Review: Patricia Brent, Spinster – Herbert Jenkins

Original Publication Date: 1908
Genre: 20th century English literature
Topics: Marriage, spinster, domestic, boarding house

Review by : Liz Inskip-Paulk at Just One More Page


Published in 1918 by his own publishing company, Herbert Jenkins’s novel, Patricia Brent, Spinster, was a pretty fast read once it got going. It’s a plot that’s been well used before: an unmarried young woman (about early 20’s) lives in a boarding house with the usual cast of misanthropes and narrow-minded “paying guests” having to eat a rotating menu that never changes (similar to how many of their own lives play out, it seems). Small talk and gossip rule the day, and so young Patricia Brent decides that she can’t take the monotony anymore and invents a fiancé for herself.

As the story continues, Brent leaves the boarding house for dinner with her “fiancé” at a well-known restaurant in London without having the faintest idea of how this will turn out in the end. Fortune smiles on her, and she meets a young army officer who, serendipitously, is also dining alone and willing to play along with her plan. Days and weeks go by and the fake fiancé really ends up falling in love with her, except she decides that she can’t have someone actually fall in love with her and rejects him, despite all his intentions otherwise.

His family become involved, his sister comes up with a strategy to make Patricia become more attracted to her brother (the fiancé) and so it goes. It was an ok read, but Patricia was pretty unreasonable in how she acts with the friendly fake fiancé and rejects him for little reason apart from he likes her (which wasn’t in the plan).

It’s a caper novel, which worked for the most part, although at times, I rolled my eyes at the female protagonist’s immature behavior. However, this was written back in 1918 and it’s pretty true to the times for some people (regardless of gender), I would think. Author Jenkins also owned the publishing company who first started to publish all the P. G. Wodehouse spoofs so I don’t think this volume was intended to be deep and meaningful.

It was not a bad read, by any means, but it was somewhat more superficial than I had thought it was going to be. It was a bit uncomfortable to read at times as it was SO mean towards innocent people at times.

Download Patricia Brent, Spinster by Herbert Jenkins at Project Gutenberg|Librivox|

Review: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM by William Shakespeare

Original Publication Date: 1590-1596 (written)

Genre: play, fantasy

Topics: love, beauty, fidelity, dreams, magic, gender, reality vs. fantasy













Review:

This was my first Shakespeare ever. Some friends warned me that is better experienced by seeing it on stage, but I found that reading the book and then watching the film adaptation worked well. I was able to go back, re-read and look online for definitions, which allowed to understand turns of phrase like “a mile without the town” or “come, recreant; come thou child”.

If I’d seen the play without reading it first I’d probably miss the images invoked by one of my favorite lines – Titania describing how she got the little Indian boy:

When we have laugh’d to see the sails conceive
And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind

Reading the play also gave me the opportunity to witness what a marvelous “insulter” Shakespeare was. I'd heard rumors, but now I've seen it for myself and am very much tempted to memorize a few... just in case the opportunity to use them presents: “You minimus, of hind’ring knot-grass made”, “O me, you juggler, you canker-blossom, you thief of love!”, “Farewell, thou lob of spirits”.

I haven’t said much about the plot because it became a bit secondary compared to the words (that’s why you have re-reads, right?). Next time around I’ll pay more attention to the social comment on the balance of power in relationships or the loss of individual identity, but just this once, let me appreciate the language alone.

Ay me, for aught that I could ever read,
Could ever hear by tale or history,
The course of true love never did run smooth.

Lysander says this to calm Hermia, after her father forbade them to marry and the King threatened her with death if she disobeyed. Lysander’s basically saying that for as long as there has been true love, there have been difficulties, and I found that strangely comforting.

Bottom & Co.’s play: loved it. How very meta-fictional of Shakespeare (or maybe it was a common gimmick at the time and I’m giving him more credit than he deserves), and how funny their keenness to make sure the audience was not scared by the lion (it’s just a man playing a lion!), or of the scene where Pyramus gets killed:

(…) and for the more better assurance, tell them that I Pyramus am not Pyramus but Bottom the weaver: this will put them out of fear.

Watching the 1999 the movie adaptation after reading the play was a good idea. I not only understood better the comings and goings of the characters, but it was also fun seeing how often the actors used a tone different from the one I used when reading by myself.

Overall a great introduction to Shakespeare and a good starting point: a fun, quick read that still allowed me to appreciate why the Bard's language has been delighting readers and audiences for centuries.

Short Story Review: Xingu by Edith Wharton

Original Publication Date: 1916

Genre: Humorous short story

Topics: Society, manners, ladies' clubs, book clubs, authors,













Review: Guess what? Edith Wharton is funny! Not slap you in the face with a fish funny, but funny.

In the short story Xingu, six society ladies get together regularly to broaden their minds. It's a culture club they've named the Lunch Club. You can't just show up to a meeting and become a member, oh no, you must be recommended by someone important. While each lady has issues with one or more of the other members, they universally agree that Mrs Roby was a mistake. And she came so highly recommended, by a professor no less. Tsk-tsk.

Occasionally, they have in experts to give talks and contribute to the discussion. The ladies are all a-twitter over their next guest, author of The Wings of Death, Osric Dane. Mrs Ballinger will play hostess to the great lady, even though Mrs Plinth has a superior house (with a footman, thank you very much). The big day comes and the author arrives but she looks down her nose at the group leaving the ladies at a loss for words. They don't know what to do, until Mrs Roby starts talking about Xingu.

