Tag: historical fiction

Review 2617: James

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I read James for both my Booker Prize project and my Pulitzer Prize project, which it won. As most people know by now, it is a retelling of Twain’s Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of the slave Jim.

Aside from generally following the plot of the original novel about halfway, James lives in a world that is much more violent than Huck Finn ever had a clue about. Everett has taken a liberty and placed the novel in the 1860s instead of the 1830s or 40s, when the original is set. He also uses a striking conceit: when among themselves the black characters speak more correctly—and sometimes with erudition—than most of the white characters.

Jim—or James, as he prefers to be called—hears that Judge Thatcher is going to sell him away from his wife and daughter, so he escapes and hides on a small island on the Mississippi. Unfortunately for him, Huck Finn has heard that his dreaded father is in town, so he fakes his own death and runs away, ending up on the same island. James realizes right away that he will be blamed for Huck’s “death.”

The two stick together and encounter what Huck thinks of as adventures and James knows to be deadly peril. After all, a slave is lynched later in the book for being suspected of stealing the nub of a pencil from his master. That he did steal it to give to James is beside the point.

The book follows the same basic outlines as Huckleberry Finn until James gets away from the Duke and the Dauphin, but all of the situations are much more deadly. Eventually, James’s inner anger is set aflame.

Everett’s books are witty, but they are also very angry. And he has some surprises for us.

This novel is fast moving and really interesting. It shows facets of the “institution” of slavery in all its ugliness.

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Review 2608: The Night Ocean

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At first, I thought this novel was going to be about H. P. Lovecraft. Then, I thought it was a sort of homage to 30s and 40s science fiction and horror writers. But having finished it, I don’t know quite how to describe it.

Marina Willett’s husband Charlie is missing or dead. A writer of insightful profiles, Charlie began working on one of H. P. Lovecraft. During his research, he became interested in the story of a book purportedly written by Lovecraft’s much-younger deceased friend Robert Barlow that alleged a homosexual affair. This book was debunked as a fraud perpetrated by Lovecraft fan L. C. Spinks. However, Charlie becomes convinced after visiting Spinks that he is actually Barlow, having faked his own death and taken Spinks’ identity. He publishes a book telling this story and immediately becomes a literary celebrity.

But then, evidence comes out about facts that are incorrect, and Charlie himself is believed to have perpetrated a fraud. After checking himself into a mental hospital, he disappears, his clothes found next to a lake.

Marina is not satisfied. She decides to revisit the research that Charlie conducted, in the hopes of figuring out what happened. Since the last thing he did before checking into the hospital was revisit Spinks, Marina goes to see him.

Most of the rest of the novel becomes a series of stories beginning with Spinks’ first interview with Charlie. These stories name-drop 30s and 40s science fiction and horror writers and other prominent figures like crazy. This technique of the strange tale is one familiar to horror readers and a nod to Lovecraft.

If I were a bigger Lovecraft fan, I’d probably recognize more allusions besides the obvious ones—his fanboy-cum-writers themselves dropping his made-up words into their conversations, for example.

I think that Lovecraft fans will appreciate this novel more than I did, but the novel leaves Lovecraft behind about halfway through, and becomes more about Barlow. Myself, I got a little tired of the structure of story after story.

The novel is ultimately about identity, search for community, and reinvention.

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Review 2605: Absolutely & Forever

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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

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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 2596: The Chosen

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The Chosen, which I read for my Walter Scott project, is about the weeks after the death of Thomas Hardy’s wife, Emma, and also about the writing of Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Hardy is working in his study when the maid comes to ask him to go to Emma. Although she indicates there is some urgency, Hardy is oblivious and continues working for a while before going up to his wife’s rooms in the attic. When he arrives there, she is dead.

The aging Hardy plunges into guilt that is made worse when, a few days later, he finds her diaries, in which he reads that Emma was deeply unhappy in their marriage. As he reads the diaries, he relives his own memories of the same days, realizing he had no idea of how aloof he seemed to her and how oblivious.

This is not really a novel of plot but more of feelings and realizations. Lowry explains at the end of the novel that Hardy burned the diaries soon after he found them, but she did quote from Hardy’s work and from letters. Emma’s death apparently spurred a collection of poems.

