"Cooking with Caroline" by Katharina Marcus

 This superb book is a delightful YA novel with all the hallmarks of a classic of its genre; of a quality comparable with the works of , for example, John Green (An Abundance of Katherines, The Fault In Our Stars, Paper Towns, Turtles All the Way Down etc).

It is written by the narrator-protagonist in the third person past tense, with regular first-person present tense interjections in which she comments on the process of writing the story and her reasons for writing it, from which we gather that something terrible has happened: this brilliant device acts as a compelling hook and keeps us reading as the third-person story and its characters develop.

Wise-cracking, self-doubting, overweight Kirsty signs up for a cooking class with celebrity chef Caroline. Also in the class is Jake Deacon, the bad boy of the sixth form. Kirsty learns more about Jake's mysterious life as their friendship develops. 

A compelling read told with humour and compassion. 

Selected quotes

• "Nice word, simplistic. So much more complicated than mere simple."
• "The pea brains of Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber obviously haven’t caught up with reality yet."
• "Jake Deacon’s job description at Gull Cove was to be in everybody’s face at all times."
• "I’m just wallpaper, aren’t I? Part of the general ambience. One of the people you need for others to stand out."
• "He straightened up again, cocked his head and let his eyes roam freely over her shape, so blatantly body scoring her that it didn’t even feel intrusive. Insulting, maybe, but not intrusive."
• "When Kirsty wore an apron, no matter what colour, she always ended up the spitting image of a stout, pre-revolution, Russian peasant crone, as depicted in her year nine history book."
• "Zach and Noel were genuinely hilarious, the kind of friends who finished each other’s sentences while constantly mocking and taunting each other in the best possible way."
• "fit for a boy band member. Maybe not the lead singer, maybe not even one of the guys directly left and right of the central ornament but definitely fit for casting as the wild card on the outer edges."
• "You bestow love on people as if there was an infinite supply of the stuff. Like it’s the one natural resource that isn’t running out fast on the human race."
• "Because she understood what he meant. This was beyond the vanities of attraction. It was as real and as magnificent as life ever got."
• “I feel like I’m in some stupid Hollywood romdram without the rom,”
• "If I look out of your bedroom window I can see the same stupid sun doing the same stupid sunset routine but nothing feels good, nothing is right, everything is wrong."
• "Those are the rules, right? Either ‘I love you,’ brings the person back from the brink of death, or the words act as the final release form: ‘I love you.’ Croak."
• "A glimpse at his clenched jaw made Kirsty’s own teeth hurt in sympathy."
• "It occurs to me that writing is a lot like cooking: hours of preparation and then the finished product is devoured in a fraction of the time. Luckily, there is no washing up here."
• "It looked somewhere between a nightmarish vision of a government facility where genetic experiments were being conducted, and a really big, recently refurbished, insanely posh public toilet."

February 2022

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

"Tristram Shandy" by Laurence Sterne

 This is a classic of English Literature, written between 1759 and 1767, whose fame rests mostly on the fact that it is so surreal. It is the ur-novel of the 'stream of consciousness' style and is marked by digressions within digressions ("This is neither here nor there - why do I mention it? - Ask my pen, - it governs me, - I govern not it."; 6.6; on the other hand "There is nothing in this world I abominate worse, than to be interrupted in a story." 7.1, but this book is all interruptions!) and by transcending the form of the novel, using blank (and black) chapters, and squiggles; it contains passages in other languages and (a few) footnotes. The Author's Preface is in volume three chapter 20!

It isn't easy to read! The speech of characters is sometimes juxtaposed and interleaved to the extent that it is sometimes difficult to know who is talking. Many of the narrator's digressions (and there are many) deal with philosophical and religious issues current in the middle of the eighteenth century which I needed explaining through the usually excellent notes to the Penguin Classics edition. Similarly, although it is famed as a bawdy book, full of double-entendres, many of these were lost on me; who knew, for example, that 'cabbage-planting' was a rude expression?

Just working out what was going on was a strain. "When a man is telling a story in the strange way I do mine, he is obliged continually to be going backwards and forwards to keep all tight together in the reader's fancy." (6.33) But the continual going backwards and forwards made it difficult for me to keep track.

The plot of the first two volumes revolves mostly around the gestation and birth of the protagonist whose nose is damaged by the forceps used by male midwife Dr Slop and whose name is misunderstood as Tristram because the maid Susannah, taking him to be baptised, can't remember his father's chosen name of Trismegistus. Later volumes include a journey from Calais to Avignon, and the amours of Tristram's Uncle Toby (an ex-soldier who spends most of his time talking about the campaigns in which he was involved before being injured in the groin). 

The characters include Tristram, the (initially not-yet-born) narrator, his father and mother, his Uncle Toby, Dr Slop, Corporal Trim, Obadiah and Susannah. 

It's influences include Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes, The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton, Gargantua and Pantagruel by Rabelais and works by satirist Jonathan Swift, poet Alexander Pope, essayist Montaigne, and philosopher John Locke. I have read very few of these authors and so I was unable to appreciate the borrowings (sometimes amounting to plagiarism) or the satire.

The modernist 'stream of consciousness' writers such as James Joyce and Virginia Woolf were clearly influenced by Sterne's style.

In New Scientist (26/02/2022, 31), there is a criticism of the film 'Dual' by Riley Stearns which contains the following phrase: “Events unfold in too surreal and nonsensical a fashion to maintain an acceptable level of credibility”. You could say the same about Tristram Shandy. But isn't that the whole point of the book? Nonsense, with gusto, becomes surreal comedy.

To sum up, I found it very hard going. But who says a classic should be easy?

It is rated 6th on the Guardian's 100 best novels of all time and a BBC poll rated it a disappointing 47th best novel ever.

Selected quotes:

• "I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me." (1.1)
• "My mother ... knew no more than her backside what my father meant" (1.3)
• "The idea of duration ... is got merely from the train and succession of our ideas" (2.8)
• "The thought floated only in Dr Slop's mind, without sail or ballast to it, as a simple proposition; millions of which, as your worship knows, are every day swimming quietly in the thin juice of a man's understanding, without being carried backwards or forwards, till some little gusts of passion or interest drive them to the side." (3.9)
• "Wit and judgment in this world never go together, inasmuch as they are two operations differing from each other as wide as east is from west ... so are farting and hickuping." (3.20)
• "Before an affliction is digested, - consolation ever comes too soon; - and after it is digested, - it comes too late" (3.29)
• "The Thracians wept when a child was born ... and feasted and made merry when a man went out of this world; and with reason. - Death opens the gate of fame, and shuts the gate of envy after it." (5.3)
• "The observation of Aristotle, 'Quod omne animal post coitum est triste'." (5.36)
• "Never is my imagination so busy as in framing his responses from the etchings of his countenance" (7.32); Tristram holds conversations with a donkey.
• "There is nothing more pleasing to a traveller - or more terrible to travel-writers, than a large, rich plain." (7.42)
• "My father had such a skirmishing, cutting kind of a slashing way with him in his disputations ... that if there were twenty people in company -  in less than half an hour he was sure to have every one of 'em against him." (8.34)
• "He knew not ... so much as the right end of a Woman from the wrong, and therefore was never altogether at his ease near any one of them." (9.3)
• "Friendship has two garments; an outer, and an under one." (9.23)
• "L--d! said my mother, what is this story all about? - A COCK and a BULL, said Yorick - And one of the best of its kind, I ever heard." (9.33; last words)

