Category: Library Raid

This Crazy Thing Called Love

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

I was trying to rearrange things on my bookcase to make room for my latest treasures after last week’s trip to the Friends of the Ferguson Library book shop (stoked I found an almost pristine copy of the Mitford sisters letters in hardcover but it’s a doorstop and a half!) when I managed to knock over the knee high stack of mass market paperbacks next to my dresser. I really need to buckle down and write those V.C. Andrews reviews I’ve been planning one of these days. But instead of settling down with Clan Dollaganger, I found myself putting aside Dominick Dunne’s The Two Mrs Grenvilles. But Friday afternoon found me combing the stacks of the Avon Free Public Library and adding This Crazy Thing Called Love: The Golden World and Fatal Marriage of Ann and Billy Woodward to my armload of books.

Now given my fascination with true crime and the life of the very very rich, you would think I would have reviewed  This Crazy Thing Called Love: The Golden World and Fatal Marriage of Ann and Billy Woodward ages ago. This weekend’s reading wasn’t the first time I’ve encountered the book. Back in 1992 when This Crazy Thing Called Love was published I was right on the library reserve list behind all the old ladies who where old enough to remember the case and in one or two cases, ran in the right circles to have met the Woodwards back in the day. The old ladies in my home town? Full of surprises!  What boggles the mind is there are people out there who devoured Truman Capote’s Answered Prayers and Dominick Dunne’s The Two Mrs Grenvilles and took those embellished stories as the gospel truth. That’s like reading Jackie Collins writing about her late night soap opera diva Sugar Anderson and assuming you now know all there is too know about Joan Collins and Shirley Maclaine. The true story is so much more interesting.

For those of you who have never heard of the Capote or Dunne books or even know who the Woodwards were, here are basics. In 1955, socialite Ann Woodward shot what she thought was an intruder at her family’s country home. Only, instead of an intruder who had been targeting their neighborhood, Ann Woodward had killed her banking heir husband Billy Woodward. The Woodwards had a stormy marriage with affairs on both sides and many people thought Ann Woodward had killed Billy Woodward in cold blood to keep him from divorcing her to marry someone from his own class. Billy Woodward’s family stood by Ann Woodward but she spent the rest of her life under a cloud of suspicion and died just before Esquire magazine published part of Truman Capote’s uncompleted novel Answered Prayers that included the story of a scandalous woman who shoots her very rich husband.

Thanks to Susan Braudy, the picture of the Ann and Billy Woodward is treated with fairness and a steady hand. Ann Woodward (born Angeline Luceil Crowell) wasn’t a saint, but she wasn’t the whore that Dominick Dunne and Truman Capote paint her to be in their stories. There wasn’t a secret hick first husband she was hiding from Billy Woodward. Given the changes in Billy Woodward’s will as their marriage crumbled, Ann Woodward would have been better off financially as the former Mrs Billy Woodward vs the Widow Woodward. Believe it or not…there really was a burglar prowling in their exclusive neighborhood the fateful night Billy Woodward died. And you can’t help but feel that if Ann Eden (the stage name Angleine Crowell used before her marriage) had never meet Billy Woodward or at least if their affair had been just a passing thing versus a marriage, both parties might still be alive and thriving in their own worlds.

If you’ve read Answered Prayers and The Two Mrs Grenvilles, make an effort to track down and read This Crazy Thing Called Love. Ann and Billy Woodward and their family deserve that much.

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.

The Asylum

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Considering on any given day I’m wandering around in a Lands’ End cardigan with a plain white t-shirt, black pants/black skirt/grey skirt (depending on the season), maybe a silk scarf and a strand of fake pearls from Macy’s  (what Blacklight calls my “librarian look” and my coworkers call “Manager Blank Jr”-I don’t have the money to for trends and splashy patterns and the like), it might come as a surprise I devour every single Simon Doonan book I can get my little undead raccoon hands on. And I mean everything from his memoir Nasty: My Family And Other Glamorous Varmints to Wacky Chicks: Life Lessons from Fearlessly Inappropriate and Fabulously Eccentric Women to even why does my local library even have this Confessions of a Window Dresser: Tales from the Life of Fashion. Finding The Asylum: A collage of couture reminiscences…and hysteria at the library and shoving it into my bag, looking around like someone was going to snatch it away from me? Perfect understandable right?

