Love Letters - Leonard Woolf & Trekkie Ritchie Parsons 1941-1968

Synopsis: It was the middle of the Second World War, and Trekkie, a painter and book illustrator, was married to the publisher Ian Parsons, who later became Leonard's colleague. Leonard was 61, Trekkie 39. He wanted her to get a divorce and marry him, but instead she persuaded him to move in next door to her in London and spent the weekends with him at Monk's House in Rodmell. When Ian came back from the war, life became more complex. Trekkie was a feisty, principled feminist - she had never wanted a husband and now, it seemed, she had two at once. She spent the weekends with Ian and the week with Leonard: she took holidays with them separately, acted as hostess for them both, and talked to no one about the way they lived. The arrangement worked smoothly for the next twenty-five years - an inventive and honest solution for a woman who loved two men in different ways at the same time. When Trekkie and Leonard were not together they talked through the post - a letter scribbled while she cooked dinner could reach him before breakfast the next morning. Trekkie sealed up their correspondance, and it was only opened after her death. Linked by excerpts from her diary, the letters shine with details of daily life: of gardens and glow-worms, books and plays; of Leonard's publishing and politics; of Trekkie's struggle to balance her professional and personal life. But above all they are a romance in two voices - his besotted, hers tender and sensible. This remarkable exchange of letters tells the story of two contrasting personalities, their love for one another and their unusual and creative domestic arrangement.

Review: I really enjoyed reading these letters, I didn't know anything about Leonards relationship with Trekkie, I've only ever connected him with Virginia. They met through Trekkie's sister Alice, who had had books published by the Hogarth Press. Alice became terminally ill and Trekkie looked after her during the last few weeks of her life. Leonard had very generously lent Alice some money 'on the poor security of an unfinished book' (Alice's words) and Trekkie was able to return it to him saying that she had been able to cover Alice's expenses without using it but that it had given Alice the greatest of comforts to feel that she wasn't being a financial burden on her sister. It had only been a few months since Virginia had committed suicide and at first the correspondence between the pair is sporadic and fairly tame but soon Leonard is visiting Trekkie (who herself was an artist and illustrator) and leaving her little presents of strawberries and flowers and their letters start to reflect how much they are enjoying one anothers company.

The relationship was complicated, there was a twenty two year age gap for a start plus Trekkie was already married. It's hard to say what her husband thought about it, nothing is really known, they kept it all private with a capital P but if he did have towering rages about it nobody ever recorded it. His own romantic life was entangled too so maybe it was a case of 'what's sauce for the goose' etc but in any case there didn't seem to be any rancour between them and indeed they all ended up living in the same house (on separate floors) and working together. The editor here thinks, despite Trekkie's assertions to the contrary, that her relationship with Leonard was sexual, though since reading these letters I've read a biography about Leonard which takes the opposite view. Either way it doesn't matter, he clearly adored her and she him .. she was his 'Dearest Tiger' and he her 'Dearest Lion'.

Extract from one of Leonards letters (showing him to be a hopeless romantic with too much time on his hands)

'I don't mind what you write your letters with or on, even a lithographic stone, if they're like the one I got this morning at breakfast. It was an amazing morning here yesterday & still more lovely this morning. It's no good your saying that you may create a wraith out of yourself which will haunt the garden, because that's just exactly what you have done. I never go into the garden now, I think, without it. It walks by my side, feeds the goldfish with me every morning, notices the new flowers as they come out. Sometimes I see it painting in the orchard or eating a mutton pie under the fig tree. I even hear it laugh or say "No, Leonard, I do not agree with you'. And the other night when the moon was up & I went out on the terrace before bed, it walked by my side in a long golden dress & was so beautiful that I realized that the penny novelette writer is quite true to life when he works up to the grand crisis with 'Her beauty was such that he caught his breath, a lump came into his throat, & for a moment his heart stopped beating." It even follows me up the village street when I go to post a letter in the new box on the main road for the other day the wraith of a bus appeared & your wraith let me hold it's hand & got into it saying: "Well, Goodbye Leonard". And don't you know that this evening & last evening after tea your wraith came out with me into the orchard & gathered the apples with me & I wasn't at all nice to the wraith, being depressed because it was not you but the ghost of you - for that is one of the things you've never done here & ever since you began to come I've looked forward to the September evening - sunny, absolutely still, with the first chill of autumn in the air & the mist beginning to creep up out of the water meadows - when I should see you in the orchard gathering the apples - for I think it's really the most beautiful moment of the year here. Don't you know all this dearest tiger? If not, I think it's rather disgraceful. For if you create a wraith of yourself, you oughtn't really let it wander ab- (this is Peats interference - I flung him off, whereupon he has leapt on the table and upset a large bowl of flowers & the floor is swimming with water) about with me here out of your control.'

