Review 2775: Monkey Boy

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Something I read said Monkey Boy was “nearly autofiction.” I don’t know anything about Goldman’s history, but to me it seemed like completely autofiction. Set with the present being sometime in the 2000s, it goes back and forth between the novel’s present three days and events in the character’s life as well as imagined events in his parents’ and other ancestors’ lives. (Maybe that’s the part that’s not autofiction.)

Francisco Goldberg is a writer who has recently moved back to Boston from Mexico because of threats to his life resulting from the reporting he’s been doing about Guatemala. Over the course of three days, while he visits various figures from his past, he goes over his relationship with his abusive Jewish father, his relationship with his failing Guatemalan mother, the difficulties his split heritage brought to his life, and his relationship with his much younger girlfriend. He also recalls events in war-torn Guatemala and other subjects. Anyway, in his discussions with old friends and babysitters, he learns things about his family’s past that have been kept secret.

It took me a while to get into this novel, which I read for my Pulitzer Prize project. I am not sure why, because the writing is good and the events should have involved me. Maybe it was Goldman’s habit of getting to a point of interest and then spinning off to tell everything he knows about that person instead of what you’re interested in. (I have more recently encountered that tendency in Victor Hugo, only to the extent of hundreds of pages.) And sometimes that apparently climactic point turns out to be anticlimactic after all. And he does like long paragraphs.

I didn’t particularly like Francisco. Aside from doing some pretty rotten things when he was a kid, he seems to be focused almost exclusively on himself. It’s hard to imagine, for example, that he could be physically abused by his father for years without realizing that his mother was not just verbally abused but also physically abused. And then there’s his refusal to visit his sister for years. (He claims it’s not because his parents left her everything.)

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Review 2774: #RIPXXI! Murder at the Spirit Lounge

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Another book for RIPXXI! Ex-nun Nora Breen encounters her friend Detective Inspector Hilary Rideout, and he asks her to come with him to the home of Doreen Chimes, a spiritualist. She has made a complaint of a theft, and Rideout asks Nora to come along as his “chaperone.”

Nora is interested to find that several people think Mrs. Chimes is legitimate, including Rideout. He is invited to a séance at her house to which Nora, as an ex-nurse, is summoned because the medium has collapsed. Mrs. Chimes is dead, having collapsed while using a planchette. Attending the event are Rideout, Lady and Miss Baybrooke, Colonel Fulford, Freddie Grace, and his unexpected date Sybil Sparkes. Mrs. Chimes died as the planchette spelled out “Eve.”

Nora begins to suspect foul play because she has noticed strange red patterns on Mrs. Chimes’ hand. It seems as if someone at the séance must have done something, because no one else was in the room. Before they get very far in the investigation, though, there is a bizarre incident at the Baybrookes’ hotel. Nora witnesses Miss Baybrooke running wildly through the hotel. She seems to be shouting at no one. She finally throws herself out the window, but Nora spots a spectral-looking soldier on the fire-escape. Lady Baybrooke is found dead in bed, her asthma inhaler filled with powder.

In trying to find an Eve, Nora and Rideout learn that Miss Baybrooke was engaged to a flyer during the war, Evelyn Leyton, a patient in the hospital that the Baybrookes’ estate was requisitioned for. He had mental problems, and after Lady Baybrooke made her break it off, he committed suicide.

As the investigation continues, more links are found between Evelyn Leyton and the séance attendees, including Rideout, who knew him. Someone seems to be taking revenge for his death, as the attendees begin dying strange deaths. Nora becomes concerned for Rideout.

This is the second Nora Breen novel. Although I prefer some of Kidd’s other books, I like Nora and Rideout and some of Nora’s friends. The damp seaside town is evocative. I figured out the name of the killer fairly quickly, but the killer was in disguise, and I didn’t figure out who that person was. I found the novel entertaining.

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A Short Announcement

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I have been trying to leave a note on a few people’s blogs but with some difficulty I’ll explain. Since last Saturday we have been without internet or landline service. A technician was supposed to come out yesterday but never showed up, and now Centurylink is telling me next Thursday. (Don’t ask.) All we have for communication is my cell phone.

There are a few blogs that I usually try to comment on or at least like. For some reason from my phone, WordPress makes me log in every time I try to comment or even like a blog. Then after I have logged in two or three times, it locks me out and tells me to come back in a few minutes. This afternoon I tried to explain this to a blogger in a comment hours after I had been online, and it still blocked me.

This is a long way of saying that I am still reading your blog even if you don’t hear from me for a.week or more. I don’t understand why WordPress is making me log in to like something since anyone can do that, but oh well.

