Tag: Rome

Review 2586: The White Bear

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The newly released (today, I think) reprint of The White Bear by NYRB is actually two novellas, The White Bear and The Rearguard. I wasn’t familiar with Pontoppidan but find he was an early 20th century Danish Nobel laureate. Both of these novellas were published in the late 19th century.

In The White Bear, we meet Thorkild Müller, who as a young misfit was directed into the ministry because of a grant that offered a generous university stipend for a theological degree if the recipient was willing to minister in the frozen north for an unspecified period. Thorkild takes the stipend but fritters away his time at university, barely setting foot in the classroom.

But then because of the deaths of two ministers, he receives his summons, which he tries to avoid by flunking his exams. That doesn’t work, and he ends up in Greenland ministering to the Inuit.

There he is miserable until one summer when, instead of returning to a trading post as expected while the Inuit were leading their nomadic summer lives, he goes with them.

Much of the story is about what happens when, as an old man, he decides to return to Denmark.

I really loved this story. I have a fascination for books about cold and desolate climates, but what’s more important is that Thorkild is an unforgettable character—huge and covered with an unkempt white beard, boisterous, simple, yet not as simple as he seems.

The Rearguard is about Jørgen Hallager, in some ways a bit like Thorkild but in others, not. He is also a big boisterous man, a social realist painter who considers that artists who turn away from realism are traitors, who is loud in his condemnation of almost everyone that doesn’t believe what he does.

He has recently become engaged to Ursula Branth, the frail, gently reared daughter of a state counselor. He has become engaged to her in Rome, where they make a lengthy stay and eventually marry. Her father and Hallager dislike each other. He is trying to separate her from her friends and family because of his socialist principles, and her father is worried about her.

I found Hallager to be insufferable—so full of himself and sure of his ideas, belligerent with anyone who disagrees, and verbally abusive to his wife, trying to bring her to a mental place where he wants her. I didn’t understand some of the basis for his rants (not being up on 19th century Danish politics and art).

I liked Thorkild a lot better. Both of the novellas are wonderful character sketches, though.

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

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Review 2473: My Father’s House

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Helen of She Read Novels has posted a note about Readers Imbibing Peril (RIP XIX), which I always forget about but usually participate in. As somewhat of a suspense novel, My Father’s House qualifies, so let this be the start of my participation this year. Most of the action is on Instagram at @PerilReaders, but I am not a great user of that.

My Father’s House is a book I read for my Walter Scott project, and it is also the first in O’Connor’s Roman Escape Line trilogy. It is based on the true story of the Escape Line, a group of people who helped captured soldiers and others escape from the Nazi occupation of Rome. In particular, it focuses on Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, one of the group’s founders.

After Rome is overrun by the Nazis, the Vatican gives Monsignor O’Flaherty a duty of ministering to British soldiers in Nazi captivity. Being an Irishman, he isn’t eager to do this duty. However, when he sees the condition of the men and the ease with which the Nazis break the Geneva Conventions, his manner to the Germans is such that he is removed from the duty. In this way, he comes to the attention of Obersturmbannführer Paul Hauptmann.

O’Flaherty then decides to form a group to help soldiers escape from the Nazis. The group becomes successful enough that Hauptmann begins receiving threatening communications from Himmler.

Much of the novel centers around a Rendimento, as the Choir, the central group that runs the Escape Line, calls their missions. The group has planned its mission for Christmas Eve (1943), thinking that Hauptmann won’t expect it, but in the last few days, Sam Derry, an escaped British major who would normally run it, is incapacitated. They begin training Enzo Angelucci instead.

The main focus of the novel is whether the mission will be successful, but the narration travels around in time and person via transcripts of interviews of several of the participants. In some respects, this structure is interesting, helping you get to know the other characters, but they didn’t all have distinct voices, and you didn’t get to know them well. There is also the disadvantage that the approach tends to interrupt the building suspense.

I thought the novel was very interesting in its subject matter. I’d never heard of the Escape Line. However, as the first of a trilogy, I’m not sure how much more there is to say, even though no doubt there are many adventures to recount. I didn’t feel as if I got to know most of the characters in the novel, not even the Monsignor.

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Review 2114: Lost Hearts in Italy

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I absolutely loved Andrea Lee’s Red Island House—in fact, it was on my Best of the Year list this last year—but I think I would have liked Lost Hearts in Italy better if I hadn’t read the other book first. I make this comment because Lee seems to be rehashing the same story except the Red Island House also dealt with other themes.

