Review 2167: Weir of Hermiston. Some Unfinished Stories

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I wasn’t aware when I picked up Weir of Hermiston that it was Robert Louis Stevenson’s last and unfinished novel. But unlike The Mystery of Edwin Drood, only nine chapters of it exist. It has been packaged in the slim volume I found, dated 1925, with several other unfinished novels or stories, but of the others only one or two chapters or partial chapters exist. Between most of the fragments is a note from the editor containing what is known about the fragment and Stevenson’s intentions.

Weir of Hermiston tells the story of Archie Weir, whose mother brought him up to fear and distrust his father, the Lord Justice-Clerk. As a young man, Archie reacts in a disgraceful way, possibly treasonous, to a hanging, so his father sends him to his estate in Hermiston to learn to run it. Archie is ashamed and is not socially adept, so he becomes a bit of a recluse. However, he meets Christina, a cousin, and begins to fall in love with her. He is joined by Frank, a financially embarrassed friend, who decides to give him some competition for Christina. Things aren’t looking good when the fragment ends.

The next fragment is Heathercat, about a young boy whose mother keeps disobeying the law in regard to religion—I didn’t really understand the details—to the point where his father is being ruined by fines. She is using her son, whose nickname is Heathercat, to run illegal errands and keep guard on illegal services of worship. The notes explain that this novel was going to be based on a true story about a young boy who was married to an older girl to prevent her being forced to marry someone else.

Other stories are about a beautiful wife of a wine seller who falls in love with an aristocratic customer, a prince, presumably Prince Charlie, who tires of waiting around and decides to act; a man who takes over the household of a friend who has fled the country; and so on. The fragments are set in Scotland, England, or France during the 15th to 17th centuries, except Weir of Hermiston, which is set in the 19th.

I forgot to add that my copy begins with a description of Stevenson’s death and funeral, written by his stepson, Lloyd Osbourne, who was apparently very fond of him.

I found a book composed of fragments to be frustrating, but it made me want to read more of Stevenson’s adult novels.

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Review 2166: In Place of Fear

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It’s 1948 Edinburgh, and it’s Helen Downie’s first day in her job as almoner for the brand new National Health Service. Her bosses are young Dr. Strasser and Dr. Deuchar—previously the partner of Dr. Strasser’s father—who share a house and a practice. Although Dr. Deuchar is friendly and humorous, Dr. Strasser is abrupt and sometimes rude. However, Dr. Strasser unexpectedly gives Helen and her husband Sandy a place to live—a flat in a house that was used as a fever hospital during the war. That’s good, because just that morning Helen’s quarrelsome mother threw them out.

Helen completes her first busy day and is delighted with the upstairs flat, which is clean, bright, and has an inside bathroom. When she and Sandy are trying to pull together a few odds and ends to make the flat minimally habitable, Helen finds the body of a young woman out back in the Anderson shelter. She thinks the woman is Fiona Sinclair, the daughter of her benefactor, Mrs. Sinclair.

After she alerts the police, Dr. Deuchar says the woman died from poisoning herself. He and Helen go to notify Mrs. Sinclair, but Fiona is okay. Then Helen thinks the body might be her other daughter, Caroline. She and Dr. Deuchar try to find the misidentified body but are told it was sent to Glasgow because it was the body of a notorious Glasgow criminal. However, on a second visit to the morgue, Helen learns that the girl was hanged, not poisoned, and a famous criminal by the name she was given is unknown in Glasgow.

Persistent Helen begins to uncover widespread corruption involving leading citizens in the city. Something is going on very close to home.

It wasn’t clear to me whether this book marks the start to another series by McPherson, but it has hallmarks of it. Helen is a feisty and likable heroine, and although I thought she was blind to the identity of the killer, what was actually going on in the city was harder to figure out. If this is a series, I’m looking forward to seeing more of Helen.

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Review 2165: #ThirkellBar! What Did It Mean?

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The focus of What Did It Mean? is on Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation. The novel deals principally with Lydia Merton, who has been asked to chair the committee for the Northbridge coronation pageant. This gives Thirkell the opportunity to poke fun at village committee meetings, during which very little seems to get done.

Lydia also gets acquainted with the Earl and Lady Pomfret and takes an interest in their oldest son, Lord Mellings, who at 16 is too tall for his strength, sensitive, and shy. Lydia arranges for him to meet the actress Jessica Dean and her husband Aubrey Clover, the playwright, and they enlist him in a part for their short play for the coronation, which promises to do much for his confidence.

For a while when reading this book, I thought Thirkell was starting to phone it in or that she needed a better editor. For example, there is a scene in which Lydia telephones to the Clovers to ask them to participate in the pageant. Then immediately following that, she takes Lord Mellings to the Deans to ask the Clovers the same question. Similarly, she reminds us several times of the little romance that took place between Noel Merton and Mrs. Arbuthnot when Lydia became so sick. There are also too many meetings described and no apparent romance until quite late in the novel.

