{review} a week of pineapples

*dusts off blog cobwebs*

'Georgy,' Mr Pasmore asks, 'may we come in?' He was already in. 'I’ve brought you two delightful visitors. They have been exploring the possibility of the pineapple. Do you like that? The possibility of? I mean we all know the positivity of, don't we? What we want, oh, what we all so want want want is the possibility of? Georgy, do you believe in the possibility of the pineapple?' (Thea Astley, Hunting the Wild Pineapple)

Last week I only read books with 'pineapple' in the title. This offered a wider variety than one might expect, and I think I did rather well and read some things I might not otherwise have tackled. So what did I read?

 

M. C. Beaton At the Sign of the Golden Pineapple (1987)

Charlotte Webster awoke during the night and lay shivering under her thin blankets. Food. Mountains of food. That’s what she had been dreaming of. A confectioner’s. She could see it now, the golden pineapple over the door, the piles of oranges and pineapples and dainty cakes. The smells of hot chocolate and coffee. Her stomach growled ferociously.

M. C. Beaton is terrifyingly prolific. This Regency series was originally published under the pen name Marion Chesney. I discovered this series thanks to Another Look Book's review of Beaton/Chesney's Minerva, which I thought could fill a Heyer-sized gap in my reading life. It was less-mannered, more overtly - perhaps one might suggest 'unbelievably' - socially boundary-pushing, and rather more risqué than a Heyer, but a fun - and quick - read. Likewise At the Sign of the Golden Pineapple: our heroine ("We are all kept in chains by the fact that we are genteel women") decides to make her own way by opening a confectionery shop/ices-and-tea-room in London with two lady acquaintances from unhappy homes - but can "ladies" ever resume their previous social and marital ambitions after working in a shop? 

The pineapple connection is that a pineapple was an emblem of the confectionery trade in the Georgian era (lots more on this here and a wonderful recreated pineapple 'ice' here). This is a (hmmm... tries to think of some relevant analogies...) wafer-thin read, stuffed sugarplum-like with sweet historical details, and easily digestible in one sitting. Not sure I'm hungry for more of the genre though, but that might be a result of the sugar overdose of read number two...

Betty Neels Pineapple Girl (1977)

  

And Mrs White, with a swift movement worthy of a magician, heaved at something under the blankets and produced a pineapple. ‘Oh!’ said Eloise, startled, and then: ‘Mrs White, what a simply lovely present—thank you, and your husband. I’ve—I’ve never had such a delightful surprise.’ She clasped the fruit to her person...

I've actually read this Mills & Boon before, and written briefly about it. Nurse falls down steps onto handsome foreign doctor while holding a pineapple; doctor replaces pineapple with THREE from Fortnum & Mason; coincidentally, poor nurse meets handsome doctor in foreign parts while on a job; does he love her or is he a bastard ("How could he talk about kippers when only a moment ago he had been kissing her as though he really enjoyed it?")? Will her clothes be good enough ("an elderly velvet dress the colour of a mole")? ... yada yada yada... You get the picture. I'm here for the pineapples, mostly, I guess. The period details (grimy 70s London) are great, and often rendered rather funny by time-passed:

‘Someone gave me a pineapple,’ she informed the table at large, and added apologetically: ‘I would have brought it down with me, but I thought it would have been nice to take home…’ There was a chorus of assent; everyone there knew that Eloise lived in a poky little flat behind the Imperial War Museum—true, it was on the fringe of a quite respectable middle-class district, but with, as it were, an undesirable neighbourhood breathing down its neck...

My favourite line is when the heroine is tossing and turning at night thinking about the mysterious doctor: "a fruitless exercise". I think NOT!

But I haven't only read pineapple 'fluff':

 

Thea Astley Hunting the Wild Pineapple (1979)

Once in Fixer’s cabin, one hour, one year, Fixer and I worked out the new coat of arms - a beer can rampant on a social security form couchant. Do we make it different, the people up here?

I don't read as much Australian literature as I feel I ought: I think this is a combination of the feeling that I "ought" (which makes me irrationally stubbornly resistant to doing so); a lack of empathy or resonance with the "bush" (I blame family camping holidays and a loathing of tropical weather), and a love of reading about places not as familiar as the home turf. Perhaps there's a bit of a block too because of difficult reading experiences with Australian lit at school and university? But I do keep trying. 

I can't say that I felt any sense of breakthrough after reading Thea Astley's take on Far North Queensland - hot, wet, uncomfortable, primitive, dangerous - a "soft porn" of a landscape - and filled with the lost and those not wanting to be found. This is a land where social boundaries break easily: "Carl’s fingers have been scratching the spines of Mac’s books. He wants to borrow a couple. I explain they’re not mine, but he’s oblivious to the protocol that goes with possession."

