Review 2786: #RIPXXI! Split Code

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Another book for RIPXXI. Joanna Emerson is a highly trained nanny whose employer recently died in a car accident. She has flown to Winnipeg on a skiing week when she meets Johnson Johnson, the famous portrait painter. Meets him again, that is, because he’s a friend of her father.

Leaving a party, a group of people board a railway carriage where some Inuits who are part of an ethnology study are living for a few days. (The Inuits are part of their party.) At some point, they realize the carriage is moving, and then it is left in the middle of snowy nowhere. During this experience, Joanna takes care of an infant who is no more than a few weeks old, Benedict, the son of Simon and Rosamund Booker-Readman and ultimately the heir to a cosmetic fortune. Everyone is eventually rescued by a bunch of guys on snowmobiles.

Joanna is hired by Benedict’s grandmother to take care of her grandson, so she travels to New York City, where she meets another nanny, Bunty, with her charges, the next door neighbors. They are children of another wealthy family, the Eisenkopps. Almost immediately, there’s an attempt to kidnap Benedict while Joanna and Bunty have the kids out in the park. However, they chase the kidnapper and find Ben in a trash can.

Johnson Johnson is around, because he is painting Rosamund’s portrait. He knows all about the kidnapping attempt and encourages Joanna to explore a theme park called Missy’s Golden American Wonderland because she found a piece of paper advertising it in her pocket after the kidnapping attempt. She takes along a group, and there they are shot at.

These kinds of events follow Joanna and her charge to Cape Cod and eventually to Dubrovnic, then part of Yugoslavia, where Rosamund wants to attend a party on a yacht. There’s a lot of action, during which Joanna proves she can do a lot more than babysit, and she eventually finds that there is more to the situation than someone wanting to kidnap the baby for money.

Johnson Johnson novels are always full of chaotic events and espionage, and this one is no exception. It’s quite a bit of fun and has a revealing last sentence. This book was originally published as Dolly and the Nanny Bird.

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Review 2785: #1949Club! The Parasites

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The Parasites is my last book for the 1949 Club.

The Delaney siblings are lying around and messing up their sister’s home, as they do every weekend, when Maria’s husband Charles tells them they are parasites. Although Niall is a successful songwriter and Maria a famous actress, Niall admits that it may be the case. The novel takes us back through incidents of their lives as the three consider whether Charles is right. A clue may be that the narrative sometimes changes from third person to second person plural, as if they were one organism.

Marie, Niall, and Celia are the semi-related children of the Delaneys, their father a famous singer and their mother a famous dancer (referred to solely as Pappy and Mama). The children run wild through hotels, and even though Niall and Celia are more subdued, they are clearly unruly, but at the theater, all three know to sit quietly. Celia plays with her dolls while Maria mimics her mother, and Niall watches the orchestra.

As we follow them, it becomes clear that Maria and Niall lead their lives with no concern for anyone else, except maybe each other, and Celia protects the two of them. In her young womanhood, she neglects her own talents as an artist to take care of Pappy after Mama dies and later do the same for Maria’s children.

Du Maurier herself struggled with some of the issues this novel brings forward. We don’t know what her childhood was like, but since her father was an actor-manager and her mother an actress, it may have been very much like the one depicted for Maria, Niall, and Celia. She lived separately from her husband for years, like Maria does with Charles, and she doesn’t seem to have felt a lot of connection with her children, also like Maria. (There’s a funny/dreadful passage where Maria is left alone for the day to care for her newborn daughter Caroline.) Did Du Maurier write this novel for readers to sympathize with her characters? I don’t think so. We don’t like them very much. To understand them, maybe. Not caring much about the children is also part of the plot of Frenchman’s Creek, a novel that is supposed to be romantic, but in which the heroine just blows off her family for long periods of time. Du Maurier herself admitted that she neglected her family for her writing. I think that in many of her books she has characters demonstrating some of her own traits.

It’s interesting also that there are three children and one of them is a boy. Du Maurier had two sisters, but she also stated that she had a sort of male alter-ego that she used in some of her books, so perhaps she saw herself in Niall.

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Review 2784: #1949Club! The Emigrants

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The Emigrants is my third book for the 1949 Club. It was originally written in Swedish about the first people from a particular Swedish parish to emigrate to the U. S. The English translation wasn’t published until 1951, but the original book was published in 1949, so it qualifies for the club. The Emigrants is the first book in what was planned as a trilogy but ended up as a quartet.

