Classics Club Spin #30

~ whatmeread ~ 6 Comments

The Classics Club has announced another spin. To participate, members post a numbered list of 20 of the books from their personal lists, to be posted by this Sunday, June 12. The club announces a number, and that determines which book to read by Sunday, August 7.

So, with no more further ado, here is my list:

  1. The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole
  2. Cecilia, Memoirs of an Heiress by Fanny Burney
  3. The Moonspinners by Mary Stewart
  4. The Aeneid by Virgil
  5. Phineas Finn by Anthony Trollope
  6. Miss Mole by E. H. Young
  7. Weatherley Parade by Richmal Crompton
  8. Sleeping Murder by Agatha Christie
  9. Love’s Labours Lost by William Shakespeare
  10. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
  11. Merkland, A Story of Scottish Life by Mrs. Oliphant
  12. The Saga of Gosta Berling by Selma Lagerloff
  13. Grand Hotel by Vicki Baum
  14. The Deepening Stream by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
  15. The Ten Thousand Things by Maria Dermoût
  16. Tis Pity She’s a Whore by John Ford
  17. The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
  18. Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth
  19. Iza’s Ballad by Magda Szabo
  20. A Double Life by Karolina Pavlova

Review 1870: Absent in the Spring

~ whatmeread ~ 4 Comments

For some reason, I always thought that the novels Agatha Christie wrote as Mary Westmacott were romance novels. Absent in the Spring, however, is a character study with an edge, reminding me more of some of the novels of Elizabeth Taylor.

Middle-aged Joan Scudamore gets stranded for several days at a guest house on her way from Baghdad to London. Before this happens, there is a revealing encounter between her and an old school friend, Blanche Haggard. Joan is judgmental toward Blanche, thinks she looks old and untidy and blames her appearance on the unfortunate choices she has made in life. Blanche cheerfully admits her bad choices but says she has enjoyed her life. She also hints at something about Joan’s daughter Barbara. We realize we like Blanche more than Joan.

During the five days Joan is stranded, she begins reconsidering her self-satisfied attitude, realizing some truths about herself and her family that she has hidden from herself. It is clear to the reader that she has bullied her husband and children, but she sees her behavior as doing her best for them. She thinks she has helped them to happy lives, but she has tried to make them all do what she thinks is right.

The big question is whether Joan can change her attitude. Let’s just say the novel is much more in the Realism school than Christie’s mysteries.

And by the way, let me just state my objection to this book being relabeled under Christie’s name. On the cover of my edition, the Christie name is more noticeable than Westmacott. Although I see no harm in acknowledging somewhere that they’re the same person, this is a marketing ploy that I don’t agree with. She wrote the book under the name Westmacott, so that should be the predominant name.

Related Posts

Appointment with Death

A View of the Harbor

Tales from the Queen of the Desert

Review 1869: The Widows of Malabar Hill

~ whatmeread ~ 2 Comments

In 1920’s Bombay, Perveen Mistry is the only female lawyer in the city. She is working with her father at the Mistry law office when a question comes up about the trust for the three widows of Omar Farid. First, the family’s agent Mr. Mukri says the widows want to change the purpose of the trust from support of veterans to the establishment of a madrassa. Further, the wives are giving up their mahr (sort of a dowry) to the trust. That may not be allowed by law. But Perveen also notices that the signatures of two of the women appear to be the same. Since the women are living in purdah, Purveen talks her father into allowing her to interview the wives.

When Perveen visits the wives, she finds Mr. Mukri rude and uncooperative and only Sakina, the second wife, understands and agrees with the requested changes. Sakina is shocked to find out that Razia, the first wife, is the administrator of the trust. Razia is unaware that Mr. Mukri has filed for a change in the purpose of the trust, but she is clearly afraid of him. Perveen also finds out that the agent has not been paying the household’s bills and that the third wife, Mumtaz, is trying to hide a pregnancy from the rest of the household. Perveen believes Mukri is mishandling the estate’s funds.

