An heiress and mainly manly men, with horses: Flambards by K.M. Peyton (1967)

Flambards by K.M. Peyton ~ 1967. This edition: Oxford University Press, 2007. Hardcover. 227 pages.

This will be a sketchy sort of review. This novel is so well known that anything I have to say will probably have already been said.

Much of what I do have to say here is reasonably complimentary, with caveats. I do appreciate K.M. Peyton, a prolific and popular writer who died this past December at the age of ninety-four.

Flambards is probably the most prominent of her dozens of youth/young adult novels, but it is not my own personal favourite of her works. I think I would have to say that her Ruth and Pennington arc of six novels is more compelling to me personally. And the stand-alone novel A Pattern of Roses is a bit of a quiet stunner. But more about those later this year, I think. They are all piled up waiting a re-read at some point.

Back to Flambards. Though it’s often relegated to “children’s book” categorization, it’s pretty darned “adult” in many of its themes. Think National Velvet, another “juvenile” “horse book” which really isn’t a horse book, and really isn’t a juvenile, either. The horses are important, but only in relation to the main characters. Four-legged set dressing, in a way.

Twelve-year-old Christina, an orphan since the age of five, is sent to live at her widowed and crippled uncle’s mostly-male-inhabited establishment, a troubled country estate called Flambards. Uncle Russell and his older son Mark are utterly horse-mad. The stables are spotless and up-to-date; the house is decidedly neglected. Younger son William is scorned by his father and brother for his slight stature, his intellectual abilities, and most of all for his lack of true enthusiasm for all things equine, though he’s expected to participate in the usual horse-related activities such as hunting, with devastating results.

Christina enters the house just as William is being brought home on a sheep-hurdle, leg smashed from a mishap while hunting. She forms a rather furtive friendship with William during his recuperation, though she is out of sympathy with him in one major way. Christina finds that she is also enraptured with horses and riding.

There’s a bit of a back story, revealed very early on, which frames the story. Young Christina is something of an heiress, with a fortune held in trust, and the reason she was invited to live with her Uncle Russell was so she might possibly be a suitable husband (once grown up) for her cousin (half cousin?) Mark. The money is already earmarked for sinking into the Flambards estate.

Christina is a survivor, and she further refines her get-through-it technique as the years slide by. Uncle Russell and Cousin Mark continue to bluster and bully, while William quietly crafts his exit strategy from an absolutely toxic family situation, with Christina carefully navigating the territory in between.

The novel starts out with deep drama, and the trend continues right through to the end, which is, in my opinion, a bit too unlikely and awkward feeling. It didn’t sit completely well with me, hence my personal rating of 7.5/10.

Flambards is a decently enjoyable read, but none of the characters ever won my full affection, and by the end I didn’t really care all that much about who ended up with who, or what would happen to Flambards itself.

Turn the page, close the book, set it aside. It did not occupy my thoughts in the days  after reading it, as the best books do. But nonetheless it’s a keeper, and has a permanent shelf space in the K.M. Peyton stack. I’ve read it a few times over the years, and likely will again.

Flambards was a popular success and received several high profile children’s fiction awards. It was followed by two sequels in 1969, a well-received television mini-series in the 1970s, and a fourth postscript novel in 1981.

 

 

Tell-All Tale of the Suddenly-Single: Ex-Wife by Ursula Parrott ( 1929)

Ex-Wife by Ursula Parrott ~ 1929. This edition: McNally Editions, 2023. Foreword by Alissa Bennett. Afterword by Marc Parrott. Softcover. 218 pages.

I wish I could recall which of my fellow readers recommended this punchy little autobiographical novel, a bestseller immediately upon its anonymous publication in 1929. Described as “scandalous” and “racy” in its time,  it no longer carries the same weight as a “forbidden topic” tell-all, but has become something much more relatable, as the dissolution of marriage has become an unremarked commonplace in our North American culture, with, according to a quick internet search, something like 40% of formalized marital unions ultimately breaking down.

Here’s the flyleaf blurb from the most recent edition of this fascinating snapshot of a certain kind of cultural and personal life in the New York of the 1920s:

It’s 1924, and Peter and Patricia have what looks to be a very modern marriage. Both drink. Both smoke. Both work, Patricia as a head copywriter at a major department store. When it comes to sex with other people, both believe in “the honesty policy.” Until they don’t. Or, at least, until Peter doesn’t—and a shell-shocked, lovesick Patricia finds herself starting out all over again, but this time around as a different kind of single woman: the ex-wife.

An instant bestseller when it was published anonymously in 1929, Ex-Wife captures the speakeasies, night clubs, and parties that defined Jazz Age New York—alongside the morning-after aspirin and calisthenics, the lunch-hour visits to the gym, the girl­talk, and the freedoms and anguish of solitude. It also casts a cool eye on the bedrooms and the doctors’ offices where, despite rising hemlines, the men still call the shots. The result is a unique view of what its author Ursula Parrott called “the era of the one-night stand.”

