Tag: 19th century

Day 359: The Yard

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Cover for The YardThe Yard contains elements that should have made it interesting to me, particularly the period, but it didn’t really grab me.

The novel takes place shortly after the failure of Scotland Yard to capture Jack the Ripper, and the police are dispirited, while the public has grown scornful of them. The body of Detective Little turns up in a trunk at Euston Square Station. Detective Inspector Walter Day is put in charge of the investigation to the surprise of everyone, as he is new to the force.

We are not left in ignorance of the identity of Little’s murderer, as he is watching the case from the sidelines. He didn’t intend to murder anyone, but Little discovered his secret. Soon another officer stumbles onto his secret and also must be killed.

Constable Hammersmith is assigned to the case, but he becomes embroiled in another incident. A thief breaking into a house finds the body of a boy stuck in the chimney and stops Hammersmith on the street to tell him about it. Directed by his superiors to concentrate on the more important case of Detective Little’s murder–the death of a chimney sweep’s boy not being considered a crime–Hammersmith continues to search for the sweep on his own time.

Another case is preoccupying Inspector Blacker. Some men have been found murdered with their beards newly shaven. Blacker thinks it is unlikely that two serial killers are loose in London at the same time, but Day and Dr. Kingsley, the coroner who is interested in new forensics research, do not agree.

This first series book sets the stage for all the recurring characters as well as attempts to recreate the chaos of the Yard. I feel it is spread a bit thin. The writing is capable rather than brilliant, although I encountered enough clichés in the first few pages to irritate me. A technique used several times of flashing back to explain something right in the middle of the action seems very disruptive and only serves to stall the flow.

Some unlikely events disturbed me as well. That two police officers would stumble onto the killer’s secret in the space of two days seems completely far-fetched. A minor incident where a family claims to have made a day trip to Birmingham seems equally absurd. I can’t imagine even in these days that a trip from London to Birmingham and back would be something anyone would want to do in one day, but back then the trains were surely slower. Such a trip may have been possible, but that the police officers receiving this information don’t challenge it seems absurd.

Almost despite myself I found myself beginning to like the major characters, but I still don’t think I’ll be picking up the second book anytime soon.

Day 358: People of the Book

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Cover for People of the BookBest Book of the Week!

I read People of the Book several years ago and remembered that it was good, but when re-reading it for my book club, I enjoyed it even more. The novel is based on the history of a Hebrew codex known as the Sarajevo Haggadah. Part of the novel is envisioned based on what is known of the book’s history, while the rest is invented.

In the immediate aftermath of the Bosnian war, Hanna Heath, an expert in the restoration of old books, is asked to restore the priceless Sarajevo Haggadah, a famous book believed twice to have been destroyed by war that was both times rescued by Moslem museum curators. The book is especially important because of its beautiful illustrations, as before it was discovered, scholars believed that old Hebrew books did not contain such illuminations.

While Hanna is working on the book, she makes observations and collects artifacts that will help trace its history. She notes that the book once had clasps that are now missing, collects an insect wing, and scrapes residue from staining.

Hanna also becomes involved with the man who rescued the book, Ozren Karaman, whose wife was killed during the war and whose baby son is in the hospital with a brain injury. As Hanna was raised by an aloof and competitive mother, though, she is poor at forming attachments.

When Hanna finishes restoring the book, she follows up with research into the clasp and the artifacts she collected. As she finds out about each item, the novel goes farther back in time, explaining what happened to the book and telling the stories of the people involved with it, until the creation of the book in 15th century Spain.

A poor Jewish girl named Lola works for the partisans in the forest outside Sarajevo during World War II after the Jews are expelled from the city by the Nazis and her family is shipped off to camps. Later she is helped to safety by the Moslem curator of the museum, who also has a book to hide. A 19th century Viennese bookbinder who is dying from syphilis steals the beautiful silver clasps from the book to exchange with his doctor for treatment. In 1609 Venice, a priest working for the Inquisition saves the book from burning but confiscates it from its owner. A young girl saves the book as the Jews are expelled from Spain in 1492.

These are just the bones of some of the absorbing stories that draw you along as Brooks imagines the history of the book. Each tale is vividly imagined and skillfully told, and they are all held together by Hanna’s experiences. People of the Book is a gracefully written and imaginative novel that emphasizes the contributions of multiple cultures and religions to the book’s creation and safety.

