WRAP-UP POST: BACK TO THE CLASSICS CHALLENGE 2015

I had a huge reading slump in April/May of this year and consequently it was a bit of a struggle for me to finish this challenge hosted by Karen at the blog Books and Chocolate…but then that is why it is called a challenge, right?  However, I was ultimately able to read 12 books for all 12 categories with less than a week to spare! And despite my readers’ block earlier this year, I really did have a ball reading for the challenge and look forward to participating in the 2016 one as well.

I shamelessly used this challenge to further my adventures  in the Barchester Chronicles by Anthony Trollope by reading Framley Parsonage for A 19th Century Classic, the fourth book in the series, which I adored, as I do most Trollope.  Also at the top of my favorites list is One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes, which I read as my choice for a Classic Novella; this book was just exquisite.  I also loved Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple, my option for A Forgotten Classic.  Whipple writes in such a smooth way, it keeps me turning the pages.  And I can’t forget Lucia’s Progress  by E.F. Benson  which I read as my Humorous or Satirical Classic.  I adore the Mapp and Lucia series; the books often make me laugh out loud, which is rare.

The biggest surprise in the 2015 challenge for me was the play, Lady Windermere’s Fan by Oscar Wilde which I read for the category of A Classic Play. This was the one I was looking forward to the least and it turned out to be not only one of the easier reads, but also one of the most fun and entertaining of the 12!

I liked, but didn’t love Armadale by Wilkie Collins which I read for the category of Classic with a Person's Name in the Title, but I read this right in the middle of my slumpiest time, so had I been in a better headspace, I might have appreciated it more.  I also liked but didn’t love American Notes by Charles Dickens which was the title I chose for a Non-Fiction Classic.  I know that the trip chronicled by Dickens was specifically used in Martin Chuzzlewit, which is the first Dickens novel I read and one of my favorites. However, I think ultimately I prefer Dicken’s fiction. 

I definitely think I would have appreciated Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Little Princess more as a child. This was my pick for the category of Classic Children's Book. It was a little hard to look past some of the book’s more dated aspects regarding race and class. As a kid, I would have seen only the Cinderella storyline.

East Lynne was my choice for Classic by a Woman Author and while it didn’t live up to my expectations, I did enjoy it once I let it be what it was, which was very, very melodramatic!

My choice for a 20th Century Classic was Appointment in Samarra by John O’Hara which I found hard going, but since it is also on the Modern Library’s Top 100 Novels in English of the 20^th century, it was one that I had to cross of my list anyway.

Lastly, while I didn’t really enjoy either the Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliff which was my choice for  a Very Long Classic Novel or Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse which I chose for my Classic in Translation, as much as I had hoped, I don’t regret reading either book.  In particular I am glad to have read the Radcliff book if only because of its reference in Northanger Abbey. In fact, I probably should re-read Northanger Abbey to get the full effect now!

I am super pleased that a wopping nine of the books I read came from my shelves; for the other three, two were borrowed from the library and only one was purchased specifically for the challenge!

AMERICAN NOTES FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION

 

Whew, I got this one read just under the wire! Charles Dickens’ American Notes for General Circulation was the title I chose to complete the Non-Fiction Classic category and the 12^th and final book that I finished for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2015 hosted at the blog Books and Chocolate, thereby completing all 12 categories.

 

I was particularly interested in reading American Notes, an account of Dickens’ visit to the U.S. in 1942, because Martin Chuzzelwit was the first novel of his that I read and it particularly contains a large section which was inspired by this journey. I was, however, also really surprised to see that Dickens’ tours of some U.S. prisons also must have inspired at least some of Dr. Manette’s incarceration in the Bastille and the repercussions of such experience in A Tale of Two Cities.

 

As a sort of time capsule, I found much of American Notes to be intriguing. For example, I appreciated the occasional linguistic differences that Dickens noticed between U.S. and UK English (I find that sort of thing fascinating) such as the all-purpose American usage of the verb “to fix” and making it a noun, as in “fixings” and the use of “Yes Sir” in a variety of meanings depending on context and intonation (similar to “whatever” in current usage). I also really was astounded by the sheer difficulty travel that faced anyone in the mid-1800s. What an undertaking! Sometimes one journey from one city to another was comprised of boat, coach and rail!  And there is a section where Dickens is in Ohio going between Columbus and Cincinnati and he extols the fact that the road is paved (after a fashion) allowing for a rate of travel of 6 miles per hour. Can you imagine? An able-bodied human can walk at a rate of 3-4 miles per hour! So for 6 miles per hour to be considered “good” astounds me!  

