Park Lane – by Frances Osborne

Presented as the interweaving stories of Grace-the-maid and Lady-Beatrice-the-reluctant-and privileged-daughter, on face value Park Lane looks like it's jumping on the back of the revived popularity for 1910s pomp, as exemplified by the recent TV hits Downton Abbey and Upstairs, Downstairs.

That’s fine, but there were two other factors that drew my attention to this book. First, it is written by Frances Osborne (wife of George Osborne, and author of The Bolter: a 2008 biography of her great-grandmother Idina Sackville, who ‘bolted’ to Kenya with other women’s husbands), and second, it appears to be about the fight for women’s suffrage.

I say ‘appears to be’ because Park Lane is very much a book of two halves, which seemingly bear little resemblance to each other, save for a recurrence of the main characters; although they themselves bear little resemblance to their earlier versions. But perhaps that’s what enduring a world war will do to you.

The first half of Park Lane is a frustrating read. It’s a slow trudge through the pages, despite what should be a fascinating read. Lady Beatrice becomes wrapped up in the forefront of the militant suffragettes with extraordinary speed, thanks to her rebellious aunt Celeste. Lady Bea keeps this secret from her family, most of all her mother, who also wants women to win the vote – but not at any cost. Downstairs, new maid Grace has ideas of becoming a secretary and instead pretends to her family in Scotland that she is one, while secretly carrying on as a lowly maid… albeit one who steals a Friedrich Engels book for her socialist brother.

All of that could have been an exciting page turner, but instead it feels like a clumsy trawl through disjointed sentences and clunky speech. And, in the exact opposite of what I’d expect from a page turner, I found myself physically wanting to read it, but mentally desperate to do anything but read it. Strange.

But I ploughed on and got to the second half, at which point war had broken out and the characters had undergone a dramatic reinvention. As had Osborne’s writing, which now picked up pace, became engaging and absorbing, and finally I got the page turning story I’d been after 200 pages previously. Although it remains hard to reconcile the characters in the second half with their first half versions – Grace loses her vim, Lady Bea fades into a wet fart, and what of the campaign for suffrage? Never far from the pages of the first half, the fight for female emancipation has vanished from the second half of Park Lane. While I know that Mrs Pankhurst asked her troops to call a halt to activity during the war, it still struck me as strange that the feistiest of her army would suddenly never mention the campaign again… not even in the 1918 chapter: the year that women over 30 were granted the vote.

The chapters following Lady Bea into the secret suffragette offices of Lauderdale Mansions are among the most exhilarating for me – conjuring up what the smell, noise, pace and atmosphere of the place must have been, and the majesty surrounding Mrs Pankhurst. But, inexplicably, the suffrage story vanishes from the pages of Park Lane as quickly as Lady Bea manages to rise to a position of suffragette respectability. Most infuriating.

But not as infuriating as the conveniently neat way in which the lose ends are all tied up at the end of the book. Which takes away from any vague credibility the plot had. 

While Park Lane was an enjoyable enough read once I’d pushed through the first 200 pages, I struggled with the implausibility of the two main characters throughout, and the treacly writing, which at times was a joyless trudge. After the unmitigated pleasure of reading The Bolter, I’d hoped for better from a suffrage novel by Frances Osborne.

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Here’s a link to the inimitable John Crace and his digested read of Park Lane.

Although, even more fun can be had by having a read of Julie Birchill’s review of ParkLane, which is a hoot. “Seriously, I've come across paper dolls with more depth than this crew.”

Fifty Shades of Subtlety

Just as you don’t need to be talented to be celebrated these days, you don’t need to be any good at writing to be a bestselling author. This was increasingly in evidence throughout seven instalments of the Harry Potter books (though I forgave JK Rowling, owing to the millions of children in whom she inspired a love of literature), and is painfully on show in the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy.

I’ve only read one of EL James’ three books, by the way – Fifty Shades of Grey. Life’s too short for the rest of the series, and my brain was numbing up. More than my exhaustion from reading the shoddy writing, I simply didn’t give a phlegmatic cock what happened to the implausible characters.

But I’m still glad I read Fifty Shades of Grey, if for no other reason than it’s a pretty funny book. And here are my top ten reasons why:

10 – On page 26 of the book, anti-hero Christian Grey goes into the HARDware shop where the object of his lust, Anastasia Steele, works. What does he do in the HARDware shop? He buys cable ties and masking tape while COCKing his head in the SCREW aisle. Subtle.