I've always thought of Leonard as a bit of a serious creature, but these letters show a different side. His in particular are very affectionate, sometimes too much so and Trekkie often had to try and bring him back into line .. 'I want you to love me ... but not as an epidemic disease.' I think he was ripe for falling in love, certainly he seems to be the more enthusiastic of the two especially to begin with and Trekkie was just the sort of woman to attract him, creative and artistic but less highly strung than Virginia. The letters are often funny, they both have a great sense of humour and were fond of writing spoof letters to each other. They had lots of shared interests .. they adored plants and gardening and they had an absolute mania for animals .. their houses were awash with cats and dogs. The relationship survived and prospered until Leonards death in 1969. Very, very enjoyable.

Memento Mori

Synopsis: Unforgettably astounding and a joy to read, Memento Mori is considered by many to be the greatest novel by the wizardly Dame Muriel Spark. In late 1950s London, something uncanny besets a group of elderly friends: an insinuating voice on the telephone informs each, "Remember you must die." Their geriatric feathers are soon thoroughly ruffled by these seemingly supernatural phone calls, and in the resulting flurry many old secrets are dusted off. Beneath the once decorous surface of their lives, unsavories like blackmail and adultery are now to be glimpsed. As spooky as it is witty, poignant and wickedly hilarious, Memento Mori may ostensibly concern death, but it is a book which leaves one relishing life all the more.

Review: I enjoyed this one, it's macabre but with a comic touch. All the characters are elderly and in various stages of decrepitude and some of them are beginning to lose the plot. When they start receiving disturbing phonecalls saying "Remember you must die" they are at a loss to discover who is making them. One thing in particular is peculiar, the voice on the end of the phone appears different to each listener although the message always remains the same. Having lived fairly full lives they each have their secrets and intrigues to hush up and plenty of enemies to suspect of foul play or blackmail. As the title suggests this is a book about being mortal and how we cling tenaciously to life even when it becomes insupportable. Each character reacts differently to the phone calls, one is not that concerned, one refuses to acknowledge, even to themselves, that they've received a call and others draw up lists of suspects. One of the suspects cannot confirm or deny the accusations saying that as far as they are aware they haven't made the calls and yet they might have made them during a Mr Hyde moment. There is a particular sinister 'Mrs Danversish' type maid who lurks about listening at keyholes and amassing evidence to use as blackmail ... a real boo-hiss character.

Despite there being plenty of absurdity, it's also a bit depressing. You feel slightly uneasy reading it, realising even when you're laughing that it's an all too accurate portrayal of old age and a reminder of what lies in wait for us. All the horrors of old age are here, vulnerability, fear, failing health and intellect .. the slow decline etc but for all that you can't help but smile at it ...

'I have quite decided to be cremated when my time comes' said Godfrey. 'It is the cleanest way. The cemetries only pollute our water supplies. Cremation is best.'
'I do so agree with you,' said Charmian sleepily.
'No, you do not agree with me,' he said. 'R.C.s are not allowed to be cremated.
'I mean, I'm sure you are right, Eric dear.'
'I am not Eric,' said Godfrey. 'You are not sure I'm right. Ask Mrs Anthony, she'll tell you that R.C.s are against cremation.'
He opened the door and bawled for Mrs Anthony. She came in with a sigh.
'Mrs Anthony, you're a Roman Catholic, aren't you?' said Godfrey.
'That's right. I've got something on the stove.'
'Do you believe in cremation?'
'Well,' she said, 'I don't really much like the idea of being shoved away quick like that. I feel somehow it's sort of ...'
'It isn't a matter of how you feel, it's a question of what your Church says you've not got to do. Your Church says you must not be cremated, that's the point.'
'Well, as I say Mr Colston, I don't really fancy the idea ...'
'Fancy the idea ... It is not a question of what you fancy. You have no choice in the matter do you see?'
'Well, I always like to see a proper burial, I always like ...'
'It's a point of discipline in your Church,' he said, 'that you mustn't be cremated. You women don't know your own system.'
'I see, Mr Colston. I've got something on the stove.'
'I believe in cremation, but you don't - Charmian, you disapprove of cremation, you understand.'
'Very well, Godfrey'
'And you too, Mrs Anthony.'
'OK., Mr Colston.'
'On principle,' said Godfrey
'That's right,' said Mrs Anthony and disappeared.

