The definitive caution for any wannabe time traveller.

Publisher: Persephone Books
Pages: 99
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-9534780-4-0
First Published: 1953
Date Reviewed: 27th February 2011
Rating: 4.5/5

Melanie is recovering after months of suffering Tuberculosis. She is much better, but when she moves out of the bedroom to sit on the chaise-longue she bought from an antique shop, she wakes up to find herself in the body of a very sick woman in the Victorian times.

The Victorian Chaise-Longue is a rather weird book in the sense that it is confusing and unsettling. It is not really the horror as described when it was first published, but there are some horrific moments in it.

You may come to the table thinking that the book revolves around doctors and medical treatment, I certainly thought that the bad elements would include Melanie being subjected to medical procedures that we have long since abandoned, but Laski makes the issue very simple.

Melanie’s problem is that she doesn’t know why she’s back in time, what the circumstances of the person whose body she inhabits is (except that they are sick), and that she is unable to articulate herself because of the limitations of the body. Melanie is in the body of one Milly Baines, a young woman who of course has no idea of the concept of things we take for granted, for example aeroplanes. Melanie can think about telling the Victorians about aeroplanes but she cannot say the word because it doesn’t exist in the time she is in. The discovery of what Melanie can and cannot do is perhaps the most interesting aspect of the book because it involves many different things, not just speech.

As well as the above-mentioned frustration, Melanie spends a lot of time trying to work out exactly why and how she got to the past. The how may be obvious, but the why is not. In fact because the reader’s knowledge is no more than Melanie’s the frustration crosses over from fiction to reality – part of the genius of this novel is that the reader never has more or less comprehension than the character. The topics covered are relevant today in much the same way as in Melanie’s time – the book was written in the 1950’s and the concepts explored match our own current way of thinking so today’s reader can understand the differences between Melanie’s life and Milly’s perfectly.

One topic I’d like to highlight is spiritual ecstasy, because Laski’s writing on it really got me thinking. Melanie likens the feeling of ecstasy after she has had sex to the feeling one has when in deep prayer. The two situations may be poles apart, but you can see where her theory lies in reference to spiritual feeling. I noted down the following quote:

It is the ecstasy that is to be feared, she said with shuddering assurance, it is a separation and a severance from reality and time, and it is not safe. The only thing that is safe is to feel only a little, hold tight to time, and never let anything sweep you away as I have been swept – and perhaps that is how, only how I can be swept back.

From this quote one can understand not just Melanie’s thoughts but also their progression as she moves from one idea to the next. It would be useful for me to say at this point that prior to the switch Melanie was bubbly and comes across as someone who acts on impulse. Thus one can see just how confused her mind becomes as she begins to question the intimate details of who she is and how it might relate to the switch.

There are other concepts that I haven’t covered because I can’t really tell you everything. Suffice to say that, like Melanie, the reader must dissect every last bit of information available.

The Victorian Chaise-Longue is a brilliant little snippet of writing that will leave you wondering for days. The page count may be small but the legacy is huge. It’s definitely made me think twice about wanting to explore the past first-hand.

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Where a sound story is hindered by its length.

Publisher: (Numerous, but I’d wager Vintage would be a good one)
Pages: N/A
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: N/A
First Published: 1853
Date Reviewed: 18th February 2011
Rating: 3.5/5

Lucy Snowe leads a mundane life, looking after other people and staying with friends. When the chance to move to France presents itself, she takes it on impulse. An encounter with a fellow compatriot leads her to employment as an English teacher in the town of Villette. Lucy’s life at once goes back to monotony but it appears that one teacher may be interested in her, even if the interest seems negative.

On the whole, Villette isn’t a bad book. The story is good, and although not up to the standard of Jane Eyre, it is nevertheless enjoyable. The characters are interesting and there is a similar variety of genres used throughout, including a small mystery.

Apart from the obvious parallels that come from them sharing a creator, Lucy Snowe couldn’t be more different to Jane Eyre. Lucy, too, addresses the reader in that beautiful way Charlotte applies to her writing, drawing them into the fold as intimately as a friend, but she has none of the strengths of her predecessor. Lucy is always saying that her life is dull and thus it becomes very irritating when she turns down offers of, for example, a dance, which would make her more interesting – and then later reasserts her position as a person living a mundane existence. Lucy has every opportunity to improve herself but for most of the book she does not take it.

Unfortunately this means that the psychology Charlotte uses – the way she has Lucy often spending ages wondering on her life – doesn’t quite make the impact it should. To speak personally, I found myself happy that Lucy had learned something, thinking she would remember it for next time, and finding my hopes dashed again and again. Lucy is her own worse enemy and it is thanks to the goodness of other people that she develops later on. If left to her own devices entirely she surely would never have got anywhere.

