This week’s Best Book is Persuasion by Jane Austen!
Day 300: The Land of Green Ginger
Joanna Burton is a naive girl with a huge sense of adventure who has always wanted to travel the world in this most touching of Winifred Holtby’s books. Born in Africa but brought to England as a small child, Joanna has never felt like she quite fit in and has always wanted to return to the “land of green ginger.” During World War I she meets a young officer, Teddy Leigh, who tells her he is going to give her the world as a golden ball, and she believes him.
Several years later, however, she is living on a Yorkshire farm with two little girls and an ailing husband. Not only was Teddy gassed during the war, but he hid from her his history of tuberculosis.
As Joanna struggles to deal ineptly with the farm, her husband, and her children, a nearby landowner asks if they could take a Hungarian man in as a roomer. Joanna is so preoccupied with her troubles that she doesn’t notice her husband’s irrational jealousy or the rumors starting up in the village about her relationship with the Hungarian.
This novel is beautifully written and painful to read at times, as the readers see Joanna unconsciously make misstep after misstep and the neighborhood gossips become vicious indeed. Holtby only wrote a few books before she died at the age of 37, but she was a master at depicting life in the Yorkshire countryside and small towns.
Day 299: Moriarty
I thought the idea of a novel written from the point of view of Sherlock Holmes’ nemesis, Professor James Moriarty, was an interesting one, but since I always found the Moriarty plot tedious, I now wonder why I thought so. When I opened the book cover to find that John Gardner is the author of many, many series novels and Moriarty is one of them, I was further dismayed, not generally being a fan of series writing (although I have a small number of favorites) and being even more skeptical of someone who writes many different series. Moreover, don’t be mislead into thinking this is a Sherlock Holmes mystery–this novel is missing Sherlock Holmes entirely and it isn’t really a mystery.
The novel opens with two introductions, both putting forward the pretense that the novel is based on newly discovered diaries of Moriarty, which cannot be reproduced because of their vile content. I suspect the truth is that Gardner found himself unable to sustain a convincing 19th century writing style, this hunch seeming to be confirmed by the modern writing style of the book and the dialogue.
The plot concerns Moriarty’s attempts to re-form his criminal empire after an absence of several years following the Reichenbach Falls incident, in which, if you’ll remember, Conan Doyle attempted to kill off both Holmes and Moriarty. In Moriarty’s absence, other criminals have taken over his various enterprises.
Although not badly written, the novel completely failed to capture me. I was not interested in any of the characters and in fact thought they made unconvincing and boring criminals. One incident early in the book that is artificially spun out by going back and forth in time and place is confusing, and such a device seems totally unnecessary.
All in all, I found the novel tedious and only finished about a third of it before quitting.
Day 298: Another Man’s Moccasins
This Walt Longmire mystery interleaves the present-time story with flashbacks to Longmire’s experiences during the Vietnam War. I wasn’t sure I was going to enjoy this development, but the novel turned out to be very good, as the two stories are linked.
Walt is helping his daughter Cady recover from her experiences in Philadelphia (detailed in the previous book) when he is called out to the body of a young woman found along a county highway. Walt immediately recognizes the woman as Vietnamese. Next to the body is a huge Crow Indian, who runs away from Walt. In chasing him down, Walt discovers that he has been living in a culvert. When Walt takes him into custody, he won’t speak.
The discovery of the Vietnamese girl triggers memories of Walt’s first homicide investigation as a marine in Vietnam. The girl’s identification shows she is named Ho Thi Paquet, but in among her possessions, Walt find the picture of another woman who resembles someone he knew in Vietnam. With the help of his friend Henry Standing Bear, Walt finds out that the girl is connected with a large human trafficking ring in Los Angeles.
Walt decides that the Crow, identified as a mentally ill Vietnam vet named Virgil White Buffalo, probably didn’t kill Ho. He also doesn’t think it is a coincidence that a Vietnamese “tourist” has appeared, staying in a motel in Absaroka County.
As I have said before, I really enjoy this series. I enjoy the sense that the landscape of Wyoming is as much of a character as the people in the novels, and I like the recurring characters, who keep developing new dimensions.
