The Woods in Winter by Stella Gibbons - #1970Club

So, this week is the week of the 1970 club which is being hosted by Simon at Stuck in a Book and Karen at Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings.

The idea is to read any book that was published in 1970. (The challenge runs twice a year and a different year is chosen each time.) I usually try to read one book for the event and this year it was The Woods in Winter by Stella Gibbons.

 

It's the 1930s and Ivy Gower cleans house for socialite, Helen Green, for a living and is fairly stoical about her life, although, rather than live in London, she would far rather live in the country. When she gets a letter telling her of an inheritance from her great uncle, she has to take it to Helen to make sense of it because she thinks it might be a scam. But no, Ivy is now the owner of a cottage way out in the Buckinghamshire countryside and wastes no time in quitting her job and moving. Before she goes though she rescues (steals) a badly treated dog from her neighbourhood and foists it onto Helen while she organises her move. 

The cottage, miles up a lonely track, is barely habitable with a hole in its thatched roof and wildlife (mice, pigeons, cockroaches) running amok indoors. Undeterred, Ivy is in her element, she can sleep by the fire with the dog and she certainly doesn't need people to make her life complete. But the locals find her, despite her being so isloated and as anti-social as they come. And Ivy gets a reputation because of her empathy with animals, that of being a bit witchy with gypsy blood, as one of her close ancestors was, in fact, a gypsy. And then her life takes a turn as a 12 year old boy, Mike, turns up on her doorstep and like all her other rescue animals, she takes him in too.

So, this is my first Stella Gibbons it turns out... I thought I'd read one other but when I checked, it was by someone else entirely. Anyway, The Woods in Winter was published in 1970 and has a 1970 element to it towards the end. But the book is about the changing world of the 1930s and the breaking down of class barriers after World War One.

Ivy is the star of the book but others feature too. The Carteret sisters from a well-off family run a tea shop in the village but only want a certain type of clientele and are doing it for a lark. Angela Mordaunt, living with her high maintenance, snooty mother, who secretly wishes she could marry and move out but thinks she's too old and unmarriageable. Helen Green, in love with a bit of a bounder and keeping it a secret from her friends, the Carterets. And the boy, Mike, not terribly communicative but a genius artist in the making. And there're other bit-part players who all come together to make this a fascinating ensemble cast story. 

The sense of place, the cottage on the edge of fields with woods climbing the hills all around, was utterly gorgeous. But already things are changing with talk of developers and that creates a bit of a melancholy feel to the book, it's definitely a 'days gone by' novel. For me, Ivy's story ended rather abruptly. The ending isn't unhappy exactly but I suppose I wanted a bit more from it. I also found Gibbons' depiction of people in general to be a bit too unsympathetic, but that could just be me. In general I enjoyed the book a lot, it's quirky and atmospheric, funny, has a superb sense of place, and definitely appeals to that sense of 'leaving civilisation behind' that a lot of us have... you can keep the mice and the cockroaches though!

A couple of autumn/winter reads

Judging by my first two fiction books of October, I'm thinking this month could be a good one for reading. It's my favourite month, book-wise, as I do tend to specialise in spooky reads or crime fiction if I can. For many years I did Carl's R.I.P. 'Halloween' themed challenge but stopped when he stopped. I didn't stop reading the books though. 

Anyway, first up is a vintage crime yarn from the BLCC series of books. Two-way Murder was one of the last crime stories that E.C.R. Lorac wrote before her death in 1959, in fact it wasn't published in her lifetime, but in 2021.

It's the night of the hunt ball and the great and good have all gathered to let their hair down. Solicitor, Ian Macbane, is down from London hoping to be reacquainted with Dilys Maine, the most beautiful girl in and around the town of Fordings in the south of England (Hampshire or Sussex was my thought.). He gets a lift from Nick Brent, across the hills, where it's incredibly foggy that night. Ian comes back with someone else as Nick has persuaded Dilys to let him give her a lift home. She has to leave early so that her autocratic father does not know she's been out. Unfortunately for them they find a dead body in the middle of the lane and Nick tells Dilys to go home over the fields and pretend she wasn't with him. He goes to find a phone at the home of Michael Reeves, a man from a rough family, whose sister disappeared last year, but gets hit over the head by persons unknown for his trouble. This is really quite a complicated murder mystery, involving as it does several plot threads and a lot of secrets, some of which the reader is aware of, some not.  Who is the dead man? Was it a road accident or was he murdered and dumped there? You will need to keep your wits about you as there's a lot going on in this novel. This is not one of the 46 Inspector MacDonald stories, the two detectives here are Waring and Turner, the former into a more routine, police procedure type of detecting and the latter taking a more psychological approach. Lorac concentrates on Turner as he tries to get inside people's heads and discover their secrets. I had no clue until the end who had done the deed and how it had been achieved. The sense of place was very strong, the foggy, dark night on the South Downs, the overall English autumn/winter feel of the proceeding days of the investigation was excellent and one of the best things about the book in my opinion. If you're looking for a seasonal crime read you could not go far wrong with this.

