Category: Monica Dickens

The End Of The Line

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

I adore and respect Monica Dickens. I think the Samaritans are an amazing group who do wonderful work and have helped so many people. I’m grateful that they and other groups like them have helped people I care deeply about. But <small voice> I really don’t like Monica Dickens’ Samaritans novel The End of the Line. I know…I am a total savage and not fit to read anything. But I don’t like this book. I tried, I truly did. I kept putting it down, vowing to shove it right into the depths of the library bag and then tried to read a few more pages and well…let’s just say for a book it’s size? I should have been done much sooner. It’s the same problem I had with Barbara Pym’s Quartet In Autumn. I can’t stand the bulk of the characters and don’t care what happens to them once the book ends.

I want to yell at Paul to ditch his drunk wife, take their son and run like hell before he gets any more trapped then he already is. And then say “Told ya so” when his wife has  a stroke. Victoria only became interesting after she got boinked on the head and should just hook up with Billie already. Tim bugs.  And Jackie…oh Jackie…he might have been better off in a place like the Southbury Training School with all its flaws then stuck with his mother. The only character I didn’t want to weep tears of rage and/frustration over is Sarah and that’s only after she proved to be more than a wet blanket.

Like so many other books I’ve read, I am certain a perfect reader exists for The End of the Line just like there are people out there who really appreciate Barbara Pym’s Quartet In Autumn. It’s not me and that’s okay. I’m not going to love everything Monica Dickens ever wrote just like I don’t love every thing from the pens of Lovecraft, Stephen King and Shirley Jackson.  The problem for me may lie with wanting more of Monica Dickens’ personal Samaritans experience. Perhaps her non-fiction Befriending: The American Samaritans is the better book for me. Or maybe I  should just curl up on Mr Couch with my stuffed cat, some lovely hot tea and the Follyfoot series…

The Winds Of Heaven

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

There are times when I’m quite grateful I was born in late 20th century. And yes, this even holds true after working a very challenging day at Company X, enduring the commute back to Moderate Income Apartments and knowing that once I walk through my apartment door there’s a stack of dishes to wash, Blacklight and Miss Susan Fish to be fed and laundry to be done. If I grumble and forget, someone please go to the East Hartford/Raymond Library, find Monica Dickens’ The Winds of Heaven and wave it in my face. Or save yourself the drive and just whisper “Remember Louise Bickford” in my ear.

Now just who the devil is Louise Bickford? Good question. Louise Bickford is a fifty-something widow, who thanks to being crushed by life and a jackass of a late husband, exists on on tiny allowance and spends her time shuffling between staying with one of her three daughters and at a hotel an old school friend runs. I know you’re thinking, well why doesn’t she just get a darn job already, get a little service flat of her own and the heck with her daughters charity and hospitality. Excellent points and I for one rather want to shake some sense into Louise and her daughters but that would rather defeat the plot our dear Monica Dickens has concocted. Besides, you have to remember the times and that Louise was gently raised and a gentlewoman. Her children won’t let her starve except for emotionally.

One day while out with her oldest daughter who I have dubbed Eldest Bitch and grandchildren on an outing, Louise makes an unlikely friend of sorts, a heavyset older man who works in a department store and writers lurid thrillers in his spare time, the exact kind Louise has to smuggle into her bitchy oldest daughter’s house to read in private. Now this oldest daughter would certainly think Mother’s new “friend” is simply not their kind-I mean he WORKS-in trade! The horror (goes to clutch pearls but remembers took them off when came home from work). Oh yes, and Eldest Bitch (government name: Miriam) really is not so lovely herself. Girl has a secret! Middle Bitch (government name: Eva) is an struggling actress and might care if she could only tear her attention away from Totally Unsuitable Married Dude. Youngest Bitch (government name: Anne)? Oh Great Tulu, you just want to shake her until her teeth rattles-how did she snag herself a hot stud monkey husband who DOES ALL THE WORK? (Blacklight: “Maybe she’s awesome in bed?”).

Louise changes households every season and all it normal (emotional starvation) in her narrow world until part of her support network shatters. Is this when Louise finally puts some starch in her girdle and gets a job at a society for gentlewomen, a lovely little service flat complete with a sweet grey cat and screws her gentleman friend until the bed breaks? Umm…sadly this particular scenario is only in my head. Monica Dickens wouldn’t have nice Louise do that. Middle Bitch? Heck yeah. What happens is Louise gets a quiet interlude of happiness and peace in a tiny caravan/camper/travel trailer with her beloved eldest grandchild. But then hey…PLOT TWIST and the end.

