(no subject)
Feb. 8th, 2024 09:22 pmI found Among You Taking Notes: The Wartime Diary of Naomi Mitchison, 1939-1945 in the in-library-use only section of the BPL, but when I went to the desk to check it out for my in-library afternoon, they were like "eh, you can take it home if you want."
This did not happen to anyone else who was there with me that day reading in-library-use-only books and I am not entirely sure why I was Chosen but I have been very glad of it! (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
genarti however may be less glad as I've been intermittently and without warning reading bits out loud to her from the couch ever since.)
In 1937, Mitchison and her husband had bought the 'big house' in the fishing village of Carradale, Scotland. She spent most of the war there except for occasional trips down south: trying to make the place into a functioning farm; trying to write; trying to raise leftist/socialist/feminist political consciousness around her; trying to interact with her neighbors in Carradale in a normal and human way while also painfully aware that she's always going to be set apart as The Lady of the Big House; trying to believe that there's a better society to hope for after the war.
Over the course of five years, she loses a baby, and a house, and a life of London intelligentsia, and a fair bit of her idealism; she gains a daughter-in-law, and a fairly romantic friendship with a local fisherman, and a deep attachment to to Scottish Nationalism. It's a really fascinating read -- difficult, in some respects, because there are so many people coming into and out of Carradale and Naomi's life always, and the diary is Selections Only and the annotations are not always helpful at grounding the dozens of names -- and in other respects it doesn't really matter keeping track of the dozens of names because what matters is how Naomi feels about it and how she's feeling is always compelling and interesting, often very relatable, often very funny, often very sad.
( A couple passages I took photos of as I read, under the cut )
There are many other passages that are so deeply contextualized that I didn't quote them but found tremendously engaging and compelling -- a lot of the parts, in particular, about how she is trying to relate to the people around her, how she is grappling with the class stuff that is so unavoidably part of her position and situation and upbringing and also so antithetical to her beliefs; it's a celebration any time she gets one of her neighbors to call her Naomi.
The library also kindly gave me You May Well Ask, her 1920-40 memoir, so that'll be next or at least next-ish.
This did not happen to anyone else who was there with me that day reading in-library-use-only books and I am not entirely sure why I was Chosen but I have been very glad of it! (
genarti however may be less glad as I've been intermittently and without warning reading bits out loud to her from the couch ever since.)In 1937, Mitchison and her husband had bought the 'big house' in the fishing village of Carradale, Scotland. She spent most of the war there except for occasional trips down south: trying to make the place into a functioning farm; trying to write; trying to raise leftist/socialist/feminist political consciousness around her; trying to interact with her neighbors in Carradale in a normal and human way while also painfully aware that she's always going to be set apart as The Lady of the Big House; trying to believe that there's a better society to hope for after the war.
Over the course of five years, she loses a baby, and a house, and a life of London intelligentsia, and a fair bit of her idealism; she gains a daughter-in-law, and a fairly romantic friendship with a local fisherman, and a deep attachment to to Scottish Nationalism. It's a really fascinating read -- difficult, in some respects, because there are so many people coming into and out of Carradale and Naomi's life always, and the diary is Selections Only and the annotations are not always helpful at grounding the dozens of names -- and in other respects it doesn't really matter keeping track of the dozens of names because what matters is how Naomi feels about it and how she's feeling is always compelling and interesting, often very relatable, often very funny, often very sad.
( A couple passages I took photos of as I read, under the cut )There are many other passages that are so deeply contextualized that I didn't quote them but found tremendously engaging and compelling -- a lot of the parts, in particular, about how she is trying to relate to the people around her, how she is grappling with the class stuff that is so unavoidably part of her position and situation and upbringing and also so antithetical to her beliefs; it's a celebration any time she gets one of her neighbors to call her Naomi.
The library also kindly gave me You May Well Ask, her 1920-40 memoir, so that'll be next or at least next-ish.
