A Girl Walks Into a Bookstore...

Review: A Spear of Summer Grass, by Deanna Raybourn

2013-05-15T11:40:00.000-04:00

Pages: 384

Original date of publication:

My copy: 2013 (Harlequin MIRA)

Why I decided to read: Copy offered for review

How I acquired my copy: Amazon Vine, April 2013

Set in 1923, the novel focuses on Delilah Drummond, a daringly modern woman who is forced to take a “break” from society when a scandal threatens her reputation. She goes to Kenya and her stepfather’s estate, Fairlight, and quickly becomes acclimatized to the way of life there—meeting, as she does so, Ryder White, a hunter/tracker.

I’ve had a taste of British colonial life in Kenya—Frances Osborne’s The Bolter is about a famous colonist of the period, Idina Sackville, and the five husbands she “bolted” from in order to set up a new life in Kenya (where she continued her adventures, many of them sexual). So there are pretty obvious comparisons to be made between Idina Sackville and Delilah Drummond, as there are between Dennis Finch-Hatton (of Out of Africa fame) and Ryder White. Still, there’s enough about each of these fictional characters to make them interesting, and I was interested to see how Delilah would develop throughout the novel. At first she seems to be a pretty stereotypical fish-out-of-water character, but I was pleased to see how she falls in love not only with Ryder White but Africa, too, and grow as a person in the process—especially since she has her past with which to grapple. So what we are shown is more than just the surface; we are shown the reason for why Delilah behaves (at least in her pre-Africa life) the way she does. So the focus is on reflection—reflection on one’s life, even though it might seem to be small in the grand scheme of things.

What I thought was especially good were Deanna Raybourn’s descriptions of Africa—the love story in the book isn’t really the one between Delilah and Ryder as much as it is about Delilah’s growing love for Africa. So Africa itself becomes a character, with its own flaws and advantages. I’m not usually a fan of Deanna Raybourn’s stand-alone novels that don’t feature Lady Julia Grey, but I thought A Spear of Summer Grass was especially well done. You even get a nod to Walt Whitman; what’s not to love?

Review: Celia's House, by DE Stevenson

2013-05-10T11:16:00.000-04:00

Pages: 367

Original date of publication:

My copy: 1978 (Ace books)

Why I decided to read:

How I acquired my copy: Amazon.com, November 2010

DE Stevenson’s books are quite hard to find, but I was able to buy a copy of Celia’s House a few years ago. The novel takes place over the course of about 40 years and focuses on the lives and fortune of the Dunne family and their family estate, Dinnian, in Scotland. Humphrey Dunne inherits the estate in 1905 from Celia Dunne, with the stipulation that Dunnian will be passed to Humphrey’s daughter, Celia, when she comes of age.

Some of the plot is a little predictable; for example, when the elder Celia states that Dunnian be passed on to the younger Celia, the younger Celia hasn’t even been born yet—so it’s pretty obvious that there will indeed be another Celia to carry on the family name. Because the book takes place over a larger period of time, there were also large gaps between events; for example, Stevenson doesn’t really describe what happens when Celia receives her inheritance or her reaction to it. In fact, the book isn’t so much about Celia as it is about the family in general.

Nonetheless, there are a few strong points to the book, including the romance—Steven describes perfectly the agony (and ecstasy) of young love. Still, I didn’t think this book was quite as strong as some of the other DE Stevenson novels I’ve read.

Review: Busman's Honeymoon, by Dorothy L Sayers

2013-05-06T16:24:00.000-04:00

Pages: 403

Original date of publication: 1937

My copy: 2006 (Harper Mystery)

Why I decided to read:

How I acquired my copy: Barnes and Noble, May 2010

I have slowly been winding my way through the iconic Lord Peter Wimsey series, based on publication date, and I’ve wound down with Busman’s Honeymoon. Lord Peter and Harriet Vane are newlyweds who decide to spend their honeymoon in the countryside at Talboys, a farmhouse in Herfordshire. But their idyll is shattered when the former owner of their house is found dead in the cellar…

The title is a takeoff on the phrase busman’s holiday; the idea being that, while of vacation or holiday, someone does something that’s similar to their line of work. Of course, Lord Peter and Harriet’s wedding is supposed to be a break from crime, but they nonetheless find themselves solving one all the same.

In all, I thought this was a strong ending to the series—Sayers wraps up a few loose ends in the Lord Peter/Harriet/Bunter storyline (and Bunter gets a more significant role in this book, which I was glad to see). Lord peter and Harriet don’t have a typical relationship; he likes that she’s not a typical woman and that she challenges him, but at the same time there’s a lot of tension between them. And it’s interesting to see how they try not to slide into the gender roles that they’re supposed to fill. We also see Peter’s shell shock (alluded to in previous novels) firsthand.

Review: Letters From Egypt, by Lucie Duff Gordon

2013-05-02T15:23:00.000-04:00

Pages: 383

Original date of publication: 1865

My copy: 1986 (Virago)

Why I decided to read:

How I acquired my copy: Ebay, February 2011

A friend to George Meredith, Thackeray, and other notables of that time, Lucie Duff Gordon (1821-1969) was raised in a radical, intellectual family and imbued with a sense of adventure; her imagination roamed father than the usual Grand Tour. In 1862, she took a tour to South Africa, attempting to recover from tuberculosis; when that didn’t succeed, she went to Egypt, where her son-in-law was a banker. Although her daughter and son-in-law lived in Alexandria, Gordon spent much of her time in Luxor, living in a ruined house above a temple. Her letters were alternately written to her husband, Sir Alexander Duff Gordon; her mother; and her daughter.