Waiting in the wings is Hardy’s secretary, Florence Dugdale, who seems to expect to take Emma’s place (and eventually did). She cannot understand why, after telling her so many times how unhappy he was, Hardy can now only talk about Emma.

For Hardy fans, especially, this is an insightful and beautifully written novel. It makes me wish I had known more about Hardy’s life before I read Maugham’s Cakes and Ale and this book. Although I read Claire Tomalin’s biography, it was so long ago that I don’t remember what it said about his home life (although I said it was interesting in my review).

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Review 2594: Clear

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I have read some excellent novellas lately, a form I don’t usually choose. That makes me glad I participated in Novellas in November last year. I think I read about this book during that event.

John Ferguson is a 19th century Scottish minister on a difficult mission. Because of the breakup of the Scottish church, in which he participated, he has left his church to join the Free Church and is thus unemployed, no new churches having actually been established. He and his wife are entirely without money, and he doesn’t want to borrow from his brother-in-law, so he takes a job of surveying a small island in the far north of Scotland for clearance. The island only has one inhabitant, who will be forced to leave, and part of John’s job is to tell him.

On the island, Ivar has been alone for many years. The rest of his family left years before, because the island couldn’t support them anymore after foolish decisions by the owner. Ivar thought it could support him, and the factor hasn’t even stopped by to collect rent in years. He lives with a goat, an old horse, a blind cow, and some chickens.

When John arrives, he promptly falls off a cliff and is badly injured. Ivar finds him and takes care of him. They don’t speak a word of each other’s language, but they begin to like each other. John, though, can’t bring himself to try to explain why he’s there.

In the meantime, Mary hears about other clearances being done by John’s employer that disturb her. She decides to go get John.

This is a little gem of a book with a surprising ending. In its few pages, it pulls you totally into the story. It’s a keeper.

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Review 2589: Lies and Sorcery

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This book was the last one I read for my A Century of Books project. At nearly 800 pages in small type and a fairly bizarre plot, it was quite a slog for me, but I was determined to finish it, especially because I hadn’t finished several others.

The novel is set in Sicily and narrated by Elisa, a young woman who is looking back over the history of her family to try to understand some complicated and intertwined relationships. She is an intrusive narrator, popping in frequently to make observations, and she implies in the beginning that she’s been mentally ill and is not altogether to be trusted. But I didn’t experience a big reveal that labels her as unreliable. Notes in the Introduction indicate that the novel is fairly autobiographical.

Elisa begins with her maternal grandparents. Her grandmother, Cesira, is a schoolteacher who marries Teodor Massia because he looks like a gentleman and acts like a gentleman so he must have money. Unfortunately for her, the Massia family throws him off because he has married a schoolteacher. Worse, he is a wastrel who blows away any money they have, so their daughter Anna grows up in poverty but with an inflated sense of self-worth as the daughter of the upper class.

On the other side of the family, Alessandra, the servant of a peasant, is happy to marry her elderly employer Damiano De Salvi, because for her it is a big step up. Unfortunately, they are not blessed with a child, that is, until she is dazzled by Nicola Monaco, a land agent who seems to her to be a great gentleman. When she has his child, she raises Francesco to think of himself as a person of great potential. The De Salvis spend every penny sending him to school and are repaid by his being ashamed of them.

For her part, Anna Massia (Elisa’s mother) spots her cousin, Eduardo Massia di Carullo, when she is five years old. Her mother points out this wealthy branch of the family, and Anna is struck by how handsome he is, like a prince. When they meet, more than 10 years later, he is struck by how beautiful she is, and she is instantly enamored. Unfortunately, Eduardo, although charming, is not a nice person, and he spends most of his time tormenting her and making her prove she loves him. They are engaged, but his family doesn’t know about it.

Eduardo, for some reason, befriends Francesco, who is a student in town dressed in shabby clothes, but he has adorned himself with some flashy but cheap ornaments and is introducing himself as a baron. It is through Eduardo that Anna and Francesco meet at a time when Eduardo is tiring of Anna. Francesco has no idea of their actual relationship and in fact never has. Then Eduardo disappears.

