Tag Archives: Classics

December 10, 2015 · 10:25 am

Review: Our Spoons Came from Woolworths by Barbara Comyns

My Review:
Our Spoons come from WoolworthsThis book is narrated by Sophia Fairclough, the main character of the book and deals with her rather difficult life during the 1930’s in London.  The language is very simple and straightforward, which is so fitting for Sophia; it’s as if we are reading her diary or sitting and listening to her story over an afternoon cup of tea.

Sophia meets Charles and they instantly fall in love and decide that they want to get married.  Even though they are only twenty-one years old and his family does not approve of her at all, they decide to get married.  They settle on a “secret” and “private” marriage at the local church, but they tell so many people that on the day of the ceremony the church is full of friends, family and odd acquaintances.

The book starts out on a very humorous tone as Sophia is extremely naïve about marriage, sex and motherhood.  Charles is an artist, a bit of a delicate genius, who can’t possibly put aside his art to get a proper job to support his wife.  Sophia is the main bread winner of the family and Charles is a terrible manager of their money.  Whenever they have a few extra shillings he spends it on frivolous things like painting supplies, wine and dinners.  Sophia is too naïve about living life as an adult to ask that her husband go out and get a job.  When she becomes pregnant and is forced to quit her job Charles is annoyed at having a baby in the house and having his only source of income cut off.

The scenes in which Sophia finds out about her pregnancy are absolutely hilarious.  She is genuinely surprised that she could be having a baby at all;  she thinks that if she wills herself not to be pregnant then she won’t have a baby.  When she goes to the hospital to have the baby she is shocked by the poking and prodding and the indignity of the whole process, right down to the horrible hospital bed clothes that she is forced to wear.

It is obvious from the very first sentence of the book that Sophia and Charles’ marriage does not end well.  As their marriage becomes increasingly difficult financially, emotionally and physically, Charles stays away from their home for longer and longer periods of time.  The humor that was spread throughout the first part of the book is noticeably absent in the send half of Sophia’s tale.  She suffers a great deal as her marriage disintegrates.

But in the end, Sophia learns an important lesson about resiliency and happy endings.  Even though she has suffered many trials and tribulations with and because of Charles she never becomes jaded or bitter.  She is guarded, yes, but never bitter.

The New York Review of Books has brought another brilliant classic to our attention.  I highly recommend this book for its humor, interesting storyline, and strong female character in the form of Sophia.

 

About the Author:
B ComynsBarbara Comyns Carr was educated mainly by governesses until she went to art schools in Stratford-upon-Avon and London. Her father was a semi-retired managing director of a Midland chemical firm. She was one of six children and they lived in a house on the banks of the Avon in Warwickshire. She started writing fiction at the age of ten and her first novel, Sisters by a River, was published in 1947. She also worked in an advertising agency, a typewriting bureau, dealt in old cars and antique furniture, bred poodles, converted and let flats, and exhibited pictures in The London Group. She was married first in 1931, to an artist, and for the second time in 1945. With her second husband she lived in Spain for eighteen years.

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November 10, 2015 · 11:50 am

Review: Narcissus and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse

This is my first contribution to German Literature Month, hosted by Lizzy’s Literary Life and Beauty is a Sleeping Cat.  Please visit their blogs for more great German Literature in translation and to see the full list of blogs that are participating.

My Review:
Narcissus and GoldmundThis is one of those classic books that is very difficult to review and do it justice because there are so many ideas contained within the book.  It is a coming-of-age story, a commentary on existential philosophy and a beautiful description of a life long friendship.  Narcissus is a teacher’s assistant in the cloister of Mariabronn and fully intends to take his vows as a monk.  Narcissus is a very talented scholar and it is evident that he will one day serve the church and even become the Abbot of the cloister.  He is a cerebral man who values the intellect but his emphasis on the rational also prevents him from having any real friendships or meaningful love in his life.  But this all changes when a young boy by the name of Goldmund is dropped off at the cloister by his father.

