Category: books

Day 889: An Inquiry into Love and Death

~ whatmeread ~ 3 Comments

Cover for An Inquiry into Love and DeathFor light reading with a supernatural twist, I’m developing an affection for the novels of Simone St. James. Her romantic suspense novels are set in post-World War I England and feature spunky heroines who get embroiled in mystery, always with a supernatural element.

Jillian Leigh is an Oxford student in one of the few colleges for women. She is summoned away from her studies with news that her Uncle Toby has died. Her parents expect her to take care of his affairs, saying that her father is unable to leave his work in Paris.

Jillian hasn’t actually seen her uncle since her parents broke with him when she was 14, for reasons she does not know. The one thing she knows about him is embarrassing, that he worked as a ghost hunter. Other than that, she remembers him as a shy, quiet person who was kind to her.

She is appalled, however, to find she is expected to identify his body. He was staying in the seaside village of Rothewell, thought to be haunted by the ghost of a smuggler, when early one morning he fell off a cliff.

Jillian stays in the house where Toby lived, an isolated cottage nearest the activities of the purported ghost. Almost immediately, odd things begin happening. She finds things in odd places, a book in  the stove, for example. At night she hears what she thinks is a tree scratching her window, but in the daytime she sees there is no tree anywhere near it. Then Scotland Yard Inspector Drew Merriken arrives and tells her that Toby may have been murdered.

After reading a few of St. James’s novels, I have no doubt there will be a romance with the inspector, but her combination of ghost story and mystery is truly suspenseful. I found this to be another enjoyable romantic suspense novel.

Related Posts

The Haunting of Maddy Clare

The Other Side of Midnight

The Winter People

Day 888: Tinkers

~ whatmeread ~ 4 Comments

Cover for TinkersGeorge Crosby lies dying. He is an old man who retired and then became a clock repairman for 30 years. As he dies, he remembers the life of his father, who was a tinker—a traveling salesman of household items in the rural wilds of Maine—and an epileptic. In a way, of course, George also tinkers, with clocks.

This novel’s writing is truly astounding. Harding has a way of examining ideas and objects down to the bone. At other times, musings seem almost hallucinogenic. I wasn’t sure I understood the point of view, though. If all of the novel is from the point of view of George, as most reviews of the book seem to imply, how does he know what happened to Howard, his father—or is he imagining a life for his father?

To me, the novel seems to be about both men, in particular, about the circumstances that led to George being raised without his father. In the hard primitive life of backwoods Maine, George’s mother is resentful and cold. It is his father who is more considering and thoughtful, but a poor provider who might stop to weave pallets of grass instead of selling his goods. After a particularly bad epileptic attack, the only one witnessed by the Crosby children, George’s mother decides to have their father committed.

This novel was difficult for me to read, because I was so interested in some aspects of the plot that I glanced over some of the gorgeous prose or couldn’t concentrate on it (not my usual approach). The prose is the point of this book, however, and the meditations it evokes.

I believe this book is related to another book that also bought. I can’t remember if it is the sequel to the other book, or the other book is a sequel to it. I’ll be interested to see if reading both books enlightens me more.

Related Posts

The Quickening Maze

Mrs. Dalloway

Olive Kitteridge

Day 887: Fair Helen

~ whatmeread ~ 10 Comments

Cover for Fair HelenBest Book of the Week!
I was completely entranced by Fair Helen from the first moments of reading it. It’s based on a 16th century ballad, “Fair Helen of Kirkconnel Lea.” Since one of my interests (although sadly not pursued for years) is early ballads of Great Britain, Ireland, and Appalachia, this is a good fit for me.

Harry Langdon is a city man, a scrivener from Edinburgh, the son of a craftsman, so the Borderlands seem wild to him when he answers the summons of his good friend Adam Fleming. Adam feels he needs his friend’s support. He fears his stepfather, his father’s brother, might be trying to kill him. And Harry is surprised to find Adam’s stepfather in the role of Heidsman instead of Adam after the recent death of Adam’s father. (If this sounds familiar, it’s supposed to.)

But Adam is more concerned about the disposition of his love affair. He has fallen madly in love with Helen Irvine, a beautiful and vivacious girl. But the Irvines and the Flemings have been feuding for years. (If this sounds familiar in a different way, it’s supposed to.) Helen’s parents want her to marry Robert Bell, a man with more prospects than a member of an unmade family.