 

I admit that I didn’t find American Notes for General Circulation as satisfying as a Dickens’ novel. A lot of readers accuse the author of being “too wordy” which I don’t mind in a novel with a plot, but it did show a bit in this book. Also I found it a little uneven, humorous and satirical in some parts but then sermonizing and didactic in others.  Famously American Notes engendered quite a bit of controversy and ill-feeling on this site of the Atlantic at the time it was published. However, as an American reading this over 150 years later, I don’t feel that Dickens’ was particularly unfair or even mean-spirited in his critiques of the U.S. A lot of what he found distasteful: the obsession with money, regardless of whether it is earned honestly or not, the obsession with partisan politics, etc. has not changed much in the intervening century and a half. I wonder too if the book would have engendered quite the hostile U.S. reaction were it not for the last two chapters, the first of which excoriates the practice of slavery and the second which particularly takes a shot at the libelous press and the love of lucre over the welfare of others.

 

The picture above is from the Penguin Classic Edition that I read from. It was wonderfully annotated and has an excellent introduction by Patricia Ingham. My Dickens collection is a mix of Penguin and Modern Library paperbacks, but I think I prefer the Penguin editions because of the annotations.

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

Of the 11 works I have read thus far for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2015 hosted at the block Books and Chocolate, this has got to be my least favorite. This was for the Classic in Translation category.

I am not a fan of allegory and Siddhartha reminded me of books like The Alchemist or Jonathon Livingston Seagull; books I fail to appreciate. I was thinking at first it is a book I should have perhaps read when I was younger, like On the Road, but I am not sure if I would have really liked this any better at 25 than at 50.

This is the story of Siddhartha, who tries on a variety of lifestyles (Brahmanism, Asceticism, Buddhism, Capitalism, Hedonism, etc.), takes each mode of living and experiencing the world to their limits and then ultimately rejects them to follow his own path. My take away from this slim book was that there is no substitute for actually living something; listening to a lecture on a concept on or being preached a hypothesis is not enough for one to internalize the idea. Ironically, I think that this might be why this book doesn’t work for me; I think I would need to experience the concepts it propounds first before I can say “aha, I get it”.

The edition I read of Siddhartha is well under 200 pages, but took me forever to read in English. I also have the German original which I am still plodding my way through now. The sentence structure is fairly simple (it reads a bit like scripture), but a lot of the vocabulary is well beyond my personal lexicon. I am still interested in reading more from Hesse, however, before I give up on him. I do want to try The Glass Bead Game and I have a copy of Narcissus and Goldmund someplace.

Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde

The category of Classic Play from Books and Chocolate's BACK TO THE CLASSICS CHALLENGE 2015 was the one I was least looking forward to. I hadn’t read a play since high school and I had this idea that plays are meant to be performed and watched and not read in the way one would read a novel. I chose Lady Windermere’s Fan because I had never read any Wilde before, although I have seen the movie version of The Importance of Being Ernest. I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised with my choice and I enjoyed reading this play very much.

Lady Windermere’s Fan is a dramedy of manners about the Victorian double standard for women regarding infidelity within marriage. I know that Wilde is known for his bon mots and quips and I thought the dialogue in this paly was snappy and delightful. The play opens with the young and very conservative Lady Windermere rebuffing a would be lover Lord Darlington’s flirtatious advances. Later, she is confronted with what she believes to be proof that her husband is having an affair which so addles her and upsets her world view that she actually considers throwing her reputation, her marriage and her child out the window and running off with the besotted Lord Darlington.

I found it interesting that this is the third work from the Victorian era that I have read this year concerning the contradictory views on adultery. The other two works were He Knew He Was Right by Trollope and East Lynne by Ellen Wood and were much more serious in tone, particularly East Lynne. The Wilde play was also much more direct and obvious about pointing out the hypocrisy of the situation. I know that this play has been filmed at least once and I would like to check it out or, better yet, see an actual live stage production someday. I am also interested in reading more from Wilde. I know he wrote a lot, across a lot of mediums, so there is a lot of good stuff for me to delve into when the mood strikes!

EAST LYNNE by Ellen Wood

I think I might be laboring under the misconception that I love Victorian era literature. The more I read, the more I am coming to believe that I may just love Dickens and Trollope.