I wouldn’t exactly call this a “revenge novel”, though seen from Patricia’s viewpoint Peter does not come off well at all. He openly sleeps around, is endlessly and cruelly critical of Patricia’s looks or, when the effects of too much work and partying start to show, her lack of them. He quite openly has a casual antipathy to their baby and is both indifferent and, when the child dies, seemingly relieved to be stripped of the burden of fatherhood. When Patricia gets pregnant a second time, Peter turns physically abusive, at one point throwing her through a glass door. Whatever Patricia’s personal flaws might be, Peter’s seem to exponentially trump them.

Patricia makes many poor decisions in the time we get to know her, but the unforeseen awfulness of Peter as a life partner is something that takes all of us by surprise – Patricia included. It was a love match to start with and passion matched passion, but somehow something changed. Patricia indicts Peter thus: “He grew tired of me, hunted about for reasons to justify his weariness; and found them.”

After a drink-fueled one night stand with Peter’s best friend – Peter doesn’t know “who”, just that it happened, as Patricia after much mental turmoil tells him – Peter gets all dramatic about Patricia breaking his trust and destroying his faith in women. He rattles on at great length about her besmirching her freshness and cleanness and innocence. She’s absolutely dirty (in his eyes)  for basically doing once what he’s been doing with unapologetically casual abandon all along. Apparently it’s different for her. Patricia pleads her case, Peter scorns her every word. Patricia wants a reconciliation. Peter absolutely doesn’t.

The marriage falls irrevocably apart, though years will pass before a divorce happens, with Peter resurfacing now and then to repeat his cutting critiques and knock Patricia out of whatever equilibrium she has attained.

Patricia, emotionally devastated, looks about for ways to dull her pain and finds them, in casual sexual encounters with many willing partners, in her success at her job, in relishing the material rewards of her work, in dressing well, dining out and dancing and and drinking, drinking, drinking. It doesn’t seem enough, though, and ultimately it isn’t.

Does this all sound too dreary for words? Initially I thought it might be, but I very soon became absolutely enthralled by Patricia’s navigation of her unwanted situation. While staying very aware that most of her issues were, at least partly, self-imposed, I soon found myself truly liking her. Her voice is by turns sad, angry, self-loathing, and absolutely cynical, but it’s also exceedingly self-aware, and genuinely humorous, as she muses on the inexplicable realities of being an unwilling “ex-wife” and everything that goes along with that designation.

Trigger warnings: This book contains frank (but not overly explicit) depictions of abortion, rape, and physical and mental abuse. It’s pretty tame stuff in comparison to what a lot of current bestsellers casually contain, but it was outspoken for its time. I felt that Parrott pulled off the tricky task of describing these experiences without crossing the line into needless titillation.

My rating: 9.5/10. The half point is deducted because the ending felt a bit uneven to me; I wanted a different resolution, though I’m not sure what that could have looked like.

An absolutely engaging story, and the characters came to life for me, sketched out and enlarged upon by a very competent writer.

The internet is abundant with elaborations on “the life she really lived”, though you might want to read Ex-Wife yourself before you drop down that particular rabbit-hole.

The afterword by Ursula Parrott’s son Marc is a bonus of the McNally edition. In real life the baby did not die, as the fictionalized child does. That said, the real-life tale of Parrot’s mothering is not exactly admirable. Marc pragmatically relates some aspects of his mother’s life and character with carefully balanced assessment, and appears to hold no grudges.

 

 

 

Journey Round the Kingdom: The Search for Delicious by Natalie Babbitt (1969)

The Search for Delicious by Natalie Babbitt ~ 1969. This edition: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969. Hardcover. 159 pages.

This book is a treasured survivor from my childhood bookshelf, and I hold it in very fond regard. It’s a short and efficiently written morality tale of sorts, and is saved from preachiness by its charm and wry humour.

Some time ago, in a small, imaginary kingdom, the Prime Minister is writing a dictionary. Everything is going swimmingly, until it suddenly isn’t.

The Prime Minister returns to his rooms after showing his progress to the King, and relates what has just happened to his twelve-year-old adopted son Gaylen.

“I went down, you see, to show the King how far I’ve gone with my dictionary. He was pleased with the first part. He liked ‘Affectionate is your dog’ and ‘Annoying is a loose boot in a muddy place’ and so on, and he smiled at ‘Bulky is a big bag of boxes.’ As a matter of fact, there was no trouble with any of the A’s or B’s and the C’s were fine too, especially ’Calamitous is saying no to the King.’ But then we got to ‘Delicious is fried fish’ and he said no, I’d have to change that. He doesn’t care for fried fish. The General of the Armies was standing there and he said that, as far as he was concerned, Delicious is a mug of beer, and the Queen said no, Delicious is a Christmas pudding, and then the King said nonsense, everyone knew the most delicious thing is an apple, and they all began quarreling. Not just the three of them – the whole court…”

This seems like a minor episode, and Gaylen laughs it off, but the Prime Minister isn’t so optimistic. And he’s right. The Court is soon in an uproar, and the ripples are spreading throughout the kingdom. There’s even talk of a civil war, boosted along by the Queen’s wicked brother, Hemlock.