There are some goods bits about The Winds of Heaven. (Blacklight: “You mean it wasn’t that one were you thought the dude was gay?” Me: “The Nightingales Are Singing! Yes! That one! The Winds of Heaven is SO MUCH BETTER!”). There’s Youngest Bitch’s hot husband. Eldest Bitch’s big secret (which is rather obvious if you are paying attention). You’ll definitely want to hop in a time machine with a wad of pound notes and hit the Portobello Road Market. (If you see any dresser sets marked with G? Hands off! MINE!). And The Winds of Heaven would make an interesting UK period series. Now to pop The Winds of Heaven in the library book and come up with my dream casting. How about Cate Blanchett in high brittle mode for Eldest Bitch, Kate Winslet in sloppy mode as Youngest Bitch…

 

 

Flowers On The Grass

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

It might seem like I have gone down a rabbit hole of horror the last few weeks. I mean I did start reading Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy (Blacklight <pointing to Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy lying on the couch> : “Gwen! That is the scariest thing I have EVER SEEN! PLEASE GET RID OF IT!”) . But fear not, I have also been reading things like my beloved Monica Dickens too. No need to race to the store, snatch up a bundle of sage and march through Moderate Income Apartments cleansing the rooms of Chez Gwen and Blacklight.

Flowers on the Grass is the story of a man who loses his wife and unborn child in a tragic incident in their little country cottage and drifts all over England, maybe just drinking a wee bit too much and wallowing in his downward spiral vs pulling himself up by the bootstraps and going on with life. Although, when you consider it closely, Monica Dickens’ Flowers On The Grass has horror elements to it. And once again, in a small way, a Monica Dickens novel written in the late 1940s reminds me of the 1966 Patrick Dennis novel Tony. The chaos Patrick Dennis’ Tony causes is greater (it’s rather hard to top Tony’s adventures including his stint serving in World War II and his destruction of a Mary McCarthy like writer) than Monica Dickens’ Daniel but it’s joy and destruction all the same. After all, Daniel slips through the lives of several people causing chaos and destruction where ever he goes on his downward spiral. No place is safe or no one is safe from Daniel. Daniel flits through lives starting with his wife/ first cousin Jane, yearning to not be tied down to anyone or anything, slipping away to start again somewhere else. He pops up in boardinghouses with permanent guests, rooms for rent, private schools, a tutor in a wealthy family. You would think there would be something that repulses people and keeps them safe from an encounter with Daniel. But there is just something about Daniel which keeps attracting people to him and coming to his aid even as he causes more trouble then he’s worth. Families protect and shelter him even though his actions could send them to prison. Women risk everything for him including their very livelihoods. And at the end, even when he actually trying to do the right thing, he’s still causing pain and sorrow. And I ended the novel very glad my only interaction with Daniel was through the pages of a book.

 

My Fair Lady

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

Blacklight: <looking at the library books piled higgledy-piggledy on the dining room table> “Dickens? I thought you hated Charles…”

Me: <shrieking>: “Monica Dickens! M-O-N-I-C-A! Never say that other name. EVER!”

Blacklight: “How can you hate Char….”

Me: <head explodes>

A few months ago I discovered the author Monica Dickens. And have been requesting every Monica Dickens title available through the inter-library loan system. I may or may not have the Follyfoot series requested (I totally do!). But there comes a point where even a completest such as myself (Blacklight: “Don’t you mean crazy pants OCD?”) breaks. Now I have slogged through the Slough of Despond, I have gone through the Valley of the Shadow of Death (and read Rae Lawrence’s Jacqueline Susann’s Shadow of the Dolls). I have read Tooner Schooner and the first two Meg novels. I have read every single Beany Malone novel my library system has. I have read Eloise Takes a Bawth. But there is nothing and I mean NOTHING (not even the 1918 HP Lovecraft knocking on my door wanting to go for a brisk 16 mile hike holding a crate of Magnum Double Caramel ice creams) that can make me read the abomination I found waiting for me at the library yesterday. You would think I might have gotten a clue from the title but lots of books can have the same title right? And if Ray Garton thinks writing In a Dark Place: The Story of a True Haunting was a career low…oh honey…I think I might have found something even lower….

