Category: books

Day 1152: The Ghost of Christmas Past

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Cover for The Ghost of Christmas PastI was amused by the sprightliness and humor of Rhys Bowen’s Her Royal Spyness novel that I read recently, so I thought I’d try one of her Molly Murphy novels. I saw this one listed on Netgalley and requested it.

The Ghost of Christmas Past is the 19th Molly Murphy novel, so it’s hard to say if I’d have been more impressed with an earlier book in the series. The series has won Agatha awards, so I assume so.

Molly is an Irish immigrant who by this novel is married to Daniel, a New York City police captain. Molly is in a depression. Her husband had problems with Tammany Hall, causing him to take some work in San Francisco from a government agency in the previous book. She followed him in time for the 1906 earthquake and lost her baby. Daniel’s employment prospects are up in the air, and Molly does not want to move away from her close friends in their New York neighborhood. And Bridey, an Irish girl she took in and learned to love, is being reclaimed by her father to return to Ireland. Finally, Molly returns from taking care of her mother-in-law to find that the Christmas she expected to have with her neighbors will not be because Gus and Sid are going away to spend it with friends.

Molly and Daniel get an invitation to spend Christmas with her mother-in-law at the stately home of Cedric Von Aiken in upstate New York. There, they find a gloomy family, haunted by the disappearance of the couple’s three-year-old daughter ten years before. Molly thinks it unlikely that the little girl supposedly dressed herself, put on her coat, opened the heavy front door, and walked out by herself. But her footprints and hers alone were found in the snow going to a nearby creek.

Of course, Molly decides to try to figure out what happened. Of course, we have the dynamic of the protesting husband that has made me tired of other series featuring a crime-solving wife.

link to NetgalleyAside from there being no sign of the other series’ humor and lightness, the plot of the novel is just too unlikely and the solution has been used before. Spoiler, although I will not be specific: an unexpected arrival is oddly time to coincide with Molly’s visit to the house. But that’s not the biggest coincidence.

Finally, the novel and dialogue are fleshed out just enough to propel the plot along, and when we come to the problem of Bridey, the behavior of those involved and their remarks are comic in their obviousness. Not one of my favorite books, for sure.

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Day 1151: Henry VI, Part III

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Cover of Henry VI Part IIIHenry VI, Part III must have been a difficult play to write, because it telescopes the major events of years into five acts. Its action is a little tiresome, as one side of the conflict is in the ascendent, then another. However, the longer speeches in this early play are beginning to show Shakespeare’s stuff. And certainly, for audiences of the day, who didn’t know their history, it was probably exciting.

The play opens where Part II left off. Henry has just been defeated by the Yorkists at the first battle of St. Albans. Shortly thereafter, he makes a deal with York that allows him to rule during his lifetime but makes York his heir. But both York and Queen Margaret soon break the vow. York is preparing to resume conflict so that he can be king when Queen Margaret attacks in an effort to protect her son’s rights.

What was most interesting to me in this play is the depiction of several of the main characters. Queen Margaret is a real viper and is reviled by several characters, even though she is just trying to protect her son. In fact, I believe it was this play in part that was responsible for her reputation in history.

Although Henry is depicted as saintly and all for peace, he is not shown as mentally incapacitated, as he was for much of his life. Warwick, despite changing sides and being ultimately on the wrong one (as far as the Tudors are concerned), is rather heroic. And Gloucester, later Richard III, is set up beautifully for the subsequent play, Richard III.

All in all, I thought that the second play moved along better. I was glad to contrast this trilogy with the other reading I have done on the Wars of the Roses.

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If I Gave the Award

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Cover for How to Be BothSince I’ve just posted my last review of books on the shortlist for the 2014 Booker Prize, it’s time for my feature, If I Gave the Award. In my opinion, many of the books on the 2014 shortlist are overrated. The winner, The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan, is sidetracked by a deeply uninteresting illicit love affair, while J by Howard Jacobson is overwhelmed by its obfuscation and sly jokiness and a deeply uninteresting licit love affair. Neel Mukherjee’s The Lives of Others is more powerful than either one of those novels.

Cover for We Are Completely Beside OurselvesHowever, my preference goes to one of the other two novels. How to Be Both by Ali Smith is more inventive than the other novels in its structure and more subtle in its message. But for its ability to keep me glued to the page, I have to say that over all the others, I preferred We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler.

Day 1150: Snowdrift and Other Stories

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Cover for Snowdrift and Other StoriesI keep saying I love Georgette Heyer, so of course when a volume of her short stories appeared on Netgalley, I requested it. Originally, the story collection was released as Pistols for Two, so I’m sure I read it years before but did not remember the stories.

