Category: Books You Need

Rude Bitches Make Me Tired

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

Like my accent if you talk to me long enough, my reading tastes are over all the place. One minute I’m sounding like someone straight of an BBC costume drama and clutching my E.M. Delafield Provincial Lady omnibus to my sensible cardigan clad bosom and the next I’m sprawled on Mr Couch in one of Blacklight’s getting slightly seedy Skinny Puppy concert t-shirts reading Lovecraft and sometimes I’ve popped a cardigan over that concert t-shirt (cheaper than cranking up the heat), sipping hot tea and wishing Celia Rivenbark would materialize in my living room, jangling her car keys and so down with stopping at the Wallingford Sonic before hitting the Clinton Crossing Premium Outlets and cleaning the Lindt store out of every single Almond truffle in the place. Because Miss Celia? So my favorite Southern writer.

Now before you Sweet Potato Queens rise up as one saying “bless her ignorant lil Yankee heart” and trying to pour margaritas the size of an ocean liner down my throat to convert me, sit the bleep down your Majesties. I’ve read every single Sweet Potato Queens book, even The Sweet Potato Queens’ First Big-Ass Novel: Stuff We Didn’t Actually Do, but Could Have, and May Yet more than once. You’re a fun bunch, but dang, I find the whole Sweet Potato Queen thing a bit exhausting. All that bending and kneeling and kowtowing to your redheaded Amazon overlord…Celia Rivenbark  seems more approachable. And I think I could encounter Celia Rivenbark and not have my liver trying to make a break for it. In my head? I like to think Celia would be all “oh you don’t drink? The more for me!” and be glad someone could drive her home safely after a girls lunch out. My liver would be half way to Canada if I hung out with Jill Conner Browne for more than five minutes.

So I don’t need to go on and on about how quick I snapped up Celia Rivenbark’s latest book Rude Bitches Make Me Tired: Slightly Profane and Entirely Logical Answers to Modern Etiquette Dilemmas? But can I show you the cut from the book itself? I swear the library used razor sharp diamond edges in cutting the hard plastic cover they heat sealed on the blasted book. And of course I devoured the Rude Bitches Made Me Tired as fast as possible, like a pig at a Old Country Buffet, once I staunched my wound. I am this close to making a custom “Rude Bitches Make Me Tired” sign in PowerPoint on break tomorrow and putting it right next to Blacklight’s Clan motto at my desk. Because there are things we all could do to be nice//better people and Celia Rivenbark points out that way in the funniest way possible. Instead of going all Miss Manners and clutching the pearls and using an epic story about the Trashys to explain why certain forms of PDA are just beyond gross, Our Lady Celia gives it to us straight. And if Blacklight and I had been parents, you so believe we would be the ones cranking the music and car dancing to get our teen to behave just like Celia.

And for you Sweet Potato Queens who are still convinced, blessed my savage lil Yankee heart, Gwen is a demon? Turn to the bottom of page 16 and read to page 17. I swear Celia Rivenbark is referring to the obituary your Supreme Sweet Potato Queen Jill Conner Browne placed when her Very Own Momma died. You know? The one her sister Judy Conner (author of Southern Fried Divorce which I have read thankyouverymuch) approved of? How would I have picked up that reference I hadn’t read the Sweet Potato Queens books? Still not forgiven, am I? <sighs>

Hopefully Celia Rivenbark is hard at work on her next book. If not, maybe she’d like to come up to New England and check out our outlet malls? I promised to drive and not be a rude road hog bitch on the way.

Skating Shoes

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

It’s January and the parking lot at Moderate Income Apartments is a bit tricky when it snows as you lug a trash bag to the dumpster. If I fall would I be as graceful as Skating Shoes‘ Lalla Moore? Or would I go smack splat smash on my butt like something out of a Keystone Kops flicker? Given my natural grace (none) I say the latter would be true.

As you might have guessed the Noel Streatfeild kick continues. Nothing like a cozy book on a cold New England January afternoon. And on the chopping block (or shall I say skating rink?) is the charming 1951 tale Skating Shoes (aka White Boots in the UK). Little Harriet Johnson is all wobbly and bobbly from being sick. Her family, a good one but not in the best financial state what with a shop filled with substandard offerings and four children to support, will do almost anything for her to be strong and well again. Enter the family doctor who pulls a few strings and gets Harriet free skating time at the local ice rink. But you need ice skates and well, the Johnson family certainly doesn’t have the money for those. But eldest Johnson child Alec gets a paper route and gives the bulk of his earnings for Harriet to rent ice skates. You know it can’t be easy for the Johnson parents to agree to this but they are in desperation mode. Harriet means just as much to her parents as her three brothers. And Alec is happy to help, he’s not being forced into his decision. Now before you die from the wholesome, who does Harriet meet on her first day at the rink? Only budding future star Lalla Moore. Do the two girls hit it off and become fast friends? Did I eat Utz Sour Cream and Onion chips for lunch yesterday (come on…of course I did!).

