Archives - August 2004 archives -- index by author -- index by category -- favorite books -- links

Search Now:

2 August 2004

• Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters is on my favorites page.
  
  
• Alice Hoffman's Blackbird House is a collection of interconnected short stories, telling the tales of those who have lived on a particular farm near Cape Cod over more than two hundred years. As always, a thread of magic - a white blackbird, a red pear tree, fire and water - runs through Hoffman's stories, and her prose is lyrical and haunting. I must admit, though, that I tend not to like short stories, as I like to have more time to get to know characters and places than they generally allow, and probably for that reason, I preferred the series of several stories focusing on the West family, which had several of the same characters throughout; the best of these was "The Conjurer's Handbook", about Lion West and his love for a Holocaust survivor.
  
  
• Dodie Smith's The Midnight Kittens is one of her children's books, following One Hundred and One Dalmatians and The Starlight Barking. Pam and Tom, twins and orphans, are staying with their grandmother over school holidays; one night, they see four mysterious kittens appear and drink the milk they've put out for the hedgehogs. This odd sighting sets off a chain of even odder events, involving secret rooms, squatters, and maybe even a touch of magic. It's charming, but slight; the characters are memorable, but the plot doesn't hang together as well or have the suspense of One Hundred and One Dalmatians.

Books read: 3

3 August 2004

• Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden is on my favorites page.
  
  
• The only books by Jill Paton Walsh I've read are her two Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries (based on the books by Dorothy L. Sayers); I didn't like them much because I thought she failed to do justice to the characters. However, I'd heard her own mystery novels, featuring Cambridge nurse Imogen Quy, were better, so I tried the first one, The Wyndham Case. When a student is found dead in the Wyndham Case, a small library bequeathed to the college by an eccentric 17th-century gentleman, Imogen is drawn into the mystery and its odd twists and turns. The plot is intricate and nicely worked out, and Walsh's writing is precise and elegant, though I wasn't entirely drawn in by the characters. I'll give the second one (I've only been able to find two) a shot and see how I like it.

Books read: 2

4 August 2004

• Anthony Trollope's Cousin Henry is one of his later and lesser-known novels, a powerful psychological study of a weak man. Cousin Henry is Henry Jones, a London clerk who is seemingly the heir his wealthy uncle's estate; however, Henry knows that his uncle made a new will before his death, naming Henry's cousin Isabel the heir. Concealing his knowledge of the new will, Henry goes through an agony of guilt and suspicion, presented by Trollope with masterly insight and compassion.
  
  
• Melissa Wyatt's Raising the Griffin is the story of Alex Varenhoff, a teenage boy who suddenly becomes heir to the throne of an obscure European country - but this is no The Princess Diaries for boys. Wyatt presents a darkly realistic look at the dangers and responsibilities of becoming a public figure, with unexpected twists and an engaging central character.

Books read: 2

5 August 2004

• Julie Smith writes two mystery series set in New Orleans. One features police detective Skip Langdon (starting with New Orleans Mourning); the second is an offshoot of the Langdon series, starring Talba Wallis, a character introduced in 82 Desire. Talba is a hotshot private investigator with a gift for computers by day and a poet (the flamboyant Baroness de Pontalba) by night, and the three books featuring her are: Louisiana Hotshot, Louisiana Bigshot, and the latest one, Louisiana Lament.
  
  Smith's particular gift for evoking the spirit of New Orleans is much in evidence in all three books; I particularly liked Louisiana Lament, which explores New Orleans literary society and has a great plot, full of unexpected twists and turns. Talba is a wonderfully engaging and vivacious character, and the supporting characters are vivid as well, especially her curmudgeonly boss, Eddie, and her mother, Miz Clara. This is a series that I continue to love (and I'd highly recommend the Skip Langdon books as well).
  
  

Books read: 3

6 August 2004

• Okay, I've been sitting here for a few minutes trying to think of what to say about Sue Grafton's new Kinsey Millhone mystery, R Is for Ricochet. If you're a fan of the series, you'll probably like it (though do get it from the library rather than buying it in hardcover); if you're not, start with one of the earlier books - they're better. This one wasn't bad - the plot was reasonably interesting, though short on suspense, and the characters lively - but it certainly wasn't one of the best entries in the series. It feels like Grafton's struggling a little to get to Z, if you ask me. Still, it whiled away a couple of hours in an entertaining way.
  
