Death and Mary Dazill

~ Jane ~ 6 Comments
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Superintendent Mallett and two friends Dr. Fitzbrown and Dr. Jones are threading their way through the grave yard, after the funeral of a police colleague, stopping every now and then to read an inscription. As they reach the lych-gate, the vicar invites them in for tea with his wife and this is when they notice two elegantly dressed ladies placing a wreath on an elaborate column of white marble, the grave of their father, Ralph de Boulter and their brother Leonard. For they are the Miss de Boulter’s of Chetwode Lodge, Lindy and Arran, and they lay a wreath on the grave every week of the year. Their brother died when he was 20 and their father six months later, the mystery surrounding their deaths left unsolved. And some way off, in a corner of the graveyard, is a neglected headstone, sunk into the grass, that bears the name of Mary Dazill.

The three men are intrigued, is there a connection between Mary Dazill to the family at Chetwode Lodge and what is the mystery surrounding their deaths? ‘Bring the old photo album, my dear,’ says the vicar to his wife, Mrs Barrett. For Mrs. Barrett’s mother, quiet Lucy Brown, was a close friend of Lindy and Arran and a frequent visitor at the lodge.

It all happened so long ago, some 50 years ago or so in the 1890’s when Lindy and Arran were teenagers and their widowed father, newly arrived home from Burma thought they needed a governess. As Mrs Barrett begins her story she turns over the thick cardboard pages of the album

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‘The day she arrived . . . was a lovely day in spring. Chetwode Lodge was like a fairyland in those days.’

And then we dive straight in to the household of 1890 and witness Mary Dazill’s strange hold over the family; the way she plays with the affections of Leonard (who Lucy loves), his friend John, (who Lindy loves) and even Ralph. The way John plays with the affections of Arran, and how Mary comes between Leonard and John, and then between Ralph and his children. Lucy, sitting unnoticed, watches and builds up the clues that lead to her belief that it was murder.

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The Red and the Green

~ Jane ~ 18 Comments
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It’s Reading Ireland month with Cathy at 746 Books and this year is A year with Iris Murdoch hosted by Cathy and Kim at Reading Matters so it seemed like the right time to get back to Iris Murdoch who I last read in a huge rash in the 90’s. The Red and the Green is one that I didn’t read then and I’m surprised I didn’t because it felt much less dense than some of her other novels. Set in Dublin in the week leading to the Easter Rising of 1916, the historical setting gives the plot a clear focus, energy and tension that I wasn’t expecting.

The novel begins on a sunny Sunday afternoon in April with Second-Lieutenant Andrew Chase-White in the garden of Finglas, the home of his fiancée in Sandycove, ‘in one of those bright little roads of multicoloured villas which run down to the sea‘, at the start of 10 days leave from his regiment of King Edward’s Horse. His mother is with him as she intends to give up the London flat and settle in Dublin, surrounded by her large, extended family. Andrew possesses an irritated rivalry for all these Irish cousins, feeling a superiority to their uncultivated outlook and yet jealous of their noisy, athletic gang. In particular he has an uncomfortable admiration for Pat Dumay, older than him by a year, he’s a natural, casual rider, known to his family as ‘the iron man’ and the reason Andrew joined a cavalry regiment in spite of his fear of horses. Pat is as Catholic as Andrew is Protestant and with Andrew fighting in the Great War and Pat an Irish Patriot, the two cousins are set on opposite sides and against each other as plans for the rebellion take shape and tension mounts, in the struggle for Home Rule.

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Just Watching: We Are The Best!

~ Jane ~ 7 Comments
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Bobo and Klara are two 13 years olds living in Stockholm, it’s 1982 and Punk is Dead or so say the popular girls in neon leg warmers with synchronised dance routines; and the boys thrashing their stuff and making sure they know how ugly they are.

But these two don’t want to join in, they’re a team of two and after a run in with the gym teacher they decide to form a band at the local youth centre, really just to annoy everyone and give those boys in Iron Fist a run for their money. They can’t play and can’t sing but write a song, Hate The Sport, and start to practice.

The team of two becomes three when they realise that Hedvig, a super conventional Christian who’s always being teased is actually very good on her classical guitar. She can teach them some chords!

Written and directed by Lukas Moodysson, adapted from the graphic novel Never Goodnight by his wife Coco Moodysson, this is a joyous rebellious ride against popular culture, seen almost as if we’re spying through the key hole, it’s so natural.

