Ersatz TLS discussion

Hello everyone. Welcome to the new thread.

I open with words from Rilke posted by Tam, and which I was rather taken by:
"I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world. I may not complete this last one but I give myself to it.
I circle around God, around the primordial tower. I’ve been circling for thousands of years
and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?"

I'm feeling cautiously hopeful that my reading dry spell may be over. The trick seems to be to go for nothing fancy. Not that not fancy means not good. After I finished watching Slow Horses I was moved to try Mick Herron's Slough House series again and have now read Dead Lions and Real Tigers. Well written and really enjoyable. Next was Summerwater by Sarah Moss which I thought very good indeed. I've now picked up Alison Lurie's Foreign Affairs which is slipping down a treat. Other bookish treats have been the 1996 Moll Flanders TV adaptation in which Alex Kingston acts up a storm, and the really good Slightly Foxed podcast on Barbara Pym recommended by Diana in the last thread.

And now over to you. There was a strong North American flavour on the last thread what with Veufveuve asking for favourite Los Angeles novels; Bill introducing the Michael Dirda archive at the Washington Post; and a bumper pile of Canadian titles culminating in an outpouring of love for Carol Shields. Those were just some of the North America highlights; impossible to feature them all, I'm afraid.

MK was actually reading Dirda at the time of Bill's post:

An Open Book: Coming of Age in the Heartland. It's a lovely story - what is a family to do with this kid who always has his nose in a book? As a teen he overhears his parents arguing about him and why he's not out there doing boyish things. So Michael runs away from home (with a classmate) and hitches as far as Pittsburgh (150+ miles) before sidling back home.

FrancesBurgundy's memory was jogged by a mention of Dirda favourite Clifton Fadiman:

I've been meaning to recommend Reading I've Liked. It turned me on to Jules Romains, and revisiting it I see so many 19th and 20th century writers who I've not read, and many I've not even heard of.  It's 800 small print pages and I have other things to do, but I'm very tempted to drop everything for a few days and ferret through it to get more recommendations for my TBR shelf.

800 small print pages? Ye gods! I expect to see Frances again sometime next decade.

Meanwhile, across the border in Canada AB was getting stuck into Brian Moore's 1971 novel The Revolution Script (AB reminds us that Moore was an Ulsterman but was living in Canada at the time of writing):

Canadian politics and social situations in Quebec are central to this novelisation of the real life 1970 October crisis. The Front for the Liberation of Quebec kidnap two men linked to power in French
Canada and the novel covers the tense weeks as the crisis unfolds.
The FLQ are a desperate muddle of marxists, with the weight of the Canadian state against them. Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the Canadian Prime Minister, young, dashing and bi-lingual takes a firm hand against the terrorists but tragedy strikes when one of the hostages is killed and FLQ dreams are shattered, as public opinion, even within Quebec turns against them.
Moore narrates the novel with a mix of journalism and literary flair, the streets of Montreal are the setting, from "Anglo " Westmount to the poverty specked streets of the French-Canadian working class where the FLQ sprang from.

What were the chances that someone else was reading a Quebec novel at the same time? Anything is possible at ersatz. Paul was reading his annual Willa Cather. We pause here for the obligatory

I LOVE WILLA CATHER

before proceeding to the review. (And I do miss @Vieuxtemps).
Here's Paul on Cather's Shadows on the Rock:

This time around she apparently left the American plains and high desert for a lonely rock on the Saint Lawrence river. She still centered her narrative on the strife of trying to carve out a niche in inhospitable environs, this time focusing upon the 2nd generation of French settlers in Quebec City. The story focuses on Cecile and her father Euclide, the personal pharmacist to Count de Frontenac the governor of the province eking out a viability on animal pelts.
…...there is a sense of indomitableness, a clash of human determination and a mocking nature. No one writes a sunset or a horizon like Cather. Her trees are all moss-covered and her rivers frozen solid and you feel the need for another blanket when reading her.
Her characters happiness comes from accepting their new home and shaving off a little of the rocky hill to make their own. Whether it's desert-stranded bishops, or wind-blasted immigrants amongst the winter wheat, her characters happiness derives from an acquiescence and a sense of accomplishment. Inevitably, for Cather unchecked ambition is fatal and wistfulness and longing lead to depression.
The resignation of the Count to his bones mouldering far from home, and Euclide's clinging to his French-style sitting room becoming more threadbare by the year are doomed to end in disappointment. The young bishop's need to impress and reform clash with the reality of living on a rock surrounded by thousands of kilometers of forest. Instead, Cecile's decision to be Quebecois ensures her satisfaction and her abundance. Cather would certainly have agreed with Thomas Wolfe that you can't go again, but she would hardly have wanted to.

