A Penguin a week

Penguins and the Bristol archive

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 23:31:00 +0000

A Penguin Donkey

It is always something of a surprise to find that I have one of the rarer Penguins on my bookshelf (such as No. 410 Artifex Intervenes). I tend to assume that if I own it it must be common, as my searching is usually on foot rather than via the internet, I live in an isolated city with very few book stores, and the amount I'm willing to pay for any individual book is quite limited. It has to be that way to feel worthwhile. The reading is always enjoyable, but the collecting must feel like a challenge: it is not only finding an unowned Penguin that brings joy, but finding it cheaply. If you can walk into a book store and buy yourself a vintage Penguin collection by simply handing over enough money, there hardly seems any point. The wall of books holds the memories of every hour spent searching.

6a, one of the harder to
find Penguins

Most of the vintage Penguins are reasonably common, but a few are much harder to come across. The rarer ones tend to be green and/or numbered around 400 - the more fragile ones from the war years when paper was relatively scarce. It is interesting to speculate on why the crime Penguins tend to be harder to find, and even when they aren't, why they are generally priced higher. It may be supply, or demand, or (as suggested to me by a member of the Penguin Collector's Society) a mixture of the two: perhaps because many of the authors are still known and widely read today, the books are still sought after, or perhaps crime novels were always more likely to be shared, and less likely to sit unread on shelves, and therefore fewer survived.

Either way, there are a number of vintage Penguins I have never seen at any price and it was this that brought me to Bristol during my recent trip to England. Allen Lane, the founder of Penguin Books, was born and raised in Bristol, and its University now houses the Penguin archive in a few small rooms in the basement of its Arts and Social Sciences Library. Visits are possible for 'bona-fide readers', and it took only a few emails and some ID to secure the necessary agreement of Penguin, and an appointment to browse the collection.

Image source: The Penguin
Collector June 2011

And it is such an interesting collection, including a copy of every book Penguin have published, with the early pre-1969 numbered titles taken from Allen Lane's personal collection of paperbacks signed by their authors. Perhaps the best known of these is the Peregrine The Common Pursuit which F.R. Leavis refused to sign, returning it with the note 'I do not think Sir Allen Lane did a service to literature, civilization or Lawrence in the business of Lady Chatterley's Lover.' (see here, p.309)

It was a lovely way to spend a morning. We were free to browse through all the books, boxes and boxes of original correspondence with the authors, old lists of Penguin publications, and original advertising. We only had to ask and it was placed before us.

The archive is currently preparing an exhibition, and some of its highlights will be on display at Bristol's Royal West of England Academy from 10 March 2012 as part of Penguin Parade.

And photos of my favourite items are here.

Penguin no. 1960: A Use of Riches by J.I.M. Stewart

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 07:47:00 +0000

Perhaps there was no need to distrust this feeling as much as he found himself doing. It might be called, in either of them, a biologically healthy response to their new situation. When anything firm comes unstuck, when the static turns fluid, when not the sun but a question-mark sails up over the horizon one day; then this undertone of excitement - distinguishably pleasurable even if what one largely faces is calamity - represents simply the knowledge that one isn't dead, that one has powers to call up and perhaps even quite surprising possibilities to explore.

And so I have left behind the cold, the novelty of travel, and days free of responsibilities spent searching for books, and returned to the warmth and the sunshine, but also the mundane (while coping with jetlag which for some reason is always so much worse in this direction). And the question which now greets me everywhere is: how many did you find? Well, somewhere between all those English post offices with their inconsistent procedures I lost track of the count and so I cannot be sure of the answer, except that it was many more than I expected to. It was all so unprecedented: a good day of searching in Perth might turn up five inexpensive old Penguins, whereas everywhere I went in England (and Amsterdam) I could easily find twenty or more, and at prices much much cheaper than I would ever find them here. So now a two month wait until all the books arrive, and as always, vague plans to do it all again.

A Use of Riches was the book I most wanted to find on this journey, and it turned out to be the least expensive one I found (for 25 pence! - it is simply inconceivable that any second hand book would ever cost so little over here.) Even though I have many unread books on my shelves written by J.I.M. Stewart, for he wrote prolificly as Michael Innes, it is his serious fiction I long to find and read. I usually enjoy the complex plots and frequent literary allusions of the crime novels, but I also find them variable in quality and so I hesitate in choosing them, and not one prepared me for the experience of reading The Last Tresilians, which he wrote under his own name.

A Use of Riches is a book best read unprepared. I would suggest that anyone contemplating reading it should avoid any reviews or discussions, including this one. The narrative is initially confusing: it follows the reflections of the banker and art collector Rupert Craine as he walks through the destroyed streets behind St Paul's on the way to his lawyer's office, and like any thoughts his are dynamic rather than linear, influenced by all he observes. In this way the reader is given the background to the story which will be told, but it is a picture painted with the broadest strokes. And then on page 66 an unexpected and shocking revelation brings everything suddenly into focus.

The illustration on the cover of this Penguin edition shows Rupert's two stepsons observing a father they have never known, a man believed killed in the war but now revealed to be alive, living in Italy, and blind. The story is a variation on the plot of Enoch Arden, told from the perspective of Rupert, the second husband, watching as his wife chooses to return to her first husband John Arnander, a man who was unreliable and unsatisfactory, a self-obsessed philanderer, but also an artist of genius. She had been his unhappy muse.

And it is in this decision that there is an allusion to the idea, expressed in sermons and parables, and in Pope's Epistle, of the appropriate use of riches being for the benefit of God or mankind. The riches here are not just wealth; they include happiness, stability, conventionality. Rupert endures the loss of his wife and the break-up of his family; she endures the loss of a stable family life and contact with her youngest children; together they arrange for the medical treatment of Arnander's blindness and the restoration of his sight, all in the hope that it will benefit Art, and through Art mankind. Inspiration is in the image of the donor in medieval painting.

In an interesting post discussing some of the references, Azalea expresses dismay at the resolution of the story, and yet to me it seemed essential: a question of completeness rather than believability. For this is a story set in a contemporary post-war world, but taking its imagery from medieval Italian art. And so along with its references to Lazarus and to rebirth, and to purgatory and Paradise, it ends with the linked concepts of judgement and fire.

It is an enjoyable novel, with interesting characters, though it never reaches the level of The Last Tresilians. And once again it was the unusual and comprehensive way in which ideas were considered and expressed which I most enjoyed.

By the same author:

(as Michael Innes:)
Penguin no. 1299: Stop Press
Penguin no. 1577: Appleby on Ararat
Penguin no. 1578: The Weight of the Evidence
Penguin no. 1640: Hamlet, revenge!
Penguin no. C2201: Hare Sitting Up

(as J.I.M. Stewart:)
Penguin no. 2533: The Last Tresilians

Penguin no. 779: Heads You Lose by Christianna Brand

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 20:19:00 +0000

Henry Gold, who all his life had been a Londoner, knew for the first time that strange sense of proportion that comes of watching, from a lonely height, the little works of man. He looked down upon the small black ants toiling in the valley, and knew that he was God; he looked up at the glazed white bowl of the winter sky, and knew that he was the least of the little ants, scurrying this way and that in futile endeavour to avoid extinction by the careless feet of time; it frightened him a little, but he felt cleansed and chastened by the loneliness and silence.

The first murder of Heads You Lose seemed unusually gruesome for a Golden Age mystery: the body of a young kitchen-maid had been found in a wood, her arms tied with a belt, her head removed; scythe, body, and head found lying side by side. Several months had passed since the discovery and the police still had no suspects. It was assumed locally to be the work of a passing tramp.

But then two more murders on consecutive nights, echoing the first grisly murder but even more grotesque, with severed heads returned to bodies and each corpse adorned with an item of clothing taken from the local Squire's locked home. Not just any items of clothing, though, but ones chosen to mock the victims. It is this touch which narrows the list of possible suspects to Stephen Pendock, his servants, and the five guests staying in his home.

Various alibis soon eliminate the servants from the list of possibilities, and the six friends must face the unthinkable reality that one of their number has not only committed at least two murders, but has behaved with unspeakable brutality in decapitating the victims and leaving the garish displays. It seems inconceivable as they are all such unlikely murderers: the handsome Squire Pendock, his long-time family friend Lady Hart, her two stunning granddaughters Venetia and Fran, the languid intellectual James Nicholl, and the capable Jewish businessman Henry Gold; all likeable, well-educated, well-behaved, and upper-class. I'm sure this element of class was intentional, an additional layer of complexity to enhance the sense of the two later murders as impossible crimes.

This was Brand's second novel, and her first featuring Inspector Cockerill, the gruff detective who seems also to be a long-time friend of most of the suspects, and who they all call 'Cockie'. Despite his determination to find the murderer, the police remain baffled throughout; we see them searching for clues, developing suspicions, and testing their theories, but never really coming close to solving the crime. They watch the suspects with a dual purpose hoping to identify the murderer, but also aware that they may be protecting the innocent five from the unidentified and clearly dangerous sixth. Their constant surveillance adds pressure, confining the suspects, and increasing their mental torment.

The narrative largely focuses on the dynamics within this isolated and carefully watched group, on how each individual thinks, and on how they react to their situation: no means of escape, in close proximity to a murderer, at risk of being accused of a crime they didn't commit. The more analytical among them initially apply themselves to finding a way out of their dilemma, by proving that the crimes could have been committed by someone other than those suspected. But with time their focus turns, and they start to consider each other.

It was impossible not to feel twice cheated by this novel, first by the gruesomeness of the murders, and then by the completely inadequate and unconvincing solution. The murders were disconcerting, and they violated my expectations of a Golden Age novel: I want the crimes to be fantastic and unrealistic, but not horrific; I want to focus on the puzzle and not on the actual implications of murder in the real world. Did they need to be decapitations? I had the unpleasant suspicion that she came up with the title first, and wrote a novel to match, so that it provided an entertaining pun.

And perhaps I feel even more disappointment because I expected something much better from the author of the exceptional Green for Danger. And being on holiday, and with a suitcase full of books, I wish I had chosen something else to read.

My holiday is over and I'm sitting here in Heathrow with a few hours to kill before my flight home, reflecting on what has been a wonderful and unexpectedly successful holiday. The highlights are obviously the many Penguins I found and the expectation of an interesting year (actually years) of reading ahead, but there was so much more to enjoy: everywhere I went I met interesting and helpful strangers; bookshop owners regularly invited me down into caverns filled with books; I saw Allan Lane's personal collection of signed Penguins at the Bristol University archive; I was overwhelmed by the beautiful voices of the choirboys at Magdalen College's Evensong on Sunday night; and I had so many interesting discussions with people I met randomly. And then of course, I was lucky enough to meet people I had previously only known online, including Adam and Simon. And now I feel a little sad to be going home, but happy to know I will soon see my younger children.

