#Go read The Cazalet Chronicles people

[wah-pah]

I LOVE VILLY SO. MUCH.

Villy is such a complex character. And I get what you mean. I was going to add something but I don't know if you're there yet so I'll refrain, but you will have a lot of feelings.

Seeing you go through the Cazalet motions has been such a joy. I love those books so much.

Also: I have just discovered that there's a radio adaptation full of names we know that aired last Summer on BBC something but it says it's not available. Gah!

[andforstarters]

As if I didn’t have enough reasons to be grateful to Hilary Mantel, it was her recommendation that led me to the author whose novels and writing I consistently turn to more than any other’s – Elizabeth Jane Howard, who published her first novel in 1950, her last in 2013, and who is best known for the Cazalet Chronicles, a five-part work of social history, astonishingly deft characterisation and technique like the finest embroidery where the stitches are entirely invisible. As one reader on GoodReaders observed, these books have suffered from their treatment as “historical chick lit”, published in pink floral covers and adorned with quotes from women’s magazines, when they are serious and important works of art, but this is because they describe domestic and interior life from a woman’s point of view, and even now, as Simone de Beauvoir pointed out a year before Howard’s first novel came out, it is only the masculine that is considered universal.

And it must be said that Howard’s books fall far from the current zeitgeist, capturing, as they do, a world of affluent white members of the British ruling classes in the last decades when the British were still attempting to rule the world.  They describe a past that is more astonishingly distant for being so recent (Howard was of my grandparents’ generation - the generation who were teenagers and who came of age during the Second World War.) This world of nannies, cooks and housemaids, of steam trains, of women who were virgins when they married and were lucky if they even knew what sex was when they said “I do”, of limited contraception and backstreet abortions, of nursery teas, of plain cooking – it feels not just a foreign country, but another planet. And yet the people she depicts so brilliantly – these upper and upper-middle class people – are the people who shaped the people whose children are now in charge of this country. And so, out-of-touch and unimaginably distant as it can sometimes all seem, it is a world that is worth understanding, as best we can, if we are to have a hope of understanding why this country is the way it is today (and, sad to say, the way it will probably be tomorrow, unless something revolutionary happens).

There are many astonishingly strange things about this world that so closely preceded our own and yet which ran according to rules, spoken, or, mostly, unspoken, that are so strange as to be often downright confusing to the modern reader. But the thing that I am drawn to think of most often (probably due to my habit of reading while eating) is the relationship that people in this world had with food, and particularly, with cooking it.

Food and drink are important in Howard’s work, particularly when she writes (as she does brilliantly) from children’s point of view, with their endless appetites, picky dislikes, and unashamed greed. (That she co-authored a cookbook with the restaurant critic Fay Maschler is proof that it was a subject in which she was interested beyond sheer social accuracy.)

The sheer abundance of mealtimes in her books is enough to make one feel sluggish with indigestion upon reading – breakfast, something called “mid mornings”, lunch, tea and then dinner for the adults (or nursery tea, then supper, for the children). The work of preparing and clearing these (for the servants) or even consuming them (for the served) must have been exhausting. Why would anyone want or need so many meals, given they were all copious - every day beginning with a full cooked breakfast, lashings of stodge of every kind, and serious puddings at every lunch and dinner?

 No doubt a great deal of this was due to the fact that for a leisured class, there was not much else to do beyond eating. But it was while reading one of the many accounts of one of these many meals, sitting picking at a snack I’d made to tide myself through to the dinner I would go onto make, that it struck me – something so obvious to the people in these books as to not need mentioning, but something so strange to me that it had not occurred to me before: in this era, if you were not served food, you could not eat. If you got hungry mid-morning, or mid-afternoon, unless food was being prepared for you and brought to you, there was no food for you to eat. You didn’t go into the kitchen and make yourself a snack. The kitchen was the cook’s domain, and cooking was her work. You were no more likely to make yourself a meal if you were hungry (there are many women in the book who it is made overtly clear have never made a meal in their lives) than we are to make ourselves a bottle of wine if we fancy a drink . This went as much for the servants as it did for the staff – they ate when their meals, prepared for them, were served to them.

 To be this disassociated from the production of meals is almost unimaginable for us, unless we have been institutionalised in one of the few places that preserve such a system to this day – a boarding school, an Oxbridge college, or an army with its mess. We are so used to having ready access to a place and the means to cook, and things that we have decided to buy and will decide when and how to eat, that to have none of these things at our direct disposal is almost impossible to imagine.

In the books and world of Elizabeth Jane Howard – a world which, I repeat, was the world of our parents and grandparents – this was not the case. The mistress of the house planned the week’s menus with the cook, according to the budget and the social diary, and at the allotted times, the inhabitants of the house sat down and ate what they were given. If you were hungry at 11am and there had been no such thing as “mid-mornings”, you would not have been able to eat. So the overabundance of meals began to make sense to me as offering a chance to eat that would otherwise simply not exist -  and God knows I have eaten enough much-needed snacks between breakfast and lunch, and lunch and dinner, to know that provision for these occasions is needed. For me, that means putting a cereal bar in my office drawer, or wandering into the kitchen for some cheese and biscuits. For a big household back then, it meant serving a meal to everyone.