  
• Jill Paton Walsh's A Piece of Justice is another low-key but interesting mystery featuring Cambridge nurse Imogen Quy and a conundrum involving mathematics, quilts, and a biography that seems doomed not to be written. I enjoyed this rather more than the first, as the characters seemed more fleshed-out, and I'm a little disappointed to see that there aren't any more books in the series.

Books read: 2

7 August 2004

• Jean Slaughter Doty's Can I Get There by Candlelight? is one of those almost-lost childhood books, about a girl who goes back in time while riding her pony and becomes friends with another girl. You know, the ones you barely remember -- can't recall the title or author -- then one day, someone mentions it and you say, "Wow, I remember that book!" Well, someone mentioned this one the other day, so I rushed to get it out of the library and was pleased to find that the book is just as absorbing and as haunting as I remembered it, although with an unexpectedly bleak and ambiguous ending.

Books read: 1

8 August 2004

• Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is often overshadowed by her sisters' more famous novels, Charlotte's Jane Eyre (and three others) and Emily's Wuthering Heights, but it is equally worth reading. It tells the story of Helen Huntingdon, a mysterious woman who comes to live at Wildfell Hall with her child and one servant, and Gilbert Markham, the young man who is powerfully drawn to her and eventually learns her secret: that she left her dissolute, drunken husband in order to shield their son from his influence. The first and last sections are from Gilbert's point of view; the central, and most powerful, from Helen's, as Gilbert reads the diary in which she narrates the events of her marriage.
  
  Victorian readers found the scenes of Huntingdon's drunkenness and infidelity revolting and coarse, and they remain powerfully compelling today, though the subjects are less shocking to today's readers. Helen is a strong, willful, intelligent heroine, and to my mind, the novel's one real fault is that too much of the narrative is given to the less interesting Gilbert; once finished with Helen's diary, the story loses much of its power, though it regains some through the use of Helen's letters in the chapters leading up to the climax.
  
  Anne Brontë's voice is as passionate as her sisters', and her fierce truthfulness pervades the novel; as her preface to the second edition says, in response to the censures of critics and readers, "I wished to tell the truth, for truth always conveys its own moral to those who are able to receive it." In penning this challenge to the conventional morals of Victorian society, Brontë told truths about the role of women and the potential pitfalls of marriage that are meaningful more than 150 years after the publication of her book.

Books read: 1

9 August 2004

• Elizabeth Inchbald was a late 18th-century actress and playwright who also wrote two books, of which A Simple Story is the better known; the other, Nature and Art, is hard to find nowadays, though you can read it at Project Gutenberg. A Simple Story is a penetrating character study, of the passionate Miss Milner and her love for the stern Dorriforth, her guardian, who is also a Catholic priest. The plot becomes a little didactic, but Inchbald's gift for characterization is evident on every page: Miss Milner, Dorriforth, the loyal Miss Woodley, the volatile Sandford...all are memorable characters, subtly and sharply drawn through dialogue and actions.

Books read: 1

12 August 2004

• Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina's Carrington: A Life is an insightful portrait of the Bloomsbury artist Dora Carrington (who went by only her last name for most of her life) who was in love with and lived with the writer Lytton Strachey (and killed herself after his death). It's full of quotations from Carrington's lively, idiosyncratic letters and of her illustrations, drawings, and paintings. Gerzina's story is well-researched and well-told, bringing Carrington to life as a vivid personality in her own right, rather than the Strachey appendage to which she is so often reduced.

Books read: 1

14 August 2004

• I've read a ton of Ruth Rendell: The Bridesmaid, Going Wrong, From Doon with Death, A Guilty Thing Surprised, Death Notes, Murder Being Once Done. The first two are stand-alone thrillers, while the latter four are in the Inspector Wexford mystery series; all feature Rendell's usual penetrating character studies and clever, twisting plots. Of the stand-alones, I liked Going Wrong the best, and Death Notes of the Wexfords, but all were engrossing.

