Eva ibbotson RIP
I learnt yesterday that one of my absolute favourite comfort authors, Eva Ibbotson, had passed away during the week. She was 85, and had been ill for some time. Still so very sad to hear about her death. Her books have followed me from childhood and onwards.
First her children's books about ghost and witches and magic made me a very happy young girl. I found my first Ibbotson at my primary school's library when I was perhaps eight or nine -a huge, illustrated and translated-into-Swedish edition of her first novel The Great Ghost Rescue. I'd love to get my hands on that copy again. It must have been from the late 1970s, pretty well thumbed, and it did look "old" in my young eyes (this must have been in say 1985 or 1986) but very exciting and promising. And it was! So I looked around for more titles, and found Which Witch? also translated into Swedish, since I didn't start reading "real" books in English until I was around 10. A few years later I was a member of one of those children's book-of-the-month clubs, and I had forgotten to send in the I-don't-want-the-next-book slip or something, so I got a flat package with "Spökena från Carra" in the mail - The Haunting of Hiram. It looked a bit "childish" in my very mature almost-12-years-old eyes, but a book is a book and I had to read it and ended up adoring it, and borrowing all her books again at the library etc. And Ibbotson's name was forever stuck in my mind..
So a few years later again, I spent the summer when I was 16 in Oxford - my fist trip abroad on my own - looking after three small boys in North Oxford but having a LOT of time on my own - and being a very geeky and shy teenager - what did I do but buy books at Blackwells and sit around in the parks and by the canals and read them - and yes, there in Blackwells I found out that one of my favourite children's books authors also had written novels for grown ups - and not just any kind of novel but a kind of romance novel that just captured my dreams and everything and totally charmed me - I had found The Morning Gift! And NOT in that horrible new edition with a photo of a young girl on it - no, this was the 1994 Arrow edition, with a very romantic watercolor of a young woman in a white dress and a big hat walking by the sea, where you can't see her face and it all looks quite wonderful.. or so my 16-year-old-self thought at least .
Ah, that book. It has followed me through life since then, and the reluctant hero of the novel, Quin Somerville, a young British Professor of Palaeontology was embarrassingly enough probably a major reason for my decision to study Geology my first year at University.. yeah, it didn't end well, even if I still love the fossils.. The heroine, Ruth Berger, was totally who I wanted to be like, and I still want to have her wonderful hair - it's from The Morning Gift I learnt Yeats' "I am looped in the loops of her hair"..
It takes place first in Vienna just after Hitler's Anschluss, and then London and Northumberland. And there are the usual amazing Ibbotson aunts, at least two of very different but equally impressive kind, a bunch of Eastern European musicians, Uncle Mischka, evil English society girls, and not-so-evil English society girl, a boring and self-obsessed piano-playing boyfriend, lovely and sweet English tea-shop ladies, a Scandinavian lesbian (if never actually said out loud but very strongly hinted at) female scientist that sees things very clearly, mushroom-picking in the alps, a wonderful Austrian mother who cooks like nobody else - and lots of Viennese cooking - Vanille Kipflern to die for - and lots of other scientist and students, and an old Northumbrian estate which stands on cliffs falling into the North Sea.. and the aye-aye, the very strange-looking lemur which is supposed to carry the souls of the ancestors to the heavens..a forgotten divorce paper on top of a London bus.. and a fake-marriage - what's not to love??
yeah.. I'm about to re-read it now for maybe the hundred-and-eleventh time.
So anyway, I adore all her novels, and the later more serious children's novels which she wrote after her husband death about 10 years ago are just fantastic. They tend to return to the plots and the especially settings, of her "romance" novels and use them from a child's perspective instead; Journey to the River Sea, The Star of Kazan and The Dragonfly Pool are all three outstanding. When it comes to the romances, which aren't really "romances" in the harlequin way, but so lovely and sweet and comforting that perhaps some cynics might find them a bit cloying *g* - apart from The Morning Gift I'd say A Song for Summer is the best one, and A Countess Below Stairs in a pretty wonderful third place - lots of eccentric Russian aristocrats working as taxi-drivers etc and being fabulous.
I think one of the great things about Ibbotson's novel is that her secondary characters are so well-constructed and fun. Everyone down to the dogs have a distinct personality and a life of their own somewhere, and that makes it work. And I'm very very sorry that there won't be any new works of hers for me to discover... She seemed to be such a cool character herself and was actually one of the few authors I would have loved to meet in real life. Thank you for a lot of fun reading through the years, Eva!
