My life in books

Somehow I had never, until now, read Jane Austen’s early - but posthumously published - short epistolary novel Lady Susan. I am very happy to have amended this lack. It’s a wicked and cynical little piece, and it is clearly the unpolished work of an author who has not yet found her strengths or style, but it’s highly entertaining.

The main character - and, unusual for any novel of the time, antagonist - is Lady Susan Vernon, a beautiful and amoral widow of around 35, who is wealthy enough to be comfortable in society, pretty and coquettish enough to seduce men left, right and centre for the sheer amusement of the endeavour, and selfish enough to have hatched a plan to marry her daughter off to a rich but weak young man, so she will be assured of access to money down the line should her own assets begin to run dry.

The plot is rather simple, and the main cast of characters limited. Lady Susan, her confidante and accomplice Alicia Johnson, her brother-in-law Charles Vernon and his wife Catherine (nèe De Courcy), Catherine’s brother Reginald De Courcy, and Lady Susan’s daughter Frederica. Lady Susan, who has recently made a conquest of Mr. Mainwaring, with whose family she has been visiting, and has simultaneously detached the young and wealthy James Martin from her own lover’s daughter with the intention of fostering a marriage between him and her own daughter, finds it expedient to withdraw from the Mainwaring establishment and visit her brother-in-law. While there, she makes another conquest in Reginald De Courcy. Eventually, her schemes to marry Reginald while keeping Mainwaring on the side, and force Frederica to marry James Martin, fall through, but Lady Susan manages to snatch some degree of satisfaction from even the jaws of so significant a defeat.

Letters exchanged between Lady Susan and Alicia give us a clear picture of Lady Susan’s character and intentions, while letters from Catherine Vernon to her mother reveal the plot from an observer’s perspective. Occasional letters written by other characters - primarily Reginald - give additional details as to Lady Susan’s actions and their consequences. The most distinctive voice belongs to Lady Susan herself; her cheerful malignancy is fascinating. The other characters are less distinct - the only other truly individual voice is that of Lady Susan’s confidante Alicia. As Milton discovered, it’s much easier to make evil interesting than to do the same for good.

The novel ends rather abruptly, with a brief epilogue outlining the ultimate fates of the various parties following the collapse of Lady Susan’s plotting. Austen either decided to end it quickly, or never expanded the latter part of her outline into the epistolary format of the main portion of the novel. In either case, there is not evidence that she ever returned to the story to develop it further, but went on to write her first published novel, Pride and Prejudice. Lady Susan remains, just barely completed, but nonetheless fascinating for being an unpolished gem.

Jane Austen created many memorable characters, painting rich and detailed portraits not only of her remarkable heroines, but of all the people around them. Sherwood Smith, in her novella Fair Winds and Homeward Sail: Sophy Croft's Story, has given us a fresh new look at one of Austen's more intriguing secondary characters, the sister of Persuasion's hero Frederick Wentworth.

Sophy Croft is a navy wife, who would rather be on board with her husband, even in the midst of war, than be left behind on safer shores. Sensible, practical, warm, friendly - she is a rock of comfort in the sea of excitable, haughty, frivolous, status-conscious, and otherwise flawed women that people Persuasion, and an example of the kind of woman that the heroine Anne Elliot can become, if fortune favours her.

How did Sophy come to be thus? What is her background - and by extension, the background of her brother Frederick, the man who captures Anne's heart?

Smith answers these questions in a fashion that is both true the the character Austen created, and satisfying to the Austen reader who always longs for just one more peek into the worlds that Austen crafted.

An interesting read for those fascinated by the details of life in different times and places, this look at daily life at the beginning of the 19th century is supported by extensive excerpts from contemporary sources, including references to Austen's life and works. Topics range from birth to marriage to death and burial, with many of the less significant events of life equally well covered, and Adkins does a fair job of showing the differences in manner of living due to wealth and class.

Informative and interesting - but I still don't know exactly what a "puppy" is or why Augusta Elton (nee Hawkins) should have had such a horror of them - though I have some ideas.

Everything is genre these days. Literary fiction is a genre now. While some of the novels I read that I'm calling literary fiction have some highly fantastic elements, I think they are more this than that.

Margaret Laurence, This Side Jordan
Margaret Laurence, The Fire-Dwellers
Margaret Laurence, The Stone Angel

I've been re-reading Laurence's works over the past few years, those that I had read before, and reading the handful I had somehow overlooked in the past. The Fire-Dwellers and The Stone Angel are old friends, part of Laurence's Madawaska sequence that culminates in one of my favourite books, The Diviners. This Side Jordan was new to me, despite being her first published novel. Set in colonial-era Ghana during the lead-up to independence, it looks at the contradictions in the lives and thoughts of both the Ghanese people - torn between their tribal pasts and ancient traditions, their circumscribed and subservient present as second class citizens in their own land, and their varied dreams of an independent future - and the white colonists who are at home neither in the colony they have come to work in nor the Europe they have left behind. in this, her first published novel, Laurence has already become the adept unraveller of inner struggles and social conditions that are so much a part of her oeuvre.


