Backlisted - Miss Buncle's Book by D.E. Stevenson

Episode Date: July 8, 2019

Miss Buncle's Book by D.E. Stevenson, a bestseller when first published in the 1930s, is the novel under discussion. Joining John and Andy is novelist and teacher of creative writing Shelley Harris. Also featured in this episode, Marc Hamer's memoir How To Catch a Mole and Sam Riviere's debut poetry collection 81 Austerities.Timings: (may differ due to variable advert length)7'16 - 81 Austerities by Sam Riviere14'13 - How to Catch a Mole by Mark Hamer20'27 - The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth23'18 - Miss Buncle's Book by D.E. Stevenson* To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops.* For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm*If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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There are also balance balls, bikes, cables, kettlebells, and TRX equipment. But, like, no pressure. Get started for $1 enrollment and then only $15 a month. Hurry this $1 enrollment sale of Planet Fitness and July 18th. $49 annual fee applies. See Home Club for details. so yeah we've both just watched the magnificent final concluding film for Deadwood. Deadwood.

We've talked about Deadwood before, haven't we? But I've just had a really annoying text from Erica Wagner, our former guest, who's done, I think, three backlists. She met Ian McShane at a party last night. So she's just saying, Hengdai, those of you who know them. Hengdai! Hengdai!

In Excelsis. those of you who know them Pink Guy Pink Guy in Exchelsis publisher had sent Ian McShane my New Statesman piece

and he's in caps he just wrote to thank me Swaringen in my inbox and then have a lovely weekend you limber dick

cocksucker for those of you who've seen the movie will know that that's anyway great news for Erica of course I'd love to meet Ian McShane but I think it's Al Swaringen who you really want to meet For those of you who've seen the movie will know that that's a... Anyway, great news for Erica. Of course I'd love to meet Ian McShane.

But I think it's Al Swearengin who you really want to meet. So good is that characterisation. We're going to limit ourselves, aren't we, to just saying one thing that we liked about... We've wanged on about Deadwood on here before. I've just finished doing a rewatch of the whole thing and then into the movie. And if you don't know this, listeners, Deadwood got cancelled after its third season

and so 15 years later they've made... They finally managed to persuade HBO to make a movie, didn't they, to conclude it. I think they had a series arc for the fourth season that didn't happen and whether the film follows that arc or not, I'm not sure. I know someone will tell me. But it brings everything together very satisfyingly it lets you say goodbye to the that amazing collection of characters and although as you say Ian McShane is of course magnificent in it I felt watching the film that the focus on the character of Seth Bullock

and on the performance by Timothy Olyphant actually was 100% the right thing to do. Watching it again, it was his performance that I thought, oh, this is the, what's the Lebowski thing? This is the rug holding the rune together. That character is the spine of the programme. And I think there weren't any bad performances in this. And if you've spent time,

if you've fallen in love with those characters, I could not imagine that you could have done a better job. And I spent most of it weeping. Also, one could see Deadwood as a chronicler of village life. Albeit. Oh, that village life. Albeit. Oh, that was smooth. That's not a village you would choose to live in. Or indeed get to live in

for very long, though. Right, let's start. Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast that gives new life to old books. Today you find us in Tanglewood Cottage in the deceptively quiet village of Silverstream. On the table in front of us lies a plate of Mrs Goldsmith's breakfast buns.

Next to them, a copy of a new novel, Disturber of the Peace, by John Smith. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound, the platform where readers crowdfund the books they really want to read. I'm Andy Miller, author of The Year of Reading Dangerously. And joining us today is... Da-ding! ..backlisted listener and novelist Shelley Harris.

Hello! It's lovely to be here. Shelley has published two novels. Her debut Jubilee, which was published by Weidenfeld & Nicholson, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Prize and was a Radio 4 book at bedtime and a Richard and Judy selection. It was indeed. And her second novel, Vigilante, about a feminist wannabe superhero, was described by the Times as entertainment wrapped round a tense thriller. Are you happy with that?

Not at all, given. She is a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Reading and is working on her third novel at the moment. And her favourite book is Michael Chabon's novel The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay. Now, I worked for the publisher of that novel when it was published in the UK and I spent years telling people how much I loved it before I read it.

But fortunately... You read it and loved it. Fortunately, Shelley, as you know, it is an absolutely fantastic novel. It is a great book. It is an authentic masterpiece. Yeah. That is the hill that I will die on, sorry.

No, no, no, I think Shaven's piece... And also, I'm going to mention this again, because as you know, my favourite piece of critical writing in the last 20 years is Michael Shaven's essay about the films of Wes Anderson. And my second favourite piece of critical writing in the last 20 years is Michael Chabon's essay about the films of Wes Anderson and my second favourite piece of critical writing in the last 20 years is Michael Chabon's essay about

reading Finnegan's Wake. Do you have another favourite book by Michael Chabon? That is such an interesting question because I think his work can be varied in quality I do but I think the Wonder Boys actually, I think I think the Wonder Boys actually I think for me

the Wonder Boys I've never read it I probably told people I read that as well bad man, that was before I reformed my character of course I read the latest one Moon Glow which is kind of, yeah

he's a, but Cavalier and Clay I think is a, I think you're right, I think it is a genuine. It's funny how Cavalier and Clay is loosely based on the lives and careers of people like Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, who of course are much, much more famous in their own right than they were 20 years ago when Chabon wrote that novel. That's true. Yes, that's true, actually,

because we've had this kind of outpouring of superhero movies. The way that Stan Lee was pushed to the front as the figurehead of those films within the films is significant. I think you could go back to Cavalier and Clay and find, you know, it's the story, isn't it, of the genesis of comic books. It is. But also the Jewish experience of comic books. I will bang on for the whole podcast about it,

so I will restrict myself a bit. But he just managed to be both ridiculously clever. It is an incredibly conceptually clever book and an incredibly cleverly written book, but also it is utterly throat-grabbing and heart-grabbing. And also just his flipping sentences, just to read that as a writer and think, OK, now I know what is possible.

