Rule Britannia by Daphne Du Maurier

Seven of us sat down for what turned out to be an amiable chat over a glass (or two) and a book. A somewhat crazy book!

The story is based around the experience of a wonderfully eclectic (and very likeable) Cornish household at the time of an attempted political, economic and military alliance between Britain and America. The household consists of Mad Grandmother, Foster Mother and a famous, in her time, actress; Emma, Mad's long suffering granddaughter; six fostered/adopted boys of all ages; Dottie the elderly housekeeper (once dresser for Mad) and Pa. Emma's father/Mad's son who drops in from his home in London where he is a cog in the alliance wheel.

The neighbours are a local farming family and a Welsh recluse who lives in a shack in the woods. Other significant acquaintances include the local GP and a pub landlord.

The events that unfold in the story draw this tiny community into situations that beggar belief. Seemingly they will stop at nothing to protect their environment and to protest at the intrusions made to their lives.

Our group wholeheartedly agree that this book is 'NOT what we had expected from a Daphne Du Maurier!'

It's a great concept but it's not a 'good' book though it is very readable. The concept is a good one, though not particularly well executed. It is like a children's adventure book, a gruesome Enid Blyton full of 'cartoon like' characters. We were left wondering what possessed this wonderful writer to write this particular book. We decided that perhaps she saw it as her opportunity to prove she is no 'Jane Austen'!

It was intimated in some reviews that this is a semi-autobiographical story and as a group we felt that Mad could indeed have been Daphne's personal pen-picture. However, I have since found that the book is dedicated to Gladys Cooper, a leading lady of Gerald Du Maurier, Daphne's actor father and Gladys is the basis of the main character in the book: Mad.

So, here is 'Mad' Gladys:

And, it all takes place in (fictional?) Poldrea, Cornwall. We all tried to place Poldrea and decided it was somewhere between Falmouth and Plymouth! However, there is a small place just outside Par named Tywardreath with a street named Poldrea and, though the street comprises social housing the location fits Daphne's description very well indeed.

This is a book that raises many questions and fails to answer, or challenge, any of them.

Would we recommend it - yes, though not for its literary qualities!

Our next book is The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls and we will meet to discuss our reading experiences at The Hundred on Thursday 26th November 8pm when our pub Dominoes team will be playing AWAY to the New Zealand!

Book Choices - September 2015

Let's choose our next read:

The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant

Alessandra is not quite fifteen when her prosperous merchant father brings a young painter back with him from Holland to adorn the walls of the new family chapel. She is fascinated by his talents and envious of his abilities and opportunities to paint to the glory of God. Soon her love of art and her lively independence are luring her into closer involvement with all sorts of taboo areas of life. On excursions into the streets of night-time Florence she observes a terrible evil stalking the city and witnesses the rise of the fiery young priest, Savanarola, who has set out to rid the city of vice, richness, even art itself.

Alessandra must make crucial decisions about the shape of her adult life, as Florence itself must choose between the old ways of the luxury-loving Medicis and the asceticism of Savanorola. And through it all, there is the painter, whose love will change everything.

 

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

This is a sprawling family saga, bursting with life, which spans three generations and crosses several continents. At its core, however, is another unorthodox but exquisite coming-of-age story.

The book's wily narrator and central character, Calliope Stephanides (named after the muse of epic poetry) is a hermaphrodite raised as a girl who comes to realise she is happier as a boy and is now living as a man in contemporary Berlin. Cal's tale begins, appropriately enough, in Greece (or more precisely Asia Minor)--an Aegean Strasbourg whose sovereignty is claimed by Greece and Turkey. In 1922 brother and sister Lefty and Desdemona Stephanides escaped their war-torn homeland and arrived, as man and wife, in Detroit, America. It is this coupling that ultimately begets their grandchild Calliope and her ambiguous sexuality, as she, or rather by then he, sanguinely notes:

Some people inherit houses; others painting or highly insured violin bows. Still others get Japanese tansu or a famous name. I got a recessive gene on fifth chromosome and some very rare family jewels indeed.

As Cal recounts the experiences of the Stephanides clan in their new land, from the Depression to Nixon, he unfurls his own symbiotic odyssey to a new sex. Cal's narrative voice is arch, humorous and self aware, continually drawing attention to its authorial sleights of hand, but never exasperating. This is big, brainy novel.

The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls

This is a startling memoir of a successful journalist's journey from the deserted and dusty mining towns of the American Southwest, to an antique filled apartment on Park Avenue. Jeanette Walls narrates her nomadic and adventurous childhood with her dreaming, 'brilliant' but alcoholic parents.

At the age of seventeen she escapes on a Greyhound bus to New York with her older sister; her younger siblings follow later. After pursuing the education and civilisation her parents sought to escape, Jeanette eventually succeeds in her quest for the 'mundane, middle class existence' she had always craved. In her apartment, overlooked by 'a portrait of someone else's ancestor' she recounts poignant remembered images of star watching with her father, juxtaposed with recollections of irregular meals, accidents and police-car chases and reveals her complex feelings of shame, guilt, pity and pride toward her parents.

Our next meeting is THURSDAY 24th September 8pm at The Hundred of Ashendon. We will be discussing Rule Britannia by Daphne Du Maurier.