Astley's writing is absolutely superb, although sometimes one feels on the verge of drowning in it. (Whispering Gums discusses why Astley's language can also be confronting.) The book is a series of interlinked short stories about the inhabitants of the tropical Far North. Her descriptions of place can be claustrophobia-inducing - small artificially created physical and metaphorical spaces within which we imprison ourselves, and then the equally terrible world without: "a postcard tropadise (the greens are too green! the blues too blue!)". 

Then there are moments of pure comedy (like the 'hunt' for the wild pineapple of the title) or the little vignettes of everyday life such as the blind date: "He was much older than she had expected. So was she." Elsewhere: "She always appeared formidably silked and hatted and her bust was frightening. ‘Breasts’ is somehow too pretty, too delicate a word to describe that shelf of righteousness on which many a local upstart had foundered."

Mr Waterman was, also, a foundation member of the metric society. He was the first in the district to think in millimetres of rain, kilometres of road, kilograms of body fat and the metric statistics of wanted criminals. When he and Mrs Waterman did their biennial culture junket to Europe, he took enormous pleasure in supplying details for his passport. ‘One point eight five four three metres,’ he wrote against ‘height’; ‘eyes’ – ‘blue’. He would chide his wife mildly. ‘No, dear. No, no. You are one point six four one two metres.’ Against ‘colour of eyes’ she wrote ‘glazed’.

A difficult but valuable read.

Kaori O'Connor Pineapple: A Global History (2013)

Pineapple is great. She is almost too transcendent - a delight if not sinful, yet so like sinning that really a tender conscienced person would do well to pause - too ravishing for mortal taste, she woundeth and excoriateth the lips that approach her - like lovers’ kisses she biteth - she is a pleasure bordering on pain, from the fierceness and insanity of her relish. (Charles Lamb, Essays of Elia [1823])

I have a copy of Fran Beauman's The Pineapple on my shelf, but I decided to read this shorter history first. It's part of a series of books devoted to single foodstuffs - nuts, pancakes, pies, soup, offal, etc. (Incidentally, Pie is by the always fascinating blogger Old Foodie.) Pineapple is basically all you need to know about the pineapple in the short form: where it came from, how it got everywhere, its role as a prestige and royal object, the craziness of growing it in England, the popularization of the fruit through canning, and so on.

Indeed, the gulf between the pineapple’s fame and the difficulty in satisfying curiosity as to its taste came to epitomize the nature of knowledge itself for the serious-minded. In his On Human Understanding, published in 1690, the empiricist philosopher John Locke used the pineapple to argue that true knowledge can only be based on experience. In Locke’s words: If you doubt this, see whether you can by words give anyone who has never tasted pineapple an idea of the taste of that fruit. He may approach a grasp of it by being told of its resemblance to other tastes of which he already has the ideas in his memory, imprinted there by things he has taken into his mouth; but this isn’t giving him that idea by a definition, but merely raising up in him other simple ideas that will still be very different from the true taste of pineapple.

I thought this a very readable book, although I think it dealt rather tentatively (but without omission) with some of the unpleasant aspects of the pineapple trade, for instance the connection with the slave trade. It was also weak, I thought, on the place of the pineapple in Australia. I am looking forward to finding out if Fran Beauman's book is better on this. I am also looking forward to an exhibition on the pineapple's importance to Queensland that will open in Brisbane this year. *plans a little holiday*

So, what did I get from my week of 'pineapple' reads? Predictable romance is enhanced by pineapples. Pineapple skin demonstrates the Fibonacci sequence. "In organoleptic terms, the pineapple’s great contribution has been the unique ‘sweet-and-sour’ taste." Pineapples have permeated all levels of society, and now I know why and how. Isn't abacaxi a great word? Pineapples feature in philosophical discourse. I can never holiday anywhere north of Brisbane. I'd really like a pineapple upside-down cake now. Here's one I made earlier...

{review} helen macinnes: the hidden target & cloak of darkness

Helen MacInnes The Hidden Target (1980)

Helen MacInnes Cloak of Darkness (1982)

I love Helen MacInnes' books, but I hadn't read (well, re-re-re-read) any for ages as they were packed in a box in the shed. Then I saw there were quite a few available for kindle -- but not, of course, the one about the hippie-trail that was teasing my memory. So, out to the shed... 

(these are the actual, badly photographed covers of my copies: 

the blueish one is foil-striped in silver, blue and white. 

These books have smallest writing I have read for years. 

Almost smaller than this writing...)

These two are actually part of a trilogy featuring the same character, Robert Renwick, and it is probably worth reading them in order, but as a re-reader I didn't feel it mattered this time around. The first one in the trilogy (Prelude to Terror) is very good indeed and has that amazing chest-squeezing mix of espionage terror and romantic torment that MacInnes is magnificent about carrying off. You're never quite sure with MacInnes about whether her protagonists will make it to a happy ending, and she is good at revealing glimpses of absolute darkness that wrack up the tension for the reader. 

