august-september 2023 books…

After The Funeral (Agatha Christie): Once again, I opted for yet another Christie mystery. This one (first published in 1953) involving a family gathering in a vast Victorian country house (of course!) after the funeral of Richard Abernethie, the master of the house (whose death raised all sorts of questions in the first place). Family members were keen to discover how much their brother/uncle had bequeathed to each of them. There was little love lost between family members and then, on top of everything else, one of the family members is murdered. The family solicitor works alongside the local police inspector and tries to pacify growing family feud matters, with mixed results. He ends up contacting an old friend, a certain Hercule Poirot (of course!)… who inevitably resolves matters! Christie continues to impress me with her imaginative writing and intriguing plots; she’s very clever at raising suspicions and convincing you that you ‘know’ who the murderer is… and then, of course, you change your mind (a number of times in my case!).
In The Pines (Paul Scraton): This rather lovely novella (plus accompanying photographs by Eymelt Sehmer, created using a 170-year-old technique of collodion wet plate photography) recounts an unnamed narrator’s lifetime relationship with the forest he lives close to… fragmented stories and reflections, blurred details and sharp focus of memory about the people who live or lived close by, the ruined buildings the forest contains, the pathways through it, his own recollections, the fables and how the forest has been affected by creeping development. At times, it felt like being told stories around a campfire… all somewhat haunting and rather beautiful.
Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 (Cho Nam-Joo): This Korean bestseller chronicles the everyday struggle of women against endemic sexism. It combines fiction with extensive background references to the position of women in Korean society. It contrasts the stark, depressing differences in how males and females are raised, taught and treated in the workplace. At school, boys eat first… she suffers sexual harassment and victim blaming… in the workplace, she has first-hand experience of the gender pay gap (and the lack of opportunities for promotion). Jiyoung, she is 33, with a one-year-old child. Her life is unremarkable, except that she has begun to take on the personalities of other people… and while performing the uncompensated, costly work of motherhood, she is horrified to hear herself denigrated as a parasitic “mum-roach”. She begins showing signs of dissociative identity disorder - she starts acting like the different women in her life. The book’s back cover neatly sums up Kim Jiyoung’s character and story: she “is a girl born to a mother whose in-laws wanted a boy”; “is a sister made to share a room while her brother gets one of his own”; “is a model employee who get overlooked for promotion”; “is a wife who gives up her career and independence for a life of domesticity”; “has started to act strangely”; “is depressed”; “is mad”; “is her own woman”; “is every woman”. I found it quite a harrowing, disquieting read… but a very powerful one.
The Provincial Lady In Wartime (EM Delafield): This is the last of the ‘Provincial Lady Diaries’ (first published in 1940). It’s a rather wonderful account, for a certain breed of English Woman, of the first three months of ‘war’ – a time when they all rushed up to London to do ‘war work’ (and before any actual air raids were happening). They find themselves in trousers and ‘slacks’ for the first time and there’s a sense of excitement about breaking free from home and serving their country. In the event, certainly for the brief course of this diary, the vast majority spend their time ‘Standing By’, awaiting a call to action. Everyone is looking for a ‘job to do’, but few have their plans fulfilled. Our ‘provincial lady’ desperately seeks a suitable post ‘of national importance’ in the Ministry of Information, the BBC or some such place… but, for the time being at least, has to satisfy herself with voluntary work in no.1 Canteen next to the Adelphi! As with the previous diaries, it’s beautifully and amusingly written… but, at the same time, a reminder of the responses and the sacrifices made by people at the outbreak of the war… and the gas masks, refugees, air raid drills, ARPs, rationing, the wireless, registration cards and the like. I feel rather sad that my time with the provincial lady’s diaries has come to an end.
A Breath Of French Air (HE Bates): One of Bates’ ‘Darling Buds of May’ novels (first published in 1959; our copy priced 2s6d). I picked it off our bookshelves in between waiting for other books to arrive or be collected from the shop. I’d seen some of the television adaptations. The Larkins family pack themselves into the Rolls and make their way on holiday to France… with all the predictable issues of language, food, weather, in/appropriate behaviour, wealth and farce. Light, entertaining and very easy reading (but not quite my cup of tea).