Review 2504: Novellas in November! Margaret the First

~ whatmeread ~ 3 Comments

Margaret the First is another of the short books listed on the Literary Hub’s 50 Best Contemporary Novels under 200 Pages post. I read it for Novellas in November.

This biographical novel is about Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, called Mad Madge in her time. She was the first woman to write for publication. And write she did—philosophy, poetry, plays, and even utopian speculative fiction. She was also very shy, tended toward agoraphobia, and wore extravagantly creative clothing.

Although some of the book is about her childhood, most of it concerns her life during her marriage. Her husband, William Cavendish, was about 30 years older than she, was a Marquess when they married, and was fighting on the King’s side of the English Civil Wars. The court was banished to France, where she had been a waiting lady to the English queen. Although she returned to England to try to reclaim some of her husband’s possessions, he was considered too big a traitor to the Parliamentary side to come back himself. It wasn’t until the Restoration that the couple was able to return and reclaim some of his fortune.

The novel is written in a telegraphic style that doesn’t seem telegraphic. That is, Dutton manages to convey a great deal of substance in a very short work (160 pages) through clever word choice and phrasing. The first half of the novel is in first person but it switches to third person, while still remaining from Margaret’s point of view.

I enjoyed this novel a lot. It is a feminist work written in a sharp, modern style, and it has inspired me to look for more to read about Cavendish. It ends with some recommendations for further reading and a few pages of bibliography.

I should note that the title of one of my favorite books, The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt, came from the title of a utopian novel by Cavendish. I didn’t know that.

Related Posts

The Blazing World

Lark

Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self

Nonfiction November: Week Four

~ whatmeread ~ 12 Comments

Here we are already coming up on week four of Nonfiction November. It’s gone by really fast. This week, the prompt is as follows:

Week 4 (11/18-11/22) Mind Openers: One of the greatest things about reading nonfiction is the way it can open your eyes to the world around you–no plane ticket required. What nonfiction book or books have impacted the way you see the world in a powerful way? Is there one book that made you rethink everything? Is there a book where, if everyone read it, you think the world would be a better place? (Rebekah)

I don’t think any of my nonfiction choices this year impacted me as strongly as expressed in the prompt. Rather, some reaffirmed my interest in topics that I have neglected. I like reading books that tell me something I didn’t know about, and this year, the only one that fits in that category is David Grann’s The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder. It is about an ill-conceived venture of 1740 to capture rich Spanish ships in the Pacific Ocean. It was part of the War of Jenkin’s Ear, a conflict I also know nothing about (something to look up!). The expedition left too late for good conditions and had misestimated when the best weather for rounding Cape Horn would be. The Wager was the smallest ship in the fleet. It underwent some problems before getting to the Horn, and when it did, it was shipwrecked. What was most interesting was what happened among the crew once it was wrecked.

Another book that restressed some reading I had already done was The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America by Thomas King, which I have not yet reviewed. It merely reconfirmed and built upon my reading from way back, when I read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown. Our history with dealing with native peoples is shameful, and our double-dealing hasn’t stopped. I need to get more informed on this issue and see what is going on today.

As I mentioned before, I really didn’t read much nonfiction this year despite my resolve to read more. It just didn’t happen that way, but I’ll try harder next year.

Review 2503: Death of a Hollow Man

~ whatmeread ~ 2 Comments

Caroline Graham does something interesting in Death of a Hollow Man. She spends half the book with an amateur theater group preparing to perform Amadeus, letting readers get to know her characters.

Inspector Barnaby’s wife Joyce works on costumes and plays minor characters. Harold Winstanley is the director, with a high regard for himself. Esslyn is playing Salieri. He has an eye for the ladies and recently dumped his wife Rosa for 19-year-old Kitty. When Rosa finds out Kitty is pregnant, a state Esslyn denied her, she is furious.

Others of the group are Deirdre, much-put-upon assistant director, whose father has dementia, putting her into a constant fret. There are David and Colin, son and father set designers and technicians. Tim and Avery are a gay couple who do lighting. The Everard brothers are Esslyn’s toadies. And young Nicholas is playing Mozart and trying to get into drama school.

