Archives - April 2007

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Robertson Davies, The Salterton Trilogy: Oh, this was wonderful vacation reading (though I got some odd glances on the airplane when I started giggling helplessly several times). The three books (which I have in an omnibus) are set in the Canadian city of Salterton, home of two cathedrals, one university, and many fascinating people. As they share a setting and some characters, the books comprising the trilogy (Tempest-Tost, Leaven of Malice, A Mixture of Frailties) are interconnected to a large extent; they could certainly be read independently, but I prefer to have read them together to follow larger developments in the lives of the characters. All three books are very funny and warm, with a style reminiscent of Trollope; the third book is perhaps the best, with the most developed plotline, though I also really liked the behind-the-scenes comedy of the first book.

Jeanne Birdsall, The Penderwicks: a really charming book, which successfully evokes the books of Elizabeth Enright and Edward Eager (though there's no magic). The Penderwicks are a family of four sisters and their father, who go to a cottage in the country for the summer. The cottage is attached to a large estate belonging to the snobbish, scary Mrs. Tifton and her friendly, musical son Jeffrey, with whom the sisters quickly become friends. The sisters are all wonderfully realized characters; I especially liked downright, snarky Skye and dramatic would-be-writer Jane. I hope Birdsall will write more, because this is a wonderful start.

E.M. Delafield, Late and Soon: The life of Valentine Arbell, a longtime widow, is turned upside down when she encounters again a man with whom she had a passionate love affair as a young woman. This was an unusual Delafield, I thought. She does show, as usual, the constrictedness of the lives of her female characters (though there are hints of something better in the war work longed for by Valentine's younger daughter), but in spite of the bittersweet tone, the ending is oddly, unexpectedly (at least to me) hopeful.

Ruth Plumly Thompson, The Cowardly Lion of Oz: a middle-of-the-road Thompson (only the third I've read, I admit) -- I didn't like it as much as Kabumpo but liked it more than Royal Book. She does do a good job of remaining true to Baum's characters and introducing new ones, so it was certainly fun to read, just perhaps lacking a bit in the charm of Baum's books.

Scott Westerfeld, The Last Days: This is a sequel to Peeps, but I didn't like it as much. I do generally like band books, so that wasn't it; I think it might have been the multiple POVs, which made it feel a little unfocused to me. And the characters I liked the most -- Alana Ray, Zahler -- got the least POV time. It just all felt a little sketchy, I guess: fun to read, but doesn't stick in my mind the way Peeps did.

Ruth Reichl, Comfort Me with Apples: I didn't like this quite as much as Tender at the Bone or Garlic and Sapphires. There wasn't as much food description, and I wasn't as interested in the details of Reichl's personal life here as I was in her childhood (in TatB) or her restaurant reviewing and sociological observations (in GaS). Still, there's much food goodness, and I like how she conveys her sense of comfort in food and eating.

Sally Gardner, I, Coriander: I picked this up at Books of Wonder on the strength of the lovely cover. Unfortunately, the contents didn't live up to it. Though I liked elements of the plot -- wherein the heroine is torn between her everyday life in Cromwell's England and the fairy world her mother came from -- it was often muddled, and the characterization was very shallow. Plus, there was a disturbing tendency to indicate goodness or badness by appearance: pretty much everyone who was fat, ugly, or otherwise unattractive was evil, and of course the heroine was beautiful and all her friends and family attractive. Oh, and nearly all Puritans are evil. Definitely not recommended.

Scott Westerfeld, Uglies, Pretties, Specials: Tally Youngblood can't wait for her sixteenth birthday, when she'll undergo the operation which will turn her, as it does everyone else over sixteen, from plain to stunningly beautiful -- Pretty. But just before her birthday, she meets Shay, who isn't sure she wants to be Pretty, and when Shay runs away to the Outside, Tally must follow her and learn how their world really works. The concepts and worldbuilding are great; I wasn't terribly surprised by the secrets Tally learns, but the way in which each book shows her learning process about her world is very well done. As with a lot of Westerfeld's books, I was far more interested in the ideas than in the characters (though there's an interesting romantic triangle), but the fast pace and the worldbuilding kept me happily engrossed anyway.

Michael Ruhlman, The Soul of a Chef: The Journey Toward Perfection: Ruhlman begins his exploration of what it means to be a chef by observing the Certified Master Chef test at the Culinary Institute of America, before going on to observe two chefs in depth: Michael Symon of Lola Bistro and Wine Bar in Cleveland, and Thomas Keller of the French Laundry in the Napa Valley. I was most interested in the first part, because of the intensity and drama of the exams, and the third, for Keller's journey toward fame and search for perfection. Ruhlman's food descriptions aren't as good as Ruth Reichl's, but his prose style is excellent, crisp, and witty, and there are some mouthwatering recipes from Symon, Keller, and one of the CIA examinees.