Actually, I just found a collection of short stories on abebooks that I haven't read yet, or at least I don't think so, so I bought it - A Glove Shop in Vienna and other stories... it does sound a little like Madensky Square but we'll see..
First her children's books about ghost and witches and magic made me a very happy young girl. I found my first Ibbotson at my primary school's library when I was perhaps eight or nine -a huge, illustrated and translated-into-Swedish edition of her first novel The Great Ghost Rescue. I'd love to get my hands on that copy again. It must have been from the late 1970s, pretty well thumbed, and it did look "old" in my young eyes (this must have been in say 1985 or 1986) but very exciting and promising. And it was! So I looked around for more titles, and found Which Witch? also translated into Swedish, since I didn't start reading "real" books in English until I was around 10. A few years later I was a member of one of those children's book-of-the-month clubs, and I had forgotten to send in the I-don't-want-the-next-book slip or something, so I got a flat package with "Spökena från Carra" in the mail - The Haunting of Hiram. It looked a bit "childish" in my very mature almost-12-years-old eyes, but a book is a book and I had to read it and ended up adoring it, and borrowing all her books again at the library etc. And Ibbotson's name was forever stuck in my mind..
So a few years later again, I spent the summer when I was 16 in Oxford - my fist trip abroad on my own - looking after three small boys in North Oxford but having a LOT of time on my own - and being a very geeky and shy teenager - what did I do but buy books at Blackwells and sit around in the parks and by the canals and read them - and yes, there in Blackwells I found out that one of my favourite children's books authors also had written novels for grown ups - and not just any kind of novel but a kind of romance novel that just captured my dreams and everything and totally charmed me - I had found The Morning Gift! And NOT in that horrible new edition with a photo of a young girl on it - no, this was the 1994 Arrow edition, with a very romantic watercolor of a young woman in a white dress and a big hat walking by the sea, where you can't see her face and it all looks quite wonderful.. or so my 16-year-old-self thought at least .
Ah, that book. It has followed me through life since then, and the reluctant hero of the novel, Quin Somerville, a young British Professor of Palaeontology was embarrassingly enough probably a major reason for my decision to study Geology my first year at University.. yeah, it didn't end well, even if I still love the fossils.. The heroine, Ruth Berger, was totally who I wanted to be like, and I still want to have her wonderful hair - it's from The Morning Gift I learnt Yeats' "I am looped in the loops of her hair"..
It takes place first in Vienna just after Hitler's Anschluss, and then London and Northumberland. And there are the usual amazing Ibbotson aunts, at least two of very different but equally impressive kind, a bunch of Eastern European musicians, Uncle Mischka, evil English society girls, and not-so-evil English society girl, a boring and self-obsessed piano-playing boyfriend, lovely and sweet English tea-shop ladies, a Scandinavian lesbian (if never actually said out loud but very strongly hinted at) female scientist that sees things very clearly, mushroom-picking in the alps, a wonderful Austrian mother who cooks like nobody else - and lots of Viennese cooking - Vanille Kipflern to die for - and lots of other scientist and students, and an old Northumbrian estate which stands on cliffs falling into the North Sea.. and the aye-aye, the very strange-looking lemur which is supposed to carry the souls of the ancestors to the heavens..a forgotten divorce paper on top of a London bus.. and a fake-marriage - what's not to love??
yeah.. I'm about to re-read it now for maybe the hundred-and-eleventh time.
So anyway, I adore all her novels, and the later more serious children's novels which she wrote after her husband death about 10 years ago are just fantastic. They tend to return to the plots and the especially settings, of her "romance" novels and use them from a child's perspective instead; Journey to the River Sea, The Star of Kazan and The Dragonfly Pool are all three outstanding. When it comes to the romances, which aren't really "romances" in the harlequin way, but so lovely and sweet and comforting that perhaps some cynics might find them a bit cloying *g* - apart from The Morning Gift I'd say A Song for Summer is the best one, and A Countess Below Stairs in a pretty wonderful third place - lots of eccentric Russian aristocrats working as taxi-drivers etc and being fabulous.
I think one of the great things about Ibbotson's novel is that her secondary characters are so well-constructed and fun. Everyone down to the dogs have a distinct personality and a life of their own somewhere, and that makes it work. And I'm very very sorry that there won't be any new works of hers for me to discover... She seemed to be such a cool character herself and was actually one of the few authors I would have loved to meet in real life. Thank you for a lot of fun reading through the years, Eva!
Actually, I just found a collection of short stories on abebooks that I haven't read yet, or at least I don't think so, so I bought it - A Glove Shop in Vienna and other stories... it does sound a little like Madensky Square but we'll see..