Classics Club Spin #33!

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Classics Club has announced another spin. How does a spin work? Members post a numbered list of 20 of the books from their Classics Club lists by Sunday, March 19. The club picks a number, and that’s the book members try to read and post a review of by Sunday, April 30. Anyone can participate who has a Classics Club list registered with the club.

So, here is my list for the next spin:

  1. Isa’s Ballad by Magda Szabo
  2. Cecilia, Memoirs of an Heiress by Fanny Burney
  3. The Book of Dede Korkut by Anonymous
  4. Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakespeare
  5. Miss Mole by E. H. Young
  6. Weatherley Parade by Richmal Crompton
  7. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
  8. A Double Life by Karolina Pavlova
  9. Hero and Leander by Christopher Marlowe
  10. The Tree of Heaven by May Sinclair
  11. The Tavern Knight by Rafael Sabatini
  12. The Prophet’s Mantle by E. Nesbitt
  13. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs
  14. The Passenger by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz
  15. Merkland, A Story of Scottish Life by Margaret Oliphant
  16. Tis Pity She’s a Whore by John Ford
  17. The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
  18. The Moorland Cottage by Elizabeth Gaskell
  19. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
  20. The Ten Thousand Things by Maria Dermoût

Hope some of you will join me. Have fun with the spin!

Review 2140: Postern of Fate

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Postern of Fate is the last of Christie’s Tommy and Tuppence novels. In reading them in order, I chose not to revisit By the Pricking of My Thumbs because I had posted its review several years ago. Since Christie aged these characters along with the years, in 1973, when this book was written, we find Tommy and Tuppence in their 70’s.

The Beresfords have sold their London apartment and bought a house in a small village. This activity has resulted in renovations and clearings out, as apparently the previous occupants made no effort to remove everything. Tuppence finds a lot of old children’s books, and as she’s sorting them, she naturally begins dipping into them. In Stevenson’s The Black Arrow she finds a basic code made from reading only the first letters of some underlined words. It says, “Mary Jordan did not die naturally. It was one of us.” By asking around the village about the history of the house, she finds that Mary Jordan worked for the Parkinsons before World War I. She was thought to be a German spy. Tuppence also finds the gravestone of Alexander Parkinson, the boy who owned the book, who died at fourteen.

Tommy in the meantime has met with some old contacts and found that Mary Jordan was indeed a spy but for the British side, sent to infiltrate a nest of Nazis. It’s believed that papers are still hidden in the house that would affect some people now high in the government.

Although this book has an intriguing premise, I don’t think it was one of Christie’s best. For one thing, early on Tuppence finds an object that is later referenced several times before she figures out the connection. To me, it was all too obvious just from the first reference, but it takes Tuppence another 100 pages or so.

However, Tommy and Tuppence are still a pleasing pair, and there is even some danger. Tommy and Tuppence save the day with the help of their dog, Hannibal, who was himself an entertaining character.

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Review 2139: French Braid

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In 2010, Serena and her boyfriend James run into her cousin Nicholas in the train station. James is surprised that Serena isn’t quite sure it is him and doesn’t seem to know much about her Uncle David’s family. French Braid explores the roots of this division in the family, beginning in the 50s or 60s.

It begins with a family vacation, the only one the family every took. Robin Garrett isn’t very at home on the lake. He is interested in gadgets but finally finds a fellow vacationer to talk to. Mercy Garrett gets preoccupied with her painting, and neither she nor Robin seem to think there is anything wrong with their 15-year-old daughter Lily hanging out with a college-age boy. Silly Lily thinks her new boyfriend is going to ask her to marry him. We see most of this holiday from the point of view of Alice, the older girl, who is worried about Lily. Mercy is at least attuned to her youngest, eight-year-old David, and notices that something has happened while Robin was teaching David to swim.

As with other Tyler books, the attention isn’t always focused on Alice. The next section is about Mercy and how she gains her independence after David leaves for college. Both his sisters are now married, but Lily has decided she picked the wrong man. Mercy looks for word from David, but he begins his separation right after he leaves for college, and we don’t find out why until the end of the novel.

Tyler employs some of her tropes here—the work-obsessed husband and the ditsy wife for one—and is occupied with the same generations she usually deals with. But her characterizations are always rich and empathetic, her stories always interesting. This one is right up there as she explores the intricate connections of family life.

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Review 2138: The House of Fortune

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It’s 1705, 18 years after the end of The Miniaturist. Nella Brandt is worried about her niece Thea’s future. Although her husband Johannes’s death left them fairly well off, his black servant Otto has not been trusted by Amsterdam businessmen to keep the business running. Instead, Otto has been working for an import company in a low-paying job. They are broke, and the only future Nella can see for Thea is to marry. However, there is the issue of her illegitimate parentage as the daughter of Maris, Johannes’s sister, and Otto, the servant, which the family has kept secret.

