Sylvia Townsend WarnerCríticas

An odd story, but beautifully written. Laura Willowes, a spinster, who, through childish mispronunciation, became known as Lolly. Set in the 1920s, Lolly rejected the safe, respectable, boring life with her brother and sister-in-law to live in an out of the way village named Great Mop. When she discovers her identity as a witch the story becomes much more interesting.

Sentence after sentence that makes you smile with delight. Very British, very witty, and a countryside I would not mind losing myself in. Besides this, this is a book about suffocating social conventions, women who are not allowed to have lives of their own, space of their own - and about how to win your life and space. I think this is the kind of book it is going to be a pleasure to re-read at some point.

the dominant character in this book is the countryside. it's a very pastoral novel and although the plot and character writing is good to me it felt of secondary importance. weirdly it reminds me of the kinks village green preservation society album. it feels like a paean to the traditional village which never changes - a certain character even says something like once a wood always a wood. weirdly the main character goes through all this effort just to stay still. I loved all the descriptions of the village and the countryside and "traditional living" and it made me want to live it pretty bad. the main story about a woman escaping her forced role etc is also good although I couldn't help thinking "well you're from a rich family and have an income so that's good" but also genuinely I feel like it's not emphasised so much and it only appears really explicitly near the end. idk it's good

Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner was such a cozy and truly delightful read. Crafted in three parts we get to know Laura, Lolly, in the wake of the death of her parents. She’s 28 at the start of the novel, unmarried, and not looking to be. She was extremely close with her father, who was the most recent to die, and her grief absolutely overtakes her. Her older brother and his wife decided they need to take care of her. They want to move her out of their country home, and then to London, which they think will be good for her grief. In doing so they end up (in my opinion) taking advantage of her agreeable state. She spends a lot of time with her nieces and nephews and ends up devoting 20 years in that service.

The first part really covers all of that. And we get a good sense of who her family is and what the Willowes are like. We don’t get hung up in the minutia of the day to day, but you see a lot of love between the family members and also a real disconnect between them. The lines of love and pity are constantly crossed and the family members are very different in terms of what they’re looking for in life or even in their religious and familial directives.

The second part focuses a lot more on Lolly’s coming of age after the 20 year period. She starts to realize how unfulfilled she is. She’s 47 years old and she’s figuring out who she is. It’s kind of an awakening.

The third part deals with the main excitement of the book of which I do not want to spoil, but I would say it escalated quickly and it gets fun and interesting as she continues to come into her own. This is absolutely charming and while the pacing was not always my favorite (and I wanted more of a certain sections than I got) ultimately it felt really special and I’m so glad that I finally read it.

There were really poignant messages of moving on from the wrongs people have done you, and not having to do so through forgiveness. As well as messages of not being good at things even though you want to be, and even though you feel called to a way of life. Lolly is, in so many ways, working against herself constantly… but that’s okay, and that’s realistic.

I would recommend this pretty much to anybody who’s looking for something cozy, with low stakes and enjoyable writing. I did pick this up thinking it was going to be very autumnal and it’s really not. But it didn’t bother me too much. A great feminist classic, though, and we’ll worth

Laura (Lolly) Willowes is an aging spinster, having spent her life first caring for her father and then for her brother’s children. After the ravages of World War I, she sees herself fair on the way to soon looking after her brother’s grandchildren, and she decides that it’s time she did some living for herself. She therefore takes what money she has left (after her brother invested it unwisely, without consulting her) and moves to a remote village, where she soon finds her true self - a witch. But her family isn’t done with her, and when her nephew comes to the village and looks to be taking over her life once again, she calls upon Satan for help…. This short novel from 1926 passed me by for many years; as a good feminist, I knew the name of the author but wasn’t familiar with her work. This is the kind of book that I find I need to be in the mood to enter, otherwise it just seems both bland and overworked in the fashion of the times in which it was written. But if one *does* get into the proper mood for it, it’s a terrific indictment of the place of women, especially surplus women, in late Victorian Britain going through into the post-WWI age and before the Depression. Whether Lolly really is a witch, whether she summons Satan and has long conversations with him, whether what befalls her nephew is planned or accidental, none of this matters; what matters is that Lolly finally can live her own life on her own terms. Recommended.