Of course, not everyone was part of a big household – either as the family or as the servants. Those who worked in jobs other than service – in manufacturing, retail, or anywhere else – would fend for themselves. But even then, men did not plan their own meals, or cook them. The only people really planning, cooking and eating their own food - seeing the process through from start to finish, as it were - were working-class women, and while many of them worked outside the home, being a housewife was such a vast and full-time job that many did not, even though money was tight.

What is remarkable to reflect upon is that almost nobody in the past – during this period, or any other in modern history – did what is now expected of almost all of us, and that is to simultaneously earn money to put food on the table, and do the work of putting that food on the table.

Countless working parents – or even working single people – struggle with this; struggle not simply with the reality of doing it, but with the guilt they are made to feel if they fail to succeed in doing it. Yes, it is true that thanks to innovations in shopping (supermarkets) and technology (modern ovens and microwaves, food processors and mixers, dishwashers and so on) have made shopping and cooking far less onerous and time-consuming than they were in the 1930s, but they are still time-consuming and onerous, and yet somehow we are bad parents or bad people if we do not whip up nourishing home-cooked meals at the end of our 10-hour working days. There is perhaps a reason why the work of planning and preparing meals, and the work required to provide the means with which to buy and prepare those meals, was separated in the past, even if it is unfortunate (to put it mildly) that those roles were almost always rigidly distributed along strictly gendered lines. 

Never in human history have we been both expected to bring home the bacon and then cook it too, and yet everyone from the government to lifestyle food programmes and glossy cookbooks suggest that we should be managing to do just, and what’s more, to enjoy doing it too.

It’s not surprising that those who can afford it now delegate so much of this work again, just as they always used to – although this time, their staff don’t sleep in their attic and deliver food from the kitchen in their basement, but rather prepare food in nearby restaurant kitchens, for diners who will never see them, let alone know their name, and deliver it by moped to their front doors. 

As astonishingly strange as the as mid 20th-century world of Elizabeth Jane Howard’s novels may seem to us on so many levels, there are far more similarities than we may first observe.

[jenmedsbookreviews]

Today I am delighted to open up the #booklove once more to celebrate the launch of Sandra Imrie’s new book, Connectedness. Happy publication dat Sandra and thanks for visiting my blog. Here’s a little more about Sandra and her books.

About Sandra

Sandra Danby is a proud Yorkshire woman, tennis nut and tea drinker. She believes a walk on the beach will cure most ills. Unlike Rose Haldane, the identity detective in her two novels, Ignoring Gravity and Connectedness, Sandra is not adopted.

Author links

Website ~ Twitter ~ Facebook ~ Goodreads ~ Pinterest

…

Connectedness

TO THE OUTSIDE WORLD, ARTIST JUSTINE TREE HAS IT ALL… BUT SHE ALWAYS HAS A SECRET THAT THREATENS TO DESTROY EVERYTHING

Justine’s art sells around the world, but does anyone truly know her? When her mother dies, she returns to her childhood home in Yorkshire where she decides to confront her past. She asks journalist Rose Haldane to find the baby she gave away when she was an art student, but only when Rose starts to ask difficult questions does Justine truly understand what she must face.

Is Justine strong enough to admit the secrets and lies of her past? To speak aloud the deeds she has hidden for 27 years, the real inspiration for her work that sells for millions of pounds. Could the truth trash her artistic reputation? Does Justine care more about her daughter, or her art? And what will she do if her daughter hates her?

This tale of art, adoption, romance and loss moves between now and the Eighties, from London’s art world to the bleak isolated cliffs of East Yorkshire and the hot orange blossom streets of Málaga, Spain.

A family mystery for fans of Maggie O’Farrell, Lucinda Riley, Tracy Rees and Rachel Hore.

About the ‘Identity Detective’ series

Rose Haldane reunites the people lost through adoption. The stories you don’t see on television shows. The difficult cases. The people who cannot be found, who are thought lost forever. Each book in the ‘Identity Detective’ series considers the viewpoint of one person trapped in this horrible dilemma. In the first book of the series, Ignoring Gravity, it is Rose’s experience we follow as an adult discovering she was adopted as a baby. Connectedness is the story of a birth mother and her longing to see her baby again. Sweet Joy, the third novel, will tell the story of a baby abandoned during The Blitz.

Amazon UK ~ Amazon US

Childhood Sweetheart Favourite book from childhood

Little Women by Louisa M Alcott. I guess, like so many women writers, I was motivated by Jo March’s determination to write, despite difficulties and opposition. I was quite sweet on Laurie and couldn’t believe he preferred Amy who I thought vain, superficial and spoiled. I still have my old Collins hardback, the sort with fragile thin paper; I love these books which make reading seem so special. Despite all the remakes, I still prefer the 1949 film – with Peter Lawford as Laurie, June Allyson as Jo and Elizabeth Taylor as Amy – I guess because it’s the one I watched as a child.