Anna doesn’t know that the Massia di Carullo family has been paying her mother a small amount of money every month since her father died. When Eduardo discovers this, just before he is ready to break with Anna, he tells his mother to double the amount. But this makes Anna find out about it, and she in her pride goes to his mother and says they don’t want her money. Then she and her mother are destitute, her mother ill and still having to teach, while she, indolent and untrained for anything, lies around the house all day. Francesco having fallen in love with her, she marries him even though he revolts her.

Our narrator describes all this in great detail, along with her parents’ marriage. Her mother is not at all maternal and often is quite nasty to her, but of course that makes the little girl idolize her more and follow her lead in disdaining her father.

The novel begins to turn into absolute weirdness about 10 years after the marriage when Anna learns that Eduardo died some time before of tuberculosis. Eduardo’s mother, who worshipped her son, has retreated from that reality and believes Eduardo is traveling around writing letters to Anna. Dona Concetta asks Anna to bring her the letters, which Anna begins writing.

Even though I have told a lot, by now, I’m not kidding, we are at about page 350 with plenty more to go as the entire family descends into madness.

Morante is a terrific writer, but she really takes her time. At one point early on, she is showing how Eduardo taunts Anna and she provides not one lengthy example but several. And these are sickening conversations.

The Introduction to my NYRB edition states that the theme of the novel is the inability to get out of poverty. That is certainly there, but I think a more important theme, aside from that of the perceived importance of class, is unrequited love. Nearly every character in the book loves someone who either doesn’t love them back or even actively despises them. And these people are tempestuous! And as for sorcery? Is there really a ghost of Eduardo or are these people driving themselves freaking insane?

Although the novel handles human emotions and behavior insightfully, and I sometimes sympathized with Elisa and occasionally with Francesco, most of the characters are more or less terrible, especially in their treatment of others.

I received this book from the publishers in exchange for a free and fair review.

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Review 2578: Catherine the Ghost

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I took a break from reading A Short HIstory of Nearly Everything to read this novella. After putting it on my list, I had forgotten that it was based on Wuthering Heights. If you’ve read that book, you should be okay, but otherwise Catherine the Ghost may be hard to follow.

Like Wuthering Heights, Catherine the Ghost begins with the arrival to the house of Mr. Lockwood, who is stranded and spends the night in Catherine’s bedroom. The ghost Catherine demands to be let in.

The novella begins there but goes forward with glimpses into the past instead of the other way around. It focuses on Catherine’s haunting of Heathcliff and ends at about the same place as the original novel. The ghost is one narrator.

The other narrator is the other Catherine, Catherine the ghost’s daughter, who was tricked into marrying Linton, her cousin, the son of Heathcliff’s enemy, Hindley.

Koja’s style of writing is poetical and unusual, as she frequently uses sentence fragments. However, it is easy to follow. This is a haunting novella. I liked it a lot.

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Review 2573: The Name of the Rose

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Adso of Melk, an elderly monk, feeling he is nearing his death, leaves this manuscript that tells, for the first time, the events of 1327 in an Italian abbey.

It’s been a long time since I read this book, so I remembered more vividly the movie version, which concentrates on the mystery aspects of the novel. But the novel is more about the religious and political upheavals of the time.

As a Benedictine novice, Adso travels into Italy with a learned Franciscan monk, William of Baskerville from Hibernia. William has been asked to mediate an important meeting between two factions of monks—the Franciscans and other Minorite sects who believe in the vow of poverty and are aligned with the French King, and other sects who think the vow is heretical and follow the Pope in Avignon.

Once they arrive at the magnificent abbey high on a mountaintop, the Abbott, Abo, asks William to look into another issue that has recently occurred. Adelmo of Otranto, an illuminator from the scriptorium, has been found dead on the slope below the abbey’s Aedificium, a fortified building that contains the kitchen, the scriptorium above it, and the library above that. It’s not clear whether Adelmo jumped or had help, and Abo wants William to figure out what happened, preferably before others arrive for the meeting. William quickly ascertains that Adelmo must have fallen from the library, but he learns that only the librarian is allowed in the library, a man named Malachy.