Goldmund has been raised solely by his father and his father has done everything in his power to erase Goldmund’s memories of his gypsy mother.  Goldmund’s father drops him off at the cloister with the intention of Goldmund being a pupil and eventually taking a vow to become a monk.  Goldmund’s father tells him that he must dedicate his life to God in order to make up for his mother’s sins.  But Goldmund does not possess the intellectual detachment of Narcissus and love and art and seduction are things which he cannot deny himself in order to become a monk.  Narcissus helps Goldmund realize that cloister life is not for him and when Goldmund learns the pleasures of sex from a gypsy woman he knows that Narcissus is right and he immediately flees the cloister.

Most of the book is a description of Goldmund’s restless journey as a wanderer.  Wherever he stays, whether it be in a modest farmhouse, the castle of a knight or a large city, he manages to satisfy his sexual desires by seducing countless women.  Goldmund is kind and loving and handsome so oftentimes a single look or a caress is enough for a woman to fall in bed with him.  But he never stays in one place long enough to have a lasting and deep friendship like the one he had with Narcissus.  The longest he stays at any place is the Bishop’s city where he becomes an apprentice to a master artist named Niklaus.  Niklaus teaches Goldmund the finer points of sculpting and Goldmund’s greatest masterpiece is a sculpture of St. John that is done in the likeness of his greatest friend Narcissus.  Even though Narcissus and Goldmund are very far apart for many years, their friendship still has a great influence on Goldmund’s life.

Narcissus does come back into Goldmund’s life at a critical point in the book when Goldmund is most in need of help.  Goldmund eventually goes back to live in the cloister as the artist in residence and he works on many sculptures with which to grace the beloved halls of his boyhood home.  Goldmund has had many hardships while on his travels and he puts all of his experiences into his artwork.  There is a heavy emphasis in the book on the close relationship between ecstasy and suffering.  When we give our heart to someone, whether it be a friend, a lover or a relative, we always run the risk of being harmed.  Goldmund had a deep fondness with his mother whom he barely remembers and throughout the book he is looking for that mother-relationship again that made him feel so safe during his very early years.    His culminating sculpture at the monastery, one that he wants to keep to himself and not share, is a mother figure done in the likeness of one of his most influential lovers named Lydia.

Narcissus and Goldmund is a classic novel that I will reach for again and again on my bookshelf.  It is a novel with so many layers that I a sure that each time I reread it I will have new insights and thoughts about this plot.  I look forward to reading another Hesse novel for German Literature month.  What German Literature have you read that you would highly recommend?

German Lit Month

 

About The Author:
HesseHermann Hesse was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. His best known works include Steppenwolf, Siddhartha, and The Glass Bead Game (also known as Magister Ludi) which explore an individual’s search for spirituality outside society.

In his time, Hesse was a popular and influential author in the German-speaking world; worldwide fame only came later. Hesse’s first great novel, “Peter Camenzind”, was received enthusiastically by young Germans desiring a different and more “natural” way of life at the time of great economic and technological progress in the country.

Throughout Germany, many schools are named after him. In 1964, the Calwer Hermann-Hesse-Preis was founded, which is awarded every two years, alternately to a German-language literary journal or to the translator of Hesse’s work to a foreign language. There is also a Hermann Hesse prize associated with the city of Karlsruhe,Germany.

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November 9, 2015 · 12:24 pm

Review: Stoner 50th Anniversary Edition by John Williams

I received an advance review copy of this title from New York Review of Books.

My Review:
Stoner 50thFor those of you that are not new to my blog, you might have noticed that this book has a place in my “favorites” section. In this book we are introduced to William Stoner who is born at the turn of the century into a very poor farm family in rural Missouri.   Stoner would have also become a farmer like his father and when he is given a scholarship to the state university, he fully intends to study agriculture.  But through the influence of a tough but inspiring English professor, Stoner changes his major to English and he himself becomes a University English professor.