You would think between his books and Slate column, Simon Doonan might not have anything more to say or reveal about the fashion industry. But Simon Doonan has more stories than oddly flowered shirts (and the man has oceans of oddly flowered shirts) and The Asylum was read in one great big swoop once I got home from the library. If Blacklight hadn’t figured out he has opposable thumbs and not made himself an English muffin for breakfast and come into the bedroom to rouse me to make an egg sandwich? I would have been standing at the damn stove with The Asylum in one hand and assembling an egg sandwich with the other and wishing I had a free hand to flip him the bird for disturbing me. Reading a Simon Doonan book is almost as good as spa day (and a damn straight cheaper).

The Asylum isn’t the biggest book or the most scholarly (waves to Tim Gunn and his epic Tim Gunn’s Fashion Bible) and I certainly don’t find Kate Moss a goddess (ughh, Kate Moss, just ughhhh) but damn if Simon Doonan can’t write in a gossipy way that makes me forget the sight of Kate Moss makes my teeth start grinding madly. Note: if you were looking at the Rimmel display in Target and heard what sounded like Tic-Tacs getting chomped into dust? Sorry…but blame Target for having the NYX and E.L.F displays so close to the Rimmel display. Note 2: I don’t like Rimmel even if Kate Moss isn’t their spokesface, Team NYX/Team E.L.F. forever!

Now to finish this review, “The Asylum is awesome and if you like fashion buy it already, really don’t waste your money on Nina Garcia books because ughhhhhhhhhh”, and watch Beautiful People (the TV series based on Nasty)on YouTube before Blacklight lurches into the living room, a Vicodin zombie demanding his egg sandwich breakfast…

Careless People

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

Now it might not a be a huge secret I’m not the most literary person. Sure I read oodles of books, have planned vacation days around trips to bookstores and was just on the phone with the Most Evil Sibling Ever (Andy) last night planning a trip to the Friends of the Ferguson Library Book Store for Wednesday (hooray for flex holidays!) but just because you read books doesn’t make you literary. You’ll never find me singing the praises of the literary canon far and wide. Actually you’re more likely to find me proclaiming how Melville should have just made out with Nathaniel Hawthorne more than how much I enjoyed Moby Dick and Billy Budd (loathe both books so very much).

So imagine my surprise when I’m cruising by the New Biography section at the Berlin-Peck Memorial Library and snap up a book on F. Scott Fitzgerald. And not just any book about F. Scott Fitzgerald, but one about The Great Gatsby, a novel that is right up there in Gwen Loathes It list right next to Moby Dick, the complete works of Charles Dickens and Ernest Hemingway. If you love love love F. Scott Fitzgerald and think I’m a savage, it’s totally okay to stop reading now. Before you shriek too much, remember I have actually read The Great Gatsby (a horrid school experience against my will) and have of my own free will read several books about the Fitzgeralds. They’re my Kardashians, a train wreck of people who I know more about than I ever intended too. I mean, you can’t read about the Murphys or Dorothy Parker without encountering Scott and Zelda. And the best of these books? Explore the society the Fitzgeralds interacted with right down to the bootleggers and publishers and the rest.

Don’t check me for pod marks. The book in question is Sarah Churchwell’s Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby, an interesting exploration of both one of my most loathed books and a unsolved murder from the 1920s that has intrigued me since I was a wee thing. True crime has always been in my wheelhouse and when you combine true crime with a greater look at society I’m in. With all my reading it never fully occurred to me a crime as well known (it was consider one of the crimes of it’s decade) as the Hall-Mills Murder would have influenced the fiction of it’s time. (For people who never heard of the Hall-Mills Murder, in 1922 the Reverend Hall and his married mistress Mrs Mills were found dead in a lane under a tree with love letters scattered around them.) Let alone a book many people (not me) consider one of the best books ever written.