In Red Island House, a young, beautiful American mixed race academic is married to an older, uneducated, self-made wealthy Italian businessman, a marriage that seemed to me inexplicable. In Lost Hearts in Italy, a young, beautiful American mixed race journalist meets an older, uneducated, self-made Italian billionaire when she is on her way to join her young, beautiful nice husband who loves her in their new home in Rome. Mira doesn’t even seem attracted to Zenin (she calls him by his last name as the heroine of Red Island House calls her husband), but eventually she begins having an affair with him, one that (this is no spoiler—it’s clear from the beginning) spoils her marriage with Nick. The novel moves backward and forward in time between 1986 and 2005, examining the lasting repercussions of Mira’s actions.

The only difference I can see between Zenin and Senna of Red Island House is that Zenin is tall and Senna is short. Lee is obviously obsessed by this relationship. Although she is an excellent writer, I think Red Island House, with its themes of identity, colonialism and the responsibility of the rich to the poor, has more to offer than just a dissection of this relationship. In Lost Hearts in Italy, Mira is like a moth drawn to a flame except she knows she is doing something against her own nature. My question was, then why did she do it? Zenin is not an attractive character at all. It’s inexplicable.

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Review 2088: Mrs. Tim Flies Home

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I intended to read the Mrs. Tim books in order, but that hasn’t quite worked out, and I received this one just in time for Dean Street Press in December.

Hester Christie (Mrs. Tim) reluctantly leaves her husband in Kenya, where he is now posted, to form a household in England that her children can return to for the summer holidays. But en route she stops for two days in Rome. There she is unexpectedly met by family friend Tony Morley. Her couple days of sightseeing with him create a misunderstanding that travels all the way back to England to cause trouble for her through the person of Mrs. Alston, whom she met on the plane from Kenya to Rome.

Mrs. Tim has found a house in Old Quinings called the Small House. Although she loves the house, she finds she has a troublesome back neighbor and a landlady who isn’t to be trusted. She also meets some pleasant neighbors and helps out a young man in his romance with a nice young girl. She solves a mystery and finds out why some of the villagers are treating her oddly.

This book is another breezy entry in the Mrs. Tim series, written in the form of letters to her husband. It gets a little patronizing toward the ancient Romans (conveniently forgetting about the Inquisition), but they’re dead so they won’t mind. Otherwise, it’s an entertaining read.

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

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Review 2017: The Aeneid

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When I choose books for my Classics Club list, I try to pick some from very early times. This time I realized that although I knew of many of the stories of Achilles and Odysseus before reading The Iliad and The Odyssey, I knew nothing about that other great classic hero, Aeneus. So, I put The Aeneid on my list.

Regarding the translation, I had heard good things about the Fagles translations of several of these epics, and that was the one described on the library web page when I reserved the book. The translation I got, however, was by Sarah Ruden. Apparently, whoever picked this book off the shelves sees no difference (assuming they actually had the Fagles translation), which is odd for a librarian. I didn’t look into the reviews of this translator’s works, just read it, so I have no idea how that might have affected my enjoyment of the book. Suffice it to say that this version was easy to read and went relatively quickly.

Aeneus and his men are refugees from the fall of Troy who are looking for a place to settle. Prophecies have informed him that he will settle on the west coast of what is now Italy and found a great empire (Rome), but he is a long time getting there. Seven years is mentioned at one point.

In the beginning of the book, the Trojans’ ships are blown off course in a violent storm. Aeneus’s ship is separated from his father’s, but they all end up in Carthage. There Aeneus dabbles with Queen Dido and seriously considers staying, but a seer tells him to go to Italy, so he does, leaving some of his people behind. Poor Queen Dido stabs herself from sorrow. I don’t think he even bothers to say goodbye. What a guy!

I found the first half of the book fairly entertaining. There is a really creepy description of a visit to an oracle, maddened by her visions (and hydrogen sulfide gas, I presume), and not too much tedious listing. That changes with the departure for Italy, as Virgil names each man who comes along, including for some a brief history of their deeds. I envisioned Virgil making sure he has included the names of the ancestors of his potential patrons.

