Day 999: Beloved

November 21, 2016November 21, 2016 ~ whatmeread ~ 3 Comments

On some occasions after reading a novel, I find my thoughts about it are not clear. Did I enjoy it? Did I completely understand it? Did I think it was powerful or overpowering? This doesn’t happen very often, but these are my thoughts after reading Beloved.

The novel, when looked at straightforwardly, is a ghost story. Sethe escaped from slavery with her children, although the plan went wrong. Most of the other escaping slaves were killed or captured, including her husband, and Sethe had to come later, giving birth to her daughter Denver on the way.

These events happened 16 years ago, but shortly after Sethe made it across the Ohio River, Schoolteacher, the despotic overseer, came after her. To keep her children from being dragged back into slavery, Sethe decided to kill them. She was stopped, but not before she slit the throat of her daughter, Beloved. (Her name isn’t really Beloved, but that’s what’s on her tombstone; we don’t know her name.)

Sixteen years later, Sethe’s house in Cincinnati, referred to as 124, is haunted. Sethe lives there with Denver, her mother-in-law having died and her sons having left. Denver is a sulky, needy young woman who craves her mother’s attention, but that is all for the ghost of her baby.

The action begins when Paul D. arrives. Paul D. had been one of the young male slaves at Sweet Home, where Sethe was a slave. He has been wandering since the war. When he realizes the house is haunted, he drives the ghost out and lives with Sethe as her lover.

But Beloved comes back, now embodied as a girl the age she would have been if she’d lived. Denver and then Sethe become enslaved to her.

But is Beloved a ghost or just a young girl damaged by slavery? Someone in the text makes a reference to a lost girl enslaved since a child, and I think that’s who Beloved is meant to be. Denver and Sethe have just mistaken her from their own needs. There is only one chapter where we see things from Beloved’s point of view, and it is incoherent.

That is what I think, but I was confused because everyone else seems to take the novel as a straight ghost story and of course, an indictment of slavery. I finally ran across a reference to an article by an academic who believes the same thing, but I never found the original paper.

In any case, Beloved is an unusual work. It uses an unusual combination of storytelling techniques, some of which I enjoyed and some I did not. It is powerful, depicting emotions and events that we can barely comprehend. Did I like it? I don’t know. Does it make me think? Yes. Do I understand it? Not completely.

The Known World

The Good Lord Bird

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Day 995: The Promise

November 14, 2016November 14, 2016 ~ whatmeread ~ 4 Comments

Several years ago, I read Erik Larson’s Isaac’s Storm, a nonfiction account of the terrible Galveston hurricane and flood of 1900. So, when one of the books on my Walter Scott Prize list turned out to be set in that time and place, I really wanted to read it. It did not disappoint.

Catherine Wainwright has behaved badly, and the result is a scandal that has resulted in her ostracism from her home town of Dayton, Ohio, and cost her livelihood as a performing pianist. In desperation, she writes to an old friend, Oscar Williams, who is a dairy farmer on Galveston Island. Although she has always considered herself his social superior, years ago he proposed to her. She did not accept him, but he is now a widower with a young son. He proposes again and she accepts. She has barely enough money to get to Galveston.

Nan Ogden is a much less sophisticated woman. She was the best friend of Bernadette, Oscar’s wife, and promised her she would take care of Andre, Oscar and Bernadette’s son. Truth be told, she has her own feelings for Oscar. Until Catherine appears, she has hopes that some day she might be Oscar’s wife. Instead, she finds herself a housekeeper for a woman who can barely boil an egg.

We don’t like Catherine at first, but she quickly grows on us as she develops more empathy for other people. As Catherine, Oscar, Andre, and Nan try to sort out their various feelings and relationships, the tension in the novel builds toward the storm. Then the novel becomes truly riveting.

The Promise is especially strong in its sense of place. I’ve been to Galveston when it was so hot I wondered how anyone could live there before air conditioning, let alone wearing corsets and tight clothes. Weisgarber really makes you feel the heat and stickiness.

The Tilted World

The Son

The Johnstown Flood

Day 994: The Lovers of Yvonne

November 11, 2016November 11, 2016 ~ whatmeread ~ 2 Comments

The Sieur Gaston de Luynes is a soldier of fortune whose fortunes haven’t worked out so well at the beginning of The Lovers of Yvonne. Almost destitute, he was lucky enough to be hired by Cardinal Mazarin to teach his nephew Andrea de Mancini arms. But in the first chapter of the novel, the Cardinal fires Luynes after Andrea becomes drunk, blaming Luynes for his nephew’s behavior.

