Author: whatmeread

Review 2618: English Magic

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I read English Magic for my James Tait Black prize project, which I have been trying to wrap up—or let’s say intending to wrap up but not doing much about it. The book is a slim volume of 12 short stories.

Repeat readers of my blog may know that I sometimes have problems with short stories. Generally, this is because if I am enjoying something, I want it to last. I had problems with some of these stories for other reasons.

“The Clinic” is a mysterious story. It seems to be set in a dystopian future. A couple has a baby who is very advanced, and they are trying to hide that from the clinic at which they apparently have mandatory visits. Their plan is to run away and hide somewhere in the woods. I think this story was intentionally written to leave readers with lots of unanswered questions, but I found it frustrating, and I can handle a lot of ambiguity.

“My Brother Is Back” continues the air of mystery. It’s about a Muslim being returned to England after years of imprisonment in the U. S. It’s written like a snapshot of time.

I stopped reading “Oh Whistle And” because of its style. It’s a fairly long story written in snippets of reports about surveillance of unions and socialists and about whistle blowing, mentioning Edward Snowden. All the characters, if you can call them that, are referred to by single letters of the alphabet. I lost track of who was who almost immediately, and the snippets were driving me crazy.

And skipping way ahead, Gatward uses almost the same approach for “Lammas,” except the snippets are pieces of conversations. This story is about a man’s long life in activism. It was difficult for me to track what I took to be real events, but I think it went back and forth in time. I finished this story.

“Beltane” is a slightly surreal story about a couple who join a Beltane ceremony, and related to that is the story “Samhain,” about a woman’s unique way to celebrate Halloween. Or is it a sinister way? I found both stories interesting.

“The Bird” is about a bird trapped in a couple’s chimney. Both it and “On Margate Sands” are vivid snapshots again, just capturing small events.

I won’t cover all the stories, but I will mention two that feature the same character. In “Lurve,” Ollie is an artist, not a successful one, who hangs out with Lottie and Jeanie, two party girls, and occasionally writes art reviews. He and his friends live in squalor. He is in love with Jeanie, but she doesn’t care.

We meet Ollie again in “Backgammon,” in which he is hanging out with his old girlfriend Ria. Ria used to be an addict, but she is getting her act together. Ollie is not an addict, but he realizes his act is not together.

Overall, I felt indifferent to many of the stories, although they are minutely observed and well written. I’m guessing the title is ironically intended.

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Review 2617: James

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I read James for both my Booker Prize project and my Pulitzer Prize project, which it won. As most people know by now, it is a retelling of Twain’s Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of the slave Jim.

Aside from generally following the plot of the original novel about halfway, James lives in a world that is much more violent than Huck Finn ever had a clue about. Everett has taken a liberty and placed the novel in the 1860s instead of the 1830s or 40s, when the original is set. He also uses a striking conceit: when among themselves the black characters speak more correctly—and sometimes with erudition—than most of the white characters.

Jim—or James, as he prefers to be called—hears that Judge Thatcher is going to sell him away from his wife and daughter, so he escapes and hides on a small island on the Mississippi. Unfortunately for him, Huck Finn has heard that his dreaded father is in town, so he fakes his own death and runs away, ending up on the same island. James realizes right away that he will be blamed for Huck’s “death.”

The two stick together and encounter what Huck thinks of as adventures and James knows to be deadly peril. After all, a slave is lynched later in the book for being suspected of stealing the nub of a pencil from his master. That he did steal it to give to James is beside the point.

The book follows the same basic outlines as Huckleberry Finn until James gets away from the Duke and the Dauphin, but all of the situations are much more deadly. Eventually, James’s inner anger is set aflame.

Everett’s books are witty, but they are also very angry. And he has some surprises for us.

This novel is fast moving and really interesting. It shows facets of the “institution” of slavery in all its ugliness.

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Review 2616: The Stone Door

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Leonora Carrington was a surrealist painter (that’s her work on the cover) and obviously also a surrealist writer. I first encountered her when I read Down Below, her memoir about her escape from Nazi-occupied France across the Pyrenees to Spain while she was hallucinating from mental illness. That book was hallucinatory for certain, but The Stone Door is even more so.

I don’t think I can describe the plot, if there is one, but it involves several groups of people, a lot of symbolism, a series of bizarre fairy-tale-like stories, and attempts to open a stone door. Gabriel Weisz Carrington, the author’s son, doesn’t attempt to provide a synopsis in the introduction, just mentions scenes in it and quotes from it. There is an afterword by Anna Watz that analyzes it, but trying to read that analysis made me tired.

