Millennium hall (Scott) 214

Millennium Hall by Sarah Scott has been on my Amazon wishlist since the beginning of the year; at the Bodleian where I work, readers occasionally order up Virago Modern Classics from the bookstacks for their work and this was one that passed through my hands. The synopsis looked interesting at the time, so I added it to the list, and finally bought myself a 1p copy the other week. What an intriguing book it turned out to be! My first impression was that the language was incredibly dated - things were "agreeable" - but then I realised that the book itself was written in 1762, and whilst the language was dated, the ideas in it were incredibly forward thinking for its time. Essentially, it is a book suggesting alternatives to marriage for women. Millennium hall as the blurb says "is an elegant mansion, surrounded by fragrant pastures and hedgerows of hyacinths and primroses", and it forms the home for a utopian community or co-operative inhabited by six very different women who have come together to live and utilise each other's support rather than relying on family or men. The book starts by describing the hall, from the point of view of a visitor, and then relates the tales of the women who have come to live there.

Sarah Scott was apparently briefly married and then spent the rest of her life living in Bath with a friend (I wondered to what extent they were friends or whether their relationship went deeper), so the book obviously draws on her own experiences and life values. It is interesting to note that while there is sex in the novel, it is only ever in a negative form, such as rape or merely for procreation which suggests that Scott had had a somewhat negative experience of marriage.

This book is very different from many of the VMCs that I have read, and whilst not a hugely gripping story is one that I would nonetheless rate extremely highly for its interesting ideas and values.

It's just been published once, in an original green edition. There are other 1p copies on Amazon, so go and buy them!

Welcome Strangers

Hot on the heels of reading the first two volumes of Mary Hocking's trilogy, comes the third book, Welcome Strangers, which I read almost as soon as it turned up from Amazon. I'm glad that I didn't resist buying it as it was kind of nice to be able to read the whole trilogy in pretty much one go. I found this one different in tone to the other volumes. The war has now ended and people have returned home and are trying to rebuild their lives. The eldest and youngest sisters Claire and Louise have their families, but Alice is trying to work out what she really wants to do after being a Wren. Her mother has remarried after her father's death, and the novel centres much more on Alice, who I found the most interesting character in the earlier books. The book also has much more happening in it with quite an exciting set of events towards the end. I don't have the book with me at the moment which is why I can't write a better review - but I would highly recommend this trilogy of books and have ordered some more books (sadly not Viragoes) by Mary Hocking from the library store to read.

The loved and the envied (Bagnold)

I find Enid Bagnold a bit of a mixed bag - I loved The happy foreigner, but was a bit underwhelmed by The Squire, but in retrospect I liked it more than I thought at first and than I wrote in my blog post about it. Unfortunately, The loved and the envied I did not like as much as either of those (although I wonder if it will grow on me in retrospect too); there were bits which I enjoyed very much, but at the same time I found the characters difficult to identify with.

The loved and the envied tells the story of Lady Ruby Maclean, looking back on her life aged 53, and coming to terms with old age. It's apparently partly based on the life of Lady Diana Cooper (the wife of Duff, the politician), with whom Enid Bagnold was friendly, and her coterie of companions who are also approaching old age (remember - while 53 may seem young now, the book was written in 1951) but I found the way that the book jumped around between different parts of her life, somewhat disjointed.

It's just been published the once, in an original green cover, and the picture on the front is of Lady Diana Cooper. So, that's another author crossed off the list! (And as for a progress update, if you're interested, I'm up to 319 out of 553, so that's 234 more to go - about 4 years worth if I read one a week...)

Good daughters (Hocking) 340, its sequel Indifferent heroes (341) (and a mention of 352)

I have had Mary Hocking's Indifferent heroes on my VMC TBR for quite a while; I was keen to read it, having very much enjoyed her book A particular place (pre VMC blogging, so I will share the pictures of that cover at the end of this post too!). However, it was the second book in a trilogy, and I wanted to read them in order. I had not spotted it in a bookshop, I was pretty sure that I would enjoy it though, so, having had a run of not especially riveting VMCs, I bit the bullet and bought the first volume from Amazon marketplace (too bad that volume 3 is quite expensive in a Virago edition). It was definitely worth breaking my policy of trying to stick to only acquiring VMCs that I see in the shops as I really enjoyed it, and that has in turn reinvigorated my VMC reading which felt like I was stuck with only the ones that I didn't especially want to read left - I am quite sure that as I still have a good third of the list to work my way through there must be some other gems out there!

Good daughters tells the story of the Fairley sisters, Louise, Alice and Claire, who live in London with their methodist father Stanley and mother Judith. The book starts in 1933 and as time passes, obviously the family become affected by the changing historical situation, so the book is interesting from that point of view. But what I liked was the way that it depicted three interesting young women and their lives, and particularly the constraints imposed on them by their religious upbringings. It was somewhat reminiscent of Noel Streatfeild's Vicarage Family.