The two girls not only become fast friends but lonely orphan Lalla who has everything her rich uncle David’s money can buy gets absorbed into the Johnson family. The children let her join their secret society and plans to turn the shop around, mother Olivia regards Lalla as another daughter and is more than happy to try and helpful Lalla when she gets into a sticky patch. Basically, the Johnson family (except for George’s horrid older brother Uncle “Guzzle”)? Awesome.

Skating Shoes is from the Golden Age of Noel Streatfeild and hits all the classic Streatfeild tropes. Orphaned character? Lalla. Big but loving poor family? The Johnsons? Distant but actually quite awesome and reasonable father figure? Lalla’s Uncle David King. Fame hungry brittle woman who shouldn’t be a mother figure? Hello Lalla’s Aunt Claudia! Talented child getting too big for their boots? Waves to Lalla post skating exhibition. Look into a creative field? Duh…skating. Technical performer vs the popular performer? Harriet might have championships in her future. Lalla? Total Queen of the Ice Capades. Annoying, gorgeous and knows it snot of a younger sibling who needs a good smack? Come here Edward… Snippets from Noel Streatfeild’s childhood? The Johnson family estate and how they’ve declined in the world. Child planning for its future/learning a trade? Alec deciding to how turn the family shop around. Devoted servant? Nana and her everlasting knitting and Miss Goldthorpe the tutor.

Skating Shoes may not be in the first Shoe book you think of (quick! Noel Streatfeild book! you know you want to say Ballet Shoes) but it’s worth the read and you need to snap up a copy when it’s in print.

A Vicarage Family

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

I’m on a Noel Streatfeild kick so let’s look at the first volume in her semi-autobiographical series, A Vicarage Family.

Our Noel character is Victoria, the second eldest of the Strangeway children, the misunderstood child of the local vicarage. Poor Victoria can’t seem to do anything right in most people’s eyes with the exception of the maid Annie and her beloved cousin John. Without these two wonderful people? Victoria’s very soul would be crushed. Her father comes from a good family with some land but it’s a narrow living compared to his other siblings. Granted, looking at this Edwardian vicarage life with 2014 eyes, having servants, sending your children off to private school and the like seems pretty sweet indeed and not too bad even if the children can’t eat cake and ices at a birthday party because it’s Lent. A life with servants, even the skeleton crew that runs the vicarage is pretty darn awesome when you’re the person who has to do all the housework.

Reading A Vicarage Family, you see how Noel Streatfeild was able to make her books so true to life for her readers. Whenever you encounter a little girl whose growing out of her clothes and there just isn’t the money to replace them with something better, those velvets that have been let out and patched and have the velvet nap going in all directions (the Fossil girls, Harriet Johnson, etc) it’s something the Strangeway girls experienced. The feeling of horror and disappointment and shame the Streatfeild characters feel is so real, so vital that you can feel in your bones that the Streatfeild sisters endured this too. And if you’ve read the Bell family series (if you can get your hands on them? Do it. Seriously.) you’ll know why out of all the perfect Bell siblings, imperfect stocky Ginny jumped off the page and into your heart. Both Ginny and Victoria fight to be understood and loved for their talents in the same way the world showers love and attention on their siblings.

And A Vicarage Story gives something not found in the Shoe books. In the Shoe books, the parents/parent figures are loving and care deeply about their children. In Ballet Shoes, Garnie is willing to take in boarders to give her charges a decent life. Given the circumstances she has been raising the Fossil sisters in, taking boarders is a step down on the social ladder but it’s a step Garnie takes. Skating Shoes‘ Olivia and George do everything possible to restore their beloved Harriet back to health even if it means accepting financial help from their son Alec. The money for Harriet’s skates is found and Olivia extends her maternal care and love to Lalla Moore without a thought.  Sure Rachel and her adopted sister Hilary end up in the clutches of Cora Wintle after their mother dies but their mother scraped and scarified to make sure her adopted daughter could dance. And Pursey and their tutor are willing to stand up to Cora Wintle for Rachel. And even when Ginny messes up? Mrs Bell loves her.

Reverend Strangeway does care about his troubled daughter and tries his best to understand her. But Victoria is just one member of the extended flock he ministers to. And the elder Strangeways love Victoria and understand her life isn’t easy and try to give her both love and the tools to make her way easier. Victoria’s mother? Mrs Strangeway? If Victoria fell down a well or disappeared? Not a problem. It’s not that Mrs Strangeway doesn’t want to be a mother, she doesn’t want to be Victoria’s mother, yes she comes to have a better relationship with Victoria as she gets older but that’s as a confident or companion not as a mother.

