This week’s Best Book is Wolf Winter by Cecilia Ekbäck! Also recommended: Thunderstruck and Other Stories by Elizabeth McCracken!
Day 805: Blood & Sand
Rosemary Sutcliff was a prolific writer of historical novels from the 1950’s through the 1990’s. She is best known for children’s literature, and most of the books I’ve read by her are set in Britain during or shortly after the Roman occupation. She also wrote a series of Arthurian novels, placing Arthur in the time just after the Roman withdrawal, which is a much more likely time period for him than the Middle Ages, if he existed at all.
Blood & Sand is for adults, however. It is based upon the life of Thomas Keith, an actual Scottish soldier in the Napoleonic Wars, who was captured in Egypt while fighting for Britain. Keith converted to Islam and went on to become the governor of Medina.
Blood & Sand is full of adventure and fighting, but it also depicts a sincere conversion to Islam and a love for the desert. It has beautiful descriptions of the desert landscape. Several times I was reminded of the line in the movie Lawrence of Arabia, where Prince Feisal describes Lawrence as “another of these desert-loving English.”
Thomas takes the name Ibrahim and makes a good friend of Tussun, the younger son of the Viceroy of Egypt. Part of his decision to convert is because of the opportunities for advancement with the Sultan’s army, and he becomes involved in trying to free the holy cities of Arabia from a group of religious zealots called the Wahabis. Some of the issues in the latter part of the book have echoes for us in modern times, showing us that these kinds of battles have been going on for hundreds of years.
I mildly enjoyed this novel. The characters are concerned with issues such as honor and are not terribly well rounded. The descriptions of Thomas’ life in Egypt and Medina and the customs of his new people were more interesting to me than the action scenes. There is a small bit of romance in the novel as Thomas marries a girl to protect her and ends up loving her, but it is not very important to the novel, and she herself is not fleshed out. The writing is at times, especially in the descriptive sections, quite beautiful, however.
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Day 804: The King Without a Kingdom
When I first read Maurice Druon’s The Accursed Kings series, I didn’t even know there were seven books. I read the first six, which told of the destruction of the Capet dynasty and ended with the death of Robert of Artois, a prime mover of events. But Druon still had one more tale of incompetent royalty to tell, that of King John II, the third Valois king.
The entire novel is written as a monologue by the Cardinal of Périgord, who tells the tale as he travels to try to mediate peace between King John and Edward, Prince of England. The Cardinal is a sharp old man with many a sarcastic observation to make to his audience, his nephew. King John is actually in captivity to the English, and the cardinal’s story is about how this situation came to be.
Unfortunately, I found this change of narrative style to be irritating, uninterrupted as it is by anything except references to arrivals, changes of horse, and other details of the journey. Although the story he has to tell is certainly interesting—about how the king threw away certain victory in battle because of his own stubbornness and incompetency, and about how he alienated his allies by reneging on deals in order to give honors to his favorite—the narrative style just seems too artificial.
In The Accursed Kings, though, Druon draws a devastating portrait of how a series of bad monarchs brought France down within a few years during the 14th century, from the greatest nation in the world to an impoverished, poorly run country that was considerably smaller.
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Day 803: Thunderstruck and Other Stories
Note: Survey results. Some of you may remember that about a year ago, I had a link up to a survey created by Ariel of One Little Library. If you are interested in viewing the results of the survey, she has now posted them on her web site.
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Elizabeth McCracken’s stories combine a minute observation of ordinary life with a sensibility that is just a little perverse. Not very perverse, like the stories of Margaret Atwood or Karen Russell, but just a little. People disappear, someone down the street is murdered, a boy is almost starved to death by his grandfather—things that do happen but are unusual.
In “Something Amazing,” Missy Goodby, a girl who died of lymphoma, is said to haunt the neighborhood, but it is Santos Mackers who disappears after locking his little brother Johnny up in a trunk. Once Johnny gets free, the Goodbys are happy to care for him.
In “Property,” a recently widowed man leases a house sight unseen for his return to the States after his wife’s death. When he arrives, he finds the house filthy and full of trash. It takes some time for him to learn a different perspective about the house.
A woman who records novelty songs finds out more than she wanted to know about her audience in “Some Terpsichore.” The library employees see the effect both on the friends of a murdered woman and on the accused boy’s family in “Juliet.”
These stories are beautifully written with vivid imagery. I enjoyed this collection very much.
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Day 802: This Godforsaken Place
Abigail Peacock and her father are regretting the impetuous desire for adventure that led them to journey thousands of miles from England to a remote village in northwestern Ontario to run a school. In 1885 the living conditions are primitive, and Abigail’s father has fallen ill in the depths of winter. Abigail continues to run the school and finds her life tedious. Lars, the helpful store owner who brought them there to teach Swedish rail workers and miners English, is almost certainly going to propose marriage. Abigail is not enthused.
