BrokenTune

I know I left it rather late to start this new pick of my library's book club but I do want to make a start with the book before our meeting on Wednesday. 

I haven't always had an interest in this club's picks but this one actually sounded interesting - a story intertwining the stories of two characters, W.H. Auden and a fictional modern poet, both trying to set up a new home in Helensburgh. 

So far, this has been really intriguing, not least because Dora's story resonates some of the themes that Pym portrayed in Excellent Women. 

Dora is not quite sure about her own place in life. She's trying to fit in but at the same time

also values her independence. 

"They belong here. The words wedged in Dora’s mind, started a slow spin. They carried a clear implication, as yet unarticulated. What was it? That Felicity and Matthew had not belonged? Or . . . she and Kit? There was something accusing in the tone, or perhaps in the very words themselves. She braced herself to meet her upstairs neighbours . . . what would belonging here look like? Dora suspected she had probably never belonged anywhere, but in the case of the city she knew best, Oxford, not belonging gave one a kind of exotic value. And because it was a university town, most people arrived there not really belonging."

I love the writing so far, too. There is even a scene where, like Pym's Mildred, Dora escapes to a cloakroom to escape a social situation. 

Note: I'm baffled by Amazon's book information - the novel is simply called Larchfield. There is no subtitle. And whoever came up with the idea to add a marketing tag to the title on the Ammy info should be poked with a sharp stick.