This chatty, conversational children's novel about a young orphan girl who goes from one set of relatives to another set and blossoms with the change is a complete delight. It's another one I had never read as a child myself but picked up because of the Shelf Discovery Challenge. Elizabeth Ann is a small, somewhat sickly, very timid child who lives with her Aunts Harriet and Frances, neither of whom are actually aunts but are related more distantly than that. Aunt Frances, who has the main care of Elizabeth Ann loves Elizabeth Ann dearly but fosters in her a very dependent relationship. She is quite fond of declaring that she "understands" this little girl left in her care. When Aunt Harriet suddenly takes sick and must go away, needing Aunt Frances, who is actually Aunt Harriet's daughter, to attend to her health, Elizabeth Ann is sent to yet more distant relatives who, not really wanting to be responsible for her care, in turn send her to her mother's aunt's family. This upheaval and plan strikes fear and shuddering into the little girl as she has heard these cousins of hers disparaged as horrible for as long as she can remember. But lo and behold, when she is finally with the "horrid Putney cousins," she comes out of her shell and starts to relish life instead of jumping at her own shadow. She learns independence and resourcefulness under the laconic and easy care of these country-living folks. Rechristened Betsy, she is expected to help around the house and to master her own fears. She finds sympathy when she needs it but is not coddled, and stops thinking that her every thought and action is of utmost importance to Cousin Ann, Aunt Abigail, and Uncle Henry. Over the months of living with these cousins, Betsy grows into a sturdy, healthy child who learns much of life and of another way to love and be loved. Written in 1917 and set in that decade, the slower, simpler way of life at the time is now nostalgic for readers. The characters are appealing and wonderful and Fisher manages to show that Betsy is happier and healthier with the Putney cousins without disparaging Aunt Frances and her more fearful, fluttery parenting style. This is a sweet book and one that I'm glad I finally made the acquaintance of.
During a trip to Ireland, Norman Huntley, lay-clerk chorister and student organist, and his mechanic friend Henry stop in to tour a less than impressive church, as much to escape the rain as for any interest in the edifice itself. But on the tour given them by the sexton, they not only feign interest, they create out of whole cloth an elderly friend of theirs who had once been an intimate of the late, beloved vicar. Not content to throw out a made-up name (Miss Connie Hargreaves), they also endow their creation with any number of ridiculous eccentricities and oddments. The farce entertains them long after they leave the church and on a whim, they send a letter, inviting Miss Hargreaves to visit Norman in his home town of Conford, to the hotel they've decided she always removes to for that month of the year. As the entire thing is started as a lark, it is a little startling when Norman receives a telegram telling him when to expect Miss Hargreaves. It's beyond startling when Miss Hargreaves actually turns up, exactly as Norman and Henry have imagined her.
Miss Hargreaves, as she's imagined, starts to cause all sorts of stress for Norman within his family, in his job, and especially with his girlfriend. Worse yet, whenever there's a disturbance in the town, Norman can almost be assured that his Miss Hargreaves is behind it. And no one believes Norman when he tries continuously to explain that he made this strange, elderly woman up. Even Henry thinks that Norman has pulled a fast one on him. The only person who might believe Norman is his dreamy, distracted father, who seems to agree that the power of creation is enormous right before he drifts back off into his own world.
Norman is torn between being proud and slightly fond of his creation and wanting her to disappear entirely. But because he can't help but preen a bit, Miss Hargreaves feels snubbed and gaining in power, starts to create her own story, shucking off Norman's control entirely. And that is when bad things start to excelerate for Norman.
When I first read the description of this one, I was intrigued by the different sounding treatment of the Pygmalion myth and thought it was likely to be a gentle, sweet, and charming story (not that the original was either, mind you). But right from the beginning there is a sense of menace as Norman alludes to his being suspected of a crime despite there being no evidence. And as Miss Hargreaves grows and changes throughout the story, the sinister sense grows and certainly outpaces any light heartedness that tried to peek its head up. The tension builds, desperation becomes palpable, and the power of creation is acknowledged in this beautifully clad Bloomsbury Group re-issue of the 1939 novel. If I had had different expectations going into the novel, I might have liked it more than I did as it is really well written, starting out blurried and slowly coming into focus to shock the reader. I am still sorry it wasn't what I had expected but it's hardly fair to judge the book on my dashed expectations and I think that many other readers will appreciate it quite a lot.
