Review: Charitable Getting

I've put off reviewing this, which I don't normally do, and I'm not sure why. You know I find Sam Starbuck fascinating, and Charitable Getting deals quite directly with a lot of the things that make him interesting.

The story centres around SparkVISION Consulting, a company which runs fundraising campaigns and PR for charities. The company is headed by Bo Sparks, a charismatic and slightly unusual fellow. The employees of SparkVISION are our heroes, ordinary people though they may be. It's an eccentric sort of office, full of gossip, secret love affairs, dancing bananas, and the occasional chance to torment the interns. Tanya Montray is a journalist who believes that Non Prophet, a popular blogger, is employed by SparkVISION, and she's determined to find out.

Much of the book is concerned with life on the internet and how it interacts with life in the real world, and how blogging relates to journalism. As a blogger myself, this is rather interesting, even if I am only reviewing books most of the time and not talking about news. But the internet has always fascinated me, and I think it's good that there are books out there that talk about it. As is said in the Afterword, this is a book that in 80 years will be completely out of date, so rooted is it in the world of late 2009. Sometimes it's worth it to spend a whole book talking about the present, to not worry about whether a book "lasts". It captures history in a way other books don't. I imagine that when students in 2111 are writing their theses about extribulum and the emergence of blogging, this will be a crucial text.

Having spent years reading Sam Starbuck's blog, I know the story draws heavily on his life. In some ways this spoiled the mystery of Non Prophet's identity. For anyone less familiar with the author, though, I don't think the book is at all predictable. As a story, this is mostly just a cheerful office novel, full of the ordinary dramas of people's lives. It's very readable and funny. It does have greater depths, though, and for anyone interested in the internet this is an important book, both in terms of the story and in terms of the writing of the book itself.

Review: Ballet Shoes

Noel Streatfeild's Ballet Shoes is one of those classic kids' books I failed to read as a child. I wish I had; I know I'd have loved it. But I've read it now, at any rate, and it's one of those kids' books that holds up well to adulthood.

Pauline, Petrova, and Posy Fossil are three orphans, brought home one by one by Great-Uncle Matthew (otherwise known as Gum) after he had filled up the house with real fossils. They are looked after by Gum's niece Sylvia (otherwise known as Garnie) and Nana. Gum goes away on one of his adventures, leaving the Fossils and their guardians provided for for five years. Five years pass, and Gum still has not returned. To earn money they must go to Madame Fidolia's Children's Academy of Dancing and Stage Training. It's not an ideal situation--Pauline loves acting and Posy cares only for dancing, but Petrova wants to drive cars and fly planes. Still, they get along well enough, though the money is slowly running dry.

It strikes me that no modern children's book would be so much about money worries. This, however, was written in 1937. Most of the story is about how the children must find a way to earn money. It's an interesting comparison.

So it's a lovely book, which I wish I'd read when I was younger but which was not spoiled by my being too old.

Review: A Proper Education for Girls

I often have difficulties with historical novels, especially those set in the 19th century. Something about the voice feels false. This was a lot of the reason I didn't like Geraldine Brooks's March, and I know there have been other books I set aside because I couldn't get past the false Victoriana. Some authors, however, do Victorian well. A.S. Byatt is a perfect example. Her Victorians never seem jarringly overdone.

Elaine diRollo's novel A Proper Education for Girls has likewise succeeded. In 1857, Alice and Lilian Talbot are two loving sister separated by their eccentric, domineering father. After a scandalous affair, Lilian is married to a missionary and sent to India. Her husband, a hypochondriac unable to bear the climate, is no match for her, and soon she is exploring the Indian countryside, painting its plants and learning the Indian customs. Meanwhile, Alice is still at home, looking after her father's Collection. The entire house is overrun with all manner of odd contraptions, art from around the world, display cases of ancient artifacts, and anything else that could possibly qualify as an example of human ingenuity. Guests hang their shirts on a stuffed bear's paws and trip over statues of Greek goddesses. The family in turn trips over the guests--inventors invited to the house to perform their experiments and then forgotten about. Aside from Alice and her father are the elderly female relatives--Mr. Talbot's mother and aunts, who are entirely on Alice's side and who spend their days in the conservatory, which has been filled with tropical plants and is now a blooming hothouse. Alice, with the dubious help of Mr. Blake, the photographer Mr. Talbot hired to photograph the Collection, works to figure out what Lilian is up to in India. In the days leading up to the Indian Mutiny, Lilian learns the skills necessary to travel India alone, and so return to England to save Alice from the extremely sinister plans of her father and his friend Dr. Cattermole.