MONICA. DICKENS. NOVELIZATION. OF. <choke> My Fair Lady…

I can’t even. No, you can’t make me. Even if you paid off all my bills. The cover alone (a washed out watercolor of Eliza in a pink dress getting gawked at by men folks) is awful enough. The artist was trying to pain Audrey Hepburn but ended up with a zombie Winona Ryder a few years before Winona Ryder was even born. Zombie Winona Doolittle wants to eat my brains and soul. Also isn’t that stupid dress suppose to be white? Have never seen the movie My Fair Lady and have no intention of doing any Google image search to get a definitive answer. Also why in the name of Great Tulu do you NEED a novelization of My Fair Lady says the person who bought The Abyss and Iron Man novelizations. And why drag Monica Dickens into writing it. Did she need crack money? School fees for her daughters? Did the price of hay for her beloved horses go up?

This…horror…this thing that should not be is going right back to the library this afternoon.

The Landlord’s Daughter

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

A Sunday afternoon curled up Mr Couch reading a Monica Dickens novel should be delightful right? Then why am I staring at The Landlord’s Daughter wondering if blasting through Season Five of Deadly Women on Netflix would have been a better use of my Sunday afternoon?

According to the Internet, The Landlord’s Daughter is Monica Dickens reworking/re-imagining of Alfred Noyes’ poem The Highwayman. I must not have the brain to properly appreciate poems and literature because I don’t care for The Landlord’s Daughter. There are so many parts of the book that could have been turned into novels of their own which I would have happily read. But mushed all together? Yuck. The framing story with Charlie (the landlord’s daughter) widower and wannabe musician Terence has a Patricia Highsmith/Ripley feel. Charlie’s background as the plain girls school gym mistress who leads a narrow and chaste life in her run down cottage, an outsider from her family (rich landlord father, famous artist model mother, popular actor brother and society beauty younger sister) could have drawn even more on the experiences Monica Dickens had living as a spinster in her little country cottage. She could have even expanded the plot thread of the sister in law dying of TB from her working as a cook/housekeeper in the 1930s for a family with a mother dying of TB.

Instead what we get is a story that leaps from the current time (circa the late 1960s) back to the early 1930s and back again. Just when you’re getting cozy with Charlie at school, BANG, it’s time for Charlie’s widower to pop up and babble on about dealing with his daily cleaner and Terence. There is a way to make these jumps less annoying because golly knows that Barbara Vine/Ruth Rendell does it superbly in A Dark-Adapted Eye which also has a mysterious at its core. But Rendell’s mystery is interesting. I really don’t care what “Jack Morgan” did or didn’t do. If you must do the whole story told as a memoir for the descendants thing, why cut off at the point Monica Dickens does. If “Jack Morgan” and Julia’s loathing of her mother is so important keep writing and show me what Charlie endured after “Jack”‘s death and the birth of Julia. Or tell me the story from Julia’s perspective of discovering the truth about her parentage and her mother’s secret life.

If you do appreciate poems and literature and are made of stronger stuff then me, by all means pick up The Landlord’s Daughter. For me? I’d rather re-read one of Monica Dickens memoirs any day. Heck, I’d rather re-read The Nightingales Are Singing and you know how much I loved that book. Maybe I’ll have a revelation and find a way to better get my head around The Landlord’s Daughter like I did with The Happy Prisoner. But at least The Happy Prisoner felt more like a proper novel versus The Landlord’s Daughter everything in the fridge stew of ideas.

 

 

 

The Happy Prisoner

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

Scene from Company X, Building Z, First Floor, Unit Awesome Sauce on Friday September 27, 2013

Coworker 123: <grumbling and mumbling at her computer>

Me: <eating lunch while checking Amazon for the Daily Kindle Deal> “Sucks, sucks, sucks, sucks…The Happy Prisoner for $1.99? Monica Dickens is on KINDLE?!?!?!” <checks to see what other Monica Dickens titles are available> “It’s like Amazon KNEW I was going to write my The Happy Prisoner review this weekend!”

Coworker 123: <you can HEAR the massive eye-roll>

Don’t pity Coworker 123. Do you know how loud I have to have my iPod to drown out her constant stream of under her breath comments on everything? If you should pity anyone…GRRRRR

Blood pressure rising, calm down, calm down, am at home and just ate a chocolate chunk scone the size of my head. You have book reviews to write!

