Madame Rachel was a - no, the - Victorian "enameller of ladies' faces". Frankly, I needed to know no more to want this book...I also quite fancy being enamelled, but we'll talk about that another day.
Oddly, after my last post, I discovered when I got Beautiful For Ever home that it is published by Long Barn Books, Susan Hill's publishing company, the genesis of which is described in Howard's End is on the Landing.
It's a very satisfying book, in terms of its size and weight, and the cover is truly scrumptious. It's a terribly bookish book; everything about it screams 'book'! So, me and books, kid in sweetshop, in I plunged. Immediately, I was reminded of the superb The Suspicions of Mr Whicher; same era, packed with scandals-amongst-the-upper-echelons, crimes hiding other crimes, early modern legal and forensic application, unsolved riddles and, even now, a slightly gauzy veil hanging over The Truth. Indeed, Mme Rachel spent some time in prison with Constance Kent, a name familiar to fans of the Kate Summerscale tome from the Road Hill House murder case. Beautiful For Ever, then, is a perfect companion work to Whicher, and of particular interest to lovers of Victorian crime. Both books are detailed and readable accounts of true crimes that rocked Dickensian Britain, and give a genuine insight into the inspiration behind classics like Lady Audley's Secret and Wilkie Collins' oeuvre.
There is clearly an impressive amount of research behind this book - records have been unearthed that have remained hidden or buried for decades. The sheer quantity of references at the back of the book pay homage to the work done by Helen Rappaport. It's a real page turner, and I have to say that whilst not quite as engaging as Whicher, I thoroughly enjoyed Beautiful For Ever.
You can sense my 'but', right? Ok, here it is. My 'but'. There is a fantastic amount of spelling errors in here, and bearing in mind this comes hot from the presses of Susan Hill's own company, I find myself very disappointed with the editing. At one point, there is actually a financial figure cited that is clearly lacking a zero. At another, a character is referred to by a name she doesn't adopt until a few years hence, and this new name appearing unexplained and then disappearing again until later in the book is very confusing. (I could rant for some time about the increasing number of spelling and grammatical errors I'm noticing in books, but I'll leave that, like enamelling, and the tattoo I've been promising myself for 15 years, till a more appropriate time). It should be noted here that my 'but' does not reflect in any way on Rappaport herself, for whom I have the utmost admiration as both researcher and writer.
So, 'but' out of the way, I will also say that there is a tantalising end to the story as a character - possibly the one I found most intriguing throughout - who had disappeared some time earlier, re-appears in a shock revelation under a pseudonym, and that not her first. Rappaport's hold-back-and-reveal in this instance really delights and rewards the careful reader.
Beautiful For Ever, for some reason, feels like it wants to be given a mark out of ten, but I'm not in the habit of laying stars on books. If I were... no, I won't. This is a well-investigated, easy-readable, fascinating story about the lengths, and enormous amounts of money (trust me, you'll be astounded!), that women will invest in the beauty industry in the hope of making themselves look better than ...what? They used to. The woman next door. The current star of stage or screen. They did yesterday. We've learned nothing, ladies, as my Bobbi Brown makeup compact testifies.
Showing posts with label Susan Hill. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Susan Hill. Show all posts
Thursday, 15 April 2010
Friday, 9 April 2010
Howard's End is on the Landing
Oh, that I had Susan Hill's discipline! To spend a year reading only books that I already own, and to hold back on buying anything new, would be fantastically rewarding, a kind of satisfying mopping up exercise. I often look uncomfortably at books I have bought and not read; they eye me back with contempt, make me squirm guiltily. "J'accuse," they seem to say; if I had left them in the bookshop, someone would have bought them who would have read them, and their life's purpose would have been granted. But I, selfishly, am leaving them unopened, unenjoyed, pointless, on shelves and in piles, ignored, unloved... Stop! Stop! Enough! I know.
The problem, of course, is that I enjoy purchasing books almost as much as I love reading them. The act of perusing titles, selecting interesting ones and taking them down from the shelf, squeezing what one can from the blurb and brief jacket reviews from the TLS, deciding whether or not this particular novel is for you at this particular time, is exhilarating. The discovery of an unheard-of gem, the re-issue of an old favourite in beautiful binding...these are experiences that equal, sometimes, the devouring of the book itself. Indeed, the number of books on my shelves that I have bought and not yet (I refuse to say never) read, indicates that sometimes, the finding and buying is in fact a greater experience than the reading. It all boils down, I suppose, to the love of the physical book as much as of the story within. Dislike of the e-reader, explained.