We know from the beginning of the novel that none of this will end well, for we have the text of the ballad before us. And Harry in his old age is telling this story of the most important event in his life and the two people he loved most. For Helen is his cousin, and the two of them were very close as children.

The situation is complicated by the politics of the Borderlands. Harry finds himself summoned by Walter Scott of Buccleuch, a lord who frankly terrifies him (a very different Wat Scott of Buccleuch than the one depicted by Dorothy Dunnet), and is forced to spy on his friends. It becomes clear to him that there have been attempts at murder, if not of Adam, but who is behind them and why?

The novel is written in a mix of Scots and English, with a glossary provided. It is a strong style that goes well with its subject matter. At first, I was thrown off by the footnotes, which are all in the wrong places. I didn’t realize what was going on and thought they were simply non sequiturs. When I figured it out, I spent a lot of time flipping pages, trying to match them up. I honestly wasn’t sure if it was a printing error until I ran across the following passage:

I had aimed to set down plainly only what I witnessed concerning the events at Kirkconnel, to correct the folk haivers and bring some understanding. Yet already I find footnotes, asides and addenda have begun to run wild down the margins and among the lines. I like to think of them as bright wildflowers that border and run through the acres of turnip and kale by which we feed ourselves.

So, Greig is having some fun with us and in more ways than one, although this is in general not a light-hearted novel. It is lovely, though, full of yearning and regret, with a backbone of history for those who are interested.

In my recurring theme of quality printing, I have to say that this is the first modern book with properly bound signatures that I’ve seen in a long while, as opposed to the signatures being hacked off and glued. That’s great, and it means my book will stay together longer. However, the end papers were pasted down carelessly. They have creases, and some of the pages of the book stick out beyond the cover. So, Quercus Books, one big step forward and a few small ones back.

Related Posts

The Candlemass Road

The Disorderly Knights

Turn of the Tide

Day 886: Kill ‘Em and Leave: Searching for James Brown and the American Soul

~ whatmeread ~ 2 Comments

Cover for Kill 'Em and LeaveKill ‘Em and Leave is a difficult book to categorize—part biography, part music history, but what it most closely resembles in writing style and approach is a series of magazine articles on the subject of James Brown and his legacy. That is not meant as a criticism, and the book is written with energy and flair.

I do not know a lot about James Brown, and my general sense of his life may incorporate some of the information that McBride would be quick to point out as lies or exaggeration. But McBride is not setting out to whitewash, just to find the truth.

And the truth is hard to find. McBride tells us that Brown was secretive, not just about money and the details of his private life but about his real self. McBride is only able to find out fragments of the truth about Brown, because Brown let people make things up about him and was more interested in creating his own legend than in revealing himself. So, McBride pursues his subject by visiting the places where he lived and talking to old friends and employees.

McBride doesn’t want to focus on the drugs and the mistreatment of women and the scandal. He wants to explore Brown’s legacy to American music and to the people in his life, good and bad. The shocking handling of his estate, which was left in trust for the education of poor children and is being ransacked by a series of lawyers, is also a focus. The damage the suits have done to the reputations of the original trustees, including the imprisonment of his honest and innocent accountant, David Cannon, is a sin. But McBride makes clear that Brown was a bad employer, erratic, distrusting, tight, and more people than Cannon have taken a fall for him. And not one poor child has received a cent of his money.

link to NetgalleyThis is a fragmentary but fascinating portrait of a complex man. If you are interested in the issues of African-American life, the history of American music, the issues of legacy, corruption in the music business or in South Carolina politics, or simply in a well-told story—any of these will assure your enjoyment of this book.

Related Posts

The Good Lord Bird

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo

 

Day 885: The Last Summer of the Camperdowns

~ whatmeread ~ 6 Comments

Cover for The Last Summer of the CamperdownsHi, all, I just wanted to tell you before I get started that I began a new project, attempting to read all of the Man Booker Prize shortlisted books since 2010. See my new Man Booker Prize Project page for more information, and join me if you want to.

