Non-Fiction November Week Two: Book Pairings

 

This week the challenge is to pair a non-fiction book with a work of fiction, 

There is no one way to connect the two, but even so I was initially flummoxed. I don’t read that much non-fiction, and most of what I do read is nature writing. I also try only to use books I’ve actually read, which I suppose limits my options even further. Once I put my mind to it, though, ideas did start to (sort of…) flow. 

So here’s what I came up with:

Mary Berry: Fast Cakes + Jill Murphy: A Piece of Cake

 The link = cake!

Two of my most used cookery books are Mary Berry’s Fast Cakes and More Fast Cakes. They were initially handed down to me by my mother, but those copies are now in such a state of decay that I’ve had to buy new ones. I’ve also given copies to friends who say they can’t bake – because these simple little paperbacks, which have no pictures and very little superfluous narrative, have taken me through thirty years of cake making.

Nowadays the internet is awash with food blogs.  They’re all very well if you want pretty pictures and a large dollop of the blogger’s life story, but usually all I want is a recipe:

Here are the ingredients, here’s the method – go.

I don’t want a video of how to crack an egg. I don’t want to have to shop for exotic stuff. Mary’s recipes in these books are down-to-earth, they rely almost exclusively on items any home baker would have in the cupboard – and best of all, they work. She even tells you when it’s OK to substitute soft margarine for butter (or rather, which recipes really benefit from butter and which don’t), and whether it’s OK to leave a mixture halfway through ‘if you have to pick the children up from school.’ 

She has a very useful page on ‘something’s gone wrong, what do I do now?’, which tells you why your fruit has sunk or your cake is too dry, and – more importantly – how you can salvage it. Although I do use other cookbooks, almost all of my baking originates from these two books. (For cakes, I think the only other books I use regularly are Nigel Slater’s – but his recipes are more extravagant, so I keep him for special occasions.)

Jill Murphy’s Large Family series – about a family of anthropomorphised elephants – was (and indeed remains, even though they’re now all in their 20s) a huge favourite with all of my children. The comic trials and tribulations of the Large household will strike a chord with children and parents alike; they may be elephants but they’re just like us, and they are very funny.

 
In A Piece of Cake, Mrs Large decides that everyone is overweight and must begin a new regime of exercise and – much worse – healthy eating. When Grandma sends a cake, it is consigned to the top shelf of the cupboard – ‘Just in case we have visitors’ says Mrs Large. Before long both parents and children are obsessing about that cake, and of course somebody eventually caves.

I once saw a review of this book in which a parent lambasted it for sending out all the ‘wrong’ messages. Personally, if I have food-related criticisms they are for the food and drink industries, not a few fictional elephants, but hey-ho. Maybe modern families won’t think A Piece of Cake as funny as we did, but my children still remember it very fondly, along with its companions Five Minutes’ Peace, All in One Piece, and A Quiet Night In.

Rachel Johnson: A Diary of The Lady + AJ Pearce: Dear Mrs Bird 

The link = women’s magazines

A collection celebrating The Lady's 134th anniversary (c) The Lady

Rachel Johnson took over as editor of The Lady (‘the oldest women’s weekly in the world’) in 2009. When she arrived in Covent Garden she discovered an institution that had been staggering on in its Bedford Street offices, since 1885 (Lewis Carroll once composed puzzles for it.) Nothing – quite literally – had changed. Many of the editorial staff seemed to have no function whatsoever, and none of them wanted anything to change. The magazine – famed for its adverts for nannies, governesses, cooks, chauffeurs and ‘companions’ (ie carers, not lovers…) for the wealthy – was losing vast amounts of money.

In A Diary of The Lady, Johnson records her attempts to modernise the magazine and improve its sales. Her battles with some of the staff, and especially with the owner – the founder’s granddaughter - Julia Budworth, are many. Sometimes Johnson wins, often she doesn’t, but needless to say she does what she thinks needs to be done anyway.

In between she hurtles around London, and occasionally the Home Counties, lunching, drinking, and generally living her very smart social life. Johnson is posh and rich, she knows just about every media type you’ll ever have heard of, and I’m sure she can be incredibly irritating to work for/with, but I have to say this book is hilarious. She is extremely indiscreet, very funny, and not afraid of owning up to her own mistakes and bad behaviour.

In March 2010, Channel 4 screened its fly-on-the-wall documentary about Johnson’s time at The Lady. The Lady and the Revamp is at times funny, at times almost sad (some people had been at The Lady all their working lives, doing nothing very much, but they still thought of themselves as essential and were stunned when they were ‘encouraged to leave.’ Some were relatives and friends of the Budworth family [The Mitford girls’ grandfather founded the magazine and made their father, the 2^nd Baron Redesdale, its first general manager. He had never even had a job before this.] When Johnson took over things were still being done in much the same way.)