I was annoyed throughout most of the first half of East Lynne because the author heavily foreshadowed EVERY plot point. This is not unique to Victorian literature, of course. I also realize that this does not bother some readers; I know that people go to see Shakespeare tragedies performed even though they are fully acquainted with the knowledge of who dies at the end; however, when I read a new-to-me book, I LIKE TO BE SURPRISED. I was a little heartened when a murder mystery storyline was introduced, but then I figured out who the murderer was in about two pages …*sigh*.  I also found it obnoxious that in order for this tragic novel to work, the characters had to be completely OBTUSE and never tell anyone the truth, until it is too late, of course.

I did enjoy the second half more; I still knew which way the train of tragedy was chugging, but I was along for the ride by then and Ellen Wood had stopped telegraphing every move and got a little nutty it a sort of fun, soap opera like-way with characters showing up in disguise, some serious teeth-gnashing and self-recrimination and a wonderfully over the top deathbed scene.

East Lynne is considered a sensation novel, which means that people read it in the 1800s for its scandalous, scurrilous nature. I imagine Victorians read sensation novels in the same way one might now read true crime or harder edged fictional crime novels; the reader can address and “enjoy” their fears in a safe setting.  The back of the Oxford Words Classics paperback edition that I read (pictured above) suggests that East Lynne can viewed as specifically tackling Victorian ethical unease vis-à-vis divorce and adultery.  Personally, however, I found Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon or He Knew He was Right by Anthony Trollope to be better dramatizations of the difficulties that many women faced in the Victorian Era in terms of divorce laws, marriage rights and child custody.

This title was my choice for the “Classic Written by a Woman” in the Back to the Classics Challenge 2015 hosted at the blog Books and Chocolate. If you like high melodrama with lots of foreshadowing, this might be the book for you, but for my tastes, it was a bit too much.

The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe

The Mysteries of Udolpho (the beautiful Penguin paperback edition I read pictured above came in at 875 pages), was my choice for the “Very Long Classic” in the Back to the Classics Challenge 2015 hosted at the blog Books and Chocolate. At first, I found this book very, very tedious.  There are ENDLESS descriptions of scenery, much of which makes the heroine, Emily, (a) cry and then (b) spontaneously compose a sonnet inspired by such landscape. These poems (sometimes pages long) are also included in the novel. 

Eventually, however, I just gave in to the silliness of it all and found it almost unintentionally funny after that. I lost count of the times our Emily fainted and/or burst into tears. It is definitely worth the experience of reading this title if you want to know the kind of books Jane Austen was mocking in Northanger Abbey as this title is one of the grandmothers of all gothic romances and was apparently very popular in its time.

The story is impossible to synopsize, so much happens to Emily St. Aubert., a young upper class woman who grew up in genteel poverty despite her father’s aristocratic background (the story is set in the late 1500s, but you would never know it except for the fact that this is stated in the first sentence of the first chapter).  Suffice it to say that there are plenty of castles and mansions with secret staircases, hidden rooms, ghostly sightings, there are mustache twirling villains and hidden agendas galore, which include forced marriages, stolen inheritances and other common misunderstandings.

Normally I prefer to read annotated versions of Victorian novels. However, this edition was published in the Pocket Penguin Classics Victorian bestsellers series and they do not have any notes or introduction. Which is just as well, I suppose, since this would have made the book even longer!  I am not sad to have read it, but I think it is safe to declare that I will never read any Ann Radcliffe again!

FRAMLEY PARSONAGE by Anthony Trollope

Framley Parsonage is book four in the Barsetshire Chronicles and it was my pick for the 19th century classic in the Back to the Classics Challenge 2015 hosted at the blog Books and Chocolate.  I have read the previous three novels in the Chronicles (naturally) and Framley Parsonage is similar to those preceding books in that it skewers the excess and/or abuse of power in the Church of England while also portraying a romance (or two).   There are  also a few reoccurring characters from the series that pop up in this title; such as the delightfully obnoxious Proudie family (introduced in the second book, Barchester Towers) and the rich but common Miss Dunstable (from the third book, Dr. Thorne).

