Holiday reading

For the last two days karinmollberg has been shepherding us around Bordeaux, showing us her list of things worth seeing, being patient with us when we dashed off down side streets or into shops or down holes in the ground - and when I lagged behind because I had stopped to take a photograph, which was often. I've had a wonderful time, culminating in a gourmet dinner with fireworks, and I look forward to writing all about it with many, many photos. But I think that will have to wait until I have more bandwidth, and better picture-editing software.

While we're waiting, have a book post. I have been reading Sisters of Fortune by Frances McNeil, which will be reissued next summer as Halfpenny Dreams by Frances Brody (the name under which Frances publishes her Kate Shackleton murder mysteries).

Frances is a friend and a client: here's the page I made about the forthcoming reissues for her website. She was kind enough to provide me with a copy of the original edition because I enjoy her writing, so this isn't going to be an unbiaised review. But I wanted to write about the book, because it was such a great read and because I think it deserves a signal boost.

If you followed those links, you'll see that it's being marketed as a saga, a genre which has its readers but probably meets even more snobbery than the crime and F&SF which are my genre staples. It is not a multigenerational family history, it is not sentimental and although it is set in the past (the 1930s) it treats the period with a sharp-eyed sense of history, of how things worked and how people felt about that.

It follows the lives of two girls, who are not in fact sisters. Each of them could be described as a 'daughter of the Bank' Lydia because her mother abandons a repertory theatre company to marry the owner of Thackrey's Bank, Sophie because she lives in the slums of Leeds's Bank district. Their lives too are overshadowed by Thackrey's Bank. Lydia and Rosa narrate alternate chapters, at first as children and then as spirited young women. If you are looking for books with strong female characters in a historical setting, this one is full of them: not only Lydia and Sophie, and her sister Rosa, but Lydia's actress mother Phoebe and her friend Ada, May who runs a second hand shop, even walk-on parts like Rosa's friend Fenella.

Terrible things happen to both Lydia and Sophie, and they are not brushed off lightly. But there's so much verve and so much life in the telling, that the result is not grim and dark. If anything, the sequence of events, one blow after another and the heroines' response to them, has the heightened colour of melodrama - in a good way.

If we must classify books into genres, I can see why both publishers felt that the depiction of life at a certain place and time would appeal to saga readers. If you aren't one of those, consider it as a novel - or maybe a historical novel. But given the strength of characterisation of team Sophie and Lydia, I wonder whether Piatkus considered targeting the Young Adult market - I think it could have great appeal there, too.

Transhumance in Saint-Justin

What could have been an agreeable but very bitty day, a day in transit, given focus by serendipity:

We made a leisurely departure from Bordeaux, breakfasting in our little nest at the Victoria Garden, dithering about how to spend the time before we were due at our next destination. Should we explore Bordeaux a little further, maybe the wine merchants' quartier? No, maybe next time. Well, should we detour to Arcachon, and see the seabirds that gather there? But after two glorious days it was raining; besides, time was passing, so maybe not a detour of that length! Eventually we settled on a visit to a supermarket on the ring road to buy fuel and a road atlas, then down the motorway up to a point to be decided, then on the minor roads to our destination, stopping to explore a small town or so.

We would have stopped in Roquefort (as far as I can discover, this isn't that Roquefort, but another town of the same name), but couldn't find anywhere to park. Villeneuve de Marsan seemed promising, and the nice lady at the tourist office (the oldest building in town, and probably the most interesting) gave us a leaflet with a suggested walk. But she was also able to explain a sign we had seen, announcing that the transhumance would pass through the neighbouring village of Saint-Justin this afternoon.

Transhumance we knew: it's the practice of taking the livestock up to the high pastures for the summer months. It seems that there are a pair of shepherds, father and son, who have turned this into an event - La Route de la transhumance: une aventure humaine - visiting a sequence of villages throughout the region where their arrival would be celebrated, mostly in the traditional French way, with a communal meal. We have other plans for this evening, but at least we could watch the arrival of the sheep. So we took the winding country road to Saint-Justin, a drive which would have been worthwhile for its own sake, and then we waited - and waited. This was exactly the kind of bastide town I'd been hoping to visit, so I was happy wandering around with my camera, snooping down alleyways and trying to get entire buildings into shot, watching the group of men who had decided that if the square was standing empty in expectation, then they'd have a game of boules...

And then there was the sound of bells, and the flock flooded in:

By the time we had taken all the pictures we could possibly want, it was beginning to rain again, and we dashed for the car and another scenic drive through Armagnac country to the Relais du Bastidou, where we have a date with our friend Helen Savage.