"The Family"

First, the disclaimer: I haven't yet finished this book.

I know, I know, I've had a month. I'm out of practice when it comes to reading... Exercise and housework have taken up most of my spare time for the past year. I did read as far as Part II, Chapter 19, so I'm going to base tonight's post on what I've read thus far. Guess I can't spoil the ending for anybody! I don't want to postpone this discussion any longer in case there are any of you who've already finished the book, so I'll just add any thoughts on the rest of the book in the comments.

Nina Fedorova's The Family (1940) was the #10 bestselling novel in the U.S. during the year 1940. A hot commodity --- and I can see why. Though I haven't found anything myself that's particularly special in the author's style of writing, the premise for the book is fabulous. It's set in the British Concession in Tientsin (today spelled Tianjin), China beginning in May 1937 through the Japanese invasion and occupation of the city in July - and I've read as far as March 1938, when the American regiment stationed in Tientsin was moved to another location. The background for the story is truly dramatic. Where else in the world would every one of the peoples who would be major players in the Second World War find themselves nose to nose during these pivotal years before war had "officially" broken out in most of the world? Japan, China, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, France, the United States, the Soviet Union: all these powers had a presence in Tientsin, whether they leased one of the city's "concessions" from China or whether their people were refugees or natives. The British Concession, where the story takes place, is a sanctuary of sorts for its residents and an attractive focal point for a community of refugees from Soviet Russia. The Japanese aren't able to either bomb or invade the British Concession without damaging themselves politically, but they do begin censoring all the mail which reaches its residents and maintain an active network of spies within the concession.

Fedorova always capitalizes the phrase "The Family." And in the beginning, it refers to a small family of Russians who operate a boarding house in the British Concession. Granny, Mother, Lida (Mother's daughter), Peter, and Dima (Granny's grandsons by now deceased sons). You quickly begin to see, however, that The Family extends to include many of the residents who come and go at the boarding house. They're all refugees in their own ways - people without a country - yet they bond and celebrate each other's joys and mourn each other's sorrows. Khan, the manservant, is a refugee from the poverty of the Chinese countryside. Madame Militza, the Bessarabian fortuneteller, was born in a land which has changed hands so many times she can't obtain the visa needed to leave China. Mrs. Parrish is an alcoholic, recently widowed and waiting for her brother to come from Great Britain so he can liquidate her late husband's estate and she can leave. Until Granny's death prompts her to become sober, you might say Mrs. Parrish was a refugee from reality. The elderly and opinionated Professor Chernov and his wife Anna Petrovna are Russian refugees, imprisoned for dissidence before fleeing for sanctuary in China. Irina Gordova, orphaned and alone in the world, is also a Russian refugee. She's in love with an American soldier who cannot legally marry while deployed overseas, so they live together from time to time and he supports her financially. Mr. Sung is a Chinese university professor who narrowly escapes the Japanese when he's forced to flee Tientsin with underground knowledge of some sort. Then, of course, there are two memorable appearances by the dressed-from-head-to-toe-in-brown Miss Pink, a "reformer" determined to convince Irina that she's living in sin:

Like all great reformers, she was quite alone in this huge overpopulated world.

Life in Occupied Tientsin is grim. Poverty and hardship and suspicion are everywhere. Neither Peter nor Lida is able to find paying work as the only available jobs are all but closed to Russians. Lida has an out - she's engaged to an American boy who's gone back to the States for college. Dima has an out - Mrs. Parrish wants to take him to Great Britain and raise him as her own. Peter is screwed - he can't find work and, without a visa, he can't leave the concession. At least as far as I've gotten in the story, he's contemplating traveling overland with a band of gypsies and criminals, sneaking across the border into the Soviet Union, turning himself over to the authorities, and hoping that they'll grant him citizenship of some sort after he does several years in prison or a labor camp.

"Aunty," - and a deep bitterness sounded in Peter's voice, - "it seems that whatever way I go I am doomed to be killed... If such is my fate, let me be killed on my native soil - be killed for something."

