Showing posts with label Young (Kendal). Show all posts
Showing posts with label Young (Kendal). Show all posts

06 September 2022

The Dustiest Bookcase: Y is for Young


Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).

Psyche
Phyllis Brett Young
Toronto: Longmans, Green, 1959
319 pages

Psyche
 was Phyllis Brett Young's first book. My copy, signed by the author and inscribed by her mother, was purchased two years ago for £20 from a bookseller in Wallingford, UK. It should have cost me a small fortune.


Canadian literature has not done right by Phyllis Brett Young. Her writing career came and went in ten years – 1959 to 1969 – during which she produced six remarkable books. Well-received, they were published in Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia; French, German, Finnish, and Dutch translations followed. And yet, Phyllis Brett Young's name doesn't feature in The Canadian EncylopediaThe Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, The Cambridge Companion to Canadian Literature or the Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada. I first learned of Young with the 2007 McGill-Queen's University Press reissue of The Torontonians (1960), her second novel.


A novel titled The Torontonians, set in Toronto, written by a Torontonian, rescued from obscurity by a Montreal-based press. At the time, San Grewal wrote a good piece on the novel and its rediscovery for the Toronto Star:
The story of a lost local literary gem, lost and found
McGill-Queen's reissued Psyche the following year.


In thirteen years of the Dusty Bookcase, both here and in Canadian Notes & Queries, the only Young I've reviewed is The Ravine (1962). A psychological thriller, it stands somewhat apart from her other work. The Ravine made my 2019 list of books deserving return to print. Ten months later, it became the fifteenth Ricochet Books title.

The author's three remaining books – Anything Could Happen! (1961), Undine (1964), and A Question of Judgement (1969) – have now been out of print for more than a half-century. 

In a country plagued by indifference regarding its literary heritage, Phyllis Brett Young remains the most unjustly neglected writer.

Phyllis Brett Young
1914 - 1996
RIP

26 December 2020

The Very Best Reads of a Plague Year



Not one week into 2020, I met a physician friend for dinner at Sidedoor in Ottawa's ByWard Market. Over too many drinks, he told me of his concerns about a virus sweeping through China's Hubei province. I'd seen a bit about it on the CBC and had noticed headlines in the Globe & Mail, but didn't take the threat nearly so seriously. Again, too many drinks. Eleven months later, we've just spent our first Christmas apart from our daughter. Parents and a grandparent, who live well within driving distance, were kept at bay. To think that in last year's 'Best Reads' I described 2019 as "a very strange year."

Here's to better times.

I reviewed twenty-one titles here and in the pages of Canadian Notes & Queries this year. Tradition dictates that I suggest three most deserving of a return to print. Easily done:

The New Front Line
Hubert Evans
Toronto: Macmillan, 1927


The first novel by a writer remembered – when he is remembered – for Mist on the River (1954). Here Evans draws upon his own experiences as a returning Great War veteran who rejects the city and its commerce for a healthier life in rural British Columbia. The love of a good woman figures.


Perilous Passage
Arthur Mayse
New York: Pocket, 1950

West Coast rural noir written by a transplanted Manitoban, this tale of two teens confronting a drug cartel brought back such memories. Nothing to do with battling crooks, you understand, rather being young. I was caught up in Joe and Devvy's adventure and romance. I'm betting you will be, too.


Blantyre—Alien
Alan Sullivan
London J.M. Dent, 1914

The first book I read this year, and the first of the author's thirty-something novels, Blantyre—Alien has grown on me. A story as strange as its title, it concerns a medical doctor, his wife, and their disintegrating marriage. I found interest in its depiction of Toronto the Good  


Two books I reviewed this year are currently in print:


The lone book revisited this year, I first read Not for Every Eye, Glen Shortliffe's translation of Gerard Bessette's Le libraire (1960), as a very young  man in in the summer of '85. I found I liked it more in middle age because my more seasoned self better understood narrator and protagonist Hervé Jodoin. An essential text for anyone interested in censorship as depicted in fiction or the dark days of Duplessis' Quebec. Not For Every Eye is available through Exile Editions

Does Armand Durand count? I read Mrs Leprohon's 1868 novel in a 19th-century French translation by J.-A. Genaud. The original is in print as part of the Borealis Press Early Canadian Women's Series. My French is so very weak that it took months for me to get through the novel. I wonder whether spending all that time with the Durand family contributed in some way to my concern for their trials.  

Two of the three novels selected last year as "most deserving of a return to print" did just that! I'm proud to say that I played a hand in both:

I Am Not Guilty
Frances Shelley Wees
Montreal, Véhicule, 2020

Following The Keys of My Prison, this is the second Wees novel I've helped revive. I'm torn as to which I prefer. In this 1954 tale of domestic suspense, a widow relocates to post-war suburban Toronto in an attempt to solve her husband's murder. Martinis and harried businessmen figure. Patti Abbott was good enough to provide the introduction.

