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The Children's Homer. Padraic Colum. 1918/1982. 256 pages. [Source: Bought]

I really enjoyed reading Padraic Colum's The Children's Homer, a retelling--originally published in 1918--of the Iliad and the Odyssey. You should know from the start that it is a prose retelling.

The story opens by introducing readers to Telemachus, the now grown son of Odysseus. When Telemachus was just a baby--just a month old--his father went off to war, to fight in the Trojan War. The war took ten long, agonizing years. But it's been over for just as many--ten long years. Telemachus and his mother, Penelope, need to know: Is Odysseus dead or alive? If he's alive, where is he? Why hasn't he come home yet? They are not the only one curious. Plenty of men want to know too. But. They're hoping that Odysseus is dead and not alive. Why?! They want a chance at Penelope. They've come to "woo" her. That and to eat and drink a lot at the estate's expense. Telemachus wants it to stop. It angers him to see so many men about the place anxiously trying to become Penelope's new husband. So what can he do about it?

For one, he can set out on a quest of his own to see if he can find traces of his father's story. Because Telemachus has at least one or two gods or goddesses on his side, he is somewhat mostly successful. He hears ALL about the Trojan war. Not just about his father, but, about many men--many soldiers. Including Achilles and Hector and Paris. He also learns that his father survived the war and is trying to come back home.

The second half of the book is about Odysseus' journey back home and how he handled or resolved the situation with all those men chasing after his wife. It is mainly if not exclusively from Odysseus' point of view. Readers see a couple of happy reunions along the way.

Plenty of action and adventure happens in both sections as the war and its aftermath is recounted. It is an interesting read. Parts of it felt very familiar to me. Overall, it was just a pleasant, enjoyable read.

© 2016 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

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The Magic Pudding. Norman Lindsay. 1918. 144 pages. [Source: Bought]

This is a frontways view of Bunyip Bluegum and his Uncle Wattleberry. At a glance you can see what a fine, round, splendid fellow Bunyip Bluegum is, without me telling you. At a second glance you can see that the Uncle is more square than round, and that his face has whiskers on it. Looked at sideways you can still see what a splendid fellow Bunyip is, though you can only see one of his Uncle's whiskers. Observed from behind, however, you completely lose sight of the whiskers, and so fail to realize how immensely important they are. In fact, these very whiskers were the chief cause of Bunyip's leaving home to see the world, for as he often said to himself--
'Whiskers alone are bad enough
Attached to faces coarse and rough;
But how much greater their offence is
When stuck on Uncles' countenances.'

Several years ago, I read Norman Lindsay's The Magic Pudding. I loved it. I did. I really LOVED it. I found it to be charming and delightful and wonderful. Part of the charm comes from the illustrations. (It is very important to read The Magic Pudding WITH illustrations.) Part of it comes from the songs or the poetry sprinkled throughout the novel. And then there's just the silliness--the absurdness--of the story itself.

The Magic Pudding stars a koala bear, Bunyip Bluegum. He goes off on his adventures primarily because he's tired of his Uncle Wattleberry's whiskers. He soon meets some new friends. Bill Barnacle is a sailor traveling with Sam Sawnoff (a penguin) and Albert (a pudding). Albert is THE magic pudding. And the adventures--in four slices, I believe--center around Albert and those that would steal him away. In each adventure, the three friends are in danger of losing their pudding to pudding thieves. Each adventure seems just a bit sillier than the one that came before. It may seem ridiculous, but, the book truly is a delight to read.

One of the early songs from the book, it was one of the early indicators that it would be LOVE, LOVE, LOVE.

Dear me,' he said, 'I feel quite faint. I had no idea that one's stomach was so important. I have everything that I require, except food; but without food everything is rather less than nothing.
I've got a stick to walk with.
I've got a mind to think with.
I've got a voice to talk with.
I've got an eye to wink with.
I've lots of teeth to eat with,
A brand new hat to bow with,
A pair of fists to beat with,
A rage to have a row with.
No joy it brings
To have indeed
A lot of things
One does not need.
Observe my doleful plight.
For here I am without a crumb
To satisfy a raging tum--
O what an oversight!' 

 The Puddin' Owners' Anthem:

The solemn word is plighted,
The solemn tale is told,
We swear to stand united,
Three puddin'-owners bold.
When we with rage assemble,
Let puddin'-snatches groan;
Let puddin'-burglars tremble,
They'll never our puddin' own.
Hurrah for puddin-owning,
Hurrah for Friendship's hand,
The pudding'-thieves are groaning
To see our noble band.
Hurrah, we'll stick together,
And always bear in mind
To eat our puddin' gallantly,
Whenever we're inclined.

© 2015 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

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The First World War has survived as part of our national memory in a way no previous war has ever done. Below is an extract from Full of Hope and Fear: The Great War Letters of an Oxford Family, a collection of letters which lay untouched for almost ninety years. They allow a unique glimpse into the war as experienced by one family at the time, transporting us back to an era which is now slipping tantalizingly out of living memory. The Slaters – the family at the heart of these letters – lived in Oxford, and afford a first-hand account of the war on the Home Front, on the Western Front, and in British India. Violet and Gilbert’s eldest son Owen, a schoolboy in 1914, was fighting in France by war’s end.

