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More 2011 Miscellanea

Epic Fail by Claire LaZebnik is the Pride and Prejudice story in modern dress. Elise, the Elizabeth Bennett character, is a new student at an exclusive Los Angeles private school where her mother has just taken a job as school principal. On her first day she annoys Derek (Darcy), the son of Hollywood royalty but her sister begins dating Derek's brother and so they are frequently throw together. Elise is attracted to Derek's enemy, Webster, but she soon realizes she has made a bad mistake.

 Although the book is intended for Grade 7 and up, we in the "and up" category can enjoy it as we search for parallels with our favorite novel.

2011  No 200

 

One of Georges Simenon's romans durs, The Door

Georges Simenon is most famous, and justly so, for his detective, Maigret. But Simenon also wrote many other novels, which he called his romans durs, hard novels.

The Door is typical of these short, sensitive stories with characters who do a good deal of thinking but not a lot of acting. The main focus in this story is on Bernard Foy, a 40-something man who lost both hands to a mine early in World War II. He lives quietly on his military pension with his wife, who works as a clerk, and paints lamp shades to keep himself busy. But his entire life focuses on his wife, his every thought is of her.

Bernard has become increasingly jealous after 20 years of marriage and finally one day he tells his wife that he imagines her in love with another man in the building where they live. This man had polio and lives in a wheelchair three floors below the Foys. His wife reassures him convincingly that she loves only him. But he can't shake his distress and the dizziness he feels when he thinks about his wife, and the sleeping pills and tranquilizers his doctor gives him do not help.

A very thoughtful and subtle novel.

2012  No 54

When I Was a Child I Read Books by Marilynne Robinson

Marilynne Robinson has written some of my favorite books, Housekeeping, Gilead, and Home. Her prose is as crisp and clear as Orwell's and her characters are as realistic as any in modern American literature. Her Christian apologetics are among the best we have today. But this book of essays was disappointing.

It's probably not a good idea to second guess an author's motives but as I read some of the pieces in this collection I found the arguments so weak that I wondered if the author really meant what she was saying. She teaches at the University of Iowa and is deeply embedded in the academic world and I suspect she feels she can only get away with being an assertive Christian by defending much of the platform of the left and the Democratic Party. Unfortunately she does not defend government spending on a gigantic scale with the same conviction she applies to monotheism.

After reading a strong and convincing essay criticizing critics who verge on the anti-Semitic in dismissing the Old Testament's contribution to Christianity, Robinson's comments about modern political movements (i.e., the Tea Party, though she never mentions the group by name) are weak and unconvincing. She shreds Bishop John Shelby Spong and stands up bravely for Calvin.

Robinson is a Christian, says several times that ours is a Christian country (according to polls asking about religious preferences or lack of them), and defends her faith vigorously. She speaks touchingly about the importance of old hymns in "Wondrous Love." Her essay on the Decalogue is brilliant.

So the book is worth reading but the quality varies greatly.

2012  No 53 

Inside the Whale by George Orwell

Written in 1940, Inside the Whale was a collection of three long essays about Dickens, boys' weekly papers, and Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer. The essay about Miller, which gives the title to the collection, talks about English literature in general but I think it is weak and not as worthy as so much of Orwell's other work. It is dated and the piece about boys' weeklies could never have been very interesting to more than a handful of people, but Orwell's comments on Dickens are perceptive and worth reading.

Orwell's politics being what they were (leftist and Socialist) he admires Dickens' criticism of society, something not found in most other popular novelists of the time like Trollope and Elliot, but he points out that in essence all Dickens had to offer was the hope that people would behave more generously to one another. Orwell wanted the entire system overturned, capitalism wiped out, government by the workers, and the rest of the naive hopes and dreams of the leftists of the 20s and 30s. But he does appreciate Dickens for the sheer delight of his writing and the characters he created.

None of whom were what Orwell would call "workers," except for David Copperfield when as a youth he was put into a blacking factory, as in real life happened to Dickens. Orwell admires A Tale of Two Cities, which I found interesting as it is not the usual Dickens fare.

2012  No 52

Bruno, Chief of Police of a small town in the Dordogne

Here is another mystery series with an engaging detective and a charming setting that I happened upon recently but don't remember how. I'm not usually drawn to mysteries set anywhere but in England or small-town USA, but this story about a very small town in France profonde is tremendously appealing.