Yes, the Monica Dickens marathon continues until the inter-library loans resources are a) exhausted or b) the library system revokes my borrowing privileges. I COULD buy Monica Dickens on Kindle or track down used copies but am on the tightest of budgets right now because of course, Blacklight’s desktop computer is acting up and might need a new hard driver or motherboard or something that costs hundreds. <bangs head on throw pillow>. Thank Great Tulu for the Central Connecticut Library system.

Now what Monica Dickens did I devour this time, glaring at Blacklight whenever he came into the bedroom to bother me? Did you read the title of this blog post? No? Okay…. <sighs> On the chopping block today is 1947’s The Happy Prisoner by Miss Monica Dickens. To be very honest, through out the first reading, I was not impressed. The book seemed to not go anywhere, I was getting confused by characters and the only thing I was taking away from The Happy Prisoner was how very much I wanted to put on my shoes, grab my wallet, walk the five blocks to Walgreens to buy the biggest bar of chocolate in the place. Two ounces of chocolate for a person’s ration. TWO OUNCES! A better person (not me) should have been swooning over Oliver (our happy prisoner) and the love stories and glad that the evil American stepmother from hell Honey was played. Since when am I a better person? My initial thoughts for the review were BLAST IT INTO PIECES and then STOMP on the pieces and GET SOME DAMN CHOCOLATE.

However the next morning on my drive into work at 5:30 am (yes I start work at the crack of dawn), keeping an eye out for Bambi and friends on the twisting rural roads, a thought sprung into my head. No, NOT “is Starbucks in F-ton open so I can get a tall hot chocolate no whip” or “get gas now or after work”. Both those usually occur to me at some point on the way to work. What did spring into my head was the last quarter of The Happy Prisoner and especially the final page.

The bulk of the novel is all about our hero Oliver, recovering at home from his nearly deadly war injuries, he could die at any moment. In the household are his American mother, his sisters Violet and Heather, his young American cousin Evelyn and Oliver’s new nurse Elizabeth. Spinster Violet finds an unlikely love and marries. Heather struggles with faith and a crumbling marriage. Nurse Elizabeth is all remote and efficient. Mother flutters and Evelyn is obsessed with her horse. In a better mood, I would gobble this plot up like a long lost Angela Thirkell. But in the last quarter, things get a little more interesting. Heather’s prisoner of war husband returns with a big secret (no, he’s not gay-try “ZOMG he had a…mistress who died”. Evelyn’s father Bob comes to England for his daughter with his new wife, the elegant and terrifying Honey.  And Nurse Elizabeth’s tough shell is cracked-she wants to save Evelyn from the wicked stepmother because she…had a wicked stepmonster herself!

Remember the hought I had on the way to work? It’s a bit Gwen Crazy Literary Theories time. The last quarter of The Happy Prisoner reminds me a bit of Patrick Dennis, in particular his novel The Joyous Season, a romp about a couple who splits up, finds the most horrid replacements for their spouse and the chaos that ensues. One of the replacements? Miss Dorian Glen (government name Glendora from the sticks) is a lean, sleek, polished, too fashionable for her own good sex demon who wants nothing more than the glamorous New York society life in a fancy  apartment. Now before Patrick Dennis was well…the best selling author Patrick Dennis and still having adventures in the New York advertising world, across the pond Monica Dickens was crafting a character Miss Dorian Glen would call sister, the elegant, lean, too fashionable for her own good, self obsessed sex demon Honey who ensnares Evelyn’s father Bob in her honey trap.  Honey, who should really be called Honey Badger because girl don’t give a bleep, doesn’t care about England, society, the social niceties, her new stepdaughter beyond making her an accessory or the importance of pony club. Honey Badger is awesome. Honey Badger gives the last quarter of The Happy Prisoner life. 

All right, The Happy Prisoner was written six years before Patrick Dennis unleashed his poison pen in print but ****SPOILER ALERT**** DO NOT READ THE NEXT BIT IF YOU DON’T WANT TO HAVE THE ENDING SPOILED****YOU’RE STILL READING THIS? FINE! SPOILERS AHEAD!****Nurse Elizabeth breaking off her engagement to Mr Dull, rushing back to Oliver to declare her love and on the very last page find out Oliver caught measles from his cousin Evelyn? Love while things around you are in ruins? Pure Patrick Dennis.

