Tuesday, March 5, 2019

Flowers in the Rain & Other Stories by Rosamunde Pilcher

From June 2005:
Flowers in the Rain by Rosamunde Pilcher 1991
Recorded Books read by Davina Porter
Fiction A+ 
This is a collection of stories, and my very favorite book among all her writing. The characters and situations seem real to me. The scenery and house interiors are described expertly.
And now here I am, 14 (!!!) years later rereading this little gem after Rosamunde Pilcher has died having lived a good, long life.

I love short stories. They feel like perfect little snapshots of a moment or a day or even a longer time. There is no excess. I think an author must be particularly talented to be able to take an idea and express it completely in just a few pages. And I think Rosamunde Pilcher was particularly skilled in doing so. 

This collection was published in 1991, but many of the stories appeared in various publications from 1983-1991. I can barely bring my mind back to the days of stories in "women's magazines". Her stories were in all the popular American ones, Good Housekeeping, Ladies Home Journal, and Redbook. (Were those available in the UK as well, or were her stories published in different magazines there?) These were all magazines my mother read, but by the 1980s, I didn't read any of them. My loss. I know some of you have collected these old magazines, and it must be wonderful to browse through them. There is an interesting article about them here. The old ones are really of their place and time. Though some are still going, they aren't like they were in my mother's day.

One of the aspects of Rosamunde Pilcher's work I adore is the coming together of different age groups. The young admire the old, and the old are accepting and understanding of the young. They are friends. This is something that has always been important to me. I have had older friends, women my mother's age, and now I have younger friends, the friends of my children. I feel very lucky.

The author has a great understanding of all ages. She writes about children as well as she writes about adults. And the children get along with older, caring adults. Readers are happy to spend our time in their company.

In November 2016, I put the following into a draft for a future posting, and it occurs to me that now is the time to use it.
Yvette left me this comment a while back on my In the Garden with the Totterings post talking about the old Victoria Magazine.
 "I've heard of the Totterings (probably from the same Victoria Magazine - gosh how I miss that magazine, the older issues, I mean. I have so many clippings and many of the covers)"
It seems to me that the 1990s were rather a golden time for homey types like me. There was Victoria Magazine, there were Rosamunde Pilcher's books, there was Mary Engelbreit, and there was Susan Branch. Each of them celebrated the simple, quiet joys of home and garden and family life. When I was in my forties and fifties these women sustained me in my own love of home. I was part of yahoo email groups whose members had the same kinds of interests. I now feel more adrift in my own boat. I do miss the camaraderie with women which the magazine and the books and the discussion groups used to make me feel.
Over two years later, I still feel the same way, and the feeling is made more poignant with the announcement of Rosamunde Pilcher's death. She was so important to me, and to fellow readers, that one of the groups we formed was called Rosamunde's Kitchen. It was so named because her books and stories always had the best kitchens! They were big spaces with room enough for a large table (always "scrubbed pine"), a writing desk which was the pulse of the mother's life, and often a couch. Her descriptions are still of my ideal kitchen! In every book, the author brought rooms and houses and gardens alive in the reader's mind.

Some of these short stories end with "happily ever after" and if not, they end with "hopefully ever after". A common theme is going back to the country, to a place where the character vacationed as a child, or lived as a child, or moving to the country as an adult and finding it is just where the person should be. She has fond memories of the places, the buildings, the gardens, the villages, and the people. These are stories of the healing power of nature. Rural life is a well-defined part of each story. And what a rural life it is, with dogs and horses and flowers and weather! Honestly, I read myself into the locale being written about, I become an observer, at close hand, of the beauty and calm of the various places.

Her characters are not people without pain. There are widows, there are children whose parent has died, there is unhappiness. They find a way to bear their grief, with the help of people showing them gentle kindness.

I wrote about one of the short stories, The Watershed here, if you'd like to read it. When I wrote the blog post, I had a few comments saying they didn't know Rosamunde Pilcher had written short stories. If you have read her novels, but haven't picked up the two books of short stories, you have such a treat in store. Each story is a mini-book.

36 comments:

  1. I have read several of her books though had to check my log to see when the last one was: 2017 Wild Mountain Thyme. I have no recollection right now what it was about.