But that is the basic premise of Careless People, the Hall-Mills Murders influenced and impacted F. Scott Fitzgerald as he plotted and planned his greatest novel. And Sarah Churchwell’s carefully researched details (right down to things from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s scrapbook that dispute certain details you come to expect when you read enough about Scott and Zelda) give you an excellent picture of what life was like as the Fitzgeralds partied and Scott tried to write and the horrifically inept handling of the Hall-Mills murder case.

Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby, doesn’t solve the Hall-Mills Murder (sadly we are more likely to solve the Jack the Ripper murders than who killed Reverend Hall and Mrs Mills due to the bungling police work) but it does do something even my most dedicated professors could never do, made me understand and think about The Great Gatsby beyond something I was being forced to read to pass a class to get that degree. Any decent writer can make Scott and Zelda come alive on the page just due to the force of their personalities but it takes a talented and thoughtful author to make me care about Fitzgerald’s works.

Will Careless People make me snatch up Mr Kindle and buy The Great Gatsby right this second? Will I be tracking down a Norton Critical Edition to get the full Gatsby experience like I did after reading Dreiser’s Sister Carrie for the first time? Never in a million years. But is Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby a book I would read again? Certainly.

On Tour

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

The Noel Streatfeild kick? Still going strong…once this review is done? Off to e-Bay to see if any of her Susan Scarlet romances are available for a decent price! First, let’s take a look at volume two of Noel Streatfeild’s semi-autobiographical series, On Tour: An Autobiographical Novel of the 20’s.

Published in the UK as Away From the Vicarage, On Tour: An Autobiographical Novel of the 20’s shows us Victoria Strangeway as an adult. World War I has ended. It’s been a very rough time but the vicarage has survived. Victoria, Isobel and Louise have returned from their war work, younger brother Dick has been wounded but will be headed to university soon. The vicar is still a walking saint and Mrs Strangeway? She still can’t manage her household for beans even though the vicar has inherited property from his late parents. And there’s a new Strangeway, littlest sister (totally a surprise baby) Theodora. Who knew the vicar and Mrs Strangeway were still…well…you know…Theodora is charming, clever and wonderful and thanks to the age gap between her and the others, is almost an only child. Louise has dropped a bombshell, she’s getting married and moving abroad with her new husband. Is there a place for Victoria in all this change?

Turns out the answer is NO. So Victoria summons her courage and goes to train as an actress. Because of the general family reaction (actress=scarlet woman) Victoria decides to take the name Victoria Sonning. Her theatrical training is hard and she has little money but Victoria is determined to live life as much as possible and shake off the vicarage shackles. A reader used to Streatfeild’s children’s novels might get a little shock when you realize that Victoria is pretty much prostituting herself to get money and clothes from her suitors. She never goes the full nine yards but you get the feeling she’s come awful close a few times. And is it that much different from Louise marrying so young? But sisters are doing what they have (and who they have) to do to escape the confines of the vicarage. Their parents aren’t horrible people but vicarage life is confining and narrow for the eldest Strangeway children.

Victoria manages to survive her stage school and then plunges into the world of a professional actress. She gets work and travels all over but you get the feeling that her stage work doesn’t truly fulfill her. And she certainly doesn’t care for the narrow and grimy life in theatrical digs and the constant moving around. Africa is enchanting but being thought of a Jezebel and a man-eater thanks to a some less than brilliant behavior and two male members of the theater company dying casts a cloud and stain on her acting career. People will always remember the scandal over how good her performances are.

On Tour is such a sadder book than A Vicarage Family. The younger Victoria had a fire and a zest that not even the wartime death of her beloved cousin John could quench. The older Victoria? The rough patches in life really send her skidding. The spark that got her to pursue a theatrical career vs life as an unpaid curate/domestic slave to her parents dims the farther she gets from school. Her longing for a home and love leaps off the page and when she realizes her so called love isn’t truly “in love” it’s a cut that almost destroys her more than the scandals that plague her acting career.