Frankly, if this hadn’t been a very short book, I wouldn’t have finished. It was difficult to follow and meant very little to me.

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Review 2615: The Widow of Bath

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Hugh Everton is traveling around English seaside towns reviewing hotels and restaurants for a travel company when he meets an old flame, Lucy Bath, the glamorous wife of a judge. Hugh is immediately afraid, but we don’t understand why until later. Lucy is with an entourage, and when they all decide to return to her home, she invites Hugh, and he goes.

One of the men Hugh thinks he recognizes as a guy named Ronson, but Ronson is introduced as Atkinson. The judge, who has been looking for his missing dog, takes Hugh aside and seems to be intending to confide in him but changes his mind. He goes up early to bed.

The others are playing cards when they hear a shot, followed by a yelp from a dog. Lucy goes upstairs to investigate. When she doesn’t immediately return, Atkinson goes up, accompanied by Hugh. They find the judge dead with a hole in his head and no gun to be found.

When they try to call the police, the phone is dead, so Atkinson drives off to the police station. Hugh goes out to look for the dog and nearly catches a woman in the garden. He finds the dog with a broken leg. Soon Inspector Leigh arrives, but the body is gone.

Everton has found the entire evening to have a menacing undercurrent. However, he has had bad experiences with the police, so he is not as forthright as he could have been.

I hadn’t heard of Margot Bennett before reading Someone from the Past, but I think she has been seriously underrated to have almost disappeared from our knowledge. This novel has an interesting noirish plot with strong characterization and witty dialogue. Bennett moved away from crime fiction to writing for television after writing only a few books. I think that’s a shame.

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Review 2614: Monk’s Hood

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It is autumn 1138, during the war known as the Anarchy. Although King Stephen’s army has withdrawn from Shrewsbury, he is now in control of the area. Abbot Heribert has been recalled to a conference to justify his tenure as abbot. As he didn’t support King Stephen, he does not expect to remain in that position. However, Prior Robert clearly anticipates stepping into his shoes, so most of the monks are depressed.

Because Abbot Heribert has been recalled, he doesn’t feel it would be right to ratify some outstanding agreements before he leaves. One of these is that of Master Bonel, who wants to donate his estate in exchange for lifelong housing and support for himself and his wife at the abbey.

Cadfael takes one of his mixtures to treat an elderly monk with rheumatism. There he meets a young Welsh kinsman of the monk, Meurig, who has been applying some of the mixture to the old man. Cadfael checks that Meurig has been warned to wash his hands and not touch his face before that, as the mixture contains a strong poison, monk’s hood.

Later, Cadfael is urgently summoned to the bedside of Master Bonel, who has been taken ill after dinner. Cadfael recognizes the symptoms of poisoning right away, and by his own embrocation. In the house are Bonel’s wife, Richildi, whom Cadfael recognizes as his old sweethheart; Richildi’s son Edwin by her first marriage; Edwy, Edwin’s lookalike nephew; Aldith, the servant girl related to Richildi; and Meurig, who apprenticed as a carpenter with Richildi’s first husband, whose brother has apprenticed Edwin.

Edwin has been estranged from the household because Master Bonel thinks he spends too much time with lower elements (i. e., Edwin’s relatives). And in fact, Bonel was entering into the agreement with the abbey to disinherit Edwin. He had come to dinner to try to reconcile with Master Bonel, but Bonel began berating him and was trying to make him kneel for forgiveness. Instead, Edwin stormed out. To the sergeant, though, this is enough proof that Edwin is the murderer. Cadfael, who has met both boys, Edwin and Edwy, doesn’t think Edwin did it, but Edwin has fled. Cadfael, helped by his new assistant, Mark, decides to investigate.

I didn’t find this mystery very difficult to solve, but I am liking Cadfael more and more, and Peters has created some vivid characters.

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Review 2613: The Bloater

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I was so taken by Rosemary Tonks’ The Halt During the Chase that I looked for more by her. I found The Bloater.

Min is a married sound engineer whose husband is seldom home. She occupies herself with witty, frivolous conversations with her girlfriends and flirtations with her admirers. She has one admirer she finds disturbing, though, a large opera singer whom she finds disgusting and attractive at the same time. She talks endlessly with her other friends about whether she wants an affair with him, whom she refers to as the Bloater.