After that, as my husband and I say about ancient stories, “There’s a whole lot of smiting going on” as Aeneus and his men arrive in Italy and proceed to evict the inhabitants. And lots of it is gory. The gore didn’t bother me but the tedium of those described battles did.

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Review 1682: Titus Andronicus

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I knew nothing about Titus Andronicus except that it is a blood bath. And it is, too, with rape, murder, dismemberment, and a woman being served her sons’ corpses in a pie.

The introduction to the play in my Riverside edition points out that the play was long poorly regarded and even by some thought not to be the work of Shakespeare. But more lately its reputation has been rehabilitated.

Titus Andronicus is a Roman general who has been fighting the Goths for years—having lost 20 sons in battle—when he returns to Rome. The emperor has recently died, and the citizens of Rome want to elect Titus, but he gives his support to the emperor’s brother Saturninus, who is duly elected but resents Titus for this.

In rapid succession and a confusing first scene, Saturninus says he will marry Titus’s daughter Lavinia while openly ogling Tamora, the captured queen of the Goths that Titus has brought back with him. Titus has just sacrificed her son to thank the gods for his triumph. Then Bassianus, the brother of Saturninus, comes in and claims Lavinia as his own, supported by some of Titus’s sons. Titus kills his own son Mutius for acting against the emperor. Although Saturninus rebukes Titus for slaughtering his own son, he still banishes Titus’s other sons for supporting Bassianus’s claim to Lavinia.

Saturninus marries Tamora, and she begins to plot her revenge against Titus for killing her son, aided by her lover, the villainous Moor Aaron. Aaron convinces Tamora’s sons Demetrius and Chiron to murder Bassianus and rape Lavinia during a hunt. They improve upon this plan by cutting off her tongue and hands, and then they frame Titus’s sons for Bassianus’s murder. More villainy follows, but once Titus has had enough, he gets his own revenge.

There aren’t very many striking passages in this play, but it is very tightly plotted. I could see some similarities to Coriolanus, another Roman revenge tragedy. I think the play might be quite horrifying and effective when performed. This play is one of the last books on my second Classics Club list.

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Review 1380: Literary Wives! Ties

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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!

We are sorry that Emily of The Bookshelf of Emily J. has left our group because of her many commitments. We’re going to miss her!

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

* * *

Ties is a very short novel divided into three parts. It is about a marriage, but moreso, it is about how a period of infidelity in that marriage affects everyone in this small family. Part I consists of letters written by the wife, Vanda, after her husband leaves her. Part II is narrated by the husband 40 years after they reconcile. Part III is from the point of view of their two children.

Initially, I was sympathetic to Vanda. After all, her husband leaves her with almost no warning and then neglects her and her children for several years, refusing to discuss their situation and too busy being happy with his girlfriend. His explanations for the affair are laden with sophism. Where did this idea come from, repeated twice, that it’s bad to resist impulses? It’s the 70’s, but come on. However, Vanda’s tone in the letters is too insistent, too strident.

An old man, Aldo is forced to revisit this period in their lives after a break-in. Cleaning up, he finds Vanda’s letters and reads them again. He sees his old affair with Lidia as a bid for freedom that was defeated out of guilt. After he and his wife reunited, she used his unhappiness to beat him and make him submissive. Worse, from the children’s point of view, she removed his role of father from the family.

This book was obviously written by a man.

Throughout the book are themes of boxes or being boxed in versus freedom and themes of cheating or being cheated.

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

We understand that Vanda and Aldo were happy and content for some years, although for a few years before the breakup, they were less so. But in this book we only see Vanda as a shrew. Of course, there is reason for her to be unhappy when her husband leaves her and the children with nothing and then avoids them for years. Still, she carries her reactions to an extreme, especially after they reunite.

For his part, Aldo seems to see her and their children as a trap. Interesting, how some men seem to forget they actually participated in having children. Once he has left them, he prefers to think only of Lidia. Later in life, he’s been downtrodden for so long, yet he sees Lidia once a year and secretly keeps photos of her in a box.

Jhumpa Lahiri, in her introduction, says the novel is about creating and destroying. To me, it is just about destroying. Aldo was happy with Lidia but didn’t have the courage to stay with her. At the same time, he destroyed what seemed to be a happy marriage with Vanda in the worst possible way, by deserting his family. When he comes back out of guilt, the two of them create an even worse mess.