Although William has been denied access to the library by Abo, he soon figures out that there is a way to get into it besides the locked entrance. After a visit to the scriptorium, where William and Adso inspect Adelmo’s work area and meet some of the monks, another monk is found dead, Venantius, a Greek scholar. This makes William surer that the deaths have something to do with the library.

He and Adso sneak into the library at night. It is a labyrinth. Moreover, they disturb someone who runs away and are almost poisoned by the air in one of the rooms.

More monks associated with the library die, and William becomes convinced that they are dying because of a secret book. He and Adso must learn the secrets of the library, and William comes to believe that the murders are related to the history of the monastery.

I have concentrated on the mystery, too, but there’s a lot more going on in this book. It is concerned with the conflict between Louis of France and the illegitimate Holy Roman Emperor, between two popes, and the then recent history of the Inquisition against certain heretical religious groups. It has several learned debates, in which the monks disagree about what seem, to the modern eye, to be obscure and trivial issues. And it fully shows the superstitions of even the most learned of men (except William) and the pit of fear that was life in this monastery.

Although the novel seems straightforward, there is a lot more going on. To me, Eco seems to be mocking the beliefs of the church at times—some of the learned disputes make such ridiculous statements (believed at the time) that I couldn’t help laughing. And I couldn’t help noticing that at least two of the characters’ names, William of Baskerville and Adelmo of Otranto, hearken back to previous mystery and gothic fiction.

A New York Times reviewer from 1980 asserts that the entire novel refers to the time when it was written (the 1970s, I assume), so obviously he also found second meanings and playfulness in the novel.

The novel moves you along despite several learned discourses. The medieval mind also seems to like lists, and I have to admit skipping through several of those. This is at once a challenging and compelling read.

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Review 2572: Sarah’s Key

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In 1942, Sarah Starzynski is 10 years old, a Jewish child in Paris. There have been rumors of a raid on Jewish homes, but usually the French police take only the men. So, Sarah’s father hides in the basement while Sarah, her mother, and her four-year-old brother go to bed as usual.

But this time, the French police are there to take everyone. They don’t seem to know about her brother, so Sarah locks the little boy in his secret place, thinking she will come back soon and let him out. In the street, her mother has hysterics and screams her father’s name so that he comes out. All of them are taken to the Vélodrome d’Hiver, ultimate destination Auschwitz.

In 2002, Julia Jarmond, an American journalist who lives in Paris, is assigned to write an article about the 60th anniversary of the infamous roundup at Vel’ d’Hiv’, as the velodrome is known. Julia has never heard of it before. Aside from the ultimate destination, the Vel’ d’Hiv’ is known because, like with Hurricane Katrina, thousands of people, mostly women and children, were there for days without food, water, or sanitary facilities.

As part of her research, Julia asks French people if they know about this story. Most of them claim not to, but Julia learns from her father-in-law, Edoard, that the flat her husband Bertrand has been renovating became a possession of the family after the removal of its Jewish family on the night of the Vel’ d’Hiv’. In fact, that family was the Starzynskis.

The novel follows Sarah’s journey for a time, alternating with Julia’s story, as her personal life becomes entwined with her desire to find out what happened to the Starzynskis, particularly Sarah, who was not recorded as having died in Auschwitz. After about half the book, Sarah’s narrative stops.

I know I never read this book before, but some plot points seemed familiar, so perhaps I saw the movie. The plot was compelling enough, but I still had some issues with it, particularly that I couldn’t imagine that after a while a four-year-old child wouldn’t have made enough noise to be found in almost any apartment building.

I had more problems with the writing, though, particularly of Sarah’s sections, and the characterization. I think Sarah’s sections are written in a way to suggest childishness—the sentences are short, most of them in a subject-verb-object order that results in choppiness. Her reactions are naïve, much more so than I can imagine from any Jewish child of ten at that time and place. And ten-year-olds can have as complex thoughts as adults. She seemed, especially at first, more like a much younger child.

The writing is better for Julia’s parts, but there are still inapt word choices and no very strong use of language. It’s mediocre. For example, a glass of limoncello is described as “a beautiful yellow.” Ho-hum.

I felt the novel was interesting enough to finish, but just barely.

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