My Reading Month - October

Better late than never - I hope - here is my October list.

Last month I was given some cordless headphones, and they have revolutionised my life. I walk a great deal, and have now been able to listen to audiobooks as I wander the country lanes or sit beside the river, contemplating the heron waiting under the opposite bank. My usual source for these books is the excellent BBC Sounds, and in October I enjoyed three books:

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, which I read for the monthly Six Degrees of Separation book challenge, was wonderful. I had only ever read (and loved) Daisy Miller before - my hand has hovered over other James novels on my shelves, but I've never felt quite up to any of them. The Turn of the Screw is about a governess who takes a job at a remote country house, Bly, where she is to teach two small children, Flora and Miles. Her employer, the children's uncle, lives in London and makes it clear that he does not want to hear anything from her once she has started her work.  

Mystery surrounds the fate of her predecessor, Miss Jessel, though the housekeeper eventually reveals that she and another former employee, Peter Quint, had an illicit relationship and are now dead. The governess begins to see an unknown man and woman in various locations on the estate, and comes to believe that these are the ghosts of Jessel and Quint, and that Quint in particular is somehow controlling Flora and Miles.

James is a master of atmosphere, and here we are soon permanently uneasy, never knowing exactly what is going on. Is Bly really haunted by these two evil spirits, or is the governess imagining things - is she in fact going mad?  There are hints at her sexual frustration, but there are also strong suggestions that Jessel and Quint really are having a malevolent influence on Miles in particular.  And why has the children's uncle cut himself off so completely from them, entrusting their supervision entirely to a housekeeper and an as yet untried and unknown governess? It's a story that leaves you questioning your own judgement. The narrators, Clare Corbett and Sam Dale, are excellent. 

My second audio book was Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton. Again I had persistently shied away from Wharton; I thought she would be dull, old fashioned and serious. Well, Ethan Frome is certainly serious, but unlike James, Wharton does not write convoluted sentences - the story cracks along, and this is another tale in which you never quite know whom to support. It's set in the fictitious town of Starkfield, Massachusets, in the early part of the 20th century. Ethan Frome is an impoverished, lame, farmer, scratching a living in the bleak winter countryside. At the beginning of the book he offers to act as driver to the narrator, who is in the area on business. When a blizzard makes travel to the narrator's lodgings impossible, Frome volunteers to put him up at the farm overnight. At he enters the house, the narrator hears a woman's voice calling out. The story then switches to the third person, and gradually explains the events of  Frome's life. As well as the plot itself - which is gripping - Wharton gives the reader a real sense of what life was like in a remote agricultural community over a hundred years ago. In this superlative novella the land, the light and the weather become characters;

'Here and there a farmhouse stood, far back among the fields, mute and cold as a gravestone.'

'The winter morning was as clear as crystal, the sunrise burned red in a pure sky, the shadows in the rim of the wood-lot were darkened blue, and beyond the white and scintillating fields patches of far off forest hung like smoke.'

Small incidents resonate; a broken dish takes on huge significance, a dead cucumber vine 'dangled from the porch like the crepe streamer tied to the door for a death.'

I would probably never have read this book if it hadn't been for BBC Sounds; its Drama section is stuffed with all manner of books, classic and modern, and I do recommend it. The reader, who does a very good job, is Joseph Ayre.

My third audiobook was John Buchan's The Thirty Nine Steps. As one might imagine, this is very much a story of its time - there's plenty of sexism, racism and probably a lot of other isms, so you do have to take it as it comes. It is also a fast-paced tale of spies and subterfuge, with the hero, Robert Hannay, rushing up and down the country, from London to Scotland and back again, in his attempt to thwart German attempts to steal British plans for the (1914-18) war that is about to happen. If you consider the actual plot, the number of coincidences and unlikely turns of events make it all a bit ridiculous. Its strength for us now is, I think, at least partly in the characterisation; the hungover Scottish road mender, the naive but well intentioned political candidate, and Hannay himself, who is clearly loving every minute of this Boy's Own story. Buchan called The Thirty Nine Steps the first of his 'shockers' - adventures in which the events are unlikely and the reader is only just able to believe that they have happened. The narrator was Kenny Blyth, another excellent reader.