One of the aspects that I enjoyed most about the book is Stoner’s contemplation about what it means to be a good teacher. He also doesn’t always play the university politics game and his career suffers for it.  He is forced to teach Freshman English courses over and over again and he does so in a stoic manner without protest.  Whether he is in a graduate seminar class or a beginning Freshman English class he always gives his best teaching to his students.

Stoner meets a charming young woman at the home of his professor and he immediately decides that he wants to marry her.  He courts Edith for about two weeks and they have a modest wedding ceremony at her parent’s house.  But Edith soon reveals her mental instability and Stoner realizes very quickly that his marriage is a miserable failure.   But Stoner never even contemplates leaving Edith and instead he endures a miserable life at home with a wife who is crazy and unpredictable. I was glad to see that at one point in the book, though, he does find real love and intimacy, which I think is what he craves all along.

The prose in this book is exceptionally elegant. This is one of those books that my thoughts keep wandering to over and over. It makes one contemplate so many different ideas: career, family, love, marriage, and even death.  The 50th anniversary edition issued by the New York Review of Boks is a hardcover book with an introduction by John McGahern.  Even if you have already read Stoner on the Kindle or in the original paperback, this beautiful hardcover edition is very special and worth having on one’s bookshelf.

About The Author:
John WilliamsJohn Edward Williams was born on August 29, 1922, in Clarksville, Texas, near the Red River east of Paris, Texas and brought up in Texas. His grandparents were farmers; his stepfather was a janitor in a post office. After flunking out of junior college and holding various positions with newspapers and radio stations in the Southwest, Williams enlisted in the USAAF early in 1942, spending two and a half years as a sergeant in India and Burma. Several years after the war, Williams enrolled in the University of Denver, where he received his B.A. in 1949 and an M.A. in 1950. During this period, his first novel, Nothing But the Night, was published (1948), and his first volume of poems, The Broken Landscape, appeared the following year. In the fall of 1950, Williams went to the University of Missouri, where he taught and received a Ph.D. in 1954. In the fall of 1955, Williams took over the directorship of the creative writing program at the University of Denver, where he taught for more than 30 years. Williams’s second novel, Butcher’s Crossing, was published by Macmillan in 1960, followed by English Renaissance Poetry, an anthology published in 1963 by Doubleday which he edited and for which he wrote the introduction. His second book of poems, The Necessary Lie, appeared in 1965 and was published by Verb Publications. In 1965 he became editor of University of Denver Quarterly (later Denver Quarterly) until 1970. In 1965, Williams’s third novel, Stoner, was published by Viking Press. It has been recently been re-issued by The New York Review of Books. His fourth novel, Augustus, was published by Viking Press in 1973 and won the prestigious National Book Award in 1973 and remains in print.

The critic Morris Dickstein has noted that, while Butcher’s Crossing, Stoner, and Augustus are “strikingly different in subject,” they “show a similar narrative arc: a young man’s initiation, vicious male rivalries, subtler tensions between men and women, fathers and daughters, and finally a bleak sense of disappointment, even futility.” Dickstein called Stoner, in particular, “something rarer than a great novel — it is a perfect novel, so well told and beautifully written, so deeply moving, it takes your breath away.”

After retiring from the University of Denver in 1986, Williams moved with his wife, Nancy, to Fayetteville, Arkansas, where he resided until he died of respiratory failure on March 3, 1994. A fifth novel, The Sleep of Reason, was left unfinished at the time of his death

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October 16, 2015 · 11:20 am

Review: Aurora Leigh by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

My Review:
Aurora LeighAurora Leigh is a beautiful, sublime poem written in blank verse.  The language, however, is not the only strong point of the poem.  The character of Aurora is fierce and compassionate, as she adapts to her new life in Britain despite her stern aunt.  Aurora is born to an English father and an Italian mother and happily spends her childhood among the mountains in Italy.  Aurora’s mother dies when she is only four, but her father continues to raise her in Italy among her mother’s people.  Aurora’s father also tragically dies when she is at the young and pivotal age of thirteen, and Aurora is shipped off to live in England with her father’s sister.  Her aunt is a stern spinster who makes Aurora learn what she believes are appropriate skills for a proper English girl.