First love The first book you fell in love with

Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome. I still love the series and have all the audio books on my iPod. Actually the first book of the series which I read was Pigeon Post, a present from my parents, and of course after that I collected them all. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve read them, always wanting to be a more imaginative John or less flaky Titty. I love their independence, their adventurous spirits, their bravery, their ability to make friends with whoever they meet.

Biggest book crush The book character you’re totally in love with

Adam Dalgliesh. Long before television detectives had to be emotionally challenged alcoholics or depressives, with more problems than their victims, PD James created this wonderful, sensible, poetry-writing, literature-quoting detective with a vulnerable side. One of the last gentleman detectives, Dalgliesh features in fourteen novels written over a period of 46 years. He seems unsurprisingly ageless, a mentor to his crime team, watching, observing, analysing. His inscrutability has a lot in common with Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot though Dalgliesh lacks the grand flourish, that would simply be too out-going for him.

Weirdest book crush Well… duh

Researching art and artists for Connectedness, I found myself drawn to Tracey Emin. I had enjoyed reading her weekly column in The Independent newspaper between 2005 and 2009, so was pleased to find these articles collected in My Life in a Column [Rizzoli]. Her anecdotal tales of her working week, her inspirations and frustrations, her victories and mistakes, gave me an insight into the practical world of a modern artist like no formally-written memoir did.

Hardest break up The book you didn’t want to end

It’s a series, rather than one book. I wish Elizabeth Jane Howard’s ‘Cazalet Chronicles’ would never end. What a master she is of unassuming quiet stories, making you care so much about the three generations of this wealthy family living through the Second World War. The lives of everyone are changed forever but particularly the women in the family; matriarch the Duchy; daughter Rachel and daughters-in-law Sybil, Villy and Zoe; and granddaughters Polly, Louise, Lydia and Clary.

The one that got away The book in your TBR or wish list that you regret not having started yet.

I could be predictable and say War and Peace, which is still on my bookshelf and on my Kindle. But instead I’m nominating Haruki Murakami’s IQ84. I’ve been a huge Murakami fan since first reading Norwegian Wood but the hardback edition of the trilogy is sitting on my to-read shelf. I’m not sure why I don’t pick it up: its length, perhaps [the trilogy is 1300 pages], or the reviews ranging from 1* to 5*.

Secret love Guilty Reading pleasure

Harry Potter. All of them. I listen to the amazing Stephen Fry read the audio books and tend to start with The Philosopher’s Stone and listen to them back-to-back. Why? JK Rowling has created a magical world that feels fingertips away from my own, which I could possibly join if I were Muggle-born. It has everything; good v evil, great fight scenes, wonderful characters to love and hate, and Rowling is so good at the detail and the planning. No fact is included in the early books that does not have relevance in the later books. Stay alert and spot them all!

Love one, love them all Favourite series or genre

Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy and now The Book of Dust. Ostensibly for children but which, like an iceberg, both disguise hidden depths of philosophy, thought and backstory enough to satisfy any adult reader. Pullman is excellent at plotting and character. We root for his people in a world not unlike ours, shaped slightly differently and running in parallel, so it is easy to imagine ourselves there. Like Rowling, Pullman is a master storyteller; many adult novelists would do well to read and study him.

Your latest squeeze Favourite read of the last 12 months

The best novel I’ve read in 2018 to date is The Heart’s Invisible Furies by Irish writer John Boyne. It is rare for me to give a book a 5* rating [my usual rating is 3] but I knew quite quickly when reading it that this would be a 5. Honest, sad, laugh-out-loud funny, touching, with paragraphs I just had to read out aloud to my husband. It is about being true to yourself, the need for honesty in relationships, and the power of love. It is the life story of one man, Cyril Avery, but also of a country and its attitudes to sexuality. The story starts in Goleen, Ireland, in 1945; a country riven by loyalty to, and hatred of, the British, at the same time in thrall to its Catholic priests whose rules were hypocritical, illogical and cruel. Cyril narrates his story, starting with how his 16-year old mother was denounced in church by the family priest for being single and pregnant.

Blind date for a friend If you were to set a friend up with a blind date (book) which one would it be?

The two novels I give most often to friends are The Light Years, the first of Elizabeth Jane Howard’s ‘Cazalet Chronicles’ and The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford. Both are wonderful books to take you to another world, away from the stress of contemporary life and into the lives of a group of people who you come to care for.

Greatest love of all Favourite book of all time.

An impossible question to answer so I am going to nominate two [if that is allowed]. Both by Jane Austen. A predictable answer, I know, but I cannot lie and choose something else just because other people have chosen Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. I love the wit, the observation, the sumptuous descriptions. And then I remember Austen’s circumstances, moving from place to place, dependant on others, watching, writing quietly, and I wonder even more at her achievement. None of the Bronte experience of group supportive writing around a large table. Jane was on her own, without feedback.. Could you do it?

Thanks Sandra. Some great choices in there. I really just get on a read some more of the classics. I’m a very naughty reader. Hope all goes well with your book launch. Don’t forget folks – order links are at the top of the page.

Have a fab day everyone and keep spreading the #booklove.

Jen

  Book Love: Sandra Danby @SandraDanby Today I am delighted to open up the #booklove once more to celebrate the launch of Sandra Imrie's new book,