 

Review 1356: The Ides of April

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Cover for The Ides of AprilFor a long time, I followed Lindsey Davis’s Marcus Didius Falco mystery series set in Ancient Rome. Davis knows her period, and the books are amusing, but after a while I got tired of them. A few friends have recommended her newer Flavia Alba series, so when I found the first one at the library, I decided to try it.

Flavia Alba is the daughter of Marcus Didius Falco and Helena Justina, who adopted her as an abandoned and wild fifteen-year-old in Britain on one of their cases. Hence, I was vaguely aware of her in some of the Falco books. At the beginning of The Ides of April, she is a young widow who has become an enforcer in her adoptive father’s footsteps.

As a female enforcer, she doesn’t get the best cases. She is trying to get her client, Salvidia, off the hook in a lawsuit against her company for running down a young boy. The aedile, Manlius Faustus, has advertised for witnesses to the accident, so she goes to his office to find out if anyone has left a statement. At the office, she encounters two key characters, Tiberius, who works for the aedile, and Andronicus, an archivist, with whom she begins a flirtation.

Flavia Alba’s case very soon becomes more sinister as she learns that her client, Salvidia, is dead of no apparent cause. A visit to the undertaker leads her to understand that a lot of healthy people are dying for no apparent reason. She begins investigating these deaths despite being warned off by the aedile’s office, but soon she is working with them in the person of Tiberius.

Unfortunately, although I enjoyed this book in some ways, there was nothing new here. Flavia Alba’s jaunty, flippant first person sounds exactly like Falco’s. Davis avoids too much repetition by hardly mentioning Flavia Alba’s parents, even when she goes to visit them, but by then I would have been happy to meet them again.

As to the mystery, there is one character with a hidden identity that was obvious to me, and I was onto the murderer fairly quickly, at least mistrusting this character almost immediately. The story arc is very similar to Davis’s first book, Silver Pigs, in that the main character encounters someone who may be a future love interest.

So, for me anyway, been there, done that.

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Day 1215: The Flamethrowers

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Cover for The FlamethrowersSet in the mid-1970’s, The Flamethrowers evokes two distinct but frenetic movements. In New York, it is the art scene, where performance art is coming to the fore and artists are trying to live their art. In Italy, it is revolution and the Red Brigade, where common people are rising up against business and political corruption.

The heroine, Reno, has grown up in Nevada ski racing and has a fascination with motorcycles and speed. She moves to New York to become an artist (although we never see her making any art) and eventually becomes the girlfriend of Sandro Valera, a well-known, older artist.

Sandro’s family in Italy made its money in motorcycles and tires, and when Reno travels to the Great Salt Flats to do a time trial on her Valera motorcycle, she accidentally gets involved in the family business. As a result, Sandro reluctantly brings her to Italy during a time of great instability and confusion.

Kushner evocatively depicts both the New York art scene and the seething streets of Rome, although often the artists seem like poseurs to me. I don’t think the depiction is meant to be satirical, though.

However, Reno as observer seems to be a different person than the risk-taker who went to New York. Further, the narrative, which occasionally jumps to the story of Sandro’s grandfather, who started the company, feels disjointed and as if it doesn’t really add up. Although I was entranced by long passages of this novel, I ended up wondering what it really was about. In particular, the novel relies on Reno’s relationship with Sandro to tie it all together, but that relationship is barely touched on.

This is the first book I read specifically because it is part of my James Tait Black Fiction Prize project.

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Day 1084: Dictator

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Cover for DictatorDictator is the final volume in Robert Harris’s trilogy about the great Roman statesman, Cicero. This trilogy has truly been spell-binding.

The novel begins in dark times for Cicero, when he and his family are hounded out of Rome by Julius Caesar, his greatest enemy. Cicero was made to look ridiculous in Colleen McCullough’s series about Caesar, but Harris sees him differently, as a man staunchly in support of the dying Republic. On the other hand, McCullough pictured Caesar much more sympathetically, while Harris shows him as a man run mad with the desire for power.

For me, this novel flagged just a little bit in the middle, while momentous events in Rome are described from afar. I think my reaction is partly because I thought I knew what happened to Cicero and was dreading it. But I actually didn’t know my Roman history that well, so I was a little bit off. In any case, the novel picks right up as soon as Cicero rejoins the action.

Robert Harris is rapidly becoming one of my favorite historical novelists. He writes a good, tight political thriller based on true events. I am already looking for his most recent novel.

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