But Aurora is resilient and even though her life is more restrained and cumbersome in England, she still finds pleasure in books and poetry.  The beautiful estate on which her aunt lives becomes the inspiration for Aurora to begin writing her own poetry.  She takes quiet walks in the early morning before the rest of the house is awake and develops her skill as a writer.  Furthermore, Aurora doesn’t take what would be the easy way out by marrying her cousin Romney Leigh when he proposes to her.  Marriage and financial security would have been a much easier fate for Aurora; but even when her aunt dies and Aurora is disinherited, she moves to London where she works and supports herself as an author.

Browning weaves the theme of class struggles throughout the poem and she especially highlights this social problem through the character of Romney.  The  poor are depicted as wreteched and even ugly; Romney makes it his life’s work to help out the poor and destitute.  After his marriage proposal is Aurora's Dismissal of Romneyrejected by Aurora, he saves a woman named Marian Erle from her miserable life and proposes to her next.  Marian is the daughter of tramps that roam around the countryside finding any work they can.  Marian’s father is abusive and when her mother tries to sell her off to a local squire,  Marian finally runs away from her parents in horror.  Romney decides that, even though Marian is well-below his social class, she will make a perfect wife to help him in his charitable missions. But we are left wondering if these two are really suited as husband and wife.  Does Marian truly love Romney or does she simply worship him as her savior.  Does Romney really have feelings of love for Marian or is he still in love with his cousin Aurora?

The upper class don’t fair any better in Browning’s verse.  They are depicted as vain, judgmental, and petty.  The character of Lady Valdemar is the epitome of a greedy upper class English woman who will do everything in her power to fulfill her selfish desires.  Lady Valdemar is in love with Romney and once she finds out that he is going to marry a lower class woman like Marian, she sets in motion a series of events that have devastating consequences for all involved in this love triangle.  Lady Valdemar’s singular focus of getting Romney to the altar makes her a despicable and opportunistic character.

At the end of the poem Browning brings the characters back to the place where everything was simpler and happier: Aurora’s native land of Italy.  There Aurora finds peace once again as she is finally away from the petty gossip and prying eyes of the upper classes in England.  Aurora does, however, admit that despite her new surroundings,  there is still something missing in her life.  She is a successful author who has become famous for her poems and novels about love.  But will she ever experience this elusive feeling for herself?  You will have to read Browning’s beautiful poem to find out.

About The Author:
Elizabeth Barrett BrowningElizabeth Barrett Browning was one of the most respected poets of the Victorian era.
Born in County Durham, the eldest of 12 children, Browning was educated at home. She wrote poetry from around the age of six and this was compiled by her mother, comprising what is now one of the largest collections extant of juvenilia by any English writer. At 15 Browning became ill, suffering from intense head and spinal pain for the rest of her life, rendering her frail. She took laudanum for the pain, which may have led to a lifelong addiction and contributed to her weak health.

In the 1830s Barrett’s cousin John Kenyon introduced her to prominent literary figures of the day such as William Wordsworth, Mary Russell Mitford, Samuel Taylor Coleridge; Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and Thomas Carlyle. Browning’s first adult collection The Seraphim and Other Poems was published in 1838. During this time she contracted a disease, possibly tuberculosis, which weakened her further. Living at Wimpole Street, in London, Browning wrote prolifically between 1841 and 1844, producing poetry, translation and prose. She campaigned for the abolition of slavery and her work helped influence reform in child labour legislation. Her prolific output made her a rival to Tennyson as a candidate for poet laureate on the death of Wordsworth.

