Review 2763: The Lark Shall Sing

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The other day a friend and I got on the topic of Elizabeth Cadell. She is an infallible read for a light-as-fluff experience. Most of her novels, written between the 1940’s and the 80’s, involve some kind of romance and sometimes a mild mystery. But she creates engaging characters.

This discussion reminded me that Cadell’s relatives had reprinted all her books—some not quite as good as others—so I decided to poke around and compare their list with the selection of mostly used books that I own. In poking around, I discovered that one of my favorites, Six Impossible Things, was not the second book about the Wayne family but the third! This meant, of course, that I had to buy the second and read all three. The Lark Shall Sing is the first. (Just an update: This whole discussion took place this spring, and I reread this book at the end of May. I just realized that although I read the first two, I forgot to read the third one. I’ll have to do that next.)

Lucille Wayne has come home to sell the family house, despite the recommendation to wait awhile by her godfather, Mr. Milward. She is from a large family now consisting of three young adult siblings and three child siblings. After their mother’s death, they stayed in the house a year, all except Nicholas, who was in the military, but Lucille convinced them to lease it for a year because they couldn’t afford it. Lucille had a job in Cornwall, and Roselle, having finished a secretarial course, was itching to get a job in London.

The year has elapsed, and the tenants, who once considered buying the house, were called back to South Africa. Lucille is engaged and plans to live with her fiancé Digby and his mother in Cornwall. Eleven- and nine-year-old Simon and Dominic are at school and live with their Aunt Mary, and ten-year-old Julia is at school and can spend the holidays with Lucille and Digby. Lucille has sent each of her siblings a letter instructing them to let her know which of their things they would like to keep.

Almost half the book is about them all coming home. Because as soon as they get Lucille’s letter, they all leave immediately for home, most of them with little money or preparation, to try to convince Lucille not to sell. On the way, the three children and Roselle are helped by three total strangers who somehow end up coming along. Roselle nearly faints when she gets off the train, and Miss Cornhill jumps off to help her, only to have her things go off in the train. Simon and Dominic arrive at the London station at rush hour, and Dominic is torn from Simon’s grasp and pushed onto the train while Simon can get nowhere near it. Simon is helped by Robert Debrett, who picks him up so he can signal to Dominic to continue, and drives him to the other end of the journey so he can meet Dominic’s train—in his limousine, because he’s a famous actor. Julia, exhausted and riding a bike too big for her, hits Italian brush salesman Pietro smack in the back and ruins his suit and brushes, but he puts her back on the bike and wheels her home. Nicholas arrives on a rickety motorcycle. Now, all everyone has to do is convince Lucille to keep the house.

This is a lovely book full of likable characters with some touching scenes, particularly the reunion between Simon and his dog, Long John. Of course, Lucille dislikes Robert on sight while Robert decides he’s sticking around to see if he can’t change her mind. What fun!

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Review 2762: The Clocks

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Sheila Webb is a stenographer who has been sent by her agency to Miss Pebmarsh’s house and told to walk in if no one answers the door. When she does, she finds the body of a man dying on the floor. As she’s standing there, Miss Pebmarsh comes in from outside. She is blind, and she’s just about to step in the blood when Sheila screams and rushes outside.

She runs right into the arms of Colin Lamb, who is looking for an address on the crescent that he can’t find. He goes in, finds the body, and calls the police. It just so happens that he is friends with Detective Hardcastle, who arrives.

The dead man, who is elderly and well dressed, has no identification, just a business card that proves to be bogus. On the mantelpiece are a bunch of clocks that Miss Pebmarsh says are not hers, all set to the wrong time, 4:13. Miss Pebmarsh says she has never seen the man before.

Colin, it turns out, is not a policeman but is in a related service, I presume intelligence. He begins helping Hardcastle investigate, and he also consults his friend Hercule Poirot.

I had no clue what was going on in this one, which was a combination of standard mystery and espionage. An added aspect was Colin falling immediately for Sheila when there is still a question of whether she’s involved in the crime.

Although this isn’t by any means my favorite Christie, it has a lot going on and a likable hero. I enjoyed it.

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Review 2761: To Cook a Bear

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Before I start my review, I want to mention a strange coincidence. The main character in this book is Pastor Laestadius, important to a historical religious revival in far northern Sweden and Finland, Sami territory. I thought the name sounded familiar, but it wasn’t his name I googled but “Old Apostolic Lutheran Church.” What I read was, “The Old Apostolic Lutheran Church of America is a Firstborn Laestadian-Evangelical Church in America.” Now, the reason I googled this topic is because when we moved to Southwestern Washington, we accidentally moved into one of two areas of the country that has lots of Old Apostolic Lutherans. In a mainly rural county that has mostly small churches, they have four large ones. Some coincidence, huh?