However, the main story of Framley Parsonage mostly concerns itself with newly introduced characters who (unsurprisingly) live in the village of Framley.  These characters are the widowed Lady Lufton of Framley Court, her grown son Ludovic, the current Lord Lufton and Ludovic’s childhood friend Mark Robarts, who is the vicar of the eponymous parsonage and Lady Lufton’s protégé.  Mark is happily married to Fanny, a love match engineered by Lady Lufton and within the first few chapters, his younger, unmarried sister Lucy comes to live with the couple in the parsonage.

 

In the beginning, it is clear that Lady Lufton, while amiable and well-meaning, controls the lives of both her son and Mark Robarts.  The plot thickens when both young men begin to chaff under her control. Mark, who grew up decidedly middle class, yearns to hobnob with the upper classes, hopefully thereby bettering his prospects both professionally and socially. Lord Lufton, meanwhile, wants to marry whom he pleases, in spite of his mother’s matchmaking.

The sin of pride as experienced in multiple ways is what really moves the various story lines: Lady Lufton’s pride in her son which threatens to estrange her from him, Mark’s sister Lucy Robarts’ pride that would keep her from the man she loves, Mark Robarts pride which prevents him from asking for help when his ambition threatens to ruin him, or the struggling neighboring vicar, Mr. Crawley’s pride which will not allow him to accept charity despite the desperate need of his wife and children, etc.

I look forward the finishing of this series in the next year or so and then moving on to the Palliser series novels.  I am no expert on Victorian fiction, but of those authors I have read from this era thus far, Trollope is right up there with Dickens as my absolute favorite.  I love in particular his gentle humor and his well-rounded characters.  The edition I read (pictured above) is from a hard cover set published by Oxford University Press in 1989 which I stole borrowed from my father.  I hope he got them cheap since the first book had messed up annotations and the third book was missing about 50 pages (an obvious mis-print). But this title was in perfect condition. 

A Little Princess: Back to Classics Challenge 2015

I chose A Little Princess for the category of Children’s Classic for the Back to the Classics 2015 challenge hosted at Books and Chocolate. I am fairly sure I watched on television as a kid a movie version of A Little Princess with Shirley Temple, but I don’t remember much from it. I love Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, a book I first read at maybe 9 or 10 years old. However, I don’t know how I would feel about it if I had read it only as an adult; I can still read The Secret Garden with my child-like eyes and ignore the more dated racist and classist aspects of it.  I was unable to do that with A Little Princess, unfortunately. I am sure, however, that the 9 year old me would have really enjoyed this story of triumph over adversity.

The story is about Sara Crewe, an English girl who travels from India to England at age 6 or so to attend boarding school, because the British upper classes didn’t feel it appropriate to educate their children in the colonies. Sara is not only fabulously wealthy; she is also intelligent and kind. She soon makes friends with the downtrodden and misunderstood in the boarding school since that is just how she rolls. Sara particularly excels at imagining things and she regales the other little girls with her stories. When people are unkind to Sara, she pretends she is a princess and treats the unkind people with grace and compassion, because she imagines this is how royalty would behave.  The headmistress secretly hates her, but chokes her dislike back because promoting Sara to prospective parents is good advertising for the school and a couple of the older girls don’t like Sara out of jealousy but they can’t do too much about it as long as Sara is the star pupil. When Sara’s fortunes take a turn for the worse, however, she finds out just who her true friends are and just how much she will have to draw on her imagination and her inner princess to survive.

As I wrote above, it was hard for me to overlook some of the more dated aspects of the book. Also Sara is just a little too perfect and a little too put upon to be believable to me now.  But I can see how an adult reader could still find the magic in this story; I saw it too, but I also saw the man behind the curtain.

I kind of wish I had sprung for the Penguin Classics edition which should have an introduction or afterward, but I opted instead to borrow and read a very PINK library copy of the Harper Collins hardback edition pictured above, which had really beautiful full page color illustrations by Tasha Tudor as well as black and white sketches above each chapter.