Review 2773: #RIPXXI! Benbecula

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I accidentally started reading the Darkland Tales in order. These are books by prominent Scottish authors about various episodes in Scottish history. This time, I read #6, so I’ve skipped a few, but I also read this for my Walter Scott prize project and it fits for RIPXXI!

Benbecula is about an 1857 series of murders on Benbecula, a small Scottish island. It is narrated by Malcolm McPhee, the oldest brother of the murderer.

The McPhee family gets by earning a small amount harvesting seaweed. The mother spends all day tending the fire while the father is weak and can only do easy work but prefers life to be clash-free. The adult children are all unmarried. Marion is a hard worker but grim. John seems to be mentally challenged. Angus can manipulate people but can’t be controlled and is left to do what he wants. Malcolm is a bit of a bully.

Angus goes off to work for a while for a farmer, but after he returns, he’s subject to fits of uncontrollable rage and has to be restrained. After he disturbs everyone by wildly ringing the church bells, authorities recommend he be committed, but the McPhees can’t afford the fees. When a doctor examines him for involuntary committal, he seems perfectly rational.

We read this with dread, because we get plenty of warning about what’s coming, as Malcolm tells the story from some years later, living alone in the family house drinking and wallowing in his own filth. There are more mysteries ahead, though.

This novel is atmospheric despite being sparely written. It definitely left me with questions. There is an Afterword that accounts some of the facts of the case.

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Review 2772: The House at Old Vine

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The House at Old Vine is the second book in Norah Lofts’ Suffolk trilogy. Like the first book, it changes narrators, but as each section is considerably shorter than the first section of the first book, the effect is of linked short stories.

The novels follow a house and a family through time, beginning in the Middle Ages. This one begins sometime before 1496 and ends in 1679 and has half a dozen narrators. Each section is separated by an Interlude, which briefly tells more about what happened next.

In 1496, Josiana Greenwood tells the story of her life and her doomed love. Some of the characters from the previous book are still in the periphery. Josiana is a bastard child whose mother refused to tell her parents the identity of her child’s father. Her grandparents have treated both her and her mother like the lowest of laborers, but when she is 13, her grandfather wants to sell her off to a much older man who disgusts her. To protect her, her mother takes her to the nuns at Clevely, where she is educated and meets her true love. We know from the beginning that her love, Walter Rancon, is going to be burned by the church as a Lollard, but the story goes back in time to divulge other facts and secrets, including the connection to the family of the original serf who accumulated the property, Martin Reed.

In 1565, the background of the story is the reign of Elizabeth and a Catholic priest in hiding. Elizabeth Kentwoode is a child who has been thoroughly spoiled by her grandfather. She is quite a vicious child, and she shows what she will do to keep her string of blue beads.

In 1620, Elizabeth Kentwoode, now a redoubtable woman sometimes called Madam, selects Barbara Hatton to be the wife of her nephew John. Barbara is in love, but shortly after the wedding, Elizabeth lets her know that John has a long-time lover, a bar maid, who looks a lot like Barbara.

In 1645 during the English Civil War, Anthony Flowerdew is a spy for Parliament trying to find Royalist supporters when he comes to stay at the Old Vine, now a respectable inn which had first been run by Madam and now by Mrs. Kentwoode (Barbara). Anthony falls in love with Barbara, now a widow with a son, and decides to quit being a spy.

In 1670, Ethelreda Benedict is a girl from an island in the fens who has barely ever met anyone besides her father when he dies. She has to leave the island and eventually gets a position at Old Vine, now a boys’ school run by Anthony Flowerdew and his stepson Chris Kentwoode. A sort of leech on the place is Barbara’s relative Canon Hatton, who while everyone has plain fare, sits in his room and eats only the best food. Yet the others think he has nothing.

In 1679, Oliver Stanton, one of Anthony Flowerdew’s old students, breaks with his father and returns to Old Vine hoping to get Flowerdew’s help in finding work. There he finds Flowerdew as an old man struggling to support the school by himself with Ethelreda Hatton now doing all the work and the Cannon still hulking by his fire. Chris Kentwoode has died, and the number of students has dropped off. Oliver takes a job as a teacher there and soon begins to feel sorry for Ethelreda, who is overworked and mistreated by her husband.

Some readers may find this format keeps them from being involved in the characters, but I felt some interest in some of them. Although it would have spoiled some surprises, I would have liked to see a chart tracing the characters’ relationships, at least the ones from the last book, as sometimes it was difficult to follow how they connected to the original characters.

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Review 2771: Frost in May

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I am not at all religious, in fact, have always felt little interest in what bits of religion I encountered as a child. And I have no opinion about Catholicism. So, it’s going to be hard to write this review without sounding anti-Catholic. I promise I am not. But anti the way this school is run—yes.