Vintage Penguins in Lyme Regis

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 23:59:00 +0000

I didn't come to Lyme Regis to find old Penguins. In fact there were moments yesterday morning while I was dragging my suitcase and assorted bags containing the 170-odd books (mostly Penguins and a few Enid Blytons) I have found so far through train stations and up staircases when I wondered whether I even wanted to continue searching. Perhaps 170 books is enough for anyone, and I could now turn my focus to the scenery. I managed to walk through the streets of Exeter past more charity stores than I have ever previously seen in one location without feeling even slightly tempted to see if there was a Penguin waiting on the shelf.

But I didn't manage to walk past The Sanctuary, an enticing book store in Broad Street, Lyme Regis. Even though neither of us planned to buy anything, we spent about an hour browsing the shelves and coming across loads of Penguins priced between one to three pounds. And then I spotted a book I have been searching for since reading The Last Tresilians last year: it was no. 1960 A Use of Riches, one of the two other novels that Penguin published by J.I.M. Stewart. Amazingly, I found the other one (no. 2037 The Man Who Won the Pools) a few minutes later in a charity shop across the road for 25 pence.

The trip to Lyme Regis was really about John Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman, and Persuasion: it was something of a literary pilgrimage. And yet walking on the cobb has proved a much more difficult ambition to fulfil than you would expect. Last time I tried to get there I walked through dark streets and falling snow and arrived at Waterloo station to find all trains cancelled. This time I made it to Lyme Regis, but was stopped by a policeman 200 metres from the cobb because it was believed that a digging child had unearthed a landmine.

It turned out to be a rubber tyre, and so this morning after breakfast I headed to the cobb again, and I was rewarded with a beautiful winter's morning and a calm ocean, and the opportunity to experience the cobb in the best way possible: alone, and in complete silence.

Penguin no. 651: Cakes and Ale by Somerset Maugham

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 19:49:00 +0000

The critics can force the world to pay attention to a very indifferent writer, and the world may lose its head over one who has no merit at all, but the result in neither case is lasting; and I cannot help thinking that no writer can hold the public for as long as Edward Driffield without considerable gifts. The elect sneer at popularity; they are inclined even to assert

that it is a proof of mediocrity; but they forget that posterity makes its choice not from among the unknown writers of a period, but from among the known. It may be that some great masterpiece which deserves immortality has fallen stillborn from the press, but posterity will never hear of it; it may be that posterity will scrap all the best sellers of our day, but it is among them that it must choose.

Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale? Act II Scene III Twelfth Night

I am finding that this life of travelling about searching for books doesn't really lend itself to concentrated reading or deep reflection. While reading this book I've travelled to Amsterdam and across to Newcastle, Chester, Liverpool, and through Wales, ending up this morning in Bristol. Everything I have experienced has been novel and distracting; everywhere I have travelled there have been friendly people eager to talk. It has been exciting and exhausting and unexpected. I had planned to write this post during the train journey from Hereford to Bristol this morning, but instead found myself squeezed onto a train filled with people sporting either red jerseys or kilts, all heading to Cardiff for a Rugby match between Wales and Scotland. It was lovely as an outsider to observe the communal feeling of friendly rivalry and shared excitement. And so instead I have settled myself in an English pub by Bristol's river front with a glass of red wine and a hope that I can find a quiet moment to collect my thoughts on this book which I loved reading.

The first thing you learn of Cakes and Ale is that its publication caused something of a controversy. Both copies are prefaced by Maugham's explanation of the story's inspiration, and his firm insistence that despite what others may have perceived, the work is largely autobiographical. I can believe that this must at least partly be true. In his story two writers reflect on the life of a third recently deceased and more successful writer named Edward Driffield. The narrator Willie Ashenden knew Driffield during his youth, while Alroy Kear has been carefully chosen by Driffield's widow to write an acceptable biography, and he hopes for Ashenden's help.

Kear's success as a writer has derived more from his ability to market himself and his books, than from any literary talent: he works diligently and consistently, is charming with the critics, and knows how to keep himself in the public's mind. Maugham suggests that through his own career he has an understanding of the possibly conflicting goals of artistic integrity and public acclaim, and that his feelings for Kear are of empathy rather than condemnation. However, it doesn't read that way: his portrayals of this average writer and his acceptance by the wider literary culture of the time seem ruthless.

It was believed by some that the character of Edward Driffield was based upon Thomas Hardy, but Maugham rejects this idea completely, noting that Driffield's melancholy fate of being compelled by others to act the role of the venerable ageing man of letters is not that uncommon. And as Maugham was 56 when Cakes and Ale was published, it is likely that his thoughts would sometimes unhappily touch on the imposts of age, the expectations of others, and his own uncertain legacy. His discussion in the preface on the creation of Alroy Kear is more circumspect: he concedes that the character is based on living writers, but suggests he is an amalgam of himself and others. It is a sharp and amusing portrait, with the feel of a rational discussion of what success means in the literary world by an author under no illusions, a kind of lifting of the veil to reveal how the world really works. But what a savage caricature it is if it was actually based on a well-known and still-living writer. Years later Maugham acknowledged that Hugh Walpole had been his target [see here]. This was possibly a calculated move as the controversy helped increase the sales.

How should a respected author be remembered: with a biography broadly painting a picture which conforms with the public's expectations of a serious, studious, and cultured life, or by embracing the truth and revealing him to be an ordinary flawed man who liked a pint, preferred not to bath, gave little thought to how things appeared, and had as his muse his vibrant but unfaithful first wife Rosie? It is a decision being taken by Driffield's widow, who seems to see her husband's legacy as a scaffold she can use to climb up the social scale, and by Kear who thinks mostly of the benefit to his own career of creating a carefully filtered work of hagiography. Neither cares for the truth, or they are content to rationalise a convenient re-interpretation of what truth means when it suits their ends. Ashenden refuses to give them the story they want, and Cakes and Ale becomes a recollection of his memories of Driffield and Rosie, inevitably telling the story that Kear will not write.

Through these memories Ashenden recognises how he was changed by knowing the writer and his delightful and carefree first wife, and how over time they freed him of the restricting Victorian values of his childhood. The world may be revealed as being in the control of the self-interested, the hypocrites, and the social-climbers, but Ashenden is personally free. Maugham reveals in the preface that his narrator is a transplanted Philip Carey from the largely autobiographical Of Human Bondage, implying that he is revealing something of his own story. And this is exactly how the novel reads, with its occasional rambling passages and its reference to thoughts discussed elsewhere: it always feels as though this story is really being narrated by the author, and as though he is outside the literary scene, no longer in its thrall, and as an observer can give a dispassionate and critical account of how it works.

It was this rational voice that I loved, along with the story's simple and straightforward prose, and even the devastating portrait of the self-serving and ambitious writer Kear. Perhaps Maugham was motivated by point-scoring or a resentment at his lack of critical acclaim, or perhaps to some extent he was revealing the flaws he recognised within himself as he suggests in the preface, but many of his criticisms of behaviours motivated by hidden agendas still seem relevant today.

Vintage Penguins in Newcastle

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 07:17:00 +0000

The overnight ferry docked at 9am in a Newcastle much, much milder in temperature than the Amsterdam we had left the afternoon before. When I had photographed the tourists walking about on the frozen canals, and watched the games of ice hockey played later in the afternoon, I had assumed I was watching a typical winter scene. But it seems the freezing of the canals was an unusual event in Amsterdam, the first time in fifteen years that it had occurred. Everyone we met, locals and tourists alike, were complaining of the bitterness of the weather.

I only had the morning to spend in Newcastle, and I had to deal with the practical issues of finding a suitcase, a UK sim, and some access to mobile broadband, and so I had to confine my search for Penguins to the city centre. Philip from Mediations had suggested Barter Books in nearby Alnmouth as an interesting second hand bookshop to visit when in the area, but the 34 Penguins purchased in Amsterdam were weighing me down, and there just wasn't time.

The range of books available in the charity stores near Grainger Road suggests it is unlikely that they ever stock Penguins, and even the books in the recently relocated Oxfam book store (now in Hood St, near Grey's monument) seemed too new. All the old books in Newcastle's centre seem to be conveniently housed together in one wonderfully interesting and inexpensive bookshop called Books for Amnesty, located near the train station in Westgate Street.

The first thing you see when you enter the shop is a bookcase filled with orange and blue spines, and there is another such bookcase in the literature section at the rear of the shop. And all these old Penguins and Pelicans are priced at only one pound each, or five pounds if you purchase six. After we had found the ones we wanted, and talked a little with the two men running the shop, they mentioned that they had boxes of them downstairs in storage, and we were invited down to look through those as well.

And so I left Newcastle and headed for Chester with another 15 Penguins, and Pam with another 10.

Vintage Penguins in Amsterdam

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 05:29:00 +0000

I have seen Amsterdam on one freezing cold day and come away with a set of impressions which will now form my view of the city, without any sense of how representative they are. My very first thought as the plane touched down was of the Hobbema painting of the avenue of trees; it seemed to perfectly capture exactly what I was seeing. And once I was through the airport and out on the streets, snow-covered Amsterdam seemed clean, well-ordered, and efficient, although my strongest impression is of a city of incredibly helpful people. It happened several times during the day: a man who saw us rummaging through boxes of books pulling out Penguins and helped us to find more, another who followed me down the street to show me on his iphone how to find the street I was searching for, people who stopped and offered assistance whenever we stood gazing perplexedly at our map. I don't recall ever receiving so much freely offered help from strangers anywhere else I have been.

We had a wonderful first day of book buying with a total haul of 46 Penguins, 34 for me and 12 for Pam (her choices are much more constrained as she only buys first editions). This unprecedented success creates a few logistical difficulties as I have to carry these books around with me now for the next three weeks and I don't yet have a suitcase, but you don't think of these things when faced with a stash of Penguins you've never seen before. I think today will be devoted to the Rijksmuseum, and more book buying will be put off until England.

The cheapest Penguins we found were 7 books for 5 euros at Long Harry's book stall at the Waterlooplein flea market. We purchased 19 between us, but there were many more we left behind. We found a few in the English section of the Antiquariaat Kok on Oude Hoogstraat, priced around 3 to 3.5 euros.

But perhaps the best moment of my day was when I spotted this shelf at The Book Exchange on the Kloveniersburgwal:

These hard to reach green Penguins cost between 2 and 2.5 euros, were mostly ones I didn't own, and Pam didn't want any of them. The shelves in the back room had vintage Penguins peppered through the other books, all well priced. It is a lovely shop with a delightfully friendly and helpful sales person named Frederico.

And this was the total haul:

Link to Pam's blog describing the day

Penguin no. 210: A Man Lay Dead by Ngaio Marsh

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 14:11:00 +0000

'Perhaps I should say I can talk for fifteen minutes because I should like, if it wouldn't bore you, to go over the history of this case. It is of enormous help, I find, to talk to someone who is not a C.I.D. man. You needn't look so inordinately perky, Bathgate. I don't expect you to solve the mystery; I merely want you to tell me how clever I am, whether you think so or not.'

I have read a handful of Ngaio Marsh titles in the past, and found them to be reasonably enjoyable stories with slightly fantastic murder plots, all featuring the pleasant, if not particularly exciting, CID detective Roderick Alleyn. The prose is perhaps a little old-fashioned, but this also seemed part of their appeal. The only really jarring element was that inevitable paragraph in which the detectives lament that people's expectations are always so ill-informed as a result of reading too much detective fiction, things being so much tougher in real life. Overall though, the few I have read have seemed fine.