Many in the group thrive on rumor and innuendo, and the atmosphere is toxic, what with Harold’s rudeness and his ego that must be constantly fed, Esslyn’s coldness, and the tension between Rosa and Kitty. Nicholas comes in early one day and sees Kitty having sex with someone in the light booth. He thinks it is David because he’s the only other person he meets that early. Rumors about this create more tension and end in a misunderstanding that makes havoc on opening night. But does it have anything to do with the death at the end of the play? For the taped straight razor that Salieri uses to cut his own throat has had its tape removed.

People who want a quick start to their mysteries might not appreciate Graham’s technique in this one of following the group over days, but it really helps develop the characters. I enjoyed this mystery, although being used to the character of Cully from the TV series, I was a little taken aback to find her depicted as acerbic.

Midsomer Murders made Joyce discover many of the bodies. I don’t know if Graham did that or not, but Joyce is right there on the spot for Essyn’s death.

Related Posts

The Killings at Badgers Drift

Magpie Murders

Final Acts: Theatrical Mysteries

Announcing a new blog

~ whatmeread ~ 10 Comments

Dear book blogging audience, OK, this has nothing to do with books, or maybe it might at some time, but not now. Still, some of you might find it interesting.

I have always been interested in art, although I am not schooled in it. In middle school, my electives were band class and orchestra (flute) until I got braces in 9th grade and ruined my embouchure. I wanted to take art in high school, but I was afraid that all the people who took it through middle school would know more than I did, so I took something else (and I can’t remember what). As an adult, I occasionally took a six-week class, but I never had a lot of time to work on it.

However, once I retired and moved to Washington, I thought that art classes might be a fun thing to do with my sister, who has always been much more persistent in working on art. We both enrolled at an art school in Vancouver, and I have been going there ever since. (My sister dropped out after a couple years.)

Although I never felt very strongly about myself as an artist, just recently things have been opening up for me. I won first place at the county fair (a big $1.50 and a ribbon), I sold a print of that painting, I shared a booth with my sister in the Battle Ground Art Fair this September, and I joined the Battle Ground Art Alliance. In December, an art gallery is opening up in Battle Ground, and one of my paintings will be for sale there.

A discussion with the webmaster for the BGAA’s website about contact information on their page for me (I submitted my email address and he was advising me to use something else) led me to create a blog about art. It isn’t a sale blog, although I may join the blog owned by the BGAA’s website for selling art once I get my act in gear. It will be a weekly blog talking about my experiences in painting and art. It’s called What? Me Paint? Check it out if you’re interested. So far, there is only one post, but you can see photos of two of my paintings.

Review 2502: Novellas in November! Picnic at Hanging Rock

~ whatmeread ~ 19 Comments

I have meant to read Picnic at Hanging Rock for years, so when I saw it on a list of short novels, I got a copy from the library for Novellas in November. It turns out I’m stretching a point with this one, though, at 204 pages, a little over the stated limit.

Let me warn you about this one. I suggest you don’t do too much poking around or read the Introduction before reading it. Even the Introduction suggests that you read it afterwards. Part of this suggestion has to do with a chapter that was removed at the suggestion of the original publishers. The Introduction to the Penguin edition summarizes this chapter, but I agree that the novel is much more powerful without it.

On a hot Valentines Day in 1900 Australia, most of the girls of Appleyard College for Young Ladies are bound for an outing—a picnic at Hanging Rock, an ancient local geographical and anthropological wonder. With them are three teachers and the coachman. The only student left behind is Sara, a 13-year-old orphan whom Mrs. Appleyard, the headmistress, uses as a scapegoat.

Although the girls are told to stay off the rock, after tea three senior girls ask to walk closer to it. They include Miranda, a girl loved by everyone at the school but especially by Sara. With her are her best friends, Irma, a beautiful heiress, and the brainy Marion. Edith, a younger girl who they think is a pest, tags along after them.

