Review 2313: Kate Hardy

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I usually like D. E. Stevenson’s novels for very light reading, but Kate Hardy seemed all over the place.

Old Quinings is a village that has been left in the past, and the residents like it that way. They are interested to learn, though, that Mr. Morven has sold the Dower House. The new owner is Kate Hardy, a writer of adventure stories who has been yearning to get out of London and away from her selfish sister and spoiled niece.

Kate has bought the Dower House sight unseen, but she loves it as soon as she sees it, even the resident ghost. She meets Mr. Morven early on, but he is careful to visit only rarely because he is old-fashioned and married, although he and his wife live apart.

Kate doesn’t mean to be a recluse even though she needs time to write, and she gets involved in all kinds of things. When she barely knows Mr. Morven, she receives an anonymous letter alleging an improper relationship between them. Another letter goes to Mrs. Morven, who comes back from America hoping her husband wants a divorce. Then Kate arranges to take care of the couple’s nine-year-old daughter Susan, which is an odd offer to a stranger and even odder for the stranger to accept. Susan arrives, but we hardly spend any time with her.

In a gesture that seems sweepingly condescending, Kate also gives a party to welcome back Mrs. Stack’s son Walter from his service in India even though she has just met Mrs. Stack and doesn’t know Walter. There’s a class issue here, not only because of the invitation but because Walter has bettered himself in the service but is stubbornly insisting on keeping his promise to take back his old job and take care of his mother. His old mates are resentful of his getting his job back, although that was promised when he went to war, and his mother and Kate think he could do better.

Then there is the witch plot, which is just silly.

I think there is too much going on in this novel. Maybe the whole thing with the witches was meant to give atmosphere, but it just seemed sort of thrown in, as does the presence of Mr. Morven’s daughter. Also, Kate ends up with two suitors without us having much of a sense of what they are like. I noticed in addition a couple of occasions when Stevenson tells us what people talked about without recounting the dialogue—and the dialogue gives us a better sense of what people are like. Its not very convincing to be told a character’s views are interesting instead of learning what they are or hearing the character say them.

So, I don’t think that this was one of Stevenson’s best.

On the old subject of mistakes in the Furrowed Middlebrow series, which we haven’t encountered in a while, Mrs. Stack is called Mrs. Stark on the back cover of the book, and there is a section after the novel ends that was apparently written by Stevenson but in my copy appears to be missing pages, because it has no heading and starts in the middle of a sentence.

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Review 2312: Bright Young Women

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Bright Young Women is a novel centering around the true story of a famous serial killer, whose last killings took place in a sorority at Florida State University in Tallahassee in 1978. Apparently, Knoll believes as I do that men commit such acts at least partially for the attention so she calls the killer The Defendant throughout the book instead of his name. So will I.

The novel is narrated by two different people in three different time frames. In 1978, Pamela is the president of a sorority and is about to become an important witness. In 2021, she is still trying to track down evidence that will lead to the body of one of his earlier victims.

That victim is Ruth, the second narrator, who in 1975 had the misfortune to meet The Defendant at the beach in Issaquah, Washington.

This novel doesn’t want to focus on The Defendant so much as on the girls he was after. The novel sticks with Pamela from the day before the crime through the days after she sees a strange man fleeing the sorority house, but it focuses on Pamela’s self-development afterwards. At the beginning, she is living an expected life as head of the sorority with the brightest girls on campus, engaged to Brian and planning to attend law school, only an inferior school even though she was accepted to Columbia because Brian couldn’t get in. Pamela is obviously in shock after the event because she doesn’t realize for hours that two of the girls are dead. But she clearly tells the sheriff that although she at first thought the man she saw was Roger, her best friend Denise’s boyfriend, she realized the man was a stranger. Nevertheless, the sheriff focuses on Roger, and this is only one instance of the incompetence of the law enforcement work on the case. Pamela is disregarded and patronized time and again in this novel.

One of Knoll’s themes is her idea that The Defendant, having performed poorly at college and not having been accepted into law school, was picking out successful, attractive women to kill. Then the media fed into his own view of himself by depicting him as smarter and more handsome than he was, despite his ridiculous performance when he eventually defended himself. Basically, they admired the killer while denigrating his victims.