Wonderful writing and a great 1926 feminist take on witches, the devil, a woman's life of drudgery and obscurity—not outdated in the least, unfortunately, but we're fortunate to have this fabulous novel.

This is such a rich and enjoyable saga about 30 or so years in the history of a convent. There is not one central plot, rather characters come and go, bringing their storylines along with them, some chapters working more like short stories within a longer overall story and setting.

Its highly entertaining in places, though sometimes goes into baffling detail about the workings of a 14th century nunnery. This was all interesting to learn, but I most enjoyed the scheming and secrets and general mayhem between the different characters.

That was one weird novel. It did not start weird though - the first 2/3rds of the novel are a novel about the fate of single women of a certain class at the start of the 20th century. Then the last third comes and ejects all of that out of the window and leaves you wondering if that was meant to be a supernatural tale or a psychological one or if someone somewhere got a bit crazy (the reader? the writer? both?)

Laura Willowes is a dutiful daughter and sister who lives in the countryside with her father and keeps house for him. She is quite happy with her life and independence. Until her father dies and her brothers cannot imagine her living on her own (it is 1902 after all) and she is forced to move to London to play the unwed aunt to her nephews and help run the house of her brother.

If the novel had ended here it would have been a nice albeit short story of the times. But Sylvia Townsend Warner is not satisfied with her heroine loss of self control so Lolly (as everyone calls Laura) starts getting eccentric (isn't that a marvelous word to use when describing someone who is not conforming to the expectations). Everyone is patient with her for awhile - until she meets someone (no, not that way) and decides that her life is her own and she is moving to the countryside - to a new place noone had ever heard of.

And that's where the novel gets a bit... crazy. One way to read it is that the man who helped her throw away the expectations was the Devil. The other way is that our Lolly got a bit touched in the head. Which I usually do not mind in novels but... this one is considered a feminist icon and it just looks a bit weird that the only way for a woman to get free and clear from expectation is either via a deal with the devil or by getting crazy. On the other hand, considering when the novel was set, that may have been really the only possible way for the story to work. If anything, I am surprised her brothers did not try to commit her into a hospital.

So did I like the novel as a whole? I am still not sure. I liked the language and I liked Lolly but the whole thing sounded like a bit of a cheap trick. Of course, I also live almost a century after the book was published and even longer since the time of the action and that is one period I had not read much from. From the little I had read though, that may have been the only way to get a book about a spinster who decides not to do what is expected to be published. And it made me want to read more from the author so there is that.

I'm not quite sure what to make of this book. Set in the 18th century Spain, it starts off with an unlikely event of a seducer being killed by the apparition of the young woman's father, dead in the duel required to avenge the ill-treatment of his daughter. And then things just spiral out of control with travelling to share the news, only to throw the ancestral village into disarray. What the book does highlight is the chasm between the lives of the landowners and those who work on it, and how things can't just stay the same.

Odd collection of rather grim little stories

There was a lot to love in this story but it fell off the rails too often. The first part taking place in England is marvelous - one can feel the frustration and disappointment. It is when the action shifts to Paris that it all becomes too much. The unlikely passion is hard to believe in. The change in social and political outlook is very interesting but again, just a bit difficult to take seriously. I will look for other works by this author as I think she could be a wonderful story-teller.½

I appreciate the feminist POV in this book very much and have marked passages for re-reading and adoration. The themes, the settings, all wonderful and detailed. Oh, and little Vinegar! However, it took me a long time to get through this little volume, and I struggled with keeping my focus increasingly as the book went on. I look forward to reading more by STW, perhaps after I clear my head with some books that won't let me be distracted.

