I said to Guy, it can’t be right, we can’t be meant to endure such bliss, and he was nearly asleep, and he laughed and said I was a puritan at heart.” This book was written in 1953 and was classed as a horror book. The sparse narrative certainly helps to make it that way, although today’s more sophisticated readers (in terms of there is little that hasn’t been written about these days) would find this a much tamer read. It wasn’t scary so much as eery for me but the ending certianly woke me up. I thought it was too detailed on describing rooms and furniture and such, and I was losing interest as a result. I think if it had been maybe a long short story and if it had been tightened up a bit, I would have liked it more. As it was, I felt I was experiencing the nightmare with Melanie/Millie in real time like over the course of two hours. Two hours to read the book and I was getting bored. If I could have read it in 30 minutes (a long short story with a lot of I feel unnecessary details removed) I would have been more positive to this story. For the rest of what I think about this book, I'll link to my reading journal. Sometimes for what I want to say, this little box here where I'm supposed to post my thoughts just isn't the right venue. Don't worry - there's not much in the way of spoilers there. When I was a boy we had lawn furniture and there was a lawn chair that was sort of like a lazy-boy….where you could rest your legs and feet on an extension of the chair. My parents called it a chaise lounge. I guess they were right. But maybe technically it was a chaise longue.

Méridienne:You’re probably most familiar with the méridienne style of chaise longue. a méridienne has a high head-rest, and a lower foot-rest, joined by a sloping piece. Whether or not they have anything at the foot end, méridiennes are asymmetrical day-beds. They were popular in the grand houses of France in the early 19th century. Its name is from its typical use: rest in the middle of the day, when the sun is near the meridian.This is the story of a young married, pregnant woman named Melanie in the 1950s with TB. She goes to sleep on a Victorian chaise longue and wakes up in 1864, an unmarried young woman named Millie who had incurable TB and a shameful secret. In her efforts to prove who she is, her identity becomes more and more linked to the past. Will she ever be able to return? Just who is she, really? Millie or Melanie? Is there a difference? It opens with a bald fear of death: firstly from a quotation of TS Eliot, "I am dying in my own death and the deaths of those after me", and then the opening sentence of the book itself, "Will you give me your word of honour... that I'm not going to die?" (Eliot may have been echoing Cranmer’s “In the midst of life we are in death”, translated from the Latin, “ Media vita in morte sumus” for the burial service in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer.)

I had high hopes for this but I really dislike a book that ends with more questions than answers. I'm not that clever, people! Spell it out! Here’s a description of a chaise longue from Wikipedia (and it has pictures of it from the olden days… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaise_... ): an upholstered sofa in the shape of a chair that is long enough to support the legs. Of all the books in the Persephone catalogue this is the one I've been looking forward to reading the most. Maybe it was the word 'Victorian' that appealed to me (I'm slightly obsessed with the Victorian period) or maybe it's just that it has sounded so fascinating in every review I've read. I've seen this book described as a horror story - 'a little jewel of horror'. For me, though, it wasn't so much frightening as unsettling and creepy.

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I have to admit I'm not sure that I fully understood what was supposed to be happening in this book. After thinking about it though, maybe that was the point - the reader isn't supposed to understand because Melanie herself doesn't understand. The book conveys a sense of confusion, panic and disorientation and I could really feel Melanie's helplessness as she lay on the chaise-longue, trapped in Milly's body, desperately trying to work out who she was and how she could escape. Much of the book is stream of consciousness as Melanie tries to make sense (or adjust) to what has happened, beginning with the obvious ‘is it a dream?’, to considerations of (if it isn’t a dream) how one might convince others that you are not who you appear to be. As the book progresses it become apparent that there are mysteries concerning the body/life our protagonist seems to be inhabiting, and the novel becomes increasingly claustrophobic as these are revealed. I felt that Laski captured the changing moods of Melanie very well as she navigated varying emotions of wonder, fear, frustration and empathy with her old and new self, whoever her ‘self’ might be. This is written in a style that epitomizes (to me at least) the beautiful precise, peculiarly ‘English’ prose of the 1950’s, which helps ground the book in its own time of writing, which I think adds to its sense of containment. One of Millie’s visitors is a young man called Gilbert, and on seeing him Millie/Melanie feels an intense physical longing. It’s clear that Millie and Gilbert were secret lovers and his was the body that “painfully crushed” Millie’s. The GR summary, in its entirety, says, "Tells the story of a young married woman who lies down on a chaise-longue and wakes to find herself imprisoned in the body of her alter ego ninety years before."

