WWW Wednesday

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Well, I guess The Chocolate Lady has got me into something with her WWW Wednesday, which she does once a month. I had some encouragement when I tried it last month, so what the heck. Maybe I’ll make it a habit, although I don’t know if I’ll do it every month.

The idea is to talk about what you’re reading now, what you just read, and what you plan to read.

What Am I Reading Now?

By now, I mean I just literally picked this book up to start it, The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons. I may have read one book by this Southern writer before, but I am not sure. I got it because someone told me it was a good ghost story. I love a good ghost story. I’ll have to let you know about it, because I have literally not even read the first sentence yet.

I just checked the copyright date (1978), and this novel is going to help me fill a hole in my Century of Books project.

What Did I Just Finish Reading?

The last book I read, I enjoyed very much. It was Westwood by Stella Gibbons. It is partially about a naïve and suggestible young schoolteacher’s hero-worship of an older renowned playwright, a pompous and humorless man who thinks he’s god’s gift to literature and likes to philander with beautiful young women, one of which she is not. Some of the scenes with this character and the descriptions of the plots of his plays made me laugh out loud.

With a publication date of 1947, this book also helped me fill a hole in my Century of Books project.

What Will I Read Next?

I just realized today that I needed to get hopping on my next book for Literary Wives. The date to post our reviews is the first Monday in June, and since I write up my reviews ahead of time, I have almost got up to it! So, I have to get reading. It is waiting for me to pick up at the library. I know nothing about it, Recipe for a Perfect Wife by Karma Brown.

Sadly, its 2019 publication date does not fill a hole in my project.

What about you? Have you read any of these books? What are you reading?

Review 2430: The Other Side of Mrs. Wood

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In 1873 London, Mrs. Wood is the most successful medium in society. She is worried about the future, though, because her patrons are getting older and at 40, she doesn’t seem to be appealing to the younger folks. To make things worse, Mr. Larson, who takes care of her money, has just informed her that a large investment in a mine has been lost. Things are going to be tight until some ships he invested in arrive.

Mrs. Wood cuts where she can, but unfortunately her profession requires her to have an appearance of respectable wealth.

A girl has been hanging around outside her meetings, which are invitation only. When Mrs. Wood catches her, a Miss Finch, she learns that Miss Finch would like to become her student. She says she has some talent. Without consulting her friend and assistant, Miss Newman, Mrs. Wood decides to take her on, thinking that as a young, attractive girl, she will attract younger patrons.

Miss Newman distrusts Miss Finch, but Mrs. Wood goes ahead with her plans, even excusing some costly mistakes that Miss Finch makes. What she doesn’t know is that Miss Finch’s intentions are bad ones and that she knows more about Mrs. Wood’s past than Mrs. Wood thought anyone knew.

Without remembering any synopsis of this novel, I immediately distrusted Miss Finch, getting a growing feeling of dread that stalled me a bit in my reading. I also felt that the middle part of the novel went on a bit too long. However, when Mrs. Wood pulls herself together, the culmination is very satisfying. I think the very end of the book, though, was a bit unbelievable.

If you read my blog, you know I’m a stickler for accuracy in a historical novel, although not an expert in the details. However, just as a side note, Barker uses the word “twee” on page two, not in conversation but in the main character’s thoughts. I thought that seemed like a modern word, so I looked it up. Sure enough, it was not in use until 1905. Oops!

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Review 2429: The Return of the Native

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A love triangle—or rather a love pentagon—is at the heart of The Return of the Native. I put this novel on my Classics Club list because, although I read it years ago, I could remember nothing about it.

The Return of the Native is Hardy’s most contained novel, all of it taking place on Egdon Heath. The action begins on Guy Fawkes night with the lighting of bonfires. The occupants of one barrow are discussing the supposed marriage that day of Damon Wildeve and Tamsin Yeobright. But Tamsin returns home in distress and unmarried, saying Wildeve made a mistake with the license.

Wildeve has told Tamsin they can marry on Monday, but on that very night he goes to see Eustacia Vye, the girl he dropped for Tamsin. Eustacia is a vibrant, proud woman, and there is no doubt that she is tempted to get revenge on Tamsin.