Day 297: Persuasion
Most people have probably read Pride and Prejudice, which is a wonderful book, but if I had to pick my favorite Jane Austen heroine, it would be hard to decide between Elinor Dashwood of Sense and Sensibility and Anne Elliot of Persuasion. Probably fewer people are familiar with Persuasion.
Anne is no longer in the bloom of youth. Seven years ago she fell in love with a young naval officer named Frederick Wentworth, but Sir Walter, her superficial, supercilious father, did not approve. Perhaps the gentle Anne would not have been dissuaded from marriage, but her older friend and mentor, Lady Russell, talked her out of the engagement because of Wentworth’s lack of wealth and social position. Anne listened because she viewed Lady Russell as a surrogate mother, and she hasn’t heard from Wentworth since.
Now the family has fallen upon hard times, and Sir Walter is forced by his profligacy to lease their house and take rooms in Bath. He and Anne’s fashionable sister Elizabeth care very little for Anne, and they leave her to close up the house and make all the arrangements for its occupation by an Admiral Croft. Much harassed, she readies the house and tends to her hypochondriac, selfish sister Mary Musgrove. At least she enjoys the company of the children and Mary’s genial in-laws, with their two daughters Henrietta and Louisa and Anne’s brother-in-law Charles.
Anne meets the friendly Admiral and Mrs. Croft, and between their society and that of the Musgroves, begins to find a little pleasant enjoyment. However, she is soon dismayed to learn that Frederick Wentworth is Mrs. Croft’s brother, and he will be arriving soon. Wentworth is now wealthy and has retired from the service.
When he arrives, Wentworth pays little attention to Anne; in fact, she overhears him saying that she has changed so much he would not have recognized her. This remark distresses her very much, as her feelings have not altered. Soon he appears to be courting Louisa Musgrove. Anne finds it easiest to send Mary off into company while she stays home with her nephews.
After Louisa has a fateful accident on an outing in Lyme Regis, Anne finds herself taking charge and summoning help. Then she returns with Wentworth to notify Louisa’s parents. Feeling superfluous after the Musgroves leave with Wentworth for Lyme Regis, Anne decides she has no choice but to join her unpleasant father and sister in Bath.
What I love about Anne is her understated good will. Despite the insults by her family members and their general bad treatment of her, she tries to help them and to be a true sister and daughter to them. Despite Wentworth’s slights and attention to Louisa, she hides her feelings and remains faithful in her heart. Anne has much in common with Elinor Dashwood, except that Elinor is well regarded by her family and Anne is not. There is something delicate and understated in this novel, and in all of Austen’s work, that I appreciate in this more tempestuous modern world.
Day 296: The Cruelest Month
The village of Three Pines in remote southern Quebec has a psychic visiting, so bed and breakfast owner Gabri arranges a séance on Good Friday evening. It is not very successful, but some of the participants decide to try again at the deserted Hadley house the next night. A few additional people attend, and several of the group are filled with foreboding. The Hadley house has, after all, been the scene of frightful crimes.
In a dusty, candle-lit room, the participants hear a horrible noise and one of their party drops dead–Madeleine Favreau, a vibrant, popular woman who shares a house with Hazel Smyth. When Inspector Gamache and his team arrive, they find that someone has slipped Madeleine the banned drug ephedra, which, combined with a weak heart, has resulted in a fatal heart attack.
The investigators find motives for several of the people at the séance, mostly those of jealousy or thwarted love. But Gamache’s team is also dealing with its own problems. Senior officers want to destroy Gamache because of his role in accusing a popular superior officer of crimes years ago and so have inserted a spy into his team. However, they have found other ways to strike, as Gamache begins finding newspaper articles attacking him and his family.
As always with Louise Penny’s mysteries, the plot is compelling and Gamache and the other characters are interesting. Of course, it is unusual that a small village like Three Pines would suffer so many violent deaths, but it is a pleasure to continue revisiting the village and its inhabitants, so I think we have to suspend our disbelief. I also think the series deserves some kind of prize for the most beautiful cover art.