Books read: 6

15 August 2004

• Stephanie Barron's Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor is the first in Barron's series of mysteries purportedly written by Jane Austen. As a historical mystery, I liked it; as an evocation of Austen, I thought it didn't quite succeed. The language was reasonably convincing (although there were a couple of missteps as to proper titles and modes of address), but oddly, the frequent references to Austen's works jolted me out of the story (as did the "editorial" footnotes, which often explained things I already knew or could easily have figured out from the text). I think I would have enjoyed it more if the heroine's name had been changed, but I just couldn't get into the "Jane Austen as sleuth" mindset.

Books read: 1

16 August 2004

• David Hughes's Himself and Other Animals: A Portrait of Gerald Durrell is a vivid and intimate memoir of the well-known British conservationist and writer, who died in 1995. Hughes chronicles a week he spent with Durrell and his (then) wife Jacquie, interweaving this narrative with a chronicle of Durrell's life. As a biography, this is nowhere near as exhaustive as Douglas Botting's Gerald Durrell: The Authorized Biography, but then it's not intended to be. Instead, it's a wonderful evocation of Durrell's charismatic, visionary, intense personality: essential reading for present Durrell fans and a good introduction for future fans.
  
  
• Jane Langton's The Diamond in the Window and The Swing in the Summerhouse are the first two books in her children's series, the Hall Family Chronicles, wherein Eleanor and Edward Hall live in Concord, Massachusetts, with their Aunt Lily and Uncle Freddy and have magical adventures. The Diamond in the Window leads them in search of missing relatives, into dreams which turn into nightmares, while The Swing in the Summerhouse takes them on a series of fantastic journeys. The characters are lively (particularly the Transcendentalist Uncle Freddy, with his busts of Thoreau and Emerson) and their adventures intriguing and imaginative. I've just discovered that there are several more books in the series, so I'll be seeking them out as well.

Books read: 3

18 August 2004

• Rita Buchanan's The Winter Garden is a guide to plants for winter interest and beauty. Although it's reasonably comprehensive in its selections, I wanted a little more detail about the plants it suggests than it provides. However, with a reference book such as The Sunset Western Garden Book as a source for supplemental information, The Winter Garden is certainly useful.

Books read: 1

19 August 2004

• Charlotte Brontë's Villette is on my favorites page.

Books read: 1

20 August 2004

• Noel Streatfeild's Ballet Shoes is on my favorites page.

Books read: 1

21 August 2004

• Lucasta Miller's The Brontë Myth is a "metabiography", a book about biography, in which Miller examines the myths and mysteries which have developed around the Brontë sisters, from Elizabeth Gaskell's seminal biography of Charlotte, which portrayed her as a Victorian saint, to the more recent conception of Emily as "the mystic of the moors". It's fascinating stuff, starting with Charlotte's shaping of herself and of her sisters through her comments on their books, her rewriting of Emily's poems, and the stories she told Gaskell. I did wish for more material on Anne, the oft-neglected sister who wrote perhaps the most scandalous of all their novels, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall; perhaps some enterprising scholar will continue Miller's work with more on Anne. That cavil aside, though, The Brontë Myth is a marvelously compelling book, packed with fascinating facts and insights.

Books read: 1

22 August 2004

• Paul Campos's The Obesity Myth is an eye-opening look at America's "war against obesity". Campos argues that the warnings from obesity researchers, the government, and the media are misleading and based on inaccurately interpreted data; reinterpreting the data from several crucial studies, he suggests that perhaps the focus should be on fitness, rather than on weight, as the data tend to show that overweight active people are actually generally healthier than thin sedentary people. I found this portion of the book cogent and believable, though I was less convinced by his claim that weight hysteria led to the impeachment of Bill Clinton (you'll have to read the book to find out more about this). Still, the statistics and arguments Campos presents are compelling and shed a much-needed new light on America's dieting and weight loss mania.

Books read: 1

23 August 2004

• I've found Marcia Muller's Sharon McCone mystery series to be one of the most consistently entertaining series around, and her latest, The Dangerous Hour, in which McCone and her investigative firm are threatened by a villain from her past, is no exception. Although it lacks a little in the suspense of the best of the previous entries, where Muller shines is in the development of Sharon's personal life and her friends, and that's why I look forward to each new McCone book.