My 'real' books in October started with another tale of adventure and excitement, Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days. I had this one on my #projectplaces stack, so thought I'd give it a go, and in fact it was a lot more fun than I'd anticipated. Wealthy Phileas Fogg, a man of fastidious habits and routines, bets his friends a large sum of money that he can circumnavigate the world in 80 days and be back at the Reform Club in London in time to claim his winnings. He and his new manservant, Passepartout, set off on the boat train to France, and the rest of the book recounts their numerous adventures.  While Phileas has no real interest in seeing any of the countries he passes through, Passepartout wants to explore everywhere, and gets into a fair few scrapes in the course of his excursions. Fogg is also being pursured by Mr Fix, a detective who is convinced Fogg is a fugitive bank robber. Various problems with unbuilt railway lines, bison on the tracks, opium dens, crumbling bridges, missed connections, the rescue of an Indian widow about to undergo sati, and an attack by Sioux warriors, all contrive to delay the travellers, who finally arrive in London five minutes late. Or do they? This is a great read and I can see why it is the most acclaimed of Verne's works.

I was disappointed by two of my October books. I've enjoyed many of Katie Fforde's romances, but I found A French Affair dull and predictable, the two main characters both unappealing and unconvincing. The story is about two sisters who inherit - from that exciting Bohemian aunt that we all have in the background (don't we?), one who used to hang out with the likes of Mick Jagger, as all Bohemian aunts evidently do - a stall in a Cotswolds antiques centre. The place is run by grouchy-but-good-looking Matthew, who - of course - has Secrets, plus a demanding ex-wife. Aunt Rainey has - surprise! - also dictated that Matthew should teach the women the antiques business. One sister is an arty stay-at-home Mum, who - of course - lives in marital bliss with her arty husband and their perfect blond twins. They have no money but manage to have a delightful shabby chic cottage in one of the most expensive areas of England because, as we all know, you can pay with fresh air if you're arty enough...  The other sister is a burnt-out PR woman from London. After a disastrous break-up the last thing she wants is romance. I think you can see where this is heading, and I'm really not against a predictable story if I like the characters, indeed it can be very comforting, BUT the sad fact is that I couldn't like any of these people and just did not care if the French House went bust or not. Perhaps I just wasn't in the right mood.

The other book that left me unimpressed was Dornford Yates Blind Corner. I think I should probably stop reading these inter-war crime classics; their almost total focus on the facts - times, dates, the operation of car engines, etc - and lack of character development just does not cut the mustard for me. Blind Corner is even more obsessed with tiny details than most; some rich and bored young men accompany an ex-spy on a mission to find some buried treasure before a bunch of low life criminals get there first. The treasure is locked up in a chamber deep below the water line of a well on an Austrian estate. This could have been quite an exciting plot, but the pages and pages of tedious prose about the measurements the men take to ascertain the location of the chamber, the calculations they make to check their suppositions, and the rotas they work out for their excavations, are beyond boring. And as this was written in 1927, we are expected to accept the premise that it is fine for posh people to find and keep other people's property, but not at all fine for the criminals to do so, mainly because they didn't go to Eton. Alan Bennett apparently called these books (for there are several sequels); 

'part of that school of Snobbery with Violence that runs like a thread of good-class tweed through twentieth-century literature.'

and he is absolutely right.

My last three books were much better. I knew I would enjoy Mary Stewart's Wildfire at Midnight, and I did. In 1953, the Coronation Year, a young model, Gianetta, takes herself off to a remote hotel on Skye to recover from the woes of her recent divorce. However, there have been strange goings-on in the area, and a local girl has recently been ritualistically murdered on the nearby mountain, Blaven. As more murders pile up, Gianetta tries to find the killer, who can only be someone else from the hotel (the guests all having, of course, their own secrets and hidden agendas.) In the middle of it all, ex-husband Nicholas turns up, and Gianetta discovers that he has been on the island when the first killing took place. Just what is he up to? As ever, Stewart's heroine is spirited and self-reliant, and though not quite as feisty as Charity Selbourne in Madam, Will You Talk?, Gianetta still impresses with her braveness and her refusal to let a man do all the work for her.