Once my brain made the very deranged The Happy Prisoner/The Joyous Season connection, The Happy Prisoner became another book. It was as if my brain needed a back door to process it properly. I played the Casting Game. Can’t you just see Tasmin Greig (Black Books, Green Wing) as the tall, gawky, awkward, overgrown Land Girl Violet? Darren Boyd (Spy) as the invalid Oliver? Fay Bainter as their American mother? Gail Patrick as Honey Badger? And then I remembered when The Happy Prisoner was published. Literary audiences, battered down by war, rationing (still going on years after the war ended) and shortages would have loved a novel with someone coming home to a loving family, finding love in unlikely places and adjusting to the post war life. For as much as a reader might loathe Honey Badger for her evil and coldness, Honey Badger has lovely clothes and style and doesn’t cling to old social norms and she lives a glamorous life in New York City. Honey Badger is pretty darn awesome

If you devour British novels like peppermints and can wrap your head around the changing post World War II England, The Happy Prisoner is a must read. If not, Blacklight says “Stephen R. Donaldson is pretty cool.” <sighs>

 

 

One of the Family

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

Like Monica Dickens herself, the bulk of the people in One of the Family are descended from a popular Victorian author. If I need to explain which popular Victorian author Monica DICKENS descends from a) we have a problem b) you have never read my blog before or c) you are my husband Blacklight and he doesn’t pay attention to what I read because playing Minecraft is his secret job. Most of the late E.A. Morley’s descendants lead the average upper-class Edwardian life. They’re not titled but are comfortable and have solid jobs. One brother is more posh then the other, one sister is modern and free and the other emotionally tied to their mother even as a married adult.

At the center of this cozy little world is brother Leonard (works for a posh department store) and his family. Leonard and his delightful but vague wife Gwen have three children, eldest married son Austin, unmarried daughter Madge and beloved afterthought and all around scamp Dicky. Their ungainly niece Bella, regards their family and house as a sanctuary from her own posh and cold home. Now the tales of this cozy family in it’s own cozy little world are all well and good but happy families can be deadly dull, so enter mysterious stranger Toby Taylor.

Now this is where my lizard brain starts working. And drawing literary conclusions that not might be then truly correct but please bear with me. As I read One of the Family, it’s cozy center family, the mysterious interloper who isn’t exactly who he seems, tragedy and joy Mr Interloper brings to our cozy family group against the background of a changing Edwardian world…how could I not be reminded of Howard’s End? Okay, so England in transition isn’t represented by the property Howard’s End. And the Morley clan isn’t the Schlegel clan. But we do have our Mr Interloper (Howard’s End Leonard Bast/One of the Family Toby Taylor) coming into the core family, causing happiness and longing and death and leaving behind an illegitimate child to a young mother who decides to go it alone. Bear with me a little more please? And the excellent film version of Howard’s End came out in 1992 and One of the Family was published in 1993.

Even if my slight deranged theory of possible inspiration from Howard’s End isn’t true and it’s just the fact there are limited plots and plot devices, One of the Family is still an good read. You have Leonard and his siblings adjusting to the changing world. Their daughters are exploring different roles then how their own mothers were raised. Madge, who the servants think is a lesbian, has cut her hair short and throws herself into settlement work and turns down the chance of marriage until late in the story. In fact, I really wish Madge had never married since marriage depletes her. Bella chafes against her parents rules and disappointments and when she turns up pregnant decides to keep her child and raise it openly to the shock of her family until she chooses a most unsuitable man over her child.

And then you have Toby Taylor. Failed doctor, would be healer, son substitute, confessor and seducer. He is Chaos, Death and Life all rolled up into one. Monica Dickens wisely doesn’t turn the entire narrative over to him. It’s much more compelling and interesting to have snippets of Toby, his relationship with an actress mistress, interactions with patients and visits to his ailing mother in a hospital. We know a little more about Toby then the Morley who encounter him in various facets but not the whole picture. Would Bella swoon as much over Toby if she knew the truth about encounters with his mistress and her cousin Sophie? Would Gwen and Leonard trust Toby with Dicky’s fate if they knew exactly how solid his medical credentials were?

it wasn’t until I finished the book and read the back flap of the dust jacket I realized One of the Family was Monica Dickens’ final novel. Until then I had been caught up in the story of an extended well to do family in Edwardian England. There’s something sad about reading an author’s last book or story. Sometimes you weep because that final work is only a ghost of what the author was capable of (Dominick Dunne’s Too Much Money) or they died too soon (Shirley Jackson’s Come Along With Me). Other times, you sit down with the last book, read it and are happy the author lived a long and productive life. Luckily Monica Dickens’ One of the Family falls in the last category.

