Escapism: from the sublime to the slightly dated

by chuckofish

Did you see the exciting publishing news this week? The final installment in Hilary Mantel’s peerless Wolf Hall trilogy comes out next Tuesday! It’s 784 pages long but getting rave reviews.

The length and the critics’ enthusiasm make me a little wary. It is my experience that the quality of editing is inversely related to book length; long books tend to be flabby. Similarly, rave reviews often reflect internet contagion more than an author’s artistic brilliance as reviewers generally follow the pack. Still, I have faith in Ms. Mantel, who really is a genius, and when I can steel myself to face the terrible ending that awaits our beloved Thomas Cromwell, I will read the book. I pre-ordered it!

In literary news of a more domestic sort, my DH bought me another gift this week (isn’t he sweet?). Knowing how stressed I’ve been lately, he thought that some gentle reading from a bygone era would be just the ticket, and his choice was spot on. I am now reading Elizabeth Goudge’s The Rosemary Tree.

Set in Devon, England just after WWII, it is a far cry from campus politics, panicked pandemic plans (in my case, how to finish the semester if we have to close the school!), and “faculty development initiatives” (aka political indoctrination). The book offers a pleasant antidote to what ails me and it also contains much thoughtful advice. If Goudge’s deceptively simple prose is slightly dated, well, so am I.

“There was a happy chirping in the cloakroom as the children put on their walking shoes. Mary, standing at the door, thought they might have been sparrows, so loud was the chirping and so fulfilled with satisfaction. Perhaps the purpose of sparrows, as of children let out of school, was just to remark loudly and with repetition that in spite of any appearance to the contrary everything is quite all right.”

It’s good to be reminded that no matter how awful the world seems everything is quite all right! We must not give in to crankiness.

I’d better wrap this up because I have a lot of baking to do today. Tomorrow is “Gifts of Women Sunday” at church, so the women are doing the entire service. I volunteered to host coffee hour with the DH and we’ll probably be stuck in the kitchen the whole time. One contributes according to one’s abilities.

Cheer up, cheer up! Spring cannot be far away, right?