These are exactly the sort of things I used to say about it before I read it but we were right yeah yeah anyway more by luck than judgment Andy for you I think the book that Shelley has chosen to talk to us about today is Miss Bunkle's book by D.E. Dorothy Emily Stevenson. First published by Herbert Jenkins in 1934 and republished in an exquisite new edition by Persephone Books in 2008. But before we lose ourselves in the tangled skeins of village gossip,

Andy, what have you been reading? I've been reading more poetry. More poetry. Yes, I read poetry now. Partly because I was saying to Shelley on the way up here that we're recording quite a few episodes of Backlisted quite close to one another. And we're reading several books that are very long.

And every so often I like to read something for me. And so that's been a slim volume of poetry I want to talk about a book by Sam Riviere called 81 Austerities which was recommended to me by the poet and critic Jeremy Noel Todd in fact I should pin the list of recommendations that I got. We should put them on the website or something. I very specifically asked for single volumes of poetry rather than selected or collected editions, because I'm interested in reading volumes of poetry as the poet originally wanted to present them to the reader. And one of the reasons I like 81 Austerities by Sam Riviere

is because it's a book that actually engages with its status as a book it has chapters it has editorial notes which seem real at first and then become increasingly bogus as they go which really made me laugh and it's got a fantastic index with eight entries, basically saying that there are eight subjects of all the poems in this book. If you'd like to know what the subjects of his work is, poetry, pornography, death, the modern, longing, dramatis personae encounters names okay so i'm going to read two or three of

the poems they are funny and thought-provoking and they really engage with their status as words on a page. That's what I like about them. That's the thing I like about books. I like books, novels, that at some point acknowledge to you, the reader, that they are a book, that what you are reading is not life, but is a thing that has been printed on paper and bound with glue and put in your hands through a mechanical process in that calvino kind of exactly so so here's the this opens this volume opens the first chapter is called girlfriend heaven and the first poem is called Crisis Poem. In three years, I have been awarded £48,000

by various funding bodies, councils and publishing houses for my contributions to the art, and I would like to acknowledge the initiatives put in place by the government and the rigorous assessment criteria under which my work has thrived since 2008. I have written 20 or 21 poems, developed a taste for sushi, decent wine, bought my acquaintances many beers, many of whom have never worked a day in their lives. How would you like to touch my palm and divine

how long my working week has been? Mostly I watch films and stare and try to decide what to wear. Speaking as a poet, I would rather blow my brains out than run out of credit as the biographer of the famously unresolved 50s poet Suicide has commented, capital is the index of meaning. Anything is better than stealing from the co-op with a clotted heart. Without it, you don't survive. Very good. What do you think, Shelley? I think it's fabulous

I'm going to buy it But also, it does make me think There are connections there with Miss Bunkle's book So many connections There are Here's a poem that has no connections with Miss Bunkle's book It's called Special New Brand And I think this is a poem about the group Pavement

I don't know for sure that it is, but there's a couple of lines in here and the general feeling of this being a poem by a man, perhaps in early middle age. I don't know how old Sam Riviere is. Anyway, it's called Special New Brand. What am I doing here? Thought I liked you guys. Thought we shared something similar. Suspicions about culture. Now everyone is singing your songs. I used to listen to this one on my mini disc player. Trying to get some sleep in lousy Australia. Now I'm feeling like a fucking alien.

Feeling betrayed. I have to accept you sold out just like the others. I'm the same as all these assholes. This 37 year old balding website designer in a flat cap. Head banging to the haircut song. Dudes seriously starting to think, I'd rather go to church. I've got one more, OK?

Dream poem. This is my favourite poem in this book. Dream poem. I know what you're thinking. It's dull unless they're sex dreams. Dreams about violent murders. Mine are pretty banal. I dreamed I wrote a poem beginning high and ending, see you later. The middle part was amazing. That's the part I don't remember. I was sitting on a platform high above the jungle. This all feels really familiar, probably from something I've seen on TV. I was dressed up as a witch doctor and used this stick of judgment, taking back the names of creatures, restoring them to myth. I was doing wisely with it. In my dream, the poem didn't have this assonance that's

creeping in. After I'd taken back everything, I kept hold of my stick, using it to designate the categories that really matter, while adding bones and wings to my hat. Sitting up here, out of danger. I hate this. I like that. Very good. So that book is published by Faber. It's called 81 Austerities by Sam Riviere. It came out about eight years ago,

so it's not really front list or back list, but it is worth reading. Has he published more? Yes, he had a volume out about three years ago called Kim Kardashian's Wedding. And he's also published a novel called Safe Mode, Yes, he had a volume out about three years ago called Kim Kardashian's Wedding. And he's also published a novel called Safe Mode, which I have bought a copy of but haven't read yet. John, what have you been reading this week? Well, as you know, I've been ploughing through nature writing in a fairly major way, doing my Wainwright judging.