Away from Canada, our resident Canadian Berkley was reading Englishwoman Iris Murdoch's The Bell:

[I] found it both entertaining and thought-provoking, like everything of hers I've read so far. Most of the entertainment came from one particular character, Dora, a young married woman struggling with her marriage to a man I think we would now see as a straightforwardly abusive husband, although that word isn't used in the novel. At any rate, she is probably one of the most likeable and engaging fictional personas I've come across recently.

Gpfr has discovered publisher Eland and was reading Travels With Myself and Another by Martha Gellhorn:

I'm getting on for halfway through and have covered 2 of the 5 journeys. The first, made with UC (Unwilling Companion) was to China in early 1941. The 2nd Sino-Japanese War had been going on since 1937. In September 1940, the Axis countries, Germany, Italy and Japan signed the Tripartite Pact in Berlin. The editor of Collier's "agreed that (Gellhorn) should report on the Chinese army in action, and defences against future Japanese attack around the South China Sea." The journey was hellish: squalor, disease, cold, rain, bugs, scary plane and boat travel, riding on tiny horses...
"But there wasn't any war here, there was an undeclared truce. I was sure this China had always been drowning in hopeless poverty and disease, war only made the normal state somewhat worse."

.... The journeys are described vividly and with a lot of humour.

Speaking of humour, we had a lot of Elizabeth von Arnim on the thread. Russell had discovered The Enchanted April:

Two married ladies, not acquainted, not employed, not well off, thirty-ish, are at their London club. They each see an ad in The Times for an Italian medieval castle for rent. They get talking. The two of them together might just be able to afford it. They decide it could do no harm to write for details. Somehow, in the same conversation, they each discover they are unhappy, because their marriages are moribund.

They arrive. “The first thing to happen in this house,” says one to the other, “shall be a kiss.”

Is the story going to take a turn I was not expecting?

Two other English ladies have joined the party, one older who is rather commanding, one younger who wishes to be left languidly alone. Now we have a full quartetto italiano of off-balance characters.

Written carefully, and correctly, but with a lot of wit, and a lot of commas, this is, so far, a delicious entertainment.

I love The Enchanted April too, and elsewhere Gpfr was mightily enjoying von Arnim's Elizabeth and her German Garden, but it's only fair to record that Georg was prompted to reread German Garden herself and had some major problems with it. I've had to abbreviate it a bit, so I hope Georg thinks I've done an okay job:

A garden that has not been tended to for many years, a copse of birch trees. A woman who loves to live in the middle of nowhere because she prefers, by and large, to be on her own and has no need of anything a city has to offer.
Well written, with gentle humour I really enjoyed it. Until page 50.
...She started to talk about their seasonal workers, recruited in Russia and Poland. Of course they weren't treated well. But there were some intersting details: their quartes were guarded at night by officials for the first 1-2 weeks. Nevertheless on more than one occasion as many as fifty managed to escape on the first night. To work on farms nearby where they could expect to be paid a penny or two more per day. Two pennies more would have only been 1% more than the best-paid men were earning on von Arnims estate. While this would surely not be disregarded by a poor person it still begs the question whether it was the only reason they preferred to work for somebody else.
.... The main part of the rest of the book was about three weeks over Christmas and New Year and three women: Minora, a guest Elizabeth only invited to do an old friend a favour, Idais, a friend who invited herself because she didn't fancy staying with her unwell husband. Minora is described as a pain-in the-butt. Elizabeth and Idais gang up against her. The former is catty under a thin veneer of politeness, the latter openly, even offensively, so. Elizabeth's gross husband throws in a lecture about women (should be put into one drawer with children and imbeciles) for good measure.
Throughout the book Elizabeth styles herself as somebody special/superior (as opposed to ordinary/boring). In the end she came out,for me, as a typical member of her class, the landed gentry. Spoiled, entitled, arrogant, ignorant, looking down at anybody and everybody who does not belong to their circle, counting the poorest not even as human beings.

