“A graphic novel?� I enquired as I noticed my little cousin reading a “Bunny v. Monkey� book. But I was promptly corrected by the words “A comic!� I n“A graphic novel?� I enquired as I noticed my little cousin reading a “Bunny v. Monkey� book. But I was promptly corrected by the words “A comic!� I nodded, of course �
“I really like these!� she enthused, so I made a mental note to track down a similar series, if I could find one. Looshkin: The Maddest Cat in the World seemed a potential candidate, and I deduced that although she goes to a “nice� (i.e. middle-class) school, comics were not out of bounds at home.
Looshkin: The Maddest Cat in the World is subtitled on Amazon as “a Phoenix Comic Book, from the million-selling Jamie Smart, Illustrator of the Year�. “Phoenix� is a weekly comic aimed at youngsters of 7-14, although 14 is pushing it a bit. I would have said 12 is the top age who would enjoy it, and Looshkin is targeted at 7-10 year olds. But what do I know? I started having “The Beano� delivered by the local newsagent when I was 21, already married for a year or so and at Art College full time. It arrived wrapped in The Times, which a fellow house-mate also had on regular order.
We did wonder if this was somehow a comment by our newsagent, who probably did not deliver many comics in this swanky area (5 of us rented a detached house in need of “doing up�) but my copy of The Beano was usually nabbed by my fellow Art Students too. Strange how potent cheap music is, as the great Noël Coward observed ...
But I’m waffling â€� for which you can either blame my immense age, or the random absurdity of this comic. So how about this “L´Ç´Ç²õ³ó°ì¾±²Ôâ€� series? It certainly is highly praised:
“Outrageously fun � in a class of its own for silliness!� � BookTrust
“Jamie Smart is a comics genius!� � Philip Reeve
“You will cry with laughter� � Stephen L. Holland, Comics Laureate
So I settled down to “discover the hilarious hijinks and astonishing adventures of Jamie Smart’s most extraordinary creation�. It has to be said though, that unless you regularly read comics, it’s not actually that easy to understand.
The cover shows that it is very influenced by Manga, with highly stylised creatures and objects, and not as easy to interpret as the more realistic comics used to be. The speech bubbles, capital letters shouting at me, lurid colours and one word interjections all seemed familiar, however. Were there separate stories? It was hard to tell, although different coloured paint blotches on the page edges seemed to indicate there were. The pages are, surprisingly, paginated. There are 208 of them - WOW - some comic, this! In fact this book comprises the first two titles: “L´Ç´Ç²õ³ó°ì¾±²Ôâ€� and “Looshkin: The Big Number 2â€�.
Here we have a big clue as to the type of humour. It’s wacky, over-the-top, and a little bit naughty (kids will think) with cute farting pigs, exploding toilets, and plenty of references to weeing, amidst grins and giggles. The teacher in me clocked this as “will appeal to reluctant readers� ...
Looshkin is, of course, the feline equivalent of a naughty child, and we have the common tropes of hopeless or stuffy parents, eccentric older relatives, annoying younger siblings, and cute but weird animals/friends/aliens. As the blurb says:
“Looshkin might look like a cute blue cat, but you’ve never met a cat like Looshkin before. If you look away for just a moment, your house will be full of foamy bubbles, there are pigs on your roof, and a portal to a hell-dimension has opened in your loft. And there are bees, everywhere! Life is never going to be boring while Looshkin is around.�
These madcap adventures might not be my cup of tea, but Looshkin does seem to be very popular with those a little younger. It’s firmly set in the 21st century with a neighbour so glued to the internet that she never gets out of her dressing gown, celebrities on daytime TV, kids who take photos on their phone and post them online (“nerds�, apparently), references to “sell-by� and “best before� dates and all kinds of other delights of contemporary English social culture.
Looshkin is the natural great-grandchild of “Beezer,� “The Dandy� and “The Beano�. Though when my husband saw me reading it, he sighed, and said with his tongue firmly in his cheek:
“Come back Enid Blyton! All is forgiven.�
Everything considered, this had better stay at my default of 3 stars. I’ll be grateful not to have to read any more, but there’s no real harm in it, even if the evil squirrels do eat the stitching on the teddy bear’s head. And surely laughter - silly or not - is always good value....more
I could just write “no�, but will try to be a little more helpful.
I could note the triggers, as some reviewers do. In the first 90 pages of this childI could just write “no�, but will try to be a little more helpful.
I could note the triggers, as some reviewers do. In the first 90 pages of this children’s book then, we have death and bereavement, brutalisation, starvation and abuse, war and oppressive regimes, detention centres and prisons, torture, and murder.
Shadow is by a well-established author and has won many awards. It is written for children between the ages of 9 and 13, and on the cover is a beautiful drawing of a Springer Spaniel. I like what I have read by Michael Morpurgo, and had bought it for a ten year old, but she will not get it! I thank my lucky stars that I always read any book I give to a child first myself.
There is a school of thought which maintains that children’s fiction should “tell it how it is�, and that it is misguided to shield youngsters from the truth. All well and good, but we do have to consider what is age appropriate. Authors such as Judy Blume, Jacqueline Wilson and Michael Rosen have all addressed social issues in their works for children. Dysfunctional families, divorce, bullying, death, bereavement and so on are all faced squarely in children’s literature nowadays. It is seen as a way of helping them to cope with and prepare for the world they will live in, to develop self-esteem and inculcate good values. This is good, I think, as long as there is also room for developing the imagination. We all need a little magic. And there do have to be limits.
