Tag: England

Review 2475: The Killings at Badgers Drift

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Here’s another book that qualifies for RIP XIX!

As such a longtime fan of Midsomer Murders, I decided it was time to have another go at reading the books. I tried reading this one long ago, but I was so disappointed in the character of Sergeant Troy that I didn’t continue.

While Miss Simpson, an elderly ex-schoolteacher, is out in the woods looking for an orchid, she sees something she wishes she hadn’t. Later, she is found dead of an apparent heart attack. However, her friend Miss Bellringer goes to Inspector Barnaby because she thinks there are suspicious circumstances.

In investigating, Barnaby encounters a slew of colorful characters, all with secrets. There is Doctor Lessiter, who mishandled the death diagnosis, and his sexy wife Barbara as well as the doctor’s sulky teenage daughter Judy. There are the creepy Dennis Rainbird, an undertaker, and his mother. At the big house, Henry Trace, a wheelchair-bound middle-aged man, is preparing for his wedding to beautiful Katherine Lacey, 19 years old. This is a wedding not celebrated by either Trace’s sister-in-law, Phyllis Cadell, or Katherine’s artist brother Michael.

Barnaby begins turning up all kinds of secrets, and soon there’s another murder.

I’m so familiar with the TV show that it was hard to judge how difficult it would be to guess the solution. Sergeant Troy is hateful, but he didn’t bother me as much this time around. Warning that the text contains some homophobic comments, mostly from Troy.

I think Graham is a deft plotter and constructor of interesting characters. I note that the TV show chose to have the murder victims die in more spectacular ways than in the original novel.

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Review 2468: The New Magdalen

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In The New Magdalen, Wilkie Collins has written a sensation novel that is by definition quite melodramatic. The subject, as you might guess from the title, is the reformed prostitute.

That’s what Mercy Merrick is, although she first appears as a nurse on the battlefield of the French/German war. An Englishwoman, Grace Roseberry, is stranded there on the way to England to live with her father’s friend, Lady Janet Roy, after her father’s death. Unfortunately, she was robbed on the way and has only her letter of introduction.

Grace confides in Mercy and then pressures her to confide in her, but she is not at all sympathetic to Mercy’s story of being forced by starvation into prostitution. Mercy reformed after hearing a sermon by Julian Gray, but every time she took a respectable position with the full knowledge of her past by her employers, she lost it once the servants or neighbors found out.

Mercy has loaned Grace some clothing. When after an attack, Grace is pronounced dead by the French doctor, Mercy takes her clothes and letters of introduction and assumes her identity, trying to get a better future.

Several months later, Mercy (now called Grace, confusingly) is Lady Janet’s adopted daughter and is betrothed to Horace Holmcroft. However, she can’t find it within herself to set a date without telling Horace the truth.

Then Julian Gray arrives. It turns out he is Lady Janet’s nephew. He has taken an interest in the case of a woman who has been hospitalized in Germany and claims to have been on her way to live with Lady Janet. Of course, this is the real Grace.

In Mercy’s absense, Grace appears and accuses her of stealing her identity. But Lady Janet doesn’t believe her and finds her offensive. And in fact, Collins depicts her as a horrible person.

That’s the message, really—the despicable virtuous woman versus the saintly ex-prostitute—for Mercy eventually decides to make things right.

Some of the Victorian values in this one are hard to stomach, but Collins knows how to keep readers interested in his story.

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Review 2466: Table Two

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One of the main characters of Table Two is more of an antihero. It’s Elsie Pearne, a bitter, disillusioned middle-aged woman who works for the Translation Office of the Ministry of Foreign Intelligence. She is intelligent and hard working, but she has a chip on her shoulder and a tendency to paranoia and doesn’t understand that it’s her own behavior that makes people dislike her.

She works at Table Two of the translation office with some eccentric coworkers. One blasts the room with cold air every morning while another can’t stop talking. A third takes delight in others’ misfortunes.

At the beginning of the novel, London has not had much of a problem yet with bombing, so the Ministry employees are simply bored and frustrated during the frequent occasions when they have to take shelter during the workday. But soon that changes.

