Review 1404: All’s Well That Ends Well

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Although All’s Well That Ends Well is grouped with Shakespeare’s comedies, the introduction to my edition says that, like Measure for Measure, it is a problem play. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but Wikipedia says it applies to ambiguity and a shift in tone between darkness and light.

The actions in this play by Count Bertram bear many resemblances to those of Shakespeare’s patron, the Earl of Southhampton, who was made to marry a girl he didn’t want. Helena, the ward of the Countess of Rousillon, is the daughter of a physician and so is inferior in position—or at least he thinks so—to Count Bertram, the Countess’s son. Yet, she is in love with him.

When the Count goes to the court of France, Helena follows. The King is deathly ill, and she offers him a cure of her father’s. He agrees, if it works, to marry her to the single lord of her choosing.

Of course, the cure works, and she chooses Count Bertram. Forced to marry her, the young man leaves for war in Italy vowing never to consummate the marriage.

Frankly, this later play is not one of Shakespeare’s best. Its main theme is the disagreement between young and old, as everyone in the play who is older thinks Bertram is an idiot to reject such a virtuous, lovely bride, and also the part that status plays in marriage as opposed to character. The play has no rolling speeches, however, and pretty much just gets down to doing its job.

From the modern viewpoint, it’s fairly easy to see why this play isn’t presented as often as others. I read it before I went to see it at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Mainly, Count Bertram is pretty despicable despite his change of heart at the end. First, he rejects Helena just because of her social status, even though she is beloved by his mother and the King. Later, he attempts to seduce a virtuous Italian girl of good family, Diana, even promising to marry her despite being already married. When she pursues him to France, he lies about her, saying she is a camp bawd. What a great guy. Obviously, all would be well if Helena didn’t end up with him at the end, at least for Helena. But that’s the 21st century view.

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Review 1403: Washington Black

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Best of Ten!
Washington Black is a twelve-year-old field slave on the Barbados plantation of Faith in 1830 when a new master arrives. Masters are to be feared, but it soon becomes clear that the new master is cruel and thinks nothing of the death of a slave.

Washington and his protector, the old woman named Kit, are alarmed when one evening they are summoned to the master’s house. They are expected to wait table while the master entertains his brother, Christopher, although they have no training. After the dinner, the brother asks for Washington to wait on him personally.

Christopher, or Titch, as he asks to be called, is a man with a scientific mind. He is working on an airship he calls Cloud Cutter, which he plans to launch from a mountain at the top of the plantation. Once Titch sees how exactly Washington draws, he begins to involve him in his experiments.

The master is away when Titch’s cousin Philip arrives. He brings some news that disturbs the plans of both Titch and the master. Then a terrible event occurs. Because Washington is present for it, he knows it means his death. Titch knows it, too, and the two flee the plantation in the Cloud Cutter.

Washington’s life becomes one of adventure overshadowed by fear. Although during the novel he travels to the Arctic, Upper Canada, England, and eventually Morocco, for years he fears being recaptured.

This novel is part adventure story, but it has the more serious aim of exploring the bonds between the exploiter and the exploited. Titch is a mystery to Wash, a seemingly compassionate man who yet abandons him in the Arctic. For years, Wash believes him to be dead, but then he hears he is alive. This sends him on more journeys to try to find and understand his mentor.

I thought this novel was fascinating, especially the descriptions of sea creatures when Wash begins studying them in Upper Canada. Later on, he begins to build the world’s first public aquarium.

I liked Edugyan’s Half-Blood Blues, but I was really caught up in the story of Wash’s life. This novel applies to my Man Booker Prize project, but I would have read it anyway.

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Review 1402: Literary Wives! Happenstance

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Today is another review for the Literary Wives blogging club, in which we discuss the depiction of wives in fiction. If you have read the book, please participate by leaving comments on any of our blogs. Be sure to read the reviews and comments of the other wives!

Eva of Paperback Princess
Lynn of Smoke and Mirrors
Naomi of Consumed By Ink

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Happenstance is really two novels, back to back, upside down from each other, about a marriage. Depending upon which way you pick up the book, you get either the husband’s or wife’s point of view first. I just happened to read the husband’s story first.

Jack Bowman is a historian who lives a life of the expected. Every Friday he has lunch with his childhood friend Bernie at the same restaurant, where they discuss this week’s philosophical question. He works at the same institute where he was hired straight out of college more than twenty years ago. He still loves his wife, Brenda, and has always been faithful. He is skeptical of, in 1978, new political and social movements. He has been working on the same book for three years, sort of. He attends periodic parties with neighbors he dislikes.