In brief, the story begins with Matt, who tells his grandad about his best friend Aman. He misses Aman, who is being held with his mother in a migrant detention centre. The author paints a picture of Yarl’s Wood, just outside Manchester, with guards and security just like a prison, and all the children inside crying. The regime is brutal and heartless.
Matt is not allowed to see his friend, but gradually Aman’s mother opens up to Matt’s grandfather and tells him her story. It includes the abuse her family suffered at the hands of the Taliban in Afghanistan, how her husband had been dragged away, and she had been tortured for stealing an apple. She eventually tells how she and her son managed to flee the country.
While hiding in a cave with Aman’s grandmother, who could barely walk, Aman made friend with a mangy, starving dog, although dogs in Afghanistan were routinely stoned. This is the dog, Shadow, whom he nurses back to health despite his family’s disapproval. The dog becomes a constant companion, and back in England when Matt’s grandfather shows Aman a photo of Matt’s dog which he has smuggled in, it reminds him of Shadow. This is the “hook� for the story, which follows Aman and his mother’s desperate flight to England, where they are assured of a safe haven with another member of the family who had married an English woman and has a good business.
I believe that one can tell whether a book is worth reading by the first 100 pages (or less!) and did not read the part where Matt and his grandfather work to help Aman and his mother to get asylum. I am sure this book will have a positive ending despite the horrors, with examples of courage, loyalty and so on, and this will presumably be believed to vindicate and justify what has gone before.
2 stars means “it was OKâ€� on the Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ scale. I do not feel able to give this book that rating for a child less than 13 (the top age suggested) because of the subject matter and how explicitly it was dealt with. However I can see that with careful policing by a parent, or as part of a project at school, with much discussion, this book could be used.
Michael Morpurgo has always wanted to highlight the importance of children’s literature, and he helped to establish the post of children’s laureate in the United Kingdom. This is a 2 year position, and he actually served as the children’s laureate from 2003 to 2005. There is no question that this book is well written, with believable characters and situations. The illustrations by Christian Birmingham are superb, softly shaded pencil drawings.
But if you give this to any child, please make sure they are ready for it, and that you are not led astray by the beautiful cover, as I was. I am left wishing I had not read it....more
The lost ghost is a short story by an American author new to me, Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman. A New England writer, she is said to have written disquThe lost ghost is a short story by an American author new to me, Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman. A New England writer, she is said to have written disquieting tales exploring a world of domestic spaces turned uncanny. Such is this one, included in “The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories�. The Lost Ghost is a ghostly tale within a domestic frame story, and probably written during her most productive period of the 1880s and 1890s.
Mrs. Rhoda Meserve has stopped in at Mrs. John Emerson’s house, and as the two sit comfortably together with their needlework she tells her friend the latest gossip, namely that a large house in the area is now being rented by a couple from another town:
“He does business in Boston and it’s just as easy to get to Boston from here as from South Dayton, and so they’re coming here. You know the old Sargent house is a splendid place.�
The sharing of this news surprises Mrs. Emerson, as everyone knows the house is reputed to be haunted. But Mrs. Meserve says the newcomers do not seem bothered when folk say there is something wrong with it, and laugh at the warnings. But she declares:
“Nothing in creation would hire me to go into a house that I’d ever heard a word against of that kind � I wouldn’t go into that house if they would give me the rent. I’ve seen enough of haunted houses to last me as long as I live.�
And of course, after a lot of prevaricating, Mrs. Meserve reluctantly tells of her own experience. When she was a young teacher in East Wilmington, North Carolina, she rented a room from two sisters Mrs. Amelia Dennison and Mrs. Abby Bird. She stresses that she was in great need at the time:
“Anyhow, they took me to board, and I thought I was pretty lucky to get in there. I had a nice room, big and sunny and furnished pretty, the paper and paint all new, and everything as neat as wax. Mrs. Dennison was one of the best cooks I ever saw, and I had a little stove in my room, and there was always a nice fire there when I got home from school. I thought I hadn’t been in such a nice place since I lost my own home, until I had been there about three weeks.�
One particular night during her stay, the young woman heard a knock on her door, (view spoiler)[“but a very little scared one�. She called to come in, and then opened the door herself. Nobody was there, but there was a draught of cold air, with a strange close smell like a cellar that had been shut up for years. Then she saw a little pitiful white face with scared, longing eyes, holding the teacher’s coat, which she had brought upstairs for her.
Greatly agitated, Mrs. Meserve shared this baffling experience with the sisters, who then felt they had to explain. The small ghost was the manifestation of a young girl who had been severely neglected, forced from a young age to work as a skivvy, eventually incarcerated and left to died in a locked room in the house a few years earlier. (hide spoiler)]
The young teacher Mrs. Meserve was so grateful for the sisters� kindness, and their frank confession that they had concealed these events, that she felt obliged to stay and try to become accustomed to the presence of the ghost. It seemed harmless enough after all, but one of the sisters started to become increasingly cold, and fretful (view spoiler)[at the child’s repeated cries of“I can’t find my mother�.
