Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay: Book, movie, and TV (Classics Club Spin #33)

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

This was originally going to be a book review post dedicated to my newest Classics Club Spin book… but then I got carried away! Not only did I read the book, but I also watched the movie and TV mini-series versions as well. Read on for my thoughts on all three (or, for the tl;dr version, jump right to the end!)

Let’s start where all such things should start — the book:

Title: Picnic at Hanging Rock
Author: Joan Lindsay
Publication date: 1967
Length: 204 pages
Rating:

Synopsis (Goodreads):

It was a cloudless summer day in the year 1900. Everyone at Appleyard College for Young Ladies agreed it was just right for a picnic at Hanging Rock. After lunch, a group of three girls climbed into the blaze of the afternoon sun, pressing on through the scrub into the shadows of the secluded volcanic outcropping. Farther, higher, until at last they disappeared. They never returned. . . .

Mysterious and subtly erotic, Picnic at Hanging Rock inspired the iconic 1975 film of the same name by Peter Weir. A beguiling landmark of Australian literature, it stands with Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, and Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides as a masterpiece of intrigue.

Picnic at Hanging Rock is my most recent Classics Club Spin book. This is a book I’ve had my eye on for some time, so I was delighted when its number came up!

This 20th century Australian classic centers around the Appleyard College for Young Ladies, run by headmistress Mrs. Appleyard, a stiff and proper Englishwoman who enjoys the income afforded her by providing a fine finishing school education for the daughters of Australian society’s affluent families.

As the story opens, it’s Valentine’s Day, 1900, and the young women of Appleyard are setting out on a picnic, chaperoned by two teachers. It’s a hot day, and their destination lies hours away by horse-drawn carriage. After the excitement of receiving Valentine’s cards, emotions are running high. The girls are eager for adventure, yet must always remember the expectation that they behave like proper young ladies.

After a picnic at the foot of the towering Hanging Rock, as it’s almost time for the return journey, a few girls beg permission to take a short walk along the stream… and never return. Hours pass; finally, one of the party returns in terror, but with no explanation of what’s actually happened. No sign can be found of the three missing girls, and what’s more, it’s discovered that one of the teachers has also vanished. As night approaches, there’s no choice but to return to the school.

An intense manhunt follows, and while one girl is eventually found — but again, with no memories of what happened to her or the others — there’s no luck in finding the others. Rumors and intrigue spread; the incident becomes known as the College Mystery. Months pass, and the ripples of that fateful day spread and touch more and more people — and the enigmatic Mrs. Appleyard seems to slowly fall apart as well.

The writing in Picnic at Hanging Rock is lush and vivid. The depiction of Hanging Rock is stark, and the author carefully describes not just the rock formations themselves, but all the flora and fauna of the area as well. The contrast between the proper, buttoned-up, virginal girls and the wildness of their environment is vivid — while providing a simulated British boarding school environment, the school cannot help but also expose the girls to the dangerous, venomous, and treacherous landscapes all around them.

This book is quite famous for not actually answering the questions it raises. This isn’t a whodunnit with a big reveal at the end. We don’t know, and never find out, what truly happened to the missing girls. There’s another large question at the end that also doesn’t get answered. People appear in the story, and then fade from it, with the author pointing out at various points that this is where so-and-so’s role ends, and we hear no more from them.

A modern-day reader used to fast-paced thrillers and explosive plot twists might find this book slow, but I actually loved it. The mood builds slowly yet inexorably. There’s intrigue and dread, yet we also gets views of love and passion, disappointments and escapes, jealousies and fears. There’s an insidious sense of doom — from the day of the picnic, everything begins going downhill, even when the connections aren’t obvious.

There’s much debate about what happened to the girls. Were they attacked, murdered, kidnapped? Simply lost, perhaps fallen down a cliff? Were supernatural elements at play? An unpublished final chapter holds the key to the author’s original explanation, but even after reading about it, I think I’m happier with the book not providing answers to the mysteries.

I’m glad to have read Picnic at Hanging Rock. It’s a tautly-written, fairly short novel that contains great writing and creates an eerie, aching mood. Highly recommended.

Next up, the first filmed version of Picnic at Hanging Rock:

Right after finishing the book, I watched the 1975 film by director Peter Weir, which is considered a movie masterpiece. At the time of its release, Vincent Canby of the New York Times wrote:

HORROR need not always be a long-fanged gentleman in evening clothes or a dismembered corpse or a doctor who keeps a brain in his gold fish bowl. It may be a warm sunny day. the innocence of girlhood and hints of unexplored sexuality that combine to produce a euphoria so intense it becomes transporting, a state beyond life or death. Such horror is unspeakable not because it is gruesome but because it remains outside the realm of things that can be easily defined or explained in conventional ways.

Read full review, here, and an opinion piece written in 2017, here.

