Review 1843: The Shape of Darkness

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Newly recovered from a vicious bout of pneumonia, Agnes is still weak, but she is so poor she has returned to her job as a silhouette maker. Her mother is ailing, and she also has her nephew Cedric to support. Then she notices that her last few customers have been murdered—their throats slit.

Pearl is an 11-year-old albino who up until recently has been appearing as a ghost in her sister Myrtle’s seances. But Pearl seems to have a gift herself, so Myrtle has been advertising her as the White Sylph. Certainly something happens when she attempts to contact the spirits. She, though, doesn’t know what, because she passes out.

Agnes, worried that someone is targeting her business, decides that Pearl can help her.

Although I have been enjoying Purcell’s novels and this one is creepily Gothic, set as it is in old, dilapidated houses in Victorian Bath, it took me a while to get into it. However, I had patience that paid off. I had lots of theories about what was going on, but there’s no way I could have guessed the truth.

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Review 1842: #1954 Club! Nectar in a Sieve

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I don’t usually post on Saturdays, but I had one more book that I read for the 1954 Club.

When I saw that Nectar in a Sieve qualified for the 1954 Club, I was excited to read this landmark novel. It depicts the life of poor Indian peasants, and as the Afterword of my Signet Classics edition states, nothing much has changed for them in the 80 years since it was written.

As the daughter of the village headman, Rukmani might have expected a more memorable wedding, but she is the youngest daughter, so no dowry was forthcoming and she is plain. So, Rukmani is married at the age of twelve to a poor rice farmer, Nathan, who does not even own his own land. But, she thinks as an old woman recollecting her life, her parents made a good choice, for Nathan was good and kind.

Rukmani remembers her life, a precarious one where they were never able to afford to buy the land, where one misfortune could mean disaster—and they had several.

Rukmani thinks things start to go wrong with the arrival of the tannery, which turns their village into a town and brings in many strangers. But one year of flood followed by one of drought cause starvation and worse problems when Rukmani and Nathan are middle-aged.

By coincidence, just before I read this novel, I read The Year of the Runaways by Sunjeev Sahota, about the life of Indian illegal immigrants in London. In all these years, nothing much seems to have changed except the ultimate outcome.

In some ways, Nectar in a Sieve is more like social reporting than a character- or plot-driven novel. The only character we really get to know is Rukmani herself. However, the novel is poetically written and tells a powerful story.

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Review 1841: #1954 Club! The Bird’s Nest

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When I saw that a Shirley Jackson novel I hadn’t read qualified for the 1954 Club, I knew I had to read it.

Twenty-three-year-old Elizabeth Richmond is a quiet girl with very little affect. Her mother died a few years ago, and she lives with her aunt Morgen. When she reluctantly seeks help for debilitating headaches, she is referred to Doctor Wright. After a series of baffling hypnosis sessions, Dr. Wright realizes that Elizabeth is exhibiting multiple personalities.

Elizabeth herself is restrained and has difficulty expressing herself. Another personality, which Dr. Wright calls Beth, is sweet and melancholy. Eventually, a third teasing and raunchy personality, Betsy, appears, and after a disastrous trip to New York, there is Bess, obsessed with the money she is due to inherit. Wright believes he can fuse these partial personas into a whole person, but soon they are fighting for their existence.

I don’t know how likely this novel would be considered now by those in the mental health profession, but it seems to be right up there for the 1950s. The novel is both bizarre and a little frightening and weirdly, macabrely funny, both effects which are probably intended. As to the novel’s resolution, well, that’s less likely but entirely 50s in nature.

I can see why some other of Jackson’s works are better known and more widely read, but The Bird’s Nest is still very good.

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Review 1840: #1954 Club! Destination Unknown

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I read Destination Unknown for the 1954 Club, and it is really more of a suspense/espionage novel seemingly based on Cold War politics than it is one of her usual mysteries. It is also not nearly as effective.

Thomas Betterton is just the latest of a series of scientists and researchers who have seemed to drop off the face of the earth. Although his wife Olive says she doesn’t know where he is, Jepson and his colleagues in a labyrinthian government office building think he has defected. When Olive asks for permission to travel for her health, they decide to have her followed.