Charlotte writes about her characters in a way unique to her. Maybe it’s in part because the length of her books allows for good development, but it’s more just the way she appropriates time. The best way to explain this would be to provide you with a quotation:

A constant crusade against the “amour-propre” of every human being but himself, was the crochet of this able, but fiery and grasping little man. He had a strong relish for public representation in his own person, but an extreme abhorrence of the like display in any other. He quelled, he kept down when he could; and when he could not, he fumed like a bottled storm.

The array of difference between all the characters is quite something. Lucy spends a lot of time thinking and shying away, whereas most of her acquaintances make nothing of sharing their feelings with everyone. A particularly fantastic character, for her distinct oppositeness to Lucy, is Ginevra Fanshawe, a girl at once annoying and yet so full of life that the reader cannot but love her as the antidote to a dull heroine.

There is a romantic element to the plot, for the most part subtle, one can never be sure if it will develop or not. And, as seems to be the norm with Victorian writers, there are a great many coincidences that make the story unfortunately less realistic.

Now there are three major bones of contention I must deal with. The first I will discuss briefly because otherwise I could end up talking on it at length.

Charlotte’s Protestantism. It becomes impossible to separate a personality from the book they have written when a lot of the work is clearly a lecture. Lucy is so vehemently against Catholicism that at times it makes the book impossible. Villette can come across as a sermon, and in suggesting it is a sermon I look to Charlotte’s situation as the daughter of a clergyman as my evidence – she would know well how to word her feelings. The hatred is just too much, Lucy goes on about how her “ears burned” as she was “forced” to listen to stories of the saints, and the silly thing about it is that in doing so and in going on about it frequently, Charlotte produces the opposite effect – indeed I felt sorry for those she scorned – and not only that, but she makes her Catholic characters, through their lesser strength of feeling for their opposites, or at least for the lesser amount of time afforded to them, the preferred group of people. Perhaps, then, it is in realisation of this, in realisation of the fact that Catholics could well be among the number of her readers, that makes Charlotte’s joining of the denominations later on through her characters, important.

The application of French. In my review of Jane Eyre I said that one could get by with a very basic knowledge of the French language; in Villette whole paragraphs are written in it and I presume that even an intermediate knowledge would not suffice. It’s odd really because Charlotte switches back and forth, during conversations, between English and French, where she could have just used English. Her method renders her work impossible to read in its entirely without knowledge of French, and therefore unless you possess it you will likely find yourself, as I did, skipping over large chunks of text, much of which it’s obvious is important to know for a clear understanding of the characters.

The last thing is the length of the book. The length is what makes it so dreary a read because there are chapters upon chapters of needless content, and although it effectively expresses Lucy’s mundane life, it makes a desire to read the book difficult to kindle for any long periods of time. The last third is very worthy of heralding, and the last few chapters are magnificent, the characters introduced interesting, but, because the wait for it is so long, that wait puts a damper on the novel in its entirety. It may have suited Charlotte to describe at length a profession which she had first-hand experience of, but for the monotonous routine she should have thought twice about how much she said.

I reckon that with a quick look at the back-story, one could easily skip the first half or so of the book. Villette may tie up it’s subplots well and have a brilliant cast of characters, but for the time it takes it’s not a patch on Jane Eyre.

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A simple story with a surprisingly poignant ending, this little book is the definition of perfection.

Publisher: Persephone Books
Pages: 115
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-1-906462-07-9
First Published: 1932
Date Reviewed: 30th January 2011
Rating: 5/5

Dolly is getting married today and the family have arrived to be there. But Dolly’s not sure about the day’s events, and, neither it seems, is someone else.

Cheerful Weather For The Wedding was my first Persephone book, I am happy to say I picked it out myself from their fabulous little shop in London from the piles of books, not knowing what it was about but being intrigued by the title. I just knew that it was “the one”, and that I should buy it as my second choice besides The Victorian Chaise-Longue, which was the book I visited the shop for. Be sure that I will write a post on the shop itself later.

I actually started the first several pages of the book twice, once on the day I bought it, and then again on the day I devoted a couple of hours to read and finish it, because the beginning is slow. I soon found out that I had wasted time by starting it twice as after the initial introduction, Strachey quickly dives into the comedy.