March 2022; 588 pages

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

"Rowan (Brighton's Bad Boys)" by Tilly Delane

This interesting book is more than just another erotic novel. The quality of the writing is such that I was actually aroused (rather than amused) by the sex scenes, that I empathised with the characters even though they were impossibly attractive and multi-talented, and that, towards the end, I turned the pages as quickly as I could to find out whether they would escape their predicament.

It is told through the alternating present-tense narratives of Rowan and Raven. (In a clever move, the final section is narrated by a third party.) He is a professional fighter in a residential therapy village to seek a cure for his gambling addiction; she is his nurse. Both are instantly attracted to one another. 

Standing in the way of the instant consummation of their passion is the fact that patient-nurse relationships are banned and Raven could be dismissed and required to repay her enormous tuition fee loan. There are also other tensions within a community of alcoholics and drug addicts; there are further complications within the professionals. But, more importantly, as their relationship develops, their past histories, full of pain and regrets, have buried hugely damaging explosives in the path of true love. It is the psychological baggage that turns these characters into fully three-dimensional people; it is this that makes one identify with and root for the protagonists; it is this that makes this novel transcend its genre.

The PoV narration is also pitch perfect with the characterisations. Raven thinks like an an American girl and Rowan like a bad British boy. Even the alternating perspectives in the sex scenes seemed in character.

 The total immersion in the characters means that, towards the end, when the thriller element of the plot kicks in, things get really exciting.

This is the middle book of a trilogy. It does stand alone but I did wish I had read the first (Silas) and I would definitely like to know what happens in the third (Diego). Looks like I'll be reading them soon.

Selected quotes:

• "Getting to London from here takes half a day. Not because of distance but because the British transportation system might as well still depend on stagecoaches."
• "A repeat customer called Charlie who, nomen est omen, has a cocaine issue."
• "I want to eat her whole. And her hole."
• "This one is all woman. Not because of the tits and the arse, though both are plenty fine, especially the latter, but because of the way she holds herself. She’s confidence porn."
• "Sure thing, I’ve had men leer at me before. But he’s not leering. He’s...smoldering. I can’t really say what the difference is. The stare is the same. Maybe it’s to do with the thoughts behind the stare. He isn’t mentally undressing me then spitting me up to stick his dick in me. In his mind, I’m already buck naked and he’s doing things to me that are all about me. About what I want. Really want. Even if it’s more than I can handle."
• "My mother, not Elena but my real mother, when she was still alive, could infuse an entire house with her anger, her despair, her narcissism. Scrap that, she could project it over an entire neighborhood. So you couldn’t escape her mood even when you’d finally gotten to school five blocks away. But I think the difference is that my mom never projected anything positive or nice. That’s not to say she didn’t have her good moments. She did. But they were exactly that, moments. They never lasted long enough to dye the air happy, the way her black moods painted everything gray."
• "I’ve not heard of the author, but the way the name of the writer is printed bigger than the title and the font is frill- less, I can only assume it’s a thriller or a police procedural."
• "She slowly lifts her eyes from the page and looks over to me, disdain marring her features. I hate that she looks at me like this."
• "Do I have mummy issues? Definitely. It kind of comes with the territory of being solely responsible for your mother's death."
• "I’m not a kisser. It’s not my thing. Never has been. Saliva exchange with another person does not hold any attraction for me."
• "I like being close to people. I was close to my mum until I killed her. I was close to my half brother and sister until their father decided I was dead weight. I was close to Silas before I fucked it up."
• "the debauched men that never grow up and their dumb bitches, who think the bigger the crime the higher the status. And who wash up battered, bruised or fucked to death because they believed the trashy romance novels that told them bad guys are sexy. They’re not. They’re arseholes. Like me."
• "She was a professional. Like Raven. Not a nurse, but a teacher. Someone who society depends on."
• "the far side of the pool, which for some unfathomable reason was built to be the shallow end." (Love the oxymoron!)
• "“What colour was it?” she asks softly after a while. “Yellow,” I answer without hesitation, and feel the atoms of grief and guilt rearranging themselves inside my soul. Such an irrelevant question and yet somehow, apparently, the one I’ve been waiting for all my fucking life."
• "They call it vanishing twin syndrome. My mother calls it ‘the devil ate his sister’. In her head, my twin would have been the girl she longed for. A little dress-up doll with angelic hair and blue eyes. I got the blond hair but grey eyes and, God forbid, a penis."

Highly recommended. February 2022.

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

"How UFOs Conquered the World" by David Clarke

 If the title suggests a pulp scifi story, the subtitle "The History of a Modern Myth" gives the game away. This is a comprehensive debunking of the UFO phenomena by a one-time believer who is now a sceptical investigative journalist with a PhD in folklore. He shows that 95% of UFO stories can be explained as observations of birds, Venus, and car headlights, some are outright hoaxes, and the most outlandish such as alien abductions may be explained by waking dreams and sleep paralysis. Most of the details are derived from folklore, myth or science fiction stories. The 5% that are not yet explained are not distinguishable from the 95% that already have been. UFO stories are believed by those who want to believe them and are not susceptible to scientific analysis for the simple reason that UFOlogists don't accept scientific methods such as the application of Ockham's razor. 