Tamsin and her aunt view themselves disgraced if the marriage doesn’t come off, even though Wildeve lets weeks go by as he tries to court Eustacia. But Eustacia has heard of the return after years away of Tamsin’s cousin Clym, an educated man who works as a diamond seller in Paris, and sight unseen, she decides he’s the man for her. She hates the heath and wants to go to Paris. So, she misses a rendezvous with Wildeve and he marries Tamsin.

With this ill-conceived marriage, we are halfway set up for the tragedy. Then Eustacia marries Clym even after he tells her he plans to run a school for the poor on the heath, thinking she can easily change his mind after the wedding. The fifth point of the pentagon is occupied by Diggory Venn, a rettleman, or man who sells the red substance used to mark sheep and whose skin and clothing are dyed red from handling it. Although the Introduction to my edition explains that Hardy meant him to be a rather freakish figure about the heath, he ends up using him as a sort of deus ex machina, always in aid of Tamsin.

A strong theme of snobbery is inherent in the novel as we learn (1) that Wildeve was meant for better things but ended up owning the neighborhood pub, (2) that Tamsin turned down a proposal from Venn even when he was a respectable dairyman because he wasn’t good enough for her, (3) that the only suitable suitors for Eustacia in the neighborhood are the morally dubious Wildeve or the unambitious Clym. And Mrs. Yeobright clearly disapproves of both her son’s and niece’s choices.

So, we’re all set up for one of Hardy’s tragedies, in which he lays into the Victorian idea of marriage while making all his characters suffer. I usually like this stuff, but Hardy was forced by his publisher to add on the last section, thus providing a happier ending and making the story seem to last a little too long.

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Review 2428: The Green Road

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The Madigan family centers its activities around Rosaleen, the mother. At the beginning of the novel, she takes to her bed, assuming the horizontal, after she learns her favorite son Dan is planning to become a priest. The family has to run itself around her until youngest daughter Hanna, the narrator of this chapter, returns from a visit to her brother with information that gets Rosaleen out of bed and on the attack.

In that chapter we learn of the tangled history of the village. The Considines, Rosalee’s family, always looked down on the Madigans, Rosaleen mocks other families for their pretentions, but it’s true that she married below her, and the Madigans have never made very much money. But Rosaleen doesn’t care about money. She would like her husband to fix a few things around the house, but he generally doesn’t.

The next chapter picks up eleven years later in 1991 New York City. This chapter is narrated by Greg Savalas, a gay man deeply in love with a man named Billy. Dan Madigan comes on the scene, and although he is not out, he begins an affair with Billy. This is the time when men are dying of AIDS, and Billy is suddenly stricken. Dan is not helpful.

Eleven years later we encounter oldest son Emmett, who is an aid worker in Mali. This chapter details his insufficiencies in his relationship with his girlfriend Alice.

The Madigans all seem to reserve themselves from deep attachments. The second half of the novel is set in 2005, when they all gather together for Christmas for the first time in years because Rosaleen decides to sell the house. It’s clear that everything is still revolving around her. We get more insight into Constance, the oldest daughter, who has her own family but is the only one left in the area to meet Rosaleen’s demands. Finally, there is Hanna, an actress who is not coping well with motherhood.

I always feel that Enright’s characters are absolutely believable and her families fraught with realistic complications. Her descriptions, too, of the Western Ireland scenery are gorgeous.

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Review 2427: Impact of Evidence

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The area around St. Brynneys on the English side of the Welsh borderlands has been snowed in for days. It has finally started to thaw, and that has brought flooding to the valleys like the residents have never seen before. Up at St. Brynneys, the Lambton family is safe from floods and working hard on their dairy farm when they hear old Dr. Robinson go out in his car. The doctor is a menace on the road, being deaf and nearly blind, but it is his habit to drive to the top of Hollybank and back, a short distance. This time, however, they all hear a crash.