More dangerously, Andrea, who is a very young man, has been challenged to a duel. The Cardinal orders Luynes to make sure the duel doesn’t occur. The only way Luynes can see to honorably do that is to injure the other combatant, Eugène de Canaples, first. So, he duly insults Canaples and then handily beats him in a duel, making sure to wound him.

However, this fight attracts a mob, which chases Luynes with the object of hurting him. He is only able to escape by jumping into the carriage of a woman passing by. He falls madly in love with this woman, who unfortunately is Yvonne Canaples, the sister of his victim.

If this weren’t bad enough, the Cardinal informs him that he has arranged a marriage between Yvonne and Andrea. He tells him he will see him hanged if he finds him anywhere near Choisy, where the de Canaples live. But Luynes likes Andrea, so when invited to go along with him, he does. It’s a good thing, too, because several other suitors are on the way there, most notably the Marquis de St. Auban.

This novel is Sabatini’s first, and it is full of intrigue, sword fights, and kidnappings. Sabatini had only lived in England ten years before writing it, but the English is impeccable, his sixth language. Although Sabatini was himself disappointed in this novel, it is entertaining.

La Reine Margot

The Black Tulip

Merivel: A Man of His Time

Day 991: The Angry Tide

November 8, 2016November 8, 2016 ~ whatmeread ~ 3 Comments

At the beginning of The Angry Tide, the seventh novel in the Poldark saga, Ross Poldark is taking his place for his first term in Parliament. George Warleggan is so jealous about what he sees as having his seat stolen that he is buying property so that he can represent a pocket borough, a borough with few or no inhabitants. What is more serious to Ross, though, is that the Warleggans are again plotting to bring down Pascoe’s bank.

When the threat comes to Pascoes, Demelza is left to deal with it, as Ross is away in London. She does what she thinks Ross would do, which is to try to support Ross’s friend Pascoe.

While the Poldark’s marriage is still shadowed by Ross’s knowledge that Demelza was unfaithful to him, the Warleggans are getting along better. George has finally accepted the idea that Valentine is his own child.

Poor Morwenna Whitworth feels herself to be close to losing her mind. Although her husband Ossie has been told that having another child could kill Morwenna, he begins insisting on his marital rights again. But twice a week isn’t enough for him, so he begins a dangerous liaison. Soon, he gets what he deserves.

This novel is another worthy continuation of the Poldark series. Although I don’t always like the directions Graham takes, the story is always interesting.

Related Facts

Warleggan

The Four Swans

The Black Moon

Day 980: Guy Mannering

October 4, 2016 ~ whatmeread ~ 7 Comments

Guy Mannering is the second of Sir Walter Scott’s Waverly novels, set in Scotland and featuring Scottish dialect and folklore. It is a romping adventure, with smugglers, hidden caves, a kidnapped child, a gypsy queen, a hidden identity, and murder.

The novel begins in the 1760’s with a visit by Mannering as a young man to Ellangowan, an estate on the southwest cost of Scotland. Mannering arrives there on a rambling tour in time for the birth of Harry Bertram, the son of the Laird of Ellangowan. Mannering is an amateur astrologer, and he casts the baby’s horoscope, revealing that he will encounter dangers at the ages of 5 and 21. Then Mannering disappears from the story for 21 years.

The tragedy of the household occurs when Harry is five. He disappears after being the inadvertent witness to the murder of a customs officer. The family assumes he has been murdered. His foolish father being overwrought by grief, the estate is plundered by his agent Glossin, and Bertram is bankrupted.

Mannering comes back on the scene after many years as an army officer in India. He arrives in time to witness the sale of the Bertram estate to Glossin. It cannot be saved from its debtors without a male heir, and there is only Lucy Bertram, born the day her brother disappeared. In his fury at Glossin, Bertram has a fit and dies, leaving Lucy without home or money. Since Mannering’s daughter will be joining him in a nearby manor, he offers Lucy a home.

Mannering has his own troubles with his daughter Julia. In India, he had reason to believe that a young officer, Vanbeest Brown, was courting his wife, so he challenged him to a duel and wounded him. But Brown was actually courting Mannering’s daughter, and her guardian has caught her meeting secretly with him. Mannering summons Julia to join him, but Brown soon follows.