This is a well-written and very comprehensive book. It delves into: 

• folklore ("‘sky sailors’ were captured by angry French peasants in the ninth century, they were questioned by the Carolingian Bishop Agobard. Presumably fluent in French, they told him they came from a ‘a certain region called Magonia, out of which ships come and sail upon the clouds’"; Introduction) and fairytales (“Kidnapping and interbreeding with Homo Sapiens to produce hybrids was a common motif of the abduction syndrome but it had precedents in folklore. The fairy myths of Wales, Ireland and other countries of the Celtic fringe were replete with similar stories. In these the little folk were elusive creatures, much like the aliens, and were similarly interested in procreation. They travelled in hosts through the sky and occasionally kidnapped humans and took them to fairyland.”; Ch 8), 
• the post-war days of flying saucers with the classic 'sightings', and the Roswell incident,
• the links between ufology and new age religion and the founding of the Aetherius society
• the links between the descriptions of 'saucers' and aliens and science fiction
• the belief that governments have evidence which they are hushing up and the 'Men in Black'
• alien abduction and sleep paralysis

But in the end it concludes that believers believe because they want to believe. In ufology “the scientific method is nearly always sacrificed to wish-fulfilment.” (254) and that ufology is not qualitatively different from any other religion: “If we laugh at people who believe in cosmic masters or sinister greys ... than where should that laughter stop? Is it only antiquity and strength in numbers that insulate the major faiths of the modern world from the same joke?” (Ch 7)

Selected quotes:

• “You  can measure a circle by beginning anywhere.” (Introduction)
• “Why would aliens redesign the appearance of their craft to conform to a mistake made by a journalist?” (Ch 1)
• “The ‘weight of numbers’ argument could not be used to support the existence of UFOs when the IFOs outnumbered them by a ratio of nine to one.” (Ch 2)
• “certain special places attracted UFOs in a similar fashion to the way stately homes attracted ghosts. The idea of a small community under siege from alien forces was already a science fiction staple.” (Ch 3)
• “The more they repeated their stories the more they tended to exaggerate.” (Ch 3)
• "They talked about scientists being closed-minded. But for them, being open-minded meant being prepared to accept anything as evidence. Even if it was inconsistent, self-contradictory or demonstrably wrong.” (Ch 3)
• “Every type of UFO evidence, from complex photographs to alien abductions, secret government documents and stories told by high-ranking military officials about extreterrstrial cadavers hidden in air force hangars, has at some point been unveiled as being invented.” (Ch 4)
• “Being open-minded actually means being sceptical. ... One of the definitions of a sceptic is an inquirer who has not yet arrived at definitive conclusions.” (Ch 4)
• “Even if in a court of law eyewitness testimony is a high form of evidence, in the court of science it is the lowest form of evidence you could possibly put forth.” (Ch 5)
• “I had learnt long ago that sincerity was not a reliable guide to honesty.” (Ch 8)
• “A fundamental theme of the stories told by experiencers [of alien abductions] ... human beings in conflict with creatures that possess virtually supernatural powers ...aliens are essentially indistinguishable from the gods of old.” (Ch 9)
• “Aliens might exist therefore UFOs must be extraterrestrial craft. This is faulty logic.” (Ch 10)
• “The test of a good scientific theory: it includes specific, testable predictions ... For it to be testable it must be falsifiable ... any theory that involves supernatural forces cannot be disproved.” (Ch 10)
• “People say seeing is believing ... All the evidence suggests the opposite is the truth. In plain fact, we see what we believe.” (279)

A sympathetic debunking of the UFO myth. February 2022; 279 pages

Also on UFOs and reviewed in this blog:

• The 37th Parallel by Ben Mezrich

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

"The 37th Parallel" by Ben Mezrich

Most of this book tells the purportedly true story of Chuck Zukowski, a self-taught UFO investigator, as he gathers evidence, both anecdotal and physical, about UFO sightings and strange animal mutilations, which he considers to be a corollary. The human interest comes from the fact that his growing obsession with UFOs has to be tolerated by his (sceptical) wife, who ends up working two jobs so that he can work half a job and still afford the travel costs and to purchase the increasingly expensive equipment (and lab costs etc) that his researches demand. The book culminates by showing that most of the phenomena that Chuck talks about are located within 1 degree of latitude from latitude 37oN, a sort of UFO highway (or perhaps runway) that stretches more or less across the entire US.

It is written in a lively tone, following Chuck, full of lots of details about his family life, his possessions, etc, to give the whole thing massive verisimilitude. This is of huge importance; given that I was, like many other readers, hugely sceptical about the UFO side of things, it is important to establish solid grounded fact for the mundane part of the book; it makes the rest seem more real. There are some great throwaway lines:

• “for all he knew she had a cemetery full of dead people on speed dial.” (Ch 1, 2)
• “Some of the best portable equipment that overextended credit cards could buy.” (Ch 3, 15)
• “The tracker had claimed that on that night he and his girlfriend - a woman with the Hollywood ready name Trudy Truelove - ‘ were lying in the back of my pickup truck, buck naked, drinking beer and having a good ol’ time when all hell broke loose’.” (Ch 17, 123)
• “lately, even her silent stares had the feel of liquid nitrogen.” (Ch 25, 191)

The final page of the book, in which Chuck may find key evidence, is heavily redacted, with big black boxes censoring key words. It’s a brilliant way to end!

Selected quotes:

• “Supposedly, Sedona had numerous hotspots where vortices appeared, resembling electrically charged tornadoes that spiraled up and down with a [page break] spiritual energy. The Native Americans would use these specific locations to communicate with spiritual beings, and to communicate with their ancestors in the stars.” (Ch 4, 49 - 50)
• “The Apache referred to their ancestors as ‘star people’, pale, white, skinny humanoids with blue eyes who travelled in craft described as ‘birds with many colors’ that’ glowed with the sun’.” (Ch 10, 69)
• “The way the aliens had moved was always described in the exact same way: hunched forward, shuffle step, feet always touching the ground.” (Ch 14, 98)
• “Bigelow ... firmly believed that future generations would look at the current belief system as ignorant and egocentric.” (Ch 19, 147)
• “Chuck knew that the human mind was built to seek out patterns and that much smarter men than he had driven themselves crazy chasing symmetries that seemed to make sense in the dead of night, but were nothing more than shapes and shadows in the bright light of day.” (Ch 28, 233)

Lively and thought-provoking

February 2022; 247 pages

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

"Numero Zero" by Umberto Eco

 A group of journalistic hacks gather together to produce a dummy newspaper whose secret purpose is to gain for their millionaire sponsor access to the inner circles of high society (basically through the power of press blackmail). One of them spins conspiracy theories linking the CIA and right wing groups to the 'murder' of pope John Paul I and the 'mystery' of Mussolini's death. The paranoid narrator fears for his life.

The themes are, I suppose, truth and fake truth, and how a newspaper can dictate the agenda and create beliefs with hints and innuendos. There is the skeleton of a thriller plot. Much of the action seemed irrelevant. There were pages of what seemed like filling (and the novel is only 190 pages), such as the couple of pages in which the journalists made silly jokes, or the two pages of autopsy report. Most of the conspiracy theories were re-peddled from other sources. 

Selected quotes:

• "Losers, like autodidacts, always know much more than winners. If you want to win, you need to know just one thing and not to waste your time on anything else ... the more a person knows, the more things have gone wrong." (Ch 1)
• "It's not the news that makes the newspaper, but the newspaper that makes the news." (Ch 5)
• "What, after all, is the pink body of an angel if not a deceptive integument that cloaks a skeleton, even if it's a celestial one?" (Ch 18)

February 2022; 190 pages

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

Eco wrote the stunning The Miracle of the Rose. He has also written Foucault's Pendulum and The Prague Cemetery. 

