Lifelong bibliophile and author (always in that order) Susan Hill decides to have a year of not buying books and reading only the many, many books that she already owns instead. So begins Howards End is on the Landing, although the book becomes more than a gimmick/book of reviews quite quickly, morphing into a quasi-biography and random extended musings on all aspects of literature.
I really enjoyed this one. It helps that I’m a very bookish person - always have been, always will be - as is Susan Hill, because that is the only kind of person this book is for. But a bookish book for a bookish person? Sheer heaven to read!
From the premise, I was expecting Hill to go through her piles of new, unread books but what actually transpires is her mostly re-reading old favourites instead! And, much like her intentionally disordered shelves, there is no order to the premise. For example, Nick Hornby’s Stuff I’ve Been Reading column in The Believer neatly lists the books bought and the books read and the column is reviews of those books. Not so for Susan Hill! She might talk about a book she read, but more often than not she will expound upon all manner of literary things that’s on her mind that day - an approach that is for the better.
One chapter will be on the importance of good titles; things that fall out of books; her hatred of e-readers (preach it Sue!); short stories; poetry; diaries; children’s books; classics; people writing in books; dreg books (ie. stocking stuffers/novelty books); anthologies; the importance of good covers/dust jackets; in praise of slow reading.
The latter leads Hill to arbitrarily take the book in a new direction as she begins dreaming up her top 40 list of Desert Island books (the same concept as Desert Island Discs). I’m a big fan of lists too and enjoyed seeing her creating it - the complete list is included at the end.
This is also a partial literary memoir. From 18 years old, when she published her first novel and began attending King’s College, London, she was moving in well-connected literary circles, and then, years later, had a media career working in TV and radio where she met more famous people. This leads to some wonderful anecdotes about legendary writers she encountered, however briefly, over the years. Who doesn’t enjoy a bit of name-dropping and gossip, eh?
She meets EM Forster in the London library after he accidentally drops a book on her foot. She meets TS Eliot on the doorstep of a house party they were both going to. She met Bruce Chatwin, the dashing Australian author, a few times, including shortly before his death of AIDS in the late ‘80s. VS Naipaul sounds like he was a very charming chap while Ian Fleming was as effortlessly cool as his most famous creation.
The best anecdote is on the times Hill met Roald Dahl on more than one literary judging panel and discovered quite a different personality to the warm figure you might expect from a world famous children’s author!
But there are also less famous names included - Charles Causley, Michael Mayne - whom she met and admired deeply. Both writers are celebrated beautifully for their work and the way they lived their lives.
As somebody whose hobby is reviewing books, it’s always a pleasure to see someone give their unfettered opinions on what they’ve read and Hill is an excellent reviewer. Her thoughts on Dickens are insightful and entertaining (her favourite novel is Our Mutual Friend; The Pickwick Papers can take a running jump) as well as those on the works of Iris Murdoch, Virginia Woolf, WG Sebald, and the Reverend Francis Kilvert.
But Hill is no different from us in never having read certain famous books, and she goes through them in one chapter. Proust, War and Peace, Ulysses, The Portrait of a Lady, Don Quixote, and 1984. She doesn’t get Jane Austen (preach it agin Sue!) and is dismissive of some well-regarded classics - Hardy’s Jude the Obscure, Eliot’s Silas Marner - so she’s a well-rounded critic who isn’t cowardly in expressing her true feelings (unlike those who don’t like to say anything negative because mew mew mewww).
And, like any good reviewer, I got some great recs out of her reviews. Hill reminded me to check out some books that I’ve known about for decades but have never gotten around to reading for whatever reason (London Fields, Daniel Deronda, The Bell, The Way we Live Now) to new books/writers that I’d never heard of but am intrigued by (The Smaller Sky by John Wain, The House in Paris by Elizabeth Bowen and The Rector’s Daughter by FM Mayor).
Other autobiographical snippets include her time as a publisher, her youthful aspirations of becoming a playwright and the surprise success of her ghost story, The Woman in Black, being adapted for the West End (this is also how I first encountered Hill, on a school trip to London to watch this amazing and terrifying play - the rocking chair!!).
It starts to flag towards the end. A couple of chapters - one about putting certain books alongside one another, and the writing styles of men and women - fall a bit flat, and her love letter to the composer Benjamin Britten felt out of place in a book about books and writers. So the book doesn’t quite go the full distance.
Howards End is on the Landing though is a delightful read and I tore through it in no time. Hill is a superb literary ambassador - an articulate, well-read, insightful, charming, generous, and entertaining guide to great writers and great books - whilst taking the form of a great book. If you’re as big a fan of reading books about reading books as me, you’ll get a lot out of this one.
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