Fancy that.

Ellen Page isn't interested anymore.

Listening Valley

I was twelve when I discovered D.E. Stevenson. I had my very first job, cleaning for a neighbor, and on a shelf in her basement sat an old hardcover edition of Celia's House. It was love at first sight.

Ten years have passed since then, and I've reread the story countless times. Its charm deepened last year when I realized that, in Celia's House, Stevenson echoes every particular of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park--a sweet, neglected niece, two vain, flirtatious cousins, a dangerous wooer, a spirited theatrical production, a calm, brown-eyed cousin worthy of any girl's love. Despite Austen's undeniable artistry, though, Celia's House will always hold a higher place in my affections. It's such a lovely story--completely indebted to Jane Austen, but really, really lovely in itself, as well.

I just can't believe it took me a decade to stumble upon its companion. It was like ... unearthing a new Shakespeare. (I'm that devoted.)

Listening Valley can be read on its own, but there is beauty and order in waiting until you've finished Celia's House. And when I really think about it, instead of regretting the years I spent without Listening Valley, I can appreciate how they deepened my love for the companion novel. I knew the original so well, the characters were old friends--reacquainting myself with them through Tonia was a stronger and purer experience because of the space. I'll definitely be scouring London bookshops for this Stevenson, and rereading it just as often as Celia's House.

"Some people might think our lives dull and uneventful but it does not seem so to us. We talked of this and agreed this it is not travel and adventure that make a full life. There are adventures of the spirit and one can travel in books and interest oneself in people and affairs. One need never be dull as long as one has friends to help, gardens to enjoy and books in the long winter evenings."

Query

My sister and I were practicing background music for our grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary party, and she flipped one page too many. Suddenly we were playing "Grace Greater Than All our Sin."

Which brought on unquenchable laughter, and the question: what songs should never be sung at a wedding/anniversary?

Reminds me of that scene in Richard Peck's A Season of Gifts, the shotgun wedding on Christmas day, with the bride obviously pregnant, and the choir singing "Joy to the World," and the narrator observing that a more appropriate selection might have been, "Lo, How a Rose E're Blooming" or "For Unto Us a Child is Born."

The final cut for our grandparents' party includes one precarious choice: "The Merry Widow." It's a lovely classical piece that I refuse to omit--I just hope no one recognizes the tune. Although, on second thought, if they know enough about music to put a name to the notes, they'll appreciate the joke, and will chuckle as they shake their heads at such mischievous grandchildren.

Emma

Have you seen the BBC's new Emma with Romola Garai? I'm watching it bit by bit on Youtube, and though I had my doubts when it was first announced, I am completely captured. It's lovely.

D.E. Stevenson

“It was a very satisfactory friendship, for Barbara profited by it too. Jerry enlarged Barbara enormously. In a new friend we start life anew, for we create a new edition of ourselves and so become, for the time being, a new creature. Barbara had never done this interesting thing before. She had lived all her life in Silverstream and her neighbors were people who had known her from childhood, and therefore had a preconceived idea of her, so engrained, that they never saw her at all, any more than they saw the sponge which accompanied them daily into their baths. In creating a new Barbara for Jerry Cobbe, Barbara created a new facet of herself and was enlarged by it. She had no idea she was doing anything of the sort, of course, and she merely felt that life had become very interesting, and that she, herself, was more adequate to its demands.”

Miss Buncle Married, by D.E. Stevenson

Jellicoe Road

I read it again last night.

Gutted.

Again.

Not as deep as the first time, last summer.

Deeper.

Sometimes I almost wish it hadn't won a shiny sticker, because too many people slurp award books, and Jellicoe should be discovered on a back shelf, turned about, weighed, flipped through, sniffed and then carried toward the door.

All the time I wish I could write like this. This bloody brilliant ... this bloody incandescent. A story that shreds, and people who make you love them so much without even trying, and pull you back again, hand over hand.

"...I'm frightened that one morning there will not be enough to keep me going. Except maybe the pages I'm holding in my hands. They comfort me, these characters, like they're my best friends, too. Like Jude when he returned that second year and they were waiting for him."