"Joe's Journey" by Marilyn Reilly

A very different reading experience.

Joe's Journey: In the Midst of an Inner Circle" is written is a free-flowing style that reminded me of 'stream of consciousness', although what is narrated is almost all action and dialogue, rather than the internal dialogue characteristic of this style. Most paragraphs consist of one or two sentences. The punctuation is eclectic; I got the impression that the story was dictated and subsequently, loosely, edited. 

The prose is very repetitive and concentrates on everyday activities, which is typical of normal life. Thus, the characters frequently drink tea (more often than not wine in Molly's case) with one another and chatter. 

To give you a flavour of the way the book is written, I chose the following paragraph more or less at random. Almost every paragraph is like this: "Oh yes said Brian you will love it down there it is beautiful, and the sun has come out for you too, Molly said it has been a real pleasure to meet you both, and I will get in touch with you as soon as I have any news at the station So, Molly waved goodbye as she got into the car and drove off, she made her way down to the harbour and looked around the shops and bought a few present’s for people back home then walked around the boating area to look at the big boat and yachts, then she went in for a pot of tea and a few cakes she was a sucker for cakes could not resist them."

There is very little conflict between the characters (except for the incident of the jointly-claimed lottery ticket) so the impetus for the plot comes mostly from external events, such as the death of Joe's wife. 

The early part of the story relates to Joe and the later part to Molly; the structure of the tale is that of a picaresque without any character being like a picaro. There is little connection between the two stories. 

It is a gentle ramble, describing the lives of very ordinary people. 

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

"Rubbernecker" by Belinda Bauer

 An ingenious, original and page-turning crime novel.

It intertwines two stories: comatose patients recovering, or not, in a hospital ward, seen both from the point of view of one of the patients and from some of the nurses; and an anatomy student with severe Asperger's syndrome learning to dissect a human corpse. These stories intersect when the student realises that the official cause of death of the cadaver he is studying is incorrect, and he begins to suspect foul play.

The verisimilitude is amazing. I learnt so much about coma (they don't just lie there!) and recovery from coma and about human anatomy. The character with Asperger's was treated with honesty and empathy and some humour. Other characters were also beautifully depicted, including the lazy, husband-hunting nurse and a devastatingly sad portrait of the Asperger's student's mother. 

The second half of the book, as the mystery deepens and the hunt for the killer turns into a fight for survival, is nail-bitingly exciting.

Selected quotes:

• "Even though he never asked, she would tell him about the garden and the cat. It always went on for a lot longer than either of them deserved." (Ch 10)
• "Months of lying prone without the benefit of circulation had left the body flattened on the bottom like a bag of sand. Now inverted, the buttocks remained oddly two-dimensional." (Ch 15)
• "Tracey Evans is an idiot. God knows how she passed her nursing exams, but she has the literacy skills and attention span of a toddler on Tartrazine. How can she mistake 'wife' for 'wofe'? What's a wofe when it's at home." (Ch 18)
• "Tapping my chest in that creepy way that doctors do - as if they're trying to find a secret passage in a smuggler's wall." (Ch 25)
• "If you can't trust a mirror, what can you believe?" (Ch 25)
• "He'd been more of an anti-careers master, really, selling them the spaces between work." (Ch 48)

A wonderful read. Shortlisted for the Golden Dagger in 2013.

February 2020; 313 pages

Also by Belinda Bauer and reviewed in this blog:

• Snap

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

"Summer Lightning" by P G Wodehouse

 The third book in the Blandings Castle series (following Something Fresh and Leave it to Psmith)and one senses that PGW is really getting into his stride. The old favourites are back: The vague but affable Earl of Emsworth, his sister Constance, his erstwhile secretary the Efficient Baxter, the butler, Beech, and two sets of young lovers whose hopes and thwarted dreams provide the motivation for abduction of the Empress of Blandings, a potentially prize-winning pig. Add to the mix that Emsworth's brother Galahad has decided to write his memoirs, which seem likely to libel half the aristocracy, and the inevitable imposter and the stage is set for another classic Wodehouse farce. 

As usual the playful prose delights.

Selected quotes:

• "It was that gracious hour of a summer afternoon, midway between luncheon and tea, when Nature seems to unbutton its waistcoat and put its feet up." (1.1)
• "the bullfinch ... continued to chirp reflectively to itself, like a man trying to remember a tune in his bath" (3.4)
• "In moments of stress, the foolish question is always the one that comes uppermost in the mind." (6.1)
• "The only man who was ever thrown out of the Cafe de l'Europe for trying to raise the price of a bottle of champagne by raffling his trousers at the main bar." (7.2)
• "Every day you seem to know less and less about more and more." (8.1)
• "He was oppressed by a feeling that he had gone considerably farther than was prudent. Samson, as he heard the pillars of the temple begin to crack, must have felt the same. Gestures are all very well while the intoxication lasts. The trouble is that it lasts such a very little while." (13.1)
• "It was not that he had any objection to Millicent as a wife. He had none whatsoever - provided she were somebody else's wife." (13.1)

The usual joy to read.

Other books by P G Wodehouse reviewed in this blog can be found here.

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

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

"Road Kill - The Duchess of Frisian Tun" by Pete Adams

This is the most experimental novel I have read for some time.

Frisian Tun is a posh street in Portsmouth, whose middle-class standards are maintained by the self-styled Duchess and a set of unwritten rules. Much of it is destroyed after a shoot-out involving tanks and rocket launchers. The action of the novel consists of an unlikely group of residents gathering together with a cub reporter (who loses his virginity) to discuss what happened in the street.

But that is like trying to describe the 'plot' of a Monty Python sketch mixed with seaside postcard humour.

It was also very funny in its repeated use of word-play. It was like one of those stand-up comedians who specialises in puns. No opportunity was missed to poke fun at the language used, to the extent that I couldn't tell if some words had simply been misprinted or or they had been deliberately mis-spelt (for example, the repeated use of the word ‘reined’ for ‘reigned’). Here are just a few examples:

• "It was in fact, a 2CV, which is twice as good as a CV."
• "It was a master class in denial, the core faith of his C of E (Church of Egypt) faith, De Nile."
• "a steamy, phonographic sex scene; just for the record." (Ch 18)

I was left scrabbling to try and find something else I had read that came anywhere close. It seemed to be a hybrid of the following:

• The Unlimited Dream Company by J G Ballard in which the respectable suburb of Shepperton erupts into an orgiastic fantasy
• Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne for the endless discursiveness and the repeated intrusion of the author.
• The anarchy of The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman by Angela Carter
• or the anarchy of a William Burroughs novel, such as Naked Lunch
• I've just (October 2025) read Zazie in the Metro by Raymond Queneau which seems similar.