Back to the happy readers, crime reading is ever present on the thread and Robert offers us a classic:

Though long out of print, Dorothy Sayers' anthology "The Omnibus of Crime" has a remarkable variety of stories. It includes two intelligent women's nightmares, "Where Their Fire is Not Quenched" and "Her Last Adventure," as well as "The Absent-Minded Coterie," a mischievous battle of wits, a gem among formula bound 1920s detective fiction, the supernatural story "Green Tea," and others that became favorites. How she loved to read, and shared!

I'm going to end with this lovely post from LL which beautifully conveys a reader very happy with her reading:

Letters to Camondo by Edmund de Waal is a beautiful, tender, tragic book about banker and art collector Moïse de Camondo, whose house and collection is preserved undisturbed at Musée Nissim de Camondo in Paris. I wish I could read more French (I can almost manage most menus) and I wish I knew more French history, but this book was a lovely read for this objet-o-phile.

On to The Candy House by the brilliant, magical Jennifer Egan. Just 30 pages in, I find myself holding my breath, wondering "where is she going to go with this?" She's just so good, Egan.

Happy reading, all.

Impressive summary Anne, great work and i do hope your dry spell of reading is over, we can all be susceptible to that happening!

Today has been wet and breezy in the shires, much needed rain after almost four weeks of dry weather.

Just read a good 50 pages of the brilliant canadian classic The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence (1964) and am loving the rich, witty prose of William Bulfin in his Rambles in Eirinn from 1907.

Plus the interesting Sjon novel Red Milk my first Icelandic read for a few years. The St Kilda memoir of Donald Gillies reads far better than the pessimistic introduction suggested, he recalls his youth on the rugged, remote Hebridean island and the life of the 100 or so people who made a living out in the Atlantic.

I don't think Iris Murdoch was entirely English, was she? I think I mean that during her literature-producing years she lived in England. Or summat like that ....

AB76 wrote: "Today has been wet and breezy in the shires, much needed rain after almost four weeks of dry weather..."

We definitely needed the rain, but as regards the weather in general I wouldn't call it the heatwave that was heralded, would you?

Anne wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Today has been wet and breezy in the shires, much needed rain after almost four weeks of dry weather..."

We definitely needed the rain, but as regards the weather in general I wouldn'..."

no, one feature of what has been an exceptionally mild 2022 (14c on new years day and 3 times in feb), is no real, heatwave style spells. its been pleasently mild and dry, it felt summery from mid April in the sun but the warmest temp i have recorded in 2022 is 20c, which is not a heatwave temperature in April or May

In Jan-May 2020 and 2021 we had warmer higher temps and heatwaves for long spells in 2020, that co-incided with those first weeks of lockdown in April

Yesterday, we made an expedition in the neighbourhood, to our local independent bookstore (http://arkbooks.dk - unbelievably hipster but also undeniably welcoming and always with an interesting stock). We had eight stamps on our buy nine and get the tenth free loyalty card. My wife chose both books; Elena Ferrante, "Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay." I've enjoyed all the Ferrante I've read and will be happy to read this. Second was "Memoirs of Hadrian" by Marguerite Yourcenar, which I'd never heard of but am very intrigued by.

Then, after we'd already paid, I noticed a compendium of three novels (Loving, Living, and Party Going) by Henry Green. I've definitely never heard of Green before, but these look very appealing to me. Has anyone read either Yourcenar or Green? In any case, I feel I may be making a slight detour on the way home from work this afternoon, to call back in.