Did you read this one when you were younger? I thought I had but the fact that I didn't remember it at all makes me think now that I didn't. Did I miss out on something special by not reading it then? I'll never know. But I sure didn't find that something special reading it now as an adult, which was a disappointment.
Maggie and Liz have been friends forever, despite the fact that Liz is pretty and popular and Maggie is fat and awkward and mostly just heor worships Liz. Liz insists on setting Maggie up for double dates when she and boyfriend Sean go out. Dennis, Sean's equivalent to a Maggie although he's gangling and nerdy rather than fat and awkward, is Maggie's date and neither one of them finds all that much appealing about the other but they continue to go out with Liz and Sean. Maggie and Sean, in the meantime, are in love and have to buck their parents to continue to see each other. Their ups and downs dictate in large part the ebb and flow of the fledgling, conflicted, but finally developing relationship between Maggie and Dennis.
Occasional notes passed between the friends or couples are interspersed between the chapters, allowing for Zindel to dispose of large chunks of time in the narration. This isn't entirely successful as it means that the disagreements and avoidances between the friends remains superficial. And there's very little narrative getting from Liz and Sean happy, albeit with Sean, the typical teenaged boy, pressuring Liz to have sex, to the rather predictable denouement of the ending. And while Maggie seems more the focus of the book than the other three characters, Liz and Sean provide the (obvious) object lesson here in a fairly heavy-handed manner. And frankly neither of them end up being terribly appealing characters. Liz is hard to like from the outset and while her unplanned pregnancy and subsequent rejection by Sean is supposed to inspire pity, it doesn't. Sean likewise doesn't grab the reader's empathy despite his frigid and emotionally barren upbringing so his ultimate buckling under to his father's advice leaves the reader feeling a rush of indigestion. And as it's completely in character, Sean comes off as just other unlikeable character in this book of many unlikeables.
The book is dated (published in the 60's) and honestly I can't see it having been terribly interesting to kids of my generation, much less the more sophisticated kids of today. And lest anyone say that society has changed for the worse, Zindel's portrait of society in the late 60's is pretty darn bleak too. Stereotypical characters, superficial plot, and an obvious, belaboured lesson. Do we not give our kids credit for being more intelligent than this? I really didn't enjoy this but I know it is a favorite of many so perhaps I missed something vital here.
The story of four sisters from Osaka, two married and two unmarried, in the years immediately leading up to WWII, this is the portrait of a time coming to a close and an aristocracy already in its twilight. The narrative here is slow and elegiac. Nothing much happens in the infinitesimal crumbling of the Makioka sisters' way of life but the novel is beautifully rendered nevertheless. The two unmarried younger sisters live not with their oldest sister, as would usually be the case, but with their second sister, Sachiko and her husband and daughter. The youngest sister, Taeko (or Koi-san), cannot marry until the thrid sister, Yukiko marries and so Sachiko and oldest sister Tsuruko want very much to find a match for the self-effacing but somehow stubborn Yukiko. Through the several years of the narrative, matches are found and discarded for various reasons. But with each new match, the prospective groom is somehow a less and less appealing prospect, mirroring the decline of the once great Makioka family name.
While the family dithers about a match for Yukiko and she herself stays quiet about the prospect, younger sister Taeko is being seen about town with the man she ran away with several years prior, defying decorum and jeopardizing Yukiko's chances for marriage. Frustrated by the protracted wait for Yukiko to marry so she herself can marry, Koi-san quietly goes about running her own life, in spite of her older sisters' admonitions and cautions. Meanwhile scenes of placid, unseeing domesticity intrude on almost every page as Sachiko sits thinking or crying or resting in her home with only the occasional company of her young daughter to enliven the room.
The three younger sisters are very well fleshed out and individual in this most domestic of novels although the reader's sympathy with each of the characters changes as the novel progresses. Japan during the "China Incident" is exquisitely rendered although very little of the gathering political storm clouds penetrate the novel's pages since the four sisters are mostly ignorant of the coming calamity, and indeed of anything much beyond their own sphere. The writing is luxurious and fulsome despite the fact that so much of it chronicles the ennui of the aristocratic housewife. This is most assuredly not the novel for people who want to have action in their novels. Almost nothing whatsoever happens here and yet somehow Tanizake has managed to make it an important and weighty nothing. Written during the Second World War, this shows perhaps most clearly, the traditions and the propriety that Japan stood to lose so clearly, really had already lost by the time of the writing. Full of faded beauty, stagnant hopes, and honor-bound duty, ancient and new, this is a tour de force.