The movie delivers on the mood of the book, from start to finish. It’s cinematic in scope and has a dreamlike quality, often focusing in on the girls’ faces, showing their beauty and their overpowering emotions. Emotion rules everything — the girls’ romantic passion while reading Valentine cards, the devotion of a younger girl to an older, the delight of peeling off gloves and shoes as soon as civilizing forces are left behind, and for the young men encountered at the picnic, the obsessive dreams that follow a mere glimpse of a girl of startling beauty.

We also clearly see the downside of these emotional states, as various group scenes turn hysterical or threatening, when heightened emotions turn the girls (or in another instance, local townsfolk) into menacing mobs.

The film captures the book’s contrasts between the British-style manners and rules of the school and the untamable nature of the Australian bush, with gorgeous shots of the girls in white dresses disappearing between stones or coming in contact with insects and lizards. There were times in the book where I couldn’t quite connect the physical descriptions of the landscape with an image in my mind, so seeing the settings in the movie was very powerful.

The movie is just as ambiguous as the book. There’s no attempt to provide answers or tie things up neatly. The point of the movie is the feelings it evokes.

For further reading, here’s an interview piece on the themes of the movie (but proceed with caution — there are plot spoilers): http://www.filmcritic.com.au/reviews/p/picnic_hanging.html

Finally, my 2nd viewing experience — the 2018 mini-series, currently streaming on Prime Video.

This six-episode TV mini-series stars Natalie Dormer as the domineering headmistress Mrs. Appleyard. Based on the key art alone, it’s clear that this version is going for a very different vibe.

According to the Variety review:

Joan Lindsay’s much-acclaimed 1967 Australian novel “Picnic At Hanging Rock” has already resulted in one stunning adaptation — Peter Weir’s 1975 film of the same name — so a second attempt, this time a television series, may already feel unnecessary. But it doesn’t take long for writers Beatrix Christian and Alice Addison to make the case for their own 2018 “Picnic,” a darker, more mysterious, and extended version that manages to feel updated for our time while still keeping the original 1900 setting.

In “Picnic At Hanging Rock,” the central mystery is laid out immediately: Four young women — three students and their teacher — suddenly vanish on Valentine’s Day, 1900, while on a school picnic at, well, Hanging Rock. The base premise is familiar to fans of crime series, but this is no ordinary drama; it’s eerie and haunting. It’s less dreamy (a quality frequently ascribed to the film) and more of a nightmare that you’ll be eager to dive into.

(For an additional critical take on this mini-series, check out the New York Times review, here.)

Over the course of six episodes, the bones of the plot of Picnic at Hanging Rock remain intact, but the mini-series expands just about every element, creating backstories for many characters, envisioning heaps more romantic entanglements, and showing scenes of events at the Rock that are eerie and perhaps even intriguing, but that don’t ultimately add a whole lot to the story.

The key change, of course, is the character of Mrs. Appleyard. It’s evident early on that she is not what she seems. Rather than an older widowed Englishwoman focused on the profitability of turning out refined young women, here, she’s a scheming con artist posing as a wealthy, respectable woman — but we’re treated to her hidden Cockney accent early on, and through flashbacks, learn much more of her character.

The girls in her care are sympathetic, much more diverse than in the 1975 movie, and more explicitly curious about their own sexuality as well as the eroticism of the untamed world beyond the confines of the school. The cruelty and abuse are much more explicit here as well, and certain subplots and side characters are completely extraneous, either there as deliberate sensationalism or as plot padding.

The middle few episodes sag, and I had to restrain myself from fast-forwarding, but by the end, I did want to see the wrap-up and how it all plays out. The mini-series keeps some (but not all) of the ambiguity of the source material, but the heavy focus on Mrs. Appleyard makes many of the other elements fade into the background, and some of the romantic entanglements seem to serve no purpose other than distraction.

I suppose I’m glad to have watched the mini-series — to satisfy my curiosity and for the sake of completion — but I would have been perfectly fine without it too.

But don’t let me talk you out of checking it out! Here’s the trailer — see if it piques your interest:

Back to the Classics Club Spin:

Yes, I ventured far afield, not just reading my chosen book, but watching two different adaptations as well. And to wrap it all up, I’ll simply say:

THE BOOK: Haunting, eerie, ambiguous, beautiful

THE 1975 MOVIE: Dreamlike and artistic, maybe not suited to 21st century moviegoer tastes, but as an older film, it’s lovely to see. Even when the plot gets lost amidst the gorgeous cinematography, the spell of the movie makes it worthwhile.

THE 2018 MINI-SERIES: OK if you like this sort of thing. It’s all a bit of a muddle, dreamy in parts and then crossing over into a campier gothic feel. (Maybe I’m alone in this reaction — has anyone else seen it?)

The biggest takeaway: Picnic at Hanging Rock is definitely worth reading, and I’m so glad I did.

Can’t wait for the next CCSpin!