Offsetting the character of Elsie is that of Anne Shepley-Rice, a young woman of the upper class who comes to work in the department. Elsie takes a fancy to her and takes her under her wing. But although Anne is grateful, she is much less invested in the friendship than Elsie is.

In the workplace, a plot centers around who is going to be appointed the Deputy Secretary of Table Two once the competent Mrs. Jury leaves for family reasons. The question is important because the Director, Miss Saltman, although a pleasant manager, is hopelessly disorganized, and Mrs. Jury does most of her work.

On the personal front, Anne feels she is hopelessly in love with Sebastian Kimble, her long-time friend and neighbor. Not only does Seb show no signs of wanting to settle down, but Anne’s family has lost its money, so she feels she is no longer a catch.

Although I’ve read quite a few novels set during World War II that are contemporary to that time, this is the first one that deals so much with the workplace. It is acerbically funny but also could be about a modern workplace, dealing with the same concerns of getting along with disparate people.

Elsie is not likable, and she creates her own problems, but I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her at times. Anne is sympathetic but a bit milk-toasty.

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Review 2465: Ethel & Ernest

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Ethel & Ernest is a completely charming graphic biography about the lives of Briggs’s parents from their meeting in 1928 until their deaths in 1971. The drawings are delightful, and the characters of the two emerge from the story.

Ethel is a lady’s maid and Ernest is a milkman when they meet. They marry two years later. The book shows their upward mobility starting with their purchase of a house that actually has a bathroom, to their astonishment, and continuing with their modifications and additions of appliances. Ernest is staunchly working class and pro-labor, while Ethel has pretentions to more, but through all, they are loving.

Through childbirth, World War II, and the Blitz, the privations of post-World War II Britain, and so on, the couple stick together and remain loving. The book has quite a bit of humor to it and is also touching. I was charmed by it.

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Review 2463: The House Opposite

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I didn’t like the main character of The House Opposite at first. Elizabeth is having an affair with her boss, a married man with two children, and she sees his wife and children only as people who get in the way of her happiness. She’s dating a young serviceman, Bob, simply to hide her affair. She apparently referred to the boy across the street as a “pansy” in his hearing, and the remark has made him doubt his sexuality.

Nevertheless, she’s friendly to her coworkers and as she begins to help with the war—working as a warden and helping in the hospital—she begins to grow on me. As warden, she is partnered with Owen, that same boy she insulted, and it is the developing friendship between the two that is a focus of the novel—that and her own self-evolution.

One of the interests of this novel is the detailed descriptions of what it was like to live through the Blitz in London. Although other novels recount an incident or two, most of the characters in this novel have chosen to stay in London and sustain many attacks, most of them even staying in their homes and feeling a little superior to those who seek shelter.

Although Elizabeth takes a long time to recognize that her lover is a stinker, she otherwise shows herself to be quite likable. There are a lot of themes, involving Owen growing up, Elizabeth humanizing her lover’s wife and children, Owen’s father’s involvement in the black market, and so on.

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Review 2462: Weyward

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Bookish Beck has a meme called “book serendipity” where she finds things in common between books she’s read recently, and I have a doozy. Not to give too much away, but this is the second book I’ve read in two weeks where women decide that the only way to deal with their abusive husbands is to murder them.

This novel is set in three time frames. In 1619, Altha is being tried for witchcraft. In 2019, Kate has discovered she is pregnant, so she has decided she must leave her abusive boyfriend, Simon. She has inherited a cottage from her Aunt Violet that he doesn’t know about and she has quietly saved some money, so she goes. In 1942, Violet has grown up isolated, not even allowed to go to the village and never told anything about her mother. At 16, she is jealous of her brother Graham, who is allowed to study interesting topics while she is forced into a traditional feminine role. She wants to travel the world and study bugs, but her father has apparently already chosen a husband for her.

Back at the cottage, Kate begins looking into her family history, into the women who called themselves the Weywards and have an unusual connection to animals.