Alice and Lilian are just two of the fabulous women you know must have been hovering on the edges of Victorian society. They are knowledgeable, capable, and unafraid of flouting traditional gender roles. Alice's lack of traditional femininity, however, proves dangerous. Dr. Cattermole, along with many historical 19th century doctors, believes he can cure perceived social ills (like Alice's independent thought) with surgery. This part of the book is horrifying, frustrating, and fascinating in equal measure. Knowing Elaine diRollo has a PhD in the social history of medicine, you know she's telling a true story. Ultimately, of course, the women prove victorious, which is thoroughly satisfying.

This is a wonderful book. Beautiful and bloody, it paints the Victorian era in more color than we usually see through our vision of sepia-toned old photographs. It makes us aware of the horrible opinions and actions women were sometimes submitted to, and gives us the satisfaction of knowing that in the end, the women won.

Review: The Forsyte Saga: In Chancery

I'm always surprised by finishing DailyLit books. I read a chunk of the book every day, and suddenly I'm ten from the end so I read them all at once, and suddenly I've finished a book I barely thought about reading.

However busy I was this quarter, I kept reading In Chancery every day. It's the third book of the Forsyte Saga, after The Man of Property and Indian Summer of a Forsyte, which is a novella. I read both of those last spring, and now I've finished the third.

It is 1899, or thereabouts. The Forsytes are growing older. The oldest generation are, one by one, dying. Their children are now in their forties, though middle age does not stop them living, having affairs, marrying. Their children are just growing up, falling in love, going off to fight in the Second Boer War. Like with the first books, the title is very apt, though you don't realize how apt until well into the book. The characters are in a kind of limbo--in chancery. They are trying to bring about changes in their lives, but this involves waiting for things to happen and making tiny movements towards the larger goal.

The main draw of the Forsyte Saga, for me, is John Galsworthy's writing style. The plot is interesting, but not captivating, and not many of the characters are really likable. You can sympathize with them, but they are not amiable, not charming. Usually, I like to read about people I like. Galsworthy's writing makes up for all that, however. He picks out moments and describes them beautifully. He talks about emotions without making anyone seem emotional. The inner workings of the Forsyte family are fascinatingly described. Galsworthy has developed a special language for Forystes. They have their own view of the world, their own systems of communication, their own way of getting things done. They are a very believable family. As someone who does not have a very large family (at least, not that I see), this is fascinating to me.

I thoroughly recommend reading the Forsyte Saga. It's wonderfully written, and a perfect portrait both of a family and of an era.

Review: Strong Poison

I first started reading Dorothy Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey novels after reading Connie Willis's novel To Say Nothing of the Dog, which makes a lot of references to Lord Peter. I was drawn in by the promise of the relationship between Lord Peter and Harriet Vane. Of course, there are four whole novels before Harriet Vane ever appears, but I've thoroughly enjoyed reading them, and at this point I'm much more interested in Lord Peter than in his romances.

When we do meet Harriet Vane in Strong Poison, she is on trial for the murder of her former love, Philip Boyes. She's a mystery novelist, and has recently done a lot of research into arsenic for a new novel. Unfortunately for her, Philip Boyes just happens to have died of arsenic poisoning. Lord Peter, clever fellow that he is, is convinced she is innocent, and sets out to prove it (simultaneously setting out to convince her to marry him).

I found the plot a bit uneven--preoccupations from the first half of the book seemed to disappear in the latter half. I confess the book may have suffered from my manner of reading it, since I read a lot of it and then put it aside for a while. Still, there weren't really enough suspects, and I think both the investigation and the book suffered from a lack of leads. On the other hand, I found myself particularly interested in Lord Peter's character in this book. His feelings about Harriet Vane were intriguing, and they made him rather more real, though also more complicated.

So on the whole, it was satisfying, as Lord Peter novels always are.

Review: Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, by Helen Simonson, was a glorious book. I loved it entirely. Its existence seems so improbable I love it all the more.

