Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell

It is a guilty pleasure of mine to read thrillers, in between the novels of translated literature which I so adore. But, sometimes I long for something effortless to read. Something distracting. Something which is both an engaging plot and uncontrived.

Perhaps you’ve seen my scorn for Gone Girl. Or, The Girl on The Train. Things got a little better with The Woman in The Window. But, Then She Was Gone turned out to be pleasant surprise.

I began it this week while walking on the treadmill at the health club. I searched my phone for something distracting, something plot driven, and I downloaded this as an audio book. It was narrated, in a lovely British voice, by Helen Duff. And it told a story which I quickly had to read in text rather than listen to in audio, as I am a much better reader than listener.

When Ellie Mack, a brilliant student and lovely daughter, disappears from home no one finds her until her bones are discovered much, much later in a ditch. This is told fairly early on; I am not spoiling any surprises. The novel goes on to explain her story, which is a rather intricate plot involving her maths tutor, specifically, while simultaneously revealing the tender heart of her mother. I found it quite compelling, and I ended it just now oddly satiated at the outcome of a rather distressing story since it was told so compassionately and effectively.

This is one thriller that did not disappoint me. (And now I am off to read We and Me by Saskia de Coster for Boekenweek, which is March 23-31.)

Still Is The Land (from West With The Night by Beryl Markham), a tremendous dog story

 

28 Sep 1936 — Famous Woman Flier Returns Home. Mrs. Beryl Markham, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west, was one of the passenger on the when the liner arrived at Southampton today. Photo shows: Mrs. Beryl Markham waving on arrival at Southampton today. — Image by © Underwood & Underwood/CORBIS

 

‍My mother found this story, an excerpt really, in The Greatest Dog Stories Ever Told edited by Patricia M. Sherwood. Beryl Markham’s courage never fails to amaze me; it stands hand in hand with her ability to write.

In this story, she tells of her dog, Buller. He was bull terrier and English sheepdog, so thoroughly mixed he looked like neither.

Buller was my accomplice in everything. He was a past-master at stealth and at more other things than any dog I ever owned or knew.

Surely he was at least as brave as Beryl, accompanying her on the Nandi hunts she participated in with the Murani in East Africa. He had even survived the attack of a leopard who had crept one night into Beryl’s hut and abducted him from the foot of her bed.

This story of their hunt, in which Beryl and Buller and the Murani encounter an angry lion, and an angrier warthog, shows more courage than I will ever possess.

But, it also shows the affection for a dog, which I know quite well.

The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton

 

Who are you? Why are you? What do you want? The problem is this—heading straight toward the miniaturist seems to make her disappear. And yet, she is so often there, watching and waiting. Nella wonders which one of them is hunter, which one of them is prey. (p. 190)

This novel caught my eye when it was first published in 2014, but it wasn’t until I saw that PBS is going to air a mini-series on it this Sunday that I decided to read it.

The Miniaturist is an interesting story, which reminded me a teensy bit of Rebecca in that it contains a young wife and lots of mysterious goings-on in her new household. The novel is set in Amsterdam, in the 1680s, and tells the story of Petronella Oortman who has left Asselfeldt to come marry Johannes Brandt. He presents her with a cabinet of nine rooms, much like a dollhouse of sorts, as he is a loving man albeit with his own limitations.

Petronella hires a miniaturist to fill the cabinet, whose creations uncannily mimic what comes to fruition within Petronella’s household. We read to discover the identity of the miniaturist, we read to find out specifics of life in Amsterdam during the fifteenth century. It is not the kind of life lived so freely today, where almost any type of behavior is accepted and upheld, as we have no burgomasters passing judgement on every action we make.

Each character is carefully drawn, from Johannes (her husband), to Marin (her sister-in-law), Cornelia (the maid), Otto (the man-servant from Africa) and Jack, a handsome young man from England who betrays them all. There is an interesting concept of  “sugar loaves”, the sale upon which their lives depend, and I found myself fully immersed in this story which Jessica Burton so expertly told.

It will be interesting to see what PBS does with this novel come Sunday, September 9, at 9/8 Central. (You can see the minute and a half trailer here.)

Middlemarch by George Eliot (completed today)

I must admit that Middlemarch didn’t interest me much until the last hundred pages. I forced myself to continue with it, due to my promise to Arti and Gretchen, and quite possibly it would have been more enjoyable if we three were together discussing it over a cup of tea with lemon. As it was, I sat this Memorial Day Weekend with this tome, in unbearable humidity, bound and determined to finish it so that I can get on to Cult X and Testament of Youth. I am not very patient with English literature, which always seems to need a better editor than it had. (Not one page of Anna Karenina, similar in length, tired me.)

