I waited for decades to read Barbara, only to find that not a whole lot happens in it. As the story opens, 14-year-old Barbara Chester is being escortI waited for decades to read Barbara, only to find that not a whole lot happens in it. As the story opens, 14-year-old Barbara Chester is being escorted to the Chalet School by her older sister Beth, a former Head Girl who is going to join Jo Maynard's household as a mother's help. It's number 30 in the series, but more usefully, the following will help situate it for loyal fans:
Where is the School located? This is the first term in Switzerland!
How many children does Jo have? Eight (I think) - there is mention of Felix and Felicity but not Cecil.
Where is Mary-Lou in her school career? She's a Senior Middle.
Barbara is one of those Delicate Girls whose poor health meant they couldn't go to boarding-school and have been babied at home instead. And I do mean babied: Matron has to show Barbara how to brush her hair. However, Barbara is likeable, determined to stand on her own two feet and enjoy her first term, which she does, with the exception of one incident which I won't spoil for you as there's little enough plot as it is. She gets adopted early on by Mary-Lou's friendship group, which helps, and of course she's a member of the Chester/Lucy/Ozanne extended family, yielding precedence only to the Russell/Bettany/Maynard clan, so it's not like she's some random new girl.
Delicious coffees drunk with "featherbeds of whipped cream" on top: 2. In fact plenty of Kaffee und Kuchen generally. 1 star for this.
Expeditions with impromptu history/geography lessons: They go to Unterseen, a suburb of Interlaken, and learn all about Swiss history. They go to Berne as well. Another star!
Chapter devoted to a Prefects' meeting: Sixth chapter, but it's not very interesting, mainly consisting of assigning responsibilities and sorting out a rota for supervising prep. It's not like there's a mysterious thief or someone sending anonymous letters (DEAREST MARY-LOU: YOU THINK YOU'RE ALL THAT, BUT DID YOU EVER STOP TO WONDER WHETHER ANYONE ACTUALLY LIKES YOU?) which mystery the prefects have to unravel and resolve totally unassisted by the staff. Alas.
Staff meeting chapter, with gossip and cigarette smoke hanging thick in the air: None. Shame. There is staff gossip sprinkled throughout.
English Tea at Freudesheim: THANK GOD NO. Well, there is, but it's offstage. Mercifully Joey is incapacitated for much for the book by quarantine, although she does burst onto the scene during a walk, screeching about how somebody has just had a baby. Jo's desperate attempt to stay relevant by announcing births before anyone else is rather pitiful, but we can discuss that another time.
Snowstorm/avalanche/river overflowing its banks/cliff rescue/plunge into lake: Yes! With the return to Central Europe, the weather once again becomes a major player in the series. There's even talk of food running out at the school if the snow lasts much longer, although disappointingly it comes to nothing. And Mary-Lou comes out with this gem while travelling on the rack-and-pinion railway:
At that point Mary-Lou, sitting behind with Verity-Anne and Vi crushed in beside her, was moved to wonder aloud what would happen if anything broke?
"Do you think we'd go on sliding down the rail; or would the whole contraption topple over and go rolling down?" she wanted to know.
But Miss O'Ryan says it's quite safe, nothing ever happens, and sure enough, nothing does.
Christmas Play described in endlessly tedious detail: Yup. I had to skim this chapter.
So all of this only adds up to 3 stars. But I had to add another, because, you guys, this is the school's first term in Switzerland! Barbara filled a major gap, explained how the school re-established its French and German days, and in its pages Biddy O'Ryan answered a question which had long troubled me:
"I am sorry, Heather, but lessons given in French must be answered in French."
So, Biddy gives her history lesson in French, because Monday is French day, and Heather therefore has to do the prep she sets in French, but the day Heather does her prep is Tuesday, which is German day, so if she needs help from the prefect supervising prep the prefect will have to explain the problems with Heather's French written work...in German?
The Chalet School is hard-core. I wish I could have spent just a couple of years there, my languages would have improved exponentially.