In the small village of Edgecombe St. Mary in the English countryside, the retired Major Ernest Pettigrew lives alone. His wife is dead, his son is a banker in London, and his younger brother lives in the next town over. When his brother dies unexpectedly, he becomes friends with Mrs. Jasmina Ali, the Pakistani village shopkeeper. They both love books and a good cup of tea, and both have been left behind by the deaths of their spouses. As the friendship between Major Pettigrew and Mrs. Ali grows and subtly, almost imperceptibly, becomes something more, the village looks on with a certain amount of suspicion. As Mrs. Ali says late in the book, "A couple may have nothing in common but the color of their skin and the country of their ancestors, but the whole world would see them as compatible." These two have a much more real set of common interests and opinions, but in the face of the world that may not be enough.

Major Pettigrew is wonderful. He is old-fashioned in all the best ways--courtly, honorable, and decorous. He has a fabulously dry sense of humour. He is constantly being thwarted by people--his son Roger, his sister-in-law Marjorie, the village ladies, all of whom just don't seem to see the world the same way the Major does, don't understand how to be truly sensible and civilized. You cannot help loving Major Pettigrew. Mrs. Ali shares many of the Major's views on the world, and she has an equally dry sense of humour. It is this that makes the book so funny. Both of them are constantly giving people well-deserved rebukes for their behaviour, but they do it so dryly that no one ever notices.

The book is about family, both the inherited and created kinds. It is about being happy and making happiness, about race and class and appearances. It does all this so effectively because it is at heart a damn good story. It is wonderfully romantic, the more so because it is the story of romance in unexpected places.

The book is surprising in many ways. The main characters are older. The book is unafraid to assert values the younger characters think are old-fashioned and unnecessary, unafraid to be quiet (though it's not undramatic), unafraid to make judgments on people's foibles, while still accepting their foibles as very human. I can't think of any other book that is quite like this one, which makes it so much more valuable. I really can't quite express how much I love this book. I stayed up until nearly one in the morning to finish it. It's going on my list of books to foist on people. I don't know where I first read about it, though I know it's made the rounds in blogland, but seriously, thank you, whoever recommended it.

Review: The Forgotten Garden

Something about this time of year makes me want fairytales. Maybe because I was reading The Children's Book this time last year, and it fit so well with the usual November weather. I've been wanting to read about Victorian England, fairtyales, mythology, nature, art, families, history.... And then I realized that I had just the book sitting on my desk, waiting to be read.

The Forgotten Garden, by Kate Morton, is about the mysteries within families, the difficulties of knowing who you are, and gardens. On the night of her 21st birthday, Nell Andrews is told she isn't who she thinks she is--her parents are not her parents and her sisters not her sisters. Her name isn't even really Nell. When she was four years old, in 1913, she was found sitting alone on the wharf in Maryborough, Australia, with nothing but a child's suitcase, and no memories of where she came from. In the suitcase is a book off fairytales written by a woman called Eliza Makepeace. Many years later, in 1975, Nell finally goes to England in search of her family. Eliza Makepeace is her only clue, and she leads the way to Blackhurst Manor in Cornwall and the mysteries of the Mountrachet family. But Nell isn't able to solve the puzzle, and it's not until she dies and her granddaughter Cassandra takes up the search that the mystery is unraveled.

The book follows three time periods, more or less. There's Nell in 1975, Eliza Makepeace in her childhood, and Cassandra in 2005. Characters often weave between these times, popping up again, still keeping secrets that have lasted decades. If the title has the ring of The Secret Garden, there's reason. Frances Hodgson Burnett even makes an appearance, and I think the book is meant to be a bit of a homage to children's books like it. The book itself, however, is certainly not a children's book.

One theme in the book I found particularly interesting was that of obsession, almost to the point of madness. It seems to run in the Mountrachet family. They want things they can't have and they'll go to rather frightening lengths to get them, even when having them isn't really perfect. It was rather frightening and definitely not quite sane, the way two characters in particular want things and can't give them up, and it's their attempts to get these things that really causes the drama of the book. And though they're not quite sane, you never feel like this is unrealistic, which makes it even creepier. It's actually quite a tragic book--so many of the characters are victims of circumstance.

I'll admit I was about 100 pages ahead of the plot the whole time. I knew it was inevitable who Nell's mother was going to turn out to be, way before Cassandra did. I think my trouble with plotlines like this is that it's how I would write it so I always know how it's going to turn out. Of course, this didn't really kill my desire to finish the book and find out how it all went down. This is a long book--550 pages--which involves a lot of interwoven plots and clues and characters, and though it's perfectly easy to follow, I'm sure it took some doing to write.