Ruth’s self-evolution takes her from a lesbian woman dominated by an unloving mother who doesn’t want the neighbors to know her “shame” to a confident, lovely girl who has found a place for herself, largely because of the help of her friend Tina. It is Tina who later comes to Pamela and tells her she thinks The Defendant murdered Ruth as well as the sorority girls. Although Tina is right about everything, law enforcement disregards her and warns Pamela against her.

Knoll’s late 1970s certainly sound more like the 60s to me. In Michigan, I didn’t know any girls who were interested in sororities or still used hair spray or dressed as described in the novel anymore. Then again, it was Florida.

I found this a fascinating novel with a strong feminist message. I am looking forward to what Knoll does next.

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Review 2311: Big Ben Strikes Eleven

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Financial tycoon and former politician Sir Robert Boniface is found shot to death in his limousine in the Vale of Health on Hampstead Heath. At first, the police aren’t sure if the death is murder or suicide—only the lack of the gun tells them it is murder.

The body is discovered by a window washer, but Matt Caldwell, an artist, is present in a nearby pub. He is not only able to identify the victim and his car, having painted Sir Robert’s portrait, but he is happy Sir Robert is dead.

Enquiries by Inspector Beckett and Superintendent Mooney lead in the direction of Sir Robert’s nephew, Frank Littlewood, who was recently fired by Sir Robert. However, two office mates, Sir Robert’s confidential secretary Miss Pritt and the obsequious Mr. Fuller, seem too eager to drop him in it.

Then the police find the gun and establish that it belongs to Matt Caldwell. Unfortunately, he is nowhere to be found.

I haven’t paid much attention to this issue until other bloggers pointed it out about other novels, but I would say this novel is about 100 pages longer than it needs to be. First, the action is brought to a screeching halt while the author lays out the case against the original three suspects—as if readers haven’t been paying attention—then we follow Matt Caldwell’s progress in a completely unnecessary romance that coincidentally brings more clues to light. The information is important, but it seems as if it could have been introduced in a different way that didn’t take two or three chapters.

But my biggest problem was with the actual investigation. Early on, Miss Pritt tells the police that the murder had nothing to do with business and uses that reason to withhold information about Sir Robert’s appointments. And the police just go along! Later, the Superintendent just hands her her handkerchief, which he found at the scene of the crime! In other ways, the approach to evidence is just as casual.

Finally, an interview with the Earl of Rollesborough, on the board of the trust that Sir Robert works for, seems called for from the beginning but doesn’t take place until the end. And no wonder, because it pretty much makes everything obvious.

I was able to identify the murderer fairly early on, but that didn’t bother me as much as the sloppy police work, or possibly lack of knowledge about police work.

I received this novel from the publishers in exchange for a free and fair review.

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Why I Quit Using Goodreads

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Observant readers may have noticed that in the last couple of days, the Goodreads widgets have been missing from my blog. Here’s why.

I got a surprise email from Goodreads on Sunday morning. Apparently, someone had complained about one of my reviews because it only had the link to my review on this blog in it. They said that it violated their review policy, so they removed it. They said if anyone else complained about other of my reviews in the same state, they would remove those.

I found that interesting for a couple reasons. (Actually, I found it infuriating.) One, when I started using Goodreads 12 years ago, I sent them an email asking if it was okay to link to my blog. They said yes, it was encouraged, and they didn’t tell me I had to write anything else. I felt that putting in part of my review and then linking to the review was redundant, so I have simply stuck to a statement referring to my review with the link. And I have done that for more than 2000 reviews over 12 years.

It is also interesting, because the majority of “reviewers” simply pick a number of stars, and at least my review did more than that.

So, first I looked for this policy that I had apparently violated. I couldn’t see a place for it on any of the menus or submenus. I looked for a link to it on a review page for a book. I found nothing. Finally, I clicked on the link to the policy that they emailed me, and as far as I can tell, this is the policy I innocently violated. The only way I can tell this is because the other policies don’t have anything to do with this issue. I haven’t harassed anyone, plagiarized anyone, or abused their rating system.

Full reviews that link to a blog are acceptable, as long as the blog is not selling a competing book and using the review to denigrate the book being reviewed in favor of its own.