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A Fortunate Man

~ Jane ~ 22 Comments
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At the end of the 19th century Johannes Sidenius, a Lutheran pastor, lives with his wife and 11 children in a small provincial town in east Jutland. Stern and pious, curt and inhospitable, Pastor Sidenius is more likely to question his parishioners on their religious inclinations that offer them the expected coffee and sympathy. Set apart from the community by his aloof indifference, his wife, after so many childbirths in quick succession, the strain of living in dire poverty and a reluctance to countenance any sort of secular behaviour has taken to her bed. Their children go to school but otherwise are kept to themselves, there are hymns around the piano, prayers and homework. Their appearance, with their unusual neck collars, long curling hair for the five boys, and hair plastered to their skulls with a plait at each temple running in front of their ears for the girls, sets them apart from their peers. Life is frugal and meagre, and silent unless you’re invited to speak. But they’ve inherited a strict sense of duty and are eager to emulate their parents’.

Not Peter Andreas though. Almost from birth he’s like a stranger in the home. He burns with shame at their odd appearance that keeps him singled out. He climbs out of his bedroom window at night to skate with his classmates and kiss the girls. He dreams of engineering and developing a new canal system which will bring Jutland into contact with the rest of Denmark and bring Denmark into contact with the rest of Europe. Not for him a life of humble gratitude, he wants to be rich, rich and famous.

At last, he’s allowed to leave home for Engineering college in Copenhagan; he drops his apostolic names and becomes simply Per. He says goodbye to his family and sets his sights on a glorious future.

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The Time Machine

~ Jane ~ 16 Comments
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This was my Classics Club spin read and what a fun surprise it was! Written in 1895, a group of Victorian gentleman meet every Thursday for dinner. Only referred to by their professions, one week their discussion turns to Time-Dimension, and the possibility of moving through space and time, when the Time Traveller shows them the Time Machine he’s been working on.

These meetings provide the frame for an extraordinary adventure that the Time Traveller recounts to them the following Thursday – when he arrives late, limping, haggard and covered in dust. After draining a few glasses of champagne he begins his story.

He has travelled through space,

‘the sky took on a wonderful deepness of blue ,a splendid luminous colour like that of early twilight; the jerking sun became a streak of fire, a brilliant arch, in space; the moon a fainter fluctuating band; and I could see nothing of the stars, save now and then a brighter circle flickering in the blue.’

until clumsily landing by a huge white statue in the year Eight Hundred and Two Thousand.

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Six Degrees From Wuthering Heights

~ Jane ~ 19 Comments
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In celebration of Emerald Fennell’s film adaptation, Kate at booksaremyfavouriteandbest has chosen Wuthering Heights to begin this months Six Degrees of Separation.

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I did see the film and on the whole thought it was quite fun, but the first thing it makes me think of is how much I liked Nurse Patsy Mount in the TV series Call the Midwife, played with aplomb by Emerald Fennell. Based on Jennifer Worth’s memoir of the same name, it’s set in 1950’s London.

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A Passage To India

~ Jane ~ 12 Comments
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Set in the fictional city of Chandrapore, on the edge of the River Ganges and against the backdrop of the British Raj and the movement for independence, A Passage to India revolves around Mrs Moore who has just arrived in India to visit her son Ronny Heaslop, the young city magistrate; and she’s brought with her Adele Quested, a school teacher who might possibly become Ronny’s wife.

Mrs Moore and Adele are surprised that the British are so isolated from India, that their lives are so insular, the club house so important and their behaviour so bigoted. Cyril Fielding is the exception, he’s the headmaster of the government school and organises for Mrs Moore and Adele to join him for tea with some of his local friends, including Aziz, a young Muslim doctor working in the British hospital.

Dr. Aziz, enchanted by Mrs Moore organises an outing to some local caves at great expense to himself for all the trappings he thinks the British need for a picnic. Ronny lets Adele go as Cyril will go with them and provide an escort but all goes horribly wrong when Aziz loses sight of her. She eventually emerges from the caves, bewildered and covered in scratches; and is seen in the distance getting into a car. Aziz is immediately arrested for assault and put in prison to stand trial.

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The ABC Murders

~ Jane ~ 16 Comments
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‘I know all about you, M. Poirot. It was you
who really solved the A.B.C. crimes.’

says young Miss Meredith on meeting Poirot at a dinner party in Cards on the Table, it’s 1936 and Poirot is celebrated as it was only last year that the country was held in the grip of fear by the ABC Murderer.