“We heard about the practices of the Minoan Islanders upon reaching the age of puberty at the last one.” He started snapping up his cutlet.
“Oh really? How terribly interesting!” said Kitty.
“Yes, very. Like to hear about them?” offered Joseph.
“Kitty, dear child! Kitty! Kitty! Open the window a trifle at the top, will you! The air gets so terribly stuffy in here always!” cried out Mrs. Thatcham very loudly.

The beauty of the novella is that an author can deliver a story quickly without having to worry about detailing the characters or their backgrounds. This is exactly what Strachey does and it provides her with ample time to use in making the reader laugh. The book is hilarious. Strachey introduces us to a plethora of characters that are very individual and ridiculous whilst at the same time being realistic. To mention just a few, there is the elder brother who is obsessed about his younger brother’s sock choice (this is technically bullying but the younger child stands up for himself and it’s the “I’m-better-than-you” nature of children that makes it funny), the mother who is a little crazy and ever forgetful, and the cousin who speaks nonsense.

The company soon understood that the young man was attacked by a fit of the giggles, and all looked surprised; excepting Evelyn, to whom giggles and laughter were as water is to a fish. And so, although not understanding very exactly what was the matter, she joined in now with Joseph immediately.

What’s interesting is that there is no main character. You could say that Dolly is the main character, but it’s more a case of her being the reason – when it comes to the amount of time spent on her there is just as much as there is the group of characters downstairs. The book may (basically) be about her and the climax may be about her, but I personally found her memorable for being different, more serious than the rest.

Strachey wrote a book that takes so little time to read and yet it kept me completely enthralled and interested. It’s a wonderful thing that Persephone Books decided to publish it and easy to see why it is now one of their most-sought after novellas. I cannot recommend it enough.

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If you aim high while staying low, there may be someone in the middle waiting for you to fall.

Publisher: Goldman House
Pages: 369
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-9815627-0-4
First Published: 2008
Date Reviewed: 10th November 2010
Rating: 4/5

Successful African-American men are being killed in the city and at first it seems that they are linked only by their wealth and status; but as lawyer Vernetta and her friends begin to discover there may be a well-kept secret that binds the men together. And for the women living with the men, the cost can sometimes be immense.

I’ve no qualms about saying that except for a brief foray, at age twelve and of only a few pages, I’m clueless when it comes to crime fiction. The furthest I’ve ever come is Philip Pullman’s Sally Lockhart Quartet, and those are more about the mystery and suspense than the crime. So in the case of this book I’ve little to compare it to and thus my opinions may not be sound, but they are true, and this book has confirmed something I already knew – reading about law firms can be incredibly interesting.

Samuels Young is extremely bold to have broached the subject she does because if you become angry at what seems to be the message at any given time, and stop reading it, you could possibly go away with a bad impression that isn’t warranted. It takes some time for all of the moral teachings to be discussed and I don’t think it would be spoiling the book to say that Samuels Young is not condemning homosexuality. The subject is viewed from many different angles and she allows each their own say, effectively providing an unbiased account of not just sexuality but modern lifestyle as a whole.

If you flick through this book before reading you may be shocked by the number of chapters, which runs over 100. But this is just part of the overall good structure of the book. Rarely are chapters more than three pages long and this means that the story is constantly moving back and forth between different characters and situations. The narrative is easy to fly through because although it may not be a thriller, the business of crime solving has been written to be fascinating and the constant changes in scenery mean there is never a dull moment. The shortness of chapters adds to this. The book may be as long as your average favourite, but the writing style makes it a much quicker read, even if you’re not devoting many hours per sitting.

Samuels Young has brought her own working knowledge of the world of the attorney to the table, and it shows. There is so much detail here that it is easy to become engrossed, but she always includes enough information about the life of her characters away from their jobs so that the book never becomes bogged down. In addition she relies little on law jargon making this an ideal candidate for someone wanting to read a law novel while knowing nothing about the subject.

“You think gynaecologists ever get tired of staring between a woman’s legs?” He inspected J.C.’s exposed thigh through the slit in her skirt.
“I don’t know, Gerald. You ever get tired of being such an asshole?”

There are quite a few characters in the book, and while the reader is given a bit of their background, again Samuels Young doesn’t overdo it, while it must be said that this is the third book to feature Vernetta and her friends so maybe that’s why (I’ve not read the others). The plot is in the driver’s seat so that although the characters are interesting they aren’t the reason you turn the pages. The only thing that is perhaps dispiriting here is Samuels Young’s approach to explaining a character’s personality by detailing their food and drink choices. Reading it, it feels as though you should be gaining something from it, but there isn’t anything to be had.