It’s a while before they can get the old Ford going, but when they do, they head to the accident, meeting Mike and Sue Dering coming home on their bikes. They all find the doctor’s car in the stream and Bob Parson standing nearby all bloody with his Jeep wrecked. Bob tells them he was driving fast down the road to get up the next hill when the doctor emerged without stopping from the side road.

The Lambtons, the Derings, and Ken, Lambton’s young hand, manage to haul Dr. Robinson’s body out of the water. But Ken notices another body. This man is a total stranger.

The phone is out and driving still dangerous, so after delivering the concussed Bob and the two bodies to the farm, Henry Lambton and Mike Dering decide to walk to the magistrate Colonel Wynne’s house to notify him of the accident. Since the area is now isolated because of floods, Colonel Wynne rides his horse the next morning to the nearest constabulary. Eventually, Chief Inspector Julian Rivers and Inspector Lancing are dispatched to find out who the second body is, when he arrived in the area, and why he was apparently in Doctor Robinson’s car.

Carol Carnac is another pen name for E. C. R. Lorac, who always writes beautiful descriptions of the local landscape. With quite a few suspects but most of them likable, I was never sure where this one was going to end up. The culprit was a complete surprise. I liked this one a lot.

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Review 2426: Mrs. Martell

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Mrs. Martell is not a nice person. She is beautiful and ambitious. Her goal has always been to marry a wealthy, influential man. She’s always had plenty of attention from men, but somehow she has not been lucky. Mr. Martell was a mistake, of course.

Cathie Martell never paid much attention to her cousin Laura until Laura married Edward West, wealthy and with great connections. Since then, she has made it her business to befriend Laura and has almost succeeded in detaching Edward for herself, but somehow he stays married to Laura.

Just in case Edward doesn’t come up to scratch, Cathie has encouraged the attentions of Mr. Hardy, a young newspaper reporter, who is able to get free tickets for shows. He is madly in love with her, but she doesn’t want Edward to find out.

This darkish social satire rivals the story of Becky Sharp, only Becky is more likable. Eliot’s prose is sharp and biting, although she tends to shift point of view without warning, sometimes in the middle of a paragraph, which I found confusing at times. Still, I was driven to find out if Cathie would succeed or get her comeuppance.

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

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In January, 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?

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

  • 1925-1934: entries needed for 1926-31
  • 1935-1944: entries needed for all years except 1935, 1936, 1937, 1941, and 1943
  • 1945-1954: entries needed for all years except 1947, 1952, 1953, and 1954
  • 1955-1964: entries needed for all years except 1958 and 1959
  • 1965-1974: entries needed for all years except 1965, 1966, 1972, and 1974
  • 1975-1984: entries needed for all years except 1975 and 1976
  • 1985-1994: entries needed for all years
  • 1995–2004: entries needed for all years except 2004
  • 2005-2014: entries needed for all years except 2009, 2010, 2012, and 2014
  • 2015-2024: complete!

Read since March 27th:

Unfortunately, not qualifying for the project, The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy from 1878

Qualifying:

  • Illyrian Spring by Ann Bridge from 1935
  • An Infamous Army by Georgette Heyer from 1937
  • Beginning with a Bash by Alice Tilton from 1937
  • Forest Silver by E. M. Ward from 1941
  • Family Ties by Celia Buckmaster from 1952
  • A Stranger Came Ashore by Mollie Hunter from 1975
  • Real Life by Brandon Taylor from 2020
  • The Immortal King Rao by Vauhini Vara from 2022
  • The Other Side of Mrs. Wood by Lucy Barker from 2023
  • Prophet Song by Paul Lynch from 2023
  • The Square of Sevens by Laura Shepherd Robinson from 2023
  • The Guest Room by Tasha Sylva from 2023

Review 2425: Murder Road

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If you like a good ghost story, there’s no one to beat Simone St. James. Her last two books were especially excellent.

It’s July 1995. April and her new husband Eddie are on their honeymoon on the way to a motel on Lake Michigan when they get lost. Something about the road they are on, Atticus Line, feels wrong. April sees a light blinking in the woods and then they see a figure in the road, a girl who seems to have something wrong with her. Her name is Rhonda Jean, and once they realize she’s bleeding, they rush her to the hospital in Coldlake Falls.