Gordon’s letters reveal someone with a high amount of inquisitiveness and cultural sensitivity; Gordon frees herself from the usual ways that other Europeans stereotyped Egyptians at the time. She was there just as the Europeans were modernizing Egypt, represented by the construction of the Suez Canal, which opened in 1869, the year Gordon passed away. Her letters reflect the changes to rural Egypt that were occurring, as well as observing social systems that were in place (especially criticizing the corvee, which was a system of forced labor that was used to build the Canal), and she was dismayed by the poverty that she witnessed while in Luxor.

Gordon’s tone is lively; perceptive; she had a keen interest in the Egyptian people and their history, and she interacted with the often, especially as an amateur doctor (Hakeemah). “I am in love with the Arabs’ ways, and I have contrived to see and know more of family life than many Europeans who have lived here for years,” she wrote. So we meet a wide variety of people, including Omar, her faithful servant. In all, a lively, entertaining collection of letters.

Review: The Home-Maker, by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

2013-04-27T06:15:00.000-04:00

Pages: 268

Original date of publication: 1924

My copy: 2008 (Persephone)

Why I decided to read:

How I acquired my copy: Persephone subscription, November 2011

Set in small-town America around the time it was written, this novel explores gender roles and how they affect families, and one family in particular. Lester Knapp is an accountant for a department store; his wife, Evangeline, is a housewife raising their three children. They both perform the roles expected of them by society, yet neither is suited to their role and neither is particularly happy. When Lester is injured in an accident that leaves him home-bound, his wife goes to work—to the benefit of everyone in the family.

Dorothy Canfield Fisher gets her reader deep into the heads of her characters, so we can understand exactly what they’re like and so that we get a three-dimensional view of the situation. Even the children’s point of view is well represented—especially Stephen, aged 5, who fears having his Teddy taken away to be washed. Therefore, we get the truth of a situation without the biases of your traditional narrator and so that the reader can see exactly what’s going on under the surface. While all the characters in the novel are lovable, my favorite is Lester—a dreamy poetry lover who turns out to excel as a homemaker and discovers a new-found appreciation for his children and their talents.

Fisher believed strongly in the strength of one’s internal personal life over external considerations. And the strength of this novel is what it says about American culture in general. Small town life is famous for being busybody-like; everyone knew your business and involved themselves in it, and if you strayed away from that, you’d be ostracized. So this novel serves as a sort of criticism of that way of life and what it represents. None of the Knapp family really has the freedom to do what suits them personally; they’re all at the mercy of what society dictates. In all, an incredible novel, with the wheelchair representing how social expectations can bind us all.

Review: Blood and Beauty, by Sarah Dunant

2013-04-23T16:55:00.000-04:00

Pages: 506

Original date of publication: July, 2013

My copy: 2013 (Random House; ARC)

Why I decided to read: Offered through Amazon Vine program

How I acquired my copy: Amazon Vine program, march 2013

I’ve loved Sarah Dunant’s novels for years, so when I saw that Blood and Beauty was available for review before publication, I jumped at the chance to read it. It tells the story of the Borgia family, specifically Lucrezia, and follows them from Rodrigo Borgia’s ascension to the papacy (and pope Alexander) in 1492 to Lucrezia’s third marriage to Alfonso d’Este in 1502. Rodrigo Borgia’s rise to power was much in keeping with the mores of the time period in which his lived. He even Italianized his name from Borja to Borgia. He and his four children, as well as his mistresses, became symbols of the power, splendor, and decadence of the Papal court in the late 15th century.

It’s really, really hard to write fiction about the Borgia family without completely vilifying or vindicating them, but Dunant does a wonderful job of showing both the strengths and weaknesses of these people. They’re ruthless and cunning, but they don’t seem (at first) as bad as history has made them out to be. There’s this wonderful scene about halfway through the novel, where Cesare Borgia gores a boar; the way the scene is described, it serves as a strong metaphor for not only the dangers of the Papal court, but the savageness of Cesare’s character. That’s the kind of fiction I love; the kind of writing that shows you how something is without explicitly saying so. It makes people, places and events seem so much more real. Dunant’s focus is on stripping away the myths in order to reveal the psychological truths that lie beneath the surface.

According to the author’s note at the end, there will be a second novel that will cover the conclusion of Lucrezia’s story.

Review: The Gods of Heavenly Punishment, by Jennifer Cody Epstein

2013-04-18T18:26:00.000-04:00

Pages: 378

Original date of publication: 2013

My copy: 2013 (Norton)

Why I decided to read:

How I acquired my copy: Amazon Vine program, March 2013

The Gods of Heavenly Punishment is set during WWII, and specifically focuses on the American firebombing of Tokyo in 1942 and 1945. We are introduced to Yoshi Kobayashi, the daughter of an expansionist; Cam, a bomber pilot taken prisoner by the Japanese; and Anton, an American architect, who had helped build some of Tokyo’s modern buildings in the 1920s and ‘30s but is enlisted to build test structures for the American air force to practice.

Epstein has chosen an event that rarely gets written about in fiction, yet caused so much devastation at the same time; in the Operation Meetinghouse attack of 1945, 16 square miles of Tokyo were destroyed, approximately 100,000 people were killed, and over a million lost their homes. It was the deadliest air raid of WWII. So I was very interested to read about this lesser-known period of history and witness it through the eyes of these characters—especially Yoshi, who finds herself directly impacted by the 1945 raid. Jennifer Cody Epstein writes beautifully, and her description of what happens to these characters is riveting.

