Category: books

Day 825: The Cricket on the Hearth

~ whatmeread ~ Leave a comment

Cover for The Cricket on the HearthA year ago I reviewed two of Charles Dickens’ Christmas stories at Christmas time, and since I have a book containing all of them, I thought I’d continue the tradition.

We first meet the Peerybingles in their home, made cheerful by a bustling wife and a cricket on the hearth. John Peerybingle is an honest carter, quite a few years older than his wife. They have a baby and a clumsy maid named Miss Slowboy.

The plot is simple. It is the eve of the marriage of Mr. Tackleton to a much younger bride, May. He comes to invite the Peerybingles to the wedding as an example of a happy May-December union. But the wedding is set for the couple’s anniversary, and they have plans to spend it alone. Still, they include May in a visit to the house of their friend Caleb Plummer and his blind daughter Bertha. An unexpected visitor is with them—a deaf old man who accepted a ride in John’s cart but seems to have nowhere to go.

Mr. Tackleton is not a nice man. He’s been a grasping employer and landlord to Caleb, and it is clear that May is reluctant to marry him. At a point in the evening, Mr. Tackleton takes John aside and shows him something that makes him think his wife has deceived him.

This story is not one of Dickens’ best. Its pleasures are in its scenes of idealized domestic happiness in the Peerybingle home. But since we can’t reconcile our first glimpses of the Peerybingles with any such betrayal as alleged, we’re not in much doubt that everything will turn out to be a misunderstanding. Most of the characters are mere sketches, the only ones even slightly developed are the Peerybingles and Caleb and Bertha Plummer.

Since I recently read Dickens’ biography, though, I was interested in his little fantasy about marriage, particularly it being between two people so disparate in age, years before his affair with Nelly Ternan but only a few years after his wife’s younger sister, Georgina, moved in to live with them.

Related Posts

Two Christmas Novels by Dickens

Oliver Twist

Mr. Timothy

Day 824: The Optimist’s Daughter

~ whatmeread ~ 2 Comments

Cover for The Optimist's DaughterLaurel McKelva Hand, a widow from Mississippi who now designs fabrics in Chicago, is called to New Orleans, where her elderly father is undergoing an eye operation. Laurel is anxious. Her experiences with the health issues of her mother were not good; there is a sense that something about her mother’s final illness wasn’t handled well.

Judge McKelva’s new wife, Fay, younger than Laurel, is vulgar, frivolous, and stupid. She objects to the procedure. But the judge has a cataract in his other eye, and without the operation at this time, he would end up blind. Dr. Courland thinks the operation will save the judge’s sight, so it is performed.

While the judge struggles to recover, Fay complains about missing Mardi Gras and goes shopping. Unfortunately, as they say, the operation is successful but the patient dies. Although the judge is ordered not to move, his wife shakes him, later saying she was trying to “shake him into life.”

Back home for the funeral in the small town of Mount Salus, Mississippi, Laurel is greeted by old friends who are preparing for the funeral. Fay arrives later and is obviously upset at what she views as an intrusion. It soon appears that Becky, Judge McKelva’s first wife, is the elephant in the room, along with the genteel friends’ incomprehension of what led the judge to marry Fay.

Since Fay has told everyone she has no family, they are surprised when the Chisoms arrive from Texas for the funeral. They are obliviously and cheerfully vulgar, and they add a good deal of macabre humor to the funeral. Fay is so determined that the judge will not be buried next to Becky that she buries him in the unpleasant newer part of the cemetery, right next to the new interstate.

When Fay leaves briefly for a visit with her family, she makes it clear that she expects Laurel to be out of her house when she returns a few days later. Laurel must reconcile herself to the loss of all her parents’ belongings and her childhood home as well as residual pain about both her parents’ and her husband’s death.

This very short novel, written in 1972, is considered Welty’s best, although I confess to a preference for the more lovable The Ponder Heart. The Optimist’s Daughter compresses a lot in just a few pages. At times, the Southern darkness almost reminds me of the grotesque humor of Flannery O’Connor, who is a bit too much for me, but Welty is kinder to her characters.

Related Posts

Wise Blood

The Mansion

The Collected Stories of Carson McCullers

Day 823: Black River

~ whatmeread ~ 4 Comments

Cover for Black RiverWes and Claire Carver have been living in Spokane since they left Black River, Montana, 30 years before. But when Claire realizes she is dying from cancer, she asks Wes to take her home to Black River. She also asks him to play to her, which he cannot do, because his fingers were broken years before.

