Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} To Bed With Grand Music by Marghanita Laski Fleur in her World. Notes from a bookish life on the Cornish coast … To Bed With Grand Music by Marghanita Laski (as Sarah Russell) She could only say defiantly, “Well, even if what you think its true it’s not all that wrong. You’ve never had to do without your husband, and in any case, you’re different from me. Some women can do without a man and some can’t, and I’m one of those that can’t.” Oh, the lies that we tell ourselves to allow us to behave however we choose. “Deborah, said Joe, “I want to tell you what my wife said to me in New York just before I came away. she said, “Joe, you’re a normal man and we’re maybe going to be parted for a long time. It’s no good shutting our eyes to what’s going to happen, but I’m going to ask you one thing. Don’t cheapen our marriage. I’d hate you to think of you going with any cheap woman and then coming back to me. But if you ever find a girl you can really respect, like you do me, I wouldn’t mind so much, because it wouldn’t be cheap.”” And the consequences that those lies can have. To Bed With Grand Music is a story about those lies – ones that we sometimes don’t realise are untruths – and those consequences. The story open with Deborah in bed with her husband Graham. He is about to go away and, though he does not offer the same, she promises loyalty and fidelity. But that promise is swiftly broken. Deborah is bored at home and her mother and her housekeeper are more than willing to take care of her infant son. And so Deborah heads for London. To keep busy, to help the war effort, to be happier… But Deborah meets Joe, a charming American, a family man without his family. A relationship develops. When Joe is sent overseas Deborah meets Sheldon, another American. And then Pierre, an older Frenchman. “Pierre, said Deborah urgently. “Will you teach me to be a good mistress?” “I tell you it is a question of temperament,” said Pierre, “and you do not understand, because you have not got that temperament. But you have got a lot of other things, beauty and freshness and naivety.” “To hell with naivety,” though Deborah angrily, “I’m damned if I’m going to be put off learning what I want, just because Pierre likes me naive.” I couldn’t find it in myself to like Deborah. But though it might seem that it would be easy to dismiss her as selfish and vacuous, it wasn’t. There isn’t too much background, but it was fairly clear that Deborah was a trophy wife. A woman who could only see herself as significant in relation to her man. Her mother’s character strongly suggested that she had been brought up to be just that. She had no other interests, no idea how to occupy her time. But she lied to herself about what she was doing, what the effects would be. Did she realise? I think she did, but I think she just lied to herself again so she could carry on. Yes, she was selfish. She was vacuous. And she was responsible for her actions and their effects. There would be more men as Deborah turns slowly from a faithless wife into a scarlet woman. Her journey was compelling and utterly convincing. And so I found another Marghanita Laski book that I could argue with while reading. She is so good at that! She’s great at characters and storytelling too, and she makes some very telling points along the way about double standards and the emotional effects of war. And then there’s the ending. She is so so good at endings, and this one is stunning. War is over, and the implications of that do not suit Deborah one little bit. Even after everything that has gone before, it is a shock to realise what Deborah has become. Little Boy Lost. The Village. The Victorian Chaise-Longue. To Bed With Grand Music. Four novels by Marghanita Laski reissued by Persephone books. All different and all excellent. Review: To Bed with Grand Music by Marghanita Laski. I am so delighted that it is finally fall and the temperatures are getting cooler and the NFL season has begun here in the U.S. I am a huge New York Giants fan and I am hoping for a stellar year. Speaking of sports, this is another interesting Persephone title, the plot of which involves a woman using sex as a game while her husband is away at war. My Review: I thought that the first scene in this book was quite shocking, but as it turns out the subject matter of the entire book is rather bold. Deborah is in bed with her husband, Graham, who is about to leave for the middle east where he will be stationed during World War II. Graham informs her that there is no way he can be expected to be faithful to her for the duration of the war. Graham also gives Deborah permission to have a dalliance of her own since he will be away for so long. I couldn’t decide what was more shocking: his declaration of intended unfaithfulness or his suggestion that his wife have an affair as well. Deborah is the type of woman who needs a man to complete her identity. When she is left alone with her three-year-old son and her housekeeper she thinks she will go crazy from the boredom and the monotony. Deborah’s mother suggests that she get a job to help pass the time until the war is over. Deborah eventually finds a job in London as a clerk and it is also in London that she has her first indiscretion with a man. The first one night stand disgusts her and she runs off in shame, but she quickly changes her mind and her attitude towards having extramarital affairs. Deborah eventually comes to the conclusion that it is acceptable to have lovers while her husband is gone so that she isn’t lonely. The first prolonged affair that she has is with an officer named Joe who lavishes attention on Deborah and even gets along well with her son. When Joe is sent to the frontlines Deborah takes on yet another lover. The rest of the novel is an account of Deborah’s string of lovers. Some of the book is very funny, especially when she finds ridiculous reasons to dump one man and move on to the next. One of her lovers gets along very well with Deborah’s mother and Deborah is extremely irked by this. So she casts him off and moves on to the next soldier. Many of Deborah’s lovers provide her with lavish gifts, jewelry, expense differs and clothes. Deborah is not a sympathetic characters since she is taking advantage of the situation of war to have a series of affairs which are all to her emotional and material benefit. One part of the book that I found particularly sad is the fact that Deborah cannot bring herself to move back home and take care of her son. The little boy craves his mother’s attention and the scenes in which she leaves him to go off to London with one of her many lovers is pathetic. The boy becomes more and more attached to his nanny and we wonder whether or not his mother’s abandonment will have a lasting effect on his life. This is a very interesting book to compare to Laski’s other World War II title, Little Boy Lost . Both books bring up a very different side of the war that are somewhat controversial. And children do not fair well in the lives of adults in either book. If I found the subject matter of this book bold then I wonder what the reaction to it was in 1946 when it was originally published. About The Author: English journalist, radio panelist, and novelist: she also wrote literary biography, plays, and short stories. Lanksi was to a prominent family of Jewish intellectuals: Neville Laski was her father, Moses Gaster her grandfather, and socialist thinker Harold Laski her uncle. She was educated at Lady Barn House School and St Paul’s Girls’ School in Hammersmith. After a stint in fashion, she read English at Oxford, then married publisher John Howard, and worked in journalism. She began writing once her son and daughter were born. A well-known critic as well as a novelist, she wrote books on Jane Austen and George Eliot. Ecstasy (1962) explored intense experiences, and Everyday Ecstasy (1974) their social effects. Her distinctive voice was often heard on the radio on The Brains Trust and The Critics; and she submitted a large number of illustrative quotations to the Oxford English Dictionary. An avowed atheist, she was also a keen supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Her play, The Offshore Island, is about nuclear warfare. Persephone Books. The spring cleaning continues in this [blank] garden of mine! As I mentioned last week, I decided to transfer some of my reading project pages to regular posts – so, you will be seeing a lot of those in the coming weeks. The Persephone Project is a personal long-term project of mine, where I intend to read my way through the entire Persephone Books’ catalog.