My Reading Month - September
I love autumn, and as a result I've been walking whenever I can, both In Aberdeenshire and in East Lothian. This may have reduced my reading time a little, or maybe I was just distracted, but I only managed five books last month. I'm hoping that October will be better, as the weather certainly hasn't been so far; at the moment we have massive flooding on Deeside (see above), and are crossing our fingers for no more rain, at least until the waters have subsided.
Of the books I did read only one was a disappointment. Georgia Disappeared by Ellen Godfrey was published by Virago in 1992, at a time when Virago seems to have experienced a rush of enthusiasm for female crime writers. Amanda Cross (Professor Carolyn Heilbrun) was indeed one of them, and I am a huge fan of her Kate Fansler mysteries - but unfortunately many of the others now seem distinctly unimpressive. I wonder if they were published simply because there were so few women writing crime in those days? Now, of course, we have so many to choose from - Val McDermid, Ann Cleeves and Marie Hannah just for starters - and compared with such stellar names, many of those Virago authors simply do not cut the mustard.
The book is set in Toronto, where Jane Tregar has been called in to manage a team about to launch a new and revolutionary software product. The original manager, Georgia Arnott, has not been seen since she left a smart party some weeks earlier, and the wealthy backer of the project, Malcolm Morton, needs someone to take over unless and until Georgia surfaces.
Jane is a friend of both Georgia and her advertising executive husband Simon, and also of Malcolm's first wife, Pat. The development team consists of three computer geeks, each with their own agenda. When Georgia's body is found in some remote woods, Simon asks Jane to find out who killed her. Needless to say, she knows the policeman in charge of the investigation, who is only too delighted to have her assistance - and this is the first of many sticking points for me; amateur detectives may have been welcomed along for the ride in the days of Peter Wimsey and Gervase Fen, but in 1992?
Everyone who knew Georgia loved her, apparently, and we are so frequently told how wonderful she was that after a while I could cheerfully have strangled her myself, so I could well understand how somebody else might. So far. so convincing; it's hard to live up to saints. Only the software team had reservations about Georgia, so we are led down numerous blind alleys to do with industrial espionage, none of which is in the slightest way convincing. Some of Georgia's social circle are interesting characters, notably Malcolm, Pat, and Simon's first wife Ariela, but the endless details about the software project are deadly in their own right. The real problem with this book, though, is Jane; she is such a boring, whiny woman that I find it hard to understand how anyone at Virago could have thought she fitted their demographic.
Jane is divorced from her much older Swiss husband, who now has custody of their children - the reason for this being unclear - and she complains endlessly about that, even though there is no suggestion that the children are unhappy with Bernie & his new wife. The sections about Jane's ineffective attempts to win the children back do make one wonder why she ever agreed (which she did) to let them go in the first place. Meanwhile, she has a lover, Tom, who is apparently unbearably jealous while having very different standards for his own behaviour. Does she do anything about that? Not really - she just complains a lot. She is bullied by her boss - does she do anything about that? Hazard a guess. Without its main character, Georgia Disappeared could have been a much better book.
Moving swiftly on to the books I did enjoy, I have already reviewed The School at Thrush Green by Miss Read here. I loved it, and it was so much more than a 'cosy' village story. I've got two more Thrush Green books lined up, ready to be devoured as soon as possible.
The Gardens of Covington is the second in Joan Medlicott's series about three older women who decide to share a house, and their lives, in the Loring Valley, North Carolina. Although, this being America, Grace, Hannah and Amelia's lives are not much like those of the residents of Thrush Green, we are drawn into their everyday ups and downs in much the same way, and I feel I know all three of them.
In this book Grace starts a tea room with her partner Bob, and considers the pros and cons of his invitation to move in together, Amelia meets a new man, who turns out to be not what he seems, and Hannah leads the campaign against more new housing in the valley - a campaign not always supported by the people who have lived there for generations and have an eye on the developer's offers for their land. There are lots of other characters in these books, each one of which is nuanced and engaging. Again I see the Covington stories as much more than a cosy read, although there is the comfort of knowing that things do usually work out in the end.
The Mysterious Affair at Styles was not only Agatha Christie's first published novel but also her readers' introduction to Hercule Poirot, the Belgian detective who, along with Jane Marple, was to form the backbone of her literary output for the next fifty years.