And one of the rewards is you get to read stuff you wouldn't normally read. One of the perils is that there are things that you like that don't make it onto the shortlist. And one of the books I'm going to talk about today hasn't made it onto the shortlist, which was announced on July 2nd. It's called How to Catch a Mole by Mark Hamer. You know, it's a book about a mole catcher. It's kind of interesting.

Lost rural craft. But it's much better than that might make it sound. It's a sort of reflection on, certainly on relationship with nature. It's got a subtitle I do not like. How to Catch a Mole and Find Yourself in Nature. Ah, I do not like. And actually, does the book no service?

Because it is actually a beautiful book, I think. And philosophically, it has that kind of sense of... Basically, Mark Hamer, the key to his life is he had a bad relationship with his father. He left home and became homeless as a teenager and slept rough and then ended up getting a job on the railway and then ended up going to art school and then has spent most of the rest of his life i'm guessing that he must be in his 60s now working in rural wales as a mole catcher and he writes about moles as you would imagine brilliantly he

knows a lot about them you have to moles are very interesting creatures and i won't bore you i'm i also like a mole i mean but it's but they're great, you know, the moles are, as you know, the suburban nightmare. I think we might have reached, unexpectedly, some peak backlisted moment. Well, they come and fuck up your lawn, Andy, let's be honest. Anyway, he's very good at catching them. I like books by people who do things, rather than people who wander through like tourists he's somebody who makes a

living out of his his nature writing he's like like you know that's why i like shepherds it's they're actually they've got a job they've got a job to do they're not just fotherington thomasing around in the countryside saying isn't it beautiful isn't it amazing so i'll read you a little bit it's probably much easier at 15 when i left school in the cold black and north i should say also there's poetry some of his poetry which is which is good planted through the book i mean it it's not a barrel of last but it is rather beautiful at 15 when i left school in the cold black and north i escaped the life of a mole i was too tall at six foot two. The mine boss said I would crack my skull and break my back. My father, who ran the village pub, tried to get me down there

to scrape coal from the walls like the strong and stocky short-armed men around me. The hidden, lone mole draws my interest, but we are not the same, the mole and me. I didn't fit in the hole. I was apprenticed to work with steel, instead welding, cutting, drilling, rolling and bending massive steel plates. I didn't stay there very long. Less than a year I was pushed from the nest. I walked. There was no scent of home. I'm drawn back to that wandering outdoor life and when I retire from working the earth, which is not too far away now, I think about loading up my backpack and walking across it again for a while. But I can't bear to spend too long away from Peggy. As I get older and my life goes slow and comfortable, I often think about the bittersweet joy and simple freedom of living outdoors, wrapped in a blanket

on a pile of dry twigs or leaves, and looking up through the leaves of a small hedgerow oak, and into the sky as the night falls, watching the silhouette of the blackbird singing from the topmost branch of the tree. That was a life without worry. I would live or die and neither would matter. Even lying under a pier once, starving and feeling that I was dying, I felt sad but I also reasoned that it was perfectly acceptable to feel sad in that situation. Goodbyes are sad.

There is no avoiding sadness in life, although it seems that happiness is easier to avoid. I have in my time deliberately tried to die, but I'm still here and life is always won on its own terms, so I stopped trying to make the choice for myself. It seemed that it was not my decision to make and I began allowing life to happen. It feels much better that way.

I learned it from the birds who just flew and nested and ate and made new birds and the hedgehogs who just shuffled and ate and made new hedgehogs and they all died and went back to mud in their own good time. Having worked all my life, created a family, discovered a home, I feel as secure as a working class man ever feels and I feel a sense of equality again with the crow and the toad and the hawthorn, with the rain and wind.

I am them, and they are me. I lost my self-importance early on and do not want to differentiate myself from the world around me. I'm just another animal, another tree, another wildflower in the meadow among billions of others, each unique in their own way, each just like the others in other ways, each one just another expression of nature trying to survive. There is something deeply magnificent in being just ordinary. I know how to survive in the kind of

nature that constantly circles around me and I'm in love with it. I trust it to behave in the way it always behaves and I expect it to be dangerous nature does not care about our safety to be comfortable and safe i have learned to be aware and to do this i have to quieten my internal dialogue to trust my body to tell me if something is wrong to do that i have to listen and be alone come on it. It's very good. That's really good. It's very, very good. It's very surprisingly better than you think it's going to be,

given, you know, you think, what can there be said about catching miles? But as a reflection on nature and the difficulty of our relationship with nature, it's as good as anything I've read in quite a while. Shelley, we're busting out the format now by turning to you and saying, what have you been reading this week? And we're busting out of the format now by turning to you and saying, what have you been reading this week? And you're busting

out of the format because I walked in and said, I have read this thing recently that absolutely completely blew me away. And I tell you what it is, and when people are listening, they're going to think I'm a plant, aren't they? Because it's an Unbound book. Or a mole. Honestly, honestly,

this has got nothing to do with the fact that I'm here at the offices of Unbound, but this book is called The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth. And it really, really has blown me away. What is it that really grabbed you about it? OK, so I think it's immersiveness was the thing that really, really grabbed me. And in part, this is because, and if you've talked about it, John, you'll have obviously talked about this kind of shadow language. So he's like, he's really hardcore.