Special Post! Best Book of the Week!
This week’s Best Book is Before the Poison by Peter Robinson!
Day 295: The Gathering
A large family in Ireland is gathering together for the wake of their brother, Liam, who drowned. Veronica Hegarty, his sister, travels to London to collect the body and keep vigil with it.
This novel follows her consciousness as she thinks about her relationships with her own husband and the rest of her family and considers why her brother’s life turned out the way it did. She describes Liam as a “terrible messer,” who was an alcoholic and finally put stones into his pockets and walked into the sea.
She also remembers her grandmother Ada, and imagines scenes involving her grandmother’s relationship to Veronica’s grandfather and to another man when she was a young woman. Veronica muses about life growing up in her grandparents’ house and the connection with her brother’s secrets and troubles. She feels guilty that she did not help him and that no one sympathized with him when he was alive.
This novel is angry, heavy, and sometimes repels the reader. By page 55, I felt that the narrator was inordinately concerned with the mechanics of men’s penises. Still, it is an evocative story about a woman’s grief and her struggle to understand her brother.
Day 294: Death on the Nevskii Prospekt
Given my interest in Russia and the time period, this novel should have been a slam-dunk for me, but I was disappointed. Lord Francis Powerscourt is asked to investigate the death of a British diplomat in Russia, who was discovered with his throat cut on a bridge across the Nevskii Prospekt. No one in the British government knows why the victim was in Russia, and the Russians, having reported his death, pretend that they know nothing about it.
Powerscourt’s investigations seem to be pointing to the victim having had a secret meeting with the Tsar. In addition, Powerscourt may be running up against the Russian secret police, the Okhrana.
The book begins with a completely unnecessary chapter or two devoted to efforts to try to persuade Lord Powerscourt’s wife to release him from his promise not to take any more investigations. In addition, the real circumstances of the death seem completely unlikely. Characterization was minimal, and the plot had several unlikely points.
Dickinson’s historical research is commented on in the blurbs, but there was little in the novel that anyone doing the most cursory reading about Tsarist Russia’s last days wouldn’t know.
Day 293: Before the Poison
I never read anything by Peter Robinson before. I looked him up because of the TV series “DCI Banks,” as he is the author of the Inspector Banks series, but then I found that Before the Poison was already on my list of books to read. It is not an Inspector Banks novel, but I found it gripping from start to finish. Although it is not a mystery novel in the traditional sense, it involves an investigation of events in the past with revelations about the present and even the hint of a ghost story.
Chris Lowndes is a recent widower, a British composer of film scores who has been living in California for 35 years. He has purchased a large house in rural Yorkshire sight unseen with the intent of making his new home there and writing more serious music.
At the beginning of the novel, he arrives at his new home, which is beautiful and old but very isolated. He is puzzled to find some personal possessions left behind although the house has been leased for many years and asks his rental agent to find out who used to own it, as he bought it from a solicitor’s office.
Lowndes soon learns that his house was the scene of a notorious murder. Grace Elizabeth Fox, a nurse during World War II, was found guilty in 1952 of murdering her husband, the local doctor. Lowndes becomes interested in the murder and soon finds that the evidence against Grace was circumstantial and mostly based on the fact that she was having an affair with a much younger man. As he tracks down information and villagers who were alive at the time, Lowndes begins to wonder if there was a crime at all or if Doctor Fox died from natural causes.
Alone in the house most of the time, sometimes stranded by bad weather, Lowndes occasionally battles with depression, misses his wife, and is kept awake by strange noises in the house and thinks he glimpses a woman in the mirror of a wardrobe. He is also attracted to Heather, the realtor, who is having marital problems. And he keeps seeing a hooded figure out by the old lime kiln. Eventually he comes across a diary belonging to Grace, which relates her experiences as a nurse during the war.
This novel is atmospheric and very interesting. A few times I thought I knew where it was going, but it went somewhere else. I wasn’t really interested in the subplot involving Heather–I didn’t really like her–but otherwise I was totally engrossed by the novel.
