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aslant27. Trio, by Dorothy Baker.
This was a follow up read since I liked Baker's Cassandra at the Wedding (book review #26) and the lesson here is...stick with the ones that NYBR has seen fit to reissue. Trio has not been reissued. It is not that great. I was interested in this one because it was the one she wrote after her Guggenheim fellowship, and it was considered "too scandalous for the times" and in its later play form was closed due to protests. The covert lesbian relationship at the heart of Trio is pretty depressingly stereotypical, like gay pulp fiction but without any sex. I'd say it was more shocking that this was considered literature than that it was considered immoral -- it's just not a great book. Older academic woman Pauline controls young grad student girl Janet in creepy, not quite believable ways, girl runs away with boy in a refutation of her sordid past, complete with a classic Chekhovian gun set-up and predictable denouement. What I did like about this was the portrayal of the confrontation between Pauline and the dean when her (spoiler alert, but you're not going to read this, are you? please don't, go read Cassandra at the Wedding instead) plagiarism is discovered. She pulls this classic delusional faculty move, the whole "I won't defend myself because the charges are absurd and if the university won't defend me then I guess we'll part ways" without actually acknowledging the dean's point that well, if it's not true, then why don't you refute the charges publically? Because of course the charges are true, except they are part of her sordid past and the gun comes out etc etc etc. Not recommended. Ah well, a quick read.
28. Below Stairs, by Margaret Powell.
This book had me laughing out loud and reading passages to anyone who would listen -- it is a hilarious, salty, old school confessional about life in British domestic service. It was apparently Julian Fellowes' inspiration for Downton Abbey, though I far prefer Gosford Park (I watch it maybe three or four times a year), and there were lots of points where I saw echoes of his plot points. Margaret, born 1907, went into service at age 13, and her descriptions of a life of poverty in the 1910s were almost more fascinating to me than when she went to work -- things like parents sending their kids to sunday school only so they could stay home and have sex for the afternoon, or about her typical day at age 7: her mother went to work before dawn as a charwoman, then Margaret would serve breakfast to her younger siblings and deliver two of them to a day nursery, then go to school with some of the other kids, rush home to cook lunch for the family (everyone returned to eat it), rush back to school, then come home and make tea (they were frequently on the edge of starvation). She is surprisingly, hilariously frank about matters of sex and "snaffling a permanent young man" and throughout her stories you hear her early feminist consciousness and class criticisms -- she was employed during an era when domestic service changed drastically in favor of the workers, due to supply and demand of the working population and the ebb of fortunes of the upper class. I found it an excellent companion to Victorians at Home, another favorite of mine, since you can still see the remnants of Victorian life in the 1900s. I am fascinated by this era in Britain, not so much for the above stairs as the below stairs life, and if you like that then you'll love this too, probably. Don't hold me to that.
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Onward! At home I'm finishing up a book about the Crusades, and have another few nonfictions in the interlibrary loan queue. Here's hoping I get to those sometime before November.
This was a follow up read since I liked Baker's Cassandra at the Wedding (book review #26) and the lesson here is...stick with the ones that NYBR has seen fit to reissue. Trio has not been reissued. It is not that great. I was interested in this one because it was the one she wrote after her Guggenheim fellowship, and it was considered "too scandalous for the times" and in its later play form was closed due to protests. The covert lesbian relationship at the heart of Trio is pretty depressingly stereotypical, like gay pulp fiction but without any sex. I'd say it was more shocking that this was considered literature than that it was considered immoral -- it's just not a great book. Older academic woman Pauline controls young grad student girl Janet in creepy, not quite believable ways, girl runs away with boy in a refutation of her sordid past, complete with a classic Chekhovian gun set-up and predictable denouement. What I did like about this was the portrayal of the confrontation between Pauline and the dean when her (spoiler alert, but you're not going to read this, are you? please don't, go read Cassandra at the Wedding instead) plagiarism is discovered. She pulls this classic delusional faculty move, the whole "I won't defend myself because the charges are absurd and if the university won't defend me then I guess we'll part ways" without actually acknowledging the dean's point that well, if it's not true, then why don't you refute the charges publically? Because of course the charges are true, except they are part of her sordid past and the gun comes out etc etc etc. Not recommended. Ah well, a quick read.
28. Below Stairs, by Margaret Powell.
This book had me laughing out loud and reading passages to anyone who would listen -- it is a hilarious, salty, old school confessional about life in British domestic service. It was apparently Julian Fellowes' inspiration for Downton Abbey, though I far prefer Gosford Park (I watch it maybe three or four times a year), and there were lots of points where I saw echoes of his plot points. Margaret, born 1907, went into service at age 13, and her descriptions of a life of poverty in the 1910s were almost more fascinating to me than when she went to work -- things like parents sending their kids to sunday school only so they could stay home and have sex for the afternoon, or about her typical day at age 7: her mother went to work before dawn as a charwoman, then Margaret would serve breakfast to her younger siblings and deliver two of them to a day nursery, then go to school with some of the other kids, rush home to cook lunch for the family (everyone returned to eat it), rush back to school, then come home and make tea (they were frequently on the edge of starvation). She is surprisingly, hilariously frank about matters of sex and "snaffling a permanent young man" and throughout her stories you hear her early feminist consciousness and class criticisms -- she was employed during an era when domestic service changed drastically in favor of the workers, due to supply and demand of the working population and the ebb of fortunes of the upper class. I found it an excellent companion to Victorians at Home, another favorite of mine, since you can still see the remnants of Victorian life in the 1900s. I am fascinated by this era in Britain, not so much for the above stairs as the below stairs life, and if you like that then you'll love this too, probably. Don't hold me to that..
Onward! At home I'm finishing up a book about the Crusades, and have another few nonfictions in the interlibrary loan queue. Here's hoping I get to those sometime before November.
