Hot and fuming at my husband

My grandmother Clarice didn’t exactly have the temperament of a temptress. Grandma was dour and stoic, well bred and well read, graduating in 1931 from Victoria University with a Masters degree in English.

Her bookshelf, however, made a liar of those literary credentials. At university, Clarice read the classics. But at home, her peccadilloes included a penchant for what was then categorised as ‘‘women’s fiction’’ and what is now pejoratively dismissed as ‘‘chick lit’’.

If my grandmother had a taste for trash, who could blame her? After her capping ceremony, Clarice was recalled to the family home in Feilding to care for her invalid father, a fellow who clung inconveniently to life for just long enough to rob her of her youth and ruin her romantic prospects. In the end she had to place a personals advert to bag a backwater farmer from Raglan, spawning seven children in quick succession before rhesus factor antigens put a stop to her fertility at the age of 46.

Grandma’s idea of a good yarn generally went: boy meets girl, boy lacks social standing, girl marries someone else, loveless marriages and madness ensue, and ultimately everyone dies, but not before a deathbed reconciliation or the revelation of an illegitimate love child.

She was particularly fond of the romantic mush penned by Anne Hepple, the British founding editor of The Woman’s Magazine. Hepple’s works included such luminary tales as 1936’s Touch-Me-Not and its sequel, Touch-Me-Again, Susan Takes a Hand (1938), Sigh No More (1943), Can I Go There? (1946) and I Want You To Come Here to Me (1969).

Grandma read them all. I can say this with certainty because, even though she died 35 years ago, her books all remained in her derelict farmhouse, gathering sawdust.

Borer gradually ate the bookshelves but had no appetite for all those Victorian cloth-backed novels. Nor did her descendants. My aunty Roseanne recently bundled several dozen of Grandma’s bad novels into banana boxes and gifted them to Mum. Dad, no Harold Bloom, waited just long enough for her to drive off before he threw the lot in the tip.

This summer, I’ve been mulling over the state of my own bookshelves. What do they say about me? Obviously, I enjoy cooking and gardening, with several hundred books in each genre. I

123RF Lynda Hallinan’s grandmother’s bookshelf belied her education. She had a penchant for what was then categorised as ‘‘women’s fiction’’ and is now dismissed as ‘‘chick lit’’.