It's a lovely book--eerie and magical and historical. It's not deep or dense in the way The Children's Book is, but it does touch on some similar themes and have a similar mood. It's a children's book for grownups, in a way, and that makes it extremely satisfying.

Single Father

I've just watched the last episode of Single Father, the new miniseries starring David Tennant. We know him from Doctor Who, of course, but it's impressive how little he's been typecast. He's been a crazy Death Eater, Hamlet, an alien, and now a single father, and somehow every time all you think about is what he's doing now.

He plays Dave, married to Rita, with whom he has three children, plus they each have a child from previous relationships. In our make-believe of a beginning, Rita dies suddenly in a car accident. The show tells the consequences, which are numerous and messy and sometimes lovely.

Many of the twists and turns of the show would be melodramatic in other hands. The writing and the fabulous acting make this perfect. The characters are flawed and realistic, the kids are especially great, the relationships complicated. I loved the whole thing.

Review: The Season of Second Chances

I first heard of Diane Meier's novel The Season of Second Chances at Cornflower Books. The premise sucked me in and induced me to order the book from the library even before it made it onto my to-read list. The book has proved to be not quite what I expected, but something very interesting all the same.

Joy Harkness, Columbia professor who specializes in Henry James and Edith Wharton, is invited to move to Amherst, Massachusetts to participate in an experimental liberal arts program. She has no attachment to Columbia--no close friends, no romantic entanglements, an inconvenient apartment--and Amherst is offering more money than she thinks she deserves. So she goes. Impulsively (an adverb completely out of character for her), she buys a falling down but potentially beautiful house. She hires Teddy Hennessey to fix it up for her--he's 35 but essentially just a big kid, still living with his mother--and he does. The college and the town welcome her in, involve her in their personal dramas, force her to be more connected to other people than she's ever been before. She keeps expecting it to be over, life to go back to "normal", but by the end her definition of normal has changed.

The book has an unusual style. Joy narrates, and much of the story is told sort of anecdotally, even conversations. On the one hand, this is the first time I've ever read a first-person novel that I thought sounded like someone would actually tell a story. I've never liked first-person stories; I always think they feel contrived, but this didn't. On the other hand, this very second-hand way of hearing about events and characters makes it hard to really understand those characters and their motivations. I sometimes felt like people's appearances were over-described--Joy doesn't care much about clothes, so it seems odd for her to describe them in so much detail. Food also felt a little over-described, and so did the details of Joy's house, sometimes, though that is much more integral to the story and makes more sense. Over all, the writing was intriguing, and my complaints are fairly superficial.

Joy reminds me of no one so much as Helene Hanff. I've read a lot of Helene Hanff this year, and certain details--Joy's clothes, her gripes about her apartment, her voice--all reminded me quite forcibly of Helene Hanff. As with all good books, though, the comparison wore off because I got too wrapped up in the story to notice it. And there are certain differences, too.

I have a feeling I won't remember this as a "college book", though that was what drew me to it originally. It's about the characters and their interaction with each other, not their interaction with university life. This is very much a coming of age, feel-good book--so much so that I'm putting off reading another book that I suspect will have a similar feel until I've read something in between. It's very believable, and quite satisfying, with a fairly unpredictable ending. So over all, really very good.

Review: The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club

Last year Dorothy Sayers was what got me back to reading after a dry spell, and this year she's simply been the continuation of the good reading habits I picked up over the summer. The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club is the fourth Lord Peter Wimsey novel, and in my opinion it is by far the best yet. I think this is the first time Lord Peter really becomes Lord Peter. He has gained a certain something--he's more buoyant, but he's also more serious. The book itself is funnier than I remember the previous books being. I have a (bad?) habit of reading all books with Sam Starbuck and his writing in the back of my head, picking out characters I know he'd like. I already know he actually does read and like Lord Peter, and this is the first book where it is vividly clear to me exactly why he likes Lord Peter, and further, where characters with certain Lord Peter inspirations have cropped up in his writing.

Dorothy Sayers has once again distinguished herself in writing a mystery that does not immediately look like a mystery. No formula here. General Fentiman is extremely elderly and not very well, so when he is found dead in his usual chair in the Bellona Club on Armistice Day, no one is surprised. But why wasn't there a red poppy in his lapel, and when did he die? When it becomes clear that the time of his death determines a half-million-pound inheritance, Lord Peter sets out to answer these questions.

