Omega
Post by beth on Jun 1, 2013 16:42:58 GMT -5
But interesting to me as well so others might like it.
Both these reviews are about books written by Jill Paton Walsh. My interest was peaked about the book in the 2nd review by its mention in the first review. Not sure that makes sense but I think you'll see what I mean by reading both reviews. I, personally, enjoy books that are set in places with which I'm familiar. So, Mouse, I think, if you haven't already read these you might want to try them.
+++++++++++++++++
1) Fireweed by Jill Paton Walsh (1970)
Review by Lucy Mangan (see link below)
I hesitated over this choice for two reasons. The first was that I love another of Jill Paton Walsh's books just as much. A Parcel of Patterns is a masterly tale based on the true story of a Derbyshire village that isolated itself from the rest of the world when the plague arrived there, letting nobody leave until the disease had run its course. At the time of its first publication, the Guardian hailed it as "a pocket masterpiece", and no one should disagree. But then I thought I could just mention its brilliance in the first paragraph and get around the difficulty of choosing that way.
The second reason, however, was that I discovered the author is no longer terribly enamoured of Fireweed. Last year, I was at a lecture in Cambridge and at a gathering afterwards someone pointed out Jill Paton Walsh to me. I had had just enough white wine to give me the courage to tell her how much I loved the book. I didn't go into too much detail but if I had I would have explained that the gradual unfolding of the love story between Bill, an unhappy evacuee during the second world war who returns to London to fend for himself until his soldier father comes home, and Julie, a fellow fugitive whom he meets while sheltering in a tube station during an air raid, was the first time a book had caught me off guard.
As the blitz shatters London around them, Bill's feelings for Julie deepen and flourish like the fireweed that takes root in the bomb sites all over the city. When Julie is eventually injured and hospitalised, her parents find her and the intrusion of adults and their all-consuming concerns about class and propriety, destroy Bill's fragile idyll.
The author listened to whatever idiotic fragments of introduction and explanation made it out of my mouth and then proceeded to tell me briskly (I remembered then that she had been a teacher before turning to writing for a living) that she did not like the book at all any more, that the parents' intervention was crass ("They seemed to come from another book") and that although she had considered it all right at the time, she now looked on it more or less as juvenilia.
Suitably chastened, I slunk away. But now I have re-read the book, I find that my marginally mutinous teenage self is stirring and I wish to say - so what? A book belongs as much to the reader as to the author and, even if it as much to restore it to myself as to offer it to you, I will still put it proudly on this bookshelf and hope that all those who take it down at an age when romantic longings are still outpacing critical faculties, will find it as illuminating, moving and satisfying as I did.
www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jun/20/lucy-mangan-book-corner
2) An Amazon review - A Parcel of Patterns by Jill Paton Walsh (1992)
"A parcel of patterns brought the plague to Eyam. A parcel sent up from London to George Vicars, a journeyman tailor, who was lodging with Mrs. Cooper in a cottage by the west end of the churchyard.
So begins Mall Percival's account of how her village of Eyam struggled against the plague. George Vicars dies on September 6, 1665, and by the end of October, twenty-five more townsfolk have been buried. As the deaths continue, the villagers, including Mall, begin to panic--helpless to fight off the disease. Uncertain as to how it is contracted and passed from one person to another, Mall forces herself to make a sacrifice that radically changes her life--she decides to stops seeing Thomas Torre, a man from another village, the man she hopes to marry. In June of 1966, at their minister's urging, the entire village makes a pact to protect those who live in the surrounding countryside by staying within the boundaries of Eyam.
Although Mall longs to see Thomas, she remains steadfast in her resolution, until one day Thomas runs into the center of Eyam, knowing that he will not be allowed to leave, yet fearing that Mall has died. Mall and Thomas marry, but their happiness is short-lived. Finally, in October of 1666, the pestilence subsides. Mall, overwhelmed by grief and sorrow, decides to write a chronicle of all she has witnessed in Eyam, hoping that it will set her free.
