Deluged With Books Cafe

I was introduced to Barbara Pym by chance as her books often appear side by side with Anita Brookner, Rosamond Lehmann and a handful of English women authors that I love. Her characters are most often vulnerable, albeit a bit lonely, sometimes gliding in unnoticed and yet their presence magnifies over time. In moments like this, it is when we recognize a bit of ourselves in them. In No Fond Return of Love,  we meet a heroine who seemed a bit worn around the edges, lives alone in her parents' big house at the London suburb and does the 'thankless task' of indexing for published authors. When she attends a weekend seminar, a needed break from the down spell of a broken engagement, she made new acquaintances and developed renewed interest as she began to be intertwined in their lives. Dulcie is a kindred character (though first impressions would cast her as a mild and boring type) but behind the gentle, if not faded, appearance lies a rather droll streak and curiosit...

You know when they say something is too beautiful, too close to the heart it hurts. That is how I see this book. In piercing waves that could be brought only by sharp truth and bittersweet recollection, this book engulfed me. Dusty Answers is nostalgia in its purest form, of memories stirring with fleeting delights and drawn out melancholy. It may be that the wistfulness of the story is what makes it appealing. Its characters remain with you long after you finish it (and I could almost not let go of that last page). It enthralls not with the plot but in the beauty of Lehmann’s prose and how she draws the scenes, the characters and their sentiments. She captures on point those young delightful years of childhood and that seeking sense of belonging in each of us. There are moments, passages that almost feel like the author peeped into my head, picked out my brains and put it down on paper; that kind of creepy feeling because it related so much. Dusty Answer is a coming of ...

When not in the mood to tackle my ‘currently reading’ list, I often curl up to a volume of Mary Stewart which has become a comfort read. Here our heroine, Bryony Ashley, was off in the Madeira when she received a summons from an Ashley cousin from England that her father was in danger. The cousin, who remains unknown, is connected to her through the unique Ashley ‘Sight’, communicating with each other using their minds.  When she returns to Ashley Court, a crumbling Tudor manor surrounded by a moat, after her father’s death, she noticed some valuable things are disappearing. Before long, she couldn’t help feeling the danger for herself as well. In most of Mary Stewart novels, the mystery gradually unfolds through varying circumstances in the disguise of strangeness and sometimes magic. In Touch Not the Cat , the element of the supernatural (like the Ashley Sight) is genuinely part of the story, which adds a different kind of thrill on top of her usually laid out puzz...

Sentimentality, choices not taken and hope merged in this little classic. After the death of her husband, Lady Slane, in her late eighties, moved out of the London family home, to the surprise of her children, and decided to spend her remaining days away from the bustle and clamor of her old life. As she settled in an old house in Hampstead, she reveled in her freedom, met acquaintances who understood her plight and spent her days looking back on the past; marrying at seventeen and becoming a wife to a viceroy. Under the shadows of her garden, she contemplated wistfully about her old dreams of becoming a serious painter, the promise of youth and the freedom to take what one wants. Vita Sackville-West, like her friend V. Woolf, echoed the inevitable ends of women in this thoughtful novel. By way of nostalgia, she expressed the ruminations of a life found wanting. She spoke further of how easily women's lives (or selves) could be swallowed up in the wake of marriage, childr...

If you want to read a book about the beauty of summer and the struggle of gardening, about something and nothing, then you may pick this up and forget the time. The Solitary Summer  follows her journey in  Elizabeth and her German Garden , where she accounted her time learning gardening and interacting with nature and friends. As also reflected in Elizabeth von Arnim's other book,  Enchanted April , her writing conjures serene images of flowers in bloom and shafts of sunlight, of lying on the grass by the pond, of reading for hours under the shade of a tree and the effects of these languid habits on the soul. In this short book, she related her witty conversations with the Man of Wrath, her exchanges with previously hired gardeners, the way of life of the villagers, funny arguments with her own conscience and best of all, her love of books and traipses at the garden.

If one digs down further, one may discover little treasures. Just like this barely known classic by Sylvia Townsend Warner (Vita Sackville-West, you're next!). There was much women authors trying to break out in the literary world around early twentieth century, telling not just mere idyllic stories of pastoral landscapes but of reflective opinion and claiming of right. Lolly Willowes  is one good representation of the feminine voice. As a forty-something spinster, Laura is trying to break away from the constraints of her family, away from just being the indispensable 'Aunt Lolly'. Seeking her independence amidst objections, she moved alone to the country air of Buckinghamshire in a little village of Great Mop. In the wild beauty of primeval woods, she connected to nature and its people in ordinary and strange ways. Published three years before Woolf's A Room with a View, Warner had spoken first of women's need to ...

It's the Crete light that makes everything magical, that and the touch of Mary Stewart. Indeed, I was off to read another one of her suspense books. I've not written any author in the blog as much as her. Her stories are more of something to immerse in and not much a race to solve the puzzle. In  The Moonspinners, even with the element of mystery, the pace dawdles and pulls us up short to appreciate scenic views and little pretty corners. Nicola, our heroine, sets off on her own in a remote village off the island of Crete to enjoy a holiday only to come upon two suspicious strangers while hiking in the mountains. Before long, she got caught between their troubles with a risk to her life.

