Juxtabook

The Little Shadows by Marina Endicott

The Little Shadows by Marina Endicott grew on me very slowly and it took me ages to read the first half. I finished it some six weeks ago. However as I was changing the beds this morning I found myself thinking about the life and views of one of the characters, Clover. Book characters popping in to your head during housework is a sure sign of a job well done in terms of characterisation. This thought also leads me to the conclusion that had I done more housework as a student I might have written even better essays. Anyway ...

It starts off as a well-wrought but not especially exciting study of life in Vaudeville. If you are fascinated by the theatre this is a winner for you straight away. In terms of character however the first part of the book largely focuses on the eldest of three sisters who perform in a sweet sister act, The Belle Auroras. Aurora, the eldest, is indeed beautiful and is regarded as the one most likely to be a success, in highly predictable ways, including making an advantageous theatrical marriage of convenience. Their widowed mother, who had performed on the stage in her youth before becoming respectable and marrying a teacher, battles to keep standards high and food on the table. They're poor, cold, hungry - so far so predictable. The theatre world is focused on Aurora: who is attracted to her, does she draw crowds, are impressarios impressed with her? But we see the theatre as much through the eyes of her younger sisters, the 'baby' Bella and quiet middle one Clover whose name is not part of their act. They watch the stage, and the acts and the grown-ups from backstage and suddenly as these two develop we learn much more than when the lovely Aurora was the focus of all gazes.

As the book progresses and the girls and their mother get older, cracks appear in the tight facade of family and we see them with their individual talents and lives as the first world war looms on the horizon. This later part of the book made it for me. The newer, more mature relationships, Clover's battles with her traumatised soldier lover, the new successes and failures, and their ways of adjusting to life and each other were fascinating and beautifully, subtly done. From the height of vaudeville to the dawn of the movie age this novel, in the end, ceates a wonderful arc of character through a slim plot and lots of theatrical atmosphere. Not my favourite novel of the year, not my favourite novel of the theatre, but in the end a very satisfying read and I am glad I stuck with it.

Best Bib and Tucker

I have recently, for the first time in 12 years, taken some marketing advice about my business. I have, in the way of many second-hand book sellers, muddled through with a mixture of sales on my own site, on the sites of several large household names about which the less said the better, and on smaller multi-seller indie sites like Antiqbook and Biblio (I recommend these latter two). And generally what I did worked. Customers usually responded to what I did and pootled their way towards buying my books. How hard can it be I thought, I used to teach media for heaven's sake! However the downturn combined with the stranglehold of said household names and a chat with, believe it or not, my pilates teacher, sent me in the direction of a wonderful lady called Kathryn who is going to help me make C L Hawley a little sprucer and more able to compete in this big, bad cut-throat world of bookselling, where pootling will sadly no longer work.

Kathryn is not full of marketing speak, she is rather more in the real world, in fact she used to work in two very well known arts organisations, one of which was connected with an author's birthplace museum, and I felt right away that she understood my business. She also takes wonderful photographs. So as part of an image refresh I am having some professional photographs taken of my books for the very first time so that I can supply bookmarks and the like with my books. This is quite an odd feeling as my books are on the whole bought and sold for their content not their looks, however, with much excitement in the bookroom a selection of my more glamorous tomes, plus some of their work-a-day booky relatives have been picked. Whilst I do clean books on their arrival, the photographing meant that an extra spruce was required:

 

The whole process has not been unlike the morning of your child's school photograph! Making sure there's no toothpaste on the cardigan and no cereal on the teeth!

Another local family business, Eastburn Country Furniture, has kindly loaned their premises for the photo-shoot. I shall let you see some of the results when they arrive.

Bunloaf and Swallows and Amazons

My mother is making bunloaf today. We always have bunloaf at Christmas and my mother took over making it from my grandmother about ten years ago. The recipe we have was one my great-grandmother used at home in Liverpool and my grandmother remembered having to carry the heavy loaves on a wooden board to the bakers where they would be cooked. I assume their domestic oven was not big enough.

I thought everybody had bunloaf at Christmas until I grew-up and got about a bit more! Then I realised hardly anyone had heard of it. Every so often I google the term to see if I can find anything else about its origins and today happened across this piece which talks about its presence in Swallows and Amazons, a book I shamefully have never read. Is it true? I do hope so! It would seem from the article's references to the Cumberland coast and the Isle of Man, and my family acquiring the recipe in Liverpool that the Lancashire/Cumberland coast seems to be its main location. Has anyone else heard of it? My mother's version is very similar to the recipe quoted in the article: no eggs and definitelyy no tea or beer.

I have written about (and photographed) bunloaf in the past when writing about J L Carr and edible archaeology.

A Cacophony of Gabble

I've just pootled across this diatribe against blogging book reviews:

"...in our present climate of criticism — a climate in which the Net has spawned a cacophony of gabble impersonating literary comment, palaver and vulgate enough to warp you. Literature has always had its leeches, except now the Net has given every one of them a bog to wiggle around in. This wouldn’t be any more of an issue than it is to ignore the wastrel on the corner dispensing pamphlets on anarchy, but as respectable print publications either prune their space for book commentary or else go extinct altogether, more and more criticism — like more and more of everything else — is migrating to blogs and social media sites. Young or new book readers looking for literary analysis are going to have an increasingly arduous chore of dividing the shit from the serious. Worse, the biddable and ovine will gravitate to the shit because that’s where all the buzzing is. If you’ve ever attempted to read a review on Amazon or on someone’s personal blog, you know it’s identical to seeking relationship advice on the wall of a public restroom."

If this is the best level of analysis the pro-critic can manage, no wonder they're being left behind.

The article is otherwise very good on the subject of The Craft of Fiction by Percy Lubbock. Lubbock's book is so good that I actually stock it (paperback, hardback) - a service probably more useful to Literature than many a bit of jargon laden, theory ridden waffle by a 'critic'!

I shouldn't allow myself to be wound up, but critics are supposed to have high levels of discrimination, and that's what you do online as you should do with print: you discriminate! I have no desire to lump all critics in the same group, and I know most are much more generous and balanced in their assessment of what goes on in the 'cacophony of gabble', indeed, there is probably someone beginning a PhD thesis on the subject of the influence of bloggers on literature as I write!