Review 2234: The Shadow King

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All I can say is, this is a powerful and eloquent book. It took me a while to get into it, but it was worth the wait.

In 1975, Hirut, an older Ethiopian woman, is on the way to meet a former enemy, Ettore, an Italian photographer who was part of Mussolini’s invading army in 1935.

In 1935, the great Ethiopian warrior Kidane has taken orphaned Hirut into his household. However, his wife Aster is almost insane with jealousy of her and thinks Hirut has stolen a necklace Aster gave Kidane at their marriage. In searching for it, she finds Hirut’s rifle, the only possession she still has of her father’s. Kidane, coming upon the incident, confiscates it for the poorly equipped Ethiopian army, for they know the Italians will soon invade, eager to be avenged for their 19th century humiliation.

Although Hirut’s personal situation worsens, all of them are caught up in the war. The household flees to the highlands, where Kidane and his men carry on guerilla attacks against the army of Colonel Fucelli.

Meanwhile Emperor Haile Selassi is ineffective, spending most of his time listening to the opera Aida. When he finally leaves the country, his troops are discouraged until Hirut notices how much the musician Minim looks like the Emperor. Kidane sets him up as a shadow king to help inspire his people, and his guards are the warrior girls Hirut and Aster.

In the Italian camp, Fucelli forces the photographer Ettore to record his cruelties, including the innocent people he has hurled off the cliffs. At the same time, Ettore is worried about what he is hearing about the treatment of Jews in Italy, as his father is Jewish.

I was a little confused about the women warrior theme, as at first it doesn’t look like Hirut is going to do much actual fighting. Also, it seems to be the fashion now to write about war from both sides, as though some sides hadn’t done things that were unforgivable, and I don’t have much sympathy with that. However, ultimately I was carried along by this novel and felt it was powerful. I was unaware before that the behavior of the Italians in Ethiopia was so brutal.

This was a novel I read for my Booker Prize project.

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Review 2233: News of the World

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Shortly after the Civil War, Captain Kidd, 72-year-old veteran of three wars, rides around Texas reading the news in small towns. He was previously the owner of a print shop in San Antonio, but during the war, the Confederate government forced him to invest in their government bonds, so he ended up bankrupt.

Most of Texas is very dangerous, prone to raids by Native warriors and lawless. He is in Wichita Falls when a freight driver he knows asks him to take a girl—who was captured by the Kiowa four years earlier and has now been returned under threat—to her relatives near San Antonio. The driver has found her hard to control and has no freight to take to San Antonio. The Captain reluctantly agrees.

The girl, kidnapped from German immigrants, is named Johanna and is going to her aunt and uncle. However, she remembers nothing of her previous existence and is wild about being taken from the Kiowa.

The Captain and Johanna come to understand each other on this dangerous, difficult journey of around 400 miles. They have to cope with floods and such dangers as an attack by three men who want Johanna for a prostitution ring.

I had already seen the excellent movie starring Tom Hanks, but News of the World is even more involving. I was interested to re-encounter Simon the Fiddler, who is the main character of Jiles’s most recent book. Having looked at some of her other books, I see that she has set several of them in the same area and time, with characters who make brief appearances in each other’s novels.

I just loved this book. Jiles has created two unforgettable characters, and the novel is ultimately powerful and heart-warming. Descriptions of the land are lyrical, from its harsh aridity to its lushness.

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Reading Thirkell’s Barsetshire Series in Order: #28 Love at All Ages + #27 Close Quarters Wrap-Up

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Thanks so much to the people who are plodding along with me to the finish. I have to admit that the last couple of books were not as sparkling as the rest of the series, but now we are almost at the end. So, thanks for your comments about Close Quarters.

I notice that Goodreads describes the next book, Love at All Ages, as the last one! However, all of the sources I looked at before beginning this project also listed one more. So, I’ll be posting my review of Love at All Ages on Friday, September 29, with one more to go after that.

Review 2232: Sing Me Who You Are

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Harriet Cooper’s mother has died, and she is moving to a bus made into a caravan that she inherited from her aunt. She does not own the land it is on but is certain her cousin Magda won’t sell it.

Harriet is welcomed exuberantly by Magda’s husband Gregg and more reservedly by Magda, with whom she has a complex but caring relationship. As Harriet settles in, she and Gregg exchange memories of Scrubbs, a friend with whom she is still in love although he has been dead for years and preferred Magda, Harriet being younger and plain.

Although this novel was written in the 1960s, it still deals with issues from the war. Aside from Gregg and Scrubbs having been captives of the Japanese, the town council, which Magda is on, is dealing with issues of agriculture versus home development for a growing population.