Just try reading about Victoria’s birthday dessert or what happens when the family gets the flu. In Annie we understand why the loving and devoted servant is so important in the Shoe books. When you haven’t received love from your parent, a person who doesn’t have a blood tie can still love and cherish you no matter what.

If the Deaccession Squad came a’calling at the local library and I couldn’t convince the librarians to sell me A Vicarage Family and it’s sequel On Tour? I would combing Awesome Books UK, hoping against hope that they had copies of A Vicarage Family available even if it was a 1970s paperback reprint. And given the prices for the trilogy on-line? Would some kind publisher (coughcoughBloomsburyGroupViragoPersephone Classicscoughcough) please please please talk to the Noel Streatfeild estate and put out the Strangeway books in an omnibus? Pretty please?

 

Tea by the Nursery Fire

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

During my mad “Oh My Great Tulu! The Deaccession Squad is taking away All The Books!” frenzy, I trolled the internet to find disappearing treasures and snapped up six books in a white hot heat including some titles I had lurking in Amazon wish lists. Strike while the iron (and the Awesomebooks UK coupon codes) are hot and all that. And among three grey bundles shoved into my mailbox with the stamp of the Royal Mail? Noel Streatfeild’s Tea by the Nursery Fire.

Why this book? Well, first I adore Noel Streatfeild and have read just about everything my library system can cough up by her (including <shudder> Thursday’s Child and The Children on the Top Floor) and second, as much as I long to re-read the Bell family series and get my hands on Beyond the Vicarage, my conscience and bank account aren’t willing to spend the money. But $5 Noel Streatfeild book about Victorian nanny? Sure why not?

Tea by the Nursery Fire: A Children’s Nanny at the Turn of the Century (also published as Gran-Nannie) is the story of Emily Huckwell, the nanny who raised Noel Streatfeild’s father and his siblings. For anyone fortunate enough to have read Noel Streatfeild’s semi-autobiographical novel, A Vicarage Family, this is the same old nanny who all the Strangeway aunts and uncles adore and has everyone racing up to the old nursery for Gran-Nannie’s strong beef tea (called “Golden Sovereigns”) the second they arrive at the family estate. However, don’t try and fit Tea by the Nursery Fire: A Children’s Nanny at the Turn of the Century in the Strangeways timeline because the Strangeway children are born in the 1890s vs Tea by the Nursery Fire: A Children’s Nanny at the Turn of the Century’s version of Isobel/Victoria/Louise who are born in the 1910s. Pop an Advil, pour yourself a nice cup of Lady Grey tea and consider Tea by the Nursery Fire: A Children’s Nanny at the Turn of the Century an alternate universe.

Another thing to consider, even though it just might be the aftereffects of diving into Tea by the Nursery Fire: A Children’s Nanny at the Turn of the Century after a nasty bout of sickness, but if you’ve read Flora Thompson’s Lark Rise to Candleford series, you might just forget which book you’re reading for a bit. The lives both Laura (Lark Rise to Candleford) and Emily/Nannie/Gran-Nannie lead are very similar especially in Tea by the Nursery Fire: A Children’s Nanny at the Turn of the Century‘s Part One-The Child. Both girls are the eldest child of a village family forced in the work world at an early age. Thanks to their father’s professions and mother’s service at the big house, both girls are raised a cut above the rest of the village children. They’re not the girls getting knocked up by farm hands in the hedgerows and doomed to a live in a tiny and overcrowded cottage popping out a baby a year. But instead of the post office, Emily/Nannie/Gran-Nannie goes off to raise other people’s children.

Even though the timeline and 100% accuracy of Emily story is in question (the back cover proclaims the the book is drawn on fact and family legend and my brain says more legend than fact), Tea by the Nursery Fire: A Children’s Nanny at the Turn of the Century gives an interesting (and brief) portrait of what life held for women at the time. You have Emily’s mother who trades brutal working hours for marriage and a narrow living even if it was better than most of her village contemporaries, Emily’s mistress (the spoiled daughter of a wealthy family who might have married a bit below her) with her lack of maternal instinct and caring only for herself and her oldest nursling John’s wife Alice (Victoria/Noel’s mother) who marries quite young and is implied she is marrying partly for love and to escape her family). Emily/Nannie/Gran-Nannie has a chance at love which is snatched away by an accident and spends her life raising children that aren’t hers biologically but might as well be for all the attention and love they get from their mother. And you have to wonder if Sylvia (the mistress of the house) ever wanted to boot out Emily/Nannie/Gran-Nannie because the children like her so much better than their biological mother.

