The Man Behind The Glass: A Victorian Gothic Tale by Greg Howes

I was recently kindly sent a copy of this 2014 original and fascinating story, 'The Man Behind The Glass' by Greg Howes, the author.  It is a unique book, I've never read anything like it. It is richly immersed in the atmospheres, sights, sounds, and (sometimes very unpleasant) scents of Victorian London.  His writing is highly descriptive to all the senses, the scenes are vividly brought to life, almost as if you are experiencing them yourself, a sensation that can be lacking in many modern tales.  The use of lavish descriptions are one of the elements that I love about Victorian writers, and Greg Howes does have a strong Victorian influence which shines through.  The novel keeps you intrigued throughout; one continually wonders where things are heading and what will be the outcome.  It is hard to put down, though I did slowly take my time to finish it, slowly digesting what had just happened.

I will leave the rest of this to the synopsis on the back of the book, as I couldn't sum it up any better:

"The Man Behind The Glass is based around a character called Septimus Blackwood, a Victorian photographer with a difference.  The tale is set in London's East End in the year 1860.  A mysterious Gothic adventure of a man's quest to capture life and cheat death through photography.  Septimus races against time to discover his family's long lost legacy buried deep amongst the forgotten rivers and cellars of old London.  Unbeknown to him a mysterious old woman looks on..."

"The story, along with its highly satirical characters escort the reader on an emotional journey into a world of intrigue, suspense and the supernatural.  Atmosphere seeps out of every gulley of this twisting and ever turbulent road; darkness and light, creation and calamity.  Encounter magical discoveries that will pick the pocket of your dreams for now and evermore."

The Woeful World of Wuthering Heights

 

 

I saw a very interesting blog about Emily Bronte's 'Wuthering Heights' today  https://stewartstaffordblog.wordpress.com/2016/10/15/wuthering-heights-its-influence-on-vampire-and-popular-culture/  and it brought back my feelings when reading this story about eight years ago. It's a great book, but not one I enjoyed, it was more an experience of getting pulled in and absorbed by its strange, dark, moody, tragic, passionate, and dramatic world.   It haunted me continually during the week I read it, even encroaching into my dreams. If I'd had a wild, windy moor to forlornly wander onto (donning a flowing cape), I would have done so.

 "My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath...I am Heathcliff - he's always, always in my mind...as my own being".

"And what was it that had suggested the tremendous tumult...Merely, the branch of a fir-tree that touched my lattice as the blast wailed by, and rattled its dry cones against the panes!... This time I remembered I was lying in the oak closet and I heard distinctly the gusty wind, and the driving of the snow; I heard, also, the fir-bough repeat its teasing sound, and ascribed it to the right cause:  but it annoyed me so much, that I resolved to silence it, if possible; and I thought, I rose and endeavoured to unhasp the casement...'I must stop it, nevertheless!' I muttered, knocking my knuckles through the glass, and stretching an arm out to seize the importunate branch:  instead of which, my fingers closed on the fingers of a little, ice-cold hand!  The intense horror of nightmare came over me; I tried to draw back my arm, but, the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed, Let me in-let me in!"

Charlotte Bronte wrote that: "Wuthering Heights was hewn in a wild workshop, with simple tools, out of homely materials. The statuary found a granite block on a solitary moor...with time and labour the crag took human shape, and there it stands colossal".

http://the-toast.net/2016/03/22/every-meal-in-wuthering-heights-ranked-in-order-of-sadness/

 

 

Joan Aiken's 'A Small Pinch of Weather and Other Stories'

Joan Aiken's 'A Small Pinch of Weather and Other Stories' is a book I finished reading last week, and it is completely wonderful and utterly entertaining.  Joan Aiken is one of my favourite authors (having over 100 books published) and she possessed an incredible imagination.  I've read various books and collections of stories for years (but have a long way to go to reading everything) but this particular collection of stories may be the most fascinating read so far.  This is pure escapism, and we have magic and fantasy as a part of normal life in these tales, they definitely take one away from the mundane.

This collection was first published in 1969, and my copy shown is a 1977 Puffin Books edition, with very eye-catching cover art.