Am I glad One of the Family is Monica Dickens last book? No. I would have loved to have more books from her. But life isn’t. And to end her career on a solid novel is a good thing, there’s no regrets or whys. And One of the Family should be one of your Monica Dickens reads.

 

 

Nightingales Are Singing

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

Let the Monica Dickens book binge continue!

Nightingales Are Singing starts in post-war England. Thirty something Christine Cope is a spinster who runs the book department at a London department store. She’s plump and lonely and leads a narrow life with her father and aunt and their animals. Occasionally she goes out with her jerk-ass cousin Geoffrey who treats her like dirt. Geoffrey is from the rich side of the family and my brain imagines him as sneering and pompous as Vincent Price in Leave Her to Heaven. Christine meets a US Navy officer, Vinson Gaegler, who seems nice enough but all the food parcels, cigarettes and nylons and steaks in the world can’t replace Christine’s dead love Jimmy. My brain Vinson is played by the early 1950s Kirk Douglas.

But Vincent persists and Christine (played in my brain by Jeanne Crain using her best MGM British accent) goes to America to marry him. And if Christine didn’t like her life in England, well, America is going to be just as and possibly more challenging. Vinson may love the US Navy even more than Christine. The Admiral coming to their wedding party seems to mean more to Vinson then his new life with Christine. But the fault doesn’t lay entirely with Vinson. Sure he has a hard-on (Blacklight: “do you have to be so crude?” Me: “yes”) for the Navy and could have given Christine the damn ‘How to be a Navy wife book” BEFORE they got married,  but Christine has her faults too. She is used to be taken care of by her Aunt Josephine, being a career woman and not realizing that married life is more than a pretty dress and fresh lipstick when Hubby comes home. And she is still carrying a torch for the dead Jimmy.  Add that to culture clashes and of course things will go dark. At one point, I started making a “dead” checklist (baby, car, marriage, dog, lover, another dog…), but I kept reading.

Nightingales Are Singing didn’t grip me in the same way as Kate and Emma. Once Christine hits America, I started wondering how many pages until her nervous breakdown or the revelation Vinson is gay. Apparently he’s straight but I have my doubts. Either that or Vinson, scarred by his trying mother, is just Navy-sexual. Because I only see him being able to impregnate Christine if he pretend she was the Admiral. (Blacklight: “You think everyone is gay.” Me: “No, just Vinson.”) What is fascinating besides playing “Is Vinson Gay?” was the look at being an English woman transplanted to America as a bride. Learning to deal with shops, America’s “classless” class system, the surreal world of being a military spouse (I’ve seen actual How to be a Military spouse guides and wow…the regulations when you’re not the one in uniform), and being an older bride. The tragedies mounting on Christine at a certain point seem like something you would have heard on “Queen For A Day”. The only thing that doesn’t die are the poor goldfish trapped in a weird tank in the kitchen. Wait, did anyone remember to feed them when Christine goes off for the week with her doomed lover?

If you want to be a Monica Dickens completest or are interesting in seeing how she might have used her own experiences as a military spouse (I really hope she didn’t endure everything Christine goes through), then track down Nightingales Are Singing. Otherwise, you may wish to stick with the true memoirs.

Kate and Emma

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

You know it’s a good writer’s biography when after you shut the book you scamper-damper to get all the author’s books through inter-library loans. And it’s like Christmas when the inter-library loans come in.

Now if you’ve read my review of Monica Dicken’s An Open Book, you know that the section where she discusses her researches into child welfare with the “Cruelty Man” had me choking back the tears. So of course the moment a whole lovely stack of Monica Dickens novels got lugged home from the library, I was digging out Kate and Emma, the book inspired by the “Cruelty Man”. If you haven’t read An Open Book, the “Cruelty Man” (or lady) is a child welfare officer. And the parents usually loathe the “Cruelty Man” and assumed their children are going to be snatched away and stuffed in a home.

But let’s talk about Kate and Emma shall we?

In the simplest of terms, Kate and Emma is the story of two teenage girls, Kate (unloved and unwanted girl from the lower class) and Emma (a judge’s daughter). But one day while Emma is visiting her father’s court in the Juvenile system, sixteen year old Kate is one of the cases. Kate has run away from home and her parents don’t want her back. Just another case in the hundreds or thousands that Emma’s father has seen. But something about Kate stirs an interest in Emma. And the two become unlikely friends.