Next, I moved on to The Haunting of Aveline Jones by Phil Hickes. I saw this Young Adult novel recommended in a Booktube video by Celeste at A Reader's Alamanac. 

Twelve year old, Aveline Jones, is on her way to Malmouth, a small fishing village on the south coast of England, to stay with her Aunt Lilian. She usually lives in Bristol with her mum but her mum's been called up to Scotland as her elderly mother is ill. Aveline is not enthused by having to spend the October half-term with an aunt she doesn't know very well and the state of the village doesn't help her mood, it's off-season and deserted, and the weather is 'stormy' autumnal (sounds lovely!) Add to that some rather creepy looking stuffed scarecrows all around the place and poor Aveline is not optimistic about the next week. Her mood is lifted somewhat by the discovery of a second-hand bookshop in the village, run by Mr. Lieberman and his nephew, Harold. Aveline heads for the shop in the hope of finding some new anthologies of her favourite genre of books: ghost stories. And find some she does, one book in particular catches her attention - it features stories of local folklore and hauntings. Inside the front cover someone has signed their name: Primrose Penberthy. To her surprise Aveline also finds that the same pen has completely scratched out the final story in the book, The Lady and the Waves. Why? Aveline realises she has a mystery on her hands when something is revealed about the fate of Primrose Penberthy. So this book is probably Middle Grade rather than Young Adult, but truthfully I think it would appeal to any lover of a good ghost yarn. I was surprised at how creepy and atmospheric it was for a book aimed at younger teens. The author sets the scene of a lonely, wind-swept fishing village in a stormy October very well indeed. I've actually experienced the setting he uses and he is spot-on. I don't think he says where it actually is but my gut feeling is Cornwall although Dorset gets a mention too, so you can make up your own mind. I found the book strong on characterisation, I liked that Aveline was not some trendy teen in the making with an attitude to match but a reader and lover of old books and bookshops. That makes a change from all the stroppy teens and pre-teens you read about. Aunt Lilian, Mr Lieberman, the old lady who was an expert on folklore, they all felt very real. It's a short book that packs a good creepy punch and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it, enough to buy the next two books to read this autumn and winter.

So, an excellent start to my October reading, both books with a very strong sense of season and place, which are two of my favourite things, and I feel fortunate to have such good luck. I hope you too are enjoying some good seasonal reading if that's your thing.

I have been reading...

Judging by the fact that I only read two books in the month of September, that header is a trifle misleading. I honestly can't remember the last time that happened. That said (there's always a 'but'), both books were over or just under 500 pages and one in particular, Black Sun Rising by Celia Friedman, was dense and packed with plot. 

58. Black Sun Rising - Celia Friedman

59. The Trouble With Mrs. Montgomery Hurst - Katie Lumsden

In the county of Wickenshire it's widely thought that Mr. Montgomery Hurst will marry Amelia Ashpoint, daughter of a local, very wealthy, brewer. But not by either of them. Amelia knows she will never marry any man, and Montgomery Hurst suddenly ups and marrys a widow with three children. The population is aghast! Who is this woman? How did he meet her? Of course they all fall over themselves to find the answers to these questions but Mrs. Hurst seems strangely reluctant to get out into society. And of course that causes even more gossip... Katie Lumsden is rather a well-known Booktuber whose videos I watch on a regular basis: I've learnt a huge amount about Victorian lit from her. This is her second book, I haven't read the first yet, The Secrets of Hartwood Hall: I gather they're very different. Anyway, what we have here is a comedy of manners in the vein of Jane Austen's Emma or Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford. It's all about gossipy village life, scandals, secret lives, hypocrisy, duty, set around about the 1840s when that was pretty much all the middle and upper classes had to pass the time. So many different characters abound that I was glad of a list of them at the start of the book, but after a while I didn't need it as they're all so different and well rounded that it became easy to follow very quickly. There's about half a dozen different threads of different people's lives and what happens to them, mainly based around match-making and what it means to be a different. Do you hide it and carry on or give in and 'do your duty'. I gave this an unhesitating 5 stars because I loved it to bits. The writing is a joy and very readable, I would recommend this to anyone who likes regency romances in the vein of Georgette Heyer, even though it's set slightly later and there are things you would not find in her books. I've no idea whether Katie is writing a sequel, I imagine not but oh, how I would love one!

So here we are in October. I was away for 5 days in Cornwall last week, my first holiday since my husband died. It felt odd of course but my youngest daughter and I had a lovely time, so nice to see family who live there. 

I'm hoping to do better than two books in October as this is one of my favourite reading months of the year. I have spooky books lined up and some crime fiction. At the moment though I'mreading a couple of non-fiction books.

This is Lucy Mangan's homage to her childhood reading and it's a joy of a book that's making me laugh all the way through.

And this is pretty much what it says on the tin... a book about the author, Peter Ross, touring Britain looking at old churches. Delightful, though I'm not that far in.

So, Happy October to everyone. I'm hoping to be around a bit more this month, September seemed crazy somehow, but in a nice way, visitors and holidays are not something to complain about. Happy Autumn reading!