Novel on Yellow Paper; Stevie Smith

State of the Nation

So. Stevie Smith's Novel on Yellow Paper is the first of many, many, books that I will be reading and reviewing. A bit of background is necessary, I think. The original had a sort of subtitle, or alternative title - "Work it out for yourself", which is charming, don't you think? The sentence appears on the first page of the novel:

"Beginning this book (not as they say 'book' in our trade - they mean magazine), beginning this book, I should like if I may, I should like, if I may (that is the way Sir Phoebus writes), I should like then to say: Good-bye to all my friends, my beautiful and lovely friends.
And for why?
Read on, Reader, read on and work it out for yourself."

What was that? It sounds like a pretty weird book? You've got a point there.
Novel on Yellow Paper was first published in 1936, after Smith attempted to get her poetry published, at which time she was "told by a publisher to go away and write a novel". And so voilà - here it is. It rocketed Smith to celebrity, and she wrote two more novels afterwards. Well done Stevie Smith, well played. Clearly, as a novel set and written in pre-war Europe, there is great concern with Nazism, Judaism and all things war. But this novel really is a truly unique way of looking at an old and well-visited subject. 

So back to that weirdness. This is not your ordinary 'beginning-middle-end' plot novel. Not by a long shot. At its simplest, Novel on Yellow Paper seems to be the ramblings of an extraordinarily over-qualified receptionist who writes down her philosophical thoughts throughout the book. She talks about Euripides, sex education, Nazism and the Catholic Church, to name but a few of the topics that she explores and tears apart. There is perhaps a sense that Smith herself can be found in the narrator, Pompey, in the parallels in their writing for a magazine magnate. There are parallels, too, between Stevie Smith's writing style and Virginia Woolf's, in its rambling, roving conscious style. Pompey borders upon anti-Semitism, until her visit to Germany shows her the utter madness of such universal hatred.

There's something to be said for a book that so perfectly captures the pre-World War Two mindset. It gives us some insight into the uncertain world of Europe at this time - a world where the soon-to-be Allied countries looked with trepidation at the workings of Hitler's Nazi Germany, rising from the ashes of their hyperinflation struck economy. There's certainly a fear behind the narrator's voice that comes through her bravado - the back-story of her mother and her 'Lion' of an aunt really highlight these insecurities where you'd otherwise perhaps ignore them.

It was a strange one to start with, though, that's for sure. 

Novel on Yellow Paper acts as a fascinating insight into novel writing during the period - and although it won't be for everyone, it's definitely worth a read.

Next up is Jack London's Martin Eden, so by all means start reading. I'm sure you'll be faster than me.

Please, if you have any comments on my reviews, I welcome them. Consider this a book group, rather than a book review - debate, discuss and shout me down, by all means. Thanks for reading.

What is The Grand Book Review?

This Blog is a book review. "How very original," I hear you think (loudly). I know. Well, this idea originates from me feeling drastically overwhelmed by the lack of books that I have read, when I compare myself to the many other voracious book-consumers that study English alongside me. It seems mad that I should be studying a degree so immersed in literature when, really, I have read very few books. And so, with a bit of searching, I came across the Guardian's '1000 Books Everyone Must Read' (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jan/23/bestbooks-fiction), and realised that I had read 22 of them. That's little over 2% of what are considered essential books. So I chucked the books into a randomiser (in particular, http://www.random.org/), and have decided to review them, as I read them, one by one. This will be slow - and I mean slow - because I'm doing this alongside my course reading, and so the reviews will appear rather infrequently.

At the top of each review, I will put in bold which of the categories the novel has been deemed to be a part of, according to the Guardian, so you can decide whether or not you'd like to read the book based on that. Just a warning, though; the category really is a very rough guide, and the novels often stray into a number of other categories.

The categories are, incidentally, Comedy, Crime, Family and Self, Love, Science Fiction and Fantasy, State of the Nation and War and Travel.

So that's all there is to it, really, and now I'm just writing because I like the sound of my own keyboard.

The next book I'll be reading will be Novel on Yellow Paper by Stevie Smith, so if, Heaven forbid, you should wish to accompany me, go ahead.

Please, if you have any comments on my reviews, I welcome them. Consider this a book group, rather than a book review - debate, discuss and shout me down, by all means. Thanks for reading.