Yeah, I don't think we've ever talked about it on the podcast, oddly enough, I don't think so. So basically, so what Paul Kingsnorth says is, I don't like reading historical novels that are written in modern English. And this book, listeners will probably know is set just after the Norman invasion of 1066 so I think it's 1066 to 1069 the harrying of the north I think it kind of finishes around the time of the harrying of the north and so he writes it in a language that is a kind of bridge between modern English and old English. And rather like something I'm trying to think of,

something like Clockwork Orange. You simply have to, and this is backlisted, so this is what you guys do. You have to have the patience to enter this world. You have to give it your attention. This is not a fucking tweet. Do you know? Yeah. They put that on the cover.

Yeah. I mean, he does all the things that all writers do in terms of creating character and da-da-da, which pull you in, but that language to be in there, you are in this, the blurb says post-apocalyptic world. It's a great way of describing it, I think.

Yes, he said it's a post-apocalyptic novel set a thousand years ago, which I think is quite, it's pretty good. And actually what you realise is, I know I'm banging on, you'll have to just cut this out, but what you realise is we were born pretty much in Britain knowing who the winners were. We totally accept it. We think that's the way it should have been. I used to work with a guy who was in a 1066 reenactment society. And he, and I'm not kidding you here, this is a true thing, he lost an eye reenacting. He lost an eye at the point of a sword.

Commitment. And I'm absolutely serious. And he said he was taken into the hospital in his chain mail. When I worked with him, one of the things he would say with real bitterness was things really started to go horribly wrong in 1066 for this country. And I used to think, what? And I now have read The Wake and I'm like, mate, I am with you. You just stick me in chain mail, put a sword in my hand, baby. I mean, obviously, I do think it is one of the most powerful novels

that's been published in the last 10 to 15 years. It's just a really strong story. We'll pick this up again after some marvellously witty and interesting adverts. We're excited about talking about Miss Dunkel's book by D.E. Stevenson for several reasons, but one of which is that it is a classic of English village life. And we all thought it would be fun to have a little village theme

to today's episode. The Wake is indeed a village novel as well. And Deadwood is a village gone to the bad. And what was the link with Sam Riviere's poem? I think there's a couple of as well. And Deadwood is a village gone to the bad. And what was the link with Sam Riviere's poem? I think there's a couple of links there. And I think one is that Miss Bunkle's book is very, very much self-consciously a book you are sitting there reading.

And the other thing is just this little thing, he was talking about money. And for me, one of the most moving parts of the book is actually when the writer gets paid. Yeah. It's always true to life. It's always true. But actually it is genuinely tear-jerking

because whoever thinks about that, whoever writes about it, whoever writes about it and actually she is just... That £100 is quite a thing. It's life-changing. It changes her life. It does.

Because she bloody needs money because she works. It's not fairies. It's not fairies giving you stories. I'm going to give some topics that I think this book is about. Village Life is a book about books. It's a book about the mechanics of writing and publishing, which is, of course, very backlisted. And it's also a brilliant example of the sort of novel republished by Persephone in the last 20 years, which is we would call middle brow. Middle brow is, we've talked about this on the podcast before, is a legitimate term adopted by academia rather than I'm not being snitty by using the word middle brow.

Shelley, when did you first read this book or come across Miss Bunkle's book? So I have two stories to offer you. One is a direct answer to that question, which is actually that I was in Hatchard's bookshop and I really, really, really wanted a comfort read. And honestly, I wish I could remember what had happened in my life. But we all have everything happening in our lives now that means we need a comfort read.

And of course, booksellers are gods. And this particular bookseller just said, look, this is the book you need. And I would never, ever have picked it up, ever. And I utterly loved it. Can I tell you another story? Can I tell you how Sarah Waters heard about Miss Bunkle's book? She heard about Miss Bunkle's book because i'm a real dickhead so basically i am really really bad

around people whose work i hugely hugely admire and i'm just awful and i have just learned that i literally physically need to stay away from people because of a really bad thing I did to Arthur Miller once and I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding. It's anecdote piling up on story. I know, I know. So I was at a thing that she was at and I can't tell you how much I love her work.

I mean, words can't express. And she was in the room and I said to the person I was with, oh, shit, OK, don't worry, I'm going to press my back against this wall and not go near her because bad things will happen. And after a while, the person I was with said, I think you need to be a bit braver and pulled me towards her and I involuntarily curtsied. I bobbed, much as perhaps a maid in one of her lovely books might bob.

Yeah. And she was absolutely charming and lovely. She was writing The Paying Guests at the time. And, you know, we were talking about all the things she'd read, Lolly Willows and stuff like that. And I said, oh, you must read Miss Bunkle's book. And she said, that's fabulous. Who's it by?

And I was so starstruck that I said R.L. Stevenson and she kind of went really what from 1934 and I went yes thinking commit girl yes R.L. Stevenson and then I shuffled away and I think I cried into some crisps. Oh, but you were almost right, weren't you? Because D.E. Stevenson was a second cousin of R.L. Stevenson. Here we go. I'm going to do the biog right now. Dorothy Emily Stevenson was born in Edinburgh in 1892. She was the daughter of one of the Lighthouse Stevensons.

