Reading 1001 discussion

Summer Will Show by Sylvia Townsend Warner

1. Please place reviews here. https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Sylvia Townsend Warner (1892 - 1978) was a poet, short story writer and novelist, as well as an authority on early English music and a devoted member of the Communist Party. Her many books include Mr Fortune's Maggot, Lolly Willowes (NYRB classics) and After the Death of Don Juan which is another of her books on the 1001 list.

Possible tags for this book include; British, France, Paris, history, February Revolution 1848, Marxist literature, Lesbian literature.

Characters:
Sophia Willoughby
Minna Lemuel, Jewish storyteller


Pre-questions:
1. Have you read any other books by this author? What thoughts, anticipations, hopes, fears do you have as you prepare to start this book?

Post questions:
1. the author states that her characters were developed over a long period before she wrote the book. Some have felt that this story is very autobiographical. What do you think?

2. How would you describe the plot, did it pull you in or did you feel forced to read the book?

3. How realistic was the characterization? Would you want to meet any of the characters? Did you like them? Hate them. Who was your favorite character?

4. How does the setting figure into the book?

5. What are some of the book's themes?

6. Does the author address issues of racism, antisemitism, and classism in the novel? And how does she address these issues. Did you feel uncomfortable with any of these issues as they were addressed?

7. A a work of historical fiction, a love story, a Marxist literature, which parts of the book did you most enjoy?

8. Did the book end the way you expected? What was most engaging, or were there parts that dragged? Would you recommend this book to others? Will you read more by the author? How were your expectations for the book met? Were you pleasantly surprised or greatly disappointed, or maybe just meh? Does the book belong on the 1001 list.

Don't forget to post your reviews in our review folder, the link is posted above.

I know nothing about the author except that she is not Sylvia Ashton Warner, but your introduction is intriguing and I am anticipating an enjoyable read.

1. Have you read any other books by this author? What thoughts, anticipations, hopes, fears do you have as you prepare to start this book?

I have 5 of her books in my TBR, but I have yet to read anything by her. I have heard good things about her writing, though. I am looking forward to reading this.

Pre-Question: I hadn't heard of her before, which surprised me because I've read a lot of socialist-feminist lit. So I'm really excited the list has brought her to my attention: I have high hopes for this one! Hopefully it's quite good.

I also have never heard of our author, so I am looking forward to learning more about her and her work.

Post questions:
Finished the book last week and really enjoyed it, so I guess I’ll get into the questions now:

1. Well she lived in a bit of a different era than the book, so not totally autobiographical. But she was involved with the communist movement and fell in love with a woman there, so definitely seems inspired by real life.

2. I feel like kind of the opposite: I feel like Sohpia went from grieving Tory mother and wife to radical communist lesbian rather quickly and easily lol. I did love the plot though. Les Miserables is one of my favorite books of all time, so I love media about the French post-revolutions and the social movements that came up at that time. I also loved that the plot included a pre-Paris commune action. I find that to be one of the greatest “what ifs?” of history.

3. Like I said above, the transformation on Sophia’s end did seem a little rushed maybe? But would love to hang with her and Minna, they seemed like cool radical ladies who deserved better. The husband’s not invited lol. Minna was probably my favorite character, she was a little overly “saintly” at times, but also human and remarkable, if not a little over frenzied in her desire for revolution, but given where she came from, it made sense.

4. The stagnancy and protectiveness of the English estate really worked well to illustrate the themes in Sophia’s narratives before being exposed to the social conditions of the rowdy, struggling, violent Paris life. Well done.

5. Social Justice, communism, the price of revolution and the human cost, the value of an authentic life (but once again, the price), just gals being socialist pals lol.

6. Yep, all of the above are addressed, in the obvious ways such as the revolutionaries and Minna’s childhood with traumatic anti-Semitism. Also with how the mix race boy is discussed and treated in the novel. Some of the language used is very uncomfortable, but intentionally so it seems to shine a light on these issues.

7. I enjoyed the historical fiction/Marxist literature aspects the most, but I tend to like historical and political content. The love story part was also well done, though. I didn’t hate any of it.

8. Yeah, I kind of expected the tragic ending, unfortunately. The beginning was a little long, but once Sophia gets to Paris and with Minna it speeds along quit fast. But, I would recommend the book, and am looking forward to her other list books now. I would also keep it on the list. I gave it 4 stars.

