Author: whatmeread

Review 2594: Clear

~ whatmeread ~ 16 Comments

I have read some excellent novellas lately, a form I don’t usually choose. That makes me glad I participated in Novellas in November last year. I think I read about this book during that event.

John Ferguson is a 19th century Scottish minister on a difficult mission. Because of the breakup of the Scottish church, in which he participated, he has left his church to join the Free Church and is thus unemployed, no new churches having actually been established. He and his wife are entirely without money, and he doesn’t want to borrow from his brother-in-law, so he takes a job of surveying a small island in the far north of Scotland for clearance. The island only has one inhabitant, who will be forced to leave, and part of John’s job is to tell him.

On the island, Ivar has been alone for many years. The rest of his family left years before, because the island couldn’t support them anymore after foolish decisions by the owner. Ivar thought it could support him, and the factor hasn’t even stopped by to collect rent in years. He lives with a goat, an old horse, a blind cow, and some chickens.

When John arrives, he promptly falls off a cliff and is badly injured. Ivar finds him and takes care of him. They don’t speak a word of each other’s language, but they begin to like each other. John, though, can’t bring himself to try to explain why he’s there.

In the meantime, Mary hears about other clearances being done by John’s employer that disturb her. She decides to go get John.

This is a little gem of a book with a surprising ending. In its few pages, it pulls you totally into the story. It’s a keeper.

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Review 2593: There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby: Scary Fairy Tales

~ whatmeread ~ 6 Comments

I’ve always been interested in Russian literature but have read mostly 19th century books. Ludmilla Petrushevskaya was a writer whose books were banned in the Soviet Union, even though they were not political and her plays were allowed. The introduction to my Penguin edition says that in 1973 because Lithuania was more open, she took a difficult trip to Vilnius to try to get something published and indeed got two stories published, but she was out of favor in her own country for years.

The first thing you notice when you look at this volume of stories is that it is backwards. You start with the back cover. Then, I guess, read the introduction, which I didn’t, because the translators explain the concept of nekyia from Ancient Greek literature. The word means “night journey,” which often includes visits to the underworld or the dead. The introduction states that every story in the book is a form of nekyia.

Lots of the stories involve people being dead without knowing it or people visiting the dead. The stories seem to belong to magical realism. That genre isn’t my favorite, but I have to admit that most of the stories are fascinating even though I didn’t always get the point. If there was one.

There is no characterization, really, because these are fairy tales, but the characters often live grim or dangerous lives. People are beaten up or have everything stolen from them. In one story, a family keeps moving farther and farther from civilization in places more and more hidden to keep people from stealing their potatoes and goat.

People also change forms, become different physically. In one story two sisters are united by a spell into one very fat woman, but this is probably the most extreme example. Petrushevskaya’s characters are mostly not nice.

This is certainly an unusual book. It’s not for everyone, but even though it wasn’t my preference, I found it oddly fascinating.

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Review 2592: Death Comes As the End

~ whatmeread ~ 8 Comments

I have been trying to pick off Agatha Christie’s books I haven’t read without looking to see what they are about. So, I was surprised by this one. At first, I thought maybe the ancient Egyptian setting was the introduction to a more modern mystery, but then I realized it wasn’t.

Renisenb has returned with her young daughter to her father’s house on the lower Nile, her husband having died. At first, it seems as if everything is the same. Her father, Imhotep, a property owner and priest, is still watchful of his own authority and eager to have control of everything. Her oldest brother, Yahmose, is still dutiful and careful of Imhotep’s interests—his wife Satipy thinks too much so and nags him to be more assertive. Satipy argues with her sister-in-law Kait over precedence one moment, and they giggle together the next. Kait’s husband Sobek, the younger brother, is still full of big ideas and wasteful of his father’s money. Renisenb’s orphaned nephew Ipy is still young but disrespectful and spoiled by Imhotep. Esa, the grandmother, is frail but sharp.

Renisenb still cannot bring herself to like Henet, the servile but sneaking servant, and she still feels comfortable with Hori, her father’s main scribe. However, when she tells Hori that everything is still the same, he warns her that it is not.

Imhotep goes off on a business trip, and when he comes back he has brought two people—a young concubine named Nofret and a secondary scribe named Kamini, who claims some relationship to the family. It becomes clear that Nofret is malicious and means to make trouble. Almost immediately, she has problems with the two sisters-in-law. Renisenb tries to be friendly to her but feels she dislikes her.

Nofret begins to succeed in dividing Imhotep from his two sons. Imhotep, angry about an incident, threatens to send the sons and their families away. The next thing they know, Nofret is dead, having fallen from the cliff path that goes to the tomb Imhotep is responsible for keeping.

The two sisters-in-law suddenly change behavior. Satipy, formerly shrewish, becomes timid and withdrawn. Kait becomes more forceful. Renisenb and Hori wonder if Nofret’s death was an accident.