In other shopping news/dilemmas, we've found three nice (but in no way exceptional) Danish modern dining chairs in a local junk shop. We categorically do not need any dining chairs, but I find myself thinking about them all the time ...

Anne wrote: "I don't think Iris Murdoch was entirely English, was she? I think I mean that during her literature-producing years she lived in England. Or summat like that ...."

Yes, she was Irish but lived in England most of her adult life, I think. Not sure about her family background, whether Anglo-Irish or what.

One thing I meant to add about Dora, the character from The Bell that I was talking about, is that I had the impression that perhaps she might have been perceived as less sympathetic by readers around the time the novel was written than I think she would be by most readers today. At one point, another character describes her as "a bitch" - but this seems to have meant something different to Murdoch, or perhaps again just during that late 1950s era, than to us today: she isn't considered mean-spirited or nasty, but is something of a trouble-maker, usually due to her own immaturity and thoughtlessness.

Since the I've read le Carré's The Russia House, which was quite good - an involving story and characters and also an interesting window on the last years of the USSR, during Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika.

Veufveuve wrote: "Then, after we'd already paid, I noticed a compendium of three novels (Loving, Living, and Party Going by Henry Green. I've definitely never heard of Green before, but these look very appealing to me. Has anyone read either Yourcenar or Green? In any case, I feel I may be making a slight detour on the way home from work this afternoon, to call back in. "

Haven't read Yourcenar, though I have that Hadrian book on my list, but I have read Henry Green and recommend him highly. Very unique style, I don't think I've come across anyone else quite like him. The way he paints his scenes makes them come alive with an immediacy that's quite startling at times. Very impressionistic. I think I liked Party Going and Loving slightly more than Living but that could be because I read Living first and it took me a while to get used to him

Thanks Berkley! Very interesting. Whether or not it happens today, I am clearly going to be going back to buy the Green.

"Living" probably appeals to me most, because of the setting, a factory in Birmingham in the 1920s. Green's background and biography are also interesting (from Wiki at least).

Thanks for the summary Anne.
I’m enjoying Slow Horses also, thanks to your recommendation.

If He Hollers Let Him Go by Chester Himes

This was written in 1945, before Himes’s Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones series, which came after, in the 50s and 60s, and resulted in him being labelled as a crime genre writer.

Amongst his claims to fame, Himes served time in the Ohio State Pentitentiary, in 1928, as part of a 25 year sentence for armed robbery (he served 8). It was while in prison he read Hammett Dashiell and Chandler Raymond and wrote some hard-boiled crime short stories.

This however, is a protest novel, and needs to be read and appreciated quite apart from his other work. It has the same punchy writing style, brisk style driven by dialogue, and a noir quality, but few other similarities.

It’s protagonist and narrator is anti-hero Robert Jones, a black shipyard worker, who has prospered thanks to the shortage of white workers during the Second World War. He has a girl friend from a well-to-do family, is highly respected at work, and has a draft deferment due to the importance of his job. But, he is well aware that simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time can bring a black man’s life crashing down around him, and sure enough this happens, when a woman he has crossed t work, falsely accuses him of rape.

It is not hard to get Himes’s message here, at every chance he takes a tangential departure from the plot to expose racism in the American middle class of the day. Prejudice is everywhere. It is not so much a question of exposing it, rather one of bringing it to the forefront, and not ignored, or taken as read.

Veufveuve wrote: "Yesterday, we made an expedition in the neighbourhood, to our local independent bookstore (http://arkbooks.dk - unbelievably hipster but also undeniably welcoming and always with an interesting sto..."

I've read Memoirs of Hadrian in the middle of a big dive into books set during the Roman empire. I thought it was very good, very quiet and understated and mournful. Good at humanising a god-like figure and showing his vulnerabilities and regrets. I have to say that i preferred I, Claudius and Claudius The God which I read in taht same period, but the Yourcenar was quite good.

I have that same triple-header of Henry Green but I haven't yet read any of them . I know Mach made his way through Green's books in the past few years and presumably Mach is making his way through a vacation at the moment

Anne wrote: "I don't think Iris Murdoch was entirely English, was she? I think I mean that during her literature-producing years she lived in England. Or summat like that ...."

