“We're so busy resigning ourselves to the inevitable that we don't even ask if it is inevitable. We've got to have courage, to take our future into our hands. If the law is oppressive, we must change the law. If tradition is obstructive, we must break tradition. If the system is unjust, we must reform the system.”

This is a classic novel set in a village in Yorkshire, the author’s home county, first published in 1936 after Holtby had died at age 36 of kidney disease. The book takes in a range of issues such as local politics, socialism, poverty, and the impact of the war and the influenza pandemic. It also has a colourful array of characters: the village councillors, in particular, the feisty female alderman Mrs Beddows, the straying minister Huggins, and returned spinster school ma’am Sarah Burton. Holtby describes the villagers with wit and charm reminiscent of Jane Austen.

Sarah is a strong, feminist character with modern ideals and a zest for life, who finds herself attracted to Robert Carne, a struggling conservative upper class landowner who is battling with the financial challenge of maintaining his estate, dealing with his institutionalised wife and with his own failing health. Sarah deals with her own work-related challenges: a frustrated scientist become science teacher, a talented student whose impoverished home situation steals her opportunities, and Robert’s turbulent daughter Midge.

I loved the writing in this book. Strangely I usually detest writers that use tell instead of show techniques but this story illustrates that it can be done well with some humour and insight. I have not seen the TV mini-series connected with this, but am now inspired to do so. What a shame this author’s life was so tragically cut short, she seems like a fascinating person. ( )

As part of my Pulitzer winners project that I neglected for too long, I read Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea today. I finally read this famous novel that won the prize in 1953.

This is the story of the old man Santiago, an old and very poor fisherman who lives by himself in a ramshackle hut and has only one friend, the young Manolo, who Santiago has taught how to fish. Since the old man seems to have run out of luck and catches practically no fish anymore, Manolo’s parents have forbidden him to accompany the old man at sea again.

Then one day when Santiago is alone at sea he catches the biggest swordfish he ever saw and what follows is his battle with the fish and his terrible struggle to get back home.

The big swordfish is a character in itself, as is the sea in a way. I liked it and can see why it is widely seen as a masterpiece. And where I shy away from Hemingway in his writings about killing animals by hunting or “entertainment” like bullfighting, here I could stomach it because fishing is this old man’s only livelyhood.

Written in Hemingway’s sparse style which succeeds in conveying emotions all the same, a sign of great penmanship. And all the big themes like endurance, the battle between (wo)manhood and nature, loyalty, suffering made for a compelling read.

A glorious tapestry of lives and ambitions, populating a small community over two years with their loves, intrigues, greed, and tragedy. Punctuated by occasional speechifying. Over the whole thing hangs the knowledge that Holtby was gravely ill and only finished the novel a month before she died. ( )

This felt a bit like an updated Trollope. It had been on my To Be Read list for a long time. I'm very glad I finally got to it. Good characters (something I'm always looking for). Interesting look at small town politics in Britain between the wars. A good read, though not a quick one. ( )

Full disclosure: I began [South Riding] in mid-August this year of covid, 2020, and I have only finished it now at the end of November. Why did I put it down? Because of the times we are in and my own state of mind, yes. In earlier days (what we call "Before Times" around here) I would not have put it down, although, as I will get to, I would note the shift in tone about 2/3rds through the book and I would add that the shift disappointed me. It's a curious feature of novel-writing that you write along mining a vein for awhile, but then you come along to, exactly as in real life, a crucial moment when a choice must be made and what you then, as the writer, decide your characters will do or how they will react to an event (even if you choose to say, "the character made me do it") the book will definitively move into a final direction. Sometimes the shift is highly original and intriguing, or breathtaking, expanding outward into the unknown, at other times, there is a failure of nerve or imagination and the protagonist doesn't take the leap, choose to fold back on his or herself, there are thousands of ways these choices can play out so that sometimes the choice to fold inward, becomes (somehow) an expanding outward. This, is, I think what Holtby intended and that is pretty much exactly where I put the book down, overwhelmed. Embedded within this story of a town in Yorkshire, the new headmistress of the girl's school, the town council and the growing pains in the early 1930's of the area. is a love story. Well, several love stories, but only one is central. Robert Carne, the local squire, wants to maintain things as they are, but his life is a mess, his wife mad and requiring housing in an institution. She is a true aristocrat (whereas Carne is of the olde landed gentry ilk and this marriage was a disaster for all concerned.) He runs his farms well, but the expenses of his wife's care have ruined him. Schemes abound but Carne, caught up in his belief in his way of life, cannot see that he must change, compromise orlose. Two women adore Carne, an older woman, Mrs. Beddows, also a Councilwoman and the new headmistress who reluctantly falls in love with him. The best story here, the most original and moving, is the love Mrs. Beddows holds for Robert Carne, twenty years her junior. I went back to the novel at last for her sake. There is a moment where she admits to the younger woman, the headmistress, that her love for Carne has been confusing, that you look in the mirror and see three score and ten, but inside you're just a girl. I'm old enough now to know that and know how poignant an emotion that is. Well worth reading, this novel. Worth also knowing that Holtby was dying as she finished this, her last, and I do think the choice she made, to turn inward, was part of her own reconciliation with her approaching death. ****1/2 ( )