Tag Archives: Downton Abbey

See the Movie, Then Reread the Book – The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

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8110V2WqqLL   After finishing reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society years ago, I remember thinking how sad the author had died and I would never read another of her stories.  The book stands as one of my all time favorites, and I eagerly anticipated the film version with three actresses from Downton Abbey in the cast – Lily James and Penelope Wilton, and Jessica Brown Findlay — perhaps better known as Downton Abbey’s dearly departed Lady Sybill.

Of course, I remember the feeling of the book but, as usual, I’ve forgotten all the details.  It was a pleasure to read it again after almost ten years.  If you haven’t seen the movie yet, see it first – then reread the book.  Both are enjoyable and a comfort.

The movie and the book are the same, but different.  Of course, the book has all of the author’s quirky notes and asides required to be missing in a condensed film version, but the movie has lush images of the scenic English countryside to compensate, and it does select the most important moments to keep.  Although the book introduces the characters through letters, fewer appear in the movie and the letter-writing is replaced by getting Juliet to the island faster.  In the movie the description of Guernsey under occupation has less importance than the mystery of the missing Elizabeth – the fearless founder of the book club.

The characters retain their core values and tone but not always in the same form.  Handsome boyfriend Mark is an American publisher trying to woo Juliet away in the book; in the movie he is an American intelligence officer, still trying to get her to marry him, but a key role in finding Elizabeth is invented for him.   Romance gets more time in the movie, making the handsome staunch Dawsey more appealing for the happily ever after ending.

I missed the funny episode with Oscar Wilde’s letters to Granny Phhen and a few of the colorful characters who were eliminated,  but I’m not sure how the short movie could have accommodated them without a sequel. I liked the movie (how could I not) and appreciated its faithfulness to the story.

Rereading the book was a pleasure, and I found a few phrases I had forgotten  – some made me laugh:

  • I thought of my friends who own independent book stores with:   “Noone in their right mind would take up clerking in a bookstore for the salary, and noone in their right mind would want to own one…so it has to be a love of readers and reading that makes them do it.”
  • I thought of myself with:  ” so far my only thought is that reading keeps you from going gaga. You can see I need help.”
  • I thought of book clubs with: “We took turns speaking about the books we’d read. At the start, we tried to be calm and objective, but that soon fell away…”

and my favorite:  “I deny everything.”

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Anonymous Writers – Downton Abbey and Elena Ferrante

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As Downton Abbey fades from the screen, the Dowager’s butler,  Septimus Spratt, lingers in my mind.  Seattle Times writer Moira Macdonald  suggested “crafting a proposal for a  series in which he runs off with Harriet Walter’s delightfully crackly-voiced Lady Shackleton (aunt of Henry Talbot, Lady Mary’s new husband)…”  Faithful viewers would watch any spinoff. Unknown-1   Unknown

Spratt’s anonymity as a writer for Lady Edith’s magazine has me wondering about other anonymous authors.  Who lurks among us, observing and noting incidents worthy of fiction?  Elena Ferrante, the Italian author of the four series novels, beginning with My Brilliant Friend, has successfully eluded exposure.  Recent speculation has the anonymous author as a college professor. Rachel Donadio wrote for the New York Times:

“Published between 2010 and 2014, Ms. Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels — “My Brilliant Friend,” “The Story of a New Name,” “Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay” and “The Story of the Lost Child” — have rocketed the novelist from near obscurity to international fame since the first appeared in English translation in 2012… the novels trace the friendship of two women, Elena and Lila, from their childhoods amid the poverty of postwar Naples through the political and social changes that swept Italy in the ’60s and ’70s, to the present day. In “The Story of a New Name,” Elena, who is the books’ narrator and becomes an accomplished writer, studies at Pisa from 1963 to 1967. In a dramatic scene, she throws some enviably strong youthful writings by Lila, who does not fulfill her own writerly talent, off the Solferino Bridge in Pisa into the Arno one November.”

9781609451349_p0_v2_s192x300The last line describing throwing writing into the sea prompted me to find the book.  I am reading The Story of a New Name, looking for clues about the author, but I understand the freedom of writing without exposure, so I am not looking very hard.

Beware of writers – they use everything you tell them…eventually.

 

Post Script: Maggie Smith Biography

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9781250081483_p0_v2_s192x300If you are a Downton Abbey fan, you may skip to Michael Covenly’s chapter 21 on “Harry Potter and Downton Abbey” in his biography of Maggie Smith.  As I revelled in the memory of the scenes recalled throughout the series and Maggie Smith’s role as the Dowager, I suddenly cringed when Covenly mistakenly identified Lady Edith as the youngest daughter of the Earl and Lady Cora.  Had he missed an agonized mother’s line at Sybil’s  deathbed – “My beauty, my baby…” ?  Was he only watching Maggie Smith scenes?

