"You won't like that," says VR almost always when I leaf through one of her library books or secondhand paperbacks. Usually she's right but this time there were obscure reasons.The author, Elizabeth Jane Howard, has a long-nosed patrician face which women tend to regard as beautiful. Men less so. I tried her once but no go. Later she surprised me by marrying Kingsley Amis (author of Lucky Jim; father of Martin) who had a reputation as a toper. Facially they seemed ill-matched. As if Grace Kelly had hooked up with Charles Bronson. I stored that factoid away.
VR's EJH acquisition, The Cazelet Chronicles, consists of five novels, each 400-plus pages. I was taking a risk. If I enjoyed number one, The Light Years, there'd be four more door-stoppers. But for some reason VR had challenged my moxie. Plus the Amis thing.
The Light Years starts with a family tree which includes the servants. Very, very necessary. I was forever querying how Edward was related to Rachel. And who were Brig and Duchy. Yes folks, I’d entered a saga but the reading was easy bar EJH’s repeated finger-nail scraper: "bored of". An account of a difficult childbirth gripped me and I was away. The Cazelet Chronicles were best-sellers but this was well observed. Not always the case. I’m now into book two.
Big deal. My reading choices are heavily prejudiced but light may shine through. I’m not alone, though true intellectuals are more cautious about such admissions. And then some books we read because we think we should, others arrive more circuitously. A fancy cover, or, say, a recommendation by a soccer player. We can’t read everything. A year ago I’d have said no chance I’d read an EJH novel. But being adamant doesn’t always work. Nor should it.
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| Nothing to do with EJH. This prunus is the only tree I've ever planted. For VR's birthday, about fifteen years ago. It has flourished and I'm astonished even gratified. It's at its best now, early spring and thus I've marked it |
I enjoyed the Cazalet Chronicles in the way you can enjoy a Mary Wesley novel or even Downton Abbey, panoramic is what some call it. Not in any way coming close to someone like Elizabeth Bowen.
ReplyDeleteBut her autobiography (Slipstream) I found quite excellent.
Sabine: Congratulations. You may be the only commenter to this, one of my hole-in-the-corner posts. The Light Years took a damnedly long time to get going given that the Dramatis Personae numbered over two dozen. For a long time I found it hard to distinguish between the children and the adults, all identified only by their first name. However the sun came out and as the Michelin Guide says: Il vaut le voyage.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry to say I've not read either of the authors you mention nor seen anything other than an in-between-programmes trailer of Downton. Were I to mount a comparison I'd say Anne Tyler and/or Annie Proulx. Or if we're going to extremes Britain's most serious woman author, George Eliot. Re-read 'em all, except, of course, Romola.