Each of these stories is a romance in miniature. They involve some of Heyer’s hallmarks—cases of mistaken identity, elopements gone wrong, accidental encounters, and a couple of duels. Appealing heroines meet attractive men usually while they are engaged in some mistaken folly.

link to NetgalleyThese are delightful, light stories, perfect for a rainy day and a cup of tea. This is a very short review, but if you like a charming romance laced with humor, you can’t go wrong with Georgette Heyer.

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Day 1149: J

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Cover for JJ is one of the books I read for my Booker Prize project, and I almost didn’t finish it. About one third of the way in, I considered giving it up. Jacobson spent almost half the book hinting around about the underlying secrets of the novel, during which time nothing much seemed to be happening. Finally, I decided to read some reviews to see if they would make me decide to finish it, and they were intriguing enough for me to continue.

This novel is set in a dystopian future, but this dystopia is not quite what we might expect. An event, referred to as WHAT HAPPENED, IF IT HAPPENED seems to color all of society. History is not studied, and reading books is not encouraged. Everything seems too politically correct, with nothing being outlawed but many things—like rock music and most forms of art—eliminated by general consensus. Because this event was precipitated by social media, no one uses computers anymore, and the only phones are landlines that cannot call long distance, called utility phones. Oh, and everyone has a Jewish last name through a program named Call Me Ishmael.

Ailinn Solomons meets Kevern Cohen, and they begin dating. They both feel like outsiders in their coastal village even though Kevern was born there. He is a paranoid person who checks his locks and the position of his rug several times before he leaves his home. Ailinn is an orphan who is new to town.

Ailinn is vaguely aware of being nudged in Kevern’s direction by her housemate, Esme Nussbaum. And Kevern’s paranoia isn’t unfounded as someone is keeping an eye on him, Professor Edward Everett Phineas Zermansky, a colleague of the Benign Arts deparment of Bethesda Academy.

Something is clearly going on, but Jacobson is evasive about it for most of the novel. Zermansky knows about part of it and his diary entries, at first unidentified, punctuate the narrative as do those of another unidentified character. Zermansky’s interjections are more annoying than revelatory, written in an ironic but elliptical style, and we don’t see the point of them for some time.

My main criticism of this novel is that it takes so long to be understandable. In the meantime, we are treated to an uninteresting romance between two characters we don’t care about. It’s not that they’re one-dimensional, they’re no dimensional. For this is a novel about ideas, not people.

The reviews promise a shocking conclusion and stunning deep secrets. Certainly something nasty is going on, but by the time I learned what it is, I didn’t care. There are enough hints along the way that the conclusion is not all that surprising. I’ve seen this novel compared to Never Let Me Go, but that novel made you care about the characters before it sprung its big reveal, and then it stayed with the characters afterward. This novel puts all its eggs into the basket of the big surprise ending, which isn’t that much of a surprise by the time you get to it.

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Day 1148: A Strange Scottish Shore

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Cover for A Strange Scottish ShoreHere I go again, starting a series at the second book. This time, I wasn’t aware it was part of a series until I went to enter it in Goodreads as currently reading. In some cases, it being the second in a series doesn’t matter, but if A Strange Scottish Shore sounds appealing to you, I advise that you start with the first Emmaline Truelove book, A Most Extraordinary Pursuit. I might just try to find a copy myself.

A lot is going on here, and it takes a while to figure out all of it. It is 1906, and Emmaline Truelove works for Max, the Duke of Olympia, in charge of some type of foundation. Emmaline is a practical, down-to-earth person, but she is helping Max try to learn about a power he doesn’t understand, the ability to move people through time.

Emmaline is on her way to Scotland with important documents when she meets two different men. A ginger-haired man seems to be stalking her until Lord Silverton comes to her train compartment. Lord Silverton, with whom she has had adventures in the previous book, is a handsome man with a reputation with the ladies, so Emmaline can hardly believe him when he claims to have fallen in love with her. Nevertheless, she spends the night with him, only to awaken the next morning and find her papers gone.

In Scotland, Emmaline and Max are summoned to a castle in the Orkney Islands to view a suit that the owner found hidden in a secret compartment of a chest that hasn’t been opened in centuries. The suit sounded to me like a wetsuit, which of course hasn’t been invented yet in 1906. The castle has a legend of the founder of the family having been married to a selkie, so Emmaline and Max begin calling it a selkie suit.

link to NetgalleyIn the meantime, Lord Silverton has disappeared. Emmaline finds clues that he has been in this castle at another time. She concludes that Max inadvertently sent him back in time, so she talks Max into sending her back for him.

