📚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 )

Loved Possession, The Children’s Book is not very well written/structured. It’s mash up of history + fiction - and she hasn’t blended very well unlike the masterly Mantel. The fiction sections are better, the more historical chunks are similar to being lectured by a rambling second rate school teacher.

I liked Angel and Insects but all the other Byatt stuff including Frederica are very self indulgent and quite clunky.

The poetry is worth reading in Possession - it’s an interesting mix of Christina Rossetti, Browning both Robert and Eliz and Emily Dickinson.

I’m still reading the Brookner, but I’ve borrowed A Summer Bird-Cage from the library as an ebook. It’s got an amusingly modish cover; they’re obviously trying hard to make it look not-dated.

I was friends with one of Byatt’s DDs at primary school. This was before Possession when she was still a scruffy academic with one novel to her name (The Virgin in the Garden).

She focused all her positive attention on one DD and was really quite nasty to the other. I’d never seen 2 children treated so differently in one house before - I was quite shocked. I later wondered if that is how their mother treated Byatt and Drabble. Is that the source of the rivalry?

That's a really odd cover 😅
Trying to think of a caption for it as a photograph.

Have you tried the new Head and Shoulders?

Fuzzy ha! Yes exactly!

Has Rose Macaulay been mentioned? She’s a game old bird.

I think I have an unread book of hers on my shelf

How interesting. Love a personal insight. I have always been fascinated by the relationship between Drabble and Byatt.

Here’s my copy!

Today I got the Anita Brookner out of my local library and the librarian told me that I was the first person to take it out ever. 😂

I have to know why you can't stand Pym? I love her novels, so it may that I have now taken umbrage.

I don’t know either. I thought I was going to love them. I didn’t find them charming and entertaining as I expected just deeply tedious and irritating. She’s described as a modern Jane Austen, which turns out to be deeply offensive to Aunt Jane, she was more like Joanna Trollope but worse.

I'm really enjoying the AB one

I have read some of her other books

I don't think Pym is anything like Austen really. (I think there's a thread somewhere on this board on this?). For a start Pym has a much smaller cast of characters. More strongly resonating events occur in Austen iyswim.

From the small amount I've read of both I'd say Pym and Brookner are more similar. Single working women of a certain type.

This is probably too early to say this but I feel the small world of Brookner and Pym characters are an anomaly of the society at the time. Whereas Austen characters not.

I've onlyread Jane and Prudency by Pym but I really enjoyed it. I found her characters come out with some very realistic observations:

"Prue hadn't really been in love with Fabian. Indeed, it was obvious that at times she found him both boring and irritating. But wasn't that what so many marriages were - finding a person boring and irritating and yet loving him? Who could imagine a man who was never boring, or irritating?"

I think that’s quite a good illustration of my problem with her: the writing is quite pedestrian. It’s a reasonable if unremarkable observation, but why repeat “boring” and “irritating” 3 times in as many sentences? Sometimes repetition can build a comic effect but here it’s just lazy.

One other writer I meant to suggest is Ivy Compton-Burnett who is very peculiar but quite interesting.

Now that we have the new book-specific threads, are we still waiting until the 25th of the month to discuss each book?

I disagree! I think it would sound very forced without the repetition.

I agree, the repetition is the point. It is her thought process. I do find that it has a comic effect and don't think it's 'pedestrian' writing at all; it's the opposite: insightful, skilful and effective.

I disagree, I think it sounds forced with the repetition, also clunky and unimaginative.

My copy of our forthcoming book has arrived. I decided to go for a hard copy this time.

I'm just finishing a rather harrowing memoir connected to the Rwandan genocide, so I'm looking forward to something a little lighter.

Oh that's really lovely, MotherofPearl!
Gorgeous* *colours there.

It's deliberate repetition. If you don't like the sound of it, that's fine, but I very much doubt that the author did it because she's unimaginative.