Nonetheless, the rest of the book documents Maggie Smith’s career with long summaries of her dramatic roles.  Covenly has more to say about her numerous roles than her life, and her resume is amazing, from Desdemona to Diana Barrie to Spielberg’s Wendy, and remember Mother Superior in Sister Act?  Throughout her career, Smith has earned six Oscar nominations (winning two), 16 BAFTA nominations (winning five) and seven Golden Globes (winning two). In 2003 she won an Emmy award for her lead performance in the TV movie My House in Umbria.

She supposedly had a long running feud with the great Laurence Olivier – sometimes on stage, and her first marriage  to fellow actor Robert Stephens, with whom she had two children, seemed to mirror a Noel Coward play.  In 1975 she married her old friend, writer Beverley Cross, who “she began to say she should have married in the first place” and stay married to him until his death in 1998.

Her audience today knows Maggie Smith for her more recent roles – the Dowager Countess, Professor Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter series (Smith was instrumental in the casting of Daniel Radcliffe as Harry), or Muriel in the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and Covenly includes those in his book.  But he is also careful to remind the reader where Smith started, and reading about her journey makes her all the more amazing.

Covenly notes – “At all stages of her career, Maggie has, for the most part, remained curiously invisible to the public, She rarely appears in charity shows, seldom lends her name to committees or educational institutions…It is as if she hides away, nursing her gift, and then bursts forth in a new role…”  So, it is no wonder she barely gave an interview to the author.  The book reads like a complete catalogue of Maggie Smith’s performances but seems somewhat lacking on the personal side – except for the author’s suppositions and conclusions.

I enjoyed the book – after all, now I know more about where to look for Maggie Smith in past productions.  Covenly protects Smith’s mystique yet offers glimpses into who she might really be – and she comes across as “what you see is what you get.”

In looking for explanations of Covenly’s references, I came across a 2004 interview by Susan Mackenzie for The Guardian – neatly summing up Smith’s background and comic timing (Covenly claims Jack Benny, the master of comedic timing, commented on Smith’s facility with the delivery of a line).  The interview preceded both Harry Potter and Downton Abbey, but offers a good and short background to the complete biography.  You might want to read it to prepare…You Have to Laugh

 

 

PBS Inspired Books

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Sunday night viewing is getting better on PBS – a reprieve from the long wait for the return of Downton Abbey.  And unlike the Maggie Smith driven saga created by Julian Fellowes for television, two PBS televised series follow real books, published and available: Poldark and Grantchester.

Poldark-umbrella-icon,-675x290-scale-2000x2000Poldark – the newest addition from the BBC for Masterpiece theater – is based on a series of twelve books by Winston Graham.  After reading Stephen Brunwell’s review – What Merits a Remake?   – with his promise of “a wealth of back stories missing from the televised versions,” I found the newly reissued books and plan to immerse myself in the Cornwall saga of a Revolutionary war hero who returns to find his land in disrepair, and his former love lost to another man.

Grantchester – sadly appearing only briefly on PBS, with the second series not Grantchester-675X290-scale-2000x2000available until 2016 – follows a series of books by James Runcie.  The handsome, erudite Canon Sydney Chambers is the clergyman/detective solving crimes with his sidekick, local police officer—Inspector Geordie Keating, in a small village near Cambridge in the 1960s.

The books are available through public libraries and in paperback.  If you want to follow the stories in order, Poldark begins with Ross Poldark (1945), followed by Demelza (1946).  To continue reading, find the list and a few free downloads at  NLS Minibibliographies.

The Grantchester Mysteries begin with Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death, published in 2012.  Muncie has been churning out a book a year, with the latest, Sidney Chambers and the Forgiveness of Sins (2015).

Comfortable and comforting – cozy with romance and mystery – just what I need right now.

 

The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches

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The brilliant eleven-year-old sleuth, Flavia de Luce, is back in Alan Bradley’s sixth book in this mystery series – The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches. If you have not yet met this smart updated version of Nancy Drew with a chemistry set, a pet chicken, and a bicycle name Gladys, who lives in a rundown version of Downton Abbey, you really do need to find this precocious heroine from the first book – The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.  Her adventures are fun; the mysteries are engaging; and the information you will glean about poison is enormous.

Although Flavia’s father and two sisters have been unlikely and mostly unwilling assistants as Flavia solves each case, her mother, Harriet, has been missing.  Harriet, who died mysteriously in a plane crash over the Himalayas when Flavia was just a baby, is finally found, and her body is shipped home.  As possible villains and World Was II heroes (including Winston Churchill) appear to attend the funeral, Flavia is determined to use her knowledge of chemistry to bring her mother back to life.

I am in the middle of reading this engaging book, and look forward to each page and more of Flavia’s wise, yet not always appropriate, comments.  The action is just heating up with possibilities of espionage and secret family history, but the word is that Flavia will be shipped off to boarding school when she turns twelve soon – and then how will she – and her readers – manage.  What will become of Gladys (her bicycle) and Esmerelda (her pet chicken).  Will she have access to her lab materials that have played an important role in solving crimes in the six book series?  Alan Bradley, don’t disappoint us.

Reviews of Other Flavia de Luce books: Flavia de Luce mysteries by Alan Bradley

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