This novel features a redoubtable heroine, a nasty villain, and plenty of action, plus time travel! If this sounds like your thing, you will probably enjoy the combination of historical novel, speculative fiction, action, and romantic suspense.

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Classics Club Spin #16

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Cover for The ShuttleI have finished my first Classics Club list, although I have not yet reviewed all of the books. I’ll be reviewing the last one sometime this month, at which time I’ll post my second Classics Club list.

For a Classics Club spin, we post 20 books from our list and then a number is chosen, which determines the book we will read for the spin. Since I’ve finished my list, I will have to make up my spin list from my second, unposted list. So, here are my selections for the next spin, for which I will post a review by December 31.

  1. August Folly by Angela Thirkell
  2. The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster
  3. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë
  4. Letters from Egypt by Lucie Duff-Gordon
  5. The Sea Hawk by Rafael Sabatini
  6. Mary Lavelle by Kate O’Brien
  7. The Lark by E. Nesbit (This is sort of cheating, because I have already read and reviewed this book, just not before I made up my second Classics Club list in June.)
  8. West with the Night by Beryl Markham
  9. Owls Do Cry by Janet Frame
  10. Edward II by Christopher Marlowe
  11. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
  12. The Viscount de Bragelonne by Alexandre Dumas
  13. The Mystery of Mrs. Blencarrow by Mrs. Oliphant
  14. Kenilworth by Sir Walter Scott
  15. Oroonoko by Aphra Behn
  16. Madame de Treymes by Edith Wharton
  17. The Priory by Dorothy Whipple
  18. Consequences by E. M. Delafield
  19. Aurora Floyd by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
  20. Vanishing Cornwall by Daphne du Maurier

 

Day 1147: The Light of Paris

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Cover for The Light of ParisEleanor Brown’s first novel, The Weird Sisters, was just original enough to keep it interesting. Sadly, The Light of Paris is all too predictable.

Madeleine has never felt comfortable in her privileged life of debutantes and charity committees. When she was in high school, all she wanted to do was paint, but her mother considered her painting trivial. She finally married Phillip to please her mother and lives in a cold, sterile Chicago condo with a husband who insists on having everything his way.

Madeleine decides to take a break from Phillip, so she goes to visit her disapproving mother in Magnolia, her home town. She finds her mother preparing to sell the house. In helping her, Madeleine discovers her grandmother Margie’s diaries from her youth.

Margie is a naive, romantic young woman who is also a failed debutante in 1924. Her family considers her an old maid, and when she refuses the unromantic proposal of her father’s middle-aged business partner, they send her off to Paris to chaperone a difficult acquaintance, Evelyn. Evelyn almost immediately abandons her to go off on her own, but after some hesitation, Margie decides to get a job and stay in Paris.

While reading her grandmother’s story, Madeleine begins to work through her own issues, all the while wondering how the Margie from her diary became the distant woman she remembers.

Madeleine’s family secrets are fairly guessable, as is the resolution to the novel. That didn’t bother me so much as some other issues. A small point, perhaps, but in those days no one would have sent a 23-year-old unmarried girl to chaperone an 18-year-old. If Margie was 40, maybe.

A larger issue is my utter lack of sympathy with Madeleine’s problems. Many people seek the approval of their parents, but to think that Madeleine could see no alternative but her Junior League upbringing and marriage to Phillip is ridiculous in this day. I’m sure there are a few women in pearls and twinsets still around, but Brown has set this portion of the novel in the 1990’s, not the 1950’s. I had no patience with this heroine. She needed to grow a backbone when she was 16, not when she was in her 30’s.

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Day 1146: Birdcage Walk

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Cover for Birdcage WalkBest of Five!
Lizzy Fawkes has a close relationship with her mother, Julia, who has worked all her life for the rights of common men. She revolted against her family’s guidance, though, in the choice of her husband, John Diner Tredevant, a property developer. Julia thinks him too concerned with money, while he thinks Julia’s support of the French revolution is naive. Unfortunately, because Lizzy was so adamant to have John, or Diner as he prefers to be called, she cannot confide to her mother her occasional doubts, as Diner behaves in a controlling manner.

Readers already know that at the beginning of the novel, a man murdered a woman and buried her in the woods near the gorge of the Avon River. Diner is building his homes in Bristol overlooking that gorge, and we slowly come to fear that he may have murdered his first wife, Lucie.

link to NetgalleyWith the success of the revolution comes the threat of war with France, and buyers back out of their agreements to purchase Diner’s houses. Diner’s behavior becomes erratic.

This novel is a real page turner. It makes the fourth Dunmore novel I’ve read, each one better than the last. It builds up a lot of suspense as you wonder what Lizzie’s fate will be.

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