This is an interesting novel with supernatural overtones that are fairly slight. I was interested in all three stories, although I found the outcomes of Altha’s and Kate’s stories fairly easy to guess. In this novel, I wasn’t as disturbed by the husband murder as I was in the other novel, in which I thought the wife could have easily gotten away. In any case, almost all the men in this novel are rotten to the core. So yes, I liked this novel fairly well.

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Review 2457: Westwood

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Margaret Steggles is a girl who yearns for beauty in her life. She is a schoolteacher moving to London for a new job, and she has been taught by her mother not to expect marriage. She tends to drift into reveries when contemplating beautiful scenery, literature, or music.

A small accident brings her into the chaotic household of Hebe and Alex Nislund. She finds Hebe beautiful but rude and is disappointed by Alex, who is a famous painter, because he seems so ordinary. Their housekeeper, Grantey, learning where Margaret lives, walks her home, because Grantey is returning to her primary place of employment, where she is an old retainer of Hebe’s parents, the celebrated playwright Gerard Challis and his wife Seraphina. Grantey invites her to stop by to visit at their home, Westwood, which is just up the hill from Margaret’s Highgate neighborhood.

A famous playwright is heady stuff for Margaret, who loves Challis’s plays. Although she doesn’t drop in on Grantey, she meets Zita, a German refugee and servant from Westwood, in the hardware story trying to find someone to mend a fuse before a party begins. The store can’t help, but Margaret can. She meets Gerard Challis and is struck by hero worship.

But Gerard is a pompous, humorless, unaffectionate, and selfish man who delights in carrying on chaste affairs with beautiful young women until they become demanding, at which point he dumps them without ceremony. He has coincidentally set his eye on Hilda, who just happens to be Margaret’s best friend. Hilda has plenty of admirers, though, and isn’t impressed, even though he is clearly wealthy and has told her he is single and his name is Marcus. This rejection of course makes him more eager.

Margaret is accepted into the Challis household as a friend and visitor, especially after the Nislund house is bombed and they all move in, too. Margaret enjoys being there even though they mostly treat her as a convenient person for helping take care of Alex and Hebe’s three small children. Margaret’s friendship with Zita can also be difficult because Zita is volatile, but they go to beautiful concerts together.

Margaret has also started helping John, a coworker of her father. He has been struggling to care for his mentally challenged daughter while his housekeeper is ill.

This novel made me laugh out loud sometimes, especially at the descriptions of the plots of Challis’s plays. The introduction tells us that Challis is based on a real person. I’d like to know who! (It turns out to be some guy named Charles Morgan.) In other respects, I really enjoyed this novel about Margaret’s development in self-respect and her shedding of her romantic myopia. This is a good one!

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Review 2455: Spam Tomorrow

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Spam Tomorrow is Verily Anderson’s memoir. Although it briefly hits other times of her life, it concentrates on the war years and ends shortly after D-Day.

The book begins with Anderson’s marriage to Donald, an event not encouraged by her parents because of his lack of wealth and an age difference that is unstated but I figure has to be at least 20 years.

At the beginning of the war, Verily, having already been warned off Donald , volunteers as an ambulance driver. At first, the drivers mostly just wait around to be dispatched, and later, she is erratic in her actual attendance at this job, getting very sick and later going off when she feels like it. She keeps running into Donald, though, who is found unfit for the military because of physical reasons and instead is working for the Ministry of Information. Finally, they decide to marry.

Most of the book has to do with the struggles—sometimes serious ones but related in a lighthearted manner—of living in London during the Blitz, of a difficult pregnancy, of motherhood, and of problems trying to find a suitable home to raise children when you’re not well off and being bombed.

Again, although sometimes concerned with serious problems, like Verily’s difficult first childbirth and subsequent illness, the memoir is related in a lighthearted manner and is often amusing. It provides yet another angle on British life during the war.

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Review 2453: The Square of Sevens

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Now, this is the kind of historical novel I like. The time period seems to be well-researched, the flawed heroine is still likable, and the plot is twisty and interesting.

Red tells us about her life in 1730, when she was seven. She has been traveling all her life with her father, a Cornish cunningman named John Jory Jago. But he believes his life is in danger so is using an assumed name. He has taught her to read fortunes using the square of sevens, a technique passed down in her family. She knows nothing of her mother except she is dead.