19Mar2023

My Classics Club Spin book for spring 2023 will be…

Posted in Bookish Thoughts, Fun and Whimsy, The Reading Life by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Earlier this week, I shared a post with my list of books for the newest Classics Club Spin challenge (see it here), and today, this spin’s number was announced. (For those keeping track, it’s CC Spin #33, and for me personally, #5!)

Hosted by The Classics Club blog, the Classics Club Spin is a reading adventure where participants come up with a list of classics they’d like to read, number them 1 to 20, and then read the book that corresponds to the “spin” number that comes up.

For CCSpin #33, the lucky number is:

And that means I’ll be reading:

Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay (published 1967)

Synopsis:

It was a cloudless summer day in the year 1900. Everyone at Appleyard College for Young Ladies agreed it was just right for a picnic at Hanging Rock. After lunch, a group of three girls climbed into the blaze of the afternoon sun, pressing on through the scrub into the shadows of the secluded volcanic outcropping. Farther, higher, until at last they disappeared. They never returned. . . .

Mysterious and subtly erotic, Picnic at Hanging Rock inspired the iconic 1975 film of the same name by Peter Weir. A beguiling landmark of Australian literature, it stands with Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, and Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides as a masterpiece of intrigue.

I’m so happy with this spin result! I haven’t read many Australian classics, and this is one that I’ve heard so much about over the years. And on a practical note, I was afraid that we’d land on one of my longer options this time — but this book is 204 pages (according to the edition in my Kindle library), and feels really doable!

What do you think of my newest spin book?

Here’s my list of 20 titles for Classics Club Spin #33:

Frenchman’s Creek by Daphne DuMaurier
Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
An Old-Fashioned Girl by Louisa May Alcott
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Peony by Pearl Buck
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
Howards End by E. M. Forster
The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
Foundation by Isaac Asimov
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham
Passing by Nella Larsen
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
The Sound of Waves by Yukio Mishima
Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
A Night to Remember by Walter Lord

My previous Classics Club Spin books:

Are you participating in this Classics Club Spin? If so, what book will you be reading?

15Mar2023

Getting ready for the Spring 2023 Classics Club Spin!

Posted in Bookish Thoughts, Fun and Whimsy, The Reading Life by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

It’s time for another Classics Club Spin!

Here are the dates and guidelines from the host blog:

On Sunday 19th, March, we’ll post a number from 1 through 20. The challenge is to read whatever book falls under that number on your Spin List by the 30th April, 2023.

We’ll check in here on Sunday the 30th April to see who made it the whole way and finished their spin book!

What’s Next?

Go to your blog.

Pick twenty books that you’ve got left to read from your Classics Club List.

Post that list, numbered 1-20, on your blog before Sunday, 19th March.

We’ll announce a number from 1-20.

Read that book by 30th April.

These Classics Club Spins are so much fun, and such great motivation for breaking out of my normal reading routines — so of course I’m going to do it again! I’m mostly preserving my list from last time, swapping out the book I just read and one other that I’m a bit less interested in right now. As for the rest of the books on my list, I’d be happy to read any of them!

And now for the good stuff…

Here’s my list of 20 classics for the next Classics Club Spin:

Frenchman’s Creek by Daphne DuMaurier
Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
An Old-Fashioned Girl by Louisa May Alcott
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Peony by Pearl Buck
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
Howards End by E. M. Forster
The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
Foundation by Isaac Asimov
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham
Passing by Nella Larsen
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
The Sound of Waves by Yukio Mishima
Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
A Night to Remember by Walter Lord

Wish me luck! I’ll post again on Sunday once the spin results are announced!

My previous Classics Club spins:

Spring 2022 (CCSpin29): The Black Moth by Georgette Heyer
Summer 2022 (CCSpin30): Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
Fall 2022 (CCSpin31): A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain
Winter 2022/2023 (CCSpin32): O Pioneers! by Willa Cather

12Jan2023

Book Review: O Pioneers! by Willa Cather (Classics Club Spin #32)

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: O Pioneers!
Author: Willa Cather
Publication date: 1913
Length: 159 pages (Kindle edition)
Rating:

Synopsis (Goodreads):

O Pioneers! (1913) was Willa Cather’s first great novel, and to many it remains her unchallenged masterpiece. No other work of fiction so faithfully conveys both the sharp physical realities and the mythic sweep of the transformation of the American frontier—and the transformation of the people who settled it. Cather’s heroine is Alexandra Bergson, who arrives on the wind-blasted prairie of Hanover, Nebraska, as a girl and grows up to make it a prosperous farm. But this archetypal success story is darkened by loss, and Alexandra’s devotion to the land may come at the cost of love itself.

At once a sophisticated pastoral and a prototype for later feminist novels, O Pioneers! is a work in which triumph is inextricably enmeshed with tragedy, a story of people who do not claim a land so much as they submit to it and, in the process, become greater than they were.

And from Wikipedia:

O Pioneers! is a 1913 novel by American author Willa Cather, written while she was living in New York. It was her second published novel. The title is a reference to a poem by Walt Whitman entitled “Pioneers! O Pioneers!” from Leaves of Grass (1855).

