A Book Club for Two!

 

 

 

 

Image of "Mister Pip" bookcover

In English common law, if there are two people present it constitutes a “gathering” and if there are three, it is recognized as a “riot.”

That said, I would have to concede that the book club I belong to is now evolving from a “gathering” to a “riot.”

It is however, not quite what most people would categorize as a book club for several reasons, but notably because we appear to have absolutely no rules. The membership of this club is also loosely defined, and really it all started with my mother’s visit and a particular occasion when I happened to have two copies of the same magazine available. Sitting at the table and reading the same edition of a magazine over coffee, we would periodically look up and say, “Oh Look! Go to page such and such..” and we would both turn to the same page, review the article, exchange opinions and generate our ideas about the various unconnected projects that we each had. This was the precursor to our book club; a “gathering” for the purposes of reading, if you will.

The book club started later. It started with books that one of us had read. We did a sort of airmail exchange, posting the book that we had each selected independently; on finishing it we slipped it into an envelope and with a simple message on a card sent it off across the pond. It diminished the miles of the Atlantic ocean. And so I sent, “Out Stealing Horses,” and in the return package I received a copy of “The Tenderness of Wolves.”

The confusion started when I started ordering books, as gifts from Amazon to be delivered directly to my mother. These were books that appealed to me, though they were also selected on the basis that I too would like to read them. Because they were gifts, my mother did not return these books, or at least that was the reason I thought that she did not return them. It made sense after all. Why would you send someone a present only to expect them to return it! In turned out in fact that my mother thought I had chosen them because they were books I had already read!

If two people represent a gathering and three a riot, then we were very soon into having a riot with our book club: The introduction of the “new” gift books meant that there was something of a backlog to my mother’s reading. So now, I started thinking that perhaps my daughter would like the occasional book, especially the two fast and easy reads, (hardly serious literature I thought but ideal for commuting reading on the bus from London to Cheltenham). And so the copies of “Riding Lessons,” and the soon to be posted “Flying Changes,” when my daughter uttered the “Ooh a sequel!” were duly allocated to her on the proviso that they subsequently be sent to my sister, the other avid rider (and reader) in our family. Actually, my sister is the only one of us that belongs to a sensible book club where you all actually read the same book at the same time and meet to discuss it.

My last read, “Mr Pip,” excited me more than any of the books that I have read in a while. I was delighted by the unusual quality of the prose and on reaching the mid point of the book, I confided to my mother how much I was anticipating her response and that it should be wending its way across the pond in no time. The immediate response wasn’t what I expected; a pause and then a puzzled query, “but how have you got that book?” It transpires that my mother had the very same book selection already set aside for me!

Objects of Our Affection- the hidden stories on old postcards.

It is always surprising to me what survives the passage of time…

Recently, I have been going through my own belongings accumulated over the last fifty or so years; slowly I have been sorting through possessions which spanned thirty years of having a family at home.

But how, I wonder, do we decide what to keep and what to part with?

Image of One cent stamps on postcards

In what must have been a desperate need by my maternal grandmother to keep what she thought of as precious but also intimately private from entering the public domain, she burnt almost all her family photographs. The cupboard in the oak sideboard of my grandmother’s house, full of papers and photographs, was a forbidden zone to me as a child. There was one exception; on one rare occasion my grandmother allowed me to “sort and tidy” the contents of that cupboard, an endeavor which I took great pride in, as it made me feel so grown up.

 There are, no doubt, many more gaps in our family history; if we were to measure that history by the family photographs that remain in circulation between us all we would discover the gaps that we ourselves had created- editing our family lives as we decide which photos to keep and which to throw out. What I have noticed though as I am sorting through my own personal belongings is not just how patchy the photographic record of my life is-bursts of photos taken in some years and then nothing at all in others, but also just how few letters and postcards I have kept over the years.

I remember that cupboard of my grandmother’s and the drawer to the right of the fireplace which brimmed over with envelopes; you had to push the papers down with one hand and push the drawer closed with the other before all the letters spilled out! There were definitely postcards in amongst those letters too; lots of them as I recall, though none have survived the passage of time.

 

image of old postcard of Canso harbour

 I do have a small collection of postcards though. But these postcards, with scenes of Canso and Guysborough are relics of other people’s lives. They were purchased by my family mainly through e-bay; no doubt having previously reached the public domain in auctions and estate sales, in exactly the way my own grandmother feared her own might be sifted and sorted through had she not first burnt them. My own interest was in the history of the Canso area, being a “come from away,” everything about the area intrigued and enchanted me. I loved looking at those pictures of Canso harbor, imagining it in the winter covered in ice or in the summer with the fishing fleet spread across the horizon. But now, it is the writing on the back of these postcards which intrigues me just as much.

 

image of old postcard of Hazell Hill, Nova Scotia

 

My all time favorite postcard though is a black and white photo of Hazel Hill, (the houses on Front St. for the Commercial Cable Company officers remain today as one of the most unchanged streetscapes in Nova Scotia).

 But it is what is written on the back of the postcard that makes it special to me. On the back of the postcard, “Ada” writes to Miss Louis Nicholas of Mahone Bay, and declares,
 

“I am having an elegant time.

Mr. A was here

to meet when I arrived, he

left yesterday for Banks

so its not quite as

pleasant for me. Hope

your all well.” 

This postcard charmed my own mother so much that we started using the phrases, “having an elegant time” or “so it’s not quite as pleasant for me,” when we wrote cards to each other!

We have often thought about Ada and wondered who she was. Who had Ada meant by “Mr. A?” Were they courting at the time this postcard was written? Was Ada writing to her sister or a close friend? And did Ada and Mr. A eventually marry or was “Mr. A” lost at sea as he set out on one of his treacherously dangerous fishing trips to the “Banks” ?