Pre-questions: I have not read any books by this author but based on the description I was really looking forward to it.

Post questions:
1. The only autobiographical nature I can pick up on was the devotion to Communism by both the author and the central character.

2. Un-popular opinion here I was really looking forward to reading this but once I started it was soooo boring. I felt remote and detached from the characters even when she was relating the death of her children she kept the reader at a distance and I was left feeling cold.

3. I really didn't like any of the characters, I don't have a favourite. They were all too remote or too overly unlikeable or too adoring. Basically for me they were all too...something or other.

4. Honestly I think it allowed for the author to comment on communism and female love but not a lot else.

5. Communism, racism, class divide, inequality, revolution and female love.

6. Poor Caspar was badly treated by everyone and I don't think racism was really addressed although they did allow him into the army so perhaps not too overtly racist there. Minna as a Jewess was popular and entertaining although there were anti-semitic slurs aimed at her.

7. The part I most enjoyed was the end when I could move onto my next book.

8. Yes and no part of the ending was expected and part of it not. I was bored and detached for most the book so no I wouldn't recommend it and yes I will read other books by the author but only because they are on the list. I would class this as meh 3 stars without reading her other list books I can't say whether I would keep it on the list or not.

Your opinion and mine match up, BW. I’ll add to that the writing style- it’s that between the wars period when the popular style was tedious.

Tracy wrote: "Your opinion and mine match up, BW. I’ll add to that the writing style- it’s that between the wars period when the popular style was tedious."

Glad I am not alone and love this comment "the popular style was tedious" that is so accurate LOL

1. the author states that her characters were developed over a long period before she wrote the book. Some have felt that this story is very autobiographical. What do you think?

As others have mentioned, the author probably did draw from her own life experiences to create characters who were politically engaged. Also, the story of two women coming to share their lives would also parallel Townsend Warner's own life. However, neither of the main female characters are writers or musicologists and obviously the events portrayed happened almost 90 years before the book was published. I did not read it as being more autobiographical than most authors drawing from their own experiences.

2. How would you describe the plot, did it pull you in or did you feel forced to read the book?

The book started out slow and was largely about the manners and situations of a landed gentry woman who projected being stubbornly independent but was really simply incredibly angry about her husband being unfaithful with someone not of their religion or class. The plot did get interesting at the very end when the characters were engaged in the February revolution of 1848 in Paris.

3. How realistic was the characterization? Would you want to meet any of the characters? Did you like them? Hate them. Who was your favorite character?

I didn't particularly love any of the characters. There were times when I found Casper and Minna interesting. Casper for his way of dealing with being an outsider (to love the insider) and Minna for her faith in human nature and her own abilities to survive. I also thought Inglebert was a good character to include....he rather represented Marx in my mind...he was able to see the coming revolution from a theoretical perspective and from a practical one. I have to say that I truly disliked Sophia a great deal. She was rude, stubbornly closed minded and constantly angry. There were good reasons for her to be angry but she never seemed to tie those things together in her own mind. She kept making bad choices as "if in a cloud", and even some of the good choices such as deciding to stay with Minna regardless of having to forfeit her money, were never described with any sense of feeling or caring. She would only say: 'I have never been so happy", but nothing she did or said made me believe she was happy. Also, would a woman in 1848 England not know that she forfeited her income upon her marriage? Was she supposed to be a very stupid woman? Or just an incredibly naive to think that Frederick would not act on his legal prerogative?

4. How does the setting figure into the book?

I liked the descriptions of the streets of Paris....you did get a really good sense of the various neighborhoods and the residents that lived there with their various class and income status.

5. What are some of the book's themes?

The book speaks to personal choices and the ramifications of those choices, personal freedom and the constraints society places on those freedoms, socialism, classism and also a bit about the capricious nature of life that brings happiness and death in odd places without warning.

6. Does the author address issues of racism, antisemitism, and classism in the novel? And how does she address these issues. Did you feel uncomfortable with any of these issues as they were addressed?

For a book published in 1936, I felt that the book was a bit too true to history in regards racism. Casper was not treated well from the characters but also not from the author. Certainly racism was brought to light in the book but not addressed other than that. Antisemitism faired a bit better with Minna being a very capable Jewess who was discriminated against in some quarters but who was opened minded toward others and in general people were quick to see her charms and her abilities. Her physical attributes were fairly stereotypical but her mind was clever, playful, and her heart was very much in the right place. Also, she was not insulted with the classic Jewish stereotype of only caring about money. Classism was the main focus of the book and our Sophia represented all that was bad in the upper class and the long suffering workers represented all that was good in the world....except Sophia's aunt had redeeming characteristics also. The fact that Sophia came to understand the true living conditions of the workers and why they would take to the barricades was the main movement of the story.