The town of St Denis has had a weekly market since 1346 and the townspeople don't take kindly to interference from health inspectors from the European Union coming around to make sure there is a date on every single egg they are selling, that the poultry has been killed in a hygenic manner, and the cheese is made from pasteurized milk. In fact, there's one vendor who buys eggs in the grocery store, rubs off the date, rolls the eggs in chicken manure and straw, and sells them to tourists as "farm fresh" at a Euro each, but nobody from the town thinks that is something the men from Brussles should be poking into.

Bruno isn't really the chief of police in St Denis. He's the only police. He works with (or sometimes against) the gendarmes, which are a national quasi-military police force. This requires a good deal of finesse and political savvy. The book is a user's manual for the bureaucratically overwhelmed. How to avoid gendarme DUI citations, techniques to disable the rental cars of European Union busybodies, what to say to convince pig-headed magistrates to release obviously innocent suspects.

But the murder in Bruno, Chief of Police, is not quite so amusing. A very old man has been killed in a particularly nasty way and his Legion of Honor medal has been stolen, along with a photo of the champion soccer team he led in 1940. Because he is a North African immigrant the initial suspects are right-wing political activists. His son is a respected math teacher at the local high school and his grandson is a friend of Bruno and a fellow rugby player. Most of the town is appalled at the thought that this might be a hate killing.

But there are reasons to be nervous about immigrants in modern France. There are millions of Muslims who have arrived in recent years with no intention of assimilating. There are riots and burned cars and other unrest perpetrated by unruly Islamists. People don't always distinguish between these threatening people and the Muslims who have been part of the community for 50 years.

The few local communists decide to use the murder as an excuse to demonstrate against racism and the mayor, being no fool, takes over the demonstration, turns it into a march to honor a murdered Frenchman who has won the Legion d'honneur, invites the school children to come along, and has Bruno on the alert for trouble. And indeed, left-wing thugs are bussed in to start a riot, which is quickly quelled with the help of the rugby team, who have turned out en masse.

Using the photo of the dead man's old soccer team and with the help of an English researcher who is visiting the area, Bruno is able to figure out the motive for the murder and with that he knows who did it. But this presents even more difficult problems.

An excellent mystery, a fine combination of quirky characters, local color, good food, and a little detective work. Bruno, Chief of Police is by American Martin Walker, who has a home in the Dordogne.

2012  No 51

English Roman Fleuve

The other day the Trollope Society twittered this article by Jeffrey Archer listing his favorite roman fleuve. I'm particularly fond of these strings of related novels because when you grow attached to characters in a good story (Glencora Palliser, Soames Forsyte) you want more and roman fleuve give you much more.

He starts the list with my favorite:

1. The Palliser novels by Anthony Trollope
2. The Forsyte Saga by John Gallsworthy
3. The Sword of Honor trilogy by Evelyn Waugh
4. Strangers and Brothers by C P Snow
5. The Hornblower novels by C S Forester
6. A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell
7. The Swann Saga by R F Delderfield
8. The Smiley trilogy by John Le Carre
9. The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott
10. The Clayhanger novels by Arnold Bennett

And now a confession. I have never read the Sword of Honor books, the Hornblower novels, or the Smiley trilogy. And I had never even heard of the Swann Saga or the Clayhanger novels. I have work to do. 

 

Love Letters by Katie Fforde

You can always rely on Katie Fforde. Her novels about young love are sure to have the classic plot: boy meets girl - boy loses girl - complications ensue - boy gets girl. I don't think I'm giving away any spoilers when I say that as Fforde's novels are in a genre we read because we know the plot will go like that.

Love Letters tickled me particularly because besides a clever plot it had so many appealing elements: a stately home, a rogue Irish novelist called Dermot, a modest and sincere protagonist who reads even more than I do, a colorful but wise sidekick, and so many amusing scenes in which the author jabs at the literary world and its pretentions that there are too many to list.

But here is one of them, a dinner at the literary festival the heroine, Laura, is organizing at which Adam, a very serious, highly regarded, but not very successful young literary novelist, comes to grief when he tries to act superior to two absolutely delightful and very successful older women, Anne and Veronica, who write "women's fiction," i.e., novels like the one we are reading.

"Does that mean we won't be doing the panel?" said Adam, sounding disappointed. "I was really hoping . . ."

"For some publicity?" said Anne. "Surely not!" Her amused expression took the sting out of her words.

Adam glanced at her sideways, as if a full-on look might turn him to stone, and muttered out of the corner of his mouth, "So how many paperbacks would you reckon to sell?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Anne. "If I'm lucky, about a hundred thousand."

