Kavan’s Comments (group member since Aug 15, 2017)

Kavan’s comments from the Retro Reads group.

This is a reread for me but I was pretty young when I first read it. I'm finding it incredibly engaging. From the moment Jean said her brother was sent to the railroad I was hooked.

For me the book lagged a bit once Ned, Elizabeth and George had less to do. I think Pennman loved Richard but I don't think the way she scripts him is particularly compelling. I find myself convinced he was a lot more complex that she portrayed him.

Same. I have gotten four in the last few hours.

I have to admit after hating Elizabeth Woodville for most of the book I was fascinated by her post Ned behavior. Telling Bess the truth about her father was terrible and yet that scene was so well written. And then her inane plotting was hilarious especially when she was having an interior monologue about how she and Ned had such dim children. Nothing she did was moral or sympathetic but she was fascinating.

Ned struck me as a more complex character. His actions were not excusable but he did seem to struggle with them. He had great strengths but equally weaknesses... I also feel like his arc was really about how absolute power corrupts absolutely. And I think there were a good many hints he was tortured by his decisions.

Whereas Elizabeth just seemed to be really petty. She was totally self serving in wanting to elevate her family and not much else. But again I think Ned's decision probably made her a lot more ruthless...whereas earlier she was just kind of petty and rude after his reveal she was like full on evil.

I believe the loathe is actually British and period appropriate. I've seen it spelled that way in several period British novels. And when I looked it up it came up as British slang. Not sure though. I read some low Scotch dialect work last year and that really made me look at old English/middle English differently. I could just be mixing it up in my mind.

Elizabeth Woodville is really wretched. She is just awful. Penman doesn't even make her sympathetic when she ought to be. EW just rushes to the darkness.

I am 20% into Sunne in Splendour and loving it.

Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm is one of those books I'm always meaning to read so I'd join in a read as well.

For the past three or four years I’ve read the Dead every holiday season. And it’s always a different experience. Sometimes I emphasize with Gabriel, sometimes with Gretta, sometimes with the two old aunts. This year what struck me was the way passion or more specifically Gabriel’s lack of passion drives the story.

Gabriel’s experience in the Dead is all about first him lacking passion and then later recognizing that absence in a very personal, painful way. From his initial conversation with Miss Ivors it’s clear Gabriel is a pretty ritualized person. He’s more interested in cycling around Europe than visiting his own country, because well that’s what he’s done for years. He seems totally involved in the Irish cultural movement, that was consuming Irish intellectuals at the time.

Later on he clings to his memories and desire for his wife as proof that he isn’t a stodgy stuck in his ways middle aged man. I think what touches him and saddens him is his feeling that Michael Furey actions and Gretta’s response to that song indicate they feel a level of passion he never attained. It reminded me of Where Angels Fear to Tread when Philip talks about how people fall in love and have feelings but he’s never in that room or part of those feelings. (I’m paraphrasing obviously). He also recognizes that even in death Michael Furey draws a more passionate response than his do….

As to Gretta I have no doubt whatsoever that she loves Gabriel. At the beginning of the evening, she is teasing him in the way long married couples will. Later on she clearly helps out as one of the family and never gives any hint she’d have it otherwise. I think the impact of the song, the memory and the weather bring on a very emotional response. I didn’t take that to infer she didn’t care for Gabriel or didn’t love him.

That said I’m not entirely certain the Dead makes passion appear any better of a choice. Passion drove Michael Furey to an early end. It causes Miss Ivors to be pointedly rude. Gabriel’s brief inflammation with passion leads to pain on his part. The memory of her youthful passion causes Gretta to sob herself to sleep.

I've had Ulysses on the brain for a bit as a book I have to read and now I do feel like it is absolutely going on my 2021 reading challenge,

I read the Dead every holiday season. Its such a moving work.

Excited about how October & November reads.

If you search ankle deep Thirkell its still free on Kindle.

Dorothea and Casabaun is a great parallel and one I totally didn't consider. Neither Arnold or Casabaun are bad men they are just ill suited to marriage or at least to the women they married.

The second the NHS comment came up I had flashbacks to last year's the Far Country read where Shute spent chapters ranting about the NHS. Thankfully DES didn't go anywhere near that far.

Arnold and Caroline just seem like a mismatch. I think if the book had been written from his pov he was a guy who wanted to travel and go on digs and such and instead he's stuck in a small village with a chatty wife.

While I like a lot of DES' work I think she has a habit of writing some characters as perfectly good and then setting the other character up as the opposite. It doesn't work for me as a reader but I can imagine the readers of her era probably adored it.

Abigail-regarding Philip I just read Elizabeth Taylor's In a Summer Season and she has a similar scenario where a wife and mother dies young. And the husband goes off one place for a long visit, and the daughter goes another. And the daughter comes back different. It was like it never occurred to the author that the idea of shipping a young teenage girl off right after she lost her mother was in any way odd. The entire concept boggles my mind.

James and Rhonda are the focus of the third book.

I don't think Caroline and Arnold's marriage was that unusual in that era. The more period books I read the more I recognize British social mores were very umm British. Older guys routinely marry much younger women and no one seems to find it odd.

As late as what 1981 the press and public swooned over Diana Spencer marrying a mid-30's bachelor who'd dated a string of girls. Even in that era very few upper class British girls went to university. The expectation was they'd marry and then they were their husband's responsibility.

And certainly before WWII, British girls were expected to marry very early. For that period, Caroline and Arnold's relationship was probably the norm rather than the exception. They met, spent a brief time together, then he went to speak to the parents. Hardly romantic but typical.

I tend to think to Arnold may have had some mental problems. Caroline seems to present him as a just a bit of a grump, but from Harriet's comments it seems far worse. And I can imagine if he did having a relentlessly cheerful wife probably did him absolutely no favors. I think it was one of those marriages where both parties needed someone totally different-but divorce would have been unthinkable in that era.

Caroline is lovely but I'm not sold she's the maternal sort at all. She seems clueless what to do with her daughters. I think that too happens. A woman is perfectly maternal and lovely to the people around her like comfort and the community but seems clueless about what's going on at home.

Hana wrote: "I just realized that Vittoria Cottage is part of a trilogy. How delightful! The others in the Dering family series are Music In The Hills and Shoulder the Sky. Meanwhile..."

Shoulder the Sky is also titled Winter and Rough Weather. I read it in May and it was really great.

I read Stevenson's Winter and Rough Weather a few weeks ago and apparently it has characters from Vittoria Cottage so I'd love to read Vittoria Cottage as well.

I'm also cool with reading any Godden.

In terms of suggestions in the fall I was hoping we'd read another Helen Macinnes. I think we've read one two years in a row and I always enjoy Macinnes

Karlyne-I've also added Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking to my endless TBR pile. It sounds fascinating.