And so I was completely unprepared for this book whose tone I disliked almost from the first page. This was mostly due to the attempts at humour, but I also thought the plotting lacked subtlety, as though the characteristic elements of a Golden Age mystery were being ticked off some list. It had the country house location, the small isolated group, several motives, abundant weapons within easy reach, and the idea of murder as a game.

Sir Hubert Hendesley is renowned for the entertainments of his weekend house parties, and on this weekend he is planning a game of Murders. The rules of the game require one guest to be quietly notified of their status as murderer. They are given a day to choose their victim and plan their strategy, and another six hours to put the plan into action, during which time they must get the victim alone, inform them that they are to be the corpse, and switch off the lights. This is the signal that the ‘murder’ has been enacted, and they are allowed two minutes to make their escape and eliminate any evidence. A mock trial will follow, and the house guests will collectively attempt to identify the culprit. However, when the lights are switched back on it is not a pretending corpse that they find, but a real one, pierced through the heart with a thin Russian dagger. And when their mock trial goes ahead, the party guests find that they are all suspects, and it is Roderick Alleyn who is asking the questions.

There was never any doubt that Charles Rankin would be the victim. He is overwhelmingly unpleasant - a middle-aged lothario who seems to treat women with contempt. As his fellow house guests include his long term girlfriend, his mistress, and his mistress’ cuckolded husband, and as his behavior is completely indiscreet, there are plenty of motives for his murder. But I couldn’t help wondering, given these inter-relationships, why anyone would assemble such a party, other than that it was necessary for the story. Two rival women and an embarrassed husband – surely a weekend together would be an ordeal even without a murder, so why did they subject themselves to it? Why not decline?

I had a similar problem accepting the murder. Retrospectively it was plausible, if a little unlikely, but only given where everyone was at the time and what they were doing. But murders aren’t planned retrospectively, and I simply couldn’t see how this one could be planned at all. It is impossible to critique it without giving too much away, so I will only note that its success depended on too many factors completely outside the murderer’s control. The slightest difference to where the victim was standing, something that simply couldn’t be known in advance, and it would have failed, and the murderer would have been caught behaving in a way that was completely inexplicable.

To be fair, this was Ngaio Marsh's first attempt at writing a mystery, and she managed to create a character which she then used in another 31 novels. However, the Roderick Alleyn we meet here isn't simply bland, he is completely unappealing: his methods include bullying and manipulation, his humour is facetious and derogatory. He uses pejorative nicknames to describe the servants such as Ethel the Intelligent. He greets the news that he has a murder to investigate with a glee which seems unseemly: 'You've guessed my boyish secret. I've been given a murder to solve - aren't I a lucky little detective?' Even his approach to solving the murder seems to lack any sense of its gravity. In the passage quoted above he outlines his belief that it is of assistance to outline the case to someone outside of C.I.D, but would a policeman seriously choose the local newspaper reporter for his confidant?

So I found it to be a novel with an unsatisfactory plot, some unpleasant characters, and many failed attempts at humour. And I was left with a strong preference for the bland Roderick Alleyn of the later novels, compared with his incarnation here.

And the Penguin-collecting trip: currently snow-bound in London with all flights to Amsterdam cancelled until tomorrow. A long day of queueing and waiting, and now a night in a lovely hotel room supplied by British Airways. And snow! - a rare experience for someone who lives in Perth.

Penguin no. 410: Artifex Intervenes by Richard Keverne

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 08:22:00 +0000

"Child's play - mere child's play," he said in a querulous voice. "A code any fool should be able to read."
     "You've translated it so soon?" Champlin queried.
     "Translated it!" old Gambit answered with a snort. "Trivial! Elemental! Morse code. Vowels for dots, consonants for dashes. My fee - five guineas. I hardly like to take it. But I was commissioned-" He shrugged his loose shoulders.
     Guy smiled. He knew old Gambit; a drunken fellow, yet a genius in his way. There was no man in London who could decode cyphers as he could. They said of him in the Temple that he could have been a great lawyer but for his drinking habits. As it was, he made a fair income, and he had done amazing work for the Secret Service in the war.

Richard Keverne is one of those perplexingly obscure Penguin authors. There are twelve of his books published amongst the first thousand titles, suggesting that he must have been a writer of some merit, and reasonably well known at one time. Now he seems almost forgotten, and it is difficult to find out anything more about him than the small amount recorded at the back of these Penguins. Although many copies of his books are listed for sale, I could not find a single review of any of his stories, beyond a two line mention on librarything. I know only that he was born C.J.W. Hosken in 1888, lived until1950, and wrote under both names. He worked initially as a schoolteacher, and then as a journalist on Fleet Street, and he served in the Royal Flying Corp and the Royal Air Force during the First World War.

Artifex Intervenes is a collection of three short stories, and although it has proven impossible to learn anything of their history, I suspect they were initially written for publication in a magazine. Despite the green cover, they are not crime stories in any traditional sense; they are more like adventure stories, in which a law-abiding and perhaps fairly conventional member of the public suddenly finds him- or herself caught up pursuing criminals, and determined to unravel and frustrate some villainous plot. Just as he or she realizes they are out of their depth, the Scotland Yard Inspector Simon Artifex will intervene just as the title suggests, introducing himself and appraising them of the magnitude of the affair in which they have become involved. However he doesn't discourage them in their endeavours; instead he gives them to understand that they are vital, and that he is relying on their help; the criminals' plot seems fated to go unsolved and unthwarted without their assistance.

The plots are developed around crimes such as smuggling, drug-running, embezzlement, and racketeering, a crime imported from America in which wealthy people pay criminals not to harm them. A wide gulf separates the decent and the depraved in these stories, with the criminals tending to be wholly bad, stopping at nothing in their determination to succeed. And so there are both attempted and successful murders, but murders about which there is no mystery: they are carried out in broad daylight by some fleeing criminal who kills his pursuers, or they involve a staged accident in which the criminal drives his own vehicle with the intention of killing even the most minor and uninformed witness. For the most part, it is not the identities of the criminals which must be determined, but their intentions, and we follow both the investigations and the varying emotional states of Artifex and his helper, as they try to determine what has been planned, and when they should act. They are invariably successful, although their conjectures are not always correct.

It is the second of the three stories, The Mysterious Mr Brand, which is the most interesting. The fiancée of the wealthy property developer Murray Fenwick is kidnapped from her home, threatened with torture, and then abandoned unharmed in a derelict house on one of his recently purchased estates. Almost immediately polite and neatly typed letters begin to arrive threatening a more serious fate for Miss Arundel unless Fenwick hands over a substantial sum. Artifex cautions that protection simply cannot be purchased that way: any payment will trigger further threats and demands, but Miss Arundel wants the payment made, and Fenwick seems unable to think rationally with his fiancée at risk. Artifex co-opts Fenwick's capable and dedicated secretary Joan Garland to help him track down the villains, never doubting that she will assist him because of her hopeless affection for her employer. In rising to the challenge, she is protecting not just her employer, but every other wealthy man in England. The story was well told and well paced, but unfortunately the conclusion was easily guessed.

These stories read as escapist fiction for those living safe, conventional lives in slightly dull occupations, and for such light entertainment I though they were reasonably well done, written in a pleasant style, and with interesting character sketches like old Gambit in the passage above. However I felt that one story would probably have been enough, as it was much the same tale in each case: someone with no particular training or experience becomes the lynchpin of a dangerous operation, they face their adventure with courage and excitement rather than fear, and end up combating evil, thwarting criminals, and finding love.

In search of old Penguins - just one week to go.

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 08:30:00 +0000

Back in November I wrote of my plan to take a break from the pressures of study (and Perth's summer heat) and head to England to spend a few weeks wandering about the countryside visiting secondhand bookshops and charity stores in search of some more old Penguins for the collection. Thank you to everyone who left a comment, or contacted me by email or twitter: I have had so little time for research, so all the information I have received has been very helpful

I'm now counting down the days, with just over a week until I head off on the 25 hour long journey that will get me to Amsterdam. It seems as though I couldn't have chosen a better time: it is hot here in a way which is apparently unprecedented, with the temperature forecast to climb above 40 degrees every day this coming week, and not dropping far enough during the night to bring much relief. I cannot wait to feel cold.

(The books I brought back
from my last lone trip.)
When I wrote that post I was planning to travel on my own. This was partly because no one I know is so keen on books that they would devote an entire overseas holiday to searching for them, and partly because the youngest children came with me last time and it is too expensive to think of taking them again, and partly because some of my most enjoyable days have been in foreign cities when I was by myself. There is something about being alone and unknown which is liberating; no one expects anything of you.

But then plans can change. Pam, a collector from Tasmania (and the source of many of my recent books), wrote and asked if she could join me on the trip. And so although we only know each other online, we are heading off to search for books together. We have just under three weeks, and an itinerary taking in Amsterdam, Newcastle, Liverpool, Llandudno, Hereford, Hay-on-Wye, Bristol, Exeter, Axminster, Lyme Regis, London and Oxford. Unfortunately, Portmeirion proved too difficult to get to by train, and has to wait for the next trip. But there is so much else to look forward to: a visit to the Penguin archive at Bristol University, time with friends I haven't seen in a while, and lunch with Simon in Oxford.

So my posting on this blog may be a little erratic through February. I hope to still post a review of an old Penguin each week, but I always travel light and only read books I serendipitously come across when I am away from home; I find it creates wonderful memories. Perhaps we'll have success and find interesting book shops full of Penguins, and then I may write of that as well. And I'll document the books I find on my other blog Vintage Penguins, and perhaps post some photos to facebook.

Ill be visiting the southern suburbs of London a little as well, to see friends near Sutton, and to go to Maryon Wilson park out near Woolwich, so if you know of book shops in that area I should visit, please mention them.

Best wishes,
Karyn

Addyman Books, Hay on Wye. Photo source: Eifion on flickr

Penguin no. 958: Loving by Henry Green

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 05:48:00 +0000

They were wheeling wheeling in each other's arms heedless at the far end where they had drawn up one of the white blinds. Above from a rather low ceiling five great chandeliers swept one after the other almost to the waxed parquet floor reflecting in their hundred thousand drops the single sparkle of distant day, again and again red velvet panelled walls, and two girls, minute in purple, dancing multiplied to eternity in these trembling pears of glass.

This seemed a novel to be read slowly and carefully, and probably to be read again in order to fully take in all that is being conveyed. It is an unusual and at times baffling book to read, as most of the story is revealed through the dialogue, or in erratically punctuated passages such as the one above. But how beautifully evoked this small moment is, with the two young housemaids distracted from their work, waltzing together heedless of the watching butler. It was this aspect I enjoyed most; not the plot or the characters, but the poetry in Henry Green's descriptions of passing moments, which could be so easily missed without concentrated reading.

