OVERVIEW: End-of-summer reading

[feather_ghyll]

The last of what I read in Belgium:

Rest and Be Thankful by Helen MacInnes is not a spy novel, which is the genre she’s most closely associated with, although there are moments where you wonder if fit will turn into one. Rather, it’s about the mindset of the US after the second world war, especially in the literary milieu.

Two of its representatives, Margaret Peel and Sarah Blye, are lost on a road trip at the start of the story. They happen upon a ranch in Arizona in dire weather, and think they may have found a location for the literary retreat they’ve wanted to set up in the house called Rest and Be Thankful. At first, they appear to be rather foolish, but as we, and the owner of the land, Jim Brant, get to know them, it is revealed there is more depth to them than that. Their time in Arizona changes them, and they gain a new perspective of their country and the New York set they’ve been a part of. There’s a bit of Country vs. City conflict, and as various writer or writer types come to their retreat, an examination of character. One of the people who causes tension is Koffing (MacInnes peints him a little harshly, because he espouses views that she finds dangerous e.g. his hypocrisy and need to prove himself make him contemptible.) There are some romances, too, as people who would not otherwise have met cross paths. Mrs Peel and others gently meddle so that things come right for the characters we care about. It’s an absorbing read, if not always a subtle one.

The Life of Elves by Muriel Barbary (translated by Alison Anderson) is not something I expected the author of ‘The Elegance of the Hedgehog’ to write. It’s a fantasy novel. The blurb describes it as a fairy tale, which is only partly true, and although Barbery indulges in postmodernism, I wish she’d just embraced the fact it was 100 per cent fantasy. I found it interesting to read fantasy from a Romance perspective, not the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon perspective that influences most stories about the fair folk.

This is the story of a foundling girl and of an orphan. Maria mysteriously arrives at a farm in Burgundy, ostensibly from Spain. Her adopted family and the whole village grow to realise there is something special about her, while we get to see that there is also something special about them. The other girl is Clara, brought up in the Italian mountains, until her great gift for music is discovered and she is sent to Rome to train under a Maestro, who is not what he seems. The chapters telling us about them are interspersed with the Councils of the Inner Pavilion, of the Elves, whose vital mists are under threat...

It’s a literary, imaginative take on fantasy, though Tolkien must have been an influence. It’s also anti-Christian at times. There’s a sense of Frenchness, despite the English idioms and clever shifts of registers and tenses. The ending is rather open to a sequel, as one battle is done, but not the war.

I keep wanting to call it ‘The Secret Life of Elves’.