Robert Louis was her father's first cousin and she lived in scotland all her life is everything okay you're looking off stage i've just had a sudden thought about keys but it's fine okay uh and she lived in scotland all her life which is interesting when you consider that she wrote about english villages in many of her books. She did not go to school, but was educated by a governess, started to write stories when she was eight. She applied against her parents' wishes, sat and passed the entrance exams for Oxford University

and was offered a place, but her parents forbade her to go, fearing that a university degree was an unforgivable deterrent to potential suitors so you suddenly when you read miss bunkel's book the wish fulfillment element is coming through loud and clear right so that here's the thing about d.e stevenson she wrote her first book in 1923 when she was 31. Her second did not appear for nine years. In 1934, she published Miss Bunkle's book,

and thereafter she wrote a novel a year, selling over four million copies of her books in Britain and three million in the USA. Respect. She is amazing. If you go on the internet... Yeah, she's excellent. And there are numerous American fan sites

devoted to her work. There is a fantastic website with a page on it where you can download what's called Susan's Never-Ending D.E. Stevenson's Spreadsheet, which cross-references every character and location in all those 40 novels, because Stevenson liked to use the same names, locations and characters and have them pop up,

like proper world-building, you know. And so novels or sequences of novels that appear to have nothing in common with one another, she would thread together for her own amusement, I think, but also because she knew readers liked to play the game along with her. I have to say, I absolutely love this. This is like a large steaming mug of Horlicks on a cold winter's night. It's just the most fun reading.

Do you remember when Dr Ian Patterson was here talking about Julie Cooper? Yeah. And we said, what's good about Julie Cooper's books? And he went, pleasure. Yes. That's what this book is, right? I found this so incredibly enjoyable, Shelley. Because it's Persephone.

And because Persephone are so classy, there's no blurb. Do we think we could offer the listeners, like in a nutshell, what the set up of the book is? All right, I'll give it a go. OK, so Miss Bunkle's book is the book within the book. So Miss Bunkle lives in what, at the opening of the novel, seems to be an absolutely picture-postcard, chocolate-box English village. And she has written this incendiary book called Disturber of the Peace.

Well, is it called Disturber of the Peace? No. Ah, go on. It's called Chronicles of an English village and her publisher changes the title. Ah, this is true. So this incendiary book is about what is really going on in an incredibly thinly disguised silver stream. Her village is called Silver Stream. She calls it Copperfield in the book. And the people are... She just does little name substitutions, like themed name substitutions for them.

And what's interesting is that the book within the book begins with setting the scene with a peaceful little village and then a sort of goat skin clad golden piping boy comes through the village piping music and the music sends people crazy and a sub huge anarchy and subversion occurs. People's lives are disrupted. And actually pretty much that's what happens in the book we are reading. Marriages dissolve, people elope with one another. Can you read us a little bit about why one of the characters who lives in the village is reading Disturber of the Peace for the first time?

Yes, I will. So the character who's reading it is called Sarah Walker. She's the doctor's wife. Mr Abbott, who is mentioned in this extract, is the editor of Disturber of the Peace or Chronicles of an English Village. And the nom de plume is John Smith. So Miss Bunker on through the high street and up the hill and then down again past the vicarage and the old church which slumbered quietly by the river. Wherever he went, he left behind him unrest and strange disturbance. People woke up, cast aside the fetters of conventional behaviour and followed the primitive impulses of their hidden natures. In some hearts, the clear, sweet music woke ambition. In some, it woke memories of other days and prompted kind actions.

Some of its hearers were driven to acts of violence. In others, it kindled love. At least, John Smith said that the music kindled love. But Sarah Walker, who knew something about that commodity, something more, she suspected, than John Smith, would have said that the emotion which the boys pipe kindled in the hearts of its hearers was not love at all but passion after this things began to happen in Copperfield incredible things Major Waterfoot discovered that he loved Mrs Mildmay for four years without ever having suspected it so he rushed across the road and found Mrs Mildmay in her garden and proposed to her with a fervour which almost made Sarah's eyebrows disappear into her hair. It may be remarked in parenthesis that Sarah's eyebrows were a distinctive feature darker than her hair and beautifully arched.

darker than her hair and beautifully arched. This was the love scene which had made such an impression upon Mr Abbott. It was a passionate scene and had either been written by somebody who knew very little about such matters or somebody who knew a great deal. It was either very innocent or else it wasn't. I love the lightness of the prose. The prose is really, really, really good. Very innocent. Or else, it wasn't. I love the lightness of the prose. The prose is really, really, really good. It appears to have been simply chatted down, and in order to do that, you have to be a really good writer.

So that's the first thing. The second thing is, this book was published in the 1930s. 1934. That scene is like a brilliant Mickey take of a kind of strand in English fiction at the time in which we might include Sylvia Townsend Warner, we might include Arthur Macon, the great god Pan, Arthur Macon. This idea of magical pantheistic things occurring in the English countryside is a trope in that era. So for her to take the Mickeykey out of that in this context

seems really funny. Wind of the Willows, yes, of course, Wind of the Willows. But it also goes through, don't you think, into sort of Elizabeth Jenkins as well, Tortoise and the Hare, which we did the sort of things bubbling under, kind of supernatural things bubbling under in English villages. The book itself is brilliant because nobody can tell whether it's satire or just innocent.