Violet to Gilbert, [mid-October 1917]

I am sorry to only write a few miserable words. Yesterday I had a truly dreadful headache which lasted longer than usual but today I am much better . . . I heard from Katie Barnes that their Leonard has been very dangerously wounded they are terribly anxious. But are not allowed to go to him. Poor things it is ghastly and cruel, and then you read of the ‘Peace Offensive’ articles in the New Statesman by men who seem to have no heart or imagination. I cannot understand it . . . You yourself said in a letter to Owen last time that [the Germans] had been driven back across the Aisne ‘We hope with great loss.’ Think what it means in agony and pain to the poor soldiers and agony and pain to the poor Mothers or Wives. It is useless to pretend it could not be prevented! We have never tried any other way . . . No other way but cruel war is left untried. I suppose that there will be a time when a more advanced human being will be evolved and we have learnt not to behave in this spirit individually towards each other. If we kept knives & pistols & clubs perhaps we should still use them. Yesterday Pat & I went blackberrying and then I went alone to Yarnton . . . the only ripe ones were up high so I valiantly mounted the hedges regardless of scratching as if I were 12 & I got nice ones. Then I went to the Food Control counter & at last got 5 lbs. of sugar . . . It was quite a victory we have to contend with this sort of sport & victory consists in contending with obstacles.

Gilbert to Owen, [9 February 1918]

I have been so glad to get your two letters of Dec. 7th & 18th and to hear of your success in passing the chemistry; and also that you got the extension of time & to know where you are . . . I am looking forward to your letters which I hope will make me realise how you are living. Well, my dear boy, I am thinking of you continually, and hoping for your happiness and welfare. I have some hope that your course may be longer than the 4 months. I fear now there is small chance of peace before there has been bitter fighting on the west front, and little chance of peace before you are on active service. I wonder what your feelings are. I don’t think I ever funked death for its own sake, though I do on other accounts, the missing a finish of my work, and the possible pain, and, very much more than these, the results to my wife & bairns. I don’t know whether at your age I should have felt that I was losing much in the enjoyment of life, not as much as I hope you do. I fear you will have to go into peril of wounds, disease and death, yet perhaps the greater chance is that you will escape all three actually; and, I hope, when you have come through, you will feel that you are not sorry to have played your part.

Owen to Mrs Grafflin, [3 November 1918]

This is just a very short note to thank you for the knitted helmet that Mother sent me from you some time ago. It is very comfortable & most useful as I wear it under my tin hat, a shrapnel helmet which is very large for me & it makes it a beautiful fit.

We are now out at rest & have been out of the line for several days & have been having quite a good time though we have not had any football matches & the whole company is feeling rather cut up because our O.C. [Officer Commanding] has died of wounds. He was an excellent [word indecipherable] father to his men & officers.

Margaret Bonfiglioli was born in Oxford, where she also read English. Tutoring literature at many levels led to her involvement in innovative access courses, all while raising five children. In 2008 she began to re-discover the hoard of family letters that form the basis of Full of Hope and Fear. Her father, Owen Slater, is one of the central correspondents. After eleven years tutoring history in the University of Oxford, James Munson began researching and writing full-time. In 1985 he edited Echoes of the Great War, the diary of the First World War kept by the Revd. Andrew Clark. He also wrote some 50 historical documentaries for the BBC.

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Cloudy Jewel isn’t on the shelf I thought it might be on, which means it’s in a box at my mom’s house, waiting to be moved to my apartment. So I continued my exploration of the work of Grace Livingston Hill with The Enchanted Barn. The Enchanted Barn is the story of a young secretary, Shirley Hollister, who needs to find a cheap home for her family for the summer, and ends up renting a stone barn.

First things first: at one point in this book, Shirley is reading  From the Car Behind. I’m not trying to cast aspersions on The Enchanted Barn when I say that that was genuinely the most exciting moment for me.

Aside from that, and the two foilings of plots that showcase Shirley’s extreme competence late in the book, mostly The Enchanted Barn is about the Hollisters’ new landlord, Sidney Graham, giving them things and falling in love with Shirley. But the improvements he makes to the barn, with and without their knowledge, aren’t balm to my materialistic soul in the same way as, say, Aunt Crete’s boatload of department store clothes.

I’ve been trying to figure out why that is, and I’ve come up with some theories. Bear with me though, because I’m basically making this all up.

There are three acceptable ways for characters to heap material benefits on people in novels:

1. By dying. Ideally, the person who dies should be vastly wealthy and unknown (or almost unknown) to the beneficiary of their will, but it’s also acceptable for the heir to just not know how wealthy the dead person was (Mr. Bingle), or not to expect to be given the bulk of the fortune (The Year of Delight).