Karl Oskar Jakobsson is a young man when his father injures himself in the field so that he can’t work. The solution is for Karl to buy his father out of the farm, with his father reserving a room in the house and some pastureland, a cow, and so on. And because Karl is going to be the landowner, he has to get married, so he marries Kristina Johansdotter.

The land, farmed by generations of the family, has already been divided up as much as it can be, a sixteenth—seven acres—of the original plot. And Karl Oskar has taken on a lot of debt. His seven acres have been cleared of the many stones as much as they can be. And then there are several years in a row of bad weather for crops. Karl Oskar feels as if he’ll soon be facing foreclosure, so he decides to sell off his farm and emigrate to the U. S., the first person in his parish to do so, in the 1850’s.

Karl Oskar’s younger brother Robert is a teenager when he goes out to work as a hired man on another farm, the family plot already being divided as far as it legally can be. He is an independent boy who loves reading, and his employer mistreats his workers. Robert ends up running away, breaking his contract, which is illegal. He tells his brother he won’t return, and he has to hide from the law, so eventually his uncle, Danjel Andreasson, takes him to help on his farm. By then, Robert and his friend Arvid have decided that one day they will go to America. They just don’t have money to go now.

Danjel’s father was involved in the Åkian heresy and eventually institutionalized. Danjel has turned from these beliefs, we are to infer, but he has an experience and returns to them. One of the beliefs is that no church hierarchy is necessary for worship. Danjel collects a small group of followers who are the dregs of local society. He gets in trouble with the Lutheran church authorities for having illegal religious meetings in his house.

Once Karl Oskar decides to leave Sweden, he gets together with Robert to tell him, only to find out that Robert has already planned to go, too. Then Danjel and his followers decide to come, only most of his followers have been intimidated by the church and he only has Ulrika, a former prostitute, her daughter Elin, and Danjel’s wife and four children. Danjel is a kind and generous man, so he pays for Arvid’s passage, too, while Karl Oskar pays for his wife, three children, and Robert. At the last moment, a neighbor, Jonas Petter, joins them to get away from his wife.

These are the travelers, and although Karl Oskar is the main character, we periodically see things from the points of view of the others. Although the book is somewhat omniscient in viewpoint, it stays removed from these characters and concentrates on moving forward.

This first novel just gets (almost) everyone to America. It is interesting, and Moberg provides some historical background in the introduction. There is definitely a class divide here. The church authorities treat the farmers paternalistically, and the farmers are often referred to as peasants. On the ship the captain and sailors are disdainful. The farmers are definitely superstitious and gullible—even semi-educated Robert believes some ridiculous things about America that he reads in a book. Danjel is actually quite crazy and hallucinates angels onboard the ship. He tells his followers things like that they will be able to understand English immediately upon arrival in America, so they don’t need to try to learn onboard. He believes this because of some passage in the Bible.

Apparently, these few first immigrations (I’m not sure if the people are inventions or not) started a flood of immigration to America from this parish in Sweden, Ljuder.

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Review 2783: #RIPXXI! #1949Club! Crooked House

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Crooked House is my second book for the 1949 Club and another one for RIPXXI. Some of Agatha Christie’s books are better than others, and Crooked House is pretty darn good. In fact, Christie commented that it was one of her favorites. It’s one of the few of her stand-alone books that I think is just as good as the best Poirot and Marple mysteries.

As the war is wrapping up in Egypt, Charles Hayward realizes he loves his friend Sophia Leonides and tells her that when he returns to England, he will ask her to marry him. Two years later, he cables Sophia to meet him for dinner in London and later reads that her grandfather, Aristide Leonides, a very rich old man, has died. Sophia joins him at dinner anyway and tells him that she fears her grandfather was murdered. Since most of the suspects are family members, she won’t marry him unless the murder is solved. She asks him to help.

Charles’s father is the Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard, and he thinks Charles could be helpful since Aristides was indeed murdered, poisoned when someone substituted eye drops for his insulin. So, the A. C. suggests that Charles accompany Chief-Inspector Taverner to the estate. The near-ninety-year-old Aristides has remarried Brenda, a much younger woman, and it’s clear that the whole household wants the murderer to have been Brenda or Laurence, the tutor whom the family believes is her lover.

Aside from them, the household consists of Sophia’s icy father Philip and her theatrical mother Magda, her emotional uncle Roger and arctic aunt Clemency, her younger siblings Eustace, crippled by illness and bitterness, and young Josephine, who likes to spy on people and brag about what she knows. Finally, there is Edith de Haviland, the sister of Aristides’ first wife.