I like the Decades Challenge a lot, not least because I have managed to complete it the past two go-rounds. It also helps to remind me that the books coming out on a daily basis are not the only things worth reading. The older books may, in some ways, even be more worthy as they've stood the test of time in a way that the current publishing crop hasn't. And so I've made a not very comprehensive list of the books on my shelves that would fit each decade listed. I will be doing my very best to read at least one of the books listed from each decade from the 1900's to the 1990's. I could find an undiscovered gem, one that has long languished on the shelves unread and unappreciated. And that really, is why I love this challenge.
My potentials list:
1990’s The Folks That Live on the Hill by Kingsley Amis or Regeneration by Pat Barker or Wild Swans by Jung Chang
1980’s Arabian Nights and Days by Naguib Mahfouz, or A Far Cry From Kensington by Muriel Spark or And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer
1970's The Spectator Bird by Wallace Stegner or Grendel by John Gardner or Ragtime by E. L. Doctrow or The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch or My Name Is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok
1960’s The Golden Spur by Dawn Powell or Mr. Bridge by Evan Connell or One Fat Englishman by Kingsley Amis or Get Home Free by John Clellon Holmes
1950’s A Question of Upbringing by Anthony Powell or Bath Tangle by Georgette Heyer or The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa or Belles on Their Toes by Frank Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey or Some Tame Gazelle by Barbara Pym or Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym or Bitter Lemons by Lawrence Durrell or Lie Down in Darkness by William Styron
1940’s The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham or The Locust’s Have No King by Dawn Powell or Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House by Eric Hodgins or The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
1930’s Remembering Laughter by Wallace Stegner, Hitty: Her First Hundred Years by Rachel Field or Swallow and Amazons by Arthur Ransome or Ali and Nino by Kurban Said or Mr. Popper’s Penguins by Richard and Florence Atwater
1920’s The Bride’s House by Dawn Powell or Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos or the Emily books by L.M. Montgomery or The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton
1910’s Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham or The Reef by Edith Wharton or Seventeen by Booth Tarkington
1900’s The Railway Children by Edith Nesbit, The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy, The Touchstone by Edith Wharton
If you know of any outstanding book from any of these decades, feel free to add them in the comments as I'm sure I will forever be amending this list and I'd hate to miss out on your newly-discovered, older gems.
This chatty, conversational children's novel about a young orphan girl who goes from one set of relatives to another set and blossoms with the change is a complete delight. It's another one I had never read as a child myself but picked up because of the Shelf Discovery Challenge. Elizabeth Ann is a small, somewhat sickly, very timid child who lives with her Aunts Harriet and Frances, neither of whom are actually aunts but are related more distantly than that. Aunt Frances, who has the main care of Elizabeth Ann loves Elizabeth Ann dearly but fosters in her a very dependent relationship. She is quite fond of declaring that she "understands" this little girl left in her care. When Aunt Harriet suddenly takes sick and must go away, needing Aunt Frances, who is actually Aunt Harriet's daughter, to attend to her health, Elizabeth Ann is sent to yet more distant relatives who, not really wanting to be responsible for her care, in turn send her to her mother's aunt's family. This upheaval and plan strikes fear and shuddering into the little girl as she has heard these cousins of hers disparaged as horrible for as long as she can remember. But lo and behold, when she is finally with the "horrid Putney cousins," she comes out of her shell and starts to relish life instead of jumping at her own shadow. She learns independence and resourcefulness under the laconic and easy care of these country-living folks. Rechristened Betsy, she is expected to help around the house and to master her own fears. She finds sympathy when she needs it but is not coddled, and stops thinking that her every thought and action is of utmost importance to Cousin Ann, Aunt Abigail, and Uncle Henry. Over the months of living with these cousins, Betsy grows into a sturdy, healthy child who learns much of life and of another way to love and be loved. Written in 1917 and set in that decade, the slower, simpler way of life at the time is now nostalgic for readers. The characters are appealing and wonderful and Fisher manages to show that Betsy is happier and healthier with the Putney cousins without disparaging Aunt Frances and her more fearful, fluttery parenting style. This is a sweet book and one that I'm glad I finally made the acquaintance of.