Loving tells the story of the domestic staff of an isolated country house in Ireland, over a few weeks during the Second World War. It is not a romanticised depiction of downstairs life, for as well as the affection some feel for others, we see their rivalries and disagreements, and the manoeuvrings, manipulations, and deceptions in which they engage in order to enforce or improve their status or pocket a little extra cash. No one seems to behave any better than they need to.

The domestic staff are all English, with a single exception, and isolated in what they perceive to be a hostile and foreign land. There is the head housemaid Miss Agatha Burch, supervising her charges, the delightful young housemaids Kate and Edith, the newly promoted (and seemingly out of his depth) 40 year old butler Charley Raunce supervising the very young pantry boy Albert, there is the gin-drinking cook Mrs Welch, and the ailing nanny, Miss Swift. The lampman Paddy alone is Irish, and he is presented very much as an outsider, with his words never quoted, and all references hinting of a wild and barbaric nature. The staff seem to live in a constant state of anxiety, afraid of returning to England because of the bombing and the risk of being called up, afraid of remaining in Ireland on account of the IRA, and the possibility of a German invasion. It is never clear if these dangers are real or imaginary, but fear of them is certainly encouraged by Charley Raunce to keep the staff in line.

And yet it is the war that seems to be bringing about a change in the social order. There is a sense of the staff never previously being perceived as individuals, being defined only by their roles, with the employers never bothering to learn their true names. But one consequence of the war is that the staff are now impossible to replace: it gives them the upper hand, and they use it to their advantage. It is the landowners, Mrs Tennant and her daughter-in-law Violet, who now seem vulnerable.

The opening and closing lines of the novel give the suggestion of a fairytale, although the last line is too flippant and unexpected to be meant other than ironically. The novel blends realistic and surrealistic elements, with the dialogue and the disagreements of the domestic staff portrayed in detail: their shifting alliances, the drudgery of their work, and the mundane quality of their lives. While in contrast there is nothing dull or conventional about the house in which they live. In every mention there seems some element of bizarre ornateness, with doorknobs in the form of gilt salmon, a bed in the shape of a boat, the sideboard with its shelf held up by carved swans, and what is described as a dairy of a drawing room containing a Gothic imitation of a hammock. And throughout the story the flocks of doves and peacocks intrude into almost every scene.

Love is presented in the novel in many forms: as the feeling Edith has for Violet's children, or that Agatha has for her charges, or in the physical affection shared between the two young housemaids, and illicitly between Violet and the Captain, someone other than her husband. However, the central love affair is the one which develops between Edith and Raunce, and which impacts on all the other staff. Raunce never seemed particularly appealing, but perhaps Edith recognises in him her only opportunity for a better life. The three older domestics are there as an example of the sad and lonely fate of anyone in this world who remains alone.

I have a sense that there were many aspects of this novel glimpsed but not understood, such as the unusual focus on colours, and the regular appearance of the birds. It seems a book far more complex than its deceptively simply story suggests.

I read Loving as part of Henry Green week, suggested and organised by Stu of the blog Winstonsdad. I expect there will be other discussions of this book posted this week, and I plan to include links below to any others I can find. Please tell me in the comments if you know of any I have missed.

A review of Loving at Gudrun's Tights
A review of Loving at 20th Century Vox

Penguin no. 201: The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze by William Saroyan

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 13:22:00 +0000

I am of Frisco, the fog, the foghorns, the ocean, the hills, the sand dunes, the melancholy of the place, my beloved city, the place where I had moved across the earth, before daybreak and late at night, the city of my going and coming, and the place where I have my room and my books and my phonograph. Well, I love this city, and its ugliness is lovely to me. And the truth is that I am not at all a writer and it is the truth that I do not want to be a writer. I never try to say anything. I do not have to try. I say only what I cannot help saying, and I never use a dictionary, I never make things up. All the prose in the world is still outside of books and largely outside of language, and all I do is walk around in my city and keep my eyes open.

Perhaps the most interesting part of this book is the preface written for the 1939 edition, in which William Saroyan tells the tale of how this collection of short stories, first published in 1934, came to be written. This is him reflecting on his own writing:

In this book this unpublished writer is proving to the world that he can write, that he has something to say, that he has a new way of saying it, and that the world had better listen, or else.

On learning that his short story The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze was to be published in a magazine with a nationwide circulation, Saroyan determined to take advantage of this first success and keep his name in his editors' minds. He says that he decided to write and send to them at least one short story every day for a month, and in this month of writing he managed to pen 36 stories. Twenty-six of them were collected into this successful and well received book. To read his words is to wonder how anyone could be so prolific, but having read them all I think I now understand. There are some unforgettable stories in this collection which give a human face to the problems of the Depression, and which are so moving and so simply told that they leave you feeling numb. But there is also much that is average and repetitious; some that are irritating; some that are very dull. Perhaps he did have something to say; the problem was that he said the same thing too many times.

Even though his stories are of struggling individuals in Depression-era America, his message is one of optimism and hope. It is a call to life, an appeal to embrace and celebrate the good fortune that is being alive, and being alive in this moment, exhorting the reader to wake up and live every moment deeply: forget money, you are already wealthy because you are alive.

Evil and ugliness are elsewhere: in groups, mobs, and organisations, in war, machinery, capitalism, and industry. Only the individual has dignity; goodness and beauty are in people. His stories are of men in desperate straits living on the fringes, but all proud and all with an insight into what he perceives to be the truth. Although they may be the lowest and poorest members of society, their low status is a marker of their inherent superiority, an indication that they haven't conformed. Everyone else is sleepwalking through their lives, trapped in their stupor by convention, ambition, Hollywood and asprin.

His new way of writing embraces a freedom of style, and a rejection of plot and structure, sometimes extending to a rejection of punctuation. He states many times that he is not a writer, and has no desire to be one, he simply wants to capture the truth, a truth observable in the people on the streets. But you can see in these statements that he is casting himself with his protagonists, and that in effect he is boasting of being something better, of perceiving a truth that other writers have missed.

I have read that he never revised his work, and often didn't even re-read it: he wanted to capture the rawness of his impressions, and he wanted every word he had written to be published. But I think this is the problem: he is too prolific and so he repeats himself; too much effort is put into writing and not enough into reflection or planning. Does any writer, no matter how talented, always write perfectly? Or is the level of quality best described by a spectrum, and when they publish they filter out all that is not their best? I think Saroyan was talented and capable, but I think he dilutes the impact of his writing by publishing the mediocre along with the exceptional. It is the same idea presented 26 times and it could not sustain my interest, but I wouldn't have wanted to miss reading the story that gives this collection its title.

Penguin no. 897: Tragedy at Law by Cyril Hare

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 12:17:00 +0000

As for the Judge, the realization of the curious peril in which his professional career stood had produced a curious reaction. As though determined in any event to go down with his colours flying, he assumed a manner that was an exaggeration - almost a caricature - of his every-day self. Never had he been so dignified, so pompous, so loftily condescending to the junior Bar, so icily critical of the leaders. His allocutions to convicted prisoners were longer than ever and, as the prisoners found to their cost, were followed by sentences proportionately long. The whole system of English justice depends upon the immunity and security of those who administer it. A psychologist would have observed with interest the effects of threatening one of these with his loss of position.

Although it has all the conventional components of murder, suspects, a police investigation, and a solution, Tragedy at Law is an unusual detective novel in that the focus of the plot is neither the murder, nor the search for the murderer. These occur only at the very end, and are dealt with briefly, providing the conclusion to the main story, a detailed portrayal of the work of the Court of Assizes, told as a fictional account of an eventful two month circuit in the south of England during the early years of the Second World War.

The story is not of those who are summoned to appear before the court, but of those who travel with it: the Judge, his wife, his clerk, marshal, and butler, and others who work at the assizes, such as the unsuccessful barrister Francis Pettigrew. Cyril Hare had toured as Judge's Marshal during World War II, and many of the observations in this story are given from the perspective of a newly recruited marshal, Derek Marshall. He details the hierarchy, rivalries and resentments amongst this group of individuals constrained to spend so much time together, and contrasts the magnificence of the ceremony which accompanies the court's progress, with the tedium of the work, and the varying levels of comfort of the lodgings.

It is a portrait of a vanished world. Perhaps the judge was no longer the King's representative dispensing the King's justice, but the traditions from those earlier times continued. The judge setting out on the circuit here, the Honourable Sir William Barber, is vexed that the pageantry which marks the start of the circuit is necessarily curtailed on account of the war. And yet the ceremony itself was baffling from a modern perspective. For whom was it held, and why would anyone be interested or entertained? The world described is so foreign, and yet so recent.

Central to much that occurs during the story is the belief expressed in the penultimate sentence of the paragraph quoted above. It was difficult to have any sympathy for this viewpoint, which essentially maintained that judges should not be held accountable for the very transgressions they punish in others. Misdemeanours by the judge are to be hushed up: he may not be morally superior to those he sits in judgement upon, but it is suggested that the stability of the system may require that he is believed to be so, appearance being more important than reality. On the first evening of the circuit the judge drinks too much, insists on driving, collides with a pedestrian on the way home, and then is found to lacking the necessary insurance. These are not trivial offences: it is shown elsewhere that a similar misdemeanour would mean time in prison for an ordinary citizen. And yet everyone involved colludes to keep it quiet. It is assumed the judge will compensate the victim and the matter will be forgotten. He may then continue judging personal injury cases, and issuing punishments to those no less guilty than himself.

Instead it leaves him vulnerable and powerless, with his authority diminished. There is no incentive for the victim to settle, and he is no longer able to keep his staff in check: they all know his secret, and he is desperate that it will spread no further. He is also subjected to threats from someone who chooses to remain anonymous, but who also seems to know what he has done. It is interesting to speculate on the view of the author: Francis Pettigrew supports the need for silence; the young and inexperienced marshal alone questions the double standard. All that follows results from the judge's inability to keep the matter quiet, but this implies that it also follows from the attempt to do so. This is a portrayal of a pompous judge, who behaves badly and creates enemies, but then perhaps he behaves this way because with the immunity he is afforded he is not constrained to behave any better?

The murder and its investigation are covered in the final 30 pages, and it was a simple matter to guess the murderer's identity: no other suspect seemed plausible. The reason for the murder is not so easily identified, and as with That Yew Tree's Shade, Pettigrew is the outsider who steps in at the last moment to identify the motive and explain the crime. However, the Pettigrew presented here is a much more bitter man, less reconciled to his drifting career and his lack of success. With its portrayal of this unfamiliar world and its analysis of the motivations influencing human behaviour, this is a far more complex story than the others I have read by Cyril Hare. It was this complexity, rather than the crime and its solution, which made the story interesting.

Also by Cyril Hare:
Penguin no. 1007: With a Bare Bodkin
Penguin no. 1064: That Yew Tree's Shade

Penguin no. 1273: Uneasy Money by P.G. Wodehouse

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 09:50:00 +0000

Boyhood, like measles, is one of those complaints which a man should catch young and have done with, for when it comes in middle life it is apt to be serious. Dudley Pickering had escaped boyhood at a time when his contemporaries were contracting it. It is true that for a few years after leaving the cradle he had exhibited a certain immatureness, but as soon as he put on knickerbockers and began to go about a little he outgrew all that. He avoided altogether the chaotic period which usually lies between the years of ten and fourteen. At ten he was a thoughtful and sober-minded young man, at fourteen almost an old fogy.

