"The Floating Church" by Alexandra Peel

This delightfully charming novella is set in the Spring of 1603. In the opening chapter we are introduced to the villagers of Hope Ghyll, through the eyes of narrator and principal protagonist Susanna, an innocent girl fast approaching womanhood who goes to the woods to confide in her doll and idol, 'Oak Tree Jesus', telling him all her dreams, from becoming May Queen to kissing the dreamy-looking James Joseph. But growing-up has its dangers and its consequences.

I'm not an expert on this period but to me the details and the descriptions and the dialogue seemed pitch perfect. At the start of the book the countryside is idyllic: the villagers work together and live together in a close-knit but tolerant co-dependence; Susanna is happy to be surrounded by her kith and kin and comforted by the certainty of the village traditions. But change cannot be prevented. A new preacher arrives, who challenges the easy paganism of village life. And Susanna's own longings prove disruptive too. With the dreadful inevitability of a gathering storm, clouds loom on the horizon. Tragedy, when it strikes, is terrible.

The plot is perfectly paced (the May day celebration, half way through, is the turning point) and the prose is lyrical. The writing seems simple and effortless which is a testament to the writer's skill. 

Some selected quotes:

• "And if there was one thing John Assheby was, it was certain."
• "The white thing lay across a large rock, soaked through, plastered to the stone like a second skin. One sleeve trailed into the water, whilst the other lay across its own body. The watery arm wafted back and forth waving to her."
• "The abandoned parson’s house where an apple tree wrapped its branches around one corner of the roof, as a parent embracing a child."
• "James, simply thinking his name made her sigh with bliss, would come home tomorrow. Perhaps."
• "Moths were a sign of death, and it was unlucky to kill them."
• "The road rose uphill to the church and cemetery and climbed from there at a rate Tom Ballard's mare and even John Baker's donkeys struggled to ascend. She remembered her father once comparing it to the long climb to Heaven, but Heaven was a steeper journey, no doubt."
• "If I had looked in more windows before marrying, tried the goods, well...who knows how things might have turned out.”

A simple tale, beautifully told. Magnificent. August 2021.

Alexandra Peel has also written:

• Beneath the Skin: a steampunk adventure in two parts:
• Where Sleeps the Serpent
• The Song of the Nightingale 
• The Life and Crimes of Lockhart & Doppler: another steampunk novel

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"Lazarillo de Tormes" by Diego Hurtado de Mendoza (?)

 Lazarillo is the first of the Spanish picaresque novels and was published in 1554 in Burgos and Alcala and Antwerp; it was published anonymously and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza is only the most popular candidate for authorship. My edition was translated by Michael Alpert and published by Penguin in 1969. 

Picaresque novels are slightly unstructured and follow the adventures of a 'picaro', a rogue. Lazaro is a young lad whose mother gives him as servant to a blind beggar; he then works for a priest, then an impoverished nobleman and other masters. It is amusing and very short (fewer than 60 pages). It reminded me of Candide without the characterisation and the philosophy.

There were some great moments:

• "We find very few authors who are prepared to write just for themselves. After all, it's not easy to write a book and if they go to the trouble they want to be rewarded, not financially but with the knowledge that their work is bought and read and praised if it deserves praise." (Prologue)
• "Cicero says 'Honour encourages the arts'. Who thinks that the soldier who reaches the top of the scaling-ladder first hates like the most? No, of course he doesn't; it's desire for praise that makes him expose himself to danger. It's the same in the case of the arts and in literature." (Prologue)
• "How many people must there be in the world who run away from others in fright because they can't see themselves?" (Ch 1)
• "Charity had not only begun at home but stayed there too." (Ch 3)
• "So skinny that he looked like a pedigree greyhound" (Ch 3)
• "I had to find a fourth employer and he turned out to be a friar of the Order of Mercy. ... I left him because ... of one or two things that I'd rather not mention." (Ch 4)

Extremely short, easy to read and amusing. April 2021

This review was written by
the author of Motherdarling

"The Murdered Cousin" by Sheridan Le Fanu

A very short novella, scarcely longer than a short story, from a classic author who deserves rather more recognition than he has received. 

It starts with a locked-room mystery. The narrator's uncle is accused of murdering a guest in his house but cannot be prosecuted because no one can see how the crime could have been committed. 

Then the narrator's father dies and she is sent to live with her uncle who will be her guardian. He then proposes that she marries his brutish son. She realises that the pair are scheming to get their hands on her fortune ... and that the alternative might be to be murdered by them. And then one night ...

Rather neatly, the denouement of this clever book reveals the solution to the locked-room mystery.

This is stylish gothic romantic thriller fiction. Another of this author's work (A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family) is thought to have provided Charlotte Bronte with the 'mad woman in the attic' element of Jane Eyre.