Day 356: Great Expectations

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Cover for Great ExpectationsGreat Expectations has long been my least favorite of Dickens’ more substantial novels, because I dislike the character of Pip. However, upon my re-reading it after many years, I’ve changed my opinion, because only in this novel does the main character undergo a complete change of his assumptions and values.

The novel begins with Pip as a young boy growing up in a vast and desolate wasteland of marshes. He is cared for by his ambitious and abusive older sister and kindly brother-in-law Joe Gargery. In the opening scene he is in the cemetery looking at his parents’ graves when he meets the escaped convict Magwich.

Under Magwich’s instructions, the terrified boy steals some food from his sister’s pantry and a file from his brother-in-law’s smithy. Magwich might have got away, but Pip tells him he met another convict on the way, so Magwich throws away his chances of escape to fight the other man, his sworn enemy.

After this odd and atmospherically fraught incident, Pip is soon engaged to entertain the wealthy but deranged Miss Havisham, an old woman who was long ago deserted at the altar and has lived the rest of her life in her bride clothes with her wedding cake rotting away on the table. Miss Havisham introduces Pip to her beautiful ward Estella, and from that time he is captured. He fails to understand, however, that Miss Havisham has brought Estella up to enthrall and torture men.

Pip grows old enough to apprentice as blacksmith to Joe, but his association with Miss Havisham and Estella has made him discontented with his lot. Soon, though, he is informed that he has “great expectations,” that an unknown benefactor has chosen him for his or her heir, and he is to become a gentleman. Pip and his associates assume his benefactor is Miss Havisham, and Pip thinks that she intends Estella to be his.

With only a few qualms of guilt, Pip throws off his childhood, including his gentle, loving friend Joe, to become a gentleman and chase after the dream of Estella. It is only through a series of misfortunes that he realizes he must learn to look at his life differently than he understood it and comes to appreciate his true friends.

I am not at all sympathetic to Pip’s desires and think the pursuit of Estella is a worthless one, but Dickens’ strengths are in his characterizations and complex plots. In addition to a cast of unusual, lovable, or repellent characters, he does a masterful job of developing Pip into a wiser and more honest man.

Day 353: Friday’s Child

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Cover for Friday's ChildFriday’s Child is one of Georgette Heyer’s funniest Regency romances. Although some of her novels are a bit closer to being “serious” romances (that is, with the emphasis on the romance, but always with witty dialogue), this novel is endearing in its plethora of foolish characters.

Anthony Verelst, the Viscount Sheringham, is a wild young man who is extravagantly wasting his inheritance on gambling and women, but his estate is left so that he cannot touch the principal unless he marries. He has fancied himself in love with the current reigning beauty, Isabella Milbourne, but he is not tempted to matrimony until he becomes fed up with his mother and her brother, one of his trustees, whom he believes is milking his estate. He proposes to Isabella, plainly expecting an answer in the positive, but piqued by his lack of ceremony, she rebukes him for his dissipated lifestyle. In a rage, he storms off, vowing to marry the first female he meets.

As he is returning to London from his mother’s house in the country, he meets Hero Wantage, a very young lady who is an impoverished orphan and a neighbor. He thinks of her as a little sister, so he has no hesitation in relating the tale of his misfortunes. When he tells her of his vow, she answers, “Silly, that’s me!” So, the heedless viscount throws her up into his curricle and drives her off to London to get married. Since she has long worshipped the Viscount, or Sherry, as he is known to his friends, and has been mistreated by her Bagshot relatives, she is happy to go.

The couple is naturally headed for trouble, for Hero is completely naïve and badly brought up, with no idea of how to behave in society. The heedless Sherry seems to feel that he can go on about his business as always without paying much attention to her, so she begins befriending the wrong people and otherwise falling into scrapes.

This novel features an outstanding cast of secondary characters, especially Sherry’s close friends–Gil Ringwood, a thoughtful young man who vaguely feels there is something wrong with the way Sherry neglects his wife; Ferdy Fakenham, a silly but warm-hearted dunderhead reminiscent of Bertie Wooster; and George, Lord Wrotham, a hot-tempered gentleman who constantly challenges other men to duels and is madly in love with Isabella. As a side comment, I think it is a hallmark of a good Heyer novel that the characters who would be the heroine and hero in a typical romance novel (that is, Isabella and George) provide some of the humor in her own novels, especially the devastatingly handsome George, with his exaggeratedly romantic behavior.

