Goodbye to All That

Finished August 9

Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves

I've had this book for a while and picked it up to meet a reading challenge. This memoir was first published in 1929 and was very controversial for its honest portrayal of the realities of World War I and of the author's personal life. My copy has an epilogue from 1957 that gives an brief overview of his life since then. The epilogue had an interesting Canadian connection as he mentions an officer he'd met during the war was now a Canadian politician. It was just after this was written that Pearson became leader of the Liberal party and later, our 14th prime minister. 

Graves work talks about his early life and growing up in Wales, with influences from his father's Irish side of the family and his mother's German side of the family. The main portion of the book covers his World War I experiences, and they are written almost dispassionately, telling of the horrors of being on the front lines, the violence and conditions of war, and of the friendships formed. Graves had many friends who were also writers and poets, and one of them that appears repeatedly is Siegfried Sassoon, another officer who had some German ancestry. The realities of the war are sometimes hard to read, and unfathomable for me to understand how anyone could have lived through it without psychological damage. 

He also talks about his marriage to Nancy Nicholson, who he first met in April 1916 at a friend's house he visited and who he corresponded with after that. She was just sixteen at the time, and they married when she was eighteen and he was twenty-two. Nancy was an artist and an ardent feminist who wanted a full life. I was surprised to see what an equal marriage it was, with them sharing the parenting of their four children, and him doing the cooking for the household. They struggled financially, with his writing providing their main income. They did go to Cairo for a year where he taught at a university, but he didn't enjoy it and they didn't fit into the expatriate society well. He had both a brother and sister in Cairo at the time, and while they were welcoming, particularly his sister, they didn't have the same outlook on life. 

The title of the book represents his feeling at the end of the time he was writing about. When his marriage to Nancy ended, he left England and lived in Majorca (except for the years of World War II, where he did return to England)

I am really glad I read this book as it offers a glimpse into personal experiences at the time.

The Deepest Night

Finished June 27
The Deepest Night by Shana Abe

This is the second book in the series that started with The Sweetest Dark. It is 1915 and Lora Jones is a scholarship student at Iverson, a prestigious boarding school for upper class young ladies housed in an old castle on England's southern coast. Lora grew up in an orphanage, and spent some time in a mental institution as well due to the music that she hears due to her special abilities. In the first book in the series, Lora discovered that she wasn't an ordinary human girl, but one that could change into a dragon. Here, she is recovering from injuries she received then, and has a new mission, to rescue Aubrey the eldest son of her benefactor, who is in a POW prison in Austria.
To help her, she has only the younger son of her benefactor, Armand, a young man who has fallen in love with her although her love is elsewhere. Armand does what he can to protect Lora, whether at the school, or outside of it. Even sometimes from his own father. And Lora does what she can to protect Armand, even as he begins to go through the changes that will bring him into his own dragon transformation.
I enjoyed the first book and always meant to follow up on the series, and am glad that I did. A lot of the plot here has to do with social classes, but there is also World War One which figures strongly in the book. Lora has her baggage from the past, and she has challenges in the present with not only the mission that the stars have for her now, but also with some of the girls that she goes to school with and with the social situation that she finds herself in. I really liked her as a character, and how she developed over the course of the book.
Looking forward to reading the third one

More Than a Lover

Finished August 18
More Than a Lover by Ann Lethbridge

This Edwardian romance has young Caroline Falkner managing a home for reformed prostitutes. The home is owned by her friend and patron Merry Tonbridge and her husband Charles. Caroline has portrayed herself as the widow of a soldier, but the truth is more embarrassing. She was wooed by a young officer just as she was coming to be a marriageable age, and then left pregnant when he went to war never to return. Both his parents and hers turned their backs on her and she moved forward as best she could to make a life for her and her child Tommy.
Tommy is around five and adventurous and confident, but Caroline guards the truth about his father closely, and is worried that his father's parents would try to take him from her. When the Tonbridges hire Bladen Read, illegitimate son of an earl and a man recently discharged from the army to protect Caroline on her journey from London back to the home, and then to provide protection at the home against those who would like it to fail, she is uncertain. She doesn't want to be reminded of Tommy's father, but she is drawn to this man, who has lost his arm in the country's service.
Read is also torn. He thought Caroline beautiful when he saw her being courted years before and still admires her. But he has always felt the status of his birth to be a mark against himself, and has a reputation as a ladies man.
The drama between the two main characters is well set, and we are introduced to the society of the times, including the ways of the upper class. A love story between two passionate people each with something that makes them wary.

