Bring back the routemaster bus!

So I finally finished a few books.

The first three novels in Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage sequence: Pointed roofs, Backwater and Honeycomb. Beautiful atmosphere and characterisation; so beautiful that it wasn't until I was halfway through the third one that I realised how little had actually happened. If Proust is like this then I want to read Proust. [12] [13] [14]

A book about Melanie Klein, by Julia Segal. Klein was a psychoanalyst who developed Freud's theories but who also believed you could psychoanalyse children through play. Her theories about the way children develop and her ideas about the focus of children's obsessions - not so much on the penis, more on the mother's nipple) are fascinating, and somehow much more real-sounding to me than Freud's. [15]

Also, The Ipcress file, by Len Deighton. I saw the film recently, which was splendid - lots of detail about sooty, sixties, Routemaster London. The book was good too although I never get particularly riveted by Len Deighton novels - they're tremendously tough and macho and not very atmospheric. I do like all the detail, though - he gives a very precise idea of the exact lifestyles and class status of his characters. [16]

A rediscovered modernist

I have discovered a wonderful author called Dorothy Richardson, by accident in a charity shop. I picked up three old Virago Women's Classics, and read a few pages and was gripped. The books are called Pilgrimage 1, 2 and 3, and are the collected short novels all with the same set of characters. There's a fourth one which wasn't in the charity shop.

The books so far is charming and beautiful. Like another favourite author of mine, Olivia Manning, she has an ability to preserve a moment so that you are there with her: not just in her surroundings, but in her mood. She also reproduces the fleeting, changing moods of early adulthood very well: the central character is a girl of seventeen who is about to start working in a German finishing school and the way she veers from feeling terribly happy to crippled with nervousness is very familiar from when I was that age.

Also there's something very nice about discovering an author for yourself. It's such a change to read something just because it looks good, not because you feel you ought or someone has recommended it. More on this when I finish it...