Heyer is one of my favorites for light reading, and Friday’s Child makes me laugh out loud, particularly when Ferdy gets it into his head that he and Gil are being pursued by “that dashed Greek we learned about at Cambridge. Kept lurking about in corners,” in other words, Nemesis. The characters are funny, the dialogue is witty, and the plot is full of twists and turns.

Day 323: Oliver Twist

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Cover for Oliver TwistOliver Twist was one of the first adult books I read as a child, although I believe that David Copperfield was the very first one. This book is, of course, Dickens’ famous indictment of the British treatment of and attitudes toward the poor, as followed through the adventures of Oliver Twist, an innocent and hapless young orphan.

Oliver is born in the workhouse after his mother dies in childbirth without identifying herself. He is named by the beadle and brought up at a baby farm, the intent of which seems to be to starve as many babies to death as possible. The story really begins when Oliver is 10 years old and is moved to the workhouse to begin an illustrious career picking oakum, which is unraveling and picking apart old ropes. There he is voted by the boys to be their representative in asking for another bowl of thin gruel at mealtime (or rather is the only one naive enough to agree to do it).

This act brands Oliver as a malcontent, and he is apprenticed out to a coffin maker with dispatch. His employer seems disposed to be kind, but he is bullied by a “charity boy,” Noah Claypole, as well as by the housemaid and the coffin maker’s wife. Finally, after being unjustly punished for standing up for himself, he runs away.

Oliver’s adventures lead him to London, where he innocently falls in with a gang of thieves lead by the infamous Fagin. Oliver’s struggles to make his way in life without becoming a criminal and the mystery of his identity are the focuses of the rest of the book.

Although this novel has a few amusing and lovable characters, it is fairly grim compared to some of Dickens’ later efforts. It is merciless in its satire of institutions such as the workhouse and the law courts. Oliver himself is more of a symbol for goodness than a fully developed character, yet we are touched by his plight.

It is a long time since I read this novel, and I found I had forgotten just how complex the plot is. Although I do not feel that it is as good as some of Dickens’ later works, as his first serious novel, it is compelling reading.

Day 313: Murder on the Eiffel Tower

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Cover for Murder on the Eiffel TowerThis mystery set at the opening of the Eiffel Tower has a nice sense of history and is well written, but like mysteries written early in the genre (which it is not), it depends almost entirely upon determining opportunity. There is no indication of motive until the lengthy written confession at the end of the novel–standard early detective fiction nonsense–that is, charming in earlier fiction, but not so much now. This novel was published in 2009.

People begin being killed by “bee stings” on or near the Eiffel Tower the day before Buffalo Bill arrives in Paris for the opening of the 1889 World Exposition. Bookseller Victor Legris starts looking into these incidents after he notices that Kenji Mori, his father figure and business partner, met with more than one of the victims near the time they were killed. He also begins to fear that the woman to whom he is attracted, Russian illustrator Tasha Kherson, could be involved.

I found Victor to be silly, not very good at investigating, and prone to overlooking clues. Many secondary characters are only sketchily drawn and therefore difficult to keep straight. So for me, despite all its promise and its setting in an exciting period of time, Murder on the Eiffel Tower was not a success.

Day 309: Parrot and Olivier in America

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Cover for Parrot and OlivierBest Book of the Week!

Peter Carey’s Parrot and Olivier in America is a fictional riff upon Alexis de Tocqueville’s trip to America in the early 19th century, from which resulted the classic Democracy in America. Olivier de Garmont is the character meant to be Tocqueville, an aristocrat with liberal leanings who is nevertheless an elitist snob.

Parrot is his servant, a man who has lived a colorful but frustrating life. An Englishman, he has had his life disrupted since he was a boy by another French aristocrat, the Marquis de Tilbot, who spirited him away from England after his father, a typesetter, was arrested as an accomplice to forgery.

In dangerous post-revolutionary France, Olivier’s mother has decided it would be wise for Olivier to leave the country, as his liberal leanings have offended the conservatives, but he is unacceptable to the liberals because of his aristocratic birth. She ends up shipping him off to America with Parrot as his secretary, on loan from Tilbot and instructed to report back Olivier’s movements.

But America inflames Parrot’s own democratic leanings. He believes himself to have a talent for engraving that he has never been able to develop while working as Tilbot’s servant, and he resents his status as a “vassal.” While Olivier feels that their rocky start has developed into a relationship that is almost love, Parrot affectionately? calls him “Lord Migraine.”

