Archives - July 2005

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1 July 2005

Harry Heathcote of Gangoil is one of Anthony Trollope's lesser-known novels, which he wrote as a "Christmas story" (like Dickens's A Christmas Carol) in 1874. Trollope disliked Christmas stories, saying in his Autobiography that "[n]othing can be more distasteful to me than to have to give a relish of Christmas to what I write", but the demand for his novels had begun to die down, and so he turned his hand to Harry Heathcote.

Trollope does provide the requisite Christmas story and happy ending, but he also shows his willingness to try new things; this novel is set entirely in Australia, unlike any of his other novels, and his evocation of Australian is really fascinating. The plot provides some tension, as the eponymous hero struggles to keep his land safe from arsonists, but the characters are less perceptively drawn and interesting than usual for Trollope; perhaps because he based his hero on his own son, Frederic, who attempted the sheep farming life in Australia (unsuccessfully, as it turned out), he wasn't able to apply his usual objective, searching approach to dissecting and showing the personality of his characters. There's also the requisite romance, but it seems put there for the sake of the plot and of the happy ending, and it's never particularly engaging. In the end, the book is worth reading for Trollope's look at life in Australia, but the characters simply fail to be up to his normal high standards.

Books read: 1

2 July 2005

Frederica is one of the best I've read of Georgette Heyer's novels. Frederica Merriville is in charge of her family while the head of the household, her brother Harry, is at Oxford; she goes to the Marquis of Alverstoke, a distant relation, to engage his help in launching her beautiful sister Charis into society. I loved the Merriville family (particularly the sensible Frederica and her youngest brother, impetuous, machine-mad Felix) and how the cynical Alverstoke is gradually drawn into all of their doings. Heyer's depiction of Regency London is spot-on, as always for the mistress of Regency romance, and this is altogether an entirely charming book.

Books read: 1

3 July 2005

I loved Rumer Godden's China Court so much that I could easily sit down right now and reread it. I'm not sure why I'd never read it before, as I adore In This House of Brede, and China Court: The Hours of a Country House is one of the better-known of her other books. It tells the tale of China Court and of the Quin family, over the years they live there. Godden interweaves the past with the present masterfully, with layers upon layers of stories slowly unfolding in tandem; while the present-day sections are told in the past tense, Godden slips into the present tense when she goes back in time, lending past events the immediacy of the present. Although there's necessarily a somewhat large cast of characters, they're richly portrayed as individuals and handled as masterfully as the narrative is. China Court is going directly onto my shelf of best-loved books (well, right after I get my mother to read it).

Books read: 1

4 July 2005

A History of Britain: At the Edge of the World? 3000BC-AD1603 is the first volume of Simon Schama's three-volume companion to his BBC and History Channel series on British history. The narrative is to a large extent a repeat of the narration from the documentary (I could often hear Schama in my mind reading the text aloud, in his inimitable speaking style), but there's enough extra information to make the book worth reading along with watching the shows. As an overall history of Britain, it's highly engaging, though perhaps a tad light on details (perhaps to be expected from a volume that covers more than 4600 years of history in less than 400 pages).

Books read: 1

6 July 2005

I'm finding Philippa Gregory's Wideacre trilogy (comprising Wideacre, The Favoured Child, and Meridon) rather hard to write about. Although they're powerfully written and very emotionally engaging, they were difficult to read. Set in England in the eighteenth century, they tell the story of three generations of the Lacey women, whose family owns the large Sussex estate of Wideacre. Wideacre's narrator is Beatrice Lacey (all of the books are written in the first person), who's an amazing but distressing character; she commits all sorts of crimes in the name of her obsession with possessing Wideacre, and although what she does is often understandable and she does show remorse, her actions are often so heinous that it's hard to sympathize with her. I had almost the opposite problem with the second book, whose heroine Julia is a much more sympathetic character who tries to do the right thing and is repeatedly defeated. The third book has a somewhat happier ending, but the overall feeling of the books was so harrowing that I'm still not sure whether I can say that I really enjoyed them: more that I just couldn't stop reading them. Maybe I'll read them again someday and be able to analyze my reactions better, but for now, I'll just say that if you're looking for powerfully written, compelling historical fiction, give them a try, but keep in mind that they're not for the faint of heart.