Enough of that.

Jussi is the narrator for most of the novel. He is a Sami young man whom Pastor Laestadius rescued from poverty and a wandering life as a boy and taught to read and write. He is devoted to the Pastor, but he is very shy and seldom speaks. He is in love with a girl named Maria but never speaks to her.

In this area of far northern Sweden, there is a strong social division in 1852. The better off speak Swedish while the common people speak Finnish. The Pastor is a leader in a return to a stricter religion, and he has been receiving complaints from the more prosperous parishioners because the poor ones tend to fall into exaltation during his sermons, which the more prosperous think is unseemly.

Jussi himself believes that by teaching him to read and write, the Pastor brought him into existence, but he has had a brutal childhood and struggles sometimes with the Pastor’s teachings.

Then a girl is found dead, mutilated. The Pastor is a botanist and is very observant. Although Sheriff Brahe insists the girl was mauled by a bear, the Pastor observes signs that she was raped and murdered and that the killer used a knife to fake bear scratches. But the Sheriff, a brute and a bully, doesn’t listen.

When a bear is found and killed, everyone relaxes, but the Pastor and Jussi are afraid there will be another death. And there is an attack. At a dance, Jussi gets up the nerve to ask Maria to dance, and she does. The next day, the village awakens to find that another girl, Jolina, was attacked. She is not dead, but she will not say what happened. Later, she is found dead, and the Sheriff insists she killed herself. The Pastor begins to suspect the Sheriff.

The Pastor applies fairly modern techniques of detection that no one else understands. For example, he compares the shavings from a pencil and knows about fingerprints. But who can he even take his evidence to?

This is a thoroughly absorbing story. Although the murder story is fictional, it also tells the story of a rebellion that is not fictional. In his Afterword, Niemi explains that he grew up near the site of Laestadius’s church and has always been fascinated by him.

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Review 2760: Guide Me Home

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I believe I read somewhere that this book is to be the last of the Highway 59 series. Since it wraps up some things that have been threads in all three books, that makes sense.

The protagonist of these books is Black Texas Ranger Darren Matthews, and this one doesn’t start out very well for him. Although he intends to ask his girlfriend Randie to marry him, he is late getting home to meet her because of his drinking the night before. For several years, he’s had a threat hanging over him for obstruction of justice in a murder case. The fact is, he did worse than that, framing a hardened member of the Aryan Brotherhood to save an old family retainer. What with the disbanding of his unit fighting hate crimes and the general tenor of the Trump administration, Darren is tired, so he has just retired despite the arguments of his boss.

When he arrives home, more trouble awaits. Randie is there, but so is his mother, from whom he has long been estranged and whose actions in stealing the murder weapon from him and turning it into the police have created the situation with the D. A. that Darren is in. She has come, she says, to try to get him to look into the disappearance of a student at Stephen F. Austin University, where she works cleaning a sorority.

Darren has a big fight with his mother and after she leaves, another one with Randie when she tries to get him to see his mother’s point of view on the key issue—what has always been presented to him as her abandonment of him as a child. Randie then leaves.

Of course, he drinks again, but when he sobers up, he decides to look at the disappearance of the girl. There is no report of anyone missing, but his mother tells him she is the only Black girl in the sorority—that she was told the girl left the sorority, but she found all her things in the trash, including her cell phone.

Darren finds out the girl’s name is Sara Fuller. His reception at the sorority is hostile, with the two girls he talks to making it clear they didn’t like Sara but insisting she moved out. When Darren goes to talk to her parents, he finds they live in an odd community named Thornhill that is for workers in the Thornhill plant. The Thornhill guards are also hostile, and Sara’s parents insist she is at school. When Darren returns home, though, he finds that a boy has followed him home—a friend of Sara’s named Rey who has found a bloody shirt in the forest where he and Sara hang out.

Darren has a lot of things going on, including heat from the Texas Rangers because a couple of times he has reflexively identified himself as one.

I have liked the atmosphere and settings in these books and the strong attachment Darren has to the area. I haven’t really liked the ongoing plot of the murder gun or the cliché of the drinking. Still, the mysteries themselves are quite good ones, so overall, I’ve enjoyed the series.

