Carol’s Comments March
2015
Hello Everyone! Welcome to another issue of Carol’s
Comments. As a devoted Downton Abbey fan, I eagerly awaited the series
return on January 4th. Before Season Five began, I decided to mainly
focus on books which gave an alternate perspective on the British aristocracy’s
decline after World War I. I started with one of my favorite novels, Brideshead
Revisited by Evelyn Waugh.
Set between 1924 and 1944, Waugh’s story centers on
middle class artist turned British Army officer Charles Ryder. He recalls in a
bittersweet flashback his halcyon days at Oxford where one summer in 1924 he
meets and develops an intimate friendship with Sebastian Flyte, a very charismatic
and rather eccentric young aristocrat.
When Sebastian takes Charles to Brideshead, the
family ancestral estate for a visit, he soon becomes quite captivated with the
entire Flyte family especially with Sebastian’s elusively beautiful sister
Julia and his devoutly Catholic mother Lady Marchmain. Ultimately, Ryder’s life
is intrinsically intertwined with the bewitching
Marchmain clan forever.
After finishing Brideshead
Revisited, I still wanted to remain in the luxuriant and strangely melancholy
world of the enigmatic Flytes. Since I
own the entire 11 episode 1981 Brideshead Revisited miniseries on
DVD, and was literally snowbound for much of January, I binge watched the 12
hour television adaptation over three consecutive
weekends.
Primarily directed by
Charles Sturridge (who replaced Michael Lindsay-Hogg after a British writers’
strike temporarily delayed production), this extremely faithful dramatization
stars Jeremy Irons as Charles Ryder, Anthony Andrews as Sebastian Flyte, Diana
Quick as Julia Flyte and Laurence Olivier and Claire Bloom as Lord and Lady
Marchmain.
John Mortimer’s
brilliant screenplay exquisitely re-creates the sumptuously evocative
atmosphere of Waugh’s original book. More importantly, Andrews and Irons give
such incredibly memorable performances that I always imagine them as Sebastian
and Charles whenever I read Brideshead Revisited.
Ultimately, this
unforgettable award-winning miniseries remains the definitive film version of Waugh’s
classic novel. Not even the recent 2008 abridged theatrical remake starring
Emma Thompson and Matthew Goode (which was also filmed on location at Castle
Howard) can compare to it. If you love Downton Abbey, I highly recommend
watching it.
Next I took a temporary
literary detour back twenty years to 1905 after reading excellent reviews in
the New
York Times and Entertainment Weekly about Priya
Parmar’s fictional biography Vanessa and Her Sister.
In Parmar’s inventive
novel, artist Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf’s older sister narrates the story by
using imaginary diaries and letters which describe the very avant-garde
lifestyle she, Virginia and her two brothers, Thoby and Adrian Stephen led in London’s
bohemian Bloomsbury neighborhoods between 1905 through 1912.
Through this unique
literary plot device, the reader not only learns about how the Stephen family
forms an intellectual circle of friends known as the Bloomsbury Group but also
witnesses Vanessa’s turbulent
relationship with her sister, notably Virginia’s possessiveness and mental
instability which eventually ruins her marriage to fellow painter and art
critic Clive Bell. At first, I thought this unusual storyline would be difficult to follow, Instead these
absorbing fictional letters and diary entries intimately draw the reader into
Vanessa’s and her friends’ personal lives and struggles.
Finally, the author
also features a prologue which lists every member of the Stephen family and all
their intellectual friends (circa 1905) along with an epilogue which describes
the fates of the surviving Bloomsbury Group after 1912.
After my brief
interlude in the Edwardian era, I quickly fast-forwarded twenty years to the
early 1920s to read The Paying Guests 2014’s wildly popular New York Times bestseller
by Sarah Waters.
Waters uses three
distinct genres: historical fiction, erotic love story and murder mystery in
this intriguing and dramatically different story. Set in 1922 in London’s
prestigious Champion Hill suburb, the novel revolves around Frances Wray and
her widowed mother. After Mr. Wray’s death leaves his family nearly destitute
due to poor financial investments, the women need to take in lodgers (aka
paying guests) to supplement their meager income.
When they decide to
rent upstairs rooms to the young married couple Leonard and Lilian Barber,
Frances quickly becomes intimately entangled in their lives. As time
progresses, Frances’ close friendship with Lilian suddenly transforms into an
illicit love affair.
Then in the last third
of Waters' book, the plot abruptly switches to a crime thriller when a brutal
murder profoundly and irrevocably changes Frances’ and Lilian’s lives and
romantic relationship forever. I found this section of the novel very
exhilarating because the reader witnesses the murder and subsequent investigation
through the criminal’s point of view.
Although I’m not
usually attracted to the themes explored in The Paying Guests, it
does offer a very imaginative and provocative glimpse into what Downton
Abbey might have looked like if the Crawley sisters or their cousin
Rose had chosen a Sapphic lifestyle.
All the books and
movies reviewed in my column can be found in most local public libraries. My
readers from St Joseph County, Indiana can visit the St Joseph County Public
Library web site at libraryforlife.org for more information. Thanks for reading
and your continued support as I start my fourth year writing this blog. See you
all next time!