And Miss Bunkle's book is exactly the same. You don't know... I mean, you're never quite sure how on top of how clever she is being. I think she is actually being very clever. There's a wonderful scene near the end of the book where you, the reader, are reading about another reader, reading the book about another book, which is like something out of Calvino.

Calvino we did on the last episode, but I was thinking this is like that vertiginous, like the cover of Amagama by Pink Floyd. It's like a picture in a picture, a book within a book within a book. This is the bit. Yeah, it's like momentum. Exactly. The main theme of the book was concerned with the fortunes

and misfortunes of Elizabeth Wade. This is the second book, which is called... The Pen Is Mightier. The Pen Is Mightier. Miss Bunkle's Other Self. Miss Wade wrote a book, and the story of Miss Wade's career as a novelist was the story of Miss Bunkle's own extraordinary experiences. Miss Wade wrote a book and placed it with Messer's nun and nutmeg.

The name made Mr Abbott roar with laughter. This spicy firm published Miss Wade's book, and it with messes nun and nutmeg the name made mr abbott raw with laughter this spicy firm published miss wade's book and it immediately became a bestseller the book was all about copperfield and copperfield was annoysed or pleased according to how it found itself in miss wade's book miss wade's book which was entitled storms in a teacup by jay farrier see what she's done there, was discussed and criticised very harshly by the Copperfieldians, at least by those of them who had no discernment. The others saw genius, which, of course,

was clearly proved by the absolutely unprecedented sales. The theme was unusual and intriguing. Mr Abbott had never read a novel about a woman who wrote a novel about a woman who wrote a novel. It was like a recurring decimal, he thought, or perhaps even more like a perspective of mirrors such as tailors use, in which the woman and her novel were reflected back and forth to infinity. It made your brain real if you pursued the thought too far, but there was no need to do so unless you wanted to, of course. So much for the main theme. Now that seems to me incredibly clever. Yeah.

Right, so you're approaching your subject in a manner which is light and playful and yet at the same time you're able to create a series of images like that. That's really good and make it easy to comprehend. You know, you get it straight away. And I think she does that again and again and again in different ways. And if you feel like clever, you can read this book and you can find lots of clever. And if you feel like your big mug of Horlicks, John,

you can sit down with your big mug of Horlicks. And I think that's a real pleasure of this book. Yes, of course, the thing about the boy in the pipe, that her pipe is the book. All the way through, there are these lovely little things you're reading the bit of when the twins get kidnapped and you're thinking kidnapped twins in an english village really would anyone do that and then of course she puts it in the novel and abbott says twins kidnapped in a book surely and she said well it actually happened that's why i

can't make things up i think it is very clever. And I also think it's more interesting than you're expecting it's going to be about the relationship between fiction and life. So it begins with this dream of a village, this kind of fantasy village. With the buns. With the buns. We need to give some space to the buns, I think. So the baker in the village knows exactly when all of her neighbours have their breakfast. And she times her boy, her baker boy's deliveries to precisely coincide so that all of her customers get their rolls fresh on the table, hot, ready to go.

And it really lulls you as a reader. I mean, it's lovely. It's a kind of fantasy. and you and it really lulls you as a reader I mean it's lovely it's a kind of fantasy and you I think you I think when I started to read that I thought this was going to be a bit toothless like nice but toothless misread yeah yeah and it totally totally isn't and actually there's some really I think one of the things I love about this book is there's real proper humanity here I mean Sarah Walker that we've just read about there's this really moving passage in which her husband reflects on her

postnatal depression and how he nearly lost her there is an abusive husband in it there is actually absolutely in 2019 people and problems that we will sharply, it's, you know what, it's a bit Marion Keys in that way, I think. There's also a totally fascinating and not judged lesbian couple, right? Absolutely. Miss King and Miss Pretty. And a passing reference to the well

of loneliness. Yes, absolutely. So the idea of the village as a setting which superficially seems buns and turns out to be much more. Yes, absolutely. So the idea of the village as a setting which superficially seems buns and turns out to be much more. And what are the things that feature in this novel which we would be surprised to find in a novel of this type, of this era? I think, and I am not an expert of novels of this type and era,

so I think partly actually actually, it is things like... I was surprised to see this kind of very chilled approach to same-sex relationships. Actually, the least chilled people in it is Miss King, one of the women in the relationship. She is stressed, but... And I think the treatment of the abusive husband, and I think...

I also think, and I think it's really, really hard when you are a feminist reading this novel not to have a little bit of wish fulfilment. And so I'm trying to be objective here. But I find it really interesting listening to that biographical thing you read about her not being allowed to go to Oxford and Sarah Walker the doctor's wife there's a real thing in it about how she she is smart she is smart smart and she actually reads some of the medical textbooks and she discusses it with her husband and then there's this very kind of 1930s moment where I think he uses a bit of Latin.

And she says, well, I wouldn't know about that then. You know, that's not going to get the bottoms wiped. And she stops at Latin. But it might be my ignorance that makes me surprised that we see these things that are subversive. And maybe you're going to say to me yeah there's loads of stuff no i was really interested in this book and in the subsequent i read um there are three sequels to this yeah to miss bunkel's book none of which are as good as miss bunkel's book the the first sequel miss bunkel married is fun the sequel to that uh the two mrs Abbots, appears to have no plot.