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Classics Club Spin #45

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It’s time for another Classics Club Spin! Here’s how it works. Before this Sunday, August 16, publish a numbered list of 20 books you’ve chosen from your Classics Club list. On Sunday, a number will be chosen that will determine your next Classics Club read. Read that book before October 4.

I have only five books on my list left to read, so this numbered list will be very repetitive:. I saw someone combining their current list with their next list to give more choice, but I decided not to mix the two. I haven’t published my next list yet.

So, here’s my list:

  1. The Princess of Cleves by Madame de La Fayette
  2. Cecilia, Memoirs of an Heiress by Frances Burney
  3. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
  4. The Methods of Lady Walderhurst by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  5. The Tavern Knight by Rafael Sabatini
  6. The Princess of Cleves by Madame de La Fayette
  7. Cecilia, Memoirs of an Heiress by Frances Burney
  8. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
  9. The Methods of Lady Walderhurst by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  10. The Tavern Knight by Rafael Sabatini
  11. The Princess of Cleves by Madame de La Fayette
  12. Cecilia, Memoirs of an Heiress by Frances Burney
  13. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
  14. The Methods of Lady Walderhurst by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  15. The Tavern Knight by Rafael Sabatini
  16. The Princess of Cleves by Madame de La Fayette
  17. Cecilia, Memoirs of an Heiress by Frances Burney
  18. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
  19. The Methods of Lady Walderhurst by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  20. The Tavern Knight by Rafael Sabatini

Review 2759: Pastel

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A few months ago, I found there were several of Georgette Heyer’s books that I hadn’t heard of much less read. I managed to get ahold of a few, but so far, I’m finding there’s a reason why they haven’t been reprinted.

A puzzle about my copy of Pastel (not the one pictured) from Buccaneer Books is its listed copyright date. I wanted to see how old Heyer was when she wrote the book, so I looked at the copyright date, which says 1910! Heyer was only eight years old then! Her Wikipedia page says her writing career began in 1922, and a Google of the book’s publication date shows 1929, and judging by this cover, she was already well-known. So, where they got that date, I don’t know.

Now to the plot. Frances Stornaway loves her younger sister, Evelyn, but she can’t help feeling that she wants to be more like her. Frances is pretty, but Evelyn is beautiful. Evelyn does everything effortlessly, while Frances tries hard but doesn’t do as well. Evelyn is sparkling and outgoing and attracts people while Frances is shyer. Only their old friend Norman Acre doesn’t prefer Evelyn. He is in love with Frances, but Frances is too romantic to want to marry an old friend.

Frances’s godmother invites just Frances for a visit. Lady Twyford has been matchmaking, so Frances is met at the station by a man who looks to her like a Viking god, Oliver Fayre. She falls in love with him at first sight, and he seems to like her. However, when he comes to call on her, he meets Evelyn, and soon they are engaged. Frances keeps up a brave exterior so that no one knows she cares for Oliver.

Frances eventually decides she’s never going to be in love again. She is fond of Norman, so she decides to marry him.

This novel shows none of the sparkling wit of Heyer’s historical romances. I believe she was hoping to write a realistic book about a certain level of society. As in her other contemporary novels (not counting her mysteries), there are a few “intellectual” conversations meant to reflect what young people are discussing in those days. One was a pretty good satire of an avant-garde art scene, while the second was heaped with sexist assumptions made by both men and women.

But basically, the story follows Frances through very mundane scenes and conversations. The book is well written but predictable.

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Review 2758: Wandering Stars

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Wandering Stars is both a prequel and a sequel to Tommy Orange’s previous novel, There There. The novel begins in 1864 with the massacre at Sand Creek. A young boy, Star, escapes the massacre but is sent to school to eradicate all traces of his culture. He becomes the great grandfather of Opal and Jacquie Red Feather, characters from There There.

The novel follows Jude Star and his descendants as they suffer childhood mistreatment and cultural annihilation, many of them ending up as substance abusers.

About halfway through, we get to the Red Feather family that we already know, and particularly the grandsons of Opal and Jacquie: Loother, Orvil, and Lony. Slight spoiler—in There There Orvil ended up accidentally shot while dancing at a Powwow, the robbing of which provided the tension. As a result, Orvil, just beginning high school, ends up addicted to pain killers.

The family has been through one tragedy after another. Jacquie, the boys’ genetic grandmother, has just left a life of substance abuse and moved in with her sister Opal, who raised the boys after their mother died. The family was just beginning to be in a good place when the shooting occurred.