Like many of Wodehouse's protagonists, Lord Dawlish is young, affable, kind-hearted, and well meaning, but not especially sharp. He finds himself in his early twenties in possession of a title, but not of a fortune, as the family assets have been entirely dissipated by a succession of improvident forebears. However, he has little interest in luxuries and so he is untroubled by this impecunious state: a large circle of friends and a lifestyle which affords him time to play golf are all he requires to feel contented.

Inevitably there is a difficulty. His captivating fiancé Claire has an opposing outlook on life: wealth is her sole objective, and she will not marry him until he manages to increase his income. The solution to her seems obvious, and she is frustrated by his lack of application in pursuing her goal: she wants him to exploit his popularity, his title, and his wealthy friends; she has no sympathy with the concept that concern for others should come between him and the ruthless pursuit of wealth.

Lord Dawlish is known to his wide circle of friends and acquaintances as Bill, and honesty and concern for others are his defining qualities. The timely death of the eccentric millionaire and serial drafter-of-wills Ira Nutcombe seems to solve his problem, when he leaves his entire fortune to Bill on the strength of a few weeks spent together playing golf. But how is Bill to reconcile his gain with the loss suffered by the disinherited American niece and nephew? If he can just disburse some of the money to Nutcombe's family before Claire finds out, he reasons that everyone should be happy. He sets sail for New York on the next liner with a plan to give half the inheritance away, while Claire, despairing of Bill and his obdurate decency, independently sets sail for the same destination on another ship.

The world Wodehouse creates abounds with coincidences, and the most implausible of improbabilities: the two independent travellers head for the same destination, dine at the same New York restaurant, and spend their respective sojourns at adjoining properties on Long Island. The American nephew fortuitously turns up on Bill's doorstep on his first night. It keeps the pace of the novel moving; everything can be achieved in a matter of days as anyone needed will invariably and absurdly turn up right on cue, even in the unlikeliest of locations. And this is a benevolent world, where events always turn out for the best, and in which the happy ending is as inevitable as it is foreseeable.

But then, this isn't a book to be read for its plot. It is the delightful prose, the farcical sub-plots, and the exaggerated characters which give it its charm. There is the interminably dull but wealthy American businessman Dudley Pickering, the press agent Roscoe Sheriff, always praying for catastrophes which will ensure him a few more inches of coverage, and the bored American nephew 'Nutty Nutcombe', lurching between temperance and dissoluteness.

I started 2011 with Wodehouse's 1940 novel Quick Service, which I found difficult to enjoy. Uneasy Money is a much earlier work, initially written as a serial published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1915, and in Strand Magazine in 1916, and then published as a novel in 1917. He was living in America at the time, and writes of what he knows, setting much of the story in Brookport, Long Island, while living there in Bellport, and having the happy couple at the end of the book plan their wedding in the Little Church Around the Corner, where he married his wife Ethel. The story is absurd, romantic, and farcical, but it is also very funny, and entertaining from the first page to the last.

Penguin reading & collecting 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 02:14:00 +0000

I tend to find these old books interesting irrespective of whether I enjoy them; all I require is that they give me something to think about. In general this makes sampling from a collection of vintage Penguins a wonderful way to choose something to read: you can randomly choose any book published before 1970 with an orange spine, and be almost certain it will be worth reading. (So far I have found only two which failed this test: Red Queen White Queen, which I consider to have been a waste of time, and Mute Witness, which I could enjoy only for the insights it gave into the film Bullitt).

And so rather than attempting a top ten of Penguins read in 2011, I thought I would simply highlight a favourite book from each of the colour-coded series.

Orange: No. 2533: The Last Tresilians by J.I.M Stewart: I loved everything about this novel by the Oxford academic more widely known as Michael Innes: the locations, the characterisations, the discussions on art, the story, the prose, and the creative ways in which ideas were expressed.

Cerise: No. 139: Flying Dutchman by Anthony Fokker: The autobiography of the Dutch aviation pioneer who taught himself to fly, and then repeatedly risked his life experimenting with aeroplane design, before building the planes used by Germany during the First World War.

Blue: No. 291: The Quest for Corvo by A.J.A Symons: A fascinating biography of the self-styled Baron Corvo, Frederick Rolfe, who struggled financially throughout his life, relying on friends and benefactors for support, ultimately quarrelling with every one. He wasted whatever talent he possessed in the compulsive nursing of grudges, and settling of scores. Daniel Skipton in The Unspeakable Skipton is immediately recognisable as a fictional portrayal of Fr. Rolfe.

Green: No. 1581: Green for Danger by Christianna Brand: I read a number of wonderful green Penguins this year, and it is almost impossible to choose a favourite when also considering The Moving Toyshop, Hamlet Revenge!, The Dying Alderman, and the books by Simenon, but there was something about the structure of Green for Danger which was particularly appealing.

And the collecting:

My personal search for the vintage Penguins I don't yet own has been hampered lately by too many other commitments and a lack of spare time, although I managed to find quite a few at the two Save the Children's charity book sales which are held in Perth each year.

However, the collection has continued to grow, and in part that has been due to assistance from people I only know online, so I wanted to take this opportunity to mention and thank a few of them.

First there is Pam who lives on the other side of Australia, on the picturesque island state of Tasmania, and regularly travels about on a scooter in search of numbered Penguins. When she stumbled across the photo of my collection and learned of my quest, she added it to her own, and now she searches for us both. I intermittently receive packages in the mail bearing books I have longed to own, and send as many surplus books as I can in her direction, but there is never any reckoning.

And I have to thank Adam for this wonderful photo of the window of Black Gull, a bookshop in East Finchley in London.

And also for visiting the shop several times during the hectic week before Christmas in order to transcribe the title of every old Penguin they had for sale, and then buy about twenty on my behalf, and then hold them for me until I get to London in late February.

And also to Flavia, who sent me this wonderful collection of Penguins in the mail:

And thank you to everyone who has contacted me with suggestions of where I might find Penguins when I head to the UK in February.

I also wanted to also mention a few non-Penguin pages I have enjoyed during 2011: the wonderful flickr page of John McNab, this review of Gilead by Simon, and my nomination for the best blog post of 2011 (by Kevin).

Wishing everyone a wonderful New Year,
Karyn

Penguin no. 1064: That Yew Tree's Shade by Cyril Hare

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 04:36:00 +0000

Village life, with its close knit unity masking a hundred subtle social distinctions, its ramifications of blood and marriage ties, its feuds and enmities that could be as old as the parish church or as recent as last year's horticultural show, always had been and remained to him a mystery. The most that a stranger could do was to keep his eyes and ears open for the chance sight or sound that might give him a glimpse into what went on below the surface.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap,
Each in his narrow cell forever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.
Gray - Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

Francis Pettigrew has recently retired from a legal career which seems to have been something of a disappointment, and has moved to a new home near the village of Yewbury. Although he acts as deputy to the Judge of the local County Court, the judicial needs of the local area seem fairly slight, and he passes much of his time contemplating the view of Yew Hill from his study window, field glasses in hand, noting the daily changes to the landscape, the blossoming of the trees, and the many sightseers attracted by the beauty of the hill and its literary associations. In this way he becomes the last person, other than the attacker, to see Mrs Pink as she descends into the woods while walking home from delivering the parish newsletter to the residence on the summit. She is found the next day, close-by the giant Yew known locally as Archdruid's, metres from where the various paths through the woods converge.

The consensus view is that Mrs Pink was a remarkable woman. She lived the frugal life of a widow while devoting all her time to the administrative tasks essential to the efficient functioning of the various boards and committees integral to village life. Her defining qualities seemed to be goodness and usefulness, although she did pose a problem for her landlord Mr Todman, by refusing to vacate his house despite his threats, bribes, and bullying. Was he desperate enough to kill her? He certainly threatened to do so, and he was on Yew Hill on her final afternoon, but so were a number of other villagers, including Mrs Ransome, a divorcee who had abandoned her infant son, and Horace Wendon, an upper-class pig farmer left destitute years before as the victim of a swindle. The architect of that swindle was the disarming former MP Humphrey Rose, recently released from prison, and also walking on Yew Hill on Mrs Pink's final afternoon.

I felt a little sorry for Detective Inspector Trimble, the uptight, defensive, and ambitious officer investigating Mrs Pink's murder; the author is clearly having a little fun at his expense. Perhaps he was determined to ensure all the credit came his way, for he is very distrusting of Pettigrew, and keen to avoid any possibility of outside (and what he considers amateur) assistance. However, despite Pettigrew's attempts to keep in the background, he soon learns all the pertinant facts simply through conversation and observation, and in the end is the only one who realises the motive.

Cyril Hare was the pseudonym of the barrister Alfred Gordon Clark, which he chose by combining the names of his home and his chambers, Cyril Mansions and Hare Court. He notes that his setting is easily identifiable, with Yew Hill based on the location of his own retirement, Box Hill in Surrey. Intriguingly, he also mentions that one of these characters is based on someone long dead, and though he gives no further clues, with his unrepentant criminal inclinations the obvious candidate is Humphrey Rose. Could he be based on Jabez Balfour? The timing seems right.

When I think of words to describe this story, the ones that come to mind are pleasant, or adequate, or satisfactory, but nothing stronger. It is easy to read and quietly entertaining, recording aspects of British village life in the early 1950s with its food rationing and housing shortages. There are some delightful portraits of the eccentric villagers and of one slightly pompous policeman, and some gentle humour directed at human capriciousness. But it is a story rather than a puzzle, and although the solution is plausible, Hare could easily have chosen any of the characters as his murderer and made the solution fit the known clues. It seemed to me a book to be enjoyed passively; the type of book I would choose for a long flight, when I need to be diverted, but lack the concentration for anything too complex.

Also by Cyril Hare:
Penguin no. 1007: With a Bare Bodkin

Penguin no. 1463: Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 12:00:00 +0000

With these people Hilary felt instantly and happily at home. These people were his friends, his chosen companions.... All these people would, given the opportunity of choice, have the same sort of homes; you could go into a room in Prague or Budapest, Paris or London, and looking round at the pale-painted walls, the heavy woven curtains, the big shabby armchair, the amusing piece of china on the shelf, you would know that this room belonged to a European intellectual of a certain generation, holding certain recognizable views. In each of these rooms the open lightwood bookcases would contain the same books; and, because of this, a whole conversational range of shared interests existed between members of this group as soon as they met together.

It is odd to see this book being described on the back cover, and elsewhere, as the story of a father's search for his son. The words suggest an enthusiasm for finding the missing child which was bewilderingly absent, and implies for the father a credit which he does not deserve. It seems to me important to recognise that Hilary does not search for his son, refuses even to provide a photograph of his younger self to help those who are prepared to search. He closes his mind to the problem of the unknown fate of the small boy, ignores it for as long as he can, and behaves as though the solution to the problem is simply not to think of it. It was fortunate for the child that someone else knew of his disappearance, someone selflessly determined to find him if he was still there to be found.