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    1. I read it too, though a long time ago. I looked it up so you could see what it was about. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60465.Wild_Mountain_Thyme
      I first heard those three words in a Jean Redpath song - gosh, in the 1970s I think. Since then, I've heard it many, many times by lots of different singers. I do love it. Here is a favorite version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KSIozxB0rs

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  2. I'm so glad you went back and reread this treasured book! I think that doing that is such a peaceful, joyful thing to do. I know some readers worry that they won't have the same reaction to a favorite book - and they might not - but I do think it's worth it to try. I'm not so fond of short stories, but this one might be good for me on audio. I'll think about it. I certainly loved her long, long books. :-)

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    1. Thank you for such good words. I'm quite sure you would like these stories. You might read just one a day. Her short stories can make me see years of the characters' lives in a few pages.

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  3. I adore Rosamunde Pilcher's books. Especially Winter Solstice and Coming Home. Thanks for this post.

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  4. Gosh, you have made me want to read her. I didn't ever read any of her books. Now I will know where to start. I loved the old Victoria magazine too. There was something so warm about it. Now it seems to be an advertisement. I stopped reading it some time ago because of that.

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    1. Oh, what a great, great treat for you!!!!
      I feel the same way about the OLD magazine.

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  5. I do love her short stories! What a lovely review!

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  6. I think I'm one of the few people who hasn't read any of RP's books. I own The Shell Seekers so I will get to that this year. People say, 'How can you be from Cornwall and not have read that!' LOL

    I entirely empathise with you over 'homey types' though. I always had needlework groups to fill the need to connect with other women like me and we all found it very fulfilling. There was always a slight looking down on women like me though, who enjoyed bringing up kids, gardening, crafts and books and so on. I remember being at a drinks party, something to do with my husband's job at the bank. A man asked me what I did, I replied that I was at home with my daughters, enjoying bringing them up, some charity work and so on. He blinked, turned around and started talking to someone else. His attitude took my breath away.

    I'll look out for that book of short stories by RP. I seem to have really got into short stories over the past year or two. Currently reading Miss Marple's Final Cases... it's wonderful.

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    1. It is interesting when I hear of people who haven't read an author lots of others have read. I am almost always the one who hasn't read it!
      So disgusting about that person. Horrible, horrible. I used to get that when Tom had a teaching job at a private school. The women barely spoke to me. Meanwhile one of the mothers left her kids at daycare during the school vacations so she could have time to herself. Don't get me going!
      I think I actually prefer her stories to the long books.

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  7. Thank you for the lovely tribute to Rosamunde! I should be sad but, as you said, she had a good, long life. Time to go pull one of her books off the shelf and enjoy a lovely reread. Wait, I can't do it as I am reading A Tale of Two Cities and it takes lots of concentration for me to read Dickens. Maybe next month. By the way, I didn't care for short stories until I read Rosamunde's. Great writing!

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    1. That's interesting that her stories appealed to you, when you didn't like short stories that much. They really are so special.
      Better you than me - I am not a Dickens fan. ;<))

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  8. Rosamunde Pilcher has long been a favorite author, for most of the reasons which you have enumerated. I have a number of her books on cassettes--and its getting harder to buy a unit which plays cassettes.
    I re-read most of Flowers in the Rain last summer while waiting for my husband to conclude one of his equipment buys. In reading the shorts, I've often 'met' characters whom I wished to know better. I think my favorite of Rosamunde's longer, later novels is "The Shell Seekers." She wrote of times and places she knew well, and the various 'people' in the books were believable. Although I know them backwards and forwards, these are the books I take out to read when I need a retreat from strenuous tasks, or when the weather is so inclement that huddling by the fire with tea, a cat, and a good book is the most appealing choice.

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    1. I loved reading this. Thank you!
      You're right about cassette machines. I finally found one and bought two for my kids so they could play their childhood tapes for the kids. They didn't last very long. Made me sad. Somehow I don't think tapes will come back as vinyl has.

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  9. I agree - short stories are a form of art rather different from writing a novel, just like writing non-fiction is different from poetry. Personally, I prefer "full" books, where the characters and places ideally stay with me for a longer period; something to return to every night before lights out.
    As for living in the country, I have lived in a village as a child and loved it. Now, since knowing O.K., I have village life on the weekends, and wish circumstances would make it an easier decision to up sticks here and move there.

