OVERVIEW: Some summer reads

[feather_ghyll]

Greetings! I've been away, yes on a beach, and here are a couple of the books that I read that I think you'd enjoy too.

Introducing Aunt Dimity, Paranormal Detective: Nancy Atherton. Penguin 2009.

This is an omnibus edition of the first two novels in the 'Aunt Dimity' series, which I think I came across in an Amazon 'if you like this book, why not this' way?. Well, I now have another series to collect. The blurb describes them as 'cosy' mysteries, and they very much are, with a slight paranormal element, romance and growing. self confidence for their heroines. They also fit in with a very American type of Anglophilia.

Aunt Dimity's Death is like a Babushka doll of charm. Lori grew up listening to her mother's tales of Aunt Dimity, which she always thought were made up, although full of details about English life. Now thirty, impoverished after a divorce, stuck in badly paying temp jobs and newly orphaned, she is shocked to discover that Aunt Dimity was real. Through 'just eccentric enough' lawyers, Dimity Westwood has left Lori an irresistible challenge over the pond. Accompanied by the overly enthusiastic Bill - whom she isn't sure she wants around - Lori sets out with a mystery to solve too thanks to her mother. Add that the charming cottage in the village of Finch is haunted and you have a very cosy mystery peopled by delightful characters to enjoy. Lori has a hair-trigger, but is able to admit it, and is a fun companion as she discovers the history of people she loved and grows to love.

Aunt Dimity and the Duke is the next in the series, but is set earlier in time. It's worth reading it in order though, as the first book better introduces Aunt Dimity and the Pyms. This is the story of how Emma and Derek, who are residents of Finch by the time of the first book, meet, expanding on their reference to mysterious goings on in Cornwall. Dimity, although still alive, is a mysterious and marginal but influential presence.

Emma Porter is not cut up after her boyfriend of many years has a midlife crisis and leaves her for a youngling. Her family and friends think she should be. She is determined however, to carry on with her plans of a summer in Cornwall, which will now be all gardening all the time. At the first garden that she visits, she meets the remarkable Pym twins (the trope of the elderly spinster twins) who guide her to Penford Hall, where she finds a charismatic duke, his eccentric staff, an unpleasant model, her loud agent-cum-manager and widower Derek and his children. Derek thought he had come to the hall to carry out a restoration project for his friend, but finds himself involved in a treasure hunt of sorts. He looks like the man of Emma's dreams, but has the baggage of still grieving for his wife, two children whom he loves very much but isn't that observant about. Unlike him, Emma does notice that Peter is too good, meanwhile five year old Nell is quite the character, playing dress up while being very astute. Emma is entranced despite herself, although aware that things are not quite right at the hall.

There is a fair bit of romanticising going on here and some of the 'revelations' aren't at all. The mysteries are usually slight, but the humour, thoughtfulness and characters made these novels a charming read. Oh, but there was one massive error where US slang does not mean the same as British slang that a "Britpicker" would have picked up on, and should not have been there given that the story marks up the differences in slang.

The website for the series Aunt Dimity's world should give you some idea of the flavour of the books.

I also read Bluestockings: Jane Robinson Penguin 2010.

It was an impulse buy - I had underpacked and so visited the airport's WHSmiths in a flustered mood, but was high-minded enough to buy this. I'm glad I did, it was quite a few of the things that the similarly themed Willingly to School wasn't. Bluestockings benefits from being a more focused and precise book, concentrating on the first women to receive systematic higher education in England from the end of the nineteenth century to 1939. We are given an overview of the history that led to that and then, beginning with the first cohort, a detailed overview of what kind of experience it was for these young women.

At one point I teared up, but mainly I read enthralled. It was that great thing, and informative, but entertaining read. Robinson writes clearly and made great selections of first-hand correspondence etc and the memories of these 'undergraduettes' and their families. You get details such as a typical day, an overview of the social expectations that bound them as tightly as the clothes they wore and an infectious sense of how they soared as they learned and used their minds. It is thought-provoking to read what these women went through as a graduate, how they saw it as a privilege and a responsibility.

I also learned about how shamefully Oxbridge (especially Cambridge) behaved in not allowing these women (and those educating them) the full recognition they deserved - they did an equal share of work but weren't awarded degrees for many decades. Robinson ends leaving us (and hopefully herself) tantalised with the story of what happened next.

The similarity between university life and boarding school life is there, but there were few references to fictional tales about this. I can think of dozens of references to old girls going to university but not of many examples of stories about them.

[For my own reference, this was read on 5 to 6/8/10]

Comments

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

I'll see if any Aunt Dimity books turn up atthe library.

Bluestockings has been on my Amazon wish list for while. So true that school stories rarely follow their heroines to university. There's The Scholarship Girl at Cambridge by Josephine Elder. Very hard to find and I haven't read it.

[feather-ghyll.livejournal.com]

Josephne Elder's Lady of Letters is partly set in an university too, but is about being a lecturer rather than a student. Gaudy Night was also mentioned in Bluestockings (and there's another series that's due a reread), but again, not from a student's POV. I don't know whether it was lack of authorial experience (although I wonder how many authoresses of boarding school stories went to one), but you'd have thought, given that the idea of 'girlhood' encompassed older ages, that it would be a subgenre in Girls Own. I suppose I should check the bibliography of Bluestockings more thoroughly.