Book log archives - November 2008

Archives - November 2008

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Jenny Davidson, The Explosionist: Sophie lives in an alternate Scotland around 1935, in a world where Napoleon won at Waterloo, and Scotland and the Scandinavian countries have established a new Hanseatic League to resist being forcibly joined to the rest of Europe. Terrorist bombings are increasing, and the Scottish minister of public safety is calling for war. Spiritualism is very real, and consultations with the dead through mediums are common.

In these turbulent times, Sophie wants nothing more than to go to university and study science after leaving her girls' boarding school. Instead, she fears she'll be forced to join IRYLNS, a governmental agency which trains young women as personal assistants to male government officials, and perhaps does more than simply train them, as Sophie finds out when she visits with her aunt. And when a medium at her aunt's house delivers a frightening prophecy to her and then is murdered, Sophie and her friend Mikael must unpick a tangled web of lies, violence, and political intrigue.

I liked Davidson's taking-off point for her alternate history and the idea of the New Hanseatic League, and I thought she created a believable political world. She's rather too prone to drop famous names into the narrative, arbitrarily changing their professions and lives -- for example, there's a reference to "the theology of Count Tolstoy, the novels of Richard Wagner, the verse of Albert Einstein, or the operas of James Joyce" -- which I found distracting at first and then just annoying. I can see how this might be hard to resist, but I would much rather have read more about how the political history of the world had developed.

I quite liked clever, scientifically-minded Sophie herself, and I liked her complex relationship with her aunt (and how her aunt, who feels that emotion is bad, tries to deal with her love for Sophie) and with her friends at school. The understated romance is handled nicely, and also Sophie's schoolgirl crush on her chemistry teacher, with its attendant awkwardness and misery.

Davidson does a good job in adding detail and complexity to the plot slowly, so that Sophie's race to solve the mysteries becomes more and more tense. I wish I had known in advance that a sequel is in the works, as I found the ending overly abrupt. Still, I'll definitely be reading the sequel!
Elizabeth C. Bunce, A Curse Dark as Gold: Charlotte Miller and her sister Rosie have problems. Their father has just died, leaving their family mill in deep debt. Their long-lost uncle has arrived and is pushing them to sell. But their small community relies on the mill for its residents' livelihoods, and Charlotte isn't willing to give up her life and her friends' lives so easily. When Jack Spinner shows up and promises a way out, Charlotte makes a bargain with him to save the mill, but she gets far more than she bargained for and must figure out the mysterious connections of the past, between Jack Spinner, her mill, and her family. The book starts out in a solid, historical-feeling kind of way; only slowly does Bunce introduce the fantastic elements and thus the real impetus of the plot. It's a little too slow in the beginning, yet it builds up to real tension by the end.

Charlotte is an intelligent and dedicated heroine, and I appreciated that, but I have to admit that by the end, I was a little impatient with her unwillingness to share her burdens and her increasing knowledge of the situation with anyone. This dimmed the charm of the main romance for me: I couldn't quite believe in how quickly it started and how it could have been maintained in the face of Charlotte's pigheadedness. I rather preferred the secondary romance, a very understated one between Charlotte's sister Rosie and one of the millworkers, and I'd have liked to see more of that.

By now, I'm sure you've figured out which fairy tale this is a retelling of. I love fairy tale retellings and have read a lot of them, and I thought this was a very good one, adding a lot of depth to the tale of "Rumpelstiltskin". I especially liked the setting, which is based on Bunce's research into English and American wool mills in the late 1700s, on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution, which provides some conflict in the plot, as Charlotte must face competition from mills with more efficient, automated systems. Bunce creates a tightly knit neighborhood around the mill, showing how one business can nurture an entire community.

Barring the small issues with pacing and characterization I've noted, I really enjoyed A Curse Dark as Gold and will be looking for more from Bunce. (This was her first novel; she apparently has two more in the works, about "a teenage thief who pretends to be a rich runaway to escape a civil war, only to find herself ensconced in the heart of the rebellion," which sounds like a fun premise.)
Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian: Junior, a budding cartoonist born with a variety of medical problems, has decided: he needs to get off the Spokane Indian reservation, to leave the rez and his problems behind, to go to an all-white high school where he can get a better education. Trouble is, his problems won't go away that easily, and being the only Indian in his school means he's attacked from both sides.