This novel is narrated in alternating chapters by Olivier and Parrot. It is entertaining–wittily and robustly written–although sometimes we seem to have stumbled into a Dickens novel, especially when reading about Parrot’s early life. In fact, I read recently that Carey wrote an earlier book, Jack Maggs, based on Magwich of Great Expectations, so that feeling is probably not too far off.

Day 305: The Dark Enquiry

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Cover for The Dark EnquirySome elements of Deanna Raybourn’s Lady Julia Grey romantic mystery series sometimes get old, such as the debate between Lady Julia and her husband Brisbane about how involved she is allowed to get in his investigations. This debate begins The Dark Enquiry, and eventually Brisbane reluctantly agrees that she can be a partner in his investigations, but not before she discovers for herself that her own proper, conservative brother, Lord Belmont, is being blackmailed. As a government official, he should have known better than to get involved with a lady, but especially to send her love letters. The lady turns out to be working for a foreign government.

In following up her investigation into her brother’s difficulties, Lady Julia disguises herself as a man to go to the Ghost Club, where Madame Séraphine holds nightly séances. There she is discovered by Brisbane. As they sneak back into the club together later in the evening, they are just in time to see Madame Séraphine be murdered by poison.

This novel is peopled with Lady Julia’s eccentric family, but it also features blackmail, gypsies, and spies. Raybourn’s novels are lively, and the dialog is entertaining. If we can just get over the endless debate about Julia’s part in the investigations, the series will continue to be fun to read.

Day 304: Flashman

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Cover for FlashmanHaving enjoyed Fraser’s The Candlemass Road, I thought I would give his satirical Flashman series another try. I read one years ago but wasn’t prepared to be met with such an unmitigated scoundrel as the main character.

Flashman is the first of the series, and it begins when Flashman is expelled from Rugby. Apparently, the character is based on a bully who appears in Tom Brown’s School Days, a novel I have never read but which is frequently referenced in other literature.

Flashman at a young age is already a complete scoundrel, cheat, and poltroon, so the comedy in the novel centers around his ability to be successful and eventually to be lauded as a hero despite his true nature. Having set his sights on a position as officer in the Eleventh Light Dragoons, a unit he selects as unlikely to see combat, Flashman is getting along swimmingly under the ridiculous Lord Cardigan until he makes the mistake of seducing a Scottish merchant’s daughter and being forced to marry her. To the snooty Lord Cardigan this fraternization with the middle class is unacceptable, so Flashman is forced into an Indian regiment.

Flashman is not happy to be consigned to what was then regarded as second class service, but once he arrives in India he finds he enjoys bossing around the natives and discovers in himself a facility for languages. Unfortunately from his point of view, this talent gets him assigned to Afghanistan as an aide to Lord Elphinstone just before the infamous and harrowing 1842 retreat.

This satire of the army and society reminds me of Thackeray’s more subtle Vanity Fair. I think you have to be in the mood for Flashman’s antics, but the novel is based on solid historical research and is certainly entertaining. Fraser’s prose is incisive as he cuts swaths through Victorian society and skewers the ineptitude of the British army.

Day 299: Moriarty

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Cover for MoriartyI thought the idea of a novel written from the point of view of Sherlock Holmes’ nemesis, Professor James Moriarty, was an interesting one, but since I always found the Moriarty plot tedious, I now wonder why I thought so. When I opened the book cover to find that John Gardner is the author of many, many series novels and Moriarty is one of them, I was further dismayed, not generally being a fan of series writing (although I have a small number of favorites) and being even more skeptical of someone who writes many different series. Moreover, don’t be mislead into thinking this is a Sherlock Holmes mystery–this novel is missing Sherlock Holmes entirely and it isn’t really a mystery.

The novel opens with two introductions, both putting forward the pretense that the novel  is based on newly discovered diaries of Moriarty, which cannot be reproduced because of their vile content. I suspect the truth is that Gardner found himself unable to sustain a convincing 19th century writing style, this hunch seeming to be confirmed by the modern writing style of the book and the dialogue.

The plot concerns Moriarty’s attempts to re-form his criminal empire after an absence of several years following the Reichenbach Falls incident, in which, if you’ll remember, Conan Doyle attempted to kill off both Holmes and Moriarty. In Moriarty’s absence, other criminals have taken over his various enterprises.

Although not badly written, the novel completely failed to capture me. I was not interested in any of the characters and in fact thought they made unconvincing and boring criminals. One incident early in the book that is artificially spun out by going back and forth in time and place is confusing, and such a device seems totally unnecessary.

All in all, I found the novel tedious and only finished about a third of it before quitting.