Lucia's Progress: Classics 2015 Challenge

I read this book to complete the category of “Humorous or Satirical Classic” for the Back to the Classics 2015 challenge hosted at Books and Chocolate. As I stated in my December 16, 2014 post, this was by far the easiest choice out of all the challenge categories, as I have come to love this series; these books make me laugh out loud…frequently. Lucia’s Progress by E.F. Benson is number five in the publishing order of a series of six books, so I only have one more left, but I suspect that these books will be excellent re-reads which I hope will help lessen the pain of good-bye. I have no intention to continue on and read any of the modern day, estate approved follow up books by Tom Holt or Guy Fraser-Sampson. Not that I think they would be bad, but if it isn’t the original author, I am just not interested.  Also, while the 6th book is still unread by me, the series on the whole has been consistently good; if anything the books get better as they go on, so why mess with perfection?  There are two short stories by Benson featuring the same characters, however, that I might have to get my hands on. In Lucia’s Progress, the Mapp and Lucia rivalry continues as Lucia and Mapp (now married) compete for a council seat, Lucia pretends to have found Roman ruins in her back garden, Mapp pretends to be pregnant and everyone one who is anyone in Tilling is thoroughly entertained by the ensuing gossip and backbiting. I don’t want to go any further in to the story  (1)  divulging the story line in book five would contain slight spoilers for those who had not read the previous 4 books and (2) I feel that these books are best read in order, so the reader comes to know Emmeline Lucas aka Lucia et al gradually. She really is an acquired taste.   Basically all of the books are satires on upper middle class village life in 1930’s England.  If that sounds like it might be up your alley (and if you like P.G. Wodehouse apparently) then try Queen Lucia and see how you get on. The image above is from the Moyer Bell edition that I read. I have the entire set in these editions (sturdy trade paperbacks). Some have introductions, some don’t. Lucia’s Progress did have a brief introduction, but it wasn’t particularly edifying.

Armadale: Classics 2015 Challenge

I chose Armadale to fill the “Classic with a Name in the Title” category for the Back to the Classics 2015 challenge hosted at Books and Chocolate. I read Wilkie Collins’ two most famous novels The Women in White and The Moonstone over 20 years ago. I still have very fond memories of The Women in White and hope to re-read it someday. I recall enjoying The Moonstone slightly less, but maybe I need to give that one a re-read as well to see how it stacks up now.

Armadale was especially appropriate to fit this challenge category because not only is it a classic novel with a name in the title, it is actually about FIVE men who have the same name of Allen Armadale. How that comes to be is established in the prologue, as one of the Alan Armadales turns up at a remote German spa and ends up confessing his sins to the only other English speaking gentleman present and having said confession then sealed for his then infant son to read upon his majority.  I won’t reveal the contents of that confession, but suffice it to say, it drives the plot of the rest of the novel and one of the major themes of this book is whether or not the sins of the fathers are fated to be visited on their sons or if it is the individual who determines his own destiny. 

I love Victorian “sensation novels” with their convoluted plots which rest upon strange coincidences.  They tend to go to extremes; for example, the sane are deviously committed to asylums, young women or old men are duped into marriage, inheritances are stolen and family secrets are shoved under the rug only to ruin the lives of subsequent generations; all that good stuff which is maybe a little goofy from a modern perspective, but also occasionally terrifying if you think too hard about it. And in this respect Armadale did not disappoint. However, I did find that the story moved very  s  l  o  w  l  y . This slower pace is not uncommon for Victorian novels that were serialized, of course, but after reading the zippy prologue which sets up the main plot in under 50 pages, I found it hard going occasionally; mostly because I found the two main protagonists, Allen Armadale Juniors, to be fairly one-note; one is a neurotic and the other a cheerful dolt, although I did appreciate the portrayal of their friendship, which is quite touching.

However, when finally the “villain” of the novel is introduced, some 200 pages in, things finally start looking up. In fact, for me, it was Lydia’ story which was the real mystery and the driving force of the plot. It also helps that her voice in the novel is recorded in letters or journal entries. Personally, I love epistolary novels and find them easier to read than 3^rd person accounts. I would actually pose the question of whether or not she is a villain at all. Granted, she isn’t a good person, she admits as much herself, but I would argue that she is as much a victim as either of the boring young Armadales.  I also found the way she held power over the poor Mr. Basherwood a reminder of the Renfield character in Dracula who catches and eats flies while locked up in a mental hospital, pining away for his master. Who knows? Maybe Stocker read Armadale and was inspired by it?

One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes

 

Typically I gravitate towards doorstoppers of books: long, involved, descriptive, etc.  However, I am often stunned (in a good way) when I read concise novels where an author has achieved so much in considerably less pages.  I have to give One Fine Day along with A Month in the Country by J. L. Carr, The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald and Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor a place of prominence on my figurative shelf of short novels that I personally have found to be brilliant and just as immersive as a 400+ page tome.
I read this book as part of the Back to the Classics 2015 challenge hosted at http://karensbooksandchocolate.blogspot.com/  as it fulfills the “Classic Novella” category.   I am not sure exactly what the line is that divides a novella from a novel, but Karen only criteria was that the book have less than 250 pages, so this fits.

