Tag: England

Review 2728: Held

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Held is a poetic musing on some deep subjects framed in the fluid story of mostly one family, with a perplexing few sections about Marie Curie. It begins during World War I and goes forward for some time before looping backward and forward between (mostly) descendants and ancestors.

Returning painfully disabled from World War I, John reopens his photography studio. John and his wife Helena have a deep connection, but John is troubled by his war experiences. After he hires an assistant, an image that shouldn’t be there appears in a photograph, making him wonder if some essence of the dead exists after death.

John and Helena’s story takes up about a third of the book, and then we travel forward to 1951 and a very short section in which Helena agrees to model for a famous artist and awakens her own artistic tendencies, buried since the death of John. We also briefly meet their daughter, Anna.

Then it’s 1984, and Peter, Anna’s partner, is relieved to welcome home his daughter Mara, a doctor who works in war zones. Mara has met Alan, a journalist, who seems to share with her the same deep loving connection that each member of this family has with the others, and with their friends.

These are some of the bones of the stories, but these characters are thinkers as well as feelers, and they consider some weighty subjects. Nature is also intimately entwined in these stories.

I understand that many readers have found this novel difficult, especially because of its fluid structure and many characters. None of this bothered me, but I am not a person who dwells on the meaning of life, so I felt I was missing a lot of the more esoteric content. I still enjoyed it. It’s absolutely beautiful, and the kinds of relationships depicted are to be admired. The characters are good and kind.

I read this for my Booker Prize project.

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Review 2727: Lessons in Crime: Academic Mysteries

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Another British Library Crime Classics volume features mystery stories set in schools. Many of these seem a little more benign in general than their usual collections, only a couple featuring actual murders. In fact, it’s almost halfway through the book before we encounter an actual murder, although earlier there is an attempted one.

In “The Greek Play” by H. C. Bailey (1932), Reggie Fortune’s goddaughter invites him to her school play because she thinks something disturbing is happening. It is.

Sherlock Holmes and Watson visit a school from which a wealthy man’s son has disappeared in “The Adventure of the Priory School” by Arthur Conan Doyle (1904).

Another student disappears in “The Missing Undergraduate” by Henry Wade (1933).

I really enjoyed “The Gilded Pupil” by Ethel Lina White (1936) about a governess who is unwittingly used to trap a wealthy man’s daughter.

“Murder at Pentecost” by Dorothy L. Sayers (1933) doesn’t feature Lord Peter Wimsey but Montague Egg, and some schoolboys help solve the murder of the master.

Schoolboys assist again in the search for a diamond hidden in what was once a private home but is now a school in “Ranulph Hall” by Michael Gilbert (2000).

It’s Raffles versus an old school nemesis during a reunion in “The Fields of Philippi” by E. W. Hornung (1905).

The anatomy professor is substituted for the corpse in “Lessons in Anatomy” by Michael Innes (1946).

I intensely disliked Detective Chief Inspector Dover in “Dover Goes to School” by Joyce Poster (1978). Fat, slovenly, lazy Inspector Dover seems to solve the crime by accident in a story I think was supposed to be funny.

“When the Deaf Can Hear” by Malcolm Gair (1959) is an almost too basic story about the disappearance of some club money.

“Low Marks for Murder” by Herbert Harris (1973) follows languages master George Faraday as he plots to murder the headmaster.

The three most repellent sixth formers in existence form the main characters in “The Harrowing of Henry Pygole” by Colin Watson (1974).

“Dog in the Nighttime” by Edmund Crispin (1954) is very short, as Gervase Fen expeditiously solves the mystery of another missing diamond.

Headmaster Richard Lumsden’s cruelty to a boy is repaid in “Battle of Wits” by Miriam Sherman (1968).

Finally, “The Boy Who Couldn’t Read” by Jacqueline Wilson (1978) features another cruel instructor.

Some of these stories of comeuppance are too far over the top, and at least one story is so abbreviated that it made me think it might be an incident taken from a longer book. In general, like all such collections, the stories are mixed in interest and craft. Overall, the feel of the volume is a little more lighthearted than usual with these collections, with some exceptions that are notably cruel.