Review: The Persephone Book of Short Stories

2013-04-15T15:50:00.000-04:00

Pages: 473

Original date of publication: 1909-1986

My copy: 2012 (Persephone)

Why I decided to read:

How I acquired my copy: Persephone subscription, January 2013

The Persephone Book of Short Stories is a collection of thirty short stories—some that have been previously published in other Persephone books (crowd pleasers such as Minnie Panter-Downes’s “Good Evening, Mrs Craven” and Irene Nemirovsky’s “Dimanche”)—some that have been published in the Persephone Post, and others that appear here for the first time. The earliest story in the collection, Susan Glaspell’s“A to Z,” was published in 1909 and the last, Georgina Hammick’s “A Few Cases in the Day Case Unit,” in 1986.

My favorite story in the collection is the first: Susan Glaspell’s “A to Z,’ in which a young college graduate gets a job as a dictionary copyist at a publisher’s office. She strikes up a friendship with a young man at the office; the irony of the story being that while these characters’ bread and butter revolves around words, they cannot find words that are adequate to describe their feelings for one another (personally, I could also relate to the main character’s situation of having that feeling of jumping off into the unknown after graduation, and of having a vaguely-defined dream to work in publishing). Other Persephone authors that appear here include Katherine Mansfield, Elizabeth Berridge, Dorothy Whipple, Frances Towers, Margaret Bonham, Diana Gardner, Diana Athill, EM Delafield, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Norah Hoult, Betty Miller, and Penelope Mortimer. I was also pleased to discover that stories by two more of my favorite authors, Edith Wharton and Dorothy Parker, were included here.

The stories are arranged chronologically and their subjects vary, but the theme is constant; the stories highlight the types of things that women’s lives are focused on: relationships, family, jobs, etc. The collection is therefore a pretty-well-rounded representation of the kind of fiction that Persephone publishes. I only wish that the collection had included fewer stories that had been previously published by Persephone, and more that were new.

Review: The Wild Rose, by Jennifer Donnelly

2013-04-10T15:18:00.002-04:00

Pages: 640

Original date of publication: 2011

My copy: 2011

Why I decided to read: received a copy from the publisher for review

How I acquired my copy: Amazon Vine program, 2011

Although I wasn’t too keen on the first two books in this trilogy—The Tea Rose and The Winter Rose—I picked this one up hoping my mind had changed. Each book in the story offers a different perspective on one family at the turn of the century; this book begins just before WWI and focuses on Seamie and Willa. I think the story is meant to be fast-paced and give the reader a good overview of early 20th century history, but the story lines were so unrealistic and predictable that I had a hard time finishing the book. There were so many characters and coincidences that the book got pretty convoluted after a while. The characters’ dialogue also didn’t seem era-appropriate. This might be a good book if you’re looking for a period romance, but be prepared to suspend disbelief at the plot and characters.

Review: Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky, by Patrick Hamilton

2013-04-08T10:35:00.000-04:00

Pages: 511

Original date of publication: 1935

My copy: 2008 (NYRB Classics)

Why I decided to read:

How I acquired my copy: Joseph Fox Books, January 2012

Patrick Hamilton covers very similar themes in his books. His plots are comprised of characters from the lowest strata of London society: drunks, prostitutes, etc. Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky is set in and around a central London pub called The Midnight Bell. Bob is a waiter who falls in love with a young prostitute named Jenny and loses all his money in the process; Ella is a barmaid in love with Bob who nonetheless begins a relationship with an older man.

The story consists of three novellas, each of which takes you on a tour of the characters’ stories, offering, as it does so, alternate looks at the same situation within the same time frame. The shape shifting is what makes the plot of the book interesting, and each of these characters is unique in their own right. Hamilton is skilled at depicting the nuances of each character, even if their motives aren’t completely obvious (but that would take the fun out of reading, anyways). “The Midnight Bell” is based on Hamilton’s experience working as a bartender and later falling in love with a prostitute; as such, Bob seems to be the most well rounded of the three. Still, Hamilton clearly understood the characters and had empathy for all of them. You know it won’t end well for any of these characters, but you continue to read anyways because they’re so well rounded. I can see why Hamilton’s style has been called “Dickensian,” but in a way his style is very different from Dickens’s.

As the novel progresses, we get an intimate look at lower-class London life in the 1930s and the milieu of the culture of the era. For example, at the time the novel was published, there were a large number of Jewish immigrants who fled to England from other parts of Europe, and the novel reflects the anti-Semitism of the time period. As such, it harbingers the social consciousness that became so prevalent in his later novels. Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky is an incredibly well written and absorbing collection of stories, one that I enjoyed immensely.

Review: A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway

2013-04-03T10:03:00.000-04:00

Pages:

Original date of publication: 1929

My copy: 2000

Why I decided to read: Re-read

How I acquired my copy: Borders, 2000.

A Farewell to Arms has been called one of the best books to come out of WWI. In it, Hemingway loosely fictionalizes his experience working as an ambulance driver on the Italian front, as well as his relationship with Agnes von Kurowsky, a Red Cross nurse he met while recuperating from shrapnel wounds. In A Farewell to Arms, Lieutenant (Tenente) Frederick Henry is a driver in the Italian ambulance corps who develops a relationship with a Scottish VAD nurse, Catherine Barkley.

