Review 2548: The Shape of Water

~ whatmeread ~ 4 Comments

No, this is not a movie review. Andrea Camilleri is a Sicilian writer of the Inspector Montalbano series. The Shape of Water is the first in the series.

The body of a prominent politician with an impeccable reputation is found by two city street cleaners in his car in an area of town known for sex and drugs. (In Sicily, at least in the 90s, they had people who walk around and pick up trash? If only they would do that here.) Although it appears he died from natural causes, Inspector Montalbano thinks something is off. Lupanello died with his pants around his ankles. It is his wife who notices later that his underpants are on backwards. (This is the only thing that seemed unlikely to me—that the coroner wouldn’t notice that.)

Lupanello’s second almost immediately takes his position. Everyone wants Montalbano to close the case, but he asks for two more days.

Other complications turn up. One of the street cleaners finds an expensive necklace near the site. Also, the car apparently got to the site using an almost impossible route.

Montalbano is an honest cop, but he is cynically aware of the levels of corruption in city government. He has some slyly funny thoughts.

I wouldn’t say this novel is telegraphic in style, but portions of it are told only with telephone calls, and we don’t often learn what Montalbano is thinking. Also, Camilleri holds back some of the detective’s findings to the end. Cheating a little, but this series is very popular in Europe and so far seems promising. I like Montalbano, who has his own ideas about justice.

Related Posts

Siracusa

In the Wolf’s Mouth

The Jewels of Paradise

A Century of Books: How Am I Doing? February Report

~ whatmeread ~ 3 Comments

In January 2024, I foolishly decided to join Simon Thomas’s Century of Book Challenge, even though I knew that reading 100 books, one for each year in a century, from 1925-2024, would be tough because last year I only read 169. So, how am I doing? I was trying to finish by the end of December, but I clearly didn’t make it.

Here are the holes in my project with the books listed for this month below. If you want to see the details, see my Century of Books page.

  • 1925-1934: complete!
  • 1935-1944: complete!
  • 1945-1954: entry needed for 1948
  • 1955-1964: entries needed for 1955
  • 1965-1974: complete!
  • 1975-1984: entry needed for 1981
  • 1985-1994: entry needed for 1993
  • 1995–2004: entries needed for 1995, 2002, and 2003
  • 2005-2014: entries needed for 2005, 2006, and 2007
  • 2015-2024: complete!

Since January 29, I read the following books. The ones for this project are listed in bold. As you can see, I concentrated this month on books for this project:

  • Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen for 1813
  • One by One They Disappeared by Moray Dalton for 1929
  • The Country Girls by Edna O’Brien for 1960
  • Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner for 1971
  • September by Rosamunde Pilcher for 1990
  • American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis for 1991
  • The Magician’s Assistant by Ann Patchett for 1997
  • Erasure by Percival Everett for 2001
  • Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism for 2021
  • Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus for 2022
  • What Sheep Do in Iceland When Nobody’s Around by Brian Pilkington for 2023

Review 2547: Howl’s Moving Castle

~ whatmeread ~ 3 Comments

I noticed that this book filled a hole in my A Century of Books project. I found the images from the movie fascinating when it came out years ago. So, although I don’t often read children’s books, I got a copy from the library.

Sophie lives in a sort of fairytale world of wizards and spells and witches. Because she is familiar with fairy tales, she knows that as the eldest sister, she would fail at any attempts to find her fortune. It’s always the youngest who is successful. So, when the family fortunes falter, she agrees with her stepmother’s plan to apprentice in her hat shop, while one of her sisters is apprenticed to a baker and the other to an herbalist.

Sophie has a talent for trimming hats, but she is still finding life a bit dull until she has an encounter with the Witch of the Waste about one of her hats. The witch puts a spell on her and turns her into an old lady.

All the girls in the country are afraid of Wizard Howl, who lives in a moving castle. He is reputed to kidnap girls and steal their souls. But Sophie thinks the only way to throw off the curse is to get help from Howl. The castle is in the area, so she bangs on the door until Howl’s apprentice Michael opens it, and then she makes herself at home as a housekeeper.

