2: Mariana (1940)
Y'all, this is going to be a terrible book report. The damned book's too good. I just want somebody else to read it so I can just squeal in shorthand, "oh my god that awful dance" and "ugh, Pierre, why the hell did her mother not say anything" and you'll say "dude, you know if her mother had said anything..." and we'd all have bottomless mimosas and maybe eclairs? I think eclairs would be nice.
So Monica Dickens was evidently the great-granddaughter of Charles Dickens, which seems weird for some reason. She wrote several nonfiction books which I'd like to read in the "I went and did...." vein - One Pair of Hands was her first, about her experiences when she dropped out of being upper class, dear, to work as a cook and servant. (I could roll my eyes and point out that you don't drop privilege that easily but I still want to read the book?) She also worked as a nurse and a newspaper reporter and is evidently best known as a columnist for Women's Own.
Mariana is her first fiction book. (Also available on Kindle.) It's semi-autobiographical, following a young woman from childhood to her marriage on the eve of World War II. Mary isn't particularly smart or particularly nice, but even when she's being a selfish little bitch I understood her. I mean, she's no more of a selfish little bitch than most young people; you have to learn your way out of that with life. She muddles through school, goes to acting classes because that sounds great and her uncle is an actor (of varying success) and anyway her friend is going, and then when she realizes that a) acting school is dumb and b) she doesn't like acting and c) that's a good thing because she's terrible at it she doesn't want to admit it because she's the one who wanted to go and it was expensive... yeah, girl, I get it. It isn't as obnoxious as it seems like it ought to be because the characters are well-drawn enough that you see how her anxiety and self-consciousness affects her relationships and her perspective without the book having to explain it. She's wonderfully snarky in a way I utterly relate to. Mary's relationship with her mother is especially specific, and described with a light touch.
The reviews I read online compared Mariana to I Capture the Castle, which... look, nothing is I Capture the Castle, okay? It does have some similarity in tone, humor, ultra-Britishness, and profoundly relatable girlhood; I'd recommend it to fans, but don't go telling me there's such a thing as another I Capture the Castle. It does exhibit one of the particular charms of "domestic fiction", and something you can only get from reading old books - it's full of quotidian details about clothing, food, and household things that with the passage of time become fascinating. I don't know of a better way to get an idea of daily life in another time period than by reading a book where people do a lot of cooking and eating and shopping and sewing and playing outside in it. (I'm sure I'm not the only person who only learned about menstrual belts from Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, right? Did you know they updated that one so the belts are gone? Criminal.)
It also has one of the best "return to the summer home of your best memories" sequences I've read. Don't do it. Don't do it.
Old timey book alert: there's some casual anti-Semitism, not much but it's jarring.
Thanks to the Tulane library for sending me this one; Mariana is one of the books that Persephone releases as a "Persephone Classic", meaning they put an attractive cover on it so you don't get to feel nearly as elegant reading it but somebody might buy it in a bookstore.
Verdict: 5/5, I loved this one and will recommend it to everybody. I suppose some readers might find it boring, but I was utterly charmed. If you like this sort of thing, you will like this; you almost certainly already know if you like this sort of thing.
So Monica Dickens was evidently the great-granddaughter of Charles Dickens, which seems weird for some reason. She wrote several nonfiction books which I'd like to read in the "I went and did...." vein - One Pair of Hands was her first, about her experiences when she dropped out of being upper class, dear, to work as a cook and servant. (I could roll my eyes and point out that you don't drop privilege that easily but I still want to read the book?) She also worked as a nurse and a newspaper reporter and is evidently best known as a columnist for Women's Own.
Mariana is her first fiction book. (Also available on Kindle.) It's semi-autobiographical, following a young woman from childhood to her marriage on the eve of World War II. Mary isn't particularly smart or particularly nice, but even when she's being a selfish little bitch I understood her. I mean, she's no more of a selfish little bitch than most young people; you have to learn your way out of that with life. She muddles through school, goes to acting classes because that sounds great and her uncle is an actor (of varying success) and anyway her friend is going, and then when she realizes that a) acting school is dumb and b) she doesn't like acting and c) that's a good thing because she's terrible at it she doesn't want to admit it because she's the one who wanted to go and it was expensive... yeah, girl, I get it. It isn't as obnoxious as it seems like it ought to be because the characters are well-drawn enough that you see how her anxiety and self-consciousness affects her relationships and her perspective without the book having to explain it. She's wonderfully snarky in a way I utterly relate to. Mary's relationship with her mother is especially specific, and described with a light touch.
The reviews I read online compared Mariana to I Capture the Castle, which... look, nothing is I Capture the Castle, okay? It does have some similarity in tone, humor, ultra-Britishness, and profoundly relatable girlhood; I'd recommend it to fans, but don't go telling me there's such a thing as another I Capture the Castle. It does exhibit one of the particular charms of "domestic fiction", and something you can only get from reading old books - it's full of quotidian details about clothing, food, and household things that with the passage of time become fascinating. I don't know of a better way to get an idea of daily life in another time period than by reading a book where people do a lot of cooking and eating and shopping and sewing and playing outside in it. (I'm sure I'm not the only person who only learned about menstrual belts from Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, right? Did you know they updated that one so the belts are gone? Criminal.)
It also has one of the best "return to the summer home of your best memories" sequences I've read. Don't do it. Don't do it.
Old timey book alert: there's some casual anti-Semitism, not much but it's jarring.
Thanks to the Tulane library for sending me this one; Mariana is one of the books that Persephone releases as a "Persephone Classic", meaning they put an attractive cover on it so you don't get to feel nearly as elegant reading it but somebody might buy it in a bookstore.
Verdict: 5/5, I loved this one and will recommend it to everybody. I suppose some readers might find it boring, but I was utterly charmed. If you like this sort of thing, you will like this; you almost certainly already know if you like this sort of thing.
Amazon links are referral links.
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