The other issue that makes On Tour a much different experience than A Vicarage Family is how closed off Victoria is. In A Vicarage Family you feel all the injustices and joys of Victoria’s life. She crackles and blazes and jumps off the page. You understand exactly why Annie is drawn to her and defends her. Maybe it’s because of the upheavals of the war or the changes in society but On Tour Victoria holds back and only gives us glimpses into her life. Was Noel Streatfeild ashamed of her life and feelings then? What was so awful that she makes Victoria a pale shadow of the girl that intrigued us so? Is it because S-E-X rears it’s head?

You can almost feel the squirming when Streatfeild writes about the appearance of Theodora. Yes, Noel/Victoria was a product of a very Victorian upbringing (Her sister Louise had no clue why she was getting sick every morning only weeks after being married. Just how much if any talk did Mrs Strangeway have with her daughters?) You might be tempted to think what keeps Victoria from actually jumping into bed with her suitors during her training isn’t the consequences (Theodora/the village girls illegitimate babies) but the actual act of sex itself. She is certainly repelled by Louise’s husband Him. Maybe it’s this disgust of sex that keeps her with her “we shall have a white farmhouse” suitor for so long because it seems crystal clear to me that this suitor might be happier with Dick Strangeway than Miss Victoria Sonning. Then again I could just be having one of my Gwen’s Crazy Literary Theories. Because I find Victoria Strangeway an interesting character I want to read more about no matter who or what she loves.

Even with it’s issues, On Tour is a must read. Even if many things are white-washed it still gives an interesting look at leaving a very moral and upright world for one with looser boundaries. And it makes you want to track down more of Streatfeild’s adult works. And exploring an author’s full writings is never a bad thing.

 

 

 

Princesses Behaving Badly

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

Back in the glory days of living at Expensive Acres, when Blacklight was well enough to work, we went to the bookstores every weekend. Once the other person was done, we knew we could check certain sections and find the other one. For Blacklight? Just head to the graphic novels and science sections? For me? History. Even better, General European History (RIP Borders, much love). And it was unusual weekend when we didn’t stroll out of Borders with at least one bag and another Borders Reward 40% off coupon gone to Coupon Heaven. I had a bookshelf devoted to Eleanor Herman, Leslie Carroll, Karl Shaw, Michael Farquhar and their ilk. So any wonder while zipping past the New Non-Fiction at the Berlin-Peck Memorial Library on a mission to get the entire Naked Gun series for Blacklight I slowed down only long enough to snatch up Linda Rodriguez McRobbie’s Princesses Behaving Badly: Real Stories from History Without the Fairy-Tale Endings on my way to the DVD section?

Now once I was home and curling up on the bed with Princesses Behaving Badly: Real Stories from History Without the Fairy-Tale Endings, I had a moment of wariness. I’ve read a lot of these real royal stories over the years. And sometimes? They’re not quite good. Even if they’re well researched. Because well, research does not always compelling writing.

Case in point. I found the wait for Kris Waldherr’s Doomed Queens: Royal Women Who Met Bad Ends, From Cleopatra to Princess Di was much better than the actual book. I’ve read Doomed Queens: Royal Women Who Met Bad Ends, From Cleopatra to Princess Di more than once just to make sure I was giving the book a fair shake. It’s okay but it’s like a bag of classic Hershey’s Kisses when you really want to savor a handful of Lindt Almond truffles. Chocolate yes, but not what you need to really satisfy your craving. On a scale of Sex With Kings/Sex With the Queen (bought them in hardcover brand new from Borders= excellent) to oh…Doomed Queens (interlibrary loan first read, picked up for a $1 at a library sale just because later on=meh) would Princesses Behaving Badly fall?