Rhonda Jean has been stabbed, and she dies in the hospital. April and Eddie are covered with blood, as is their car, and they suddenly realize they look like murderers. And that’s how the cops see them.

April and Eddie soon realize that they need to try to solve the murder themselves. They learn that there had been a series of murders on the Atticus Line, mostly of hitchhikers on the way to a beach, starting in 1976 with an unidentified woman. There is also a story of a ghost who haunts the road. Once you see her, you die. April sees her when they return to the road, and the ghost tries to pull Eddie from the car, but they don’t die. What does the ghost want?

As far as the plot goes, and sympathy for the main characters, this one is right up there with St. James’s best. Unfortunately for me, Michigan native, it turned into What It Gets Wrong about Michigan, especially Midland, one of the novel’s settings and my home town.

Never mind me. If you like ghost stories, you’re going to love this one. No need to continue reading. However, if you like accuracy . . .

First, it was the weather. This is minor, but the characters experience a series of really hot days. Sure, it can be hot in Michigan, but in the northern lower peninsula, which is where the book is set, it’s usually not that hot in July. Mornings are usually cool and nights cold. There’s a bit about a flannel shirt that Eddie brought along in case it was cold. He would know it would be cold. Of course, weather in 2024 could be different, but I looked up the weather in that area in July 1995. They had one day in the 90s and a low in the 80s. Most days were in the 60s or 70s. But again, this is minor.

Then she shocked me by saying Midland was in the south, almost to the Indiana border, proving she never even looked at a map. Midland, as its name suggests, is smack dab in the middle of the lower peninsula, maybe a bit east of the middle. It’s a five-hour drive from Ohio. Indiana is further away. The main characters are from Ann Arbor, which is almost two hours further south than Midland, so they wouldn’t make that mistake.

I’m no Midland booster—I got out of there as soon as I could—but St. James depicts it as a sad little town. It’s actually quite prosperous as the home of Dow Chemical, which has pumped a lot of money into it, and it has a large percentage of people with PhDs. The characters think they are in a sad downtown area when they go to the library, but they are not, and in fact never get there. The downtown of MIdland was quite vibrant in the 90s, much more so than when I left in the 80s. The library is actually on a long main street that is commercial at both ends but middle- to upper-class residential in the middle where the library is, with the botanical gardens behind it and the performing arts center next to it. April is surprised that the library is surrounded by greenery, but most of Midland is quite green, although it gets a little seedy a few long blocks away, closer to downtown. Finally, there is no bank across the street from the library.

Just a little more research, even if she couldn’t make a visit, would have got these facts right. It’s kind of interesting that she didn’t do it or make up a different town, as she did with the setting farther north.

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Review 2424: The Bookbinder

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Pip Williams revisits the Oxford University Press and the themes of World War I and rights for women in The Bookbinder. Again, she shows her skill as a storyteller.

Peg Jones has grown up around the Oxford University Press, but she’s a representative of town rather than gown. She works at the press as a bookbinder, but she has always yearned for more education and an opportunity to attend Somerset, the women’s college. Aside from the social and educational restrictions, she has been held back by a feeling of responsibility for her special needs identical twin sister Maude.

World War I has just started, and Peg gets an opportunity to apply for one of the positions on the men’s side, but she doesn’t take it. In a link back to The Dictionary of Lost Words, Peg helps Esme’s lover bind a printed copy of her collection of women’s words.

After the invasion of Belgium, Belgian women come to work at the press, and Maude becomes close to one of them, Lotte. Peg goes to volunteer at the hospital and is teamed a reader/letter writer with Gwen Lumley, an upper-class girl who becomes her friend.

Peg is torn between her feeling of responsibility for Maude and her resentment of it. She is both grateful to Lotte for helping with Maude and jealous.

Her contact with Gwen along with the help of her supervisor, Mrs. Stoddard, leads her to an opportunity to apply for a scholarship to Somerset. But she must pass two series of exams.

Williams is skillful at involving readers with her characters’ ups and downs as well as their self-development. I enjoyed this novel very much.

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