They meet Robert Antrobus at an inn. He is an antiquarian who is interested in the square of sevens. Her father tries to get him to take Red, but he refuses. Red’s father dies, and Antrobus returns to take her home to Bath and adopt her.

Now named Rachel Antrobus, Red begins as a young woman to try to find out about her family. The pack of cards she has always used has a Latin slogan on it that is the motto of the rich and powerful De Lacey family. That family is engaged in a legal battle over the estate between most of the De Laceys and Lady Seabourne, a sister of Julius De Lacey who is estranged from the family. The dispute is about a codicil that Nicholas De Lacey left, leaving the bulk of his estate to his first grandchild. Lady Seabourne’s son is that grandchild, but the rest of the family claims that Nicholas burned the codicil.

Red learns enough about the family to believe that she is the daughter of a runaway marriage between John Jory Jago and Patience De Lacey. Then she finds the codicil in the tube that contained the document explaining the square of sevens and realizes she is the first grandchild.

Fairly early on, we see another point of view. Lazarus Darke is working for Lady Seabourne trying to find the codicil.

Someone breaks into the house, killing the housekeeper, Mrs. Fremantle, obviously looking for something. Then Mr. Antrobus dies. Red has reason to believe that her new guardian, Henry Antrobus, has stolen her inheritance from Mr. Antrobus, and then he sells the codicil. Red runs away from home to London.

Red finds herself a job telling fortunes at a show, an illegal activity. The show was once a joint enterprise between John Jory Jago and Morgan Trevthick. Red, who has thought her mother dead, finds out that Patience De Lacey is Lady Seabourne. She presents herself to her, but Lady Seabourne throws her out. So, Red decides to infiltrate the De Laceys as a fortune teller for Mirabel Tremaine, who she believes is her grandmother. But can she find the codicil? And how will she prove that she and John Jory Jago lived instead of both going over a cliff when she was a baby, as everyone believes?

Soon, Red realizes she has entered a nest of vipers. But are they all or only some of them vipers? It seems as if I have told a lot of the story, but there is much more to come.

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Review 2452: La Rochelle

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Mark Chopra is a neurologist who lives alone and has apparently never had a partner. He also seems at first to have no friends except a much younger couple, Ian and Laura. The draw there is Laura, with whom he is in love. As for friends, it gradually becomes clear that he has other friends, but he disregards them.

Mark judges the stories Laura has told him and his own observations and thinks that Ian doesn’t treat Laura the way she deserves. At the pub at the start of the novel, Ian tells Mark that Laura has left him to think about their future. He doesn’t know where she is and doesn’t look for her, saying she’ll come back when she’s ready.

Mark is a highly intelligent person who tends to overthink things. He starts worrying about Laura, thinking she could have had an accident or even have been kidnapped. But he does nothing except hang out with Ian every night, getting so drunk that he can’t remember things and smells like booze at work. He ignores the warnings of coworkers (his other friends that he doesn’t seem to recognize) about his job.

Toward the end of the novel, Mark finally does something, but the trip there wasn’t pleasant for me. Mark is not a reliable narrator. He knows more than he tells until toward the end of the novel. But I also found him an unpleasant person. Despite being, he finally claims, willfully abstinent, he seems to think of women only in terms of sex. He meets a couple and immediately wonders how often they have sex. He makes constant demeaning comments about female anatomy. He expresses his gratitude toward a female friend and coworker by mentioning her bra size! Is this supposed to be a side effect of Mark’s lifestyle choice? Is it supposed to be funny? I have no idea. I found this character to be deeply unpleasant despite his desire to be a knight errant for Laura. It was no surprise at all to me to find him ultimately having no interest in what he finally gets, even though it’s what he wanted.

The plot eventually has some surprises, but after a labyrinthian scheme finally reveals itself, the whole idea just seemed stupid to me. The characters go to all kinds of trouble instead of speaking a single sentence. (I think Roger Ebert used to call that the “idiot plot,” in reference to movies.) I really wouldn’t have finished this book if it hadn’t been part of my James Tait Black project.

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