Both these reviews are about books written by Jill Paton Walsh. My interest was peaked about the book in the 2nd review by its mention in the first review. Not sure that makes sense but I think you'll see what I mean by reading both reviews. I, personally, enjoy books that are set in places with which I'm familiar. So, Mouse, I think, if you haven't already read these you might want to try them.
+++++++++++++++++
1) Fireweed by Jill Paton Walsh (1970)
Review by Lucy Mangan (see link below)
I hesitated over this choice for two reasons. The first was that I love another of Jill Paton Walsh's books just as much. A Parcel of Patterns is a masterly tale based on the true story of a Derbyshire village that isolated itself from the rest of the world when the plague arrived there, letting nobody leave until the disease had run its course. At the time of its first publication, the Guardian hailed it as "a pocket masterpiece", and no one should disagree. But then I thought I could just mention its brilliance in the first paragraph and get around the difficulty of choosing that way.
The second reason, however, was that I discovered the author is no longer terribly enamoured of Fireweed. Last year, I was at a lecture in Cambridge and at a gathering afterwards someone pointed out Jill Paton Walsh to me. I had had just enough white wine to give me the courage to tell her how much I loved the book. I didn't go into too much detail but if I had I would have explained that the gradual unfolding of the love story between Bill, an unhappy evacuee during the second world war who returns to London to fend for himself until his soldier father comes home, and Julie, a fellow fugitive whom he meets while sheltering in a tube station during an air raid, was the first time a book had caught me off guard.
As the blitz shatters London around them, Bill's feelings for Julie deepen and flourish like the fireweed that takes root in the bomb sites all over the city. When Julie is eventually injured and hospitalised, her parents find her and the intrusion of adults and their all-consuming concerns about class and propriety, destroy Bill's fragile idyll.
The author listened to whatever idiotic fragments of introduction and explanation made it out of my mouth and then proceeded to tell me briskly (I remembered then that she had been a teacher before turning to writing for a living) that she did not like the book at all any more, that the parents' intervention was crass ("They seemed to come from another book") and that although she had considered it all right at the time, she now looked on it more or less as juvenilia.
Suitably chastened, I slunk away. But now I have re-read the book, I find that my marginally mutinous teenage self is stirring and I wish to say - so what? A book belongs as much to the reader as to the author and, even if it as much to restore it to myself as to offer it to you, I will still put it proudly on this bookshelf and hope that all those who take it down at an age when romantic longings are still outpacing critical faculties, will find it as illuminating, moving and satisfying as I did.
www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jun/20/lucy-mangan-book-corner
2) An Amazon review - A Parcel of Patterns by Jill Paton Walsh (1992)
"A parcel of patterns brought the plague to Eyam. A parcel sent up from London to George Vicars, a journeyman tailor, who was lodging with Mrs. Cooper in a cottage by the west end of the churchyard.
So begins Mall Percival's account of how her village of Eyam struggled against the plague. George Vicars dies on September 6, 1665, and by the end of October, twenty-five more townsfolk have been buried. As the deaths continue, the villagers, including Mall, begin to panic--helpless to fight off the disease. Uncertain as to how it is contracted and passed from one person to another, Mall forces herself to make a sacrifice that radically changes her life--she decides to stops seeing Thomas Torre, a man from another village, the man she hopes to marry. In June of 1966, at their minister's urging, the entire village makes a pact to protect those who live in the surrounding countryside by staying within the boundaries of Eyam.
Although Mall longs to see Thomas, she remains steadfast in her resolution, until one day Thomas runs into the center of Eyam, knowing that he will not be allowed to leave, yet fearing that Mall has died. Mall and Thomas marry, but their happiness is short-lived. Finally, in October of 1666, the pestilence subsides. Mall, overwhelmed by grief and sorrow, decides to write a chronicle of all she has witnessed in Eyam, hoping that it will set her free.