The word “full,” I guess, is supposed to convey that you have to write something in addition to a link. Otherwise, this rule is about something else entirely. There is no rule that outright says you have to leave a text review in addition to a link.

I sent them an email explaining all of this, and the response I got just repeated everything they had already said. To my comments about not being able to find their reviews policy on their site, they actually responded this:

 For security reasons, we do not share details about our guidelines or moderation processes. 

So they’re purposefully hiding their policies? Is that what that means?

In the meantime, I was so angry, especially at the pettiness of someone bothering to complain about my review, that I decided to look for alternatives. I finally decided to switch to The StoryGraph because it allowed me to import my Goodreads data (some of it) and because it was one of two alternatives that allows me to use my computer rather than an app on my phone. I have Goodreads app on my phone, but I never use it.

While I was researching alternatives, I heard for the first time about some of the controversy surrounding Goodreads since it was bought by Amazon. Some of it involves not following up when authors complain about blackmail attempts by people who threaten to load their books up with one-star reviews if they don’t pay up. I found this interesting because Goodreads does allow you to post star reviews with no other content, whereas The StoryGraph does not. You have to at least make some selections about the type of book it is even if you don’t write anything. Apparently, it is okay to Goodreads to leave just stars, even if this can be abused, rather than linking to a full and legitimate review. And it is interesting to me that they would not follow up on blackmail threats by removing the one-star reviews but then remove mine.

I may have cut off my nose to spite my face, because I am having to get used to the new interface, and in some ways I don’t like it. It is a lot harder, maybe impossible, to see all the books you have reviewed. I used the Goodreads spreadsheet feature a lot, and they don’t seem to have anything like that, although I have asked. (I can export all my book information and figure out how to get it to tell me what I need, but I’m too lazy.) As far as traffic is concerned, my blog stats inform me that I got eight referrals from Goodreads in the last year, so that seems insignificant. I do have one follower who came over from Goodreads that I know of and who leaves comments on my blog occasionally, but I don’t think I have lots of them. I don’t know how many users The StoryGraph has, but probably a lot fewer than Goodreads. The only social feature that I used on Goodreads was to see what one of my friends was reading, just one. So, I’m not going to miss that.

Anyway, all I can say is, bye, bye Goodreads.

Review 2310: Jane Austen at Home

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Although I read Claire Tomalin’s biography of Jane Austen years ago and thought it was very good, I feel that historian Lucy Worsley’s book provides a more personal look at Austen with more detail about her everyday life. Although some references are drawn from Worsley’s knowledge of Georgian society, she doesn’t hesitate to draw inferences from Austen’s novels and letters. Further, I think she has a better sense than some biographers of when in Austen’s letters she is joking

Worsley points out how important a settled home is in Austen’s fiction. Certainly, from the time of her father’s retirement from Steventon, that is something she and her sister and mother did not have that provoked much anxiety.

It was Tomalin’s suggestion that Austen was unable to write when she was unsettled, but Worsley suggests that Austen was working on novels all along but not doing much to market them. She also pointed out some subversive ideas in Austen’s fiction that I never noticed despite how many times I’ve read the novels. In any case, she does a good job of showing how revolutionary Austen’s fiction was for her time.

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Review 2309: The Curate’s Wife

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When I reviewed E. H. Young’s Jenny Wren, I remarked that I preferred Jenny’s sister Dahlia to Jenny. So, I was delighted to find that The Curate’s Wife is about Dahlia (although Jenny’s romantic fate is also involved).

Dahlia has married the curate, Cecil Sproat, on the basis of a friendship in which she feels she can say anything. But very soon, she finds that’s not true when it applies to religion, which has not formed part of her upbringing and which she finds silly. For his part, Cecil is rigid and has been unthinking in his religious beliefs. There is also the problem that Cecil is in love with Dahlia, but the reverse is not true.

Another issue is created by Mrs. Doubleday, the wife of Rector Doubleday, Cecil’s boss. She is an unpleasant woman who already dislikes Cecil and takes a strong dislike to Dahlia. She makes it her business to listen to gossip about the girls’ mother’s inferior social standing and her affair during the war. Their mother foolishly married farmer Thomas Grimshaw at the end of Jenny Wren, hoping that would remove a bar to Jenny’s marriage with Cyril Merriman, but that only made the situation more hopeless. Jenny has gone off to live with Mr. Cumming’s sisters and father and learn about the antique business.