The events of one week make him begin evaluating his life. First, he finds out that an old flame may be publishing a book on the same topic as the one he has been dilatorily writing. Second, his wife is leaving town for five days to attend a crafts conference. Finally, his friend Bernie arrives on his doorstep after separating from his wife.

Jack wonders if he wants to finish his book. He isn’t really interested in the topic, which was suggested by his boss. Further, he wonders whether his work in his comfortable, stress-free environment serves any purpose.

For her part, Brenda began making quilts several years ago and has begun attracting attention because of them. She tends to be placid and self-deprecating, but before she took up quilting she sometimes found herself angry about her life.

At the conference, she finds friendly people who are interested in conversations about things that interest her. Moreover, because of an embarrassing incident, she befriends a metallurgist attending another conference at the same hotel. Soon, she can tell she may have to decide whether to have an affair.

I couldn’t decide what my reaction was to this book. On the one hand, characters are examining their lives through the lens of mundane events. On the other hand, I feel that the portrait of the marriage was more realistic than usual because of this, showing a couple doing ordinary things. I thought that approach was braver than a depiction of horrid secrets coming out. On the other hand, especially the conversations seemed ordinary and not very interesting. As a side note, I am interested whether reading the book the other way around would make any difference.

What does this book say about wives or about the experience of being a wife?

What stands out for me about this marriage is that Brenda, open and ready for change, ultimately decides to stick with her old life. Jack, on the other hand, previously so resistant to change, seems to decide that some changes might be good.

Literary Wives logoAs to her role as a wife, Brenda entered marriage with naïvete and not much thought at a time when it was expected. Twenty years later, she isn’t sure she made the right decision, or rather, she thinks maybe she missed something. Her quilt making, however, has given her a sense of purpose and creativity. She doesn’t seem to resent that she must be a wife, mother, and housewife before being a creative person, even though that topic is raised in one of her conference sessions. Still, she is tempted toward change.

It’s interesting to me that in this time of a growing awareness of feminism (this book was published in 1980), Brenda doesn’t seem to be very aware of it or interested in the ideas the movement has spawned.

I am glad, although Jack doesn’t necessarily understand Brenda, that the book didn’t follow the cliché of the husband being unsupportive of his wife’s activities.

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Review 1401: The Muse

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In 1967 London, Odelle Bastien has been making her way with difficulty. Although she is well educated, her race and origins in Trinidad are keeping her from getting a job. Then she gets a break. Marjorie Quick hires her as a secretary in an art institute and makes friendly overtures.

Odelle finds Quick mysterious. She asks Odelle about herself but tells her nothing. She does, however, encourage Odelle to write.

Odelle has also met Laurie Scott, a young man who is interested in being more than her friend. His mother has just died, leaving him only an unusual painting. To support himself, he intends to try to sell it. Odelle encourages him to bring it to the Skelton Institute, her workplace. When Quick sees the painting, she has a strong reaction to it.

In 1935, Harold Schloss, an art dealer, has fled Vienna with his family. Unfortunately, he has chosen Spain, which will soon be little safer, to flee to. His daughter Olive has been accepted at Slade, but she hasn’t told her father. He believes that women can’t be artists, just dabblers.

Olive meets Isaac Robles, an artist, and his sister Irene. Both are servants for the house the Schlosses are renting. Olive is struck by Isaac’s good looks and begins painting in a new style with vibrant colors.

The novel follows these two time threads as it explores the mystery of the painting. Who painted it, and how did it end up in London? How does Quick know about it?

I was struck by Burton’s weird and wonderful The Miniaturist, so much so that as soon as I finished reading it, I bought this book. I found The Muse to be a bit more mundane, with few surprises. For a long time, I was much more interested in Odelle’s section than Olive’s, particularly because Olive makes a decision about her art that I found shocking and unbelievable. In theme, this novel is similar to The Blazing World, and in an action taken by an artist, but with a crucial difference.

Also, like some other bloggers, I am wearying of the dual time-frame format. I am beginning to think it is a little lazy. After all, it seems easier to write half a book about two historical time periods (or one depending upon the time chosen for the more recent period) than a whole book about one. One of the delights of The Miniaturist was how it immersed me in the period. This novel doesn’t really do that.