The next event seems clearly not an accident. The two brothers are poisoned after drinking some wine. Sobek, having drunk more, dies.

Renisenb, Esa, and Hori get together to try to figure out who the murderer is, but there are more evil events to come.

Christie doesn’t offer many hints to figure out the murderer, and I didn’t guess the solution. However, I also didn’t find this novel as interesting as some of the others. Perhaps Christie was trying a change of pace or just wanting to write something that reflected what she learned on her archaeological digs. Still, it worked almost wholly on an understanding of the characters rather than any real clues.

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Review 2591: Lady Living Alone

~ whatmeread ~ 8 Comments

For quite some time in reading this novel, there is no indication of what it will become. It seems to be a domestic novel about a modest woman in her 30s, Penelope Shadow, disorganized, scatterbrained, unconventional, undomesticated, and of little means until she has a hit with her fourth novel. Soon enough, she is doing well and is able to move out of her sister’s house and buy her own. She has trouble keeping servants, however, and that is mostly an issue because of her phobia of being in the house alone at night.

On her way home from visiting friends, Penelope is forced to stop in a hotel at night because of the weather, but more because there is no one at home, the servants having quit while she was gone. The hotel is pretty dreadful, but a very handsome young man who is working there brings her tea when she wants it. He later confides to her that he’s leaving in a few days because he was hired as a waiter but is made to do all kinds of other work—cooking breakfast, cleaning, and so on.

He is so efficient and seems so kind that Penelope decides to ask him to work for her. His reaction when she’s not looking is the first indication that the novel is going somewhere other than expected.

Everything goes so well at home with Terry working for her that she is in seventh heaven. This state lasts for months until Terry comes home angry because, he says, people are spreading nasty rumors about their relationship. Instead of hiring another woman to live in the house, Penelope says they should get married.

Maybe, like me, you don’t think this is a great decision. Slowly, the novel shifts from a domestic drama to suspense.

This novel is a little different from anything I’ve read. It takes its time getting to where it is going without being a long book, and even after the reader is fully aware that things are going badly, Penelope is basically the only person who doesn’t know that.

I liked this novel a lot. I liked Penelope and sympathized with her problems, even though she is so impractical and looks too hard for people’s better nature. My dread grew toward the end of the book, and the ending was quite suspenseful.

Lofts wrote this book under the name of Peter Curtis so as not to confuse her usual readers, who expected historical novels. I’m going to look for more by Peter and also for those under her own name, as she is a writer I haven’t read before.

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Review 2590: The Night of Fear

~ whatmeread ~ 2 Comments

At a Christmas house party with the staff dismissed to attend a party in the village, the guests play a game of hide and seek. The host, George Tunbridge, and Julian Haviland, a young guest, wait for 20 minutes after the lights have been turned off at the main and then are supposed to look for those in hiding. However, before they begin to do that, another guest, a blind man named Hugh Darrow, comes running out in a panic. He has discovered the bloody body of another guest, the famous writer Edgar Stallard.

Sergeant Lane has Inspector Collier of Scotland Yard staying with him as a guest, and he is happy to bring him along on the case. Suicide being ruled out because of the absence of a weapon, and no forced entry discovered, the police feel the murderer must be one of the guests.

Aside from George Tunbridge and his wife, who is so shaken she takes immediately to her bed, the guests are Sir Eustace Tunbridge, a pompous older man engaged to a beautiful young Diana Storey; Mrs. Storey, Diana’s grandmother, who went to bed early; Ruth Clare, a young woman who it becomes clear is in love with Hugh Darrow; and a bunch of young people, including Angela Haviland, who were hiding together and are so alibied. Even George and Julian are without an alibi, as they stood on either side of a screen as they waited.

Unfortunately, the Chief Constable is offended to find Collier on the scene, and he is asked to report back to London. That leaves Sergeant Lane to investigate by himself for a day. The next morning, he is found unconscious from a gas leak in his room. Collier is convinced that he was on to something, but his notes have been ripped from his notebook. Collier’s replacement, Inspector Purley, arrives and comes down heavily on everyone then concludes that the murderer was Hugh Darrow, who had a grudge against Stallard and didn’t tell anyone that his blindness was cured from the shock of discovering the body. In making this decision, Purley is ignoring some clues—that despite typing at all hours, Stallard appears to have left no notes or manuscript in his room and that Sergeant Lane is poisoned in the hospital after Darrow is arrested.

To help with the defense, Collier recommends a private investigator, Mr. Glide. When Sergeant Lane is poisoned, he is unable to speak but writes a clue on a piece of paper.

This novel wasn’t quite as zippy as Dalton’s first one and had a little too much recap of the evidence, but it was still fun to read and fairly baffling. It looks to me as though Mr. Glide might become a recurring character. I’m looking forward to the next one.