9 – Anastasia falls head over heels in lust with the mysterious Grey. He charms her with his good looks, immense wealth and mysterious ways. Here’s a genuine sentence from the book describing how she sees him: “His voice is warm and husky like dark melted chocolate fudge caramel… or something.”

8 – We are told – on no less than four occasions throughout the book – that Christian smells of “freshly laundered linen and some expensive body wash”. This much-repeated phrase conjures up an olfactory image of Bold 2in1 and Java by Lynx in my mind’s nose. Sexy. (See also: “Oh my… Sweat and body wash and Christian. It’s a heady cocktail. So much better than a margherita.”)

7 – The night before Christian finally seduces virginial Anastaia, she goes out and gets steaming drunk, and calls him from the stinky toilets of a bar. Being her knight in shining armour, Christian comes to rescue her from the toilets… and she thanks him by vomming all over his expensive shoes. Yet still he boffs her the next night and buys her a laptop. Romance is not dead.

6 – EL James has a fascinating choice of adjectives at her disposal. For instance, we learn that Christian talks “phlegmatically” and that he “quirks” his eyebrows. My favourite metaphorical moment in the whole book, however, is when Anastasia blushes “the colour of the Communist manifesto”. That’s literature that is, right there.

5 – Despite his wealth, none of Christian’s clothes fit properly. Throughout the book, we are repeatedly told that his grey linen trousers are hanging off his jutting hips “just so”. Doesn’t that make you want to mother him?

4 – During the sexy bits, an extraordinary amount of page space is devoted to the removal of each other’s Converse trainers and socks. I’m not making it up.

3 – When the characters (aged 21 and 27) choose to listen to music, they listen to such contemporary artists as Snow Patrol, Bruce Springsteen and Kings of Leon. It’s like EL James rang my dad (73) and asked him to name drop a few bands that the young people like these days.

2 – Without the Fifty Shades of Grey series, we would never have met Anastasia’s inner goddess. I like to think of the ever-present inner goddess as a Tinkerbel-lite figure… ie, if we all believe in her, she WILL exist. Even better, her inner goddess is constantly at war with her subconscious, meaning that we have three female heroines for the price of one. But which would win in a fight?

1 - However, the best sentence in the entire book is this one: “My heartbeat has picked up, and my medulla oblongata has neglected to fire any synapses to make me breathe.” I’m not making it up. I promise, hand on heart, that that is a genuine, unadulterated sentence from the book. In fact, EL James is so pleased with her use of the term “medulla oblongata” that it’s not long before it cracks a second mention. (Medical ignoramuses will be turned on to learn that the “medulla oblongata” is the part of the brain that controls breathing and vomiting. It’s true. I checked on Wikipedia.)

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Of course, I’m being flippant. Fifty Shades of Grey is badly-written, populist tripe that’s benefitted from a great marketing campaign. And just as Oasis became famous because everyone bought their records when they heard everyone else was buying their records, people are buying Fifty Shades of Grey because they don’t want to be left behind. Hell, I only read it because everyone else was, so who am I to talk? Exactly.

PS – I’ve deliberately avoided mentioning the many reasons why this book is a feminist’s worst literary nightmare. The contracted ownership, coupled with the stalking, mental and physical abuse, and more… it’s appalling to see the mainstream acceptance of such behaviour in 2012, at a time when we should be further ahead than ever in putting an end to this degrading treatment of women. But there are many other people, far better qualified than me to speak on such matters, who have already written about this so well in relation to these books.

A book from beyond the grave

My mother and I are different in many respects. While we’re very close, we agree we have few shared interests. She likes to travel alone to far-flung corners of the globe; I like coupled-up holidays in sunny spots. She has no qualms about building a cupboard from scratch; I think I’ve achieved the same if I assemble a flatpack shelf. But one thing we do share in common is a passion for old-fashioned women’s novels of the type republished by Persephone. What’s extra pleasing is that this is an enthusiasm that was also passed down from her mother, who died in 1978 just before I was born. 

So my mother and I swap and gift Persephones, Bloomsbury Classics, Virago Modern Classics and original Penguin paperbacks (among others). We read and talk about authors like Monica Dickens, Rachel Ferguson, Dorothy Whipple, Noel Streatfeild and more. We think we’re up to date if we’re reading Diana Athill.