In writing Lolly Willowes, Warner masterfully describes the awakening of Laura Willowes from a single woman being cared for by her family to a woman who takes control of her own life. Laura grows up attached to her father, caring for him and helping to run their household. When he dies, she is expected to live with one of her brothers' families. Because in 1902, an adult woman surely could not live on her own. She spends years living with this family, spending time with her nieces until they also grow up and move on. And there she still is. But a chance encounter with a guidebook about a small village in the country leads her to take control of her own life and strike out on her own, much to the horror of her conservative family.

People in this village that she moves to keep to themselves, but as Laura connects to more and more to nature, she realizes there is magic all around her. The end really takes a strange turn, and while I got what Warner was doing, it also felt a little out of the blue to have Laura make a deal with Satan for her independence and to find that the sleepy town is full of witches!

I'm not sure yet if this book was brilliant or crazy.½

This was the first Book of the Month Club selection, and I was really excited for this. A feminist fantasy from 1926. I was ready to love it.

Spoiler: I didn't.

Most of the book was a rather pedestrian story of an old spinster who gets taken in by her older brother's family after her father's death, and ends up being "Aunt Lolly" to her nieces and nephew in a rather stifling and regimented life. After the next generation is grown, she decides -- to the horror of her relations -- to move to the country.

Now, this doesn't mean it was a bad story, mind. It just wasn't what I was expecting. I did find the first 2/3 of the book rather charming and full of subtle societal commentary on the role of unmarried women in society.

And then there was the last third. Oh boy. That's when things take a left turn fast and it just got downright weird. That's when with little warning, Laura sells her soul to the devil in a storm and it just enters WTF land. I understand the symbolism, I understand the message (hard to miss it as it was basically spelled out the last few pages), but the execution and pacing was just off.

I feel bad basically panning this book, but it just didn't do it for me.

Beautiful dream-like writing. Lolly, one of the 'invisible women,' a forgettable middle-aged spinster, is grateful Satan (who doesn't seem a bad sort really) finds her and women like her interesting and worth "the hunt."

Ok, I loved, loved, loved The Corner That Held Them so I’m about to go on way too long about it. #SorryNotSorry #TLDR

What did I love?

The cover and the title!

The characters!

Yes there are a lot of them. “Innumerable and insignificant” as the author herself wrote, to a friend. I don’t know how she did it, but the author managed to give us a rundown of the first 200-years of the convent of Oby in a mere 24 pages. Then, on page 25 we meet Sir Ralph Kello in 1349, during the Black Plague. The rest of the book is about him and the nuns over a course of only 33 years. During that short period of time there are four different Prioresses: Alicia, Johanna, Matilda, and Margaret. Then we have the various nuns, novices, bishops, baliffs, villagers, laborers, and beggars.

Plot

Even the author says there’s not really a plot. For me, there are many individual “plots” as each character has a specific desire or fear that they go about getting or avoiding.

One character wants a beautiful spire for the chapel, another character wants to be Prioress, another anchoress, another priest…bishop. One has a secret and struggles with being damned and fear of being found out,

There were also several adventures taken…

a journey to York to find a lawyer,
a journey to Brocton to acquire a new hawk where a poem about a gentle giant is discovered
a journey to Esselby to collect rents. On the way, this particular character is introduced to and sings Ars Nova style with a Chaplain and a leper (How cool that we can pull up the Kyrie by Machault on Spotify!) “Again! Let us sing it again!” he cries.
There is drama. A murder. There is scandal. There are rumors, and slander. People go mad.

The Candlemas Cuckoo!!!

The Fish-Pond!!!

The alter-hanging!

The green staff!

All the drama that unfolds after the nuns decide they must hide their gold & silver from the insurgents!!

Structure
I loved how there would be one long paragraph about a new character and then a one-sentence segue into some new situation or drama, such as “It was through him (new character) that the novices began to practice levitation.”

I learned stuff!
I didn’t know anything about medieval times or how convents worked so I found all of it quite fascinating and had to take a lot of notes and look up a lot of words. I had my (paper) dictionary next to me at all times.

