gillpolack: I've been reading Farthing tonight. I w

gillpolack (

gillpolack) wrote,
@ 2008-03-24 23:15:00

I've been reading Farthing tonight. I was really enjoying it until there was just one Mitford echo too many. Now I can't get Love in a Cold Climate out of my head and Walton sounds like a pale imitation. Which she isn't, really, she's writing another sort of book entirely. I wish an editor who knew Mitford had combed through and made sure that the echoes weren't quite so strong, because I really, really like the book (and have told my mother she has to read it). I also think WAlton gets the antisemitism thing wrong, but that's one of those things that's almost impossible to get right. And drabbit, now I'm echoing Walton echoing Mitford.

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	sartorias 2008-03-24 12:51 pm UTC (link)
	Does it help to think of this as our world one world over? Everything locked into place when I remembered that. But we all process differently and yadda. (Reply to this)(Thread)

gillpolack
2008-03-24 12:55 pm UTC (link)

I was doing that, from the word go. Except for a few things (she seems to have got rid of the British Fascists and to have left the Pacific out of everything for instance) her world conceit is seriously cool. It's just that she seems to borrow specifically from Mitford rather than building a composite using a wider cross-section of writers from the right sort of set. I can see why she does it. It's very effective. It's just that the minute she says that dinner was bloody, I expect someone to get out the rifle and start hunting the children.

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sartorias
2008-03-24 01:24 pm UTC (link)

I've always wondered about that--though my interests in that period were mostly in the social links of boarding schools, and how that affected political alignments later. But the thing is, that some of Nancy's phraseology especially I've seen echoed in other diaries and letters, etc, making me wonder if she picked up a lot of her slang from the posh crowd at Lord Berniers'. (Jessica drops a few non-subtle hints that Nancy retrofitted herself after she managed to get into that crowd.) In which case she would have retrofitted the parents to make them into aristocratic eccentrics, instead of just plain eccentrics, dad at one point inheriting a relatively obscure title. because Nancy was a snob's snob.

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gillpolack
2008-03-24 01:28 pm UTC (link)

I've never loked at her life from that direction. I was more interested in the politics, to tell the truth. Mosely was so interesting. I don't know a vast amount, though - my main interst is in fiction (as ever).

Nancy Mitford retrofitting wouldn't surprise me though. I think the whole Mitford family did retrofitting once they found their happiest milieu.

Suddenly I wonder why there aren't *more* stories that use them. Diana alone would make a wonderful fictional character.

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	sartorias 2008-03-24 03:11 pm UTC (link)
	I wonder if there have been, but not very good? (And they wouldn't be, if presenting the home Mitfords the way they would want to be perceived. As for Jessica, user Oursin is doing a nifty fic right now about her._) (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

gillpolack
2008-03-25 01:10 am UTC (link)

I'll watch out for the Jessica one.

My biggest problem with the book right now is with food. She wrote as if the Commonwealth was intact, but if Japan was unbeaten then it wasn't intact. If Australia had been invaded there went the family fruitcake, for instance.

I don't often read alternate histories, because they're way too easy to find fault with. I still like this one, but for me the world was incomplete.

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	a_d_medievalist 2008-03-24 04:21 pm UTC (link)
	Funny -- in some ways, that's one of the things I liked about Farthing. I'm not as well-versed in the Mitfords as I should be, but I can see what you're saying. OTOH, I think the absence of the Pacific is one of the things that makes it work a bit more for me. The concentration on Europe and North America is a reminder that it's fictional. (Reply to this)(Thread)

gillpolack
2008-03-25 01:19 am UTC (link)

I had too many reminders of its fictionality. I do think this is because I'm Australian, though, not ebcause of any defects in the book. She tangled Dominion and Commonweath status for the Commonwealth countries she did have and she tangled food supplies to the UK from the Commonwealth, but Lindbergh as US President is always a good idea (or a bad one, from a Jewish perspective).

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	murasaki_1966 2008-03-24 11:34 pm UTC (link)
	Is this something I should be reading? At present, I'm comfort reading. Which means Lord Peter Wimsey in Murder must advertise. Interesting book. Sayers deliberatly played up the sureeal aspects of the books to distance it from her own experience in an advertising agency (a job she enjoyed, BTW). The Lord Peter Wimsey Companion has a very interesting article about it. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	gillpolack 2008-03-25 01:20 am UTC (link)
	You asbolutely should read it. I don't know if you'll love it or pick the same holes in it that i did, but you'll enjoy it from either direction. She's a good writer. Muder must advertise is my favourite Sayers and my copy has gone walkabout. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	murasaki_1966 2008-03-25 01:43 am UTC (link)
	MMA is my second favourite Sayers. Sorry, my dear, I love Nine tailors more. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	thistleingrey 2008-03-25 06:01 am UTC (link)
	Ah, interesting--I know the Mitfords not at all but did wonder about the absence of the Pacific, then chalked it up to Not Within These Characters' Interests. Melange of ignorance, here. :P goes to look up Dominion (Reply to this)(Thread)

gillpolack
2008-03-25 06:06 am UTC (link)

Some of the Pacific wouldn't have been, but some most certainly was. Commonwealth countries, for instance, would most certainly have been. We were the chief reason the UK survived Hitler. Though the US was key after it entered the war in our reality, it didn't enter till late and we were there the whole way. My great-uncle, in fact, died fighting with the RAF, for instance.

it's hard to write about the England of that time in any universe. It was so much little England at the same time as it was equally much the dying Empire. Extraordinary complex.

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