The end of the story provides the first real chill. Mrs. Denison and her young lodger are worried about Mrs. Bird, who is upstairs in bed, finding it impossible to keep warm. Then they see her outside in the bitter cold, walking across the front lawn away from the house, holding hands with the ghost of the little girl. Rushing upstairs they see that she has died in her sleep, no longer fretting about the ghost child but with a smile on her face. It must have been her spirit that they had seen. (hide spoiler)]
The story ends abruptly (but none too soon) with only a brief reference to the frame story: just two short sentences to explain the obvious.
Overall the story feels flat with no atmosphere. Most of it is told in a matter of fact way, alien to a gothic or weird tale such as this. Here is a small sample of the long preliminary passage, presumably intended to set a scene of cosy domesticity:
“Mrs. Meserve settled herself in the parlour rocking-chair, while Mrs. Emerson carried her shawl and hat into the little adjoining bedroom. When she returned Mrs. Meserve was rocking peacefully and was already at work hooking blue wool in and out. “That’s real pretty,� said Mrs. Emerson. “Yes, I think it’s pretty,� replied Mrs. Meserve. “I suppose it’s for the church fair?� “Yes. I don’t suppose it’ll bring enough to pay for the worsted, let alone the work, but I suppose I’ve got to make something.� “How much did that one you made for the fair last year bring?� “Twenty-five cents.�
and so on and so forth. The conversation is pedestrian and deadly dull.
When we come to the story proper it is told mostly through the voice of Mrs. Meserve. As an aside, they call each other Mrs. Meserve and Mrs. Emerson throughout, as befits their time, culture and class. Their situation is a precise replica of Edwardian England; the staid and unimaginative writing adds to the stultifying atmosphere.
Evidently the message of the story is to reveal that horrors are more often found in the living, rather than in any spirits or phantom appearances that we might see and believe to be appearances of the dead. We are far more moved by (view spoiler)[the details of the little girl’s life and eventual death than we are by her appearance as a ghost. We imagine her pain and longing, the heartbreak of those who knew her and then became aware of the atrocities that are were inflicted upon this unwanted child. Her fate was (hide spoiler)] far more unnerving than the ghost’s appearance. An additional point of interest might be the ambiguity of the title. We are not entirely sure who The Lost Ghost is. (view spoiler)[The child? The mother? Mrs. Bird, latterly? Birds had often been an indicator of something supernatural in Victorian fiction (hide spoiler)].
There are other stories from the period and culture with this feel: supernatural stories which teeter on the edge of reality. Edith Wharton and Henry James’s ghost stories both have this sense, and are both rather stolid, although Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman writes far more dialogue than either of those. A little earlier, the English author Elizabeth Gaskell (calling herself Mrs. Gaskell) had written a similar themed short story titled “The Old Nurse’s Story�.
Ghosts in stories usually cause unrest, or outright fear. But in The Lost Ghost it is the knowledge of how the ghost came to be that truly haunts us. As mentioned, the writing is lifeless, and only the ending - predictable as it is - saved this from being a one star story. But I will make that a solid two stars (i.e. by Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ’s scale “it was OKâ€�) because of details of the author's life that I have just learned.
Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman was brought up very strictly by Congregationalists. She began writing stories and verse for children before the age of 20, to help support her family and achieved success quickly.
“As an adolescent, Freeman was increasingly caught between the need for her mother’s love and her instinct to avoid becoming her mother and subsiding into her mother’s form of passivity. Despite continuous pressure from her mother to participate in domestic chores, no amount of discipline could pull Mary away from her reading to the reality of hated kitchen work. According to Edward Foster’s biography of Freeman, “Disliking her household duties, she avoided them, nor could she be moved by disciplinary tactics.� It is clear that a growing tension between Mary and her mother centered on her resistance to undertaking the tasks expected of a “good girl.�
Increasingly Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman escaped into her own writing. This is probably why her stories are centred on the monotonous routine of domesticity, which is then transformed by strange and inexplicable events.
The Lost Ghost made me think of a frightening TV episode of Dr. Who involving gasmasks, called “The Empty Child� where one sentence must surely be the author Steven Moffat revisiting The Lost Ghost, but much more effectively. Also a far better short modern novel on this theme is Susan Hill’s “The Small Hand�.
Perhaps I will try another story by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman if it comes up in an anthology, but I will not seek her out, despite her many works: more than two dozen volumes of published short stories and novels. Perhaps the deadpan verisimilitude of the accounts of small, humdrum lives is supposed to lull me into a sense of security, but it makes me feel more like the adolescent Mary, and want to escape by running a mile....more
My detailed review of the text of Nicholas Nickleby is LINK HERE.
For my latest close reading of Nicholas Nickleby I have examined six different print My detailed review of the text of Nicholas Nickleby is LINK HERE.
For my latest close reading of Nicholas Nickleby I have examined six different print editions, and these notes may be of use to anyone trying to choose the best for their needs.
This review is for the “Oxford World’s Classics� edition from 1999. The first edition in this series was in 1990, but this paperback has an introduction and notes by Paul Schlicke, which are very good. He credits Michael Slater’s Penguin Edition in helping him to compile the explanatory notes at the end, and indeed this Oxford and the Penguin Classics Edition are the two best and most comprehensively annotated editions currently in print I have found, since there is no Norton critical edition.
