Can you finish it?

I have set myself a literary project: to tackle Trollope's Parliamentary Palliser series.

I am talking about Anthony, of course, and not Joanna.

Having started and failed to complete any of the Barsetshire Chronicles time and again, why am I subjecting myself to this? I'm not really sure, except that I have a sneaking suspicion that I am missing out. I didn't get on at all well with the misdemeanours of churchmen - but I read The Way We Live Now for the Masters, and enjoyed the satire on high finance and the inevitable parallels that can be drawn with our very own thoroughly modern banking crisis.

I can't help wondering what Trollope would have made of the tabloid hacking scandal.

So I have turned to the Parliamentary novels, about a weakly bound coalition between the Tories and the liberal Whigs. Sound familiar? I have started at the beginning with Can You Forgive Her? (albeit with misgivings, having read the joke titles Can You Stand Her? and Can You Finish It?).

No politics as yet, but an interesting quandary for the heroine as she holds out against marriage as the only destiny for her sex, asking 'What is a woman's life for?'. Seeing friends juggling marriage, motherhood and full time work, I do sometimes worry we haven't come that far. Free childcare for all working parents! I'd vote for that.

Reading List

It was a good Christmas for books, thank you friends and family.

I have already rampaged through P.D.James's murder mystery sequel to Pride and Prejudice, Death Comes to Pemberley. Despite steering clear in general of 'sequels' and other related imaginings as not possibly anything other than second-rate cash-ins that toy unforgivingly and insensitively with the themes of the original, I risked this one - I think due to the genre shift, it seemed safer that my impression and interpretation of the original would remain intact. Brilliant read, although I could have managed without the didactic digression on the history of the jury system and judicial appeals...

The Vintage re-release of Westwood is also a thing of beauty and a joy forever: a lovely matt paperback with lustrous thick cream pages and a evocative front cover. With Stella Gibbons's best known novel Cold Comfort Farm being one of my standard rainy day / 'mean reds' books, I naturally expected similar scouring literary satire and witty, quotable lines. Not so. This is maturer, sadder - as cynical, yet bittersweet and melancholy. Perhaps because it is a later-life novel, perhaps influenced by the impact of the Second World War. Beautiful reflection on infatuation, love and the intersection of seemingly unconnected lives.

Guardian Style has already been dipped into post-prandially over quite a few dinner tables. Finally, I know how to spell Gandhi (never Ghandi) and what the singular form of referendum is.

I am plunged into Claire Tomalin's biography of Jane Austen right now. I love her. Claire Tomalin, I mean, although, of course, also Miss Austen. Her biography of Nellie Tiernan (The Invisible Woman) was, for me, the first to open my eyes to alternative insights to the myth of Dickens, National Treasure. Already, the Austen novels' emphasis on money, class and power is becoming beautifully contextualised and Jane's only just been born.

Back to the sofa, I think, to pick up where I left off...

Insipidity and Intrigue‏

Image originally uploaded to Flickr by shawnzrossi

I have been re-reading Mansfield Park, my least favourite Jane Austen. My favourite is Persuasion, for romance, although Pride and Prejudice is funnier.  

I am finding Fanny Price much less insipid than previously: I am surprised at her wry insight and sly observations, and am discovering that she has a more vivid and animated inner life than I recall. I think this passed me by on first reading, perhaps because I was too young? 

Also, I am noticing inordinate amounts of seduction and intrigue, frequently openly discussed by the characters. Noblemen kidnapping innocent young ladies, unwed mothers, underage elopements, co-habitation, runaway wives and women "under the protection" of men who are not their husbands ... I wonder ... What a fab PhD that would make! 

Have you heard about Rainy City Stories?

It's an interactive literary cityscape project for Manchester: stories for specific areas of the city.

Genius idea. I love the idea of cities as being full of people living in separate, self-contained, self-absorbed orbits, colliding in fleeting moments of human interaction and drama, and then moving on, changed or unchanged as event and temperament dictate.

And I also learned that the poet Jackie Kay lives in Chorlton!

Listen to the Guardian podcast feature.