I learned about
convents and manor houses and about convents relying on the nuns dowries (ranging from money to a yearly supply of wine), and about the various roles in a convent, prioress, infirmress, treasuress, cellaress, etc.

the importance of receiving relics (one of Magdalene’s tears in a bottle, the tooth of one of the Holy Innocents–I had to Google “Holy Innocents”)

the Interdict of 1208 which was a real thing

composers Machault & Landini

Definitions and meanings I had to look up
harridan , extreme unction, wicket, pursuivant, shrive, he left in a dudgeon, efficacious, contrition, stripes were salutary, cavils, for the nonce, lollardry, Trinity cope, corrodian, custo, dropsy, acedia (accidie), anchoress, retinue, mitre, admonitory end of his crozier, pedantic, laity, confederate tooth, a white sepulchre, music in measure, prolations, triste loysir, mors demoy, the longs (in music), Kyrie, Guillaume de Machaut, sarsenet, verderer, apoplexy, somnolent…

Unfusable – I couldn’t find this spelling in the dictionary or via Google so I’m still not sure what it means.

Aquinas – Still trying to find out what that is. A character puts a letter away in one so it’s not St. Thomas Aquinas. Hmm…maybe he was reading a publication by or about Aquinas so he shoved the letter in the book? Dunno.

Writing – Random blurbs that grabbed me.

The nuns arrived, bright as a flock of magpies.

They would then be able to give an undivided attention to the mortifying tranquility of their lives.

What love is to some women, and needlework to more, litigation was to Richenda.

Dame Cecilia had fits & began to prophesy. This infuriated Richenda, to whom any talk of the end of the world after she had worked so hard and successfully to put the convent on a good footing for the next century, seemed rank ingratitude.

The Bishop was still nursing his wrath.

The Bishop’s approval was not necessary, but after the business of Prior Isabella, no one at Oby was going to risk slighting a Bishop.

For in times of calamity people will do nothing unless they are paid on the nail for it.

All across Europe the pestilence had come, and now it would traverse England, and nothing could stop it, wherever there were men living it would seek them out, and turn back, as a wolf does, to snap at the man it had passed by.

Black Death, a sorcerer travelling from China had shifted the balance of Christendom & killed half the folk in England.

…talking calmly (as one does when all hope is gone).

When a Priest starts manspaining to Dame Blanch: “Pedantic fool!” She thought.

You did not disturb me. A flea bit me in the breast.

Dame Salome didn’t want to be treasurer but they picked her because the position was going to be uncomfortable and Dame Salome is one of those mild, pillowy women who can be squeezed into tight places.

Pernelle Bastable, a bower woman, arrives and scarcely had she done with exclaiming over the delight of being settled and tranquil at last before the horse was saddled and Pernelle hooded for another journey.

Arriving at the Inn, Pernelle takes charge, ordering hot water, chickens, pillows…”It is wonderful what God sends us” remarked Dame Helen. “First a Priest, now a Pernelle.”

A frosty day coming in December scratched one’s eyes, the sunlight was so suddenly brilliant.

Time – No summer is so long, so wide, as the summer before it. Time, a river, hollows out its bed and every year the river flows in a narrower channel and flows faster.

She plunged her smooth hand into the belly of a goose.

The nuns found it hard to conceal their weariness and their disillusionment (for it is disillusioning to discover that compassion stretched out too long, materializes into nothing more than a feat of endurance.

Dame Salome, with one of those flashes of worldly wisdom which at times emerge from very stupid well-meaning people, said: Now we can expect a crop of slanders. For when people do you an injury they always slander you afterwards.

Of all menaces to peace & quiet, a visionary nun is the worst, and when that nun is the novice mistress the worst is ten times worsened.

That is the drawback of being so very sensible: one cannot take counsel because it is against common sense to seek it. The metal of common sense is so lonely and unfusable that for people like Dame Matilda there is no career except to be a tyrant or a superlative drudge.

But then what is a belief? A thought lodges in the mind, will not out, preserves its freshness and color and flexibility like the corpse of a saint: Is this belief or is it heresy.

The tweedle of a wren.

He lacked whatever it is that holds a man to his purpose.

People who allowed themselves to mock at a priest were but half a step from beastly lollardry.

No matter. We are nuns, we don’t think.

