Old friends
I have plenty of contemporary crime novels to hand that I am looking forward to reading, and yet these days I find myself more often turning to old friends. I’ve gone back to the novels of Ngaio Marsh and have just enjoyed Singing in the Shrouds, Scales of Justice, Clutch of Constables, Death and the Dancing Footman, and When in Rome. I have to say that she is not in my view the best of the GA writers. In Artists in Crime the middle stretch of the novel consists of interview after interview and she makes the mistake of having most of the characters be really repellent. Her attitudes towards homosexuality have not dated well. I was startled by that in Singing in the Shrouds. And she cannot hold a candle to Dame Agatha for plotting. Her strength lies in description and conjuring up atmosphere, and I think this owes something to her first career as a painter.
I’ve found myself thinking of when I first read her novels. It was the 1980s and I was a postgraduate student living in a bedsit in Birmingham. I can see it as I write this. There was a bed that unfolded from the wall, a small yellow galley kitchen, and a surprisingly cavernous bathroom. It was damp. I was tired of sharing student houses and wanted to live alone, but looking back, I can see that I was often lonely. I did have friends, but writing a Ph.D. thesis is a solitary occupation and it is easy to feel discouraged. Days could easily pass when I didn’t speak to anyone. Now that I think of it, I was far more isolated in those days before the internet and mobile phones than I am now in lockdown.
But then as now it was a comfort to escape into a familiar world with familiar characters and to know that at the end of the book all will be explained and order will be restored. I’ll be ready for more up-to-date reading soon, but just for now old friends are best.
8 Comments
Margot Kinberg
May 27, 2020Isn’t it interesting, Christine, how a book can evoke all of those memories. I’ve had that happen to me, too. No matter how many excellent contemporary novels there are out there, it’s nice to have that connection with the past, and those ‘old friends’ to re-read. And Ngaio Marsh was one of the best.
Christine Poulson
May 27, 2020Yes, there can be something quite magical about coming across a book and remembering where you first read it. And in troubled times, old friends can be very comforting.
Deborah Mainwaring
May 30, 2020What a nice little reminiscence. I have kept a book list since 1972 of anything I have read — just the title and author on a lined narrow spiral-bound notepad (both sides of the page eventually got covered and I moved on to another notepad long ago). Probably something sort of OCD about such a list, but it has the power to remind me of what I was doing in any given year from just looking at that year’s titles. It also shows me my own reading inclinations and patterns and how one book led to the next and the next. And crucially, if I am reading a book that seems vaguely familiar, I can look back (and back) and eventually discover it on the list and can either throw the book aside in exasperation or else re-read it and get a pleasant renewal of interest. What I am absolutely sure of is that my courage in reading difficult or new styles has dwindled with the years and I fall back on comfort reading much more often.
Christine Poulson
May 30, 2020I wish I had thought to do that. With some books I do remember where I read them – Elizabeth Bowen’s Collected Short Stories in Brittany – Michael Connelly in Greece – but it would be good to have a complete record. And yes, it is the same with me – I’m a far less adventurous reader now. Luckily my book group saves me from subsisting solely on a diet of comforting reading.
Susan D
June 2, 2020Thanks for sharing that description of the bedsit, Christine, and your feelings living there. I can just see it, and feel the cavernously uncosy bathroom.
Christine Poulson
June 2, 2020I’ve been thinking how glad I am that I don’t live there now during lockdown. And I feel sorry for the many people who are living in such cramped quarters. That bathroom – can’t remember whether or not there was an electric heater high on the wall – but it was absolutely perishing in winter. I am amazed, looking back, to think that I lived there for four years.
Moira@Clothes in Books
June 16, 2020I know those kinds of memories so well. And very occasionally I feel nostalgic for the person I was when I first read a book, as well as the place.
I probably read Ngaio Marsh at a similar era to you, and was disappointed that they weren’t as good as the Sainted Agatha. But on re-reading them in the past few years, I like them more than I expected while, again like you, having problems with some of the attitudes. The big surprised for me was Surfeit of Lampreys, which I absolutely loved when I was young, and hated this time around!
Christine Poulson
June 16, 2020There will probably be another post on her as I was surprised to have a vivid memory of Death in a White Tie and yet I had completely misremembered a certain aspect of it. And she made a factual error which clearly no-one has corrected in later editions.
Yes, there can be Proustian moments in rereading . . .