According to Wikipedia, her parents were both Irish Protestants, but moved to London when she was only a few weeks old - I don't know how she considered herself.

I liked Murdoch's first novel - 'Under the Net' - a lot. A later novel (probably The Sandcastle) felt less interesting, and I could not deal with her wordy and over-long Booker winner, 'The Sea, the Sea'.

Veufveuve wrote: "Thanks Berkley! Very interesting. Whether or not it happens today, I am clearly going to be going back to buy the Green.

"Living" probably appeals to me most, because of the setting, a factory ..."

If I may jump in re Green, I would read them in reverse order, in that I thought Party Going was OK, Living is good but Loving is one of my favourite novels ever.

On the TBR shelf I have another triptych (?) by Green - Nothing, Doting and Blindness. Not sure I'll ever get round to them as they seem to be early works trading on those later ones, but if anyone knows different do let me know.

Andy wrote: "Thanks for the summary Anne.
I’m enjoying Slow Horses also, thanks to your recommendation.

If He Hollers Let Him Go by Chester Himes [bookcover:If He Hollers Let Hi..."

i read this a decade ago and its superb, historical too as it documents the massive wartime industry in LA, where many southern african-americans moved west, leading the way for the established african-american presence today

FrancesBurgundy wrote: "Veufveuve wrote: "Thanks Berkley! Very interesting. Whether or not it happens today, I am clearly going to be going back to buy the Green.

"Living" probably appeals to me most, because of the sett..."

I was excited when i first came accross Green about 15 years ago but ended up not enjoying anything he wrote, though i have "loving" in my pile.
"Living" was twinned with Greenwoods "Love on the Dole" as two very dissapointing interwar novels of working Britain. Greens style jarred on me right away and i found his WW2 novel of fire-watching oddly uncomfortable. He is an interesting writer but as yet i havent managed to enjoy his prose

Thanks for the intro, Anne.
I've just read In Dark Water by Lynne McEwan; the first in a new detective series. A police officer has just moved back to Scotland with her family. As well as being a Detective Inspector, she's also a lifeboat volunteer which adds a nice twist. Not earthshaking, but I enjoyed it and will read the next when it comes out.

Veufveuve wrote: "Yesterday, we made an expedition in the neighbourhood, to our local independent bookstore (http://arkbooks.dk - unbelievably hipster but also undeniably welcoming and always with an interesting sto..."

I love mid-century Scandinavian design. It started when I was given a set of teak Jacobsen-7 dining chairs about 30 years ago. Since then I have found quite a few lovely pieces on fleamarkets and in charity shops. I have 3 superfluous armchairs and at least 5 superfluous dining chairs. If space were a problem I wouldn't hang on to them, my tendency is rather towards minimalism.

Re your chairs:

What works for me in such situations: I ask myself how disappointed I would be if somebody else bought the thing(s) while I have been dithering?

AB76 wrote: ""Living" was twinned with Greenwoods "Love on the Dole" as two very disappointing interwar novels of working Britain.."

I found Living more rewarding when I read the dialogue to myself in a Midlands accent. I know it should be Birmingham but I mostly used a broad Derby as being easier for me. Then it sprang to life a lot.

Also, I think Green was high up in his Dad's factory in that area so he should have got the speech right and he would have known lots of people like the characters he wrote about.

Excellent introduction and review, Anne. Mightily impressed! Good to be reminded of Alison Lurie, I read many of her novels when she was in her heyday, always worth looking out for. Probably worth a re-read.

Lots of interesting takes on Green! Much more than I expected, so thanks everyone. And thanks to Anne for another great introduction.

And Georg, that's exactly the kind of question that is nagging away at me.

Arrrggghhhh wrote reviews of the books I have been reading on holiday and lost them. I'll try again.

