Tag: Massachusetts

Review 2517: Dead Ernest

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I very much enjoyed the Tilton books I have read so far, especially for a certain wacky energy, so when I saw that Dead Ernest filled a hole in my Century of Books project, I looked for a copy. At first, this novel was almost too frenetic for me, but either it calmed down a bit or I got used to it.

Leonidas Witherall, Tilton’s amateur sleuth, is trying to finish one of his Lieutenant Haseltine adventure novels before his publisher goes crazy, so he has asked not to be disturbed. However, telegrams keep arriving that he doesn’t look at, people keep coming to the door, and his housekeeper, Mrs. Mullet, keeps trying to tell him things he refuses to listen to. Of course, we know he should at least be opening the telegrams and listening to Mrs. Mullet.

After Leonidas sends her home, two young men show up with a truck and try to deliver a freezer. Leonidas thinks they have the wrong address and sends them next door where new neighbors are moving in. The two men come back and say the neighbors don’t want it either, but Leonidas sends them away again after they tell him that a man fixing a tire beside the road paid them to deliver it. Later, he finds the freezer shoved into his kitchen. Inside is a leg of lamb, some haddock, and a body. Leonidas is horrified to recognize it.

Leonidas recently picked up some new offices and duties. One of them involves Meredith Academy, which was taken over by the Navy during the war. Now that the war is over, the Navy has handed it back without warning. This would normally not affect Leonidas, but he was willed the school by a friend and has decided to act as head at least for the meantime. He recognizes the body as that of Ernest Finger, whom he hired as French instructor the day before.

As soon as he discovers the body, the doorbell rings. It’s a girl dressed in violet who says she was sent for his birthday. And she is determined to stay for the time she was hired even when he tells her it is not his birthday. People keep coming over, and it’s all he can do to keep his nosy neighbor, Mrs. Havershaw, from opening the freezer. Once he gets rid of all of them except Terry, the girl, he tells her what’s going on and they decide to join forces.

As Leonidas keeps getting pulled into social engagements he’s forgotten about, he continues to investigate, ruling suspects out and gaining and losing partners as he goes. This novel is funny and entertaining, and the case is ridiculous. The perfect light reading.

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Review 2474: North Woods

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In early colonial days, a couple flees one of the colonies into the wilderness of Massachusetts. There, they settle in a valley.

A settler with a baby is kidnapped by natives. When she becomes ill with fever, they leave her with an old white woman, who cares for her. But when white men come after her and plan to kill the natives—the old woman’s friends—she murders them. Before this happens, one of the men gives the captured woman an apple, and she drops the seeds on the ground.

An apple tree grows.

After the French and Indian Wars, Major Charles Osgood gives up his uniform and decides to grow apples. His friends think he has lost his mind. He searches all over until a child leads him to an apple tree near a ruined cabin in the wilderness. The apple is marvelous. He builds a house and takes cuttings from the tree to make an orchard, producing an apple called Osgood’s Wonder.

So Daniel Mason goes on relating the history of this plot of ground, from one owner to another. People die, are murdered, are conned, become ghosts, run mad, the wilderness recedes and then returns, the house is ruined and rebuilt, added to, ruined, rebuilt. Each section is linked to others by characters, coincidences, and place. Some of the incidents are funny, some fates are sad, some characters get what they deserve. Tales are punctuated by songs written from the grave.

I can’t really convey how much I enjoyed reading this unusual novel. It’s steeped in the beauty of the forest. It somehow manages to involve you despite some quite short (some longer) stories of its characters. You get worried about the fates of apple and chestnut trees! I loved this one. It did exactly what a book is supposed to do, pulled me into a different world and made me reluctant to leave it.

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Review 2341: #1937Club! Beginning with a Bash

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I really enjoyed reading Alice Tilton’s The Iron Clew a few years ago for the 1947 Club so when I saw that Beginning with a Bash qualified for the 1937 Club, I was delighted. And this novel proved to be as much of a romp as the other.

This year, because I had so many previous reviews for books published in 1937, I did a separate posting. You can see that list here.