Even though I had two true crimes meets history books on the nightstand, the adventures of Leland Stanford and his pet photographer Eadweard Muybridge, the Hall-Mills murder and F. Scott Fitzgerald did not exist once I opened Princesses Behaving Badly and started to read. I have Muybridge’s The Horse in Motion, 1878 framed at my Company X work desk right next to my HPLHS membership certificate. And Netflix knows I’m a sucker for true crime shows like Deadly Women. That night, I turned off the bedroom light with the greatest reluctance.

Why? I was plunging into well written and researched mini-biographies of women, some who I know from reading or Stuff You Missed In History Class podcasts to ladies I had never encountered before. As a person who has read a vast number of true royal stories, mad props to Linda Rodriguez McRobbie for not just going down the easy path of “Pauline Bonaparte? She could give  Santa Ho Ho Ho lessons” and “Caroline of Brunswick was so nasty…”. It was so refreshing to see both these ladies treated with respect and not just meat holes for poking. Crass yes, but most people think of them as just sluts. Sure, I might have rolled my eyes at mentions of Princess Diana and her daughter in law the Duchess of Cambridge because that comes as naturally to me as breathing, but I was reading about princesses who actually did something besides get on the cover of every darn tabloid in existence. Don’t believe me? Read about Sarah Winnemuca and then we’ll talk about who did the greater good. <crosses arms and raises eyebrow at the People’s Princess cult> And who knew the Punk Princess I used to read about in Vanity Fair became an accomplished business woman who could teach fellow 1980s icon Donald Trump a thing or thirteen.

If I hadn’t just spend a hoarded Amazon gift card on Blacklight’s birthday present (damn you Police Squad: The Complete Series DVD), Princesses Behaving Badly: Real Stories from History Without the Fairy-Tale Endings would have been snapped up for Mr Kindle in a heart beat. For full price. And given my tight book budget and love of a good bargain? I can’t give any other recent real royal stories books that high a praise.

 

Theater Shoes

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

The weather is slowing getting a tinier bit warmer but once I get home from Company X and feed the spouse? It’s off to curl up on the bed with a book.

Well, at least the plan is to read but mostly I wake up a few hours later with the edge of a book pressed on my cheek.

Not exactly the best look ever…Now during those brief moments before I drift off into Dreamland I’ve been reading cozy books like Noel Streatfeild’s 1944 Theater Shoes (published in the UK as Curtain Up).

Like just about every other Noel Streatfeild’s children’s’ book, Theater Shoes features a family of children who through circumstances shed their everyday (i.e. boring) lives and discover a world of creativity and a whole new way of life.

It’s World War II England and the Forbes children (Sorrel, Mary and Holly) have been uprooted from their cozy existence living with their widowed former Naval officer father in Guernsey once the Germans came calling. Mr Forbes joins the Navy and entrusts his motherless children to his pastor father and his housekeeper Hannah.

Since this is war and it is a Noel Streatfeild children’s’ book, Mr Forbes goes missing in the Pacific and then Reverend Forbes (a very vague man who barely remembers he even has grandchildren dies). Oh what will happen to the Forbes?

If you’re thinking the Forbes end up a children’s home or are parceled out around their late grandfather’s parish, bad reader! Bad! The children find out their late mother was a member of the Warren family, one of the most illustrious and amazing theatrical families in England. It’s like finding out you’re a Barrymore or a Booth. Apparently, the Forbes have never meet their Warren relations because their mother ran off and married their father vs the husband chosen for her.

But there isn’t a book if the Forbes don’t go to London and explore their Warren heritage so off Sorrel, Mark, Holly and Hannah go.

Once in London, things aren’t the best for the Forbes. Their Warren grandmother lives in her own little glamorous world barely acknowledging there is a war or that life outside the theater exists. In my head? Grandmother Warren (aka Margaret Shaw) is played by Dame Maggie Smith and says theater “thea-a-tah” like she’s channeling a drunken Bette Davis. Now the Forbes children have been gently raised and are SHOCKED! Shocked I tell you by everything around them.