Muriel doesn't tie up all the ends, she allows the reader to come to their own conclusions (not always wise in my case) and gives them plenty of food for thought. Not a cheerful read overall but an interesting one.

News from Nowhere

Synopsis: 'The only English utopia since More's that deserves to be remembered as literature.' News from Nowhere (1890) is the best-known prose work of William Morris. The novel describes the encounter between a visitor from the nineteenth century, William Guest, and a decentralized and humane socialist future. Set over a century after a revolutionary upheaval in 1952, these 'Chapters from a Utopian Romance' recount his journey across London and up the Thames to Kelmscott Manor, Morris's own country house in Oxfordshire. Drawing on the work of John Ruskin and Karl Marx, Morris's book is not only an evocative statement of his egalitarian convictions but also a distinctive contribution to the utopian tradition. Morris's rejection of state socialism and his ambition to transform the relationship between humankind and the natural world, give News from Nowhere a particular resonance for modern readers. The text is based on that of 1891, incorporating the extensive revisions made by Morris to the first edition.

Review: Until I saw this on the 1001 list, I didn't know that William Morris had written any fiction. This is William's idea of Utopia, and it's a million miles away from the futuristic science fiction novels/films that we're used to. It seems he was inspired to write the book after reading Edward Bellamy's 'Looking Backward' .. it has a similar premise to 'News from Nowhere' in that the central character awakes to find himself a few hundred years in the future in a world where poverty and corruption have been eradicated. William didn't much like Bellamy's version of Utopia though and thought it vulgar and materialistic but still the book obviously sowed the seeds of an idea in his mind. William's central character William Guest falls asleep after returning from a meeting of the Socialist League, when he awakes the next day, he finds himself in a very different world indeed.

He meets Dick who undertakes to row him on the Thames, from Hammersmith through London and onwards to Kelmscott (Morris's true home) stopping frequently along the way. He learns from Dick that things have much changed .. though Dick doesn't know he is a traveller in time .. he passes himself off as a foreigner or jokingly as a being from another planet to account for his ignorance and wonder. Cities have been transformed, the urban sprawl has been eradicated and there is more 'elbow room', the buildings are handsome and there is a heavy emphasis towards arts and crafts in all their forms but always beautifully and simply done (especially clothing ... women are no longer upholstered like furniture.) Work is undertaken for pleasure rather than payment, in fact there is no monetary system at all and food and goods are shared willingly. Everyone is content and happy, there is no discord, no prisons, no courts, no crime and everyone, especially the women are extremely good looking and long lived (he would be shocked if he walked down Swindon high street on a Friday night to see how far away from his idyll we are.) There is no schooling in the literal sense, children are encouraged to learn for themselves by being in and of the world instead of stewing inside and those more inclined to further their knowledge do so.

I'm not sure how I felt about William's ideal world, on the whole I didn't think it could ever possibly work and I'm not sure I'd want it to. He still saw the woman's role as the child bearer and nurturer but though in this new world women were free from oppression by men (and vice versa) and their opportunities were varied and unconstrained, domestic labour was still seen as the job they were most fitted to (because it was the job they most enjoyed.) But of course this is the author's vision and it's not a picture of what he thought would happen or thought should happen, it's just a version of his ideal world.

When William reaches London he meets Dicks kinsman, Old Hammond, and learns from him how this new change came about. It's a tale full of civil unrest, revolt and bloodshed which takes up several chapters. Though interesting to begin with, this part of the book dragged for me and I was glad when William returned to the Thames and his journey (which just illustrates how empty headed I am.)

It's an interesting book, he writes lovely prose, using delicious words such as slumbrous, thitherwood, behoof and wherry. I've always lived near to the Thames so his journey was familiar to me, I used to live at Lechlade which is fairly near to Kelmscott and visited his gorgeous manor house and garden. There is a craft barn in the garden and I couldn't help but think he'd be dismayed if he saw it. Anything that could be covered in a William Morris pattern had been ... you know the sort of thing toaster covers and draft excluders and peg bags ... I suppose they do come under the heading of useful .. I'm not sure all of them are beautiful .. but he hated clutter and fuss. In contrast his house was just lovely, so simple (if a house that grand can be simple) but absolutely gorgeous with the most beautiful tapestries and embroideries that I've ever seen.