Robert Renwick is one of the sort of old-school espionage champs that you really want on your side if you are stuck in the middle of Europe somewhere and something bad is going down. Because the books are set at the end of the 70s and early 80s there's still enough good ol' Cold War villainy around (and some leftovers of WW2), as well as problems with travelling through the continent (anyone nostalgic for when everyone had a different currency? - no, personally not), crossing all those frontiers, and just getting everywhere SO SLOWLY. Then there's the leftovers of the 70s to play with: relics of Baader-Meinhof and anarchists and terrorists plus NATO and Interpol and so on. 

Renwick, American but mostly Europe-based, has set up an agency, tacitly supported by various western intelligence organizations, to gather and analyse intel on terrorism which can then be sent to the relevant agencies. But Renwick is unable to shake off his field agent past, and always ends up out in the field and in great danger. He is a brilliant analyst and it is remarkable that his omniscience never makes one want to shake him until his teeth rattle: he just comes across as remarkably good at his job. 

I love these sort of 'hunt down the baddie' books where there's a real lo-tech feel: no pulling up a satellite -- you've got to get off your bum and go to deepest where-ever and use your binoculars and your bare hands. 

MacInnes is great on detail: in Prelude to Terror, there's a great art history plot going on under all the spy stuff, and plenty of lovely spots like Vienna take centre stage. In The Hidden Target we set off on the hippie-trail from Amsterdam, across Europe, Turkey and over to India in a camper (my idea of hell) with a very smart young woman who finds herself rapidly out of her depth -- could she really be the unwitting companion of one of the most dangerous terrorists of the time, and why does he need her? And in Cloak of Darkness we jump from the Africa to the US then Europe in a race against time to save Renwick from assassination by mysterious forces intent on trafficking weapons to anyone who can pay. Renwick is supported by some great colleagues, and there is always the well-planted seed in MacInnes' plots that someone here is not all they seem. 

If you're looking for a classic go at Cold War espionage, then she's well worth a read. You have to take on board that women -- despite female authorship -- have relatively secondary roles and often these are painfully traditional (they are pretty and they need saving, for instance), but certainly in the trilogy some of the woman do have significant roles in the plot (as they do in other of MacInnes' books). The Hidden Target is the most appealing in that sense, and also I think for its really varied scene-setting. It is also fascinating because it is set at a time when the hippie-trail is breaking down: the route is by the end of the 70s particularly dangerous, indeed deadly in parts, and the Afghanistan region is about to entirely disintegrate as the Russians move in. The (presumed) innocence of earlier journeys has been lost forever. 

Surely the hippie-trail is due a revival as a narrative theme: or have I missed this? There is one book that I would compare with The Hidden Target in this regard and that is Charles Mccarry's brilliant take (and astonishingly accomplished debut novel) on a carload of are-they-aren't-they-spies travelling from Europe to the Sudan in the 50s in The Miernik Dossier, one of the best spy stories I have ever read (his Tears of Autumn could well qualify as the best).

Anyway...: Helen MacInnes - great spy-craft, great settings, a spot of romance (but not as soft or happy as Mary Stewart, for instance), and that slight ambiguity about whether good really ever fully vanquishes evil without itself becoming tainted. 

{review} taylor, ferguson, carter; crime, fairytale, WTF?

I'm not sure what happened to the first half of May. Gone in a flash... I thought I'd do a 3-in-1 review today, as at the snail-like pace I'm reviewing at the moment, who knows when I'd ever write them up properly. 

Andrew Taylor Waiting for the End of the World (1984)

This is the second in the William Dougal series. I had high hopes that it would reach the heights of the exquisite and excellent no. 1 (Caroline Minuscule: my review), and while I found it an enjoyable read, I thought it lacked something of the attractive amorality of its predecessor. Dougal's pursuit of "uncomplicated hedonism" is once again compromised by his Nemesis-cum-mentor Hanbury, who blackmails him into spying on an Apocalypse-survival cult-leader who wants to make inroads into the UK doomsday market. This is a simple description which in no way can do justice to Taylor's ability to make hilarious chaos from the seemingly simple - and soon Dougal finds himself in well over his head. Taylor's writing is witty and dry, and I would definitely add the next one in the series to my TBR. Note: the age of mobile phones has really destroyed forever little scenes like this one:

The telephone began to emit a continuous whine. Dougal put down the receiver. There were six people waiting outside now; the first in the queue, a Hell's Angel with I LOVE E II R tattooed on his naked chest, was kicking red paint from the kiosk with an immense jackboot. Dougal emerged and held the door open for him. The Angel unexpectedly said: 'Fanks, mate.'

