Day 1150: Snowdrift and Other Stories

~ whatmeread ~ 5 Comments

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.

Related Posts

Sylvester, or the Wicked Uncle

Black Sheep

Cotillion

Day 1149: J

~ whatmeread ~ 2 Comments

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.

Related Posts

The Prague Cemetery

Brave New World

The Heart Goes Last

Day 1148: A Strange Scottish Shore

~ whatmeread ~ 2 Comments

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.

Related Posts

The River of No Return

The Bone Clocks

1Q84

Classics Club Spin #16

~ whatmeread ~ 21 Comments

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

~ whatmeread ~ 2 Comments

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.

Related Posts

The Weird Sisters

Empire Girls

Under the Lemon Trees

Day 1146: Birdcage Walk

~ whatmeread ~ 10 Comments

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.

Related Posts

The Lie

Exposure

The Greatcoat

Day 1145: By the Pricking of My Thumbs

~ whatmeread ~ 4 Comments

Cover for By the Pricking of My ThumbsBy the Pricking of My Thumbs is one of the books I read for the 1968 Club. It is one of Agatha Christie’s Tommy and Tuppence novels.

Tommy and Tuppence are a witty and urbane middle-aged couple who used to be involved in some sort of secret service organization.  The novel begins with a visit to Tommy’s Aunt Ada at a retirement home, where Tuppence makes the acquaintance of a Mrs. Lancaster. Mrs. Lancaster asks Tuppence if it was her child and talks about a child hidden behind a fireplace.

After Aunt Ada dies a few weeks later, Tuppence asks after Mrs. Lancaster only to learn that she was abruptly removed from the home. Before she left, she gave Aunt Ada a painting of a house that seems familiar to Tuppence, and she uses the excuse of trying to return the painting to find Mrs. Lancaster. For some reason, she fears that the woman is in danger.

1968 club logoTommy is away at a conference when Tuppence begins trying to track down Mrs. Lancaster. The address left for her at the retirement home is a hotel, which has no record of her. All inquiries seem to dead end, so Tuppence begins looking for the house.

Although Tommy and Tuppence are vibrant, I did not feel that the other characters showed Christie’s usual talent for adroit characterization. Even though they eventually connected, the two strands that the investigation uncovers make the novel overly complicated. I could have done without the crime syndicate angle and thought it was unnecessary to the story. Besides, the other thread was much more chilling. Still, I enjoyed reading this Tommy and Tuppence novel.

Other Books for the 1968 Club

Aside from the reviews I’ve published this week, here’s a list of other books published in 1968 that I previously reviewed:

Related Posts

Appointment with Death

At Bertram’s Hotel

Death on the Nile

 

Day 1144: The Victorian Chaise-Longue

~ whatmeread ~ 4 Comments

Cover for The Victorian Chaise LongueThe Victorian Chaise-Longue is a short little tale of the macabre in honor of the season. Its plot is simple.

Wealthy Melanie Langdon is recovering from tuberculosis, complicated by recent child birth. When she is finally recovered enough, she is carried to lie on a Victorian chaise-longue that she bought in an antique store. There she falls asleep.

When Melanie awakens, she has returned to Victorian times and is locked in a Victorian body. When she is alarmed at her situation, she is thought to be hysterical.

logo for RIPI did not find the novel terrifying, but perhaps that is my own lack of imagination. I felt I needed to care for the character more before she was put in her dilemma. I understand from the introduction that Laski moved to a remote house to induce in herself a sense of fear, just to write this novel.

This is the final book I read for the R.I.P. challenge. Happy Halloween!

Related Posts

Sleep, Pale Sister

The Solitary House

The Sleep Room

Day 1143: Cousin Kate

~ whatmeread ~ 9 Comments

Cover for Cousin KateCousin Kate was one of the novels that I could read for the 1968 Club, during which we read books for the year chosen. Since I love Georgette Heyer, I was delighted to reread it.

Heyer’s Regency romances usually fit into one of two categories—straight romance or romantic suspense—both laced with humor and wit. Cousin Kate fits in the latter category.

Kate Malvern returns with some dismay to the home of her nurse, Sarah Nidd. She has lost her position as governess, because her employer’s brother made an offer of marriage. As she continues looking for a new position, she realizes her lack of success is due to both her lack of credentials and her good looks. She begins to talk wildly of taking a job as an abigail or a seamstress.

Kate’s mother’s family cut her mother off when she married Kate’s ramshackle father. But Kate’s father had a half-sister whom Kate has not met, Lady Broome. Unbeknownst to Kate, Sarah writes to Lady Broome hoping she will offer Kate a home.

She does, but shortly after arriving at the stately Staplewood, Kate realizes it is not a happy home. Sir Timothy is in frail health and lives in his own wing. Nineteen-year-old Torquil is also subject to headaches and extremely volatile in his behavior. He is constantly attended by either his man, Badger, or Dr. Delabole. Lady Broome claims to have work for Kate, but the household runs smoothly, and Kate, used to being active, is soon bored. Lady Broome also showers her with gifts, which makes her uncomfortable.

1968 club logoSir Timothy’s nephew, Philip, arrives. At first, he seems disdainful of her, but soon he is urging her to leave. She does not see how she can do so without seeming ungrateful and hopes there will be something she can do for Lady Broome. Little does she know that there is.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve appreciated the truly silly humor of some of Heyer’s funnier novels most. So, Cousin Kate is not one of my favorites. That being said, it still features an engaging heroine, witty dialogue, and an interesting plot. It is hard to go wrong with Heyer for a light, cozy read.

Related Posts

Sylvester, or The Wicked Uncle

The Convenient Marriage

Friday’s Child