Tag: England

Review 2620: The Librarian

~ whatmeread ~ 6 Comments

In the 1950s, Sylvia Blackwell arrives in the town of East Mole to take on the job of children’s librarian. She finds no fault with the dingy, musty cottage her landlady shows her. She is excited to start her new job and life.

Although she and her boss seem to dislike each other on sight, she fits into the town fairly quickly, reorganizing and making improvements to the library, making friends with her neighbors, all but one, and tutoring her landlady’s granddaughter, Lizzy, for the 11+ exams with the help of her whip-smart, eleven-year-old neighbor, Sam.

By and large, she is a creature of good will, happy to help the children learn and become interested in books. And she is succeeding but has not reckoned with the effects of envy and ill-will. And she makes the mistake of falling in love with a married man.

I thought at first that this book was going to be a standard romance, but it deals with some more complex issues. I was interested in the story and ultimately found it somewhat touching. I felt, though, that Part Two, the last 40 pages, was a little too concerned with trying to tie up every little loose end and takes too long to do it.

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Review 2619: Literary Wives! Novel About My Wife

~ whatmeread ~ 13 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.

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

My Review

We learn that Tom’s wife Ann is dead, but we don’t know the cause for some time. Tom looks backward and forward along the length of their marriage trying to figure things out. Occasionally, there are scenes from a book manuscript he’s writing in which he tries to guess what happened in Fiji the weekend they got married.

Tom is a script writer, and Ann makes models of cancer patients’ body parts at a hospital. Feeling as if things are going well financially, they have bought a house in Hackney with a lot more space than in their flat. They love it, but when Tom’s job writing a script falls through because the producer leaves the field, he begins having trouble finding another job.

Ann comes home from work one day and tells Tom that she saw her stalker at work. Tom didn’t know she had a stalker, but she says she has spotted him in various places.

Ann is Australian, but she has lost her accent and doesn’t want to talk about her past. She also has a history with drugs that she doesn’t seem as secretive about.

It’s hard to explain what this book is about without giving away too much, although the blurb just goes ahead and gives away a major plot point. Let’s just say that the tension level rises as Ann becomes pregnant, Tom still can’t find a job, and Ann’s behavior becomes manic at times. Ann has secrets, but she’s not telling.

Without being a thriller but more an intense examination of a relationship, Perkins’ book skillfully builds up quite a bit of suspense. It liked it a lot.

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

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The relationship described here is so complex that it’s hard to answer that question. Or maybe Ann is complex and unknowable. At first, I was annoyed at this couple and their dismissive attitude to many people and things, but after a while I began to like them. Still, Tom doesn’t seem to notice that Ann’s behavior is getting more bizarre, that she keeps going after ant infestations, for example, when Tom doesn’t see any ants or staying up all night rearranging things into weird configurations. In the meantime, he is both spending money and worrying about debt. Both of them seem to be subject to compulsive behaviors.

Secrets seem to be a big problem. Although the two love each other, they both keep their secrets—Ann about her life in Australia and the events in Fiji, Tom about the state of his work, and the level of their debt. The culmination comes when she finds out the truth about another secret he’s keeping.

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Review 2615: The Widow of Bath

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Hugh Everton is traveling around English seaside towns reviewing hotels and restaurants for a travel company when he meets an old flame, Lucy Bath, the glamorous wife of a judge. Hugh is immediately afraid, but we don’t understand why until later. Lucy is with an entourage, and when they all decide to return to her home, she invites Hugh, and he goes.

One of the men Hugh thinks he recognizes as a guy named Ronson, but Ronson is introduced as Atkinson. The judge, who has been looking for his missing dog, takes Hugh aside and seems to be intending to confide in him but changes his mind. He goes up early to bed.

The others are playing cards when they hear a shot, followed by a yelp from a dog. Lucy goes upstairs to investigate. When she doesn’t immediately return, Atkinson goes up, accompanied by Hugh. They find the judge dead with a hole in his head and no gun to be found.

When they try to call the police, the phone is dead, so Atkinson drives off to the police station. Hugh goes out to look for the dog and nearly catches a woman in the garden. He finds the dog with a broken leg. Soon Inspector Leigh arrives, but the body is gone.

Everton has found the entire evening to have a menacing undercurrent. However, he has had bad experiences with the police, so he is not as forthright as he could have been.