O Pioneers! tells the story of the Bergsons, a family of Swedish-American immigrants in the farm country near the fictional town of Hanover, Nebraska, at the turn of the 20th century. The main character, Alexandra Bergson, inherits the family farmland when her father dies, and she devotes her life to making the farm a viable enterprise at a time when many other immigrant families are giving up and leaving the prairie. The novel is also concerned with two romantic relationships, one between Alexandra and family friend Carl Linstrum and the other between Alexandra’s brother Emil and the married Marie Shabata.

O Pioneers! is my most recent Classics Club Spin book, and once again, it’s been a great experience getting that little push to read a book that I might have missed out on otherwise.

Prior to O Pioneers!, the only work of Willa Cather’s that I’ve read was My Antonia, which I read once during high school and again more recently when I came across a copy at a library sale. I loved Cather’s writing style and the sense of beauty that comes through her descriptive passages, and I’ve always meant to seek out more of her books.

O Pioneers! centers on Alexandra Bergson, whom we first meet as a young woman. From the earliest chapters, we understand that she’s the backbone of her family. Her parents arrived on the Nebraska plains years earlier as immigrants, struggling to establish a home and a livelihood in harsh conditions. As the book opens, Alexandra’s father is dying. While she has three brothers — two teens and five-year-old Emil — her father’s dying instructions are clear:

“Boys,” said the father wearily, “I want you to keep the land together and to be guided by your sister… I want no quarrels among my children, and so long as there is one house there must be one head. Alexandra is the oldest, and she knows my wishes. She will do the best she can. If she makes mistakes, she will not make so many as I have made.”

As the book continues, we see Alexandra doing what no one else in the family can. She keeps the farm going, but not only that — she’s determined to do more than scratch by. She learns, thinks, and grows, and despite her brothers’ objection to what they see as risky ventures, Alexandra uses her wits and strategic planning to acquire more land, invest, and ultimately succeed in becoming one of the best established farmers and landowners in the region.

Of course, the older brothers aren’t always content to abide by Alexandra’s decisions. Rather dull-minded and resentful of hard work, they still uphold the manly tradition of being sexist jerks when it comes to their sister:

Oscar reinforced his brother, his mind fixed on the one point he could see. “The property of a family belongs to the men of the family, because they are held responsible, and because they do the work.” Alexandra looked from one to the other, her eyes full of indignation. She had been impatient before, but now she was beginning to feel angry. “And what about my work?” she asked in an unsteady voice.

[…]

Lou turned to Oscar. “That’s the woman of it; if she tells you to put in a crop, she thinks she’s put it in. It makes women conceited to meddle in business.”

Success takes a toll, as Alexandra remains largely alone. She has friends and neighbors and community, and while she seems content with her life, she’s never pursued romantic love of any sort. As she moves through her adult years, she’s devoted to Emil, now a young man, envisioning herself making a future and inheritance for him. Emil, though, like many young people raised on the plains, doesn’t necessarily want a life as a farmer — he attends college, travels, and seems to have a myriad of options available to him. Ultimately, though, a passionate love affair threatens his and Alexandra’s dreams for his future.

O Pioneers! covers about 20 years of the family’s lives, and we see how time changes them all. Through it all, Alexandra remains the steady, devoted head of the family and keeper of the land, and it’s only a tragedy near the end of the story that forces more extreme change upon her.

The writing in O Pioneers! is simply lovely. Willa Cather’s words are spare, but evocative. From her descriptions of the land itself to her illustration of the characters’ lives and thoughts, the words she uses bring the people and place to life.

ONE JANUARY DAY, thirty years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Nebraska tableland, was trying not to be blown away.

But this land was an enigma. It was like a horse that no one knows how to break to harness, that runs wild and kicks things to pieces.

He best expressed his preference for his wild homestead by saying that his Bible seemed truer to him there. If one stood in the doorway of his cave, and looked off at the rough land, the smiling sky, the curly grass white in the hot sunlight; if one listened to the rapturous song of the lark, the drumming of the quail, the burr of the locust against that vast silence, one understood what Ivar meant.

A pioneer should have imagination, should be able to enjoy the idea of things more than the things themselves.

But off there in the cities there are thousands of rolling stones like me. We are all alike; we have no ties, we know nobody, we own nothing. When one of us dies, they scarcely know where to bury him. Our landlady and the delicatessen man are our mourners, and we leave nothing behind us but a frock-coat and a fiddle, or an easel, or a typewriter, or whatever tool we got our living by. All we have ever managed to do is to pay our rent, the exorbitant rent that one has to pay for a few square feet of space near the heart of things. We have no house, no place, no people of our own. We live in the streets, in the parks, in the theatres. We sit in restaurants and concert halls and look about at the hundreds of our own kind and shudder.

