Have Book. Can Travel.

Here I am off to the wonderful ROME for a few days of bloggy holiday and some quality time with Dorothy Whipple's Someone at a Distance. What could be nicer?

St. Petersburg in a Nancy Mitford frame of mind

I was properly mortified on Thursday evening when I opened an email from Frances at Heywood Hill inviting me to the launch of the new Capuchin Classic, Nancy Mitford's Highland Fling. Regular readers of this blog will know that I am a great fan of the mint green voyage of rediscovery that is Capuchin. The reason for the mortification is two fold. Firstly, by the time I opened the email, the party had practically already started, and secondly, I couldn't go in any case, as I was already on my way to St. Petersburg.

It was our first time in the "Venice of the north" and in Russia and what a time it was. We had a wonderful taste of Russian culture at the wedding of dear friends and topped it off with a splendid tour of some of the city's sights before dragging out weary and sleep-deprived bodies back home last night.

How much reading did I do? Well, not as much as planned. I spent most of the flight out sad about having missed the Capuchin bash, and most of the flight home, fast asleep. I feel like a very naughty book blogger. The book that I had with me, and which I did read a bit of was Nancy Mitford's Love in a Cold Climate - the lovely, if slightly dilapidated copy that you see here. More reflections on that; later.

The George Eliot you didn't know...

A small second hand bookshop, stuffed with battered Stephen King novels in the middle of the Trinibagonian capital, Port of Spain, was the last place that I expected to find a stash of Virago Modern Classics. But there they were, at the back of the store, so far from where they originated and such a salvation for me in my dilemma. My problem was that I was facing a 10 hour flight accross the atlantic, out of the burning caribbean and into snowy Europe, and I could not face it without a book or two. I chose three and read one that very afternoon. With the powerful heat of the day on my face and the city heaving into action around me, I read The Lifted Veil by George Eliot.

It was a shock to find a George Eliot title that I have not heard of, and even more of a shock to find it dealing with themes and exploring concerns which that brilliant novelist is not known for. Where Eliot is usually realistic, stark and concerned with the everyday, The Lifted Veil is a novella of horror, suspense and the supernatural. The tale is told by the central character, the sensitive Latimer whom we see progressing falteringly from adolecence to manhood. Latimer is burdened by a condition which plagues his relationships with others and ability to make his own destiny and that condition is that Latimer is both a clairvoyant and a mind reader. These abilities make latimer profoundly miserable, he fears the life that he is able to forsee and is at the same time drawn, inexorably to it. He is a figure of passive aggression whose ability to see the petty and vain thoughts of others renders him misanthropic himself.

Narration by an intelligent but flawed Latimer calls to mind the anxious ramblings of Victor Frankenstein and the hazy, gilded evocation of nineteenth century Europe as well as the final, hideous setpiece in which Latimer discovers that which he did not forsee, all recall Mary Shelley’s classic. In this novella, George Eliot is dipping her toe into the waters of the supernatural and the so-called pseudoscienes that so preoccupied the Victorians. The “veil” is a reference to the lack of knowledge about fate and about others which is the usual human condition. Latimer, by contrast, inhabits a world, or thinks that he inhabits a world, in which that veil is lifted, in which his knowledge of the world around him exposes him morally and emotionally. This premise is a vehicle for a rather wonderful exploration of the self and a treatment of alienation and the tawdry thoughts that can motivate human behaviour. George Eliot interuppted writing Mill on the Floss to pen this dark yarn, and in its candid potrayal of charcter, it is typical of its author’s work. A fine discovery and one for the recommendations list.