Howl has imprisoned a demon in his fireplace to move the castle, so she makes a deal with the demon. If she can break his contract, he’ll break her spell.

Otherwise, things in the castle seem quite different than she expected.

I think some of the ideas in this novel are imaginative, but otherwise, it seemed as if everyone was running around aimlessly most of the time. There is a contract to be broken, for example, but Sophie and Michael only make one attempt to break it, and the rest just seems to happen. I’m sure children would find the novel fascinating, but to me it seemed too loosely plotted and could have been about half as long.

Related Posts

The Golden Compass

A Stranger Came Ashore

Victorian Fairy Tales

Review 2546: The Temptations of Big Bear

~ whatmeread ~ 4 Comments

I can’t remember whether I found this book when looking for more about native peoples or for filling holes for my A Century of Books project. In any case, it does both.

Readers from the U. S. may not be familiar with the name “Big Bear,” but I’m betting Canadian readers are. He seems to have been their equivalent of Sitting Bull.

In The Temptations of Big Bear, Wiebe tells Big Bear’s story beginning in 1876, when the Cree, of whom Big Bear was a chief, along with other groups of native peoples and the Métis, meet to discuss a treaty with British officials. The treaty calls for the people to “sell” several hundred thousand acres to the government in exchange for small reservations and regular payments as well as assistance when they are hungry. Big Bear does not sign the treaty. He wants to wait to see what happens.

Within a few years, it becomes apparent that the buffalo, upon which the Cree depend, are dying out, so Big Bear signs the treaty. However, he does not select a reservation for his people. Instead, they continue to move among their usual environs.

This novel leads up to events at Frog Lake in 1888, where some of the Cree warriors attack the settlers, kill some, and take others prisoner. These attacks follow years of broken promises and starvation. Although Big Bear tries to stop them, he is disregarded. Of course, he is held responsible by the authorities and tried, despite all the white witnesses but one having testified for him.

This is an eloquently written novel. It is insightful and interesting, and Big Bear’s last speech at his trial made me cry.

Wiebe doesn’t cite sources, and it’s hard to tell whether some of the speeches and writings are verbatim from records or not.

Related Posts

One Thousand White Women

Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War

The Sentence

Review 2545: This Real Night

~ whatmeread ~ 6 Comments

This Real Night is the second book in West’s Aubrey family trilogy, which starts with The Fountain Overflows. I put The Fountain Overflows on my Top Ten list for last year, and this novel is just as good.

The novel begins just after the girls’ father leaves them. He is beloved by all, but he is a gambling addict who has lost all their money many times, and when he leaves, goes with a collection of jewels he had hidden from their mother. Since he left, their mother has sold some paintings that she pretended were worthless, so they, although nowhere near well off, are comparatively comfortable.

Their mother was once a famous concert pianist, and she has trained the twins, Rose and Mary, to become pianists. Soon they will start music school. Their older sister, Cordelia, who was convinced by a teacher that she was a talented violinist, has finally realized that she is not, but she decides she wants to become an assistant in an art gallery. She begins studying art history. Their brother Richard Quin is still a schoolboy.

Their household is expanded because their Aunt Constance and beloved cousin Rosamund have moved in. Constance’s husband, although wealthy, is so stingy that they can’t support their household, as he only spends money on his spiritualism hobby.

One advantage of their father’s absence is that they can continue their friendship with Mr. Morpurgo. He had been a great supporter of their father, hiring him to be an editor of his paper, for their father was a brilliant political writer. Like all of their father’s past supporters and friends, Mr. Morpurgo broke with him, probably over a series of unpaid debts.

The novel begins with a visit from a strained, ill-looking Mr. Morpurgo, lately returned from a trip abroad. It is Richard Quin and Rosamund who figure out that their father has died, probably a suicide, but they don’t tell anyone. Rose only learns after she overhears them talking sometime later.

The family story continues relating fairly mundane events, but they are made interesting by the vibrant narration and the perceptions of this highly intelligent and gifted family. They are also very loving with each other except for Cordelia, whom Rose thinks hates them all and who definitely processes information differently than the others. For example, they all deeply love Richard Quin, who is attractive, charismatic, and kind, but Cordelia thinks he is going to be a failure.

