Mitford wrote Pigeon Pie in 1939 and it was published a year later. This short, satirical spy novel describes the unexpected adventure of Sophia, an upper-class Englishwoman who spends her days idly amusing herself until the looming war draws her into action. I did not warm up to this book immediately; I was half done before I realized that Sophia really was as stupid as she seemed, but the author meant the reader to like her anyway.

Sophia lives with her husband, Luke, a boring man for whom she has some fondness. She has a long-term affair with Rudolph, and her husband Luke is in love with Florence, a fellow-member of an enthusiastic new religion that meets at Luke’s estate. The blithe affairs, the passion for fashion and the constant competition between women convey a picture of the upper class as very silly people, astringently yet affectionately lampooned.

My favorite passages always concern Sophia’s chief competitor, Olga:

Sophia rang up her enemy. Olga Gogothsky (nee Baby Bagg) had been her enemy since they were both aged ten. It was an intimate enmity which gave Sophia more pleasure than most friendships; she made sacrifices upon its altar and fanned the flames with assiduity.

“Hullo, my darling Sophie,” Olga purred, in the foreign accent which she had cultivated since just before her marriage and which was in striking contrast with the Eton and Oxford tones (often blurred by drink but always unmistakable) of Prince Gogothsky.

Written just before the start of the war, the story involves the infiltration of German spies into Britain. There is murder, kidnapping and betrayal, clever disguises and secret plots. Sophia is forced to act at last when her beloved lapdog is kidnapped and threatened.

Pigeon Pie made me laugh, if quietly. It was a quick, easy read, light and frothy, with just enough acidic edge to make it flavorful.

Felix Salten was a Hungarian Jew whose family moved to Austria shortly after he was born, when Austria offered Jews full citizenship. He wrote several stories featuring animals as main characters, and his books were banned by the Nazis in 1936.

I began reading Bambi for my Disney Reading Challenge. Based on the movie, I expected it to be a novel written to deter hunting, and certainly many people have read it that way, but the further into the book I got, the more it seemed that this was a book about hunting the way Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita was a book about the Faust story. Hunting provides the plot, but the real story is about something else.

Almost everyone knows the story, at least as the movie presented it. The novel is darker, soaked in the terror the animals feel for Him, the constantly capitalized pronoun for the human hunters. Bambi begins life innocent of the dangers He poses, and is only gradually taught the reasons for his mother’s caution. The novel traces Bambi’s development into an adult and a prince of the forest.

Trying to interpret the symbolism of a book always makes me want to pile on disclaimers, because I don’t feel particularly good at it. Sadly, symbolism has to be pretty obvious for me to get it.

While Bambi is more than a simple allegory, it is the oppressive forces of totalitarianism and enforced social conformity, rather than hunting, which are the focus of condemnation here. The human hunters are organized and powerful and remorseless, unlike the woodland animals, who kill individually and out of simple bloodlusts. The human hunters enlist other animals (like dogs) in their hunt, and (in the novel) they kill massively and indiscriminately.

Animals who aid or abet Him are held in particular contempt. Gobo, a deer captured and hand-fed by Him, returns to the wild with stories of His kindness, only to die from stupidly trusting Him. The dog is attacked for serving Him in his hunt. Domesticated species are reviled for being traitors.

The high point of the book comes when Bambi is travelling through the woods with his father, who has been imparting his wisdom to his son before his own death. They smell Him in the woods and hear the terrible sound of his gun. Bambi’s father insists that they move closer, telling Bambi that this time is different. They find the man lying dead on the ground, and Bambi’s father says:

“Do you see how he’s lying there dead, like one of us? Listen, Bambi. He isn’t all-powerful as they say. Everything that lives and grows doesn’t come from Him. He isn’t above us. He’s just the same as we are. He has the same fears, the same needs, and suffers in the same way. He can be killed like us, and then he lies helpless on the ground like all the rest of us, as you see him now.”
There was a silence.
“Do you understand me, Bambi?” asked the old stag.
“I think so, “Bambi said in a whisper.
“Then speak,” the old stag commanded.
Bambi was inspired, and said trembling, “There is Another who is over us all, over us and over Him.”

I don’t think the author is trying to make any particular statement about God, but rather the inevitable destruction of forces that try to restrict and enslave the spirit of the individual.

There are other elements that do not fit perfectly into an allegorical interpretation, and the novel can be enjoyed for Salten’s beautiful descriptions of the forest and its creatures alone. It was worth reading once, and I will probably read it again, though it will be awhile till my kids are old enough to handle the scary parts.

Julia Sauer’s Fog Magic would probably not be published today. There are no bad guys or obvious conflict. The adults are all people worthy of trust. The magical experiences of the book are never explained. Even the heroine’s adventures away from her parents are accepted and subtly encouraged by them.

Most of what creates tension and resolution in children’s literature today is absent from this short novel. Published in 1942, this is a simple story about a girl in Nova Scotia who finds a magical place in the fog, a place only she can go, even though, strictly speaking, not much happens to her there.

But reading it awakened in me the longings of a child, longings for a place that is magical and meant, a place that is both utterly alien and full of welcome and belonging. Deftly, Sauer creates in an adult reader a reminiscence of childhood that is something more than nostalgia. We are caught up in Greta’s love of home, sense of adventure and bittersweet appreciation for the things we leave behind when we grow to adulthood. At the same time, her portrayal of growing up as the next great adventure offers children a sense of mystery and anticipation for the future.

It is a lovely book, one I plan to strategically locate for my daughters to find on their own someday.

Patricia Wrede frequently combines her fantasy novels with elements of detective fiction. This handily serves to move the plot along, but sometimes feels like I am reading two incomplete stories instead of one fully-developed one. I have read four of her novels now, and I always come away not quite satisfied, but thinking, “She has potential as a writer. I wonder how her next book will be.”

The Raven Ring is a novel set in a world (or country? I wasn’t quite clear on that) called Lyra, and is part of a series set in that world. This book features a woman named Eleret from an egalitarian tribe called the Cilhar. She is an accomplished fighter who must travel to a major city to retrieve the effects of her deceased mother, a warrior who died while serving as a mercenary.

Much of the book focuses on the stock fantasy conflict between a strong woman and the sexist men around her. Wrede portrays Eleret’s strength clearly and consistently within the story; I never felt she was subverting the story to her political purpose. Eleret is simply unaffectedly competent, a rare enough quality for women in fantasy literature, who usually have to make a much bigger to-do over their abilities to be taken seriously. Even surrounded by the inventions of the fantasy genre, Eleret struck a more realistic chord with me than other imaginary female warriors. She seemed more like women I actually know, and I enjoyed the book for that quality alone.

But again I found myself wondering when Wrede would write her best book. I think there is a very good one in her, but this one wasn’t it yet.