The cover aptly features “The Nickleby Portrait� by Daniel Maclise, which is now in the National Portrait Gallery, London. Charles Dickens and the artist Daniel Maclise had become close friends the summer before this portrait was painted. In a letter dated 28 June 1839, Dickens wrote “Maclise has made another face of me which all people say is astonishing�. Partly what they found so astonishing was that the eager expression and the piercing eyes was exactly how readers visualised the earnest young hero of Nicholas Nickleby, determined to make his way in the world sensitive to slights and “lion-hearted� (as one character calls him) in his chivalric readiness to defend moral justice. Just like Charles Dickens.
And indeed just after the novel was completed, his publishers Chapman and Hall presented it to Dickens at a celebratory dinner. An engraving of it was later used as the frontispiece to the first edition of Nicholas Nickleby in 1839.
Paul Schlicke’s excellent introduction follows the list of contents. Then comes a 13 page chronology of Dickens in 3 columns: the year, events in his life and related contemporary world events. Most of this information can be easily found elsewhere, and I assume it is included in each of this series of Dickens’s books. However, it is no doubt convenient for readers to have it handy in each volume.
After the title page with its dedication to W.C. Macready, the great tragic actor, both of Dickens� own prefaces are included, i.e. to his 1839 first book edition and his later one for the 1848 edition.
Then comes the text proper, in a very slightly bigger font, although the type is still very dense. For some odd reason, this is where the text begins to be paginated, although there have already been 56 pages in the book! Each chapter is titled, although the running titles for each page (which Dickens added later) are not included.
After the final chapter we have Appendix A, which is a facsimile of the "Nickleby Proclamation" over 3 sides. This had been issued as flyers prior to the serial, in a vain attempt to prevent the widespread plagiarism from which his earlier works had suffered. Dickens was furious at the number of pirated editions in America, and even in Britain where there were copyright laws, all plagiarists had to do was to alter the names slightly, and they would be free from prosecution.
One notorious plagiarist styled himself “Bos�, and had already produced 112 installments of “The Posthumourous Notes of the Pickwick Club�, and a serial called “Oliver Twiss�. Dickens channelled his fury into this jokey poster threatening pirates with a dire and terrible execution, but it was to no avail. Soon the same pirates were back, one with a new novel called “Nickelas Nickelbery�. As well as these serials and books plagiarised from Charles Dickens, at least 25 stage versions were produced while Nicholas Nickleby was still being published in installments. The worst was by a hack dramatist, William Thomas Moncrieff in May 1839. Dickens’s next installment was to include a scathing diatribe against plagiarists through the mouthpiece of Nicholas in chapter 48.
Appendix B gives the running headlines to the 1867 edition, over 9 pages. This is followed by 17 pages of useful explanatory notes. However they are not listed by chapter, but only by page. Therefore they are only of use if this edition is the one read. Obviously it would be an improvement if not only the running headlines were added to the appropriate page, but also if chapter numbers and headings were to be included in the explanatory notes. However this would entail considerable extra editing work.
There follow 7 pages of textual notes, which are fascinating for those who like to see Dickens’s later thoughts. Charles Dickens was not an author who edited his work very much at all. This was partly due to the inconsistencies which would arise as a result in serial publication, but also because he worked at such a frenetic pace that he was always working on something new, and frequently writing more than one book at once, as well as his editing and journalism. When he began Nicholas Nickleby, he still had several months of “Oliver Twist� to write!
An example of the textual notes are the details of changes to one character’s name. He starts out as “Lord Verisopht�, a weak and ineffectual boy, given to sucking the end of his gold cane like a dummy. He is indeed “very soft�. But Dickens changed his mind about the character as he wrote later installments, and felt the name was no longer appropriate for such a (view spoiler)[ noble, brave and chivalrous young man (hide spoiler)], so he altered how he referred to him. The notes show that from 1867, most of the references to him have been altered to “Lord Frederick� rather than to “Lord Verisopht�. Initially the later episodes also called him Lord Frederick, and some changes had already been made in 1848.
A final page gives details of further reading.
For anyone whose eyesight is good, this is the edition I would recommend....more
This must be one of the silliest books I have listened to for some time. Fans of the feather-brained Bertie Wooster and his faithful gentleman’s gentlThis must be one of the silliest books I have listened to for some time. Fans of the feather-brained Bertie Wooster and his faithful gentleman’s gentleman Jeeves, will love these audio adaptations. The versatile Richard Briers’s Bertie Wooster is an endearing clot, and Michael Hordern’s voice perfectly captures Jeeves’s urbane sagacity. This dramatisation of Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit dates from 2003, although the book was first published in 1954.
In this ridiculous romp we meet some favourite running characters such as Bertie’s pal G. D’Arcy (“Stilton�) Cheesewright and Bertie’s Aunt Dahlia, who lives in Brinkley Court and is affectionately called “old thing� by her favourite nephew. The bleeding-heart poet Percy Gorringe rings a faint bell, but I am not sure we have met the budding romantic novelist Florence Craye before. There are a host of character including Roderick Spode of Totleigh Towers, (alias Lord Sidcup), Horace Pendlebury-Davenport, Daphne Dolores Morehead, an upmarket novelist who has sold a serial novel to Aunt Dahlia for her magazine “Milady’s Boudoir�, and the ghastly Lemuel Gengulphus Trotter (accompanied by his equally vulgar wife Emily), a dyspeptic little man with a face like a weasel who owns a lot of papers in Liverpool - which Bertie and his current amorato agree must be a simply dreadful place to live.