Abigail is not at first receptive to Lars’ suggestion that she get a rifle. But eventually she buys one on a whim, guiltily spending some of her family’s savings. She finds an area outside of town to practice, and it soon becomes the only thing she enjoys. One day, though, she arrives at her practice location to find a wounded, unconscious cowboy. It’s not totally clear, but suggested, that she shot him by mistake the day before.
Here’s where the story started to lose me a little bit. Abigail doesn’t want anyone to disturb the place she practices, so instead of going for help, she leaves the cowboy there and returns at times to nurse him. This decision eventually leads to an even more morally challenged decision and then to a cross-country journey to find a man connected with Buffalo Bill Cody’s western show.
I don’t expect characters to be perfect, but this is the same person whose desire to do the right thing puts herself and a friend in jeopardy later in the novel. And then there’s the way they get out of it.
This kind of thing probably won’t bother many readers, though, and the novel does make an inventive adventure story with a strong heroine. I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy it. Still, just one more caveat.
Part of the novel is devoted to a rebellion in Canada that I hadn’t heard of before, of the Métis people lead by Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont. Early in the novel, information on this topic is introduced through synopses of news articles Abigail is reading to her father and through some discussion. These sections and later ones are handled a little awkwardly because of the amount of information and its method of introduction. The way it was handled made me wonder what it was doing in the story. The information fits into the story eventually, but I feel, firstly, that it could have been introduced more smoothly, and secondly, that the novel unhandily juxtaposes the rebellion, the James Gang, and Annie Oakley.
When I read in an interview of Gault on Consumed by Ink that Gault wanted to write something that combined her research into those three topics, it made perfect sense to me. I just think the subjects could have been combined in a way that seemed more likely.
Disclosure: I received a copy of this book free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
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Day 801: Wolf Winter
Best Book of the Week!
It is 1717. A few days earlier, Maija and her family arrived at their new home on the side of Blackåsen Mountain in the Lapland area of Sweden. They moved away from Finland because Maija’s husband Paavo, formerly a fisherman, began to see dead men in the water. But here on the mountain he is ineffective and frightened.
Maija’s daughters Fredericka and Dorothea are out with the goats when they find the body of a man. Although the nearby settlers are quick to claim an animal attack, it is clear to Maija that the man, Eriksson, was killed by a person using a lance. She has already felt an unease on the mountain and believes they must find the murderer. Unfortunately for the search, Eriksson seems to have been disliked by all.
Maija’s family has had some experience with the older ways, even though they are forbidden by the church. Fredericka, however, was being instructed in them by her grandmother without her mother’s knowledge. Fredericka finds herself being haunted by Eriksson, who wants her to find his murderer, and tries to seek help in the supernatural from the Lapps.
Another important character is the new priest for the region. He comes to visit the area and tries to help with the investigation. At first, he seems cold and unready for a position in such a wilderness. But he is actually bewildered. He was a court priest and a friend to the king until he was abruptly sent away from court.
When the snow comes early and kills the harvest, Paavo decides to travel to the coast to earn some money. Maija is left to struggle through a particularly harsh winter with the girls. There are wolves on the mountain, and some of the settlers believe the mountain itself is evil. No one has found Eriksson’s killer, but Maija is still looking.
This novel creates an atmospheric, fully realized world that captured me from the first words. Although it is centered around a mystery, it is just as successful as a historical novel, with a touch of the mystical, set in an unusual place and time. You can easily imagine the cold and hardships. This novel is excellent.
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Best Book of the Week!
This week’s Best Book is Slade House by David Mitchell!
Day 800: The Day She Died
I recently discovered that Catriona McPherson, the author of the Dandy Gilver historical mysteries, also writes much darker contemporary thrillers. A while back I reviewed The Child Garden, which came out in September. The Day She Died was published last year.
The reason I mention The Child Garden is that when I began reading The Day She Died, some of its elements seemed familiar—a lonely cottage in Scotland, a distraught man, a damaged heroine. But this novel is a different story altogether.
Jessie Constable has spotted Gus King several times in town and even met him once, an encounter that thoroughly embarrassed her, but he doesn’t seem to recognize her when she finds him distraught in the grocery store with his young daughter. He has been talking loudly on the phone, and he explains to her that his wife Becky has just informed him she is leaving him and the children.
Jessie decides he shouldn’t be driving, so she offers to drive him home, even though she will have to take a cab back. Once she arrives at his remote cottage on the seaside, though, she finds herself drawn further into his problems. Almost immediately after they get to the cottage, the police arrive to inform Gus that his wife has been found dead in a car accident, an apparent suicide.