Although a couple of young men in a family party see them crossing a stream, no one sees them after that—or at least no one sees some of them. The girls fall asleep on a circular platform, and when they wake up very late, Miranda wanders away, seeming to hear no one’s calls. Later, Edith comes running screaming away from the rock but can’t remember anything except that she saw Miss McCraw, the mathematics teacher, running away without her skirt. By then, the party has been searching for the girls and has noticed that Miss McCraw is missing, too.

The whole countryside erupts into an uproar. On a subsequent search after the official police ones, the two young men who glimpsed the girls at the rock try searching again, and Mike Fitzhubert finds one of them barely alive. He is injured running for help, but his companion and groom, Albert Crundall, rescues them both.

Most of the novel is about the aftermath of the disappearances. This is an atmospheric and mysterious, even haunting novel that holds the attention. It’s an Australian classic.

Related Posts

The Sun Walks Down

The Secret River

A Room Made of Leaves

Review 2501: Novellas in November! Young Man with a Horn

~ whatmeread ~ 6 Comments

I read Young Man with a Horn to fill a hole in my Century of Books project but, as has happened several times already, by the time I got to it, I had already read a book for that year. (I made a list of my to-read pile years to avoid this, but now I’ve lost the list!) However, at 171 pages, it qualifies for Novellas in November.

Young Man with a Horn is Baker’s debut novel and is still her best known. She seems to like to tackle complicated subjects and what were at the time fringe characters. (For example, she subtly indicates in Cassandra at the Wedding that Cassandra is gay.)

We know from the beginning that this novel is not going to have a happy ending. The anonymous narrator makes that clear in the Prologue. And about that narrator—the novel is related in a loose, conversational style, like someone might use to tell the story to a friend.

In the 1920s, Rick Martin is a 14-year-old orphan at the beginning of the novel. School isn’t working for him and he spends most of his time in the library until he finds a piano in an unlocked church and teaches himself to play, which doesn’t take long.

He decides he wants a trumpet, though, because it’s easier to carry around. His young aunt and uncle are very poor, so to buy one he needs a job. He gets one setting pins at a bowling alley. There he meets Smoke Jordan, an older Black boy who is a drummer. Eventually, they start hanging out to talk about music (after Rick gets over some racist notions). They like sitting behind a club where Smoke’s neighbor, Jeff Williams, has a band which is getting to be well known, a bunch of gifted Black men. Eventually, they are invited inside, and when Rick gets his trumpet, he convinces the trumpet player to give him lessons. It’s jazz Rick is interested in rather than the dance music the band plays in public. It becomes almost the only thing he is interested in.

The book traces his career as he becomes one of the best jazz trumpet players in the country. Baker draws a convincing portrait of an obsessed personality. It’s fairly fast-moving, and the only part I didn’t really appreciate was the blaming of his wife for the failure of their marriage.

Related Posts

Cassandra at the Wedding

Trust

Lucky Us

Nonfiction November: Week Three

~ whatmeread ~ 16 Comments

I had to think a lot about what I could do for this week, because the most self-evident answer to the prompt was too obvious. Here’s the prompt for this week:

Cover for Wolf Hall

Week 3 (11/11-11/15) Book Pairings: This week, pair up a nonfiction book with a fiction title. Maybe it’s a historical novel and the real history in a nonfiction version, or a memoir and a novel, or a fiction book you’ve read and you would like recommendations for background reading. Or (because I’m doing this myself) two books on two different areas have chimed and have a link. You can be as creative as you like! (Liz)

Cover for Bring Up the Bodies

Maybe this pairing is obvious, too, but it didn’t immediately come to mind. Here it is, though. I recently finished the history/biography Hunting the Falcon: Henry VII, Anne Boleyn and the Marriage That Shook Europe by John Guy and Julia Fox. This account begins when both figures are younger, with Henry becoming king and Anne first going to the French court. But it concentrates on the years of their relationship and marriage, including the fallout from Henry’s divorce of Katherine.