Selected quotes:

• "The door had been double locked upon the inside, in evidence of which the key still lay where it had been placed in the lock."
• "I have plucked the old baronet as never baronet was plucked before; I have scarce left him the stump of a quill."
• "having been, so far back as she could well recollect, always rather strict, as reformed rakes frequently become, he had latterly been growing more gloomily and sternly religious than heretofore."
• "he was a specimen of the idle, coarse-mannered, profligate 'squirearchy'." 
• "I'm reckoned rather hard to please, and very hard to hit. I can't say when I was taken with a girl before, so you see fortune reserved me—." 'I'm a catch' is never the best start to a proposal.
• "such a consummation, though devoutedly to be wished, was hardly likely to occur" A nice quotation from Hamlet with a twist: the word being 'devoutedly'

Le Fanu describes one character as being like 'Sir Giles Overreach' a character in 'A New Way to Pay Old Debts' by  Philip Massinger written c 1625 

February 2021

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"A kid for two farthings" by Wolf Mankowitz

Set in the East End of London. While his mum does piece work making hats, Joe, too young for school, is looked after by Mr Kandinsky who, helped by Shmule, sews trousers in the basement. When Joe's pet, a day-old chick, dies, he goes into the market to buy a unicorn. The unicorn is crooked, and very sickly, but unicorns have the power to grant wishes.

• Joe wants his father to come back from Africa.
• Mr Kandinsky wants a steam trouser press.
• Shmule wants to be a body-building champion but needs to earn money through professional wrestling against fighters who frighten him.
• Sonia wants Shmule to buy her a diamond ring which is why Shmule is wrestling.

Will dreams come true?

A charming story told from the perspective of a little boy and full of wonderful characterisations and superbly caught dialogue.

Some great lines:

• "Life is all dreams - dreams and work. That's all it is." (C 1)
• "'For how long?' she said, 'how long is anyone pretty?'" (C 1)
• "Naturally small animals only have small lives and naturally they lose them more easily." (C 1)
• "Everybody needs a name, otherwise how can they know who they are?" (C 4)
• "They only talked to themselves, mumbling all the time, sometimes having arguments alone." (C 4)
• "One of the things about games is that unless you keep adding to them and working out new ideas, they get dull - not the games really, but you get dull in the games, and then they seem dull."(C 7)
• "Once the evening comes, what does it matter how bright or dull the day has been?" (C 9)

A beautifully told novella from the author of Make me an Offer. April 2019; 97 pages

This was made into a film directed by Carol Reed and starring such luminaries as David Kossof playing Mr Kandinsky and Diana Dors playing Sonia. Wolf Mankowitz is perhaps better known for his contribution to the world of films: he is the man Apart from going to Downing College Cambridge (where I followed twenty years later) Wolf Mankowitz is the man who introduced Cubby Broccoli to Harry Saltzman which led to the James Bond films; having written the screenplay for Dr No, Wolf thought it was not good enough so asked that his name be removed from the screen credits.

"Castle Rackrent" by Maria Edgeworth

This is a two part story first published in 1800. It is narrated by an old retainer (Thady Quirk, honest Thady or old Thady) of a family of Irish gentry.

The first half relates the history of the family till the present day. Sir Tallyhoo Rackrent died from a hunting accident and left the estate to his 'cousin-german' (we would now say first cousin) Sir Patrick O'Shaughlin on condition that he changed his name (and presumably his religion, O'Shaughlin being a Catholic name). Sir Patrick was a party animal who died after a particularly heavy party; his body was seized for deby which gave his heir (Sir Murtagh Rackrent) the excise to refuse to pay any debts. Sir Murtagh was a lawyer who sued everyone: "Out of forty-nine suits which he had, he never lost one but seventeen" but died while arguing with his wife about an abatement. The estate then passed to his younger brother Sir Kit Stopgap who immediately went to Bath and became an absentee landlord leaving the estate to "middle men" who bought leases cheap and rented them out dear but Sir Kit abroad gambled away all the money until everything was mortgaged. Then Sir Kit appointed Thody's son Jason as agent and married an heiress who was a Jewess and brought her back to Ireland and then locked her up in a room in the castle to extort money from her. Seven years later she was let out after her husband was killed by the third of his adversaries in consecutive duels. And so eventually a new heir arrived, Sir Conolly (Condy) Rackrent.

The second book his Condy's story, still narrated by Thody who becomes even more gossipy and full of Irish idiom than before. Sir Condy gets into debt and has to decide whether to marry the neighbouring heiress (against her father's wishes) or his childhood sweetheart. A toss of the coin decides him on the heiress. But the newlywed and rather unhappily wed couple are extravagant and soon the money has all gone and Thody's son Jason the agent starts to persuade Sir Condy to sell a little here and a little there and so starts bit by bit to acquire the estate.

Sir Condy's wife at one stage reads 'The sorrows of Werther'.

This is a delightfully written and utterly picaresque family saga written very briefly and with a brilliant ear for the language of the time by one of the most gossipy narrators I have ever read. Great fun and very short.

Jane Austen was a fan of Maria Edgeworth, once declaring that she would only read novels by herself, Edgeworth or Walter Scott. 

December 2016, 90 pages

Other books with Castle in the title include:

• I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
• The Castle by Franz Kafka
• The View from Castle Rock by Alice Munro
• The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls
• We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
• The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick
• I'm the King of the Castle by Susan Hill
• The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole
• The Castle of Adventure by Enid Blyton
• In Bluebeard's Castle by George Steiner (literary criticism)
• Hatter's Castle by A J Cronin

Other fiction by Irish authors reviewed in this blog may be found here.

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God