 

Ruby Ferguson Lady Rose and Mrs Memmary (1937)

I read Ruby Ferguson's charming pony-mad 'Jill' books as a child as they were among my mother's favourite books from her childhood. This is an absolutely charming book for grown-ups or, rather, "a fairy tale for grown-ups": a Persephone, and what a gorgeous one. A group of tourists tour a rundown stately home in Scotland. Through flashbacks and memories supplied by the caretaker, Mrs Memmary, the tragic story of the last occupant of 'Keepfield' is revealed in a chronological narrative of Lady Rose's privileged but emotionally austere childhood, her schooldays, presentation to Queen Victoria, dutiful marriage, inheritance of her family's title, then a unexpected opportunity for love and happiness - and a tremendous sacrifice. Ferguson creates a magical atmosphere, but one that simultaneously presents us with the possibility that this will be the fairytale without the happy ending. I was so sad when this story was finished: not just because it was a sad tale, but also because I did not want the story to end. Highly recommended!

"Take my advice," said the Duchess, "and stop the girl from reading novels. Girls of eighteen have no business to read love scenes in print; it puts false ideas into their heads. Operas at Covent Garden are bad enough, heaven knows, with persons actually romantically embracing each other on the stage. But I hastened to impress on Rose and Hermione Southwood that it all happened hundreds of years ago, and that in any case it is extremely doubtful whether Dido and Aeneas actually existed. I myself will lock Tennyson in my bureau; and if you see Rose reading any other poetry I do implore you, Margaret, for your own sake, to substitute something wholesome. A young girl needs to read nothing but her Bible; and only carefully selected portions of that!"

 

Angela Carter The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (1972)

"There was once a young man named Desiderio who set out upon a journey and very soon lost himself completely." I think this book has decided me, finally, that I don't enjoy dystopian fiction and magical realism. I do, however, really like Angela Carter's writing (with Nights at the Circus being my favourite). This one is set in a post-war world, a little Metropolis-like in places. The narrator-hero, Desiderio, must overcome the evil Doctor Hoffman, who "was waging a massive campaign against human reason itself" with mass hallucinogenic mirages to which the narrator is seemingly immune. ("The only form of transport the Minister permitted in the city was the bicycle, since it can only be ridden by that constant effort of will which precludes the imagination.") 

The book explores, on one level, what it is to be a hero - "I became a hero only because I survived". The redeeming feature of this tale was, for me, Carter's beautiful writing, lush descriptions, and quite astonishingly imaginative scene-settings - it is completely possible to become word-drunk on her writing. Carter also weaves in echoes from other texts (for instance, Don Quixote and the picaresque tradition; ethnographic and travel writing; witch-trials; the Odyssey; and many more) which create a further unsettledness for the reader who may well bring a certain set of expectations along with these other texts. It is sometimes overwhelmingly postmodern. This was not an easy book, as it deliberately breaks narrative rules, occasionally baffles with theory, and was, in general, far too surreal for my enjoyment. But, to be fair, it was also a lush and gorgeous exploration of a "subtly hostile", rampantly foliaged, dystopian landscape where "everything it is possible to imagine can also exist".

And the very birds of the air seemed possessed by devils. Some grew to the size and acquired the temperament of winged jaguars. Fanged sparrows plucked out the eyes of little children. Snarling flocks of starlings swooped down upon some starving wretch picking over a mess of dreams and refuse in a gutter and tore what remained of his flesh from his bones. The pigeons lolloped from illusory pediment to window-ledge like volatile, feathered madmen, chattering vile rhymes and laughing in hoarse, throaty voices, or perched upon chimney stacks shouting quotations from Hegel. But often, in actual mid-air, the birds would forget the techniques and mechanics of the very act of flight and then they fell down, so that every morning dead birds lay in drifts on the pavements like autumn leaves or brown, wind-blown snow.

So? In sum, one absolutely loved, one reasonable sequel, and one Oh My Eyes My Eyes! Too Weird! (birds quoting Hegel is my new nightmare...).

{review} heartburn

Nora Ephron Heartburn (1983)

If I had it to do over again, I would have made a different kind of pie. The pie I threw at Mark made a terrific mess, but a blueberry pie would have been even better, since it would have permanently ruined his new blazer, the one he bought with Thelma. But Betty said bring a Key lime pie, so I did.

A marker of how much I like a book is the irritating appearance of this little note when I check my Kindle highlights: "You have reached the clipping limit for this item". With Nora Ephron's Heartburn, this appeared well, well, well before I'd reached the end.

Why did I love it? Funny, heart-breaking, cynical, gorgeously written. Did I say funny? A survival text for picking yourself up and moving on. And it also has recipes! If you love tales of love, loss, lust and gluttony, this is for you.

My edition has a foreword by Ephron explaining that she wrote it after the break-up of her own marriage to the journalist Carl Bernstein (of Watergate fame). It caused quite a scandal at the time, being a thinly disguised semi-autobiographical account of how a wife discovers her husband's affair at a moment when she is seven months pregnant. 

