A few weeks ago, I blogged about author Ursula Torday and how I had a sort of virtual not-quite-relationship with her which was like a haunting. I fell over her books on three different occasions in my life, years apart. And now, ten years on, I have just done so again.
So that makes four.
We clearly have unfinished business.
As a result, I have been reading her books and digging a bit – and reconsidering the very helpful email that her godson, Robert Torday, sent me 10 years ago. This is how it started this time…
URSULA TORDAY – THE FOURTH HAUNTING
Now, on the whole, I don’t care too much for Heyer’s crime fiction, so wouldn’t normally have engaged. BUT, I was still bubbling over with enthusiasm after reading Jane’s book. And someone mentioned Dewey Death. I’d heard of it, but never read it. Now the time had clearly come. I got on to BookFinder and tracked down a copy.
URSULA TORDAY AND HER DOUBLE LIFE – and MINE
For Ursula Torday worked at the National Central Library which was “a scholarly library for working people”.
And, before I went to university, I worked for a few months in the University of London Library at Senate House. We were separated by 25 years and about two streets.
And her heroine lives a double life. As Ursula Torday did herself, at that time as Paula Allardyce. As I did for many years with colleagues in the City.
DEWEY DEATH BY CHARITY BLACKSTOCK
The victim is the classic body in the library. Only this is a real working library which organises major inter-library loans and is full of workplace power plays, jealousy and the borderline hysteria of a small workforce cooped up together without enough to do and too much unchannelled emotional energy. It is clear from the very first page that the bickering has become toxic.
BEATING EXPECTATIONS
But this is no joke. And it’s not an Agatha Christie puzzle, either. This story is deadly serious. It shook me to the heart.
Yet her publisher fell into the trap, too. The blurb on the inside cover of the first editions says “Charity Blackstock’s thriller, with which she joins Heinemann Detective Fiction Team, blends suspense and humour in a workaday setting.”
Oh sure, Ursula Torday is witty. She’s clever and clear-sighted. She’s spot-on about those workplace tensions. But she knows that, however ridiculous they may be, ultimately they’re poison
And the thriller element is agonising, for more than one reason.
For this is a love story, a story of a terrible love.
And also a tragedy.
URSULA TORDAY GENRE-BUSTER?
Because everyone in this book is passionate about something. And under pressure of propinquity, they go too far.
And one, of course, is not ordinary at all, more passionate, more impatient of constraint more wilful, more self-aware. More compelling.
But it leaves you shaken. Not reassured that justice has been done or harmony restored. All you know is that the lives have been changed. I loved it. But some readers probably feel a little lost.
WOULD YOU ENJOY READING HER BOOKS?
Ursula Torday is one of those authors, I think, who becomes a passion for a few readers but has now fallen out of fashion. The late Sara Craven was a huge fan. Indeed she gave me two of Torday’s books, which I have re-read with extraordinary pleasure and interest..
Her writing is wonderful. But brace yourself: she doesn’t give you an unalloyed HEA, ever.
WHO WAS URSULA TORDAY?
Georgette Heyer said you could find her in her books. I’m pretty sure the same is true of Ursula Torday. If she was not published between 1938 and 1954, what was she doing? From Robert Torday’s account, during the Blitz she volunteered as a social worker, in spite of her mobility difficulties, caused by childhood polio.
Robert Torday recalls her account of working in publisher Naim Attallah’s lively enterprise (Quartet Books, The Women’s Press). That would have been much later, of course. One wonders what she made of the charming fantasist publisher and his stable of the poshest totty.
I think she’s wonderful.
Sophie
Well, you have whetted my appetite. I shall go hunting, I think. Though rather iffy about that Dewey library book from what you say.
She is a truly extraordinary writer. Dewey Death is a turbulent sort of book and certainly not for everyone. But I actually think that you might be one of the people who would really get it, Liz. The evocation of passion is breathtaking. And there is catharsis, honest.
If you ask nicely I might even lend you my copy, now that I have one of my own! Though not for too long.
Thanks for the offer but I mostly do kindle these days, space in my bookshelves being at a premium. Shall find it out as you recommend it!
Thank you, Sophie, what an interesting woman she was. I am now going to have to search out UT’s books, even though I suspect some of them will not make comfortable reading!
I find I need to take them one at a time – and savour them. She’s unique – and certainly gives you a lot to think about.
Following this post, I sought out a copy of Dewey Death and have just finished reading it – Thank you, Sophie, for pointing out this author to me. It was certainly a jolly good read, if not always comfortable. I worked for many years in offices, can remember making stencils for the Gestetner as well as the petty rivalries that can grow in a confined environment. Today captures that perfectly. But she is also a master at characterisation, her creatures are not two dimensional cartoons, they are to be admired and pitied, one can laugh at or sympathise with them because they are so real. And I felt the shadow of two world wars hanging over everything. It is a masterpiece – an entertaining read but with very real darkness at its heart, but for all that the message I took (and that I think possibly sums up those bleak post-war years), is that life goes on. I am so glad I read it and I shall look out more of Torday’s work.
I think that’s a terrific assessment of the book, Sarah.
I know what you mean about the shadow of both wars – and the darkness, in spite of much that was amusing, both satirical and social comedy almost to the point of farce.
Relly glad that it hit the spot with you.
I bought Dewey Death after your last post. I thought it was remarkably modern – certainly in its denouement. It sort of quietly folds its wings and creeps away; while the girls sunned themselves on the roof in lunchtime, and Miss Cullen, neat and censorious, corseted and refrigerated, sat in her office. I love that description. However, I think it made me slightly uncomfortable. (I’m not a fan of Heyer’s detective fiction either, although I’ve got them all. Well, you have to, don’t you?)
I know what you mean about feeling slightly uncomfortable, Lesley. And I’m not really sure why.
With Heyer, I DO know – it’s the snobbish dismissal of people who don’t share her habits of thought or speech. And the brittle determination of the main characters to stay cool, witty and careless at all times. It makes me impatient and, hence, out of sympathy with whole damn thing.
But with Torday, somehow, it’s exactly the reverse. I agree, it feels very modern – and strong meat modern at that. Yet it is so clearly set in its time, with the war still a force acting on people. And the contemporary reporting – or, as it seems to us, period detail- is meticulous. Yet the characters are as fierce and psychologically comprehensible as if they had just walked into us in the street. The feelings seem to bypass habit and convention and leap straight from the author’s brain to the reader’s. With a wallop, too.
Maybe that’s the root of the discomfort. We’re not used to anything quite this raw these days. (That might also be true of Heyer’s Penhallow, by the way, which she thought was her masterpiece and I’ve never been able to re-read. It’s too painful.)
Torday is not TOO painful and she does bring you to a place of rest at the end. And I agree, that is very skilfully drawn. There is life after the end, even for the most seriously damaged. People are wounded but they will recover. Maybe that is also true for the readers.