Two Meetings

First, a late and contrite note on the book club meeting for March. Held on a rainy evening at the warm fragrant Tiglio farmhouse, furnished beautifully in contemporary elegance, of Helen Fentimen, we wined and dined sumptuously and discussed Daphne du Maurier’s  My Cousin Rachel. Did she or didn’t she? No one knows for sure. Selene felt it was a real page turner filled with  manipulation and revenge and Margaret added jealousy, obsession, and love. Someone mentioned overdrawn hobbledehoy. In short, the mystery-romance story of two bachelor cousins falling in love with a beautiful half Italian distant cousin and the effect she had on them, published in 1951 followed on several years of Noir drama films where the nefarious female character was always foreign and exotic. The question throughout was whether she had poisoned Ambrose and was in the process of poisoning his young cousin Philip. Du Maurier’s character was mysterious, charming and clever and sufficiently duplicitous that one never was sure whether she did indeed do the deed.Margaret's thoughtful notes follow:

Written in the first person by Philip and therefore of necessity  slanted. We see and know only  his truths. He sees everything from a  narrow viewpoint, that of a young man who has not yet matured…until his encounter with Rachel he is a virgin. One suspects that the same was true of Ambrose. They were both therefore easily manipulated by Rachel.
THEMES: obsession, jealousy, love and hate.
CHARACTERS.
Philip: naive country bumpkin brought up in country in a household of men, secure childhood, morbidly attached to Ambrose. No knowledge of women apart from  Louisa his childhood friend who he never sees as a woman.  Limited knowledge of the world. He loves nature and is extremely aware of it, but only in his own area, specifically, his estate. When he travels to Italy he sees none of the beauty, only ugliness and poverty. He is infantile in his behaviour, his sulks and jealousy, his loves and hates. His love for  Rachel could be seen as oedipal…his father-substitute’s wife. He inherits Ambrose’s estate, money, family jewels and ….wife..  He becomes or subconsciously wishes to become Ambrose.  Irrational, he oscillates from believing one thing to believing the opposite. His jealousy and paranoia cause him to commit murder.
Rachel: worldly, sophisticated, spend-thrift. Insecure childhood, marriage to gain security first to Sangalli then to Ambrose. Sensual, attractive to both sexes. Sense of humour. Is careful to secure a livelihood. She is a woman alone in a period when women had far fewer rights. Money will give her independence, and the strength to face life and live it to the full. She appears to be caring, as when Ambrose and  Philip are ill. Has great knowledge of plants and like the witches of old, knows the virtues of medicinal plants and poisonous ones.   She casts spells. She could also be a murderer.  However,  why would she have murdered  Ambrose when he hadn’t signed the will?  Rachel is shocked by the similarity between Philip and Ambrose. While she is dying , she calls him Ambrose.
Rainardi: viewed with suspicion by Philip he represents the unknown, all that is foreign and therefore untrustworthy. He is dark and sinister and speaks another, incomprehensible language.
Louisa, good, innocent and in love with Philip. She is open and honest, contrasting Rachel’s secretive and complex character
Nick:  incapable of putting a brake on Philips wild decisions. Perhaps he  also sees the chance for his daughter of marrying money, disappearing.  He is the voice of reason which cannot be heard by the besotted Philip.
Daphne du Maurier said that when she wrote the book she became Philip and therefore like Philip did  not know  whether or not  Rachel murdered Ambrose .


The April meeting was held at the vibrant, cozy, familiar and always welcoming home of Krysia Bell. The book we discussed, most of us had read many years ago and, on re reading found it a different book altogether. This time around the themes that impressed us most were sociopolitical, socioeconomic, socialism, sufferance, equality, and existentialism. Helen remarked on the class differences writ large within the beautiful sensitively, vividly descriptive.  Margaret cited the essentially tragic age of upheaval and change, the social situation and class destruction. She brought the author's background and current social status to our attention, with reference to its impact on the story.  Krysia called it not a book for sissies. The book under discussion was Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H Lawrence. Here are Krysia’s extensive and intuitive notes:

The novel is set in the Midlands at Wragby Hall, the home of  Lord Clifford Chatterley and his wife  Constance, Lady Chatterley. Clifford owns the colliery bordering Wragby Hall separated by a small wood and a park. This is a perfect setting to explore the theme of  Lawrence’s novel, the nihilistic/existential monotonous life of the Aristocracy, the slavish existence of the working class, and the Marxist theory that there is no such thing as the individual only the struggles between classes.