It is when Brown arrives in the locality that the plot heats up, for he begins finding things familiar, and he meets a mysterious gypsy woman named Meg Merrilies who makes some mysterious pronouncements. Of course, it soon obvious that Brown is the long-lost heir to Ellangowan. But he has the enmity of local villains, who are afraid he can accuse them of murder and malfeasance against him, as well as circumstances that appear to convict him of a crime. Moreover, he doesn’t know who he is, and once he knows, how will he prove it?

This is an entertaining adventure novel about the wild borderlands of Scotland. It has some fine villains, upright heroes, and an amusing couple of comic characters, one being the farmer Dandy Dinmont, a terrier breeder, whose name has since been taken for a breed of terriers.

Waverly

The Candlemass Road

Christowell: A Dartmoor Tale

Day 975: Master & God

September 23, 2016 ~ whatmeread ~ 6 Comments

For many years I faithfully read Lindsey Davis’s entertaining mystery series set in ancient Rome and featuring informer Marcus Didius Falco and his lovely wife Helena Justina. I only stopped reading after about 20 books because I was a little tired of the situation. Still, I occasionally pick up one of the series.

So, when I saw that Davis wrote a straight historical novel about the reigns of Domitian and Vespasian and Titus (Domitian’s father and brother), this seemed perfect to me. The novel covers the whole of the Emperor Domitian’s reign and has as its main characters Gaius Vinius Clodianus, a Praetorian guard, and Flavia Lucilla, a hairdresser.

And this was a bit of a problem. I initially had a hard time getting into this novel, and one reason, I think, was the sort of bifurcated story of Domitian’s reign. Gaius Vinius and Flavia Lucilla are just too far removed from the action to integrate them successfully into this story. The result is that the bulk of the novel is exposition, pages and pages of the author telling us what’s going on rather than events being told through the story of its characters.

Later, the two main characters become more important to the general thrust of the novel, and it improves. But for most of the novel, we’re left with a two-pronged approach, Domitian’s reign on the one hand and the romance between the two main characters on the other. This approach even becomes three-pronged during several years when Gaius Vinius is prisoner in Dacia. I couldn’t help contrasting this novel with Colleen McCullough’s excellent Master of Rome series (about Sulla, Julius Caesar, and Mark Anthony), or even better, Robert Harris’s series about Cicero (reviews upcoming).

This isn’t to say that I didn’t eventually settle down and enjoy the novel. I did. I just didn’t think it was one of Davis’s best. Occasionally, a hint of her trademark sardonic humor appears, but overall, I feel that she struggles to keep the novel moving.

Alexandria

Quo Vadis

Acté

Day 973: The Lie

September 21, 2016September 26, 2016 ~ whatmeread ~ 6 Comments

Best Book of the Week!
Helen Dunmore has this thing she does. I’ll be reading along, moderately interested, and then at the end of the novel she’ll do something that makes me realize the novel is much better than I first supposed. She does this again with The Lie.

Daniel Branwell has returned to his home town in Cornwall from World War I. A dying old lady took him in when he arrived home, and he cared for her until her death. He doesn’t want to mix much with other people, though. He is traumatized from the war and particularly by the death of his friend Frederick, who is haunting him.

As Daniel struggles to make a living, his memories alternate between those of the war and of his childhood friendship with Frederick. Although Daniel was bright and did well in class with an eidetic memory for poetry, he was forced to drop out of school at the age of 11. Frederick, as the son of a wealthy man, was being prepared for better things. Still, even as young men, when Frederick was home they were nearly inseparable.

Daniel meets Frederick’s sister Felicia, now a widow with a young daughter. Their mutual grief brings them together, and they begin spending time with each other, he helping her around the house or both of them visiting the sites of his adventures with Frederick.

But Daniel has told a lie about something. Because of it, he is aware he’s being misunderstood by the village.

This is a powerful novel that I may not have looked for were it not for my Walter Scott Prize project. Although I have not enjoyed all of the short listed books, this one sneaked up on me.

Exposure

The Greatcoat

No More Parades

Day 970: The Four Swans

September 14, 2016 ~ whatmeread ~ 2 Comments

The sixth book in the Poldark series finds George Warleggan unable to dismiss the allegations that Aunt Agatha made about his son Valentine’s parentage before she died. He has been treating the baby Valentine with some distance and has been having Elizabeth followed. But he finds no evidence in support of his suspicions.