From the late 1920s and bleeding into the 1960s — a la Betty Draper’s era — chaise lounges fit the bill as a “form meets function” piece. Famous architects and designers fiddled with the chair’s design, keeping the chaise at the forefront of the prefabrication revolution.In the 1930s, the chaise longue moved from the psychoanalyst’s office to the silver screen. Any leading lady worth her salt — Greta Garbo, Jean Harlow, Gloria Swanson — draped herself seductively across one for photos and film shoots, generally clothed in a low-cut, spaghetti-strap satin nightgown. Today, it remains a staple of photo shoots for movie stars, fashion models, and even the occasional business executive looking to infuse femininity into her image. Romanzo breve di genere gotico, Sulla chaise-longue racconta la storia della benestante Melanie, convalescente dalla tubercolosi, che appisolatasi su una chaise-longue usata ma mai utilizzata dai suoi nuovi proprietari, si ritrova imprigionata nel corpo di una ragazza malata, in un'altra vita e un'altra epoca. Laski was born to a prominent family of Jewish intellectuals: Neville Laski was her father, Moses Gaster her grandfather, and socialist thinker Harold Laski her uncle. She was educated at Lady Barn House School and St Paul's Girls' School in Hammersmith. After a stint in fashion, she read English at Oxford, then married publisher John Howard, and worked in journalism. She began writing once her son and daughter were born.

Duchesse brisée (Broken duchess in French): this word is used when the chaise longue is divided in two parts: the chair and a long footstool, or two chairs with a stool in between them. The origin of the name is unknown. The comparison merely came up because both authors seem to base their ideas on a similar question about what time really is, and how we live in time. La letteratura gotica mi è sempre piaciuta ma purtroppo non avevo mai sentito parlare di Marghanita Laski; dopo aver letto questo racconto sono convinta di voler addentrarmi di più nelle parole e libri dell'autrice, perchè Sulla chaise-longue mi ha molto intrigata. A fairly weird novella from the 1950s. Melanie, a young woman in early 50s London, visits an antique shop where she feels strangely drawn to an ugly Victorian chaise-longue. For the purpose of this article, however, we will focus on the modern iterations of this piece of furniture.The chaise longue (pronounced “shayz long”, the literal English translation from French for which is “long chair”) has in recent decades become more popularly known and pronounced as chaise lounge in English-speaking countries. The modern chaise longue was first popularised during the 16th century in France. They were created by French furniture craftsmen for the rich to rest without the need to retire to the bedroom. It was during the Rococo period that the chaise longue became the symbol of social status and only the rarest and most expensive materials were used in their construction. Today, the chaise longue is seen as a luxury item for the modern home. They are often used to complement a home’s décor such as living or reading rooms, or as a stylish boudoir chair for bedroom seating.During the 1800s, the chaise longue developed more feminine connotations as a decadentthrone for women to rest during the day without having to go to their bedroom. It was during the French Rococo period that the chaise longue became a symbol of social status and were ornately crafted from only the rarest and most expensive of materials. Types of Chaise Lounges

And both books look at people in their time, and really caught up in time and other circumstances. In Laski's novel, this leads to illustrate the state of women in society - Victorian society and that of the 1940s/50s. Is there much change? In 1928, famed architect Le Corbusier collaborated with fellow Bauhaus cohorts to create a sleek, metal-framed chaise that offered the sitter unparalleled flexibility. A user could tilt the frame either to raise up the head and lower the feet or vice versa.Charles and Ray Eames, the famous designer duo known for their eponymous molded chairs, created distinct Fiberglass shell chaise lounges with tubular steel legs—a look that really embodies that distinct mid-century modern style. It is not very common to see chaise lounges in homes these days, but may be something you see in an expensive hotel room. While it may seem to have outdated function, there are many ways it can be used now. The chaise lounge can make for the perfect reading nook, with a standing lamp positioned right beside it. Tall transom windows bring natural light to the foyer. It opens into the living room complete with a leather sectional and a contemporary chaise lounge. The main character Melanie was interesting. Of course the story mostly revolved around her and the rest of the characters just felt like actors in a play. I know everyone else wasn’t dealt with very in depth, but I liked that they just felt like a cast of characters in a play. I feel like that made it interesting. My Kindle Edition contained a short preface by P.D. James, where she describes the novel as “terrifying”. Personally I didn’t have that reaction. “Slightly creepy”, is probably as far as I would go in describing this. Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading The Victorian Chaise-Longue.Functional and Decorative: Antique chaises are not only functional for relaxation but also serve as decorative elements in a space. They can add a touch of luxury, character, and charm to a room, becoming a statement piece that enhances the overall ambiance. For a much shorter, less mysterious take on a similar situation, see the 1890 classic, The Yellow Wall-Paper. My review, HERE, includes a link to a free version on Project Gutenberg. I actually don't say this too often, but I think this his book would've benefited from a more rigorous editing process. The second half was actually quite good, and there were ideas and moments in here with great potential, but in general I found the book largely disappointing and even cringeworthy at points.