Monthly Archives: September 2021

#BookReview ‘Here We Are’ by Graham Swift #theatre #Brighton

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What a delightful slim story is Here We Are by Graham Swift. On the surface it’s a simple tale of a summer season at the theatre at the end of Brighton Pier in 1959. It’s a tale about a magician and his assistant. It’s also a tale about perception and delusion, truth and lies, what is real and an illusion. Graham Swift When young magician Ronnie Deane gets a job for a seaside summer season, he advertises for an assistant. Evie White has experience in the chorus line but has never worked for a magician before. They are both on a steep learning curve. Their guide in Brighton is Ronnie’s friend Jack Robbins, compere, listed on the bill as Jack Robinson. ‘Some patter, some gags, some of them smutty, a bit of singing, some dancing, some tapping of his heels.’ As Ronnie and Evie, listed as ‘Pablo & Eve’, perfect their act, work their way up the bill, they go out as a foursome in the evenings with Jack and his latest girl. They change so frequently Evie can’t keep track of their names, instead thinking of them simply as ‘the Floras’.
This is principally Ronnie’s story, how at the age of eight he left his mother and was evacuated to safety in Oxford. There he found a new home, new parents and a magician to share all the secrets and tricks of the trade. By the end of the war, when Ronnie returns home to London and to his mother, he is a man who knows what job he wants to do.
Like all Swift’s stories, this can be read on many levels. At its simplest it is about a love triangle.
Only 208 pages, it is a short novel. The language is beautiful with not an unnecessary word. Not much may happen, but as the events of 1959 unfold Swift tells us the story of Ronnie’s childhood and how it impacts on the man he has become. The lies told to prevent hurt, the lies told for self-protection, lies told for unknown reasons, and some lies which may actually be the truth. As unknowable as Ronnie’s Famous Rainbow Trick. Unpretentious, at its heart lies a mystery that is in itself mysterious.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK AT AMAZON

Here’s my review of Swift’s MOTHERING SUNDAY.

If you like this, try:-
‘A View of the Harbour’ by Elizabeth Taylor
‘The Gustav Sonata’ by Rose Tremain
‘Redhead by the Side of the Road’ by Anne Tyler

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview HERE WE ARE by Graham Swift https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5iB via @SandraDanby

First Edition ‘The Age of Innocence’ by Edith Wharton #oldbooks #bookcovers

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Published in 1920, The Age of Innocence was Edith Wharton’s twelfth novel and the one which would win her the Pulitzer Prize in 1921; the first woman to do so. This [below left] is the American first edition, published by D Appleton.

It is said the first choice of the Pulitzer judges was Main Street by Sinclair Lewis, which was rejected on ‘political grounds’. Wharton’s story first appeared in 1920 in the magazine Pictorial Review, serialised in four parts, then published in book form in the USA by D Appleton.

Edith Wharton

The Age of Innocence – character study by Joshua Reynolds

It is believed the title of the novel was taken from the painting by Joshua Reynolds [above] which was much reproduced in the late 18th century and came to represent the commercial face of childhood.

Edith Wharton

Wordsworth Classics current ed 1994

The current edition by Wordsworth Classics [above] dates from 1994.
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The story
Set in 1870s upper class New York society, The Age of Innocence was set around the time of Wharton’s own birth. She wrote the book had allowed her to find “a momentary escape in going back to my childish memories of a long-vanished America… it was growing more and more evident that the world I had grown up in and been formed by had been destroyed in 1914.”
Gentleman lawyer Newland Archer is due to marry the shy and beautiful May Welland until he encounters May’s cousin. The exotic Countess Ellen Olenska pays no court to society’s fastidious rules and, scandalously, is separated from her husband, a Polish count. To avoid scandal, Ellen is advised to live separately from her husband rather than pursue divorce. Newland tries to forget Ella and marries May but their marriage is loveless. Newland and Ellen meet again and as Newland falls in love with Ellen his behaviour breaks the rules of accepted behaviour. When he finally decides to follow Ellen to Europe, May announces she is pregnant.

Other editions

Films

Edith Wharton

film poster 1993

The 1993 film [above] starring Daniel Day-Lewis as Newland Archer, Michelle Pfeiffer as the Countess Olenska and Winona Ryder as May Welland, was directed by Martin Scorsese. Watch the trailer.
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Edith Wharton

film poster 1934

A 1934 film [above] with the same title took inspiration from the Wharton novel but set the action two generations later. Dallas Archer has fallen in love with a married woman, to the displeasure of all his family except his grandfather Newland Archer. And in 1924, a black and white film of The Age of Innocence [below] starred Elliott Dexter as Newland.