It was the child's misfortune to be born in France during the war, a few days before the Germans arrived. His Polish mother doesn't survive: she is murdered for sheltering Allied soldiers after Hilary returns to the army, and it is possible that her two year old son shared her fate. Or perhaps the Germans found him and chose not to kill him, giving him instead to a German family to raise. But the possibility remains that she was able to protect him from the Germans, and that he was clandestinely smuggled out of Paris through some untraceable route, and is now somewhere in France, one of many children whose real identities are unknown. Perhaps his fate will never be known with any certainty: he was too young to remember his family, and all those in a position to confirm his whereabouts are now dead. There is some hope that a small child named Jean who has been found living in the impoverished orphanage of a small bombed out village may be the missing boy.

The problem is almost mathematical in its conception, perhaps contrived, but entirely plausible in the circumstances of post-war France. All avenues of research have been exhausted, and this is the only child Hilary will be offered: if he decides that this child is not his son, then he must accept that his son will never be found. He must make a choice, but it is a choice which carries two inherent risks: he may accept a child who is in reality not his son, or he may reject his true son and leave him languishing in the orphanage. Having made the choice, he will have to live with the uncertainty.

At its core, this book appears to be a comment on the attitudes of the left-leaning intellectuals of the time. Hilary seems representative of this class, and through his thoughts and behaviours they are exposed as intolerant and self-obsessed. He is smugly certain of his superiority, and judges others by the narrowest of criteria, based entirely on tastes and opinions, and blind to actions and all they imply in terms of humanity, decency and courage. The essential requirement is to conform; anyone who deviates from the orthodoxy is rejected; anyone perceived to be of lower intelligence than himself is despised. He is very quick to judge others, but does his own behaviour withstand scrutiny? Jean is a child who needs rescuing, a quick-witted and intelligent boy who is living a life deprived of all that is worthwhile, and Hilary is his only hope. It was frustrating to witness him focus entirely on the cost of saving this small boy, to obsess about the risk of rescuing a child he may not have fathered, and to dream of escaping the decision.

It was a book I found difficult to read and to enjoy, partly because of my antipathy for Hilary, and partly because it seemed so contrived. I felt that the author revealed and explained too much, as though she didn't trust the reader to work out anything for themselves. This continues to the very end of the book, when with the final lines she removes the uncertainty which had been the most interesting aspect, and reveals the boy's identity, so that we know whether Hilary has made the correct decision or not. But this information can only be of interest if the paternity is of prime importance, and I was never convinced that it was. The boy deserves saving for himself, irrespective of who his father was. It is the lesson of the book: that in war-ravaged France, people selflessly acted to save the children of strangers.

By the same author:
Penguin no. 1835: The Victorian Chaise-Longue

And more favourably reviewed elsewhere:
Savidge Reads
Harriet Devine
Novel Insights

Penguin no. 342: Farewell Victoria by T.H. White

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 08:38:00 +0000

Life was giving him a send-off. The sea had been the vital fluid itself, and here, in a tiny outpost of the sea, was society which made an insignificance of death. Man was occupied with his extinction, even against the obvious background of all those people on the front. He strove importantly in the anthills and the hives of towns, without humiliation before his species. But here were species which had no cousinship with man, which still worked with the same preoccupation, which pursued the urge for life along a million parallel courses. The picture was not depressing. Old Mundy found himself welcomed. He became a part of the brotherhood, wrapped in the common movement, supported by the freemasonry. Here in his rock pool, was war and peace and industry.

What is it about books written years ago that makes them so appealing? It was something I reflected on a little this week after Kevin from Interpolations asked me a few questions about why I read and the type of fiction I enjoy. There seems to me something captivating in the way these old books capture the times in which they were written, inadvertently recording aspects so commonplace that no one would think to make a point of writing them down. The small details they reveal can be endlessly surprising, highlighting how distorted contemporary views of the past can be, or perhaps only that my understanding of the past remains so uninformed, a picture inadequately inferred from the small and unrepresentative sample of facts I have come across. Time seems to act as a filter, removing all the subtle details.

Farewell Victoria seems to have been written in this spirit: the author sets out to capture and record some of the commonplace, mundane, and fleeting fragments of life in the Victorian and Edwardian eras before they pass from memory. He tells his story by focusing on the ordinary life, one affected by the important events of the time, but not integral to them. In doing this he recognises that recorded history tends to be the stories of exceptional people and exceptional events, and it is this that skews the picture. Instead he uses wonderfully evocative prose to construct a comprehensive mosaic more fully describing the experience of any person living in those times. Disraeli, Gladstone, Victoria and Edward are mentioned, but they remain in the background.

His principal character is Mundy, the son of a groom, born in 1850 into a world that still retained some artifacts of its medieval past. Mundy dies 83 years later; his life is lived during a time of unprecedented change. We first encounter him at the age of eight, an uncomprehending child, completely accepting of the world into which he was born. He lives his early life at the manor of Ambleden, a world of rural beauty, imposed structure, and simple pleasures: of trees and animals and hunting, and Pic-Nics, and segregated bathing, and horse-drawn bathing machines. We return to Mundy at distinct moments in his life, some personally important, and some important to the nation. We follow him to the savage wars in Zululand, and to retirement in Hastings. And we follow him as he becomes increasingly unimportant to Society, just like the horses he has always loved and cared for.

The book reads as a lament for that which is left behind, and for the fact that all existence is temporary. Mundy is the last living of his contemporaries, and so as every child is introduced we are reminded that he or she grew into an unrecognisable adult, and is already in a grave. Nothing sustains; everything described here has vanished; what has been passed over is no longer valued. It is a reminder: the experiences and memories stored in Mundy's brain will never be observable again; when he dies it is all lost.

However, there is no sense here that progress is something to be avoided, or that the past was idyllic, only a recognition that modernity came at a price, and that price was the loss of individuality. It is suggested that the modern world is one of crowds and communal pleasure, and of observing someone else achieve. It is pleasure in observing rather than doing, and in winning rather than in participating.

It is a lovely book, beautifully describing a world which no longer exists, and insisting that there is value in remembering the past.

Penguin no. 65: The Man in the Dark (An Ealing Mystery) by John Ferguson

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 01:57:00 +0000

He went down the stairs, clinging to the hand rail, while numberless people flitted past him, not one of them more to him than a tattoo of rapid feet, swarming for the trains. Yet had he been sensitive enough that feeling of being so alone in the crowd might well have served him as a premonition. It was perhaps fate singling him out, and separating him off from his fellowmen for the strange sequence of events destined to begin that night. Fate seems to work like that, using a man for a purpose he cannot see at the time. He goes down one street rather than another, for no apparent reason, and something happens in that street which alters the whole of his life.

This seems to be another of the forgotten Penguins. Online references only lead to copies listed for sale, and there is very little information available concerning the author. I could find only that John Ferguson was a Scottish clergyman who wrote ten detective novels, although he was better known as a playwright. This is one of six which feature the Scottish private detective Francis McNab, and one of four published as numbered Penguins.

The plot is complex, with the story written more as a thriller than as a conventional crime novel. We know many of the details of the crime from the early chapters, and although clues are scattered throughout, they are not there to help the reader solve a puzzle; this is the story of a pursuit. The question being considered is how you would track down an otherwise respectable man who committed a single murder. England in 1928 was filled with young men trained to kill during the war, but what if they used their training once, and only once, in civilian life? The suggestion is that the police would never find them, for they lack training in logic. They draw predictable inferences from all they observe, fail to consider competing hypotheses, and willingly ignore any clues at odds with their conjectures. Francis McNab has been trained in logic. He is hired to investigate the murder by a newspaper with an eye on its circulation.

Sandy Kinloch is the man in the dark. He was left blind as the result of an explosion in the First World War, and he is destitute. He had once been a medical student with an inclination for literature and a promising future, but ill-fortune together with the war, his injuries, and some poor investments, have reduced him to penury. He spends his last few borrowed coins to travel to Ealing on a fog-bound London night to beg some help from a former fellow student, Dr Peter Dunn.

But Kinloch and Dunn are Scottish, and they seem to share with the other Scottish characters in the book a set of personality traits which makes it difficult for them to get along with others: they are proud, sensitive, and quick to take offence, and they treat conversation as though it were some type of fencing match, always looking for opportunities to wound each other. Kinloch leaves Dunn's house angry, penniless, and without options, and inadvertently stumbles into the path of Ponsonby Paget, whose murder later that evening will alter the course of his life.

Paget is a politician and journalist, strangely esteemed by the general public for his weekly newspaper, the Eye Opener, a publication devoted to exposing the private lives and secrets of London's well known citizens. He is kept in business by a steady stream of women (and only women) willing to sell him gossip for publication. But gossip can be put to other uses, and people will pay to have a story disappear. Paget's miscalculation was to blackmail someone who was also willing to kill. Kinloch is a witness to all that occurs, lured from the fog in his desperate state by the promise of earning an easy five pounds. But he is a witness in no position to identify the murderer, and he is likely to be a suspect himself.

It is clear that the murderer will only be identified if Kinloch can be traced, but Kinloch has reasons for remaining elusive. The police have no chance of finding him: they have inferred from the crime scene that Kinloch is lame rather than blind, and they have embarked on a futile search. The story evolves as a three-tiered game of hare-and-hounds: Kinloch on the trail of the murderer, and McNab on the trail of the blind man. It is completely unbelievable, and yet engagingly written, told partly in the present and partly in retrospect, using three narrators who have differing perspectives and differing loyalties.

It has those staples of the genre, the dim offsider who must have every aspect of the solution explained, and the scoffing at crime fiction generally, with the suggestion that in a fictional world all the clues would be more apparent and more easily deciphered. And yet many of the clues presented here are absurdly fortuitous; only the slightest deviation and the crime would have remained unsolvable. However, it was well written, interestingly structured, and enjoyable to read.

Penguin no. 1257: The World My Wilderness by Rose Macaulay

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 10:47:00 +0000

Savagery waited so close on the margins of life; one day it would engulf all: yet another civilization would go down into darkness, so historians and philosophers said, to join les autres, those sunken civilizations of past ages which can be dimly seen, magnificent wrecks, lying fathoms deep in the seas of time. No civilization has lasted more than a few thousand years; this present one, called western culture, had had its day and was due for wreckage, due for drowning, while the next struggled inchoate in the womb of the ensuing chaos, till slowly it too would take shape and have its day... We haven't finished, Richie protested, we have scarcely begun, give us a little more time for beauty. O, I love long life better than figs. But beauty vanishes, beauty passes, and he saw only her receding back, menaced and to die.

The above passage captures something of the tone of this book: it is despairing, and unrelentingly sombre and pessimistic. The story is set just after the end of the Second World War, predominately in blitz-ravaged London. Rose Macaulay seems to have been profoundly affected by the experience of living through that war, of witnessing the devastation of the city, and of suffering the loss of all her books, letters, and unpublished manuscripts when her own flat in Luxborough House, Marylebone, was destroyed by a bomb in 1941 (while she was staying elsewhere). She was clearly devastated by her loss; judging from this book, it seems to have left her harbouring a deep sense of disillusionment with humanity, and a complete rejection of any hope in progress, or in the promise of the future.

