Themed Read May 2022: Life Stories - Fact or Fiction

Welcome to our MAY 2022 Themed Read.

This thread is going up a little early to give everyone who wants to join in the chance to have their books lined up and ready to read.

Our theme this month is LIFE STORIES – FACT OR FICTION.

There is no big list this month, just a few suggestions, because this could go in a number of directions and is quite open to interpretation.

Our first thought was that this could be a month for reading autobiographies or autobiographies of Virago authors, or autobiographies or biographies published by Virago.

For example:

Daphne Du Maurier and her Sisters by Jane Dunn
Willa Cather: A Life Saved up by Hermione Lee
The Invention of Angela Carter by Edmund Gordon
Rose Macaulay by Sarah Lefanu
Katherine Mansfield: a Secret Life by Claire Tomalin
Sylvia Townsend Warner by Claire Harman

You might read letters and diaries too.

Our second thought was that this could be the month for starting or continuing to follow a life or lives though a series of books.

For example:

Frost in May, The Lost Traveller, The Sugar House and Beyond the Glass by Antonia White
The Roaring Nineties, Golden Miles and Winged Seeds by Katharine Susannah Pritchard
Elizabeth and her German Garden, The Solitary Summer and Elizabeth’s Adventures in Rugen by Elizabeth Von Arnim
The Fountain Overflows, This Real Night and Cousin Rosamund by Rebecca West
Good Daughter, Indifferent Heroes and Welcome Strangers by Mary Hocking
Tin Toys Trilogy by Ursula Holden
The Orlando Trilogy by Isabel Colegate
Company Parade, Love in Winter and None Turn Back by Storm Jameson

(Virago also published Storm Jameson’s autobiography, Journey from the North.)

Our final thought was that this could be the month to read a single book that captures all or a significant part of a life.

For example:

Letty Fox: Her Luck by Christina Stead (#4)
A Pin to See the Peepshow by F. Tennyson Jesse (#11)
The Beth Book by Sarah Grand (#20)
My Antonia by Willa Cather (#22)
Mary Olivier: A Life by May Sinclair (#25)
The Life and Death of Harriett Frean by May Sinclair (#26)
Diana of the Crossways by George Meredith (#30)
The Third Miss Symons by F.M. Mayor (#36)
The Vet’s Daughter by Barbara Comyns (#43)
Virginia by Ellen Glasgow (#62)
Daughter of Earth by Agnes Smedley (#72)
The Quest for Christa T. by Christa Wolf (#75)
Miss Herbert by Christina Stead (#97)
Deborah by Esther Kreitman (#108)
Angel by Elizabeth Taylor (#135)
That Lady by Kate O'Brien (#168)
Poor Caroline by Winifred Holtby (#192)
Mary O’Grady by Mary Lavin (#209)
The Rector’s Daughter by F.M. Mayor (#259)
Fenny by Lettice Cooper (#264)
Lolly Willowes or the Loving Huntsman by Sylvia Townsend Warner (#390)
Liza’s England by Pat Barker (#417)
Julius by Daphne du Maurier (#506)
West with the Night by Beryl Markham (#532)
An Angel at My Table by Janet Frame (#533)
Dust Tracks on a Road by Zora Neale Hurston (#713)

Any book that you feel informs you about a life and has a link to Virago is eligible this month.

What will you be reading?

I'm planning to read The Sheltered Life by Ellen Glasgow.

I have lots that would fit this theme! Bios of Vita Sackville-West and Rebecca West, the diaries and notebooks of Patricia Highsmith, and the Tin Toys trilogy, among others. It will be a good month!

Ooh fun times! I have Riva Lehrer's Golem Girl which is her memoir centred around her life as an artist and a person with disabilities, published by Virago but not a VMC, or The Virago Book of Women Travellers which is bits out of many women's real lives so I think would count, too (and has the advantage of being part of my TBR project).

This sounds brilliant and again I have so many which would fit the bill. Like Liz, I'm thinking maybe some of my Travellers would fit the bill!

I'm planning to read Tea at Four O'Clock by Janet McNeill. My interest was piqued by Jennifer (japaul22)'s recent review, and while it's not a classic bildungsroman, I understand there are flashbacks looking back on the main character's life.

>5 kaggsy: Ha well indeed yes, that pile of Travellers I have amassed also works, I knew I'd missed something off. Need to get to the post office for you, too!

>7 LyzzyBee: LOL, no hurry.... I have a *lot* of Travellers plus Storm Jameson's autobiography plus so many others which would fit in - e.g. Paris was Yesterday by Janet Flanner. As always the issue is in deciding...

Virago Travellers are definitely eligible, and the reason I didn't mention them is because there is so much choice this month and they have a month of their own in August.

It look as if our May reading is going to be wonderfully rich and diverse.