Now at this point, a novel where the lower class Kate and upper class Emma could go a few ways. The easy way is to have Emma take Kate under her wing, tidy her up, educate her and have Kate find Mr Right and her and Emma could live next door to each other and everything would be tea and scones and lovely forever and ever. That would be a very boring book. And yes this is coming from someone who adores Cinderella/makeover stories like Jutland Cottage and The Thing About Jane Spring. But what makes those books different from the very boring but would certainly sell to a certain market book is a certain bite and wit.

Luckily, Monica Dickens doesn’t take the easy way. In fact, the alternating voices of Kate and Emma took a few chapters to get used to but give it those few chapters and you’ll find it hard to put down Kate and Emma.

Kate is fortunate enough to land in a loving foster home with run by Mollyarthur who wouldn’t be out of place as a character in a Maeve Binchy novel. She loses some of her hard shell and starts her unlikely friendship with Emma. In the warm safety of Mollyarthur’s house, both Kate and Emma bloom. Only Kate gets pregnant. It’s not that surprising.

What is a surprise is Emma’s response to the situation. She wants to live with Kate and have the two of them raise the baby on their own. Emma’s even willing to have people think Kate’s baby is her own. Kate has her own plans. But what Kate ultimately does (marriage to the baby’s father) sets her on a doomed path. It doesn’t take a crystal ball to see that Kate will follow her mother’s path of an unfortunate marriage with too many children too fast and not enough money.

But as Kate marches towards her fate, Emma’s life isn’t all cream. In fact, it’s never been perfect as it seems from the outside. Emma is the oddball of her three siblings. Her family is haunted by the tragic drowning death of her younger brother. Her parents have distant relationship that is just barely holding on. She’s fortunate enough to come from a well-connected family and can find a job and rise in the ranks of her uncle’s supermarket business. She’s not popping out a baby every year by a dim-witted husband in slum rooms and dodging the landlord. But she has her own tragedies including her part in the one that nearly destroys both her and Kate.

Emma means well. She has a core of caring and compassion that with care and training would make her a wonderful child welfare worker like her mentor and father figure Johnny Jordan. But Emma hasn’t trained as child welfare worker, she blinded by guilt, money, privilege and friendship. Deep in her heart of hearts, Emma knows Kate is on the same path as her mother, turning the child who forced her into an ill-considered and ill-fated marriage into a whipping boy. The point when Emma sees a burn on Kate’s son made with a poker by Kate and doesn’t scoop that little boy up is the moment you want to smack Emma upside the head for not saving him. You want to tell her that betraying the bonds of friendship with Kate is worth it if it means saving Kate’s son. Or Kate herself.

Kate and Emma is not an easy read. It’s not a fun frolic with comic episodes. If you want that sort of Monica Dickens’ book, pick up One Pair of Hands. There are parts that will make you cry. You’ll wish the horrors of Kate’s life would end. If you’re me, you’d want to know more about Mollyarthur and Johnny Jordan. And you’ll want to thank the person who whined about Monica being so obsessed with the welfare of horses over children and sent her down the path to writing Kate and Emma.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An Open Book

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

There are writers who have a memoir you love and then another and then you wish they would just stop already because if you see their stupid books in the new biography section one more time you are going to scream and really? you need to spend another book writing about your addiction to overpriced shoes and your makeup collection? <wipes brow and takes a few deep breaths> Sorry, still a bit riled up over the latest of Annoying Author’s latest “memoir” cluttering up valuable space and wasting library resources. Back to the proper review. I promise.

Then you have authors who write memoirs and you snap them up because a) they are witty b) well written and c) don’t focus on stupid $200+ ballet flats. Also these authors you need to hunt down like, well…your father after a 12 point buck in during deer season. With great caution and expense. Only you don’t get some people going “EEWWWW” and “hunting is WRONG” when you snag your prey. And my dad? He eats what he gets and venison is delicious, so zip it!  Instead when the book hunter find your prey, you bring it home and curl up on Mr Couch (or Mr Bed if Blacklight is awake and ranting about Richard Dawkins and Minecraft and wrestling) and devour it.  Or you zip to the library after cleaning up the kitchen, grab your inter-library loans and head home because you’re tired and just want to collapse.

And even though you should really take a nap because it was one bleep of a workday and you are doing overtime the next day, you crawl into bed with one of your inter-library loan treasures intending to read for a little bit. And then the next thing you know you’re being pulled from a life as a nurse in training during World War II by a voice asking “who is daddy widdle wedhead?” to the fish tank and “hey are you making that pizza tonight?” to your dazed self.