Thea has other ideas. She is young and romantic and devoted to the theater, where she has befriended Rebecca, a principal actress. But she hasn’t been spending as much time with Rebecca lately, because she is in love with Walter Riebeeck, a set painter. She disdains Aunt Nella and her attempts at an appearance of respectability, in full teen rebellion.

Nella gets Thea an invitation to a society party in hopes that she’ll meet a young man, and she does meet Jacob van Loos, a young lawyer. At the party, though, Nella believes she senses the miniaturist, whom she has not heard of in 18 years. And Thea receives a miniature of Walter.

Although I didn’t find The House of Fortune quite as fascinating as The Miniaturist, it is still a worthy successor. However, there is so much arguing in the first part of the novel that it put me off, and Nella isn’t sympathetic until later in the novel. Plus, I found Thea to be a spoiled little brat at first and her romantic tragedy all too foreseeable. However, Burton still managed to make the book compelling.

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Review 2137: Summerwater

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Summerwater is a novel composed from brief vignettes that at first seem so disconnected as to be short stories. However, connections appear slowly.

Staying in a collection of cottages on an island in a large Scottish loch are a group of disparate people. The novel alternates point of view to tell their stories over one very wet day. In between each of these chapters is a shorter vignette about what is happening in the surrounding forest.

Justine has an obsession for running, possibly to get away from her family. But she has a secret about her running. David and Mary, an elderly couple, are navigating Mary’s growing decrepitude and memory loss. Milly and Josh are an engaged couple working on their sex life, but Millie would just like a bacon sandwich. Lola, a young girl, takes out her father’s xenophobia on a little Ukrainian girl. Alex, about fourteen, stays out in his kayak a little too long. Becky, his older sister, is so bored she wants to burn the place down. Claire is so unprepared when her husband gives her a break from the kids that she can’t figure out what to do with it. And so on.

We’re told at the beginning that there will be a death, which adds to the tension. A couple of the vignettes got old—the one about sex, even though it was funny, and the thoughts of indecisive Claire. Despite the activity, I found the work slow moving and contemplative.

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Review 2136: The Secret Guests

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A while back, I tried reading a mystery by Benjamin Black, a pen name for the writer John Banville. It made me interested enough to try another book by him.

During the Blitz, the British government decides to send the two princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret, away for safe-keeping. Ireland is selected, presumably because it is neutral. Garda Detective Strafford, who is assigned to security, thinks the choice of Ireland is crazy, because there are still many people in the newly independent Ireland who hate the British, but the British involved don’t seem to know that. Celia Nashe, the MI5 agent assigned, just wants to break through the old boys club and get a decent mission.

So, Celia and the princesses are sent, otherwise unaccompanied, to join the household of the Duke of Edenmore with only Strafford for company, surrounded by a hidden detachment of incompetent Irish army men. Clonmillis Hall proves to be a castle—ramshackle, comfortless, cold, and poorly run.

No, this isn’t Cold Comfort Farm but a pretty good thriller, as the local IRA agent finds out who the girls are and notifies his contacts in Belfast. But first we see the discomfort of Nashe and Strafford, the homesickness and boredom of the girls.

Nothing much about this semi-literary thriller is predictable. The girls are lightly characterized—Elizabeth as reserved and priggish, Margaret as sly and mischievous, but still with sympathy. Although the novel changes point of view, it sticks mostly with Strafford. An interesting, engrossing read.

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Review 2135: The Tortoise and the Hare

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Imogen Grisham has a relationship with her husband, Evelyn, that is probably not unusual when this novel was written, in the 1950s. His job as a barrister being demanding, she feels it is her job to provide a stress-free home life. Unfortunately, since he is difficult to please and often impatient with her, she placates him. Her young son, Gavin, is like his father and treats her with disdain.

Imogen, who is some years younger than her husband, notices his growing friendship with Blanche Silcox but doesn’t worry about it because Blanche, a spinster, is old and unattractive, to her mind. However, Evelyn and Blanche have more in common, and eventually Imogen finds herself being excluded from occasions in which Blanche is included.

Although I thoroughly disliked Evelyn and Blanche, it was hard for me to be sympathetic at times with Imogen because she is superficial and so passive. For example, there is a situation in which Gavin has a serious problem at school while Evelyn is involved in an important case. Instead of going to school herself, she sends her friend Phil to deal with it, I assume because she believes she will be ineffectual. Even Imogen’s best friend thinks, not that Imogen should have gone herself, but that Evelyn would have respected her more if she’d interrupted him at work. Maybe there’s something about mothers going to school at that time that I don’t understand.

However I felt about the characters, this novel is a realistic portrayal of the breakdown of a marriage with all of its hesitations and heart-rendings on the one side and its self-justifications on the other. It is layered and ultimately affecting.