I very much enjoyed this novel about a middle-aged woman trying to start a new life at the same time as trying to sort through old injuries. I found it interesting and touching.

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

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Review 2231: Literary Wives! Sea Wife

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Today is another review for the Literary Wives blogging club, in which we discuss the depiction of wives in fiction. If you have read the book, please participate by leaving comments on any of our blogs.

Be sure to read the reviews and comments of the other wives!

My Review

At the beginning of Sea Wife, I thought, oh no, it’s in he said/she said format, which I’m already sick of. That’s not really what’s going on, though. Eventually we realize that Michael’s ship log entries are interspersed with Juliet’s thoughts as she reads them.

Juliet is home after a voyage in the Caribbean. Before the trip, she had been suffering from post-partum depression since the birth of her 2 1/2-year-old boy George (or Doodle). Then her husband Michael convinced her they should buy a sailboat and go to sea. She was terrified of this idea, having no sailing experience herself. However, eventually she agreed. Michael wanted to sail around the world, but she convinced him to sail in the Caribbean off Panama, where they ended up buying the boat, so they could stay near land. Along with them went Doodle and seven-year-old Sybil.

Michael is right about one thing—the adventure forces Juliet out of herself. It also focuses attention on their marriage. They have some lovely moments, but dread arises as we slowly realize that Michael has not returned home.

After my initial bad reaction, which only lasted a few pages, I found this novel absolutely compelling. The descriptions of their stops and of the seas are vivid and beautiful. Both Michael and Juliet have the opportunity to unearth some of their own demons.

What does this book say about wives or about the experience of being a wife?

Literary Wives logo

First I have to rant a little about how unprepared this couple were to take on this kind of trip. Michael’s teenage years spent doing a few trips on Lake Erie were definitely not enough experience to set sail on the ocean with his family, especially when Juliet has never sailed. They’re not sailing on a cabin-cruiser-type yacht but on a sailing vessel, which is much more complicated. He tries to teach her during the trip, but she gets confused about the names of things and is afraid of doing something wrong. This mid-life crisis experiment seemed so stupid to me that it took me a while to get past it. They lived in Connecticut, for heaven’s sake. As this was supposed to be his life-long dream, he could have rented a boat and taught her to sail before they went.

In any case, a sailboat, however large, is a good place to focus the mind on the family problems. Michael seems to have been breathtakingly self-absorbed during Juliet’s depression, leaving her alone with the kids almost all the time and not helping with the housework.

Michael loves Juliet, but he harbors a lot of resentment against her for being depressed and for focusing on her memories of being abused by a family friend. He seems angry that she turned out to be a different person than she seemed to be when they met, a woman he thought was brave and self-assured..

Juliet is afraid she no longer loves Michael. Her political beliefs are opposite to his and he hasn’t handled her depression well.

I like how their relationship ebbed and flowed during the trip, with good times and not so good, like a real marriage, instead of (more common with our Literary Wives books) being unrelentingly bad. Living the dream, Michael is nicer and more involved with the kids even though he is occasionally impatient and Juliet has gotten out of herself. The couple end up really having adventures, as well as working out some of their problems. But how does it end? I’m not telling.

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Review 2230: #ThirkellBar! Close Quarters

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Although it begins somewhere else, Close Quarters is mostly concerned with Margot Macfayden. Readers may remember that in Jutland Cottage, Margot was the daughter of impoverished and ailing Admiral and Mrs. Phelps. She worked hard, day in and out, maintaining their house and keeping the goats and chickens without much of a thought for herself until Rose Fairweather took her in hand. At the same time, others pitched in to alleviate her condition by visiting her parents so she could get away sometimes. Nevertheless, the wealthy, older Mr. Macfayden found her crying in the henhouse one day and proposed.

At the beginning of Close Quarters, Mr. Macfayden dies after only five years of marriage, and aside from her natural grief, Margot finds herself again at a crossroads. Her parents are now cared for, but she thinks perhaps she should live with them again. However, she doesn’t want to.

She knows the Luftons would like to reclaim the house she’s been leasing, so she starts looking for a house, but she can’t find anything suitable. No one but the readers know that Canon Fewling (Tubby to his friends) suffered a great disappointment when he learned she was engaged.