Actually I did a tapestry of one of William's designs some years ago which is one of the few things that I've managed to put up in our new home. I do love his designs and the whole arts and crafts movement in general.

Speaking for Themselves - Audiobook (Part One)

Synopsis: This is a fascinating collection of the personal correspondence between Winston Churchill and his wife Clementine between 1908-1929.

Review: Though this is only volume one and so contains only half of the letters, it's still an engrossing sixteen hours long. What I loved about the letters most was how lovable and affectionate Winston's were, for all his rather serious public persona he was obviously a deeply devoted (as he often liked to sign himself) husband and father. It's often said that Winston's unhappy childhood and the lack of affection felt from his mother and father made him all the more appreciative of the love he felt for and received from Clemmie. Clementine's letters were affectionate too but what struck me most about hers was the fact that she wasn't afraid to give out political advice to Winston or to strenuously write in favour of taking said advice when she thought it was going unheeded.

In the main though their letters are full of love and concern for one another. Winston being referred to as pug, dog or pig often and Clemmie being his puss or cat. The children (five in all) are the precious PK's (puppy kittens) which now I've written it down all seems rather silly but doesn't come across so at all because the letters are full of such sound good sense. They are wonderfully romantic letters though for the most part. There were very few that were terse or cross .. none at all I think from Winston (though he could be resolute, in the face of her disapproval, about sticking to his guns politically.) I think I fell in love with him a bit myself just listening to him telling her how lucky he was and how beautiful she is. Then again some letters were burnt or destroyed - both Clemmie and Winston sent letters to each other that were meant for each others eyes only but these were of a mostly political nature and at times of great political sensitivity and secrecy - others have been edited or weeded out so it's not a complete picture but a pretty detailed one all the same.

The first few letters are about their early (quite short) courtship and marriage, then we follow Winston through to his cabinet position in Asquith's Liberal government, his disastrous involvement in the Gallipoli campaign which devastated him and forced him to leave government and his time spent serving on the Western Front commanding the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers. These letters from the trenches and dugouts are fascinating, sometimes Winston sends home lists of the things he needs and my mind was boggling with the thought of Clemmie parcelling up sleeping bags, sturdy boots, brandy and cigars .. though quite possibly she didn't have to go and queue up at the post office and wait interminably for 'cashier number four please' to become vacant.

This particular volume of letters ends with Winston as Chancellor of the Exchequer in Baldwin's Conservative party. I'm looking forward to downloading the second half of the letters which will take me through his time as prime minister to their end days.

Senor Vivo and the Coca Lord

Synopsis: Dionisio Vivo, a South American lecturer in philosphy, is puzzled by the hideously mutilated corpses that keep turning up outside his front door. To his friend, Ramon, one of the few honest policement in town, the message is all too clear: Dionisio's letters to the press, exposing the drug barons, must stop; and although Dionisio manages to escape the hit-men sent to get him, he soon realises that others are more vulnerable, and his love for them leads him to take a colossal revenge.

Review: Goodness gracious me, this was a torrid, surreal, and at times harrowing, read. I knew I was in for something different when the first paragraph read ...

'Ever since his young wife had given birth to a cat as an unexpected consequence of his experiments in sexual alchemy, and ever since his accidental invention of a novel explosive that confounded Newtonian physics by loosing its force at the precise distance of 6.56 feet from the source of its blast, President Veracruz had thought of himself not only as an adept but also as an intellectual. His speeches became peppered with obscure and recondite quotations from Paracelsus and Basil Valentine; he joined the Rosicrucians, considering himself to be a worthy successor to Doctor John Dee, Hermes Trismegistus, Sir Francis Bacon, Christian Rosencreuz, and Éliphas Levi. He gave up reading his wife's women's magazines, from which he had previously derived most of his opinions, and took up reading La Prensa .'

The book tells the story of Dionisio Vivo, who is annoyed but unworried, when he finds his front lawn repeatedly littered with grotesquely disfigured, dead bodies. His friend, the local policeman Ramon, tries to tell Dionisio that these killings are warnings, sent because of Dionisio's regular letters to the press condemning the local drug barons and criticising the corrupt government. Dionisio however, refuses to be frightened or to believe that the two things are in any way connected and he continues to go on with his life as before. Well, almost as before, he has in fact fallen in love with the beautiful Anica and is determined to settle down and shape up (in other words he has to give up his frequent visits to the town prostitutes.)