When my grandmother died, my mum inherited boxes of her books, most of which fitted the above category. And over the past 34 years, these books have been shuffled around – between bookshelves, bedrooms, homes and sometimes – on an ill thought through whim – to the charity shop, only to be regretted. Some of the books we’ve read and loved, some we’ve thought: ‘What was she thinking?’ But to me, who never knew my grandmother, they offer a glimpse into her interests, and her way of life: most of these books were contemporary novels at the time she bought and read them. As an added bonus, some have handwritten inscriptions in.

And then something happened.

My mum was rearranging the bookshelves last weekend, creating a library of women authors in my old bedroom. And in the process of transferring books from several rooms to one, she leafed through some crumbly Angela Thirkell books (seemingly my grandmother’s favourite author, judging by the quantity of her books that we have) and two very old picture postcards fell out. They were addressed to my grandmother and sent by her next-door neighbour (who was on holiday at the time) in the early 1950s. This being the era when the postcard ruled, they contained mundane messages asking her to leave a particular pot in a safe place, and something to do with the bins. But added in a corner, in pencil, as an afterthought, was a recommendation for a book: A Picnic In The Shade by Rosemary Edisford. There was no comment about it, just the title and author.

Taking this as a sign, my mum went to Amazon and tracked down a second-hand copy (the book is long out of print), and is now eagerly awaiting its arrival. We’re both very excited, and my mum is firmly convinced that it will be a most enjoyable book – one that we will later deliver to Persephone for them to reprint, along the lines of the Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day story. 

I can find little information about Rosemary Edisford online. A Picnic In The Shade is listed on Amazon as her only book, however Google tells me she wrote a short story for the New Yorker in 1961 and possibly a guide to the saints. I’d love to know more about her. I’m intrigued and keen to romanticise this note from 60 years ago…

Once the book arrives and we’ve read it, I’ll report back. In the meantime, if you happen to know anything about Rosemary Edisford, please let me know.

A Little F’d Up

It’s hard to decide what I like best about A Little F’d Up: Why Feminism Is Not a Dirty Word. Is it that the author, Julie Zeilinger, wrote this when she was just 18? Is it that Seal Press had the good sense to take a chance on a teenage feminist blogger and ask her to write a book? Is it that the resulting book is a damn near perfect example of what a book explaining feminism to teenagers should be? It’s probably all three. That and the fact it’s peppered with phrases like: “And that’s when the shit hit the fan.”

Julie started her blog, The F Bomb, in response to her own interest in feminism, and it rapidly grew into a platform for others to share and contribute ideas and articles. It’s a great space, and well worth checking out. Sure it has a US focus, as does A Little F’d Up, but then Julie is American, so what did you expect?

Split into six sections, the book opens with a lengthy and excitable exploration of the feminists who came before us, and leaves no stone unturned. What comes across is Julie’s enthusiasm for our feminist foremothers, and the reasons why she wants her readers to understand why it is so important to acknowledge and celebrate what’s already been done, and how we can use that to inform what we do in our own feminist activism. An approach I wholeheartedly agree with.

After having introduced her readers to the cream of the US feminist crop, Julie marches on to explain why feminism has a PR problem (and how to get around it), why the ‘us vs them’ philosophy is never going to work, the problems (and strengths) of internet feminism, some stark facts about global misogyny (FGM, sex trafficking etc), and also why feminism is the answer to every teenage girl’s problems.

The world has been crying out for a damn fine book, written by a sassy and clued-up teenager, about feminism for teenagers. Sure, Michaels Kimmel and Kaufman authored a great book last autumn called The Guy’s Guide to Feminism (also by Seal Press) but, as the name suggests, that’s geared more to steering our brothers along a supportive path. And there are several good books introducing feminism to women in their 20s or 30s, but these can seem alienating to teenage readers. More than anything, as Julie understands, the PR problem that feminism is irrelevant can be lessened by explaining to teenage girls exactly why feminism IS relevant to them. Because, heck, are they going to need feminism to get them through university, work and life.

PS – If you’re after a more UK-focused book to introduce young girls to the joy and power of feminism, keep an eye out for my upcoming review of The Exciting Life of Being a Woman, by Feminist Webs (HammerOn Press).