Books read: 3

7 July 2005

I first read Sherwood Smith's Crown Duel last October and enjoyed it very much, after getting over a certain dislike of the heroine. Rereading those comments, it occurs to me that a plot summary might be useful, since I didn't provide one the first time, and really, anything I can do to encourage people to read this book is a Good Thing. When their father dies, the young Countess Meliara and her brother Count Branaric inherit his struggle against the grasping, tyrannical king. They're drawn into a world of war and intrigue, where nothing is as it seems and where Meliara must quickly use her native intelligence to figure out how to handle herself and protect her country. The characterization is marvelous (particularly of Meliara), the narrative and pacing excellent, and the writing accomplished. If you like young adult fantasy at all and haven't read Crown Duel, you're missing out.

Books read: 1

8 July 2005

I liked Rebecca Tingle's first YA historical, The Edge on the Sword, very much and was pleased to see that there was a sequel, Far Traveler. Far Traveler is the story of Aelfwyn, daughter of Aethelflaed, heroine of the first book; when Aethelflaed, ruler of Mercia, suddenly dies, Wyn's uncle King Edward tries to use her as a pawn to re-establish control over Mercia, whereupon Wyn must reinvent herself in order to escape him. I wasn't quite as fond of the timid, introverted Wyn as I was of her stronger mother, but Tingle has come up with an intriguing story for a woman whose real fate is unknown to history.

Books read: 1

9 July 2005

Daphne du Maurier's Mary Anne is an odd sort of beast, a mix of historical fact and fiction that doesn't quite work. Mary Anne Clarke was the scandalous mistress of George III's son the Duke of York; she was also du Maurier's great-great-grandmother. Clearly, Mary Anne led a very interesting life; unfortunately, though du Maurier succeeds in drawing the strength of her character, her style of telling Mary Anne's story is lackluster. It would have been better as straight historical biography or as historical fiction than it is as a blend of both; as it is, there's too much invention (largely of dialogue) for it to seem reliable as history, and not enough emotion or narrative drive for it to work as fiction.

Books read: 1

10 July 2005

I find that oddly, I have little to say about Adrienne Rich's landmark study of motherhood, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. I've felt for a while that I should read it, and then my book group chose it, which provided the necessary impetus. Rich takes an approach that's at once scholarly and personal; she examines the history and literature of motherhood, while also drawing on her own experiences. I found it interesting enough, though occasionally over my head, and I was often surprised at how little society has changed in many ways; yet I was curiously unsatisfied by it. Perhaps I simply wished for more engagement with Rich's experiences; perhaps I needed to read it in a less scattershot, more concentrated way (I read it over the course of two or three weeks, in the evenings when I had time). Much of it did speak to me, so I expect I'll try reading it again in a few years and see if I can engage with it more.

Books read: 1

11 July 2005

I decided that before reading Laurie R. King's The Game again, I should read Rudyard Kipling's Kim, as King calls The Game "a humble and profoundly felt homage" to Kim. Besides, I'd never read it, and it's one of those classics I felt I should get around to someday. Kimball O'Hara is the orphaned son of an Irish soldier who was stationed in India; when his father died, Kim was raised by a half-caste woman and learned to live on the streets of Lahore. The story begins when Kim meets a Tibetan lama who is in search of the mystical Buddhist River of the Arrow; Kim becomes the lama's chela, or disciple, and travels with him through India. The other side of Kim's heritage tugs at him too, though, when he is discovered by some English soldiers and eventually pulled into Britain's espionage network in India.

The story is more a series of episodes than a tightly plotted narrative, set against the colorful background of Kipling's India. The characters are as memorable as the setting: the gentle lama, the horse trader Mahbub Ali, the British-educated Hurree Chunder Mookerjee, the mysterious Lurgan Sahib, and most of all, Kim himself, in all the complexity of his nature and upbringing. It's not a novel to be read at breakneck speed, but one to be savored, as Kim and Kipling savor the diversity and colour of 19th-century India.

Books read: 1

13 July 2005

Before reading Laurie R. King's new Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes novel, Locked Rooms, I felt like rereading the previous two novels in the series, Justice Hall and The Game. Besides the first book, The Beekeeper's Apprentice, these two might be the high point of the series for me, particularly Justice Hall, which I liked even more this time than the first time I read it. It begins with a bang, when Russell opens the door and finds their friend Ali (whom we met in O Jerusalem) wounded and fainting on the doorstep; it turns out that Ali and his cousin Mahmoud are really Alistair and Marsh Hughenfort, and that Marsh is in fact the Duke of Beauville. Ali asks for Holmes and Russell to help Marsh, thus drawing them into a web of family loyalties and treacheries dating back to the execution of the ducal heir during WWI. The mystery is intriguing, the pacing taut, and the characterization superb.

