Reading Challenge Week 7 - A Book By a Female Author

Well, it was O-Week (did you go to our workshops? Did you look at our online training?), so we didn't managed to get a lot of reading done this week.

However, we did rustle up a few likely suspects to give us some reviews of "A Book By a Female Author" for this week's Reading Challenge:

Brenda Carter Read Miss Peabody's Inheritance by Elizabeth Jolley.

(Monica) Elizabeth Jolley AO (1923-2007) was an English-born writer who settled in Western Australia in the late 50s. She was 53 when her first book was published, and she went on to publish fifteen novels (including an autobiographical trilogy), four short story collections and three non-fiction books, publishing well into her 70s.

I was introduced to Elizabeth Jolley’s writing as an undergraduate and her novels and short stories have become firm favourites. She takes ordinary events and relationships and adds a twist that is both unsettling and fascinating. I love her ‘voice’ and the way she plays with chronology and double narratives. Her plots are heavily influenced by her own rather unorthodox life, pushing the boundaries of conventional relationships, female sexuality, and the parallel existence of public respectability with the inner world of the imagination.

My favourites would probably be Miss Peabody’s inheritance (820A JOL 1C MIS) and An innocent gentleman (820A JOL 1C INN). Check the library catalogue for many more items written by and about this talented author.

Sharon Bryan Read Bedknob and Broomstick, by Mary Norton.

If I had to choose my favourite Disney movie of all time, Bedknobs and Broomsticks would probably be duking it out with Mary Poppins. I found our copy of P. L. Traver’s Mary Poppins in the Curriculum Collection years ago, but I only recently stumbled across Norton’s book.

It turns out that Disney made a few changes to the book (well, they practically re-wrote Mary Poppins, so that’s hardly surprising), but I have to say that I don’t mind all that much. The subplot of the 2^nd World War, the evacuation of the children and the German invasion thwarted by magic were all added by Disney. The island of Naboombu, populated with talking animals in the movie, was originally an island called Ueepe, populated with “cannibals” (however, no one was even threatened with being eaten, so the accusation of cannibalism was entirely unfounded). And Professor Emelius Browne wasn’t exactly in the book either. Instead, we have a necromancer (******)* from the past called Emelius Jones.

The ending of the book is also unsatisfactory, in that it doesn’t make sense when you think about it. Having previously established that the past is a terrible place for a witch, and the present isn't so bad once you get used to it, Miss Price and Emelius Jones suddenly decide that the past is the only place for them. The characters have pretty daft reasons for choosing the location of their “happily ever after”, and it feels like Norton was just getting rid of them.

I did enjoy the book, but this is one of several books in which I'm glad I saw the movie first - it gave me the chance to enjoy the works separately and appreciate the changes between the two versions, rather than feeling like Disney had ruined the book.

* Norton gives her readers six stars so they have time to find out what a necromancer is, so I may as well give them, too.