However, the novel picked up as it went on, and the romance, once it emerged, was understated and touching. I finally ended up liking this one almost as well as the others.

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Review 2164: Classics Club Spin Result! The Moorland Cottage

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When I selected The Moorland Cottage for my Classics Club list, I didn’t really read what it was about. Then when it arrived—a print-on-demand novella without any extraneous information—I thought maybe it was a gothic story, since most Victorian writers wrote some early in their careers. However, it is a romance with a strongly moralistic ending.

The Brownes live in an isolated cottage on the moor. Mrs. Browne is the widow of the respected curate of Combehurst. She dotes upon and spoils her son Edward while scolding and nagging at her daughter Maggie. As a result, Edward is selfish and unheeding, while Maggie is loving and giving.

When the local squire, Mr. Buxton, who was friends with Mr. Browne, decides to send Edward to school, the Browne children meet Frank Buxton and his cousin Erminia, both about their same ages, with Frank being a little older. Both Buxton children are impressed by Maggie but dislike Edward, and Maggie and Erminia become good friends.

As young men and women, Edward has not improved his character, while Maggie is good and beautiful, used to thinking of everyone but herself. Frank falls in love with Maggie, but Mr. Buxton is strongly opposed to their engagement. Then Edward’s misdeeds complicate the situation.

I had to laugh when I saw this novel described as “feminist” on Goodreads. When I was a little girl, I detested a fairy tale called “Patient Griselda.” It was about a prince who subjects the girl he loves to a series of painful tests to see if she is worthy of him. I wanted the girl to tell the prince to buzz off. This novel is going in the direction of Griselda except it is Edward, not Frank, who is always making demands. Thankfully, the ending was a little better than I expected. The novel has a strong religious message but one that seemed wrong-headed to me.

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Review 2163: All the Horses of Iceland

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In the 12th century, Jór tells the story of how Eyvind of Eyri traveled to Central Asia three centuries before, bringing back horses that formed the stock for the horses of Iceland.

Eyvind is a trader who joins up with a band of Khazar traders on their way to Khazaria. When he sees the small, fiery horses of Central Asia, he decides to try to buy some to take back to Iceland. He is helped in these goals by his encounters with a ghost who is haunting the people of a qan.

This beautiful little novella is told in the style of myth about a time of cultural change. It is poetically written and really lovely.

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Review 2162: Shrines of Gaiety

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It’s 1926. Ma Coker is being released from jail, and it’s like a circus in front of the prison. Nellie Coker is the head of a crime family in London, the owner of five clubs that Frobisher, the new broom at the police station, thinks are responsible for the disappearance of quite a few girls.

Miss Gwendolyn Kelling has unexpectedly inherited some money, so she quits her job in York as a librarian and decides to search for her friend’s sister, Florence Ingram, and Freda Murgatroyd, both 14, who have gone to London to make their fortunes, Freda being positive that she is going to be a star. When she goes to the police station, Frobisher asks her to visit one of the Coker clubs to report what she can observe.

Niven Coker, Nellie’s oldest son, by coincidence comes upon Miss Kelling on the street after she has been mugged. He gives her a ride to her ladies hotel, and afterwards she receives her purse.

Frobisher has been asking at the office for Maddox, one of the inspectors, but he has been on sick leave. Frobisher is sure Maddox is corrupt, but what he doesn’t know is that Maddox is putting the final pieces in place to take over Nellie Coker’s clubs. To start with, there is arson.

Maddox isn’t the only one after the Coker empire. There’s also Mr. Azzopardi, who begins by trying to exploit the weaknesses of Nellie’s youngest son, Ramsey.

There are some dark deeds in this novel, but it is written with a lightness that conveys more the fevered fun seeking of the time. For a crime family, the Cokers are curiously benign, and Nellie Coker seems to be three steps ahead of everyone else. The novel is more of an ensemble piece and doesn’t have a main character, although we admire Miss Kelling and also the plucky but naïve Freda. Although ostensibly a crime novel, I found it more a portrait of a particular period and enjoyed it very much. Atkinson has based some of it on the life of Kate Mayrick, the owner of clubs in Soho.

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Transcription

A God in Ruins

Review 2161: The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare

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After the death of her father toward the end of World War II, Alice Young finds out that Evertell, the farm that has been in her family for generations, was not sold as she thought but is waiting for her to decide what to do with it. She has not been there since her mother died under painful circumstances, and she doesn’t want to keep it. However, her thirteen-year-old daughter Penn has been depressed since her own father’s death three years before, and she hopes the trip to evaluate the farm will perk her up. She also hopes the money will help pay for Penn to attend the private school she expressed interest in several years ago.

When Alice and Penn arrive at the large but dilapidated farm, Penn is enchanted. She is also enchanted by the stories Alice tells her about the family’s descent from Eleanor Dare, an original settler of the doomed Roanoke colony. Unfortunately, it was the theft of a stone, said to be engraved by Eleanor Dare to explain where the survivors of the colony went, that finally drove Alice’s mother over the edge of sanity. Penn is also fascinated by the commonplace book, written in by the female descendants of Eleanor over the centuries.