Maureen Johnson, The Bermudez Triangle: Nina Bermudez, Avery Dekker, and Mel Forrest are the Bermudez Triangle, lifelong friends just about to enter their senior year of high school. But the Triangle changes forever when Nina goes away for a summer program at Stanford; when she comes home, she has a new, long-distance relationship, and a big surprise waiting for her: Mel and Avery have become a couple. Johnson examines the girls' romantic and sexual feelings with sensitivity and warmth, as they struggle to come to grips with new relationships and emotions. I think I liked Devilish a little more -- funnier, tighter pacing -- but this was darned good.

Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep: I was going to say something like, "Sittenfeld catches the prep school atmosphere perfectly," but I've never been to prep school, so how would I know? It's darned convincing, though, particularly as told by Lee, an outsider, a Midwesterner, a scholarship girl in the midst of rich kids. I did occasionally get a little irritated with Lee's refusal to change, but I think that's a good indication of the quality of Sittenfeld's characterization of her heroine, that I could believe in her enough to get annoyed when I wanted her to be more assertive, to stand up for herself. I am a sucker for boarding school stories in general, but this is a particularly good one, very funny and honest, with an almost memoir-like quality.

M.F.K. Fisher, How to Cook a Wolf: Here's some very sharp, intelligent, and witty food writing. Fisher wrote this during WWII to show people how to economize on food and still eat well, and it's really captivating to see her strategies and recipes. My edition is actually the revised one of twelve years later, and Fisher revised it by adding many, many pointed and witty comments in brackets. It was particularly interesting to read this soon after Comfort Me with Apples, in which Ruth Reichl becomes friends with Fisher and visits her several times. I'd like to read lots more of Fisher's writing and maybe a biography, if there is one.

Justine Larbalestier, Magic or Madness, Magic Lessons, Magic's Child: I reread the first two when the final volume came out. This is an excellent trilogy, with marvelous characters, wonderfully delineated settings, and a really fascinating magic system, in which magic has an enormous cost: use it and use up your life force, resulting in an early death, or don't use it and go mad. I don't want to discuss Magic's Child in detail for fear of spoiling earlier volumes, but suffice it to say that it wraps things up well -- not necessarily easily, but satisfyingly.

Antonia White, Frost in May: On the surface, this is a classic girls' school story, largely autobiographical, told with a simplicity that belies the book's underlying complexity. For it's a Catholic convent school, and recently converted Nanda has somewhat more to face there than the usual run of classes and tests, sports, and midnight feasts. White's portrayal of the school, the students, and the nuns is clear and unsparing, and I was surprisingly caught up in Nanda's experiences, particularly at the shattering ending. I do hope Virago has reprinted White's other books, too, as I really want to read them also.

Jill Paton Walsh, The Bad Quarto: This is the new book in Walsh's Cambridge mystery series, and it's a distinct improvement over Debts of Dishonour, though still not as good as A Piece of Justice. Walsh is clearly more comfortable with the academic milieu here than with the financial one of Debts of Dishonour and comes up with a reasonably interesting plot involving Shakespeare, a missing student, and a mysterious group who climb college buildings for fun. Plus, I still really like Walsh's sleuth, Cambridge nurse Imogen Quy, and there's a rather unusual romantic involvement for her.

Winifred Watson, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day: This is my latest Persephone purchase; it's apparently one of their bestsellers, and I can see why. It's an unabashed Cinderella tale, of a middle-aged governess, down on her luck and desperate for a job, who falls in accidentally with a beautiful nightclub singer and spends a wonderful day living the high life. It's almost irresistibly funny and charming, though there's some distressing casual racism (against Jews and Italians). It's not any worse than the anti-Semitic bit in Heyer's The Grand Sophy, but it did dim the book's charm for me a little. On the plus side, Watson portrays very well Miss Pettigrew's quiet desperation and her burgeoning friendship with Miss LaFosse; the characterization is generally excellent.

Sarah Dessen, The Truth About Forever: Macy Queen is anticipating a long summer; her boyfriend will be at Brain Camp, her job at the library is extra dull, and she's still grieving for her father, who died unexpectedly of a heart attack. Macy's trying to be perfect, for her perfectionist boyfriend and her brittle, workaholic mother, but when she falls in with a chaotic catering crew, she discovers that she doesn't have to be perfect. Dessen creates an affecting atmosphere of grief and loss, even though Macy and her family barely talk about her father, and as always, many wonderfully realized characters. Okay, maybe Wes was a little too perfect, but I loved how he and Macy get to know each other by playing Truth, asking each other questions which must be answered truthfully. This is yet another really good Dessen, maybe up there with Just Listen for me. (Clearly once I finish reading her output so far, a mass reread is in order.)