In every community there must be someone who is odd man out.

Wasps are the laity of bees.

Sanctimonious old gadfly.

Routine and its slow mildewing of the mind.

He laid out a music-book among the mutton bones and the breadcrumbs.

If Triste Loysir had seemed a foretaste of paradise, the Kyrie was paradise itself. Again! Let us sing it again!

As he lay in bed at the Chaplain’s house: It struck him that every bug in the place must have heard the good news and forsaken the lepers for flesh that was a novelty.

William Holly thinks he swallowed a tiny toad in his salad.

“God’s bones!”

Those experienced in dispair are seldom good comforters, though the world prefers to believe otherwise.

Bible humor

“This is my 7th year as custos of Oby. It’s a long time. At least it is a long time in which to have got nothing done.”

“The patriarch Jacob served seven years for Leah and another seven years for Rachael. And I don’t know that he got much out of it,” remarked Sir Ralph.

This book was written in 1948, but wouldn’t this make a good social media profile?

Perkin de Craye – Bishop. A fat, smooth, proud man with a stammer. Caring only for Our Lady, works of art, ritual, and foreign cheeses.

Shout out to Lory @ Entering The Enchanted Castle for introducing me to Sylvia Townsend Warner vand to Helen @ Gallimaufry for her Sylvia Townsend Warner Reading Week posts.

3.5 stars, rounded up.

Lolly Willowes is an odd little book. I found it a bit delightful in the beginning, but midway through it changes direction and becomes almost another kind of tale. Of the second half, I admit to not being smitten, but in fairness to Sylvia Townsend Warner, she does foreshadow that darker things are coming:

So when she was younger, she had stained her pale cheeks (with a crushed red geranium) and had bent over the greenhouse tank to see what she looked like. But the greenhouse tank showed only a dark, shadowy Laura, very dark and smooth like the lady in the old holy painting that hung in the dining room and was called the Leonardo.

There is a darkness in Lolly Willowes that is almost a mirror image of a holy lady, with everything backward and reversed. Even in her darker passages, Townsend Warner maintains a light, almost frivolous tone, and it is this tone perhaps that temporarily masks the fact that Warner is, in fact, dealing with a very serious issue.

Laura “Lolly” Willowes is a twenty-eight year old spinster. She has been raised indulgently by her father, and cares for him in his last days, so her insignificance and lack of freedom does not impress itself upon her until his passing, when she is relegated to the role of the spinster aunt in her brother’s household.

And Laura, feeling rather as if she were a piece of property forgotten in the will, was ready to be disposed of as they should think best.

Lolly accepts her fate for years, but there is a desire in her to be free, and she rebels against the behavior she sees in her sister-in-law, Caroline, who yielded to Henry’s judgment in every dispute, she bowed her good sense to his will and blinkered her wider views in obedience to his prejudices. That desire for more independence eventually comes into its own, and from that moment this novel becomes an early anthem to feminism.

The manner in which Lolly becomes a free being is unique and unorthodox. I tried to imagine how it would have been received by her original audience in 1926, to no avail. She seems to be saying that the caging of women by men makes any alternative preferable and no price too costly.

Lolly tells us that she does what she does, to have a life of one’s own, not an existence doled out to you by others, charitable refuse of their thoughts.. And, we applaud her while wondering why such an extreme must be necessary in order to obtain the smallest, simplest freedom--the freedom to live ordinary days in your own chosen way, the freedom to enjoy the life you are given.

When I closed the last page of this seemingly light, carefree fantasy, I realized I had read one of the most scathing condemnations of a male dominated society I had ever come across. Perhaps Townsend Warner, like her character, was deceptively gentle, while truly being, as Lolly contends of all women, “how dangerous, how incalculable, how extraordinary they are.”

Most currently pertinent quote (I’m positive I know this man):

He seemed to consider himself briefed by his Creator to turn into ridicule the opinions of those who disagreed with him, and to attribute dishonesty, idiocy, or a base motive to everyone who supported a better case than he.