In Indifferent Heroes, the story carries on. The Second World War has arrived, dramatically changing the girls lives. I thought this was an excellent read as the level of historical detail and interest was spot on, and the different strands of story worked incredibly well.

Having read the first two volumes in quick succession I couldn't resist ordering the third, Welcome Strangers, and I hope that it turns up soon.

Onto the covers - the trilogy was published in the italicised green format, whilst A Particular Place has one of the original green editions.

117 Days (First)

117 Days by Ruth First was the last new VMC to be published in 2010; I'm afraid it somewhat slipped the net in me mentioning it (mainly because it hadn't been mentioned on the list that I had seen earlier in the year, so when I arrived I did not notice that it was a VMC which I feel bad about but it was Christmas and I was opening lots of other packages!). When I did eventually get to it, I found it an absolutely fascinating little book.

117 Days refers to the 117 days of imprisonment that Ruth First underwent in 1963 for her involvement in the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. At the time, there was a law stating that people could not be held for more than 90 days, as the title illustrates, it was very easy for the state to get around that. She was arrested without warrant, or trial, and held in solitary confinement. When she was released after 90 days, she was almost immediately re-arrested (she was making a telephone call to her family). The book gives a pretty good insight into Ruth's experiences and what it was like to undergo life in a cell, the lack of space, the monotony - she describes how the highlight of each day was making a mark on the wall to indicate the passage of time, but how this could at the most take five minutes. She was eventually released, and manage to escape in 1964.

The book contains an introduction by her daughter, who happens to be the novelist Gillian Slovo, whose books I have read and enjoyed.

Just the one modern cover for this title, it doesn't look especially like a VMC, which may have been another reason why I missed it. But I see from Amazon that it is also available as a Kindle edition which is exciting (even though I do not own one and do not want to own one, it is nice to see that it is being made available to people who do like these devices!)

Salem Chapel (Oliphant)

Having read The mystery of Mrs Blencarrow by Mrs Oliphant, recently republished by Persephone books, over Christmas, I felt moved to grab one of her books from the Virago Modern Classics TBR pile. I had enjoyed Mystery, but had felt that perhaps the novella was not quite suited to Mrs Oliphant. Both Salem Chapel and Miss Marjoribanks which I also owned were quite substantial works so quite different. They are part of the "Carlingford Chronicles", which begin with The Rector and The Doctor's Family; I didn't have too much of a problem starting with the second book in the sequence, although I am wondering whether the first book might provide a better introduction to the characters. Likened to Anthony Trollope's Barchester books, the books are set in a small town in the nineteenth century and relay the lives of the characters there.

Salem Chapel is a tale devoted to the arrival of a new minister, Arthur Vincent, who comes to take charge of the Dissenting Chapel in Carlingford, and tells of his involvement with the other townspeople. Life is not as he expects it to be - he finds himself obliged to attend tea parties to say prayers at their end and seems to spend more time involved in the workings of society than preparing his sermon.

If I'm honest, Salem Chapel did not really grab me, and I hope that I will have more success with the other volumes in the series (perhaps I should go back to The rector?). It's just been published the once by Virago with an original green cover.

Bid me to live (H.D.) 158

Happy New Year! One of my New Year's resolutions is to get the VVV back on track, which has been sporadic over the last few months, and aim to read at least 1 VMC a week AND write it up (I still have two un-blogged titles from last year to do).

So, without further ado, I have spent the second day of 2011 (how strange it feels to type that) reading Bid me to live by H.D. My fiance immediately asked what H.D. stood for, so I need to begin by explaining that it was the pen name for the poet Hilda Doolittle.

This book needs setting in context, because as the blurb on the back, the introduction, and afterword by her daughter explain, the book is profoundly autobiographical, to the extent that it is only the names which have been changed.

The book tells the story of Julia Ashton, who is H.D., who in 1917 lives in London. Her husband Rafe is involved in the war and is a transient character coming and going in the narrative. She has just lost her baby. Julia is involved with the Bloomsbury world, and other "characters" in the novel include the DH Lawrences, Cecil Grey, Ezra Pound). Eventually she escapes London for Cornwall.

I struggled through this; the synopsis appealed to me - wartime setting, interesting characters/background, my beloved Cornwall, but I just found it disjointed and difficult to read and never really got to grips with Julia.

H.D. has written one other VMC - Her - which I picked up in Oxfam on the 31st and which was what prompted me to read Bid me to live. According to her page on wikipedia though, she was far more prolific than her VMC output might suggest with a number of collections of poetry and prose.

This one has just been published once by Virago, in an original green edition.