Book log archives - March 2007

Archives - March 2007

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Nancy Conrad and Howard A. Klausner, Rocketman: Astronaut Pete Conrad's Incredible Ride to the Moon and Beyond: This was a fast breezy read which captures much of Conrad's happy-go-lucky, charming personality, but is often disappointingly sketchy. According to the acknowledgements, Conrad and his wife Nancy spent hours making recordings of his reminiscences and filing his personal papers and photos, before his untimely death in a motorcycle accident several years ago, and the book is based largely on those, with writing assistance from screenwriter Klausner. I thought the book balanced uncomfortably on the line between memoir and biography, with neither the fully realized voice of Conrad, had he been able to write it himself, nor the level of detail I would have expected from a third-person biography. Still, it's fun and fast to read -- recommended with reservations and the hope of a more in-depth biography in the future.

Diana Wynne Jones, The Game: Hayley has lived with her grandparents ever since her parents disappeared years ago. When she does something to upset her grandmother, she's suddenly sent to live with her aunts in Ireland, where she joins her cousins in playing a mysterious game in which they visit a wonderful place called the mythosphere, where stories live and are connected to each other. I loved the premise of the mythosphere, but I didn't think the novella form gave enough room to explore it and the ways in which Hayley and her family interact with it. Also, the resolution was way too easy; I never felt much tension about the outcome. There are some wonderful ideas here, though, and I rather hope Jones returns to this universe sometime to explore them some more.

Maureen Johnson, Devilish: Jane Jarvis isn't looking forward to her senior year at St. Teresa's Preparatory School for Girls; she's unpopular and proud of it, but she does have her best friend Allison as an ally. She does, that is, until something strange happens to Allison, who's suddenly attractive, smart, and dating Jane's ex, Elton. Clearly, Allison has sold her soul to the devil -- quite literally, and Jane decides to save it for her, with the assistance of a mysterious but very cute freshman boy. Devilish is populated with well-drawn characters, but Jane is particularly great: snarky, rebellious, and very smart. I liked this a lot and will likely seek out Johnson's other books.

Juliet Marillier, Wildwood Dancing: This is Marillier's first YA novel, and it's a good one, combining "The Twelve Dancing Princesses" with lore of vampires and other fantastical beings to create a very good story. Fifteen-year-old Jena lives with her four sisters and her father in Piscul Dracului, an old, intriguing castle near a mysterious forest and lake, where Jena's cousin Costi drowned when she was five. The sisters lead an ordinary existence by day, but they have a secret; on each night of the full moon, they enter a passageway from their bedroom which leads to an enchanted place where they play, talk, and dance the night away with fairies, trolls, dwarves...and one night, the frightening Night People, who are said to drink human blood. I thought Marillier did an excellent job combining various elements from fairy tales and folklore into a harmonious whole, and her characters are memorable; each sister has a very definite personality, as do the cast of supporting characters. I do wish she'd spent a little more time on the sisters' main antagonist; there were some interesting motivations there, and the resolution of that part of the plot was unsatisfying. I hope Marillier writes more YA -- I enjoyed this more than any of her books in quite a while.

Antonia Forest, The Player's Boy: I bought this as soon as Girls Gone By reprinted it last year and have been holding off reading it until they decide to reprint the sequel. But they haven't announced plans for the sequel yet, and I couldn't wait any longer for a Forest fix. Here, Forest goes back in time to the Elizabethan era to tell the story of Nicholas Marlow, a forebear of the Marlows of her other books. Nicholas runs away from his family and falls in with first Christopher Marlowe, until something terrible happens in Deptford, and then with William Shakespeare and his group of players. As usual for Forest, the characterization is excellent and the plot very engaging, and her feel for Elizabethan life is good. I do rather wish now I'd waited to read The Player's Boy, because it ends on something of a cliffhanger (having been originally intended as simply the first part of the book, which was split in two for publishing reasons), but hey, this way I can look forward to reading it again.

Garth Nix, Mister Monday, Grim Tuesday, Drowned Wednesday, Sir Thursday: Again, I knew I should have waited to start these until they were all out, but I just couldn't. When Arthur Penhaligon has a nearly fatal asthma attack, he has a bizarre experience which saves his life...but also endangers it again by introducing him to a mysterious and frightening realm where he is the Rightful Heir, who must save that world and his own from the powerful Morrow Days. As in the Sabriel books, Nix has created an intriguing world and a neat magic system, but I think here he's done a much better job of characterization and particularly of plot. (I need to reread Sabriel and its sequels, but I distinctly recall being bored by Abhorsen.) I have Lady Friday on hold at the library and am waiting anxiously for it.

