Daily Book Excerpt: YA/Children’s books:
Along the Shore
This story is adorable. I love it. It has that Lucy Maud sense of the absurd – even in the middle of a love story – that I find so attractive. I guess it’s how I see life. I’m not really a romantic person. I mean, I have been in love and all that, but the whole ROMANCE thing is not really my bag. My sense of humor gets in the way. This is why books by, uhm, Nicholas Sparks, for example, do nothing for me. The folks in them seem to lack a sense of humor … and they’re too unabashedly romantic. Even in the middle of my greatest love affair which shot through the sky of my life like a freakin’ COMET … I was never romantic like that. I am blunt. Detached. Snarky. I don’t know – there’s something in Lucy Maud’s humor that really appeals to me. This story, especially – and in its own simple way it is my favorite in this particular collection.
It’s written in diary-form – Marguerite Forrester, a young woman, living in a repressed way with her extremely strict aunt – keeps a journal about their summer vacation on the sandshore. Marguerite’s parents died when she was a baby, so her aunt has brought her up and keeps her on the tightest leash imaginable. The whole story is about Marguerite trying to conduct this romance without her aunt knowing … her aunt, too, despises men and thinks that they all are after only one thing and must be avoided at all costs. Marguerite is a good girl, she is not a rebel … but in this case, she feels she must sneak around behind her aunt’s back.
The way it happens is: Marguerite sits on the sandshore with her aunt, bored out of her mind. She picks up a pair of binoculars that they have – for bird-watching or whatever – and stares up and down the beach thru the binocs for sometime. Eventually – she sees a man – on a jetty of rocks at the edge of the beach. And he is looking directly at her, waving. She is horrified. She is busted! She puts the binocs down, terrified that her aunt will notice. A couple more days go by like this – with Marguerite looking around the beach with the binocs – and the man is always in the same place (and of course, he is young and handsome) – and he waits for her to rest the binoc-gaze on him – and he will wave, and smile. Marguerite’s aunt would have a fit if she knew her niece was having secret “meetings” with a man like this. Marguerite writes in her journal with terror. And yet she starts to look forward to seeing him. Eventually – the man spells something out to her in the deaf-mute alphabet. It’s a gamble – maybe she won’t know sign language? But strangely enough – Marguerite does know the alphabet. Her roommate at boarding school had taught it to her – so that they could communicate their secrets to one another without the other girls finding out what they were talking about.
So Marguerite begins this “long-distance” communication with this strange man (whom she ends up knowing: he is the brother of her beloved roommate at school – and she had heard many stories about how great he was) – and they talk back and forth in deaf-mute – all behind the dozing aunt’s back. If Marguerite is discovered “flirting” with a strange man – she will be in the deepest shit of her life!
But why this story is adorable – and so funny – is that … this courtship is carried on via ALPHABET – so try to imagine saying, “I’m really attracted to you” but you have to spell it out. That would take too much time. So they end up boiling down their feelings into blunt short statements which won’t take too much time to sign. It’s kind of like the early 20th century version of IM or text messaging.
So here’s their first “conversation”.
Excerpt from Along the Shore
July Twelfth
Something has happened at last. Today I went to the shore as usual, fully resolved not even to glance in the forbidden direction. But in the end I had to take a peep, and saw him on the rocks wiht his glass levelled at me. When he saw that I was looking he laid down the glass, held up his hands, and began to spell out something in the deaf-mute alphabet. Now, I know that same alphabet. Connie taught it to me last year, so that we might hold communication across the schoolroom. I gave one frantic glance at Aunt Martha’s rigid back, and then watched him while he deftly spelled: “I am Francis Shelmardine. Are you not Miss Forrester, my sister’s friend?”
Francis Shelmardine! Now I knew whom he resembled. And have I not heard endless dissertations from Connie on this wonderful brother of hers, Francis the clever, the handsome, the charming, until he has become the only hero of dreams I have ever had? It was too wonderful. I could only stare dazedly back through my glass.
“May we know each other?” he went on. “May I come over and introduce myself? Right hand, yes, left, no.”
I gasped! Suppose he were to come? What would happen? I waved my left hand sorrowfully. He looked quite crestfallen and disappointed as he spelled out: “Why not? Would your friends disapprove?”
I signalled: “Yes.”
“Are you displeased at my boldness?” was his next question.
Where had all Aunt Martha’s precepts flown to then? I blush to record that I lifted my left hand shyly and had just time to catch his pleased expression when Aunt Martha came up and said it was time to go home. So I picked myself meekly up, shook the sand from my dress, and followed my good aunt dutifully home.
July Thirteenth
When we went to the shore this morning I had to wait in spasms of remorse and anxiety until Aunt got tired of reading and set off along the shore with Mrs. Saxby. Then I reached for my glass.
Mr. Shelmardine and I had quite a conversation. Under the circumstances there could be no useless circumlocution in our exchange of ideas. It was religiously “boiled down,” and ran something like this:
“You are not displeased with me?”
“No – but I should be.”
“Why?”
“It is wrong to deceive Aunt.”
“I am quite respectable.”
“That is not the question.”
“Cannot her prejudices be overcome?”
“Absolutely no.”
“Mrs. Allardyce, who is staying at the hotel, knows her well. Shall I bring her over to vouch for my character?”
“It would not do a bit of good.”
“Then it is hopeless.”
“Yes.”
“Would you object to knowing me on your own account?”
“No.”
“Do you ever come to the shore alone?”
“No. Aunt would not permit me.”
“Must she know?”
“Yes. I would not come wihtout her permission.”
“You will not refuse to chat with me thus now and then?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps not.”
I had to go home then. As we went Mrs. Saxby complimented me on my good colour. Aunt Martha looked her disapproval. If I were really ill Aunt would spend her last cent in my behalf, but she would be just as well pleased to see me properly pale and subdued at all times, and not looking as if I were too well contented in this vale of tears.