There are desperate and repeated attempts on his life but inexplicably they all fail and his enemies, plus the local townspeople, begin to believe that he is in fact a 'brujo' ... a magical being who is kept free from harm by the spirits. The hit men are advised to target his loved ones instead with terrifying and far reaching consequences. For a book that's so steeped in violence it's surprisingly funny. The thugs are often bumblingly stupid and there's an element of farce in their early assassination attempts but just as you begin to get accustomed to the almost cartoonish violence things take a sickening turn. At times I found it very, very reminiscent of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, there's a mix here of humour, lust and violence which is very like the writing in 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' especially when you add in the huge dollop of magical realism that weaves through both.

Obviously de Bernieres is keen to expose the evils of drug trafficking and he manages to get his point across here loud and clear without it seeming at all preachy or sanctimonious. I've only just learnt that this book is the central one of a trilogy .. I didn't know this as it was lent to me but I thought the story stood by itself anyway. Perhaps it would have been less confusing at the start if I had read 'The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts' ... it did take me a few chapters to get the feel of the writing but the story grips you within no time (literally by the throat.)

Like Marquez, de Bernieres's tale is full of red blooded males, hot blooded women, tarts with hearts, slow witted thugs, calculating evildoers and ridiculous despots.
There is plenty to make you blush and if you don't like sex in novels then this one definitely isn't for you. There's violence too in abundance .. including a particularly harrowing scene near the end which I couldn't actually make it through. Somehow the humour still comes through and so does the magical, mystical elements.

Action packed and absurdly funny but not for the faint hearted.

Flowers for Algernon

Synopsis: Charlie Gordon, IQ 68, is a floor sweeper, and the gentle butt of everyone's jokes, until an experiment in the enhancement of human intelligence turns him into a genius.

Review: I think I'll keep this one short (hooray I can hear you all saying), the key to reading this book is not to know any details of what happens to Charlie after he undergoes the operation which is hoped will greatly improve his intelligence. I had been wanting to read it for some time so was glad when the Book Club Forum Reading Circle picked it as their read for this month .. it gave me the nudge I needed.

More detailed reviews and opinions can be read here (**but there are plenty of spoilers and revelations so don't read unless you are happy to know the outcome**)

Reading Circle - Flowers for Algernon

I loved reading it and devoured it in a couple of sittings. Charlie narrates the whole story via his daily progress reports and you find yourself, within no time, rooting for him and hoping that everything will work out well. It gave me back my hope that I can read and enjoy science fiction novels as long as they're not too deep and complicated (science with a very small s in other words.)

In Tearing Haste

Synopsis: In spring 1956, Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire - youngest of the six legendary Mitford sisters - invited the writer and war hero Patrick Leigh Fermor to visit Lismore Castle, the Devonshires' house in Ireland. This halcyon visit sparked off a deep friendship and a lifelong exchange of sporadic but highly entertaining letters. There can rarely have been such contrasting styles: Debo, unashamed philistine and self-professed illiterate (though suspected by her friends of being a secret reader), darts from subject to subject while Paddy, polyglot, widely read prose virtuoso, replies in the fluent, polished manner that has earned him recognition as one of the finest writers in the English language. Prose notwithstanding, the two friends have much in common: a huge enjoyment of life, youthful high spirits, warmth, generosity and lack of malice. There are glimpses of President Kennedy's inauguration, weekends at Sandringham, stag hunting in France, filming with Errol Flynn in French Equatorial Africa and, above all, of life at Chatsworth, the great house that Debo spent much of her life restoring, and of Paddy in the house that he and his wife Joan designed and built on the southernmost peninsula of Greece.

Review: I've read quite a lot by and about the Mitford's over the years .... Mary S. Lovell's 'The Mitford Girls' (which rates for me as one of the best biography's ever), 'Letters between Six Sisters', 'Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford', 'Hons and Rebels' and two of Nancy's novels 'The Pursuit of Love' and 'Love in a Cold Climate' ... I always enjoy their writing enormously and so when I saw this at the bookshop I got my purse out immediately.