This was very good fun, and Lord Peter was very charming, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Review: Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy: The Last Man in the World

Sometimes the books you least expect to read are the most satisfying. I worked off my desire to read Jane Austen spin-offs this summer, and in any case Pride and Prejudice was not my main interest. I had a lot of reading to do for class, and I was in the middle of a Dorothy Sayers novel. But I was at home for the weekend, and my mother went to the library, and she brought it home, and it sounded like a nice change from the history of science or linguistics, and so here we are.

Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy: The Last Man in the World, by Abigail Reynolds, is one of a series of Pride and Prejudice variations. Known usefully to the fanfiction world as AU, or alternate universe, these books choose a turning point in the story, a "What if?" scenario, and imagine how the book would run if one or two small things had happened differently. I have always loved contemplating What Ifs, and the most interesting ones are the smallest changes, which spread throughout the story and change everything.

This book's turning point is Mr. Darcy's first proposal to Elizabeth. What if she had been forced by questions of reputation and propriety to marry him? I was very pleasantly surprised by how well this premise was executed. It was well-written, chose excellent moments to throw in hints of the original book, and explored how the change in circumstance would affect the characters in interesting ways. Though the alternate path of the story changed Elizabeth and Darcy very much, I never felt like they had ceased to be Elizabeth and Darcy. The book also added some new pieces of information about the characters, which was seamlessly worked in to what we already know.

This was an interesting "What if?", a satisfying Jane Austen spin-off and an interesting story of a marriage, and it successfully managed not to be absurd, overly angsty, or self-indulgent. I read it all in a day. I think this can safely be proclaimed a winner.

Review: Evelina

I've been hearing about Frances Burney in passing ever since I started reading Jane Austen criticism a year and a half ago. Though we think of Jane Austen as a 19th century writer, she spent her first 25 years in the 18th, and early versions of some of her novels were written before the turn of the century. Further, all the early formative reading she did was of 18th century authors like Frances Burney and Samuel Richardson. The association between Jane Austen and Frances Burney for me goes one step further--in George Knightley, Esquire, there is a cat named after a character from Evelina. So when I read someone's excellent review of Evelina, I rushed off to order it from the library.

It has, I believe, exceeded all my hopes. Evelina was written in the 1770s, and in the beginning I had to keep reminding myself of this, because all my Jane Austen associations were so overpowering. As I got further into the book, however, these associations receded--not because they ceased to be true, but because the book was so good I never thought of anything but the present story. 

The easy explanation of the plot is this: Evelina is the heroine, a naive but good and intelligent young girl, raised wholly in the country, who goes to London for the first time and embarrasses herself a lot. Because Evelina is so ignorant of town customs, she's the perfect person to point out their absurdities, and in this way the book is social commentary. There's also a question of her parentage, because her father is a cad who left her mother and claimed they weren't married, and the story surrounding this, when it is finally solved, sounds very much like something out of a play, full of misunderstandings. And of course, there is a love story.

I have never read anything written prior to Jane Austen, aside from poetry and Shakespeare, so I was not entirely sure what to expect from this. The novel is written in letters. I was surprised by how often the language sounded like Shakespeare, despite being written almost 200 years later. Certain phrases and modes of wit we associate with Shakespeare turned up here, none of which I've ever noticed in Jane Austen, 40 years later. Perhaps this is partly to do with Burney's writing style, or her choice of characters, or simply 40 years of language change. 

I found Evelina captivating, though I couldn't quite tell you why. It has a certain quality, in common with Elizabeth Gaskell novels despite myriad differences between the two writers, which makes it thoroughly satisfying. I loved it.

Review: Grammar is a Sweet, Gentle Song

I am already a confirmed lover of grammar. I have studied five languages besides my own and taken three linguistics classes, I've been writing for years, and I've edited many an essay. For the most part grammar comes instinctively to me. This book, therefore, is for me not so much a discovery as an affirmation.

Grammar is a Sweet, Gentle Song, by Erik Orsenna, translated from French by Moishe Black, is the story of two children shipwrecked on an island. Fourteen-year-old Thomas and ten-year-old Jeanne, the narrator, are on an ocean liner to New York to visit their father when a storm sinks their ship. The storm leaves them in shock, and when they wash up on the island they are unable to speak. They are taken in by an islander, who shows them the sights of the island--at the Word Market they look for rhymes to buy, at the town hall in Word City words are married. At the "most vital factory of them all," sentences are made. By visiting these sights and discovering the wonder of grammar, Jeanne and her brother regain their ability to speak.