7. A a work of historical fiction, a love story, a Marxist literature, which parts of the book did you most enjoy?

I felt that Sophia was a poor representative of someone whose mind opens to Marxism...She was really depicted as an ugly person. She barely loved her children (devoted but not loving), she hated her husband and one got the impression that she hated him before he left her and she certainly hated him after he left. She loved Minna but we are not really allowed to see Sophia through loving eyes. So, although I was happy to see two women living together, it didn't really feel like a love story. Sophia is simply not lovable.
As for the historical, Marxist part, I felt that there were some difficulties with that also. Marx wrote his manifesto in 1848, the same year of the action in Paris. All of Europe was experiencing political troubles largely due to the fact that there had been a number of bad harvests and people were hungry. The industrial revolution which turned human beings into a commodity (labor) was growing but much of the political activities in Paris in 1848 was focused on throwing out the monarchy and going back to the ideals of the first revolution. The barricades were built by liberals with a nationalist focus. This revolution fell apart because the liberal socialists (no one was called a communist in 1848 I don't think) could not agree on tactics, namely cooperative work for all or a more capitalist approach and the revolt ushered in that poor excuse for an emperor, Napoleon's nephew. In other words, it was not successful. I guess the fact that the characters are all starving in the end gives us some insight into the failure but not enough I don't think.

8. Did the book end the way you expected? What was most engaging, or were there parts that dragged? Would you recommend this book to others? Will you read more by the author? How were your expectations for the book met? Were you pleasantly surprised or greatly disappointed, or maybe just meh? Does the book belong on the 1001 list.

I will read the other book by Townsend Warner on the list but no, I largely would not recommend this book.

Pre-questions:
1. Have you read any other books by this author? What thoughts, anticipations, hopes, fears do you have as you prepare to start this book?

No, this is my first, I haven’t heard of this author before. The historical context (the 1848 French Revolution) creates some anticipation.

Post questions:
1. the author states that her characters were developed over a long period before she wrote the book. Some have felt that this story is very autobiographical. What do you think?

The author’s real life somewhat mimics Sophia’s story (falling in love with a woman with Communist tendencies; no ex-husband though). And she definitely did not go through a revolution, although her interest in Communism coincided with the rise of fascism.

2. How would you describe the plot, did it pull you in or did you feel forced to read the book?

A very linear plot with an almost predictable tragedy at the end. For me, it was a drag, not because of the plot, but mainly because of the writing style.

3. How realistic was the characterization? Would you want to meet any of the characters? Did you like them? Hate them. Who was your favorite character?

I would say that the characters were rather realistic and representative of the participants of the 1848 French Revolution. I neither liked them nor hated them and can’t really point to a favourite.

4. How does the setting figure into the book?

The successive surroundings of Sophia as she evolved throughout the novel were very characteristic of the era and correctly depicted: the rich land-owning gentry of rural England, the indolent Bohemian and Parisian artistic life, the burgeoning and rather clandestine Communist movement.

5. What are some of the book's themes?

Communism, revolution, women’s rights and freedoms, classism, racism.

6. Does the author address issues of racism, antisemitism, and classism in the novel? And how does she address these issues. Did you feel uncomfortable with any of these issues as they were addressed?

They pervade the novel. Racism, especially with the treatment of Caspar by various individuals throughout the novel. Antisemitism, based on Minna’s stories and the various jibes uttered at the Jews. Classism, through the antagonism of Sophia’s two life stages.

7. A a work of historical fiction, a love story, a Marxist literature, which parts of the book did you most enjoy?

Even though the historical aspect of the fiction seemed to correctly reflect the historical facts and ambience, I had to drag myself through this story. I didn’t find any uplifting parts from the potential love story (was it really a love story? Apart from the complicity and comradery between Minna and Sophia, I failed to spot any hints of deep love; not obvious to me that we could qualify them as lesbians) or as a work of Marxist literature (if it was, it felt just as abstruse and misleading as Hegel’s dialectics).