Tea by the Nursery Fire: A Children’s Nanny at the Turn of the Century isn’t just for the Noel Streatfeild fanatics. Given the revival in interest of all things Victorian and Edwardian (hey there Downton Abbey and Gosford Park!), Tea by the Nursery Fire: A Children’s Nanny at the Turn of the Century should appeal to readers who want to know more about a vanished era. And of course, Tea by the Nursery Fire: A Children’s Nanny at the Turn of the Century would make a fine little BBC One film…

 

What the Devil is A Clothing Coupon?

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

I’m at work, stacks of printouts growing taller and taller on my desk and listening to Kate Macdonald’s Why I Really This This Book (p.s. it’s brilliant and if you love older books you need to listen to this podcast ASAP) when I found myself nodding and saying out loud as one of the very handsome IT guys from next door strode by my desk “Oh I have so been there…wait…so I’ve been using context clues in reading?” Because like Kate trying to figure out sledding and what delightful goodies Katy’s family sent her at school, I’ve been using context clues to figure out concepts in all the older British novels that seem to make up more and more of my reading. But context clues can only take you so far. Sometimes…well sometimes you need more. And I need to remember that very handsome IT guys walk by my desk ALL THE TIME.

Luckily, earlier reading and having parents who plopped me down in the front of the television with them while they watched Upstairs, Downstairs back in the dark ages (aka the 1970s), Victorian culture doesn’t confuse me as badly as it could to say…Blacklight. Let’s just say whenever I run the vacuum cleaner over my bare toes (shoes are evil) yes I curse the vacuum cleaner but a little voice also says “girl, you could be using a carpet sweeper and used tea leaves and be on your hands and knees”. Or when I blind myself with shampoo in the shower? The little voice “imagine how gross your hair would feel if you couldn’t shampoo it every day? Or had to use soap on it? And no lovely fancy dan conditioner?”. That little voice? Quite wise.

But until I stumbled across certain books, that little voice wasn’t quite so knowledgeable about World War II England. I mean I figured out rationing and clothing coupons thanks to Noel Streatfeild’s Theater Shoes and 1940s House on PBS, but I didn’t realize just how complicated the whole thing was. Now? If my fellow Anglophile coworker ever came over for tea? There would be certain gaps in my bookshelf.

The following books are quite wonderful on their own as social documents of daily life in World War II England and can be purchased from your local bookseller. But they also add a certain “ahhh…oh yes” to reading and re-reading World War II fiction and non fiction. Silly example. Reading Joyce Dennys’ Henrietta Sees It Through: More News from the Home Front 1942-1945, I wondered how Faith would get a layette together and deal with rations for little No-well (Noel). Well it turns out there are clothing coupons and ration cards to address that very situation.

  • The British Home Front Pocket-Book 1940-1942 from the Ministry of Information. (ISBN 978-1-84486-122-4) A treasure trove of information about everything from rations, evacuation, air raid shelters and more. I now know how to build a shelter in the middle of my living room if need be. (Blacklight: “WHOOO! Fort!”)
  • 101 Things for the Housewife to Do 1949 by Lillie B. and Arthur C. Horth (ISBN 978-0-7134-9056-5) Yes, this from 1949 but remember Britain was still under rationing and restrictions even in this post war time. Make do and mend was still in full force. And after reading the section on growing bulbs? I completely understand the Provincial Lady’s agonies every year.
  • Make Do and Mend: Keeping Family and Home Afloat on War Rations edited by Jill Norman (ISBN 978-1-84317-265-9) Facsimiles of actual Government Ministry leaflets about how to make your clothes last long with proper care and mending. Turns out I haven’t been too far off in my attempts to darn my dad’s socks. And I can totally see Vera from A Dark Adapted Eye reading each one of these pamphlets with the greatest of care before turning two old dresses into a new one or unraveling a sweater to re-use the yarn to make things for the infant Jamie.
  • Eating for Victory: Health Home Front Cooking on War Rations edited by Jill Norman (ISBN 978-1-84317-264-2) Even more facsimiles of Government Ministry leaflets with the focus on food and heating your home. Maybe Faith from Henrietta’s War: New from the Home Front 1939-1942 should have read these instead of lamenting the loss of silk stockings for her amazing and awe inspiring legs? And even though these are British publications, I can see the ladies of “Noah’s Ark”, especially Mrs Rasmussen giving a nod of approval before turning a toothpick, a pinch of salt, a tomato and three broken crackers into a lavish feast fit to build the puny Steve Rogers into a great big buff ripped to all get out Captain America without the super soldier formula.

Right now I have Lillie B. and Arthur C. Horth’s 101 Things to Do in Wartime 1940 on order. And if it’s anything like the above titles? It will be a most welcome addition to my bookshelves.

*what is a clothing coupon? Clothes were subject to rationing in the war. People were issued ration books with clothing points or coupons. You had to give so many coupons plus cash to purchase new shoes or stockings or materials or notions and the like. Used/secondhand clothes didn’t need coupons but had fixed prices.