A few of the stories concern the Armitage family, and these are a lot of fun to read.  There is a new book available of all the Armitage family stories in one volume, 'The Serial Garden,' which I felt compelled to order and am awaiting its arrival.   Here is bit from the story 'Broomsticks and Sardines', where Mark and Harriet's (the Armitage children) schoolteacher has been teaching her class some very strange things of a magical nature, which they are putting to use: 

"Mr Armitage, in his study, could hear raucous shouts and recriminations going on between Mark and Harriet and the Shepherd children, ancient enemies of theirs in the garden on the other side...  'Will you stop that hideous row,' exclaimed Mr Armitage, bursting out of his french window.  A deathly hush fell in the garden.  He realized almost at once, though, that the silence was due not so much to his intervention, as the fact that where little Richard, Geoffrey, and Moira Shepherd had been, there were now three sheep, which Harriet and Mark were regarding with triumphant satisfaction.
'Did you do that?' said Mr Armitage sharply to his children. 
'Well -yes.'
'Change them back at once.'
'We don't know how.'
'Geoffrey - Moira - your mother says it's bed-time.'  Mr Shepherd came out of his greenhouse with a pair of secateurs. 
'I say, Shepherd, I'm terribly sorry - my children have changed yours into sheep.  And now they say they don't know how to change them back.'
'Oh, don't apologize, old chap.  As a matter of fact I think it's a pretty good show.  Some peace and quiet will be a wonderful change, and I shan't have to mow the lawn.'  He shouted indoors with the liveliest pleasure,
'I say, Minnie!  Our kids have been turned into sheep, so you won't have to put them to bed.  Dig out a long frock and we'll go to the Harvest Ball.'
A shriek of delight greeted his words."


The titles of these short stories are delightful too, you just know you are in for something interesting:
A Small Pinch of Weather
Broomsticks and Sardines
The Boy Who Read Aloud
The Land of Trees and Heroes
The Cost of Night
The Stolen Quince Tree
Smoke From Cromwell's Time
The Apple of Trouble
The Lilac in the Lake
Harriet's Hairloom
A Leg Full of Rubies
The Serial Garden

Here is the description of this collection at the beginning of the book:

"You will find a small pinch of weather and more than a pinch of a thousand other things in this book of short stories by Joan Aiken, who is one of the most truly original and versatile writers for children today.  Here are funny stories-about the school where Harriet and Mark Armitage learned spells instead of ordinary lessons-and sad, romantic, magic tales about a king who lost all the darkness in his land, the beautiful lost princess Freylinde, a sinister story about a phoenix and a leg full of rubies, and a fascinating story about Mark and the wonderful garden he built from cereal packets.  Not to mention the story the book is named after.
All in all, this is about the most unexpected, out-of-the-ordinary books of short stories you can imagine.  The sad stories are spiced with wit and the funny ones tinged with sadness, but the one certain thing is that you will never feel too sure what will happen next."

Joan Aiken wrote books for adults and well as children, but as with the best writers, the children's books can appeal just as much to adults, and they possess humour that appeals to all ages.  I will be bold and say that you should have this book, particularly if you like beguiling tales by authors with boundless imaginations, and I doubt that anyone has/had a more vivid imagination than Joan Aiken, she really was amazing. 

http://joanaiken.com/

The House of the Deer by D.E. Stevenson

 

On hearing so many good things about D.E. Stevenson's books, and being keen on a certain type of vintage fiction, I felt it was past time for me to begin reading some of her books and borrowed this one from the library (but with a less romantic cover).  Right away I liked her style of writing and knew 'The House of the Deer', from 1971, would be one I would enjoy reading, especially with it being set in the Highlands of Scotland, which I love. 

 

 Gerald Burleigh-Brown is coerced, by his boss and brother-in-law Sir Walter MacCallum, to take his place and spend a holiday in an old house in the wilds of Scotland with some good friends of his and participate in the deer culling in the deer forest there.  There is much description of deer stalking, which I momentarily thought might put me off, but this is a very good story with elements of mystery, gentle romance, and adventure, and I believe it would appeal equally to men and women.  There are some rather exciting scenes in the second half of the book involving a small gang of dangerous criminals, but I'm giving nothing away to spoil the plot.

 

Here is an interesting detailed description of the house itself:

 

"Gerald looked at the old house with interest.  It was on the side of a hill near a burn and was built of rough grey stone.  The windows were on different levels and were of different sizes and shapes:  some were large and square, others were small and oblong.  Those facing west were built into a kind of bow, like half a tower.  Above that the half-tower became a whole tower with windows facing in three directions.  The roof, which was made of slate, was steep and uneven; gables jutted out at all angles and twisted chimneys sprouted in unexpected places.  The pepper-pot turrets, which had been added "just for fun", gave the place a rakish appearance.   "I've never seen anything like it before!" Gerald exclaimed.  "No, and you never will," declared Mac, smiling.