Ephron's heroine is not strictly herself - as she notes, "One of the things I’m proudest of is that I managed to convert an event that seemed to me hideously tragic at the time to a comedy – and if that’s not fiction, I don’t know what is." 

Or, as her narrator puts it:

Vera said: ‘Why do you feel you have to turn everything into a story?’
So I told her why:
Because if I tell the story, I control the version.
Because if I tell the story, I can make you laugh, and I would rather have you laugh at me than feel sorry for me.
Because if I tell the story, it doesn’t hurt as much.
Because if I tell the story, I can get on with it.

Ephron's protagonist Rachel Samstat is a television cook and very much a New York girl ("‘Too New York’ is what the last network that was approached about me responded, which is a cute way of being anti-Semitic, but who cares?"). The failing marriage is not her first. And the responsibility for what has happened, as we see as the novel unfolds, is perhaps not as clear-cut as we are initially led to believe. There is a good deal of sheer selfishness, on both sides. But it is a tragedy, even if so wittily upcycled into comedy.  

If pregnancy were a book, they would cut the last two chapters. The beginning is glorious, especially if you’re lucky enough not to have morning sickness and if, like me, you’ve had small breasts all your life. Suddenly they begin to grow, and you’ve got them, you’ve really got them, breasts, darling breasts, and when you walk down the street they bounce, truly they do, they bounce bounce bounce. You find yourself staring in the mirror for long stretches of time, playing with them, cupping them in your hands, pushing them this way and that, making cleavage, making cleavage vanish, standing sideways, leaning over, sticking them out as far as they’ll go, breasts, fantastic tender apricot breasts, then charming plucky firm tangerines, and then, just as you were on the verge of peaches, oranges, grapefruit, cantaloupes, God knows what other blue-ribbon county-fair specimens, your stomach starts to grow, and the other fruits are suddenly irrelevant because they’re outdistanced by an honest-to-God watermelon. You look more idiotically out of proportion than ever in your life. You feel such nostalgia for the scrawny, imperfect body you left behind; and the commonsense knowledge that you will eventually end up shaped approximately the way you began is all but obliterated by the discomfort of not being able to sleep on your stomach and of peeing ever so slightly every time you cough and of leaking droplets from your breasts onto your good silk blouses and of suddenly finding yourself expert in mysteries you hadn’t expected to comprehend until middle age, mysteries like swollen feet, varicose veins, neuritis, neuralgia, acid indigestion and heartburn. Heartburn. That, it seemed to me as I lay in bed, was what I was suffering from. That summed up the whole mess: heartburn. Compound heartburn. Double-digit heartburn. Terminal heartburn.

The narrative structure works extremely well, cutting back and forwards and into the middle of her two major relationships. The action shifts between her beloved New York (home of all foodie delights) and her husband Mark's base in Washington ("a city where you can’t even buy a decent bagel"). Food - and what food can mean in relation to love and giving and sensuousness and sex - is terrifically important to the book.

But I realized as I stood there doing my demonstration in the middle of the Macy’s housewares department that I had been as dopey about food and love as any old-fashioned Jewish mother. I loved to cook, so I cooked. And then the cooking became a way of saying I love you. And then the cooking became the easy way of saying I love you. And then the cooking became the only way of saying I love you. I was so busy perfecting the peach pie that I wasn’t paying attention. I had never even been able to imagine an alternative. Every so often I would look at my women friends who were happily married and didn’t cook, and I would always find myself wondering how they did it. Would anyone love me if I couldn’t cook? I always thought cooking was part of the package: Step right up, it’s Rachel Samstat, she’s bright, she’s funny, and she can cook!

Seriously, I laughed, cried and drooled.

We had driven miles to find the world’s creamiest cheesecake and the world’s largest pistachio nut and the world’s sweetest corn on the cob. We had spent hours in blind taste testings of kosher hot dogs and double chocolate chip ice cream. When Julie went home to Fort Worth, she flew back with spareribs from Angelo’s Beef Bar-B-Q, and when I went to New York, I flew back with smoked butterfish from Russ and Daughters. Once, in New Orleans, we all went to Mosca’s for dinner, and we ate marinated crab, baked oysters, barbecued shrimp, spaghetti bordelaise, chicken with garlic, sausage with potatoes, and on the way back to town, a dozen oysters each at the Acme and beignets and coffee with chicory on the wharf. Then Arthur said, ‘Let’s go to Chez Helene for the bread pudding,’ and we did, and we each had two. The owner of Chez Helene gave us the bread pudding recipe when we left, and I’m going to throw it in because it’s the best bread pudding I’ve ever eaten. It tastes like caramelized mush. Cream 2 cups sugar with 2 sticks butter. Then add 2½ cups milk, one 13-ounce can evaporated milk, 2 tablespoons nutmeg, 2 tablespoons vanilla, a loaf of wet bread in chunks and pieces (any bread will do, the worse the better) and 1 cup raisins. Stir to mix. Pour into a deep greased casserole and bake at 350° for 2 hours, stirring after the first hour. Serve warm with hard sauce.

