Irma Prunesquallor, described by Mervyn Peake at the beginning of the second book of the Gormenghast series.

i had to stop reading and laugh. How perfectly delightful! This quote illustrates how well Fiona Shaw captured the character of man-hungry Prunesquallor.

 

PBS character page: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/gormenghast/characters/irma.html

The character photo on the PBS page looks like the embodiment of this quote!

Well written, with some lovely prose, A STONE'S THROW follows Meg, a young British girl from the time her father left with her brother to when her son stands throwing stones with his teenage daughter at the funeral of his father.

While the writing was tight, with good characterisation of Meg and her husband as a reserved English couple, the themes were too complex for such a short book. I never really got to know the characters, and therefore couldn't relate that well to them. Perhaps that was an intentional technique to emphasize the extreme self-containment needed to sustain a lifetime of British stiff-upper-lip, but it only served to make the characters difficult for me to know.

Meg's husband George, too, was one dimensional as a character - throughout the book we only see him through the eyes of Meg and her son Will, and their view of him was rather harsh. I would have liked to get behind his reserve to find out his thoughts on the compromises he had to make throughout his marriage to Meg.

Interesting enough for me to want to finish it, the first part (up to the end of Meg's boat journey during WW2), was wonderful, but ultimately I was left somewhat frustrated and rather sad at such a passionless existence, although Meg's encouragement of Will to live his life on his terms offered some hope.

Quietly powerful, A Stone's Throw is a study in compromise and its consequences. In evocative and delicately-crafted prose Fiona Shaw traces a pattern of emotional damage that spans three generations of one family.

The first part of the novel focuses on Meg Bryan, a young woman whose childhood is overshadowed by the disappearance of her father and younger brother. As World War two breaks out Meg emigrates to South Africa to marry a man she does not love. On the journey a fleeting, passionate affair with a soldier makes her understand how much she has lost.

The second part focuses on Meg's son, Will, whose life is blighted by the death of his first lover in a freak accident for which he feels responsible. Like his mother, Will makes a marriage of convenience and spends the rest of his life paying the price.

What this novel does particularly well is illuminate with compassion and honesty the struggle of individuals rendered emotionally inarticulate by the long term effects of grief.

Set in a small northern town in the nineteen fifties, Tell It To The Bees is the story of Charlie whose utterly self-absorbed father walks out on his marriage leaving his wife Lydia unable to pay her rent, despite working all the hours she can in a factory.

Through her son,Lydia becomes friends with Jean, a local doctor. When Lydia is threatened with eviction, Jean takes her in. Though neither of them have ever considered themselves to be any different from other people, they find themselves drawn into an intense sexual relationship.

Gossip travel quickly in a small town and Jean's husband appears at Charlie's school to take his son away from this 'unnatural' household and threatens to go to the police if Lydia tries to take the boy back.

I loved the author's almost cinematic use of detail. It's this that makes her so successful in capturing the world as seen from a child's eye. Deeply moving, sometimes harrowing, Tell It To The Bees drills down into the permafrost of nineteen fifties Britain to reveal a twilight world of repression lit up here and there with moments of pure joy.