And now for the interesting bits. Tertius Lydgate, who unfortunately married Rosamond Vincy, has become so far behind in debt that he beseeches his wife to give up her purple amythests, sell the silver plate, and even move to a less expensive home. Her pride, and her attachment to her belongings, forbid such actions, and she turns the situation to being his fault alone. She is completely unwilling to support him and turns her graceful neck away at an angle that makes me want to strike it.

So, Lydgate appeals to the banker, Mr. Bulstrode, who gives him one thousand pounds. Yet, almost simultaneously, a patient of Lydgate’s dies, and the townspeople believe that the money given by Bulstrode, and accepted by Lydgate, is a bribe.

”It has come to my knowledge since,” he (Lydgate) added, “that Hawley sent someone to examine the housekeeper at Stone Court, and she said that she gave the patient all the opium in the phial I left, as well as a good deal of brandy. But that would not have been opposed to ordinary prescriptions, even of first-rate men. The suspicions against me had no hold there; they are grounded on the knowledge that I took money, that Bulstrode had strong motives for wishing the man to die, and that he gave me the money as a bribe to concur in some malpractices or other against the patient-that in any case I accepted a bribe to hold my tongue. They are just the suspicions that cling the most obstinately because they lie in people’s inclination and can never be disproved.” (p. 811)

That last line is perhaps the briefest summary of Middlemarch, a novel in which George Eliot examines the defamation of character, and the consequential ruin of one’s trust in oneself; the bond of marriage which can suffocate when it is an unhappy one; the superficiality of the masses when assembled together in the same small town.

Dorothea Casaubon calls Lydgate to her home, and comforts him with her gentle and true spirit which insists on seeing the good in others. When she writes a checque for one thousands pounds for Rosamond, and delivers it to her home, she unexpectedly comes upon Rosamond and Will Ladislaw sitting altogether too closely on the sofa. He his clasping her hands in his, and the situation looks compromising. But this doesn’t bother Rosamond half as much as it does both Will and Dorothea.

”Shallow natures dream of an easy sway over the emotions of others, trusting implicitly in their own petty magic to turn the deepest streams, and confident, by pretty gestures and remarks, of making the thing that is not as though it were. She (Rosamond) knew that Will had received a severe blow, but she had been little used to imagining other people’s states of mind except as a material cut into shape by her own wishes; and she believed in her own power to soothe or subdue.”

Yet, as we read on it is Dorothea’s character to seek the good in people, to believe in the triumph of good over evil, and to know that money cannot possibly bring the happiness so desired by many. Her first husband, Mr. Casaubon, had meanly forbidden her to marry again, specifically the one she truly loved, or else she should lose the property he had left to her. But this sword will not cut through her armor, one which chooses truth over prosperity. I love how she ends with the one she loves.

As I close the last pages, I am pleased with the outcome of this book, happy that I have read a classic I had not read before. It would be a perfect story for Masterpiece Theater, as there is so much wisdom inherent to its tale told through the foolishness of so many of its characters.

”Yes, dear, a great many things have happened,” said Dodo in her full tones.

“I wonder what,” said Celia, folding her arms cozily and leaning forward upon them.

“Oh, all the troubles of all the people on the face of the earth,” said Dorothea, lifting her arms to the back of her head.

Read-along In June: Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain

Having finished the read-along for Middlemarch in May, I am now embarking on the read-along for Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain sponsored by Jillian of In Her Books. (Click on the link to find her invitation.)

Here is a brief description of this novel:

In 1914 Vera Brittain was eighteen and, as war was declared, she was preparing to study at Oxford. Four years later her life – and the life of her whole generation – had changed in a way that was unimaginable in the tranquil pre-war era. TESTAMENT OF YOUTH, one of the most famous autobiographies of the First World War, is Brittain’s account of how she survived the period; how she lost the man she loved; how she nursed the wounded and how she emerged into an altered world. A passionate record of a lost generation, it made Vera Brittain one of the best-loved writers of her time.

You can buy it with free shipping from Bookwitty here.

Please feel free to join this endeavor, on Twitter as #cctestament.

Frankenstein: I Have Suffered Great and Unparalleled Misfortunes

While in the midst of Mary Shelley’s classic novel, and discussing bits of it on Twitter, I mentioned to Frances and Thomas that the first time I read Frankenstein I was much more sympathetic to the monster. Now, at this rereading, I seem to have lost my patience with him. For it is not just the monster who endures terrible suffering due to a lack of human connection.

From the very beginning, Captain Walton expresses  in a letter to his sister “one want which I have never yet been able to satisfy…”: that of a friend.

You may deem me romantic, my dear sister, but I bitterly feel the want of a friend. I have no one near me, gentle yet courageous, possessed of a cultivated as well as of a capacious mind, whose tastes are like my own, to approve or amend my plans.

This longing for connection, and the suffering that ensues from the lack thereof, dwells in all of the main characters: Captain Walton, Victor Frankenstein, and especially the daemon himself.