William Goldman, The Season: A Candid Look at Broadway: Goldman's account of the 1967-68 Broadway season is thorough, opinionated, often hilarious, and brutally honest. He takes the reader through every aspect of the season and its productions, from directors, producers, and actors, to the nuts and bolts of ticket selling and theatre rentals. His merciless criticism spares nobody, yet it isn't malicious or mean-spirited; I could feel his genuine love for Broadway and his outrage at the state it was in (and the state many would say it's still in). Though it's nearly forty years later, much of what Goldman has to say here still resonates today. I highly recommend this if you've any interest in the subject at all.

Cicely Hamilton, William - an Englishman: Hamilton's hero and heroine are ordinary English people, William and Griselda. They meet in the course of pursuing their various idealistic causes (pacifism, women's suffrage), get married, and go to a secluded cottage in the Ardennes for their honeymoon. While they're there, cut off from communication with the rest of the world, the war starts, and very soon they are swept into it, with tragic consequences. Hamilton gently mocks their activism and idealism, how they speak of their "war" for Progress; yet when William and Griselda are caught up in the real war, she ceases to mock, and instead one feels her great sympathy for the victims of war and a great rage against the makers of it. This is a stunning, harrowing book and well deserves to have been the first book Persephone reprinted.

Monica Dickens, Mariana: Monica Dickens was the great-granddaughter of Charles Dickens. Of her novels, I've only read Mariana, which I like very much; I would also recommend her non-fiction, particularly the very funny One Pair of Hands, about her work as a cook and the households she worked in. Mariana was Dickens' first novel, published originally in 1940. It begins with Mary, the heroine, learning that her husband's destroyer has been sunk with only a few survivors. While she waits to find out whether her husband is one of them, she takes refuge in thinking of her past: the vivacious mother and actor uncle who brought her up, the beautiful Elizabethan house belonging to her father's family, her education at a strict girls' school and a drama school, and her love affairs in England and Paris. Just as One Pair of Hands and her other autobiographical works do, Mariana draws on Dickens' personal experiences: she too spent her holidays at an ancestral house, she too went to drama school, she too spent time in Paris after leaving school. Perhaps partly because it's based on her own life, the book is full of the small domestic details Dickens is so good at, of clothes, food, gardens, and houses, which I find so fascinating. I've only read this twice, but it's quickly turning into a perfect comfort read.

Dorothy Whipple, Someone at a Distance: This tale of marriage and adultery has a rather pedestrian plot, but outstanding characterization; her lovely prose and the interest she creates in how the characters are going to react to each other and to events made the book utterly absorbing. I'm very interested in reading more Whipple; fortunately Persephone has reprinted others of her books.

Noel Streatfeild, Saplings: an adult novel by the famous children's author. Streatfeild follows a happy middle-class British family into World War II and examines the psychological effects of the war and the evacuations of children from London during the bombings. As with her children's novels, her portrayal of how children think and feel is excellent. Her feel for the adults is rather less so, though it's very interesting to see an author much better known as a children's author dealing with more adult subjects, from drunkenness to death. Streatfeild tackles these with her trademark directness but doesn't quite manage to capture the adults' perspective as well as the children's.

Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Making of a Marchioness: Here's another adult novel by an author much better known for her children's books. The only other adult novel by Burnett I've read is A Lady of Quality, which I didn't like; I tried The Making of a Marchioness and liked it quite a bit more. The book is divided into two parts. The first is a simple Cinderella tale, akin to Burnett's other books; simple Emily Fox-Seton is raised into the nobility when she marries the Marquis of Walderhurst. In the second part, the book becomes a melodrama as Emily falls prey to the machinations of Alec Osborn, heir to the title unless Emily produces a son. Under the surface of the fairy tale and the melodrama, though, there's a fascinating commentary on late Victorian marriage: Emily and Lord Walderhurst, Alec Osborn and his wife Hester, and the beautiful Lady Agatha, who must soon marry well or step aside for her younger sisters and face the grim fate of a spinster.

Thea Holme, The Carlyles at Home: In spite of the title, this small book is really more about Jane than Thomas. Holme traces the Carlyles' life in London from their installation at their house in Cheyne Row until Jane's death more than 30 years later. She doesn't go much into their relationship, preferring to concentrate on the details of their domestic lives and more particularly Jane's occupations and health. It's far from exhaustive, but I think it does a nice job portraying the couple, their home, and the other people in their lives (especially their succession of sometimes eccentric household help).

Scott Westerfeld, Evolution's Darling: The Darling of the title is an astronavigational computer who becomes sentient due to a close relationship with a teenage girl; after acquiring a robot body, Darling goes off in search of an AI artist and becomes involved with a female assassin. I liked this less than I was hoping. There are some interesting ideas about artificial and human intelligence and individuality, but on the whole, the characters didn't grab me, the plot was choppy, and I disliked the multiple violent sexual episodes.