Okay. That might have been a true story from Friday night. (It was). Blacklight did not get his pizza. He has opposable thumbs and can make his own dinner. How dare he summon me from the pages of Monica Dickens’ autobiography An Open Book? But he’s Blacklight and well, that’s what he does. Now what Monica Dickens’ does? Write awesome books.

An Open Book is British author Monica Dickens’ autobiography. Yes, she related to that Dickens but you get the delightful impression that their relationship (she is his great-granddaughter) doesn’t impress her that much. In fact, when she talks about her experiences promoting her books, the relationship between her and Mr Overrated seems like a burden and something she wishes didn’t exist.

I wonder if anyone coming up to her burbling “You know I loathe Mr Overrated to pieces” would have gotten a broad smile from her. Because if I had lived in her heyday, I would have been that person. Trust me. I met Mr Andrew Leman (co-founder of The HP Lovecraft Historical Society and all around awesome guy) and was that burbling dimwit who could barely form proper sentences like “I would like to buy this t-shirt” and “thank you Mr Leman”. So in my twisted little brain, the fact that Monica Dickens seems “meh” over her distant relationship to the overrated one? So very refreshing because so many other authors would be mentioning that connection every three seconds.

In fact, you could read An Open Book for her experiences promoting her books alone. Anyone who has written a book, or worked in book promotions will smile and remember their own best stories. It’s not the laugh-a minute horrors Grace experiences in promoting Hatto & Hatto’s books in Wendy Holden’s Gossip Hound (US)/Fame Fatale (UK) but it’s a universally familiar one to writers. Emma Chisit, indeed. 🙂

Instead of lingering and hovering over a distant yet important family connection, Monica Dickens weaves a tale of enchantment around life at Number 52. She’s the youngest child of three (older brother, slightly older sister) and the odd duckling in a talented and loving extended family. She goes to school and becomes a debutante but is more on the sidelines then in the first tier of things. Other people fall in love, get married and start families. Monica tries her hand at acting and then cooking professionally.

Now Monica is a nice girl from a nice family who can barely cook. She’s taken a course of six lessons. But she talks her way into being a professional cook/servant and spends many months toiling behind stoves and in cold kitchens. And apart from the occasional successful dish, comes a book about her experiences, One Pair of Hands, which becomes a popular seller. She’s not a best seller but she’s a known quality and now establishing herself as a professional writer.

With World War II, our Monica tries her hand at war work as a nurse, inspiring another popular seller, One Pair of Feet, that horrifies the nursing profession. The black mark of One Pair of Feet, doesn’t stop her from writing. Years pass and her busy pen and typewriter churn out books and articles. Along the way, Monica finds love, a husband of her own and adopts two very lucky little girls. There is sadness though. The war kills her older brother, her parents are getting more fragile and she is torn between her new home, America and the call of her childhood home Number 52.

What truly sticks in the mind besides the behind the scenes gossip of One Pair of Hands and One Pair of Feet are two sections that wrench the heart. If Blacklight wasn’t so busy watching Minecraft videos he might have looked over and saw me sniffling and then just barely fighting back tears. I dare you to pick up An Open Book and read chapters 16 and 21 without reaching for the Kleenex.

Chapter 16 is a brief thing, just a handful of pages about Monica trailing along with social worker. There’s a baby found in a room with only a burned leather couch. Another family ignores the fatal illness of an infant with the mother hoping that she’s pregnant again. Just these few pages had me tearing up as much as all three of Jennifer Worth’s excellent memoirs of her time as midwife.

Chapter 21 deals all too briefly in my opinion, with Monica Dickens’ work with The Samaritans. Now if you’re a Red Dwarf junkie, you know that Rimmer’s stint at the Samaritans is used as a joke in the first few series. Who knew that Monica Dickens helped found the American branch of The Samaritans? Without looking at http://www.samaritansusa.org? And this from a woman who beat herself up emotionally for mishandling her first call even though that caller got help.

Is it any wonder reading An Open Book had me abusing using my beloved inter-library loans with a white hot speed? If only it wasn’t Sunday or I would be headed to the East Hartford Public Library RIGHT NOW to brave their vertigo causing fiction section and not have to wait for the inter-library loan system. Or that Monica Dickens is on my list favorite authors. Unlike Annoying Author, I never wanted to slap Monica, or roll my eyes at her. Instead I wanted to sit down for a cup of tea, eat a scone and go pet her horses. Pity more authors can’t inspire that.