This novella is crammed with witty, sometimes cruel dialogue. It moves along very quickly and is beautifully written. At times, I wondered if Min really wanted to have an affair with anyone—or maybe she does.

When I was reading about this book, I learned that Tonks gave up a successful career and retreated into isolation. You would hardly believe this of the creator of such witty, vibrant characters.

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Review 2612: Across the Common

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Louise has left her husband Max for reasons that are not clear to her and gone to stay at The Hollies with her elderly aunts. Part of the problem is that she still considers The Hollies home and bears some guilt for how she left it. Maybe she resents some of the attention Max gives to his students or maybe that he realized his limitations as an artist but is happy as a teacher. (When we finally meet Max, he seems perfect, so it must be for some other reason.) In any case, she eventually realizes, she needs to grow up.

At first, she is happy to be home with her formidable Aunt Rosa and her fey-like Aunt Seraphina, although not so pleased to hear that Aunt Cissie, who has broken her hip, is coming to recuperate. And then there’s Gibby, the cook and housekeeper, who is more like family. But very soon, she learns something disturbing—that her grandfather committed suicide years ago. No one will talk about it, so she doesn’t know why.

As she listens to her aunts talk about their past, Louise begins considering what happened to all the men in the family—they all left or died. Her own father was a sort of invalid, and both he and her mother died there from the flu. Neither of her sisters ever married.

Soon, Louise begins to discover secrets in her family history and instead of retreating to her childhood, as she does at first, learns to become her own person.

I liked this book very much. The writing is gorgeous, and Berridge manages to tell the story without falling into clichés. Rooms, scenes, and emotions are minutely observed, as are perceptions about human relationships.

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Review 2611: Romantic Comedy

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For some reason, I thought I had read at least one book by Curtis Sittenfeld. It turns out, though, that I was confusing her with someone else. (Correction: I just looked, and I have read one other book by her. I thought I looked that up before I wrote this.)

Romances are not usually my genre, but I can sometimes enjoy them. Romantic Comedy was so popular that I decided to give it a try.

Sally is a comedy writer for a TV program called The Night Owls, a thinly disguised Saturday Night Live. She loves her job but after an embarrassing incident with a co-worker, has given up on romance.

Her spots usually have something to do with feminism, and for the week in question, she is working on one sketch called “The Danny Hurst Rule,” named after her office mate and friend, who is engaged to a famous, beautiful actress. The idea is that beautiful celebrity women might date average-looking men, but the reverse never happens.

For that show, the guest host and musical guest is Noah Brewster, a popular musician. Sally finds herself terrifically attracted to Noah as she helps him write a sketch, but since she considers her looks average, she can’t believe he would be interested in her. He obviously is, but at the after party she makes a crack that drives him away.

Two years later during quarantine from Covid, Noah sends her an email. This starts a chain of correspondence.

I think Sittenfeld was attempting to write a smart, witty romantic novel. I have realized I am out of step with modern humor (proved by the fact that I haven’t considered SNL funny since the 80s, and I’m waiting for younger folks to realize that fart jokes are not funny), and I did find some of the lines witty, but I found the rest of the novel only moderately interesting and was a bit bored by the string of long, heart-felt texts.

The most interesting to me was the research Sittenfeld put into the operation of SNL, the preparation and behind-the-scenes stuff. Otherwise, I was kind of meh. Although I did find both main characters sympathetic, Sally is so hung up on her preconceptions that she creates a lot of problems, and Noah is too perfect.

Also, I have an objection. Why do most modern romances involve a woman ending up with someone wealthy? Although there is certainly a long history of that, it used to be that sometimes two ordinary people could make a romance.

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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

Right now, I’m reading the second book in the Department Q series: The Absent One by Jussi Adler-Olsen. It’s pretty grim so far, but that doesn’t usually bother me with crime novels. The second season of Department Q is supposed to be uploaded to Britbox this month, so I’m right on time. FictionFan pointed out to me that the TV series has inexplicably moved the mysteries to Scotland. I didn’t even notice that! Maybe it’s because I saw the TV series first.

What I just finished reading

I have to thank Nonfiction November for this one, because I have seldom enjoyed a nonfiction book as much. It’s the beautiful Pocket Atlas of Remote Islands by Judith Schalansky. If you like maps and stories about remote places, even if you don’t have an affinity for islands like I do, you’ll find this one fascinating.

What I will read next

I think it’s going to be The Darlings of the Asylum by Noel O’Reilly. I have no idea how this book got on my list or what it’s about, but it’s almost time to find out!

How about you? What have you been reading?