8. Did the book end the way you expected? What was most engaging, or were there parts that dragged? Would you recommend this book to others? Will you read more by the author? How were your expectations for the book met? Were you pleasantly surprised or greatly disappointed, or maybe just meh? Does the book belong on the 1001 list.

This was a disappointment. The story would have had all the elements to create a good novel, but the crowded, dry and affected writing style, heavily redolent of the Bloomsbury’s set’s (Woolf et al.), just suffocated its potential. I still have to read the author’s other book on the list, but I would suspect that neither should belong to the list; I am sure there are better examples of lesbian literature and/or historical/Marxist literature among the list.

1. I thought that Sophia Willoughby as an independently minded aristocrat taking responsbility for her estate but feeling unfulfilled, despite willing herself to be devoted to her children's upbringing was very likely a character who had been gestating for a number of years. I thought this part of the novel to be well realised and intriguing. Although not at all autobiographical. Apparently Warner published the book six years after beginning her relationship with the poet Valentine Ackland, so Sophia's relationship with Minna could be based on experience. She was also actively anti-Fascist and Marxist, although working for the Red Cross in the Spanish Civil War happened after this novel was published.
2. I enjoyed the first part set in England and I thought the characters of the revolutionaries were finely drawn and the action at the barricades well done, but Sophia's arrival at Minna's place and her ineractions with her husband at Great-Aunt Leocardie's home in the Place Bellchasse were strained and unbelievable for this reader.
3. I liked Great-Aunt Leocardie, she was my favourite. I thought Ingelbrecht a sympathetic character, but he became friends with Sophia too quickly. I found Minna too much of an enigma to believe in her. Mostly I found Sophia sympathetic except for her arrival at Minna's and then decamping there so abruptly. Martin w,as an interesting charcter but we did not know too much about him.
4. The Paris of 1848 was described very well.
5. The rights of women, the class struggle, anti-clericalism.
6. Racism in the careless guardianship for poor Casper; anti-semitism, although the Lithuanian pogrom was sympathetically described, the birth of Marxism, classism in the noblesse oblige attitude of Sophia before she had to sing for her supper. No, I did not feel uncomfortable, the book was written in the 1930's and Warner was developing her feminism and communism at the time. And she was writing about something that happened 88 years before that.
7. It did not work as a love story for me. Sophia kept exclaiming how much happier she was living the bohemian life, but with little evidence. I lbest iked the description of the 1848 revolution as historical fiction.
8. I am a fence-sitter about whether this book should be on the list. It is certainly better than others which are included but it was not a particularly enjoyable read for me after the first part.

Post questions:
1. the author states that her characters were developed over a long period before she wrote the book. Some have felt that this story is very autobiographical. What do you think?
This is really hard to say, as there is likely some autobiographical context in most every book written. So, I agree that there is most likely a decent amount of content that draws on the author's own experience, I can't definitely say that it is autobiographical per se. The fact that she dedicated the book to Valentine Auckland does indicate there may possibly be influence from their relationship included in the book.

2. How would you describe the plot, did it pull you in or did you feel forced to read the book?
It started out slow for me, became very interesting, dragged in the middle, then gradually became less interesting. It was one I appreciated more when thinking about it after the fact than as I was reading, if that makes sense.

3. How realistic was the characterization? Would you want to meet any of the characters? Did you like them? Hate them. Who was your favorite character?
I think the characterization seemed realistic fo the time and place. Would I want to meet any of them. Not necessarly. I didn't hate any of them. Sophia can be hard to relate to. I wanted to feel sympathy for her, and sometimes I did, but It wasn't always easy due to her cold manner.

4. How does the setting figure into the book?
The author did a great job with this. Here descriptions of Paris were partiularly beautiful.

5. What are some of the book's themes?
Loss, social class differences, communism, racism, feminism, and relationships.

7. A a work of historical fiction, a love story, a Marxist literature, which parts of the book did you most enjoy?
I am biased toward historical fiction, so I would have to say that was my favorite aspect of the book.

8. Did the book end the way you expected? What was most engaging, or were there parts that dragged? Would you recommend this book to others? Will you read more by the author? How were your expectations for the book met? Were you pleasantly surprised or greatly disappointed, or maybe just meh? Does the book belong on the 1001 list.
I did enjoy this book, but it did fall short of my expectations. While I think this book is cleverly written (particularly the use of "movements" to arrange the plot) and certainly innovative for its time, I am not entirely sure it merits its place on the list.