Civil to Strangers

Published posthumously, Civil to Strangers and Other Writings is a collection made up of one of Barbara Pym's novels, several fragments of unfinished novels, a few short stories, and an essay adapted from a BBC radio talk she gave about finding a voice as a writer. It's a must-read for any Pym fan. As a whole, this collection is to Pym what something like Lady Susan or The Watsons is to Jane Austen--something that ardent fans probably pick up once they've worked their way through the rest of the author's works and are left wanting more. Luckily for me, this is just the fourth book of Pym's that I've read, so I have many more of her novels ahead to look forward to.

The complete novel, Civil to Strangers, is just as delightful a read as Excellent Women and Jane and Prudence. It features a comically selfish husband who doesn't appreciate his wife until a series of slight miscommunications has her running off to Europe with a foreign admirer who's just moved into the village. The three unfinished fragments are both charming and frustrating in that they left me wishing they had been developed into full novels. "Home Front Novel" is set in a typical quaint Pym village and shows how the villagers' lives are enhanced by their efforts to support the home front during WWII. "Gervase and Flora" is set among a community of British expatriates in Finland and "So Very Secret" is a traditional spy novel, with the twist that it starts a cast of Pym's "excellent women". Although the latter made it easy to see that the spy genre wasn't Pym's forte, it was also one of the funniest spy stories I've ever read and had me laughing out loud in public--always the true benchmark of literary humor. And finally, the essay based on her radio talk offers insights into the diverse group of authors that Pym considered to be influences--everyone from Austen to Proust, Henry Green to Ivy Compton-Burnett. Pym's thoughts about writing show that, despite the somewhat unassuming quality of her work, she was a part of the important literary thinkers of the last century.

Taking Another Spin

The Classics Club is doing another spiny and of course I'm joining in. I've taken a bit of a short cut and recycled most of my list from the last spin, which saw me rereading Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent. 

(image via here- perfect table for a book spin, no?)
 

Here's my list of twenty classic books--a mix of some I'm looking forward to and some that I'm a little more reluctant about reading:

1. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

2. Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell

3. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

4. The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde

5. Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin

6. Howard's End by E.M. Forster

7. The House in Paris by Elizabeth Bowen

8. A Separate Peace by John Knowles

9. The Warden by Anthony Trollope

10. Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

11. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

12. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser

13. Cecelia by Fanny Burney

14. Ulysses by James Joyce

15. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

16. Othello by William Shakespeare

17. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

18. Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen

19. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

20. To The Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf

Where will the spin land me this time?

Friday Fancies

It ended up being another light week around these parts. Despite being full of good intentions, I got wrapped up in some extra projects, yoga classes, and preparations for an early summer mini-vacation. I won't jinx myself by promising that I'll be back in full swing next week. What I will promise, though, is that I'll be back with a post about the latest Barbara Pym that I finished, so stay tuned.

(a mediocre iPhone picture of one of the cutest sights of Spring)

Some of my favorite finds from around the internet this week:

An e-book for Francophiles.

But since I'm more of an Anglophile myself, here's an incredible looking London bike race.

Pretty bags for farmer's market season.

An article about one of my favorite things- restyled covers of classic books.

And speaking of restyled covers, new on the horizon are Penguin's street art editions.

This Side of Brightness

I became an almost immediate fan of Colum McCann's writing upon first reading his work. His beautiful language combined with his eclectic subject matter--from tightrope walkers to famous Russian dancers--yields fascinating and absorbing results. In This Side of Brightness he deals with two men from different time periods whose lives are both centered around subterranean New York City. During the early part of the twentieth century, Nathan Walker works as a "sandhog", digging train tunnels under the East River. Closer to the present day, a homeless man named Treefrog lives in the underground train tunnels and struggles to maintain his daily existence. McCann alternates between telling each man's story, tightening up the two arcs as the novel progresses until, much like a pendulum slowing down at the end of it's swing, the stories begin to overlap.

As interesting as this novel was to read, it wasn't my favorite of McCann's. To me, his unique subject matter choices in Let the Great World Spin and Dancer enhanced the stories he was telling by serving as unexpected backdrops for universal characters and themes. In This Side of Brightness, I didn't think the story was strong enough to be of equal significance as the quirkier details of the story. Much of my interest in the novel was of a gawking nature, specifically in relation to Treefrog's story. The idea of "mole people" who live underground is such an urban legend that it's hard to look away when it's presented in as much vivid detail as it is here. But if Treefrog, and subsequently Nathan, were separated from that context, I'm not sure they would have enough depth as characters to make me care about them. There's a lot that's engrossing about this novel, and it's worth a read for fans of Colum McCann, but probably not the place to start if you're just trying his work for the first time.

Friday Fancies- Gatsby Edition

Gatsby fever seems to have erupted this week, all leading up to today's movie opening. Are you going to see it? I will, although I might not necessarily rush out this weekend. Although I liked what Baz Luhrmann did in Romeo & Juliet and Moulin Rouge, I've been feeling a bit uncertain about the Gatsby trailers I've seen so far, but I've come to the realization that my favorite things about the book, like the language and Fitzgerald's sense of nostalgia, would be nearly impossible to capture in any film version. If I try to remember that I just might be able to approach the movie with a more open mind without automatically drawing comparisons to the book.

(image via here)

In case you missed anything, here are some highlights from the recent Fitzgerald frenzy:

In 1925, the New Yorker ran a series of "Suggested Bookplates". Here's the one they came up with for Fitzgerald.

A Gatsby game.

If you really want to get in the spirit, you can add some art deco touches to your home and wardrobe.

In the interest of being a fair and balanced blog, here's a critique of Gatsby for those of you who might be on the other side of the fence.

And if you're still looking for more, check out this roundup of all things Gatsby.

For one more last minute addition, here's a hidden image in the iconic Gatsby cover. Hope I'm not the only one who had never noticed that before.