One thing leads to another, as things tend to do in fairy tales, and Gaylen finds himself tasked with undertaking a survey of the entire kingdom, visiting every dweller there within to record each individual’s choice for Delicious. He sets off on his trusty steed Marrow, and it’s all a lovely adventure, until he discovers that Hemlock is out on a mission of his own, stirring up dissent and spreading false tales of the King’s motivation for asking Gaylen to record everyone’s choices.

This is a fast-moving story, and Babbitt packs a lot into it, with characters ranging from the optimistic Gaylen and his fellow human countrymen to an assortment of almost-forgotten creatures, such as the dwarfs in the mountains, woldwellers in the forests, mermaids in the lakes, and winds in the air.

Gaylen’s journey round the kingdom turns dark and dangerous, and disaster looms, but in proper fairy tale tradition, his kind and fair-minded actions and reactions are rewarded, though not without some close calls.

This is a fantastic story to read aloud to your young people, or perhaps to enjoy for yourself on days when you might need cheering up from the woes of the real world. Never mind that it’s classified as a “juvenile” – it’s a well-crafted tale, and that is always worthy of appreciation, and the adult reader will enjoy what Babbitt has done here.

My rating: a staunch 10/10. And if you do find yourself in possession of this little book, I hope it’s a version that includes all of Babbitt’s  original pen-and-ink illustrations in the chapter headings. They are delightful.

 

 

 

The Virgin Mary Takes an Interest: Catalina by W. Somerset Maugham (1948)

Catalina by W. Somerset Maugham ~ 1948. This edition: Pan, 1978. Paperback. 239 pages.

I’ve dipped into Maugham’s more mainstream novels over the years – The Painted Veil and The Moon and Sixpence spring to mind – but this rather frou-frou satire set in Spain during the years of the Inquisition was certainly not what I had expected.

Our young heroine, Catalina, a sixteen-year-old beauty unfortunately crippled after being run over by a bull, prays incessantly to the Virgin Mary to heal her, for when she lost the use of her leg, she also lost her handsome lover. Lo and behold! a vision of the Virgin appears to her with a promise that she can be healed if the right person gets involved. Says Mary, “The son of Juan Suarez de Valero who has best served God has it in his power to heal you. He will lay his hands upon you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, bid you throw away your crutch and walk. You will throw down your crutch and you will walk.”

Catalina hobbles home and tells her mother of the vision, but the response is dismissive – “probably just a dream!” – and it is also not wise to draw too much attention to oneself in regards to claiming divine visitations, what with it being the height of the Inquisition and all. It’s even more sobering to consider that one of the sons of de Valero referenced by the Virgin, the saintly Bishop Don Blasco de Valero, is a chief Inquisitor.

There are three de Valero brothers, Don Blasco (the priest), Don Manuel (the prominent military man), and Don Martin (the humble baker). When Catalina’s vision inevitably becomes a topic of public discussion, everyone assumes that Don Blasco will be the one to pull off the miraculous cure, but things go a bit awry.

Maugham pads out his tale with many long digressions, many concentrating on Don Blasco’s back story and his current crisis of faith. Don Blasco’s saga is mirrored with that of another prominent member of the Spanish religious elite, Doña Beatriz de San Domingo, Prioress of a Carmelite convent.

Doña Beatriz’s ears perk up when she hears Catalina’s story, and, ever-quick to grasp opportunities to enhance the status of her nunnery, attempts to lay claim to the miracle-about-to-happen, as the vision of the Virgin took place upon the steps of the Carmelites’ church.

There are quite a number of surprises in store for the protagonists of this novel, and some for the reader, too. I was intrigued by Maugham’s mixture of satire and seriousness; there were passages of true emotional appeal here and there that caught at one’s heartstrings, but, as the novel progressed, these became more elusive, as the farcical elements took over.

Catalina’s eventual fate is not as predictable as one would initially think, and the Virgin pops up again to oversee Catalina’s wellbeing.

I thought, for the first few chapters, that I might have found something of a hidden gem with this one, but unfortunately I can’t award it that status. It’s more of a curiousity read, and I suspect it will be relegated to the “read once, don’t think I’ll read it again” stacks.

The last published full-length work by W. Somerset Maugham, Catalina is available on Project Gutenberg, and is relatively cheap and easy to source as a printed version through all the usual online book places, for those wishing to round out their collection of this author’s work.