Whichever way you look at it, the programme is fascinating, and the book is a great read.

In AJ Pearce’s Dear Mrs Bird, Emmeline Lake wants to become a war correspondent. It’s 1941, she’s living in London with her best friend Bunty, and the chances of her fulfilling her dreams are slim. Instead she ends up as a typist working for Mrs Bird, the formidable agony aunt of Women’s Friend magazine. Mrs Bird is not a friend to women, but a judgemental old-fashioned battleaxe who puts most of the letters she receives straight into the bin – she will not even contemplate replying to anyone she views as immoral, amoral, or even slightly silly. Emmeline starts to feel sorry for these often desperate women; she takes their letters out of the bin and replies to them herself.

London in the Blitz

There’s lots of detail about single life in London during the Blitz, and although most of the story is light-hearted and often funny, something eventually happens to make Emmeline realise that she has to grow up and stop treating life as a game. I enjoyed this book.

 

Compton Mackenzie: Extraordinary Women + Axel Munthe: The Story of San Michele  

The link = Capri

Compton  Mackenzie is probably best known as the author of The Monarch of the Glen and Whisky Galore, but in 1928 he wrote Extraordinary Women, a novel set on the island of Capri (fictionalised as Sirene), where he and his wife lived for seven years.  

Capri was already known as being exceptionally (for the time) tolerant of foreigners and political, artistic and sexual ‘outsiders’, and the Mckenzies were popular with many of the cosmopolitan expatriate socialites who visited or lived on the island in the early 20^th century. (Norman Douglas, who arrived there in 1898, described them as ‘a colony of loveable freaks.’) These included Somerset Maugham, Lenin, Gorky and EF Benson.

Extraordinary Women tells the story of a group of lesbians who come to live on the island, led by Rosalba Donsante who

 ...with her long jade cigarette holder and slim ebony stick, strikes fear (or desire) into the hearts of all women.

(Andro Linklater in his introduction to the 1986 edition by Hogarth Press)   

Rosalba and her immediate coterie are based on three women – Renata Borgatti, Mimi Franchetti and Romaine Brooks - who all became close friends of Mckenzie’s wife Faith. Mckenzie said that almost all of the characters in the book were inspired by real people, and the events by actual incidents he observed in this close little world. It is an entertaining novel, but Mckenzie does not seek to ridicule any particular sex or orientation;

It is a well made and witty book , preaching no moral and offering no profound insights into the human condition other than the single truth, that love makes fools of us all. 

(Andro Linklater)

Compton Mckenzie and Axel Munthe both lived on Capri, and indeed they were friends, but whereas Mckenzie wrote pure fiction, Munthe’s The Story of San Michele purports to be - at least partly - true.

Munthe was a Swedish born doctor. He first saw the site of San Michele in 1875 when he sailed in a small boat from Sorrento to Capri. He was 18 years old and still a medical student in Uppsala, but when he came across the (then) ruined peasant’s house and adjoining chapel in Anacapri, he decided he would one day come back and rebuild it. 

After a medical career in Sweden, Paris and Naples, Munthe eventually started work on the villa in 1887, though by 1890 he was running out of money and had to open a medical practice in Rome to fund the restoration. He later married a wealthy Englishwoman, and from then on lived mainly in Italy, although the rest of the family spent summers in Sweden and the children were largely brought up in the UK.

The Story of San Michele is primarily a collection of Munthe’s memoirs and observations of his life on Capri, and includes mentions of some of the famous people he knew – among them Louis Pasteur, Henry James and Guy de Maupassant. It also contains some pure flights of fancy – conversations with animals (he was a very keen animal lover and opened a bird sanctuary on the island), a story about the author’s arrival at the gates of heaven after his death….

Unlike Mckenzie, Munthe associated with both the wealthy and with the very poorest of people (he had worked in the slums of Paris and helped in a cholera epidemic in Naples.) He was also the physician to the Swedish Royal Family, and persuaded Crown Princess Victoria to spend winters on Capri for her health – though there is now some question as to whether the real reason was to save Munthe the bother of going to Sweden to see her.

The Story of San Michele was for some reason a set book in my first year at senior school. Revisiting it now, I don't think any of us had, at the age of 11, much of a clue as to what it was about, though I do recall finding it very romantic. Set books have a lot to answer for (but that's another topic.)

So this time my links have been women’s magazines, an Italian island – and cake. This week’s challenge was a real exercise in thinking outside of the box!

Next week: Be the Expert/Ask the Expert/Become the Expert hosted by Veronica at The Thousand Book Project.