The family faces difficulties such as the girls’ sense that people, especially men, don’t like them, the problems of Aunt Lily, whose sister is serving time for murder, and the revelation by Rose’s new professor that she has been trained wrongly for her talents. They are a family you fall in love with. The novel ends at the beginning of World War I.

Related Posts

The Fountain Overflows

Family Roundabout

The Big Music

Review 2544: Island

~ whatmeread ~ 7 Comments

Alastair MacLeod is considered a master of the short story. Island collects all 14 of his stories into one volume. Most of them are set on Cape Breton in Nova Scotia, where he was raised. Almost all of the stories are concerned with the lives of the working-class, often Gaelic-speaking descendants of Scots who immigrated to Canada during the 18th century clearances.

The stories are arranged by date from 1968 to 1999. Many of the early ones are about young men dreaming of or actually leaving the island. Later, they become more about older men who stayed.

The difficult and sometimes bleak lives of the islanders were interesting to read about. Since childhood memories would have been set in the 1940s, and some of the stories are about fathers or grandfathers, the life is often fairly primitive.

All of stories are well written and hold the attention, but I found several deeply touching. In “In the Fall,” a man’s wife makes arrangements to sell an old horse behind her husband’s back. The horse had been her husband’s faithful companion and co-worker but is no longer able to work. Of course, he’s being sold to the knackers.

In “The Road to Rankin’s Point,” a young man’s family gathers to try to convince his 90-some grandmother to move from her isolated farmhouse to assisted living. He himself has found out he only has a few months to live.

In “Winter Dog,” a man looks back to when he was a boy, to a dog who saved his life. And another one about a man and his dog, “As Birds Bring Forth the Sun.” And one about the results of a brief love affair, “Island.”

MacLeod only wrote one novel, which I’ll be looking for.

Related Posts

The Berry Pickers

Sweetland

The Islandman

Review 2543: The Feast

~ whatmeread ~ 5 Comments

At the beginning of The Feast, we’re informed that a cliff came down near a resort town in Cornwall, obliterating a bay and a hotel beneath the cliff. Some of the people from the hotel survived.

With that information in hand, Kennedy begins the novel a week before the cataclysm. So, she cleverly sets out a source for some suspense while the readers form an opinion about which people they hope will survive.

The small hotel is owned by the Siddal family, run somewhat incompetently by Mrs. Siddal. Mr. Siddal is an educated man who has done nothing for years. They have three grown sons, the oldest of whom, Gerry, is the most helpful and least appreciated.

Other characters do almost nothing, too. Miss Ellis is supposed to be the housekeeper, but she does nothing but spread vicious gossip and order the maid around. A character who acts like an invalid is Lady Gifford. The Giffords have adopted three children, but Lord Gifford works all the time and Lady Gifford spends all her time in bed. She seems to dislike her mischievous daughter Hebe.

Mrs. Cove has three young daughters who yearn to give a feast like one they’ve read about in books. In reality, they have very little. Their mother is so stingy that she sells any candy they’re given, saying it is to buy children’s books. But they have no books. Blanche, the oldest, has problems with back pain but has never seen a doctor.

Two women are abused by their male relatives. Evangeline is at first so shy that she can barely utter a sentence. But her father, a Canon, accuses her of chasing after men and berates everyone else. At the beginning of the novel, they have been tossed out of another hotel because he is so obnoxious.

For his part, Mr. Paley seems to be holding something against his wife, but she doesn’t know what it is. Instead of talking to her about it, he bullies her.

These are a few of the characters, which also include a lady author who likes to take on younger male writers as protégés, her chauffeur being one. And there is Nancibel, the housemaid who does most of the work in the hotel . . . and others.

Despite pending fate, I enjoyed this novel very much. It shows a lot of insight into human nature. I have only read one other book by Kennedy, but I enjoyed it as well.