Mother manages to scrape together enough to keep the boarding house afloat, but she eats very little herself and is always very tired. Yet Fedorova seems to be trying to tell us that we can find the strength to carry through the hardest of times if we make the most of the people around us. And that even a big collection of strangers can be a Family to each other if they need one badly enough. There may be some big finish to this story which drives the point home, but I haven't gotten there yet... I can only guess where she's taking us!

Nina Fedorova was a Russian refugee herself, eventually settling in Eugene, Oregon, then in San Francisco. America is viewed as nothing less than the promised land in this book. A place Dima dreams about, where "children eat ice cream and candies daily," where both the young Russian women in the book plan to escape and build new lives in democracy and freedom. According to a 1947 newspaper article, Fedorova wrote a sequel to this book, titled The Children - you know a book's got to have been popular if a sequel was written! - and there was interest from Hollywood in making a film of the first book. I gotta tell you --- the entire time I was reading this book all I could picture was the action taking place on the silver screen. It was so easy to picture one of those melodramatic black and white films of the era with the bad foreign accents, the rainy Chinese setting, sweeping overhead battle scenes, and the fade-to-soft finishes on teary heroines. (Greer Garson would've made a perfect Mother!) They would have had to shrink the cast of characters though. Maybe combine a few of the characters. There are just too many to keep track of... Can you see this book as a classic Hollywood film? Who would you have cast in the roles?

Next month's Book of the Month Club selection will be the #8 bestselling novel in the U.S. during 1940: The Grapes of Wrath (1939) by John Steinbeck. I'm going to get an early start on this one, dear readers! Please join me on Friday, February 12 for the next meeting of our club.

Interlibrary Loan

One of my dear readers, Kathy, made such a useful comment to Saturday's post, I wanted to be sure anybody who's hunting for a copy of The Family had a chance to see it. If you don't find a copy on the shelves of your local library, check in with your librarian. Most public libraries - if not all - can provide interlibrary loan service. That's one great advantage we have today over the folks using libraries during the 1940s. Here's the scoop:

I actually work in an Interlibrary Loan department in a University library. I just checked OCLC, which keeps a record of cataloged books and it states that 589 libraries own The Family (OCLC# 31298074). All anyone needs to do to get an ILL book is to go to their public or university library and ask to place an ILL request. Most libraries don't charge for the service, but ask before placing it. A lot of libraries now allow you to place an ILL request online. The turn around time for an ILL loan is about 1-2 weeks, depending on what shipping service is used between the lending library and your library.

In case you need it, the full bibliographical info about the book is: Nina Fedorova, The Family (Boston, Little, Brown, 1940). Good luck! I picked up a copy myself last night. For those of you who like to sneak a peek at the first line of a book, here's a teaser:

The only thing the Family managed to retain from the prolific line of their noble ancestors was a long and shapely aristocratic nose.

I'll be back this evening or early tomorrow morning with a holiday post... How does a list of Christmas gifts suggested for women in 1942 compare to the same list in 2009?

50 + 1 = 51

It's Sunday morning --- which means not only that I'll be heading to church soon to mark the second Sunday of Advent, but it's time to share my weekly trip to the scales. I weighed in at 143 this morning. 1 more lb. has officially entered the annals of history! (At least, I hope so.) My weight isn't dropping anywhere near as quickly as it did over the summer, but it's still dropping. And that's what counts most. 26 lbs. to go.

I was searching for some information about Nina Fedorova, the author of our Book of the Month for January and came across this darling newspaper write-up of a women's club meeting in Ludington, Michigan. The Lakeshore Sunday Club gathered at a private residence to hear a review given by one of its members on our featured book, The Family. After the book review, a young lady (who was probably the daughter of the hostess) played some songs on the piano and then they hit the refreshment table. It's a pretty detailed account of the evening - right down to the color of the candles. About the only thing it doesn't explain is why the Sunday Club was meeting on a Tuesday night!

Club Hears Review of Prize Book
Ludington Daily News, January 23, 1941

A splendid book review formed the program for the regular meeting of the Lakeshore Sunday Club, held on Tuesday evening at the home of Mrs. Ralph Sheldon, 403 North Robert street.

Mrs. Gail G. Owen, vice-president of the club, presided over the short business meeting in the absence of the president, Mrs. Erving Clark.