Published in 1947, One Fine Day depicts a day in the life of a certain upper middle class family who live in a large house in the countryside outside of London.  There is no plot, nothing extraordinary happens really. However, every thought and observation is related in impeccable detail; every small moment echoes with larger story.  The writing is at times melancholy, at times wistful, at other times joyful.

The main focus of the book is Laura, a wife and mother, who despite her middle class upbringing, is at heart a little bohemian. She has a young daughter still in school and a husband who takes the train in to his office in London.   Laura’s dreamy, spontaneous nature is curtailed by her responsibilities in the post war era. Before the war, she had servants to manage the house and the housekeeping.   Two years after VE day, those who might have looked for a position of nanny, gardener, or cook prior to the war are now either dead or moving towards better paying, more liberating jobs in industrial areas. 

Laura isn’t only person adjusting to life after wartime of course, everyone in the village is, for better or for worse. At home, her daughter Victoria and her husband Stephan are both only getting to know one another again, since Victoria was just a toddler when the war began and Stephan left to fight in Europe. Victoria is a little bit resentful of her father’s intrusion into the cocoon she and her mother developed while he was off fighting. And Stephan seems slightly bewildered by the small person his daughter has become, no longer a baby to be tickled or to give horse rides to.  And the same is true for Laura and Stephan and their marriage after such a long separation. After the first prayer of thanks that they have been reunited when so many have lost so much, they too have to adjust their expectations of each other, now that they are older and so much has changed in their mutual absence.

One Fine Day is a beautiful story told in small instances. The take away is that life moves on and we decide how we move with it; one can decide to appreciate each beautiful day as it comes or one can stay stuck lamenting a lost past that cannot be changed.   

The edition of the book I read  (shown above) is published by Virago, a publisher that re-issues books primarily written by women which have fallen out of print. I am so glad they did for this title, because it was really an amazing depiction. I know that this book has been compared with Virginia Woolf and I think that that is fairly apt in Panter-Downes depiction of the rich inner lives of her characters.

Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple

My second choice for the Back to the Classics 2015 challenge hosted at  http://karensbooksandchocolate.blogspot.com/  is Someone at  a Distance which ticks the box for  the “Forgotten Classic” category.  In order to determine a forgotten classic, Karen suggested using goodreads to find books that have less than 1000 ratings or looking at the publishing catalogs of imprints such as NYRB, Virago and/or Persephone which specialize in re-publishing books and authors that have fallen into obscurity. From a Distance is a twofer, since it has under 700 ratings on goodreads and was re-published by Persephone in 1999. This is the second Whipple novel I have read, the first being The Priory, which I read last year and simply did not want to end, it was so enjoyable and I was entirely caught up in the story.  Someone at  a Distance wasn’t quite as fantastic as The Priory for my tastes, but it was nonetheless good.

I don’t want to get too much in to the plot, since I don’t want to spoil anything.   Whipple wrote domestic dramas and Someone at a Distance falls more on the side of melodrama.  However, it was a real pleasure to read even if the story isn’t too original. The book opens with the elderly widow Mrs. North who has been accustomed to being catered to her entire life. Now in her dotage, she is rather bitter and bored, even though her son and daughter-in-law live only a short distance away.  So she takes on a young French woman, Louise, as a companion for a few months. It is Louise's introduction which establishes most of the conflict in the novel, as she inveigles her way in to first Mrs. North's life and then into the rest of the family's, all the while neglecting her own doting parents back in France.

I loved Louise, even though she was detestable. And that is really a testament to Whipple’s writing, because  all of the characters, even if their actions were deplorable or unduly self-sacrificing, were understandable and fully rounded, I thought.

Someone At a Distance also has a slight feminist slant, which I think was also discernable in The Priory.  In both books certain female characters are faced with the dilemma of having to support themselves outside of marriage, a situation which offered few feasible solutions for many women in the early and mid-20th century.