This is a collection of letters between Deborah Devonshire (Debo), the youngest and now sole surviving Mitford sister who married Andrew Cavendish and later inherited (or at least Andrew did) the beautiful Chatsworth in Derbyshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor (Paddy) the author most known for his travel writing. They start off quite haphazardly and random, in fact the first letters are only from Paddy indicating that he was probably less meticulous about keeping Debo's early correspondence, but their letters soon become more frequent and confidential.

Debo writes like all the Mitford's, wittily and newsy, recounting a lot of her day to day worries and frets about the running of Chatsworth (she's a great lover of chickens and rare breed sheep) plus accounts of her occasional dinners and lunches with Prince Charles and 'Cake' (the Queen Mother) and a description of her day out at the inaugaration of President Kennedy in which, to her wild excitement, she was summoned from the back to come and sit with him during the parade (in Debo's words 'it fuddled the commentators on the telly as they only knew politicians and film stars and when strange English ladies loom they are stumped'). I probably enjoyed reading her letters more, they're briefer but more chatty and amusing. Paddy is a keen observer too and a wicked gossip but he has a tendency to enclose long accounts of his latest travel exploits which interrupt the rapid flow of the letter's and sometimes make for tedious reading (I'd be happy to read them in his travel books .. just not attached to the letters) still, obviously Debo was anxious to hear all about them .. I'm just not sure that we needed to. They both love words and wordplay and so puns, sketches and comic verse flow back and forward and they're always on the lookout for things that will amuse the other.

The later letters deal a lot with old age, the sad inevitability of the loss of loved one's and the ever increasing visits from 'Dr Oblivion'. They both find writing more difficult now, Paddy especially as he suffers from tunnel vision but at the time of the book going to press they were still corresponding aged 88 (Debo) and 93 respectively.

There are lot's of lovely photo's too which is always a treat because it helps to put faces to names.

The Diary of a Nobody

Synopsis: 'Why should I not publish my diary? I have often seen reminiscences of people I have never even heard of, and I fail to see - because I do not happen to be a 'Somebody' - why my diary should not be interesting.' The Diary of a Nobody (1892) created a cultural icon, an English archetype. Anxious, accident-prone, occasionally waspish, Charles Pooter has come to be seen as the epitome of English suburban life. His diary chronicles encounters with difficult tradesmen, the delights of home improvements, small parties, minor embarrassments, and problems with his troublesome son. The suburban world he inhabits is hilariously and painfully familiar in its small-mindedness and its essential decency. Both celebration and critique, The Diary of a Nobody has often been imitated, but never bettered. This edition features Weedon Grossmith's hilarious illustrations and is complemented by an enjoyable introduction discussing the book's social background and suburban fiction as a genre.

Review: Bless him, you can't help but be rather fond of Charles Pooter, he's a bit pompous and he's forever getting his knickers in a twist about something but he means well and his pathetic little attempts to rise above his rather ordinary suburban life are rather touching. He has a terrible sense of humour, making puns which are not very funny but which keep him amused for hours .. at one point he even wakes up laughing in the middle of the night so tickled is he by a pun he'd made during the evening (you won't be tickled .. you'll just groan.) His diary entries early on are laughably banal, just basic recounting of his terribly dull days at the office and terribly dull evenings at home with his wife Carrie and their fairweather friends Mr Cummings and Mr Gowing (who are habitual visitors unless they're at home sulking over some perceived slight.) So exciting are his days that twice he starts his diary entry with 'mustard-and-cress and radishes not come up yet' and all his little tiffs and disagreements with Gowing, Cummings and the maid are written down and chewed over. But for all that you can't help but become engrossed in his tales, you sort of cheer him on and hope that tomorrow will be a better day because he is forever suffering little (and large) disappointments and embarrassments (there's a good deal of farce and buffoonery.) Whatever grand schemes he and Carrie embark on .. disaster and disappointment often follow. Some of these disappointments involve his son Lupin, who is a bit of a cad. Charles and Carrie (Carrie especially) are apt to think the best of him (naturally) but the reader can see from a long way off that Lupin is a bit of a scoundrel.

The humour is subtle but it actually entertained me far more than a lot of so called hilarious books. It helps if you're fond of the characters and I was. How can you not love a man who buys some red enamel paint on his way home from work and then proceeds to paint practically everything in the house in it (including book spines) ... just because it looked so nice on the flowerpots (ok ... if he's your husband then obviously you would kill him but as a literary character you can't help but feel indulgent towards him.) It's one of the 1001 books that I've been told I must read before I die and I have to agree with them .. it's a peach.