Mrs. Jack Abrahamson presented the program, an excellent review of the book, "The Family," by Nina Fedorova, which received the Atlantic Monthly Prize of $10,000. The author is a Russian citizen who fled her native country and is now living in Oregon. She plans to become an American citizen.

The story of the book involves a family of White Russians who fled to China, "and ordinary family which became un-ordinary." Their experiences after having established a boarding house in Tientsin make up the interesting story. The review was greatly enjoyed by the club.

Three lovely piano solos, played by Miss Jerry Lou Sheldon, concluded the program.

Later, delicious refreshments were served from a table appointed with spring flowers in a crystal bowl and with pink tapers in crystal holders.

Perhaps we'd better make sure our book group lives up to the standards of the Lakeshore Sunday Club. Would anyone care to serve as a Refreshments Committee of One? Maybe you can track down some 1940s menu suggestions for a club meeting and share some recipes with us in advance of our meeting on January 5. Even those who aren't able to track down the book can share in a recipe tasting in their own kitchen! Perhaps a Program Committee of One can suggest an entertainment for the evening that compliments the subject of the book. We'll need a Decorations Committee of One as well to recommend some decor appropriate to the season. Any volunteers?

Jitterbug's Book of the Month Club

He is always saying apologetically:

"I just can't find any time to read books!"

Yet ... if he spent (on average) only 30 minutes a day - before bedtime, or while traveling to or from work, or in other leisure moments - he could easily read every best-seller during the year, and a great deal more!

The Book of the Month Club used these words in 1940 to try and recruit new members to the fold. In the 14 years since its inception in 1926, some 250,000 American homes had become members of this club designed to promote the production of inexpensive editions of bestselling fiction and nonfiction. Once a month, members received word of the latest club selection. If they didn't respond by returning the slip printed, "Don't want it," the book would be sent - and billed - to them. Members were required to purchase a minimum of four books per year and could choose a free "book dividend" for every two books purchased.

I'm making another venture into the world of 1940s culture this month with a special new mission: Jitterbug's Book of the Month Club. These dark winter evenings and chilly temperatures have me spending more time indoors than I have in months - and just itching to curl up with a good book. Even the busiest of housewives would have found time occasionally to enjoy reading or a hobby like needlepoint. (Well, probably except those with small children!) The Manual actually allots time each day in the late afternoon for "Rest, Relaxation, Correspondence, Reading, Personal care, etc."

Would you like to join me in catching up on some of the bestsellers of the 1940s? (I promise --- I won't send you any of those dreaded return-this-or-else-you'll-be-billed-for-it slips.) I always feel so out of the loop when vintage radio programs make a joking reference to a current book or character and the audience roars. I want to be in on the joke! And many of these bestsellers were adapted for films that became classics in their own right. It might be fun to get to know what the screenwriters didn't have time to include about the backstory for our favorite silver screen heroes and heroines. You may have to hunt to find some of these titles. Bestsellers don't always stand the test of time and some libraries are unfortunately quick to discard anything with an aging cover these days. You may have to scour used bookstores, eBay, or the stacks at Amazon to find some of these titles. If you don't have any success, don't worry. You can drop in and drop out of Jitterbug's Book of the Month Club any time you like!

Without further ado, here's the selection for January 2010 --- The Family by Nina Fedorova (Boston: Little, Brown, 1940). The Family was the tenth bestselling piece of fiction in 1940 and won the Atlantic Fiction Contest that June. Here's a description from the publisher which sounds like it could've been plucked right from a dust jacket:

The Family is the story of a cheap boarding house in Tientsin, China. Granny, mother and the children are trying to make ends meet. They are White Russians. The olders remember days of wealth. The youngsters remember nothing but hand-to-mouth existence. The only assets are the family bonds of love and tradition. To this boarding house come an extraordinary assortment of mankind, a Bessarabian fortune teller, an English woman dipsomaniac, a Russian scientist with an urge to save the world, a Chinese scholar, Japanese spies, an American doughboy and his mistress, an abbess and two nuns and even - an English bulldog. There is much comedy in the story and its people but as it progresses, the family begin to show a depth of character and a resourcefulness which transfers the comedy into something deeper and more stirring. The laughter and oddities remain but under the surface one feels the pathos and the true tragedy of these wanderers. The story ends with the Japanese occupation of Tientsin.

