It’s the latest year reading Club hosted by Kaggsy & Simon. I couldn’t find any 1925 books in my TBR, but I have read and reviewed a couple of the greats published that year and a couple of others too. Links to full reviews are in the titles.
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
The archetype of the novel in a day with one of the most famous opening lines ever. There are so many themes in this novel – but for me the most prevalent one was death in all its guises: from old age (there are various old women who effectively show the future); there are references to Shakespearean deaths (Othello and Cymbeline for instance); there is Septimus’ actual death; Clarissa and Peter are afraid of mortality – although Clarissa is able to come to terms with it. Unexpectedly, there are many violent underlying emotions, and everyday objects from womens’ lives take on a more macabre threatening feel – scissors, needles, pins – against them is Peter’s knife, and Septimus’ fate.
Contrasting with this is Woolf’s wonder at the beauty of London and its parks with lyrical passages about nature. Views from assorted windows abound too and these are also beautifully written – I loved these aspects and the paragraphs read like prose poetry. I didn’t do so well with the more stream of consciousness sentences that carried on and on, clause after clause, being the outpourings of whomever’s mind was currently in charge of the text. Woolf’s longest sentences are a real challenge when you’re not used to them – for a sub-200 page novel, it took me 4 days to read!
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
I last re-read Gatsby in 2013 after seeing Baz Luhrman’s film starring Leo DiCaprio as the shady businessman and Tobey Maguire as Nick. Some criticised the film, but I loved it, and re-reading the novel, it gave me a new appreciation, especially of Nick. I’m an incurable romantic when reading novels of this period. Even if Gatsby was a shady businessman, I wanted him to find love, to consummate his great American Dream – I was willing to suspend my prior knowledge of what happened (again) just in case it had changed. I’d previously been rather lukewarm towards the narrator Nick, but this time having seen what are almost throwaway comments made solid in the film, I appreciated him more.
The Fatal Eggs by Mikhail Bulgakov
Set in 1928 – just into the future at the time of writing, Bulgakov’s Professor Persikov is a classic mad scientist. The ageing academic is consumed by his passion for zoology, and amphibians in particular. He is a difficult man, and makes the lives of those around him hell, including his assistant Pankrat, and all the students he teaches in Moscow whom he persistently fails in their exams. One day he makes an accidental discovery after having left a microscope on; when he returns the combination of light and lenses has created a red ray which focused on the amoeba under the scope has accelerated their growth immensely. He builds a larger apparatus, and tries it out with similar success on his beloved frogs.
At the same time as Persikov’s discovery, and unbeknown to him, a fatal disease is rampaging its way through Russia’s poultry stock, and all chickens have had to be destroyed. Persikov’s invention by this time has come to the attention of journalists and the secret police – who step in to confiscate his large machines, planning to use them to speed grow new chickens – but there’s a mix-up with the eggs, and as you might guess, things are going to go badly wrong!
Mad professors, bungling secret agents and mob rule make for a heady mix of broad comedy and swipes at all things red and Russian – nothing escapes his satiric pen, although I’m no expert in the October revolution and what came after it. The ending of this novella is somewhat weak, using a conveniently Wellsian construct that I won’t divulge to save spoiling the plot for anyone else that wants to read it – however, getting there is rather fun.
Pastors and Masters by Ivy Compton-Burnett
Published in 1925 at the age of 41, Pastors and Masters is set in a minor prep school of which Nicholas Herrick is the nominal headmaster. However apart from taking prayers in the morning he leaves everything to Mr Merry (who, gasp! is not a qualified teacher), plus Mrs Merry, Mr Burgess (who, phew! is qualified), and Matron Miss Basden. Herrick and his younger sister Emily, prefer more intellectual pursuits such as engaging his friends in debate, and bragging about the book he is writing – will it ever get finished and be published? This is the basis of the plot, on which I’ll expound no further to save the twist in tail for you.
ICB’s style though takes a bit of getting used to. There’s little descriptive prose, it’s mostly dialogue and that is really clipped, and the characters never shut up! They’re constantly talking, mostly at each other, in engagements of verbal sparring, scoring points off each other. This was a group stuck in an old Victorian way of doing things, full of fake gentility. It was impossible to find a single likeable character who actually had anything interesting to say or did anything of merit whatsoever – something I suspect was a deliberate ploy of ICB. An interesting introduction to ICB’s work, but just as I really got into it, it was over.