It’s tough to give a numerical rating, as I truly enjoyed substantial parts of Catalina, but now that ten days or so have passed after my reading, I look back on the overall experience and sadly must settle on a modest 6/10.

At War with the Money-God: Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell (1936)

Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell ~ 1936. This edition: Penguin, 1975. Paperback. 264 pages.

I’m starting my 2024 Century of Books with this satirical novel, centered around a petulantly angry young man who almost manages to succeed at failure by deliberately refusing to take advantage of every chance he is given to advance himself, from his school days onward.

Gordon Comstock, on the cusp of his thirtieth birthday, is the last scion of a large, once-prosperous, middle-class English family. He’s a bit of a weedy chap, living unnecessarily squalidly by his own choice, and he’s very much on a downward spiral.

Having a modest aptitude for literary creativity, Gordon has achieved a small success as a poet, though his one published volume of verse, Mice, is now languishing on the remainder shelves of the bookstore he works at, after selling a meager one hundred and fifty-three copies in the two years since its debut.   

Gordon is pretty miffed about this. He can’t quite come to terms with his unsuccess as a writer, which he wraps up with his bitter condemnation of what he sees as a universal fixation on degrees of social rank, economic status, and the push to attain more money, more things. He feels that if only he were free to concentrate on his writing without the whole wage-slave thing, he would flower forth into his full intellectual potential.

Gordon’s psyche seems to be deeply scarred by his recognition that, as the years go by and the family money disappears – whisked away by the increasing cost of living and unwise investments – his family’s financial status is desperately inadequate to meet with the costs of maintaining a suitable social position without its members seeking paid employment. His way of dealing with this is to “defy the money-god” of conventional society by refusing to play the middle-class game of climbing-the-ladder-and-getting-ahead. Much as he would reject that description, Gordon’s a snob at heart.

Despite the best efforts of his few surviving family members and a stalwart handful of friends and well-wishers to see him settled in a “good job” with “good prospects” for future advancement, Gordon has sworn an oath against participating in what he sees as a dirty game. If he can strip his life of inessentials, take on the most minimal employment possible to provide for his most basic needs, and dedicate his leftover hours to his literary ambitions, he’s sure he will do great things and receive the recognition he secretly desires.

Unfortunately, Gordon lacks the touch of genius which would enable this wishful thinking to become reality, and he is peeved to find that a life of voluntary poverty gets in the way of creative work because of sheer physical discomfort and the desperate realities of being a poor person in sub-par lodgings.

Paradoxically, while rejecting conventional behaviour and scorning those who have, as he sees it, compromised their integrity by embracing the middle class live-to-work ethos, Gordon is bitterly jealous of anyone with money, and passionately wishes that he had some himself.

This is a richly written novel, and even though I had an increasingly strong desire for someone to just give our protagonist a bone-jarring shaking, I was wooed and held by the brilliance of Orwell’s powers of description, his deft character sketches, and his willingness to delve into some very deep places, literally and figuratively.

Oh, and what about the aspidistra of the title? Yes, that’s the ubiquitous Victorian-era houseplant, and the reader of this tale will become well-acquainted with its characteristics and its symbolic importance to Gordon Comstock as he pursues his unhappy spiral into self-inflicted misery.

Am I still rating my reads? Yes, I think I am.

Not a “must read” by any stretch, but I found this little novel intriguing and ultimately enjoyable, though I’m not quite sure about my response to the author’s choice of an ending. I’ll give no spoilers – read it yourself and see what you think!

Let’s give this an 8/10.

Happy New Year!

It’s been quite some time since I’ve been active here, and I sure have missed you guys. Life got a little bit strange for me about eighteen months ago, and it’s taken me till now to get up the gumption to get a post out.

I have a long saga regarding these missing months, but I think I’ll condense it to the basics. I’ll probably be sharing more in the future, but this shall suffice for now.

I have joined The Club That Nobody Wants to Be In.

Yup. The big C. And yeah, it’s been hard. But we soldier on, as one does. There sure are a lot of us dealing with this stuff. It’s not as exclusive a club as one would wish it to be, but on the plus side, the support I’ve been finding from friends and strangers alike has been beyond positive. Adversity does indeed bring us together. All the cliches are true.

My particular situation was a double whammy. First, malignant melanoma – “This is the one that can kill you”, as the diagnosing doctor soberly said – and then, as a totally unexpected bad bonus, the discovery of a rather large brain tumour. That one came as an utter shock, though in retrospect the symptoms were certainly there, and had been worsening for some years, though I had never even contemplated “brain tumour” as a reason for my worsening eyesight and hearing, and some increasingly strange strength and mobility glitches.

In the past year I have had three unpleasant surgeries, including a craniotomy to attempt brain tumour removal, and several facial surgeries for removal of the skin cancer, and subsequent facial reconstruction from my right eye all the way to the corner of my mouth. (I had a marvelous plastic surgeon – I look good – better than any of us expected.) I also have had six intense weeks of radiation therapy to the tumour site at the back of my brain, my “lifetime dose”, which, if I’m one of the fortunate ones, should knock back regrowth of my cranial interloper, at least for some years. It will continue to be a journey.