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Review 2726: The Land in Winter

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For Britain, the winter of 1962-3 was one of the coldest on record, with massive amounts of snow in some areas. Miller has set his novel in a rural area near Bristol where two young married couples are neighbors.

Eric Parry is the local doctor. His wife Irene is early in pregnancy, but he is also having an affair with a wealthy married woman. Irene, somewhat isolated in their country home, is feeling her separation from her sister Veronica, who is in the U. S.

Next door are Bill and Rita Simmons. Bill is the son of a wealthy immigrant who has left his father’s world behind to become a farmer. Rita is about the same distance along in her pregnancy as Irene. She is a lively girl with a dodgy past, but she is haunted by voices, and her father is resident at a nearby asylum.

Rita comes calling on Irene, and the two women get along well. Irene finds Rita pulling her out of herself and getting her out of the house.

Both of the households have some class differences, although they are noted rather than seeming to cause problems. Irene is quite posh in origin, whereas Eric’s father was a railroad worker. Bill has attended university and seems to be a bit ashamed of his father, who is a slum landlord, while Rita’s past hints at darker things.

This novel was more moody than anything else. For some reason, perhaps in time setting and themes, it reminded me of The Ice Storm (although that is set ten years later), the movie not the book, which I haven’t read. There’s the sterile life of the housewives, the weather, the rowdy party, and the infidelity.

Of the books I’ve read by Miller, this is not my favorite, but it is certainly atmospheric and had me genuinely worried about some of its characters. I read it for both my Walter Scott Prize project and my Booker Prize project.

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Review 2721: Beggar’s Choice

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I had difficulty reading this book after the first few pages, because it was so obvious that someone was trying to frame the main character, without him realizing it, that it was painful to read.

Car Fairfax is down and almost out. First, his father lost the family fortune, and then Car took a job with a man who mishandled other people’s money. Since then, every time he’s landed a job, he’s been let go.

He is out walking after losing his latest job when someone puts a leaflet in his hand about an opportunity to earn £500. He notices right away that the boy is handing out leaflets for something entirely different, so he figures he was purposefully given the one he got. Shortly afterward, he gets two requests for £500. His friend Peter’s wife Fay asks him for it and his cousin Anne, whom he distrusts, tells him she has forged a check for that amount and wants him to go to jail for her. He says no to both women but responds to the job. He has also run into Isobel, with whom he is hopelessly in love.

The writer of the ad, calling himself Z10, sets an assignation, which Car keeps. He is driven out to his uncle’s neighborhood, where someone shines a light in his face just as the doctor drives past to see his uncle, and later Anna shows the doctor apparent evidence that there’s been a break-in at her house.

Car hasn’t met Z10 on the rendezvous, but he thinks he has until he actually meets him and Z10 apologizes for missing the meeting. Z10 puts him on retainer and gives him money to buy new clothes and socialize.

Although it was clear to me that Anna is trying to set Car up and Fay seems to be in on it, I wasn’t sure of Z10. I was still dreading what was coming until a new character appears—an American friend of Peter’s named Corinna. She is a breath of fresh air. She immediately begins wondering why Car keeps losing jobs. The only problem with Corinna is that she is a much more interesting character than Car’s love interest, Isobel.

This novel becomes a complex adventure story as someone is clearly out to get Car and he remains mostly oblivious for a while. Once I got over my initial dread, I enjoyed it a lot.

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Review 2717: Death in Ambush

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I think I intended to review this book at Christmastime, but somehow it got lost in the pile.

Death in Ambush is particularly enjoyable, because it is narrated by Lee Crauford with a particularly light touch. She has apparently been a major character in at least one other mystery by Gilruth at the start of this novel.

Lee’s friend Betty Sandys invites her and her husband Bob for Christmas, but Bob can’t leave work until Christmas Eve, so Lee goes on ahead. On her first evening at Staple Green, Lee meets several people at a cocktail party. They are Betty’s good friend Lady Metcalfe, Diana, whom everyone likes, and her much older husband Judge Metcalfe, whom everyone dislikes for his general rudeness and cruelty to Diana. There is Judge Metcalfe’s son Michael, who wants to be an actor against his father’s will, and his fiancée, Ann Quathough, who is an actress and has an unguarded and sometimes nasty tongue. Ann’s father Lewis Quathough, an eccentric art dealer, is there, as well as John Wickham, the Metcalfe’s agent, whom everyone knows adores Diana. Finally, Sonia Phillips, a new arrival in town and a quite glamorous woman, appears late and comes in through the surgery, as Howard Sandys is a doctor. There is a lot of wandering around that evening, and sure enough, Judge Metcalfe becomes ill of an apparent stroke and dies a few days later. But Howard has his doubts, and it turns out Metcalfe was poisoned with morphine, apparently at the party.

