Leaver's Post: Mrs Waller

Sadly, this term we're saying goodbye to Mrs Waller, Head of English at SPJ, whose brilliant teaching has enabled so many future Paulines to navigate their way successfully through their entrance exams, and who also steered 6H at SPS through the murky waters of their iGCSEs last year. She has also been a regular contributor to our book blog posts, and very generously found time to contribute to our regular leavers' questionnaire.

What were you reading when you were a teenager?

Short stories by Ian McEwan and Angela Carter, The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall, novels by Flann (quirky) and Edna (well-wrought) O'Brien, Perfume by Patrick Suskind, Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons, all sorts of urban stuff by Michael Bracewell (The Crypto-Amnesia Club was my favourite I think) and Martin Amis ...

... the Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake, the Philip Pullman of his day perhaps, dystopia by George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, obvious teen winners like The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks, the Hitchhikers ‘trilogy’ by Douglas Adams and in my more earnest moods almost anything by George Eliot (though one of them’s AWFUL – can never remember which…possibly Felix Holt), and comics (like Stray Toasters, Tank Girl, Arkham Asylum, 2000AD)

What are you planning to read over the holidays? 

Well, this winter perhaps some poetry and scripts. I've lost the habit of reading those lately. I might re-read Idiopathy by Sam Byers, because it made me laugh, as does Caitlin Moran, before hunting for something new for 2020.

What/who is your all-time favourite book/writer? 

Not possible: changes all the time. I'm not great at 'favourites' questions, and this one’s the hardest.

Who’s your favourite fictional character? 

I like Caitlin in How To Be a Woman, Cassandra in I Capture the Castle, and vicious Katherine in Idiopathy. Women who start with ‘C/K’ basically; perhaps I should rename myself.

Do you have a favourite word/favourite line from a book? 

OK – there too many funny ones to choose from, so I’ll go for more philosophical ones, such as this from Middlemarch: 

'That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.' 

To match this, from Nabokov’s Transparent Things:

‘A thin veneer of immediate reality is spread over natural and artificial matter, and whoever wishes to remain in the now, with the now, on the now, should please not break its tension film. Otherwise the inexperienced miracle-worker will find himself no longer walking on water but descending upright amongst staring fish.’

If you had to recommend one book that everyone should read, what would it be? 

I’ve mentioned The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists before on blogs [see here], and A Fine Balance, so it’s tricky. I'd say if you think you don't like Dickens, Our Mutual Friend is worth a go. If you aren’t sure about Eliot, start with Scenes of Clerical Life, despite the unpromising title. For an alternative way to access poetic metre without preaching, The Anthologist is a laugh. Boys wanting to develop their ‘soft skills’ (a revolting expression I won’t miss hearing) by experiencing one version of what it’s like to be female, could try Caitlin Moran How to be a Woman.

Many thanks once again to Mrs Waller - not just for her amazing contributions to our blog posts, but for all she's given SPJ and SPS students throughout her time here, and best wishes for whatever's next!