I feel okay. Not great, but definitely okay. I will likely never feel really great in the “before” sense – brain surgery and then radiation is a pretty big deal and one sure feels it – but I am still standing. Still walking, albeit with a walking stick some days, still talking as coherently as I ever did, albeit with some speech lags when I get too tired, still enjoying cognitive capabilities pretty well what they were pre-surgery, and – big hurrah! – I can still see. I’ve lost about a quarter of my visual range, but things as of my last ophthalmology assessment show no significant changes, so I’m good with that.

I can still read, and books have played a crucial part in keeping me comforted and dare I say “grounded” during these surreal times.

So here’s to the brand new year, and the books we’ll all read in it, and the companionship of others and all of the good things that go along with that.

I have no idea how often I’ll be posting. Everything seems possible this first week of January. I see my friend Simon is once again tackling ACOB – A Century of Books – and I am mulling over joining him. I’ve completed this ambitious project once before, and partially completed two others, and it is a lot of fun.

For the past year and a half it’s been old favourites and “comfort reads” all the way. Nothing too dramatic, or edgy, or tragic. Real life has provided all of those elements, and books have been, and will continue to be, a respite from that.

I do hope to get a handle on my tendency to just ramble on and on once I do get settled at the keyboard. That’s a worthy challenge all by itself. I might set myself a word limit on future book posts, to force brevity. We shall see.

Cheers, book friends! You are all bright stars in sometimes-dark skies. Thank you for the companionship, and for sharing your words, and may this happily continue in 2024 and beyond.

Barb

(Credit for the comic goes to Tom Gauld.)

Welcome to Television Land: The Children on the Top Floor by Noel Streatfeild (1964)

The Family on the Top Floor by Noel Streatfeild ~ 1964. This edition: Random House, 1965. Hardcover. 248 pages.

Goodness, look at that calendar! Almost March. Well, I’ve been getting in a respectable amount of reading time – it’s still dark in the evenings and we are still snowbound, so outside garden work hasn’t ramped up yet – and the pile of books-I-want-to-talk-about is really stacking up. I likely won’t get to them all, unless I whip off a slew of 100-word micro-posts (now there’s a tempting thought!) but hey, we do what we can.

Suspend your disbelief – and maybe your expectation of quality storytelling – when you crack the pages of this deservedly obscure Streatfeild juvenile.

Malcolm Master is a stunningly successful television personality. The whole of England hangs on his every word, and of course his cleverly produced Christmas Eve broadcast is something extra special. Malcolm stares the camera right in the eye that fateful night, and declares in a voice quivering with apparent sincerity,”Christmas is not Christmas without children. You cannot guess what this old bachelor would give to wake tomorrow morning to the squeals of delighted children opening their stockings.”

Be careful what you ask for, Mister Master. Because guess what appears on his doorstep bright and early Christmas morning, just in time for the milkman to carry inside?

Yup. Four wee babies. Two boys, two girls, all of approximately the same age, and each apparently well fed and cared for and accompanied by anonymous and sadly inane Christmas cards from four different mothers.

I was quite enthralled by this development, thinking to myself, “Aha! Children of our hero’s indiscretions, a la The Whicharts!” (For those unfamiliar with that odd little tale, it’s essentially Ballet Shoes for grownups, with the children landed on the doorstep of their father being the offspring of his ex-lovers.)

Well, this idea was soon put to rest, as these random babies do not get any backstory at all, and no one ever seems to inquire about their origins, and they are immediately absorbed into the household which is conveniently staffed with an assortment of “cottage loaf shaped” mother figures who glom on to the babies and whisk them away to be raised in seclusion on the top floor of Malcolm Master’s stately home.

The children are named after nursery rhyme characters and are raised in a certain degree of luxury, because they soon are introduced to the starstruck nation as Malcolm Master’s “quads”, stars of numerous television commercials advertising a wide range of products with attached sponsorship deals which clothe and feed and house the children with the very products they are used in touting.

Malcolm himself really doesn’t have much to do with the children – they’re very much in the background as he goes about whatever it is he does to keep his own star shining bright, so when disaster strikes in the form of a heart attack brought on by overwork, and a subsequent sea journey to recuperate, the children and their well-meaning pseudo-mothers are left to get on with things as best they can. For Malcolm has inexplicably not had the foresight to arrange for the care and feeding of his many human responsibilities, and money starts to get tight. Oh, dear, what shall we do? Who will care for the children now that the Master money has (apparently) run out? They may have to go to an ORPHANAGE!!!

Um, okay. I can think of quite a few options, but hey! – most of them would be quite sensible and not very exciting, plot wise.

