Cambridge literature

[girlyswot]

I've been thinking sporadically over the last couple of weeks...

And now I've written that sentence, I really want to end this post there.

...that it would be nice to be reading some Cambridge books while I'm here. I often like to do this - I took The Nine Tailors with me for a memorable holiday in Norfolk; Persuasion when I visited Lyme Regis; one of Bill Bryson's books about America when I was in the US; Outlander in the Highlands and so on. But I've been struggling to come up with any. Which strikes me as odd. I have several very much loved Oxford books - Gaudy Night, The Ready Made Family, The Subtle Knife, and so on.

What am I missing? What would you recommend? Preferably fiction, set at any time within the last 800 years. Though if you have a particularly splendid non-fiction book set in the city that you want to suggest, I'm open to that too.

ETA: Suggestions of Cambridge poems also welcome. The only one I can think of is The Old Vicarage, Grantchester.

Comments

[white_hart]

Rosamund Lehmann's Dusty Answer is partly set in Cambridge, and I suspect might be your kind of thing. And PD James's An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (which I didn't think was brilliant, but it was OK). And Porterhouse Blue, but that may well not be your kind of thing.

topicaltim suggests The Glittering Prizes although he thinks it only begins in Cambridge. And The Common Pursuit by Simon Gray (not the FR Leavis one!), although that's a play.

Douglas Adams's Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency has a lot of Cambridge in, too.

In return, can you think of any Northumbrian books for me to take on holiday?

[white_hart]

And re poems, what about Little Gidding?

Oh, and Kate Atkinson's Case Histories is set in Cambridge.

[girlyswot.livejournal.com]

Kate Atkinson is one of those authors I am always meaning to read but never have. So maybe I should try that first.

Thank you!

[white_hart]

She's very good, although her humour can be very black. In fact, it strikes me that One Good Turn, which I gave up on about a year ago because I just wasn't in the mood, is set in Edinburgh, so perhaps I should take that with me next week.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

I read One Good Turn before Case Histories. I thought both were excellent - although it isn't quite the Edinburgh I know (despite all the streets being real!) - a bit like Rankine's Rebus in that respect.

[girlyswot.livejournal.com]

Oh, excellent, thank you. I shall definitely give the Rosamund Lehmann a go. I did read Porterhouse Blue (or possibly another in the series) many years ago but probably I shan't bother again. Having just checked on Amazon, The Glittering Prizes is not the book I thought it was, but it looks interesting too.

The one that comes to mind for Northumbria is Credo by Melvyn Bragg, though it may not be ideal holiday reading, and I also think it needs to come with a warning that somewhere in the first few chapters is one of the most graphically violent rape scenes I've ever read. I'll see if I can think of any others.

[white_hart]

Yeah, I think I might give that one a miss. There's Lorna Hill's Stolen Holiday, but I'm unlikely to be able to track down a reasonably-priced copy in the next three days (which is rather a shame, as we'll be staying almost exactly where the book is set!).

[girlyswot.livejournal.com]

Oh - while you are in Edinburgh, you should go to the Children's Bookshop aka Fidra Books. I bet they have Lorna Hill.

[white_hart]

They probably do and are certainly on my list! It does look as though GGBP reissued Stolen Holiday recently so they might have one. It would be rather marvellous to reread it only a few miles from Seahouses!

[amamama.livejournal.com]

LOL! I love the beginning of your post. *g* I've no Oxford books to recommend - the only one I know is The Subtle Knife, but that one has me wanting to explore Oxford!

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I can only think of books I wouldn't recommend - Forster's Maurice and I think some of Byatt's Frederica Quartet*. Jill Paton Walsh's Imogen Quy books are also set there, but have a tendency to turn me from a Scandinavian social democrat to a violent Communist revolutionary, so I won't recommend those, either.

Did Iris Murdoch set anything in Cambridge? Or Margaret Drabble? They might be worth looking at. I have visions of that host of intelligent 50s/early 60s women who did degrees at Cambridge and then wrote novels to stop themselves going mad when their husbands went to the library and pub and they had to stay in and handwash nappies.

*Though Frederica deserves some note as an extraordinary canon Mary-Sue.

[girlyswot.livejournal.com]

I have had conflicting reports on the Jill Paton Walsh. The only things of hers that I have knowingly read are the two Sayers 'sequels' which is not precisely a ringing endorsement, but possibly she is a better writer when she is not trying to be someone else.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I certainly don't think faux Sayers shows her to her benefit!

I greatly enjoyed Walsh's "Knowledge of Angels" and thought it well-written but then I was coming at it from a sympathetic viewpoint (and also it felt a bit like a giant Karen Blixen story). I'd forgotten that I meant to read Goldengrove Unleaving - think I'll have to go to the library.

[bookwormsarah.livejournal.com]

I am preparing a talk on Fenland fiction, although at the moment I have the children's books covered and not really progressed onto the adult...

Tom's Midnight Garden (Philippa Pearce) is set around Cambridge (Great Shelford I think), as are the Greene Knowe books by Lucy Boston (Hemingford Grey).

Michelle Spring writes detective stories set in Cambridge, but my favourites are Jill Paton Walsh's Imogen Quy books. There are three in the series: The Wyndham Case, A Piece of Justice (murder with additional patchwork!), and Debts of Dishonour. I loved the first two, but don't really remember the third.

I don't like the Susannah Gregory medieval murder mysteries, but they are set in the city.

The descriptions in The Nine Taylors are very Cambridgeshire fens - all the sluices and drains...

Enjoy! I'll add more if I think of them.

[girlyswot.livejournal.com]

Children's books are certainly good to recommend. I love the Green Knowe books but I have never connected them to Cambridge particularly. Tom's Midnight Garden is one I loved as a child but haven't read for a very long time - I might see if I still have a copy of it.

I shall investigate the various detective stories and see which look like they might be my kind of thing.

Thank you!

[bookwormsarah.livejournal.com]

If you are staying in Cambridge and have a car you can visit Greene Knowe (about 20 miles up the A14), which is exactly like the books, complete with topiary, the witchball, the mirrors, the rocking horse, and Toby's mouse... I've been a couple of times and I love it.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

I just wanted to say that I am completely the opposite: I like to read books about where I'm not!

I'll read books set in the US in India, about Europe in the US and about India in Europe...

Seriously.

If I am visiting somewhere, I want it to be my experience, rather than a vicarious experience determined by a writer.

[girlyswot.livejournal.com]

Yes, I see that. For me, it's all about the reading. I love the way that being in the right place heightens the experience of reading the book. I remember reading The Subtle Knife when I was living just around the corner from Philip Pullman and driving along exactly the road where Will cuts between worlds every day. It definitely helped increase the sense of being in the world of the story that I was reading.

I did read quite a lot of books set in England while I was in the US, but that was mainly because of being so homesick.

[brownfach.livejournal.com]

I have Tom's Midnight Garden - read it when you come to stay, as all the children's junior+ fiction is shelved in the spare room!

[girlyswot.livejournal.com]

Perfect. I love that you keep your children's fiction in the spare room specially for me. ;)