This novel is being marketed as a mystery, but it is about 80 pages before Perveen goes to see the women and 120 before a murder is committed. That is mostly because Massey devotes about half the novel to Perveen’s personal life, particularly her brief marriage. It seems to me that she could have accomplished what she needed to do in a few paragraphs or a chapter, because we don’t invest much in this relationship. Perveen is afraid of her ex-husband at the beginning of the novel, but the reasons could be explained in a lot less space.

Massey does a good job of giving the feel of the indoor spaces and food and costume, but I didn’t get a good sense of what Bombay was like at this time, something that I look for in a novel set in an exotic location or other time. And, in fact, Perveen’s visit to Calcutta for the first time is an excellent opportunity to describe that city, but there is no description.

At first, too, I thought I was going to object to Perveen being too much out of her time, for I really dislike historical novels where the heroines behave more like they live in the present. This particularly bothered me in the section about Perveen’s romance, but as the novel continued, it stopped being an issue.

This is not a mystery, however. Perveen pokes around a bit, but the solution just depends on her being in the right place at the right time. It is her father who actually finds the most important clues. So, overall I was disappointed in this novel.

Related Posts

Murder in Old Bombay

Cromartie vs. the God Shiva

Nectar in a Sieve

Review 1868: The Swiss Summer

~ whatmeread ~ 1 Comment

When Lucy Cottrell’s friend takes her to visit an elderly friend, Lady Dagleish, she has no idea how her immediate plans will be affected. Lady Dagleish is sending her companion, Freda Blandish, to spend the summer at her chalet in Switzerland to inventory its contents, and Lady Dagleish tells Lucy she must go along and spend the summer in the chalet, inviting any friends she wishes.

All during her marriage, Lucy has fallen in with her husband’s ideas for a holiday, he preferring to stay in England or Scotland and near convivial friends. But Lucy has yearned for the alpine meadows of her honeymoon, for quiet and beautiful scenery, so she is surprised but delighted by Lady Dagleish’s invitation.

Lucy is thrilled to arrive at a beautiful, large chalet high up in the mountains. Although she was not impressed by Mrs. Blandish when she met her, Lucy herself is an amenable person, and at first things go well. Then Mrs. Blandish’s teenage daughter Astra arrives and makes it clear that Lady Dagleish doesn’t like her and wouldn’t want her there. Mrs. Blandish asks Lucy not to tell her, and Lucy reluctantly agrees.

Lucy finds she likes Astra but is dismayed to learn that Mrs. Blandish expects more guests—paying guests—her friend Mrs. Price-Wharton and her family, and she expects Lucy to keep quiet about it. Utta, the Swiss housekeeper, is certain these people should not be there, but she doesn’t know what to do about it.

Finally, Lucy’s own guests arrive, her godson and a friend who are mountain-climbing in the area. The two young men begin to make friends with Astra and snobbish friend Kay Price-Wharton. Lucy does not quite have the quiet holiday she desired.

This novel has some likable characters and some not so likable. It is full of the beauties of Switzerland in the 50s, and like another novel, The Enchanted April, made me want to go to its setting immediately. I had to laugh at all the references to the characters’ healthy red (or tanned) faces, though. This novel is charming, with just a hint of the sardonic.

Related Posts

The Weather at Tregulla

A Pink Front Door

The Woods in Winter

Review 1867: Literary Wives! The Sentence

~ whatmeread ~ 9 Comments

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.

We would also like to welcome a new member, Rebecca of Bookish Beck! We are so glad to have her with us!

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

My Review

Tookie spent the first decade or so of her adulthood getting wasted and falling into trouble with the law. When she was arrested by Pollux of the tribal police, though, she wasn’t even sure she had broken the law, or at least she didn’t see it that way. She had borrowed her previous employer’s van to bring the body of her friend’s boyfriend back to her from the woman her boyfriend left her for. But Tookie didn’t know the woman had taped packets of crack into the body’s armpits.