Gus begs her to stay, and soon she finds herself living with him and his two small children. Their relationship quickly turns physical. Still, Jessie keeps wondering about little things that don’t make sense. Where is Ros, Becky’s best friend, who looks so much like her? Who is the man who keeps trying to get her attention but can barely speak English?
Chillingly, the book begins with a woman imprisoned in a small space. We don’t know who she is or what the time frame is, but we know that at some point Jessie’s romantic adventure will turn dark.
I figured out some of the mysteries of this novel well in advance but not all of them. Jessie’s story is gripping and the situation much more complex than it seems. This book is a great psychological thriller.
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Day 799: The Sunken Cathedral
The Sunken Cathedral is Kate Walbert’s homage to Claude Debussy’s piano prelude of the same name. In turn, Debussy’s piano prelude was inspired by folk tales of a sunken city off the coast of Brittany. Walbert’s novel, like Debussy’s prelude, is impressionistic in nature. It begins with images of New York City under water after storms caused by global warming.
The novel moves immediately to a few months earlier, when we meet several different characters living in New York. Marie and Simone are two elderly French women who decide to take a course in painting. Marie is the principal character of the novel. When she was a child, her family members were victims of the Holocaust and she was in hiding.
Elizabeth is the mother of a middle school boy. She becomes obsessed with the Who We Are stories the school assigns the families to write. In this section I think Walbert is gently skewering the upper-class parents who are so wrapped up in their children’s school activities. But Elizabeth is unable to do the assignment, seeming to lack a sense of self.
The structure of this novel is unusual, as it presents us with little shards of each characters’s story, frequently interrupted by footnotes. Sometimes the information in the footnote is more important to our understanding than the main text. It took me a while to get interested in this novel, and at times I was irritated by this technique. I would just be getting involved in what was going on when a footnote would appear, sometimes in the middle of a passage, distracting me from the action.
Still, the novel is beautifully written. At times I wondered where it was going even though it was obvious where it would end up. I’m not certain, though, that I understand the purpose of the novel, except maybe to depict the lives of several people before the flood.
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Day 798: Ghostly
In honor of the season, I’m slipping in Ghostly, a new collection of ghost stories edited by Audrey Niffenegger. The stories are quite varied, some rather old, some new, some eerie, some funny. I have only read one of them before, “August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury. This story, strictly speaking, is more science fiction but works well as a ghost story. It is certainly haunting.
My favorite story in this collection is a subtle one by Edith Wharton, “Pomegranate Seed.” Charlotte Ashby has married a widower who was understood to be under his previous wife’s thumb. Charlotte begins to notice that he regularly receives letters addressed in a faint handwriting. These letters distress him and give him headaches. She finally realizes they are from an unexpected source.
I also liked “The Beckoning Fair One” by Oliver Onions. In this story Paul Oleron leases the first floor of an old ruined house and finds it occupied. He becomes obsessed with this occupant, who is jealous of his friend Elsie. The result is murder.
“They” by Rudyard Kipling is a story inspired by the early death of Kipling’s daughter. While taking a random drive in the country, the narrator meets a blind lady with a house full of elusive children. The narrator can see them, but it turns out, not everyone can.
“The July Ghost” by A. S. Byatt, has a similar theme. A distressed young man tells a story at a party about his practical landlady. A silent young boy appears often while he is sitting in the garden. It takes him a while to realize that the boy is the landlady’s dead son, whom she yearns to see but cannot. This sad story was also inspired by the death of a child.
“The Specialist’s Hat” by Kelly Link is a newer story about two young girls who are left home with a babysitter by their neglectful father. Although very young, the babysitter lived in the house quite some time ago.
Several of the stories are humorous, the most successful of which is “Honeysuckle Cottage” by P. G. Wodehouse. James Rodman, author of noir crime stories, is bequeathed money and a house by his aunt, the author of sentimental love stories, provided he stay in the house for six months. Rodman discovers, to his horror, that the house is haunted, not by an individual but by a sickly sentimentality that affects everyone who enters it.
Another funny story is “Laura” by Saki. A dying society woman with a sense of mischief says that she would like to come back as an otter and admits she has let out the chickens her husband is so obsessed with and trampled his favorite flowers. After the funeral, which everyone finds irksome because it interferes with important social engagements, an otter begins breaking into the chicken coop and dragging the chickens through the flower garden.
For the most part, I found these stories entertaining and unusual. Niffenegger has included one of her own as well as illustrations and a short introduction before each story. The stories will certainly add atmosphere to your Halloween.
What? Me Read? 