Dahlia begins to feel as if she missed out. After school, she was first isolated on the farm and now is living with a dedicated man doing good works. She has never even been to a party or enjoyed other types of amusements. She begins to fancy herself in love with Simon Tothill, a young man she met at a theater rehearsal.

Just as Dahlia and Cecil are beginning to understand each other, Jenny arrives without warning. She has left the Cummings and expects to live with Dahlia and Cecil. Although Dahlia is happy to see Jenny, she begins to realize just how selfish her sister can be. For his part, Cecil is a little jealous of how close the sisters are.

Dahlia’s problems with Cecil have an interesting parallel in the relationship between the Doubledays. Mr. Doubleday is easy going and tries to avoid trouble but is afraid of his ill-natured wife. Their son is returning after three years of service in Africa, and Mrs. Doubleday wants him all to herself. But she soon makes a mistake in a remark that frees Mr. Doubleday from trying to please her.

This novel takes a complex look at new marriage and the lack of preparation people have for its problems. I didn’t like Jenny any better, but I have been impressed by how far below the surface Young’s novels go.

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Review 2308: One Afternoon

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One afternoon Anna Goodhart, a widow in her mid-thirties with three daughters, runs into Charlie, a young actor whom she met years ago at some event of her husband’s. He invites her to a party. She agrees to go but almost backs out. However, she goes and they soon begin an affair. Although she doesn’t expect it to last, she is wild with joy and makes no secret of their relationship.

This is the story about a woman who begins to rebuild her own life after her husband’s death, to realize things about her marriage, and to identify what she wants her life to be. Although attitudes had begun to change for women in 1974 when this book was published, it reads like a much more modern novel. I was surprised how the people in Anna’s life, with a couple of exceptions, take her affair and her subsequent decisions.

This is a lovely book filled with mostly kind people. It explores memory and how it tangles with reality as well as the complexities of love.

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Review 2307: The Geometer Lobachevsky

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In 1950 Ireland, Soviet citizen Nikolai Lobachevsky has been working in the western bogs, trying to help a team survey the bog lands. He receives a letter from the Soviet government summoning him home to take up a “special assignment.” He knows that probably means execution, so he hides on a remote estuarial island.

Readers who look for a rousing plot aren’t going to find one here. Nothing much happens except for work and exact observations. First, Nikolai is helping with the surveying. Later, he helps farm seaweed. But he is homesick, and once he hears of Stalin’s death, he decides to return to Russia, taking a gamble that Malinkov, for whom he used to work, will pardon him for whatever sins he’s supposed to have committed.

I just felt meh about this novel, which I read for my Walter Scott project. It excels at descriptive passages, but it was hard to know Lobachevsky. Also, I am not that into strictly contemplative novels.

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A Century of Books: How Am I Doing? January 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?

Well, unlike Simon, who seems to have a huge library of unread books from just about every decade, I have just been reading through my pile, and my worst fears are being justified. Just in the first weeks, I read seven books written in 2023! I had to decide whether, on my page for keeping track, I would list just one book per year or go ahead and list every book I read for that year, and I decided to do the latter, because the former was just too frustrating. I also had to decide, because my first few book reviews for the year were for ones I read in 2023, whether to list those. I decided to do that even though it might seem like cheating, because it’s unlikely that I am going to meet this challenge at the rate I am going. And in any case, by the end of the year, I won’t have posted reviews of the books I read towards the end of the year yet.

I will summarize my progress so far by decade. If you want to see the details, see my Century of Books page.

  • 1925-1934: 4 books (however, 3 of them are for 1934—I don’t know how I did that)
  • 1935-1944: 1 book
  • 1945-1954: 1 book
  • 1955-1964: 2 books
  • 1965-1974: 2 books
  • 1975-1984: 1 book
  • 1985-1994: 0 books
  • 1995–2004: 0 books
  • 2005-2014: 2 books
  • 2015-2024: 16 books, but 7 of them are from 2023

So, although Simon said the first half of the year you could just plug in the years and later begin to purposefully look for books for the years you don’t have, I may have to come up with a plan that is more specific sooner, because random reading doesn’t seem to be working well for me.

I’ll post this report each month, so you can see how I’m doing.