Alexie's voice and the brilliant cartoons drawn by Ellen Forney make this a great book. Junior comes alive on the page: smart, sarcastic, funny, despondent, and struggling to make sense of his experiences. The other characters are well-drawn also, from Junior's friends and family on the reservation (especially his once-friend, now-mortal-enemy Rowdy) to the people he meets in his new school.

Alexie walks a fine line here between the grinding depression of Junior's life and his remarkable resilience and humor, and in the main, he manages to keep his balance. He loses his balance a little near the end, when several tragic things happen in a rush; I thought the piling-on of tragedy, while not unrealistic, made it hard to consider the events and their impact on Junior separately.

Still, it's an amazing book, full of life (both good and bad) and humor and strength, portraying social issues with a complexity that keeps it from being just another teen problem novel.
Kit Reed, The Night Children: Jule Devereaux has been trapped for the night inside the WhirlyFunRide in the gigantic Castertown MegaMall, after she quarreled with her aunt and then her aunt disappeared, just as her parents did years ago. As Jule is about to find out, the mall is much more than it seems, and during the night, it is ruled by gangs of children, abandoned children and runaways who live in secret places in the mall. Or perhaps the children don't really rule here: perhaps the true ruler is the sinister billionaire Amos Zozz, who runs Castertown and the mall and has his own secret plans.

The setting is intriguing, and I liked the complex interactions of the different groups within the mall: the children's gangs, Jule the newbie, Zozz the great and powerful and his daughter Isabella, the corporate Zozzco employees, and the mysterious outsider Lance. The social commentary, about the dangers of capitalism and the ethical treatment of people, is a little unsubtle, and Zozz himself was so over the edge that I found him unbelievable. Yet the plot is sufficiently tense and fast-paced that I was absorbed to the end. I'd be interested to know if there's to be a sequel, since some plot threads are left hanging.
Olivia Manning, The Play Room: This takes place in the 1960s, in a small British seaside town, where teenage Laura longs to grow up and move to London someday. She also longs to be friends with beautiful Vicky Logan, whom Laura worships. But just when something happens to pull Laura and Vicky together and it seems Laura's dreams might come true, Vicky is drawn into an affair with a rough factory worker.

I read this (a Virago reprint) on the strength of Manning's Balkan Trilogy and Levant Trilogy, and I was rather disappointed. I occasionally felt some sympathy for Laura, whose life is constricted by her looks, her small town, and her unsympathetic mother, but none of the other characters came alive for me. Perhaps the book's short length (under 200 pages) contributed to this feeling; the characters and situations generally felt underdeveloped.
Barbara Michaels, Into the Darkness, The Dancing Floor: a pair of rereads -- one is a favorite Michaels; one, well, isn't.

In Into the Darkness, Meg Venturi is called back to her small hometown when her grandfather Dan dies. Unfortunately for Meg's plans to leave as soon as possible, it turns out that Dan left her half the family jewelry business, which Meg has been trying to leave behind because of a family tragedy when she was very young. Even worse, the other half of the business belongs to enigmatic, terse Riley, who turns out to be a genius in designing jewelry but suspected by half the town of having murdered Dan.

Meg is a great heroine, smart, stubborn, and often cranky, and the romance works for me really well. The plot moves right along to a tense ending in which Meg gets to be the courageous rescuer. And I love the jewelry and gemstone knowledge and lore throughout -- ever since I read Into the Darkness and learned about regard rings, I've wanted one that spells out my name. This is one of my favorite Michaels books.

On the other side of the ledger, The Dancing Floor is one of Michaels' last books (she doesn't seem to be writing under this pseudonym any more, just as Elizabeth Peters), and not one of her best. Heather Tradescant is on a pilgrimage to England, to visit historic gardens, as she and her father planned before they died. When she is refused entrance to the 17th-century gardens of Troytan House, now owned by an eccentric millionaire, she instead goes through a mysterious wall of brambles, which takes her into the gardens and also into a set of events which put her life in danger.

I keep it around and reread it occasionally for the historical gardens bits, but as a whole, I find it too long and drawn out to equal Michaels' best novels, which are tense and quick moving. Also, I don't really like the heroine, who's unbelievably rude and yet attracts every male in sight. (I rather like that she is presented as physically unattractive, but I failed to see how her abrasive personality was so alluring.) And lastly, I really don't like the "naturally evil child" theme.
Barbara Vine, The Blood Doctor, King Solomon's Carpet: In The Blood Doctor, Martin Nanther is writing a biography of his great-grandfather Henry, a famous Victorian doctor and hemophilia expert, as the same time as he faces some large issues in his personal life: his wife is obsessed with having a baby, and his seat in the House of Lords is about to be abolished. As in A Dark-Adapted Eye, I really liked how Vine weaves together the past and present history of a family. One would think that the connection would be less immediate here than in A Dark-Adapted Eye, where the narrator actually lived through the past events of the story, but Henry's life and what Martin discovers about it influences Martin's own life in interesting ways. I did figure out fairly early on what the big mystery was about Henry, but that didn't change the impact of the narrative for me; it may be a little less suspenseful than is Vine/Rendell's wont, but I found it absorbingly complex. I was particularly interested, oddly, in the bits about the House of Lords, not a subject I'd ever thought or read much about.