This is essentially the hackneyed Ballet Shoes formula, first trotted out to great success in 1936, transposed to 1964, with the Wonderful World of Television and the Master’s children’s eventual preoccupations and probable future careers – actress, costume designer, cameraman, film engineer – taking the place of the Fossils’ performing arts focus.

There’s so much more I could say, meanly deconstructing this flat little fairy tale episode by episode, but I will leave us right there. A peek at the Goodreads page shows quite a few readers retaining very fond memories of this one, and that’s fair enough. I came to reading Noel Streatfeild as an adult, so there is no childhood nostalgia to temper my reactions to the more far-fetched of her literary efforts.

Her best books – of which there are a respectable number – are very good indeed. Her middle-of-the-pack efforts – very readable in a “light entertainment” sort of way. And some never really get off the ground, and for me this was one of those.

The Children on the Top Floor starts out with oodles of promise, and it could have been charming and quite funny, but unfortunately it soon fizzled out. With 248 pages to work with, it’s not as if there were space constraints, but Streatfeild must have been jaded when she picked up her pencil on this one.

To be fair, an awful lot of 1960s’ and 1970s’ children’s books were pretty dire – it was, after all, the beginning of the incredible proliferation of young audience targeted “themed” and “problem novels” still plaguing us today, churned out with hyper-focus on the chosen topic to the neglect of strong character development and vivid storytelling.

My rating: 3.5/10.

My late mother, book-a-day reader extraordinaire, who always was happy to delve into a quality “children’s book”, would have categorized this one as a “dull thud”, and that’s where I sadly have to put it too.  This writer could do better. If you don’t remember it as a favourite childhood read, perhaps best appreciated by the Streatfeild completest.

 

Some years in the law: Jumping Off the Donkey by John Barnsley (1983)

Jumping Off the Donkey by John Barnsley ~ 1983. This edition: Minimax Books, 1983. Hardcover. 191 pages.

Found in the book stacks when doing a spot of spring cleaning the other day. I have no idea where I picked up this obscure autobiography – thrift store? charity book sale? – but it has provided me with a few hours of mild but genuine enjoyment, and that is always pleasing.

From the flyleaf:

John Barnsley is the pen name of a former country solicitor who began working life, after being educated at Derby School and Clifton College, as a journalist on weeklies in Hexham, Jarrow and South Shields.

Leaving journalism John Barnsley became a solicitor’s articled clerk one year before the outbreak of the Second World War. In that war he saw service in England, Egypt, Palestine, Eritrea, Cyprus and the Dodacanese Island where he was Custodian of Enemy Property. After VE day he was sent to Norway where, after a brief spell in charge of a POW camp he was called upon to defend Germans accused in Oslo of war crimes in two celebrated trials.

John Barnsley’s writing style might best be described as tongue-in-cheek with a leaning to the ponderous; one can almost feel his elbow nudging the reader’s figurative ribs on occasion. Not offensively so, though. I am sure Mr. Barnsley would have been a boon to dinner parties post-retirement, when he could let himself go with carefully anonymous tales of some of the characters he encountered throughout those years in the law.

While the law firm anecdotes are generally amusing, the strongest parts of this slender account are the more serious bits – the wartime references and in particular the account of acting as the defense lawyer for several German war criminals.

A bit of an eye opener, that is, and shines a light on a viewpoint not often recognized or discussed – that of the legal counsel speaking for the accused in atrocious crimes.

Criminal law was not Mr. Barnsley’s forte once his military days ended; he returned to civilian life and the workaday business of assisting in settling estates and property transactions and the like.

An interesting find and I am glad to have read it; a good example of this type of “common man” memoir in that it brings a touch of humanity and understanding to one person’s part in our shared society and history.

My rating: I think it deserves a 7.5/10, when considered among other similar minor memoirs. A competent and engaging example of its genre.

Interplanetary slugs and sexism: The Puppet Masters by Robert A. Heinlein (1951)

The Puppet Masters by Robert A. Heinlein ~ 1951. This edition: Signet, circa 1975. Paperback. 175 pages.

Flashback to the school library rotating paperback rack!

I first read Robert A. Heinlein as a teen in the 1970s. I found some of his more extreme libertarian and offhandedly sexist views a bit problematic way back then, but kept reading because of the storytelling – it was pretty darned good for sci-fi for its time.

How does it travel to 2022?

Hmm. Still problematic. Mostly for his patronizingly chauvinistic views towards women. His ideal female? Built, beautiful, sexually willing, good in the kitchen and very, very quiet.

Misogynistic attitudes possibly put aside – though I’ve met a disturbingly large number of these folks, both male and female, who have vintage 1950s’-type views on the equality of the sexes – today’s “libertarians” seem to have ideological views right on par with Heinlein’s, so I guess you might say he was ahead of his time – or a product of his time? – in regards to his frequently trotted out diatribes on the dangers of socialism.

