The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets

Was there ever a condition so idiotically pathetic as that of the penniless toff?

I've been sick for what feels like weeks (how dramatic of me) and without the presence of mind to focus on anything too challenging (the end of Simone, some so-far poorly written travel literature about the Sierra Madre, etc), I've been combing the bookshelves for something to take the edge off too many long days at home. A reading copy of Eva Rice's The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets was given to me by a friend back in our bookshop days, and I've been carting it around with me since. I can't say anything of the final cover, but the proof cover has one of those awful chick-lit-y illustrations on it, so even though this one came recommended by a trusted source I wasn't ever able to quite get past the jacket. I like to think now though, having read it, that it was just saving itself for when it knew it was really needed.

Penelope, Charlotte and their other frightfully English comrades (and a few scandalous Americans) have been such good company over the past 24 hours. I was never much of a fan of I Capture the Castle, but this one seemed to tickle me in all the places I wish Dodie Smith had. Little touches of Evelyn Waugh's crumbling aristocracy, but spoken in a more artless, youthful voice, are irresistable to me. I can't get enough of young kids in old manor houses! There's something so compelling to me about that narrative - old stately England, swept through two world wars into the age of America, quite unsure where one ought to put all these tapestries at a time like this*.

Some other online review has already claimed the metaphor that had popped into my mind while I was reading (it wasn't so original that I can be cross about that), but I'm going to have to say it anyway. This book is like chocolate cake. It's just sweet and filling and in a slightly-too-small serve. I've been saving the last mouthful for hours now but I don't think I have the will to resist any longer. Even though I'm sure I can guess exactly what is going to happen, I know I'm going to enjoy every last crumb! Tea, anyone?

*Did I mention that Eva Rice is also the author of Who's Who in Enid Blyton? Toodle pip!

Simone

I found myself with a bit of a gap in the reading schedule (in between uni reading, work reading and travel reading), and, feeling in need of some emotional/philosophical fortification, I decided to revisit Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter. I was quite obsessed with Simone de Beauvoir in high school, after writing one of my last school assignments on her, but I haven't picked up any of her books since then. It is a pleasure and a relief that I still find her writing as fascinating and consoling as I did when I was seventeen. This book in particular stuns me - I have a terrible memory, so I find it astounding that Simone is able to recall incidents and emotional arcs from her childhood with such clarity. How could such a tiny person have such a sense of herself? Or such a sense of the fact that she lacked a sense of herself? Clearly only one of us had the makings of a genius!