So what is Xingu? Don't Google it! (like I did) Really, don't. You'll find out what it is eventually. It's a lot of fun reading how the ladies bluff their way through the discussion. It reminds me of those people who lie about reading Ulysses to impress others. Not one of those women know what Xingu is, Mrs Rory excepted, but they are trying hard to convince each other they know exactly what it is.

I've always thought that Edith Wharton was part author, part sociologist. I can imagine her sitting in the background during a party with a notebook murmuring, "Interesting..." to herself as she scribbled notes about all the guests. She has the group dynamic down. Mrs Plinth is the bully, she likes to have her own way. Mrs Ballinger, founder of the Lunch Club, is her biggest competition, even though she only has two parlour-maids. Mrs Leveret will change her opinion to suit her audience, and Miss Van Vluyck and Laura Glade make the remainder of the group. The outsider is Mrs Roby.

Clearly Mrs Roby is the Cady Heron within this group of Mean Girls. However, she has enough confidence in herself to say what's on her mind. When Mrs Plinth tells her "No one reads Trollope now." She replies that she's just started and he amuses her. "Amusement," said Mrs Plinth,"is hardly what I look for in my choice of books." Mrs Plinth would not make a very good book blogger as she "so much disliked being asked her opinion of a book. Books were written to be read; if one read them what more could be expected?" That line made me laugh. I can't help but think that Edith Wharton had personal experience with a Mrs Plinth.

As for Osric Dane, she's one of those insufferable literati who think everyone else is an idiot- think Franzen and Oprah's Book Club. For a moment I was totally in the Lunch Club's corner. Then Mrs Roby has her revenge at last once the topic turns to Xingu.

Xingu is not the usual heavy fare from Edith Wharton and it's a nice change. I recommend it.

MACBETH by William Shakespeare

Original Publication Date: 1623

Earliest Known Performance: 1611

Genre: play, tragedy

Topics: free will, leadership, ambition, war, human nature

(image by brekkers)








Review:

How exactly do you “review” Macbeth? Especially if it’s only the second Shakespeare play you’ve ever read? Surely every original thought about it must have already been published, built-upon, attacked and defended.

Now that I’ve read it, I can finally understand the fuss. If you just want a good story you’ll take great pleasure in the spooky atmosphere and the bloody scenes, if you’re a philosopher you can revel in the Grand Issues like free will, ambition and leadership and if you’re a language buff there’s lots of passages to underline.

Just like with A Midsummer’s Night Dream, I took great pleasure in the words, even though they were more archaic and harder to follow (it’s after all a historical play, set in the 11th century). Here are some great examples, the kind you want to memorize and use to impress people at parties:

Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky

And fan our people cold

I have begun to plant thee, and will labor

To make thee full of growing

Start, hide your fires!

Let not light see my black and deep desires

Infected minds

To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets

Macbeth is the story of a great and respected warrior that once upon a time comes across three witches that give him a vision of the future: he will be King! Macbeth believes them and starts making sure that history bends to this prophecy. Thus begins a bloody chain of events, which starts with regicide, but certainly doesn’t end there.

It’s so spooky that it became a sort of theater-Voldemort: in the acting business it’s only referred to as “the Scottish play”, never by its name, which is said to be CURSED *cue high-pitched violins*.

(credits: Kate Beaton at Hark, a Vagrant!)

The play also has the potential to sparkle great conversations, the type I remember having with friends after watching Donny Darko: would have Macbeth been King, if he didn’t take matters in his own hands? Why didn’t he just sit and wait for the crown to fall on his lap? Was the prophecy just an excuse to bring out everything that was mad and evil in him? What about the Lady Macbeth, another Eve figure, that tempts her man into sin?

Lady Macbeth is an interesting one. She’d also like to be Queen, but knows she doesn’t have the cold blood that’s needed to kill those in her path. And she’s right, because shortly after helping to cover Macbeth’s crime, she rapidly descends into madness and commits suicide. Her power lies in influencing her husband, but even that was too much for her. Still, Lady Macbeth has the best speeches, my favorite being the creepy scene where she asks the spirits to maker stronger, colder… and less womanly:

Come, you spirits

That tend on mortal thoughts! unsex me here,

And fill me from the crown to the toe top full

Of direst cruelty; make thick my blood,

Stop up the access and passage to remorse,

That no compunctious visitings of nature

Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between

The effect and it!

As Macbeth himself becomes insane and more brutal, his speeches also become more frantic, and even more spectacular:

I have almost forgot the taste of fears:

The time has been, my senses would have cool’d

To hear a night-shriek

There weren’t as many insults as in Midsummer’s Night Dream (only “rump-fed ronyon”, “shag-haar’d villain” and “lily-liver’d boy”), but there were many little expressions that I immediately recognize. It was such a great experience to think “So that’s where it comes from!” Examples:

that shalt be king hereafter

“King Hereafter” is the name of a novel by Dorothy Dunnett, about the life of the Scottish King that lightly influenced Macbeth’s story.

To wear a heart so white

“A Heart so White”, is a novel by Javier Marias, which my bookclub read a few years ago.

The weird sisters, hand in hand

“The Weird Sisters”, is a recent and very popular novel by Eleanor Brown

Something wicked this way comes

Same title as a Ray Bradbury novel.

One last thought (and a question): I thought it was very cleaver the way Shakespeare made the prophecy make sense. It’s certainly the same level as most Hollywood twists. Was he the first one to use a “literary quibble“?

Macbeth, as well as all other plays by Shakespeare, is available on Project Gutenberg and on LibriVox (in audio).

This post was also published at The Sleepless Reader.