Because women can write and sell books, too.

In the US, Jacqueline Susann is looking to be on the bestseller list with her debut novel, the forthcoming Valley Of The Dolls. Early on she gets breast cancer and makes a pact with God to give her ten more years in which to make enough money so that her autistic son is taken care of for the rest of his life. Meanwhile, in the UK, Jackie Collins is concerned with the breakdown of her marriage to a very mentally ill man and putting food on the table – she wants to start writing. And back state-side, Nancy moves to New York to pursue her dream of becoming an editor. All three women must learn to work with and subvert the stereotypes and sexism they come across to be the successes they know they can be.

Scandalous Women is Paul’s latest novel, about Jacqueline Susann and Jackie Collins (and also the purely fictional Nancy), is a story of strength, women’s agency, and, arguably, the literary industry in the 1960s and 1970s. Told in the third person via the three women quoted, Paul is able to deliver a lot of information alongside her fictionalisation of a momentous change for women authors, including the period’s steps in the struggle for women to be accepted as equals.

Paul has an uncanny talent for creating not just an interesting story but diving under the surface and serving up information in a way that makes you speed through the book at a rate of knots in order to devour it. She is here, as always, able to present a story in biographical fiction form where you know that you can rest assured that if whatever you’re reading in any given moment is not true, it’s either not too far from the truth or a real possibility that could have been.

There is some great and subtle intertextuality here as well as whatever the term is (or would be, if there isn’t one) for an effective inter-biography-textuality. Paul’s Jacqueline, in particular (Jackie has her moments, too) makes a point of telling various people, generally interviewers or her fellows in the publishing industry, about – when criticised for not being literary – how she concentrates on storytelling and how fiction for women that looks at sex is absolutely fine. (She’s selling bestsellers by the thousands, constantly, after all – Google says it’s at 40 million now). Paul’s prose fits this perfectly – her usual straight-forward and very welcome style seems here to be fine-tuned to her subjects; this book is particularly accessible, meaning that you can focus on the plot and themes and there is never any need to re-read what you’ve read in order to understand it. This accessibility is a big part of why the thematic sections of the book, where they pertain to publishing industry concepts and history, are so fascinating; it’s like the success of the advertising aspects of Paul’s previous book, A Beautiful Rival, only with further concentration and exploration applied.

Paul has brought the real people to life; Jacqueline and Jackie are here completely and understandably, but their husbands – lesser-known if Wikipedia is correct – and others burst from the page as well. They feel true to life – Jacqueline’s mix of business and kindness can be seen in various interviews, for example. She’s rather inspiring – she’ll make sure you know how much she’s sold but she’ll also remember things about you she can ask about later to show that she gives a damn, and while that may help her gain admiration it also very much does come as a kindness too. (Yes, I have been rather taken by the interviews I’ve watched¹.)

A paragraph break must be made here to discuss the meetings between Jacqueline and Jackie. There is no solid evidence that this happened but in true Gill Paul style, a conclusion has been reached after assessing the probabilities (in this case that they attended many of the same events) and the fiction spun from there. There’s a very caring conversational thread towards the end that really shows off the reasoning Paul has applied to her choice to have the two know each other.

Back to characterisation, and the fictional people are just as great as the factual. Their development is strong, with a particular note needing to be made for the most important fictional character, Nancy. It’s fair to say that you may just find Nancy to be your favourite; perhaps due to the fiction and the relative lack of limitations Paul had when creating her (she did still have to be woven around the reality) there is just that little bit more development, and of course Nancy is where the publishing industry itself comes alive.

You may wish sometimes that it hadn’t come alive. One of the focuses of Scandalous Women is the misogyny of the publishing industry of the time – the sheer number of men versus women, the side-lining of women, and the sexism, which is shown both in dialogue and in actions. (As an example, Nancy must slide down a fireman’s pole in her skirt in order to get one of her jobs, and yes, that is based on fact.) Nancy has a tough time convincing her boss and everyone else to give women’s writing a chance, even when those same writings are doing fantastically across the pond. And Jacqueline and Jackie, despite being bestsellers, have their own snarky remarks and harassment to deal with. They’ve more agency to respond with due to their relative standing compared to Nancy but it still reads as ridiculous, and, sadly, very real. And on other topics it’s not a spoiler to note, Paul includes Jacqueline’s religious belief, struggles with cancer, and motherhood, carefully and with full respect to the real woman.