The Web and the Wing

Finished July 26
The Web and the Wing by Teresa Raftery

This novel covers the time period from November 11, 1918 to the late days of 1930, and is the first book in a planned trilogy. The story begins in the village of Ardleagh in Lancashire, where the Earl of Eglinton and his family are returning following the was. The eldest son was killed, and James is now the one who will inherit the title, a development that will mean that his father will determine a different course of study for him than James wants for himself.
Claire has returned to the estate to help out, after working as a teacher in the village recently. She was taken in years before by her aunt Anna when Claire's father was killed in a mine accident, and her mother having died when she was just a toddler.
Over the years Claire and James had been playmates, Claire introducing James to the unstructured play of village children and a world his privileged upbringing wouldn't have normally exposed him to. The two also became close in other ways and feelings have developed between them, feelings that Claire knows can lead nowhere due to their difference in class. She determines to find herself a life of her own elsewhere and a chance encounter provides her an opportunity that will lead her farther than she thought.
The Earl's sister Amelia married a Spanish nobleman, and has a daughter Leonora a few years younger than James, and Leonora is allowed to attend boarding school in England and have her social debut there.
Leonora's father, Alva, Duke of Arradova, has a close friend, Raimundo de Conde, a general in the Army. As Spain sinks into political turmoil, Alva and Raimundo are involved and Leonora's future is being determined by her father.
As the plot moves the characters from Lancashire to London, Cordoba to Biarritz, Paris to Berlin, we see the lives of these three young people develop. We also see the political history that leads to the Spanish Civil War and World War II developing.
This is a novel that ties in the personal stories of these characters to history in a very real way. I will be looking forward to the continuation of their stories.

The Uninvited Guests

Finished April 21
The Uninvited Guests by Sadie Jones

Wow, a great book, but totally unexpected (like the guests).
Its starts off as a drawing room comedy as the man of the house, resented by his stepchildren, goes off to try to obtain funding to save the house from creditors.
After he is gone things begin to happen. The day is Emerald's 20th birthday and the family and small staff prepare for a party as two out of town guests are expected. Much cleaning, cooking, etc is done.
When the guests arrive, so too do others, the apparent survivors of a terrible railway accident. They are disheveled and wanting assistance. The family bundles them into a room and ignores them for a time, but as the evening goes on, they become more insistent and can't be confined.
Another uninvited guest shows up that appears to be higher class, but he insinuates himself into the party and instigates unpleasant happenings.
A tale set in the early twentieth century, of class and manners that defies description. The host family is unusual and grows more so as the book goes on. With interesting characters and a remarkable plot, this is another success for Sadie Jones.

In-depth Fiction

Finished May 31
The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt
This is a long book (over 600 pages) and it took me quite a while to get "into" it. The book follows a large number of characters, beginning with Olive Wellwood, an author of fairytales, and her family, and continuing on with relations, friends (both English and German), and the children resulting from all of these people. The book begins in 1895 and ends with the end of World War One. While there is a strong focus on the children of the different families and their development and interaction, we also see how this development affects the adults.
There is a lot of information around fairy tales, both German and English and their history and their popularity during this time period that I found very interesting. Another theme that came out related to the fairy tales was puppetry, particularly that of German puppet traditions.
Pottery was another strong theme that arose here with two characters being gifted in this area. There were also other writers and producers of plays that had lesser roles in the book.
With all these creative characters, a strong them for me was the genius of the artist, both physical and mental. The temperment of the artist to engross themselves in their work at the expense of those around them and the public success they valued less than their own feelings of accomplishment.
Another strong theme here was one of politics. There was a lot going on politically during this time period, including the Fabians, women's suffrage, labour union actions, anarchists, and socialism. We get glimpses into all of these within this novel and see how politics can fill the needs of some individuals.
While the events of World War One are only a small section of this novel, I felt that they were done very well, and I liked how the ending brought some interesting outcomes for the characters.
As I said, it took a while to enjoy this novel and get drawn in, but by the end I was thoroughly enjoying it and I learned so much besides.
After reading I noted a great interview with the author by one of the Dewey Divas: http://deweydivas.blogspot.com/2009/05/interview-with-s-byatt-on-her-new-novel.html
I really found this interesting after reading the novel.