The blurb on the back of the book compares it to The Little Prince, and it does have distinct similarities. Both books are about discovering the wonders of life. It also reminded me of The Elegance of the Hedgehog. Aside from having that indescribable quality common to all the French literature I've read, Jeanne's voice reminded me a lot of Paloma's in The Elegance of the Hedgehog. Two smart, matter-of-fact preteen girls.

I can see this being assigned in a French class, because it does a very good job of explaining basic French grammar. This is occasionally odd in translation, because the gender of words is part of the story and English words have no gender. The translation is never particularly jarring, though.

I loved this. It's short, sweet, French, grammatical, and wonderful. My favourite bit was the answer to the question, "What is a great writer?":

"Someone who, with no regard for trends and modes, constructs sentences solely to help him explore truth."

Review: Le Petit Prince

Possibly everyone but me has already read this. To fully excuse myself, I have to say that I was intending to study French, so I was putting it off until I could actually read it in the original. But then that didn't pan out, and who knows if I'll ever be able to read that much French, so I'm reading it in English.

A pilot stranded in a desert in Africa looks up from mending his plane one day to see the little prince. The sole resident of Asteroid B-612, the little prince has left his tiny planet to explore. He asks the pilot to draw him a sheep--"Dessine-moi un mouton." The little prince sees the world differently from adults, and I think it's totally impossible to read this book without seeing from his point of view for a while.

I read this in my warm living room with the rain absolutely pouring outside, already in a certain odd mood, and it was the perfect moment for such a book. The Little Prince is a children's book which easily reminds adults of their childhood, whether or not they read this in childhood. It's lovely. There's nothing more to say about it.

Review: Miss Hargreaves

Probably most people who read a lot of book blogs have already heard about Frank Baker's Miss Hargreaves from Stuck in a Book. I'm pretty sure he's responsible for the lovely new Bloomsbury Group edition of the book. Having heard so much about the book, when I was going through my to-read list for books to order from the library, I ordered it.

It's a premise that's entirely suited to me. Norman Huntley and his friend Henry are inspired on the Spur of the Moment to invent an eccentric 83-year-old woman called Miss Hargreaves. Just for fun they mail her a letter, but when she shows up in their ordinary cathedral town complete with the cockatoo, dog, harp, and bath with which they have imagined her, things begin to get difficult. Miss Hargreaves is exactly as Norman has pictured her, and what's more, every time he must come up with a new story to explain her inexplicable existence, that story appears to come true also. It's an impossible predicament. She is inconvenient, embarrassing, and demanding, but trying to rid himself of her only causes Norman more problems. She's impossible (in more than one sense of the word), but he likes her.

Myself a master of inventing absurd stories, this book ought to be perfect for me. It wasn't though, not quite. I think I'd heard too much about it, and so formed a vision of it that predictably was not accurate. Perhaps it was the tone of the book or Norman's response to Miss Hargreaves, or Miss Hargreaves herself, that didn't agree with what I wanted the book to be. I'd have written it differently. I'm sorry this happened. I think, had I had no preconceived notions, I'd have loved it. That said, it is a fabulous book. I suspect is is growing on me in the aftermath. It has something to say about creation and creative thought, and that's something which fascinates me. It has a lot of thoroughly funny lines, though it was not a book I especially laughed over. It is a fabulous idea, and if not done the way I'd have done it, done well. I suspect it will also be memorable. It may make me think twice about inventing stories.

Though not perfect for me, it is perhaps perfect in itself, and well worth reading.

Review: Secret Adversary

I've decided that Agatha Christie is the perfect author to read via DailyLit, but unfortunately I've exhausted the Agatha Christie novels they have available. The latest I've just finished is Secret Adversary. Not Marple or Poirot, Secret Adversary has some of Agatha Christie's less famous heroes. This is the first of the Tommy and Tuppence books, less murder mystery and more adventure novel, set in the early 1920s. A missing girl, a ring of conspirators, multiple kidnappings, a hidden document leftover from the war which must not fall into enemy hands, who better to save the day than two very young adventurers, against the brilliant and invisible Mr. Brown? Tommy Beresford and Prudence "Tuppence" Cowley are childhood friends who meet again years later, and since both are jobless and in need of money, they decide to start a Young Adventurers company, with the aim of having other people's adventures and getting paid for it. They are very much part of the 1920s. Tommy has a sort of boy scout air to him, young, sporting and not very imaginative. Tuppence is a resourceful and intelligent modern sort of girl.