* * *

The Last Summer of the Camperdowns is one of those books that I made a note I’d like to read some time ago, but by the time I got to it, could not remember what it was about. When that happens, I don’t read the cover. I just plunge in. I was surprised to find myself reading a sort of modern gothic novel.

Riddle Camperdown is a 12-year-old girl spending the summer at her family’s dune-side house on Cape Cod in 1972. Her name says a lot about the eccentricity of her family, for she is named after Jimmy Riddle Hoffa (yes, that one), and her father sometimes calls her Jimmy. “Camp” Camperdown is a labor organizer, composer, and politician, a noisy brash, boisterous, charismatic true believer. His wife, Greer, seems a mismatch for him. She is a cool, chic ex-movie star with an acid tongue. Riddle, who adores her father, thinks her mother only cares about money and status.

Another of the couple’s regular arguments starts up when they learn Michael Devlin is returning to the area. Michael is a rich, privileged man who used to be Camp’s best friend, but an incident during World War II drove them apart. Riddle is also fascinated to learn that Michael was engaged to Greer and stood her up at the altar.

Riddle and Greer are avid riders, so when that afternoon they go over to see Greer’s friend Gin, Riddle wanders off to the yellow barn to see a mare with a foal. When she is in the barn, something horrible happens, something she doesn’t see but only hears. She thinks she hears someone or something being chased through the barn and then dragged back to the tack room. She is terrified, but just as she is getting the nerve to open the tack room door, Gin’s employee Gula comes out.

Riddle is already terrified of Gula, so she pretends she hasn’t heard anything. Inexplicably, though, she is too terrified to tell her parents.

Soon, they learn that Michael Devlin’s youngest son Charlie has disappeared. It doesn’t take long for Riddle to guess it was Charlie she heard in the barn. That night, the barn burns down with several horses in it.

As Riddle is repeatedly terrorized by Gula, her parents’ marriage seems more and more fraught. Michael Devlin begins threatening Camp’s political campaign with a tell-all book, and Camp fears what he sees as his wife’s attachment to Devlin. In the meantime, Riddle falls in love with Michael Devlin’s oldest son, Harry.

This novel is quite suspenseful, with a plot that is far more complex than it first seems. If there were two small things I didn’t quite buy, one was the extremeness of the Camperdowns’ arguments at first. The other was how long it took Riddle to tell the truth, considering how Gula was threatening her, even going into her room and leaving things. Although ultimately Riddle was also hiding the fact that she hadn’t told the truth right away, I would think she would be too scared not to tell.

Related Posts

The Little Friend

Once Upon a River

Swamplandia!

Day 884: Tales from the Queen of the Desert

~ whatmeread ~ 12 Comments

Cover for Tales from the Queen of the DesertTales from the Queen of the Desert is a set of excerpts from two books by a remarkable woman, Gertrude Bell. Bell was a travel writer, diplomat, linguist, archaeologist, even a spy during World War I. She was widely regarded as an expert on the Near and Middle East and helped establish the country of Iraq.

She wrote the first book, Persian Pictures, after she visited her uncle in Persia (modern-day Iran) in 1892. She was very observant, and whether she is describing the landscape, the bazaar, or her impressions of Tehran, her descriptions are so vivid that it’s possible to imagine exactly what she saw.

In this book, she is sometimes a little snide, in a superior sort of way, although sometimes funnily so, as when she reports her impressions of the famous Peacock Throne of the Shah. At first she is astounded when she realizes that every inch of the room, including the carpet, is encrusted with jewels. But then she notices other objects among the jewels—patent medicine pills and toothbrushes, for example, which are also treated as treasures. As a final touch, she notes that the room is lined with boxes, which turn out to be music boxes. She understands that the Shah likes to turn them on all at the same time.

Some of her observations resound strongly even today. For example, at the beginning of the first chapter, she describes entering Tehran from the west gate. From that side, the city at the time was relatively unpopulated, the desert creeping in. But by the east gate, the town was vibrant and full of people. She concludes, “The East looks to itself, it knows nothing of the greater world of which you are a citizen, asks nothing of you and your civilization.”

Syria: The Desert and the Sown was published in 1907 after what was apparently Bell’s second trip to Syria, as she references a visit five years before. In this book, although she visits some of the area’s most important cities, the excerpts concentrate more on her travels in the hinterlands, where she meets many interesting people and examines archaeological sites. She also has another errand, which she does not discuss.