Perhaps I should be looking further afield. The author tells me that he has been considered a literary version of Salvador Dali and it is hard to disagree on the evidence of this book. It left me wondering why the novel form is so unexperimental, compared to paintings, or films.

Was it enjoyable? It wasn't difficult to read and there were some very funny moments. The bizarre characters are well-drawn. But most of all it was liberating. It blew away the literary cobwebs and showed the possibilities of a novel, once you have dispensed with convention.

Selected quotes:

• "Jack thought for a while, which involved stopping as he was not a famed multitasker."
• "The passion had the potential to become frenzied, except Amanda had to help him with her buttons and finally her bra strap."
• "All that remained as evidence of the Duchess’s stately pile was a particularly un-stately pile of rubble, the shells of walls sticking up like empty teeth where fillings had long ago departed, the plumbing and cabling exposed as if dead nerves of a deceased body and a first floor bath tub, stubbornly reigned high and mighty, like a large nasal protuberance on a formerly proud face." (Ch 1)
• "his mother did not allow him to have a mobile phone for risk of brain tumours, always assuming there was sufficient brain residing in the Pimple skull for a tumour to attach itself" (Ch 5)
• "Amanda Austin, the mature cheese to Jack’s dry, powdery chalk" (Ch 10)

I am awarding it five stars because I think it achieved completely what I imagine the author set out to do.

February 2022

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

"The Haunting of Alma Fielding" by Kate Summerscale

 Alma Fielding was a Croydon woman whose house was 'haunted' by a poltergeist in the 1930s. She became a subject of intense scrutiny by psychic researchers led by Nandor Fodor. This book is an account of those investigations.

It is well written but it is little more than a blow-by-blow account of the case and, to be honest, I quickly became tired of the reports of yet another seance. I felt the book could have done with more summary. But then it wouldn't have been long enough for a book. Perhaps the problem was that I was sceptical from the start, quickly deciding that the 'supernatural' occurrences were instances of fraud, and impatient of the credulous researchers.

It was interesting that the interest in spiritualism and 'psychic' phenomena peaked after so many people had been bereaved by the First World War, especially as the threat of a second war became imminent. It was sad that so many of the so-called psychic phenomena were so trivial: the manifestation of white mice and old coins like cheap conjuring tricks. It was bizarre that so many mediums professed to spirit guides that were Native Americans (and if not, from other exotic nationalities). 

Selected quotes:

• "A peculiar, six-digit handprint on the mirror." (Ch 1)
• "The golden age of psychical study was also the heyday of supernatural hustle." (Ch 4)
• "The 'futurity racket' ... was typical of societies on the brink of chaos and destruction: the Italian magician Count Cagliostro flourished in Paris before the revolution of 1789, much as the faith healer Rasputin thrived in St Petersburg before 1917 ... since publication of the first newspaper horoscope in 1930, astrology had become a national craze." (Ch 6)
• "At twenty-three she had contracted anthrax poisoning from a Woolworth's toothbrush that scratched her gum." (Ch 7)
•  "Psychics were natural transgressors, crossing all kinds of boundaries, from waking to trance, from the earthly to the spirit world. Their weaknesses - moral, physical, emotional - were the fissures through which the phantoms came." (Ch 7)
• "The weather was mild and the international situation stable. 'No bad news - official!' announced the Pictorial." (Ch 11)
• "Solid edges seemed to melt, objects to quiver and press. The sitters flinched at the metamorphoses, the breaching of boundaries, the spillages." (Ch 12)
• "One day in about 1900, when she was seven, her Aunt Martha beat her in punishment for 'lying' about the invisible friends with whom she played. Eileen was angry. Afterwards she sat watching her aunt's ducklings paddling on the farm lake. She leant forward from the lake's edge and seized a baby duck, pushed it under the water, held it there until its wings stopped heaving against her hands. ... Then she grabbed another duckling ..." (Ch 13)
• "Her mother had drowned herself in a well in 1893, when Eileen was two weeks old, and her father had shot himself six weeks later." (Ch 13)
• "Many of her actions in this phase were deliberate ... but some so impulsive as to slip the leash of choice or intention." (Ch 17)
• "From Bram Stoker's novel onwards, the characterisation of Dracula as a ruthless rapacious parasite drew directly on anti-Semitic tropes." (Ch 18)
• "The investigation, like an abusive relationship, had moved from enticement to coercion, from flattery to threat." (Ch 18)
• "Justice Singleton questioned whether Fodor had much reputation to lose ... the jury should remember that it was dealing with a man who had gone to the Isle of Man to meet a talking mongoose." (Ch 19)
• "She had enacted a wild, months-long magic-realist extravaganza at the International Institute for Psychical Research, a piece of performance art in which she was both the Lady-sawn-in-half and the magician who cuts a slice through her." (Ch 19)
• "In 1941, the navy launched an inquiry into the Scottish medium Helen Duncan ... after reports that she had psychically intercepted a state secret about the sinking of a warship. The investigation uncovered deceit rather than ethereal espionage, and in 1944 Duncan became one of the last people to be convicted of fraud under the Witchcraft Act." (Ch 20)
• "Many mediums were bereaved mothers, and ... the convulsions of trance could resemble a woman's labour throes." (Ch 20)

February 2022; 314 pages

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

Kate Summerscale also wrote The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, which also seemed too long for the material it contained but became a massive best-seller.

"Dune" by Frank Herbert

 The classic scifi story about the battle for a desert planet. A galactic empire is riven by faction fighting between aristocratic houses. An order of witches controls an aristocratic breeding programme. A young man on a desert planet is taught mind control tricks. This epic story is clearly the influence for Star Wars but, as the biggest-selling scifi novel of all time, it is so much more.

Its major themes include environmentalism, psychedelic drug use, eugenics and religion. There are clear references to the emergence and rapid expansion of Islam from its desert setting. Although religion is fundamental to the motives of the characters, and they experience drug-induced altered states of consciousness which include the ability to see the future, Dune is resolutely secular: there are prophets but no Gods.

Told from a multiple PoV, the plot is a characteristic hero's adventure; in the very earliest pages the hero is tested by and receives advice from a crone. Much of the interest of the book comes from the world-making which is incredible. Each 'chapter' begins with a quote from the works of Princess Irulan.

Selected quotes:

• "Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them." 
• "A world is supported by four things ... the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valour of the brave." 
• "She went through the quick regimen of calmness - the two deep breaths, the ritual thought." 
• "Growth is limited by that necessity which is present in the least amount." 
• "Is it defeatist or treacherous for a doctor to diagnose a disease correctly?"
• "She stared at him, thinking of the Duke's men rubbing their woes together in the barracks until you could almost smell the charge there, like burnt insulation."
• "The day hums sweetly when you have enough bees working for you."
• "As his planet killed him, it occurred to Kynes ... that the most persistent principles of the universe were accident and error."
• "She had succumbed to that profound drive shared by all creatures who are faced with death - the drive to seek immortality through progeny." 
• "When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movement becomes headlong - faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thoughts of obstacles and forget that a precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it's too late."
• "Give as few orders as possible ... Once you've given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject."