Shall we convene the club by meeting one month from today to discuss the book? I'll call the meeting to order on Tuesday, January 5. Happy hunting!

"...when we knew them by the shape of their legs"

Here it is Friday and I haven't posted anything yet about last Sunday's vintage dinner! Thank goodness for "Independence Day Observed" - it gives me the chance to do some serious catching up on all fronts. (I'll do my observing tomorrow.)

Eggs Scrambled with Chopped Chives or Parsley
Salad of Shredded Lettuce and Carrots and Chopped Sweet Pickle
Roll
Blueberry Pudding

Recommended by The American Woman's Cook Book (1945) as a menu for a Saturday evening, this was a wonderful change of pace after a hot summer's day. Just the kind of the meal that would allow a housewife some extra time to get her children through their Saturday night baths... I added some Parsley to my Scrambled Eggs. Most of you could probably scramble eggs with your eyes closed, but I thought you might enjoy seeing a '40s take on the recipe.

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BATTERED OR SCRAMBLED EGGS

In a frying-pan, place one teaspoon of butter for each egg. Beat the eggs until the whites and yolks are well mixed. Season with salt and pepper and add one to three tablespoons of milk or cream for each egg. Pour into the hot fat and cook slowly, stirring constantly until the eggs are of the desired consistency. Serve at once. A little onion-juice or chopped parsley may be added to the eggs, if desired.

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I made the salad using iceberg lettuce, carrot, and chopped sweet gherkins. The whole-wheat roll was purchased at the supermarket --- a nod to the foods commercially available by the 1940s. The Blueberry Pudding was a simple cottage pudding with fresh blueberries added to the batter. It was so good, but I'm afraid it'll be the last of my desserts from these dinner menus for a little while. (The leftovers are way too tasty!) I'm going to substitute either a baked custard, sherbet, or pudding for the vintage suggestions.

The summer rains have moved into this part of the desert. I use the word "rains" loosely - it rains for about 5-10 minutes in the late afternoon - but the storms do stir up some lovely wind and cloudy skies... So it was time to clean my bedroom yesterday evening and a storm had just passed by. For the first time in all these months, I had to find an alternative to airing my bedcovers and pillows on the landing outside my door. The railing was wet and water was still dripping from the roof. Hmmm. What's a good housewife-who's-not-a-wife-and-works-outside-the-home-five-days-a-week to do? I reached for The Manual. Aha!

Remove all bed covers; stretch over end of bed, or over chairs, off the floor.

That - I could do. And at least it gives you a chance to open the windows and air the mattress. Making up my bed again afterwards wasn't quite as satisfying an experience as it usually is. I didn't get to beat the pillows or give the bedcovers a good shake - didn't want to stir up any fresh dust indoors - but it was a decent trade in a pinch.

Have you ever read Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon books? I'm reading the second one, Leaving Home (1987), and there's a thought he expressed in passing that's making me especially mindful these days of the way my legs look. (Mindful to the point where I may have overdone it with my new exercises yesterday --- my legs are aching this morning!) It's a passage in the opening essay to the book that made me think of my legs. A beautiful passage in more ways than one. It makes me laugh and weep a little at the same time. I laugh, because I'd like to be known by my nieces as the aunt with fabulous legs!

When I was little I didn't think of grownups as having bare skin; grownups were made of wool clothing, only kids were bare naked...

Every time I read a book about how to be smarter, how not to be sad, how to raise children and be happy and grow old gracefully, I think "Well, I won't make those mistakes, I won't have to go through that," but we all have to go through that. Everything they went through, we'll go through. Life isn't a vicarious experience. You get it figured out and then one day life happens to you. You prepare yourself for grief and loss, arrange your ballast and then the wave swamps the boat.

