Wild Strawberries by Angela Thirkell (1934)

The events of the book occur over a period of several summer months, centered chiefly iat Rushwater House, the rural home/estate of the Leslie family. Over that period of time the grandson of Lady Emily and Mr. Leslie turns seventeen and some gentle pairing off occurs of eligible members of their social circle. The plot, such as it is, unfolds with the greatest of gentleness such that it feels, at the end, that the reader spent a very agreeable weekend with the family and watched as their life unfolded.

past here, there be many many spoilers

Wild Strawberries belongs firmly to a time past. Set in the English countryside of (the fictional) Barsetshire, the book is separated from the modern (and especially the non-English modern) reader by what feels like like a much more than a century’s chasm of time. Yes, many of the differences between the world of the books and that of the present-day reader can be set down to the effect of technological change and another war that spanned the globe, but what makes the book read slightly more like science fiction (or an alternate reality) are the cultural/social differences between the world in which Thirkell wrote and the world inhabited by the present day reader.

Take, for example, the treatment (by the narrator of the book and the individuals who people the book) of Lady Emily Leslie. As the book opens the Vicar is anxiously waiting for Lady Emily to arrive before the (public) church service could begin. The Vicar, who finds her constant lack of punctuality stressful, also considers her to be universally loved although universally irritating. Lady Emily does not limit her lack of consideration for others to her chronically and disruptively lateness that interrupts the church service for everyone, she also makes it a point to instruct others where to sit, to insist of “helping\” others who have asked for no help and need none, and at her daughter’s wedding she went so far as to “attempt[ing] to rearrange the order of the bridesmaids during the actual ceremony.” The Vicar, we are told, prayed that he would never criticize Lady Emily again after seeing the pain on her face after her woman’s son was killed in the Great War.

At this point my class sensibility rises up and I cry foul. Yes, Lady Emily’s eldest son died in the field somewhere on the continent. But, I would venture, it was unlikely that there were many families in that parish who had not lost a loved one in the Great War. Does one imagine for a moment that the Vicar would have been so understanding (and so hard on himself for resenting her behaviour) if the woman who was routinely disrupting every church service had been an housemaid, a washerwoman or the wife of workingman? We may be told that Lady Emily was loved by all but what we see is Lady Emily displaying the monstrous self-centeredness of a member of her class. Thirkell describes Lady Emily as “behaving altogether as if church was a friend’s house\” and indeed she does act in church just as she does in her own house, and the houses of her friends, expecting others to defer, to be patient, to serve and to privilege her wants above even (or perhaps especially) their own.

It is a theme that ran through much of English writing at the time this book was published, that thoughtless, indeed criminal, behaviour was eccentric and charming if it was carried out by a member of the upper class. And indeed it is clear, if one reads closely, that members of Lady Emily’s household are quite aware of the fact that she is disturbing the lives the those around her, that she was causing extra work and much concern for many of their retainers and that, in end, Lady Emily got what made her happy rather than what would really make those around her contented. [Note: The person who disrupts your life in order to make you sit in the chair zie would sit in if zie was you is not considerate and thoughtful–they do what they do in order to present themselves to the world as being thoughtful without having ever to go to the actual effort of considering the wishes of others.]

The world of Thirkell’s characters is one with class assumptions/presumptions so thick on the ground that individual instances melt into one another. Lady Emily’s grandson will inherit the estate on the death of her husband, and since we are told that “[i]nheritance and death duties were not words that trouble Martin much” the estate is rich enough that there will both both and yet that information is imparted as if having sufficient assets that taxes must be paid were a special burden that the family must bear with great difficulties. Of one of Lady Emily’s surviving sons we are told, “If he had had to earn his living, David would have been a serious problem. But, owing to the ill-judged partiality of an aunt, he had been independent for some years.\” In other words this is a world in which there is often a family member who is well off enough that they can leave substantial amounts of money to relatives.