The first book was the third in the Bradcote and Catchpoll series by Sarah Hawkswood. Our intrepid heroes are called upon to investigate attacks on loads of salt being carted from Droitwich to various areas on the county. A mysterious archer shoots the carters and then disappears leaving lurking villains to collect the salt. The love interest that MK mentions appears as the beautiful (of course) widow of a lord who accidentally got involved in one of the attacks. The recently widowed Bradcote, much smitten, saves her from a fate worse than death (of course) in the course of solving the crime with the help of the grumpy Catchpoll and their flame haired apprentice Walkelin.

The next one I have read is

The book starts with a thief entering a house belonging to a local councillor to steal documents relating to a land deal. Unfortunately,, he accidentally drops an easily traceable old watch (as you do) whilst carrying out the theft during which time the cleaner is also in the house, unaware of his entry. She is later found badly injured with blows to the head and is taken to hospital. The police soon identify the owner of the watch and assume he is the attacker. However, the cleaner is later murdered in hospital by an assailant who sneaks in and out again. All is obviously not what it seems.....

The third book I have just started reading is also the third in the Commisario Sonari series. Sonari is nostalgically wandering through Parma early one evening in a thick fog when he gets a call to attend a massive pileup on the autostrada resulting in fires and fatalities. However, when he gets to the scene, in addition to various animals wandering about loose in the fog, he comes across a badly burned body lying at the side of the road. He realises that the death did no occur as first it seemed because there is no sign of burning around the body.......

Veufveuve wrote: "Lots of interesting takes on Green! And thanks to Anne for another great introduction."


I second the thanks to Anne.

Here's a discussion of Green's Party Going in conjunction with its being featured in Anthony Burgess' Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English Since 1939.

https://www.anthonyburgess.org/blog-p...

Somewhat off topic as far as books are concerned, all the recent talk of St Kilda reminded me of a tv programme presented by Neil Oliver (he if the Bettany Hughes-type flowing locks). It was about the island of Swona. The island was inhabited for around 2400 years before finally becoming uninhabited in 1974. However, a small herd of cattle were left behind. When Oliver and Chris Packham went to make the programme the herd had become feral and they had to keep an eye on them for their own safety. When the island was abandoned there were eight cows and one bull and by the time the programme was made there were 20 cows and calves and 3 bulls.

Here is further information about the island if anyone is interested:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swona

What puzzles me about these, and other occasions when the N. American bison population was reduced to (?) double figures, what happens regarding inbreeding? Is it a case of luck that these
two populations seem to thrive or just they were very healthy? Any geneticists around?

Oh, and a bit of bad news for AB - the forecast for next week is for hotter weather.

Gpfr wrote: "Thanks for the intro, Anne.
I've just read In Dark Water by Lynne McEwan; the first in a new detective series. A police officer has just moved back to Scotland with her family. As w..."

More to add to the tbr pile! Thanks for the heads up Gpfr

giveusaclue wrote: "Oh, and a bit of bad news for AB - the forecast for next week is for hotter weather."

forecast here is max 22-23c which i dont mind, its when it hits a windless 28-30c for 4-5 days, so that by the end every indoor space is a fetid wall of warmth, when i think "too hot"

In the Laurence novel, the descriptions of the prairie extremes make me glad i dont live where a continental climate prevails. Freezing winters, short springs, hot summers and mild autumns would be hell for me. (well not the freezing winters...lol)

I just became aware of this obituary: Justin Green, Who Put Himself Into His Underground Cartoons, Dies at 76
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/30/ar...

Justin Green, a star of underground comics in the 1970s who channeled his Catholic guilt and childhood neuroses into Binky Brown meets The Holy Virgin Mary, a raw and intimate confessional epic that inspired cartoonists like Art Spiegelman to explore autobiographical subjects, died on April 23 in Cincinnati. He was 76.

Yes, thank you from me too Anne for the new thread. My first thanks disappeared with my first attempt at a post today.

Paul wrote: "Veufveuve wrote: "Yesterday, we made an expedition in the neighbourhood, to our local independent bookstore (http://arkbooks.dk - unbelievably hipster but also undeniably welcoming and always with ..."

