I'm reading one book upstairs and another book downstairs. It works for me.
Much to my surprise they have a lot in common inspite of such different settings.
The Upstairs Book is Mrs Bridge by Evan S Connell.
It's an unusual style; a series of very short chapters, if you can call them chapters. Some are only a few paragraphs. Each one describes an incident; maybe an overhead telephone conversation, or going out for an evening meal with acquaintances, or similar. But they open windows on Mrs Bridge's life as a 'nice' small town American lady in the 1950s, living in a nice house in a neighbourhood and desperately trying to live a nice life with a nice family, and knowing that she is somehow missing something in her efforts to be so correct and polite and right.
It was strongly recommended by a friend who described it as simultaneously very funny and very sad. I'm finding it fascinating.
It's being serialised on Radio 4, but I'm sticking with the book at the moment.
The Downstairs Book is 'The List of Suspicious Things' by Jennie Godfrey.
I think this popped up on a suggestion by Amazon. It appealed to me because it is set in Bradford at the time the Yorkshire Ripper was terrorising women. Again, there is a strong emphasis on 'doing things right', but this time it's not about being a gracious middle class lady, but the grittier life in the terraced houses near the closed and abandoned mills.
Miv's father is thinking about moving the family away as the police having much success in tracking down the Ripper, so Miv and her friend are doing their own investigation so that they can catch him, and she needed move.
We worked in Bradford then, and lived just outside on the road between Bingley and Keighley. I vividly remember what it was like living in the area while the Ripper was at large. We were all scared.
One evening I went with another student to a piano evening run my our piano teacher. We all took turns performing in a sort of informal concert. A woman I didn't know very well was going to give me a lift home (we didn'thave a car), but for some reason she couldn't, or didn't want to, drive all the way. So she dropped me off at a bus stop on Manninggam Lane, beside the cemetery, late on a dark, bitterly cold winter night.
What was she thinking of? I was shaking with cold and fear until, after what seemed like hours, and could have been half an hour at that time, a bus came.
I've never forgotten that night.
I loved The list of suspicious things, it was a great read, thanks gor the tips on my blog.
ReplyDeleteI'm enjoying The List of Suspicious Things too; it sent me right back to those days in and around Bradford.
DeleteHow can people be so unthinking?
ReplyDeleteI do wonder... 45 years on my flabber is still ghasted.
DeleteA very frightening occasion for you. What an unthinking woman.
ReplyDeleteThe whole episode was very odd...
DeleteI loved Mrs bridge. So poignant, the story written in little brush strokes that add up
ReplyDeleteI've only come across that style once before; Kevin Crossley-Hollands books 'Arthur and the Seeing Stone', which was like opening the shutters on a series of stained glass windows .This was much more than a children's book.
DeleteMy goodness, what a scary night! Mrs Bridge: isn't there a companion novel, Mr. Bridge, and was there a movie based on them, called Mr and Mrs Bridge, maybe with Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman? Too late for me to feel like doing a search on it.
ReplyDeleteI've just done a search and you're right. Mrs Bridge was written in 1959, Mr Bridge in 1969. The author, born in 1924, grew up in the 'country club area' of Kansas City so obviously knew exactly what he was writing about.
DeleteThat was a dreadful to do to you. It must have been terrifying. Regards Sue H
ReplyDeleteYes, I'm still astonished by the whole episode. Of course, statistically it was unlikely that anything dreadful might happen, but even so...
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