Everything they went through: the loneliness, the sadness, the grief, and the tears--it will all come to us, just as it came to them when we were little and had to reach up to get hold of their hand, when we knew them by the shape of their legs. Aunt Marie had fat little legs, I held her hand one cold day after a blizzard, we climbed snowdrifts to get to the store and buy licorice whips. She said, "Come on, we can make it, don't slip," and soon she was far behind, a fat lady in a heavy coat with a fur collar, leaning into the wind, wheezing from emphysema, and sometime later she died. She knew that death was only a door to the kingdom where Jesus would welcome her, there would be no crying there, no suffering, but meanwhile she was fat, her heart hurt, and she lived alone with her ill-tempered little dogs, tottering around her dark little house full of Chinese figurines and old Sunday Tribunes. She complained about nobody loving her or wanting her or inviting her to their house for dinner anymore. She sat eating pork roast, mashed potato, creamed asparagus, one Sunday at our house when she said it. We were talking about a trip to the North Shore and suddenly she broke into tears and cried, "You don't care about me. You say you do but you don't. If I died tomorrow, I don't know as you'd even go to my funeral." I was six. I said, cheerfully, "I'd come to your funeral," looking at my fat aunt, her blue dress, her string of pearls, her red rouge, the powder on her nose, her mouth full of pork roast, her eyes full of tears.

Every tear she wept, that foolish woman, I will weep every one before I am done and so will you. We're not so smart we can figure out how to avoid pain, and we cannot walk away from the death we owe.

So true. For all our modern technologies, shopping malls, and miracle drugs, we can't avoid the mistakes and fears and losses that shaped the lives of our grandmothers, our great-grandmothers, and their great-grandmothers before them... If you've never read any of Keillor's books - or listened to his marvelous Prairie Home Companion on NPR - you've got something wonderful in store. He paints such a frank and beautiful picture of life in a small Minnesota town. His bits in Lake Wobegon Days on the scandal of air conditioning and over-ambitious tomato gardeners --- genius!

The Egg and I

Have you ever poached an egg? I haven’t, so this morning’s 1945 breakfast menu was truly an experiment. I had no idea whether I’d end up with something edible or not. To start, here’s the menu:

Tomato Juice
Poached Free-Range Eggs on Toast

The menu originally included a serving of Prepared Cereal, but the first two courses were filling enough. I like my eggs over hard, so I knew it was going to take a long time for them to do more than just “set.” Thirty minutes later, they were still several shades less done than I like, but it was almost time for me to head to work and I had a living room to tend to this morning! (I think I should have used a smaller pan.) They tasted pretty good - a very rich egg flavor - but it’s probably going to take a while to get this recipe down.

Pick up and replace small articles belonging in the room, such as books, magazines…

My vintage housekeeping manual advises the 1940s housewife to treat each of the kinds of reading material she might find scattered about the living room in a different way. Newspapers were just “picked up” and probably soon recycled into one housekeeping use or another. Magazines were returned “to table or rack.” They could be enjoyed for several months and then cut up for Patty’s paper dolls or, for those with a penchant for saving things, tied up in twine and tucked away in the attic. Books, however, merited several pages of advice. And, in fact, the schedule even allots time in the late afternoon for every housewife to enjoy reading or another quiet activity before the rush of the dinner hour. Even the layout of your bookcases was broken down to a science:

Bookshelves should never be crowded, because, if the books are jammed together, bindings may be injured or even split, from pressure. On the other hand, books should stand straight on the shelves, and not be allowed to lean, no matter how much space there is, for leaning subjects the binding to severe strain. If the shelves are only partly filled, support the books with bookends. If books are too large to stand upright on the shelves, lay them flat. Never put them at an angle. The shelves should be several inches deeper than the books and the books should be set well to the front of the shelves, to allow circulation of air around them. Never stack books in unsteady piles from which they may fall and be badly broken.

Check out some of the titles you might find on the carefully stacked shelves of a ’40s home. These are the four bestselling novels of the decade:

The Robe by Lloyd C. Douglas (1943)
The Big Fisherman by Lloyd C. Douglas (1948)
Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor (1945)
The Miracle of the Bells by Russell Janney (1947)

…and the four bestselling pieces of non-fiction:

The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald (1945)
Peace of Mind by Joshua L. Liebman (1946)
Speaking Frankly by James F. Byrnes (1947)
Under Cover by John Roy Carlson (1943)

Drat. Eggs again! I just can’t get away from them today. I’d better take a look at tomorrow’s menu.