Oriel MaletRecensioni

Whimsical little tale that I'd have rreally liked when I was about 13. Sort of in the stable of Dodie Smith's "I Capture the Castle." When 17 yr old Jemima is "let go" from her boarding school, following her parents' scandalous divorce, it's unclea what to do with her. With a rich (but preoccupied) father, a floozy mother and a jealous aunt intervening in her time at Grandmother's house...she is sent, with another girl to Paris to be "educated".
As Jemima comes to adore the magic of life in an old French house, and befriends two children....and the handsome Frederick...there is a second story going on with their deeply corrupt "governess" who has plans of her own.½

As I read this, it was ...verging on...spring here, and there's a certain charm in this little (140p) tale of a single day in the life of a school for performing arts in the years of WW2
Taking a number of characters...student Linda, about to leave for a career on the stage; the German music professor, thinking of his lost loved ones back home; a housemaid; a young pupil, a put-upon Companion ....Their lives pan out against a background of blue skies and daffodils.
The mystery of life, ever moving forwards..
Has a certain charm.

Whimsy is all very charming, but as we reached about p 50...three dear little orphan girls, harsh step-parents, one unable to speak, a magical puppeteer, an enchanted mirror, a comical old English schoolmarm, a singer...all in a quaint French village (complete with whimsical chateau)....I felt enough was enough..

Have read and enjoyed a couple of Malet's novels, but couldn't get into this at all! There's a successful young man, 'changed' by the war...he looks out of window and regularly sees a girl, who seems familiar. And then they meet at a party...and I was just totally underwhelmed by the writing and gave up.

Marjory Fleming is a fictionalised biography, a form which often worries me. But this book didn’t worry me at all: I was sure from the start that it was going to be wonderful.

Why?

Well first there was the subject. Marjory Fleming died in 1811 when she was just eight years old. But she left behind journals and poems that were preserved and published years later to great acclaim.

And then there was the author. Oriel Malet’s own first novel was published when she was just seventeen, and so she seemed better qualified than most to write about such a bookish precocious child. And I read Marraine, her memoir of her godmother, the actress Yvonne Arnaud last year and fell in love. The observation, the perception, the sheer love in that book was a joy.

And Marjory Fleming, a small, quiet book, is a joy too.

Not because Marjory is an appealing child, but because Oriel Malet brings her to life so beautifully, with such empathy and understanding.

First she introduces her home and family in such beautiful descriptive prose, and then the three year-old Marjory, hiding from her sister, not wanting to come in from the garden. The garden sounded so lovely that I quite understood Marjory. But I felt for her sister too when she was sent to bring in the truculent little girl.

There are so many details on every page. All beautiful and creating a picture both lovely and utterly real. And such an emotional journey. Marjory learns to read.

“Marjory climbed out of bed and tiptoed across the room to look closer. There were no pictures, and confronted with the black and white symmetry of the print, which was small and close, and peppered with curly S’s, she felt a definite sense of frustration. Why couldn’t she read, when she wanted to so much?

She flicked over the pages in desperation. The light fell on the title page. There, in big, black letters, was a whole row of words. Looking at them, Marjory suddenly found that they said “The Mouse, and Other Tales,” and were no longer just a jumble of letters. Even while she stood a little bewildered, in front of her own small miracle, a door slammed somewhere downstairs, and voices floated up from below. Closing the book, she scampered back to bed, and almost at once fell fast asleep.

Next day, when she awoke, the first thing that Marjory remembered was that she could read. She had made out “The Mouse and Other Tales” all by herself. For a moment she lay breathless before this discovery.”

So simple, but it made my heart beat a little faster, as a whole new world opened up to Marjory.

And I shared her nervous anticipation when her cousins came to visit, her happiness as a bond developed between her and her seventeen year-old cousin Isabella.

“Isabella Keith, gay, clever, so young, so sure, was pleased with her cousin. She was just grown up, and still had a joy in the unusual; she was not afraid of it as her elders were. She saw at once in Marjory a fine mind, and was wise enough to treat the child with respect, not as an inferior being. Marjory, sensing approval, opened her heart even wider. She came running to Isa whenever she could.”

It’s not entirely clear why at the age of five Marjory leaves her home in Kircaldy to live with her cousins in Edinburgh. And Marjory isn’t concerned with the hows and whys. She is happy and astounded. And Isa’s mother and sister are confounded. Is Marjory a changeling, they wonder. It seems entirely possible.

It is in Edinburgh that Isa gives Marjory her first journal, and encourages her to write.

“She went away laughing, and Marjory was left gazing at the blank pages of her first journal. Not for long. A moment later she was well away, firmly clutching the pen which sphuttered and scratched cheerfully across Isa’s carefully ruled lines. The room was very still. Only the clock ticked, and the canaries chirped and hopped in their cages. Occasionally a carriage rumbled by in the street outside. The child sat still too, lost in a deep concentration that no-one, save Isa perhaps, had known existed. Her hand moved the pen fiercely, with effort, for it would make squiggles and blots that she never intended, her tongue stuck out with concentration, as she scratched away. She was rapt. There was a look of satisfaction on her face, and now, for ever afterwards, she would pick up a pen whenever her thoughts struggled for expression.”

But enough! I’m not here to tell the story. I’m here to praise the book.

Oriel Malet creates a child – a bright child, but a child nonetheless – so beautifully, with such empathy, with such understanding that you really can see what she is seeing, feel what she is feeling.

The quality of the bigger picture is just as high. Every detail that makes up a child’s life – people, places, events – in such lovely descriptive prose.

