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The Sugar House / Wild Mary

So here is my first joint book review. I’m not sure how this would best work – GCSE english lit: “compare and contrast…”? Or one and then the other? Actually my first two books – The Sugar House by Antonia White and Wild Mary by Patrick Marnham – aren’t worlds away from each other so maybe I’ll try the compare and contrast thing at the end.

The Sugar House is the 2nd in the trilogy sequel to “Frost in May”. “Frost in May” was the first book to be published by Virago Modern Classics and I read it after seeing Carmen Calill (Virago’s founder) enthuse about it. To be honest I read it because I thought I ought to as a good Virago-reading feminist, but actually I found it hilarious and really enjoyed it. It’s a semi-autobiographical account of Antonia White’s catholic childhood upbringing, and the trilogy sequel follows her into adulthood.

In “The Sugar House”, Clara, the protagonist, is now twenty-one, a reluctant actress in a travelling company and hopelessly in love with unsuitable Stephen. Stephen is many years her senior and the parts of the book where Clara is desperately trying not to act young, or behave like his dead wife, so that Stephen will propose to her, are some of my favourite bits. When Stephen betrays her and marries someone else, she marries her old friend and former fiancee Archie, whom she does not love. The resulting portrait of Clara trying to set up home with an unconsummated marriage and a husband who is drunk more often than not is devastating. Two of the major themes are Clara’s complicated relationship with her father, and her Catholic faith, both things which she cannot get away from but which complicate her life and attitude to it.

The book is made compelling by Clara herself, often so full of self-doubt but trying very hard to find her place in the world and to be a good wife, a good daughter, a good Catholic. I suppose I identified with her so much because so many of her thoughts and doubts are those which I’ve had myself – and I think this just shows Antonia White’s skill as an author.

The final book in the trilogy – “Beyond the Glass” – is now on my “to read” shelf.

Wild Mary is the biography of one of my favourite authors, Mary Wesley, author of, most famously “The Camomile Lawn” (which has probably just edged into #1 in my all time favourite books) but lots of other wonderful books as well. I definitely recommend reading all her books before embarking on her biography as a lot of the situations and people in her books are based on those of her life. Not only does this give an extra layer of richness to her books, it can ruin the plot of some of them if you’ve not already read them!

So as you might expect, the story of Mary’s life is just as fascinating as the plot of any of her books, especially during the second world war when she was separated from her husband, worked in the war office and entertained dozens of lovers (it all sounds terribly glamorous). But life wasn’t all rosy, in particular she never had a good relationship with her mother (who loved her sister better) nor her sister, and was harassed for many years by her second husband’s ex-wife (a particularly stressful and spiteful episode). Still, Mary’s life covered most of the twentieth century and I found it particularly interesting to read about her life and how she reacted to the momentous events happening around her.

Another reason why I find her particularly inspiring is her attitude to age – she herself published her first book when she was 71, and wanted to make the point that sex was not in fact invented in the 1963 but that people of her generation were doing it just as much, behind closed doors – “As a woman who was liberated before her time Mary Wesley challenged social assumptions about the old, confessed to bad behaviour, recommended sex. In doing so she smashed the stereotype of the disapproving, judgmental, past-it, old person. This delighted the old and intrigued the young.” Intriguing she certainly is, and it’s nice to remember that life isn’t over at 70.

I don’t expect this to happen very much, but there is in fact a cross-over in these two books – when Mary Wesley converted to catholicism, Antonia White (an ex-lover of Mary’s husband) was her godmother and remained a close friend for the rest of her life. Two books then, both very different, about very different women, but each inspiring and enjoyable.

As a result of reading these two, I bought “The Children’s Book” by A.S. Byatt.

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fractalfairytales is written by me, Joanna, and has been around since 2005, although I've had presences on the web since 2000. The latest incarnation of the site is designed to showcase my many hobbies, interests and offerings, including writing, singing, knitting, coding, reading and snapping, and sometimes just living.