I have started early with Elizabeth Von Arnim's All the Dogs of My Life which is a delight, and I have to make myself read slowly and savour it, because my natural inclination is to keep turning the pages.

I'm not making a grand plan this month; I'm going to see where the books lead me.

The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rugen for me, given that I've read the first two in the series.

I can highly recommend the Mary Hockings to anyone who hasn't already discovered her.

I've started Victoria Glendinning's biography of Rebecca West, which is very good so far. West was an interesting person right from her childhood.

>11 Sakerfalcon: That's good to know! I have so much West unread, and I don't know why - she was a fascinating woman and a great author!

>11 Sakerfalcon: Good news! I have the same book waiting on my bedside table.

My first book this month was All the Dogs of My Life by Elizabeth Von Arnim. I found it very uneven, lovely in places but irksome when she kept writing that she needn't go into certain things because this wasn't autobiography it was the story of her dogs. The book showed the arc of her life, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who didn't like dogs and didn't know the author already.

Then I picked up All the Books of My Life by Sheila Kaye-Smith, written near the end of her life and published posthumously. I loved it - she was thoughtful, articulate and engaging. A fair few Virago authors were mentioned and when she referred to not liking Trollope and mentioned the two books she had had read and not got on with I found myself wanting to recommend others, forgetting that she had died before I was born.

It wasn't really a life story but it gave a good picture of her early life and the woman that she was.

I very much enjoyed Victoria Glendinning's biography of Rebecca West. For me it was the perfect length and depth - it gave you a good look into her character and life and those of the people around her without getting bogged down in extra detail or going off on tangents. I do enjoy big immersive biographies such as Red comet sometimes, but I don't always feel I need that much depth. This was just right.

Now I've started the Tin toys trilogy which is very good so far. The child narrator's voice is reminding me somewhat of Barbara Comyn's work, but this seems grimmer.

I read Elizabeth Taylor's Angel and I have to ask how in the world did Taylor create such a completely unlikable character in a book I ended up loving? Doesn't make sense. I should've hated this book because well, Angel is absolutely toxic. But Taylor's writing is so gobsmacking beautiful and descriptive that it's hard to get beyond that. Plus it's her genius, I think, that could create a character that's so repellent while being so absolutely fascinating. I won't soon forget her.

"At that first meeting, long ago in London, she had seemed to need his protection while warning him not to offer it: arrogant and absurd she had been and had remained: she had warded off friendship and stayed lonely and made such fortifications within her own mind that the truth could not pierce it. At the slightest air of censure in the world about her, up had gone the barricades, the strenuous resistance begun by which she was preserved in her own imagination, beautiful, clever, successful and beloved."

Slipping in sideways here with The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rugen. I didn't get started until halfway through the month, after which I did a couple of chapters each night in bed. I enjoyed it, not as much as the first two but definitely up to her usual standards.

I read The Sheltered Life by Ellen Glasgow. While I was expecting to get the life story of Jenny Blair Archbald, who's a child in the first half and a young woman in the second half, in fact it is the life story of her grandfather David Archbald that is actually told. We see David at age 75 in the first half, age 83 in the second, but between these is a lovely section in which he ponders his life, starting in antebellum Virginia and including an extended visit to England where he falls in love.

I've started to read The Virago Book of Women Travellers though not sure I'll get it read this month (I'm skipping the excerpts from the Virago Travellers I bought recently. Lovely doughty women packing up their lives and going a-travelling, but of course taking their lives with them, too!

I have read Enid Bagnold's autobiography - more than 70 years in less than 300 pages! She was most concerned with her early life and recording that world that she had seem change irrevocably and was very good company. There was less about her marriage and children, and she wrote more about her plays than her books, but what she did write about those subjects was telling.

I'm currently reading Tea at Four O'Clock for this month's theme. A woman's life told mostly in flashback, after the death of her sister whom she had cared for, for many years (setting her own life aside to do so). It's very good.

>16 brenzi: Angel is genius isn't it? She's so absolutely repellent but you can't look away!

I'm finishing Tin toys, which has been an amazing read so far. This last book sees the two older sisters in Ireland, living hand to mouth in a decaying farmhouse while their stepfather drinks himself to oblivion and their mother is largely absent, both in body and in spirit. It's bleak but so good.

>22 Sakerfalcon: Yes! Absolute genius! A veritable car crash.

I read and reviewed The Virago Book of Women Travellers - I didn't finish it until yesterday but read most of it during May and it had potted life stories of the contributors as well as episodes from their travels. https://librofulltime.wordpress.com/2022/06/03/book-review-mary-morris-ed-the-vi...

>22 Sakerfalcon: I loved the Tin Toys Trilogy. Read it ages ago and worth a re-read. Problem is I'm OVERWHELMED with so many un-read books!