The unfairness of this is obvious in a further description of David’s life, “and every now and then his looks and his easy manners and his independent income landed him a job, though not for long.\” Those “easy manners\” [manners that were viewed as appropriate and acceptable to other members of the social circle to which David was born] were at least in part the result of being first raised by nannies and then being sent off to an expensive school and the independent income was a result of being a member of the class in which is was not uncommon to have wealthy relatives. These initial advantages result in him having a continued marked advantage over the many unemployed who actually needed a job.

The fact that, at the time this book was written, unemployment was a serious problem in England is only touched on tangentially and then only by attacking some of those who worked for taking the jobs from others who wanted to work. One often finds characters quite openly speaking out against the idea of woman working– although this is quite clearly about women of their class working since the book is full of nannies and cooks and housekeepers who are all women and most definitely work:

Having paid this lip service to the hateful Miss Stevenson, she felt she had gone far towards appeasing her conscience in the matter of her bad behaviour at lunch.

‘Don’t know what they want all these girls for,’ said Mr. Leslie. ‘Taking jobs from the men. Glad you don’t want to have a job, Mary.’

“I am afraid I did have a job for a bit,’ said Mary, ‘ in a library.’

‘Oh, books, that’s all right. No harm in a girl reading a bit. It’s all this education I object to. Same everywhere. All these young young people going to the university and coming away half-baked. Can’t even talk English.’[1] (385)

Even within Thirkell’s world of established country families (daughters of dukes and earls married to untitled gentlemen who have country homes, who have with daughters who take tea at Buckingham Palace and whose sons engage in businesses just to keep themselves occupied rather than to put food on the table) there are great variations in wealth. Mr. Holt lives on declining dividends while managing to live in the style he wished to be accustomed by “being a toady” and is portrayed cuttingly by Thirkell and mocked by the Leslies. Mary Preston is shown in a much more friendly light:

‘Let’s sit down and bask,’ said David. ‘I can’t feel happy till I get
the sun in my bones, can you? Would one do without the Riviera?’

‘Do without it, I suppose,’ said Mary….’I’ve never been there, but I’m still alive.’

‘Never been to the Riviera,?’ said David, looking at her with interest.
……..

[Mary] realized that to him an existence which did not imply at least a couple of thousand pounds a year of one’s own was fantastic. She was tempted to say, ‘I have two hundred a year of my own and mummie has about six with her pension for daddy, and we pig along somehow,’ but felt this would be unladylike.[1](348)

While the impact of social/cultural changes sometimes subtly underlines (or undermines) the reader’s appreciation of the book there other moments which resonate chillingly over time as in the following case: Two characters have gone to a train station to pick up a visitor…

The crowded bank-holiday train had only just pulled in…In any other place the sight of two stalwart young men advancing with a gliding step, arms liked like skaters, uttering what they fondly hoped was a college yell, might have attracted attention, but the hikers, many of whom had already struck up folk-songs of whose doubtful meaning they were luckily unaware, took David and Martin for some of themselves. A few gave the Fascist salute, to which David politely made reply, ‘Good morrow, good my lieges,’ while Martin more simply responded ‘Ave.’ [1](339)

The stereotyping of “foreigners\” is not only unrelenting it is accepted with amusement in that social circle. No group or country really escapes the mockery although it is clear that it is slightly less offensive to be from north Europe than from other places in the world. Anyone who falls outside of that zone of “almost English” is referred to in terms which the modern reader may find breathtakingly offensive:

John gave his mother her barley water. David helped himself to whisky and soda and drifted over to the piano, where he played and sang snatches of music from revues and musical comedies with such masterful ease that Mary was more than ever glad the men had not been in the room when she was singing.

‘You must have had a black mammy for your fairy godmother, David,’ said John. ‘I don’t see how else you got that nigger ouch in your voice.’[1](366)

The Nazis are mentioned in passing but one would be hard pressed to deduce from reading Thirkell (or many other authors of the time) that various European countries has been, since the end of the Great War, suffering from massive unemployment and occasional hyper-inflation. The closest any the characters come to these fiscal realities is a concern about declining dividends. Jews were not, at that time, part of the social life of the gentry/aristocracy of England and it will not be until several years later when Jewish refugees start to arrive in larger numbers that the subject of what is happening in Germany will even surface in most of contemporary English fiction.