The dawn in the east looked like the light from some great fire that was burning under the edge of the world.

One could easily believe that in that dead landscape the germs of life and fruitfulness were extinct forever.

Other versions of O Pioneers!:

As far as I could discover, there’s been just one O Pioneers! film adaptation — a 1992 made-for-TV movie starring Jessica Lange and David Strathairn. I have no idea if it’s easily available, but I’d love to check it out!

Wrapping it all up:

I’m so happy to have finally read this beautiful, powerful book. Many thanks to the Classics Club for inspiring me to read O Pioneers! and other classics!

Can’t wait for the next CCSpin!

11Dec2022

My Classics Club Spin book for winter 2022/2023 will be…

Posted in Bookish Thoughts, Fun and Whimsy, The Reading Life by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

For CCSpin #32, the lucky number is:

And that means I’ll be reading:

O Pioneers! by Willa Cather (published 1913)

Synopsis:

O Pioneers! (1913) was Willa Cather’s first great novel, and to many it remains her unchallenged masterpiece. No other work of fiction so faithfully conveys both the sharp physical realities and the mythic sweep of the transformation of the American frontier—and the transformation of the people who settled it. Cather’s heroine is Alexandra Bergson, who arrives on the wind-blasted prairie of Hanover, Nebraska, as a girl and grows up to make it a prosperous farm. But this archetypal success story is darkened by loss, and Alexandra’s devotion to the land may come at the cost of love itself.

At once a sophisticated pastoral and a prototype for later feminist novels, O Pioneers! is a work in which triumph is inextricably enmeshed with tragedy, a story of people who do not claim a land so much as they submit to it and, in the process, become greater than they were.

I’m excited for this one! I read My Antonia many years ago, but haven’t read anything else by Willa Cather, and I actually have a few of her books on my (never-ending) to-read list.

O Pioneers! is relatively short (just 159 pages), so I may wait until early January to get started. The target date for finishing is January 29th, 2023, so I should be in really good shape.

It turns out that this is my third American classic in a row for my CCSpin books. That’s okay… but I may need to revise my list to try to broaden the selections a bit more before the next spin comes along.

What do you think of my newest spin book?

Here’s my list of 20 titles for Classics Club Spin #32:

Frenchman’s Creek by Daphne DuMaurier
Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
An Old-Fashioned Girl by Louisa May Alcott
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Peony by Pearl Buck
O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
Howards End by E. M. Forster
The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
Foundation by Isaac Asimov
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham
Passing by Nella Larsen
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
The Sound of Waves by Yukio Mishima
Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Porter

My previous Classics Club Spin books:

Are you participating in this Classics Club Spin? If so, what book will you be reading?

8Dec2022

Getting ready for the Winter 2022/2023 Classics Club Spin!

Posted in Bookish Thoughts, Fun and Whimsy, The Reading Life by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

It’s time for another Classics Club Spin!

Here are the dates and guidelines from the host blog:

On Sunday 11th, December, we’ll post a number from 1 through 20. The challenge is to read whatever book falls under that number on your Spin List by the 29th January, 2023.

We’ll check in here on Sunday the 29th January, 2023 to see who made it the whole way and finished their spin book!

What’s Next?

Go to your blog.

Pick twenty books that you’ve got left to read from your Classics Club List.

Post that list, numbered 1-20, on your blog before Sunday, 11th December.

We’ll announce a number from 1-20.

Read that book by 29th January, 2023.

I’ve had so much fun with my previous CCSpin experiences, so of course I’m going to do it again! I’m going back to my list from last time, and other than replacing the book I just read, I’m going to leave the rest of my list as is. I’d be happy to read any of these!

And now for the good stuff…

Here’s my list of 20 classics for my 4th Classics Club Spin:

Frenchman’s Creek by Daphne DuMaurier
Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
An Old-Fashioned Girl by Louisa May Alcott
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Peony by Pearl Buck
O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
Howards End by E. M. Forster
The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
Foundation by Isaac Asimov
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham
Passing by Nella Larsen
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
The Sound of Waves by Yukio Mishima
Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Porter

Wish me luck! I’ll post again on Sunday once the spin results are announced!

My previous Classics Club spins:

Spring 2022 (CCSpin29): The Black Moth by Georgette Heyer
Summer 2022 (CCSpin30): Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
Fall 2022 (CCSpin31): A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain

6Oct2022

Book Review: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain (Classics Club Spin #31)

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
Author: Mark Twain
Publication date: 1889
Rating:

Synopsis (Goodreads):

One of the greatest satires in American literature, Mark Twain’s ‘A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court’ begins when Hank Morgan, a skilled mechanic in a nineteenth-century New England arms factory, is struck on the head during a quarrel and awakens to find himself among the knights and magicians of King Arthur’s Camelot. The ‘Yankee’ vows brashly to “boss the whole country inside of three weeks” and embarks on an ambitious plan to modernize Camelot with 19th c. industrial inventions like electricity and gunfire. It isn’t long before all hell breaks loose!