Although I found the ending of this book more touching than the last few, there were several occasions when Thirkell repeated conversations that she has not only had in other books but that had already appeared in this one, as if she couldn’t remember what she had written. The story of Mr. Wickham’s reluctant proposal to Margot is repeated three or four times, for example, while a snobby conversation about common mispronunciations occurs more than once. There is a stupid recurring joke about the Parkinsons’ last name that I don’t understand but suspect is more snobbery, and several different people opine that Mrs. Parkinson wears the pants in the family. Also, Margot’s lack of undergarments when Rose took her in hand is mentioned again.

Maybe I’m getting tired of Thirkell’s little conversational tidbits, but they seem also to occur more often. I liked the central theme of this book but disliked a lot of the chatter. And that’s disappointing, because often the chatter is amusing. Anyway, only two more books to go.

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Winding Up a Project and Starting a New One

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On thinking about the books I have read the last few years, I realized that I was reading far more British than American books, not that there is anything wrong with that, but it seemed odd because I am American. One of the reasons, I think, is that most of my projects are based in Great Britain even if the prizes accept entries from other countries. So, I decided to wrap up one of those projects and start a new one for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Even though I have enjoyed reading many of the shortlisted books for the James Tait Black Fiction Prize, I decided to wrap up that one, as the Booker Prize is a little more mainstream. I will continue to read the shortlist for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, because I enjoy historical fiction so much.

One advantage of picking the Pulitzer Prize is that I have already read several of the finalists and winners, and several of them were favorites. I will continue to read the books in the James Tait Black list until I have finished all of them from 2010-2023. I have nine more to read and eleven to review.

Those who have been following my Angela Thirkell project might remember that we only have three more books to go before we finish the entire Barsetshire series (29 books). One of those reviews will appear tomorrow. So, that’s another project that’s winding up.

Review 2229: The Field of Blood

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Ever since I read my first Denise Mina book, back in the Garnethill days, I thought I kept up with her. But it seems I might have missed The Field of Blood, which is the first Paddy Meehan book.

Two boys, 11 and 10 years old, take Brian Wilson, a three-year-old, out into a field and murder him. They are quickly found and thought to have committed the crime by themselves.

Paddy Meehan is an 18-year-old copy “boy” for the Scottish Daily News who wants to be an investigative reporter. When she reads about the story the police have put together of the crime, it doesn’t make sense to her. Why would the boys, who are from poor families, have taken a train out to a relatively posh area to kill Baby Brian when there are many desolate areas in their own neighborhood? She begins investigating and decides the boys were driven out to the scene.

Since she is not a reporter and is told to stop saying she is one, she uses the name of Heather Graham, the only woman reporter on staff. She is at outs with Heather, whom she previously considered a friend, because when the boys’ photo appeared in the paper, she recognized one as the cousin of her fiancé Sean and confided in Heather. Ambitious Heather suggested she break that story; however, she refused, saying her family would never forgive her. When Heather broke it instead, Paddy, who knew her family would think she did it, had a fight with Heather.

Heather is murdered, and Paddy doesn’t realize that because she was using Heather’s name, Paddy’s investigations have unwittingly caused her death.

Mina’s early mysteries are gritty. This one, set in 1980s Glasgow, is no exception—gritty and thrilling. Paralleling Paddy’s story is a real one about another Paddy Meehan, a thief who was framed by the police for murder.

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Review 2228: The Island of Missing Trees

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I’ve now read three books by Elif Shafak, but I always have the same problem. Some choice she makes in the narrative style separates me from getting fully involved. In this case, it’s the blasted fig tree.

In the 2010s, Ada is the sixteen-year-old daughter of Cypriot parents living in London. Her mother died the year before, and she is grieving. Her father, an introverted plant scientist who is also grieving, is not much help. Her parents went through traumatic events when they were in their teens during the invasion of Cyprus. Further, their marriage meant a break from their families, as Kostos is Greek and Defne was Turkish. Ada would like to understand more, but Kostos promised Dephne not to talk to Ada about their past.

Just before the holidays, Ada has a sort of breakdown in school, and her behavior is recorded and put on social media. She is depressed and hostile until her Aunt Meryem, whom she has never met, arrives for a visit. She is angry with her aunt because she didn’t come to Dephne’s funeral, but from her she begins to learn about Cyprus and her parents.

The chapters involving humans are separated by chapters narrated by a fig tree that Kostos brought from Cyprus. This fig tree knows all about the history of Cyprus as well as about various creatures. Plus, it is visited by numerous birds and insects, all of which have stories to tell or the tree has facts about them to impart. Every time I came close to getting involved in the flow of the story, there was a chapter by the fig tree to interrupt it. I finished the book, but I almost put it down numerous times, and I started skipping through the tree’s sections.

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