I don't think I have anything much to add to my earlier comments on The Game, other than that I think King generally did Kipling and his characters justice. Therefore, I'll go on to Locked Rooms, which follows almost immediately on from The Game. At long last, King is exploring Russell's shadowy past; her parents and brother were killed in a car accident which she survived and which she's always thought she caused by starting a fight with her brother. When Russell decides that she and Holmes should return to England by way of San Francisco, she starts to act oddly and have nightmares of faceless men and locked rooms, and when they arrive in San Francisco, it becomes clear that there is a great deal of mystery surrounding her family's death.

While I really liked the exploration of Russell's past and psyche, I wasn't thrilled with the narrative framework King chose. Previous books have been represented as Russell's own writings, which King was mysteriously chosen to present to the world; here, much of the narrative is still Russell's, but King has added several sections of third-person narrative from Holmes's point of view. Though I was interested to see Holmes's POV, I thought that the narrative voice in these sections wasn't very well handled -- it jumped from person to person, sometimes in the space of a page, and lost believability thereby. Along with the narrative framework, the solution to the mystery proved less than compelling, but Russell's psychological journey was interesting enough to leave me with a generally positive impression of the book.

Books read: 3

15 July 2005

Robertson Davies's What's Bred in the Bone is one of those books I guess I'm going to have to reread in order to define why I liked it so much. It's a sort of fictional biography, telling the life story of Francis Cornish, starting from a conversation between his heirs and his potential biographers and told with interjections from a pair of supernatural beings, the Lesser Zadkiel (the Angel of Biography) and Maimon, Francis's personal daimon. The daimons provide interesting analysis of Francis's life along the way, as well as inspiring thought about the nature of free will, whether one controls one's own life or whether it's truly shaped by outside forces and by "what's bred in the bone", a phrase that comes up often.

Okay, that makes the book sound just sort of freaky, and really, it's not. It's full of fascinating characters, chief among them Francis himself, and a tightly twisted plot, in which past actions and accidents often affect the present. Probably the best recommendation I can give it is that I intend to go out and buy the other two books in the trilogy (this is apparently the middle book, but they're not so tightly connected that it matters, I think) as soon as I can. Perhaps reading them will help me figure out what it is about Davies's writing that I like so much.

Books read: 1

16 July 2005

A Gladiator Dies Only Once is the second collection of short stories (after The House of the Vestals) in Steven Saylor's excellent Gordianus the Finder mystery series, set in ancient Rome in the 1st century BCE. The short story format doesn't allow Saylor to develop plots with the complexity of those in the novels, but the stories are satisfying nonetheless, not least for the exploration of aspects of Roman life and culture which haven't come up in the novels. These range from gladiators, in the title story, to chariot racing and the manufacture of the curious Roman condiment called garum. As always, the appearances of historical personages are convincing, and again, Saylor introduces people who haven't appeared in the novels, most notably the politician Lucullus and the rebel general Sertorius. I'm looking forward eagerly to Saylor's next Gordianus novel, but A Gladiator Only Dies Once was a welcome tidbit to keep me going until then.

Books read: 1

17 July 2005

Patricia A. McKillip's Od Magic isn't one of her best, but it's still a pleasure to read. When the isolated Brenden Vetch, who has a gift for plants, meets Od, a mysterious and powerful wizard, she sends him to her school in the city of Kelior, where every wizard must be trained to serve the kingdom of Numis...and to be controlled by the king. His arrival at the school sets off a chain of events which affects the other wizards at the school, the enigmatic magician Tyramin and his daughter, and even the king and his daughter, Princess Sulys.

I liked how McKillip subtly investigates her theme of governmental control without becoming at all preachy, but I thought that the book suffers a little from having too many points of view; particularly, I thought Brenden, with whom the book started, got a little lost by the end, and I'd have liked more focus on fewer characters. (Though I don't know which viewpoints I'd give up, as I did engage with all of the viewpoint characters - perhaps a slightly longer book might have satisfied me more on this point.)