Highly recommended. 

{review} lace

Shirley Conran Lace (1982)

    

Lili’s eyes did not glisten. They glared. They projected rage and fury. For a moment the star stood silent as she surveyed the four older women: Kate in her mulberry suit by the door; Pagan in pink, sprawled across the apricot cushions; Maxine poised, porcelain cup in one hand, the saucer held on her blue silk lap; Judy in brown velvet, on the edge of the sofa with shoulders hunched, hands under her chin, elbows on her knees, scowling right back at Lili. Then Lili spoke. “All right,” she said, “which one of you bitches is my mother?”

I didn't read Lace as a teenager, although - thanks to the public library - I did devour my fair share of bonkbusters by Judith Krantz (the unforgettable Princess Daisy, for instance; and if you haven't read Clive James' review of this in the LRB, you MUST MUST MUST!). 

When Lace was reissued I thought that this was my chance to recover a bit of my lost prurient teenaged years. And, in that sense, the reissue of Lace as an e-book is perfect, for no one can tell what you are reading. 

Yet, I don't think one should be too ashamed of adding it to one's reading list. As Desperate Reader has written in her fine review, Lace remains an important and relevant book for women. The dangers, prejudices and active discrimination that these women faced from the 1950s to 1980s still remain relevant, and Lace is a book that celebrates what women can achieve despite the odds. It also celebrates the power of female friendship and the value of female independence.

To bring you up to speed, five women dominate Lace. Four of them meet at finishing school in Switzerland: Maxine, who will become a French countess and chateau-restorer and fan of having couturier clothing torn from her elegant, nip-and-tucked body; Pagan ("wonderful mahogany hair"; Jean Muir leg o'mutton sleeves), impoverished aristocrat, "perplexed, hopeless drunkard", and charity fund-raiser; Kate, timid unlikely war correspondent who can make a single biscuit last two hours and drives a "silver Karmann Ghia"; Judy, poor country gal transformed into top New York PR queen with a fancy for purple Courrèges pantsuits (who really should have been a lesbian). The fifth woman, Lili, superstar actress, ex-porn star, wearer of Diorissimo and a sucker for/of buttered asparagus tips, is, as the most famous line of Lace suggests, the long-lost daughter of one of these women. The book does that jumping back and forward thing so characteristic of 70s/80s' bonkbuster 700 page epics, as we try to figure out who bore Lili and who the father might have been. 

Let me simply offer some choice passages to demonstrate what you've been missing. 

On sex:

Then he collapsed on top of her and Kate felt a stickiness trickling over her collarbone and down her neck. She knew what it was and she didn't dare move in case some of the stuff got in the wrong place. She was terrified.

*

Softly, insistently, Pierre again pulled her hand downward and clasped it over his flesh. Maxine decided to pretend that it wasn't her hand. She was terrified of doing something wrong, of hurting him. Did you bend it forward? Did you rotate it? Could it snap off?

*

…he was the Nijinsky of cunnilingus…

[this is the same bloke who likes to jazz up sexual shenanigans with a goldfish up the cooter.] 

* 

On fashion:

“That V neck doesn’t plunge as low as the one in the show,” Maxine criticised. “No, Monsieur Dior kindly agreed to a high neck. Before six-thirty and after forty-five one should never show an inch of skin.”

*

Maxine needed a great deal of underwear for a very private reason.

* 

The perils of alcohol:

Serge stormed into Senequier, drank a bottle of brandy, then drove wildly to Cap Camerat where he strangled the white cockatoo.

* 

Interior décor:

Opposite the window was a fifty-foot run of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lacquered Chinese red. Not all the shelves contained books; Kate's collection of antique snuff boxes stood on one; another held a small collection of terra-cotta ancient Greek votive statuettes and other shelves held small, charming objects—a seventeenth-century bronze of a man wrestling with a bull by Garnier, a tiny yellow Meissen patch-box that had once belonged to Madame de Pompadour.

* 

General good advice:

Judy said, “Real protection isn’t a man—it’s money! That’s what gives you the power to do good, the power to be bad, the power to stay or to leave.”

* 

So, Lace - go on… Yes, it's pretty awful. Also sordid. Ridiculous. Funny for many wrong reasons. Addictive. 

Where do I go from here…? I've also never read any Jilly Cooper. And I think I need a monogrammed crocodile jewellery case and a set of sables.