First off, their late mother’s room is a creepy shrine while the rest of the house that Grandmother Warren never ventures in has been stripped bare, the furnishings sold to pay bills. Their aunts and uncles help out Grandmother Warren but they have their own issues. And the Forbes children are going to go to theater school. Because heaven forbid a Warren not be talented and amazing. Even duds like Aunt Lindsey and Aunt Marguerite go on stage.

And the only school good enough for the Warren/Forbes? Madame Fidolia’s Children’s Academy of Dancing and Stage Training.

What?

Did you think they would end up at Cora Wintle’s school? 🙂

If at this point you’re tempted to roll your eyes and put down Theater Shoes, keep reading. Ever wanted to know what happened to the Fossil sisters? Well, Pauline is huge Hollywood star, Petrova is flying for the war effort and Posy is safely in Hollywood too, dancing in movies and wanting to re-create a ballet troupe. And remember Pauline’s rival for parts? The ugly but clever Winifred in the mustard frock? She’s teaching at the Academy now alongside Theo Dane, Miss Jay and the rest.

Of course, the Warren talent is in the Forbes children and the Fossil sisters “adopt” them with Pauline sponsoring Sorrel, Petrova sponsoring Mark and Posy sponsoring Holly even though Holly can barely dance. One of my favorite parts about this? Besides Petrova being all “dude here’s a screwdriver for a present” is the provision that the Forbes children get pocket money. Pocket money sounds so much cooler than an allowance. I’m going to call my Ladies Nice Things Account my pocket money from now on. But even better than pocket money? The Forbes have some Warren cousins who also attend the Academy and the Warren cousins are so much cooler than their dull Forbes relations. Isn’t sorrel something sheep eat? <shakes self awake>

Once you’ve read enough Noel Streatfeild things, you stumble across the trope of a child being destined to follow a certain path. Skating Shoes‘ Lalla Moore is being groomed to fill her dead skating champion father’s shoes. Dancing Shoes has Rachel becoming an actor like her late father and Hillary’s late adoptive mother wanting her to attend the Royal Ballet school because Hillary’s biological mother was a dancer. And let’s not forget Dancing Shoes’ Dulcie Wintle and Ballet Shoes‘ Posy Fossil almost dancing out of the womb. And imagine if one of David and Polly Forum’s brood didn’t have a lick of talent?

Sorrel and Holly have inherited the Warren talents and of course they will find a life in theater. But Mark? He might like just like Sir Joshua Warren but he’s future Navy and resists anyone telling him he is the least bit Warren. I find Mark boring and wish he had been packed off to school far far far away from London. Because damn…thank goodness for Cousin Miriam (one of the few Streatfeild characters with amazing talents who you don’t want to smack into next week) and Cousin Miranda who I would love to see in a cage match with Dulcie Wintle over a part circa 1959. Noel Streatfeild is so good at writing these quite talented and lovely little bitches in training.

But for every scene of Sorrel worrying about Mark getting into the right school so he can join the Navy (don’t care more Miriam and Miranda please!), the reader gets a little slice of life in wartime London. The growing lack of variety in food, how hard it is to manage decent clothes on coupons, consumer goods disappearing unless you have oceans of ready money.  Money might have been tight for the Fossils growing up but hey pawn your necklaces to your boarder and you can take that five pounds, go to Harrods and get a velvet dress in less time than it takes me to explain to Blacklight why his Facebook feed is blowing up about football on Super Bowl weekend. There simply isn’t the money or clothing coupons to replace a shabby outgrown dress for Sorrel until Aunt Lindsey is able whip up a dress by cutting down one of her evening frocks. Cousin Miriam looks wonderful in a white fur coat but I really hope she likes that coat because she’s going to have to wear it even when the sleeves creep up her arms and the fur dries out and sheds everywhere like the Reverend’s leopard gloves in a Fairacre novel. And your sweet ration? I really hope Pauline can keep sending those chocolates from America…