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Review 2134: Back to the Garden

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I know that Laurie R. King’s Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series is very popular, but I didn’t go past the first one because it’s clear to me that Sherlock Holmes, in his original form, was meant to be a misogynist. However, I have very much enjoyed some of King’s standalone novels, which tend to be atmospheric and creepy. Back to the Garden appears to be a standalone, unless it is the first in a series.

Raquel Laing is an inspector for the San Francisco Police Department on medical leave and possibly in disgrace after her use of a shortcut resulted in her injuries. However, her old boss has asked her to work on an informal Cold Case team, which recently realized that some bodies might be related and that a fabled serial killer from the 1970’s might really exist. So far, the team has found the killer by his son’s discovery of a storage locker holding his trophies. He’s a dying old man named Michael Johnstone who claims a whopping 19 murders. And Raquel has made a deal with him. For every body they find, he’ll tell them where another is.

Over on the Gardener estate, a statue made by a now famous artist when the estate was a commune in the 1970s is falling over. When Jen Bachus, the estate manager, has a contractor in, he says the base must be replaced. In the base, they find old bones and blonde hair.

Blonde women buried in concrete are hallmarks of Michael Johnstone, so Raquel arrives at the Gardener estate to begin an investigation. San Matteo County’s lab is running behind because of a triple homicide, so they don’t know yet whether the bones are male or female, but Raquel begins going through the estate archive and questioning people to look for any link to Michael Johnstone.

The investigation is made more difficult by the estate’s vexed history. The two brothers who were originally heir to the estate grew up hating their grandfather and both left—Fort to an ashram in India and Rob to a commune in Oregon. Fort was written out of the will, but Rob inherited the estate. He tried to turn it down but was eventually persuaded to take it for the commune, which was being kicked off the Oregon farm. The Gardener commune survived for about four years before failing. Just before it failed, the statue was erected. Now Rob lives on the estate like a recluse while others run it.

The novel swings back and forth between the 1970s and the present time, slowly revealing its secrets. Although this one isn’t as atmospheric as King’s other standalone novels, it’s a puzzling and satisfying mystery.

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Review 2133: The Secret River

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Kate Grenville started out writing a nonfiction account of her great-great-great grandfather’s family, but she ended up with too many questions. So, she fictionalized their story and combined it with what she had read about other Australian pioneers.

William Thornhill grows up in poverty in early 19th century London, but he sees a future for himself when Mr. Middleton, a waterman on the Thames, takes him on as an apprentice. William has grown up with Sal Middleton, his boss’s daughter, and he marries her shortly after he reaches journeyman status. However, things go wrong for Middleton, and William finds his livelihood is much more difficult to earn. Finally, he is caught stealing part of a cargo to support his family.

Although he is sentenced to death for theft, William manages to get his sentence reduced to transportation, and his family is allowed to accompany him. In Australia, although life is primitive, it doesn’t take him long to realize he can make money there and maybe return to England in style. However, when he takes a job ferrying goods from a river where settlers have begun farming, he sees a piece of land he can own by settling on it.

Now begins a conflict, with William realizing he will never return to England and Sal only wanting to return. The conflict is heightened when some of the settlers have clashes with the aboriginal people.

I was certainly engaged by this novel, and I felt that Grenville did a good job of portraying the conflicts with the aborigines. Grenville’s characters are flawed but totally believable. She looks unflinchingly at Australia’s brutal origin story, which is very similar to our own.

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Review 2132: Death of Mr. Dodsley

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On his rounds, a young police constable encounters a drunken young man late one night. The man tells him he saw a door opened and closed by a cat, so after the man leaves, the constable goes ahead checking doors and finds the door to a bookstore open. When he looks into the store, he finds a man shot to death in the office. It’s Richard Dodsley, the owner.

Inspector Mallet’s team finds that someone, possibly two people, waited in the store while Dodsley was out and shot him when he returned late to work on a sale catalog. They also learn that a mystery was recently published by Margery Grafton, the daughter of a prominent politician, the circumstances of which closely match those of the murder. It seems more than a coincidence that Margery Grafton is keeping company with Dick Dodsley, the dead man’s nephew, who worked in the shop.

The police find that Dodsley hired a private investigator, MacNab, to find out who has been stealing rare books from his store. MacNab has not been successful, but he gets more closely involved when Margery Grafton hires him to find the murderer because she thinks the police suspect Dick.

Death of Mr. Dodsley does not present us with a super-complicated puzzle , which is a point in its favor. On the other hand, characterization isn’t super important and there are a few important characters that we see almost nothing of, such as Dick Dodsley, the prime suspect. MacNab himself is a fairly laid-back character, and at times the plot seems to be moving very slowly.

Although it’s possible to guess the murderer, there is a surprise at the end that I didn’t see coming. It’s also fun that British Library has been lately publishing these “bibliomysteries.”

I received this book from the publisher in exchange for a free and fair review.

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