For sheer lovely, descriptive writing:

The two women sat by the fire, tilting their glasses and drinking in small peaceful sips. The lamplight shone upon the tidy room and the polished table, lighting topaz in the dandelion wine, spilling pools of crimson through the flanks of the bottle of plum gin. It shone on the contented drinkers, and threw their large, close-at-hand shadows upon the wall.

For humor mixed with pathos:

During the last few years of her life Mrs. Willowes grew continually more skilled in evading responsibilities, and her death seemed but the final perfected expression of this skill. It was as if she had said, yawning a delicate cat’s yawn, “I think I’ll go to my grave now,” and had left the room, her white shawl trailing behind her.

I was surprised and delighted by this little gem of a story. It felt as relevant today as it must have been in 1929. Laura Willowes feelings of frustration and dissatisfaction with the limited choices available to her as an unmarried woman are written with a distinctly modern tone, as troubling as that is to read today. The emotions and restrictions felt by this character echo the same arguments women of today are struggling against. The fact that this was written over 80 years ago reminds me of both how much women in our culture have achieved but reinforces how much farther we have to go. Reading this book felt like a little prayer to those women who came before us: we remember you and understand why you pushed the boundaries of your limited lives for the rights to pursue your happiness and we will not forget that the fight is not over.

Oddly satisfying period read about a woman drifting through life until she doesn't. Very chill book given that she ends in a town with a satanic cult -- but very vibrant and pleasing to read.

This is one of those books that was mentioned as in an offhand remark in book discussion I was reading. It seemed intriguing enough, so I had it ordered though inter-library loan by my local library.

On initial thoughts - its very British. Which is to be expected from a book written in 1926 for a British Audience. This isn't a difficult read, but it can be hard to follow if you aren't very knowledgeable about middle class life in Britain in the first part of the 20th century.

But here's the thing - Day to day tasks don't really matter. This is a book about woman taking her freedom, in a life where she has always been kept. Does it matter if you know what Laura is doing on this specific task - not really, just as long that the reader understands she is always busy, with no time for herself.

As for Laura herself, she is mostly an every women- standing in for all the spinsters who find themselves not married and in the care of family. And as a result she is a bit bland, and that is by design. Even at the end of the book, she realizes she wants freedom, from everybody including Satan (who is not quite the deity from the Christian Bible), she still doesn't have much in the way of personality, just that of someone who can do as she wishes without the underlying want.

As for reading it, I'm glad I did. It falls under early 20th Feminism and questions what how society keeps a women vs what a women is capable of. And it rings true in the 21st century, even the wrapping of equality, women still don't make the same as men and are expected to do chores & have a job outside the home. In some ways having even less freedom than in the early 20th century.

Its a good book and a fast read. But it will leave a person thinking.

I love Warner, but boy, I struggled with this one. I liked the first part very much, where she does what she does best: explore the ambivalence of women trapped in their era's expectations and circumstances, how they cope (or don't), and how they struggle to break free. In the mid 1930s, it was probably fairly risky to write a story about a comfortable, handsome, intelligent woman - Sophia Willoughby - in 1848 who has separated herself from a selfish, feckless husband, and borne him two children - who then die horribly of smallpox. Sophia herself occasioned their exposure, by taking them to a lime-kiln to breathe the fumes to improve their health. Once they are dead, she finds she feels almost relieved. This is all more subtle and interesting than it sounds. Then she sets off to Paris, to come to an arrangement with her husband - and suddenly falls in love with his mistress.

It happens abruptly, and inexplicably. Minna Lemuel seems to have almost nothing to recommend her: she is frequently described as shabby, homely, amoral, shiftless, and exploitive, not to mention some uncomfortable Jewish stereotyping. I found it extremely difficult to understand what on earth attracted Sophia to Minna and Minna's talky, thinky, polemical friends. It devolves into far too much descriptive, perseverating, philosophical meandering. All necessary, to some extent, as Warner plonks this all down into the onset of the 1848 revolution in Paris. Now, if you are going to set yourself up to do a historical novel set there, you might do well to remember who and what you are up against: Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. Warner is good, but she isn't that good, and her politics and her art just sit uncomfortably, with various stock characters spouting tediously as Sophia transmutes into a happy, hungry street singer. The subplot involving Sophia's treatment of an illegitimate biracial half-cousin is ugly and comes to a horrific end - but somehow doesn't convince the reader that Warner is seriously bothered by it. The final setpiece on the barricades, Minna's death, and Sophia's plunge into violence is fairly rousing and dramatic, but... well, there's still Hugo looming forever bigger, warmer, better. Warner herself ended up a committed Communist, and the weird ending with Sophia suddenly absorbed by proto-Communist pamphlets is almost laughable.