Books read: 1

18 July 2005

Catherine Newman is a columnist for Babycenter, and I often read her columns and chuckle. I more than chuckled at her new book (partly adapted from those columns): Waiting for Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family is hilarious, yet poignant. It begins when Newman and her husband discovered that she was pregnant with their second child, right around their son Ben's third birthday. Newman's recounting of her pregnancy, Ben's journey through toddlerhood, and Birdy's birth are full of joy, laughter, and tenderness; I know this sounds soppy, but I actually had tears in my eyes several times (and not only from laughter). Waiting for Birdy is right up there with Anne Lamott's marvelous Operating Instructions as one of the funniest, most truthful books about being a parent that I've ever read.

Books read: 1

25 July 2005

Sherwood Smith and Dave Trowbridge's five-volume space opera, the Exordium series (comprising The Phoenix in Flight, Ruler of Naught, A Prison Unsought, The Rifter's Covenant, The Thrones of Kronos), is out of print, which is a shame. As the series begins, Jerrode Eusabian, Ruler of Dol'jhar and called the Lord of Vengeance, has set in motion a plot to assassinate Emperor Gelasaar of the Thousand Suns, along with his three sons. However, Gelasaar's youngest son, Brandon, escapes, and it's up to him to restore the House of the Phoenix to the throne Eusabian has usurped.

The universe Smith and Trowbridge have created is large, complex, and fascinating: the interplay between different cultures (the Panarchists, the Dol'jharians, the Rifters), the alien species, the religions. The plot is equally intricate; the authors keep the different threads going nicely and are adept at picking up threads left alone for a while -- for instance, the reappearance of a minor point-of-view character from the first book in a larger role in the fifth book surprised and pleased me. The characters are well thought out and engaging; even the "bad guys" are often sympathetically portrayed (with the exception of Eusabian, a villain through and through).

A word of warning: if you like your endings tied up neatly, you probably won't like this series. Much is certainly resolved in the fifth book, but there are important points which are left open-ended. If this betokens further books in the series, they're certainly welcome!

Books read: 5

26 July 2005

Along with most of the rest of the world, I have of course been eagerly awaiting the next installment in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Being picky, I like to get the UK editions (because the American ones have been edited for American readers, which I think is ridiculous), and thus, I had to wait an extra week or so to receive my copy in the mail (plus I was on vacation when the book actually arrived). I was glued to it as soon as I opened it, and it proved to be well worth the wait.

The series continues to get darker (particularly after the previous book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix), but this book provided enough humorous moments to counterbalance the more serious passages (though don't get me wrong, there were a lot of the latter). Clearly I can't discuss the plot in detail for fear of spoilers, but I liked Harry's character development; he's grown up a lot in the last two books and is becoming more mature and complex. The ending was certainly a shocker, in what actually happened and in its implications for Harry's future; it's going to be a long wait for the final volume.

Books read: 1

27 July 2005

Georgette Heyer's The Black Sheep has an unusual heroine and hero: Abby Wendover, twenty-eight and considered on the shelf, and Miles Calverleigh, a rake with a scandalous past and a disdain for the restraints of polite society. They meet as Abby is trying to extricate her naive niece Fanny from the fortune-hunting clutches of Miles's nephew Stacy. Also unusually for Heyer, Abby and Miles fall in love quickly, and the rest of the book deals with their discovery of their love and with what they do about it. The subplot about Fanny and Stacy isn't tremendously gripping, though it intertwines nicely with Abby and Miles; it's Abby's and Miles's relationship that's enchanting. I got this from the library and am obviously going to have to track down a copy -- it's definitely worth a future reread.

Books read: 1

28 July 2005

Valiant: A Modern Tale of Faerie is a return to the mysterious, urban faerie world of Holly Black's earlier Tithe; though it's not a direct sequel by any means, there is a short appearance by characters from the first book. When Valerie makes a shocking discovery at home, she runs away to New York City, where she falls in with a gang of teens who live in the subways -- and learns that one of them, Luis, claims to be able to see faeries. Valerie tracks down the creature Luis works for -- a troll named Ravus -- and gets far more than she bargained for, as she's drawn deeper into the faerie world. Although the grimness of Black's urban faerie world isn't quite up my alley, I thought the characters and plot were well done and the romance more unexpected and interesting than that in Tithe.