I hadn’t heard of Margot Bennett before reading Someone from the Past, but I think she has been seriously underrated to have almost disappeared from our knowledge. This novel has an interesting noirish plot with strong characterization and witty dialogue. Bennett moved away from crime fiction to writing for television after writing only a few books. I think that’s a shame.

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Review 2614: Monk’s Hood

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It is autumn 1138, during the war known as the Anarchy. Although King Stephen’s army has withdrawn from Shrewsbury, he is now in control of the area. Abbot Heribert has been recalled to a conference to justify his tenure as abbot. As he didn’t support King Stephen, he does not expect to remain in that position. However, Prior Robert clearly anticipates stepping into his shoes, so most of the monks are depressed.

Because Abbot Heribert has been recalled, he doesn’t feel it would be right to ratify some outstanding agreements before he leaves. One of these is that of Master Bonel, who wants to donate his estate in exchange for lifelong housing and support for himself and his wife at the abbey.

Cadfael takes one of his mixtures to treat an elderly monk with rheumatism. There he meets a young Welsh kinsman of the monk, Meurig, who has been applying some of the mixture to the old man. Cadfael checks that Meurig has been warned to wash his hands and not touch his face before that, as the mixture contains a strong poison, monk’s hood.

Later, Cadfael is urgently summoned to the bedside of Master Bonel, who has been taken ill after dinner. Cadfael recognizes the symptoms of poisoning right away, and by his own embrocation. In the house are Bonel’s wife, Richildi, whom Cadfael recognizes as his old sweethheart; Richildi’s son Edwin by her first marriage; Edwy, Edwin’s lookalike nephew; Aldith, the servant girl related to Richildi; and Meurig, who apprenticed as a carpenter with Richildi’s first husband, whose brother has apprenticed Edwin.

Edwin has been estranged from the household because Master Bonel thinks he spends too much time with lower elements (i. e., Edwin’s relatives). And in fact, Bonel was entering into the agreement with the abbey to disinherit Edwin. He had come to dinner to try to reconcile with Master Bonel, but Bonel began berating him and was trying to make him kneel for forgiveness. Instead, Edwin stormed out. To the sergeant, though, this is enough proof that Edwin is the murderer. Cadfael, who has met both boys, Edwin and Edwy, doesn’t think Edwin did it, but Edwin has fled. Cadfael, helped by his new assistant, Mark, decides to investigate.

I didn’t find this mystery very difficult to solve, but I am liking Cadfael more and more, and Peters has created some vivid characters.

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Review 2613: The Bloater

~ whatmeread ~ 4 Comments

I was so taken by Rosemary Tonks’ The Halt During the Chase that I looked for more by her. I found The Bloater.

Min is a married sound engineer whose husband is seldom home. She occupies herself with witty, frivolous conversations with her girlfriends and flirtations with her admirers. She has one admirer she finds disturbing, though, a large opera singer whom she finds disgusting and attractive at the same time. She talks endlessly with her other friends about whether she wants an affair with him, whom she refers to as the Bloater.

This novella is crammed with witty, sometimes cruel dialogue. It moves along very quickly and is beautifully written. At times, I wondered if Min really wanted to have an affair with anyone—or maybe she does.

When I was reading about this book, I learned that Tonks gave up a successful career and retreated into isolation. You would hardly believe this of the creator of such witty, vibrant characters.

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Review 2612: Across the Common

~ whatmeread ~ 2 Comments

Louise has left her husband Max for reasons that are not clear to her and gone to stay at The Hollies with her elderly aunts. Part of the problem is that she still considers The Hollies home and bears some guilt for how she left it. Maybe she resents some of the attention Max gives to his students or maybe that he realized his limitations as an artist but is happy as a teacher. (When we finally meet Max, he seems perfect, so it must be for some other reason.) In any case, she eventually realizes, she needs to grow up.

At first, she is happy to be home with her formidable Aunt Rosa and her fey-like Aunt Seraphina, although not so pleased to hear that Aunt Cissie, who has broken her hip, is coming to recuperate. And then there’s Gibby, the cook and housekeeper, who is more like family. But very soon, she learns something disturbing—that her grandfather committed suicide years ago. No one will talk about it, so she doesn’t know why.

