Emma – Jane Austen

Set in the Regency world of country houses and formality we have, centre stage, Emma Woodhouse. Young, attractive, comfortably off living with her widowed father, and it has to be said, a little spoilt. She acknowledges that, and is bent on self-improvement, almost as much as she is bent on improvement of others.

Such as Harriet Smith, ‘natural’ if inconvenient daughter of some man with means enough to place her out of the way but in a respectable position. Emma soon has plans for Harriet, which do not include marriage ‘beneath her’ to a local farmer. She thinks Harriet can do better, spikes the proposal, and steers her protégé towards the new vicar, Mr Elton.

Emma, herself, is more than eligible, but has declared that she will not marry, as that would entail leaving her home and father, over both of which she has free rein. She is happy in her circle that includes her old governess, now married locally to Mr Weston, her sister married to Mr John Knightly with two children, and her brother-in-law, the other Mr Knightly, an established bachelor who holds the family seat at Donwell Abbey. Also tolerated are two spinsters, Mrs. and Miss Bates. When Emma, for the benefit of Harriet, draws Mr Elton into the fold she miscalculates the effect.

Two newcomers arrive independently to spice up life in the village. Come to stay with the Bates’ is Miss Jane Fairfax, young, attractive, and as equally accomplished as Emma if somewhat inferior in pedigree. She soon turns a few heads. Visiting the Westons, albeit infrequently and briefly, is Frank Churchill, a sociable and engaging young man, who despite the surname is Mr Weston’s son by an earlier marriage. The ladies find him charming, including to her surprise, Emma. Mr Knightly has his reservations.

There is much polite conversation while sat in drawing rooms or walking in gardens; a few letters are exchanged; and fleeting bodily contact occurs during a dance. Some confusion and misunderstanding along with hints of forthcoming proposals, keep the plot alive (just).

All very, well, Jane Austen. Wordy to the modern reader, so rather buries its wit in verbiage, but it is another classic ticked off the Book-et List.Set in the Regency world of country houses and formality we have, centre stage, Emma Woodhouse. Young, attractive, comfortably off living with her widowed father, and it has to be said, a little spoilt. She acknowledges that, and is bent on self-improvement, almost as much as she is bent on improvement of others.

 

Trust – Mike Bullen

Greg Beavis and Dan Sinclair are mates, and rivals, with both working as sales reps for the same IT company in London. They both have long term partners and families. Dan is married to Sarah with a teenage son, Russell; Greg is not married to Amanda, but their commitment is demonstrated in the form of two young daughters.

It all starts to go wrong when Greg and Dan attend a two day conference in Birmingham. The men get talking to two attractive young women, Liz and Lynda, and on the last night as drinks flow in the bar, things get flirty and beyond.

On their return to the family fold, things change. There is incriminating evidence in Greg’s bag. And Dan’s renewed sexual vigour, while welcomed by Sarah, is suspicious.

Events unfold; deception and misunderstandings multiply. The partners, destabilised by suspicion, become prey to temptation and proposition. Revenge is considered. Even adolescent Russell and long-gone Liz and Lynda, and their partners, become tangled in the webs of deceit. Trust is in scant supply.

The prose is sharp and witty, and the plot complexities are well handled and easy to follow. Bullen has a nice line in one-liners and penchant for the ironic use of idiomatic expressions. Unsurprisingly, given Bullen is the creator of the Cold Feet TV series, the book has the same knowing – ‘this is adult life’ – vibe.

A good entertaining read.

The St James’ Park Murders – Frank Demain

Every other Saturday, August to May, Sarah Stephenson sees her husband, George, off to Hexham station to get a train to Newcastle for the match at St James’ Park. Except he doesn’t attend the game, he listens to the radio commentary while in bed with a lady he knows only as Jenny.

Sarah knows nothing of this arrangement, but there again George knows nothing of her own simultaneous fortnightly routine that involves an intimate visit from neighbour and shopkeeper, Tony Raine.

The cosy, mutually oblivious arrangement ends when after a particularly energetic afternoon with Jenny, George returns home to find the police outside his house with the news that his wife is dead, believed murdered,

On the case is DI Elspeth Sanderson, newly transferred to the area and still getting to grips with her new team. Step by step they gather evidence, strip away false alibis, uncover motives, and inevitably crack the case, despite distractions that involve Elspeth’s rivalry with a local DI and a long distance on/off relationship with a policeman in the Gambia where her previous case took her.

The plot holds together with enough twists and turns to maintain interest, and the characters are well drawn and distinctive. An enjoyable introduction to the DI Sanderson series of novels

Untold Stories – Alan Bennett

This collection of writings contains a variety of offerings from a master storyteller.

The title piece, Untold Stories, gives an account of Bennett’s early life and in particular his relationships with his parents. It is followed by Written on the Body, which takes the story forward to his time at university and into the Army to do his National Service. Both these pieces are surprisingly revealing and are coloured by the realisation of his sexual orientation.

The middle of the book is devoted to diary extracts covering 1996 to 2004, commenting variously on items in the national news and events in his professional life (with impressive name-dropping), supplemented by random observations on places visited, sights seen, and conversations overheard.

