Archives - September 2008

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John Marsden, Letters from the Inside: When Mandy answers an ad from another girl, Tracey, who wants to correspond by letter, they begin an epistolary relationship which grows deeper and deeper as each girl opens up and reveals her secrets. I was impressed by the writing, in how Marsden delineates each girl's voice, and by the way in which he slowly allows them to open up to each other. However, I hated the ending. I don't necessarily need a happy ending to enjoy a book, but I do prefer something more definite than this book provided. I did think it was well written, though, and would probably try his other books.
Nicholas Mosley, Julian Grenfell: Julian Grenfell was an Englishman who died young near the beginning of World War I, having written one of the war's most famous poems, "Into Battle". In this biography, Nicholas Mosley is interested in examining what led Julian, his peers, and his family to believe that to kill and die in war was a desirable, even a splendid, thing.

I see why Persephone reprinted the book, which I had wondered about. Their focus on women's literature may make this seem an odd choice, a biography of a man by another man, but Mosley spends just as much time on Julian's mother Ettie as he does on Julian, seeing her as the key to Julian's character. He provides a good portrayal of the mindset of the times, using Ettie and Julian as his exemplars, but I did wish he'd spent more time on the actual subject of his biography instead of seeing everything quite so much through the lens of his mother.
Irene Hunt, The Everlasting Hills: The description (man cannot accept son's mental retardation) and Hunt's other books (omg The Lottery Rose) made me think that this might end up being a gratuitously depressing book, but lo and behold, it really wasn't. Jeremy lives in a small mountain community with his father and his sister Bethany, who teaches at the local school, and although Bethany loves Jeremy for who he is, his father cannot accept that his son is mentally disabled. When two strangers enter their lives, everything changes for the Tydings family. Hunt's characterization is especially good, particularly in her sympathetic and understanding portrayal of Jeremy and of his sister, who might easily be sickeningly saintly but isn't. Sad things happen -- I've never read a Hunt book where sad things didn't happen -- but the ending is believably happy.
Alexandre Dumas, Louise de la Vallière: The second book of the three comprising The Vicomte de Bragelonne, this definitely suffers from middle-book syndrome. After setting up exciting plot threads for our heroes, the four musketeers, in the first book, Dumas doesn't give them much to do here, instead mostly focusing on court intrigue around Louis XIV and his love affairs. Athos, my favorite musketeer (well, tied with d'Artagnan, at least) barely appears at all, leaving the stage to his much more boring son, Raoul, the eponymous Vicomte. Still, there's some good interplay among Aramis, Porthos, and d'Artagnan, who interferes with Aramis's constant plotting; one begins to see the shadows of the mysterious prisoner, the man in the iron mask, who will be the focus of the third volume.
Anita Loos, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes: Loos's tales of gold-diggers Lorelei and Dorothy are razor-sharp and very funny. I had rather a hard time getting into them, because of the deliberately misspelt and repetitious style, but then I started to appreciate how well Loos pulled that off. I particularly liked sarcastic Dorothy (who reminded me of Dorothy Parker, really, with her ability to come up with witty repartee on a moment's notice), but Lorelei is neat, too, and rather more intelligent than she first appears. I got this from the library, but I imagine I'll be buying a copy at some point. (Also, afterward I watched the movie, with Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell, and loved it.)
Elizabeth Peters, The Laughter of Dead Kings: Don't you hate it when you've waited for something for years, and it turns out...disappointing? Peters' last book about art historian sleuth Vicky Bliss was published fourteen years ago, and since then, I and lots of others have been waiting for another one, while Peters continued to write more Amelia Peabody Emerson novels instead. (Not that I have anything against Amelia, but I think there are maybe more novels in that series than there need to be.)

The Laughter of Dead Kings isn't all bad, by any means. It was lovely to see Vicky, her lover and art-thief-turned-honest John, and her enthusiastic and rotund boss, Schmidt (who has a wonderful action scene near the end); the dialogue is still sharp, and I appreciated the return to Egypt, the setting of the last book. But the plot takes an awfully long time to get going; the first three-quarters of the book are simply slow. The last quarter, though, is much better paced and exciting, particularly in the aforementioned scene with Schmidt, and Peters does answer the long-open question of whether and how these books relate to the Amelia books, which is satisfying. I just wish she'd come up with a rather better beginning.
Barbara Vine, A Dark Adapted-Eye: Since I like Ruth Rendell, I thought I'd try her alter ego, Barbara Vine. This edition of Rendell's first book as Vine has an interesting little afterword by the author, discussing her decision to write books under another name, one she thinks of as another aspect of herself; she says she thought books by Barbara rather than Ruth would turn out "a softer voice...more sensitive perhaps, and more intuitive". Indeed, A Dark-Adapted Eye is more introspective and more slowly paced than those of Rendell's books I've read.