As she listens to her aunts talk about their past, Louise begins considering what happened to all the men in the family—they all left or died. Her own father was a sort of invalid, and both he and her mother died there from the flu. Neither of her sisters ever married.

Soon, Louise begins to discover secrets in her family history and instead of retreating to her childhood, as she does at first, learns to become her own person.

I liked this book very much. The writing is gorgeous, and Berridge manages to tell the story without falling into clichés. Rooms, scenes, and emotions are minutely observed, as are perceptions about human relationships.

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Review 2607: Girls in Their Married Bliss

~ whatmeread ~ 6 Comments

Girls in Their Married Bliss is the third book in O’Brien’s Country Girls trilogy. It is unusual in that the book is narrated partially by Baba instead of only by Kate (once Caithleen). Baba is much more cynical, and she lets us know right away that neither of them is happy.

At the end of the last book, Kate seemed to give up on her older married boyfriend Eugene and moved to England with Baba. However, she was pregnant, so, in the interim between the last book and this one, she and Eugene eventually married. But Kate felt ignored in their marriage except for Eugene’s myriad of rules, so she began a romantic relationship with another man. They have just broken up at the beginning of this novel when Eugene discovers his love letters. He turns cruel and nasty and threatens to take away Kate’s little boy.

Baba has married a rich, crude builder for his money. After she has an unsatisfying encounter with a drummer, she becomes pregnant. Despite her knowing attitude, neither she nor Kate have any idea what to do, and they must do something, as Baba’s husband is not big on sex.

This is an affecting trilogy, but I thought this book was the most affecting. I don’t want to say any more about what happens, though.

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Review 2605: Absolutely & Forever

~ whatmeread ~ 12 Comments

I have been on the fence about or even disliked some of Rose Tremain’s books, so I wasn’t really looking forward to reading Absolutely & Forever for my Walter Scott Prize Project. I especially wasn’t because I’m not that fond of coming-of-age novels in general. However, I found this little novella to be truly touching and insightful about human emotions. And the coming-of-age part is only the beginning.

It’s the late 1950s and Marianne is 15 years old. She has been in love with beautiful 18-year-old Simon Hurst for some time, and he finally pays attention to her the night of a friend’s party. He has just been given a new Morris Minor car, so he takes her for a ride and they have sex. Marianne says she will love him absolutely and forever.

I thought I knew where this was going, but it wasn’t. Simon and Marianne go off to their respective schools and plan to get married when they are older.

However, Simon fails his Oxford exam. Everyone is shocked, and the next thing Marianne knows, he has moved to Paris to be a writer. Marianne tries to buckle down to her French so that she can move there as soon as possible, but she is clearly not good at studying. Her parents tell her they are certainly not going to allow her to visit Simon in Paris when she is only 15.

Simon’s letters eventually fall off, and in the last one she gets the bad news. Simon has gotten his landlady’s daughter pregnant and married her.

The novella follows Marianne as she grows into womanhood, works at some jobs but seems to have little purpose in life. She marries her good friend Hugo (who I felt was a much better person than Simon). But she continues to love Simon.

The heart wants what it wants is the theme of this touching novel. And it tells the story beautifully, narrated by the distinctive voice of Marianne.

The book blurb hints at some secret, and it’s not very hard to guess. But that’s not the point. I found this book to be wise and deeply touching.

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Review 2603: Babel: An Arcane History

~ whatmeread ~ 3 Comments

Knowing that this wasn’t my genre, I still decided to read Babel because it sounded interesting. I tried very hard, but it was a DNF for me at about 150 pages. I’ll tell you why in a bit.

A Chinese boy, later called Robin, is dying from cholera when he is mysteriously cured by the application of a silver rod by a stranger named Dr. Lovell. It is too late for Robin’s mother, however.

It is the first half of the 19th century, the height of the British Empire. It seems odd to Robin that once he is well, Dr. Lovell offers to make him his ward and have him educated. The doctor is not warm in his manner, but Robin accepts, suspecting it’s the doctor who has been sending his family books all his life and provided a Scottish nurse. For Robin is now fluent in both Cantonese and English. He also sees a strong physical resemblance between himself and Dr. Lovell.

Robin is educated in Latin and Ancient Greek for the next few years living in Dr. Lovell’s home in Hampshire. The doctor continues to be cold and in one case beats the boy badly for forgetting to go to a lesson.