Beginning with a Bash is Tilton’s first book featuring Leonidas Witherall, the ex-teacher who looks just like William Shakespeare, so that his friends call him Bill. The novel begins with Martin Jones fleeing the police down a Boston street on a wintry day, clad inappropriately in flannels and carrying a set of golf clubs. He takes refuge in a used bookstore, where he finds Leonidas, his ex-teacher, as well as Dot, an old friend and new bookstore owner. There Martin explains that after he got his dream job at an anthropological society, $50,000 in bonds disappeared. (In a nod to Bookish Beck and what she calls book serendipity, this is the second book I’ve read in a month that involved stolen bonds.) Even after Martin was proved innocent, his boss John North fired him. He has lost his home, got accidentally mixed in with a demonstration by Communist sympathizers and got arrested again, and is a vagrant, so when someone snatched a lady’s purse, the police thought it was him.

Martin is hiding out in the bookstore when he discovers John North dead in the back, having been bashed over the head. The police naturally arrest Martin for murder. However, Leonidas notices that on that same morning two different customers came in looking for volume four of the same obscure book of sermons, and John North was one of them.

Leonidas decides that there’s nothing for it but that he and Dot must figure out who killed John North so that Martin can be set free. In no time at all, they have accumulated helpers in the form of North’s maid Gerty, her gangster boyfriend Freddy, and the indomitable widow of the governor, Agatha Jordan. They blithely engage in house breaking, vehicle theft, and even kidnapping while being chased around by other gangsters and hiding from the police. And let’s not forget that aside from stolen bonds, the story involves secret passageways, gun battles, and capture. All of this is told in a breezy style with lots of humor. It’s a totally improbable story but lots of fun.

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Review 2297: Killingly

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Killingly is loosely based on the true story of a student’s disappearance from Mount Holyoke College in 1847.

Bertha Mallish has vanished, but the readers realize that her best friend Agnes Sullivan seems to know something about it. The river has been dragged, but no trace of Bertha can be found.

Bertha and Agnes are the campus misfits. They are hard workers who don’t socialize and are from poor families. However, the last few months they have become very close.

Dr. Hammond, who had been courting Bertha, has arrived at the college with Reverend Mallish, Bertha’s elderly grandfather, and Florence, her much older sister. Florence and Agnes don’t like Dr. Hammond, who quickly develops an obsession about the case, hires a private detective, and behaves as though he’s in charge of the investigation. He becomes suspicious of Agnes.

Beutner is very skillful in how she slowly unfolds the story and reveals what happened to Bertha. She draws you in to a story that is sometimes affecting, sometimes suspenseful. The novel is involving, and I look forward to reading more by Beutner.

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Review 2278: The Romantic

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In the 19th century, Cashel Greville grows up in Ireland under the care of his aunt, who is governess to Sir Guy Stillwell’s family. But it’s clear to the reader, if not to Cashel, that all is not what it seems. Sure enough Cashel’s aunt moves them to Oxford, where they take up residence with Sir Guy under the name of Ross, and Cashel’s aunt Elspeth gives birth to twins, Hogan and Buckley. It is not until Cashel is 15 that Elspeth reveals she is his mother and Sir Guy his father.

Outraged, Cashel runs away from home and joins the army as a drummer boy. If you think I’m giving too much away, this all happens within the first 50 pages of this 450-page book, in which Cashel is on the field at Waterloo, hangs out with the Shelleys and Lord Byron, writes a best-selling novel but is cheated by his publisher and ends up in the Marshalsea, attempts to form a commune in Massachusetts, and so on. Oh yes, he also meets the love of his life in Ravenna, Italy, but she is married to a rich old man.

Cashel’s eventful and perhaps not altogether believable life (he claims to have discovered the source of the Nile before Speke and to have thwarted an antiquities smuggling scheme with the help of Sir Richard Burton) is supposedly documented by an autobiography and other papers that came into Boyd’s possession. With this claim, Boyd begins another of his “whole life” novels, maybe the most picaresque and least believable.