It deals with a long-ago murder, a journalist who wants to write a book about the murderess, and the murderess's niece, Faith Severn, to whom the journalist comes for information. We start out knowing who the criminal is, but not exactly the crime, nor the motive, and Vine slowly but surely reveals the pattern of the past (beautifully historically detailed, by the way). But even the ending isn't set in stone; Faith herself never knows everything, and though things are brought to a satisfying conclusion, the uncertainty that remains only increases the psychological realism of the book and its impact. It's been a while since I read a Rendell, but I wonder if I'm going to end up liking Rendell-as-Vine even more.
Lauren Henderson, Strawberry Tattoo, Chained, Pretty Boy: Okay, now I'm even more annoyed that Henderson stopped writing these, because Pretty Boy, while it wraps up its central mystery reasonably well, leaves Sam, our heroine, in a distinctly bad place in her personal life, growing out of some choices she made during the course of the book. I thought what Henderson was doing in exploring Sam's character, her reluctance to make commitments, and her relationship with her boyfriend, Hugo, was really interesting, but it just seemed like an odd place to leave off, particularly with no more books to come (apparently).
Antonia Forest, The Player's Boy, The Player and the Rebels: Here, Forest departs from her modern-day setting for the Elizabethan era to tell the story of Nicholas Marlow, a forebear of the Marlow family 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 (in the second book Nicholas is unwillingly involved with the rebellion of the Earl of Essex), and her feel for Elizabethan life is good, though I think she sees class divides as more fluid than they actually were (especially in Nicholas's friendship with the Earl of Southampton's page, Humfrey). I do love her sensible, relaxed, steadfast Shakespeare and her portrayal of Nicholas's life in the theatre company.
Madame de Sévigné, Selected Letters: Oh, these were utterly delightful, and I wish I had more of them. (Also, I would like to be able to read them in French someday.) They're a simply marvellous mix of court gossip, political news, and family matters, in a fluid and vivacious style, often very funny. I laughed especially over the bit where her son discloses a recent problem with impotence: "He had found a favourable opportunity, and yet, dare I say it? His little gee-gee stopped short at Lerida. It was an extraordinary thing; the damsel had never found herself at such an entertainment in her life. The discomfited knight beat a retreat, thinking he was bewitched." (Although interestingly, she goes on to say, apparently without being upset, that her son told her that she had given him "some of the ice in [her] composition".) Yet the letters aren't all humor; there's the sadness of death and of separation, and the melancholy of introspection, and the love of nature and literature.
Anthony Trollope, La Vendée: I have got to Trollope's third novel in my ongoing Trollope-read, and unfortunately, I can see why it's little-known. It's a historical romance, set during the French revolution, and unfortunately, it's not a good genre for him (I don't think he ever wrote in it again). The characters are rather stereotypical (virtuous rebel aristocrats, evil revolutionaries, simple peasants), not as richly drawn as in later Trollope, though I did like his thoughtful (though short) portrayal of Robespierre. There are a few exciting bits, but they're few and far between; perhaps reading this right after a lot of Dumas, the master of swashbuckling, wasn't terribly fair to it, but a novel with this much action in it ought to have a rather faster pace. Clearly Trollope was still searching for his voice and style (which he found in his next novel, The Warden).
P.G. Wodehouse, Jeeves in the Offing: Among Bertie's fellow guests at Brinkley Court are redheaded troublemaker Bobbie Wickham, neurologist Sir Roderick Glossop (masquerading as a butler!), his awful former headmaster Aubrey Upjohn, and novelist Mrs. Homer Cream with her odd son. Alas for Bertie, Jeeves has gone on vacation, and when Bertie becomes entangled in the various goings-on of the house party, he simply gets deeper and deeper into trouble. This was a fine Jeeves and Wooster, but it needed more Jeeves and a more complicated plot to be one of Wodehouse's really brilliant outings; it's just a little on the slight side, though very funny.
Dorothy Whipple, The Priory: With every Dorothy Whipple book I read, I see more why Persephone Books are so fond of her. The Priory is a seemingly simple story of a house and of the family who live in it. As it opens, Major Marwood has decided that he must marry again, as his spinster sister Victoria and his two daughters, Penelope and Christine, simply aren't interested in running the house or in organizing the cricket games and weekends which are the delight of his life, even though they use up scarce money at an alarming rate. Whipple also includes the house's servants in her story, in a love triangle among the Major's right-hand man Thompson and two of the maids, sharp Bertha and pretty Bessy.