Although everyone knows how the estate was left, there are unpleasant surprises. First, the will that was read to all of them a year ago is missing. Then, someone knocks Josephine unconscious. Finally, a totally different will is sent to his lawyer by one of Aristides’ old friends.

This one is twisty, and I had no idea who the evildoer was. Although Sophia seems like one of the least knowable characters, there’s a reason for that. This is a good one.

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Review 2782: #RIPXX! #1949 Club! The Third Man

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The Third Man is my first choice for the 1949 Club and also applies to RIPXXI. As usual for the club, I’ll start out by listing books written in 1949 that I have reviewed previously:

I think I’ve read some of the children’s horse books (Black Stallion, Chincoteague), too, but it’s too long ago for me to remember back when I was a child.

And now for my review.

For those like me who are more familiar with the movie, there are quite a few differences. However, Greene explains in the Preface to my Penguin edition that the book was written as a preliminary to the screenplay, because he found it almost impossible to write a screenplay without a book.

The narrator is British Detective Calloway, who sometimes speaks firsthand and other times secondhand from information received from the main character, Rollo Martins. Rollo is the author of several pulp Westerns who has been summoned by his friend Harry Lime to Vienna. But he arrives just in time for Harry’s funeral after he was hit by a car.

Martins is at a loss, because at the time, shortly after World War II, British citizens were only allowed to take £5 out of the country, so he’s broke. Furthermore, Calloway meets with him to discuss Harry’s illegal activities, which are serious. Rollo, who has been friends with Harry since school and hero-worships him, doesn’t believe him. At the same time, Calloway wants to try to determine how involved Rollo is in Harry’s activities. Rollo is so incensed at Calloway’s imputations that he tells him he’s going to prove him wrong.

Rollo starts with interviewing the witnesses to the accident, who apparently were both acquaintances of Harry. This seems odd, and what is odder is that another witness, Dr. Koch, who saw the accident from the window but didn’t talk to the police, tells him he saw three men at the scene of the accident rather than the two who were reported. Who was the third man? And doesn’t it seem sinister when Dr. Koch is killed shortly thereafter?

Another complication is Anna Schmidt, Harry’s girlfriend, a Hungarian actress who is hiding under a false name and papers from the Soviets. She also doesn’t believe Harry is guilty. Unfortunately, Rollo falls in love with her.

This novel is not as suspenseful as the movie, but it excels in its bleak descriptions of post-war Vienna and the complications of its subdivided governance. It’s really moody.

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Review 2781: The Talnikov Family

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When The Talnikov Family was published in 1848, it stirred up quite the kerfuffle with its tale of an abusive family. In fact, it was suppressed. This novel is largely modeled on Panaeva’s own upbringing.

Natasha is part of a large family whose parents don’t pay attention to their many children except to abuse them verbally and physically. Natasha especially seems to be a target of her mother. The household also includes aunts—their father’s sisters—some of whom spy on each other and the children. When one of the boys goes to work for his uncle, his uncle seems to feel it’s his duty to beat him. And their mother hires a governess based on how strict she is.

The family seems to be upper class, but the girls are always cutting down clothing from the adult women or are padding out shoes that are adult sizes. They are poorly fed, because the governess likes to withhold food as punishment.

There isn’t much of a plot to this novel, just stories of superstition and mistreatment throughout the family. The novel doesn’t really have much of an arc, either, just recounts one appalling event after another, but it apparently began debates about such topics as gender, sexuality, and revolution.

Panaeva became a major force in the Russian literary world, running a literary journal that published works of the likes of Dostoevsky, Turgenev, and Tolstoy.

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WWW Wednesday!

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Sorry! I got back online for two days and off again. The issues with the photos are a result of trying to post from my phone.

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 enjoyed the other books I read by Dorothy Canfield Fisher, so I just started The Bent Twig. So far, it seems to be about a family that cares more about its members doing things that make them happy than social appearances.

What I just finished reading

I sneaked a more recent arrival to the top of my pile to read the latest book by Ann Patchett. I didn’t find it as impressive as some of her latest books, but I still found it deeply touching.

What I will probably read next

I have no idea where I heard about this book, but it has emerged to the top of my pile. So, it will probably be next.

Review 2780: Creation Lake

~ whatmeread ~ 3 Comments

“Only activists from Paris would take up subsistence farming in a place like this,” thinks the unnamed narrator going by “Sadie Smith” of Creation Lake. This novel has been called funny, but this kind of deadpan humor, along with comments about what she did not say, are about the funniest it gets.