The plot, such as it is, revolves round the romantic entanglements of various young people in their “set�, the purloining and pawning of a pearl necklace or two, a little light breaking-and-entering, and an evening at a dubious night club (strictly for research purposes, you understand). The resulting fiasco entails a night at His Majesty’s Pleasure for our hero, to which he promptly gives a fictitious middle-class name and address as his cover, before appearing before the Beak in the morning. What a wheeze!
Nothing quashes our hero’s amiability, although whenever one of his jolly japes means that a little superior application of the brain is needed, it is Jeeves who supplies the perfect answer. It is a standing joke that not only does the valet Jeeves happen to be an expert in every field imaginable, but that he always appears at the precise moment he is needed, with a slow, carefully enunciated and deferential “You rang, sir?� (in this recording fruitily delivered by Michael Hordern).
Not that these members of the leisured classes ever have problems of great note, or dwell on topics which might keep them from their favourite fashionable pursuits. The most desirable asset of the moment is a particular French chef, the hiring of whom would secure the highest social accolades. And the most scandalous report is of someone who would never admit to making his money in ladies� lingerie. How to obtain some badly needed ready cash is a frequent nuisance to exercise the brain. But the overriding dilemma Bertie faces in Jeeves and the Feudal Spirt is to decide whether his moustache - which he grew secretly when Jeeves was away fishing for a few days - gives him as dashing an appearance as he believes, or whether Jeeves is correct in that it is an aberration, and should be shaved off as soon as possible. (Of course we know whose view will prevail. Jeeves’s knowledge of social niceties is near-perfect.)
P.G Wodehouse is one of Britain’s best-loved comic writers, with a lively style which is peppered with Edwardian slang. He was a prolific writer throughout his life, publishing more than ninety books, forty plays, and two hundred short stories between 1902 and 1974. Although American Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ friends are sometimes bemused by his use of slang terms, he spent much of his life in the US, and used New York and Hollywood as settings for some of his novels and short stories. I am currently watching “Wodehouse Playhouseâ€�: three series of plays from his short stories, with nary a Jeeves nor a Wooster. Many of these plays are set in the US. Because of problems during the war, P.G. Wodehouse lived in the US from 1947 until his death in 1975, taking dual British-American citizenship in 1955.
If you need a pick me up, and enjoy the absurd, give him a try. Here are a few of my favourite lines from Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, which reveal the inner wisdom of Bertie Wooster:
First on Jeeves:
“A few moments later the man was with us, looking so brainy and intelligent that my heart leaped up as if I had beheld a rainbow in the sky. ‘Oh, Jeeves,� I yipped. ‘Oh, Jeeves,� yipped Aunt Dahlia, dead heating with me.�
� “He coughed again, that deferential cough of his which sounds like a well-bred sheep clearing its throat on a distant mountain-top.�
Then on one of his pals:
“‘Would you say my head was like a pumpkin, Wooster?� ‘Not a bit, old man.� ‘Not like a pumpkin?� ‘No, not like a pumpkin. A touch of the dome of St Paul’s, perhaps.’�
And finally on himself:
“‘But then everybody says that, though you have a brain like a peahen, you’re the soul of kindness and generosity.� Well, I was handicapped here by the fact that, never having met a peahen, I was unable to estimate the quality of these fowls� intelligence, but she had spoken as if they were a bit short of the grey matter, and I was about the ask her who the hell she meant by ‘everybody�, when she resumed ...�
And if we ever pause to ponder on why our hero is the way he is, we need look no further than his aged relative:
“Hullo, hullo, hullo!� she boomed. The old hunting stuff coming to the surface, you notice. ‘Is that you, Bertie, darling?� I said it was none other. ‘Then what’s the idea, you half-witted Gadarene swine, of all this playing hard-to-get? You and your matter-weighing! I never heard such nonsense in my life. You’ve got to come here, and immediately, if you don’t want an aunt’s curse delivered on your doorstep by return of post. If I have to cope unaided with that ruddy Percy any longer, I shall crack beneath the strain.�
Not everyone likes Bertie of course. Here is one character’s indignant expostulation:
�... Wooster, the slithery serpent who slinks behind chaps� backs, stealing fellows� girls from them. Wooster the home-wrecker! Wooster the snake in the grass from whom no woman is safe! Wooster the modern Don what’s-his-name!�
But as Bertie himself says:
“I like B. Wooster the way he is. Lay off him, I say. Don’t try to change him, or you may lose the flavour.�...more
I'm leaving this one unrated, as I only read 8 chapters. I abandoned it as I was just so bored! Similar books I've read and enjoyed are:
Martin Amis's I'm leaving this one unrated, as I only read 8 chapters. I abandoned it as I was just so bored! Similar books I've read and enjoyed are:
Martin Amis's Time's Arrow, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s Slaughterhouse-Five, Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveller's Wife, Virginia Woolf's Orlando, Matt Haig's How to Stop Time
Different time periods, different people, different genders, living backwards ... All have a slightly different tweak, whether going backwards, dotting around in history, but not the same life 15 times. I didn't think the idea of living different lives had been done in quite the same way before (except for Groundhog Day, perhaps - but that's only a snapshot of part of a life) in my experience. I was excited at the concept reading a time-loop book with a character who re-experiences the same span of time, inevitably with some hope of breaking out of the cycle of repetition.