"A hundred thousand? Bloody hell!"

"She's being modest," said Veronica. "She sells far more than that."

"Only because they're in the supermarkets."

There is a laugh-out-loud scene where Laura is at a book club where the opinionated leader keeps contradicting what Laura says about Dermot, although she knows the Irish novelist very well by now.

"I'm Jocasta . . . Jocasta is from the classical Greek."

"So is mine, Laura, that is. It means laurels."

"Jocasta laughed. "Oh, I don't think mine means anything."

Jocasta, of course, was the wife and mother of Oydipus. Laura begins to realize what she has got herself into at this deadly boring book club.

I highly recommend this romance to readers who don't really care for chic lit and who admire Georgette Heyer. Katie Fforde is a cut above.

2012  No 50

 

More 2011 Mopping Up

Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Having read this mystery before I knew how the three plots would turn out, but I recalled it being well written and I wanted to follow the stories and look for the clues the author planted along the way that I might have missed the first time.

That turned out to be somewhat worthwhile, but not as fruitful as I expected. This is a book to read once, but it IS a book to be read.

2011 No 197

The Saturday Morning Murder: A Psychoanalytic Case by Batya Gur
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I wish I could remember who recommended this book to me because she deserves a personal thank you. I had seen the title before now - it was published in 1993. But it didn't particular call to me. But I took a flyer because of the recommendation. I had to buy it because the library doesn't have a copy and the library has so many other wonderful mysteries why should I bother with this one.

Well, I did, and I am very pleased with what I found. An almost flawless plot, a couple of superb characters and lots of other, interesting ones, and lots of information about Jerusalem, which I didn't realize I was interested in until I read this book. In fact the teaser in The Saturday Morning Murder: A Psychoanalytic Case sent me to the new Biography of Jerusalem by Simon Sebag Montefiore.

The story takes place in a psychoanalytic clinic and everybody who works there or comes for help has a story. The stories intertwine and it isn't until the very end of the book that the red thread becomes apparent. I'm looking forward to the next book in the series.

2011 No 198

False Charity by Veronica Heley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This first in a cozy series called the Abbot Agency Mysteries has a clever catch. Bea Abbot has just been widowed and when she returns to London from the round-the-world trip she and her husband were on when he died she faces more than just the misery of life without him. Their event planning/fix it company is in trouble, there is a friend of the woman who has been keeping it afloat living in the attic, and her son and his brittle wife are all but moved into her house and are making plans to sell the company.

At first it looks like Bea, in her despondency, is going to go along with some of this. But as she begins trying to repair the company's tarnished name and to meet its obligations to other small businesses, she finds herself relying on the unreliable minder and her computer whiz friend in the attic to help her solve a murder that is mixed into the Abbot Agency's activities.

Bea Abbot is a particularly likeable protagonist and her son and his wife particularly unlikeable foils. A fine start to a new (in 2008) series that I intend to follow.

2011 No 199

Dog Eat Dog by Jane and Michael Stern

Dog Eat Dog: A Very Human Book About Dogs and Dog Shows by Jane Stern
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Jane and Michael Stern's Roadfood was the book that first grabbed my attention and I've delighted in many of their other food books over the years. In Dog Eat Dog they have written their usual fact-filled book with great humor and elan, only this book is about dog shows.

Much like the recent Show Dog by Josh Dean, the Sterns' book follows a breeder and a couple of dogs, in this case Bull Mastiffs, as they compete through the year and eventually wind up at the Westminster Kennel Club show at Madison Square Garden. This book was published in 1997, but it would appear the dog show circuit hasn't changed that much in 15 years, nor have the challenges to breeding and raising dogs, or the excitement and heartbreak of winning and losing.

In their chapter on rare breeds the Sterns describe many dogs that were then not accepted by the AKC but which are now favorites at the Garden, like the Leonberger, the Glen of Imaal Terrier, the Plott Hound, the Dogue de Bordeaux, the Cane Corso, the Neopolitan Mastiff, and the Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever. The Presa Canario (Canary Island Gripping Dog) hasn't made it to the big time, nor has the Azawakh, one of the skinniest dogs on earth. The Xoloitcuintli (Mexican hairless dog), however, was one of the new breeds at the 2012 show.

A short, crisp book that offers a fine introduction to the thrills and chills of the dog show world.

2012 No 49

Wish List

My sister got one of these yard carts and she can no longer live without it. I want one too.