Hemingway’s themes deal with death, women, war and love, all of which of course are present here. There’s a kind of detached unemotionalism about A Farewell to Arms; even death doesn’t see to faze Henry. Yes, it’s brutal, but the tone of the book reflects the overall themes that play out here. Hemingway’s style is sparse, laconic; he doesn’t use flowery language to describe anything. In all, a fairly stunning novel.

Review: The Montana Stories, by Katherine Mansfield

2013-04-01T17:36:00.000-04:00

Pages: 327

Original date of publication: 1921-1928

My copy: 2007 (Persephone)

Why I decided to read:

How I acquired my copy: Persephone subscription, October 2012

Katherine Mansfield wrote the 25 stories in this collection during the 9 months she spent at Montana sur Sierre in Switzerland, seriously ill with tuberculosis. The stories are arranged in the order she wrote them, and many were left unfinished. Some characters are recurring; Mansfield also gained inspiration from other writers, including Chekhov, Louisa May Alcott, Virginia Woolf, Henry James, and DH Lawrence.

Mansfield chastised herself for writing “lowbrow” stories and made jokes about them (“the Mercury is bringing out that very long seaweedy story of mine ‘At the Bay.’ I feel inclined to suggest to them to give away a spade an’ bucket with each copy…”); but as the publisher’s note at the end says, “what choice did she have?” Mansfield wrote herself that she did not consider herself a good writer. But what we see in Mansfield’s stories is an interest in human relationships; we also see, in this period leading up to her death, an increasing interest in mortality. What these stories show is an interest in the diversity of life, for Mansfield wrote about all types of people going though all types of situations.

The note at the beginning says that Mansfield would not have approved of having these unedited stories anthologized, and it’s easy to see why. Many of the unfinished stories here are more like ideas for stories rather than fully fleshed out stories. Several of the stories were left unfinished because Mansfield turned her attention to writing magazine articles in order to pay for treatment; still, you get the impression that these stories have a lot of potential. Some of the finished stories were published in Sphere magazine and are here accompanied by (highly stylized) illustrations.

Extracts of Mansfield’s diary from this time are reprinted in the publisher’s note at the end of the book, and give the reader a sense of context. In all, this is an interesting glimpse into the mind of an author who knew she was dying and yet had one of the most creative periods of her life (perhaps fueled by the fact that she knew she was dying?). As Mansfield wrote in her journal, “Stronger than all these desires, is the other, which is to make good before I do anything else. The sooner the books are finished, the sooner I shall be well, the sooner my wishes will be in sight of fulfillment.”

Review: The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton

2013-03-25T17:39:00.000-04:00

Pages: 420

Original date of publication: 1905

My copy: 2000

Why I decided to read:

How I acquired my copy: Borders, 2000

The title for the book famously comes from the Ecclesiastes quote, “The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.” Lily Bart is possibly Edith Wharton’s most complicated character, and this novel one of the best portrayals of the glitter and cruelty upper class New York society. When the novel opens, Lily is 29 years old, unmarried, and trying to “keep up with the Joneses,” so to speak. Torn between her desire to fit in with society and a desire for a relationship, Lily fits in nowhere. This novel then is the story of her downfall.

I first read The House of Mirth in high school, but really didn’t appreciate it the way I do now—or even understand the complexity of the themes that Edith Wharton explores. Reading The Age of Innocence a couple of years ago led to a newfound love for Edith Wharton’s works. No one except possibly Henry James can describe upper class New York society the way Edith Wharton does—and she does so so skillfully that you don’t quite understand at first what she’s up to. As such, this novel contains brilliant commentary about the double-faced aspect to the society from which Wharton came.

As for Lily herself, as I’ve said, she’s one of the most complicated of Edith Wharton’s characters and yet a prototype for characters who came after—namely, Undine Spraggs in The Customs of the Country. Lily is vivacious, witty, and knows exactly how to manipulate people… but her greed and desire to live the good life lead hr to reject the marriage proposals of several good men who might have been otherwise suitable. For that reason, Lily has a hard time seeing what’s right in front of her—namely, her friend Lawrence Selden, with whom she has a complicated and sometimes strained relationship throughout the novel. At the end, Lily is rejected by the society of which she so desperately wants to be a part.

Six Degrees of Barbara Pym's Novels

2013-03-22T14:44:00.000-04:00

This year seems to be The Year of Barbara Pym; I know some of you out there are involved in some kind of a readalong in honor of the 100th year of her birth. I’ve read most of her canon, with only The Sweet Dove Died, Civil to Strangers, An Academic Question, and Crampton Hodnet left to go (sadly). Barbara Pym’s novels feature very similar casts of characters: spinsters, clergymen, retirees, clerks, and anthropologists, with which she had direct experience. So it stands to reason that there would be overlaps in characters between the novels. You can trace that though the publication history of her books and therefore see how Pym onionizes her stories and characters. She adds layers onto layers, adding more details as her books progress.

Some Tame Gazelle (1950):

Archdeacon Hoccleve makes his first appearance.

Excellent Women (1952):

Archdeacon Hoccleve gives a sermon that is almost incomprehensible to Mildred Lathbury; Everard Bone understands it, however, and laughs hysterically (ch. 9). The Archdeacon fails to show up later on because he has gone back to Some Tame Gazelle. Mildred holds an annual lunch with William Caldicote, with whom it is hoped that they will "get off."Esther Clovis appears here as well.

