My Friend Madame Zora

My Friends #8

by Jane Duncan

My Friend Madame Zora

Genres: Fiction

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

Jane Duncan was the pseudonym of Scottish writer Elizabeth Jane Cameron, best-known for her My Friends series of semi-autobiographical novels. She also wrote four novels under the name of her principal heroine Janet Sandison, and some children's books. She was born in Renton, West Dunbartonshire and brought up in the Scottish Lowlands where her father was a police officer, but much of her childhood was spent in the Highlands on the Black Isle in Easter Ross, on her grandparents' croft "The Colony", the "Reachfar" of her novels. She graduated in English from the University of Glasgow and did various secretarial jobs before serving as a Flight Officer (Intelligence), WAAF during World War II. Afterward, she lived in Jamaica for ten years, returning to Jemimaville, near "The Colony", in 1958 as a widow. In 1959 Duncan became something of a publishing sensation when Macmillan Publishers announced that it would be publishing seven of her manuscripts. The "Reachfar" (My Friends) series is narrated by Janet Sandison and follows her life (which in outline parallels that of the author) from the World War I period through to the 1960s, depicting the people she encounters and showing how her crofting upbringing influences her in whatever society and geographical location she finds herself.

Reviews

[Fiona Thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jane Duncan described this as her attempt to write a detective or mystery book and like many such books, once you know the outcome, you can't not know it, but what makes it fascinating on re-reading is always picking up more clues and hints. Twice and Janet are back in Crookmill and having to sell their house as they can't afford to keep it on whilst sending their lives in St Jago. But this is complicated by their love and commitment to Loose and Daze who have been looking after it for them since they left, and who looked after them when they all lived there (see My Friend Monica). Enter Madame Zora - one of her cats is killed by their dog, Dram, and a visit to apologise draws Madame Zora into their lives. An added complication is a very pregnant Monica who is having some strange moments of deja vu as well as being obsessed by a former member of Achraggan who was reported missing, believed killed during the war. Janet feels that the weird sense of otherness that she felt in St Jago has followed her back to Scotland. It's a triumph of a book, filled with great characters and intriguing moments...and all is resolved once again, at Reachfar. It is, as all her books are, about connections and the sliding door moments of life.

[I · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very readable although very much of its time.

[Cassandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yes, yes, the plots of these books are overdetermined, it is quite annoying, but in spite of that I love them so very much. I have said it all before, but I like the people, especially Janet, whom I have come to the conclusion I would very much enjoy knowing, although we might well argue constantly. I like that she is 41 and so very alive and determined and often wrong, so very human, and that she and her husband have a real partnership, much arguing but knowing one another well and working together towards the goals and occasionally putting the foot down one way or another. I like also how Janet approves of all the social changes so many of her contemporaries despised -- she is clearly in favour of the welfare state -- but she also sees how taking care of the physical self can still leave people desperately lonely. And I like the little details of how the people around Reachfar enjoy having electricity and washing machines and are curious about the changes they are experiencing, it is very ... integrated, I think, especially when I compare it to Angela Thirkell, for whom the changes are all disasters. Thirkell writes about the mowing machines so she can rage about how the men breaking their backs scything the grass were so much more picturesque, and the central heating is a chance to talk about how much better it was when the servants woke up before dawn to warm your room for you. Thirkell hates the world that allows those who waited upon her hand and foot a better life where they do not bow to her. For Duncan the changes have their good and their bad, and she shows it across the spectrum of people.

In this one in particular, I liked the focus on the older people, and how one is kind -- the true kindness, where she invites Madame Zora to tea, and no, Janet does not enjoy it, but she has chosen to do it and she does it as well as she can, and that is what I like so much about her. She often ends up frustrated at her own impulses, but she carries them out without resentment; she may be bad-tempered and annoyed at herself for it, but there is no ... punishment of herself or of the people she ends up with. It is hard to get into words, that, but it is part of what makes the books so pleasurable to me. She takes responsibility for herself, even when she does something on impulse that she later regrets, she sees things through, and I enjoy that.

What I did not like: Yes, the over-determined plot, where everything moves to finding Guido, and Janet's determination that faith does move mountains being proved true was a little too sentimental for me. No, things do not happen just because we want them to, people do not come back from the dead because we miss them or believe they are still alive, human faith and such are not rewarded in these palpable concrete ways, the reward of being that sort of person is in the being, or not. It would have been a stronger book if she had let it stand like that. I was hoping that one of the amnesiac Italians would turn out to be Stubbs, so that we would have the connection to Guido's story without the sentimental happy ending.

[Ika Willis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the eighth volume of a 19-book series which I think of as a single, serial, work. I've written longer reviews of Book 13, My Friend My Father (here: no spoilers for the series), and Book 19, My Friends George and Tom (a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... masses and masses of spoilers), as well as some brief reflections about Book 18, My Friends The Misses Kindness (a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... again, massive spoilers for the series) and Book 16, My Friend the Swallow (a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show..., spoiler-free).

[Joy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Janet and Twice, having decided to stay in the West Indies, are packing up the furnishings of their Scottish house to sell it. They become involved with a fake fortune-teller who is starving in an old Highlands house. Madame Zora is hardly likeable, but a picture in her house turns out to change the life of more than one person.

[Alexis Lloyd · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love these books although they were written a long time ago! Jane Duncan a Scot, who lived in the Caribbean,for many years, wrote her books in the linen cupboard because her husband didn't approve. These are funny gentle books that lift your spirit. Duncan also writes as Janet Sandison.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another of Janet Sandison Alexander's story with a familiar cast of characters but some new ones Like Madam Zora. Fun to read.