Of course, everything comes out right in the end. Even if the longed for brawl between Miranda and Sorrel in a dressing room never happens. I really wanted costumes crushed, powder and makeup smeared, telegrams and boxes of chocolate flung all over the place. Because that would be amazing and so not Noel Streatfeild. Or should I say everything comes out right-ish because the war is still ongoing. And if you know your history, things are about to get much rougher for the British citizens. It’s not my all time favorite Noel Streatfeild children’s book, but it’s certain in my Noel Streatfeild Top 5 and if any of my step-nieces showed the least interest in something that wasn’t Disney (highly doubtful)  I would buy them their very own copies of Theater Shoes in heartbeat.

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?

 

Traveling Shoes

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

Getting books from the inter-library loan system can be a gamble. Some times you stumble across a gem (Circus Shoes), some times you want to hurl the book across the room screaming “Burn It With Fire!” but refrain since it’s 2 am and it’s a library book you don’t feel like spending gas money to replace (The Children on the Top Floor) and others fill that sweet spot while you hunt down more treasures.

Noel Streatfeild’s 1962 offering Traveling Shoes (published in the UK as Apple Bough) fits the last category. It has all the usual cozy goodness you expect from a Noel Streatfeild book, a family of talented children and their devoted governess/nanny and their adventures using their talents to earn their livings. This time around our charming talented bunch of tots are the Forum clan, eldest daughter Myra (the worrier), Sebastian (the classical musician), Wolfie (the budding pop song writer) and Ettie (the dancer). For a change, the Forum parents are both alive (father David is a musician and mother Polly paints-no orphans here!), artistic and flakier than the almond croissant that I’m tempted to brave Sunday afternoon crowds to get my little undead raccoon paws on. Trust me when I say David and Polly totally belong in 1990s Portland or 2000s Brooklyn.

Everything is fine and dandy in the Forum household at their shabby house Apple Bough until Sebastian is discovered to be massively talented. And before you can say “Sir Garnet”, the Forum clan is traveling the world as Sebastian gives concerts all over the world. At first everyone loves the whirlwind life but after four years the children want a proper home, their beloved Apple Bough was sold when Sebastian went on tour even though the Forum parents think everything is marvelous. Enter the children’s visit to their clergyman paternal grandfather (ding ding Streatfeild trope!) and a plan to have a proper home is born. And three other Forum children learn there just might be life outside of being Sebastian Forum’s sibling.

I know there is wonderful children’s fiction out there, things that will inspire and teach and uplift you. But dang it if sometimes what you need is a Noel Streatfeild tale. I mean Wolfie, the handsome little budding pop song writer, oh how you want to smack the smug right of him, especially once he becomes a popular child actor. And of course Ettie is the most talented and amazing and wonderful dancer since…well…since Posy Fossil first danced in the day nursery. Will she be accepted to the Royal Ballet? Will I eat candy for lunch? Duh. Add in the cozy governess Miss Popple and the children clinging to their proper British background like it’s a security blanket and it’s pure Streatfeild heaven.

Sure you might want to shake the vague out of the Forum’s mother Polly because really…for the mother of four she’s one of the most self-centered mothers in a Noel Streatfeild book. I know she’s an artist and artists have the creative and must create or die but dang. There were times I wondered if she loved the glamor of being Sebastian’s mother and the touring life more than Sebastian himself. Does it ever cross her mind that she should be the mother and not push off her duties on her oldest (and least artistic) child Myra? Myra is headed for a nervous breakdown or becoming Miss Popple 2.0 to her siblings children.

Would I track down Traveling Shoes in a white hot panic on Amazon, Awesome Books UK or eBay if the library’s copy falls victim to the Deaccession Squad? Nope. But I would snap it up if I found it at Book Barn or a library book sale. It’s not the best Noel Streatfeild ever, and if you’ve read other Noel Streatfeild books you’ll find things that occur over and over but Traveling Shoes is a nice solid Sunday afternoon read.