Written in 1889, ‘A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court’ is one of literature’s first genre mash-ups and one of the first works to feature time travel. It is one of the best known Twain stories, and also one of his most unique. Twain uses the work to launch a social commentary on contemporary society, a thinly veiled critique of the contemporary times despite the Old World setting.

While the dark pessimism that would fully blossom in Twain’s later works can be discerned in ‘A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, ‘ the novel will nevertheless be remembered primarily for its wild leaps of imagination, brilliant wit, and entertaining storytelling.

And from Wikipedia:

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is an 1889 novel by American humorist and writer Mark Twain. The book was originally titled A Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Some early editions are titled A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur.

In the book, a Yankee engineer from Connecticut named Hank Morgan receives a severe blow to the head and is somehow transported in time and space to England during the reign of King Arthur. After some initial confusion and his capture by one of Arthur’s knights, Hank realizes that he is actually in the past, and he uses his knowledge to make people believe that he is a powerful magician. He attempts to modernize the past in order to make people’s lives better, but in the end he is unable to prevent the death of Arthur and an interdict against him by the Catholic Church of the time, which grows fearful of his power.

Twain wrote the book as a burlesque of Romantic notions of chivalry after being inspired by a dream in which he was a knight himself, severely inconvenienced by the weight and cumbersome nature of his armor. It is a satire of feudalism and monarchy that also celebrates homespun ingenuity and democratic values while questioning the ideals of capitalism and outcomes of the Industrial Revolution. It is among several works by Twain and his contemporaries that mark the transition from the Gilded Age to the Progressive Era of socioeconomic discourse. It is often cited as a formative example of the time travel genre.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is my fall 2022 Classics Club Spin book, and once again, I’m delighted that the CCSpin has given me reason to finally read a classic that I might never have considered otherwise.

Way back in my middle school days, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn were both required reading, and that was about it in terms of my experience with Mark Twain. Still, I’d been more or less familiar with the general plot of this book as well as The Prince and the Pauper, which have both been adapted and retold in countless formats over the years.

*1889 frontispiece by Daniel Carter Beard, restored*

In Connecticut Yankee, a “modern” man of the 1880s finds himself transported back in time to the world of King Arthur. Being a proud Yankee, our narrator isn’t content to just find a way to fit in and survive, but instead decides to bring 19th century civilization to life a full thirteen centuries early.

First, seeing the power that Merlin holds over King Arthur and his court, the narrator proclaims himself to be an even greater magician, and uses his 19th century scientific knowledge to create supposed miracles — for example, using dynamite and fireworks — to astound and frighten everyone there. Quickly, he is given the title of “the Boss”, second only to Arthur himself in power and authority.

From there, the Boss begins a plan to introduce modern technology to the kingdom, instituting factories, newspapers, electricity, schools, currency, and more. Determined to improve health and sanitation, he introduces soap, then has the knights roam the countryside carrying advertising shingles to promote it! Of course, obstacles arise, and the Boss finds himself challenged and inconvenienced many times throughout his adventures, but his knowledge of unknown mechanics, science, and communication techniques help him triumph, again and again.

The writing in Connecticut Yankee is sly, sardonic, and often outright funny. From the earliest chapters, I was charmed and entertained, as in this encounter with a young boy as the narrator enters the court at Camelot:

He arrived, looked me over with a smiling and impudent curiosity; said he had come for me, and informed me that he was a page.

“Go ‘long,” I said, “you ain’t more than a paragraph.”

Mark Twain satirizes and skewers concepts of class throughout the book, as the main character — while appreciative of Arthur himself — is determined to do away with nobility, chivalry, and all the inherent injustices of a societal order that holds some people to be better than others.

Intellectual ‘work’ is misnamed; it is a pleasure, a dissipation, and is its own highest reward. The poorest paid architect, engineer, general, author, sculptor, painter, lecturer, advocate, legislator, actor, preacher, singer, is constructively in heaven when he is at work; and as for the magician with the fiddle-bow in his hand, who sits in the midst of a great orchestra with the ebbing and flowing tides of divine sound washing over him – why, certainly he is at work, if you wish to call it that, but lord, it’s a sarcasm just the same. The law of work does seem utterly unfair – but there it is, and nothing can change it: the higher the pay in enjoyment the worker gets out of it, the higher shall be his pay in cash also.

The application of justice, as portrayed in this book, is particularly brutal, and there’s one especially heartbreaking scene of a young desperate mother’s punishment that’s truly haunting.

Still, even during scenes of great violence or inhumanity, Twain’s humor shines through. Even the more serious situations are lightened by his skill with words, and I couldn’t help laughing at so many of the small little lines and comments that are thrown in throughout the story.

His head was an hour-glass; it could stow an idea, but it had to do it a grain at a time, not the whole idea at once.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is an early example of a time-travel novel, and while the genre has certainly changed over the years, it’s a fun look at the concept. Mark Twain does it well, showing both the influence of the 19th century on Arthurian times and offering a solid set of circumstances to explain why history continue on as expected.