And I want to say to people who think they can write YA fiction, read Jellicoe Road. Again and again. You don't just walk into a kitchen and cook. You pore through recipes, your eyes blear over Betty Crocker, you eat and sleep and breathe Julia Child, like that Meryl Streep movie, and then, finally, you set out your ingredients.

So many people say, oh, I've always wanted to write young adult novels. And they have no idea. They even write them, and when I glance through the pages I think of that scene in Sleeping Beauty.

Fauna: I'm going to bake the cake.

Merryweather: You?

Flora: She's always wanted to, dear, and this is her last chance.

Merryweather: Well, ...

Fauna: I'm going to make it fifteen layers with pink and blue, forgive-me-nots ...

Flora: And I'm making the dress.

Merryweather: But you can't sew, and she's never cooked!

Flora: Oh, it's simple.

Fauna: All you do is follow the book.

[Flora directs Merryweather to stand on a chair]

Flora: Up here dear, you can be the dummy.

Merryweather: Well, I still say we ought to use magic.

[Flora throws a sheet of pink cloth above Merryweather and begins cutting with a pair of scissors. Fauna has laid all the ingredients for the cake before her.]

Fauna: [reads from the book] Flour, three cups. [searching] Cups, cups, cups, cups, cups ... [finds three cups of different sizes and uses them to pour flour into the bowl] One, two, three.

[Flora has cut a circular hole into the sheet]

Merryweather: What's that for?

Flora: Well, it's got to have a hole in the bottom.

Fauna: That's for the feet to go through.

Fauna: [still reads from the book] Two eggs, fold in gently Fold? Oh well.

[Fauna puts two eggs into the bowl and starts to fold them in. We hear their shells cracking. Merryweather is completely hulled into the pink cloth]

Merryweather: I can't breathe!

[Flora cuts the cloth open at the top. Merryweather takes a look at the dress from the inside]

Merryweather: It looks awful.

Flora: That's because it's on you, dear.

Fauna: [at her cake] Now yeast, one tisp. Tisp?

Merryweather: One teaspoon!

Fauna: One teaspoon, of course.

I still say we ought to use magic. Read Jellicoe Road.

October Reading Log

Goodness, my reading was prolific this month! Best understood chronologically, from the bottom up.

Jellicoe Road, by Melina Marchetta
Here.

The Baker's Daughter, by D.E. Stevenson
Sweet, but not quite as good as I'd remembered it.

Fat Cat, by Robin Brande
Reviewed here.

Pollyanna, by Eleanor Porter
Very nice; if you like the film, you'll enjoy the story.

Thrones, Dominations, by Dorothy Sayers & Jill Paton Walsh
Excellent Whimsey fare.

First Boy, by Gary Schmidt
An under-the-radar Schmidt. Perhaps rightly so, not as amazing as his other works.

A Brief History of Montmaray, by Michelle Cooper
Reviewed here.

Betsy-Tacy, by Maud Hart Lovelace
Reviewed here.

A Fatal Waltz, by Tasha Alexander
Ditto.

A Poisoned Season, by Tasha Alexander
Love this series.

Relativism: Feet Planted Firmly in Mid-Air, by Francis Beckwith & Gregory Koukl
Excellent and challenging and stimulating.

Wise Blood, by Flannery O'Connor
Astonishing prose and dialect and ... I have no idea what it means.

The Great Gilly Hopkins, by Katherine Paterson
Wow. Excellent.

Tristan and Iseult, by Rosemary Sutcliff
Tragic ... lovely storytelling prose. "The love between Tristan and Iseult would not let them be, dragging at them as the moon draws the tides to follow after it, until at last, whether they would or no, they came together again."

And Only to Deceive, by Tasha Alexander
Quite delightful. Less brazen than Lady Julia, just as intriguing.

Jacob Have I Loved, by Katherine Paterson
The woman sings her prose. Yes, the bit where Sara Louise falls in love with the Captain's hands still willied me, even though I'm not twelve any more, but I was able to appreciate the story this time. How does Paterson know me? Thinking her mother has thrown herself away by staying on the island, and then slowly, seeing and understanding when she goes away to the Appalachians... Brilliance.

Hebrews, James, I Peter, II Peter KJ Bible