Tag: biographical fiction

Day 217: In the Time of the Butterflies

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Cover for In the Time of the ButterfliesIn the last days of the Trujillo dictatorship of the Dominican Republic in the 1960’s, a jeep containing the bodies of three sisters known as “las mariposas,” or “the butterflies,” was found at the bottom of a steep cliff. The three sisters were revolutionaries who were committed to the overthrow of Trujillo, and they were murdered by the regime. In the Time of the Butterflies tells the story of the lives of the three sisters, and their surviving sister Dede.

The novel begins with the young girlhood of Patria, Minerva, Maria Terese (Mate), and Dede Mirabal, narrated by each girl in turn. As life under the regime becomes more difficult and the sisters grow older, one by one they become radicalized until they and their husbands are actively taking part in an underground movement working toward a revolution. The novel depicts their lives in prison and the final days when their husbands are moved to a new prison precisely so the sisters will be forced to drive up that fateful road to visit them.

The novel certainly is interesting and kept my attention, but it was vague in a way that is difficult to describe. I think it assumes a larger knowledge than I have of the state of affairs in the Dominican Republic at that time. Ironically, I also feel as if it downplays the acts of the regime. In my investigations after reading the novel, I learned that the Trujillo regime was responsible for the murders of many people, but the book was not effective in conveying that or the other atrocities committed by the government. Reviews of the book remark that it captures the terror of the time under the regime, but that is exactly what I feel is lacking.

Day 181: Clara and Mr. Tiffany

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Cover for Clara and Mr. TiffanySusan Vreeland’s Clara and Mr. Tiffany is a novel about Clara Driscoll, a real artist who headed a woman’s workshop designing the most complex lamps and screens for Louis Comfort Tiffany. The novel details the ups and downs of a long professional relationship, including Driscoll’s frustration at not being recognized as the designer of some of Tiffany’s most famous pieces. A lot of the interest in the novel resides in the tension between the women’s division and the men’s division, which was only allowed to work on the more mundane pieces.

Right now I am reading some of Vreeland’s own comments about the captivating woman she found depicted in Clara’s own letters. Unfortunately for the novel, Vreeland does not do a great job of making her characters interesting in this book or of conveying the woman she found in those letters. Several important but minor characters are so undefined that I couldn’t keep them straight.

I believe that Vreeland is hindered rather than helped by the fact that she is fictionalizing the lives of real people whose relatives are probably still alive. She has written more successful books about artists who lived farther in the past–Monet in Luncheon of the Boating Party and Artemisia Gentileschi in The Passion of Artemesia, for example. There are certainly interesting aspects to the story–Driscoll had an unusual life featuring at least one bizarre event–but the novel is written more like a series of incidents than a narrative with an arc.

Day 152: The Master

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Cover for The MasterThe Master, Colm Tóibín’s engrossing novel about Henry James, is virtually plotless. Over the course of five years, James works, visit friends, and remembers significant events in his life and people who are important to him. At the same time he muses on how the people, tales they tell, or incidents he has observed have informed or will inform his writing.

I have often found James’s work perplexing, feeling as if there is a lot going on under the surface that I don’t understand. A novel about him, therefore, is not an intuitive choice for me. Nevertheless, I found myself extremely involved in this story about a man who appears to have always stood back and watched. In Tóibín’s view, James lived a life of “pure coldness.”

The book delicately depicts a complex man, social on the surface but always at an emotional remove from others, homosexual but so concerned about propriety and public opinion that he never acts on it (perhaps–that is not entirely clear) and avoids situations where he may be tempted. He is sometimes very cold in his inaction, such as when he deserts his best friend, Constance Fenimore Woolson, because she has been too open for his taste about their completely innocent relationship, causing some friends to blame him for her subsequent suicide.

The most fascinating part of the novel, in my opinion, is how it illuminates the way that a writer may take a situation, a sentence, thoughts about how a pair of people interact, and turn them into a complete work of fiction. For example, a tale told to him about two children alone on an estate reminds him of his relationship with his sister Alice. As children, both of them had been abandoned as their family toured Europe and have never been fully included in the events and emotions of the family. These memories finally emerge in the ghost story “The Turn of the Screw.” Similarly, his memories of his intelligent, vivacious cousin Minny Temple are brought back to life in first The Portrait of a Lady and then The Wings of a Dove.

Meticulously researched and beautifully written, The Master is an evocative novel about the inner life of an emotionally crippled writer.

Day 84: Bring Up the Bodies

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Cover for Bring Up the BodiesBest Book of the Week! Year!