I usually like Boyd’s novels—in fact, some of them I have loved—but I had trouble connecting with this one. I’m not sure why, especially since it received uniformly positive reviews. It is fast moving despite its length. Maybe too fast. I didn’t feel like I got to know Cashel or really any of the characters. All of the women are ciphers, even Cashels’ great love. Boyd spends more pages on a sexual encounter with her than on Cashel’s marriage and its subsequent breakup.

Given Boyd’s plans for the adventures in this novel, maybe he needed to make it a lot longer.

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Review 2192: Act of Oblivion

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It’s hard to know where sympathies might lie in this historical novel set right after the Restoration, in 1665. On the one hand, there is Richard Nayler (a fictional character), tasked with finding and taking to trial (or later, just plain executing) those deemed responsible for killing Charles I. A mighty task, but he performs it so zealously, not minding a dirty trick or two.

On the other hand, there are Colonel Edward Whalley and his son-in-law Colonel Will Goffe (historical characters), on the list because they signed the King’s death warrant after an illegal trial. They have escaped to America, but Nayler blames them for the death of his wife (in premature labor after they broke in on a religious service on Christmas Day, deemed illegal under Cromwell, and arrested people) and is determined to catch them.

Robert Harris states that this hunt for the regicides was the greatest manhunt of the 17th century so we may assume that’s his motivation for the book. Although I’m not particularly interested in the Puritan period of New England history, certainly there are interesting things I didn’t know disclosed in this novel, like the history of New Haven. In addition, Harris depicts the wildness of New England at this time more vividly than anything else I’ve read.

Harris manages to raise the tension of the novel at the end, when Nayler, long after everyone else has lost interest, finally locates Goffe, but overall, I was too turned off by the deeds on both sides of the English Civil War (usually I favor the Royalists, but he shows just how brutal both sides were) to care much about these antagonists. I read this book for my Walter Scott Prize Project.

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Review 1804: Beheld

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In the Afterword to Beheld, TaraShea Nesbit says she wrote it because she wanted to hear the women’s voices she missed in reading about Plymouth Colony. Certainly, the voices we hear in the novel are mostly those of the women or the dispossessed.

Beheld focuses on some of the stories we never heard about Plymouth, particularly the divide between the Puritans and the other residents—indentured servants, farmers, carpenters, and the other people meant to do the work and who do not share the Puritans’ beliefs.

Alice Bradford is the second wife of the governor, William Bradford. His first wife was her beloved friend Dorothy. But Dorothy died upon her arrival in Plymouth under circumstances Alice doesn’t understand, and shortly after Alice’s own first husband died, William sent for her to be his wife.

John and Eleanor Billington signed contracts to work for seven years as indentured servants in exchange for a parcel of land for each male in their family in the proposed colony in Virginia. But first the Puritans’ boat The Speedwell sprung a leak and the Puritans forced themselves onto The Mayflower. Then the boat went north to Massachusetts instead of Virginia. The Puritans took charge of the colony, not allowing the same rights to other men, not allowing anyone but themselves to trade with the natives, giving themselves the best parcels of land, and finally cheating John out of his son’s parcel.

This is an interesting novel that depicts the Puritans as self-righteous and self-serving. Of course, most of us who have studied this period and place since grade school know this, but perhaps not how much. Miles Standish is shown as greedy and violent. I felt this novel was quite eye-opening.

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Review 1713: The Narrow Land

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As a young child, Michael Novak was rescued during World War II and sent to the States as part of a program for orphaned children. There, he was adopted by the Novaks. At 10, he is still extremely fearful and full of routines he follows to calm himself. So, he is resistant when Mrs. Novak tries to put him on a train, the first step in a journey to spend the summer on Cape Cod with the Kaplans. Finally, he decides to go.

On the island in 1950 live the artist Edward Hopper and his wife Jo. Although they tend to be standoffish with the vacationers, Michael forms a friendship of sorts with Jo. And it’s really the relationship between Edward and Jo that this book is about.

Edward has been having a dry spell, and he seems preoccupied with trying to find a woman he painted a few years before. She is right under his nose in the person of Katherine Kaplan, Mrs. Kaplan’s daughter, who is dying of cancer. He has seen her and noted the resemblance, but she is no longer dyeing her hair blond. He is an introvert who spends most of his time in his own head.