The excerpts from this book seem more fragmentary, for she begins chapters in different locations than she left off. Again, her descriptive powers are notable. By now, she gets by very well in Arabic and has studied the customs and courtesies of the area. Her attitude of slightly amused superiority is gone.

In both books, Bell’s writing is almost poetic at times. It’s easy to feel the romance and dangers of the East. There is nothing like some books for taking you to another place and time.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Related Posts

The Cruelest Journey: Six Hundred Miles to Timbuktu

The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia

Wild

Day 883: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

~ whatmeread ~ 8 Comments

Cover for Salmon Fishing in the YemenI enjoyed the movie Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, a light romantic comedy, so I picked up the novel. Although most of the same elements are there, the novel is a bit darker and more satirical, the emphasis on government idiocy.

Dr. Alfred Jones is a scientist for the National Centre for Fisheries Excellence. He loves his work but is taken aback when he receives a letter about assisting with a project to establish salmon in the Yemen, to be sponsored by a wealthy sheik. Fred thinks the idea is scientifically absurd and ignores it.

But government officials in the prime minister’s office get wind of the project and see it as a possible source of good publicity about the relationship between the U.K. and the Middle East. The outcome is that Fred is ordered to follow through on the project.

Fred is pleasantly surprised at the apparent competence of the project manager, Harriet Chetwode-Talbot, but it is when he meets the sheik that he begins to have an interest in the project. The sheik is a devoted fisherman who has an outlandish but possibly feasible plan for his project.

Fred’s marriage isn’t going smoothly. His no-nonsense wife Mary has accepted a temporary posting to Geneva without consulting him. She is far better paid than he is and is dismissive in her attitudes toward his career, even when a political shift toward the project gets him fired and he is taken on by Harriet’s company at a lot higher salary.

Harriet also has some personal problems. Her fiancé Robert has been posted somewhere in the Middle East, and she is no longer receiving his letters. Nor can she get any information about him from the Marines.

This novel is epistolary, told completely in emails, Fred’s diary entries, letters, transcripts of interviews, and newspaper articles. It is occasionally funny, almost ridiculously satirical, and a little bit sweet. However, if you are hoping for the movie ending, you will be disappointed, because in the movies, the boy always has to get the girl, especially if he’s played by Ewan McGregor. In fiction, things can be more complicated.

Related Posts

To Rise Again at a Decent Hour

The Descendants

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand

Day 882: Rebecca

~ whatmeread ~ 19 Comments

logo for the 1938 clubBest Book of the Week!
Since Rebecca is a book that qualifies for The 1938 Club and is also on my Classics Club list, I thought this was a good time to reread it. I must say that during this reread, I noticed things I’d never noticed before.

Some years after the time of the novel’s action, the narrator recollects the events at Manderley from a life of exile. As a young, naive woman working as a companion for the vulgar Mrs. Van Hopper, the narrator meets the older, sophisticated Maxim de Winter one spring on the Riviera. When Mrs. Van Hopper becomes ill, the narrator spends some time each day with him, driving through the countryside. Mrs. Van Hopper recovers and decides abruptly to return to the States. When the narrator tells Maxim, he proposes.

Cover for RebeccaThe narrator, whose first name we never learn, is an immature girl who is prone to imagining what people are saying about her or what may happen, usually in exaggerated terms. The wedding is not the romantic event that she imagined, but she goes along with whatever Maxim suggests.

Finally, they come home to Maxim’s family home of Manderley, and that’s where the novel really gets going. For the narrator is already haunted by the thought of Rebecca, Maxim’s first wife. Rebecca was beautiful, assured, accomplished—everything the narrator believes she is not. Everyone assures her that Maxim adored Rebecca and was shattered when she died in a sailing accident. Everyone tells her she isn’t at all like Rebecca. The decor of the house reflects Rebecca’s taste, her name is scrawled inside books, her monogrammed handkerchiefs are in the pockets of coats, and the servants tell her, when she timidly makes a request, “Mrs. de Winter used this vase,” or “Mrs. de Winter sat in this room in the morning.”