As Alice tries to improve her relationship with Penn, she is forced to face memories of her mother’s death and find the truth of family secrets.

It’s interesting to learn that this book was inspired by Brock’s fascination with the stone alleged to be engraved by Eleanor Dare, because the story of Dare, as imagined by Alice’s mother, was the least interesting part of this novel. Possibly, this is because of the matter-of-fact way it is told, with few details. The more modern story is told in alternating chapters from Alice’s or Penn’s point of view, and I found it extremely interesting and engaging. Brock proves to be an effective storyteller. I only thought it took Alice a long time to make the decision that seemed obvious from the beginning.

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Review 2160: The Prime Minister

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The Prime Minister is the fifth of Trollope’s Palliser novels and the most political so far. It follows two stories, one political and one not so much, but they intertwine.

The introduction to the Oxford World Classics edition says that Trollope wanted to write about politics but included a romance to make the book more acceptable to his readers. However, in this case, he admitted his idea of a romance was unfortunate. As a result, this novel was not as appreciated by his audience.

These days, we have bigger problems with this plot than Trollope’s contemporaries probably had. And that’s because of an anti-Semitism on the part of Mr. Wharton that seems so commonplace it’s not even commented on. As usual, I try not to judge older books by our standards, but be warned.

Instead of falling in with her family’s wishes and marrying Arthur Fletcher, who has been Emily Wharton’s friend since childhood, Emily falls in love with Ferdinand Lopez. Lopez has been generally accepted as a wealthy man and a gentleman, but no one knows anything about his family or his past.

Mr. Wharton is against the marriage, but the only reason he gives is that Lopez isn’t an Englishman and may even be a Jew. He doesn’t inquire into Lopez’s finances (which would have saved him a lot of trouble) or his background, but just refuses his permission until he finally gives up and allows Emily to marry. Slowly, we find out that Lopez has no money or any morals at all. Emily begins to learn what she has done on her honeymoon when Lopez insists that she ask her father for money after he has already given them £3000.

The political story concerns Plantagenet Palliser, now the Duke of Omnium. No one has been able to form a government, so the Duke is asked to attempt to form one, which of course would make him the Prime Minister. He tries to resist this honor, but he finally accepts it. At first he hates the position, because it doesn’t involve a lot of work on an important project, which is what he likes. He also has few social skills. He is upright and conscientious but not likable.

The Duchess at first determines to make a splash, so she begins endlessly entertaining. However, the Duke’s lack of appreciation for some of their guests begins to create problems, for example, when a man she invited to set up her archery range directly approaches the Duke for a political position and gets thrown out of the house.

One of her errors is to make Lopez a favorite, a decision which later causes problems for her husband. Despite its anti-Semitism, I found The Prime Minister to be an insightful depiction of marriage to an abuser, as Lopez separates Emily from her friends and family, belittles her, and makes all of his disappointments her fault. Even after he is gone, her behavior in thinking she has been shamed and must always bear that shame is true to the condition of an abused spouse.

I didn’t enjoy the political story quite so much but felt it to be insightful about people’s behavior in a political environment. I also like the ebullient, incisive Duchess.

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Review 2159: Miss Iceland

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I was so entranced by Miss Iceland that I ended up reading it all in one day.

It’s 1963, and Hekla is leaving home at 21 to go live in Reykjavik and become a writer. She has plans to stay with her best friend Jón John Johnsson, while he is at sea, and she also has another friend there, Ísey, a young mother.

Hekla gets a job waitressing in a hotel restaurant, but when middle-aged men try to grope her, she is told to put up with it. One man repeatedly tries to get her to enter a Miss Iceland competition. She is not interested but later learns that another girl who entered was raped by one of the presenters. She really only wants to write, read, and visit her friends.

She loves Jón John, but he is gay, and apparently 1960s Iceland is no place for a gay man. He brings her clothes from Hull and dreams of escape.

Ísey also has ambitions to be a writer and fears that she will only have more children. Soon, she is pregnant again.

Hekla finds that in Iceland, poets are men. She gets a boyfriend, Starkadur, who is a poet and works in a library. She hides from him that she is a published poet, and when she asks about Mokka, the café where the poets hang out, she is told they don’t welcome girlfriends. When Starkadur finds out she is not only a poet but more gifted than he is, he begins obsessing and can no longer write. Still, he wants to marry her and buys her a cookbook for Christmas.

I can’t really describe what was so fascinating about this book. Hekla herself is quite detached, although not from her friends. I think it was because the story seemed real, not at all contrived. The ending is a little abrupt and unexpected, but I liked the story and wanted there to be more. The novel explores friendship, the urge to create, and the search for self-expression. It’s both delicate and powerful.

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