Books read: 1

24 August 2004

• Jane Langton's The Astonishing Stereoscope, The Fledgling, and The Fragile Flag are the third, fourth, and fifth books in her Hall Family Chronicles series. I thought The Astonishing Stereoscope was deficient in the plot department; the plot linking together Eddy and Eleanor's adventures (this time through the device of a magic stereoscope) lacked conflict and failed to hold my interest.
  
  However, The Fledgling and The Fragile Flag, both featuring the Halls' step-cousin Georgie, were both excellent. In the former, Georgie becomes friends with a goose and learns to fly, while being threatened by the town banker; in the latter, she, Eleanor, Eddy, and some of their friends march from Concord to Washington to protest the president's plan to build a nuclear missile. Both books have much more coherent plots than The Astonishing Stereoscope, and the character of the frail but determined Georgie is an engaging one.

Books read: 3

25 August 2004

• Okay, I might as well admit it: I'm addicted to Wilkie Collins. No Name is the second of the four novels generally thought to be Collins's best, and it is indeed right up there with The Woman in White and Armadale (I haven't read the fourth of the novels, The Moonstone, yet). The plot centers on two sisters, Magdalen and Norah Vanstone, who find out that when their parents die that they weren't married at the times of the sisters' births, making them illegitimate; thus, they are disinherited by law and cast out from their childhood home by their estranged uncle. Norah submits to her fate and finds work as a governess, but Magdalen vows revenge and embarks on a series of plots to regain their inheritance.
  
  This was a fairly long book (700+ pages), and I read it in one day, only putting it down when I absolutely had to. It must have been almost unbearable to read as a serial. The level of suspense Collins maintains is astonishing, and the characters are remarkably vivid, particularly the rebellious Magdalen herself, her accomplice the roguish and wily Captain Wragge ("the unblushing, the invincible, unchangeable, Wragge!"), and her main enemy, the devious Mrs. Lecount. But No Name isn't all about the sensational plot and characters; it's also a penetrating portrayal of the Victorian society and laws which drive Magdalen almost to ruin.

Books read: 1

26 August 2004

• Nina Kiriki Hoffman's A Fistful of Sky is on my favorites page.
  
  
• L.M. Montgomery's Jane of Lantern Hill and The Blue Castle are on my favorites page.

Books read: 3

28 August 2004

• Humphrey Carpenter's The Brideshead Generation: Evelyn Waugh and His Friends is a thoughtful and balanced portrait of a talented group, including Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Powell, Graham Greene, John Betjeman, and Harold Acton, beginning with their lives at public school (usually Eton) and at Oxford. It's a little more a biography of Waugh than of the whole group, but Carpenter does keep up with the others, following them and Waugh through their careers and personal lives. It's a thoughtful and balanced portrait which made me want to read more about several of them, particularly Acton and Betjeman.

Books read: 1

29 August 2004

• Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone is generally thought to be one of the finest English detective novels; T.S. Eliot, in fact, called it "the first, the longest, and the best". The relatively simple (for Collins) plot involves the Moonstone, a mystical yellow diamond; stolen from a shrine in India, it is eventually given to Rachel Verinder on her eighteenth birthday and stolen again that same night.
  
  The search for the thief and for the Moonstone is narrated by several different characters; this is a device Collins also used to good effect in The Woman in White, and here he uses it again in order to limit the amount of information given out to the reader by each narrator. This isn't just a narrative gimmick, though; Collins takes care to make sure that the narrator's voices are wonderfully differentiated. The two most interesting narrators (and probably the two most dissimilar, yet utterly believable) are Gabriel Betteredge, the homely steward to the Verinder family, who has recourse to Robinson Crusoe and a pipe when troubled, and Miss Clack, their sanctimonious busybody of a cousin, given to strewing tracts everywhere and sermonizing. (There's a wonderful bit with Miss Clack and a cab driver: when she doesn't tip him, he swears at her, whereupon she instantly gives him a tract and he drives off in fury: "Quite useless, I am happy to say! I sowed the good seed, in spite of him, by throwing a second tract in at the window of the cab.")
  
  Compared to Collins' other novels, The Moonstone is quieter, less contrived in plot, and less melodramatic, yet it is as gripping as any of them.

Books read: 1

Total books read this month: 41
Total books read this year: 268

Last updated 29 November 2005. All text and photographs © George Mitchell and Margaret Johnston, unless otherwise noted Comments, questions, suggestions to margaret@lonelymountain.net.