I received this book from the publisher in exchange for a free and fair review.

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It’s Time for Another Classics Club Spin!

~ whatmeread ~ 10 Comments

The Classics Club is beginning its 41st spin event this week. If you are a member and want to participate, just post a choice of 20 books from your Classics Club list in a numbered list before Sunday, June 15. You can duplicate some, especially if you don’t have 20 books left to read, like me.

The Classics Club will announce a number on Sunday, and that’s the number of the book you should read from your list. The idea is to try to read that book before the 24th of August and post a review.

If you are not yet a Classics Club member and would like to participate, all you need to do is post a list of books you want to read, most people post 50-100 books, and a deadline by which you would like to have them read. Submit that list to the Classics Club, and you’re signed up! Then post your list of 20 for the spin.

Here’s my list of 20 for the spin:

  1. Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakepeare
  2. The Deepening Stream by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
  3. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
  4. The Methods of Lady Walderhurst by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  5. Cecilia, Memoirs of an Heiress by Frances Burney
  6. Tis Pity She’s a Whore by John Ford
  7. The Tavern Knight by Rafael Sabatini
  8. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
  9. The Princess of Cleves by Madame de La Fayette
  10. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
  11. The Passenger by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz
  12. Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakepeare
  13. The Deepening Stream by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
  14. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
  15. The Methods of Lady Walderhurst by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  16. The Passenger by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz
  17. Tis Pity She’s a Whore by John Ford
  18. The Tavern Knight by Rafael Sabatini
  19. The Princess of Cleves by Madame de La Fayette
  20. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

Review 2589: Lies and Sorcery

~ whatmeread ~ 8 Comments

This book was the last one I read for my A Century of Books project. At nearly 800 pages in small type and a fairly bizarre plot, it was quite a slog for me, but I was determined to finish it, especially because I hadn’t finished several others.

The novel is set in Sicily and narrated by Elisa, a young woman who is looking back over the history of her family to try to understand some complicated and intertwined relationships. She is an intrusive narrator, popping in frequently to make observations, and she implies in the beginning that she’s been mentally ill and is not altogether to be trusted. But I didn’t experience a big reveal that labels her as unreliable. Notes in the Introduction indicate that the novel is fairly autobiographical.

Elisa begins with her maternal grandparents. Her grandmother, Cesira, is a schoolteacher who marries Teodor Massia because he looks like a gentleman and acts like a gentleman so he must have money. Unfortunately for her, the Massia family throws him off because he has married a schoolteacher. Worse, he is a wastrel who blows away any money they have, so their daughter Anna grows up in poverty but with an inflated sense of self-worth as the daughter of the upper class.

On the other side of the family, Alessandra, the servant of a peasant, is happy to marry her elderly employer Damiano De Salvi, because for her it is a big step up. Unfortunately, they are not blessed with a child, that is, until she is dazzled by Nicola Monaco, a land agent who seems to her to be a great gentleman. When she has his child, she raises Francesco to think of himself as a person of great potential. The De Salvis spend every penny sending him to school and are repaid by his being ashamed of them.

For her part, Anna Massia (Elisa’s mother) spots her cousin, Eduardo Massia di Carullo, when she is five years old. Her mother points out this wealthy branch of the family, and Anna is struck by how handsome he is, like a prince. When they meet, more than 10 years later, he is struck by how beautiful she is, and she is instantly enamored. Unfortunately, Eduardo, although charming, is not a nice person, and he spends most of his time tormenting her and making her prove she loves him. They are engaged, but his family doesn’t know about it.

Eduardo, for some reason, befriends Francesco, who is a student in town dressed in shabby clothes, but he has adorned himself with some flashy but cheap ornaments and is introducing himself as a baron. It is through Eduardo that Anna and Francesco meet at a time when Eduardo is tiring of Anna. Francesco has no idea of their actual relationship and in fact never has. Then Eduardo disappears.

Anna doesn’t know that the Massia di Carullo family has been paying her mother a small amount of money every month since her father died. When Eduardo discovers this, just before he is ready to break with Anna, he tells his mother to double the amount. But this makes Anna find out about it, and she in her pride goes to his mother and says they don’t want her money. Then she and her mother are destitute, her mother ill and still having to teach, while she, indolent and untrained for anything, lies around the house all day. Francesco having fallen in love with her, she marries him even though he revolts her.

Our narrator describes all this in great detail, along with her parents’ marriage. Her mother is not at all maternal and often is quite nasty to her, but of course that makes the little girl idolize her more and follow her lead in disdaining her father.

The novel begins to turn into absolute weirdness about 10 years after the marriage when Anna learns that Eduardo died some time before of tuberculosis. Eduardo’s mother, who worshipped her son, has retreated from that reality and believes Eduardo is traveling around writing letters to Anna. Dona Concetta asks Anna to bring her the letters, which Anna begins writing.