Sadie is a provocateur who infiltrates fringe groups to observe them for signs of violence, and if there are none, sometimes create it. She used to work for the FBI until pressure from her superiors caused her to persuade a naïve young man into planning a violent act. Then when he and his co-conspirator successfully pled entrapment, her bosses threw her under the bus. Now she works for corporations and wealthy clients, not always aware of who her clients are.

For her present assignment, she has become the fiancée of Lucien, a filmmaker, just to get close to his friend Pascal, the leader of an activist commune in a remote rural area of southwestern France. Sadie’s mission is to again watch the group for plots and also keep an eye on a sleazy politician named Platon. The activists, called the Moulinards, are concerned about a plan to drain all the aquifers in the area to make a giant reservoir. Sadie will be staying in an empty house owned by Lucien’s family and helping Pascal with an English translation of some documents.

Central to the group’s beliefs is an email correspondence with Bruno Lacombe, their mentor, who has withdrawn from the world to live in a vast cavern in the area. Sadie has been able to crack his email to read his messages to the group, which are mostly concerned with the lessons they can learn from Neanderthals. Some of these ideas can make you think, but most are completely unsupported by science, yet presented as if they’re scientific. And a group less likely to commit violence I cannot imagine.

I have to admit to getting tired of reading Bruno’s rambling emails, and of course, Sadie isn’t a likable character. However, the book picked up in the second half.

I’ve read only two other books by Kushner, but one of them seemed also to be concerned with the intersection between wealth and fringe violent groups, not really a topic I find interesting. I read it for my Booker Prize project.

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What I Added to To Read in September

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Frankly, this month has been so fraught with stuff to worry about that I forgot this new feature until I saw Liz’s at Adventures in reading, running, and working from home, where I copied it from originally.

This is the second issue of my new feature, which I hope to post at the beginning of each month. I am listing all the books I added to my To Read list during the previous month, starting with the most recent. The trick is to remember what made me add them to the list.

I am doing worse this month when I know I should remember than I did last month, when I wrote the first feature off the cuff! So, if you think your review might be responsible for me putting a book on my list, please let me know.

Said the Dead by Doireann Ní Ghríofa

I have to admit, this one has me puzzled, especially because I added it in the last few days. I could have sworn it was mentioned by Cathy of 246 Books, but it’s not mentioned in her September news about Irish literature. I also see the Literary Hub wrote about the author, but I can actually picture what the page looked like in my mind, and it’s not the page from Literary Hub. So, if you wrote about this book recently, perhaps in terms of an award nomination or lack thereof, let me know. Anyway, it sounded interesting. It’s a sort of memoir by the Irish poet.

Grand Horizontales: The Lives and Legends of Nineteenth-Century Courtesans by Virginia Rounding

I am fairly sure I read about this book in the New York Times book section. Look! Two nonfiction books in a row! I think the title of this book indicates why it might be interesting.

My Husband by Maud Ventura

I actually tried to figure out a way I could tag books with where I heard of them in The Storygraph, but there was no way. I might have to start writing this stuff down, because I have no idea where I heard of this book. I would think this might have come from the New York Times feature, “Books We Liked this Week” except it was published in 2021. It was originally written in French about a woman’s excessive love for her husband.

Farewell to Eden by Sebastian Faulks

I remember where I read about Farewell to Eden, because I had a discussion with FictonFan about not particularly liking Faulks. Her enthusiastic review made me add it to my list.

Blockers by Michael Lewis

Although Michael Lewis’s The Big Short was not about subject matter that usually interests me, it was actually excellent. Blockers, about people’s encounters with Trump’s “government efficiency” folks, sounds a little more down my alley. That being said, aside from yet another nonfiction book, I have no idea where I read about this one. Might be the New York Times.

Peck & Peck by Bonnie Garmus

Here we go again. I have no idea where I heard about Peck & Peck, but I so enjoyed Garmus’s Lessons in Chemistry that I put it down on my list without even reading what it was about.

The Little I Knew by Chiara Valerio

It’s official. Starting today, I will write these down, because the farther out I get, the less I remember. In any case, it’s about the secrets of a woman who died unexpectedly, so it sounds right up my alley.

Prague Nights by Benjamin Black

I am confident that I put Prague Nights on my list after reading the review by Helen of She Reads Novels. I have read six of Black’s novels on my own (so I’m kind of surprised, Helen, that you said you’ve never heard of him, since I know you read my blog), so just the mention of this one intrigued, especially as I am fascinated by Eastern Europe.

So, here it is for this last month. I hope I do better at remembering in October!