This really was the perfect book for a light spring evening, and now I find that I have two writers to cherish.½

Oriel Malet was a success in the literary world at a very early age. She was just twenty when her first novel, ‘Trust in the Springtime’, was published and she was only three years older when her second book, ‘My Bird Sings’, won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize.

Her prize money bought her a motorcycle, and a trip to Paris.

‘Jam Today’ tells the story of the six months that the author spent in that city, with her good friend Flavia.

It’s a lovely book; light as air; made buoyant by youth, love, and charm.

The pair had no need to work or to study – though they take a few art classes and do a good bit of reading, for their own amusement and to impress their families – they were there to enjoy life, to explore the city, and to meet the people.

Their base was an apartment borrowed from a family friend:

“A flat in Paris had conjured up visions of a bare room close to the sky, perched like a bird’s nest in one of those tall dark houses on the Left Bank. Ours was in the seizième, close to the Bois du Boulogne. Many French people find this quarter convenient and pleasant to live in, but it is expensive and has blocks of exclusive flats with wrought-iron doorways, long streets full of parfumiers, and the kind of shop that has one hat on a stand in the window, against velvet curtains on little brass rails … We were not however prepared for the magnificence which greeted us when we pushed open the solid wooden doors of the Rue de la Faisanderie, and at first we stood rooted to the threshold with surprise. A great chandelier, like a tree bearing mysterious fruit, blazed down light upon the crimson carpet. A warm scent rose to greet us, that would always be associated with this place, this moment. It was a rich scent of wood fires, old furniture, and French cigarettes. The fire was in the salon, whose white walls flickered enticingly in the firelight.”

The concierge was warm and welcoming, but after their ascent in a lift ‘which looked like a great glass birdcage, and wobbled ominously when we stepped into it’ our heroines found that the central heating wasn’t working and that the housekeeper – claiming that she was too ill, with some unnamed malady – would not be supplying the meals that they had been promised.

Undaunted, they decided that a walk to the shops to buy provisions would warm them up, while the handyman sorted out the heating. It sounded simple, but in a strange country on a Sunday it was anything but. After a few ups and rather more downs the pair decided that maybe they should eat in a café.

“We could not help reflecting on the power of food; how beaming these people seemed, and how cross the cold travellers in the bus. Suddenly Flavia raised her glass in the air, and cried: “Vive la France!”

It was the only French she knew, apart from ‘oui’ and ‘non’ and ‘le metro.’ I was amazed, but our frieds at the new table were enchanted. Raising their glasses back, they shouted in reply: ‘Vive L’Angleterre!’ Flavia beamed, her eyes shining, her cheeks pink.

‘Paris in wonderful,’ she said”

That was the first adventure – the first of many.

The girls somehow fell in with Ivan, a moody would-be poet, dramatist and artist at a drawing class. They entertained his aunt, who would never go anywhere without her horse, at their very first dinner party. They made friends with runaway honeymooners, after the dog they were walking stole and ate their lottery ticket. They wangled an invitation to tea with singer Yvonne Printemps…

The mixture of story, character and city is quite irresistible. I suspect that the author may have embroidered a little; but there’s a something about the way that the story ebbs and flows that tells me that she didn’t embroider too much, and that this book catches the essence of a special six months of her young life.

It’s vivid, it’s witty, and it’s utterly involving and engaging. The writing is lovely; and there’s light and shade, there’s thoughtfulness, as well as bags of youthful charm.

I’m sorry that ‘Jam Today’ is long out of print, and that Oriel Malet is so little read nowadays.

It took me quite some time to track down a copy, but it was worth it, it really was …½

"This is the story of a child"
By sally tarbox on 19 October 2017
Format: Paperback
Marjory Fleming , who died in 1811, aged just short of her ninth birthday, was a child poet and something of a prodigy. Daughter of an unexceptional middle-class Scottish family, she was naughty, spirited and difficult - but way beyond her years in the poems and journals she left behind.
This is a fictionalized biography; the author drops into her life at different moments from age 3 to her death. We see her at home, frustrated at her family members' mundane mindsets; away in Edinburgh where she was brought up by a beloved 17 year old cousin; and wrenched away, back to her parents at Kirkaldy, where she pined for Cousin Isabella.
With extracts of her writings incorporated, this is a fascinating account of one who would surely have gone on to achieve great things.

Wonderful little feel-good book in which the author recalls a six-month sojourn in Paris with her friend, Flavia in the 1950s. Unencumbered by such things as work or study, our bachelor girls devote themselves to soaking up the ambience and having lots of unexpected adventures.
Meeting Ivan, a moody would-be poet and artist at a life drawing class...befriending a honeymooning American couple when our ladies' dog eats their lottery ticket...an invitation to tea with singer Yvonne Printemps...
And throughout it all beautiful descriptions of the city that just make you feel you're there:
'All the evenings were alike that summer, coming slowly down across the river with the deepening blue sky, the stars suddenly piercing the dark branches of the trees, nailing them down, each leaf black and clear against the fading light. Suddenly the cathedral sprang out of the dusk, like a fantastic golden ship ploughing its way through a wash of green trees.'
The author concludes that their time in Paris 'had been a blissful interlude which it would be ungrateful to expect life to repeat...pure jam today'½

A charming little biography of a young Scottish girl in the --'s who had an unusual flair for writing. The book includes excerpts from her diary, where she artlessly captured details of the lives of those around her and wrote very amusing anecdotes. After spending several happy years with a devoted older cousin, she returned home and died at the sad age of eight, having made more impression on the world in that short time than many do in the fullness of their years.

I really was unsure whether I would enjoy this book but I found myself unable to put it down and was moved to tears some time before the end.