📚The Mumsnet 'Rather Dated' Book Group - All welcome to join📚

[Antarcticant]

Welcome to the Mumsnet 'Rather Dated' Book Group, where we will be reading and discussing fiction from the 1930s to the 1990s that would have been described as 'contemporary' in its day.

The best introduction to the 'rather dated' concept would be to read the wonderful thread which inspired this group:

www.mumsnet.com/talk/what_were_reading/4596284-rather-dated?reply=119670989

To summarise, a number of posters expressed disappointment that literature of the 20th Century is often dismissed as 'rather dated' because society has moved on from many of the values and lifestyles described.

We decided to create a reading group where the literary merits of such fiction can be appreciated, with any 'rather dated' elements being a point of interest rather than a reason to dismiss a novel.

We will be reading one book a month. Our first book, for September, will be the book that inspired the original thread:

The Road to Lichfield by Penelope Lively

Please do join the thread whether you want to take part in the discussion or just place mark to follow it.

Fellow Rather Dated people, please add anything important I might have missed!

(With huge thanks to ImJustMadAboutSaffron for the original thread and idea )

@StellaOlivetti Lovely edition - I'm guessing early 1990s?

@AnApparitionQuipped late 80s!

@StellaOlivetti I have the companion editions to yours.

They’re lovely! I have The greengage summer, but in a modern edition.

I love this book club even though I'm just a lurker atm. I have just ordered The Road to Lichfield though and have been meaning to read Rumer Godden for sone time (since the TV adaptation of Black Narcissus several years ago). I will try to catch up.

I've finished the book. Now I want to watch the film :)

The film is an absolute cracker, @IsFuzzyBeagMise. It’s one of my all-time favourites (though pretty much anything Powell & Pressburger is, really). Deborah Kerr is just so beautiful as Sister Clodagh, and Kathleen Byron so wonderfully bonkers as Sister Ruth. Not to mention Jean Simmons as Kanchi.

Now I want to see it again too! Even if it is rather overheated and seething with sexual tension, compared to the book…

So is this the programme that had Gina McKee in recently

I have the book it not sure if I want to read it

It's a great film but I haven't seen it for a long time because it's quite a hard watch. Used to be on frequently on weekend afternoons and bit traumatic for me as a child.

I looked at the trailer of it on YouTube @Terpsichore and I'm intrigued! It did seem to be seething rather than simmering with sexual tension 😄
I couldn't tell if it stayed close to the book; the clip is too short. The character of Kanchi looked rather alarming, I thought!

I’d say it does stay close to the book, but it’s definitely a heightened version of it.

I'm intrigued to know why you find it a hard watch, though, @tobee? - that's not my perception at all.

I should add that you don’t need to expand on that, obviously, @tobee, if it brings up any upsetting associations.

Agreed.

I'll let you know when I finish the book!

Welcome @Caroffee ! I'll be lurking through the Black Narcissus discussion too, so you'll see me at the back with my flat white, and coffee and walnut cake.

Cake? Is there going to be cake?

The P&P film is bonkers but brilliant. When I saw it in the cinema, there were gales of laughter when David Faffar as Mr Dean made his appearance astride a disproportionately tiny donkey.

I watched the start of the film and got as far as Mr. Dean's arrival on the tiny donkey and Kanchi's entry. It's brilliant. So atmospheric. Ayah reminded me of Mrs Doyle from Father Ted :)

I must have seen the film ten times at least, but the best was a special screening at the NFT in London on a proper huge screen, with Kathleen Byron (Sister Ruth) as the guest afterwards doing a Q and A. It was packed and we hung on her every word. She was still highly amused by the brevity of David Farrar's shorts!

All the spectacular Himalayan landscape - the stomach-churning shots looking down the gorge where the nuns ring the bell - was faked with painting on glass. Incredible.

That really is incredible re the painting on glass.
David Farrar's shorts! Yes 😁he shows a lot of leg.

A fine selection of vintage cakes such as Black Forest Gateau, Arctic Roll, Fox's Orange and Lemon cupcakes and Raspberry Pavlova

As it happens, I've just made a pineapple upside down cake. I think that's sufficiently dated? Making good headway with BN now; about 75% finished.

Re upside down pineapple cake, very 70s, my ma had those a recipe on one of those colour recipe cards.

(I fear I may be taking this thread off topic )

... and failing to parse a grammatical sentence... but you get my drift

Yes! to David Farrar’s teeny-tiny shorts. So funny.