Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man by Seigfried Sassoon

Normally a book with the word 'fox-hunting' in the title would have been an automatic turn-off.

But the new Faber Modern Classics covers have a weird appeal.

My life is also soooooo crazy, out-of-control, mad at the moment that I'm in desperate need of comfort - comfort reads, comfort food, comfort clothes and comfort other worlds in which to lose myself.

Curiously a fox-hunting memoir fit the bill perfectly.

It turns out I needed to escape into a more innocent, gentle and slower time almost as badly as Sassoon did after his time in the trenches of WWI.

Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man is Sassoon's semi-autobiographical remembrances of life in rural Kent before the ravages of WWI scarred a generation. They are lovingly nostalgic, yet tinged with the bittersweet knowledge of what is to come.

They are loosely based on his childhood but read more as a collection of boys own adventure stories. George Sherston is a reserved, cautious boy living alone with his Aunt Evelyn. Thanks to the kindly interest of the groom, George is given a pony at the age of nine. This leads eventually to day excursions to watch the local hunts and races.

The fox-hunting is never described in gory detail. Sassoon sticks to the wholesome and slightly romantic riding side of things with a bit of local gossip thrown in for good measure. The story is more about George's coming of age - his thoughts, his moods and his doubts and insecurities - as he enters society and begins to race with the adults.

MOAFHM is, ultimately, a love letter to a time and place long gone.

Sassoon is not concerned with class differences or cruelty to animals - we are after all seeing the world through the uncritical eyes of a young boy. Occasionally, though, an older, more reflective 'George' provides the voice of impending change and loss.

The air was Elysian with early summer and the shadows of the steep white clouds were chasing over the orchards and meadows; sunlight sparkled on green hedgerows that had been drenched by early morning showers. As I was carried past it all I was lazily aware that my dreaming and unobservant eyes that this was the sort of world I wanted. For it was my own countryside, and I loved it with an intimate feeling, though all its associations were crude and incoherent. I cannot think of it now without a sense of heartache....

Fox-hunting drawing by Sassoon

Those long days of dry weather and white figures moving to and fro on the greens now seem like an epitome of all that was peaceful in my past. Walking home across the fields from Butley, or driving back in the cool of the evening after a high-scoring game on the county ground at Dumbridge, I deplored my own failure or gloated over one of my small successes; but I never looked ahead, except when I thought about next winter's hunting. The horses were out at grass; and so, in a sense, was I.

Dotted with county cricket matches and country dances, Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man has been a genteel stroll down memory lane in a period of history that I feel very comfortable in losing myself.

Sassoon followed up this highly successful story with two more novels to complete The Sherston Trilogy - Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (1930) and Sherston's Progress (1936).

Interestingly, Sassoon's time spent in a psychiatric hospital at the end of WWI was also fictionalised by Pat Barker in her well-known book Regeneration (1991).

MOAFHM was the winner of the James Tate Black Memorial Award (one of the UK's oldest literary awards) in 1928.

The other 15 titles to look out for in this current range of Faber Modern Classics are:

Nightwood by Djuna Barnes

Ariel by Sylvia Plath

Pincher Martin by William Golding

The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi

Self-Help by Lorrie Moore

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

Venice by Jan Morris

Selected Poems by T S Eliot

Look Back in Anger by John Osborne

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

An Unsuitable Job for a Woman by P. D. James

The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster

The Hawk in the Rain by Ted Hughes

Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey

Aunt Julia and the Script Writer by Mario Vargas Llosa

My Year in Non-Fiction

Non-Fiction November is a fabulous meme hosted by Sophisticated Dorkiness et al.

The initial join up post asked about our favourite non-fiction reads for the year so far.

I felt that I hadn't read much NF this year, so I planned to skip this question in favour of focusing on AusReading Month.

However, thanks to a huge storm this afternoon, I've had more inside time than planned...so I decided to see what NF I actually had read in 2014.

I was pleasantly surprised to find 13 adult titles and 8 children's books under my non-fiction/biography tags.
7 were written by men; 14 by women. 14 were written by Australians; 7 by International authors.

I had several favourites this year.

parenting

Stepmother Love

All Joy and No Fun

Free Schools

travel

Le Road Trip

memoir/true crime 

This House of Grief
Boy, Lost
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running 

psychology

Change Your Thinking

children's

Big Red Kangaroo

All of these favourites are Australian titles except for Le Road Trip, What I Talk About & All Joy and No Fun.

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My most recommended non-fiction book (written by an Australian) of all time is True Pleasures by Lucinda Holdforth.

Meet the dazzling women of Paris: from Colette to Nancy Mitford; Marie Antoinette to Coco Chanel;

Madame de Stael to Pamela Harriman; Napoleon’s Josephine to Edith Wharton. Rule-breakers and style-setters, demimondes and diplomats, these women were utterly diverse,
yet all shared one common passion — Paris, the world’s headquarters of femininity.
At a turning point in her life, Lucinda Holdforth journeys to Paris and takes a very personal tour through the lives, loves, and losses of its celebrated women.