There's also this revelation, once again from Biddy O'Ryan, about how the triplets take after Jo:
"Con has her dreamy side and all her love of and feeling for history. Len has her protectiveness. When did Jo ever fail to rush to the help of anyone who seemed to need it? Len is just the same there. As for Margot, she has all her mother's love of mischief. They've split up her qualities among them; that's all."
OF COURSE. Why didn't I see this sooner?
I do slightly regret that I have a late-sixties paperback rather than the ominous raspberry-hued cover which tantalised me for years, but I unexpectedly came across this copy in very good condition for only £1, and you can't have everything. Four stars it is....more
I just finished reading, for the second time, this doorstopper by a Pulitzer-winning bestselling novelist, about a bestselling novelist who writes dooI just finished reading, for the second time, this doorstopper by a Pulitzer-winning bestselling novelist, about a bestselling novelist who writes doorstoppers and wins the Pulitzer. Herman Wouk could certainly draw on experience for his account of the rollercoaster career of Arthur Youngblood Hawke (who goes by Youngblood Hawke professionally). Hawke is on a personal quest to unite artistic integrity with the American Dream: his goal is to have a million dollars in the bank so that he will be free to write whatever he likes, commercial or not. Obviously, this was back when a million dollars bought a lot more than it does now: the story begins in 1946 with Hawke in his mid-twenties and about to strike the big time with his very first novel.
Unfortunately Hawke is his own worst enemy: he overworks, doesn't take care of his sometimes fragile health and makes some appalling financial decisions. Among these are putting up venture capital for various real estate projects headed by his untrustworthy cousin, Scotty Hoag. At one point, someone refers to Hawke as the 'Wolf of Wall Street'. However, the real wolf of the book is Scotty, who conceals a cold and devious nature behind a façade of such relentless bonhomie that it takes a long time for Hawke (and took a long time for me) to accept just how much of a villain he is. As much as I liked Hawke, Scotty is the real achievement of this book in terms of characterisation. For me he's right up there with the great twentieth-century anti-heroes like Kenneth Widmerpool and Jay Gatsby. Or indeed Captain Queeg from Wouk's own Pulitzer-winning The Caine Mutiny.
No sooner does Hawke arrive in New York than he becomes ensnared in a love triangle which dominates the book. Symbolically enough, one of the women he gets involved with is a Madonna; the other is a Whore.
The Whore: Frieda Winter Frieda is a socialite and patron of the arts, wealthy in her own right, married with four children and a male secretary: basically, the midcentury answer to Alexis Carrington Colby. She's thirty-nine when she meets Hawke, who is fourteen years younger, and throughout the book it seemed to me that Wouk couldn't quite forgive her, not just for her adultery but for daring to be desirable and sexual after the age of thirty-five. I don't think he is fair to her, and I think he is particularly unfair to her as a mother. Frieda, as the predatory Other Woman, is the major factor keeping Hawke apart from his true love, Jeanne.
The Madonna: Jeanne Green Hawke is attracted to Jeanne from their first meeting. Unfortunately, he isn't ready to settle down; he wants to sow his wild oats, while Jeanne is saving herself for marriage. She becomes Hawke's trusted editor, and is as much career woman as Virgin Mary standin, continuing to work not only after marriage but after children too, which was far from typical in that era. I'm not sure it reflects more liberal attitudes in publishing, or whether Jeanne's work was seen as acceptable because she is a handmaiden to a male author rather than an author in her own right. She does have an irritating habit of deferring to men in meetings on the grounds that she doesn't know anything about business, when very clearly she does. Perhaps that helps her stay under the radar.
Love interest aside, here's an awful lot going on in this book. Hawke's indomitable mother is pursuing a lawsuit regarding the mineral rights to a piece of land in the coal-mining region of their home state of Kentucky. This plotline gets quite technical, but coming from a legal family I became very interested in it. I also appreciated that Wouk didn't sacrifice realism to drama: when the case comes to court it is in a very low-key way with no jury and few spectators. Nevertheless, thanks to the time already spent exploring the conflict between the characters, it's a high point of the book.