I imagine angry listeners will now besiege me saying, no, no, you haven't understood it. But I have. But the common thread running through those books, those three books, which she is very good at, are the patterns of female relationships within them. The male characters are there to buffer the central relationships and the central relationships between the women the the married relationship

between the person miss buncle marries let's not give it away let's not do spoilers isn't particularly believable should we say i don't think this is a book without flaws. And I think that's one flaw. Do you? OK. And I want also, I will say that pretty much all of her working class characters are basically Mrs. Overall from A.C.R. Yeah, they are. Lore, lore, Mrs. Would you be liking another?

It's not, you know, this is a middle-class book that really doesn't kind of seek to... Dawkins had made. I mean, it's interesting. She's very good on money in the book. So money is interesting. The vicar who decides, who's got money, who decides he wants to have a year trying to live without it

in a rather feeble way. But she's obviously got no money because her dividends, you know, her parents are both dead and the dividends are disappearing. It's the 1930s, and I think there is that background. This is definitely, you feel, although it could be, you know, set in the Edwardian period, you do feel that the world is changing

and there are threats on the horizon. But the money, at no point does she think, maybe I can survive without a maid but dorcas her maid is yeah as you say central casting has no real agency in the plot just is very very thrilled to discover that she's eventually going to get married i think the the sharpness of um miss buncle are the sharpnessness of Stevenson as a writer. I said earlier this was a book about publishing. I'm just going to read the beginning of chapter two.

This little bit brought me so much actual pleasure. So this is Mr Abbott, who you hear from here is a publisher. Mr Abbott looked at the clock several times as he went through his business on Wednesday morning. He was excited at the prospect of the interview with John Smith. Years of publishing had failed to dim his enthusiasms or to turn him into a soured and bitter pessimist. Every new and promising author found favour in his eyes. He had given up trying to predict the success or unsuccess of the novels he published, but he went on publishing them and hoping that each one published

would prove itself a bestseller. Last Friday morning, his nephew, Sam Abbott, who had just been taken into the firm of Abbott & Spicer, suddenly appeared in Mr Abbott's sanctum with a deplorable lack of ceremony and announced... I'm trying not to do an Ian Lavender voice here. Uncle Arthur. The fellow who wrote this book is either a genius or an imbecile.

Something stirred in Mr Abbott's heart at these words, a sort of sixth sense perhaps, and he had held out his hand for the untidy-looking manuscript with a feeling of excitement. Was this the bestseller at last? This is how Mitch feels when one of these comes in. It's so true. His sensible, publishing businessman self had warned him

that Sam was new to the job and had reminded him of other lamentable occasions when authors who had promised to be swans had turned out disappointing geese. But the flame which burned within him leapt to the challenge. The manuscript had gone home with him that night, and he was still reading it at 2am, still reading it and still in doubt. Making allowances for the exaggeration due to his youth and inexperience,

Sam had been right about Chronicles of an English Village, and Mr Abbott could not but endorse his opinion. It was not written by a genius, of course, neither was it the babblings of an imbecile, but the author of it was either a very clever man writing with his tongue in his cheek, or else a very simple person writing in all good faith. Whichever he was, Mr Abbott was in no two opinions about publishing him the autumn list was almost complete but room should be made for chronicles of an english village and he goes on to this brilliant thing he goes to say he stays up through the night he reads the book he's utterly gripped by it it gets to the end and uh he's talking about he's already thinking about the blurb. Yeah.

His mind was already busy on the blurb, which should introduce this unusual book. The author might have his own ideas about the blurb, of course, but Mr Abbott decided that it must be very carefully worded so as to give no clue, no clue whatever, as to whether the book was a delicate satire comparable only with the first chapter of Northanger Abbey or merely a chronicle of events I mean, that's not, you know. I know. It's light, it's funny, it's factually accurate.

It's great. She really carries you through these scenes. What do you think it is that speaks to people here in 2019 amongst books of this sort there is a fascinating publishing phenomenon i'd be interested in anyone's views on this what why why in the 21st century is there such a hunger for and enthusiasm for books written by and about women in the 1930s and 40s? That's so interesting, isn't it? And I can't help but think there's actually lots of answers to that. I think, I mean, this is a really kind of obvious answer, but we are more atomised

and what community means now is different. more atomised and what community means now is different. And I just wonder whether there's a kind of longing, and I don't mean a kind of Brexit-y longing for kind of something that didn't exist. I just wonder whether there's a longing for a smaller tribe. I just wonder whether there's a longing for a smaller tribe. I don't know. I think what's interesting is that one way of looking at this book

is that it's an escape book. The community is pretty loathsome, actually, it turns out. Pretty vindictive, pretty unpleasant. And I'm thinking all the time through the book is how is she going to survive? And actually, she doesn't. She decides to not stay in the village. I don't think I'm giving away too much. all the time through the book is how is she going to survive and actually she doesn't she decides to not stay in the village without i don't think i'm giving away too much i won't exactly say how

she doesn't stay in the village but and i think that that's one of the things you know i i love i read i do like reading a lot about i like village fiction because i think on one level it is just what happens when you put small groups of human beings together and how drama is created by the tensions. And what the book is, in a way, what the book is saying is that the book, because it's truthful, because it reveals people, there are some people who are enriched by that

and who gain from it, and there are other people who are prepared to horsewhip, which is what Mrs Featherstone Hogg hog wants to do so i think it's not what makes this different from just pure uh wish fulfillment and i think saying what they used to be nostalgia for a simpler there's nothing terribly simple about this you know this is um you know trilopian in some ways in its in its kind of its kind of... It doesn't really let anyone off the hook. Also, these are books, aren't they, which are both repositories,