If Wolf Hall was a wonderful historical novel, Bring Up the Bodies is masterly. In this second of a trilogy, Hilary Mantel continues the story of Thomas Cromwell. Bring Up the Bodies is more focused than the last book, because it deals with a much shorter time period and defined subject–the downfall of Anne Boleyn.

The writing is elegant and impeccable. I have read a few comments that Wolf Hall was sometimes difficult to follow because the readers could not always tell who was meant by “him” or “he.” Mantel has written both books using a strict third person limited point of view, from that of Cromwell, and people don’t think of themselves by their first names. Hence, the difficulty, which I did not notice as a problem in Bring Up the Bodies. This technique is very difficult to employ successfully–we are much more used to a third person that changes from character to character or even to third person omniscient. But Mantel uses it effortlessly to create a memorable character in Cromwell–kind but implacable, one who fosters the growth of others but does not forget the crimes and indignities committed against Cardinal Wolsey, whom he loved as as a father.

Henry VIII has already decided he wants to rid himself of Anne Boleyn and marry Jane Seymour, but Anne has one more chance. She is carrying a child, and if it is born alive and is a boy, she is safe. Henry must have an heir, and he has decided that if he hasn’t been given one, God must have found some fault with his marriage to Anne just as there was one for his marriage to Katherine of Aragon. Thomas Cromwell must find him some way out of his difficulties.

Of course, Cromwell helped Anne to her position in the first place, but the Boleyns have made many enemies in their enjoyment of power, and they have treated him with disdain. More importantly, Anne Boleyn destroyed the Cardinal, and her brother mocked him in his downfall.

From the moment you begin reading, you find yourself plunged into the Tudor world of shifting politics and intrigue. Of course, we know what happens to Anne Boleyn, yet the novel maintains its suspense. The Boleyn and Howard families are going to suffer a huge defeat, but they will go down fighting.

Day 77: Wolf Hall

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Cover for Wolf HallBest Book of Week 16!

This is a good time to write about Wolf Hall, because I was thrilled to learn that Hilary Mantel’s sequel to it has just come out. My copy is arriving soon. Mantel is always an interesting writer whose work does not occupy any one genre, although her last few books have been historical fiction. Wolf Hall won the Man Booker Prize and was one the best books I read in 2010.

The novel looks at the political and religious machinations of Henry VIII through the eyes of Thomas Cromwell, who rose from low origins to become Henry’s chief minister. Although Cromwell has traditionally been viewed as Henry’s “heavy,” recent historians have looked at his career more kindly, showing that his work as chief minister brought England into more modern statehood and that his changes created more order for government functions that were less controlled by the whims of nobility.

Mantel depicts Cromwell as a loyal man who cares for his dependents and works to reform England. He builds up a great household as he moves from the position of secretary to Cardinal Wolsey to work for the king. Later, after the Cardinal’s downfall, he slowly, almost imperceptibly, works to bring down those who furthered their own interests by destroying the Cardinal, including the rapacious Boleyns.

Cromwell is loving to his family and friends, completely faithful to the Cardinal and then to Henry, intelligent, able in many spheres of work, and decent. Mantel paints a charming pictures of his home life. In contrast, she turns the tables on Thomas More, venerated for centuries, showing him as a sadistic torturer of Protestants who is in love with his own martyrdom.

Cromwell meets Jane Seymour when she is a young, lonely lady’s maid to the queen, teased and neglected by the rest of the court, and feels pity for her. Later, after he is long widowed, he falls in love with her. The title of the book is the name of her ancestral home, Wolf Hall.

Mantel’s approach is understated, leaving the reader sometimes to connect the ideas. The details in this novel seem completely authentic, and Mantel handles the period brilliantly. She somehow manages to generate tension and suspense even about things we know all about, like what will happen to Anne Boleyn.

Day 75: Doc

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Cover for DocThanks go to my friend K.C. for recommending this book. Writing a very interesting tale of a tragic life, Mary Doria Russell does a good job of staying true to the facts while fictionalizing what she can’t know in Doc, the story of Dr. John Henry (Doc) Holliday.

Russell begins with Holliday as a young boy, delicate, raised as a Southern gentleman and educated by his mother. Although he is frail, he shows much promise for his intelligence, grace, and wit, but his chances are hurt first by the Civil War, which ruins his wealthy family, then by the tragedy of his mother’s death caused by sickness and starving, and finally by tuberculosis.

Already by the time he sets off in his early 20’s for Dallas to work in a dentistry practice, he is ill. Shortly after he arrives, a major collapse in the world economy causes him to lose his job and casts him adrift to live as best he can. Gambling and the hope of starting his own practice bring him to Dodge City, and the Earps bring him to Tombstone for the famous gunfight.

