Candleford Green – Flora Thompson

So I come to the end of my relationship with Flora Thompson. This third entry follows Laura’s life as assistant to the postmistress at Candleford Green. Though  Laura – now in her middle teens – is a more distinct personality, one with opinions, she’s still mostly an observer of others. In these vivid portrayals, through all three books, we learn not just about individuals, but how they fit into society. That society provided for basic human needs, such as a sense of community and pride of craftsmanship. It’s presented without sentimentality, but its virtues still emerge. Thompson ends the trilogy with a thought-provoking chapter entitled “Change in the Village.” The influence of the Industrial Revolution was reaching into rural England, altering people’s way of life. All begins to change: the way they farm, the houses they live in, the clothes they wear. And, most importantly, their values. Some of these changes are for the better, but, for me, a strong sense of loss prevailed. As, it is clear, it did for Flora. She would always be bound to the world that would vanish – it formed who she was – and when she was in her sixties she felt the need to recreate it. That she did it so well is her lasting tribute. *

In Pursuit of the English – Doris Lessing

The action begins when Doris leaves South Africa for London (the time is 1950) and rents a flat in a rundown rooming house. Three characters stand out: Flo and Dan, a married couple who own the house, and one of the tenants, Rose. All are vivid, mostly emerging through the words they speak; Lessing catches the working class vernacular exceedingly well. It’s Rose who is the most developed, and she’s a very appealing character; on one level, the book is about the friendship that develops between her and Doris. But, though the book is in the first person, Doris stays in the background; we learn little about her. She has a son – eight years old, I believe – who lives with her, but he’s mentioned, in passing, maybe a half dozen times; he’s basically non-existent. I don’t see Lessing as a negligent mother; she was just not writing about herself or her role as mother. She’s primarily a recorder of the words and actions of others. At about the halfway point the mood of the book changes. It had seemed rambunctious, often humorous, with a sense of comradery prevailing. Then it grew grim, even sordid. What was colorful became murky. The humor was still present, but it involved such human emotions as meanness and greed. Problems lurking in these lives gained dominance, and it took an effort for me to adjust. I can’t imagine that Lessing thought she was describing the English people as a whole (as the title implies); she was dealing with a strata of society. Since her bio corresponds to the events in the book (which in some versions is given the subtitle of “A Documentary”), were her characters real people she got to know? If so – since many are depicted in a highly unflattering way – what about a libel suit? She actually addresses this concern in a dialogue near the end in which an odious fellow proposes that she write a book in which he’s a thinly disguised character, and she has him doing odious things. He would then sue her publisher for libel, and, he assures her, their insurer would settle out of court. They would pay up, and he and Doris could split a hundred nicker. Hmm. Maybe Lessing thought that no one in the book was likely to read it. As was, apparently, the case with the people at Popular Library, which put out the paperback version. They managed to get everything wrong. The cover photos are wildy misleading, their description of what the book is about is way off base, and the text itself is a mess, with many typos and misspellings and wrong words substituted for the right ones. I wonder if Lessing would care. This was a phase in her writing she would turn away from, and go on to more ambitious undertakings (and a Nobel Prize). A shame, for this waywardly structured book delivers a look at life that kept me interested and involved.

The Lemur – Benjamin Black (pen name)

A crime novella that’s a dud and ends with a thud. It’s literary in style, set in New York, and full of the trappings of extreme wealth. This probably was an effort to appeal to its original audience – it was first serialized in the New York Times Magazine, whose sophisticated readers no doubt recognized the brand names of ultra expensive watches, clothes, etc. But enough about this inconsequential book – let’s talk about John Banville, the guy behind that pen name. He’s an esteemed author, the winner of numerous awards, including the Booker. I haven’t read anything by him, but apparently he’s difficult (he’s described as “the heir to Proust, via Nabokov”). So why is he slumming in the crime novel genre? Most likely for the money. Crime novels sell, literary ones don’t. And I see, in his Wiki entry, no mention of his teaching at a MFA program, where most literary writers wind up. In his back cover photo Mr. Black looks grim and tough, though it may be depression. The book was never published in hard cover, just a Picador paperback. I’m always amused by typos. Here’s a sentence: “You’ve certainly upset, Granddad.” Of course, there should be no comma; the speaker is not addressing his Granddad, he’s talking about him. But, in this book, who cares?