This is somewhat less serious than other Agatha Christie novels, even if they do speak of saving England. It's a good old adventure story. Still, the plot is just as convoluted and clever as any Agatha Christie. I was suspicious of the character who turned out to be Mr. Brown quite early on, but I was never sure, and I had no idea why or how or who else was involved. I got within the last 25 sections of the book and had to race to the ending. It keeps your attention and is a very good, untaxing sort of read for an afternoon.

Review: The Greengage Summer

I'm actually not sure where I first heard of The Greengage Summer, by Rumer Godden. It was probably A Work in Progress, but it's possible someone else read it as well and knocked it onto my to-read list. When I went through said list looking for books I wanted to finally read, this was one of the ones I picked, so something about it must have appealed to me from the start.

It's a lovely book. It reminds me of Joanne Harris novels--small town France, a certain dreamy quality to the storytelling. For some reason I always have difficulties with Joanne Harris novels, though, even when I like them a lot. I got through Chocolat all right, but I've started Five Quarters of the Orange two or three times and never finished it. I had no such difficulties with The Greengage Summer. It was hard to put down. I'd start reading it, and keep reading and never find a good place to stop, though once I put it down it didn't poke at me to go back. Funny how differently books behave in this.

The Greengage Summer tells the story of five English children who spend a summer in a hotel in the wine countries of France. Their mother is absent, in a French hospital, and they are haphazardly looked after by the people in the hotel. The oldest girl is Joss, sixteen and just beginning to grow up. The next oldest girl is Cecil, thirteen and our narrator. Then we have Hester, 10, and Willmouse, who spends most of his time sitting in the orchard designing clothes. The youngest is Vicky, who is four years old and hangs out in the kitchen. The other inhabitants of the hotel are Mademoiselle Zizi, the proprieter, Madame Corbet, the manager, Monsieur Joubert, a painter, and Eliot, and Englishman who is temporary guardian to the children and many other things besides. There are also various hotel employees who flit in and out of the story, some more important than the others.

Cecil tells the story from her memory, and true to memory, the story jumps around and gives hints of the future. Though you never particularly suspect her of embellishing, you know that to Cecil some parts stand out more than the others, some are remembered in a certain light. There's something about summer which leaves behind memories as impressions, certain signs that bring it to mind. Though the story has a very strong plot, it is remembered and told in increments, so that sometimes the individual actions or things seem bigger than the whole. I don't mean to imply that the book doesn't hang together well, or have a strong sense of continuity. It absolutely does, which is part of why it was so hard to put down.

This is a story about growing up, about the adult world intruding into the children's world even more than they intrude into the adult world. What the children know is crucial to the mysteries the adults are trying to solve. The children see people differently than adults see them, sometimes because they see more clearly, sometimes because they are ignorant of adult concerns, and sometimes because the adults really are different when they are with children. The book seems to say that the point of view of children is just as valid as that of adults. If a person has been nice to a child, the child can think of that person as nice, and it doesn't matter what that person does to adults, and that's okay. It's a nice message.

This is a wonderful book, perfect for long bright summer afternoons. I may not have explained it well, but that's because it holds together so perfectly and imprints itself on your memory in such an indefinable way. I loved it.

Review: At Large and At Small

I love Anne Fadiman. I still remember reading Ex Libris, three years ago, as an experience. I read the entire thing in one go, lying on somebody else's bed in the June sunshine from a skylight. Shaun of the Dead was on tv in the background, which I realize is kind of incongruous, zombie movies not being much in the line of calming books about books, but it adds to the memory in a nostalgic way all the same. I read Rereadings not very long afterwards, but for some reason it's taken me until now to get around to At Large and At Small.

The whole book is an ode to the familiar essay--not quite a personal essay, not quite totally impersonal, but slipping easily between both. The subjects of the essays range from insect collecting to Charles Lamb to coffee to mail to moving to ice cream to the American flag to Samuel Taylor Coleridge (it sounds like a bizarre word association game, doesn't it?). Anne Fadiman has never failed to make me want to write essays. She's a brilliant writer in technical terms--impeccable grammar, lovely turns of phrase--but she also clearly loves the writing and loves her subjects. The familiar essay is interesting in that way--it tells the story of the subject from a historical, objective perspective, but the motivation for writing about it is personal, and the personal story is told also.