While the author has not attempted to limn a portrait of English political life in the mid-thirties she does do a wonderful job at drawing a picture of how “ordinary\” life was lived among the class on which is she is focusing. Whether Thirkell intends the reader to notice, indeed whether Thirkell herself notices, the gentry around whom this story revolves are bullies. They may be solicitous of “their own” but they are openly proud of their right and ability to bully. This can be seen in almost all their actions from Lady Emily and her family taking as their right the power to disrupt community church services, to the joint and open baiting of Mr. Holt whose only sin is to be a toady whose time has passed to the casual reference to the fact that as a child David Leslie made a habit of harassing the kitchen cat.

The Leslies, their friends and those in their social circle live in a world distanced from the what were, for most, the realities of life. Mr. Leslie raises and sells bulls but does not seem to do so for reasons of profit as much as he does because it is an interesting hobby. John Leslie has a business, indeed Mary Preston visits him there, and yet there is nary a hint as to what type of business is conducted at his office although one does learn details about when tea is served and with what type of biscuit. Mary and her mother struggle to get by on a sum that would have seemed a fortune to the maids who unpacked her suitcases when she arrived at Rushwater House. Much of what the characters do is not work so much as it is “make work” and often what is defined as work (for example, picking the flowers for the house) turns out to be the haphazard supervision of servants who actually cut the flowers, arrange them and place them around the house.

Just as there is always a servant to do the actual work there is always a plenitude of space. Agnes (the married Leslie daughter) has no job and only three children and yet she has not only a nannie (referred to only as “Nannie”) but also “a girl” (Ivy) who helps her. The children have bedrooms and also a nursery which appears to be a large room given over to the children and their needs. You get a sense of this when Agnes tells John why she and her family couldn’t manage in the house he is thinking of selling:

I wish I could take it myself, only there wouldn’t be room for the children. We really need so many rooms now. A day nursery and a night nursery, and a room for James, and a room for Ivy. And when Emmy is a little bigger she will want a room for herself. And when I have some more babies it will mean another nursery as well.

John laughed and asked if Agnes didn’t find her household difficult.

‘Oh, no,’ said she in surprise,’ it is quite easy. And when I have some more babies I shall get a second nurse as well as Ivy. It is really no trouble.’[1](413)

The one thing that the Leslies seemed to be short of is private time in which individuals could actually get intellectual and physical work done. No wonder women dreamed of having “a room of their own” when most of their lives were taken up in looking after others even to the point of staving off their boredom. While one set of women cleaned up the remains of the dinner another set of women played the piano, sang and read aloud. Only women who, like Lady Emily or Lady Dorothy, were renowned for their selfishness, did not mold their lives around the needs and desires of the greater family.

By the end of the book this reader felt a strange affection for two fairly minor characters–Lady Dorothy Bingham and Miss Joan Stevenson–both of whom were judged harshly by others (a domineering widow and a “hard” university woman with a job) and both of whom had a tendency to carefully survey their environment and clearly asses the situation:

‘I think Lionel Harvest is a nephew of yours,’ said Miss Stevenson. ‘He us under me at Broadcasting House.’

“Is he? Queer boy, Lionel. I’d let my girls go out with him, but I do’t know that I’d let my boys.’ Here Lady Dorothy laughed the laugh before which every fox in her division of the country quailed. ‘He’ll come into four thousand a year though when old General Harvest dies.’

Miss Stevenson registered this statement with her well-trained brain. [1](450)

Lady Bingham deploys her money and influence without asking that others pretend that she is doing them a favour and Miss Stevenson has realistically decided that the best thing insurance for a university educated woman is to find a well-off husband who will be happy with what Miss Stevenson so diplomatically refers to as a “companionate marriage.\”

The Second World War looms, not yet on the horizon but not that far away. This reader thinks that Lady Dorothy and Miss Stevenson are better prepared to navigate the upheavals to come than are the Leslie family.