Happening – Annie Ernaux (French)

Ernaux won the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature. I found only one of her many books in my local library, and it was shelved in the non-fiction stacks. But the copyright page describes it as fiction. I can understand the confusion. Ernaux writes about herself – Happening, which was published in 2000, is about an abortion she had thirty-five years prior to the writing, when she was twenty-three. Her style is flat, devoid of embellishments. It doesn’t read as a novel – it’s more an exploration of a situation. We do get the emotions of Annie as a young woman (it’s written in the first person), but there’s a clinical feel to Ernaux’s approach. She even includes sections in parentheses, in which her adult self makes observations. Abortion was illegal in France at the time the events take place, and doctors – who were subject to imprisonment – wanted no part of it. From people Annie knows she finds little help, little understanding, little kindness. The impression I got was of a lonely young woman searching in a bleak, uncaring world. She even attempts to terminate the pregnancy using knitting needles. She’s finally put in touch with an old woman who performs “back street” abortions. It doesn’t go smoothly, and we get the unpleasant details. Ernaux never tries to make her younger self endearing. At no point does she refer to what she’s carrying inside her as a baby or a child; its potential as a human being never seems to enter her mind – it is only a foetus. Also, the father is not interested in helping her, but she had unprotected sex with someone for whom she had no emotional ties. The  book can be taken as a denunciation of the French anti-abortion law, but as such it is belated – when it was published the law had been revoked many years ago. Ernaux had a purely personal agenda: she set out to recreate – to relive – an experience that had great significance for her, and on those terms she succeeds. But do you want to accompany her?

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings: Sojourner at Cross Creek – Elizabeth Silverthorne

A good biography by someone sympathetic to its subject. Not that Rawlings’ flaws are glossed over (her over-drinking, her black moods during which she could say hurtful things), but all-in-all she was a remarkable woman. What I will concentrate on in this review is how, after many years of submissions and form rejections, she attained success as a writer. It began with her moving to Cross Creek, a remote area of the Florida Scrub. She fell in love with this world, and proceeded to learn about it – the animals, the plants, and, most of all, the people. Marjorie immersed herself in how the “Crackers” thought – their values, their outlook on life – and she kept notebooks in which she transcribed how they talked. She interacted with them as a neighbor; her house was not unlike the ones they lived in. She hunted, grew crops as they did. She could kill a rattlesnake, butcher a pig. So, when she turned to writing about the residents of Cross Creek, there was an authenticity. She was thirty-five when she submitted a story set in that region to a New York magazine – Scribners. It was a life-changing choice. A sophisticated audience was interested in the exotic world which, in Rawlings’ capable hands, was most definitely a real world. The story was passed on to the chief editor at Scribners, Maxwell Perkins. Max Perkins – the premier editor of his era. He wrote Marjorie, telling her that he thought the story was excellent, but he had many suggestions for revision. She found his suggestions sound, and made the changes. So began a relationship – and a friendship – that lasted until Perkins’ death. Marjorie would, under his tutelage, produce two enduring works – The Yearling and Cross Creek. She was introduced to just about everybody of importance in the literary world. But the negative aspect was that she developed a dependence on Max. After his death she would produce one novel, The Sojourner, but it wasn’t up to the standards of the previous books. She went into an emotional and physical slump, and would die at age fifty-seven (four years after Max’s passing). I’ll close with an excerpt from a letter she wrote to her secretary while working on Sojourner: “I should not be in such anguish if Max were here. He could have told me long ago whether or not I’m on the right track, and there’s absolutely no one else I could allow to see unfinished work . . . There’s no one I trust for an honest answer as I trusted Max . . . I have lost all faith in my creative ability.” (Max and Marjorie is a collection of the correspondence between the two, and it includes nearly 700 letters, notes and wires.)

Over to Candleford – Flora Thompson

If you appreciated Lark Rise (as I did) and grew to like and care about Laura (as I did), you won’t find this sequel disappointing. Thompson does something akin to adjusting a telescope. In the first book we get a broad view; in this one she turns the knob and we get a closer look. Most significantly, Laura emerges as a more developed individual. But this is not an autobiography or a memoir. Thompson obviously had no desire to reveal intimate details about her family, and she only touches on her own feelings. We do get to know the mother much better, but the father stays in the background (though when he emerges he is kindly toward Laura). We learn more about life in the hamlet of Lark Rise, but gradually the locale shifts to Candleford. It’s a bustling market town where Laura has relatives with whom she stays for long periods of time. She meets and develops a friendship with the postmistress, who also owns and runs a blacksmith shop in the neighboring village of Candleford Green. When Laura reaches the age of thirteen (after her meager schooling ends) it’s time for her to get a job and leave home. Laura’s mother wants her to become a nursing assistant, but she recognizes that Laura as no inclination in that direction. And her needlework is so poor that she can’t be an apprentice to a dressmaker. What to do with Laura? At this point a propitious offer comes: the postmistress needs an assistant. So, in a final chapter entitled “Exit Laura,” she moves to Candleford Green. The virtues of this book are in the lovely writing and the acuteness of observation and perception. Thompson possessed a gift: when she describes a person they come alive, and the world she creates was made real to me. I look forward to the last instalment in the trilogy. *