But on to the story. (Remembering that it was written in 1951, so the action is set some six decades in the future.)

It’s 2007. Flying saucer sightings have recently been reported all over the U.S.A., and one is discovered to be on the ground in the country outside Des Moines, Iowa. Initial radio reports from the scene  indicate that the occupants are alive and … then … silence. When transmission resumes, it’s all very, “Ha ha ha! Just a couple of teenagers pulling off an elaborate hoax! Nothing to see here, folks, nothing to see…”

Scenting danger, a trio of state security secret agents heads for the site of the mystery spaceship, and discovers something exceedingly unsettling. Strange, mollusc-like creatures are parasitizing humans, nestling along their spines and controlling their thoughts and actions. The slugs (as they are soon nicknamed by the humans still not under the influence) seem to be able to replicate quickly, and are very quick to utilize what they are learning from their hosts to further their invasion.

Planetary disaster! The aliens must be stopped! (Save the President!) After some chapters of non-stop action – including a week off for passionate lovemaking between Secret Agents Number Two (a young man of almost superhuman strategy, fighting and survival skills) and Secret Agent Number Three (his female counterpart, with the added bonus of being built, beautiful, willing, silent, etcetera) the weak spot of the slug-creatures is discovered, and invasion mop-up begins.

This plot sounds as goofy as all get out, and it really is, but there is some solid writing for the genre in there too. Heinlein’s consistent popularity through the decades – most of his novels are still in print and selling very well indeed – argues for some twinkles of gold amidst the dross.

This isn’t really much of a review, and I really should head off to bed – morning comes so soon! – so you might want to head over to E. Magill’s excellent post here. Magill also uses the term “problematic”, and his “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” assessments mirror my own, in regards to The Puppet Masters and the other Heinlein works he mentions.

And the reviews on Goodreads are decidedly rewarding.

When Heinlein is good, he is very good, but when he is bad….well, you know the rest of that one.

My rating: Let’s call it a pretty solid 7/10.

Because the parts which are good are very good. And Heinlein’s frequently very funny. And, yes, there’s a nod to personal nostalgia in this rating, too.

Oh – and that paperback cover art by Gene Szafran – that’s a glorious 10/10. Someone should make the Szafran Heinlein covers (there were a few) into posters. Maybe someone has? Good stuff.

 

Strange Americana: Norwood by Charles Portis (1966)

Norwood by Charles Portis ~ 1966. This edition: The Overlook Press, 1999. Softcover. 168 pages.

Trigger warning. I think I need to put this out there in a prominent place – this book has era-expected language, meaning in this case that you will come right up against the n-word, multiple times. It’s generally used in a derogatory way by a key character – not our eponymous protagonist, which was a great relief to me – but one of the unsavories he comes in close contact with.

Reading with 2022 eyes, I have to say I stopped dead when I hit the first occurrence, and thought exceedingly hard about where we’ve come with our current hyper-sensitivity to problematic language.

Which I think is one of the main reasons why we shouldn’t ban or censor books from a time before – we should feel repugnance and we should take time to consider how and why our personal and societal attitudes have changed.

And this is all I will say about that, because I am well aware that opinions on tolerance of and censorship of currently unacceptable language in writings from a prior era will differ. Every reader of vintage fiction is going to have this conversation with themself as things pop up.

If you’re still wanting to stay with me on this one, let’s take a look at this book, this weird and rather fantastic (in every sense of the word) road trip tale. It’s kind of like a stream-of-consciousness fever dream, and it’s brilliant.

Norwood Pratt, just back from Korea, is now an ex-Marine. He’s also now an orphan – his mother is dead, his father has just died – and the feeling back home in Norwood’s current home town (the family’s moved around a lot) of Ralph, Texas is that Norwood needs to come on back home and look after his sister Vernell. She’s taking things hard, and she never really was that viable a specimen even before the latest bereavement, so there’s nothing for it but that Norwood take a hardship discharge and get back into civilian life.

Norwood is on the bus heading back to Texas from Camp Pendleton in California when he realizes that he’s forgotten to collect a debt owed him by one of his Marine buddies. It’s $70, not exactly a fortune, but it’s the principle of the thing, thinks Norwell, and he decides to settle down for a prolonged sulk as the bus rolls eastward.

The sulk doesn’t last long, as Norwood almost immediately befriends a young couple with a baby, transient vegetable pickers heading back to Texas with their California asparagus-season money. He invites them to come and stay for a few days, and our story is on.

Sometime during the night the Remleys decamped, taking with them a television set and a 16-gauge Ithaca Featherweight and two towels. No one could say how they got out of town with all that gear, least of all the night marshal. The day marshal came by and looked at the place where the television set had been. He made notes.

If Norwood has a weakness, it might be that he’s sometimes too trusting. But as subsequent occurrences go to show, he’s far from naive.