Jane and Prudence (1953):

Miss Doggett receives a letter from Mildred Lathbury, informing her of her marriage to Everard Bone. Later, a stranger offers Prudence and Geoffrey advice on the menu; he turns out to be William Caldicote and we find out why his relationship with Mildred Lathbury might never have worked.

Less Than Angels (1955):

Esther Clovis is now the narrator. Mildred (Lathbury) Bone now works in the field in conjunction with her husband. There is a reference to Helen Napier and Miss Jessop from Excellent Women. Catherine Oliphant makes an appearance for the first time. Tom Mallow is a prototype for Rupert Stonebird in An Unsuitable Attachment.

A Glass of Blessings (1958):

A short story by Catherine Oliphant is read by some of the other characters; the story reworks an episode from Less Than Angels. There are references to Rodney, who previously had an affair with Prudence Bates from Jane and Prudence. Archdeacon Hoccleve is mentioned as being a distant cousin of the narrator and Julian Mallory, previously of Excellent Women, comes to preach at Saint Luke’s. Members of the congregation from both Saint Luke’s and that from Excellent Women mingle together.

No Fond Return of Love (1961):

Dulcie’s lodger finds a copy of Some Tame Gazelle in her bathroom (ch. 8). Father Tulliver from Less Than Angels makes an appearance.

Quartet in Autumn (1977):

No allusion to any of her previous novels.

The Sweet Dove Died (1978):

Senhor MacBride-Pereira, the Portuguese gentleman from No Fond Return of Love, makes a brief appearance here.

A Few Green Leaves (1985):

Dr Gellibrand’s brother is Father Gellibrand, who conducted Marcia’s funeral in Quartet in Autumn. The death of Esther Clovis from Less Than Angels, who had once helped Emma get a grant, is announced in a newspaper, and Digby Fox attends her funeral.¹

I can’t take credit for putting the above together; the article below can be found on JSTOR.

What I thought was interesting was that what Pym’s use of crossover characters reveals is that there’s never really any narrative “closure” to these novels and therefore we can hear what happens to many of them without the author really needing to write a sequel to their stories. In her subtle and clever way, Pym shows us the interconnectedness of human life and that we are all connected to one another more than we might think.

1. A Fistful of Pyms: Barbara Pym's Use of Cross-over Characters. Alan W. Bellringer. The Yearbook of English Studies. Vol. 26, Strategies of Reading: Dickens and after Special Number (1996), pp. 199-207.

Review: Quartet in Autumn, by Barbara Pym

2013-03-20T17:17:00.000-04:00

Pages: 218

Original date of publication: 1977

My copy: 1977 (Perennial)

Why I decided to read:

How I acquired my copy: Philly Book Trader, July 2010

Quartet in Autumn centers around four retirement-aged office workers in London: Edwin, Norman, Letty, and Marcia. Edwin, a widower, is a church hopper; Norman, struggles with his anger; Letty’s an eccentric spinster whose childhood friend is set to marry a much younger clergyman; and Marcia, a survivor of a mastectomy. As the story progresses, Letty and Marcia do retire from their jobs (“something vaguely to do with filing”), an occurrence that brings the characters together more than they realize.

You might think it’s a depressing novel, but it’s bittersweet in a way. The characters are stuck in a kind of limbo; stuck in the past and remembering how things used to be, but still faced with the decisions they have to make about the future. So it’s interesting to see how each one copes with change in their lives. Pym’s novels always contain the same types of characters: office workers, churchgoers, spinsters, etc. But she manages at the same time to make her characters unique, describing them with the kinds of details that sum them up perfectly (Marcia is the type of person who allows the dust ball of a dead cat to remain on her bed).

Part of the book is based on personal experience; Barbara Pym wrote this after recovering from a mastectomy herself. So it’s interesting to kind of get in her mind and read her musings about aging and all that it entails. As the women retire, it seems as though their figurative vision improves and that they can see themselves and their situation with just a bit more objectivity than they ever could before. And then men change, too, especially when a major even happens towards the end of the book that changes the whole tone of the novel (and it’s very sudden, too; you get the feeling that Pym was very uncomfortable with the subject). I don’t think I enjoyed this quite as much as I could have (and there were other Pym novels that I’ve enjoyed more, but this one is certainly good.

Review: Bonk: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, by Mary Roach

2013-03-13T20:28:00.000-04:00

Pages: 318

Original date of publication: 2008

My copy: 2008 (WW Norton)

Why I decided to read: saw Mary Roach speak at a conference

How I acquired my copy: Denver airport bookstore, October 2012

In Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Roach explored the topic of the human cadaver and how it’s used in science. In Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, she does pretty much the same thing, except with sex and sexuality. Roach wanders out into the fringes of scientific exploration in her books, into the areas that aren’t considered “typical,” and she writes her books with a liberal amount of humor. Roach traveled all over the world to witness—and even participate in—clinical trials involving sex. Every now and then she footnotes her writing with random stuff, including a note about who Millard Filmore’s running mate was (trick question!).

From start to finish, Bonk is an entertaining read—even if I did get a few odd looks as I was reading it in public. Sure, the subject matter can be uncomfortable at times, but even more so is the humor that the author sees in her subjects. She spares no one, from the artificial inseminators in Denmark to clinical trials on prostitutes in Egypt. In her introduction, she even pokes fun of herself and the avenues that her “obsession” sometimes take. “Last summer I was in a medical school library Xeroxing a journal article called ‘Vacuum Cleaner Use in Autoerotic Death’ when the paper jammed. I could not bring myself to ask the copy room attendant to help me, but quietly moved over to the adjacent machine and began again.” In both of the books of hers I’ve read, Roach seems to go off on random tangents, but it’s always an intriguing and entertaining ride.