“Believe me, Frankenstein: I was benevolent; my soul glowed with love and humanity; but am I not alone, miserably alone? You, my creator, abhor me; what hope can I gather from your fellow creatures, who owe me nothing? They spurn and hate me…Shall I not then hate them who abhor me?

Does being hurt, being an outcast, being angry at one’s creator, warrant hate or consequent murder?

The monster tries to explain his position:

“My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy; and when wrenched to misery by vice and hatred, it did not endure the violence of change, without torture such as you cannot even imagine.”  

The violence of change. Changing from innocence to knowledge, from love to hate, from man to monster. Surely change has been an unsettling constant for centuries.

Mary Shelley includes a few lines from her husband’s poem in this novel, without giving him credit, yet these lines bring an insight into the concepts she is trying to express about the power of change; about our lack of control:

We rest.—A dream has power to poison sleep;

We rise.—One wandering thought pollutes the day;

We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;

Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:

It is the same!—For, be it joy or sorrow,

The path of its departure still is free:

Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow;

Nought may endure but mutability!

~Percy Bysshe Shelley

But, the insight which I like best of all is how Henry Clerval reminds his friend Victor Frankenstein, “Those maxims of the Stoics, that death was no evil, and that the mind of man ought to be superior to despair on the eternal absence of a beloved object, ought not to be urged. Even Cato wept over the dead body of his brother.”

And what might Cato himself say to the suffering monster? Perhaps this couplet would have offered a piece of important wisdom:

If you can, even remember to help people you don’t know.
More precious than a kingdom it is to gain friends by kindness.

(From the publisher: “A towering masterpiece of Gothic fiction, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein birthed the horror and science-fiction genres and spawned countless cultural offspring. In fact, its cultural progeny is so pervasive that we forget how radical, insightful – and, yes, terrifying- it is. In our Restless Classics edition, award-winning novelist and critic Francine Prose breathes new life into the book with a brilliant new introduction, Mexican artist Eko offers twenty-six harrowing full-page illustrations, and University of Pennsylvania English professor Wendy Steiner presents insightful online videos. Find out more about the series here.”)

Happy Birthday, Charlotte! And, Thanks For Writing Jane Eyre

When I revisited this post today, with a picture taken in the bleakest days of February when I reread Jane Eyre, I thought the photo a little dark. Yet, it is perfect for much of the novel. So many parts of it are almost hopeless, and yet we read on encouraged by Jane’s courage and strength; the very moral fiber of her being sustains her. And, me.

We know the story, or at least are familiar with most of it. In the very first chapter, Jane is locked into a room, much like how her lover’s mad wife, Berthe, is locked into a room of her own. How can these two women be compared?

One is innocent and young, the other has gone mad. But they both love Rochester, and no story is as compelling, to me, as a love story. Combine that with the search for home, not only in the physical sense, but in a place to really belong, and you have a book which endures time as Jane Eyre does.

I was struck by the similarities between Jane Eyre and Rebecca this time around. Both of them have:

• a dashing, dissatisfied husband looking for a tranquil wife
• a mild mannered, soft-spoken, gentle new wife lacking confidence
• a wild, bold, daring wife who’s no longer loved
• a manor home with a stately name: Thornfield and Manderly, respectively

And, here are some favorite quotes:

“Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs.” (p. 82)

“But what is so headstrong as youth? What so blind as inexperience?” (p. 363)

“Thank you Mr Rochester; for your great kindness. I am strangely glad to get back again to you; and wherever you are is my home-my only home.” (p. 367)

Charlotte’s birthday was 200 years ago today, April 21. How well do you know her? Take a quiz here to find out.

 

 

The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters

But even before she’d got the cigarette lit, she closed her eyes, leaned back into her pillow–and suddenly she found herself in an unfamiliar house with crumbling walls. How had she got there? She had no idea. She knew only that she had to keep the place from collapsing. But the task was like torture. The moment she got one wall upright, the next would start to tilt; soon she was rushing from room to room, propping up sagging ceilings, hauling back the slithering treads of tumbling staircases. On and on she went, through all the hours of the night; on and on, without pause, staving off one impossible catastrophe after another. p. 383

The paying guests is a term for lodgers, those who come to rent a home from a landlord. But it’s an ironic term in this case, because Lilian and Leonard Barber will pay in many ways for coming to the home of Miss Wray and her mother. At first I suspected a story resembling Arsenic and Old Lace. “They’ll be poisoned,” I thought, “this unsuspecting couple coming to a perfectly presentable house.”

But there are many ways to be poisoned besides arsenic.

How about love as a deadly poison? Could we substitute the fallout of a scandalous love affair for a fatal draught?

Delicious tensions abound in this novel, between husband and wife, mother and daughter, lover and lover, police and the accused. There is an underlying assumption, that Mrs. Barber’s dalliance could only ever involve a male. How shocking in the 1920’s, how virtually unknown, the fact that lesbian relationship exist.