I found King Solomon's Carpet less successful, though the time since I've read it (a couple of weeks) and the fear that my computer is about to shut down again are making me have a hard time defining exactly why. It has generally to do with the London Underground, a broken-down Victorian schoolhouse, and a bunch of people who are living in the house, all rejects from society in various ways. I liked the Underground neepery more than anything; I wasn't particularly invested in the plot or the characters, perhaps because there were too many followed in too much detail.

I also reread The Keys to the Street, by Vine's alter ego (or maybe Vine is Rendell's, I guess) Ruth Rendell. It held up quite well to a reread, as I'd remembered a few bits of the plot, but not the big reveal about one of the characters.
Kage Baker, The Anvil of the World (reread), The House of the Stag: The latter is a prequel to The Anvil of the World, less funny (or at least I found it so), but still good. I reread The Anvil of the World right afterward and liked how The House of the Stag filled out the worldbuilding (though I think they stand on their own just fine).
James P. Blaylock, The Paper Grail: This forms sort of a loose trilogy, apparently, with All the Bells on Earth, which I haven't yet read, and The Last Coin, which I read and enjoyed several months ago. Here, the various characters are on a quest for the Grail, which takes an odd, yet powerful form. I liked the misty north coast California setting, and I always like Blaylock's quirky characters, but I did think the plot took too long to get going.
Liza Dalby, The Tale of Murasaki: a beautifully written imagining of the life of Lady Murasaki, author of The Tale of Genji, interwoven with her actual journal writings. I'd be very interested to read her journal now, as I really couldn't tell which bits were Murasaki and which bits were Dalby, who achieved an elegant, slightly distant style without sacrificing emotion.
George MacDonald Fraser, Flashman and the Mountain of Light, Flashman and the Angel of the Lord: average Flashmans, I think, entertaining, but not outstanding.
Liza Picard, Restoration London: Like Elizabethan London, this is readable and amusing and very detailed, though I still sometimes wanted a deeper look at things.
Ruth Scurr, Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution: a very balanced biography of an enigmatic man. Robespierre is a difficult subject: the "incorruptible" man who at one time opposed the death penalty, yet sent many to their deaths by guillotine before dying himself the same way. Scurr does an admirable job presenting his history and character and offering cogent analyses of his ideas and actions.
Anthony Trollope, The Bertrams: Unusually for Trollope, this is set partly in and around Jerusalem. Unfortunately, this just means that Trollope's insularity and racism, which are why I don't like his travel writing, are to the fore, and so I didn't enormously care for the novel as a whole.
Edith Wharton, The Fruit of the Tree: a little-known, unusual, and fascinating Wharton. She's more generally known for her books about New York and European high society, yet here she chooses a mill town for her setting and creates a love triangle among the poor, radical assistant manager of the mill, a high-minded nurse, and a charming but shallow upper-class widow. As always, Wharton observes her characters sharply, especially Justine, the nurse, who is determined to have a life and a career for herself, to break out of the life another character calls "the plan of bringing up our girls in the double bondage of expediency and unreality, corrupting their bodies with luxury and their brains with sentiment." The plot gets a little unwieldy, but there were more than enough ideas -- about labor reform, class, euthanasia, and the lot of women -- to keep me reading with interest.
A.N. Wilson, London: A History: Perhaps this should have been called: "London: A Collection of Historical Anecdotes and Occasional Authorly Rants". I did enjoy it, mostly, as I generally find Wilson entertaining and interesting, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone looking for an actual history of London. And I definitely wouldn't recommend the last chapter, in which Wilson vents his spleen against London's mayor from 2000-2008, Ken Livingstone, producing a rant which I simply found annoying to read (and not a good way to wind up the book).


Last updated 16 February 2009. All text and photographs © George Mitchell and Margaret Johnston, unless otherwise noted Comments, questions, suggestions to margaret@lonelymountain.net.