There have been many, many movie and TV adaptations of this story over the years, including a musical version from 1949 starring Bing Crosby, a 1989 TV movie starring Keshia Knight-Pulliam, and a really strange-looking 1995 movie called A Young Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, starring Michael York as Merlin and featuring a guitar-playing teen in the lead role.

I’d decided to read Connecticut Yankee via the Serial Reader app — which I did — but instead of sticking to just one 10-minute installment per day, I got caught up in the story and finished well ahead of the October 30th deadline. I expected to be interested in the story, but I didn’t realize just how entertaining it would turn out to be.

I’m really glad to have read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. I’m not sure that I’d pick up more Mark Twain immediately, but I think at some point, I’ll want to read more of his works, perhaps venturing into some of his non-fiction writing.

Are you a Mark Twain fan? Which of his books would you recommend?

Once again, I’m so happy that I decided to participate in the Classics Club Spin! Looking forward to the next one!

18Sep2022

My Classics Club Spin book for fall 2022 will be…

Posted in Bookish Thoughts, Fun and Whimsy, The Reading Life by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

For CCSpin #31, the lucky number is:

And that means I’ll be reading:

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain (published 1889)

Synopsis:

One of the greatest satires in American literature, Mark Twain’s ‘A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court’ begins when Hank Morgan, a skilled mechanic in a nineteenth-century New England arms factory, is struck on the head during a quarrel and awakens to find himself among the knights and magicians of King Arthur’s Camelot. The ‘Yankee’ vows brashly to “boss the whole country inside of three weeks” and embarks on an ambitious plan to modernize Camelot with 19th c. industrial inventions like electricity and gunfire. It isn’t long before all hell breaks loose!

Written in 1889, Mark ‘A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court’ is one of literature’s first genre mash-ups and one of the first works to feature time travel. It is one of the best known Twain stories, and also one of his most unique. Twain uses the work to launch a social commentary on contemporary society, a thinly veiled critique of the contemporary times despite the Old World setting.

While the dark pessimism that would fully blossom in Twain’s later works can be discerned in ‘A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, ‘ the novel will nevertheless be remembered primarily for its wild leaps of imagination, brilliant wit, and entertaining storytelling.

It’s been a very long time since I’ve read anything by Mark Twain — probably going back to reading Tom Sawyer in middle school — but I’m excited for this one! I’m assuming this will be a lighter read relative to some of the other classics on my list, although it does sound like there are some heavier themes as well as the playful elements.

I’ve been trying to figure out how long this book is, but because it’s public domain and there are so many versions published, I’m seeing everything from 271 pages to 480 for an illustrated edition!

For my own reading adventure, I’ll be using the Serial Reader app, which has this book available in 54 installments. If I start now, reading one installment per day would push me past the October 30th deadline, but if I double up at least some of the time, I’ll make it!

Wish me luck!

Here’s my list of 20 titles for Classics Club Spin #31:

Frenchman’s Creek by Daphne DuMaurier
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain
An Old-Fashioned Girl by Louisa May Alcott
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Peony by Pearl Buck
O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
Howards End by E. M. Forster
The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
Foundation by Isaac Asimov
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham
Passing by Nella Larsen
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
The Sound of Waves by Yukio Mishima
Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Porter

My previous Classics Club Spin books:

Are you participating in this Classics Club Spin? If so, what book will you be reading?

15Sep2022

Getting ready for the Fall 2022 Classics Club Spin!

Posted in Bookish Thoughts, Fun and Whimsy, The Reading Life by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

It’s time for another Classics Club Spin, and I can’t wait!

Here are the dates and guidelines from the host blog:

On Sunday 18th, September, we’ll post a number from 1 through 20. The challenge is to read whatever book falls under that number on your Spin List by the 30th October, 2022.

We’ll check in here on Sunday the 30th October, 2022 to see who made it the whole way and finished their spin book!

What’s Next?

Go to your blog.

Pick twenty books that you’ve got left to read from your Classics Club List.

Post that list, numbered 1-20, on your blog before Sunday, 18th September.

We’ll announce a number from 1-20.

Read that book by 30th October, 2022.

And now for the good stuff…

Here’s my list of 20 classics for my 3rd Classics Club Spin:

Frenchman’s Creek by Daphne DuMaurier
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain
An Old-Fashioned Girl by Louisa May Alcott
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Peony by Pearl Buck
O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
Howards End by E. M. Forster
The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
Foundation by Isaac Asimov
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham
Passing by Nella Larsen
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
The Sound of Waves by Yukio Mishima
Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Porter

Wish me luck! I’ll post again on Sunday once the spin results are announced!

