I am sorry this is not a very coherent review

And here we are, finally talking about The Dud Avocado. By Elaine Dundy, it's the story of an American girl of about twenty, called Sally Jay Gorce, who descends upon Paris looking to enjoy herself. Predictably, she gets more than she bargained for in her search for a bit of life.

The book has a very interesting style. It's written in first person, in three parts, the second of which is a diary. It's got a very informal feeling, rather like she's just writing a letter to someone she knows well, but you never feel like you're on the outside reading someone else's letter, it's like it's a letter to you. Sally Jay changes her mind about things, spends time looking for the best way to describe a thing, and she has fun with her story. It's an odd book. It masquerades as chick lit, and it would be entirely possible to read it as nothing more, but it definitely does say something about life. It's just that the narrator doesn't quite realize that's what she's doing. One actually wonders whether it's not just the narrator, but the author too, who doesn't realize she's writing more than what her words appear to be. From reading the Introduction and the author's Afterword, it definitely seems that this is a pretty autobiographical book.

And I suppose I don't really know what to say about it. If it were chick lit, it would be easy to see laid out the events of the book and what significance they all have to it, but this is much more blurry than that. I'm not even sure whether it has a happy ending to it. It's not a bad ending. I'm not sure what it is.

I would definitely recommend reading it, though. The book, above all, has an extremely distinctive voice, and it's a very appealing one. I seem to recall a blurb somewhere about the book, which calls Sally Jay a forerunner to Bridget Jones. While dissimilar in a lot of ways, Sally Jay is definitely similarly likeable.

So many books

New books to read! Oh, it's so exciting.

I went to the library yesterday and came back with two books I've very much been looking forward to--The Light Years, by Elizabeth Jane Howard, first book of The Cazalet Chronicle, and Bloodhound, by Tamora Pierce. I watched the miniseries The Cazalets quite some time ago, and have been meaning to read the books since. It's one of those "sprawling family dramas" and starts in 1937 and goes, I think, through the war. I quite liked the miniseries, though it was occasionally a tad melodramatic (I don't know whether because of the story, which would be still true of the book, or something about the production). Anyway, it's always nice to have another World War II novel to read, especially after reading The Mitfords, which of course spanned the entire 20th century but World War II does always seem to be a focal point. Some day I suppose I ought to read one that's actually about the war, and not just the people at home during it.

Bloodhound is the sequel to Terrier (and second in a supposed trilogy), and written in journal format with, says a blurb on the back, "homage to the police procedural genre." It's set in Tamora Pierce's by now very well-developed world of Tortall, and like 200 years before the first books she ever wrote about that world. It's always kind of interesting to compare those books with these, because her writing has improved vastly. It is still, of course, young adult fiction (and fantasy to boot), which is certainly not great literature but inevitably very satisfying.

I would be tempted to put off The Dud Avocado again and start in one of these (oh no, more choices as to which one), but I am determined not to, and so now I have motivation to whizz through that and get it finished so I can read these. Nothing against The Dud Avocado, mind you, I'm actually really liking it and might have made the great push to finish it anyway.

It's been such a long time since I checked out any books from the library. Before these I didn't have anything checked out at all, even movies or cds. I really quite missed it; I used to love the library, I still do though I don't make it there quite so often.

Penelope Fitzgeraldish musings

And to end the suspense about which book I chose to read... it was The Bookshop. Though The Dud Avocado was close on its heels, The Bookshop being a very short 123 pages.

I find I'm of two minds about Penelope Fitzgerald. I like her and always pick up her books expecting to love them, but somehow I find myself ultimately unsatisfied. I like her writing style, and I always very much like her premises or her settings--a bookshop in a tiny seaside town, a tiny college of Oxford, both show lots of promise for my enjoying them. I often like her characters, too. I think it's just what she does with the characters and the settings that I find unsatisfying. These books are rather too short to have exactly what I'd call a plot, it's more an extended premise or even a series of (relatively mundane) events. It's not the lack of plot I mind, I suppose, just the outcomes. I think the settings of her books give me an expectation of what the book is going to be like, and that's never what it is, so I am unsatisfied because what I expect is exactly what I want. In a way, I guess, Penelope Fitzgerald's eluding of my expectations is a point for her skills as a writer. Her books are never what it says on the tin. They're very good, and I will probably keep reading them, even though on some level I find them disappointing.

Short books fascinate me, in a way. They're longer than a short story, quite long enough to get to know the characters, but too short to have a really involved plot. In a way, this makes them sort of like a slice of the life of a person you know really well, except that it's not someone you know so you've got a fresh view. And of course, there's always the joy of being able to finish them quickly so you can get on to something new.

Now I am on to The Dud Avocado. I started it ages ago and got distracted, but now I'm back to it and more into it that I was before, so hopefully I will finish it this time.

Bookish indecision

I finished reading The Mitford Girls yesterday as expected, and now I'm experiencing my usual inability to chose a new book after finishing such a good one. We've rented a car for 4th of July weekend and drove around to various shops today, so I wound up with I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith, which I've already read, and The Bookshop, by Penelope Fitzgerald, which I haven't. I did read another book by Penelope Fitzgerald, The Gate of Angels, which I talked about here.

So now I'm torn between reading The Bookshop, The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy, or Lyddie, by Katherine Paterson. Or maybe even a reread of I Capture the Castle, which I loved a great deal when I read it a few years ago. Decisions, decisions, I think I just need to pick one and sit down with it.

Happy 4th of July, to those in the right country for it!

The Great Hulking To Be Read Pile

I have just read Richard III, I am deep into Beowulf (it's much more comprehensible the second time around, now that I'm older), and I have an enormous stack of books to read. I thought I'd take you on a tour through some of them.

Next up for school books after Beowulf is The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey, which I'm definitely looking forward to since I hear it's a mystery novel and it's been ages (like, years) since I read a mystery. Then I must get back to Mansfield Park and finish that, because I have to have all the Jane Austen read for the Jane Austen class I'm taking next semester, and I need that done by February. I am infinitely looking forward to this class, especially after reading Emma and loving it such a lot. It's a situation where it's a class that I completely don't need to take but that I will put before classes I kind of do need to take.

After these are done (they don't even look like too much written down like that), I have quite a lot of books I've acquired recently that I desperately want to read. Someone at a Distance and Villette are near the top, since I got them for Christmas and that was a while ago now; I've already started Someone at a Distance and I'd like to get more into it. Ducky (as my father is mysteriously called) loves buying me books, and has lately brought home The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy and The Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton. I know nothing about either of them, but both look interesting if we may judge by the back covers. The Dud Avocado purports to be a sort of romantic comedy about a young American girl who goes to Paris in the 1950s. All elements I am fond of. The Slaves of Solitude is set in England during World War II (which I was wanting to read more about), and stars a middle-aged spinster who escapes the Blitz by moving to a dull sort of suburb, and I guess various hijinks ensue. I'm looking forward to them.

Today I got in the mail the book I won in one of the book draws over at dovegreyreader scribbles before Christmas. It's called The Story of a Marriage, and it's by Andrew Sean Greer. Also set in the '50s, this time in San Francisco. I'm looking forward to this one too.

And now, I am going to bed.