God, that Larkin poem is brutal isn't it? Have to say I love Donne despite him being a bit of a sleaze. I don't mind a good sexy poem.
Elkie thank you for the SA recommendations. I had A Long Way from Verona on my shelf when i was younger (12?) and remember finding it really quite odd although bits of it have really stayed with me (the awful house party and that terrible dress). I would like to go back and have another read.
I found a blog which quotes the Hardy bit - was your interview a bit like this, Sap?
I had just reached the part when [spoilers - terrible thing that happens] when a hand came down on to the book from out of the shadows beyond the reading lamp, and it was Mrs. Baxter. ‘Jessica!’ she said, ‘I’d no idea you were still here. The buzzer went ten minutes ago. Whatever are you reading? It must be very exciting.’ She picked Jude up and held it near her spectacles for a moment, twisting the lamp upwards so that she could see. She gave the most frightful sort of yelp after a minute and nearly dropped it. ‘Jess, dear!’ she cried. ‘Whatever on earth! What is this terrible book?’ I said it was an English Classic. ‘It must be removed from the library,’ she said. ‘It’s a most horrible book. What would your father say? Oh, Jessica, you mustn’t read such a horrible book!’
I said it was by Thomas Hardy.
‘I don’t care if it is by William Shakespeare, you are NOT to read it. I will speak to the librarian to have it taken off the shelves.’ And I think she must have done, because it’s certainly not there now.
I read LOTF a couple of years ago when DS was studying it for GCSE. I thought it was terrific - so compact and yet so terrifying. The tension in the final chapters is just brilliant, and awful.
81. People Like Her, Ellery Lloyd
Domestic-noir thriller about a instagram mum with a follower who gets rather too interested in her family. I picked this up as a palate cleansing easy read after the Nadine Gordimer (which was quite challenging) but was pleasantly surprised to find it was better than I was expecting.
The thriller plot is rather silly and quite nasty (it certainly ends up in a much darker conclusion that I had expected - be warned) but if you disregard that, this is quite a witty depiction of a family living their life online, with some unexpectedly thoughtful pondering on the morals of making your living from it. The bits sending up the instamums are very funny too.
82. An Aacademic Question, Barbara Pym
I have not read any Pym until now. This is a bit of an odd one, written in the early 70s but only published in 1986, some years after her death. According to Wikipedia "she was ultimately dissatisfied with the novel. She put it aside and never returned to revise the work". I picked it up from a charity book shelf for 25p - in retrospect I don't think it was the best place to start with this author.
This is an English campus novel about the unfulfilled wife of a professor at a provincial university. It's funny and smart, sometimes searingly sharp and rather ruthless. The plot revolves around a McGuffin, which is to say an object which is essential to keeping the characters moving but ultimately amounts to very little. The real focus is the characters' relationships, and the sexual, racial and class politics which bubble away under the surface. It's hard to tell how much of the awkward and sometimes unpleasant aspects of these themes are down to the fact that the book is 50 years behind the times, and how much is deliberately introduced by Pym. You can tell from the awful way that she writes about parenting that she is certainly having some fun at the expense of the characters, or the reader, or both.