Books about books are always interesting to those who love books. I suppose books about golf are interesting to those who, unfathomably, love golf. There is, though, something rather post-modern in reading about reading. Perhaps it is because reading is such a personal and private business that it is pleasant sometimes to throw open one's literary windows and to let in someone else's reading habits, to learn of their preferences and to hear their wisdoms. One may not always agree with these new and strange views on literature, but they are of profound interest nevertheless.
Susan Hill, in Howard's End is on the Landing, pleasantly affirms many of my own views, which is a boon to one's literary confidence. I found myself yesterday sitting on a train, actually nodding at a passage on Jane Austen, about whom I entirely share Ms Hill's opinion:
"Perhaps the nineteenth century, whose style of dress and architecture, design and manners, I find cold and distancing, is to blame for my inability to appreciate Austen, whose cool, ironic style is somehow all of a piece with that formality and porcelain veneer."
With the very lake out of which Colin Firth appeared sodden in the TV series of Pride and Prej just a ten minute bicycle ride out of my back garden, this may seem odd, but is, I am afraid, true.
Howard's End is on the Landing is well-structured, each chapter being short and carefully labelled so that one might find five pages on children's picture books, seven on Hardy, a handful on Bruce Chatwin; digestible chunks that can easily be returned to should one need a wise comment on a specific author or genre. It is funny in places - the chapter entitled "The Dregs" being particularly amusing, as Hill runs through a collection of books, the origin of whose appearance in her house she cannot fathom, with such delectable titles as Red Grouse and Moorland Management and Sue Barton: District Nurse. We all have our equivalents.
Hill has also alerted me to several books about which I either knew nothing, or had passed over. I shall at some point investigate further The Smaller Sky by John Wain and the life and works of Elizabeth Bowen.
There are also shadowy hints at a bleaker side of publishing - the cuts in Arts funding, for example, leads Hill to an interesting discussion of whether or not plays can stand alone as literature or whether they must be performed in order to fulfil their purpose. If the latter, does the lack of repertory theatre these days mean that certain plays, or styles of play, even playwrights' oeuvres, will die out altogether? There is more than one oblique comment about the lack of culture in modern culture - again, hints at a dystopic future for the literatii.
I do not always agree with Hill's summation of books or writers. I cannot bear crime or detective fiction, about which she raves, for example. I have never been able to be fully absorbed in any Virginia Woolf other than Orlando, which is the one Woolf about which Hill is disparaging. This, however, is simply interesting: I am not so self-absorbed that I will only tolerate literary criticism with which I agree!
No. My one criticism of Howard's End is on the Landing would be this: there are far too many - and often, frankly, dull - anecdotes about famous authors Hill has met or known. It becomes tedious. She met Roald Dahl twice, on both occasions in a professional capacity. Neither reveals an interesting enough story for retelling. And yet she does, in a 'my dear friend Roald Dahl' kind of way. It is not an illuminating addition to the book ( surely everyone knows he was a grump?), and I would far rather she simply talked about her daughters' reactions to his books and her own experiences of reading them aloud to said daughters. The same is true of her chapter on Iris Murdoch - tell me about the books, Susan, not an amusing evening you spent with the writer. We weren't there, and it seems from this anecdote that we really needed to be...
This book is at its best when Hill allows her passions full and free rein. Here she is on reading slowly:
"Fast reading of a great novel will get us the plot. It will get us names, a shadowy idea of characters, a sketch of settings. It will not get us subtleties, small differentiations, depth of emotion and observation, multilayered human experience, the appreciation of simile and metaphor, any sense of context, any comparison with other novels, other writers. Fast reading will not get us cadence and complexities of style and language. It will not get us anything that enters not just the conscious mind but the unconscious. It will not allow the book to burrow down into our memory and become part of ourselves, the accumulation of knowledge and wisdom and vicarious experience which helps to form us as complete human beings...Not every book is worth that sort of effort...they are ice-cream reading and barely a trace of the flavour remains half an hour after they are finished. Sometimes, only ice-cream will do. But we are not nourished physically, mentally, artistically or spiritually by its literary equivalent."
Luckily for Susan Hill, despite having at least ten books by my bed that I have not yet (the crucial yet) read, I bought this one. And in this case, read it immediately. And I can highly recommend, if a copy sits in a similar pile in your own home, that you slide it out and give it a go too.
The problem, of course, is that I enjoy purchasing books almost as much as I love reading them. The act of perusing titles, selecting interesting ones and taking them down from the shelf, squeezing what one can from the blurb and brief jacket reviews from the TLS, deciding whether or not this particular novel is for you at this particular time, is exhilarating. The discovery of an unheard-of gem, the re-issue of an old favourite in beautiful binding...these are experiences that equal, sometimes, the devouring of the book itself. Indeed, the number of books on my shelves that I have bought and not yet (I refuse to say never) read, indicates that sometimes, the finding and buying is in fact a greater experience than the reading. It all boils down, I suppose, to the love of the physical book as much as of the story within. Dislike of the e-reader, explained.