Well-intentioned, still showing streaks of the insight and emotional sympathy that can engage, but... nope. I'd skip this one.

I found the main character to be annoyingly passive, so had minimal interest in how her life would turn out. Laura, called Lolly by her family, is a well-off spinster and could escape her dreary family any time she wants, but it's 1926 and it's hard for a woman to live independently, so she allows herself to become an indispensable maiden aunt, her individuality ignored. Eventually she escapes to a small village where she is happy until her nephew Tobias arrives and takes over her life. To make Tobias move away, Laura accepts help from an unusual source. I found the ending to be ludicrous, and it made me think even less of Laura. No-one likes a manipulative whiner!

The points this book makes about women's independence may have been relevant and interesting in 1926 when it was first published.

Not as wonderful as Lolly Willowes, but that's a high bar. But it's another beautiful example of what Warner is so great at: ordinary, overlooked, well-intentioned people - spinsters, clerks - who get their shot at breaking out of the trap they have been in most of their lives. Late in life, Timothy Fortune feels a call to take up a missionary's work in a remote south seas island. He is gentle, kind-hearted, and always means well. So are the indigenous inhabitants of the island - who welcome him, and mostly cheerfully and politely ignore him. One adolescent boy, Lueli, is curious about the stranger, hangs around him, becomes fond of him, and Fortune thinks he has a convert. But who has converted whom? For Lueli, in his innocence and pliability, stirs a certain passion in Fortune. And yet... Lueli cannot quite be possessed, and cannot be persuaded away from his deep and lifelong beliefs, to a nearly tragic extent. Fortune must come to grips with his own values, and those of the people he has tried to entice away from theirs, and comes away desolate, yet freed... sort of. In the sequel, The Salutation, we catch up with Fortune as he literally drifts across the planet, taking odd jobs on ships, wandering up and down North and South America. In Maggot, we have Fortune among others, on the fringes of a community. In Salutation, he is mostly alone, crossing huge expanses of harsh, empty country, finally settling in an eccentric boarding house. He confronts his solitude, tiring of dragging a heavy garment of grief that he has not been able to put on and learn to wear. It is searingly, gorgeously sad.

With another pitch-perfect cover by one of Prinzhorn's "insane" artists, murdered by the Nazis.

Even though I was surprised that the Elfin tales did not thrill me (normally I love fairy tales and most versions thereof), the other stories - almost without a single exception - moved me, touched me, and awed me with their deft and economical power. If five stars means "amazing," then, yeah, five stars.

I will go on record right now to say that "Oxenhope" is one of the most beautiful (if not the most beautiful) stories I have ever read. "Total Loss" broke my heart (what's left of it, anyway, after 60+ years of animals in my life); "At the Stroke of Midnight" is sharp, tragic, desperate, and a dark reprise of Lolly Willowes, a novel I cherish. A single half-sentence in "The Red Carnation" made me gasp.

The stories are small in scale, sparely written, often about people (especially women) trapped by their lives and circumstances and their attempts to free themselves. Yet there is a wry, sympathetic narrative tone that keeps them from being merely grim, but instead poignant.

On my shelf of lifetime treasures.

It took me longer than I expected to finish this novel, although I liked it all the way through. In the first half, we see Sophia as a competent, energetic landowner, but the death of her frail children and final breach with her husband leaves her at a loss: what to do now. She sets out to Paris to meet her husband, but ends up drawn to and living with his former mistress, Minna, and witness the 1848 unrest first hand.½