Nanda Grey’s father is a recent convert to Catholicism, and Nanda also is eager to embrace it. So, her father has enrolled her in school at the Convent of the Five Wounds. It is a very strict school. Letters in and out are read, even to and from parents, censored and sometimes confiscated. Girls are not allowed to be in pairs. Pictures and text are cut out of storybooks, which in fact are only occasionally available. All the students’ reading seems to be on religious topics. Not much time is spent in the novel discussing school subjects, but a lot is spent on religious matters. In fact, for a while I wondered what else the children might be learning, if anything (but apparently some Latin is included, big surprise).

Nevertheless, Nanda is fervently involved in all this, even though she is periodically checked by Mother Radcliffe, who seems to find her willful. (The idea is to break the will, which I think is awful.)

It took me longer to read this short book than it should have because I got really tired of the religious bent to it. In fact, there are about six pages of Nanda’s meditations that she wrote during a retreat, and I completely skipped them. But I was appalled by some of the ideas of the school. For example, when Nanda is still quite young, she talks about how every child should be prepared and happy to die at any moment. It’s in a sermon by a priest, but it’s obviously part of the girls’ consciousness—and embraced. I found it shocking.

Throughout, there are events and incidents that show constant attempts to work against the girls’ natural likes and interests. Parts are assigned in a play not based on the girls’ interests or abilities but counter to them. And the lead, Nanda’s best friend Léonie, who is very good at her part, is removed from it because she’s enjoying it.

Nanda’s enthusiasm and devotion begin to encounter setbacks as she approaches the age of fourteen. Then she runs into a major obstacle, one that even affects her relationship with her beloved father.

The novel doesn’t have much of a plot but is more involved with the daily details of school life.

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Review 2770: #RIPXXI! Written in Blood

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Here’s another book for RIPXXI! It’s hard to tell whether I would have found this fourth entry in Graham’s Barnaby series even more effective than I did, being so familiar with the TV version that I knew practically everything that was going to happen. I could even picture the actors in some of the parts. Still, I enjoyed this one a lot.

The Midsomer Worthy writing club is trying to decide who to invite as a speaker, knowing full well that no one ever accepts. They finally decide on the blockbuster fiction author Max Jennings. But Gerald Hadleigh seems upset by the decision, although he agrees as club secretary to write the invitation.

Everyone is surprised when Jennings actually agrees to come. The club members are strictly amateurs. Senior citizen Rex St. John is writing about the adventures of a hit man but gets hung up on describing his weapons. Intimidating Honoria Lyddiard is writing a history of her distinguished family. Her quashed sister-in-law Amy Liddiard is writing an adventure novel. Brian Clayton sees himself as an intellectual and is writing an avant-garde play. Sue Clayton, his beleaguered wife, is writing a children’s book about a delightful dragon. And Laura Hutton is pretending to write something to be in the club because she’s in love with Gerald. And what is Gerald writing? I don’t think it ever says.

The afternoon of the meeting, Gerald visits Rex and asks him not to leave him alone with Max. The evening seems to go well except that Gerald doesn’t say much. Rex tries to perform his assigned task when everyone has left except himself and Max, but Max pretends to leave with him and once he’s gone through the door, shuts and locks it. Rex waits outside for a while wondering what to do but feels as if someone is watching him and eventually leaves.

The next morning Gerald is found dead upstairs in his bedroom, his head brutally smashed. Oddly, although most things seem to be in place, the police find that several drawers are empty and a suitcase missing.

Although Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby has been told that Gerald is a retired civil servant and widower from Kent, he can find no trace in records of his marriage or of him, for that matter. And he also can’t track down the location of Max Jennings, who reportedly left around midnight.

As usual, Graham takes her time developing her characters, some of whom have fates they richly deserve. In fact, one of the differences of the book from the episode is that she spends some time at the end on some fitting endings, in particular for two loathsome characters.

Graham is wickedly funny as she skewers writing clubs and a high school drama teacher’s pretentions.

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Review 2769: The Marriage Plot aka Literary Wives! Family Family

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Today is our first review for the newly rebranded The Marriage Plot (aka Literary Wives blogging club), in which we discuss the depiction of wives in fiction. If you have read the book, please participate by leaving comments on any of our blogs.

Be sure to read the reviews and comments of the other wives!

My Review

When I first started reading Family Family, I wasn’t sure how much I was going to like it. One of its main characters is a movie star, and it bothers me how often these days that novels are placed in a framework of wealth and privilege. I personally prefer reading about ordinary people.

However, Frankel can certainly tell a story, so I ended up reading the entire book almost continuously, ignoring some work that I planned to do instead. I have never read Frankel before, but I’ll be looking for more.