{weekend words}

'What do you think about when you weed?' she said to me one day, as she sat and watched me busy among the onions. 'Well, all down that row I worried about the Linnet, and all down this one I'm worrying about Bill, and for the first three rows I worried about Libya, and for the next two our shipping losses, and - ' 'Stop!' said Lady B. 'I am an old woman,' she went on, 'and nobody expects me to do more than knit, but I'd never take a knitting needle in my hand again if I couldn't read at the same time and thus occupy my thoughts.' 'I wonder if one could read and weed?' I said. 'Of course you couldn't,' said Lady B. 'But it's time you snapped out of all this gloom, Henrietta. I think you'd better enter for the Bowling Tournament.' 'But I haven't played bowls since the war began.' 'That doesn't matter. I shall enter, too,' said Lady B recklessly. 'It will be unfortunate for our partners, but good for their self-control.'

Joyce Dennys (1986 [2010])

Henrietta Sees It Through: 

More News from the Home Front

 

{review} henrietta sees it through

Joyce Dennys Henrietta Sees It Through: More News from the Home Front (1986 [2010])

 

The sequel to Henrietta's War: News from the Home Front 1939-1942 is almost as delightful as its predecessor. 

Things on the home front are, of course, rather less lively by 1942, as the war drags on and more and more of the inhabitants of the little West Country village feel its effects. They are particularly irked that outsiders seem to think that they exist in a lost Eden of peacefulness.

This is a light-hearted book, which makes the small tragedies of war all the more poignant as everyone tries their hardest to maintain a stiff upper lip. As heartening morale-boosters, these well-crafted little letters to the mysterious 'My Dear Robert' are spot on. On the aftermath of enemy raid in the vicinity,

If it was Hitler's idea to strike terror into the hearts of sleepy West Country folk, then the whole thing was a failure, because it has simply made everybody very angry indeed. Lady B came round that evening, quite pink with annoyance. 'I'm in such a temper,' she said. Charles said he wished he could give her a little something, but there wasn't a drop in the cupboard. When we asked Lady B if she had been upset by the Incidents, she said no, she had got under the piano and taken some of Fay's Dog Bromide mixture, which had worked wonders. Lady B said Fay had been quite unmoved by each shattering explosion, and had remained in her basket with a bored expression on her face.

Henrietta (with her "two faithful hairpins, Castor and Pollux") is a delightful, scatty heroine, with her ability to get into all sorts of minor and very funny scrapes. Lady B. - Henrietta's companion in these scrapes and also her bulwark against the world's troubles - is a one of my absolute favourite characters. 

Lady B.

'What do you think about when you weed?' she said to me one day, as she sat and watched me busy among the onions. 'Well, all down that row I worried about the Linnet, and all down this one I'm worrying about Bill, and for the first three rows I worried about Libya, and for the next two our shipping losses, and - ' 'Stop!' said Lady B. 'I am an old woman,' she went on, 'and nobody expects me to do more than knit, but I'd never take a knitting needle in my hand again if I couldn't read at the same time and thus occupy my thoughts.' 'I wonder if one could read and weed?' I said. 'Of course you couldn't,' said Lady B. 'But it's time you snapped out of all this gloom, Henrietta. I think you'd better enter for the Bowling Tournament.' 'But I haven't played bowls since the war began.' 'That doesn't matter. I shall enter, too,' said Lady B recklessly. 'It will be unfortunate for our partners, but good for their self-control.'

It is not all fun ("Watching me garden is one of our gardener's favourite pastimes. He never seems to tire of it…") and games: there are losses, constant worries about the children's safety, and so many small but significant sacrifices to make (pulping one's books!). There are also a couple of interesting little bits and pieces: I didn't realize that doctors were exempt from having to take in evacuees. I would like to know more about a passing reference to women being compensated less than men for war injuries. And now I shall pronounce Noel Coward as "Nole Card"!

Dennys' wit is so sharp:

"At the Labour Exchange I was interviewed by a Young Person whose lips were painted where her lips were not."

On war on the English character: "Perfect strangers, they say, make each other cups of tea."

We nearly won the Dog Race (Owner to Run Backwards), too, but just at the finish Perry caught sight of the spaniel and twisted his lead round my legs. Some people fall elegantly and gracefully - I am not one. When I got back to my chair, Lady B said, 'Fancy those knickers lasting all this time. Didn't you get them before the war?'

Perry, incidentally, is the dog who "did catch a mouse once, but only after Charles had hit it with a telephone directory"!

Rating: lovely, lovely book. 10/10.

If you liked this... a different kettle of fish, but Mollie Panter-Downes' war stories {REVIEW}.

{weekend words}

Not only am I currently spending a long, long weekend interstate in lovely Melbourne, but I am lucky enough to be staying at The Windsor, a wonderful old hotel in the Grand Hotel tradition. Kerry Greenwood captured the Windsor so beautifully in her first Phryne Fisher mystery, Cocaine Blues (1989), set in  Melbourne in the 1920s.

'Where we goin' first?' yelled Bert. Phryne screamed back over the noise of the labouring engine, 'First to the Queen Victoria Hospital, then to the Windsor Hotel, and we aren't in a particular hurry.'