If there is anything wanting, this reviewer wished there was just that bit more narrative, for the fictional Nancy to be given more time – her fascinating career in motion and her story, albeit tied up well at the end, was ever intriguing, and that is entirely down to the storytelling.

Scandalous Women is, then, a fantastic look at two of the women who were the defining people of a defining moment in the publishing industry. Full of information and period detail as well as a solid page-turner factor, it’ll entice you, make you want to know more and, if you haven’t read them already, you’re going to finish it wanting to go and pick up those novels that were oh so indecent.

I was given my copy of this book by the author.

Publisher: Avon (HarperCollins)
Pages: 365
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-008-53216-1
First Published: 13th August 2024
Date Reviewed: 9th September 2024

Footnotes

¹ One such interview is Susann’s interview on Good Afternoon in 1973

Please note that this review uses ‘Jane Austen’ and ‘Austen’ to refer to the real writer, and ‘Jane’ to refer to Bull’s fictionalisation of the same.

Catherine Morland would be proud.

When Jane comes back to the ball from the glasshouse where she’d been talking to Tom Lefroy, no one is speaking. A woman has been murdered; no one knows who she is or, indeed, who’s done it. The magistrate starts to get on with it but Jane has her misgivings about him and as the days continue and he hasn’t reached a conclusion nor, as far as Jane is concerned, made a proper effort to find out whodunnit, she decides to conduct her own investigation. Her family aren’t keen – it’s a bit of a silly idea, and Jane manages to cause great offence in her efforts to find out the truth, but it becomes all too important to her to solve when her brother is arrested. But there’s also Tom’s likely impending proposal to prepare for and cousin Eliza’s coming to Steventon. Will Jane work it out before it’s too late and will Tom ever get down on one knee?

Jessica Bull’s Miss Austen Investigates (or The Hapless Miliner across the pond), is an utterly delightful fictional take on Jane Austen’s years in Steventon, largely influenced by Northanger Abbey. In essence it is a bit of a parody of an actual parody, one absolutely brimming with excellent research, immersive use of location, careful and comedic and sensitive handling of real families from the past, and interesting fairly evidence-based interpretations. And yes, all those adjectives were necessary to include – this book is one of the most well-produced literary works I’ve read in a long time.

It is obvious very early on that everything Bull does in this book, all the choices she makes, has or have been fully thought out. Let’s start with the general concept – the influence of Northanger Abbey on the text. Bull’s fictionalisation of Jane Austen is partly informed by what we know of Austen herself, and partly informed by Austen’s character, Catherine Morland. (This latter person is most in evidence when our titular character of the book this review is about becomes incredibly illogical and won’t be drawn by reason, much like our dear Catherine.) Bull’s balancing of the different personalities into one character – I say ‘different’ even though I myself believe it’s likely Austen herself was remarkably fun – won’t be for everyone, in fact it’s likely some readers may find her silliness too much, but I’d wager most people will ‘get’ it at the very least.

Of course it’s also in the element of the mystery here that Catherine Morland can be found; Bull’s novel is very much a mystery novel and well set in its time and society – Jane never goes around with the historical equivalent of a policeman and no one is shooting anyone, instead Jane’s investigations largely take the form of musings and a couple of brief questions here and there over a cup of tea and slice of cake at various houses.

(This in itself is something to remark upon – Bull’s setting Jane as the sleuth enables a look at how women were treated more as decorations and possessions rather than people. There’s a particularly sad scene wherein the funeral of the murder victim – a woman – is attended by just a few men and Jane hides herself outside because as a woman she cannot be at the funeral. See also the way Jane is asked to stop investigating – whilst this is in line with Catherine Morland’s experiences it also aligns with the historical treatment of women in her position.)

Looking at location and society – friends and family, mostly – this is arguably where most of the heart in the book can be found. Bull has recreated the village of Steventon and the now-lost Steventon Rectory where Austen grew up (it was torn down within a few years of the Austen family moving away) and looked at Ashe House and Deane House in the nearby villages of the same names (which still exist and are privately owned). The sense of place and time is fantastic and it’s easy to get lost in the world and carry on turning the pages. Bull also shows Jane’s time with her family and there is a lot of fun to be had in the dynamics between members, particularly baby Anna (made younger in this book than she would have been in real life) and Jane’s mother, Mrs Cassandra Austen.

What’s really lovely though, is that Bull has put so much work into the whole family that you’ll feel you know them more than you ever could have before. About half of Austen’s siblings are included in these fictionised forms, with James, Henry, and George paramount. (Sadly Cassandra isn’t here, but that is in keeping with her story and it allows for Bull to add an element of the epistolary novel to the book.)