It wasn’t what I expected, to read of a love affair between two women. It wasn’t even something I enjoyed, compared to the shivers I got while reading The Little Stranger. But if a novel reflects the writer’s soul, it would be unfair to expect something different than a lesbian theme from Sarah Waters.

I wondered if the two women in The Paying Guests would destroy each other as the deed they committed in secret threatened to expose more than their romance. And while their story vacillated between clinging to each other and separating, between innocence and guilt, I compulsively turned the pages to learn of its conclusion.

For what does all of Miss Wray’s cleaning mean? The day in, day out tasks of polishing the floor on her hands and knees, drawing water from a rumbling heater for baths and clearing up, dusting knick-knacks in the parlour while her mother naps? She will be forever scrubbing, but never spotless.

Lost For Words by Edward St. Aubyn

Sometimes you have to read the judges rather than the books.

I used to believe that doctors cured you, Presidents led you, and book awards went to the book best written.

Not anymore. (Especially since the IFFP went to The Iraqi Christ by Hassan Blasim.)

In his inimitable style, a blend of the most delicious sarcasm and facetiousness, Edward Sr. Aubyn describes the farce involved with a prestigious literary award. Neither writers nor judges are spared so much as a scratch from his sythe.

The Elysian Prize, more than vaguely resembling the Man Booker prize, is chaired by Malcolm Craig. It is a prize “confined to the Imperial ash heap of the Commonwealth.

Judges on the committee include Jo Cross, a well-known columnist and media personality; Vanessa Shaw, who is interested in “especially good writing”; Penny feathers, who is the Secretary of the Foreign Office’s old girlfriend. “The point was to build a consensus and come up with a vision of the sort of Britain they all wanted to project with the help of this prize: diverse, multi-cultural, devolutionary, and of course, encouraging to writers.

Some of the writers are Sam Black, preoccupied by psychological contracts, writing The Frozen Torrents; Katherine Burns, a lady novelist who surrounds herself with artists, thinkers, scientists and writers, as well as multiple lovers; Sonny Badanpur, who could trace his ancestry to Krishna and wrote The Mulberry Elephant; Penny who is a judge, but also the author of the thriller Roger and Out.

Halfway through the novel we find that some assistant sent Sonny’s auntie’s cookbook, instead of Katherine’s novel, to the judges. The cookbook finds its way to the long list and subsequently the short list. I could not stop laughing at the utter absurdity, which plausibly smacks of truth, in this situation. No one seems able to admit that the cookery book is not a splendid piece of fiction.  (John Elton, the American literary agent says, “Playing with textuality can be dangerous, but the audacity of putting it in a “cookbook” is sheer genius.”)

I curiously awaited the disclosure of the Short List, as if it was something real, just to read the following titles:

The Frozen Torrent by Sam Black
The Enigma Conundrum by Tim Wentworth
All The World’s A Stage by Hermione Fade
wot u starin at by Hugh Macdonald
The Palace Cookbook by Lakshmi Badanpur
The Greasy Pole by Alistair Mackintosh

Really, it’s enough to make me laugh out loud. Or, vomit violently into a sink. Or, as one of participants says, to “go to one of the nearby bookshops to buy something good to read on the way home, to…remind him what literature was before he went to the Elysian Prize dinner the next night.”

The Patrick Melrose novels are my very favorite works of Edward St. Aubyn’s, for the raw emotion they so powerfully convey; enough to make this American woman feel she had experienced the life of a British man.

Lost For Words is an entirely different kind of novel, as it points to a gigantic literary farce rather than a grim childhood and it’s subsequent effects. While St. Aubyn’s satire in the novel may seem like a touch of sour grapes to some, to me it seems to more closely resemble Shakespeare’s line in King Lear: “Many a true word hath been spoken in jest.”

(Find Victoria’s excellent review here.)

Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith

In an era, and a country, where crime is supposed to be non-existent because “theory dictated that there was more work, more fairness, less exploitation”, we find a Russia which is truly terrifying.

I have always been fascinated with Russia. I took almost enough Russian literature in university to have a minor in it. I suspect that in many ways, I have glorified this land of ice and snow, hand-painted boxes, and tortured writers. I probably have overlooked most of the suffering and pain that its citizens have endured.

The bleakness of Russia in the 1950’s comes alive in this brilliant mystery. It is written with layers of paranoia over layers of deception. It is written with the characters’ fear and trembling, only mirrored by those in charge because they realize their lives are no different. Everyone is an accusation away from a life of exile. Or, torture.

If you finished Gone Girl (or The Truth About The Harry Quebert Affair) with a sigh of disappointment, as I did, you need to read Child 44. It is a true mystery, an exquisitely wrought thriller with no games played at the reader’s expense.