Books read: 1

29 July 2005

In an outburst of nostalgia, I picked up a bunch of Lois Duncan YA suspense books at Powell's recently and read them all in a bunch -- Down a Dark Hall, Stranger with My Face, Summer of Fear, and Daughters of Eve, all rereads except for the last. I was surprised at how well they held up -- I'd reread Down a Dark Hall a couple of years ago and knew I still liked it, but Stranger with My Face and Summer of Fear still worked well also, and Daughters of Eve was simply chilling.

Stranger with My Face and Summer of Fear have some similarities of theme, as they both have to do with issues of identity and displacement. In Stranger with My Face, Laurie Stratton starts to feel as though a mysterious someone is spying on her, and her friends keep seeing her in places Laurie knows she never went, and Laurie must find out more about her mysterious double. Rachel of Summer of Fear has to deal with her cousin Julia, who moves in with Rae's family when her parents die in a mysterious car accident; Julia slowly works her way into the affections of Rae's family, friends, and even boyfriend, leaving Rae feeling displaced and wondering about Julia's mysterious power of enchanting others.

Down a Dark Hall was always my favorite Duncan, and the only one I've reread several times since I was a teenager. When Kit Gordy enters a private school, she's shocked to discover that there are only three other students, and she's disturbed by the school itself, whose atmosphere she immediately feels is evil. Eventually, Kit makes a chilling discovery about why she and the other three girls were the only ones selected; I don't want to reveal this, as it would be a massive spoiler, but this aspect of the plot just fascinates me. Kit herself is a particularly attractive, down-to-earth heroine, and the grim ambience of the school is spine-tinglingly effective, even years after I read the book for the first time.

Daughters of Eve is a little different from the others, being more of a psychological thriller than a supernatural one (though there is a supernatural element). The Daughters of Eve are the high school's most exclusive club, led by art teacher Irene Stark, and new members Ruth, Jane, and Laura are thrilled to be asked to join. Slowly, the club is led by Irene to question the gender assumptions which hem them in on all sides, and they eventually take some shocking actions in order to redress the balance. The characterizations are sharply observed, and the character interactions are equally perceptive and often simply painful to read, as the girls (and their mothers, in several cases) encounter sexism in many forms, from straightforward prejudice to outright physical abuse. As the girls spiral downward from simple redress into outright vengeance, the book becomes a chilling look at the effects of institutionalized gender roles. It's not for those who want a happy ending, or answers to the questions Duncan brings up; she offers neither.

Books read: 4

31 July 2005

Sarah Monette's Mélusine is a fabulous debut fantasy novel, about a pair of unlikely heroes in a richly imagined world. Felix Harrowgate is a wizard of the Mirador, powerful and respected until a long-held secret is divulged which drives him back to his evil master, Malkar, and into insanity. Meanwhile, the thief Mildmay the Fox is drawn into intrigue when he meets Ginevra, a beautiful shopgirl who wants him to steal back some items from her former lover. Eventually, the separate stories of Felix and Mildmay combine into one, as they form an unlikely partnership.

The real triumph of Mélusine is in its language and voice. Monette tells the story in three separate voices -- Felix's haughty sanity, Felix's insane delirium, and Mildmay's slangy thieves' cant -- and she handles them brilliantly, never losing her grasp for an instant or letting the reader be confused about who's narrating. Along with the narrative voices, the language is simply lush and vivid, utterly suitable to the richness of the setting; the city of Mélusine is particularly well described in Mildmay's sections of the narrative.

As far as the characters go, I preferred Mildmay's narrative to some extent, as he's the more immediately sympathetic character, with unsuspected depths of feeling. Felix falls into madness so quickly that it was a little difficult for me truly to enpathize with the change in his circumstances, as there had been so little time to get to know him before his fall. Still, the vivid, present-tense passages where he's delirious and mad are emotionally compelling, simply for the horror of what he endures.

I should say here that I think the publishers of Mélusine did the book a terrible disservice by failing to mention anywhere in the book (even on the last page) that it is the first of two books; there is an upcoming sequel, due out next summer, titled The Virtu. If I hadn't known before I started Mélusine that there would be another book, I would have been very disappointed in the lack of any real resolution to the plot. As it is, I was able to revel in the rich setting, languages, and characters, and now I can look forward to rereading Mélusine when The Virtu is published.

Books read: 1

Total books read this month: 32
Total books read this year: 240


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