A hugely influential epic.

February 2022; 485 pages

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

"Jamaica Inn" by Daphne Du Maurier

Jamaica Inn is a classically Gothic novel with a very strong sense of setting. There are some strong and enormously conflicted characters such as the violent alcoholic Joss Merlyn and his much abused wife Aunt Patience. The heroine falls for Byronic bad boy Jem Merlyn which leads to an interesting ending.
The characters
An unusual feature of the book is that there are two principal antagonists: Joss Merlyn and Francis Davey. These two are almost opposites of one another: black and white. Our introduction to Joss is: “He was a great husk of a man, nearly seven feet high, with a creased black brow and a skin the colour of a gypsy. His thick dark hair fell over his eyes in a fringe and hung about his ears. He looked as if he had the strength of a horse, with immense powerful shoulders, long arms that reached almost to his knees, and large fists like hams. His frame was so big that in a sense his head was dwarfed, and sunk between his shoulders, giving that half-stooping impression of a giant gorilla, with his black eyebrows and his mat of hair.” (Ch 20): in other words, Joss is a classic neanderthal, huge and ape-like, and his principal colour is black. Francis Davey is, on the other hand, an albino: “Mary looked up at the pale eyes in the colourless face, the halo of cropped white hair” (Ch 7). Joss is, of course, from the lower classes and Francis Davey is a Vicar, a professional man, who is from the educated classes (although he serves the poor). It is as if Du Maurier has created twin villains, each one the mirror image of the other. The twins even have their own sections of the book: Joss is the villain at the start (whilst Davey is seen by the narrator as a good guy) and then Davey takes over as the villain after Joss is killed.
Joss Merlyn
Aunt Patience
Mary. the protagonist
Jem Merlyn, romantic hero, Byronic figure, the bad boy that the good girls love
Francis Davey, the albino priest
Dialogue
There are times when the dialogue is stilted and unreal. Here is the protagonist at the peak of her distress: "Why I have been living there does not matter now, and the story would take too long in the telling. I fear and detest him more than you or anyone in the country, and with reason. I came here to warn Mr Bassat that the landlord intended to leave the inn tonight, and so escape justice. I have definite proof of his guilt, which I did not believe Mr Bassat to possess. You tell me that he has already gone, and perhaps even now is at Jamaica Inn. Therefore I have wasted my time in coming here." (C 14) She is far too self-composed; she speaks in well-formed sentences! The 'therefore' at the end is ludicrous.
The Genre
The Plot

The pacing
Looking out of the window
The Hero’s Journey
The setting




Other Selected Quotes
Du Maurier's grandad wrote Trilby, a phenomenally successful book of the time, after which the hat was named, which introduced the character of Svengali.
December 2021

Joss is, in the words of Sarah Dubant, "near to caricature ... His brooding figure, craggy looks and wild temper are in their own way all attributes of the romantic hero inverted into violence and self-loathing – a Mr Rochester without a Jane to redeem him" (though I felt him closer to Heathcliff). At first Joss seems to be a stereotype but Du Maurier works to make him three-dimensional. One of our U3A members said that she found one of the most sinister moments in the book to be when Joss cuts and butters a slice of bread for Mary: “He proceeded to cut carefully a thin slice from the loaf, which he quartered in pieces and buttered for her, the whole business very delicately done and in striking contrast to his manner in serving himself – so much so that to Mary there was something almost horrifying in the change from rough brutality to fastidious care. It was as though there was some latent power in his fingers which turned them from bludgeons into deft and cunning servants. Had he cut her a chunk of bread and hurled it at her she would not have minded so much" (Ch 2).

This dual personality is typical of Joss. For example, he is sexually threatening (there is always a subtext of sex with Joss) but he reassures Mary: "I’ve better things to do than to play cat’s-cradle with me own niece." (C 2) On the other hand, when he is under the influence of alcohol, he threatens her with violence: “I’m master in this house, and I’ll have you know it. You’ll do as you’re told, and help in the house and serve my customers, and I’ll not lay a finger on you. But, by God, if you open your mouth and squark, I’ll break you until you eat out of my hand the same as your aunt yonder.”

Mary recognises that there are two versions of Joss: 

• "There was still something fine about his great dark eyes, in spite of the lines and pouches and the red blood-flecks." (C 2)

• "Though there should be a world of difference between the smile of a man and the bared fangs of a wolf, with Joss Merlyn they were one and the same." (C 2)

The ‘two sides of the coin’ is seen in his attitude to alcohol: on the one hand he sees it will be his downfall but on the other it makes him feel powerful: “There’s been one weakness in my life, and I’ll tell you what it is ... ‘It’s drink. It’s a curse, and I know it. I can’t stop myself. One day it’ll be the end of me, and a good job too. There’s days go by and I don’t touch more than a drop, same as I’ve done tonight. And then I’ll feel the thirst come on me and I’ll soak. Soak for hours. It’s power, and glory, and women, and the Kingdom of God, all rolled into one. I feel a king then, Mary. I feel I’ve got the strings of the world between my two fingers.” 

Joss is given a back story which he tells Mary (he is given to somewhat self-pitying monologues when drunk; he is a typical maudlin drunk). His father was hanged for killing another man in a fight, his grandfather was transported for thieving, his elder brother was found drowned in a Marsh. 

He also blabs secrets when he is drunk. It is during another binge that he tells Mary that he is the leader of a gang of wreckers and has killed multiple times, including women and children, rather than saving them from drowning. 

It is suggested in the Introduction to the Virago edition that Joss is based in part on the author’s father, an actor who was a sometimes violent alcoholic, and in part upon her husband who suffered ‘shell-shock’ (PTSD) cause by his times in the trenches during the First World War and had nightmarish dreams.

Aunt Patience is, in many ways, a foreshadowing of Mary. She made her choice to marry a bad boy (Joss, the landlord of the Inn) and has now become a weak and terrified woman, shaped by mental cruelty and physical abuse. There is conflict within her between the would-be loving wife and the would-be conscientious aunt: she tries to warn Mary and even, in tiny ways, to help her, but at the end she is loyal to Joss.

Mary’s mother tells Mary: “You’ll like your Aunt Patience; she was always a great one for games and laughing, with a heart as large as life." But Mary’s first encounter is described thus: "Her eyes were large and staring, as though they asked perpetually a question, and she had a little nervous trick of working her mouth, now pursing the lips and now relaxing them." (C 2)

Mary, the narrator/ protagonist, is a courageously stubborn goody-goody who can be surprisingly naive. For much of the plot she is at the mercy of circumstances. 