Further, there is the terrifying Mrs. Danvers, the housekeeper, from whom the new Mrs. de Winter senses actual hostility. Mrs. Danvers was devoted to Rebecca and resents a new wife taking her place, especially one so much Rebecca’s inferior.

The narrator was not brought up to a life with servants, running a big house, and she has no idea how to behave. Maxim gives her little help in this regard, just expecting her to adapt. She makes mistakes, and his moods become more erratic until she thinks he regrets their marriage. As she becomes more unhappy, events build to a climax on the night of a big costume ball.

This is an extremely powerful novel that, I think, hits you differently depending upon the age you are when you read it. When I was young, I thought it was romantic and scary. Now, I think it’s more of a study of some very maladjusted characters. But this is the first reading where it made me think of Mr. Rochester.

Even though I love Jane Eyre, I’ve never been much of a fan of Mr. Rochester. But what does he do? He yearns for a young, innocent girl and is prepared to commit a crime to get her. We can say this for Jane, though, she has a strong sense of herself.

I don’t want to say much more about Rebecca in case you haven’t read it. But let’s keep it at this. Maxim de Winter also yearns for a young innocent girl, but his choice has such a weak sense of self that we don’t even learn her name. He takes her to a life for which she is completely unsuited and untrained, with a servant he might predict would be hostile, and just leaves her to make the best of things. And this comment doesn’t even touch on the darker secrets of the novel.

Do these observations make me love the novel less? No, this is a great novel. Rebecca is one of Daphne du Maurier’s most atmospheric novels, in a career with many atmospheric novels. I believe she modeled Manderley after the house where she lived in Cornwall, and its description is detailed and loving. Du Maurier was interested in aberrant personalities, in which she probably counted her own. This is a dark novel that fully draws you in. It is very well written, an excellent character study and a masterful suspense novel.

Related Posts

Castle Dor

The Poison Tree

Daphne du Maurier: The Secret Life of a Renowned Storyteller

Day 881: Quiet Neighbors

~ whatmeread ~ 4 Comments

Cover for Quiet NeighborsBest Book of the Week!
Jude is in trouble, thinking of fleeing the country. But when she gets to the train station, she remembers a kind face, so on an impulse she takes a train to Glasgow. In a nearby village, she walks into Lowland Glen Books. There she is taken under the wing of the owner, Lowell Glen, and sent to his house for an exhausted rest.

Jude’s trouble involves her ex-husband Max, but we don’t learn what it is for a while. She is afraid to read the online articles about whatever happened but just sees that they have thousands of hits. Then she destroys her phone.

Jude is a library cataloger with a bit of a phobia about disorder. She finds the squalor of Lowell’s home disturbing but is pleased when he offers her the attic apartment to live in and a job helping him catalog the books in his store. She is just settling in when another orphan of the storm arrives, a pregnant Irish teenager who announces that she is Lowell’s daughter, a person Lowell didn’t know existed.

Lowell immediately accepts Eddy, but Jude is skeptical. Eddy claims that her mother, Miranda, only told her about Lowell on her death bed, but Jude thinks she is lying about something. She is also upset when Lowell lets her know that Eddy would like her apartment. Lowell has a place for Jude, though, a cottage he owns next to a graveyard.

The cottage is so isolated that Jude is happy to accept it, figuring that no one will find her there. She is also enchanted to find that the cottage once belonged to T. Jolly, someone whose brief reviews in the backs of some of the books in Lowell’s store have delighted her. She starts making a collection of his books, but the notes in the later books in his collection take on a different, more ominous tone.

With Quiet Neighbors, Catriona McPherson moves away from contemporary thrillers back toward the mystery genre. Aside from the question of why Jude is hiding, there is a mystery connected with Lowell’s “summer of love” back in the 80’s that engendered Eddy, a mystery of what Eddy’s mother Miranda told her versus the facts they can determine about the time. And then there is the mystery of T. Jolly’s notes.

link to NetgalleyThere does turn out to be a murderer, and to me that person’s identity was obvious as soon as murder was suspected. But this did not interfere with my enjoyment of the novel. I loved most of the characters and the warm, unusual household that Lowell, Eddy, and Jude begin to build. I loved what McPherson does with two apparently menacing characters. I absolutely loved this novel.

Related Posts

The Child Garden

The Day She Died

Haunt Me Still