Initially I found the writing light and entertaining, but soon my anticipation and interest started to pall. The writing quickly sank into a stodgy account of humdrum lives. I found nothing whatsoever to engage me with the main character, nor did I get any sense of where the novel was going or why. Surely I should have after 8 chapters?
I decided to read a few reviews, but this did not inspire me to listen further. I simply couldn't maintain any interest after the first 3 or 4 lives - especially since one review said it started to dot around. Surely the story would lose even more momentum, unless it were written more skilfully. The audio player was already set at the fastest speed I could understand it, so perhaps it would be better on the page. In fact though, quite a few reviews said the first half was slow, or that it took 300 pages for the story to start, or that the second half was just a routine chase thriller. Some mentioned a quantum physics element. Nevertheless plenty of friends gave it 4 stars. Presumably the book rescues itself at some point, but it's not for me.
I'm disappointed not to enjoy this, since Harry August is an almost exact contemporary of my parents, and started life in the same geographical location. When I realised this early on, I had high hopes.
But their stories were so much more lively ... even when they got very old, and my Dad got into a bit of a time-loop himself, and forget he was repeating the same story ......more
On 3rd January 1842 Charles Dickens, just a month away from his 30th birthday, started on his tour of America. Accompanied by his wife Catherine, her On 3rd January 1842 Charles Dickens, just a month away from his 30th birthday, started on his tour of America. Accompanied by his wife Catherine, her maid Anne Brown and nearly 80 others, he sailed from Liverpool on the steamship “RMS Britannica�, commissioned just two years earlier. Dickens already had 4 serial novels under his belt “The Pickwick Papers�, “Oliver Twist�, “Nicholas Nickleby�, and “The Old Curiosity Shop�, and was at the height of his popularity on both sides of the Atlantic. So why did he risk a 6 month pause in his writing, not to mention crossing the Atlantic at such an unseasonable time of year?
Many Europeans had made this risky journey, as travelogues were becoming increasingly popular. During 1815-1860 there were to be 200 such accounts of travels across the Atlantic. It was quite a temptation for the young Dickens, who was both well read and astute. He wanted to be in at the start; to “report back� himself. People in the Old Country were curious to discover just how far the settlers had progressed in creating a democratic republic, with room and equality for all. Some stressed the hardships settlers might have to face, methods of agriculture being of interest to those in England. Those with radical and reformist ideals like Dickens wanted to know just how successful America’s experiments in government, economics and law were proving to be. His focus and tone is markedly different from his “Pictures from Italy� four years later, where he wrote far more like a tourist.
However neither of these works is a straight travelogue. Try as he might, they come across as extremely subjective, and this of course is why they are so entertaining, and deserve to be far more widely read. The stamp of Dickens: the entertainment factor, the humour, the disproportionate time spent on minor details which interested him, the lack of patience with any cant or ceremony are all here in abundance.
Even the title itself is a joke. The work certainly is “notes� rather than a structured journal with dates; he skips to and fro when he feels diverted. The title can also be seen as a pun. American Notes for General Circulation could well be a joke at the expense of American currency. The end of the Second Bank of the United States and the ensuing worldwide financial panic of 1837 led to widespread bank failures, and rendered much paper currency worthless.
Dickens’s trip lasted for 6 months; he returned in June. For all that time his children had been at home in London, left with Dickens’s sister Fanny and the sculptor Angus Fletcher. Daniel Maclise made a sketch of them (which now hangs in the Doughty St. Museum) and Catherine loved it so much that she took it with her to Canada and America, and hung it on the wall of every place they stayed in. George Washington Putnam from Boston was soon hired as Dickens’s “faithful secretary� (although Catherine disliked him) and also stayed with them throughout the trip, writing his own record later.
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Charles Dickens - Travels in America and Canada 1842 - with thanks to David Perdue’s Charles Dickens Page
So we embark on the journey, and Dickens’s excitement is palpable. In this first chapter we can feel the optimism and energy fizzling, as he describes the ridiculously cramped proportions of his “state room�, sleeping on bunks with a “very thin mattress, spread like a surgical plaster on a most inaccessible shelf�. Being Dickens he exaggerates for effect to the point of absurdity, with “portmanteaus which could now no more be got in at the door, not to say stowed away, than a giraffe could be persuaded or forced into a flower-pot�. However his optimism is infectious, so they all talk it up among themselves and persuade each other that it was actually a paradise of a cabin, and not a miniscule box of a room at all.
They consume the same menu for 3 weeks: boiled potatoes, roasted apples, and various meats, although the alcoholic drinks were plentiful! But after 3 weeks on board the steamship, suffering seasickness in some of the worst storms in living memory and only 3 days of calm seas, they were eager to arrive.
The Britannica approached the American continent by way of Nova Scotia amid terrifying weather, and ran aground at the capital, Halifax, where a crewman set off at 3 am in a rowing boat, uprooting a small tree to bring back to prove to the travellers that there was land close by! They were relieved to eventually set foot in the city of Boston, which delighted Dickens: “the air was so clear, the houses were so bright and gay � The city is a beautiful one, and cannot fail, I should imagine, to impress all strangers very favourably.� In fact this remained his favourite city of the tour.
