly offered to provide two copies of Hell and Good Company to two readers here.  The giveaway is open to U.S. readers.  If you leave your name and email in the comments section I will draw out two names this coming Saturday (always happy to have recommendations, but not necessary if you want to throw your name in the hat!).

I wish I had a copy of the book to send to each person who dropped their name in the hat--unfortunately I've just got two to give away.  I used the Random Number Generator to choose two numbers and 1 and 4 were the winners.  Thanks very much to everyone for playing along!