Edith Wharton

film poster 1924

If you like old books, check out these:-
‘It’ by Stephen King 
‘Ulysses’ by James Joyce
‘Five on a Treasure Island’ by Enid Blyton

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
First Edition THE AGE OF INNOCENCE by Edith Wharton #oldbooks #bookcovers https://wp.me/p5gEM4-4aX via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Amy & Isabelle’ by Elizabeth Strout @LizStrout #contemporary

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The mother and daughter portrayed in Amy & Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout are at odds with each other. The events of one long sweltering summer in Shirley Falls are simple, familiar across the ages, but are told with a hefty emotional punch. So strong is this book it’s difficult to see that it was Strout’s first novel, published in 2000 to be followed only eight years later by her Pulitzer Prize-winning Olive Kitteridge. Strout is adept at peeling away the layers of character and events to show the raw emotion, shame, guilt and pain beneath. Elizabeth StroutWhen Isabelle Goodrow arrived in Shirley Falls with her baby daughter, she took a job at the local mill. Now, in a time that feels like 1970s America, Amy is sixteen and has a summer job in the same office as her mother. They sit and fume at each other, barely talking, brushing past each other without a word. Amy, who has fallen in love with her maths teacher, believes her upright, unemotional mother, has no idea of what she is feeling right now. Isabelle despairs of her daughter’s behaviour. Told in absorbing detail, switching between the two viewpoints, the trauma of the two women is revealed. Shirley Falls is an evocative setting, an industrial town with a river flowing through it. As the temperature rises, the river begins to stink adding to the stresses not just on the Goodrows but on the small community in which they exist. Strout excels at portraying the circle of characters which make the world of a novel so believable – Amy’s friend Stacy, Fat Bev and Dottie Brown at the mill, Isabelle’s boss Avery Clark.
Isabelle finds it difficult to fit in, has always felt like an outsider. As she judges others, she assumes others judge her. This is more about her own experience and inadequacies than about anyone else. As the summer days plod on and Amy’s affair unravels, we see hints of the truth of Isabelle’s past that go some of the way to explaining why she is as she is.
Difficult to put down, I enjoyed Amy & Isabelle very much. Both women are so real, their situations are real, you want to slap them both and hug them both. Strout writes in an extraordinarily perceptive manner about ordinary people in ordinary places, so real you feel you are in the room too.

Read my reviews of these other books by Elizabeth Strout:-
ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE
LUCY BY THE SEA
MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON
OH WILLIAM!
OLIVE KITTERIDGE
OLIVE, AGAIN
TELL ME EVERYTHING

If you like this, try:-
‘If I Knew You Were Going to be This Beautiful, I Never Would Have Let You Go’ by Judy Chicurel
‘The Museum of You’ by Carys Bray
‘When All is Said’ by Anne Griffin

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview AMY & ISABELLE by Elizabeth Strout @LizStrout https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5id via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘A Room Made of Leaves’ by Kate Grenville #historical

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When she is 21, a moment’s dalliance in a bush forces orphan Elizabeth to marry soldier John Macarthur. The story of their marriage in 1788, journey to the colony of Australia on board a convict ship and life in the new settlement called Sydney Town, is told in A Room Made of Leaves by Kate Grenville. Kate GrenvilleElizabeth was a real woman but little is known of her, though her husband features in Australia’s history books as the British army officer who became a politician, legislator and pioneer of the Australian wool industry. Grenville is free to imagine what life must have been like as a white settler, and a woman, in a rough, uncultured town where the native people are viewed as animals.
Very quickly Elizabeth finds her new husband is a bully and her new home is a brutal, unforgiving, judgmental place. She spends much time alone with her sickly son and survives by disguising how clever she is, particularly from her husband. More children quickly follow and she bonds more with the convicts who work for her as servants, than she does with the wives of her husband’s friends. An outlier, she decides to improve her learning and seeks lessons on astronomy from an officer in her husband’s corps. What follows changes her understanding of her new country and her place in it.
The pacing seems at times off kilter, a trifle slow in places and rushed at the end, but the writing is as beautiful as I remember from Grenville’s earlier books. Of the book’s two halves, I wanted less of the first half and more of the second about Elizabeth’s role in developing breeds of sheep suited to the wool trade.
Essentially this is a delicately-written story of a young woman who, after making one mistake, is trapped in a loveless marriage far away from her Devon home. She learns how to manage her husband without him realising he is being managed, she tempers his outbursts and steers him out of trouble. Perhaps this fictional account of Elizabeth’s life will mean more to Australians who have grown-up with the historical story of the real John Macarthur.
A good read but not my favourite Grenville book.

Read my review of another Kate Grenville book, RESTLESS DOLLY MAUNDER.

If you like this, try:-
‘Dangerous Women’ by Hope Adams
‘The Pearl Sister’ by Lucinda Riley
‘Rush Oh!’ by Shirley Barrett

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview A ROOM MADE OF LEAVES by Kate Grenville https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5jI via @SandraDanby