The other characters are great, and I’d put a spotlight on all of them, but it’s Special who runs the show for being the catalyst for so many reasons. She isn’t actually given more space in the book than the rest, but her dealings are so completely different to them and her manner too that it’s likely her you’ll remember most. The boyfriends are also great and easy to imagine. While they might not intentionally be humorous their place in the story, firmly outside lawyer proceedings, means that they bring a certain element of enjoyment to the book that wouldn’t have existed otherwise. Where the women are naturally busy and uptight because of the lawsuits, the men are laid back and the reason you get to see the other sides of the ladies. They are a very good plot device.

In lure of the accessibility of the book regarding law, it might also be useful to note that this book is fully accessible as a whole. People unfamiliar with African-American slang should find no problems when reading this book.

Having read Murder On The Down Low I can see why Samuels Young wished to tap into a community that isn’t being included in the genre she loves. You see so many movies where solving a crime involves the black community but very rarely does the plot allow for the characters to be more than two-dimensional except for the occasional main character who is the one to lead the investigation into the neighbourhood. Samuels Young presents the community as an interesting backdrop to a story, the people fully included. And she shows that when it comes down to it the differences that come from culture aren’t big and thus it’s a pity that there isn’t more fiction like the work she produces.

He tried to smile, but she could tell his lips weren’t used to moving in that direction.

If you can solve the mystery I congratulate you, because it’s been well hidden. Samuels Young never invites you to guess and interestingly, although you may want to, there is never the feeling that you should. These people are more than capable of solving it while you make your way through the pages.

Murder On The Down Low makes a field of shells from a single bullet and weaves a mile from a few yards. It may not be worth the time Special puts into it, but it’s worth yours.

I received this book for review from the author thanks to Pump Up Your Book.

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I know, I know, I know. I’ve thrown away my – hopefully good – taste in books and settled for a trashy novel. I’m no longer a Mills & Boon virgin.

Publisher: Mills & Boon
Pages: 138
ISBN: 978-1-408-90710-8
First Published: 2009
Date Reviewed: 4th November 2010
Rating: 2.5/5

When I was a young teenager, and asked an adult about Mills & Boon, a publisher I’d heard of, the response was less than positive. I was told that they produced the worst books, riddled with sex, and were completely pointless. I took it to heart, but ever since I’ve been meaning to rebel, because the opinion had been so awful I just had to see what was so bad, and having a laugh at a cheesy book sounded a fun idea.

So when I found out that Mills & Boon were providing free ebook downloads of some of their titles I acted the wanton lass and downloaded them all so that I’d have a number of novels to choose from. I wanted the most sex-laden book possible without breaking the barrier into full-on erotica. Downloading was good, because no way in heck was I going to walk up to a counter in a bookshop with a seedy-looking book in tow.

Out of the 12 I chose to read Hunter’s book, lured by the bright cover image (different to the one shown in this review). It sounded the least dodgy and relatively cheese-free. The plot was thus:

Gabrielle left France unwillingly when she was caught kissing her mother’s boss’s son (the heir to his family’s castle and wine industry). Her mother, the housekeeper, believed Gabrielle’s association with a man of a far higher social class unbecoming. But now Gabrielle is back, and she never had managed to get over her feelings for Luc. It’s quite possible that he never got over her either.

I was very surprised that it took so long to get to the sex. There I was expecting it soon and expecting it rampant and instead by page 50 Hunter was still trundling along detailing vineyards and the wine business. I went to make a coffee. Whether this is usual for the genre I have no idea, but I did start to wonder if this would be any “worse” than an Elizabeth Chadwick novel, where the sex is passionate but the history equally important. When the sex did finally arrive it was steamy, and actually not all that different to a regular fiction book. There was little to cringe at and the basis of the relationship was an all-consuming and true love.

Which brings me to the writing; it was quite good. Again I was surprised, and very happy to find no spelling mistakes whatsoever, which is more than can be said for most mainstream fiction. The plot was well developed and there was plenty of information about what goes on backstage in the wine industry (and no, I’m not meaning sex).

There were a good few issues covered; one that was explored in detail was the relationship between Gabrielle and her mother. The social standing of the people didn’t make me feel separated from the story; it was simply that they just happened to have money. The characters were solid and although there wasn’t sufficient time to really get to know who they were, the details were ample enough.

So yes, I’ve been shocked at my foray into this genre, but I’m aware that my previous opinions gained from hearsay may have been too harsh anyway. Maybe I didn’t really know what Mills & Boon were about.

The cover of my copy was scandalous but in fact this is a story of people who could never love anyone else the way they love each other. I wouldn’t recommend it as something you should make a point of reading, but if you happen to come across it and have nothing else to do I’d say it’s not such a terrible use of time.

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