Related Posts

Troy Chimneys

A Wreath of Roses

Grand Hotel

Review 2542: The Scapegoat

~ whatmeread ~ 8 Comments

It’s been some years since I read du Maurier’s The Scapegoat, so when I saw it filled a hole in my A Century of Books project, I took it down from the case and placed it on my project pile. I find I remembered the plot fairly accurately.

John, an English lecturer in French history, is finishing his yearly vacation in France. This year, he feels dissatisfied with his life. He has no close connections and lives alone. He suddenly feels a lack of purpose in life and decides to drive to a monastery. But first he stops for the night in LeMans.

There, he bumps into a stranger who looks exactly like him. This man introduces himself as Jean and invites him for a drink and then to spend the night at his hotel. When John awakens, he is in the other man’s room with his things. The man is gone and so are all John’s own things, including his car. John finds a chauffeur has arrived to collect him in the new identity of Jean, Comte de Gué. He realizes that he has no proof of his own identity to convince the police, so he goes along.

At the Comte’s home, no one suspects a thing. He must guess who all these people are, but when he makes mistakes, he finds that no one expects him to behave nicely. His counterpart is apparently prone to cruel jokes.

John finds himself slowly becoming involved in the lives of the Comte’s family, who have secrets and problems from events during World War II. In addition, the family fortunes depend upon the Comte’s pregnant wife bearing a boy—or dying.

As usual with du Maurier, there aren’t very many unshadowed characters in this novel. It’s quite dark despite John’s intentions to do good for the family. The plot is interesting and involving, though.

Related Posts

Jamaica Inn

Rebecca

Daphne Du Maurier: The Secret Life of a Renowned Storyteller

Review 2541: Erasure

~ whatmeread ~ 5 Comments

If you’ve seen the movie American Fiction, you already know the plot of Erasure. I haven’t seen it yet, and I read this book for my A Century of Books project.

Thelonius (Monksie) Ellison is a writer of high intelligence whose dense, uncompromising novels have failed to make a hit with the general public. He has just put out his latest book, but his agent, Yul, is having difficulty placing it and has been told that Ellison is too far from his ethnic origins as a Black man.

Ellison lives in California, where he is a university professor, but on a visit to Washington, D. C., for a conference, he finds that his mother isn’t doing well. Eventually, he is forced to move back to D. C. to take care of her. That means taking a leave of absence, but he hasn’t sold his book. His mother’s affairs are in poor shape, so he finds he needs money.

He is infuriated by a recent book that is making a splash, We’s Lives in Da Ghetto. It’s written by a middle-class midwestern Black woman based on one week that she spent with relatives in New York, and it employs every known cliché about the lives of Black people.

On a whim, Ellison sits down and writes a parody of this kind of novel, which he titles My Pafology. He submits it to Yul, who is horrified, and asks him to submit it to publishers under the name of Stagg Leigh. Shockingly, Random House takes it as straight and offers him lots of money.

This novel produces spoof upon spoof. Even Everett’s character Ellison takes himself so seriously that I think he’s being mocked. Certainly, he starts out mocking academia with the learned talk he gives at the beginning of the novel. This talk is incomprehensible, and yet it makes another academic leap up and shout, “Bastard!” at him. He also hits the publishing industry, the reading awards organizations, and television interview programs.

The novel is presented as Ellison’s diary, so it includes learned jokes (most of which I didn’t understand), imagined conversations between various dead people in the arts, recollections from his past, especially about his father, and the entire text—about 50 pages—of My Pafology.

As My Pafology gains attention, Ellison begins to lament that he ever compromised his standards. Forced occasionally to masquerade as Stagg Leigh, he feels as if his own persona as a cultured Black man is being erased. Maybe he feels that that whole culture is being erased.

Parts of this novel were above my head, particularly some of the little scribbles in the diary. Also, when I say Everett is heaping on the satire, I’m not saying that the novel is funny (although some of it is). Most of the time I felt sorry for Monksie, who is too unyielding for his own good and knows it, but cannot stop.

Percival Everett is having a moment lately, which has resulted in four of his books being in my pile, of which this is the second. I’m not sure if I like his work, but it is at least interesting.

Related Posts

The Trees

Flights

Ferdydurke