Thank you to everyone who has written a post and sent me the link to it! There are some wonderful reviews out there for any readers or potential readers of Sylvia Townsend Warner to look at – and I recommend you do...
Lory at Entering the Enchanted Castle wrote about The Corner That Held Them:
The Corner That Held Them is a striking evocation of medieval life, with all its stinks, vermin and diseases, along with the persistent human doggedness that was needed to keep people going through all that. Lively and discursive as Chaucer’s pilgrims, it’s not at all a conventional narrative, leading the reader along a winding road that seemingly goes off into thin air at the end. Though it’s set within and around a community of women religious, the imaginary English convent of Oby, it never becomes otherworldly and distant from the everyday; the world and its concerns are always present in the microcosm of this subset of flawed humanity.
So did Harriet Devine:
What, then, is this book really about? STW is too complex and original a writer for there to be an obvious answer. On one level it just looks like a meander through a series of everyday events, with some dramatic interludes. But that seems in many ways to be the point - this tiny microcosm presents a little slice of human life which, though far distant from us in time, represents the way people have always adapted to living together and still do today.
Meanwhile, Ali at HeavenAli has written about English Climate: Wartime Stories:
It feels as if these are the very people Sylvia Townsend Warner saw around her, perhaps interacted with, took part in, or listened to, their conversations – there is such an authenticity to the exchanges between characters. [...] These stories are really excellent providing some rich texture to the times in which they were first written. Witty, lively with a slight seam of darkness running through them, these show Sylvia Townsend Warner to have been a consummate short story writer.
Simon at StuckInABook wrote about another collection of short stories, from the 1960s, A Spirit Rises:
In her novels, Sylvia Townsend Warner travels widely through time and space. In her short stories, she tends to stick to contemporary England – and this is doubtless one of the reasons I love them so much. She doesn’t need to take us to another world; she can turn her observant eye to the world directly in front of her. And nobody is as good as Warner at the slightly unexpected twists of wording that show deep below the surface of people and their relationships with one another. [...]
A Spirit Rises isn’t quite as meteorically wonderful as [Swans on an Autumn River], but it’s not all that far off – it certainly includes the finest writing I’ve read this year, and I know will reward careful, slow, luxurious re-reading. If you’ve only encountered Warner the novelist, please don’t hesitate in exploring her extraordinary talent as a writer of short stories.
Hayley at Desperate Reader enjoyed The Flint Anchor:
The book is also surprisingly open about homosexuality in the fishing community of Loseby. It was still a criminalized when the book was published, and considered as an unspeakable sin by the Barnard family, but in the working part of the town love is love and they're not fussy about where it's found. It's a powerful contrast to the Barnard's who remain in Anchor house with their limited understanding of love and the petrifying value they place on respectability. […]
What I most admire about Sylvia Townsend Warner, and find in abundance here, is her clear eyed ability to pick something apart and lay it out for our inspection without judgement or emotion. We might feel sorry for the Barnard's, we might recognise something of ourselves in them, or we might just be fascinated by the spectacle - I found this book compelling for all of those reasons and more.
And David at David’s Book World wrote a double review – of Mr Fortune’s Maggot and The True Heart:
Mr Fortune’s Maggot is focused tightly on these two characters, and in that it makes broader points about faith and colonialism. The change in Fortune’s thinking is carefully drawn, and I found the ending deeply affecting.
There’s a heightened quality to The True Heart that I really appreciated – Sukey even takes her plight to Queen Victoria – as well as a vivid sense of place.
lethe also read The True Heart and reviewed it on GoodReads:
The story has a certain dreamlike quality, which is heightened by a few sudden time-lapses. It is also probably the most light-hearted and fairytale-like of all STW's novels. There is never really any doubt that Sukey will succeed in her quest. Whenever things start to look hopeless, there is always a kind stranger that will help her on her way, so that even being received by Queen Victoria, whom she intends to implore for assistance, does not seem quite such an outlandish idea.
lethe wrote about Lolly Willowes too – a re-read, which is always interesting, especially if you can compare it to your first encounter:
I still love Parts 1 and 2 as much as I did when I first read it back in 2002, but I'm still not happy about the turn of events in Part 3.
If you have written a review and haven’t sent me a link yet, please do! Even if it’s after the end of the week – I can still add it over the next fortnight or so.
Thank you to everyone who has joined in this week, reading and/or writing, and thank you to everyone who has taken part in any of the STW Reading Weeks. For me, this is the last one – though I’d be delighted if anyone else felt like continuing it. To mark this, I am holding an actual competition, the first one I’ve ever done.
COMPETITION!!!
I have an unread Penguin Modern Classics edition of each of The Flint Anchor and The True Heart. (The back story: I ordered them a few months ago from the Book Depository and they did not arrive; the Book Depository very kindly sent me replacement copies and then of course another week later the original books arrived, their packaging plastered in cross yellow stickers about infringing some article or other, and the Book Depository said I could keep them.)
If you would like to win a copy, please write your name in the comments + which book you’d prefer (you can write both and I’ll add your name to both draws) before midnight next Sunday (10th July). The competition is open to anyone in the EU or UK but not further afield for regrettable reasons of stinginess.
NEXT YEAR?
And finally! I think I’d like to host another reading week next year – but who should it be? Ideally it’s someone who should have a bit more attention, whose work is reasonably easy to acquire. I’m thinking about Storm Jameson or Alice Thomas Ellis at the moment, but if you’ve any ideas I’d love to hear them.