George Austen is where it’s at. George is largely forgotten in our collective history, almost certainly because of what we would now call epilepsy, and the relative menial role he therefore played in society. (Case in point – there’s a Wikipedia link for every sibling, except him.) He plays a big role in the book, with Jane always thinking about him in context with what’s going on. Another character, Jane’s cousin, Eliza, who’s son has epilepsy also, is there to help her with her investigations and there is a lovely burgeoning romance with Henry Austen that’s based on the real history, too.

The writing is super, with most of the narrative in third person and Jane’s letters to Cassandra giving a first person perspective. Bull has used the format the late Deirdre Le Faye gave Austen’s letters in Jane Austen’s Letters which provides a lovely nod to study and research. Bull has also slipped her letters in the gaps between the letters that were burned by the real life Cassandra, and added her own nod to this unfortunate piece of history in the letters themselves.

I can’t end this review without mentioning Tom Lefroy; Bull has come to an evidence-based conclusion as to the nature of Austen’s relationship with him and explored it in her book. It is very well done and there are further choices made that increase her character’s agency.

There is a lot more that could be said about this book – it’s a treasure trove of parodies and references – but a review can only be so long. Miss Austen Investigates is one you certainly want to read if you are at all a Janeite, or/and if you like mysteries. It may even suit your general historical fiction fan, as well. It is an absolute delight, and joy or joys, book two is already on the horizon.

I received this book from the publisher in order to interview the author, which is something I set in motion.

Publisher: Michael Joseph (Penguin Random House)
Pages: 435
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-241-64208-5
First Published: 25th January 2024
Date Reviewed: 30th April 2024

A memoir and then some.

Publisher: Myriad Editions
Pages: 209
Type: Non-Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-1-912-40857-3
First Published: 14th May 2020
Date Reviewed: 13th May 2020
Rating: 5/5

Owing to the title of this book and in addition its contents (necessarily discussed below) I’m leaving my usual synopsis paragraph to this one sentence.

Royle’s third narrative book, his first narrative non-fiction (I say ‘narrative’ because the author has also written many academic works), does both what it says on the tin and what it implies on the tin if you were to look at the tin more closely. Mother: A Memoir is a mixture of straightforward memoir about the author’s mother but also a book about the concept of a mother – particularly, of course, his mother – and the concept both of writing a memoir and of memoir as a written form. It’s about writing. What this means in brief, is that this is a highly experimental, artistic, and language and linguistics related book that is nevertheless also a standard memoir.

But ‘standard’, in any quantity, doesn’t really explain this book. The only book that this one comes anywhere close to being similar to, at least to my admittedly limited knowledge, is the Royle’s previous book, An English Guide To Birdwatching. The book succeeds in being something very special: from the title, it’s a memoir of the author’s mother, Mrs Royle. (I’ll be referring to Nicholas Royle as ‘the author’ from now on to limit any confusion.) However as you read through it you might be forgiven for thinking that it’s only half about Mrs Royle, until you’ve read enough to discover that in actual fact it may be more of a memoir and more of a tribute to her than you could have imagined.

The book is also about a love of reading and literature in general; some of the best passages discuss times when the author and Mrs Royle conversed about texts, and there’s a lot of enjoyment to be found in the many references to novels and poems that are included without further comment. It can take a few pages to get into it, with its various versions of wordplay, but it’s very easy once you’ve got the hang of it. It’s very appealing and often quite fun.

The writing style is great; there are stylistic choices deliberately chosen and accounted for. The most obvious is in punctuation; the book is devoid of commas, there are none except in quotations, because, as the author says on page 25 (bracketed text mine):

But in writing about my mother I have been compelled to respond to what was quirky and singular about her own language. I have experienced a kind of unfettering. And stumbling into a new closeness to her in the very reaching out to shape words and syntax – idioms and ironies – in the wake of her voice and her laughter. In the remembered tricks and turns of her vivacity. I discovered I had to write – for better or worse – without commas. Things linked without notifications or signposts. Continuous but broken. Making more use of dashes. In sentences sometimes lacking main verbs. Or subjects. Discandying flux. Even if at the same time I cannot write a sentence without wanting to pay homage to my father’s lifelong Maxwellian [both Royle’s and his brother’s word for their father’s passion for the English language, based on his name] vigilance as Grammaticality Enforcement Agency.