Whilst in Boston Dickens visited the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts Asylum for the Blind and met Laura Bridgman, considered the first deaf-blind person to receive an education in English. Dickens was so impressed that he included the account of her progress from Dr Howe’s clinical notes almost verbatim. Chapter 3 is thus at least double the length of any other chapter. When Helen Keller’s parents read this account, they were inspired to seek an education for their own daughter from the teacher Annie Sullivan.
Dickens’s journey to Lowell, Massachusetts by railroad is a masterpiece of comic writing, as well as social comment. There was a male-only carriage plus a third carriage for unaccompanied women - and men - as long as they had a female companion with them. This was an improvement on the restrictions for respectable females in England, never being able to travel alone on a railway. However he hated the stuffy anthracite stoves everywhere, and was already noting the different conditions for black people: “As a black man never travels with a white one, there is also a negro car�, which segregation would be very shocking to his British readers. Dickens describes it as a “a great blundering clumsy chest such as Gulliver put to sea in, from the kingdom of Brobdingnag.� It could be that he uses such humour not only to deflect his horror, but also to exorcise it for the time being.
At Lowell he was very favourably impressed by the young factory women, who were mainly women and children from farming backgrounds. These were healthy, well-fed young women working happily in good conditions and educating themselves in their leisure time. They had access to libraries, a piano, and even wrote and printed a magazine of articles called “The Lowell Offering�. Dickens was greatly taken by this and read 400 pages.
He wrote a detailed account, comparing it with the appalling conditions for mill workers in Lancashire. Even 7 years later in 1848 Elizabeth Gaskell was to describe the utter poverty and suffering in industrial Manchester in “Mary Barton�.
Dickens was determined to investigate all the different sorts of institutions, and throughout spent a great deal of time looking at schools, prisons, factories and hospitals where friends such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow had arranged visits for him. He also explored different churches, government institutions, legal systems and courts, and discussed philosophical theories and religions he came across.
In Hartford, Dickens visited the Insane Asylum and a State Prison, recording his positive interactions with the patients and inmates. He then headed to New York through The (Long Island) Sound on a small steamship; another comic part as it did not bear comparison with those in England. New York at that time was just the city: New York, New York. Dickens wrote a marvellously ambiguous satirical description about the “hogs of New York�: escaped pigs which had multiplied and were causing a real problem in the busy city.
Moving next to Philadelphia, Dickens’s description of the Eastern Penitentiary, a solitary confinement prison there is unforgettable. Whilst recognising that the intention of the management was sincere, and the conditions were clean, his horror of the concept is unmistakable. The many examples he records show us that very few people could cope mentally with such harsh deprivation.
Straightaway then, we see that Dickens dives into an analysis of social conditions and the plight of the disadvantaged, rather than just a tourist’s view, or zooming in on his own copyright problems. But with volume 2 (chapter 9) the tone changes.
Dickens continued South to Washington and met the President although he politely declined a second meeting, as he wanted to stick to his itinerary. Even here, he was revolted by the ever-present habit of spitting. Then followed a steamboat ride to Fredericksburg, before a railroad ride from Fredericksburg to Richmond.
This was the deepest downward dive, encountering slavery at first hand. Dickens described a harrowing scene: a slave woman with her children who had been sold, leaving behind a father and a husband. “The children cried the whole way and the mother was misery’s picture.� Describing this truly heart-rending episode, Dickens was shocked and disgusted to the core, abandoning his plans to explore the Southern States, as he dreaded what he would find.
For the only time, he changed his itinerary and travelled further West. He used steamboats more than the railroads, and his focus switched to be the land itself, concentrating more on the conditions of recent European emigrants to America, beginning with the journey from Pittsburgh to Cincinnati in a Western steamboat.
Dickens began to be weary and disillusioned, surrounded by travellers who were all so dogged and worn down, with so little sense of humour. Steamboat after steamboat followed, some trips as long as 12 hours to Louisville. But here a stranger requested to meet him: a Choctaw Indian named Pitchlynn. Dickens was excited to see someone in their native costume, and disappointed to meet a dignified man in a suit. Peter Pitchlynn was a famous Native American who became a tribal chief, well-respected for his education and diplomatic skills. He sorrowed at the demise of his people, but knew it was inevitable as both sides were entrenched. Dickens was most impressed with Pitchlynn’s wisdom.
The journey seemed interminable following the Mississippi. Perhaps the land they were trying to tame, cutting down dozens of trees which sank into the swamp, explained the migrants� numb exhaustion. He loathed Cairo, saving this up in his mind to satirise so savagely in Martin Chuzzlewit. There were brief respites such as meeting a gentle Kentucky giant.
Neither could he see why so much was made of the prairie at the frontier of Ohio. It was nothing compared with the scenery at home.
He backtracked towards Canada, visiting Toronto, Montreal and Quebec. His encounter with Niagara Falls was mesmeric; a profound spiritual experience for him; one which affected him all his life. “I think in every quiet season now, still do those waters roll and leap and roar and tumble all day long.� We see glimpses of this in his writing, with all his esoteric references to moving water.
Much as he enjoyed the Canadian part of his journey, Dickens was glad to see the coast of Ireland, and leave the sailing ship at Liverpool.
All the copious letters Dickens wrote to his friend John Forster formed the basis of American Notes, which he wrote a few months after he had returned home. However his American readers violently objected to his depictions. His journey also provided the inspiration for his next novel “Martin Chuzzlewit� but satirising the people and their practices inadvertently further irritated his American readers.