Much of the book deals with the characters’ struggles but also with their reflections about what it means to be an indigenous person, especially if you’ve been robbed of your traditions.

Orange’s writing style is unusual. At times, he likes his sentences to be very long. That didn’t bother me so much as the feeling that I felt closer to these characters in the previous book, except for Lony, who although very young is super intelligent but tends toward magical thinking. Yet, it turns out, he sees his family very well.

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Review 2757: The Hollow

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For the weekend, relatives are gathering at The Hollow, the home of Lord and Lady Angkatell. Midge Hardcastle is already there. She’s a pleasant girl who works an unpleasant job as a clerk in a dress shop rather than depend on or borrow from her relatives. As a child, she and her cousins spent their summers at Ainswick, Lucy Angkatell’s hereditary estate, but it was entailed and now belongs to another cousin, Edward Angkatell. Midge loves Edward and Ainswick, but Edward loves another cousin, Henrietta Savernake.

Henrietta has not left town for the Hollow yet, because she is working on a sculpture. Her cousin John Christow is finishing his work at his doctor’s practice before he leaves for The Hollow with his wife, Gerda. Gerda worships her husband but at the same time seems terrified of doing anything that displeases him. John is described as a person with good looks and charisma who is about to make a breakthrough on an important medical discovery. He is also having an affair with Henrietta. The other visitor that weekend is David Angkatell, a young man in the throes of university superiority.

Once they have all arrived, a neighbor thrusts her way into an evening gathering. She is Veronica Gray, a famous actress and an old fiancée of John Christow whom he hasn’t seen in 15 years. She has made the excuse of needing matches to interrupt their evening. John Christow has recently been dwelling on the time they spent together, so he sees her home and does not return until 3 AM.

In his absence, John finds that Veronica assumes he will drop everything and return with her to Hollywood, but he suddenly sees her for the grasping and selfish woman she is and refuses.

The next day, new neighbor Hercule Poirot comes over for lunch and finds what he first assumes is a tasteless tableau set up to greet him. John Christow is lying bleeding by the pool, and Gerda, who is regarded by everyone as slow, is holding a gun. At the same moment, Henrietta, Edward, and Lady Angkatell appear from different directions. John, dying, says Henrietta’s name. Henrietta attempts to take the gun from Gerda, and it is dropped into the pool.

Inspector Grange is inclined to believe that Gerda killed John, but Gerda says she found him and picked up the gun. Poirot thinks things are more complicated than they appear, and as it turns out, the gun Gerda found is not the one that killed her husband.

This is a situation with lots of undercurrents. Lucy Angkatell is outwardly warm and scatty but perhaps ruthless. Poirot begins to believe that the family knows who the murderer is.

The biggest problem I had with this novel isn’t to do with the mystery so much as the veneration everyone has for John Christow, who may have been a great doctor but was also completely selfish and oblivious to what others were feeling. Maybe Christie was drawing an accurate sketch of a particular type of person, but why are all these women in love with him?

However, the mystery was difficult. I had my eye on one character, but I was wrong. If a mystery writer can fool me, that’s all to the good. As usual, Christie’s characterization is excellent.

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WWW Wednesday!

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It’s the first Wednesday of the month, so it’s time for WWW Wednesday, an idea I borrowed from David Chazan, The Chocolate Lady, who borrowed it from someone else. For this feature, I report

  • What I am reading now
  • What I just finished reading
  • What I intend to read next

This is something you can participate in, too, if you want, by leaving comments about what you’ve been reading or plan to read.

What I am reading now

I bought Klotsvog after enjoying Margarita Khemlin’s The Investigator, a mystery set during the Soviet era. I haven’t gotten into it much yet, but it’s supposedly about the effects of anti-Semitism on a Jewish woman in post-World War II Soviet Union.

What I just finished reading

I just finished a book that I read for my Booker Prize project. It’s Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood, about an Australian atheist who nonetheless goes to live in a monastery near where she grew up. There was a lot of talk about it a couple years ago, but I am not a contemplative person and have a black hole when it comes to religion, so maybe not the best book for me. It’s also going to be very hard to describe in my review.

What I will read next

I’m not absolutely sure what I will read next, but I’m thinking I’ll want to go a little lighter. The next light book in my pile is Roman Nights, a 1970s mystery/thriller by Dorothy Dunnett featuring Johnson Johnson, previously named Dolly and the Starry Bird. All of the original books were named after Dolly (Johnson Johnson’s yacht) and some kind of “bird,” that is, woman, and I suppose that’s why they are renamed.

What about you? What are you reading?