"But, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction--what has that got to do with a room of one's own?" I should have read this eons ago. Didn't Virginia Woolf just cut right to the heart of it with these first words? Then she preceded to tell us readers a most wonderful message about writing, about women, and the importance of a fixed income and a space. By this extended essay, she speaks not only to women (and women authors) of her time but even of today as it is still relevant and applicable. Here she discussed about exploring the chances and the advantages of being independent and of pursuing creativity entailed from a little freedom. Years ago, I bought a tattered secondhand copy of  A Room of One's Own  and its condition was a testament enough of it being well read. I say, everyone must read this book! A lot may categorize this as a voice of feminism, but, for me, it is that and a lot more. It is a book worthy to be read again and agai...

One of the classics in Chicano literature, Bless me, Ultima  is a poignant novel about a boy who, on the threshold of manhood, seeks himself through his own roots, pushing the confines of his upbringing, opening his mind to the magic and changes in the world and the exploration of other beliefs. Through it all, there is Ultima, who is his guide to wisdom. There's something sultry in the pull of magic realism. Not only that, the colorful textures of Chicano and Latin America literature, such as  this , bring about a cauldron of tastes and tempestuousness in the air. The book reminisces of the old vaqueros of what is now New Mexico, the little towns and family ranches, the infiltrating pagan faith that still exists and always, the feel of the beating sun and the mystery of spirits in nature.

It is my third book of Mary Stewart and, as every time, I am taken by the languidness of her novels, notwithstanding the allure of cottage garden stories. Though not quite as sweeping as The Ivy Tree or magical as Thornyhold (my favorite of all!) and is a notch or two down, it remains a nice warm reading. Rose Cottage  is light with a sprinkle of mystery, a hint of romance and a good imagery of the English countryside and charms of a stone cottage. You could say, a classic British women fiction (for me, anyway) sans the drama. A summer in 1947, a woman coming back to her childhood home, a puzzle about her birth, a bunch of missing tokens and suspicious neighbors.

As usually happens, I had watched the film before knowing that it was based on a book which I just finished reading. It was a perfect time for I have, these days, been gravitating towards women authors at the turn of the twentieth century. Elizabeth von Arnim gets to the heart of the matter in making a study of women with their inner yearnings and the slow unfolding of their souls. It is a story of transformation akin to the blossoming of a flower. The women, quite unhappy and set in their ways, found themselves changing little by little surrounded by the magical beauty of the Italian countryside, the lush flowers carpeting the hillside and the break from the monotony of their lives which had become dreary.

In these days when I have been burying myself on modern classics, this book finally got its turn. What more, I watched both film adaptations beforehand and genuinely found it lovely. A Room with a View  tells us about a young English woman traveling to Florence with her cousin guardian. She meets a few of the English tourists in their Italian pension over dinner and what starts as a typical appropriate discussion about "a room with a view" turns into an awakening of a woman's heart and mind to the beauty, to the discoveries of living life. Forster writes the classic (British) way of exploring a coming of age story, about a girl wrapped in the pleasantries and manners of her own circle that when she finds herself outside the zone of her comfort was made to grasp the threshold of a different view. If I had not known beforehand the gist of the book, I'd have tired of half the rambling conversations that make no sense to me, that offer nothing to enlighten nor t...

Mary Grey has nothing to look forward to except a future as colorless as her name. So if she looks, walks, and smiles so much like the glamorous missing heiress Annabel Winslow, why not be her for a little while?  ( * ) Arriving in Northumberland to visit the land of her ancestors, Mary Grey was confronted by a handsome stranger mistaking her for her cousin, Annabel, whom he believed was dead for years. Now she was presented by a most tempting offer, for her to disguise as Annabel and assume her place in Whitescar, the home of the Winslows, with Connor pulling the strings. When I discovered Mary Stewart, I fell in love with her style of writing and the quiet charm of her heroines. It seems she likes to begin things in a certain poise, as displayed in a couple of her books. The chapter opens with Mary lounging on the Roman wall, cigarette in hand, staring out at a beatific landscape. There's a certain feel of film noir in her prose and lush descriptions, a dash of mystery, s...

It starts with a serene day in Brooklyn in the early years of the twentieth century, a description of a little fire escape, a little corner facing a big tree in the yard; a metaphorical figure looming over Francie Nolan's growing years. It is a quiet coming of age classic about a girl's dreams, about Brooklyn and the American social classes, about immigrants and being poor, about the luminescent characters of two different families: the strong Rommely women and despairing Nolan men. In the outskirts, it is also about a tree. Francie Nolan is an eleven-year-old girl living in a small apartment with her brother Neeley, her mother Katie, a pretty scrub woman and her father Johnny, the impeccably handsome Irish singing waiter with an on and off job at the union. With the book spanning Francie's life from a young girl to a budding young woman against the backdrop of the shifting years in Williamsburg, we are given glimpses of her honest thoughts and struggles, despair again...

Set in the quiet and drowsy English countryside, this is a quiet tale of a lonely child growing up into a young woman and traveling to a cottage deep in the forests of Wiltshire county, where she settled in to the air of mystery surrounding Thornyhold. The heroine is Gilly Ramsey, who spent a miserable childhood being starved for affection from a cold mother and a religious father when a visit from a distant godmother opened her eyes to the wonders of nature and the world around her. Years passed and she inherited her godmother's house and garden, along with it her known reputation as the local 'white witch', friendly but odd neighbors and other strange happenings.