Giant’s Bread

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One night, while Nell and her mother are abroad, Vernon is introduced to a professional singer called Jane Harding at a party hosted by Sebastian. He is attracted to Jane, despite a ten-year age difference, and starts to see her, to Joe’s approval but Myra Deyre’s consternation. Jane’s effect on Vernon is to apply himself more to composing music and, to do so, he leaves his uncle’s firm. Nell is frightened of Jane and confronts her, but the older, more experienced girl is more than a match for Nell. Vernon finishes his composition and, suddenly scared of rumours that Nell is going to marry George Chetwynd, proposes to her, but she asks him to wait. Ja znam šta želim i ka tome stremim-a on ne zna šta želi,a to nešto što želi juri njega... I to nešto šta god bilo,biće ostvareno po cenu bilo čega." Perhaps understandably, Christie’s publishers Collins (now part of HarperCollins) weren’t terribly enthused about her departure from lucrative detective fiction. But they needn’t have worried: Christie also produced her first Miss Marple novel in 1930, Murder at the Vicarage.

The story itself is a little harder to rate and review. I've been a fan of Christie's mysteries and nonfiction since I was a kid, and I have read many of her books at least twice. But I had no idea what to expect from her "romance" fiction. I'm not sure this qualifies as a romantic story, but I'm also not the right person to ask for that determination. I will just say it was an interesting departure from her mysteries. It opens with a prologue featuring a stunning new operatic composition, a work of musical genius, and then the rest of the book shows us how it came to be and what sacrifices were involved. Finally, it was all very predictable - inevitable that the child who hated music was going to grow up to be the composer of the revolutionary opera and that the grown up characters would behave in the manner that they did, purely because it was inevitable that the unpleasant characteristics of our cast woud dominate over the redeeming features which were not allowed to develop. One of the main male figures in Vernon's life is his Uncle Sydney, Myra’s brother. He is a self-made man who runs a manufacturing business in Birmingham and is someone who Vernon instinctively feels uncomfortable with. Someone who promotes a different reaction is Walter’s sister, Nina, an artistic woman who impresses Vernon by her playing of the grand piano in the house. This is an object for which Vernon has an unreasoning terror, naming it "The Beast", and which promotes a hatred of music in his soul.This is a hard read because you are following a cast of characters who are not inherently likeable and whom you are not sure if you are supposed to root for or not. Vernon is "a genius", but are we supposed to applaud his sacrifice of all in favor of music? And actually he himself doesn't sacrifice very much, a lot of those decisions are more or less made for him. I guess in the end he does make one active sacrifice but again how much is that just him realizing what his situation is rather than him choosing what his life will be? Sebastion is a respectable character in that he lives his life how he wants to live it, regardless of what anybody else thinks, but he's terribly lonely. Joe is an insufferable little git, but she's often little more than a side character. We don't really get to know that much about her inner life, beyond how she's perceived by other characters. Jane is insufferable as well, but the book frequently attempts to make us feel sorry for her. It’s a stretch to use this text to claim Christie is chiding herself for writing mystery novels (comfort) when she could be writing more Westmacotts (love). But it is safe to say that, like most successful authors, she struggled with the push-pull of creativity and career.

The Legendary Book Club of Habitica's Ultimate Reading Challenge Task: A book published before you were bornNaravno, da drama bude veća, pojavljuje se i Džejn. Pevačica-glumica koja se čini savršenom partnerkom za Sebastijana, zaluđuje Vernona. Stvari se komplikuju, a komplikuju ih sami likovi. Niko zapravo ne zna šta želi od života, a onda počinje Prvi svetski rat. Aunt Nina’s marriage breaks up and Walter wants her and her young daughter Josephine (Joe) to live with them but Myra objects. Fate takes a turn though when the Boer War breaks out and Walter goes off to fight. In his absence, whilst Vernon is away at school, Nina dies and Myra takes Joe in. As a result, Vernon has a playmate in the holidays and the two start to make a circle of acquaintances. One of them, Nell Vereker, is a thin girl who cannot keep up with Vernon and Joe in their games. The local village is aghast when the adjoining property to Abbots Puisannts is bought by a rich Jewish family called the Levinnes and, although held at arm's length at first, gradually the family come to held in a grudging acceptance. Vernon and Joe also make friends with the son of the family – Sebastian, who is much the same age as them. A few weeks before the end of the war, Walter Deyre is killed in action and Vernon inherits Abbots Puisannts, although not being of age, it is held in trust for him. A shortage of money means that Myra and her son have to move and they rent the house out while they move to Birmingham to be near Uncle Sydney.