Soon Lee’s friend Detective-Inspector Hugh Gordon is on the case. Things begin looking bad for Diana even though everyone who knows her insists she couldn’t have done it.

I was fairly sure I knew who did, although I couldn’t puzzle out the alibi issue, and I was right. But I think it was more of an instinctual than reasoning guess, and once one character was ruled out, I knew I was right. But this is a mystery with a really light touch and mostly likeable characters. I enjoyed it very much. Interestingly, Lee’s husband Bob doesn’t even appear in the book, and there are some hints that the detective is in love with her. I would quite like to see where this goes, if anywhere, but I understand that Gilruth’s books are hard to find. And indeed, Abebooks only has this edition.

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Review 2709: The Town House

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The Town House is the first book in Norah Lofts’ Suffolk Trilogy. Fairly early in the book, a 14th century serf, who later calls himself Martin Reed, escapes from his manor with the knowledge that if he can live in a walled city for a year and a day without being captured, he is free. With him is Kate, the young woman he intends to marry.

The novel follows three generations of Martin’s family. At first, everything he tries comes to nothing. Already trained as a smith by his father, he serves an extra year of apprenticeship only to have the guild decline to make him a member, which means he cannot be a smith. Hired by a carter and asked to privately shoe horses, his work is discovered and the guild attacks him and leaves him for dead. All these years, his family lives in abject poverty. It is not until he does a favor for the church that he finally gets an opportunity, but it is too late to save his family from tragedy.

The book is divided into five parts, from the point of view of different characters. The first is Martin himself. The second is Old Agnes, a homeless woman he takes as housekeeper after the tragedy. The third is Anne Blanchefleur, the young woman of good family but no fortune who marries Richard, the now wealthy Martin’s son. The fourth is Maude Reed, Martin’s granddaughter. The fifth is Nicholas Freeman, Martin’s secretary.

Although the beginning of this book is almost identical to that of Cathedral of the Sea (The Town House is written earlier), I was more involved in The Town House. Martin’s prosperity and home are built on tragedy and betrayal. This is a story of complex characters, many with deep faults. I found it interesting in both the story it told and in the background details about Medieval life, especially in the section narrated by Maude, who goes to live for a time in the household of a wealthy and noble cousin. I have already ordered the second book in this series.

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Review 2707: #ReadingIrelandMonth26! Oscar Wilde

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This book isn’t written by an Irishman, but since it is about an Irish writer, I think it qualifies for Reading Ireland Month. Thanks to Dean Street Press for providing this interesting biography of Oscar Wilde, originally published in 1976.

Oscar Wilde has always seemed to me a fascinating and tragic figure. He was well known for his wit and perfect sentences. I have often considered whether his remarks were studied, but contemporaries seemed to believe that they were all extemporaneous, which is amazing.

Sheridan Morley’s biography of Wilde is not the exhaustive kind that ends up submerged in trivial details. Instead, it is short, appears to be aimed at the general public, and provides just enough information along with a few quotes from his work or writings about him. It’s well written and moves along nicely.

I have read details of his disgrace before, but this novel deals a lot less harshly with Lord Alfred Douglas’s part in it. It makes a point that Wilde had been behaving recklessly, apparently under the impression that he was so popular he was untouchable.

Of course, Wilde’s trial and imprisonment are great travesties of British justice and losses to British literature. As he wrote in the years before the event four major comedies (the point made that they were the only major English comic plays written in the 100 years before), who knows how many other works—and what kind—he could have produced?

This is an enjoyable and interesting book about a man who was determined from a very young age to be either famous or infamous, so he said, and achieved both.