Browning’s volume Poems (1844) brought her great success. During this time she met and corresponded with the writer Robert Browning, who admired her work. The courtship and marriage between the two were carried out in secret, for fear of her father’s disapproval. Following the wedding she was disinherited by her father and rejected by her brothers. The couple moved to Italy in 1846, where she would live for the rest of her life. They had one son, Robert Barrett Browning, whom they called Pen. Towards the end of her life, her lung function worsened, and she died in Florence in 1861. A collection of her last poems was published by her husband shortly after her death.

 

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October 5, 2015 · 11:53 am

Review: Green Mansions by William Henry Hudson

My Review:
Green MansionsLast week I was in one of those moods where I just couldn’t decide what I wanted to read.  I tried a couple of books that just weren’t working for me and then I finally settled onto this oftentimes neglected classic by William Henry Hudson.

Hudson was not only an author, but he was also a naturalist and wrote extensively about the flora and fauna of his homeland in Argentina.  So it is no wonder that the most striking aspects of this novel are the descriptions of the lush landscapes in which the main characters live.

The contrast between the “savages” and civilized man is an interesting topic that Hudson explores.   Abel is escaping from his civilized country in which his government is constantly being threatened by coups and rebels.  He takes refuge in the lush, tropical forests of south-western Venezuela which are inhabited by unorganized tribes of Indians.  Abel finds that life among the Indians is much simpler than life in the city; the focus of these people is gathering food, building shelters and protecting themselves from their enemies.  Abel describes the lavish rainforests in which he lives among these people as his “green mansions.”

Abel learns that even among these tribes superstitions, prejudices and hatred exist.  The Indians with which he settles put him through a series of tests to see if Abel can be trusted and accepted into their community.  Abel is eventually given his own hammock on which to sleep in one of their huts and he is invited to take his share from the communal eating pot.  But Abel is restless sitting in his hammock all day, so he explores in a local wooded area where he meets a mysterious woman named Rima.

When he first explores this forest, Abel hears what he thinks are warbling bird sounds.  The sounds seem to follow him no matter where he goes in the woods.  Eventually he stumbles across a woman who looks and acts like no other native he has encountered.  She is at peace with nature and lives among the animals in harmony; the animals and insects seem to obey and respect her and even a poisonous snake which bites Abel wraps itself around Rima as her protector.  Abel gradually falls in love with Rima and wants nothing more than to act like lovers do with embraces and kisses and sharing and conversation.  But Rima is elusive and even though she is around Abel she doesn’t let him see her or touch her very often.  It appears that she is also in love with Abel, but she doesn’t understand the concept of love and so she is afraid of her feelings and shrinks from Abel’s advances.

In the end Abel must find a way to teach Rima what love is and show her how to express it.  Abel must also protect Rima from the other natives of the forest who view Rima, because of her difference in appearance, as a threat to them.  And although the book ends on a tragic note, the descriptive passages of the fertile rainforest, the ideas about love and Abel’s enduring will to live all make this a great classic.

About The Author:
WH HudsonWilliam Henry Hudson was an author, naturalist and ornithologist. He was born in the Quilmes Partido in Buenos Aires Province, Argentina, where he is considered to belong to the national literature as Guillermo Enrique Hudson, the Spanish version of his name. He spent his youth studying the local flora and fauna and observing both natural and human dramas on what was then a lawless frontier, publishing his ornithological work in Proceedings of the Royal Zoological Society, initially in an English mingled with Spanish idioms. He settled in England during 1869. He produced a series of ornithological studies, including Argentine Ornithology (1888-1899) and British Birds (1895), and later achieved fame with his books on the English countryside, including Hampshire Days (1903), Afoot in England (1909) and A Shepherd’s Life (1910). His best known novel is Green Mansions (1904), and his best known non-fiction is Far Away and Long Ago (1918). His other works include: The Purple Land (That England Lost) (1885), A Crystal Age (1887), The Naturalist in La Plata (1892), A Little Boy Lost (1905), Birds in Town and Village (1919), Dead Man’s Plack and an Old Thorn (1920), and A Traveller in Little Things (1921).

 

 

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