Lark Rise – Flora Thompson

What is this book – besides wonderful? It’s not a novel, not a memoir, not a sociological study, though all these elements exist. What seems predominant is the latter – its recreation of an English farming hamlet in the mid 1800s. I believe that Thompson’s intent was to bring to life a world that had passed away. But it was her world, the one she grew up in, so there’s a personal aspect. And the way she presents it to us – its homes, the work of men and women, the games children play (and much more) – flows like fiction. I found this to be a unique and wholly successful venture by an author who left school at age twelve. What interest do I have in her subject? Well, it turns out that I have great interest, for Thompson’s focus is always on human beings; there are no facts that aren’t linked with people. Her main character, Laura, is rarely an active participant in an event, and doesn’t often express an emotion or give an opinion. Probably, in these 230 pages, you could gather the times she emerges as a personality and it would amount to maybe a dozen pages. Yet – and this is remarkable – she exists, I knew her. Her brother Edmund (which was the real name of Thompson’s brother) appears even less frequently, yet we develop feelings for him because we get to know Laura’s feelings for him. She doesn’t present Lark Rise in an idyllic light, nor with rancor – there’s good and bad. It’s a place where poverty is a fact of life, but the underlying message may be that people make the best of the world they find themselves in. This first book was written when the author was sixty-three, so there’s the perspective of time (and some nostalgia). She died eight years later, after writing two shorter sequels that continue the story. I need to touch on the ending of Lark Rise, which shows Thompson’s ability to quietly produce an effect. The last sentence is stunning, in the sense that it stuns – or moves – the reader. At least it did this one. I should also note that this book was a “browsing the stacks” discovery (which is something I’ve been doing all my reading life). I pull from the stacks a book by an author I’ve never heard of, and read the first few sentences, then a few sentences from a random page. Good, inviting prose? What does the summary say? Is it a subject I have some interest in? If so, I take it home and give it a chance. I’ve found some real gems this way. *

At Bertram’s Hotel – Agatha Christie

The “About the Author” page states that only Shakespeare and the Bible have outsold Christie. I won’t be adding to the billions. This is my third go at her work, and it’s the last; for a diversion I’ll have to look elsewhere. Christie writes smooth, clear prose, and she’s good with dialogue, but in Hotel her plot is weak. And scattered. The ending – the solution – is long, unconvincing (the hotel a den of master criminals?) and foolish (there are too many “Ah ha!”moments). It’s deemed a Miss Marple Mystery, but she plays a minor role; a Chief-Inspector Davy does the heavy lifting. His persistence was the only interesting thing in the book.

Crazy Horse – Larry McMurtry

This is one of those short Penguin Lives biographies. They all have a portrait of the subject on the cover, but in this instance it’s a barely distinguishable face. Which is fitting, for no image of Crazy Horse exists. And there are few verifiable facts about his character or deeds. McMurtry states at the outset that “any study of Crazy Horse will be, of necessity, an exercise in assumption, conjecture and surmise.” The approach he takes is to offer claims while identifying them as being unsubstantiated; many he dismisses as outright false. Even Crazy Horse’s death, which was a public event at Fort Robinson, contains so many conflicting accounts that it’s impossible to get at the truth (beyond the fact that he died from a bayonet wound). The role he played in the Battle of Little Bighorn is unknown. His status among the Indians is not clear; Crazy Horse was no head chief whose word was obeyed (a role he most likely, given his solitary nature, would have rejected). I finished this book not having any clear idea of the man or his accomplishments. Yet an overview of the tortured relationship between the white settlers and the Indians emerges. Many whites wanted them exterminated. Actually, the life of the Plains Indians did end with what was close to an extermination: the vast herds of buffalo they depended on were nearly wiped out by “sportsmen.” The Indians were no dupes, nor were they noble. And they could be a formidable war force. But many recognized the inevitable – the whites were too strong, too numerous – and tried to bargain for terms that were at least acceptable. Promises were made by the whites, sincere ones, but the higher-ups in Washington revoked them. I’m quite sure, from what I gather about Crazy Horse, that he would not have adapted to reservation life, so maybe his death was a blessing. I have respect for what McMurtry has done here, and I also appreciate his giving credit on several occasions to Evan Connell’s excellent nonfiction account of the struggle for the Great Plains, Son of the Morning Star.