A wealthy woman, Emily Inglethorp, has been poisoned with strychnine. Hastings, a friend of Poirot's is on sick leave from the Western Front, and a house guest of the Inglethorps; he asks the Belgian, who is currently living in a nearby house for displaced persons, to help him solve the murder. The various suspects include Mrs Inglethorp's sons John and Lawrence, her second husband, Alfred, whom she has recently married, John's aloof wife Mary, an orphaned family friend Cynthia, and Mrs Inglethorp's devoted companion, Evelyn Howard. The novel also marks the first appearance of Inspector Japp, who often pops up in later books.
Having read quite a few British Library Classic Crime novels recently I have come to the conclusion that the 'Golden Age of Crime' simply isn't golden for me. Although Christie definitely develops her characters far more than most of these inter-war writers, the emphasis is still very much on times, dates, places and secret identities. In modern crime fiction we learn far more about the characters and their motivations; Ian Rankin, for example, grounds Rebus, Siobhan, Gill Clarke, Big Ger McCafferty and a huge cast of minor characters very firmly in the real world (usually various Edinburgh and Fife communities), and we learn as much about those settings and their history as we do about the people themselves - in each case, lots. I think I prefer this, and find even Christie somewhat mechanical and at times plain uninteresting. Nevertheless, the solution to The Mysterious Affair at Styles is nothing if not ingenious, and the book is a good quick read.
My last book of the month had been languishing on my shelves for some time, and I'm really not sure why, because when I finally started reading it I couldn't stop. The Future Homemakers of America by Laurie Graham begins in the Cold War, on an American Air Force base in the Fens, when five military DWs (Dependent Wives) find themselves in the middle of nowhere in a damp, cold English winter.
Graham's prose is so readable that I was instantly drawn into the lives of Betty, Peggy, Audrey, Gail and Lois. What's more, they are well delineated characters - I seem to have read a fair few books recently in which one character sounds just like another, but this time I never had to remind myself who was who. Each one was convincing, none was a caricature.
The women are not allowed to work, so they spend their time making pies for their husbands, baking for sales, looking after their children (and if they don't have children, they have even less to do), cleaning their houses and meeting up with one another in an attempt to have a little fun.
Betty, a former star of The Future Homemakers of America club (for can you believe this was actually a group schoolgirls could join in the USA of the 1950s?) spends her time making life easy for her volatile, controlling husband, and covering up for his abusive behaviour. She bakes, she sews, she feeds her family perfect meals, but underneath it all her marriage is already rotting. Audrey, the wife of a senior officer, considers herself a cut above the other women, and organises numerous events to welcome new wives and keep everybody connected, but despite her slightly superior attitude she is still very much part of the group. Lois, the 'loose woman' of the five is bold, daring and can't be bothered with her easy-going husband or even their small child. Gail, the youngest, is married to her sweetheart and desperate for a baby, if only to acquire on-site housing. Peggy, the narrator, is frustrated in her domestic role and longs to escape its confines, but is devoted to her young daughter. She is strong-minded, plain-speaking, and was never likely to succeed as a Future Homemaker.
On a rare outing in Peggy's car, the girls come across Kate, a local woman living in a basic two-roomed Fenland hovel with John, whom they assume to be her husband, especially as the two share a bed in the kitchen, the other room being reserved for John's eel-catching equipment. John is already showing signs of what Kate calls 'nerves' - twitches and spontaneous jerky movements. Kate accepts her lot but dreams of something better, and is thrilled when Peggy offers to teach her to drive - something that will become pivotal in her later life.
The book follows the women over the next 20+ years, as the wives return to the US, and Kate's life undergoes radical changes. Graham is never heavy-handed with topical references, but revealing advertisements of the time intersperse the chapters, and we see Peggy's daughter growing up through the 1970s, rejecting 1950s' role models, and becoming involved with feminism as she follows a rather different career path. The women keep in touch spasmodically as their lives encompass divorce, death, illness, grandchildren, second marriages and in one case evangelical religion. Kate also remains in contact with some of the group - and in many ways it is her life that proves the most surprising. I rooted for her, this woman who has borne the hardships of life in what was then such an isolated, poor and backward area (the American women are amazed to find that the cottage has neither telephone, electricity nor running water), remaining calm and sensible through all the vicissitudes of a harsh existence, and eventually taking control, starting a new career, and enjoying late middle age more than any of the others.
I could see the final denouement of the plot coming, but maybe only because I worked in East Anglia for some years myself. I still found this part of the story both moving and sad - though the closing scenes are predominantly upbeat.
I was recently sent a link to this wonderful recording of Vaughan Williams' In the Fen Country, performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra:
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