Ross Poldark has been offered a seat in Parliament, but he refuses to run, thinking that such a job will not suit his disposition. He is not happy to learn, however, that George Warleggan gets the position instead.

Demelza hears of a meeting between Ross and Elizabeth Warleggan, so she fears that Ross may be seeing Elizabeth again. When a young naval officer that Ross rescued from prison in France is attracted to her, Demelza is in the mood to pay him more heed than she ordinarily would be.

The economy is shaky during the wars with France. At first, the French seem to be foundering, but then everyone begins hearing of the victories of a new general, Bonaparte. Ross becomes impatient of having no more role to play than as leader of a group of Volunteers.

With the latest two novels, the scope is branching out to include more characters. This novel goes into the fate of Elizabeth’s cousin, Morwenna, who George Warleggan forced into an unhappy marriage when she fell in love with Demelza’s brother, Drake Carne. Morwenna’s repellent husband, Reverend Osborne Whitworth, has used the excuse of Morwenna’s illness after the birth of her child to molest her younger sister Rowella, who is the children’s nursemaid. We also hear more about the difficulties of the Carne brothers.

After six books, this series has not palled. From a mildly interesting start, it gets more and more compelling as it goes on. I have already bought the other six novels in the series.

The Black Moon

Warleggan

Jeremy Poldark

Day 967: The Danish Girl

September 9, 2016 ~ whatmeread ~ 3 Comments

The Danish Girl is another example of how untrustworthy book blurbs are for conveying the sense and feel of a novel. The blurb talks about “the glitz and glamour of 1920’s Copenhagen, Paris, and Dresden.” Yes, there is a bit of going about to bistros in Paris, but this novel is not about glitz and glamour. It is mostly about the tender relationship between two people, Greta and her husband Einar, who becomes the first man to undergo a sex change operation. Ebershoff lightly based this fictional book on the lives of Lili Elbe and Gerda Wegener, both artists, but he says the details of their lives are wholly invented.

It is Greta who realizes something first. She is a portrait painter with a deadline. When an opera singer can’t make her sitting, Greta asks Einar to put on a stocking so she can use his leg as a model. Later, she has him put on a dress. Einar is a delicate man who is not self-aware. From the time he begins dressing up as Lily, he becomes more and more abstracted from his painting and his former life. Greta sees him drifting vaguely away from Einar, becoming Lily.

I wondered if Ebershoff’s description of Lily’s state of mind really reflected how a transexual person would feel, as Lily seems barely able to remember anything about Einar and vice versa. It almost seemed more like a description of a person with multiple personalities. But I don’t know much about this subject.

This is not a novel of action or plot. It is more about the states of mind of the people involved. It is sympathetic and touching. I didn’t think it would be my subject matter, but I found it affecting.

The 19th Wife

A Place Called Winter

The Other Daughter

Day 965: Strange Company

September 6, 2016 ~ whatmeread ~ 2 Comments

I read about half of Strange Company but decided not to finish it. It just wasn’t the book for me. I thought it might be interesting because it is about Native Americans during the Civil War.

Roderick “Dhu” Walker is a member of a group of the Cherokee Nation called the Pins, for pins they wear under their lapels. They are traditional Cherokees on the side of the Union who begged the government to protect them from the Confederates under the terms of their treaty. The government did nothing, though, and the Confederacy has forced the Pins to fight on its side.

Before a battle in Missouri, some of the Pins decide not to fight but instead to kill Confederate soldiers during the battle. Dhu kills a couple men but mostly because they get in his way while he’s trying to escape. Later, though, he is captured by the Confederates as a deserter.

As a prisoner, Dhu is teamed up with a Union soldier and forced to fight him at the instigation of Captain Gordon Early. This amusement is only stopped by the intervention of the Colonel. When the Union soldier, Ben Lacey, tells Dhu that Early is off to escort a load of gold from Mexico, Dhu talks Ben into escaping with the idea that, along with some other Cherokees, they’ll intercept the shipment.

The novel moves along fast enough but does little else. There seems to be no idea of characterization. Sentences are short and choppy. Although the writing is grammatical, it is not polished by any means. Any metaphors are clichés. In short, the novel is not very good. If you are interested in reading a Western, you’ll be much better off with one of the “Related Posts” at the bottom of this post.

Disclosure: This eBook was sent to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

The Son

Appaloosa

The Sisters Brothers

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