Hilary Craven has left England for Morocco in the hope that a change of scenery will lessen her despair after first her husband left her for another woman and then her only child died of meningitis. But it doesn’t help, and she soon is going from pharmacy to pharmacy collecting sleeping pills. She is about to take them when Jepson bursts into her room with an alternative. The plane she was supposed to take to Morocco has crashed. She missed it and got another one, but Olive Betterton was on it. Both women are physically similar and have red hair. Will Hilary take Olive’s place and hope to be contacted, to try to find out where the scientists are even though it’s likely she won’t survive this mission? She agrees.

Although there are some complicated strands to the plot, not only is the novel not a mystery but it doesn’t feature the deft characterization or humor that are usually part of Christie’s books. Not one of her best, I’m afraid.

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Review 1839: #1954 Club! Go Tell It on the Mountain

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Reading Go Tell It on the Mountain checked off some boxes for me. Not only does it qualify for the 1954 Club, but it is on my Classics Club list. In addition, it’s been a long time since I’ve read anything by Baldwin.

Fourteen-year-old John Grimes is in rebellion. His stepfather, Gabriel, is a deacon in a Black Pentacostal church. Gabriel is a man who believes himself bound for heaven, but John sees his faults. He is self-righteous and treats John harshly while he is kinder to his own scapegrace son. He is cruel to John’s mother, Elizabeth, because she had John out of wedlock. He has other faults that John doesn’t know about but Gabriel’s sister Florence does. John sees his hypocrisy and that of the “saints,” as the novel calls the church faithful, and stands aloof from the frenzied religious services.

The novel is divided into three sections. The first explores John’s frame of mind. The second is divided into thirds, which explore the thoughts of Florence, Gabriel, and Elizabeth. Finally, in the third section, John is forced to confront his feelings in a service at church.

This novel is powerful, and its language is masterful. As I am an atheist, it’s hard for me to conceive of the characters’ mindset, in which everything is about the acceptance or rejection of God and all others are sinners. I thought it was interesting to explore this world, but I found especially the last, hallucinogenic section, and the resolution of John’s dilemma, to be a bit too much.

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Review 1838: #1954 Club! Katherine

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The latest year-based club sponsored by Simon and Karen is the 1954 Club! As usual, in this first post for the club, there are several books published in 1954 that I have already reviewed, so here they are:

Actually, I thought there were a lot more, but it turns out they were books I had read previous to my starting my blog, books like Madam, Will You Talk? by Mary Stewart, The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff, Lord of the Flies by William Golding, The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkein, Mary Anne by Daphne Du Maurier, and don’t let’s forget Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit by P. G. Wodehouse.

Katherine is the first book I read for the club. It is a highly romanticized tale of Katherine Swynford, the mistress for many years of John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster and second son of Edward III, who eventually married her and legitimized their children.

In 1366, Katherine de Roet leaves the convent where she has been raised to join her sister Philippa at court. Philippa is to marry Geoffrey Chaucer and hopes to find a husband for her sister. Soon, one appears, for Katherine is astonishingly beautiful. She is offered a marriage she couldn’t normally expect to Sir Hugh Swynford, a landed knight who is infatuated with her. She is repelled by him, but she has no say in her marriage.

Hugh is the Duke of Lancaster’s man, and Katherine finds Duchess Blanche to be a beautiful and kind woman. She is entranced by the Duchess, but she finds herself uncomfortably attracted to the Duke.

Hugh takes Katherine home to their estate, which is meager and poorly run, and basically leaves her there pregnant while he goes off to war, the Duke being determined to capture Castile and rule it. The novel details her life, and after the deaths of both their spouses, their love affair.

Seton says in the beginning of the book that she used nothing but historical fact for her story. Yet, I wasn’t quite buying it. It seems clear that Katherine and the Duke were seriously attached, but Seton depicts Katherine as sweet and naïve, without ambition. She probably had to in 1954, to legitimize having an adultress (as Katherine would have been viewed then) as a heroine. I’m willing to bet that a woman who rose from almost nothing in that age to be the second highest woman in England had some ambition. And more power to her.

The novel shows a great deal of knowledge of medieval customs, dress, and cuisine. Still, it’s so highly romanticized that I found it a little hard to take at times. What it accomplished for me was a desire to read about Swynford from a reputable biography.