Both other women having lied about Tookie’s involvement in the crime, she had the bad luck to pull a judge who sentenced her to 60 years. What saved her in prison was reading.

Tookie’s lawyer never stopped working for her, so after ten years she was released for time served. She got a job at a bookstore in Minneapolis and married Pollux, no longer a cop.

Flora dies. Tookie describes her as the bookstore’s most irritating customer. The bookstore (which I believe is Birchbark Books, owned by Erdrich) specializes in books written by and about indigenous people. Flora was a wannabe, who claimed indigenous heritage based on a photo of an ancestor who looked possibly indigenous.

After her death, Tookie takes home a handwritten manuscript that Flora was holding when she died. It is difficult to read, but when Tookie makes out a particular sentence, she is horrified. She knows that reading this sentence was what killed Flora. She tries to burn the journal and finally buries it in the backyard.

Flora begins haunting Tookie at the bookstore. At first, no one else notices her, so Tookie is afraid she’s going mad. But then others hear her, and Tookie becomes afraid to work in the bookstore alone. The city becomes more chaotic with the arrival of Covid and later the events surrounding the murder of George Floyd.

This book explores what the living owe the dead, as well as what we owe ourselves. It is a book for book lovers and even ends with lists of favorite books, so of course it appealed to me.

Erdrich’s books can be difficult to read, but even though this one contains some tough scenes, she seems to be softening. Despite some hard subject matter, the novel is almost cozy, with a warm feeling of community centered around the bookstore, a loving marriage, an evolving family life for Tookie, and quirky, likable characters. Its overall feeling is of transcendence. It’s a lovely book.

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

I had to reread this novel for the book club even though I had just read it a few months ago, because I hadn’t read it with our subject matter in mind. On second read, I liked this book even better than I did the first time.

We should all be so lucky as to have a marriage like that of Tookie and Pollux. Although they have a few small spats, for most of the novel, the two have a warm and accepting relationship. There is a little bit of a breakdown because Tookie feels she can’t tell Pollux about being haunted by Flora, but even that turns out to be a misunderstanding.

The biggest impact to their relationship comes with the murder of George Floyd and the resulting chaos around police violence. These events make Tookie face her feelings about Pollux having been a cop, especially because when she reached out to grasp his hands after her adventure with the corpse, he cuffed her. I believe this situation is made worse because of Pollux’s own ambivalence about the events surrounding the Floyd killing and his own former career. Tookie shows her feelings subtly, for example, by not wearing the jingle dress herself but giving it to Hetta to wear, but the couple know each other so well that he understands.

Basically, their relationship is so good that they weather their problems. Troubles come from not speaking about things, but eventually everything is discussed.

Related Posts

The Night Watchman

LaRose

The Bookshop

Review 1866: The Bird Artist

~ whatmeread ~ 8 Comments

The Bird Artist, I find, is listed as the first in Howard Norman’s Canadian trilogy, of which The Haunting of L. is the third. I’m not sure I understand the grouping, since I have read several other books by Norman and they are all set in Canada, so far. However that may be, I continue to be charmed by his work even though it all seems to explore some dark places.

Fabian Vas is the narrator of the novel, and he tells us right off the bat that he has murdered someone. Then he goes on to describe his life in the remote village of Witless Bay, Newfoundland, where he becomes a bird artist and boat fixer, beginning his story in 1911.

Two complicated sets of relationships affect Fabian’s future when he is a young man. One is that between Alaric, his mother, and Orkney, his father. The other is between himself and Margaret, his longtime friend and lover. Margaret is acerbic, and Fabian seems ambivalent. Alaric hates Margaret, so she talks Orkney into arranging a marriage for him with a cousin he has never met. It is this arrangement that kicks off a series of events ending in some fatalities.

That makes it sound like a dark novel, but it is not. In fact, it has a lightness to it, in tone, in its insights in its characters. It is about betrayal and guilt but also about redemption. Another fine novel from Norman.