Additionally, Broadway, Hollywood and Washington during McCarthyism form the backdrop to other sections of the book. Wouk is tremendously skilled at creating a sense of place, whether it's an all-night diner in the Kentucky backwoods or Fifth Avenue in a snowstorm. Meanwhile, the characters drink like they're in Mad Men and bitch like they're in All About Eve. A good companion read to this one, although less easy to find, is Kathleen Winsor's Star Money, similarly about a beautiful twentysomething novelist, Shireen Delaney, whose first novel becomes a runaway bestseller. Winsor based the book on her own experience as the author of the 1940s blockbuster Forever Amber. Shireen, like most of Winsor's heroines, goes through men like Kleenex and I could absolutely see her having an affair with a guy like Hawke, only to break it off in frustration because he would dismiss her historical epic as a bodice-ripper. Hawke is steeped in the prejudices of his day to some extent: while he consciously avoids racism and anti-semitism, the same can't be said for sexism and homophobia - admittedly, very prevalent at the time.
Youngblood Hawke is excellent value on the Kindle at the moment and comes recommended to anyone who loves a good story.
The Greengage Summer is about children but not a children’s book. I’m not sure how to classify it: it’s somewhere between YA and general fiction. In aThe Greengage Summer is about children but not a children’s book. I’m not sure how to classify it: it’s somewhere between YA and general fiction. In a nutshell, Cecil (Cecilia) Grey narrates the story of what happened the summer she and her siblings spent at a hotel in the Champagne region of France.
There’s no one to supervise them because their father is absent on an expedition and their mother falls ill as soon as they arrive in France and spends several weeks in a French hospital, leaving the children in the care of an Englishman staying in the hotel, Eliot, who turns out to be a rather unsuitable guardian.
The children are spoiled and insular, and their mother intended to educate them with visits the French battlefields and war graves. In the event they don’t go near a battlefield and their education comes through the discovery of alcohol, cigarettes and adult sexuality. That makes it sound a more racy book than it is: the narrative brilliantly evokes the significance of small milestones like a first taste of champagne.
The book was first published in 1958, but I wasn’t convinced that the setting was the 1950s. The references to the war could as easily mean the First World War as the Second World War � appropriate enough to a book which is all about ambiguity.
While England and the English are repeatedly associated with the colour grey (the family’s surname is grey; the children arrive at the hotel dressed in their grey flannel school uniforms; the wallpaper in Cecil’s bedroom at home is a ‘grey-blue pattern�) France is associated with the colour green. Green is associated with fertility and, by extension, with sexuality. The hotel proves to be a hotbed of various passions and the cat is put among the pigeons when Cecil’s beautiful sixteen-year-old sister, Joss, comes downstairs after a period of illness and immediately attracts the attention of Eliot � to the fury of his lover, the hotel owner, Mademoiselle Zizi. Which brings us to another thing associated with green � jealousy.
Instead of doing the sensible thing and poisoning a greengage, then dressing up as an old crone to get Joss to eat it, Mademoiselle Zizi starts to let herself go � drinking too much and forgetting to put blush on � which doesn’t help matters. But if she is playing the Wicked Queen to Joss’s Snow White, then Joss (who in two scenes admires her own beauty in the mirror) begins to aspire to queenship herself.
Joss’s discovery of her new power is very quickly followed by the discovery that it has limitations. She can’t make Eliot commit to her � he continues to play her off against Mademoiselle Zizi. There are ways to deal with this kind of behaviour: you can turn elusive, ending phone calls after a few minutes by gaily announcing that you have ‘a million things to do!� Or you can drop the man in question. (Moppet recommends dropping him). Joss makes a different choice � a choice which will have far-reaching consequences for all concerned. She and Cecil learn the hard way that (to use another food metaphor) they can’t have their cake and eat it � the privileges of adulthood come with dangers and responsibilities attached.
Bottom line: insightful and evocative coming-of-age story.
Cross-posted (with additional material) to ...more
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