Her essential conflict is between the safety of her ordered upbringing and the danger of passionate love, with all its opportunities and threats. This conflict drives much of the story. It is, of course, foreshadowed by the choices that her uncle and aunt made, particularly her aunt, so the disadvantages of choosing bad boy Jem are obvious. 

Jem is the romantic hero with a Byronic twist, the bad boy that the good girl falls in love with. "He lacked tenderness; he was rude; and he had more than a streak of cruelty in him; he was a thief and a liar. He stood for everything she feared and hated and despised; but she knew she could love him." (C 9)

The key scene is when Jem takes Mary to Launceston for a picnic and to sell a stolen horse at the market. The picnic involves a hugely symbolic moment: "You can eat the apple, if you’re feeling religious. There’s an apple comes in the Bible, I know that much." (C 9) This is the moment when Mary as Eve (I suspect that the choice of the name ‘Mary’ reflects the idea that in Christianity Mary is a sort of second Eve) falls ... and the tempter is the man, Jem as Adam. With Jem, Mary is portrayed as  fundamentally morally flawed: she takes pleasure in Jem’s cleverness as he sells the stolen horse back to its original owners (a horse that she is later offered as a gift for herself!)

Mary is also weak. She knows the parallels between the way Aunt Patience married Joss for love (and it destroyed her) and how marrying Jem is likely to destroy Mary: “He was too like his brother. His eyes, and his mouth, and his smile. That was the danger of it. She could see her uncle in his walk, in the turn of his head; and she knew why Aunt Patience had made a fool of herself ten years ago. It would be easy enough to fall in love with Jem Merlyn." She even tells Jem that she likes his hands because “they are like your brother’s”; but the hands of Joss are the hands she has seen delicately cutting bread and the hands that Mary has imagined killed innocent women and children in the service of the wreckers. Nevertheless (and this is reprise of the ‘two sides of the coin’ theme, she can’t resist Jem: “whether it was his hands or his skin or his smile she did not know, but something inside her responded to him, and the very thought of him was an irritant and a stimulant at the same time." (C 9). 

I found the portrait of Francis Davey unconvincing. He was too obviously the sinister hidden force behind the smugglers, too obviously the reflected image of Joss. Perhaps he was more convincing when the book was written when Church of England vicars were pillars of the establishment and a wicked one must have been shocking but there is a long tradition in Gothic literature of wicked priests (from The Monk by Matthew Lewis, one of the founding stories of the genre) and Davey’s albinism was also a huge clue (a significant 'deficiency' in melanin has been used by many authors as a shorthand for moral deficiency, for example in The Da Vinci Code,  (though not nearly so many as use an 'excess' of melanin). And while Joss is the villain who gets drunk and blabs all the secrets, Davey is the villain whose ultimate wickedness and ruthlessness (after he has filled in cold blood both Joss and Aunt Patience) is no match for the innocence and purity of the heroine so that, instead of slaughtering her on the spot as he should have done, he encumbers himself with her on his flight. 

The obviousness (to the reader) of Davey’s wickedness makes Mary look gullible to the point of stupidity. “She could trust him; that at least was certain." (C 7)

"Jamaica Inn opens with echoes of Dracula: a carriage rattling through a desolate landscape and wild weather to a place where even the locals won't go ... We are in the territory of the gothic novel ... there’s no doubt that many of the ingredients of Jamaica Inn – wild men, wild land, dark secrets and violent ends – are close to gothic cliché".” (Sarah Dunant, in the Introduction to the Virago Modern Classics edition)

Is it a 'feminist' novel? Mary is a female hero and she has significant strengths but she is also (essentially so for a hero) muddled and misguided (although heroes must necessarily be, at least in the first 90% of a book, so that the story can progress). But, in the end, she needs to be rescued by men. Furthermore, there are a number of occasions on which Du Maurier reflects on the different character of womanhood and some of it can be linked to the time when Du Maurier was alive; at this time I imagine her thoughts were quite challenging, especially the classically romantic notion that the woman should be helplessly attracted to the bad boy. Nowadays, however, a number of her remarks might be seen as pandering to stereotypical notions of femininity of the day:

• "Why were women such fools, so short-sighted and unwise? wondered Mary; and she scrubbed the last stone flag of the hall with venom, as though by her very action she might cleanse the world and blot out the indiscretions of her kind." (C 5)

• "Senseless or conscious, women are pretty much the same when you come down to it" (C 5)

• "Here she was, with tears ready to the surface and an aching head, being hurried from the scene of action with smooth words and gestures, a nuisance and a factor of delay, like every woman and every child after a tragedy." (C 16)

Although the book opens with Mary in a coach, travelling across Bodmin Moor to Jamaica Inn, which provides a compelling hook, considered in the chronology of the novel the beginning is the death of Mary’s mother. Until then Mary has been a farm girl, living a domesticated life, governed by the turning of the seasons and the everyday patterns of birth, growth, reproduction and death. This rural idyll, this Garden of Eden existence, comes to an end when she travels to Jamaica Inn. Bodmin Moor is the otherworld, the land of heroes and adventures. This is typical of the  ‘Voyage and Return’ type of novel as described by Christopher Booker in ‘Seven Basic Plots’. But in the classic version of this story, Mary should return to her ‘real’ world, changed, having learnt important truths. The genius of the ending of Jamaica Inn is that Mary chooses to stay in the otherworld, despite the prophetic foreshadowing of the life of Aunt Patience married to Joss Merlyn. 

The pacing of the plot conforms to the four part model with one of the major characters, the romantic interest, introduced almost exactly at the 25% mark, and the sinister albino priest half way through the second quarter. Following the protagonist's near-seduction at 50%, the albino turns up perfectly on time. The third quarter contains the peak of the villainy and ends with the protagonist taking decisive action; the final quarter deals with the consequences of this move.

 In Seven Types of Ambiguity (p 19),  William Empson states: “A dramatic situation is always heightened by breaking off the dialogue to look out of the window." This is what Shakespeare does in Macbeth when he puts the only comic scene (the porter at Hell’s gate) immediately after the murder of Duncan. And when Mary discovers the murdered bodies of Joss and Aunt Patience, du Maurier repeatedly slows down the action with description:

• "There was no other sound except the husky wheezing of the clock in the hall and the sudden whirring note preparatory to the strike. It rang the hour – three o’clock – and then ticked on, choking and gasping like a dying man who cannot catch his breath." (C 4)

• "Her eyes dwelt upon little immaterial things: the fragments of glass from the smashed clock-face that were bloodstained too, and the discoloured patch of wall where the clock had stood." (C 15)

• "A spider settled on her uncle’s hand; and it seemed strange to her that the hand stayed motionless and did not seek to rid itself of the spider. Her uncle would have shaken it free. Then it crawled from his hand and ran up his arm, working its way beyond the shoulder. When it came to the wound it hesitated, and then made a circuit, returning to it again in curiosity, and there was a lack of fear in its rapidity that was somehow horrible and desecrating to death. The spider knew that the landlord could not harm him. Mary knew this too, but she had not lost her fear, like the spider." (C 15)

In Chapter One, as Mary is being carried to Jamaica Inn, both the coachman and a woman at a coaching inn in Bodmin (the threshold of civilization)  try to dissuade her; this is a classic trope. That Mary doesn’t, in the end, return to the safe world is a flouting of the Voyage and Return convention.

