Summer Reading Continued…

I heard Charlaine Harris (author of the Sookie Sackhouse series) speak a few nights ago. Her recommendation on how to get yourself to write: “Put up or shut up” made me consider the same. Harris was a funny speaker and she had that gentle southern drawl I remember so well in my own grandmother’s voice. Harris is very sparky and alive and it’s easy to see how Sookie is her brain-child. She insisted that all her characters were different parts of herself and I liked that idea too.  My only sorrow was hearing that she’s going to discontinue the Harper and Tolliver series after this next book. Harris has done a lot of series besides just Sookie and this other series centers around Harper and her stepbrother Tolliver. Harper got hit by lightening as a teen and ever since then can sense where dead people are and how they died. The series centers around herself and her brother (her sidekick) traveling around the US helping people find their dead loved ones or Harper being able to tell how that loved one died (if there are any questions). Needless to say, they’re surrounded by controversy and the fundamentalist community does not take kindly to them though they want to find their dead loved ones as much as anyone else. It’s a dark series and sometimes hard to read…though that didn’t stop me from reading each book in one day! Harris related in her talk that each book took tons of work since each book opens up with a whole new cast of characters besides the mainstays, Harper and Tolliver. And there’s the completely new setting besides that too and she’s found it’s just too much work. But she promised a new series after this since she always works away at two series at a time. You gotta wonder what her quirky mind will cook up next. I’m looking forward to it!

Mixed in while reading that series, I picked up Greenery Street by Denis MacKail. Now I have to admit, when I started this book, I was a little worried it might be too sugary. But I continued on and I’m so glad I did. Greenery Street is a comedy and a loving one at that. It centers on a couple, Felicity and Ian Foster, as they settle into their first home and it’s about all the little kinks and the maddenings parts that couples get to work out together. I alternately wanted to shake Felicity and then Ian and then Ian and then Felicity, etc, etc but in a laughing way and not at all violently! P.G. Wodehouse adored this book and it’s not hard to see why. Isn’t that endorsement enough?

A month ago or so, I claimed I would read all of L.M. Montgomery books in a week. A little foolhardy. I didn’t do that but I’ve been steadily chewing through them since I wrapped up Harris’ series and Greenery Street.  I decided to read her books in chronological order using Magic Island: The Fictions of L.M. Montgomery as a companion since it has a chapter on each book. What have I found? I’ve found that Montgomery’s writing takes me towards a mental vacation. There’s something so relaxing and satisfying about her books. Everyday life is the setting and mixed into the everday is nature, sweeping our souls towards the sublime. I really love how she’ll mention someone knitting lace and then a few paragraphs afterward are purple prosy descriptions of the outdoors. Reading her books as a young girl gave me an immense love of the outdoors and nowadays I find that the easiest way to get my head screwed on straight is to take a walk outside. Being outdoors always pulls me towards something bigger than the immediate goings-on. I owe Montgomery a huge debt for what she gave to me when I was a kid.

There’s also been an announcement that Penguin is going to print The Blythes are Quoted in its entirety. It was the final book she completed shortly before her death. Part of it was printed as The Road to Yesterday but a fair amount of the original writing was taken out as being deemed “too dark.” But it’s really excited this is coming out as it shows Montgomery was experimenting and trying new ways of writing.

And well…of course this book would be dark. Montgomery survived two world wars and besides that was addicted or at least heavily on, bromides and barbituates that no doubt led to her early death. She had a son who gave her terrible problems (it’s speculated he was a psychcopath) and her husband lost his  mind a few times. I’ve read through two sets of her journals and wow…she really gave us the joyful part of her in the books. I believe in her later works Montgomery can do tragedy just as well as comedy and I’m looking forward to seeing what this new book will add to the legacy of her writing.

And finally…”I believe you [men] capable of everything great and good in your married lives. I believe you equal to every important exertion, and to every domestic forbearance, so long as – if I may be allowed the expression, so long as you have an object. I mean, while the woman you love lives, and lives for you. All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one, you need not covet it) is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.”
—–– Jane Austen, Persuasion

I could not stop thinking that as I watched “Letter from an Unknown Woman” directed by Max Ophuls and taken from a short story by Stefan Zweig. (sorta spoilers? beware) The movie is taken from the viewpoint of a letter, written by a woman while she is dying to her former lover who has completely forgotten her. It is the story of a loving and noble person who is never recognized for her value. Her letter ends in “Oh, if only you could’ve recognized what was always yours, could’ve found what was never lost. If only…” I managed to somehow not cry at the end though her faithless lover didn’t quite manage that himself. This is such a beautiful film and though it’s sad, it does end with a splendid cry of hope.