In the essay about coffee, Fadiman writes, "Don't we all just keep doing the things that make us even more like ourselves?" (186). This line caught my attention, because it struck me as descriptive of all the essays in this book. The people she writes about--Samuel Taylor Coleridge Charles Lamb, Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson, her father, her brother, her husband, herself--are all very thoroughly themselves. The parts of their lives she picks out to write about are the parts that most set them apart, without which they would be less themselves, someone else. Possibly someone more normal, sane, or balanced, but probably someone less interesting.

I love books about books, so Ex Libris remains my favourite, but there's no questioning that no matter what she writes about Anne Fadiman is a completely wonderful essayist. I'm terribly sad I've now finished both her books of essays, but I know they will always be thoroughly rereadable.

Review: I ♥ Macarons

I first discovered macarons over at Paris Breakfasts. They're a bizarrely alluring confection--colourful, flavourful, and unusual. They are not macaroons. A while ago I finally got to taste them, at the French bakery in Pike Place Market, Le Panier. They're not quite cake and not quite candy. But I admit, they cost more than I really want to spend on sweets, and for I while I've been contemplating trying to make them. In quest of this, I ordered I ♥ Macarons, by Hisako Ogita, from the library.
The book's quest is to make macarons seem doable in your own kitchen, and it does manage to make them seem a little less daunting. It's only three ingredients, after all--ground almonds, powdered sugar, and egg whites, plus whatever ordinary frosting or jam you want to put in the middle. This is a lovely little book with great photographs of what is obviously an eminently photogenic food, and I hope I get around to making use of it.

Review: A Room with a View

I was not expecting to be so drawn in to A Room with a View. E.M. Forster has never particularly drawn my attention. I half-watched the 2007 tv version of A Room with a View, and at some point half-watched Where Angels Fear to Tread, but nothing ever pressed me to read these. So I can't say why I picked it up. I started reading it through DailyLit, but I don't really remember choosing it. After a while I started to realize it deserved more attention than my DailyLit books generally get, and I ordered it from the library. Whatever random chance led me to choose A Room with a View, I'm so glad it did.

This is a beautiful book, but I have to qualify that. It is beautiful in a youthful way, with freckles and sunburnt cheeks and grass stains. Despite discussions of passion, corporeal love, and gender roles, the beauty is in the violets and the wet grass at the end of the pond, moments where the characters stop overthinking their lives, and adopt a childlike manner of simple unquestioning action and reaction.

Lucy Honeychurch goes to Italy with her cousin Charlotte, who takes on a sort of maiden aunt chaperone role. At the Pension Bertolini in Florence, they are disappointed in their hopes of a room with a view. This room with a view becomes the frame for the whole book--whether it is important, whether to take it when it is offered. Lucy discovers that living feels different in Italy--feels more, perhaps. "Italy worked some marvel in her. It gave her light, and--which he held more precious--it gave her shadow" (pg. 102). She goes home to England and becomes engaged to Cecil Vyse, but she finds that the people and events of her Italian travels keep creeping back into her life.

This book is subtle in interesting ways. Major events are shown less through people than through settings. People are described by settings--a room with a view, the out of doors, a drawing room with no view, a field of violets, and the emotions behind their actions are both described and influenced by their surroundings. This effect is used in such a way that events crucial to the plot seem brief and small, but the descriptions make it subtly apparent that these events are beautiful, and therefore important.

My main impression of this book is of the different expressions of beauty, its necessity and meaning, but I also loved the way independence was explored. The freedom to form one's own opinions of what is good or right or proper, and again, freedom from and in places. Independence is also, in an interesting way, contrasted with love. These two things certainly interact, but it's sometimes hard to tell how. In many ways it's hard to explain this book or my reaction to it. I have the somewhat odd feeling that it's just so intelligent, in a way that's not entirely textual, that I only understand it on an emotional level, and can't explain it. But it's been a while since I felt like that about a book, and it's interesting.

I loved A Room with a View. I can only suppose it was the hand of some guiding cosmic librarian that urged me to read it, since I'm not sure chance accounts for it. And there's something extra satisfying in loving a book one has always heard about.