Jo is extremely jealous of him and thinks he pays too much attention to Olivia, Mrs. Kaplan’s daughter-in-law, when it is really Olivia paying attention to him. Jo is in fact irrationally and violently angry at times, particularly when she feels she had to abandon her career when she became his wife. Although Jo has some moments of self-awareness, I really think Hickey treats her harshly as a character. Granted, I know nothing about the couple’s life, but Hickey shows her making a fool of herself at a party with her airs and graces and spiteful remarks about other people.

Hopper is not very nice to Jo and belittles her art, although I read about that and found she had some standing as an artist.

This novel, which I read for my Walter Scott project, was slow moving, and for a long time I couldn’t tell whether it was going anywhere. Sometimes that doesn’t bother me, but in this case I had a hard time staying interested. The novel does have a payoff in the end, but it is more character study than plot-based.

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Review 1673: Writers & Lovers

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Ever since reading Euphoria, I’ve been wondering what else Lily King can do. Let’s just say that Writers & Lovers did not disappoint.

Casey Peabody is having a rough time. At 31 she is still waiting tables and trying to work on her novel. Her mother died recently, and she is grief-stricken. She just wasted a spot in a writing workshop on an affair instead of writing, and now she hasn’t heard from the man she spent so much time with. She lives in what used to be a gardening shed, and her landlord frequently belittles her. Finally, she has a crushing student loan debt, and she is working double shifts just to be able to afford to live in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

As if all this isn’t stressful enough, she finds herself dating two very different men. She is supposed to go on a first date with Silas when he abruptly leaves town with no explanation. Then she meets Oscar, a middle-aged, established writer with two delightful young boys. Soon, she is going on outings with the three of them. But then Silas shows back up.

This is an intimate and engaging story of a few months in a complicated woman’s life. This description almost makes it sound like a romance novel, but it is much more than that. I found it absolutely compelling.

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Review 1672: Literary Wives! Monogamy

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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!

Eva of Paperback Princess
Lynn of Smoke and Mirrors
Naomi of Consumed By Ink

* * *

Annie, a small, reserved photographer, and Graham, a large, extroverted bookstore owner, have been married for about 30 years. Their story goes forward linearly with many visits to the past as Miller minutely examines their relationship. The crux of the story, though, is that Graham has been having an affair that he has just managed to break off. Then that night he dies in his sleep. Months later, Annie is just beginning to make some sort of recovery from her grief when she learns of the affair and has to reassess what she thought she knew about their marriage.

It’s hard to explain or evaluate this novel. Miller is generous to her characters, but she is also very observant. She examines and excavates their relationship in a detached way, even though the novel is from Annie’s viewpoint, that can seem cold. That is, there are no value judgments but also no feeling of affection, either, which may make readers feel detached. On the other hand, she really understands the intricacies and complications of marriage.

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

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Although Annie and Graham are happily married, we learn that Annie resisted him at first because she was afraid he would overwhelm her. For his part, his bonhomie and charm hide his insecurities, and his lust for life is characterized by a certain insatiability. He needs.

In this novel, although we see almost her every thought, I thought Annie was somewhat of an enigma. I find myself puzzled by her even while understanding why she is angry with Graham. I almost think that the novel provides us too many details of their lives to answer this question. Of all the books we have read for this club so far this one seems to be the most nuanced. Still, I find myself without very much to say about it.

After thinking about it for awhile, though, it seems to me that the couple is a mismatch even though they were happily married for years. It seems that Annie doesn’t realize that Graham reinvented himself from an introverted geek to the loud, exuberant charismatic person he became. Perhaps because this isn’t his true self, Graham seems to seek reaffirmation of his attractiveness through affairs. Annie is probably too self-possessed to be the person who could calm Graham’s insecurities. Perhaps he would have been happier with someone who was more dependent.

The title also makes me wonder if we’re supposed to re-evaluate the whole concept of monogamy, but nothing in the book forwards this thought.

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