Eight years later, in his preface to the first cheap edition Dickens offered a sort of apologia:
“I have nothing to defend, or to explain away. The truth is the truth; and neither childish absurdities, nor unscrupulous contradictions, can make it otherwise. The earth would still move round the sun, though the whole Catholic Church said No �
I never have been otherwise than in favour of the United States. No visitor can ever have set foot on those shores, with a stronger faith in the Republic than I had, when I landed in America.�
Such approval was quite outspoken for a loyal subject of Queen Victoria. But the bad feeling against him in America was only finally quelled by his second visit: a reading tour in 1867-68, undertaken despite being advised against on health issues.
Another trigger for Dickens’s trip was the lack of copyright. From “The Pickwick Papers� onwards Dickens was plagued by pirate editions of his works, since there was no copyright law whatsoever in the United States at the time. Despite his furious objections, it was only getting worse, with bootleg works published freely. Dickens received many fan letters from his American readers, and realised that every single copy of his novels was sold there without him receiving a penny in royalties. When he later reached Philadelphia, Dickens discovered that even his earliest work “Sketches by Boz� was being printed and sold to readers, with no copyright law in place. In New York the latest installment of “The Old Curiosity Shop� was in great demand, with the harbour crowded with throngs of his fans desperate to hear about the fate of Little Nell. Each month the magazine would be taken by ship, transcribed, printed, and sold there - but Dickens himself did not receive a penny.
He used the chance in many of his speeches in America, to call for international copyright law, and his persistence in discussing the subject led to much criticism. Dickens held many meetings with influential people and publishers, and formed a group of other writers to alert the public and get the law changed, but he includes none of this in American Notes. John Forster advised Dickens as to what might not be acceptable to his readers, and chapter 19 of his huge 3 volume biography of Dickens includes several of these letters. Taken together, we can get a fuller picture: the bald facts without embellishment.
The situation in Canada was different, however. As a British Province, British copyright law applied.
So did they really right all the wrongs of the Old World? We can see him constantly evaluating throughout in the tone of the book, where everything he comes across is compared with the “status quo� of England. Dickens stresses what he has repeated both throughout the narrative and in the preface, that he finds much to admire in the Americans he has met, and in their way of life. He considers those he has met to be in the main very friendly and respectful, and contrasts the informality and “utmost courtesy� of public depts. However he also states that it is only fair to note what he sees as their faults. He sometimes does this candidly, sometimes with a sense of outrage, and sometimes jocularly. Observing “everyone talks to you�, he soon tired of being mobbed, and early on he actually pretended to fall asleep when a passenger was pointedly pontificating about the true principles on which books of travel in America should be written by an Englishman.
And he really hated the American tendency to organise everything according to party politics, so that everything came down to political allegiance.
Over 2 chapters he expressed his considered analysis of what he viewed as major flaws in American society. Most serious by far was the question of slavery, about which he felt passionate. It seemed inconceivable to him that a new progressive country should condone - and even boast about in some States - “that most hideous blot and foul disgrace …�, which had been abolished throughout the Britain Empire since 1833.
Dickens wrote a logical, reasoned argument against slavery, arguing in detail how such a system corrupted both whites and blacks in slave states, and also pointed out that the free states were complicit in the system. Then came a long list verbatim, of adverts for runaway slaves in newspapers. (Incidentally, he took these hideous adverts from a pamphlet written by Theodore D. Weld and published by the Anti-Slavery Society in 1839, but he did not acknowledge it.) He was horrified by the physical violence vented on both male and female slaves.
The next thing Dickens abhorred in America was the prevalence of violence. The ideals of liberty and equality he observed, seemed to include the freedom to shoot or knife any other American.
Thirdly, he listed what he calls the “universal distrust�, where people suspected others and sought to gain advantage over them. He largely blamed the scandal-seeking press for undermining private life and destroying everyone’s confidence in public life. As other writers had said, Dickens stated that the universal obsession with reading poor quality newspapers was why America did not have its own literature.
Allied to this was what Dickens observed to be the American ideal of making a “smart deal�. The overriding commercial urge, with everything sacrificed to business and the idolisation of successful businessmen meant that America was a capitalist jungle. This led to its people being far too serious; lacking both in humour and a wider perspective.
Finally came a point which Americans must have found hugely insulting. In many places throughout American Notes Dickens found standards of personal cleanliness and public health very primitive. He was particularly disgusted by the almost universal habit of spitting, and although his descriptions of several episodes are hilarious, it is clear that Dickens was revolted by this practice. Perhaps he suspected that his overly genteel readers back home would be secretly delighted at his confirming their opinions of just how vulgar the Americans were.
American Notes was published in October 1842 by Chapman Hall, just four months after his return. The reaction from some Americans was vitriolic. The New York Herald dismissed it as “the essence of balderdash�. Even 22 years later, Mark Twain was suspected of parodying Dickens in his “Innocents Abroad� (1869), although he went on to write 5 more travelogues.
American Notes is a hugely detailed book, packed to the brim with information, as well as Dickens’s outspoken and honest opinions. It is well worth reading as a unique snapshot of a time and place. Most Victorian journals are lengthy, just as the novels are, and numerous details are crammed into this one. It has been impossible to convey more than a flavour of the whole in this review, but in the comment sections I will post Dickens’s Itinerary....more
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