The House on the Strand

by Daphne DuMaurier

What an extraordinarily wonderful book this was.  Devotees of DuMaurier already know that she never fails to write something entertaining.  I found it a thrilling read.  From the beginning I was interested to see where the story would go, and it became more exciting and engaging as I went along.  The best praise came from a member of the reading group who was very disappointed to read a DuMaurier, but did, and was delighted by the book.

DuMaurier wrote this book, which is essentially about experimental drug-taking, in the 1960s, when there was a lot of it going on, both medically and recreationally.  In this book, the outcome of the drug taking was given a twist – the drug not only produced hallucinations but appeared to take the user far back in time to be witness to events that were taking place in the very spot in Cornwall that the main character was staying.  Not only the main character went back in time, but his friend also found himself ‘tripping’ to the same time and the same events: events that could be later proved as having taken place.

When the friend is killed crossing a railway line after taking the drug, one has to question whether the hallucinations are real, or even, what reality is.  The railway line did not exist in that place at the time he ‘tripped’ back to and so, in his ‘trip’ he was simply walking across a valley; or was that the hallucination.

Both the present day story, and the historical events that the characters went back to, became page turners in their own right; a great story within a great story.

Living in the West Country and having visited parts of Cornwall in the book, gave an added frisson to the book.

The fly in the ointment was the descriptions of the relationship between the main character and his wife – a woman he lives apart from while he sorts out what job to take.  He was trying hard to hide his drug taking when she comes to visit with her two young sons from the U.S.  Even though he seems to be trying to keep things as normal as possible between them, it is as if she is dead to what is really taking place with him and between them.  This was less believable than the hallucinations.

Two American friends come for a short visit en route to somewhere else.  After an evening of drinking, they seem intent on doing some wife/husband swapping – possibly something else that was beginning to be experimented with more openly in the culture of the 1960s.  This couple seem to have more of a sense that all is not as it should be with the main character than his wife does.

That said, it is a great book, highly recommended with a score of 8 out of 10.

Agnes Grey

by Ann Bronte

I want to start with a reminder: our Reading Group books come from Devon Library Reading Group service.  Each year we make a choice of 24 books from a long list.  The library then choses a book for us off that list and I collect it from the local library.  If there is not a book available from our list they send us a ‘wild card’.  So, even if we don’t like the book, most of the time, we chose it as a group.  That does not stop my over-worked sense of responsibility for what the group reads.  This book was no exception.  Initially I found this a difficult boring read.  Once I got past the first couple of chapters, I was hooked, but in the same way I used to get hooked on the Archers.

This book is essentially a 19^th century soap opera.  Financial ruin dictates the future of Agnes, one of the daughters of the ruined family; she gets a job as a governess, has a terrible time, comes home, gets another governess job, has a different sort of terrible time, sticks with it for what seems like years and years and years.  Eventually, a love interest comes on the scene, but being 1847, there are no pubs or clubs to actually meet each other, so it appears to flounder except in her fantasy life.  Now, by ‘fantasy life’ I don’t mean various shades of (Agnes) Grey!  What I mean is she thinks about the person until she can think about nothing else.  The story does eventually have a happy ending, but not until Agnes has been subjected to endless humiliations and cruelty.

It is possible that the book is, in part, autobiographical.  Anne Bronte worked for a period of time as a governess herself.  That will be how she could pull out so much detail; and it is the detail that makes this book work reading.  The real interest is in considering the social content.  Bronte seemed to have it in for the upper classes and portrayed them in a very uncomfortable light.  We read about child rearing methods that, in 2015, would be considered to border on emotional abuse.  In our discussions we had to be clear that when we thought about the descriptions of relationship, work life, domestic details, etc, we were keeping them in their historical context.  Ways of living that we find foreign and complicated would have been perfectly natural and acceptable.  The family could, for instance, insist that Agnes sit where they wanted her to sit at church, or in the carriage home. If the girls chose to walk, Agnes must walk, and walk behind them in silence, unless the girls wanted to communicate with her.  She was then expected to teach them respect, along with their academic lessons – a near impossibility.

The book was written and set at a time when the industrial revolution was well established and there will have been a lot of new money in the England.  In towns and cities there may have been a smidgeon more freedom for women, but Agnes (as with Ann herself) was trapped in isolated rural situations until the very end of the story when she and her mother set up a school in a seaside town (and she meets again the man of her fantasy).  Agnes’s life as a governess created a sense of claustrophobia, isolation, and despair.  Even among the staff in the houses she worked at she was alone: she was too educated to be considered one of the servant class, and did not have high enough social status to socialise with the family.  With nowhere to go and no one to help, Agnes relied on her religious background to steady her.

The reading group read The Suspicions of Mr Whicher a few months ago, a book about a crime that took place in the 1860s, just a few years after Agnes Grey was written and published.  The two books were describing life experiences in the same time period, yet when reading Agnes Grey, there is the distinct feeling of something much more archaic.

In general Agnes Grey is an uncomfortable but thought provoking read.

The group scored it 6.5 out of 10.