With the introduction of the Major's new wife, earnest, graceless Anthea, things start to change at the Priory, in ways its inhabitants never imagined, and everyone must come to terms with life in a changing, modern world. The ending jars, because it's full of misplaced hope for a war the characters think has been averted (World War II, in reality soon to start), but the rest of the book is beautifully understated, quietly absorbing, and engaged with examining the role of women, as all of Whipple's books are.
Thomas Hardy, Desperate Remedies: Oh, this was quite strange, but worth reading. It was Hardy's first published novel, and it's most unlike his other books, an odd mishmash of romance and Gothic and sensation novel. When Cytherea Graye takes a position as lady's maid to eccentric, beautiful Miss Aldclyffe, she is drawn under the influence of the charismatic Manston, Miss Aldclyffe's steward, and entangled in a web of romantic and violent intrigue.

It's overwritten (never a two-syllable word where a four-syllable one can be used instead), and the plot takes too long to get going, but it's oddly compelling and atmospheric anyway. It's full of quotations and allusions, which often weigh it down (like the multisyllabic vocabulary), but they're often used in an interestingly subversive fashion. There's an ongoing allusion to The Aeneid, for instance, but the character whose first name is Aeneas is far from noble or pious, and a former prostitute is compared to the virginal Camilla for the courage they bear in common. The next Hardy I'm planning to (re)read is Under the Greenwood Tree, which is going to be a heck of a contrast to this one!
Robin McKinley, Chalice: Mirasol used to be a simple beekeeper; then she was unexpectedly chosen to be Chalice, part of the mystical Circle which governs Willowlands. She feels very unready for her role, and it's even worse when the new Master arrives, and together they must face a dangerous threat to their land.

As with Dragonhaven, the balance between interiority and action feels off, but not as badly, or maybe it's just that I liked the main character more. I did like how McKinley starts the narrative in medias res, with Mirasol greeting the new Master, and slowly reveals how things have come to be as they are. As always with McKinley, the connection to nature is an excellent feature; I especially liked Mirasol's bees. On the whole, I wouldn't rank this as high as favorite McKinleys, but it's an improvement on Dragonhaven.
George MacDonald Fraser, Flashman and the Redskins, Flashman and the Dragon: a good pair of Flashman installments. I especially liked the structure of the former; it covers Flashman's adventures in the United States at two different periods of his life, and the events of the first sojourn affect the events of the second in clever and surprising (to Flashman and to me) ways.

Flashman and the Dragon made me want to read more about Yehonala, later Empress Dowager Cixi, because I wondered if Fraser were doing her justice, and also about the Taiping Rebellion and the Opium Wars. But hey, that's a large part of what I like about historical fiction, that it impels me to find out more about people and subjects that catch my interest.
Sherry Thomas, Private Arrangements: I've been bouncing off new-to-me romance authors right and left for months, so I was hesitant about trying this, but I ended up liking it quite a bit. Gigi and Camden Saybrook have been living apart for years, ever since something happened on their wedding day to part them. When Gigi asks for a divorce, Camden returns from America, and sparks fly.

Thomas uses flashbacks to good effect to show their early relationship; refreshingly, it turns out to be a truly terrible mistake Gigi made, rather than an annoying Big Misunderstanding, so that it's understandable that the separation would have happened and lasted so long. I thought the ending was really too easy, though: the happy ending was given, not earned, and so wasn't as satisfying as it might have been. Also, though I liked the secondary romance (with an older couple), I thought it pulled the focus away from the main romance too much.

Still, I liked this more than enough to seek out Thomas's next book, Delicious. Oh and yay for the late Victorian setting, which was a nice change from the everlasting Regency.
Wilkie Collins, The Law and the Lady: Reading Hardy's Desperate Remedies put me in the mood for sensation novels, so of course I went to Wilkie Collins; this is the last of his books I own and hadn't read. Collins chooses a woman for his protagonist, Valeria Woodville, who marries and then finds out that her husband was tried and not found innocent (the Scottish court's verdict was "not proven") of poisoning his first wife. When her husband deserts her because he can't stand the shame of her knowing about his past, she determines to find the truth and prove him innocent.

One thing I love about Collins is his strong women, and Valeria is a good example: she's clever, brave, and determined (not to say stubborn). Even though she does submit several times to her husband's judgment, she often ends up doing what she wants anyway. However, although there are other interesting characters, like the eccentric "man-machine" Miserrimus Dexter, I thought the plot was creaky and overly...constructed, I guess. Collins is always about cleverly constructed plots, but in the best of his novels, he conceals the construction with marvelous atmosphere and suspense, which he doesn't manage to pull off in The Law and the Lady.


Last updated 20 January 2009. All text and photographs © George Mitchell and Margaret Johnston, unless otherwise noted Comments, questions, suggestions to margaret@lonelymountain.net.