📚 'Rather Dated' January: E. Nesbitt: 'The Lark' 📚

Ooh yes, I think it was. I really liked liked it.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie was the film The Holdover? I watched it at Christmas too - really liked it.

This looks like a lovely discussion…

I believe you - it’s me I’m worried about, not you!

We’re all very nice really, Remus! 😂

I’d love to be able to attend the Persephone Day in April but unfortunately the logistics aren’t going to work. I did attend a few events at the Persephone Festival a couple of years ago and enjoyed that very much.

I can’t do Bath, but really, really hope to brave a meet up at some point, if somebody will promise me a hand hold!

yes, I liked Saplings too. But weirdly I haven’t read any of Noel S’s children’s books.
I would have really liked a day out in Bath at the Persephone day. I wanted to go last year too, but both times I’m out of the country. Bah. I’ll try and arrange my life a bit better next year.

You certainly tried Remus!
One thing I like about books written during or straight after the wars is the under lying sense that everyone had their own war - good or bad. I thought The Lark showed the delicate tip toeing, not assuming, waiting for volunteered information very well.

Anyone fancy a day in Bath for the Persephone book day? It's a bit thin this year but I booked a couple of things and will sack Bath interiors shops.

I mostly enjoy being surrounded by people like yourselves and the random friendly conversations.

I love Noel S, but I’ve failed in every attempt at reading Saplings, the opening of which just feels too irritatingly middle class and I hate the character of the mother. I gave my copy to charity, after DNF’g about eight times.

I hadn't heard of The Lark and am grateful to this thread for the recommendation!

It is very frothy and I laughed at the poor heroines facing the need to earn their living with only a delightful 3 bedroom house in outer London and £500 in the bank (a fair wodge of money at that time) to sustain them. Like others I appreciated the way it dealt with the aftermath of the War and some of the plot twists, like Hilda Antrobus turning out to be independent and a good egg, and the fun lodgers being criminals.

Thought the opening chapter was VERY silly and set up an unnecessarily irritating dynamic between Jane and John.

We read Saplings for this very book club, @BookEngine …..

I think it's clear E Nesbit was stronger as a children's author, although I've not read any for years, not sure I'm ready to puncture another tween classic.

Noel Streatfield, Ballet shoes etc, wrote an incredible adult book Saplings, with a big age range of characters with very adult, complex decisions and emotions. I must try and find more of her adult stuff.

Aside from Edith's personal life, fiction and biography, can anyone recommend another of hers or if the children's books deserve a revisit?

Finally finished it!
I enjoyed it, partly because I do like E Nesbit’s writing; very light, quite dry and witty and rather painterly in her description of houses and gardens. My mind’s eye was full of Country Life type pictures of flower filled gardens and shabby chic rooms. In terms of the story, I liked the Jane and Lucy making their way in the world plot, although it had a comic flavour lacking in, for example, Dorothy Whipple. You never really worried that there wouldn’t be a happy ending. I saw a lot of Jane Eyre parallels, all that dressing up, the names of Jane and Rochester, the young women alone and having to be self reliant, even the repetition of the word ‘aunt’! The First World War was ever present, even though it was only ever referred to quite obliquely.
Miss Antrobus was my favourite character. I liked the way she had no more interest in marrying John Rochester than he had in marrying her. And her war experience was impressive (although to be fair, there wasn’t much opportunity for Jane and Lucy to go to France since they were, as Jane reminded us, at school).
This is the first time I’ve read E Nesbit apart from the excellent children’s books (The Treasure Hunters is my favourite), in fact I’d forgotten she wrote for adults. I’ve ordered the Eleanor Fitzsimmins biography from the library, and looking forward to reading that.

Is it trying to upend the Gothic Romance of Jane Eyre in the way Cold Comfort Farm took Rural tropes?

Thats an interesting point, could be - just not so well executed. I have read both CCF and the original Mary Webb book it satirised (The House in the Forest), the latter is so absurd it didn't take much in the way of change to take the piss out of it. CCF is quite biting though, rather in the vein of Waugh. I'm finding The Lark saccharine and drippy. Set in the time of economic depression, when many people were suffering real deprivation, I even find it a bit disrespectful, but maybe I'm taking it too seriously.

I think Jane Eyre has joined The Young Visiters in books I will never both reading again in my lifetime.
Jane would be constantly on the Relationship boards despite everyone saying this is an Ofsted matter or this is totally inappropriate in the workplace and you are only 18!!!

I probably wouldn't reread The Lark although I do like to imagine the greenhouse where they set up shop. I'm picturing a Country Living magazine article with some wafting woman, trader husband in the background and a fledgling artisan craft business.

Mr Bronte Rochester has just dressed up as a fortune teller and apparently fooled all the house party ladies although not Jane.
I think E Nesbitt did a lot of retelling with this one.

Is it trying to upend the Gothic Romance of Jane Eyre in the way Cold Comfort Farm took Rural tropes? Perhaps that's what makes it a tad painful at times when it's story rather than period detail.

I liked the rant about 1930s modern furniture being flimsy and throw away.

I have to say I'm not loving The Lark. I've been rereading quite a lot of authors from this period recently - Rosamund Lehmann, Elizabeth Bowen, Margaret Kennedy, Jean Rhys, Rumer Godden - but it just isn't doing it for me, and I'm on the verge of abandoning it.

Its not the period language or style, it just has no real depth, and the dialogue is beginning to grate. It seems very childishly written, and the book it most reminds me of is Daisy Ashford's The Young Visiters, but without the naive charm.

I watched a great film over Christmas about a boy and a teacher stuck in a boarding school together over the Christmas holiday. I’d recommend it - but I’ve completely forgotten what it was called!

I'm a quarter of the way through Jane Eyre. Poor kid.
Looked up 'Resurgam' and despite reading my childhood hard copy, Google must know. It immediately links Resurgam - I will rise again, with this is a recurring theme that reflects the strength of the main character in Jane Eyre.

The Lark girls, continuingly rise again but with less angst for the soul, good humour and much better food.

Things I've noted so you don't have to reread Jane Eyre in a world with more entertaining options.

45 out of the 80 orphans are ill with typhus, they haven't shut the school. This was written in 1847, and transmission by the human louse wasn't identified till 1909. Grim.

Harry Potter link - John Reed and Mrs Reed sound so like the Dursleys , his ' delicate health' - too many sweets treats and her adoration. Like Harry, Jane is also to be kept at school for the holidays. I guess we could stretch that to the Larks being trapped at boarding school due to the war but it's a common enough trope to get the main characters out of the family home.

I will slog through the rest, it might not go back on the shelf, life being too short to reread and then revisit The Children's Book

Some of the other characters are fairly identifiable, Eric Gill for one, and I think also Kenneth Grahame and JM Barrie. I think her personal circumstances, particularly her husband's relationship with her friend who lived with them as a sort of housekeeper, are portrayed fairly accurately, but im sure poetic license was used as well, so it's difficult to be sure. I have a feeling some ceramicists were in there too. Might be time for a reread

So long as one skips most of the school stuff and the Really Fucking Boring Missionary Twat section!

Never a bad thing to re-read Jane Eyre, @BookEngine !

I have not read Jane Eyre in years but wondered if there were more parallels including starting off at school, the window seat, the attic tower room - convenient for observation but all with a happier undertone.

Might have talked myself into rereading Jane Eyre!