Our Spoons Came From Woolworths

Synopsis: Marry in haste, repent at leisure. Sophia is twenty-one years old, carries a newt -- Great Warty -- around in her pocket and marries -- in haste -- a young artist called Charles. Swept into bohemian London of the thirties, Sophia is ill-equipped to cope. Poverty, babies (however much loved) and her husband conspire to torment her. Hoping to add some spice to her life, Sophia takes up with the dismal, ageing art critic, Peregrine, and learns to repent her marriage -- and her affair -- at leisure. But in this case virtue is more than its own reward, for repentance brings an abrupt end to a life of unpaid bills, unsold pictures and unwashed crockery.

Review: This is the sort of book I love relaxing with, it's not challenging but it's quirky. In a lot of ways it reminded me of A Diary of a Nobody as though not strictly written in journal style it is a day to day account of the life of Sophia Fairclough and she has an innocent 'Charles Pooterish' way of looking at life and hoping things will turn out alright. She gets herself into similar scrapes too. Written in 1950, it's the sort of book that Persephone or Bloomsbury would publish if it wasn't already in print.

'The next free afternoon we had, we went to the address in Haverstock Hill she had given us. A woman with very fuzzy black hair came to the door. She had a huge silver belt round her waist, and arty, messy clothes. She kept saying "ger-ger" after every few words, rather like a giant cat purring. She showed us the flat, which consisted of a large basement room with an old fashioned dresser, and a small kitchen and use of bath and lav. When we had seen it she said we had better meet her sister "ger-ger", so we went upstairs and met the sister who had even more fuzzy hair, but it was fair, and her eyes were round and blue and her face like a melting strawberry ice cream, rather a cheap one, and I expect her body was like that, too, only it was mostly covered in mauve velvet. She spoke to us a little and said we were little love-birds looking for a nest. She made us feel all awful inside. Then she suddenly went into a trance. We thought she was dying, but her sister explained she was a medium and governed by a Chinese spirit called Mr Hi Wu. Then Mr Hi Wu spoke to us in very broken English and told us we were so lucky to be offered such a beautiful flat for only twenty-five shillings a week; it was worth at least thirty-five. So when she had recovered we said we would have the flat, and left the first week's rent as a deposit.'

I liked Sophia enormously, she's very funny and naive. She has a nice bright chatty way of telling you things even though sometimes the things are heartbreakingly sad (the first line reads 'I told Helen my story and she went home and cried') she's baffled by circumstances but seems to think that this is all she can expect. Later on she finds ways to spice up her life a bit but makes the same foolish decisions there too and things end badly. Sophia's husband Charles is a totally self absorbed, puffed up idiot who thinks, even though he isn't that good, that he will become a famous painter one day and practically leaves Sophia and the babies to starve whilst he dabbles with his paintings. He has a mother who puts him on a pedestal - she thinks Sophia is unworthy of him and believes she has trapped him into marriage. Charles doesn't want to have children, he's quite put out when Sophia becomes pregnant and suggests all sorts of hideous 'remedies.' You do want to shake Sophia at times but then you realise that this was set in the 1930's and not all women were wordly wise (Sophia originally believed that birth control was a matter of telling yourself 'I won't have babies' ... ahhh bless.) The narrative is a mix of ordinary life blended with the absolutely bizarre and madcap.

'I asked Charles what he wanted the baby to be called, and after a little thought, he said "Pablo" after Picasso, would be a good name, I thought "Pablo" sounded rather impressive, but could imagine how tired one would get hearing people say "Why do you call you baby Pablo? Is it a boy or a girl?" The other babies in the ward were all called Maureen, if they were girls, and Peter and John for the boys. They called mine "Ginger", which I did not like very much. Next time Charles came he suggested Sandro and Augustus. I was so happy he was taking an interest in the baby, I did not want to hurt his feelings, although I didn't like any of these names much. I felt you couldn't call a tiny thing that grew smaller every day Augustus, so I said it had better be Sandro. the next day a registrar visited the hospital and the mothers who had chosen their children's names had them registered, so I had mine registered Sandro Thomas Hardy Fairclough. I added Thomas Hardy because he was my favourite author at the time. I was not sure if Charles expected Botticelli after Sandro or not, but left it out because of spelling difficulties.'

It is said to be semi autobiographical ... Barbara says 'the only things that are true in this story are the wedding, Chapters 10,11 and 12 and the poverty' .. and it does read like a series of very unfortunate events. You hope for a happy outcome for Sophia - and in fact you know there will be one because it's written at the start - but oddly when it came it seemed too pat for me and I couldn't quite believe in it. However, taken as a whole I enjoyed it, Sophia's not your ordinary heroine, she's quite foolish and childlike and probably, left to her, womens lib would never have happened .. but she has a loving heart and a Mitfordesque spirit (newts in her pocket and a penchant for painting everything sea green) which made me warm to her.