I also had the pleasure of meeting Lucinda a few years ago. We shared a memorable night discussing France and literature - happy times.

My most recommended International non-fiction titles of all time are The Hare With the Amber Eyes & The Paper Garden.

The Paper Garden is unlike anything else you have ever read.

At once a biography of an extraordinary 18th century gentlewoman and a meditation on late-life creativity, it is a beautifully written tour de force from an acclaimed poet.

Delicately, Peacock has woven parallels in her own life around the story of Mary Granville Pendarves Delany (1700-1788) and, in doing so, has made this biography into a profound and beautiful examination of the nature of creativity and art.

In the future?

For balance, I would like to read more non-fiction from & about other countries again. I would also like to add more science & psychology to the mix to round out my preference for history & memoir titles.

I'm hoping that between Non-fiction November & AusReading Month I will finally finish The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka and The Biggest Estate.

I also have 3 other Aussie non-fiction titles to peruse this month (time willing) - Adam Spencer's Big Book of Numbers, Sydney by Delia Falconer and The Best Australian Science Writing 2014 edited by Ashley Hay.

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Ooops! Another 5 days have gone by & I haven't finished this post.

So I will merge the 2 weeks and apologise profusely for posting such a big fat non-fiction rant.

I thank you and applaud you if you have made it this far!

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Week 2 of Non-Fiction Novemberr is being hosted by Lu at Regular Ruminations.

This weeks question is about experts - being an expert or asking an expert.

Firstly, let me say how wonderful it is reading and exploring all these new non-fiction titles & authors. The extra special added bonus of course, is finding a whole stack of new-to-me blogs to explore as well.

I'm not sure that I am an expert in any one field of non-ficiton as my interests take me into so many areas, but....

During one of my many Holocaust phases I discovered Gitta Sereny.

Her most riveting & telling bio is called Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth. I cannot recommend this one highly enough. Sereny established a trust relationship with Speer from which to probe and push him to finally face the truth about what happened. It's an extraordinary account of how the people involved were able to ignore what was going on; how they deluded themselves & shifted responsibility.

Sereny's bio won the James Tate Black Memorial Award for Biography in 1995.

If like me, you're constantly trying to understand this atrocious time in history in an attempt to come to terms with man's inhumanity to man, then try Australian writer Inga Clendinnen's Reading the Holocaust. Some of her essays are very confronting, but she challenges you to think for yourself and to really see and feel what happened in the hope we will never let it happen again.

For an insider's account of the Holocaust, you can't go past Primo Levi. All his work is insightful & gracious, but If This is a Man is truly one man's search for his own humanity.

To move to a completely different, but slightly related topic - Coco Chanel.

I've read, enjoyed & highly recommend Chanel by Edmonde Charles-Roux & Chanel: The Legend and Her Life by  Justine Picardie. 

These two books not only reveal Coco Chanel warts and all, they also show us about life in France from the 1880's through to the 1970's. For anyone with Francophile tendencies, Chanel's bio's embrace a fascinating period of French history and culture.

On my TBR is the latest bio by Rhonda Garelick called Mademoiselle; Coco Chanel and the Pulse of History as well as Sleeping With the Enemy: Coco Chanel, Nazi Agent by Hal Vaughan.

I will stop here at the risk of overwhelming us all!

Please let me know of your favourite Chanel bio or your most enlightening Holocaust read. 

But for now, let me wish you all a very merry non-fiction goodnight.

Midnight's Children by Salmon Rushdie

This week's Friday Flashback (hosted by Lisa at Bookshelf Fantasies) is one of my all-time favourite past Booker winners (1981).

It was my first attempt to read anything by Salmon Rushdie.

It was also one of those books that evoked a sense of place so strongly that I still feel myself back there simply by talking about it.
But by back there, I don't just mean India.

I mean Perth, Margaret River and Denmark in southern WA!

Midnight's Children was the book I took on my 2 week holiday to Perth in 1999. I was visiting a dear school friend and her family at the time. I was able to use her home as a base from which I went on a few day trips and extended excursions.

For me, Midnight's Children became this strange parallel universe that I travelled through in my mind even as my eyes took in the incredible sights and sounds of WA for the first time.

I remember certain B&B's, cafe's, bushwalks and even a boat trip in Denmark that have become intricately enmeshed with scenes and characters from the book.

I was enthralled, mesmerised even by Rushdie's writing. I loved the mix of historical fiction and fantasy. I adored his discussion on time, history, truth & memory.

“I fell victim to the temptation of every autobiographer, to the illusion that since the past exists only in one's memories and the words which strive vainly to encapsulate them, it is possible to create past events simply by saying they occurred.” 

I made notes, jotted down quotes and my travel journal became a weird mix of travelogue and book review.

“What's real and what's true aren't necessarily the same.” 