Although Wes plans to take her the day after Claire’s request, she dies during the night. So, Wes prepares to return her ashes to Black River.

Wes has not been there nor seen his stepson Dennis since he and Claire left, although Claire has been back to see her son. Their leaving was after a horrendous series of events. First, there was a riot in the prison where Wes worked. He was held prisoner by a convict, Bobby Williams, for more than a day, and tortured, his fingers ruined. Later, in an argument with teenage Dennis, Dennis pulled a gun on him. That was when he demanded that Claire choose between him and Dennis.

Added to his grief and the difficulties of seeing Dennis again, Wes has heard that Bobby Williams is up for parole. Williams claims to have found God and to be a different person than he was when he held Wes captive. Wes doesn’t believe that people can change. In fact, his beliefs go farther than that, the source of the problems between him and his stepson. Dennis’ father was a criminal, and Wes has always watched for criminal tendencies in Dennis. Finally, Williams robbed Wes of one thing, his gift as a talented fiddler, that made him believe true faith was possible.

Like the modern Western novels of Kent Haruf, which inspired this one, Black River is a quiet story about ordinary people. Although Hulse is not Haruf’s equal as a stylist, she shows herself as an accomplished storyteller.

Related Posts

The Hour I First Believed

Empire Falls

The Burgess Boys

Day 822: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

~ whatmeread ~ 11 Comments

Cover for Miss PettigrewBest book of the week!
This novel is a confection. It is absolutely delightful.

Miss Pettigrew is a poor, middle-aged governess with no family who has been haunting an employment agency hoping for a job. This morning she is in luck. The agency has two openings, one for a maid and one for a nursery maid. The agency sends her off to interview with Miss La Fosse (by mistake).

Miss Pettigrew is received by a beautiful young woman in a negligee. She is clearly entertaining a young man. Miss Pettigrew has been brought up to be a proper lady, but instead of being shocked, she is entranced by this glimpse of an exotic lifestyle.

Without even inquiring who Miss Pettigrew is, Miss La Fosse asks her to find a way of getting her friend Phil to leave before her other friend Nick arrives. Miss Pettigrew is successful in doing this and begins to discover in herself an untapped capacity for organization. Soon, she is responding to Miss La Fosse’s pleas to stay with her during Nick’s visit. Miss Pettigrew sees that Nick is an attractive but dangerous man.

Over the period of a day, Miss La Fosse and her friends involve Miss Pettigrew deeper in their affairs. She is fascinated by this view into a more Bohemian existence, even though her mother would have considered her new friends vulgar. Attracted by their affectionate natures and their colorful lives, she decides that for one day she will enjoy herself and worry about the future tomorrow.

I thoroughly enjoyed this lovely novel about a timid spinster who learns to unfurl her petals. It is a Cinderella story with a 1930’s edge.

Related Posts

The Making of a Marchioness

Nightingale Wood

Love in a Cold Climate

Day 821: Broadchurch

~ whatmeread ~ 2 Comments

Cover for BroadchurchMaybe because I so enjoyed the British TV mystery series Broadchurch, it wasn’t such a great idea to read the book. It’s one thing to read the book a series or movie is based on and another to read one based on the series. However, the novel was written by a good British suspense writer, Erin Kelly, so I thought I’d give it a try.

An 11-year-old boy is found dead on a beach in a small town early one morning. Because his paper route gets him out of the house early, his parents haven’t missed him yet.

On the same morning, Detective Sergeant Ellie Miller returns to work from vacation eager to take over her new job as head of investigations. When she arrives, though, she finds the position has gone to a man, Detective Inspector Alec Hardy. Worse, she soon remembers he was lead in a murder case in Sandbrook that went terribly wrong.

Beth Latimer doesn’t realize that her son Danny is missing until she takes his lunchbox to school, thinking he forgot it. His teacher and school mates haven’t seen him. On the drive home, the traffic to the beach is blocked because of a police investigation. Some instinct makes her stop her car and run to the beach.

While the small town tries to cope with the idea that someone among them has murdered the boy, Ellie Miller and Alec Hardy work the evidence trying to find the killer. Alec is brusque and rude and constantly reminds Ellie that she can’t trust people. Ellie thinks her strength lies in her knowledge of these people, particularly the Latimers, who are her family’s best friends. As the town’s suspicions turn from one person to another, she has to reassess this idea.