…

'You staying at the Windsor, Miss?' asked Bert, removing his pendant cigarette and flinging it through the rattling window of the taxi. 'Toffy, are you? The time will come when the working man rises against his oppressors, and breaks the chains of Capital, and. . .'

'. . . then there won't be any more Windsor,' finished Phryne. Bert looked injured. He released the steering wheel and turned his head to remonstrate with the young capitalist.

'No miss, you don't understand,' he began, averting death with a swift twiddle of the wheel that skidded them to safety around a van. 'When the revolution comes, we'll all be staying at the Windsor.'

'It sounds like an excellent idea,' agreed Phryne.

As this publishes, I shall be having Afternoon Tea.

{one book, two books... redux}

I loved Simon's quiz on Stuck in a Book the first time, back in May. Let's have another go:

1. The book I'm currently reading.

I have a lot of books on the go at once, but I'm closest to finishing (one in my study and one in the loo) these two rather different books: The Complete Book of Aunts by Rupert Christiansen (2006) and Pierre Frei's Berlin (2005).

They are different in genre (commonplace book/anthology vs. crime fiction) and other things (e.g., Berlin is a translation from German), but their biggest difference is quality: Berlin is a unputdownable story of a series of murders set in immediate post-war Berlin. It offers an interesting twist by tracing the lives of the victims from roughly ten years before the crime up to the circumstances that led to their being in that particular place at that specific time. It is an excellent and intelligent thriller.

The Complete Book of Aunts, which seemed so promisingly amusing when I saw it in a secondhand store, achieved the fate of relegation to the bathroom, where books go to die force me to finish them in the absence of anything else to read. It is superficial and pretty sloppy in content. It needed a good editor and it certainly is not "The Complete Book of Aunts", given that the author claims very early on that there is no adjectival equivalent of 'avuncular' for aunts. Um, yes there is: materteral. Wouldn't you at least Google if you were interested in auntly completeness? It also contains sentences that should never have made it into print, such as: "After she died, Virginia wrote a memoir of Caroline Emelia..." Clever woman, Virgina Woolf, writing from beyond the grave... As I said, s-l-o-p-p-y.

 

2. The last book I finished:

The last book I finished was very enjoyable: Tess Gerritsen's The Silent Girl (2011). It was a crime novel too (I seem to be wallowing in crime at the moment) and the current last in the Rizzoli/Isles police procedurals by Tess Gerritsen. I had read none of her books before I read the other Simon's review of Keeping the Dead. Next thing I knew I had consumed the entire series in two weeks and was living in fear that even locked doors and windows won't keep out a serial killer who wanted nothing more than to mummify me for posterity. OK, I exaggerate a little, but these books are totally addictive, well-written and full of moments that are so frightening you will need to go and turn on all the lights and hide under the bed. For some reason there was always a gruesome autopsy scene just when I wanted to have dinner. I haven't read much along these lines since I gave up with Patricia Cornwell when her plots and characters got so ridiculous they made me laugh instead of tremble in fear, but I thoroughly recommend Gerritsen if you want to be scared out of your wits. My only quibble is that why is it generally women who meet gruesome and graphically described ends (and from women writers)? This article gave me pause for thought (and somewhere recently I've read something else about book jackets on these books always featuring anonymous chunks of naked women, but I can't find the link; I don't think it was this). Of course, Gerritsen does provide balance with her strong female protagonists who defy victimization.

3. The next book(s) I want to read:

Non-fiction? Rosemary Auchmuty's A World of Women: Growing Up in the Girls' School Story (1999). Why? I enjoyed her first book on this theme, about the elaborate worlds created in girls' stories set in schools.

Fiction?  Mary Wesley's The Camomile Lawn (1984). Why? Love books set in the 1930s/Second World War.

Crime-fiction? Imogen Robertson's Anatomy of Murder (2011) - I enjoyed the first one in the series.

4. The last book I bought:

Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book (2008). Yes, I'm about two (and the rest) years behind on what everyone else has read. I like it that way.

5. The last book I was given:

As I was leaving work one day, a lady in the lobby was handing out the Friendly Street Poetry Reader 26 (eds. Ioana Petrescu and David Adès, 2002). Many passersby looked a little suspicious that someone was giving away (a) anything and (b) poetry and (c) something not involving enrolment in a religious cult or pyramid selling scheme. There was a lot of Don't Make Eye Contact going on. But the Friendly Street Poets are an Adelaide institution: a poetry collective established way back in 1975. They hold poetry readings, open mike nights and so on, and publish anthologies of their members' work. Poetry is food for the soul, so here's a taste:

To be a moth, once more, at the lamp
of a woman's eyes; seeking that flame
in the knowledge of cinders; and the
darkness when the lamp is turned away...
(excerpt from David Adès, 'To Hazard This')