As in life, so in that truer fictional world found in books—some have to toil for a living, others get to do as they please. This is reflected in five books chosen pretty much at random (except for the Saramago—let's face it, I was never going to not include a book with an archivistic slant).
The mechanical, hierarchical world of the Registry does not immediately lend itself to associations with such fantasy. The effect is partly achieved by the mix of vagueness (despite his job being concerned with Births, Marriages, and Deaths, Senhor José’s own surnames are not given, except to say that they are ordinary) and specificity (the smell of the Registry being half rose and half chrysanthemum). It is also achieved by the complex disruption of this authoritative place of control: Senhor José not only maintains a secret archives of celebrities, he overturns his world a second time in pursuit of an ‘ordinary’ person whose details he chances upon (on an index card).
White Boots was published in 1951, fifteen years after her very famous Ballet Shoes. It tells the story of rich Lalla, being pushed to be the greatest figure skater in the world, and poor Harriet, taking up skating as part of her recovery from illness. Harriet is a very likeable, serious character, deeper and more realistic than Lalla. What also makes it interesting is the way in which their characters begin to be revealed, not just through their relationships with each other, but through the way they skate.
An added ‘occupational’ attraction is that of Harriet’s paternal uncle, a market gardener, who helps out his impoverished artist brother by letting him have whatever vegetables have not sold, resulting in some very random meals. Two polytunnels later, I know how that feels…
Mudlarking, for anyone who has not come across it before, is scavenging along riverbanks for interesting items. It used to be a way of making a living, albeit a meagre one, and probably marginally less unsavoury than pure-finders who collected dog faeces for tanneries. The nineteenth century journalist, Henry Mayhew, included an interview with a teenaged mudlark in his descriptions of London.
In Elsetime, Needle has a second job of sorts, as curator of the history of everyday life around the Thames. He has a form of synaesthesia that means he can ‘see’ the stories attached to the items that he finds; his ‘memory’ of the events associated with his finds acts like a museum guide.
(You can read my review of Elsetime here.)
Arthur Ransome’s tale recounts the adventures of the resilient and enterprising Walker and Blackett families and their surprisingly sang-froid parents. They acquire a common ‘enemy’, the Blackett’s grumpy uncle, and run a contest to see who can capture the other group’s dinghy. It is a very straightforward—that is, entirely unlikely—adventure story, but very vividly and realistically told. There’s even a parrot.
Flavia is fascinated by, and almost unfeasibly knowledgeable about, chemistry. She has had the great good fortune to find that an ancestor was similarly inclined, meaning that Flavia has access to a very well-equipped laboratory at her family’s dilapidated ancestral home, Buckshaw. Her delight in finding chemical ways to murder her sisters—with whom, as she sadly notes occasionally, she used to be friends—would be more worrying in an eleven-year-old who was less robust, articulate, and open than Flavia.
As is the lot of amateur detectives in fiction, she encounters murders at a rate that must mean the environs of Buckshaw would rival South L.A., or possibly even Cabot Cove, for their homicide statistics. Flavia has regular opportunities to put her encyclopaedic knowledge of chemistry to practical uses.
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Right—off now to engage in the important pre-weekend pastime of testing that raspberry tincture I made a couple of months ago…
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