She touches repeatedly on this idea of the decay of Civilization, alluded to in the descriptions of the ruined landscape around Cheapside and St Giles. It is the markers of a civilized and organised Society which have been destroyed: the churches, offices, and shops. The discarded artifacts of civilised life lie everywhere: fragments of hymn books, broken church bells, staircases that lead nowhere. She intimately documents the wilderness as it encroaches on these devastated areas, naming the small plants and animals gradually moving into an environment most people have abandoned. And she remembers that which is no longer observable, referring to the cratered streets and alleyways by their former names, and recalling the lives formerly lived in the ruined buildings. The bombs have also uncovered the buried remains of civilizations no longer extant: a reminder of the inevitability of decay.

The title seems to be a reference not only to this central London wilderness, but also to the moral wilderness suggested to affect those who lived through the war, and also to the personal wilderness into which the protagonist Barbary is cast when her mother Helen sends her away. Helen is beautiful, knowledgeable and capable, but also indolent and self-concerned, and much more inclined to pursuits providing pleasure than those requiring effort. She had taken Barbary to France years before, leaving her son Rich in England with his upright and distinguished father, and becoming the mistress, and then the wife, and ultimately the widow of a French collaborator, found drowned in the bay once the Germans had gone. She has allowed her daughter Barbary to run wild with the juvenile maquis, individuals who resisted the Germans during the war, and who continue their lawless activities despite the Germans being gone. And in consequence Barbary is wild, untidy, uneducated, and distrusting of authority.

An event which is revealed only in the closing chapters has severed the close relationship between mother and daughter, and Helen sends Barbary away, back to her father in London. Barbary is rejected by her mother, removed from the wild landscape of Collioure that she loves, and finds herself stranded in the bleak grey urban blandness of London. She seeks solace in the ruined buildings and wild landscape of the bombed streets that lie behind St Paul's, and imagines a new maquis comprising the drifters, army deserters, and thieves that occupy this wild part of London; an incompatible barbarism living in the centre of civilization.

These characters seemed conceivable as individuals, but not as a family. It was impossible to ignore the suspicion that each was there to stand as symbol for something else. Helen, with her allure, her knowledge of classical myths, and her love of beauty, and the echoes in her story of Helen of Troy who also left her distinguished husband for a foreign lover, seemed to represent civilization, but one dissipated through apathy. Barbary's name hints at her barbarian qualities, but may also be a reference to the maid in Othello: My mother had a maid call'd Barbary: She was in love, and he she loved proved mad and did forsake her. I was reminded of Kenneth Clark's suggestion that civilization can be undermined by exhaustion and boredom; here the suggestion seemed to be that it can be undermined by apathy. Barbarian qualities are not confined to those dwelling in the wilderness; there are repeated allusions to a widespread recent moral wilderness in which cheating, smuggling, and defying authority have become the norm as a consequence of the war.

Despite its pessimistic tone it is an interesting book, particularly in the way it records the picturesque qualities of the ruined streets, and how the devastated area looked in the years after the war, before it was rebuilt in its bleak modern style. The prose was perhaps a little flowery for my taste, with long and detailed sentences, which sometimes required re-reading if they were to be fully understood, and with many embedded literary references (such as I love long life better than figs in the passage quoted above, taken from Antony and Cleopatra). But it is fascinating to read because it keeps you concentrating, trying to decipher her meaning, and reflecting on whether she had a valid point.

Penguin no. 1393: Our Hearts were Young and Gay by Cornelia Otis Skinner & Emily Kimbrough

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 08:58:00 +0000

We had been planning the trip for over a year. Pinching, scraping, and going without sodas, we had salvaged from our allowances and the small-time jobs we each had found the preceding vacation the sum of $80.00, which was the cost of a minimum passage on a Canadian Pacific liner of the cabin class. Our respective families had augmented our finances by letters of credit generous enough to permit us to live for three months abroad, if not in the lap of luxury, at least on the knees of comfort. For months we had been exchanging letters brimming over with rapturous plans and lyric anticipation and now June really had rolled around and the happy expectancy of the brides-to-be of that year had nothing on us.

This is a simply delightful book, and easily the most amusing I have read in years. It must have been quite a different experience to read it when it was first published in 1943, as it is clearly anticipated that any reader will have some idea of just who these people are. But I picked it up knowing nothing of Cornelia Otis Skinner or Emily Kimbrough, or of Cornelia's father Otis Skinner, or of Eisenhower's cardiologist Dr Paul Dudley White, all of whom are featured rather affectionately in these recollections.

It seems that Cornelia was a writer and an actress who successfully wrote and performed monologues on the stage during the 1920s, and who was clearly reasonably well known by the 1940s (there is footage of her here featuring on What's my Line?) . Perhaps that is why the book has been written from her perspective, even though it was co-authored by both women; the sections in which she relates Emily's lone experiences inevitably read a little oddly. It was a very successful publication, spending five weeks at the top of the New York Time's bestseller list, before being made into a film the following year. Emily then wrote a sequel about the making the film, We Followed Our Hearts to Hollywood, although that doesn't seem to have made it into the vintage Penguin list.

Our Hearts were Young and Gay is a tale of two innocents abroad: looking back across 20 years, Americans Cornelia and Emily recall the trip they took to Europe together in the early 1920s just after graduating from Bryn Mawr college, when they were young, naïve, and largely uninformed. It was a kind of supervised aloneness, as Cornelia's parents took a parallel holiday, crossing the ocean at the same time but in a different ship, and staying in many of the same locations, but in different hotels.

Cornelia and Emily cherish this illusion of independence, and perhaps some delusions of youthful sophistication. As they head off on their adventure, Fate does them rather a favour in terms of the interestingness of their story, by delivering a series of unanticipated misfortunes, along with some very fortuitous saviours. Barely have they waved farewell to their parents before their plans begin unravelling: their ship runs aground, they are left stranded in Canada as the only passengers for whom an alternative passage could not be organised, and they are exposed to measles during the delay at the worst possible time for two girls shortly to pass through customs. Their memoirs read like farce as they blunder from one absurd predicament to another.

One of the most endearing qualities of their humour is that there is nothing cruel about it; they have fun only at their own expenses. They celebrate what it is to be young, enthusiastic, and desperate to make an impression. They invariably do so, but usually not the one they were hoping to make. They detail their rivalries, their affectations, their mistaken purchases, their imaginative fears, and their dreams, and through it all their sense of wonder at the experiences they are having.

They describe a world which has vanished, one in which girls are very innocent, measles is terrifying, and travel is leisurely and unhurried. They stay for long periods in hotels, and seem unperturbed by setbacks that cost them weeks. As the adventures settle down, they include wonderful anecdotes of the people they encounter, such as lunch with H.G. Wells, and a visit with a First World War veteran almost imprisoned due to his injuries in the hospital at Invalides.

It is a light-hearted read, hilarious in places, and such a charming tale.

In search of old Penguins.... [Updated 18/11/2011]

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 12:33:00 +0000

I have put the book reviews aside for a single post because I wanted to ask for some information from anyone who lives in the UK and who enjoys browsing through secondhand book shops, charity stores, and markets.

It has occurred to me lately that I need to take a break from my studies. I have a fascinating PhD topic, a small part of the research effort focused on understanding how HIV-1 mutates in response to the immune system of the person it has infected, but I am sure boredom is the enemy of anyone attempting to write a thesis. I need to escape from it for a while. My husband has very kindly offered to relieve me of my responsibilities for a few weeks early next year, and suggested that I hop on a plane to the UK and spend a few weeks wandering about in the villages of England or the suburbs of London continuing the search for Penguins to add to the collection. I know it would probably be cheaper to sit here at the computer in Perth and buy them through ebay, but I wouldn't enjoy it nearly as much.

In the past I have relied on serendipity to help me find bookshops stocked with vintage Penguins, and I like to think that I have been very fortunate. The moments when I stumbled across them on holiday will never be forgotten, and yet I remember the exact details so vaguely: there was a bookshop in Arundel, another below the pavement in Edinburgh (possibly in Leith Walk?), a charity store open on a Sunday afternoon in Oxford (perhaps on the Cowley Rd), an antique store in Castle Cary, and a market stall in Spitalfields market on a Sunday morning. And then there are the Oxfam stores: I found my first ever copy of Ariel in Kentish Town, and I love to walk the streets of Hampstead, through the churchyard of St John-at-Hampstead, ending up at the charity stores in West End Lane.

Unfortunately relying on chance doesn't always work. A few weeks after I returned from a family holiday that involved a lovely stay in the village of Frome, Yvonne of Fiction Books left a comment on this blog about a wonderful book store near Bath stocked with hundreds old Penguins. I must have only been a few miles away and yet I never found it. So this time I'm asking for help before I go.

I haven't settled on an itinerary yet, or even a time to go, although it will probably be in winter in order to avoid the crowds. Perhaps I will spend a few days in Amsterdam, catch the ferry to Newcastle, and then take a train to Liverpool. There are places near Liverpool that I would love to visit: Chester, Llandudno, possibly Portmeirion if I can work out how to get there on my own and without a car. Then to Lyme Regis, because the last two times I have tried to go there I have been prevented by snow, Oxford, and then London.

If you have any advice or recommendations, I would love to hear them. Is there any village I should particularly head to? Any shop that I shouldn't miss? If you have seen a stash of old Penguins for sale anywhere in the UK I would love to know.

In search of old Penguins: Part 2
Vintage Penguins in Amsterdam
Vintage Penguins in Newcastle
Vintage Penguins in Lyme Regis
Penguins and the Bristol archive

*****Update*****
I just wanted to thank everyone who left a message in the comments below, or who contacted me by email or by twitter. When I get some time over the weekend I plan to sit here at the computer with google maps and a train/bus schedule and work out where all these places are, and see what is feasible. Having journeyed by car last year in the UK and seen the havoc caused by the snow and black ice, and dealt with the roundabouts, and the parking (though only as a passenger), I know that hiring a car would be far too stressful. In Western Australia country roads tend to be long, straight, wide, and empty.

In case anyone else is interested, the other suggestions that I have received which are not listed below are: Joel Segal in Exeter, Adelphi Books in Portsmouth, Book Cupboard in Plymouth, Charing Cross Rd in London, Scoob in London, and the mystery novel shop in Hay-on-Wye, courtesy of @CAPittard, @timesflow, @SimonTateBooks, and @detectivecritic on twitter.

Sarah, my email address is karynreevesATgmail.com. Simon, you are just lovely, and I would like nothing more than to come and say hello when I am in Oxford.