Russell does a great job of depicting Doc: a soft-spoken gentleman with a wicked tongue, generous to his friends, profligate with his money, a fine pianist, and patient with his rapacious prostitute mistress Kate, who also fell far from a proud background.

Russell also fills out the characters of the Earps, especially happy, kind Morgan and the rather thick-headed, upright Wyatt. Bat Masterson appears as self-aggrandizing, responsible for falsely depicting Doc in the media as a hardened killer.

Russell’s approach is a little disorienting. She periodically changes her narrative style to sound more like an old codger telling a yarn and at other times sounds like she is writing a nonfiction biography. It is hard to tell whether she makes these style shifts purposely or has trouble removing herself from her source material. Although most of the book is chronological, she occasionally plays with time by going back to tell about a character’s earlier life.

Overall, Doc is a sympathetic, involving effort.

Day 38: The Winter Palace

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Cover for The Winter PalaceBest Book of Week 8!

The Winter Palace by Eva Stachniak is an excellent, absorbing historical novel that captures the rise of Catherine the Great.

Barbara (Varvara) Nikoleyeva is the daughter of a Polish bookbinder who takes his family to St. Petersburg hoping for opportunity. It is the years of the reign of Empress Elizabeth, the daugher of Peter the Great, who has wrested the empire from her nephew, the rightful heir, Ivan, and placed him in prison. Years ago, Varvara’s father had bound a badly damaged book owned by Elizabeth, and Varvara’s mother, an artistocrat who has married beneath her, urges him to draw himself to the Empress’s attention. The family’s move is a success until both Varvara’s parents die, and as a young woman she begs a place at court from Elizabeth.

The court is full of secret passages and peepholes. Nothing is private, and many people are paid to listen, poke through others’ belongings, and inform. Varvara finds herself employed as a spy, or nose, for the Chancellor Bestuchev. She does not wish for this position but finds it a way to keep favor, as in the volatile atmosphere of the court, one needs to keep in with the right people. Even the position of princes and princesses can be precarious, and Varvara has no social status.

Varvara is new to court when the Empress imports Sophia Anhalt-Zerst to consider her as a possible bride for her heir, the childish Peter Fyodorovich. Varvara’s sympathies are caught immediately as she watches Sophia navigate the treacherous shoals of the temperamental Empress, Sophia’s own selfish and conniving mother, and the foolish Peter. Despite her mother’s plotting, which almost gets her thrown out of the country, Sophia converts to Russian orthodoxy, taking the name of Catherine, and eventually marries Peter.

Varbara becomes close to Catherine and supports her even as she is ignored and then cruelly treated by her husband and loses her status with the Empress and the court when, because of Peter’s impotence, she fails to conceive.

The life of the Russian court is vividly depicted in this enthralling novel, where Catherine’s rise to power is paralleled by the building of the magnificent Winter Palace.

Day Twelve: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

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Cover for A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering GeniusBefore I start this review, I have to apologize for the untimely posts this week. I’ve told several people that I would try to post a review every weekday during my lunch, but lately we’ve been having a lot of Internet outages. So, I’m posting when I can.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is based upon true events of Dave Eggers’s life. When he was 22 years old, his mother and father died within months of each other, leaving his family to split up and himself in charge of his eight-year-old brother, Toph. They live in bachelor squalor while Eggers obsesses. Eventually, they move to San Francisco, where he becomes a founder of Might Magazine.

I didn’t read this book for a long time because I was put off by its title, but it received so many good reviews that I finally picked it up from curiosity. I have to preface my remarks by saying that I have lately gotten some clues that I don’t understand modern humor (i.e., I am officially a geezer), especially when I’ve tried to watch movies that are dubbed “hilarious.”

Readers might get a clue about how this book is going to proceed from its set of “Rules and Suggestions for the Enjoyment of this Book.” One of them is to skip the middle of the book. Good suggestion.

I found the first 100 pages or so about his parents’ deaths and his subsequent struggles affecting and absorbing. However, this is one of the few books that I just couldn’t finish. I found it so juvenile and smug that it was absolutely grating, but that’s not why I stopped. When Eggers abandons his straight narrative, he begins musing, and his prose devolves into unbelievably long, rambling paragraphs. His approach has been deemed “inventive” and even “the memoir as metafiction” (yikes!). I was actually only 30 pages from the end of the book when he started another of his lengthy asides, and I just couldn’t take it anymore. I gave up.