2. In arranged marriages. It’s great when a not entirely willing husband lavishes gifts on the heroine of a novel, but only if he isn’t in love with her yet, or doesn’t know he is. Fake engagements might also come under this heading (Patricia Brent, Spinster).

3. From a family member or anyone else who is absolutely never going to be the protagonist’s love interest. Elderly ladies giving Patty Fairfield things. Aunt Crete‘s nephew pampering her.

These options have a couple of things in common: first, the gifts can’t be construed as charity. And second, they can’t be intended to get anything from the main character; they have no strings attached, or are treated as a matter of course. And that’s why the giver of the gifts has to be either unequivocally not a love interest or already married, because if they’re wooing the heroine, or might somewhere down the line, the gifts could be construed as part of the wooing. And that kind of ruins it.

The things Sidney Graham does for Shirley and her family fail on both counts. Part of his interest in Shirley is his attraction to her, right from the beginning, which makes it really difficult to see him as disinterested. And then, while Hill makes a point of Shirley being very sensitive about accepting charity, but she can’t back that up. I mean, she can tell us that both Shirley and Sidney are young and kind of dumb, but that doesn’t make Sidney’s putting staircases and walls and chimneys and windows into the barn anything other than a gift to her.

It lessens the impact of the family living in a barn, too. I mean, they’ve got furniture and stairs and curtains and stuff, and, while it’s still largely a barn, there’s no camping out feel to it. It’s less the story of a family roughing it in a barn for the summer and more the story of a family moving from a cramped city apartment into a big house in the country.

It’s a fun story — I don’t want to suggest that I didn’t enjoy it. The baby’s baby talk was awful, but the next youngest kid’s slang made up for it. And while the living in a barn aspect and the being given nice things aspect weren’t satisfying, the bits where Shirley was extremely competent and earned everyone’s admiration really were. I just spend an excessive amount of time thinking about tropes, and about how fiction functions. It may be an attempt to justify my extremely lowbrow reading choices.

Tagged: 1918, gracelivingstonhill

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Here goes possibly the nicest of the reader recommendations from week before last. Thank you Mark; I am exceedingly grateful.

I tend not to deal well with characters who seem to go out of their way to mire themselves in difficulties, but Patricia Brent, Spinster — by Herbert George Jenkins — did it so charmingly that I can’t really bring myself to complain. The title character overhears some of the catty older women at her boarding house gossiping about her — and, incidentally, adding a few years to her age — and tries to get back at them by casually referring to a fiancé over dinner that night. She’s not ready for the questions they throw at her, and she ends up being a lot more specific about the fake fiancé than she intended. Like, to the point of making up a name, rank and regiment for him. This is sort of embarrassingly awkward, obviously, and then it gets worse. Patricia goes out to dinner the following night for a nonexistent date with the fictional Major Brown and some of her fellow boarders follow her, which, a) aren’t you glad you’re not friends with them? and b) things are now acutely, humiliatingly awkward.

So Patricia does the insane, inevitable thing. She grabs of hold of the first soldier she sees and makes him have dinner with her. She continues to be pretty embarrassed by the situation, but she shouldn’t be, because Lieutenant-Colonel Lord Peter Bowen, D.S.O., is very pleased to have met her. The rest of the book is Peter dancing attendance while Patricia tries to make him go away — while secretly wishing that she could continue their fake engagement in some way that doesn’t mean her pride has to take a fall.

The book can be frustrating at times, because Peter is ridiculously perfect, and he and Patricia really like each other, but to Patricia it looks like all the advantages are on his side, and it’s only when she’s been convinced that he needs her as much as she needs him that she admits she loves him.  I mean, these characters really don’t seem like equals when they meet, and 90% of the book is Patricia figuring out that they can be. I don’t know if I can adequately convey how much I like that.

I also really enjoyed the supporting characters, in spite of the fact that they tend to fall into good guy/bad guy groups. On one hand you’ve got Patricia’s fellow boarders, her employer and his wife, and Patricia’s self-designated “only surviving relative.” They’re oblivious, and misguided, but funny in a way that didn’t make me cringe. Then you have Peter’s family and friends and Mr. Triggs, Patricia’s employer’s father-in-law. They’re sensible, welcoming, fun to be around, and, with the exception of Mr. Triggs, pretty glamorous. I particularly loved Lady Tanagra, Peter’s sister. And Lady Peggy, who introduces Patricia to her salon-like household and makes her slide down the stairs on a tea tray. I find it a little weird that pretty much all of the good people come from Peter’s world and not Patricia’s, but Patricia feels weird about it, too, so I don’t mind so much.

Another cool thing is the World War I setting. For much of the book the characters seem to be blissfully unaware that there’s a war going on, in spite of the fact that the hero is in the army. And I thought, okay, this is a lighthearted romantic comedy, albeit a surprisingly sophisticated one (Yes, I use the word ‘albeit’ in my internal monologue. Frequently.). We’re mostly pretending there isn’t a war on, and that’s fine. But then

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