The House of the Deer was unique inside as well as outside.  There was one large room which ran through the centre of the house on the ground floor and had windows facing east and west.  It was used as a sitting-room at one end and as a dining-room at the other.  This was the old part of the house, as could be seen from the thickness of the walls.  The windows were set in deep embrasures which were filled with cushioned window-seats.  Halfway down one side of the room there was a huge stone fireplace with a wrought-iron grate for burning logs.  The furniture consisted of large chairs upholstered in brown leather (which probably had been new in Victorian times) and large bookcases containing books about fishing and shooting and the habits of deer.  There was a work-basket, bulging with grey woolen stockings, on one chair and a pile of papers on another."

The characters and their interactions seemed very real, and I look forward to reading more stories by D.E. Stevenson.

A Stella Gibbons Selection

 

Along with many people, the only Stella Gibbons book I had read was Cold Comfort Farm.  When I recently discovered the beautiful new Vintage Classics reprints of several others of her stories, with such appealing cover art, I could not resist buying some of them.   The first one I picked was Conference At Cold Comfort Farm, which I had high hopes of liking.  Unfortunately I did not like it very much and found it tedious to wade through; with so many characters being as irritating and outlandish as possible and the scenarios around most of the original characters so unlikely that it was just weird (and we know good old Cold Comfort Farm is weird, but in a more fun way).

Stella Gibbons obviously had a dislike of artistic or craftsy women, as she (unfairly) tends to make fun of them whenever she can. In 'Cold Comfort Farm', Flora tells wild dryad-like Elfine to "avoid orange linen jumpers and hand-wrought jewellery" and is quite sniffy over her liking poetry and wanting to work in an arts and crafts shop.  She also is withering over certain artistic shades of green.

An amusing passage in' Conference' is where Flora is rather disturbed over the immaculate and new "olde world" change in decor that has come over the inside of the previously grubby farmhouse:

"Her first hours there had been so fully occupied that she had not been able to receive more than a general impression of snowy walls where once rude words had leered out from sooty surfaces, and gleaming floors that were formally dull and scored by hobnailed boots, and that everything was labelled in wrought iron Greate or Lytel;  the Greate Scullerie, the Lytel Rush-dippe Roome, the Greate Staircasee, the Lytel Stille-Roome, the Greate Bedderoome, the Lytel Closete, and so on.  But now, observing at her leisure, she hardly recognized some of the shocking old cupboards and filthy cobwebbed alcoves, fitted up as they were with window-seats and oak chests.  There were typical farmhouse grandfather clocks ticking all over the place, and where there could have been an expanse of bare wall, it was filled up with a Welsh dresser all over peasant pottery.  In the Lytel Scullerie there were fifteen scythes arranged in a half-moon over the sink; there were horse-brasses all around the Greate Inglenooke and all round the Lytel Fireplaces, and Toby jugs and spotted dogs all over the windowsills.  The air in the rooms smelt faintly of warm, damp grass:  otherwise it was exactly like being locked in the Victoria and Albert Museum after closing time."

It sounds rather sweet and nice, like an old-fashioned tea room, yet profusely overdone, like a museum where one cannot touch the exhibits.  The quaintly-spelled, unauthentic labels are really funny.  Apart from the joyous turn of events at the end, it does seem a shame that it looks set to be the nasty, mucky old farm it once was.
Overall, this book seemed highly chaotic and had too many unlikeable and obnoxious characters, but I will be keeping it because of that lovely cover art!

The next one chosen was the collection of short stories entitled 'Christmas At Cold Comfort Farm'.  This was an excellent book that was hard to put down.  The stories were varied, interesting, well-written and sometimes rather poignant.  I highly recommend this one.

The last one read was 'The Matchmaker',  which involves a young wife and her three little daughters leaving war-damaged London and moving into an old cottage in rural Sussex.  Other characters include a landgirl and two Italian prisoners of war working at the local farm, a bachelor neighbour and various other characters.  This was a good book, if perhaps a bit long; by the end I was glad to be done with the emotional turmoils of some of the characters and had changed my opinions on some of them as they had developed over the novel, and actually couldn't bear the landgirl Sylvia at all and was glad to see the back of her!

I have grown to like Stella Gibbons' books rather well (some more than others), she is interesting and often thought-provoking, possessing a sharp wit and common sense. The next one I intend to read, as it looks extremely intriguing, is The Charmers.