(The extract shows the other effect of the lack of commas – the book is quite often very poetic. It also quite often changes the ‘natural’ emphasis in a sentence to highlight what is truly important in it.)

Perhaps – likely? – the author’s father wouldn’t have appreciated the way the book was written, which in the context of the family and the addition of Mr Royle’s letters to newspapers, is an interesting idea in itself. But there’s also an interesting question that this reviewer found herself asking – does the author’s focus on his mother’s language, given the father’s was the language deemed more correct (and thus important), question the traditional ideas of the relative values of men and women’s work and so on? (I should point out the author never says this, it’s just something I took away with me.) It certainly questions whether Mr Royle’s use of language is necessarily better (employed in Mrs Royle’s correspondence, his corrections in the letters she wrote are shown in the author’s discussion and reproduction of one of them).

This is perhaps the time to also note that Mrs Royle was a dedicated, passionate nurse who was well loved by many. Stories of her work are many, are lovely, and are spread throughout the book. (The narrative is not linear – the content is divided into chapters each on a theme – and scenes and elements of Mrs Royle’s life are returned to.) Quite a number of the photographs show Mrs Royle at various stages of her career.

It’s also perhaps the time to note that as much as the book is about Mrs Royle, it’s also about her husband, the author’s brother, who sadly passed away at a young age, and many other members of the family. There’s a lot to be said for the cover photograph showing the nuclear family. This book covers the affects of a mother on lives – the affect of Mrs Royle on the author, his father, his brother, and inevitably somewhat the whole family on who the author is.

To be sure, despite the small number of pages – just over 200 – Mother: A Memoir is a book you will probably want to take a bit of time with; it’s a good one to savour. That’s related to the major point to make – this book is brilliant.

I received this book for review.

Related Books

There was every possibility of reading a book that day.

Publisher: The Borough Press (HarperCollins)
Pages: 282
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-008-15057-0
First Published: 7th April 2016
Date Reviewed: 30th January 2020
Rating: 4/5

For this anthology, twenty-one women writers, some very well known, others less known but no less great, come together to tell various short stories inspired by Jane Eyre, in particular the famous line that comes towards the end.

This collection is pretty special. Not only are the stories on the same theme but on the same sub-theme, the same sentence. It’s true that many of them do not deal closely with the subject itself, but they do all revolve around it, just at different distances.

Reader, I Married Him explores the variety of ideas that accompany all our personal experiences of Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester’s union – some look at it in terms of love, just love; some look at it in terms of the thoughts that have been explored in our more modern times of Rochester’s personality and the difficulties with his ‘woman in the attic’, as well as in terms of Jane’s beliefs in herself, and her experiences in childhood. Others look at it in terms of how it might play out today, others in a modern day context in general. Some look overseas, in countries Charlotte Brontë had possibly never heard of, and some look at same sex romances that would have been completely off the table.

The variety is, both by its nature and simply by fact, the best aspect of this book. You get enough stories about Jane Eyre and other characters from the novel to be satisfied with the literary context and classical exploration, and then there are also enough stories that are close enough, too, in that way, which means that the others – far more loosely based – become an excellent palette cleanser and are highly interesting in themselves. (Because, suffice to say, if you’re picking up this book, you’re either picking it up for Charlotte Brontë or for the authors.)

Chevalier’s compiling of the stories has been done well; the contributing editor has arranged them in such a way that even if you tire of any one particular story, you’re still very interested to read the next. And this is no mean feat when there are twenty-one to get through.

No surprise – there are plenty of standouts. Standouts for you, yourself, are necessarily going to depend on what aspect of the exploration intrigues you most, so this paragraph may be more subjective. Standouts in terms of this review include Kirsty Gunn’s Dangerous Dog, a very loosely-based story that centres on a woman who comes across a group of teenagers hurting a pit bull and tries to show them it’s not a horrible creature; Joanna Briscoe’s To Hold, where a woman marries three men for different reasons but loves Mary; the titular Reader, I Married Him by Susan Hill, a fictional narrative concerning the marriage of Wallis Simpson and Edward VIII (though they are not named as such); Francine Prose’s The Mirror, which looks at Jane’s story as a repeating pattern in Rochester’s house; Elif Shafak’s A Migrating Bird, loosely-based and concerning a young Muslim student who falls for an effective exchange student who, friends say, will return home; Patricia Park’s The China From Buenos Aires, incredibly loosely based but fantastic, a tale of a young Korean Argentinian woman who moves to America and misses home; Salley Vickers’ Reader, She Married Me which is exactly what you would think it is; and Tracy Chevalier’s Dorset Gap, where a guy joins a literature student on a walk post-pub (public house) visit and tries to emulate her idea, of signing a book for passing ramblers, to poor effect.