The Ravine
Phyllis Brett Young
Montreal, Véhicule, 2020

First published in 1962 under the nom de plume Kendal Young, The Ravine was Phyllis Brett Young's only thriller. Remarkably, it remains the only one of her novels to have been adapted to the screen. Don't bother with the film, read the book. The introduction is by Amy Lavender Harris.



Praise this year goes to Mary Chapman and the ever-expanding Winnifred Eaton Archive. This online site provides a remarkable wealth of material concerning the groundbreaking Asian-Canadian author of Marion and "Cattle", amongst other novels. Of late, I've become increasingly interested in Eaton's Hollywood years. The Archive somehow satisfies while fuelling my desire for more. Do visit!

And now, the resolutions:

I've got three book projects on the go, but will be doubling down on telling the awful story of Maria Monk. As a result, fewer titles will be reviewed here next year. I'll be filling the gaps by reviving 'The Dustiest Bookcase.' Seasoned readers may remember it as a series of short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).

Oh... and as always, I resolve to keep kicking against the pricks.

Wishing everyone a Happier and Healthier New Year! Bonne année! 

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20 May 2020

Phyllis Brett Young's Ricochet



Copies of Phyllis Brett Young's The Ravine, the latest Ricochet Book, were delivered yesterday. I see their arrival as another sign of spring.

Number fifteen in the series, The Ravine has had an unusual history. It was first published by W.H. Allen in 1962 under the name "Kendal Young," and yet the author's true identity was exposed in an advert on the rear dust jacket.


Sadly, Psyche never made it to celluloid. The Ravine did appear on the screen – adapted bowdlerized and bastardized as Assault (1971) – but it isn't worth your time.

The Ravine is.

I knew nothing of Phyllis Brett Young until 2007, when McGill-Queen's University Press revived her 1960 novel The Torontonians. The next year, it brought back, Young's Psyche (1959).


This new edition of The Ravine joins MQUP's reissues in shining light on a writer to be celebrated.

As Ricochet Books' Series Editor, my thanks go out to Valerie Argue, Phyllis Brett Young's daughter, who granted permission for its reissue. I thank Amy Lavender Harris for providing a very fine introduction.

The first new edition in forty-nine years, it's long overdue.


Related posts:

19 March 2019

Nature as the Devil's Playground



The Ravine
Kendal Young [pseud Phyllis Brett Young]
London: W.H. Allen, 1962
208 pages

Young Barbara Grey "saved for simply ages" to buy a silver bracelet for her mother's birthday. Now that that the day has arrived, she can barely contain her excitement. She manages to make it through her after-school art class, but can't wait for the teacher, Miss Warner, to drive her home. And so, Barbara heads off, cutting through the ravine.

Miss Warner – Christian name: Julie – notes Barbara's absence and ties to be brave. She rounds up her other students, piles them into her station wagon, and drives down into the ravine. It is dark and rainy, mud makes the tires spin, yet Julie Warner presses on, dreading what she might find.

The car hits a particularly bad patch, spins out of control, and shines its headlights on a man resembling the devil standing over what looks to be a vast pool of blood. The figure disappears into the darkness. The pool of blood turns out to be Barbara's red raincoat... which covers her dead body.

Oh, Barbara, why did you go into the ravine? Not six months earlier, Deborah Hurst – then a student at your very school – was assaulted in the ravine. She hasn't been the same since, and now spends her afternoons waking blank-faced through the streets of your town.

Julie is devastated, of course, but what makes it particularly hard on her is that she has – or had – a little sister who disappeared from the luxurious lobby of the Warner family's Manhattan apartment building. The missing girl was on her way to a violin lesson.

The art teacher comes from a very different place than Barbara and Deborah. Her station wagon replaced a convertible. She works, though she doesn't have to. She has a flat above a drug store, though she can afford better digs. She doesn't have to live here.

But where is here?

Because of title, The Ravine, and the knowledge that it was written by a Torontonian (whose best-known work is The Torontonians), I began this novel thinking it was set in Toronto.

It is not.

The Ravine takes place somewhere in New England. The setting is referred to as a "town," though it appears to be a much larger municipality. There are two daily newspapers, a "foreign" quarter, and downtown streets that are unfamiliar to the art teacher. And yet, the community is so small that everyone knows everyone else; Julie, being relatively new, is the exception.

She's brought into contact with several people as a result of poor Barbara's murder. There's Dr Greg Markham, who treated Deborah Hurst, and has been following her movements ever since. Tom Denning is a newspaper editor, whose chief concern is circulation. Captain Velyan, head of the police, is doing his best to deal with crimes of a sort that just don't happen in a town like this.

Of these three men, Greg is the most important. Struck by Julie's testimony at the coroner's inquiry into Barbara's death, he trails her to a filthy café in which she has taken refuge from reporters. He asks her to dinner that evening. By the end of the date, during which they share one brief kiss, they've become an item.