Elizabeth Taylor's At Mrs Lippincote's is set slightly earlier, at the tail end of the Second World War. Julia's officer husband Roddy has been posted to a provincial town. and as his Wing Commander thinks the men 'settle better' if their families are with them, Julia and their young son Oliver have had to come too. With them is Roddy's unmarried cousin, Eleanor, a teacher at a local school. They have rented a house belonging to Mrs Lippincote, who has moved out to a residential hotel. Julia is imaginative and unpredictable, unwilling to be bound by the social rules for officers' wives. She lives in a world of Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte rather than cooking and clothing coupons, and has a close relationship with the rather precocious Oliver, with whom she likes nothing better than to discuss books and life. Roddy is stuffy and desperate to impress his superiors, 

Eleanor is in love with Roddy and thinks that Julia is a terrible wife. In an effort to make her life different, Eleanor becomes involved with the local Communist party (brilliantly and hilariously observed by Taylor) - something that would scandalise Roddy were he to find out.

Into this mix the author also adds Mr Taylor, once the manager of La Belle Charlotte in Soho (where Roddy and Julia used to dine) now bombed out, ill, and running a seedy bar in his sister's bungalow. Julia becomes involved with Mr Taylor, though not romantically, and surreptitiously visits him.  Roddy's Wing Commander himself also has a leading role; he wants to discuss literature (and possibly more) with Julia. We also meet Mrs Lippincote's rather odd daughter Phyllis, who still thinks she can visit the house without notice whenever she wishes. 

As so often with Taylor, it's the sharp observation of small things that give this story its life. Mrs Lippincote's hat. A heart-shaped biscuit 'nibbled like a squirrel.' Julia making pastry, watched by Oliver. The grave of a pet in the garden 'Fenella. A faithful friend. Aged 12.' 

By the time the Davenants leave Mrs Lippincote's, much has changed, but in so subtle a way that we might almost miss it. A wonderful book, and - amazingly - Taylor's first published novel.

Finally, and again for #projectplaces, I took from my shelves Garrison Keillor's Lake Woebegon Summer, 1956. I remember hearing Keillor read from his Lake Woebegon books on the radio years ago, his dry, even tones making the story of his childhood and of the characters that peopled it all the more entertaining. Lake Woebegon Summer, 1956, is the thinly veiled memoir of his early adolescence; it's about friendships, bullies, school, teachers, his parents - his pessimistic, cautious father and laid back, kind mother, his academic brother and annoying sister. 

The entire extended family (there are numerous aunts and uncles, including the interesting and rather sad Eva) are members of the Sanctified Brethren, so Gary (Garrison's own real name - he adopted Garrison as a pen name) is brought up to be in Fear of the Lord. His sister takes this much more seriously than he does. The house has no TV. All other religions are deprecated. Prayer meetings take place in the homes of various relations.

Despite all this, Gary has the usual interests - girls (in particular his glamorous, rebellious cousin Kate), sex, pornography (High School Orgies is a favourite, and the quotes from it are priceless) - and the usual worries - girls, sex, friends, teachers - as any other teenage boy. Provided you're happy to read about those (sometimes in graphic detail), this book is hilarious. It's also well written (Gary wants, of course, to be a writer) and easy to read. I'm glad I got back to Keillor, and that there are many other books of his to enjoy.

So all in all, October's books were a mixed bunch. I surprised myself by enjoying so many classics, none of which turned out to be hard work at all. And having once thought I'd never get into audiobooks, I find that if I can listen to them while out and about - whether exploring the local graveyard in the low, dripping, cloud that is so characteristic of this area in autumn, or enjoying the spectacular sunsets we've seen of late as I walk beside the Dee - they add immeasurable pleasure to my daily life. I think if I had to choose my favourite this month would be Ethan Frome, and I'm so glad I've discovered Edith Wharton.