Back to his old job at the Nipper Independent Oil Co. Servicenter, Norwood settles down to looking after his still-depressed sister and doing all the cooking and housekeeping.

Sometimes he sat on the back steps wearing a black hat with a Fort Worth crease and played his guitar – just three or four chords really – and sang “Always Late – With Your Kisses,” with his voice breaking like Lefty Frizzell, and “China Doll” like Slim Whitman, whose upper range is hard to match. The guitar wasn’t much. It was a cheap West German model with nylon strings he had bought at the PX. He also put in a lot of time on his car. He had bought a 1947 Fleetline Chevrolet with dirt dobber nests in the heater and radio for fifty dollars. He put in some rings and ground the valves and got it in fair running shape. He loosened the tappets and put up with the noise so as to keep Vernell – who would race a motor – from burning the valves. She burned a connecting rod instead.

Norwood is good hearted and patient, and a darned good brother, but life feels flat to him.

One night he came home from work and said, “I’m tard of working at that station, Vernell.”

“What’s wrong, bubba?”

“Every time you grease a truck stuff falls in your eyes and your hair and down your back. You got it pretty easy yourself yourself. You know that?”

“Why don’t you get a hat?”

“I got plenty of hats, Vernell. I don’t need any more hats. If all I needed was another hat I would be well off.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I want to get on the Louisiana Hayride.”

Yes, Norwood has a secret longing to be a country and western singer, and the prospects are darned poor for that, and he’s starting to get depressed and even a little bit angry. Brooding away about the injustices piling up in his life, he decides to hunt down the debt owed to him by his old army buddy.

So Norwood leaves Ralph, driving an Olds 98 and hitch-pulling a Pontiac Catalina, both gleaming with fresh new paint. He has a commission from one Grady Fring (“the Kredit King”) to deliver the cars (and an unexpected passenger) to New York and return with another car, his payoff a chance to see the country and $50 in driving fees. Works out good, thinks Norwood, for he has a line on his army buddy who him the $70 – the guy was last heard from in New York. Win-win.

Well, things immediately go sideways, and inside out, and upside down. You have to read this yourself to find out all the many details, but I will tell you that during his travels, Norwood hops a freight train, meets a lot of interesting people, including Mr. Peanut, and the world’s smallest perfect fat man. and a beatnik girl who reads him passages from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet but doesn’t commit herself so far as to go to bed with Norwood, which leaves him mildly disappointed but he gets over it. Along the way he loses his precious cowboy boots – thirty-eight dollars, coal-black 14-inchers with steel shanks and low walking heels, red butterflies inset on the insteps – and he never gets on the Hayride, but he gains a few things, too. Including a college-educated chicken and a lady-love. Could be worse.

I will leave you with one of my favourite snippets from this goofy little book. Here’s Norwood in New York, contemplating tattoos.

There was a tattoo parlor and Norwood looked at the dusty samples in the window. He had a $32.50 black panther rampant on his left shoulder, teeth bared and making little red claw marks on his arm. He had never been happy with it. Something about the eyes, they were not fully open, and the big jungle cat seemed to be yawning instead of snarling. Norwood complained at the time and the tattoo man in San Diego said it wouldn’t look that way after it had scabbed over and healed. Once in Korea he sat down with some matches and a pin and tried to fix the eyes but only made them worse. Many times he wished that he had gotten a small globe and anchor with a serpentine banner under it saying U.S. Marines – First to Fight. To have more than one tattoo was foolishness.

Norwood knows what he thinks.

This was Charles Portis’s first published novel, and it was very well received. Very much a product of its free-wheeling time – and one has to wonder if Mr. Portis was indulging in something illicitly mood-enhancing when he rattled this one off, but it comes together just right, in a we’re just along for the ride sort of way. 

I feel like Norwood is very much a dress rehearsal for 1976’s much longer, more complex, but pleasingly similar The Dog of the South, one of my personal secret treasure books.

Now, your own mileage may vary on Charles Portis. My husband, who shares many but not all of my reading tastes, isn’t a huge fan of either Norwood or The Dog of the South, though he laughs along with me at some of the absolutely deadpan humour. Portis can sure nail inner thoughts and dialogue.

No, he (my husband) is something of a traditionalist – he much prefers Portis’s most well-known and likely most popular book, True Grit. (Yes, this is that Charles Portis.)

Me – I like ’em all. Too bad there are so few. Five novels. Not nearly enough.

My rating: 9/10. It would be a 10, but it’s just too short. So many questions left unanswered!

For the record, this novel was made into a 1970 movie starring Glen Campbell as Norwood. Major liberties were apparently taken to Hollywood-ize it – very likely so Campbell could showcase his musical chops. (He also played and sang on the soundtrack.) Full disclosure: I just watched the first ten minutes of this on YouTube. It was…regrettable. Please read the book first. Or better yet, instead of. (Sorry, Glenn.)