A stranger to town is also looking for trouble. Reporter Karen White has Hardy on her radar, after she figures he bungled the Sandbrook case. He didn’t, but the truth takes a while to come out.

Honestly, if you have already seen Broadchurch, this novel doesn’t add anything to it except for more insight into what some of the characters are thinking. The ending has a few extra scenes that only draw it out unnecessarily. The final scene, which I found touching in the series, is a bit too much because it’s from the point of view of the boy’s mother.

However, if you have not seen the series, this book is a perfectly good murder mystery. The characters and situation are interesting, the solution quite a shock.

Related Posts

The Dark Rose

The Poison Tree

A Great Deliverance

Day 820: Enter Sir Robert

~ whatmeread ~ 1 Comment

Cover of Enter Sir RobertLady Graham and her youngest daughter Edith are the main characters of Enter Sir Robert, set in post-World War II Barsetshire. Thirkell relates her novels as if she’s personally telling you a story, and although all the novels are set in Barsetshire, this one seems a little more rural than the others I’ve read recently. People are always running off to look at the pigs.

Lady Graham is a charming woman whom everyone loves, although she is a little scatter-brained. With most of her children married and her husband, Sir Robert, almost always away on some vital service to the nation, she has only Edith, who is 18, left at home.

Mrs. Halliday has an invitation for Edith. Her daughter Sylvia, who is expecting, is coming for a visit. Mrs. Halliday would like Edith to stay for a while to be company for Sylvia. Mrs. Halliday is taken up with Mr. Halliday, who is not well, and her son George has been working the farm as best he can alone. Meanwhile, Lady Graham is preparing a small memorial service for the anniversary of her own mother’s death.

Edith enjoys herself very much at the Halliday’s, visiting with Sylvia, entertaining Mr. Halliday, and viewing the farm with George, who seems to like her company. When the Hallidays all go to view the Old Manor House, which they have been leasing to a bank, they meet Mr. Cross, son of Lord Cross and also a delightful young man.

Like Thirkell’s other novels, Enter Sir Robert depicts the everyday life of the people of a certain social station with wit and humor. Her characters are mostly nice people, with only a few barbs directed at the bishop. The countryside is lovingly described, and there is always a little light romance. They are a pleasure to read. Oh, and if you care to read this one, you’ll find that the title is Thirkell’s little joke.

Related Posts

Happy Returns

Miss Bunting

Barchester Towers

Day 819: The Winter People

~ whatmeread ~ 4 Comments

Cover for The Winter PeopleReading two books by Jennifer McMahon doesn’t make me an expert on her, but they do have something in common. They both show a fascination with the supernatural and the grotesque.

Like her more recent book The Night Sister, The Winter People is set in Vermont. It takes place in two time periods, the present and 1908.

In 1908, Sara Harrison Shea lives with her husband and daughter on a barren farm near a landmark called the Devil’s Hand. Sara was raised by a Native American woman she calls “Auntie,” whom the nearby villagers visit for potions and spells. We know from the beginning of the novel that she died a terrible death and that parts of her story are recorded in her diary, which has pages missing. In the village of West Hall there have long been legends of “Sleepers,” people who are brought back from the dead.

In the present time, teen Ruthie returns late from a date to find her mother, Alice, gone. When Alice hasn’t returned by the next day, Ruthie and her little sister Fawn begin looking through the house for clues to where she has gone. In a series of hidey holes, they find some strange things, a gun and the wallets of two people from Connecticut. Since the countryside around West Hall is known for people’s disappearances and the Devil’s Hand at the edge of the farm is supposedly haunted, Ruthie begins wondering what her mother could be involved in and doesn’t call the police.

Katherine is grieving the death of her husband, Gary. He had been distraught since the death of their son, but recently things seemed to be better. Then he told her he was going to Cambridge to photograph a wedding but died in a car accident in Vermont. What was he doing there? When Katherine gets back his charge receipts, she finds he ate lunch in West Hall, so she decides to move there to try to find out what Gary was up to.

McMahon builds up quite a bit of suspense in this novel, often from small things like the tapping on a closet door. The novel centers around a series of grief-stricken people and the belief that people can come back from the dead. Can they? And if so, in what form?