Certainly a few of the above stories are better than the others in the paragraph but there isn’t a ‘bad’ one in the whole bunch; it’s simply the case that when you find the one or two that speak most strongly to you, be that in the literary context or otherwise, the others just can’t quite match up to them.

But that is to be expected; with the variety of debates on the various themes and topics in the original, some will speak more strongly to you than others. This is where the more average, more ‘plodding along’ periods of your reading will take place, when you want to be done with your current story so you can see what the next one is like. The book can also seem longer than it is because of the need to reset your expectations so often and so much, what with differences in closeness to Brontë’s work. Inevitably the work you have to do to understand them in context changes, too.

Reader, I Married Him does really need a reading of the source work behind it to get the most out of it; it doesn’t matter whether you read it once years ago or whether you’ve studied it over and over – you just need to have read it. And every reader will take away something different from it; interestingly, if we were to say that everyone’s opinions of the classic are branches of the same tree, then these stories and our opinions of them are further branches, from each of the first. It is effectively a secondary or tertiary source. And it’s a good one.

A Japanese classic.

Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo (Pushkin Press)
Pages: 181
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-1-782-27500-8
First Published: 1946; 5th December 2019 in English
Date Reviewed: 28th November 2019
Rating: 5/5

Original language: Japanese
Original title: 本陣殺人事件 (Honjin satsujin jiken – The Case Of The Honjin Murder)
Translated by: Louise Heal Kawai

In the early hours of the morning after a wedding, screams and the sound of a koto being plucked are heard from the bridal room. The couple have been killed and there are hand-prints, three fingered, on the walls. A mysterious man had arrived in the hours prior to the wedding.

I would venture to guess that you’ve never read a novel quite like this one. A book with similarities? Quite possibly – this a book influenced by others. But unless you’ve read Yokomizo before, it will still be new to you. The Honjin Murders is as original today as it likely was in 1946. Yokomizo creates a story within a story; the basic idea is that an unnamed writer – our narrator – is recounting a true-to-him story. It’s an interesting enough idea as it is, but Yokomizo’s use of real world classical and then-contemporary crime novels seems to not only influence the fiction and the fiction inside that fiction, but is quite possibly linked to Yokomizo’s own reading. The narrator employs these crime novels – Christie, Conan Doyle, among others – in various ways; they inform the way he writes but they also inform the crime he’s writing about, with the detective of this story within a story – Kosuke Kindaichi, who stars in a total of 77 later books – loving crime novels and able to thus recognise the books on the shelves of the victim’s family which every other inspector believes unimportant to the investigation.

The above is actually something you experience later on in your reading – the first thing you become aware of is the part of the story at which the narrator starts his tale. In a way unlike many others, Yokomizo, through his narrator, begins the tale at the effective end – you see the events that precede the murder, and then you hear about the discovery of the bodies. And then you get a diagram of the murder scene, answers about most of the people who are there at the time, even the suspected murderer is cited.

You’d be forgiven at this point in the story for wondering with what the narrator plans to fill the rest of the book, because the rest consists of the vast majority of the pages. What he does is answer almost all the W questions – ‘where’, ‘what’, ‘who’, and some of the ‘how’ – but leaves out the rest of the ‘how’, a bit of the ‘who’, and all of the ‘why’. This is a whydunnit more than any ‘who’; the ‘why’ is everything here, it carries the story, and it works incredibly well.

The ‘why’ is answered with aplomb, even if the summing up of all the detective’s discoveries is done at the end in one big telling scene. Some of it forms a reminder of history, earlier than the 1930s setting – to note anything further than that would spoil the story. This is a book that has aged, but aged rather well, and the storytelling is such that it’ll likely remain famous for a long time.

The Honjin Murders is an interesting one. It doesn’t seem like a page turner, but you’ll finish it quickly. It doesn’t seem like there are going to be red herrings, and why, anyway, would you read a book when almost all the answers are given straight away? But it will continue to surprise you. (And given everything mentioned so far, the idea of the initially confused reader was likely in Yokomizo’s plan all along.) If you want a crime novel where the (real life) author’s sleuthing exceeds the fictional detective’s, read this book. It is fantastic.

I received this book for review.