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Review 1837: The Ashes of London

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London is in the midst of the Great Fire of 1666. James Marwood is on an errand for his master when he stops to watch St. Paul’s burn. He is barely able to stop what he thinks is a boy from running right into the fire. When clothes begin to burn, the resulting dishevelment reveals a young woman rather than a boy. James puts his cloak around her, and she runs off still wearing it.

The girl is Cat Lovett, whose father is an attainted traitor as a result of the Restoration. She was supposed to meet him next to St. Paul’s. She has been living with her uncle’s family, the Alderleys, but they are trying to force her to marry Sir Denzil Croughton, a man she dislikes. She is hoping her father can help her. That night, though, her cousin Edward rapes her, and she stabs him in the eye, so she runs away with the help of her servant Jem to Jem’s sister.

James is also the son of a man who was on the wrong side of the Restoration. His father is a member of a sect called the Fifth Monarchists, who believed that after the King was put aside, Christ would be King. Now frail and senile, he keeps saying things that are deemed traitorous.

James works for the publisher Williamson, but soon he is asked to meet Mistress Alderley. She wants James to find her niece, and later he is asked by government officials to try to find Lovett.

There is also the matter of two bodies that have turned up. They both have their thumbs tied together behind their backs and have been stabbed in the neck.

I decided to read this series after the strong recommendation by Helen of She Reads Novels. I found it to be engrossing and entertaining. The atmosphere of burning London is well done as is the general paranoia following the Restoration. James and Cat are both appealing characters. Although it is quite a long novel at 400+ pages, it went very quickly. I’ll just have to look for the next one.

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Review 1836: Rhododendron Pie

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Ann Laventie comes from an artistic and elegant family, all of whom are witty and have excellent taste. All, that is, except for Ann, who thinks they are wonderful but likes ordinary things and people. While her family disdains their solid Sussex neighbors and stays away from them, she likes them, especially the large and noisy Gayford family. Still, she feels she must be at fault.

A young film maker, Gilbert Croy, comes to stay and pays Ann a lot of attention. After Ann’s sister Elizabeth moves to London, Ann goes to visit her, convinced that she is in love with Croy and determined to come back engaged. But once in London, she begins to notice things. Her brother Dick’s sculptures, for example, all look alike. She absolutely adores a girl that everyone in her siblings’ group of friends shuns.

Rhododendron Pie is Margery Sharp’s first novel, and it’s quite funny as it explores the bohemian world of her upbringing versus the more mundane. Ann is an appealing heroine, and frankly I liked the Gayfords a lot better than the Laventies, especially in their reaction to Ann’s engagement. Her mother, though, an invalid who is mostly just a presence in the novel, gives a wonderful speech at the end. A fun one from Margery Sharp. I’m glad to have read it for my Classics Club list.

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Review 1835: Kidnapped

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His mother long dead and his father recently having passed away, young David Balfour is ready to set out to seek his fortune. But family friend Reverend Campbell gives him a letter from his father to take to an Ebenezer Balfour of Shaws near Edinburgh. David hopes that if he has a wealthy relative, the man will help him to a career.

When David arrives at Shaws, he finds it incomplete, almost a ruin, and Ebenezer Balfour to be unwelcoming. He is David’s uncle, but right away he sends David up a ruined staircase almost to his death. Then, once his uncle has agreed to go with David to a lawyer, Mr. Rankiller, to discuss David’s inheritance, he has David kidnapped by an unscrupulous sea captain, who is supposed to take him to work as a white slave on a plantation.

North of Scotland, the ship David is on runs over a small boat in a storm, and the only survivor of the boat is Alan Breck Stewart, a Highland Jacobite who has been collecting money for his exiled chief. He has saved his belt full of gold, but David overhears the ship’s officers planning to kill the man for his money. David alerts Stewart, and the two hold off the crew in the roundhouse, ending with a much-depleted crew. Ultimately, this results in a shipwreck.

Beached in the far northwestern Highlands, David and Alan must avoid capture by the English army while they journey to Edinburgh to reclaim David’s inheritance and find Alan another ship for France.

This novel was my favorite Stevenson book as a child, so I was curious how I would view it now. I enjoyed it very much. David and Alan are interesting contrasting characters, and the novel gives a good idea of living in the Highlands in 1751. It’s full of adventure, too, a fun read.

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