Midnight's Children began a personal phase of reading all things India that lasted quite a few years & included lots of memorable books like A Passage to India, The God of Small Things, A Suitable Boy, Interpreter of Maladies, Fasting, Feasting & Journey to Ithaca just to name a few!

“Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems - but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible.” 

Midnight's Children was also the joint 1981 winner of the James Tate Black Memorial Award. 

An International Feast

My previous post was all Aussie.
Now for the adult fiction update from around the world.

I'll begin with one of my favourites - When God Was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman. Funny, poignant, heart-warming, up-lifting. A truly human drama full of surprises, quirks & tragedy.

A great holiday read; one you will want to share with others.

Over Christmas I read a modern day classic - The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt.
I was initially attracted to the glorious blue/green art nouveau dragonfly on the cover of my edition.

What followed was a wonderful ramble through the English countryside at the beginning of last century. The book is populated by a group of diverse, contrary and interesting families. They're absorbed in the world of art, history, nature and literature. Their passion rubs off until you feel regret for not living through this period of time with them!

The only thing I found unsettling was the sudden jumps in time, especially as the book ended on one of these sudden and rather unsatisfying (& convenient for the author) jumps.

The Children's Book won the 2009 James Tait Black Memorial Award and was nominated for the Booker.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt was recommended to me by several friends and when I found a lovely old copy in a 2nd hand shop on holidays, it seemed fated.

My uni days are long over, so the romantic 'good ole college days' atmosphere didn't really work on me the way I've heard told by others. But I did love the story. The intensity of the friendships, the sinister, gothic drama that unfolds so gently and politely is completely absorbing.

It was a captivating read - dense and juicy. So much so that I couldn't read anything of substance for weeks afterwards.

As a consequence I turned to Maisie - Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear. Light and easy, but with enough going on to keep it a cut above the rest.
Set after WW1 in London, Winspear is obviously concerned about the way war affects people long after the fighting is over. Her characters are all shell-shocked in one way or another and the fall-out continues to impact years later.

Maisie is a detective who uses the new ideas of psychology & intuition to help solve crimes. The first book gives lots of fascinating WW1 back story. It was just what I needed after The Secret History and I will certainly be reading more Maisie Dobbs in the future.

And now for my favourite read so far this year - Rules of Civility by Amor Towles.

It combines some of my favourite themes - the 1930's, New York, jazz, art, martini's, love, the meaning of life...!
Full of decadence, despair & drama - rags to riches and back to rags. The American dream, the quest for happiness...and all the compromises we make along the way.

Pop on your flapper dress, slip an olive into your martini and let this wonderful novel take you on a very New York journey.

I also finally read 2 of last year's Booker shortlist books - just in time to beat this years nominations!

The Finkler Question - hmmmm - where to start. I did find it funny - not laugh out loud stuff, but the word play was fun and it was clever in a very Finkler way.
And maybe that was the problem. I am not Jewish. Throughout the book I felt that there was some great story going on behind the scenes that you could only really get if you were Jewish. Perhaps that was the point?

I finished the book (slowly), waiting for my moment of ah-ha! It didn't come and I was left somewhat disappointed.

But then I picked up Room by Emma Donoghue!
I had been putting off reading this book - the premise - a story of a boy locked in a room with his mother. After all the media coverage of the young woman found in an Austrian shed, the idea seemed a little too real and somewhat grotesque.

And the first quarter of the book is exactly that. The story of captivity told innocently through the child's eyes. Except, of course, the boy does not view it as captivity. He knows nothing else; the Room is his world and he is happy enough.
He struggles when his mother finally tells him about the outside world and her plans for their escape.

I won't reveal any more of the storyline, except to say that this book made me cry - and very few books achieve that status! It was completely satisfying from start to finish.

Another piece of light fiction and a pleasant surprise, was At Sea by Laurie Graham.

A female detective of sorts, full of gentle English humour - from an American poking fun at the English tendency towards snobbishness & intellectual superiority!

It was uncomplicated, amusing and the perfect holiday read.

To finish this ramble, I will rave about Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel.

The story of Thomas Cromwell during the time of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn's rise to wifedom was bound to pique my interest.

I loved the sense of anticipation that sat underneath the story of Cromwell, Anne Bolelyn and her family's rise to power.
The title of the book and the quiet, mousy Jane Seymour who appeared discretely throughout. We know her as Henry's third wife and that his infatuation with her began with a visit to her family seat of Wolf Hall.
The whole time I'm reading about Anne I'm experiencing a delicious sense of future foreboding, waiting for the inevitable downfall...waiting for Henry to notice Jane. So for the book to end with "Early September. Five Days. Wolf Hall." was beautiful and frustrating at once. Is there a sequel??

Full of fabulous characterisations, the sense of time and place feels personal.  If Henry VIII were alive now, would he be diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder?
I loved the story, but occasionally found it hard to follow who's talking and when.

I think I could be a little in love with Mantel's Thomas Cromwell.