Charles de Lint, The Little Country: When musician Janey Little discovers an unknown novel by her favorite writer, she and her family and friends are drawn into a battle with a mysterious organization and its powerful leader. The story-inside-a-story format works well here; I was about equally interested in both and so wasn't irritated to be going back and forth. It did take me a while to warm up to some of the characters, but I quite liked this overall.

Sarah Dessen, This Lullaby: This is another really good Dessen, in which Remy, the emotionally detached heroine, falls in love with a totally unsuitable guy and learns to open up. Like Dessen's other books, it's wise without being preachy and has great characters and relationships. I'm having trouble restraining myself from buying all of her other books immediately-if-not-sooner.

Ruth Reichl, Tender at the Bone: Like Garlic and Sapphires, Reichl combines memoir and food writing beautifully, with mouthwatering recipes and descriptions along with witty, often poignant reminiscences. I especially loved the part where she goes to girls' school in Montreal and visits a friend's family, where the friend's father discovers Reichl's taste for good food and offers her all sorts of fabulous food.

Maeve Binchy, Whitethorn Woods: I liked this quite a bit more than her last couple of books, which I found thinly characterized (especially Night of Rain and Stars). Binchy takes a unifying theme -- a small Irish community with a sacred well in danger of being wiped out by a bypass -- and weaves a series of cleverly intertwined stories around it. The stories are each told in two parts, in first person, by two different characters speaking of some of the same events, and the different viewpoints make the characterization especially rich. I've read Binchy's last few from the library and not bothered to buy them in paperback, but this one I think I will buy, as I can definitely see rereading it.

Jessica Mitford, Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford, edited by Peter Y. Sussman: Oh, how I shrieked over these. Besides the eternal Mitford fascination, I loved reading about Decca's muckraking career, which isn't really covered in either of her two autobiographies (Hons and Rebels and A Fine Old Conflict), and about the things she left out of the autobiographies, most notably her reaction to the death of her son, Nicholas, at the age of ten in a car-bike accident (which is barely mentioned in AFOC). Now I would like someone to do a collection of the Duchess of Devonshire's letters, please, though I imagine that won't happen until after her death; I would like to see her side of some of the exchanges with Decca. Oh, and I thought Sussman's editing was very good -- just the right number of explanatory notes and excellent, witty introductions to each chapter. It's a long book, but I'd have read twice as many letters gladly and only wished it was longer.

Moss Hart, Act One; Steven Bach, Dazzler: The Life and Times of Moss Hart: Act One is a wonderful memoir of Moss Hart's climb to Broadway fame as a playwright and director, full of memorable people and witty descriptions. It truly is only Act One, though, as Hart brings the curtain down just after he achieves success on Broadway with the production of his first hit, Once in a Lifetime (written with George S. Kaufman). Happily, just before I finished it, I came across Bach's Dazzler in a San Francisco bookstore (why, yes, I do have to visit at least one bookstore even on a two-day trip) and was pleased to have that to finish up Hart's life story. Bach's account is a well-balanced and fairly thorough one, though there were some places where he had to resort to speculation, as Hart's widow didn't give Bach access to Hart's personal papers. The speculation is labeled as such, though, and Bach does do a particularly good job showing when what Hart wrote in Act One didn't exactly correspond to what really happened.

Margaret Kennedy, Troy Chimneys: Miles Lufton is a rising MP in Regency England with excellent prospects, but he lives a double life of sorts: one side of him is "Pronto", the energetic rake who thrives in the political scene, while the "Miles" side longs for a quiet life at his country house, Troy Chimneys. The period detail and voice are excellent, and Miles' split personality is beautifully done, along with his bittersweet romance. I really, really liked this and am feeling as though I'm not doing it justice here, but if you like historical novels, it's worth searching out; I'll certainly be looking for more Kennedy.

Monica Dickens, An Open Book: This autobiography was nostalgic and amusing, as I'd expected it to be, but it didn't quite fill in the gaps left by her other autobiographical books (One Pair of Hands, One Pair of Feet, My Turn to Make the Tea), nor did it provide as much as I wanted about the rest of her life. Much of it is about the real-life experiences and research Dickens used as material for her books, which is often potentially fascinating. But there just isn't enough of it -- she spends a few pages on each new topic or experience (going round with social workers, for example), always leaving me wanting more. Perhaps if I can track down more of her novels and read them, I'll get what was missing here.


Last updated 6 August 2007. All text and photographs © George Mitchell and Margaret Johnston, unless otherwise noted Comments, questions, suggestions to margaret@lonelymountain.net.