Tag: Marie Dobbs

Reviewsrevues is 8!

On By philshanklinIn Uncategorized4 Comments

Today I am celebrating 8 years and 891 posts and a big thank you to those of you who have stuck with me or joined me along the way or even just discovered one or two posts randomly when looking for something else!  I thought I would celebrate by looking at the top 10 most read posts of the last year – some of which were written quite a long time ago now and which have continually appeared on my most-read lists (in fact only number 3 was read and reviewed in 2022).  I admit I do continue to  find it fascinating to see what  people are reading.  So here goes:

10. Diary Of Two Nobodies – Giles Wood and Mary Killen

Posted back in 2018 and has been one of the most read posts ever since.  The musings of the couple from “Gogglebox” has certainly been of interest- although it has slipped down from its number 5 spot in 2020.

9. Scott And Bailey – Series 5

When I last looked at the top posts back in 2020 this was  the most read even though this last series of the ITV police show was first shown in 2016.  Suranne Jones and Lesley Sharp certainly made a lasting impression.

8. Past Caring – Robert Goddard

I reviewed this 1986 novel in 2018.  This was the debut novel from the much loved British crime writer and despite me saying at the time “I am convinced, however, that there will be some real gems in the 25 or so works of his that I am still to encounter” I haven’t got around to reading him since.  I do have a copy of his 2020 novel “The Fine Art Of Invisible Detection” looking across at me from the bookshelves as I write this so I might very well find myself rediscovering this author this year.

7. This Is Going To Hurt – Adam Kay

I read and reviewed this in 2018 when it was dominating best seller lists.  It’s just reminded me that I have not got around to watching the BBC TV adaptation which was so well received  and which starred Ben Whishaw- I have the whole series recorded on Sky but never seem to be in the mood to get started with it.  Looking back at my review I’m wondering if that is because I said “I haven’t read anything before with so much bodily fluids sloshing around”.  It’s one thing reading about it but another when you are watching it whilst eating your tea!

6. Kathy Kirby: Secrets Lives And Lipgloss – James Harman

Obviously one of my guilty pleasures which is 60s songstress Kathy Kirby has had a bit of renewed interest in the last year as she features twice in my most read list.  At number 6 we have this four star 2005 memoir which I reviewed in 2016.  Harman shines a light on a woman who found fame under the shadow of her lover and mentor the much older celebrated band leader Bert Ambrose but who after his death went into free fall.  Exploited by both the music business and the press her naivety ran alongside a determination to bounce back.  Harman knew her well and conveys the 1960s showbusiness world she inhabited as well as the vulnerability of some who rose to the top.  It might be a struggle to get hold of this book now which may explain why fans are searching for my review of it.

5. Sanditon – Jane Austen and Another Lady

Another consistent top 5 performer is this 2019 five star review of a 1975 publication of the completion of Jane Austen’s unfinished fragment which was completed by the “Another Lady” in this case Australian-born author Marie Dobbs.  I’m sure the ITV series has helped maintain the interest in what I thought about this.

4. The Very Best Of – Kathy Kirby

Number 79 in my Essential CD lists is the 2016 review of a 1997 20 track release on the Spectrum label.  I’m pleased to see this getting a good number of reviews – I wouldn’t want this singer who was once reputedly the highest paid woman on British television being forgotten.  By the mid 60’s when Beatlemania was at its height her chart career was over yet within these twenty tracks there are some fine examples of British pop music.

3. The Whalebone Theatre – Joanna Quinn

My four star review of this 2022 novel meant that it was out of the running when I came to choose my Top 10 books of the year as I had read so many 5 star titles but this is a book which remained with me throughout the year that I am wondering if my original four star rating was not a little stingy.  A splendid Dorset-set debut and I am pleased that so many people have wanted to find out more about it.  A book which achieved a very good level of critical and commercial success.

2. 20 Of The Best – Shirley Bassey

This budget Music For Pleasure CD spans the years 1960-73 and made it to number 80 in my Essential CD countdown.  This has tended to hover around the lower half of the Top 10 most read posts since publication but has had a real surge this year to become my second most read post.  This is surely because of the continued love and support for this now 86 year old Dame of the Realm, living legend and national treasure. 