Julie runs around behind her new boyfriend's back in enlisting Denning and Velyan to entrap the devilish man. Meanwhile, Greg puts together a plan of his own, which he keeps from Julie. Neither action bodes well for a long-term relationship.

The educated, lithe, artsy, blonde, daughter of wealth, Julie is a type; she's as familiar as Dunning, the alcoholic newspaperman, and Velyan, the out-of-his-depths police captain. Dedicated doctor Greg is also a type, though I'd argue that his day has passed. From their very first meeting he looks to exert control over Julie's life:
"Your trouble is that you think too much about other people, Julie. You need someone who will put you first. Do I do that with your permission, or without it?"
The afternoon newspaper is anxiously awaited, a hospital switchboard operator causes concern, meals are taken in drug stores, and cigarettes are offered all around. This is a novel of another time, and nowhere is is more evident in its depiction of the ravine itself.
At midnight on that Thursday night, the ravine was as dark and silent as the valley of death itself. Its thick, black canopy of branches was as motionless as the windless darkness, as secretive as the deep earth trough it shielded.
     Unseen, soundless, the sullen pools in the depths of the ravine swelled and spread, bloated by rivulets of rain-water which slithered inexorably down its steep sides: which crept around the holes of the trees; which filtered noiselessly through the lesser resistance of undergrowth obscene with funguses which had ever seen the light of day.
     Shunned even by the owls, it knew no movement other than this dreary invasion of last minute streams which it would eventually absorb with slow reluctance. A reluctance not duplicated by the morbid eagerness with which it took the night into itself and became one with it.
     Severed, as if by a will of its own, from all but the powers of darkness, it seemed to brood with deliberate malice upon the evil secrets it guarded: seemed to reveal in a black, inanimate triumph belonging only to itself.
     Brooding over a dark past, savouring the taste and smell of recent death, the trees and bushes which were its real substance became linked one to another in a tangled threat as ugly as it was positive.
More fully realized than the encircling town, the ravine is seen by a great many in the community as "a tangled, cancerous growth." It is an evil place. The reader is told there are those who want it left alone, but none of them feature as characters.

After Deborah's assault, Denning's paper launched its "Abolish the Ravine" campaign, painting a picture of a changed landscape with roads, scattered shade trees, and "artificial drainage." It calls for light standards "as unobstructed as the moon and stars above." The campaign was a success in that circulation increased. Barbara's murder provided a second boost.

The novel's brief denouement, which takes place the month after Barbara's murder, features a passage in which the first snows begin to fall, "clean, white, and beneficent, gently covering the acres of raw stumps which are all that remained of the ravine."

For this reader, it was an unhappy ending.


Trivia: The dust jacket features an advert for other W.H. Allen titles, including Psyche, Phyllis Brett Young's first novel:
Kendal Young is the pseudonym of Phyllis Brett Young whose latest novel will be one of 1962's major films. It is the fascinating story of what happens to a young girl after she has been kidnapped.
I'm sorry, which novel will be one of 1962's major films?

The reference is to The RavinePsyche is the story of the kidnapped girl*

The Ravine was not a major film of 1962 or any other year, though an adaptation was shot and released nine years later under the title Assault. It is not to be confused with the 1971 gay porn film of the same title.


Must say, of the six novels W.H. Allen advertised on the dust jacket, the one that most intrigues is Touch a French Pom-Pom, with its promised probing of "the curious situation of four people with the same peculiar desire."

*Addendum: Phyllis Brett Young scholar Monika Bartyzel informs that the “major film” reference was indeed to Psyche: "Victor Saville had the movie rights, and cast Susannah York to play the dual roles of Psyche and her mother. It was announced far and wide, but then he retired from filmmaking in ill health (his last credits are from 1962) and the project floundered." She adds that “'Latest novel' is definitely a poor choice of words, especially since The Torontonians came out in 1960, the year after Psyche."

Thank you, Monika!

Object: A compact hardcover made of red boards. My copy was purchased for five American dollars (with a further twenty for shipping) from a dishonest New Zealand bookseller. Described as "Ex library used copy with wear and tear but overall clean square copy," the thing came apart in my hands.



Access: As far as I can tell, the W.H. Allen edition enjoyed just one printing. Pan published the first paperback edition in 1964, followed by a 1971 movie tie-in as Assault.

A German translation, Mein Mörder kommt um 8, was published in 1966.

The Ravine is held by Library and Archives Canada and McMaster University.

That's it!

Copies of the The Ravine is surprisingly uncommon. The Ravine was published in Canada by Longmans, yet there is no evidence of its existence online. I know of it thanks to Amy Lavender Harris, who owns a signed copy. As of this writing, there are no copies of the Allen and Pan editions listed for anywhere. Two copies of Assault are currently listed for sale online at £2.50 and £3.50. Get 'em before their gone. Like the Longmans, this edition isn't recognized by WorldCat.