India Allwood is a popular actor starring in a fantasy series. She is also the mother of 10-year-old adopted twins, Fig and Jack. She is a private person who keeps her kids off limits to the paparazzi. Recently, she finished a movie about adoption that she thought treated the subject simplistically. Now she is personally being attacked online for the very things she criticized in the movie herself, as if it were her fault. When India gets stuck talking to a blogger, she makes some comments about it, and the internet blows up along with her producers.

India not only adopted Jack and Fig, but when she was 16, she became pregnant by her boyfriend Robbie and decided to place her daughter with adoptive parents. Her daughter Bex is now 16, and India is unaware that Bex is in contact with Fig. Trying to help out, because haters are saying that India knows nothing about adoption, Bex announces online that she is India’s daughter, placed with her mother Camile when India was a teenager. The fallout becomes worse. And Bex has hopped a plane to come to India’s home in L. A.

And that’s only the beginning, as the novel moves back and forth in time from the present to various significant times in India’s life.

The novel has a light tone, and Frankel is skilled at depicting characters you can relate to and like. I enjoyed this book so much.

Although concerned with some serious issues as a result of Frankel’s own experience as an adoptive parent, this is ultimately a warm fuzzy sort of book, without feeling manipulative but simply touching.

If I have any caveat, it’s that the novel takes place during Covid, but people are traveling all over the place and arriving at other people’s houses, often without warning. (Also, just a small point, but there are no cottages behind either bookstore in Seaside, Oregon.)

What does this book say about wives or about the experience of being a wife?

This novel is not really about marriage. Out of several groups of people who get dragged into India’s story, there are some gay couples, but the emphasis isn’t really on them. Instead, Frankel focuses on the subject of what constitutes a family. As India’s issue expands, more people concerned in her life arrive at the house. India eventually has to expand her definition of family from the tight group of herself, her two children, and her mother to a lot more people.

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What I Added to To Read in August

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I almost forgot I was going to continue doing this until I saw Liz’s August post on Adventures in reading, running, and working from home. 

So, here we are. The books I added in August, in order from most recent to least. My thanks to the bloggers who have told me about these books (I think!).

Take Six Girls: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters by Laura Thompson

I’ve always been fascinated by the Mitfords, wondering how they could have ended up such diametrical opposites after having such a close childhood, it seems. I have read a couple of biographies only to discover that the authors were biased in some way. (I didn’t know the Guinesses were relatives until I was well into the bio written by two of them.) So, when I saw a brief write-up of this one by Kate on Books are My Favourite and Best, I added it to my list.

In the Shadows by Chris MacDonald

FictionFan has been talking up Chris MacDonald lately, so why wouldn’t I listen? Anyway, it sounds right up my alley.

Off the Beaten Path by Eloise Corvo

I already have no idea where I heard of this book or if I just was attracted by the cover. If you know that I read your blog and you recently reviewed this book or another in this series (because I have an idea that I actually read about the second book in the series, so I went back for the first book), let me know. Anyway, I like the cover, and the setting on Lake Michigan might have attracted me, because I’m originally from Michigan.

Little Spark by Jess Kidd

My knee-jerk reaction when I hear there’s a new book by Jess Kidd is to put it on my list. I am fairly sure I read about this book in a review by Helen of She Reads Novels.

Model Home by Rivers Solomon

I have read about Model Home in several places lately, but I believe I put it on my list after reading a review in the New York Times. I thought it may have been on their list of the 50 best thrillers in the 21st century, but it turned out it wasn’t. I think I read about it elsewhere as well. Its description as “a new kind of haunted-house novel” got me right away. I love haunting stories.

Who Among Us? by Mario Benedetti

I didn’t remember where I heard about Who Among Us?, but when I googled it, FictionFan‘s blog came up immediately, so I’m guessing it was from her. And this is a classic situation for me where I already don’t remember anything about the book. But that’s okay. I rarely try to remind myself what a book is about before I start it. I like to have an open mind.

An Ocean and a Day by Hannah Richell

Brona’s review on This Reading Life showed up as soon as I googled this book, since I couldn’t remember where I heard about it. I knew that one of my Australian friends reads a lot of books about grief. That is not my thing, but the memoir sounded interesting.

The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout

This is really silly, but I bought a Strout book recently thinking it was her newest one, and it was one I had missed. I didn’t realize that until I started reading it. Since I always buy her books, ever since Olive Kitteridge, I immediately put this one on my To Do list to make sure I didn’t forget it. And, of course, lots of people have been reviewing it.

Apple Tree Yard by Louise Doughty

And for my final addition for this month, I see that I’m back to Kate on Books are My Favourite and Best for her review of Apple Tree Yard. I have a lot of new thrillers on the list, I see, and this is one of them.

So, what new books have you discovered lately? New to you, I mean.