Laurie Halse Anderson, Twisted: Tyler Miller was an outcast in high school until he sprayed some graffiti on school property, spent the summer with a landscaping crew, and came back to school with a buffed-up body and notoriety. But just when it seems as though he's finally achieved popularity and a gorgeous girlfriend, Tyler is accused of another, more serious crime. This is undeniably a honest, powerful book, and I thought it was very good, but I missed some of the wit that leavened Speak. I was impressed by the voice, though; granted that I've never been a male adolescent myself, this seemed very convincing to me.

Laura Kinsale, The Hidden Heart: The Shadow and the Star, which I read a few months ago, is the sequel to this. When her father dies, Lady Tess Collier must leave the wilds she's spent her life exploring with him and return to England, with the mysterious Captain Gryphon Meridon as her protector...but his secret past affects both their lives. I didn't like this quite as much as The Shadow and the Star, but I liked it a lot: the brave and adventurous Tess and the appealingly vulnerable Gryf are a memorable pair. And the plot made a little more sense than usual, actually, though it relied a little too much on misunderstandings and miscommunications.

Valerie Lawson, Mary Poppins, She Wrote: The Life of P.L. Travers: I found Lawson's thoughts on Travers' work (the Mary Poppins books particularly) interesting and worth reading (especially the section on the making of the Mary Poppins film), but I didn't think she did as good a job on her life or character. Although Lawson reports the surface of Travers' life in great detail, there's little insight into Travers' emotional life; her need for a male mentor is simplistically (and repetitively) referred to as a search for "Mr. Banks" (clearly equated with her banker father). Her adopted son, Camillus, floats in and out of the pages of the book almost randomly, with no extended examination of their often troubled relationship. I finished the book feeling as though I had acquired a few more facts about Travers, but little more understanding of her complex personality. Also, there are odd little errors throughout (which makes me wonder how many I didn't catch): Lawson identifies Andersen's "The Little Mermaid" and "The Snow Queen" as by the Brothers Grimm (claiming that Travers preferred the Grimms' "black" tales to the "blander, saccharine whiteness of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy stories"), she calls "Bambi" a "feel-good film about childhood" and "The Three Little Pigs" a full-length movie like "Snow White", and claims that Disney began making fairy tales and children's classics into full-length movies in the 1950s -- um, no, what about "Pinocchio" and "Snow White"?

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Children of Hurin: You know, this was probably worth reading, but since I've also read the versions in The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, and The Lays of Beleriand, I was less fascinated than I hoped I'd be -- it just didn't seem as though there was much more there. Okay, or maybe it's that I still hate Turin. Sorry, I know there's the whole tragic hero thing going on, but he's so much his own enemy that I can never really come up with any sympathy for him (though I love Beleg Strongbow and Nienor). The Alan Lee illustrations are beautiful, though.

Curtis Sittenfeld, The Man of My Dreams: Sittenfeld follows her heroine, Hannah, from her teens to her late twenties, as Hannah grows up and searches for love. I didn't like this as much as Prep; although it's more tightly written, with less endless self-analysis by the protagonist, it's also too episodic, like a series of short stories instead of a novel. There's a balance to be struck between spending too much time and too little time with a character; Prep has maybe a little too much, The Man of My Dreams not enough -- each episode felt a little chopped-off from the others, though of course they're linked by Hannah's life and emotions. I did really like the ending, which was unexpected and refreshing, and I admire Sittenfeld's lucid style. I'll certainly be continuing to read her.

Lettice Cooper, The New House, Fenny: Cooper is new to me, but I already want more. I particularly loved The New House, which examines one day in the life of a family: sister Rhoda and mother Natalie are moving out of the old family home to a smaller house, while younger sister Delia looks forward to marriage and helping her husband with his work and brother Maurice tries not to think about his fragile, shallow marriage. The differences (and similarities) in the women's lives are especially finely observed, as Rhoda tries to decide whether to break out of her old life by taking over the job Delia will have to give up when she marries or to stay as a helpmeet to her selfish mother and end up like her aunt Ellen. Fenny follows the life of a governess who takes a post in Italy and becomes intertwined with the life of the country and with the lives of her charges; I liked it, but I preferred the multiple viewpoints and wider focus of The New House, which explored its characters more interestingly.


Last updated 23 August 2007. All text and photographs © George Mitchell and Margaret Johnston, unless otherwise noted Comments, questions, suggestions to margaret@lonelymountain.net.