Review: Moonraker, by F Tennyson Jesse

2013-03-08T19:54:00.000-05:00

Pages: 162

Original date of publication: 1927

My copy: 1981 (Virago Modern Classics)

Why I decided to read:

How I acquired my copy: Library Thing member, July 2011

One day, young Jacky Jacka visits a witch, where he sees a vision of a woman in a bowl of water. The vision leads him to seek passage on a ship to the West Indies, which is then hijacked en route by the pirate Captain Lovel and the crew aboard the Moonraker. The year in 1801, a time when Napoleon had control of the high seas and the days of swashbuckling piracy was—nearly—on its way out. The story takes young Jacky throughout the Caribbean, and along the way he meets a Frenchman named Raoul and a black man Toussaint L’Ouverture, who works to free Haiti from the forces of Napoleon.

On the surface it’s a fun tale; Tennyson drew her inspiration from Robert Louis Stevenson, and obvious comparisons might be made between this book and the Pirates of the Caribbean films. But this novel goes a bit deeper than that. F Tennyson Jesse was a sailor herself; she was also a journalist, so she tended to over-research material for her books. There’s almost too much nautical description in this novel.

Her novels all have similar themes; without wanting to spoil too much about the plot of Moonraker, the author commonly explores themes about women and their place in a typically male environment. Jesse also explores the theme of race, albeit briefly; in that way, I wish that the book had been a bit longer, just so that the author could have explored the Haitian rebellion a little more. According to the introduction at the beginning of my edition, this novel belonged to a dying genre of fiction: the adventure story with an historical setting. I guess some things truly are cyclical.

Review: Aurora Floyd, by Mary E. Braddon

2013-03-04T18:43:00.000-05:00

Pages: 384

Original date of publication: 1863

My copy: 1984 (Virago Modern Classics)

Why I decided to read:

How I acquired my copy: bookshop in Charing Cross Road, London, September 2011

Aurora Floyd is a member of that genre of novels called Victorian sensationalist fiction. Published in the 1860s, sensationalist novels, mostly written by women, addressed the fears that people of that era had and addressed issues such as adultery, bigamy, murder, and other scandalous social issues. Nothing is ever what it seems in a novel like this. This novel has all the classic elements of this brand of novel: a young woman, Aurora Floyd has a deep, dark secret, which leads her to reject marriage proposals from two men (but then accept one). As the story plays out, her secret threatens to come out as well and destroy the life she’s created.

Aurora isn’t your typical Victorian heroine, but given the heroines we seem in fiction these days, she’s pretty much the same as the rest: she’s strong-willed, unfeminine, active, and willing to defy contemporary social issues. She’s not subversive in the way that Lady Audley is; she doesn’t actively try to create a new persona for herself. In the end, despite her so-called unlikeable traits, we come to like her and sympathize with her. Still, Aurora is a fascinating character. Also fascinating are the themes; it’s interesting that she’s the daughter of an actress, because in essence the whole novel is kind of like a stage play, with melodrama and dramatic illusion.

Although the subject matter is tame to our modern sensibilities, it’s important to look at the environment in which they were written. Lady Audley’s Secret was written just before this book; and Ellen Wood’s East Lynne was published at around the same time. The newspaper reviewers of the time were brutal towards writers of sensationalist novels, especially towards what they perceived as moral laxity. “Sensationalist novels as a whole were called into existence to supply the cravings of a diseased appetite,” wrote the Quarterly Review in 1863. Writers of sensationalist fiction poked fun of various aspects of daily life, including conventional marriage (Aurora’s cousin Lucy is an example of such). So its interesting to see how the exposure of the underbelly of Victorian mores, as well as the reaction to it, both say something about the time period in which these books were written.

Review: Castle Dor, by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch and Daphne Du Maurier

2013-02-28T18:10:00.000-05:00

Pages: 274

Original date of publication: 1961

My copy: 2004 (Virago Modern Classics)

Why I decided to read:

How I acquired my copy: The Strand, NYC, July 2011

Castle Dor was the last unfinished work of the critic Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch and finished (at his daughter’s request) by Daphne Du Maurier after his death. The novel is a modern retelling of the Tristan and Isolde myth, re-set to Cornwall of the 1840s. Linnet Lewarne is a young woman married to an innkeeper; she strikes up a relationship with a Briton onion seller named Amyot Trestane. Although not written from the first person point of view, the center viewpoint is that of the village doctor, who recognizes how history is repeating itself, literally.

Du Maurier did a fairly good job of finishing the novel—you can’t tell where Quiller-Couch’s writing leaves off and Du Maurier’s begins. She later wrote that she could never hope to imitate Quiller-Couch’s style of writing, but that she tried to adopt his “modd;” still, this wasn’t one of the best books that she’s put her pen to. Because the story is told from an “outside” point of view, we don’t really get that of the main two characters, so it’s hard to assess their motives.

In fact, the main character of the book is Doctor Carfax, who, as Du Maurier put it, serves as a kind of Prospero, helping move the events of the novel along while not really being a part of them. One gets the sense that all of these characters are involved in something much larger than themselves, something much beyond their control, and there’s a fairly wonderful kind of atmosphere to that effect. Although I had some reservations about this novel, it’s interesting to see how two writers—one a critic of literature, the other considered a “romance” novelist—coincide, and how they were able to create one cohesive novel.