Mind, it’s not a bad novel, and many people will like it. I just found it a disappointing follow-up to Burton’s first book.

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Review 1400: The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye

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Here’s another review for Readers Imbibing Peril!

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Like many others, I devoured Stieg Larsson’s Millenium Trilogy. I didn’t seriously consider reading David Lagercrantz’s continuation to the series until I picked up this novel on impulse. I have skipped one book in the series, but this one didn’t seem difficult to understand even though I hadn’t read the last.

Lisbeth Salander is in prison on charges related to events in the last book. There she has observed an inmate, Faria Kazia, subjected to routine abuse by another inmate, Benito, a gang member, with no intervention by authorities. In fact, although Warden Olsen came in with good intentions, he’s been held in check by Benito’s threats against his daughter.

Faria is in prison for shoving her brother out the window. She has said nothing in her defense, but Lisbeth is inclined to believe the death is related to an honor killing.

Lisbeth is also engaged in research into her own past. She asks the journalist Mikael Blomkvist and her elderly guardian Holger Palmgren to find some information for her. Soon, Palmgren is found dead under suspicious circumstances.

I know that Stieg Larsson wrote outlines of several more Salander novels before his death. What I don’t know is whether Lagercrantz is working from Larsson’s outlines or not. Lagercrantz is no Stieg Larsson, however. I don’t think Larsson was a great writer—he was too inclined to go into extensive detail on political issues—but he was a master of the gripping tale. The bones of one of his complex stories is here, but Lagercrantz fails to construct the fully realized world of Larsson’s novels. Further, he writes choppy subject/verb/object sentences that don’t flow well, and he gives away most of his plot points fairly early on.

So, no more Lisbeth Salander for me, which is a shame.

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Review 1399: The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock

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In 1785, Jonah Hancock is a merchant who is waiting for his ship to arrive. It is delayed, and he has heard nothing for a long time, but such is the life of a merchant. Finally, his captain arrives but without his ship, which he has sold to purchase, of all things, a mermaid.

Mr. Hancock doesn’t quite know what to do with the wizened, grimacing creature with the fish tail, especially as it is dead and Captain Jones has sold his ship for £2000 less than it is worth. But the Captain blithely believes the mermaid will make his fortune—he should exhibit it.

Angelica Neal’s protector recently died, leaving her with nothing. Her friend, Mrs. Frost, worried about their household expenses, urges her to return to the house of Mrs. Chappell, the bordello owner, but Angelica is hoping to attract a protector rather than to fall back in debt to Mrs. Chappell. Unfortunately, she falls in love at the party Mrs. Chappell gives to exhibit Mr. Hancock’s mermaid, with a young lieutenant who doesn’t come into his fortune for years.

I enjoyed this peculiar novel, which seems solely a historical novel but contains a whimsical dash of the supernatural. I was interested in both Angelica and Mr. Hancock as characters, as well as some of the others. There is an odd subplot about a girl who runs off from Mrs. Chappell that, while not unfinished, takes some part of the narration and then vanishes from the book until the end. I wasn’t sure of the point of that story line.

In fact, the entire novel sort of meanders past the point where you think it will end, making for an unexpected last 100 pages.

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Review 1398: The Arlington Inheritance

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The identity of the criminal is not a secret in The Arlington Inheritance. Instead, the suspense lies with how Miss Silver, Wentworth’s Marple-like sleuth, will find and put together the clues.

My friend and I have been trading books lately, and she loaned me this one. At the time, she commented that she didn’t like the repetition. More about that later.

Jenny Hill’s guardian, her old governess, Miss Garstone, dies unexpectedly in a hit and run accident. When she is dying, she tries to tell Jenny about a letter written from her father to her mother. Her father died in the war, and her mother was injured shortly thereafter, not speaking again until she died shortly after Jenny was born.

After Miss Garstone’s death, her sister immediately descends to claim her property and grudgingly gives Jenny the little chest that is supposed to contain the letter. But when she opens it, no letter is there.

Jenny has nowhere to go, but Mrs. Forbes, her neighbor across the road, offers her a job as governess for her two girls, Meg and Joyce. Jenny was born in Mrs. Forbes’s house, owned at the time by her father, but as he didn’t marry her mother, Jenny as a baby was dispossessed by Mr. and Mrs. Forbes, her father’s nearest relatives.