Rating: 3-1/2 stars
[1]Thirkell, Angela, 1966 An Angela Thirkell omnibus / with an introduction by Elizabeth Bowen Hamish Hamilton, London,

One of the prejudices that figures on both the left and right of American politics seem to feel quite free to express quite openly is to be \”anti-fat.\” Just as pundits on the right fling the \”fat\” epithet at Michael Moore and Al Gore pundits on the left throw around the same insults. For example Wonkette\’s entire argument against Chris Christie appears to be \”don\’t listen to him, he\’s fat.\” 


Chris Christie Makes Fox News Tilt Left


Remind me again why it is wrong for \”the right\” to do this but not the left. Remind me again why it is wrong to discount someone\’s opinions on the basis of the colour of their skin but not on the basis of how much they weigh.

Before the Fact by Francis Iles (1992 )


SPOILERS ABOUND

If Before the Fact is remembered other than by enthusiasts of the “alternate” murder mysteries that were relatively popular in England in the 1930s it is as the inspiration of Hitchcock’s Suspicion.

BTF was published in 1932 and for the reader who knows only the England of Marsh, Allingham and Christie it may come as a shock to find a story which deals so openly, if with a somewhat oblique form of openness, with matters of sexuality. The POV character, Lina, is clearly frigid during the first weeks of her marriage before finding pleasure in sex. Her husband, Johnnie, describes her then as having been like a wet fish in bed. We learn that, if Lina had allowed, Johnnie would have experimented unspecified sexual ‘abnormalities.’ Lina, during a time when she is estranged from her husband, frankly considers the possibility of not just taking a lover but of living openly with him.

The ‘twist’ of the book is that the ‘murderee’ as she comes to think of herself, is aware ‘ Before the Fact’ that her husband intends to murder her. Indeed she knowingly takes the poisoned drink from her husband only after she is sure that he will ‘get away’ with murdering her.

My lack of patience with the book is that after one gets over its novelty one realizes that it is a comparatively well written exercise in making the victim to complicit in her victimization that one ceases to blame her victimizer for his actions. Indeed one finishes the book blaming neither the murderer or the person who stood by watching his actions. The Lina whose mind the reader sees into is suffering from masochism so great that she talks herself into seeing her husband, a man of ruthless egotism who has robbed and murdered his way through life, as a child for whom she is responsible. How many women who end up in battered women’s shelters have bought into this idea that somehow it is their fault that they were not able to reign in the weaknesses of the man in their lives? Though Iles works hard to make Johnnie an attractive cad to this reader he is merely a man who preyed on other people. The author may have written the book to explore why people stay in such oppressive relationships but on rereading it seems more like a paean to wifely martyrdom. Rather than seeing Lina as a martyr or a woman who loved not wisely but too well this reader saw her as a woman who had as weak a moral compass as her husband. This reader ended the book feeling more sorry for the other people that Johnnie will murder after he has run through every last cent of his dead wife’s money than she did for Lina.

There was, at this time in England, an amazing amount of affection for the aristocratic cad. Had Johnnie been from the working class one cannot doubt that he would have been thrown into prison and any of Lina’s set who read about his exploits would have seen him as nothing but a common thief and murderer. It is this same affection one sees in Marsh’s A Surfeit of Lampreys wherein the reader is invited to find the fact that the titular family lives by not paying the money they owe to tradespeople and servants charming. Looking back over almost eighty years one sees the enormous degree of entitlement still enjoyed by members of the gentry and aristocracy at that time and one wonders if anything short of the intervention of a World War could have prevented serious class violence from erupting in England.

Rating: 3 stars

The Poisoned Chocolates Case by Anthony Berkeley (1929)

This is very much a book of its time, albeit a well-written one. Roger Sheringham and the five other members of his Crimes Circle each attempt to solve a murder which has stumped Scotland Yard. Sheringham had appeared as an amateur detective in previous Berkeley mysteries and the other participants were all suggestive of one or more prominent figures in contemporary English fiction and public life.