Review: The Sandalwood Tree, by Elle Newmark

2013-02-25T13:00:00.000-05:00

Pages: 509

Original date of publication: 2011

My copy: 2011 (Black Swan)

Why I decided to read:

How I acquired my copy: Waterstone’s, Piccadilly, September 2011

Maybe I’ve been reading too many classic novels recently, but I thought that this novel fell a bit short for me. I guess I was expecting lush descriptions of India, vivid descriptions of historical events, and great characters. Sadly, I was disappointed.

The Sandalwood Tree is a split-time novel. One half of the novel focuses on an American, Evie, whose husband Martin comes to India on a Fulbright scholarship to document the end of the British Raj and the separation of India and Pakistan in 1947. One day, she finds a packet of old, illegible letters that documents the friendship between two Englishwomen, Adela and Felicity in 1856. The chapters then alternate between the two stories; Evie’s story focuses on the disintegration of her marriage, while Felicity goes to India as a member of the “Fishing Fleet,” young Englishwomen who went to India to find husbands once they’d failed to find husbands within two seasons of coming out. You can tell right off the bat from the tension in the beginning of each story that something big’s going to occur…

Well, I thought it was an interesting idea, but the characters weren’t really as well rounded as I might have liked them to be. None of them was particularly likeable, though; Evie came off as a bit too modern for her time, and the two Victorian women were a bit too juvenile for my taste. As a result, I got bored pretty quickly; there’s nothing much that made this novel particularly enjoyable for me, so I couldn’t finish it. Still, I thought the idea was good, especially with the contrast between the Sepoy rebellion in one story and the end of the British Raj in the other. But if you want a much better, more authentic telling of the Sepoy rebellion, I’d recommend MM Kaye’s The Shadow of the Moon.

Review: Old New York, by Edith Wharton

2013-02-22T12:36:00.000-05:00

Pages: 315

Original date of publication: 1924

My copy: 1995 (Scribner paperbacks)

Why I decided to read:

How I acquired by copy: Amazon.com, April 2011

Old New York is a collection of four novellas set in 19th century New York in the 1840s, ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s, which reveal varying sides of upper class New York society at the time. Each of the four novellas digs deep below the surface of society. False Dawn chronicles the relationship between a father and son, the latter of whom goes off to Europe on a Grand Tour and brings home “unsuitable” artwork; in The Old Maid, a young woman’s daughter is adopted by her cousin; The Spark, the shortest of the four, is about a young man’s encounter with Walt Whitman during the Civil War; and the last, New Year’s Day, is about a young woman’s alleged adulterous affair.

Edith Wharton is skilled at describing people and her motivations; she’s especially adept at seeing the way her characters really are. There’s no “real” link between these stories, but the overarching theme of all of them, as with her novels, is the class system, and how these characters fit—or don’t fit—into that system. The stories also focus heavily on women’s roles in society: expectations versus reality, as well as familial relationships. By far the best of the four stories was The Old Maid; it’s much longer and the characters are much more well rounded. The weakest story in the collection is The Spark; Wharton had a good idea, but she didn’t explore it fully enough.

Edith Wharton has a habit of including recurring characters in her short stories; Mrs Manson Mingott, Sillerton Jackson, Mrs. Struthers, and Henry Vander Luyden from The Age of Innocence appear here as well. Although I didn’t think this collection of stories was particularly even, I did enjoy it.

Review: The Sugar House, by Antonia White

2013-02-20T15:10:00.000-05:00

Pages: 255

Original date of publication: 1952

My copy: 1989 (Virago)

Why I decided to read:

How I acquired my copy: Philly Book Trader, January 2013

The Sugar House is the second novel in a trilogy of books that began with The Lost Traveller. Clara Batchelor is now twenty-one; having graduated from drama school, she’s now a member of a traveling acting group. She has a love affair with another actor (although we can tell that it won’t end well) and ends up marrying her former fiancée Archie. Although newlywed, Clara—and Archie—still have a lot to learn about life; and for better or worse, the second half of the novel is how they try to cope with the demands of marriage and, at the same time, grow up.

Antonia White has laid on the symbolism and imagery pretty thickly; the title is in reference to the Hansel and Gretel story. The similarities are so close that you might think that White is retelling the old myth, with the house made of confectionery representing the house in Chelsea, and the trail of breadcrumbs and witch representing Clara and Archie’s marriage. Because of this, the book seems kind of claustrophobic; indeed, most of the scenes in this book take place indoors. It’s a clever analogy, but it’s not so skillfully done in that Antonia White actually has to tell her reader what the title means in the text of the novel. Still, I enjoyed reading the continuation of Clara’s story; and it’s interesting to watch how she matures from childhood to adulthood in this book.

The Catholicism of White’s earlier novels is less obvious in this novel, but still present. Antonia White was very strongly influenced by her religious upbringing, and so it shows clearly in her series of novels that were based on her personal history from the ages of 9 to 23. The Sugar House fictionally details White’s marriage to Tom Hopkinson as well as White’s attempts to be both a writer of fiction and work as an advertising copywriter. You don’t need to have read The Lost Traveller or Frost in May (which is also unofficially a part of the series) previously, but it helps. Given what happened to Antonia White in real life, it’ll be interesting to see how the story unfolds in the last book Beyond the Glass.