Thanks once again for all these wonderful suggestions,
Karyn

Penguin no. 1357: Roman Tales by Alberto Moravia

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 20:51:00 +0000

If you are in the habit of flirting with women, it is difficult to realize when the time for that is past and women begin to look upon you as a father or - even worse - a grandfather. It is especially difficult because every middle-aged man has, inside his head, another head: his outer head has wrinkles, grey hair, decayed teeth, lustreless eyes; his inner head, on the other hand, has remained just the same as when he was young, with thick black hair, a smooth face, white teeth, and bright eyes. It is the inner head that looks longingly at women, imagining itself to be visible to them. But of course women see the outer head, and say: 'What does he want, the old scarecrow? Can't he see he's old enough to be my grandfather?'

This is a collection of 19 tales set in the streets, parks, and suburbs of Rome in the years shortly after the Second World War. There are many references familiar to any tourist who has visited the city: the Borghese Gardens, the Piazza del Popolo, the Quirinale, and the streets of Trastevere. The stories are very short, all told in the first person by differing narrators who are working class and male. We know very little about them, usually not even their names; they describe themselves primarily in terms of their occupation and their appearance. Almost all work in poorly paid positions: they are truck drivers, taxi drivers, waiters, gardeners, caretakers; a few are unemployed and living on the threshold of homelessness, and a few are willing to contemplate crime.

In general the stories tell of commonplace events in each narrator's life, sometimes spanning only a single afternoon or evening. Taken together they provide a snapshot of the Roman working class, but they are perhaps even more interesting individually: each is a study of character, a portrayal of a small sample of the diversity of human experience, and an attempt to understand how people think, and why they behave the way they do. The overriding sense is one of unhappiness and loneliness, of people trapped partly by circumstances, and partly by their own character flaws.

These are lives constrained by something which is lacking, sometimes wealth and possessions, and sometimes intelligence, self-discipline, rectitude, physical strength, or attractiveness. They seem in general to be fairly accepting of the smallness of their lives, and they fashion their expectations and desires accordingly. For a while these desires guide every thought and action: the desire is usually for a woman, but where even that dream had been abandoned, it will be replaced by something else which is wanted just as desperately: a pair of shoes, a little peace, a temporary escape. But these tend to be individuals who are ineffective: when they fail to achieve their goal, they simply give up, submit, and continue with their lives of quiet desperation.

Even though the stories are independent, they are bound together by certain themes that recur throughout, reflecting the shared values of the class of people described. In particular, ideas about friendship are explored: the men seem to recognise in it a shared code that regulates behaviour, and brings a requirement for loyalty that exceeds all other concerns. Irrespective of any opposing inclination, a friend never takes the role of a rival, and always assists in any way required. It is a regulation consciously self-imposed, even when the cost is high. But as always there are people who take advantage of another's loyalty. A second theme is the importance of appearance, and the humiliation of being small in stature. Isolation is the price paid for being unattractive, weak, overweight, old or in any way unmanly.

It is a book about people and the isolation of existence more than it is about Rome: many of these characters, and their thoughts and philosophies, are recognisable removed from their Roman context. And for all its bleakness, it is Moravia's ability to articulate so clearly these shared human experiences, such as that in the paragraph given above, that make the book so interesting to read.

By the same author:
Penguin no. 880: The Woman of Rome
Penguin no. 1460: Two Adolescents
Penguin no. 2371: The Fancy Dress Party

Penguin no. 988: The Case of the Gilded Fly by Edmund Crispin

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 11:30:00 +0000

Their relationship was further complicated by the fact that Fen had solved several cases in which the police had come to a dead end, while Sir Richard had published three books of literary criticism (on Shakespeare, Blake and Chaucer) which were regarded by the more enthusiastic weekly papers as entirely outmoding conventional academic criticism of the sort which Fen produced. It was, however, the status of each as an amateur which accounted for their remarkable success; if they had ever changed places, as a mischievous old Don in Fen's college once suggested, Fen would have found the routine police work as intolerable as Sir Richard the niggling niceties of textual criticism; there was a gracious and rather vague sweep about their hobbies which ignored such tedious details.

This was an old Penguin in a very sorry state: the pages had yellowed, the spine had crumbled, the cover was torn and marked, and the inside pages showed evidence of water damage and mould. It was found by my six year old daughter last week in a box of secondhand books at a local suburban fair, somewhere I wouldn't expect to come across an old Penguin, and a sign that she has learned to scan rows of old books for those special spines. And it was a title I was keen to find, as I had seen it listed as the only Crispin in the Guardian's 1000 books everyone must read, though in the comedy section rather than in crime. The listing had me intrigued - could this book be even better than The Moving Toyshop?

It was disappointing to find out that the answer was no. The Case of the Gilded Fly was interesting to read and held my attention to the end, but it is much more of a conventional Golden Age mystery novel, and as a result it is not nearly as original or entertaining as the later book. It lacks the exuberance and vitality, and while it is eccentric and absurd, it is so in a way which is not completely satisfying: the story is contrived, the characters lack dimension, and the solution to the murder is so unlikely that it is only barely plausible. This was Crispin's first attempt at writing a mystery novel, and he completed it in less than two weeks while still an undergraduate at Oxford University, which makes it an impressive achievement, and perhaps explains some of its flaws. I suspect the problem is that I read these books in the wrong order; this may have seemed a better novel if my expectations hadn't been raised by a superior work.

The story is set in Oxford, and concerns the members of a provincial repertory theatre as they prepare to stage the play Metromania, written by the well-known playwright Robert Warner, with his mistress Rachel West taking the lead role. The early chapters seem to be given over to the bickering of the cast, exploring their jealousies and rivalries, and their complex network of mismatched love interests, with Jean in love with Donald, who in turn is infatuated with Yseut, while Yseut works on luring Robert away from Rachel. It is Yseut who is the real problem. She is wealthy, alluring and promiscuous, and seems a murder victim made to order, as she relishes creating disharmony, and is universally disliked. When she is found dead in Donald's rooms, the police suspect suicide, though Fen avers immediately that it is a case of murder: not only does he believe that the apparent suicide has been staged, he is certain that he can name the murderer.

However, he chooses not to: he does not see in his ability to solve the case a compulsion to necessarily do so. He reflects on it as something of a dilemma: Yseut's murder has improved the lives of the people she knew, while identifying the murderer may at the very least impoverish the theatre, as the murderer is likely to face the death penalty. And you get the impression that Fen also seems to enjoy his private knowledge, and the accompanying feelings of superiority, as he taunts others with their inability to deduce what he suggests is obvious. His dilemma ceases to be academic when a second person is murdered, and he acts to inform the police, but there is an absence of any sense of culpability with the second death.

As intimated in the preceding paragraph, this is a Fen who is not quite as appealing as the one who appears in The Moving Toyshop. There are the same collection of characteristics but they are weighted differently, so that his energy is diverted into fidgeting rather than action, and rather than being playful, he is excessively forgetful, bullying and moody.

The title is perplexing: the gilded fly is a Shakespearean reference (King Lear) which takes concrete form here as a the pattern on a ring forced on to Yseut's hand after her death. And yet the murderer goes to great lengths and considerable risk to disguise the crime as a suicide, so why the ring? It helps alert Fen to the motive, but seems to achieve no tangible purpose for the murderer. The book is full of literary allusions, some obvious and some obscure, but this one seems an afterthought. And it only serves to highlight how parts of the story aren't entirely satisfactory.

By the same author:
Penguin no. 1315: The Moving Toyshop

Penguin no. 1728: A Question of Upbringing by Anthony Powell

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 05:52:00 +0000

These classical projections, and something in the physical attitudes of the men themselves as they turned from the fire, suddenly suggested Poussin's scene in which the Seasons, hand in hand and facing outward, tread in rhythm to the notes of the lyre that the winged and naked greybeard plays. The image of Time brought thoughts of mortality: of human beings, facing outward like the Seasons, moving hand and hand in intricate measure: stepping slowly, methodically, sometimes a trifle awkwardly, in evolutions that take recognizable shape: or breaking into seemingly meaningless gyrations, while partners disappear only to appear again, once more giving pattern to the spectacle: unable to control the melody, unable, perhaps to control the steps of the dance.

Nicholas Jenkins observes a group of workmen on a street corner, warming themselves before a fire in the softly falling snow. The scene reminds him of Nicolas Poussin's 17th Century painting, A Dance to the Music of Time, with its linked figures traversing an endless circle as Time looks on and accompanies them on his lyre. It is the first of many references to paintings in this book, each there to help the reader visualise the scene, but also perhaps giving some indication of Powell's conception of his readership. Jenkins' thoughts cascade through the snow, the workmen, Poussin's painting, Time, and death, until he finds himself looking backwards and reflecting on the years shortly after the Great War when he was on the brink of adulthood.

It is a difficult book to assess on its own as it serves as the introduction to a story which spans several decades, and which unfolds in a series of twelve books published between 1951 and 1975, known collectively by the title of Poussin's painting. I made the mistake of reading the fifth, Casanova's Chinese Restaurant, at random, but it is clear now that these books need to be read in sequence order. This first book reflects on the fluidity of relationships, the drift of friends and acquaintances into and out of the narrator's life during the final years of boarding school and early years of University. The pattern of such movements are viewed as describing the structure of life, but it is a pattern discernible only in retrospect. His recollections focus almost exclusively on the lives of those he has known rather than on himself, but these stories are inevitably fragmentary, restricted to the sections interwoven with his own. Their lives are in effect sampled, and it is a technique which highlights the subtle changes in personalities and relationship through time.

When Jenkins reflects on his final years at school it is Kenneth Widmerpool he thinks of first, even though he was never a friend. With his unusual and ill-fitting clothes and his lack of natural ability, Widmerpool was inevitably an outsider. He longs to be noticed, and works with determination and perseverance towards the elusive goal of success, but to no apparent end. He seems at first to be a character deserving of pity, but this would not be his own conception of himself: when Jenkins meets him again a few years later in France he is surprised by Widmerpool's complete unawareness of an inferiority Jenkins never questioned .

The older Widmerpool is a far more confident and pompous figure, defining achievement and success narrowly, determined to let nothing get in his way. He is humourless and rational, appraising everything for its contribution to wealth, status or security, and without any sense of pluralism: he sets himself up as a critic of anyone who would choose a different path. In his world there would be no value placed on art, music, poetry, or imagination. It was impossible to read this without thinking of Paradise Postponed, and Leslie Titmuss; Widmerpool must surely have provided some of the inspiration for John Mortimer's character.

Widmerpool seems a marker of a changing world and the modern fixation on progress. He shares with Quiggin, another acquaintance from a less affluent background, an uncouthness, a sense of grievance and resentment, and an inclination to criticise others. But there is also a sense of momentum about them both, and a faculty for industry with which they compensate for any lack of talent. In this they seem to offer a contrast with Jenkins' wealthy friends, Peter Templer and Charles Stringham. Despite their advantages, both Templer, with his affectations and desire to impress, and Stringham, with his sharp mind but bored disposition, seem ineffective and directionless, perhaps burdened by their eccentric families. Jenkins seems to occupy a space between the two extremes.

There is little plot, with the narrative concentrating on a parade of characters, many of whom must reappear in future volumes. It has a melancholy air, a lament for the passing of time and the ending of friendships, but it achieves its purpose: it has me wondering about the characters, and keen to read on.