This reviewer found Berkeley’s prose style to be enjoyable. Each character had a different “voice” and each proposed a solution to the murder that was both reasonable and predictable given that person’s (and the people for whom that person was a stand-in) understandings of the world. Reading each of these proposed solutions and the responses each “solution” elicited from the group told this reader more about a particular slice of English life and culture than would several volumes of academic exposition. The writers of murder mysteries routinely use short-cuts, exaggerations and stereotypes in order to make the story believable (for fiction is often held to a higher stand of “reality” than is reality itself) and yet the picture that they draw must adhere either the reality the reader understands or proscribes. Since different authors attracted different audiences the varied realities one comes across in these books gives the present day reader a vivid picture of the actual and mental world of the English reader of popular murder mysteries in the first half of the interwar period.

While some of the presumptions and understandings upon which the amateur detectives’ solutions are based will probably come as no surprise to today’s reader others seem to be more appropriate to a Monty Python sketch than a book that is not categorized as farce or magical realism. As this reader expected servants and clerks exist only to be questioned and to fulfill their practical functions. For example, at no point in the story did any person suggest that a member of the working or lower middle class might have played an intentional role in the murder. What was surprising was the degree to which the differences in the way in which men who went to one of the public schools and men who were “merely” well educated were considered as real, tangible evidence of who could and could not have committed the crime given the different solutions proposed. There was also a general agreement not only that men acted (and thought) differently than did women but that methods of murder would differ not only by the gender and education of the murderer but also by the gender of the murdered.

Although The Poisoned Chocolates Mystery is not a collection of short stories it can be read in a similar fashion as the the reader (and the members of the Crime Circle) are introduced to the crime and each of the six present, on separate nights, their proposed solution. There are no maps or complicated alibi checklists to reference. In short, a well written and diverting story for the reader who enjoys murder mysteries written in the early period of the “Golden Age.”

Rating: 4 stars

  Some time ago I wrote about how \”negotiable\” women\’s rights were in much of the modern (particularly American) democratic discourse. Recent events, and more importantly coverage of recent events, have only increased my level of concern.

A number of websites (and major newspapers) covered the fact that more than one Hassidic Newspaper edited Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Counterterrorism Director Audrey Tomason out of the photo the White House published of the officials in the situation room on May 1 2011 waiting for the outcome of the bin Laden raid.

Original White House Picture:

This is not just an example of people rewriting history in order to make it more palatable ideologically this is an example of a kyriarchy aggressively thrusting a specific subset of the human race out of the public sphere. And make no mistake about it, refusing to show pictures of women (on the grounds of sexual modesty) does more to sexualize and objectify those women than would showing pictures of them naked. It is pointless to argue that the opportunities of women are not limited by the fact that they cannot be pictured just because no law says that a woman cannot own a newspaper or a television station. To function effectively in the public sphere one must be visible in the public sphere.

Prime Minster Julia Gillard (Australia), Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (United States) and Michelle Obama (First Lady, United States) at the International Women of Courage Awards

If women cannot be seen then women are dependent on men deciding that women\’s issues are of importance. Imagine an award ceremony such as that pictured above if the public face of courageous women was a man (or a blank space.) No money could be raised, no discussions could be held if no man felt the issue to be important.

Imagine how difficult it would be for any woman to run for office if her male opponents could appear on television and be seen and heard debating and she was but a smudge mark on a photograph. Politicians must be seen to be doing their work.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard at a community cabinet in Australia

Prime Minister Sheikh Hassina of Bangladesh presiding over a joint meeting of the NDC and DSCSC at Armed Forces Division in Dhaka Cantonment.