Review: Greenery Street, by Denis Mackail

2013-02-15T14:25:00.000-05:00

Pages: 372

Original date of publication: 1925

My copy: 2009 (Persephone)

Why I decided to read:

How I acquired my copy: Persephone shop, September 2011

Greenery Street is the story of a year in the life of a young married couple. The street of the title is a symbol of a way of life; the first-time houses that young married people have before they begin having families. The couples always vow to stay longer, but when they begin to have children, they move onward and upward in search of larger houses in which to live. The novel is based on Denis Mackail’s experience living as a newlywed in Walpole Street, in a house that had apparently once been occupied by PG Wodehouse and that was later occupied by the author Jan Struther. Mackail himself came from a rather exalted family; he was related to Rudyard Kipling and Stanley Baldwin,; his sister was Angela Thirkell (who apparently was quite a bully) and his nephew was Colin MacInnes. Mackail grew up as a nervous child, only finding refuge in marriage; his first year of marriage, fictionalized in this book, was one of the happiest times of his life.

Ian and Felicity are one of the married young couples that move into Greenery Street to begin their life together. They’re not so much characters as they are stereotypes; Felicity is pretty much the perfect housewife (or at least she tries to be), and Ian is the young working husband. It’s a rather dated view of marriage (although keep in mind that the book was published in the 1920s), and a dated way of viewing how houses should be arranged (as the preface says, a 5-story terraced house today seems adequate in which to raise children, but that’s only if you don’t consider the servants a middle-class family had). The novel is written very much like a play, complete with stage directions and dialogue. It’s an interesting way to write, but I thought that, combined with regular prose, this way of writing was confusing and broke up the flow of the story. Mackail frequently switches from the present tense to the past tense, which also distracted from the flow of the story.

Review: Loitering With Intent, by Muriel Spark

2013-02-13T16:53:00.000-05:00

Pages: 224

Original date of publication: 1981

My copy: 2001 (New Directions)

Why I decided to read:

How I acquired my copy: Joseph Fox bookstore, Philadelphia, January 2012

The novel opens on a summer day in 1949, when Fleur Talbot, an aspiring writer at work on a novel called Warrender Chase, get a job as typist for an “Autobiographical Association” that promises to save the memoirs of its illustrious members for a period of 70 years. As she gains material for her novel (and subsequent novels), Fleur begins to suspect that Sir Quentin, its head, is blackmailing its members. What ensues is a bizarre, funny take on the idea that “truth is stranger than fiction.” The phrase “to loiter with intent” is used in a humorous sense to describe anyone who is waiting around for an unspecified purpose. The whole tone of the novel is like this, in some ways; you get the sense that our narrator and the other characters are hanging around, waiting for something to happen.

Muriel Spark’s novels won’t appeal to everyone. She was famously detached from (and sometimes brutal to) other people in her personal life, and she has the same attitude towards the characters in her novels, even this one, where the book is written in the first person. But I think she also has to be—Spark’s focus is on human existence and interaction as a whole, so she doesn’t get too deeply invested in her characters. As a result, there are some really great quotes in the book, such as “Contradictions in human character are one of its most consistent notes.” It’s that detachment from her characters that allows Spark to paint a full picture of them. Spark’s novels are characterized by observations of deceit and the use and abuse of power. As with novels like Aiding and Abetting, Spark proves that these kinds of things sometimes happen in some of the most bizarre circumstances.

Loitering With Intent is somewhat autobiographical; set around the time that Spark began to write, it captures very well a first-time author’s attempts to get published—a secondary theme to the novel in how it explores the edge of London literary life in the late 1940s/early1950s.

Review: Trooper to the Southern Cross, by Angela Thirkell

2013-02-09T15:57:00.000-05:00

Pages: 175

Original date of publication: 1934

My copy: 1985 (Virago Modern Classics)

Why I decided to read:

How I acquired my copy: Amazon UK, June 2012

Set just after WWI, Trooper to the Southern Cross is narrated by Major Bowen, a former military doctor. He and his wife Celia book passage on a trooper ship, the Rudolstadt, from England to Australia. On board are former military personnel, diggers, prisoners, and others, and this novel is the story of their voyage.

The novel is based on personal experience. Angela Thirkell came from an illustrious family; her grandfather was the painter Edward Burne-Jones, her father was the first biographer of William Morris, her brother was Denis Mackail (author of Greenery Street, published by Persephone), Rudyard Kipling and Stanley Baldwin were first cousins, her son was Colin MacInnes, and JM Barrie was her godfather. Thirkell’s second husband was George Thirkell, one of the first Australians to enlist in WWI. In January 1920, the couple, newly married and with Thirkell’s children from her previous marriage in tow, set sail for Australia on the troopship SS Friedrichsruh.

Thirkell fictionalizes the experiences by making Major Bowen and Celia childless, but she gives another couple on board two children, who pull the same pranks that Thirkell’s own children pulled while on board make it into the book (locking lavatory doors from the inside, for example). The voyage was not without incident; the Germans sabotaged the ship (which prohibited alcohol) and there was also a riot. You also get the sense that the cross-dressing Irish digger was also not totally fictional.

It’s an entertaining novel; although there’s not much plot to speak of, I enjoyed it. You really get the feel for how claustrophobic it must have been on board. The author’s use of Australian dialect is a bit annoying and takes away from the pace of the novel, but after a while I got used to it. Thirkell was a stranger to Australian ways, but she observes them quite beautifully in this book, contrasting them sharply with the ways of the English. She certainly took every opportunity of mocking the Australians by cleverly making her main character a member of that nation, and frequently making him the butt of her jokes.