Books about books are always interesting to those who love books. I suppose books about golf are interesting to those who, unfathomably, love golf. There is, though, something rather post-modern in reading about reading. Perhaps it is because reading is such a personal and private business that it is pleasant sometimes to throw open one's literary windows and to let in someone else's reading habits, to learn of their preferences and to hear their wisdoms. One may not always agree with these new and strange views on literature, but they are of profound interest nevertheless.
Susan Hill, in Howard's End is on the Landing, pleasantly affirms many of my own views, which is a boon to one's literary confidence. I found myself yesterday sitting on a train, actually nodding at a passage on Jane Austen, about whom I entirely share Ms Hill's opinion:
"Perhaps the nineteenth century, whose style of dress and architecture, design and manners, I find cold and distancing, is to blame for my inability to appreciate Austen, whose cool, ironic style is somehow all of a piece with that formality and porcelain veneer."
With the very lake out of which Colin Firth appeared sodden in the TV series of Pride and Prej just a ten minute bicycle ride out of my back garden, this may seem odd, but is, I am afraid, true.
Howard's End is on the Landing is well-structured, each chapter being short and carefully labelled so that one might find five pages on children's picture books, seven on Hardy, a handful on Bruce Chatwin; digestible chunks that can easily be returned to should one need a wise comment on a specific author or genre. It is funny in places - the chapter entitled "The Dregs" being particularly amusing, as Hill runs through a collection of books, the origin of whose appearance in her house she cannot fathom, with such delectable titles as Red Grouse and Moorland Management and Sue Barton: District Nurse. We all have our equivalents.
Hill has also alerted me to several books about which I either knew nothing, or had passed over. I shall at some point investigate further The Smaller Sky by John Wain and the life and works of Elizabeth Bowen.
There are also shadowy hints at a bleaker side of publishing - the cuts in Arts funding, for example, leads Hill to an interesting discussion of whether or not plays can stand alone as literature or whether they must be performed in order to fulfil their purpose. If the latter, does the lack of repertory theatre these days mean that certain plays, or styles of play, even playwrights' oeuvres, will die out altogether? There is more than one oblique comment about the lack of culture in modern culture - again, hints at a dystopic future for the literatii.
I do not always agree with Hill's summation of books or writers. I cannot bear crime or detective fiction, about which she raves, for example. I have never been able to be fully absorbed in any Virginia Woolf other than Orlando, which is the one Woolf about which Hill is disparaging. This, however, is simply interesting: I am not so self-absorbed that I will only tolerate literary criticism with which I agree!
No. My one criticism of Howard's End is on the Landing would be this: there are far too many - and often, frankly, dull - anecdotes about famous authors Hill has met or known. It becomes tedious. She met Roald Dahl twice, on both occasions in a professional capacity. Neither reveals an interesting enough story for retelling. And yet she does, in a 'my dear friend Roald Dahl' kind of way. It is not an illuminating addition to the book ( surely everyone knows he was a grump?), and I would far rather she simply talked about her daughters' reactions to his books and her own experiences of reading them aloud to said daughters. The same is true of her chapter on Iris Murdoch - tell me about the books, Susan, not an amusing evening you spent with the writer. We weren't there, and it seems from this anecdote that we really needed to be...
This book is at its best when Hill allows her passions full and free rein. Here she is on reading slowly:
"Fast reading of a great novel will get us the plot. It will get us names, a shadowy idea of characters, a sketch of settings. It will not get us subtleties, small differentiations, depth of emotion and observation, multilayered human experience, the appreciation of simile and metaphor, any sense of context, any comparison with other novels, other writers. Fast reading will not get us cadence and complexities of style and language. It will not get us anything that enters not just the conscious mind but the unconscious. It will not allow the book to burrow down into our memory and become part of ourselves, the accumulation of knowledge and wisdom and vicarious experience which helps to form us as complete human beings...Not every book is worth that sort of effort...they are ice-cream reading and barely a trace of the flavour remains half an hour after they are finished. Sometimes, only ice-cream will do. But we are not nourished physically, mentally, artistically or spiritually by its literary equivalent."
Luckily for Susan Hill, despite having at least ten books by my bed that I have not yet (the crucial yet) read, I bought this one. And in this case, read it immediately. And I can highly recommend, if a copy sits in a similar pile in your own home, that you slide it out and give it a go too.
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