My U3A group agreed that Du Maurier excels at describing the setting of the book. One of them pointed out that the story is anchored in ‘geographical reality’; all of the locations is authentic. This gives what might otherwise be a far-fetched Gothic story verisimilitude.

But the physical landscape is considerably more than just a backdrop. It is a metaphor for the psychological landscape. Having come from a placid farming life, where animals are domesticated and even time is organised into a seasonal calendar, Mary (a passive onlooker of the world) enters a realm of bleak, wild and desolate scenery and wild weather to match the feral behaviour of the law-breaking, violent and dangerous men. This is a hugely romantic, Byronic notion: that wilderness and danger can be attractive and Mary falls in love with the land and the people. 

In many ways the book is one long pathetic fallacy. It starts by describing the weather: “a cold grey day ... a backing wind ... a granite sky ...a mizzling rain [though very soon “driving rain”] ... clammy cold” (Ch 1) This is swiftly contrasted with “the shining waters of Helford” at the start of Mary’s journey, “the green hills and the sloping valleys, the white cluster of cottages at the water’s edge. It was a gentle rain that fell at Helford, a rain that pattered in the many trees and lost itself in the lush grass" and “sank into the grateful soil which gave back flowers in payment.” This is, in the very next paragraph, contrasted with the moor “a country of stones, black heather, and stunted broom”. [Blackness is recurring a motif.] But farming life, even in idyllic Helford, is hard and Mary’s mother’s dying words are to instruct her to go to Aunt Patience because “A girl can’t live alone, Mary, without she goes queer in the head, or comes to evil. It’s either one or the other." (C 1)

Even when the landscape can seem innocent and even pretty, the ground can be treacherous. The brother of Joss and Jem was drowned in a bog and the metaphor of the marsh corresponds to the character of the Vicar: he takes Mary in and when she is helpless he threatens to kill her. 

The landscape affects its inhabitants. Mary’s first view of Bodmin Moor makes her reflect “No human being could live in this wasted country, thought Mary, and remain like other people; the very children would be born twisted" (C 1) The extended pathetic fallacy of the book means that the character of Joss is a reflection of his setting. And the landscape and the people swap places, at least in Mary’s imagination. In the final, desperate chase with Frances Davey, Mary “could see the stones turning to men beside her. Their faces were inhuman, older than time, carved and rugged like the granite; and they spoke in a tongue she could not understand, and their hands and feet were curved like the claws of a bird." (C 17)

Other setting-oriented quotes:

• "Here on the summit the wind fretted and wept, whispering of fear, sobbing old memories of bloodshed and despair" (C 17)

• "The sun had already disappeared behind the furthest hill ... before many hours had passed the grey malevolence of a November dusk would have fallen." (C 4)

• "Colour came in patches; sometimes the hills were purple, ink-stained, and mottled, and then a feeble ray of sun would come from a wisp of cloud, and one hill would be golden-brown while his neighbour still languished in the dark." (C 3)

• "The mist parted and dissolved. It rose from the ground in a twisting column of smoke" (C 17)

• "The texture of the ground was crisp, and the short grass crunched beneath the foot like shingle." (C 18)

• "Never before had she known there was malevolence in solitude." (C 1)

• "She spoke much as a child does who tells herself a story and has a talent for invention." (C 2)

• "There are nights when every cottage on the moors is dark and silent, and the only lights for miles are the blazing windows of Jamaica Inn." (C 2)

• "betraying by the very secrecy of their movements their desire to remain unseen." (C 4)

• "You’ve got a clever little monkey face, and a ferreting monkey mind, and you’re not easily scared. But I tell you this, Mary Yellan; I’ll break that mind of yours if you let it go astray, and I’ll break your body too." (C 4)

• "I heard another man say that once, and five minutes later he was treading the air. On the end of a rope it was, my friend, and his big toe missed the floor by half an inch. I asked him if he liked to be so near the ground, but he didn’t answer. The rope forced the tongue out of his mouth, and he bit it clean in half. They said afterwards he had taken seven and three-quarter minutes to die." (C 4)

• ""He preached the same sermon always on Christmas Day, and his parishioners could have prompted him anywhere." (C 7)

• "Men and women were like the animals on the farm at Helford, she supposed; there was a common law of attraction for all living things, some similarity of skin or touch, and they would go to one another. This was no choice made with the mind. Animals did not reason, neither did the birds in the air." (C 9)

• "If loving a man meant this pain and anguish and sickness, she wanted none of it. It did away with sanity and composure, and made havoc of courage." (C 9)

• "I don’t want to love like a woman or feel like a woman, Mr Davey; there’s pain that way, and suffering, and misery that can last a lifetime." (C 10)

• "‘You are very young, Mary Yellan,’ he said softly; ‘you are nothing but a chicken with the broken shell still around you.'" (C 10)

• "Like all men who have been badly scared, he threw the blame of his own panic upon the shoulders of another, and now blustered to reassure himself." (C 12)

• "She dreaded panic, above all things; the scream that forced itself to the lips, the wild stumble of groping feet and hands that beat the air for passage." (C 15)

• "Jem was safe from her, and he would ride away with a song on his lips and a laugh at her expense, forgetful of her, and of his brother, and of God; while she dragged through the years, sullen and bitter, the stain of silence marking her, coming in the end to ridicule as a soured spinster who had been kissed once in her life and could not forget it." (C 16)

• "‘You should have heard me preach,’ he said softly. ‘They sat there in the stalls like sheep, even as I drew them, with their mouths agape and their souls asleep.'" (C 17)

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

An abbreviated du Maurier Bibliography
Novels:

• The Loving Spirit (1931)
• I'll Never Be Young Again (1932)
• The Progress of Julius (1933) (later re-published as Julius)
• Jamaica Inn (1936)
• Rebecca (1938)
• Frenchman's Creek (1941)
• Hungry Hill (1943)
• The King's General (1946)
• The Parasites (1949)
• My Cousin Rachel (1951)
• Mary Anne (1954)
• The Scapegoat (1957)
• Castle Dor (1961) (with Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch)
• The Glass-Blowers (1963)
• The Flight of the Falcon (1965)
• The House on the Strand (1969)
• Rule Britannia (1972)

Selected non-fiction:

Gerald: A Portrait (1934)