It begins when Poirot receives a letter challenging him to solve a crime, it will happen in Andover on the 21st of the month, signed ABC. When the crime goes unsolved the murderer becomes more confident, goading Poirot to find him. But the victims seem to be chosen at random, the only pattern is that the murderer is following the alphabet and leaves a copy of the ABC railway guide on their body; how can Poirot get into the mind of such a person? And it’s all so public, Poirot has to work with numerous police forces, including the obnoxious Inspector Crome who thinks he’s above the rest; and the relations of the victims who all think they can help as a ‘committee’, and above all the press are stirring up the public with scare mongering headlines. It’s all so baffling, at some point the murderer must make a mistake, but what is driving him? understanding the psychology is all important.

But luckily Hastings has arrived in England for a few months, leaving his wife at their ranch in Argentina, he has some matters to attend to and is only too keen to assist his old friend Poirot.

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It’s twenty years since they first worked together in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, when Captain Hastings, convalescing with friends at Styles Court bumped into Poirot, his friend from earlier days in the war, and who now lives in a nearby hostel for refugees. Lover of cars and motor racing, he’s fond of a game of golf and always has an eye for a pretty face; Hastings is loyal, charming and affable, slightly bumbling, he has an acute sense of what’s right and always expects the best of people – and that’s why I’ve chosen him as my Beloved Character in this months ReadChristie challenge.!

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Just Watching: The Bicycle Thief

~ Jane ~ 14 Comments
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Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas and Louis Jean Lumière were pioneers of the film industry in the 1890s and La sortie de l’usine Lumière à Lyon (Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory, 1896) is considered to be the first film ever made. Though each of their films is only 40 to 50 seconds, showing candid portrayals of working class France, they’re the purest form of realism, referred to as actualités, or actuality films, and have a direct influence on the Italian Neorealism movement 40 years later.

Focusing on the harsh truths of life around them, during and post WW11, filmmakers including Visconti and Fellini often hired non professional actors, and made a point of using real settings rather than sets, with real people in the background, showing the collective anxiety of the time with unadulterated authenticity. Roberto Rossellini’s Roma città aperta  (1945) is the first fully realized film of the genre and it’s shocking in its depiction of torture and life under an authoritarian regime; but Vittorio De Sica’s The Bicycle Thief from 1948 is perhaps the most well known.

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The story follows Antonio (Lamberto Maggiorani) as he gets a job hanging film posters, but for the job he must have a bicycle. He and his wife Maria (Lianella Carell) must first pawn the sheets from their beds to buy back the bicycle they have already pawned. The delight at at last having a steady income, the excitement over what this will mean for their family is shattered when the bicycle is stolen and Antonio loses his job. He searches the city with his son Bruno (Enzo Stajola), eventually finding the thief but without proof there’s nothing they can do.

The desperation of poverty is stark and the uneven distribution of wealth that we see as they chase through markets, a soup kitchen, and then their decision to stop at a trattoria, is shown through a politically charged mindset that doesn’t attempt to gloss over the reality. Their plight is desperate, but the relationship between father and son is full of warmth, not always in agreement, but they’re a team; there are no rosy answers but Antonio learns a lesson about dignity.

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The Master of Ballantrae

~ Jane ~ 21 Comments
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Reminding me of those lovely old Gainsborough films, the story is told through the memoir of Ephraim Mackellar, Lord Steward for forty years on the Durisdeer estate in Scotland.

It all begins in 1745 with the eighth Lord of Durisdeer, at home with his eldest son James, the Master of Ballantrea, popular and wild, he loves wine and cards, women and being in on the fight; his younger son, Henry, and Miss Alison Graeme, an orphan from a remote part of the family who has lived with them since a girl and is the heir to a considerable fortune. Now it’s understood that there’s an understanding between the Master and Miss Alison and as the Durisdeer land is heavily mortgaged, they need that money; Alison is very willing.

When news arrives that Prince Charles Edward; has landed in Scotland attempting to reclaim the throne for his father and proclaim him James VIII of Scotland our James, the Master of Ballantrea has his head turned by the sense of adventure and leaves to join the Jacobite rebellion. Henry, left at home with Alison to run the estate, hears news that the uprising has failed and believing James to be dead, takes the title of Lord Durisdeer and Alison as his wife. Oh dear.

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