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    1. That's a very nice way of putting your preference for books over stories. I can imagine the pull of village life.

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  10. This is lovely, and so sweet to think about such a quintessentially English writer being read so far away. We didn't have those actual magazines but equivalents, and short stories were certainly published in them - I suppose now the Persephone Biannually and Slightly Foxed still publish short stories of a quieter nature.

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    1. It is just amazing to me to think of publications actually offering fiction by good writers. Now everything seems to be lifestyle or politics. Maybe the pendulum will sometime return to literature and the arts. I think RP is huge in the US, or at least was in the past. Everyone was reading her. And I hear that the Germans are particularly big fans of her work.

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  11. Rosamunde Pilcher did have stories published in UK magazines (e.g. Woman's Weekly, Woman and Home), some of them were serialized and so you would read the stories over time. When I first started to read her books, I realized that I had read some of them before in those magazines. Having grown up in the UK, many of the places and scenes she described are very familiar to me.

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    1. Lucky you to have read her work in magazines! It must be lovely to read about a place you know in a book.

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  12. I used to love Victoria Magazine and remember decorating my home with all sorts of teacups, fountain pens, potpourri, etc. I loved the elegant, yet cozy, rooms depicted on those glossy pages. I love Mary Engelbreit and Susan Branch, and of course Rosamunde Pilcher is one of my favorite authors, although you know I prefer the novels to her short stories. I look forward to reading The Shell Seekers again and I still have Coming Home on my shelf waiting to be read for the first time. Lovely post, Nan.

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    1. I love that you did that! I actually bought TSS for the Kindle. Felt like I should read it again!

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  13. Have you read D> E> Stevenson or Elizabeth Cadell. You might enjoy them.

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  14. Have you seen that there is a new Nuala book out? I'm reading it now. Passage from Nuala.....I probably prefer longer books, but short stories can be very special. I have a friend in Toronto who writes them and is in several anthologies. I'm one of her beta readers, though I think I'm not very talented at catching things or making suggestions.

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    1. No, I didn't know! Thanks SO much. It sounds very interesting.
      You have a writer friend! I love it that you are a "beta" reader.

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  15. These short stories would be a good way for me to sample Rosamunde Pilcher. I haven't read anything that she wrote.

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  16. Nan, I was on my way to bed and saw this post and had to visit tonight. Now I know what book I'm taking to bed with me! I haven't gotten out her short stories in years so it will be like new. I bet some of my favorites are in this one. I remember so many of them inspiring me. I clicked on your Watershed post and remembered that one vividly. Both posts of yours are a joy to me, recalling so many reasons why I fell in love with her stories. I remember buying another Pilcher book in a bookstore ages ago and the sales woman asking me if I liked the author. I told her I did and that I almost got drunk on her writing. No response and I thought she probably believed that should only be said about "literary" works. Now I'm going to go dust off that little paperback and turn in early. Lovely!

    Thank you so much for a blog where someone else is not just reading current page-turner books,
    Dewena

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    1. What a wonderful comment. Thank you so much for all your words. What kind of a bookseller doesn't respond when a customer says what you did??!!! Probably she wasn't a reader, and just had a job there. Ha! (as my friend Kay says)

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  17. I can smell the chilled air in your header picture!
    I have just picked up Flowers in the Rain. It's very restful reading for bedtime, although I do think she could have done with a firmer editor occasionally! On one page of Endings and Beginnings she has 'immense meals', 'an immense, ragged lawn' and 'an immense fireplace'.

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    1. I just changed the header for a more spring-y look!
      You're right about the editing!

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  18. I didn't know Rosamunde Pilcher wrote short stories! Now I am going to be looking for Flowers In The Rain. Coming Home is one of my favorite novels, but I love The Shell Seekers and September too. Like one of your other commenters, I turn to her novels when life is stressful. They are a perfect escape to the British countryside, the glowing kitchen Aga, the Cornwall sea. I had not heard that Rosamunde Pilcher died. That saddened me but she left such a body of well-loved literature. With that thought, I will go make myself a cup of tea. Thank you, Nan, for your blog. It always encourages me to pick up a good book.
    Debbie

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    1. And I thank you for taking the time to leave me such a nice comment!!

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