Jenny thinks she is in love with Mac Forbes, who is occasionally attentive to her, but when she is away from him, she has doubts. When Mac visits this time, he seems to be paying more attention to her. However, Jenny overhears a conversation that chills her. She hears Mac tell his mother that Jenny’s father did marry her mother. Rather than tell Jenny, he plans to marry her, assuring himself the possession of the house and property.

Appalled, Jenny runs away from home, but trouble comes after her.

Wentworth draws some appealing although mostly one-dimensional characters in Jenny, some of her relatives, and Miss Silver. Occasionally, I mildly enjoyed this effort even though Wentworth’s writing style deals in a lot of repetition. Someone will recount something that has happened, that we already know about, sometimes several times. It’s not done for a reason, for example, to show that a witness is leaving something out, but simply seems to be her style and makes the book slightly longer. This doesn’t occur until the crime, though, which happens well into the book (as far as we know). After that, it can certainly be annoying.

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Review 1397: Deep Waters

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I have read several of British Library Crime Classics’ mystery story collections, usually themed around a locale. In Deep Waters, most of the stories are set at sea, although some involve rivers and one each a pond and a swimming pool. The stories are in chronological order by when they were published, from 1893 to 1975.

The first story, “The Adventure of the ‘Gloria Scott'” by Arthur Conan Doyle, is a Sherlock Holmes I have never encountered before, supposedly his first case. Like several of the first few stories, it presents and solves a puzzle so quickly that I was barely aware there was a puzzle. In fact, as I read these stories, I felt as if I was watching the evolution of the mystery story.

“The Eight-Mile Lock” by L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace, only the second story, was one of three written by women. It details the theft of a diamond bracelet from a party staying on a houseboat. The mystery is not so much about who stole the bracelet or how but where he put it to evade the police.

“The Gift of the Emperor” is a Raffles story written by E. W. Hornung, who was Arthur Conan Doyle’s brother-in-law. I don’t know if it was the last of Raffles’s career, but it seemed to be.

One of the stories I liked best was “A Question of Timing” by Phyllis Bentley. The main character, Robert Beringer, uses his observation skills as a writer to foil a criminal, save a detective’s life, and get the girl, all during a walk. This story takes place on an embankment of the Thames.

I have a frustration in general with mystery short stories as they really only have space to pose and solve a puzzle. So much that I enjoy about mystery novels is not possible at this length. Some of these stories, though, had beautiful descriptions of their settings. In any case, this is a good collection for those interested in the evolution of the mystery story.

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

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Review 1396: Kingdom of the Blind

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Here’s another review that is suitable for Readers Imbibing Peril!

* * *

Although I’ve enjoyed many of Louise Penny’s Armand Gamache series, I had stopped reading them. However, on impulse I picked Kingdom of the Blind up at the library.

Having skipped one book in the series caused a problem, as the last book apparently climaxed in a major event that forced Gamache to allow a new drug onto the street, a killer. Now, Gamache is suspended and under investigation, a familiar situation for him. And that’s one problem for me. Since the beginning of the series, different figures in law enforcement have been out to get him. Each time this plot line seems to be wrapped up, it isn’t. I’m frankly tired of it.

This novel centers on two plot threads, something common to Penny’s books. In one, Gamache is among three people asked to execute the will of a woman they don’t know. Why were they selected, and why has the woman, who worked as a house cleaner, left money and property she doesn’t seem to possess?

The second thread is related to the search for the drugs. It begins when Gamache has one of his proteges, Amelia, dismissed from the police academy for possession of drugs.

It wasn’t very hard to figure out what was going on in one of these plot lines. The other was more difficult.

But really, my problem with this series relates to its sameness, the reason why I almost always quit reading series. First, the same ancillary characters go through the same routines. Second, Penny doesn’t really trust her audience. If someone says half of a well-known phrase, someone else has to finish it. She constantly tells us what to think about exchanges between characters. There’s a certain heaviness to Gamache, whom she depicts as almost like a saint, so that despite some kidding around, everything feels heavy. And anyway, the jokes are always the same.

Finally, there’s the writing style. Penny uses lots of short sentences and sentence fragments in this novel, particularly when hammering home a point that the reader doesn’t really need hammered. I don’t remember her using this style before, but perhaps I just didn’t notice it in the previous books.

This all sounds like I hated the book. I didn’t. I am just tired of the series, as I often become tired of series. This series started out as a really good one, so if you’re interested, I suggest starting at the beginning. Penny almost always links story lines from one book to the next, so it’s best to read them in order.

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