no books; one Starkey trick

I am reading, I'm loving the Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series, and I re-read The Giver, and The Once and Future King, Ruskins lectures on Geology to a girls school and all sort of other things. I have even had my Mac fixed so there is not excuse, but I don't want to write about them.

I am sad. Sad would seep through the words and contaminate my beautiful books. It would sit there and sulk until I opened the book up again, months or years later and the sad would burst out full strength and push its way back. And I would be sad again. We can't have that.

Instead I will play Jacks like I was taught but only when the Baby is asleep (she is too small for jacks and I'm not about to share yet anyway) and I will make lists of things, things that make me happy, simple thing, free things, and I will push my heart up again through pure strength of will. And then I will write about books again.

The first on all my lists is Sunshine and warmth. Today, if the very fickle English sun favours me, I will walk in the sun, maybe I will take my computer and if the Baby behaves I will sit with a coffee in the sun and make a longer list. Then again a list with one is still very nice.

The Scapegoat-Daphne du Maurier

Over the past years I’ve been reading Daphne du Maurier’s fiction when I have a break in other novels. I started with Rebecca after seeing it performed in the Lake District over my anniversary. I loved the small slip of a girl who play the new Mrs. De Winter, she almost appeared to fade into the background half the time, which is pretty amazing for an actress to do as they normally want as much of the spotlight as they can steal. She was small and weak and trusting, but most of all she was in love, and you could see it.
Reading Rebecca is much the same, you fall in love with the main character and all of her insecurities. Not only is she not the title character of her own book, she’s not even given her own name. Even Mrs. De Winter is a convenience because she still thinks of the sector of a first wife as Mrs. De Winter. Hitchcock did an absolutely amazing adaptation for the screen of Rebecca that stays very faithful to the book and of course, keeps all the beautiful tension. There are so many similarities with Jane Eyre and Rebecca that one really hesitates to call it an original plot. More a modern look at the mind of a girl who knows she isn’t attractive being loved by someone above her.
Daphne-such a beautiful name, I want to call her that- a collection of short stories, published as ‘Not After Midnight’ or ‘Don’t look Now’ The title story is good in the same vaguely creepy way that Rebecca is, but the jewel of the collection, in my opinion is ‘The Way of the Cross’ which, while not a thriller like the others, is so very honest is the depiction of widely divergent characters that you feel sympathy for all and none of them at the same time.
There are several other De Maurier books, my Cousin Rachel, The Birds, and Jamaica Inn being the most famous because they were made into films.
The book of hers that I just finished is not one of the most popular, but I actually couldn’t tell you why. The Scapegoat isn’t really a thriller, although it had the distinct possibility of being one. Rather it is a telling of two men who look the same switching places, although one not very willingly. Our main Character, perhaps the title character, John is a British professor of French history on holiday who is hoodwinked into taking the place of a man he met only hours before on but happens to look exactly like, M Comte de Gue...and there’s the rouse. It’s not great, but it gets us to where we want. John is now a stranger looking in on a life that isn’t his own but without the formality of being thought a stranger.
The people he meets are divided into two sections, well drawn sad depictions of a rotting aristocracy; refined morphine addicts, insetuios family members, the over religious and one sweet, but very spoiled little girl. These are undoubtedly the people the count was trying to get away from when he thought of changing places. Of course there is a second set of characters that John, not being born and raised to overlook that of the over idealized French peasants drawn only the way a very rich girl can. They are noble, and thoughtful , respectful and of course wise an d respectful. This isn’t to say there aren’t peasants like this, but I do always find in shocking in a book where ALL the presents are drawn that way. There are people John falls in love with that his double hated, or more to the point was just tired of.
Rebecca is to the scapegoat as the blush of youth is to middle age. And if you liked one you are sure to love the other.

Means of Escape by Penelope Fitzgerald

When a book is given to me with such a title, at such a perfect time I hunker right down that very moment to read it. Not only do I believe books are the perfect escape, but escape, and more precisely a means to it is exactly what I have needed.
This is not an instruction manual, neither is it an adventure tale, but a set of often tragically hollow and compelling stories that leave one more alone and more content than any I have read in a long time. I do not think that any of the stories give the escape the characters want, and many end up giving more to think about the readers situation and how they are settled more than anything. Have you stagnated? Are you possessed of an exploring heart but meagre pockets, or debilitating fear? It may not be time for change, but perhaps it is always time to know where you sit in your own life.

We have the titular story set in 19 century Australia. It could so easily have been a preachers cautionary tale about the wiles of men, instead the preachers daughter originally taken up with an escaped convict, is the one left in her own lonely place we instead of with her, he takes up with am ex-convict spinster woman they employ to do the washing. The lesson- if there is one- is not ‘don’t be caught in the clutches of evil men’ but rather, ‘even a scorned woman has her charms and can be notably superior to a virtuous maiden in some respects’ or at least ‘in the words of Sondheim ‘if you know what you want, then you go and you find it and you get it’.
We also have a painter who wants to capture truth, but has problems both with his subject and his teacher; a child who can’t decide between his possessions, his curiosity and getting money from either; a man who comes for dinner in the middle of a woman’s labour and is unhappy to note that she won’t be cooking; and a man who has lived his live for a company who then lays him off. No one quite fits everyone is incomplete and many of the stories end mid sentence if not mid-breath.

I left my little retreat thinking: If someone looked through a window into my life, would it be one of these stories where the sidelines character steals the show from the main focus? Yes, we are all protagonists, but who drives you plot forward?