The rest of the writings include essays on the theatre and plays, radio and TV work, art and architecture, finishing off with accounts of some personal tribulations.

Irrespective of the subject matter, the prose is always spot on, the perspective is invariably off-centre, and the opinions given are subtle and understated to devastating effect.

The Siege of Krishnapur – JG Farrell

It is the start of 1857 and at Krishnapur, a two day ride from Calcutta, the English Raj are preserving their societal customs as best they can under foreign skies and a punishing climate. The poetry society is in session. Mr Hopkins, the top man, who bears the title of Collector, is reviewing his eclectic collection of items of art, science, and technology, some recently brought back from his visit to the Great Exhibition in London.

In Calcutta, the bright young things - epitomised by Lieutenant Harry Dunstable, his sister Louise, and newly arrived from Britain, George Fleury and his sister Miriam, who is already a widow – are at play with dances, outings, and picnics. But soon they decamp to Krishnapur where Harry and Louise’s father is resident doctor. On arrival they meet the pretty but disgraced and deserted Lucy Hughes, whom they befriend despite her tainted reputation.

It is not the best time to be in Krishnapur. There is unrest in the Indian army, mutiny is threatened. The Collector decides to strengthen the residency’s defences. Just in time, as the sepoys attack in force. The defences hold for now, but the siege begins.

Under the growing pressure what will happen? Will standards of civilised behaviour hold up? Will the Collector and his minimal forces be up to the task of defending the residency? Will the two doctors, Dunstable and McNab resolve their professional differences and work together to patch wounds and combat dysentery? Will the spiritual leads, Reverend Hampton and Father O’Hara keep the faith, despite their God’s seeming indifference to their plight and the atheistic jibes from magistrate Tom Willoughby? Will George’s and Harry’s romantic interests, and indeed the charms of the young ladies, survive the rigours of the siege? All is eventually revealed.

The pace of the novel and style of prose neatly mirror that of events, beginning rather stiff and formal, becoming languid during the siege, and then frenetic during the chaotic (and surprisingly funny) climax.

Despite its 1973 Booker prizewinning credentials (rarely a good sign), a really good read that, though slow to grip, increasingly entertains as it progresses.

 

Offshore – Penelope Fitzgerald

This offshore community is only a gangplank from dry land, on Thames barges permanently moored on the tidal reaches of that river in the heart of London. It is the sixties but these folk are neither swinging nor fashionable, though some may stretch to Bohemian.

There is an artist, Sam Willis, aboard Dreadnought, a vessel he needs to sell while it still floats. There is Maurice, aboard the conveniently renamed Maurice, who makes a living from picking up men from the shoreline pubs and from providing a repository for dodgy, probably stolen, goods. Aboard Grace is Nenna James, estranged from her husband and so effectively a single parent of her two daughters. Respectability is represented by retired company director Woodie Woodrow who takes pride in keeping his Rochester shipshape, and by Richard and Laura Blake, on Lord Jim, default leaders of the mooring.

Over the course of a few days, we share the small dramas of their lives as they fret about not only their own problems but also that of their neighbours, whom they are quick to help or at least comfort. The slowly sinking Dreadnought, the vulnerability of Maurice, the marital problems of Nenna, are all symptoms of the social decline of the floating community.

Immune from the general gloom, Nenna’s daughters, 11-year-old Martha and 6-year-old Tilda, have known little else and are as at home on the river as the rats that are kept at bay by the greased mooring ropes. They radiate freshness and hope.

At under two hundred pages, the book gives a taste of life on the river, a glimpse into a community rarely featured but here portrayed in realistic, if affectionate, style.

Katalin Street – Magda Szabo

The book-packing journey reaches Eastern Europe in the shape of Hungary.

Specifically at Katalin Street, Budapest, to follow the lives of three families who live in adjacent houses there. The properties are substantial with views out onto the Danube, and the residents are solidly middle class.

Mr Elekes is a headteacher with a wife and two daughters, Iren and Blanka. Next door but one are widower Major Biro, live-in housekeeper Mrs Temes, and the major’s son Balent, who is a little older than the girls. In the middle house, newly arrived, are Mr Held, a dentist, with his wife and daughter, Henriette, the youngest of the children. The Helds are Jewish, and this is 1934 …

After an extended preface that meanders enigmatically through time and space, the narrative unfolds in half a dozen chronological snapshots from 1934 to 1968. Some are told in the first person by Iren. The others are narrated in the third person from Henriette’s point of view that unnervingly persists beyond her early death in the upheavals of 1944.

For Budapest, the upheavals continue into the post war communist state and the false dawn of 1956. Such events form an unintrusive context to the story, the emphasis being on how they affect the residents of Katalin Street.

The spare prose quickly draws the reader into (mainly) the children’s lives – as children initially then as they grow older into adulthood. Throughout, the relationships among them – based on love, rivalry, jealousy, loyalty, and guilt – are particularly well drawn. There is enough forward shadowing to intrigue, and plenty of dramatic incidents to excite, before an end that is not so much a resolution as a coming to rest.

Once into the narrative, the book becomes an engrossing read.