Not showing pictures of woman allows members of the kyriarchy to live in a world in which, obviously, women aren\’t needed/useful in the public sphere since we have the photographic evidence that despite their absence the required functions of governments, institutions and organizations carry on. Yes, you might argue that a little girl need not actually see a picture of woman president/prime minister/doctor/lawyer/astronaut/writer/athlete in order to dream of being one herself but one wonders how hard to is to dream of working hard so that one can be obliterated from the pages of history.

If I could ask those men who wish to erase from the newspapers and history the images of all women one question it would be…..

What would Golda Meir think?

Golder Meir, Prime Minister of Israel 1969-1974

Note: All the above pictures are in the public domain. Each was available on the official website of the country in question.

The Eye of Osiris: A Dr. John Thorndyke Story by R. Austin Freeman (1911)

Sometimes one is disappointed when reading a “classic” wondering just what it was that made others rate a book so highly. That has happened to this reviewer often enough to make approaching “must-reads” and “classics” filled with trepidation. In this case, however, the reasons why so many have included this book on their lists of “great mysteries” are obvious. This is a delightfully written, nicely-placed and eminently fair example of detective fiction.

Freeman makes the interesting choice of having the book written from the point of view of Paul Berkeley, a recently qualified doctor and former student of Thorndyke. Jervis, the narrator of the first two Thorndyke books, has not disappeared but it is no longer through his eyes that the reader witnesses events. This allows the narrator to not see all that Thorndyke does without making him irredeemably slow and unteachable.  Thus there are times that the reader, already familiar with Thorndyke’s methods, will be able to infer more from things that Berkeley hears, sees or read than does he.

Beyond here there lie spoilers.

In addition to providing the reader with an excellent story of deduction and reasoning Freeman also writes one of the few believable and sympathetic love stories this reviewer has come across in the detective and mystery stories written at this time. Ruth is not simply a sweet Victorian girl she has a believable personality and an interesting mind. One understands exactly why Berkeley is drawn to her and one can watch the way their relationship progresses from being strangers, to individuals with shared interests, to becoming friends and then realizing that they have fallen love. None of it is strained nor is it extraneous. Berkeley is given believable motivations for his actions through the book.

Freeman plays so fairly with his readers that if the reader is well-versed in the detective fiction of the time they will have suspicions and inklings of understanding before at the end the truth is revealed. Yet this in no way diminishes from the enjoyment of following the story and from finding out the indications and clues one missed. No anvils are used nor does the author fall back on obfuscation.

This reader regretted the moment when the last page was turned and the story ended but then was cheered by the knowledge that there is another Thorndyke book on the “to read” shelf.

Rating: 4-1/2 stars

John Thorndyke\’s Cases by R. Austin Freeman (1909)

This book is, as the title indicates, a collection of Thorndyke’s cases. Freeman seems to be “trying out” different approaches to writing detective fiction and so the cases vary from almost painfully complex to straightforward. The degree to which Jervis, and the reader, are included in the process of detection also varies from story to story. It would be tempting to presume that the more complex the method of crime the more the reader would be excluded from the ability to at least share in some of Thorndyke’s suspicions however this proves not to be the case. Although not all the stories are equally successful at mixing ingenuity and charm with serious detection this reader was left with the urge to immediate pick up the next Thorndyke book and start reading it.

 Rating: 3 stars

The Red Thumb Mark by R. Austin Freeman (1907)

 
This story is not only surprisingly charming to the reader but also unexpectedly relevant to the contemporary fad for forensic procedurals. Thorndyke seems, in many ways, to having been designed to be an interesting not quite anti-Holmes. Thorndyke does not call into question the necessity for the careful checking of clues and scientific examination of all possible aspects of the crime. What he calls into question is what might called the fetishization of particular forms of scientific findings without considering all the possibilities of how that “evidence\” came to be found at the scene of the crime. In this case, Thorndyke, in defending Reuben Hornby, has to counter the automatic assumption of the police that “a finger-print as a kind of magical touchstone, a final proof, beyond which inquiry need not go.\” Indeed, Thorndyke argues that “this is an entire mistake. A finger-print is merely a fact, a very important and significant one, I admit, but still a fact, which, like any other fact, requires to be weighed and measured with reference to its evidential value.”