records of the female experience in the eras in which they were written and also evidence, proof, of the marginalisation of the writers who created them. Yes. So these were seen as very... These would not have been reviewed in august literary journals at the time. And arguably the middle brow, which this represents,

is not reviewed in those journals now. So there is an ongoing process or and it would pushing it to the sidelines right there absolutely is and of course what's really being pushed to the sidelines is the readers of it yeah it's because of who reads these books that they've been sidelined and i'm really happy that as you say in in academe you know i've got quite i work at reading university and i've i've got um a colleague nicola wilson who's working on it absolutely bringing this straight back into the light yeah because of the writers but also because of the readers well you you were saying to me a brilliant thing earlier about how the over over emphasis put on iq as a measure of quality, right? That not all books can be dazzlingly clever,

nor should they be. Though this book is in its own way dazzlingly clever. But that's not the only thing that's going on under the bonnet. And it's also not the only way that it is being, if you like, used by its readers. I think there's a real reader-centered thing here about how do we actually read and what are the pleasures and uses of our reading and I know that sounds a bit cold perhaps no no no you know I agree I don't mean it coldly at all I'm so

enthusiastic about this book in a very kind of non-cold way but if I were Gwyneth Paltrow I would be talking about different modalities at this point probably and jade eggs but um please don't I'm not going to do that now though not now I think that there is a need to respect readers and understand why they read what they do and how they read, without making a hierarchy. That's what I think. Well, it's now time for one of our irregular but always much-enjoyed backlisted quizzes. How exciting. So this is, because I have my literary colleagues around me, I'm going to give you the names of a few fictional villages

and the counties in which they are situated and you have to give me which may or may not be fictional and you have to give me the titles and the authors all right so i'm gonna so i'm gonna get fingers i'm gonna bowl you some low balls to start with okay some easy ones start with the village of ulverton in Dorset. Obviously Adam Thorpe's Olverton. Okay, very good. The village of Aikenham in Suffolk is the model for which book?

Is it Aikenfield by Ronald Blythe? It is Aikenfield by Ronald Blythe. The village of Midwich in the fictional county of Windshear is the setting for... So that's the Midwich Cuckoos.

Bye. Oh, flip. Ah. Go on, go, go, go, go. Interruption. John Wyndham. John Wyndham, that's right. OK, so that's three steps away.

Filmed as? Village of the Damned. Indeed. I ask the questions. Sorry. Now, for this one, I want the author Now for this one I want the author but I'm also

in order to accept the answer I need it's a series of novels set in this village but I will need the title of one of the 13 novels

set in the village The village is Thrush Green and that's in the Cotswolds Thrush Green That is Miss Reed isn't it? It is Miss Reed All I need is. Thrush Green. That is Miss Reed, isn't it? It is Miss Reed.

All I need is one novel by the best-selling author Miss Reed. While you think of it, her real name was Dora Jessie Saint. She died in 2012, aged 98. She sold about 50 million books, and she was born in? I don't know. Croydon. Croydon. Oh, my God.

Anyway, so Fairacre, that's one of her other fictional villages, and Thrush Green. Anyone want to take a guess? Something at Thrush Green is, I'm sure, absolutely... Is there a title about the village school at some point? The School at Thrush Green, I will give you that. Well done. You could have had Gossip from Thrush Green,

Christmas at Thrush Green and ten more. OK, the next one. Who lived in the village of St Mary Mead in the fictional county of either Downshire or Radfordshire, depending on which novel you read? St Mary Mead is Miss Marple, isn't it? It is Miss Marple by... Agatha Christie. You must name a Miss Marple, isn't it? It is Miss Marple by Agatha Christie. You must name

a Miss Marple novel. Oh, for flip's sake. Jeez, Louise. I can't. My brain's gone completely. No. I can let you have the body in the library. 415 from Paddington. 415 from Paddington. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Hardborough in Suffolk. Based on the author's Library, 415 from Paddington. 415 from Paddington. All right. Hardborough in Suffolk, based on the author's experience of living in the seaside village of Southwold and opening a bookshop. It's Penelope Fitzgerald, the bookshop. It is, yes. We had to get that clue. I bunged you an extra clue in there. You bunged. It is, yes. We had to, but we had to get that clue. I bunged you an extra clue in there. You bunged us a title, really.

The village of Marygreen in Wessex is the birthplace of who? Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Do you know what? Just for fun, I'm going to say Jude the Obscure. You are right, Shelley. It is the birthplace of Jude Fawley in Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy. So I don't know how many you scored. Someone else can top that up.

Very good, I thought. It was very good going. Listeners, I've got a question just for you. If you're listening to this on the day it goes out, the first person to tweet me with the exact answer to this question... Is it something you can find on the internet you must not use the internet and we're all friends and i'm trusting you won't you have to give me the exact title of the novel in question and then you will win a prize to be decided by me

yeah we'll know right because it'll your browsing history will come up and I'll see it. So which novel is set in the village of Devil's End in Wiltshire? I must have the exact title of the novel and author. Devil's End in Wiltshire is the setting for which children's novel of the 1970s? Oh. Tweet me. Tweet me. You can choose to listen to Backlisted with or without adverts.

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