The sex scenes for which it is famous  are disappointingly mild now and of course  we wouldn’t be shocked by the use of the ‘f’ and ‘c’ word running through it or the sexual freedom and adultery which takes place. The acquittal of Penguin books in the famous trial was a crucial step towards the freedom of the written word.

I don’t expect the ruling classes much liked Lawrences’ portrayal of  aristocratic males as spineless, arrogant, nonsensical prattlers, with wives who have lost interest in them or divorced them, children in search of their nanny’s as Clifford becomes with Mrs. Bolton at the end. Clifford is a typical example. A priggish, self centered, pompous man paralyzed in The Great War and confined to a motorised bath chair who finds most aspects of life meaningless. Even his writing, clever spiteful stories about people he has known, are in themselves, as his father-in-law points out, quite meaningless. Connie on the other hand seems to have more resolve; intelligent, outgoing, worldly, free thinking in comparison to Clifford, educated in the cultural centres of Europe, she throws her energy at the void, the dream, the simulacrum of reality in which they live, dominated by Clifford’s writing which she practically co-authors. Clifford needs her to be at his side every moment of the day, but of course it’s not long before she tires of this. The loneliness of Wragby Hall, the absence of a husband in any physical sense, the prospect of no children, and the reality of  Clifford’s blank insentience and vacuity drives her to an affair with Michaelis another listless purposeless man with whom she has to compromise herself. Mick asks her to marry him and when she declines he turns nasty. ‘He brought down her sexual feeling for him like a pack of cards by saying that women either don’t come off or wait until a man has and then the man has to hang on while the woman does and why can’t a woman synchronise her coming off when the man does?’ I suppose this would have been considered a shocking thing to voice in the Sixties.
As the years pass it’s the fear of nothingness in Connie’s life that affects her. She grows numb of the bitch goddess (which is the name they give to success) and this is another nothingness. The bitch goddess of success had two main appetites: one for flattery, adulation, stroking and tickling such as writers and artists gave her and the other, the meat and bones, were provided by the men who had money in industry.

I thought it was a great book. I loved the way we were taken into their private thoughts, especially Connie who was in some way as shallow and whimsical as Clifford although quite likeable, but what I loved about it most were the poetic colourful descriptions of the wood.

This is the newly graveled path when she first sees Mellors -‘When the rock and refuse of the underworld had burned and given off its sulphur, it turned bright pink, shrimp-coloured on dry days, darker, crab coloured on wet. Now it was pale shrimp-colour, with a bluish-white hoar of frost.’


And this one; a beautiful metaphor for their love making.

The wood was silent, still and secret in the evening drizzle of the rain full of the mystery of eggs and half-open buds half unsheathed flowers in the dimness of it all trees glistened naked and dark as if they had unclothed themselves and the green things on earth seemed to hum with greenness.

Mellors never says much until his letter at the end  in which he reveals his extreme earthiness and the obsessions about people being so interested in money that they had lost themselves.
Having made a big mistake marrying his wife Betty it looks as if he is about to make another mistake with Connie.
Connie in search for something more meaningful finds passion and erotic love. That is what they have in common which seems pretty futile in the great realm of things. Would they grow to really love one another.  Mellors wasn’t a fool but how could Connie put up with that awful dialect he spoke. You couldn’t understand what the man was talking about. And someone who said things like ‘you’ve got a fine arse to stroke on yu woman like you needs proper graftin.’
They both loved flowers, they both loved sex, would that be enough for a lifetime. Maybe for Mellors but unlikely for Connie.

Thank you to everyone who contributed and participated.
Here is a recap of the upcoming details, by title, date and venue:

Black Swan Green by David Mitchell, 21 May at Palazzo Salvi
The Passion by Jeanette Winterson, 26 June at Margaret Moore's
A Heart So White by Javier Marias, 31 July at Pietro and Marijke's

Thank you again,

Kerry and Krysia