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Review 2699: The Art School Murders

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In Morosini’s floundering art school, the body of a model, Althea Greville, is found behind the dressing screen. She was apparently murdered just after the life class in which she modeled. Inspector Hugh Collier, brought into the case early on, finds that she had worked for the school the year before, causing some havoc in the hearts of men because of her attractiveness, even though not young. However, now she seemed a little desperate.

Leaving school the day of the murder are two first-year students, Betty and Cherry. Betty runs back to get her scarf and later teases Cherry about something she’s seen but won’t tell her. The next day, Betty skips school to go to the cinema and is found murdered in the balcony.

Finally, after Cherry tells Mr. Kent that Betty may have confided in Emma, her aunt’s servant, Emma is found badly injured. Collier ends up with five suspects, including Mr. Kent, Kent’s sulky nephew Arnold, and Morosini himself.

This book is entertaining and moves along quickly. It isn’t exactly fair to the readers, because there is almost no hint of the motive before the end. However, I still found it fun to read.

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Review 2694: #ReadIndies! The Spring Begins

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I didn’t think a press for a large library would be considered independent, but I guess it is, so I have another book that qualifies for Reading Independent Publishers Month.

The focus of The Spring Begins is unusual, especially for when it was published in 1934. It is about the awakening, the possibility of romance, for three women. But they are the women usually behind the scenes—a young housemaid, a young nursemaid, and a middle-aged day governess.

Lottie, the nursemaid, is 19 years old and straight out of an orphanage. She loves the two little girls she’s in charge of as well as their baby brother, but she is afraid of Nurse. She knows nothing of men, but Nurse has been horrifying her with stories about how nasty they are and what horrible things they do, so that she can barely bring herself to look at them. But there is a nice young man who works around the grounds named George.

Maggie, the kitchen maid and scrubber, has even less status in the house than Lottie. But she is a fierce, strong girl who hates Cook but is confident of her own attractions. She feels a strong pull toward Maxwell, the gardener, even though she knows he is not the marrying kind.

Hessie is the daughter of a deceased clergyman who helps out the vicar’s wife and acts as governess to her children. She is obsessed by her own gentility and her hopes for Mr. Saul, the curate. But she behaves artificially with him, and it’s clear that he’s not interested. Hessie finds herself adrift when she learns that her younger sister, Hilda, is engaged to her long-time boss. Hilda is fulfilling their mother’s only ambition, and Hessie notices how their mother begins to spoil Hilda and ignore Hessie. She is eaten up with a combination of jealousy and sadness that her relationship with Hilda will never be as close. Also, she is being disturbed by her own unruly thoughts about relations between men and women.

Of the three women, I liked Hessie least because she is constantly judging other people and thinking about her own behavior as a lady. I liked her better, though, after a crucial event toward the end of the novel.

I found this novel interesting, but sometimes my attention wandered from it. It is vividly written, though, and its characters are believable.

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Review 2692: Death at the Sign of the Rook

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Jackson Brodie is in his 70s now but still working as a private detective. He has taken a case from Hazel and Ian Padgett, who claim their mother Dorothy’s caregiver, Melanie Hope, stole a painting from her after she died, a Renaissance painting that is probably valuable. But Jackson finds something shifty about the Padgetts, not to mention that the painting was hung behind Dorothy’s bedroom door.

Periodically, we depart this story to look in on the community at Barton Makepeace, an estate so encumbered that the new Lord Milton, Piers, is turning part of the house into a hotel and hosting murder mystery weekends. Piers’s son Como has stolen a valuable Renoir to pay his debts, and now Lady Milton’s valued housekeeper, Sophie, has disappeared with one of the remaining valuable paintings, a Turner. Jackson’s friend Sergeant Reggie Carter has been called in on the case, but Jackson starts to think that Sophie and Melanie may be the same woman.

As usual with a Jackson Brodie book, the story meanders around among several characters, especially inhabiting the surrounds of Barton Makepeace, including a one-legged wounded warrior who is having trouble finding his place and a vicar who has lost his faith and his voice.

We learn from the opening that this novel ends in a parody of a country house mystery with the characters trapped in the stately home during the murder mystery play in a snowstorm—oh, and an escaped murderer is on the loose.

My only caveat about this enjoyable novel is that I can no longer remember the plot of the previous book (from five years ago) to understand several references to it. Atkinson’s mysteries aren’t typical of the genre, but they are fun.

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