Finally, Robin is sent to Oxford to study in the translation school, Babel. Besides translating books into English and writing grammar books, Babel’s mission is to handle silver, which can process magic spells through language. Robin makes friends with the other first years—Ramy, Letty, and Victoire, yes, girls at Oxford 100 years before they were let in. I’ll get to that in a minute.

Almost immediately, just as he’s introduced to this new, exciting life, Robin meets a man who looks almost identical to him. This is Griffin Lovell, an early protégé of Dr. Lovell’s, and he belongs to the Hermes Society, a secret group that steals Babel’s silver to give to the more deserving. And Robin helps them.

Before I get into my general problems with the historical angle, I thought it was a shame that Kuang brought the Hermes Society into the novel so soon. I would have liked to see what was going on in Babel without the distraction of the resistance movement. Kuang doesn’t even let Robin go to school for one day before he gets involved with them. That may turn out to be important for the plot. I don’t know, because I quit reading very quickly afterwards.

OK, here’s my problem with some of these genre-bending books. If you’re going to put a magical realism book or speculative fiction in a historical setting, at least get the details right. You can’t cheat by saying this is your alternate reality. Having girls in Oxford might squeak by as part of this invented school if the girls acted even remotely like 19th century women. Having some of the characters with social attitudes closer to 21st century ones I give a reluctant pass to, since some of these characters are from suppressed populations.

However, having the characters use words or think thoughts using words that are anachronistic—no. In one case, for example, Robin thinks about huffing a scent, that is, inhaling it. At that time, though, huffing meant breathing out. The word didn’t start meaning breathing in until the late-ish 20th century, and then it referred to breathing in drugs, although the usage may be more general now.

Another wrong detail is Robin’s casual use of a fountain pen. The problem is that although fountain pens had just barely been invented by then, they were not in general use until much later in the century. In the 1830s, they cost about £2000, although I don’t know whether that’s an amount that is adjusted for 2025 or not.

Historical novels need to get the details right, whether they’re genre bending or not. In my opinion, it’s only fair to change the details that apply directly to the alternate reality. Otherwise, writers are just being lazy.

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Review 2602: One Corpse Too Many

~ whatmeread ~ 8 Comments

It’s 1138 during the war between King Stephen and Queen Maud, which became known as the Anarchy. King Stephen is besieging Shrewsbury, which is soon to fall. FitzAlan and Adenay, the castle defenders, wait until the last minute to flee with their men, but rumor has it that Adenay’s daughter and FitzAlan’s fortune are still inside the castle.

In the monastery, Cadfael is assigned a new helper, a boy named Godrik, who is a hard worker. It doesn’t take Cadfael long to figure out Godrik is a girl, Adenay’s daughter Godith, whom Stephen is searching for to use as leverage.

Stephen has the remaining defenders of the castle executed after he takes it, and Cadfael takes charge of identifying and burying the bodies. However, he finds there is one corpse too many. In looking more carefully at the corpses, he sees that one man has been garroted. So, he reports to the king the information that someone has tried to hide a murder by mixing the body with the executed and is given permission to try to identify the body.

A young lady of the town, Aline, identifies the body as Nicholas Faintree, a squire of FitzAlan. She has recently also identified one of the executed men as her brother.

Meanwhile, Godrik, whom Cadfael has sent reaping to escape the attentions of a mysterious man, Hugh Beringer, who has been following him, finds a wounded man. It turns out that the wounded man Godith finds is Torond Blunt. He was sent off with Nicholas Faintree to carry FitzAlan’s fortune into Wales. However, they were ambushed at night. Briefly separated, Torond returned to find Nicholas dead and then someone attacked him from behind, but he managed to get away and hide the fortune.

Now Cadfael is hiding Godith and Torond and trying to make arrangements to get them both to Wales along with the fortune. Meanwhile, it’s clear that Beringer is dogging his steps ever since he visited Godith’s old nurse to tell her she is safe. Incidentally, Beringer is engaged to Godith, although they haven’t seen each other for years. And she has fallen in love on sight with Torond.

Beringer seems to be playing a game with Cadfael, so he decides to play back. But is Beringer a friend or foe?

Although this mystery doesn’t really give clues to the murderer’s identity until the end, it does a good job of misdirection. This book is the second of the Cadfael series, which I would describe as Medieval cozy. It has likable characters and seems to be well grounded in its time period.

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