Thorndyke does not debunk the science behind fingerprinting nor is he skeptical of the process of scientific investigation. What he does present is the difference between true scientific inquiry and the automatic assumption that having mastered a particular scientific technique one may fall back upon it as if it were written in stone. And indeed, he demonstrates that any technique of investigation will soon be countered by criminals who take it into account and counter it with new techniques of their own. It is particularly interesting to read this book today at a time when many treat DNA evidence with reverence but without real understandings of its strengths and weaknesses. Indeed one wonders what opinions Dr. Thorndyke would have as to the reliability of many of today’s labs and many of today’s experts.

For those who are interested in the details of forensic analysis Freeman devotes a good part of the book to that very aspect of forensics which is most overlooked in most television procedurals; how does one present evidence in a way that is understandable and convincing to juries. For those who are less interested in the scientific aspect of “ratiocination” Freeman includes a wonderful analysis of the Holmesian deductive method as Thorndyke explains not only why his supposition that a figure outside the window was a stationmaster was sound but also why it was, for all that soundness, a mere educated guess.

In conclusion: This is an enjoyably written book which avoids unneeded plot complications, does a good job of introducing the reader to Dr. Thorndyke and his methods and may do well to assuage that empty feeling the reader is left with after consuming the last of the Holmes stories.

Rating: 3-1/2 stars

 
August Folly by Angela Thirkell (1936)

In August Folly, the fourth of Thirkell’s Barsetshire novels, the reader finds hirself once again the world of the English gentry in the years between the two World Wars. It is tempting to categorize this as light-weight book with two main functions: to entertain and the second to sketch in more completely the existing characters that make up the cast of the Bartsetshire novels and to add a few more members to that cast.

Those functions may have been the conscious intentions of the author however August Follyleaves the modern day reader with a carefully sketched picture of the realities of provincial life among the English gentry in the 1930s. In particular the reader is given an insight in the nuanced complications of economic inequalities among people of similar class status. The England in which this story has set has already begun to undergo the changes that would lead to, if such a thing c ould exist, a partial upheaval in the class system.

Many of the characters in this book seemed trapped in the contradictions between the economic/class system that was and the economic/class system that is to come. The families around whom this book revolves all belong to the gentry (they are, in the terminology of the time, ladies and gentlemen.) The sons attend university and clearly studying at Oxford or Cambridge are their only options for acquiring tertiary education. However, unlike previous generations of young men of their class, this cohort is more conscious of the limitations of such education in providing them with the skills required to get jobs (and make money) in the world of business. Whereas earlier generations of the gentry had been content (and able) for the most part to live off dividends and perhaps the income from their land the current generation was finding it more and more difficult to do the same.

The story itself revolves around one summer in the country life of three families living in the Barset countryside:[1] the Palmers, the Deans and the Tebbens. As is not uncommon in books of this type characters meet, interact, and misunderstand each other. Their actions and interactions take place against the attempt on the part of Mrs. Palmer to stage Euripides’s Hippolytus. Usually in romance/soap operas there would be a clear echo between the themes of the play being staged and the drama enacted among those rehearsing the play and yet, in this case, there is not. The modern reader may be struck with the extent to which the English at the time had such a shared culture that one could be fairly sure that any other ‘educated’ person would have read the same plays and know the same poetry. Aside from that sense of “shared culture” the overwhelming echo from play to book is that the characters about whom Thirkell is writing live as constrained lives as those in the play. There were but a narrow number of people that any individual could pair up with and there was but a narrow range of jobs any individual could enter be they upper, middle or working class.

