Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
I have recently read this ready for my next module and really loved it. It was such a funny book filled with amusing characters (especially our main character, Flora) who finds herself falling from riches to rags when her parents die and leave her with a tiny allowance and no property. Set early in the 20th Century , Flora isn't worried about her life changes and plans to go and live with some relatives in Surrey, at Cold Comfort Farm. Her plan is to settle in and change her family, who don't live the life of luxury she does, to live their lives more to Flora's satisfaction. Does she succeed in her task? Well, you'll have to read it to find out the rest of this hilarious plot, with its shocks, mystery and romance!
One of my favourite quotes, which gives a good idea of the atmosphere of the novel - 'Bikki, who had a shocking stammer, talked a great deal, as people with stammers always love to do.'
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Mrs Dalloway is a novel woven from different characters that introduce conflict, parallels and contrasts. Centred around Mrs Dalloway, a middle class wife of a sensible, wealthy man in London, she spends her day planning for a party she is hosting that evening, which is important to her place in London society. Her morning is interrupted by a visit from her childhood sweetheart and she begins to reminisce about her childhood and question her choice of husband. Her daughter, Elizabeth, is a generational contrast to her mother, not wanting to become a sensible man's wife she sees independence in her future by becoming a doctor or farmer.
As these main characters bustle around London, we see them brush past other characters whose lives are unrelated, but are connected in other ways. One such character is the tragic Septimus Warren Smith, whose story I'll leave for you to discover. This novel has an interesting narrative, with its stream of consciousness storytelling and one day setting that is also littered with analepses.
Above is an example of Elizabeth's character who was starting to experience the freedom becoming more accessible to women.
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison is one of the most important authors of our time and one that everyone needs to read. With Beloved Morrison gives a fresh voice to victims of American slavery. The most prominent stories are usually those of slave narratives (fascinating and deeply upsetting reads) but there has been conflict around these and how genuine they are due to a large number of them being written by white, educated people who were told these stories by slaves who have never been taught to read or write themselves. Morrison gives a voice back to the '60 million and more' slaves who were brought over from Africa through the middle passage, many of whom didn't survive the trip due to being packed into shelves, lying down and chained up so that they were trapped in that tiny space having to eat whatever was given to them while lying in their own waste.
The main character is Sethe, whose story looks at her escape from slavery as a heavily pregnant woman and the curses that have stayed with her after suffering the pains of slavery. Her tragic story is based on an actual newspaper story that Morrison found, about a woman driven to extreme actions by the fear of being captured and forced back into slavery.
Beloved's eerie character represents those in the middle passage and the torture they endured as well as being a literal haunting of all that is/has been good and (mostly) bad in the family's life.
A complex novel, some aspects may not be obvious to everyone but the powerful story of this family will teach you a lot about American slavery. This novel is beautifully written and has so much to discuss that I could be here typing for days. If I was to beg and urge you to read anything in your life, this would be it.
Above are two passages. To talk about them properly, again, would take up a lot more space! But the last photo shows a passage from Beloved's perspective, you may not understand her role immediately but when you do it is the clever literary magic that is Toni Morrison!
Thanks for reading this, I hope you are inspired to go of and read one or all of these! I am going to try and make this compilation of my 'book of the week' books (found in my sidebar) a monthly thing, so look out for more amazing reads!
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