"Rather dated"

[ImJustMadAboutSaffron]

I just finished reading a book, published in 1977, set either 1975 or 1976. I went on Amazon to look at some reviews (I know these are not worth reading, for the most part; often I have seen "Boring" or "Rubbish" as a "review") because sometimes there are some interesting ones.

Someone has written that the book is "rather dated". What do they expect 45 years later for heavens' sake???

Yes, I think you're right, Polkadots. E.g. novels from around the turn of the millennium often include correspondence by email, which seems old-fashioned now (at least, for personal communications rather than work) yet had only really got going in the 1990s. As time goes on, the advent of social media will come to be seen more and more starkly as a cultural watershed.

Here's one I love, from 1996, whose central premise would barely work in the era of mobile phones (with a major plot twist around a rural phone box), Libby Purves: A Long Walk in Wintertime.

@woodhill
Yes, Olivia Manning wrote Fortunes of War.

You're welcome, I am enjoying the discussion! I just ordered An Academic Question for myself.

I remember reading that but quite a while after 1996 as I was living in this house, I moved here in 2004. The husband was shagging a younger woman with a very irritating name. Lisha or something like that.

I spent my afternoon trawling charity shops in search of a hard copy of The Road to Lichfield (and didn’t find one - though I managed to read it online thanks to Open Library) but I did find a hitherto-unknown-to-me novel by another excellent Rather Dated writer - Elizabeth Jenkins. Her last book, actually; A Silent Joy.

I love “rather dated” books - Dick Francis, PD James, Jilly Cooper.

Riders with it’s accounts of roaring inflation, soaring petrol prices and the general response being to hurl oneself into a vodka and tonic or 16 before driving slap into a wall (no injuries) is something I find faintly cheering. Characters with huge overdrafts who don’t seem to give a shit because they’re too busy bonking someone glorious, while in real life I’m unglamorously budgeting weekly.

Barbara Pym is wonderful. I want dated sometimes. A relic and record of my youth so I know it wasn’t just me who was there! I don’t always want character relationships to develop by whatsapp or revelations discovered through their Twitter feed. Normal people know that not all attitudes of the past are to be acted out in this world but a fictional flashback can stir positive feelings as well.

I remember my mum reading it when it was on tv in the 80s with Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson

George Orwell is good for contemporary 1930s fiction, and I'm another Barbara Pym fan.

Ooh how lucky that I've already read The Road to Litchfield. Unfortunately, I'm not being modest or anything, I really am I slow reader.

Someone recommended Jilly Cooper's The Common Years, autobiographical account of her living near Putney Common from 1972. I bet that counts as "rather dated"!

Barbara Cartland’s book “We Danced All Night” about her life in the Roaring Twenties was very interesting. The writers of the tv show Upstairs Downstairs used Cartland as a model for the Georgina character in the fifth series, which was set in the 1920s. I don’t like her fiction but that autobiography was great.

When I looked around Brooklands and the museum there's a fascinating amount of stuff about Dame Barbara and her motor racing and aviation exploits!

I watched recent repeats of Upstairs, Downstairs (the original). I thought it was boring when I was young but it's a bit of a guilty pleasure. I even bought a couple of secondhand spin off paperbacks.

I think PPs on this thread would love the Backlisted podcast. I’ve found lots of ‘rather dated’ books that I’ve loved thanks to its premise of ‘giving new life to old books.’ Barbara Pym’s ‘Excellent Women’ is one; RC Sherriff’s ‘The Fortnight In September, and Dorothy L Sayers’ ‘Gaudy Night’ are two others I’ve read and enjoyed after hearing them discussed on the show.

Lynne Reid Banks' The L Shaped Room has been mentioned several times. It's very much of its time- the middle class pregnant central character has never socially met a black or a Jewish man (and the descriptions of these characters when they do appear are cringingly awful)

But what dates it the most is that poor destitute Jane is forced to live in the cheap and highly undesirable London Borough of Fulham.

Backlisted is great. Not just the books chosen but all the incidental book chat. Agree with Shirley, it’s like being among like-minded booky friends.

I grew up reading most of the books mentioned on this thread.
I haven't seen Joanna Trollope mentioned. I think she was still writing until recently but her earlier books were set and published in the 60s.

One of my favourite "dated" writers is Robert B Parker. American gumshoe crime writer. Beautifully witty sparse prose with attitudes of it's time.

I don’t think anyone has mentioned Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine yet. Her descriptions of London in the 60s/70s is unsurpassed, I think.
I’m (very slowly) re-reading Anthony Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time sequence at present and though obviously very dated there are some characters who seem startlingly modern. The political and intellectual elite don’t seem to have changed much over the last century or so, and rebellious youth likewise.

Her pseudonyms are Jane Austen characters, I love that!

I love all these authors, looking up at my penguin orange bound books. Can we add Monica Dickens as well?

RF Delderfield.
Joanna Trollope.
Mary McCarthy.
Edna O Brian

Susan Howatch too, I loved her mystery ones, good engrossing short read.

Lots of the plots wouldn't be possible now with mobile phones. Which is why I love them.

Edna O'Brien!
I read the Country Girls when I was about 16 in 1974.
I had forgotten about Susan Howatch, I dimly remember going off her books as they went all religious.

@Terpsichore I had never heard of the Open Library, thank you!

I created an account and borrowed the Road to Lichfield but how on Earth do you read the books? It's like a photograph of the (yellowing) book page. Am I missing something??

@RiverSkater I was puzzled by that too and eventually concluded that yes, I’m afraid that IS how you read it - it’s basically a scanned-in copy of the book. But if you find the setting for a single page view, and juggle it a bit (I read it on my iPad) it’s actually do-able if you’re determined (and you can’t find a copy otherwise).

I also realised that they only let you have it for an hour at a time, but you can keep renewing, or go back to it when it suits you - just remember your page number…..

This takes me back. It was one of the first adult books I read too (not the first, though). I must have read it when I was about 15 or 16. I was fascinated by it because the world it described - inhabited by middle-class people who were intellectually brilliant and beautiful and successful but who somehow took it all for granted - was so alien to me. I read it many many times over the next 20 or 30 years. Sad to say, that world still feels alien!

Some people can't handle reading anything that wasn't written half and hour ago. If you enjoyed it - good for you.