Unlike many other novelists who include a number of characters who all belong to the gentry Thirkell does not rely on subtle clues to indicate to the readers the differences in financial statuses of the different families. Of the Palmers we learn little save that they have no children and they are quite comfortably situated. The Deans are clearly well heeled. There are nine children in the family and at no time is there any indication that choices are made for financial reasons. Mr. Dean works and is evidently successful although one doubts that the lifestyle of the family arises only from his wages. They own more than one car. They employ more than one chauffeur. They eat caviar and spend money without consideration. The Tebbens, on the other hand, are clearly struggling to maintain the what they consider the necessities of life. Mr. Tebben holds a position as a civil servant (or which we learn precious few details) and his wife writes economic text books. They cannot afford a car but they have a (not particularly good) cook. They hire household servants but worry about the cost of tea. Though they belong to the same class as the Deans and the Palmers the economic realities of their lives are so dissimilar that a modern reader, less schooled in the nuances of class, will wonder why they consider themselves part of the same social set.

If August Folly had been set in London the counterpoint of the old ways dying set against the formation of the next generation might have become lost in the midst of its own playing out. It is says much for why Thirkell was considered a popular and accessible (but fundamentally lightweight) author by her contemporaries that it is possible to read and enjoy her books without even noticing the underlying themes and tensions yet if one considers them carefully if the thematic material was removed there would be little left to read.

This is a story a people who are at best only minor actors upon the stage of their county and their country. They react rather than act and thus are at the mercy of the fates as to the direction of their own lives. Because they are born to a class that is accepted as “the leaders” they see themselves as having some degree of control over their lives and yet, as one looks back over the occurrences of the book, one realizes that Thirkell has presented to the audience characters with as little final control over their lives as had the characters in the Greek play they were staging.

[1] For those unfamiliar with the work of Thirkell – one of the major conceits of the greater number of her novels is that they take place in the same corner of England as Trollope explored in many of his novels. Not only do Thirkell’s readers encounter place names familiar from many of Trollope’s books the reader is also explicitly informed that Thirkell’s characters inhabit Trollope’s created England by having the narrator or characters identify other characters as descendants of individuals in Trollope’s books.

Rating: 3-1/2 stars

 
Tiassa by Steven Brust (2011)

It is difficult to write a review of Tiassa because I will not know myself exactly what I think of it until I have read it at least 3 or 4 more times. And even after those re-readings I suspect that I would find it difficult to give the book an exact grade.

So, first things first.

Did I enjoy Tiassa?

Yes indeed.

Did Tiassa live up to your expectations?

It is difficult to answer that question because I have learned to have few expectations of any of Brust\’s books except that the time and effort spent reading them will be worthwhile.
However I had no specific expectations as to when in Vlad Taltos life the book would be set. Nor did I have specific expectations as to which of the other characters we have previously met in the Dragaeran books we would encounter in this outing. My hope was that this book would deepen our understanding of how the Dragaeran Empire runs — and it does so. My hope was that Brust would return to tell us more about particular characters — and he has done that. My hope was that at the end of Tiassa I would want to immediately go back and reread all the other books in the Vladiad in the light of my new insight and understand of the Vlad\’s story — and that was my second impulse after I reached the last word of the book. My first impulse was to turn back to the first page and read Tiassa again.

Is Tiassa a well-written book?

Brust shows off his technical skills as a writer in this book. This reader had already been impressed with the difference in \”voice\” between the Khaavren Romances, the Vladiad and Agyar. In Tiassa Brust moves from one point to another in both the life of Vlad and Khaavren and in doing so uses the right voice for the right person in the right time.

Is this a good choice for a \”first Vlad\” book?

To write more than this would be to spoil this book for those who have followed Vlad\’s saga over the years. And as much as I enjoyed this book I would not suggest it as a good \”first Vlad\” for someone not already familiar with the series. Brust is, as always, mercifully sparing of the infodump and therefore much of the individual reader\’s understanding of situations is dependent upon the having read the previously published books. In addition to problem of being \”lost\” without adequate backstory the reader who has never read another Vlad/Khaavren book will also miss the joy that long time readers have of trying to determine who is an unreliable narrator, who is a self-deluded narrator and who, if anyone, really understands (and could relate) what really happened.

Rating: 4-1/2 stars