Appointment in Samarra by John O'Hara

The first book I read for the 2015 challenge, filling the category of “20th Century Classic” (and also ticking yet another book off the Modern Language 20th century best of list!) was Appointment in Samarra by John O'Hara.  I can see why the writing in the book is admired, O’Hara is able to convey a lot with few words, but I just didn’t care about any of the characters or what happened to them. In some ways, this book, with its exposure of small town conformity and hypocrisy, was similar to Sinclair Lewis’ novel Main Street, which I liked a lot more. Maybe this was because Carol in Main Street is a much more sympathetic character than Julian English, the protagonist (or maybe antihero) of Appointment in Samarra.  The book is also quite frank about sex, especially given that it was published in the 30’s.

The story is told in an indirect way, with detours in the backgrounds of peripheral characters interspersed within the main plot. Julian seemingly has everything going for him. He is in his late twenties, from the right family, moderately wealthy, well married, well liked etc. But one evening, he publicly insults another member at the country club and this sets off his downward spiral from respectability to persona non-grata in the town. What makes Julian do it? The book really doesn’t answer that question overtly. Is it snobbery? Is it jealousy? Does he have a death wish?  Does he feel trapped in his conventional, middle class life? Is it the fact that his business and his marriage aren’t quite as ideal as they seem? Is there a history of mental illness in his family, bad blood? Or is it his alcoholism?

Or maybe it is none of the above, since the title of the book indicates that one cannot outrun one’s fate. Throughout the book, Julian has chances to redeem himself, but he consistently chooses paths that only further ensnare him so that ultimately he feels he has only one way out.

So my first pick wasn't a favorite...but the only way is UP! I am sure that my subsequent reads will be more to my taste and enjoyment.

BACK TO THE CLASSICS CHALLENGE 2015

I’ve decided to put this neglected blog to good use for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2015 hosted by Karen at Books and Chocolate (link here http://karensbooksandchocolate.blogspot.com/2014/12/announcing-back-to-classics-challenge.html ). I participated in the Back to the Classics Challenge 2014 by linking to my goodreads pages, which worked ok, but the reason I wanted a blog was to be able to take part in/keep track of these types of on-line challenges.

The categories and the books I plan on reading are as follows:

1.      A 19th Century Classic -- any book published between 1800 and 1899. – This should be pretty easy, considering all the unread Dickens, Collins and Trollop books that I want to read. I think I will choose Framely Parsonage, the fourth book in the Barchester Chronicles.

2.      A 20th Century Classic -- any book published between 1900 and 1965. Just like last year, all books must have been published at least 50 years ago to qualify as a classic. -  Here, I have to take advantage of my quest to read all the books on the Modern Library’s “100 best English-language novels of the twentieth century” which I have been working on since 1999 or so and choose one from that list.  Only 34 more titles to go!  I think I will read either Appointment inSamarra by John O'Hara or Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

3.      A Classic by a Woman Author --  This was a tough one to choose because there simply is so much to choose from, but based on Simon at Savidge Reads’ glowing review (http://savidgereads.wordpress.com/2009/12/06/east-lynne-ellen-wood/) I think I will give East Lynne by Ellen Wood a try.

4.      A Classic in Translation -- This was also difficult, but I finally decided on Siddhartha by Herman Hesse because (a) I have a copy in English already, (b) it is very short and (c) I think I might try to also read it in the original.

5.      A Very Long Classic Novel – I have the doorstop of TheMysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe awaiting me in this category.

6.      A Classic Novella -- Here I opted for One Fine Day by Molly Panter-Downes which has been championed by a variety of bloggers, but most important to me, by Simon at Stuck in A Book (http://www.stuck-in-a-book.blogspot.com/2012/03/one-fine-day-mollie-panter-downes.html).  

7.      A Classic with a Person's Name in the Title -- Since I chose the Radcliffe novel for the chunkster category, I thought I would read either Armandale by Wilkie Collins or Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens for this category.

8.      A Humorous or Satirical Classic -- The easiest by far! I will read Lucia’s Progress by E.F. Benson, which is the fourth book published in the Mapp & Lucia series.

9.      A Forgotten Classic --  Karen pointed out that Virago or Persephone titles would probably be a good fit here, so I have chosen to read Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple.

10.   A Nonfiction Classic --  I think I will try American Notes by Charles Dickens.

11.   A Classic Children's Book – I am pretty sure I never read A Little Princess by  Frances Hodgson Burnett and The Secret Garden is a childhood favorite, so that will probably be the book I read for this category.

12.    A Classic Play – Yikes! The hardest category of all! I have some Shakespeare plays on my shelves, but hopefully Lady Lady Windermere's Fan will be more amusing than King Lear, if I can get my hands on a copy.