For some reason I've connected her with Viet Nam, but a google search so far has come up dry. However, i did find that she got herself a Google Doodle on her 117th birthday, There's quite a background included with the Doodle -

https://www.google.com/doodles/margue...

Veufveuve wrote: "Lots of interesting takes on Green! Much more than I expected, so thanks everyone. And thanks to Anne for another great introduction.

And Georg, that's exactly the kind of question that is naggin..."

Throwing my name in the ring as a big Henry Green fan.

Reach for your tissue box first -

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukr...

Berkley wrote: " One thing I meant to add about Dora, the character from The Bell that I was talking about, is that I had the impression that perhaps she might have been perceived as less sympathetic by readers around the time the novel was written than I think she would be by most readers today. At one point, another character describes her as "a bitch" - but ..."

I read The Bell about thirty years ago and can't remember any of it, but I do remember really enjoying it. I was madly impressed that CCC was able to identify the French rhyme but didn't have space to include it.

I haven't read The Russia House, but it's on my list for summer-in-the-garden-reading. I stopped at A Perfect Spy and then jumped forward to The Constant Gardener and then jumped forward again to A Most Wanted Man. I also skipped The Little Drummer Girl for some reason I can't remember, and that seems quite potty to me now. Love the Smiley ones, but at present I think The Spy Who Came In From the Cold is the standout masterpiece.

scarletnoir wrote: "I liked Murdoch's first novel - 'Under the Net' - a lot. A later novel (probably The Sandcastle) felt less interesting, and I could not deal with her wordy and over-long Booker winner, 'The Sea, The Sea' ..."

I've only read two, The Bell, donkey's years ago, which I really liked. Then The Sea, The Sea a few years back; I really enjoyed the first half, but by the end I was admiring it more than liking it.

Lass wrote: "Excellent introduction and review, Anne. Mightily impressed! Good to be reminded of Alison Lurie, I read many of her novels when she was in her heyday, always worth looking out for. Probably worth ..."

Thanks! For some reason I didn't read any Lurie back in the day, although I was well aware of her. Foreign Affairs is my first. Always good to start reading someone with a backlist.

Andy wrote: "I’m enjoying Slow Horses also, thanks to your recommendation.."

Are you reading or watching Slow Horses, Andy?

MK wrote: "For some reason I've connected her with Viet Nam, but a google search so far has come up dry. "

I think that's probably because you're thinking of another French writer MK, Marguerite Duras. (Lovely intro MsC!)

Veufveuve wrote: "Yesterday, we made an expedition in the neighbourhood, to our local independent bookstore (http://arkbooks.dk - unbelievably hipster but also undeniably welcoming and always with an interesting sto..."

i missed this original post Veuf and further to my earlier comments i would say that Green is well worth trying, due to his originality and breadth. He tends to use a very unusual writing style. Definite articles are absent and it other oddities can make the flow of the novels(well the ones i have read), a bit jarring and odd. Hence i did not enjoy reading Green but i looked back on it with a feeling that i was glad to have experienced a different kind of writer
Extract from a New Yorker piece on his style:
Along the way, and to differing degrees, Green’s writing had omitted the definite article (a habit his mother lamented on his wedding day); avoided the relative pronoun (favoring “and this had” over “which had”); played havoc with the comma; fiddled with tense; taken a guillotine to the adverbial suffix “-ly” (“she said, more serious”). Green believed that well-groomed, well-behaved English was an obstacle to expression. But his style wasn’t a merely negative exercise, a winnowing or clearing out: he delivered a gorgeous, full-bodied alternative.

Anne wrote: "Andy wrote: "I’m enjoying Slow Horses also, thanks to your recommendation.."

Are you reading or watching Slow Horses, Andy?"

I’m watching it Anne. Coming to episode 5.
I’ve read a couple by Herron, but not appreciated him as much as I thought I would.
Will most likely try again.

Anne wrote: "Anne wrote: Love the Smiley ones, but at present I think The Spy Who Came In From the Cold is the standout masterpiece ...."