Even though I have told a lot, by now, I’m not kidding, we are at about page 350 with plenty more to go as the entire family descends into madness.

Morante is a terrific writer, but she really takes her time. At one point early on, she is showing how Eduardo taunts Anna and she provides not one lengthy example but several. And these are sickening conversations.

The Introduction to my NYRB edition states that the theme of the novel is the inability to get out of poverty. That is certainly there, but I think a more important theme, aside from that of the perceived importance of class, is unrequited love. Nearly every character in the book loves someone who either doesn’t love them back or even actively despises them. And these people are tempestuous! And as for sorcery? Is there really a ghost of Eduardo or are these people driving themselves freaking insane?

Although the novel handles human emotions and behavior insightfully, and I sometimes sympathized with Elisa and occasionally with Francesco, most of the characters are more or less terrible, especially in their treatment of others.

I received this book from the publishers in exchange for a free and fair review.

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Review 2588: Bluebird, Bluebird

~ whatmeread ~ 6 Comments

Black Texas Ranger Darren Mathews is on suspension after he went to the aid of Rutherford McMillan, a man who has worked for his family for years. He is also having trouble with his wife, Lisa, who wants him to return to law school. Then a friend, Greg Heglund, an FBI agent in Houston, asks Darren to look unofficially at a situation in Lark in East Texas. There, the body of a Black man, an outsider, was found in the bayou and later the body of a White woman, a local, was also found there. Usually in that part of the country it’s the other way around, plus Lark hasn’t had a murder for years.

An interest for Darren is the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, and he finds in tiny Lark a major presence. The only two businesses in town are Geneva Sweet’s café with mostly Black patrons and an icehouse up the road packed with members of the ABT. When he arrives at Geneva Sweet’s Sweets, he finds the locals nervous and unwelcoming. Missy Dale’s body was found right behind the café. At Jeff’s Juice House, just up the road, where Missy was a waitress, he finds the all-White clientele belligerent and violent.

Then Rainie Wright arrives. She’s the widow of Michael Wright, the first victim, and she is distraught. She worries Darren, because she is from Chicago and has no idea how to behave in the rural South (and no, this novel is not set in the past).

A person Darren finds of interest is Wally Jefferson, a rich White man whose mansion is right across the highway from Geneva’s café and who treats her and the café with a proprietorial air. But Geneva is prone to telling him to get out of her place.

Darren is inclined to suspect Missy’s husband of the murders, since Missy was seen talking to Michael at the icehouse. But that doesn’t quite satisfy him. There are connections here that he doesn’t understand.

I’ve been looking around for a new mystery series to follow, and this novel by Locke has me wanting to look for more. I am familiar with East Texas, and she has the atmosphere down. There is plenty of action and some suspense in this novel. I have to admit that my suspicions fell on a culprit pretty quickly, and I sensed that the story would have something to do with an earlier crime, which it did. But I certainly had some surprises coming. The only think I didn’t like was the cliché of the cop who drinks too much. Bluebird, Bluebird is listed as the first of Locke’s Highway 59 series, so I’m not sure if the others feature the same protagonist or just the locale or both. I have driven on that highway so many times!

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Review 2587: Luckier Than Most

~ whatmeread ~ 2 Comments

Luckier Than Most is an autobiography by David Tomlinson, the stage and screen actor. Although I felt handicapped as an American reading this because I wasn’t familiar with many of the names he mentioned, I found it a pleasant read, and Tomlinson comes across as a good and patient person. Americans are probably most familiar with his comic work for Disney Studios, particularly in Mary Poppins or Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Although often a comic performer, he had serious stage roles as well.

Although some of his theater stories are interesting (and I noted that he rarely said a bad thing about anyone and was just as likely to say nice things about a crew member or understudy as he is about a star), I found most interesting his recollections of his childhood. Although fond of his mother, he and his brothers were terrified of their father, who was not affectionate and had a terrible temper. His father disliked David and told him he wasn’t going to amount to anything. He was hiding a big secret, hinted at from near the beginning of the book but not hard to guess, even though David and his brothers didn’t discover it until they were adults.

Later on, with David’s success and again with his discovery to CST (what the brothers called their father) that they knew his secret, David’s relationship to his father improved. CST even admitted that he had misjudged him.

The book is also interesting because of its light, well-intentioned stories about well-known figures. It was surprising, for example, to learn that Peter Sellers needed people around him all the times because he was an insomniac and had no hobbies or other resources for his spare time. The only person Tomlinson said anything negative about was the actor Jack Lord, who played in the original Hawaii Five-O.

If you want a book that dishes the dirt, this isn’t it, but if you want a nice, light read, it is.

I received this book from the publisher in exchange for a free and fair review.

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