My previous Classics Club spins:

Spring 2022 (CCSpin29): The Black Moth by Georgette Heyer
Summer 2022 (CCSpin30): Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

31Jul2022

Book Review: Cannery Row by John Steinbeck (Classics Club Spin #30)

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Cannery Row
Author: John Steinbeck
Publisher: Penguin Books
Publication date: 1945
Length: 181 pages
Genre: Fiction
Source: Purchased
Rating:

Cannery Row is a book without much of a plot. Rather, it is an attempt to capture the feeling and people of a place, the cannery district of Monterey, California, which is populated by a mix of those down on their luck and those who choose for other reasons not to live “up the hill” in the more respectable area of town. The flow of the main plot is frequently interrupted by short vignettes that introduce us to various denizens of the Row, most of whom are not directly connected with the central story. These vignettes are often characterized by direct or indirect reference to extreme violence: suicides, corpses, and the cruelty of the natural world.
The “story” of Cannery Row follows the adventures of Mack and the boys, a group of unemployed yet resourceful men who inhabit a converted fish-meal shack on the edge of a vacant lot down on the Row.

Cannery Row is my summer 2022 Classics Club Spin book, and I’ll admit that I felt a bit ambivalent when my spin landed on this book. I’ve had a copy of Cannery Row on my shelf for a few years now and have been wanting to read more Steinbeck, but meanwhile, my book group read Tortilla Flat last year, and that seemed like enough for the time being!

Still, once I got started, I couldn’t help but be charmed by Steinbeck’s descriptions and unique way with words.

In Cannery Row, as the synopsis above states, there really isn’t much of a plot. Instead, it’s a series of vignettes and moments that capture the spirit of a time and place. As the author explains in the very first passage of the books:

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.

I read that first line, and I was hooked!

It continues:

Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories, and flophouses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, “whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,” by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, “Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,” and he would have meant the same thing.

If there is a main character in Cannery Row, I suppose it might be Mack:

Mack was the elder, leader, mentor, and to a small extent the exploiter of a little group of men who had in common no families, no money, and no ambitions beyond food, drink, and contentment.

A less generous writer might describe Mack and his group as bums, but Steinbeck instead presents them as well-intentioned pranksters whose endeavors usually go sideways, but who never mean anyone any harm. They drink and go on adventures, and are admirers of Doc, who runs Western Biological, the laboratory and business where he collects, studies, and sells the specimens he finds along the shores and in the tidepools of Monterey Bay and beyond.

Others in the neighborhood include the Bear Flag Restaurant, which is actually a popular brothel run by the kind madam Dora, and Lee Chong’s store, where pretty much anything can be found at any time of year. Then there’s the couple who turned an abandoned cannery boiler in a vacant lot into a makeshift house, and then became landlords by renting out the random pipes on the lot as sleeping shelters for the various men needing a roof over their heads.

The characters interact through business deals and random conversations and unbalanced bargains. An ongoing thread in the book is Mack’s desire to throw a party for Doc to show him how much he and the boys appreciate him. Let’s just say that it does not go as planned — before the night is out, much of Doc’s home and lab is destroyed, and there are frogs everywhere! The gang’s search for frogs is another very funny saga, and even results in a brand-new Cannery Row economy based on the value of frog futures.

Of course, some pieces of Steinbeck’s writing don’t age well. He uses racial terms that would be unacceptable today (“Wops and Chinamen and Polaks”), although to be fair, I think he’s attempting to describe the variety of the people of Monterey — he isn’t being derogatory (although I was uncomfortable with how he writes Lee Chong’s dialogue; perhaps not considered out-of-bounds in the 1940s, but certainly not okay today).

I do love Steinbeck’s writing. He can be beautifully descriptive, and also terribly funny just by virtue of the words he uses:

He can kill anything for need but he could not even hurt a feeling for pleasure.

Describing a changing moment in a tidepool:

A wave breaks over the barrier, and churns the glassy water for a moment and mixes bubbles into the pool, and then it clears and is tranquil and lovely and murderous again.

Small moments made me laugh:

“Henri loves boats but he’s afraid of the ocean.”
“What’s he want a boat for then?” Hazel demanded.
“He likes boats,” said Doc. “But suppose he finishes his boat. Once it’s finished people will say, ‘Why don’t you put it in the water?’ Then if he puts it in the water, he’ll have to go out in it, and he hates the water. So you see, he never finishes the boat — so he doesn’t ever have to launch it.”

And then there’s the time when Mack and the boys manage to restore an old truck just enough to get it running, but with small problems, like the fact that it can only make it up a hill if they go in reverse.

I am truly glad that I read Cannery Row, and I so appreciate the Classics Club Spin challenge that got me to finally take the book off the shelf and give it a try.

I would like to read more by John Steinbeck in the future. So far, besides Cannery Row, I’ve read East of Eden and Of Mice and Men (both very, very long ago) and Tortilla Flat, and I know I should read The Grapes of Wrath at some point too.

Do you have any favorite Steinbeck books? Please let me know if you have recommendations!