Just been doing the washing up where I suddenly remembered that TSWCIFTC is, of course, a Smiley novel too. When I referred to the Smiley novels before I meant the central Karla trilogy. Off to unload the washing machine now.

Andy wrote: "I’m watching it Anne. Coming to episode 5.
I’ve read a c..."

Episode 4 was when I got gripped. It's been a huge benefit not having to read Slow Horses 'cos I tried several times and it was like wading through a swamp. Going straight on to the second and third in the series was pure fun all the way. I really like Herron's characterisation of his duff spooks, with the possible exception of River, who has a tiny bit of a void at the heart of him.

Yourcenar was a sort of one-book genius, but her Memoirs of Hadrian is well worth reading. (She was the first woman named to the French Academy; General de Gaulle wrote a private letter of praise to her for Hadrian.)

Veufveuve wrote: "Lots of interesting takes on Green! Much more than I expected, so thanks everyone. And thanks to Anne for another great introduction.

And Georg, that's exactly the kind of question that is naggin..."

I now have a vision of both you, and Georg, in a Piranesi type 'environment', where instead of marble busts set into archaic niches, there are countless modernist danish classic dining chairs set into hard oblong concrete niches, in vast halls, whilst the burgeoning 'tides of history' are lapping at, and occasionally flooding, their 'footprints of destiny'...

Thanks for that, to both of you... I don't think I will look at a modern 'design classic', in quite the same way again, at least for a while...

Andy wrote: "Anne wrote: "Andy wrote: "I’m enjoying Slow Horses also, thanks to your recommendation.."

Are you reading or watching Slow Horses, Andy?"

I’m watching it Anne. Coming to episode 5.
I’ve read a c..."

If your local library has the audio version of Slow Horses, and you like audio in the first place, I recently downloaded and listened to it. (I read the book way back when.) I liked the audio version so much that I'm going to see if I can do the same with Dead Lions.l

Hushpuppy wrote: "MK wrote: "For some reason I've connected her with Viet Nam, but a google search so far has come up dry. "

I think that's probably because you're thinking of another French writer MK, Marguerite D..."

Yes, thank you.

Thanks for the intro, Anne, excellent as always. I’m another one appreciating the Alison Lurie prompt.

I’ve now finished The Enchanted April. I would just like to say it was delightful to the end. Elizabeth von Arnim, at least in this book, is an artist of winning style and penetration. Every elegant phrase has a comic turn. Every character has a bundle of inner misgivings, amusingly described. The unreal beauty of the setting adds its own beneficent magic. Will love resolve all difficulties? (The lawyer hopes not! Trouble = Fees.) How entrancing it is to fall in with the dream.

FrancesBurgundy wrote: "On the TBR shelf I have another triptych (?) by Green - Nothing, Doting and Blindness. Not sure I'll ever get round to them as they seem to be early works trading on those later ones, but if anyone knows different do let me know."

FWIW, I tried one of this trilogy many years ago, but could not get into it... I didn't realise it was an early work and not rated as one of his best. I don't recall which one it was.

Andy wrote: "Thanks for the summary Anne.
I’m enjoying Slow Horses also, thanks to your recommendation.

If He Hollers Let Him Go by Chester Himes [bookcover:If He Hollers Let Hi..."

Coincidentally, I am also reading this book by Himes ATM... very good so far, especially at describing the rage and frustration of a young black man who is often insulted and/or ignored because of his colour. I'll review it when I finish.

scarletnoir wrote: "Andy wrote: "Thanks for the summary Anne.
I’m enjoying Slow Horses also, thanks to your recommendation.

If He Hollers Let Him Go by Chester Himes [bookcover:If He H..."

glad to see this novel being read, not sure if it came from my original mention of it when i was suggesting LA reads a few months back but Himes is a real talent

Anne wrote: "Lass wrote: "Good to be reminded of Alison Lurie"

"Foreign Affairs is my first..."

I've read - and have - all Lurie's novels. I re-read from time to time.

giveusaclue wrote: "I have just started reading the third in the Commisario Sonari series..."

Thanks for the recommendation: I had a look and got the first in the series, River of Shadows by Valerio Varesi.