Related Posts

The Night Sister

The Night Strangers

Wylding Hall

Day 818: The Making of a Marchioness

~ whatmeread ~ 8 Comments

Cover for The Making of a MarchionessBest book of the week!
Although The Secret Garden was one of my favorite childhood books, I had no idea that Frances Hodgson Burnett also wrote novels for adults until I read a review of The Making of a Marchioness. The Preface points out that Polly references it in Love in a Cold Climate, but there Burnett’s name isn’t mentioned. In any case, I’m happy to report that it is a delightful novel.

The Making of a Marchioness combines a Cinderella story with a realistic description of an evolving marriage. It has been called “a romance between two unromantic people.” It also has a bit of peril mixed in.

Emily Fox-Seton is a woman in her 30’s of good birth but very poor. When her parents died, her more fortunate relatives made it clear they couldn’t be bothered with her. So, she has created a business of doing small tasks and running errands for her wealthy clients. She has the happy characteristic, though, of being a positive person who perceives kindness everywhere.

Lady Maria Bayne enjoys both Emily’s company and her utility, so she invites her to Mallowe for a house party in August, thinking Emily can help with the arrangements for her annual féte. Emily is delighted to leave the city in summer and soon becomes interested in the competition among three guests to snare Lord Walderhurst, a 50-year-old widower who is also a marquis. She finds herself rooting for Lady Agatha, a beautiful girl from a poor family that has several daughters to marry off.

Lord Walderhurst, though, likes the open expression in Emily’s eyes and her happy, busy ways. To Emily’s astonishment, he proposes, and she gladly accepts.

But that is only the beginning of the novel, about how gratitude and love can provoke love in its turn. Some piquancy is added by a plot development that puts Emily in danger from her husband’s heir, who has always considered Walderhurst’s vast estates as almost his.

This is a lovely novel that brought tears to my eyes. Its characters are prosaic but nice (except the heir). Even selfish Lady Maria is quite lovable. The writing is beautiful, and Emily’s story is touching.

By the way, a recent television adaptation of this novel, titled The Making of a Lady, follows the plot with some changes, but it wildly miscasts the two main characters, making them both younger and more attractive than they’re supposed to be in the novel. Still, I marginally enjoyed it.

Related Posts

Persuasion

Love in a Cold Climate

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand

Day 817: The Hornet’s Nest

~ whatmeread ~ Leave a comment

Cover for The Hornet's NestIt is 30 years after the Battle of Culloden, but Highland Scots are still forbidden by their English overlords to wear the plaid, play bagpipes, or honor their heritage in other ways. Rebellious Lauchlin MacLeod and her brother Ronald, teenage children of Laird Kildornie, are always finding themselves in trouble.

So it is on the day they meet their cousin Matthew Lennox, a gentleman from Virginia journeying to visit his English and Scottish relatives. Lauchlin is marveling that this Sassenach is related to her family and doesn’t realize he has been escorted there by a troop of redcoats. She just barely avoids being caught wearing a kilt while her brother hides in the bushes with his bagpipe.

In town showing Cousin Matthew the sights, Ronald and Lauchlin attack some boys who are torturing a kitten. Later Sergeant Tucker arrives at their home to tell them that the boys are the children of Captain Green, the new area commander. The boys have lied about the cause of the attack, and Captain Green isn’t as likely as the previous commander to overlook their behavior. The next incident could be serious.

Cousin Matthew has a solution. Lauchlin and Ronald can travel to Virginia and live with his sister Lavinia until things calm down. Secretly, he enlists them to send news and drawings, for Lauchlin is a gifted caricaturist, about doings in the colonies for a paper he is founding in London called The Gadfly.

So, Lauchlin and Ronald set out for the colonies accompanied by their kitten Haggis. They arrive in Williamsburg in 1773, just in time to witness the lead-up to the American Revolution. It’s not too difficult to imagine where their sympathies lie.

This novel effortlessly mixes the viewpoints from both sides of the revolution, for their Lennox relatives are Loyalists, and some are charming characters. Lauchlin is an ebullient scamp, Ronald a boy who must learn that all Sassenachs are not the same. Their many Virginian cousins dislike them at first but then most of them learn to love them. And Haggis has his own distinctive personality.

This novel is one of my favorites so far of the Watson books I’ve newly discovered, because it is less unlikely than some of them and has really enjoyable characters. Plus, it provides an unusual viewpoint of the American Revolution. Young teens and tweens should love this book.

Related Posts

Witch of the Glens

Lark

Mistress Malapert