A. S. Byatt, Possession

I saw and loved the movie that was based on this book and always knew I'd get around to reading it. And having done so, I am impressed and delighted by it. There's sonething delightful about the uncovering of a dark literary mystery and the politics of the academy that surround the adventure that deeply appeals to me, and the past that is so revealed, the story of two poets who have a brief affair, and how it affects their lives, their work, and their partners, is well told and strikes true. But the best part among so much goodness was the way that Byatt creates all the primary documents - letters and poems - in the varied voices and styles of the poets and their associates. It was exciting to be able to read the poetry of the two past protagonists and see, not just told, how they influenced each other's work, to examine for myself the little clues to their shared history in their writing.


Barbara Gowdy, Mister Sandman

Gowdy's work is often surreal, and Mister Sandman is no exception. But as surreal as it is, it is a profound examination of the liberation that comes from being truthful and honest to one's self, and those close to one.


Hiromi Goto, Kappa Child

Goto's novel about a Japanese-Canadian woman from a profoundly dysfunction family who, through a fantasy pregnancy in which she bears the child of a kappa, or water spirit, also bears and re-births herself, is both funny and moving, and very, very good.


Jo Baker, Longbourn

As an Austen fan, I was really looking forward to this book - a revisioning of Pride and Prejudice from the perspective of those at the bottom of the social ladder, the servants, the enlisted soldiers. And my anticipation was rewarded. Baker looks closely at the lives of those who toil from sun-up to sun-down so that Austen's gentlemen and gentlemen's wives and daughters can live lives of luxury. By introducing a black servant into the Bingley house staff, Baker also lets us examine issue of race in the era of Austen. Much richer and more rewarding than the last big-nane Austen hommage, Death Comes to Pemberley, Longbourn made me look twice at much I'd simpky taken for granted in Austen's novels, and put them into a class perspective. Highly recommended.

Like many other people these days, I have a deep appreciation and affection for the work of Jane Austen. I've re-read all of the published novels several times, and collect the various versions of the films and TV movies that have been based on her books. I am a little more picky about which of the many "inspired by Austen" novels that have been hitting the market in ever-increasing numbers, but I do read some, when the fancy takes me.


Jane Austen & Seth Grahame Smith, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

This was, as many people seem to agree, a lot of fun, but I fear the idea did not delight me sufficiently to cause me to go and buy all the other versions of classics with interpolated fantasy elements that are (were?) such a fad for a while. Best part of this one? - the martial arts battle between Lady de Burgh and Elizabeth Bennett.


Carrie Bebris, Suspense and Sensibility

Bebris has written a series of mysteries in which Elizabeth and Darcy solve crimes involving both the other characters from Pride and Prejudice and characters related to or featured in the other novels. I rather enjoyed the conceit of this one, in which a member of the fictional Dashwood family from Sense and Sensibility is possessed by his ancestor, the historical Francis Dashwood, notorious founder of The Hellfire club (well, one of them, but certainly the one best known to posterity). Unfortunately, Bebris does not, at least in my opinion, get the "voice" of the Austen characters quite right and this left me a little disappointed. I may or may not investigate the other books in this series.


Michael Thomas Ford, Jane Bites Back

This was delicious. Jane Austen as a vampire, turned by no other than Lord Byron, living in modern times and trying to get a new novel published. I enjoyed Ford's take on an Austen who has survived into modern times and seen her books rise in popularity and critical acclaim, and plan to pick up the sequel.


Karen Joy Fowler, The Jane Austen Book Club

Fowler's conceit in this book is fascinating - the novel follows a diverse set of characters in a book club devoted to Jane Austen, their interactions with each other and with the texts they are reading and discussing. Parallels naturally emerge, but the relationships and resonances are subtle. Well worth reading.

So, I took a holiday from posting in my journals. I think it's time to come back. Catching up on what I've been reading will mostly mean just listing the books I've read, with maybe a few comments about the really good, really bad, or really interesting ones.


War, Evil and the End of History, Bernard-Henri Lévy

Interesting concept, kind of hypertext, with several relatively standard reportage-style essays on various theatres of war Lévy had covered, linked by footnotes to extensive personal commentary and philosophical ruminations. Dense, but thoughtful.


Jane Austen: A Life, Carol Shields

A pleasant biographical sketch of one of my favourite authors. Worth reading.


The Terror Dream: Myth and Misogyny in an Unsecure America, Susan Faludi

Fascinating analysis of how both the state and the media presented the "stories" of the attacks on the US on September 11, 2001. Must read.


Cheek by Jowl, Ursula LeGuin

Essays about writing by a great writer. If this is the sort of thing you like, you'll be delighted.


Good Calories, Bad Calories, Gary Taubes

A look at the science behind how the body utilises the energy in the food we eat, from a biochemical more than a medical perspective, which asks some very searching questions about the kinds of nutritional advice North Americans have been receiving over the past 50 years, and suggests that many of the things we've been told were good, are not so good, and many of the things we've been told were bad, may be good after all. I found the arguments compelling enough to change my way of eating, and I haven't gone back yet, after more than a year.


Payback. Margaret Atwood

Atwood looks at the concept of debt on the eve of the economic crisis and finds some quite interesting things to say about it all.