Related Posts

The Haunting of L.

The Northern Lights

My Darling Detective

Review 1865: Truth

~ whatmeread ~ Leave a comment

Of the Peter Temple novels I’ve read, Truth strikes me as the most hard-boiled. It has witty dialogue but not the lightness of some of the others. The ending is lighter but also cynical.

Stephen Villani has just been made the head of the Victoria Homicide Squad, and he’s already exhausted. At a brand new, very expensive condo, the body of a young girl is discovered, in her teens, maybe, and clearly having suffered abuse before her death. Villani is even more affected because she looks like his 15-year-old daughter, Lizzie, who has run away from home.

When his team begins trying to collect data from the building’s security people, they are told there was a big system outage that night because of an opening at the attached casino, so they have no camera footage and cannot tell whose key card was used to enter the condo. Also, the management is reluctant to divulge the names of the owners.

A bit later, they are called to a scene of torture and murder of two thugs in a local gang. The pressure comes down to Villani to concentrate on this crime and drop the investigation of the girl’s murder, but Villani is not willing to do that.

Besides pressures at work, Villani has other troubles. A huge forest fire is threatening his father’s place as well as the forest he and his father planted, and he knows his father won’t evacuate. His daughter Lizzie was returned home but already ran away again. His relationship with his wife Laurie is on the skids. And he is tormented by his relationship with his father, who left him alone at a young age to take care of his younger brothers but has never shown him any affection. Finally, he has kept silent about a major crime committed by a coworker.

Temple never seems to use an unnecessary word, and here the effect is heightened by the tough, affectless cops who only seem to speak in incomplete sentences. The dialogue is witty, although I didn’t understand all of the slang. This is a complex, cynical thriller about family and politics in law enforcement.

Related Posts

The Broken Shore

White Dog

Dead Point

Reading Thirkell’s Barsetshire Series in Order: #13 The Headmistress + #12 Growing Up Wrap-Up

~ whatmeread ~ 2 Comments

Thanks to everyone who joined in commenting on or reviewing or even just reading along with Growing Up. Although we met some new characters, I enjoyed catching up with some old friends. The participants were

This month’s book is The Headmistress, which I will be reviewing on Thursday, June 30. I am fairly sure I have never read this one before, so I’m looking forward to it.

And here’s our badge.

Review 1864: #ThirkellBar! Growing Up

~ whatmeread ~ 5 Comments

Growing Up takes us to Beliera Priory, the home of Sir Harry and Lady Waring. The Warings have moved to the servants’ quarters, because the Priory has been taken over as a convalescent hospital. Nearby is a secret base, and the Warings receive a request to house an officer who is stationed there along with his wife. Although they are expecting their niece Leslie on a convalescent leave, they agree to billet the couple in their larger extra room.

To our delight, the couple turns out to be Noel and Lydia Merton, and in their exchanges of news with the Warings, we get to hear about almost everyone from the previous books. The Warings have been busy during the war, but the Mertons bring a little extra interest to their lives.

Leslie’s arrival is marked by a stranger carrying her case from the station. In the dark, she can barely see him, but he turns out to be Philip White, now a Colonel, whose disastrous romance with Rose Birkett was a feature of Summer Half. Leslie finds herself immediately interested in Philip.

In this novel, we are treated to the courtship of Selina, the Warings’ maid, by three men (a private young enough to be her son, a sergeant with eye trouble who is a greengrocer by trade, and Jasper, the Warings’s mysterious half-gypsy gamekeeper); the return of Tommy Needham, the fiancé of Lydia’s best friend Octavia Birkett, missing an arm; the goings-on at the Winter Overcotes (which you will be delighted to know is near Summer Underclose) railway station; as well as, of course, the progress of Leslie’s romance. Tony and Mrs. Morland make a brief appearance as do other old friends. Another delightful novel by Thirkell.

Related Posts

Summer Half

Cheerfulness Breaks In

High Rising