1. The Heart’s Invisible Furies – John Boyne

How delighted am I to see this at the very top of my most read pile as this is one of my favourite books of all time and I don’t miss  many opportunities to mention this and recommend it so I do hope that readers have found their way to this book through my promotion of it.  I reviewed this back in 2017 and in the eight years I have been writing this book I think only this year’s Book Of The Year “Young Mungo” by Douglas Stuart has come close to toppling this off my favourite book pedestal.  Thank you for seeking this review out in considerable numbers and thank you for reading this book. 

Where are you reading from?

The Top 10 countries for visitors to reviewsrevues.com.  The figures in brackets relate to 2020 when I last published this list.

1(1) UK

2(2) US

3 (7) Australia

4(-) Italy

5 (6) Canada

6(4) Germany

7(-) China

8(-) France

9(5) Netherlands

10 (-) Ireland

Welcome to the new countries in the Top 10.  Not sure what has happened to my Belgian visitors who have slumped from the number 3 position.  Hopefully they will be back before I celebrate reviewsrevues 9th birthday.

Many thanks for your continued support.

Sanditon – Jane Austen & Another Lady (1975)

On By philshanklinIn Uncategorized7 Comments

 

sanditon

I thoroughly enjoyed the recent Andrew Davies adaptation for ITV and was fascinated to find out more about what was actually just a fragment of a novel.  Jane Austen probably intended it to be her seventh novel beginning it in early 1817 and of which the first approximately 26,000 words survive.  Midway through Chapter 11 she became unable to continue due to ill- health and passed away in July of that year.  It took until 1925 for the unfinished work to be published for the first time.  It is this fragment which Andrew Davies chose to finish for television, in his style.  He was not the first to do this.

No further plot outlines or developments were left but in the mid 1970’s the anonymous “another lady” who was “an established author in her own right” had a go at completing the work and has done a remarkably good job.  This “lady” was later revealed to be Marie Dobbs, an Australian-born author who lived and worked in many countries yet gained most fame for her version of the small, minutely observed world of Jane Austen and her creation of the seaside town of Sanditon.  There have been other continuations since, the most recent being the 2019 novelisation of the TV series by Kate Riordan, but this first version is for me thoroughly satisfactory.

Charlotte Heywood is spared by her family to spend the summer at the developing seaside settlement.  (Austen based it on Sidmouth but placed it geographically near Peacehaven) under the care of the Parker family led by Tom, a keen supporter of and investor in the town.  Here she meets the somewhat fierce Lady Denham (played brilliantly by Anne Reid in the TV version) living with her favoured relation Clara Brereton, whose presence threatens the inheritance of two other of Lady D’s kin, Sir Edward Denham and his sister Lucy.  Other visitors to the town include the heiress Miss Lambe, from a West Indian family and the rest of Tom Parker’s brothers and sisters, a bunch of hypochondriacs apart from the dashing Sidney who Austen had most likely earmarked for the hero and eventual love interest for Charlotte.

From here the TV adaptation went for Sidney emerging naked from the sea (not too many complaints with Theo James in the role), another working class man interested in Charlotte, a furtive relationship between Miss Lambe and her beau (complicated further with her being Sidney’s ward) and an odd relationship with the younger Denhams which looked incestuous but wasn’t.  “Another Lady” went for much gentler fare- a trip to a neighbouring seaside town and a Ball but there is much talk of elopement and a probable upping of Austen’s original plan in the drama stakes with a little more forthright flirting than we might have anticipated and an abduction which actually happens rather than being reported which was how Austen sometimes dealt with her more dramatic twists.  But having said this, I for one thought it was continued seamlessly and couldn’t see any joins (some of the later continuations dispense with Austen’s opening altogether) and I actually enjoyed myself more than I did when I last re-read “Pride And Prejudice” which may surely have Austen fans clutching at their corsages in horror but I totally relished this joint effort and it is one of this years’ reading highlights which I never would have discovered without ITV taking a chance on it.

fivestars

This continuation of Sanditon was first published in 1975.  I read the 1976 Corgi paperback edition.