I’m actually pairing this nonfiction book with three fiction books that concentrate on the same subject matter, and they, of course, are well known. I meant Hilary Mantel’s outstanding trilogy about Thomas Cromwell. The trilogy begins with Wolf Hall, in which Cromwell helps Henry with his divorce from Katherine so he can marry Anne. It continues with Bring Up the Bodies, in which Cromwell eventually helps ruin Anne after she fails to produce a son and Henry sets his eyes on Jane Seymour. Finally, it ends in The Mirror and the Light, which begins with the beheading of Anne.

Whether you’re interested in the nonfiction or the fiction books, you’ll be entertained, but the trilogy happens in my opinion to be a set of top historical fiction books.

Review 2500: Novellas in November! Such Small Hands

~ whatmeread ~ 6 Comments

I decided to make more of an effort to participate in Novellas in November this year, more than accidentally reviewing a novella in November, that is, so I started looking at lists. When I first went for classic novellas, I was finding the same kinds of things, many of which I considered novels, not novellas, so I just tried search for novellas in general. I finally found this intriguing list on Literary Hub, the 50 Best Contemporary Novels Less Than 200 Pages. I picked out a few books from it, most of which I was unfamiliar with.

The quotes on the back of this very short book (101 pages) use words like “chilling” and “terrifying.” I was nearly halfway through it feeling that it was a little strange but certainly not terrifying. So, I did a little looking around, as I sometimes do when I feel like I’m not quite with it. That led me to find out something I wish I didn’t know ahead of time. So, don’t do this! If you choose to read the novel, you’ll find it out in the Afterword.

Marina’s parents died after a car accident. She herself was badly injured and hospitalized for some time. At seven years old with no relatives, she is placed in an orphanage. The other girls, whose point of view is represented as a group, love and are repelled by her, so they make her an outcast. And there is something odd about her. When anyone asks her about her family, she uses the same words, with no affect.

Marina’s only possession besides an odd selection of clothes from her house is a doll the psychologist gave her. Marina, rejected, plays constantly with the doll. Eventually, the other girls steal, destroy, and bury it.

These descriptions sound a little odd, but what is very unusual is the way the unspoken thoughts of the children are expressed in the text. It’s lyrical, and as I mentioned before, the other girls are treated as one. References in reviews speak of a Greek chorus, but to me it seemed stranger than that.

I’m not going to say more about this except that the events and aura of the novel become stranger as it goes on. If you are interested, you most likely won’t be disappointed. And what the heck! It’s only 100 pages long. Read it!

Related Posts

We Have Always Lived in the Castle

The Bloody Chamber

The Wicked Boy

Review 2499: Novellas in November! Highland Fling

~ whatmeread ~ 11 Comments

I read Highland Fling to fill a hole in my Century of Books project but found it also qualifies for Novellas in November!

The novel begins with Albert Gates, who almost on a whim, moves to Paris to become a painter. There, he at least seems serious about it and actually arranges a showing at a gallery in London before returning home to arrange his show.

Now the point of view shifts to that of Jane Dacre. She has been spending time with her married friends, Walter and Sally Monteath, who are having difficulty living on their incomes, Walter, a poet, apparently being unable to hold a job. The Monteaths are asked to travel to Scotland to host a house party at Dulloch Castle, Lord and Lady Craigdulloch having been called out of the country. They are not excited about it but agree thinking it will be a good way to save money. They invite Jane and Albert.

The rest is a no-holds-barred satire of country house parties, sporting people, Scottish customs, and surprisingly, the young people themselves. In Scotland, Albert comes off as an intellectual snob, his remarks rude and his likings absurd, his outfits unsuitable and ridiculous. (He reminded me of an obnoxious artist character in Angela Thirkell’s series, but try as I might, I cannot figure out which book he appears in. If anyone knows who I’m talking about, please tell me.)

Nevertheless, Jane falls in love with him and everything he says is wonderful. This plot point may be explained because Mitford herself fell in love with a young man on a similar Scottish visit, and they eventually split, possibly because he was gay.

This novel seemed a lot less polished than Mitford’s later ones, but it is her first. The caricatures are very broad, and the supposedly bright banter seemed puerile. However, there are some funny moments here, the description of Albert’s art being one of them.

Related Posts

The Pursuit of Love

Love in a Cold Climate

Pigeon Pie