A Room with a View
E.M Forster
I was surprised that a book written and set in the Edwardian period could be so flipping relatable. The story begins with Lucy Honeychurch accompanied by her infuriatingly dull cousin Miss Bartlett arriving in Florence for a holiday. Lucy is disappointed and Miss Bartlett is mortified when they find themselves in a room with absolutely NO view and not only that but the room is also very much decorated in the English style (I was visualising the 1908 equivalent of a hotel room full of union jack memorabilia) and that the Signora who runs the boarding house is actually a COCKNEY. Lucy is armed with her Baedecker guide book (the 1908 version of lonely planet) it tells her what to see and which Art pieces are worthy of being admired, this reminded me of my own trip to Florence when I was nineteen, going to the Ufizzi Gallery with the sole purpose of seeing Botticelli’s Birth of Venus then leaving the gallery almost immediately to go to the Galleria dell’Accademia to see Michaelangelo’s David, like Lucy failing to appreciate anything beyond what I was “supposed” to appreciate. Forster is definitely poking fun at the British tourist.
Some of the people Lucy and Miss Bartlett meet on their trip include Young Mr Emerson and Old Mr Emerson, who I imagine MUST be Northerners (you know the type you meet on holiday) they’re over familiar but good natured enough though mistrusted by Miss Bartlett for being uncivilised and socialist and secretly admired by Lucy for those very reasons. Mr Beebe the good natured and fair clergyman. Miss Lavish who likes to pretend she’s woke and a revolutionary, well, but very much gives privileged woman who moves to East London because it’s “’trendy” but is secretly afraid of poor people vibes and the truly rotten Mr Eager. So the first half of the book is set in Florence and in the second they go back to England.
Look at Me
Anita Brookner
I started this book on such a good footing, the book begins by introducing us to Francis who I instantly liked, she works in a hospital Art Library and her favourite piece is Melancholia by Dürer (also one of my favourites, I even wrote about the piece for my university dissertation), her best friend is called Olivia (SNAP.) So I instantly felt that me and Francis were going to get along quite well. The book is about the toxic friendship Francis forms with a doctor who works at the hospital and his wife but more than that it’s about loneliness. This is my first Brookner and having now read more about who she was, it’s clear she was a very inspirational person, Anita was the first woman EVER to hold the Slade Professorship for Art History at Cambridge University then after a long and successful academic career Brookner wrote her first novel at the age of 53. A Start in Life was written in 1981 and Brookner ended up writing 23 more books, shocking everyone in 1984 when she won the Booker Prize for her novel Hotel Du Lac (I must read this next.) However Brookner came up in a time when it was one or the other, career or family, she forged the way for women to have it all but that wasn’t her own reality and from what I’ve read about her writing, that sadness at not being able to have it all, permeates through her work.
Insastiable
by Daisy Buchanan (narrated by Charley Clive)
I listened to book this on Audible
On a positive note. I loved the cover Art, I thought the narration by Charley Prose was brilliant and I felt the writing did flow, I just didn’t really like the story. The story was actually kind of similar to Look at Me by Anita Brookner in the sense that it was about a main character, Violet, who gets involved with a couple. This book had a lot of sex, almost too much sex. I’m not a prude but it just felt unnecessary at points because it added nothing to the story. I mostly chose to read this book because I love the authors podcast (You’re Booked ), I was not expecting what was essentially well written 50 Shades of Grey. Furthermore, the sex just wasn’t very sexy, it was actually quite cringe at points and some of it seemed logistically questionable.
and finally my poem of the month
Jenny kiss’d Me by Leigh Hunt [1838]
Jenny kiss’d me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,
Say that health and wealth have miss’d me,
Say I’m growing old, but add
Jenny kiss’d me.
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