MarysLibrary

The King's Hounds by Martin Jensen

What a treat this historical mystery has turned out to be. It's the story of the murder of a Saxon thane on the eve of King Cnut's 1018 meetings in Oxford of the proto-parliamentary Witenagemot (Saxon) and Ting (Danish.) He wants these former enemies to agree to the same laws for the entire country of England, enforced by himself.

I don't think I'm leaking any spoilers when I reveal that Cnut's plan does work and except for the lamentable incident of William the Norman 50 years later the peace that Cnut established lasted 200 years.

But that peace is in danger if Cnut doesn't find out who has murdered Osfrid the Saxon. Whom can he possibly find to investigate for him? Neither Saxons nor Danes will trust the results of anyone from the other side.

At just this ticklish moment two men wander into town. Winston is a failed monk, the country's best illuminator who has been hired by Queen Emma to paint a picture of her husband, Cnut. Halfdan is the younger son of a Saxon nobleman who backed Edmund and not Cnut. When Edmund died he lost his estates and Halfdan, Danish on his mother's side and Saxon on his father's, is scraping by with handouts and what he can steal.

That's Cnut on the right fighting Edmund Ironside

They meet on the road one night when Winston has set up camp and Halfdan, who has been living off what he could steal, is deciding how to go about attacking the seemingly vulnerable man. But a pair of thugs attack Winston before Halfdan can do so and he comes to the monk's aid. The well-provisioned illustrator thankfully shares his roast leg of lamb with rosemary and they decide to travel together.

It turns out Queen Emma is out of town but King Cnut sees an opportunity to get himself out of a fix. He orders the two men to undertake a bit of sleuthing on his behalf. If they find a Dane killed Osfrid, the Danes will be satisfied that one of the investigators was at half Danish. And if a Saxon is discovered to be the murderer their Saxon background will save them from being accused of favoritism by the English.

And should they fail to discover the culprit Cnut can always banish them and say he did his best.

These are pre-feudal times when every nobleman defends himself and his land with a private army, and the king's housecarls intervene only when violence becomes impossible to ignore. It's dangerous to walk the streets of Oxford or to wander among the tents pitched by the noblemen who have come to the Witan and the Ting. Halfdan provides some protection to Winston, who is older and wiser and more observant.

I've recently been doing a lot of reading about post-Roman times in Britain and the colorful world of the Saxons. The author obviously knows his cultural history, although he makes no attempt to lecture the reader. The characters who people this story are wonderful: Tonild, the infuriated Saxon wife of the dead Osfrid; her truculent brother Ranulf; Godskalk, Cnut's head of security; Baldwin, the king's accountant; Wulfstan, the archbishop of York; and the fearsome Viking, Thorkell the Tall. The last two are historical characters.

And the murderer? It takes Winston and Halfdan a while to figure out who would benefit from the brutal and very public murder of this Saxon nobleman at just this crucial moment. But an illustrator by necessity pays close attention to detail and the young and impetuous Halfdan is intelligent and enthusiastic. Cnut is pleased with their work and the reader will be too.

Two Old Women

The other day at our neighborhood's annual progressive dinner I met a new neighbor who recommended a book, Two Old Women. I  tracked it down at once and today I read it. And it's wonderful.

Written by Velma Wallis, who was born on the Arctic Circle in Fort Yukon, Alaska, Two Old Women a story her mother told her when she was a child about the Athabascan people before the influence of European culture.

The People, a nomadic band of Athabascan Indians, are struggling to make it through a particularly bad winter. They don't have enough to eat and game is scarce. As they pack up to move to a place where they hope to find better hunting the chief tells the group that he has decided that the two oldest women will be left behind. The rest of The People cannot to continue to support them when there isn't enough even for the hunters to eat.

No one dares to argue with the chief. Times are as bad as anyone can remember them. So the daughter of one of the women leaves her a bundle of rawhide cords and her grandson leaves her his hatchet and the band moves away.

The women are furious, hardly believing their people could do this to them. They are depressed when they think of the hopeless situation they are in. But they realize they have a choice. They can sit there and die or they can die trying. They decide to try to survive.

The story tells us how they go about trapping small game. They make mittens and blankets from the furs of the rabbits and squirrels and other small animals that they eat to stay alive. They travel to an old camping place they remember from many years ago where they catch fish and cache their extra food and furs. They grow stronger by the day and they fight to stay alive, determined if they don't succeed to die trying.

The next winter the band goes back to the place where they left the women and when they do not find their bones the chief realizes they may not have died. He sends a scout to find them. Will the tracker be able to follow the women to their river-side camp? Will the band take their cache from them? Can they forgive the band and can the band overcome their guilt at leaving the women behind?

This is a fine old story written by a woman who has lived off the land in a cabin north of the Artic Circle just as these women did.

Nine Coaches Waiting by Mary Stewart

Nine Coaches Waiting is Rebecca crossed with Jane Eyre as written by Georgette Heyer, taking the best from each of them.

I've heard of it many times over the years -- it was first published in 1958 -- but it was only when Gudrun's Tights, a blog I read regularly had a Mary Stewart Week that I decided to see what the fuss was all about. As usual I'm a bit late to actually do so on Mary Stewart Week, but better late or something.

The book doesn't fit into any one category. It's a bit Gothic but nothing supernatural is going on. It's a sort of murder mystery but no one is actually murdered. And it's a thriller in that people are in danger and trying to elude other people who wish them harm. With a classic romantic story threaded through it.

The heroine, Linda Martin, had an English father and a French mother and she lived in Paris until, when she was 14, her parents were killed in a car crash. Having no relatives, Linda ended up in an orphanage. When the story opens it is nearly 10 years later and she is hired by Mme de Valmy to be governess to her nephew, also an orphan, whose parents died in a plane crash. Young Phillipe, Comte de Valmy, has all too many relatives.

Linda pretends not to know French because her employer suggests it would be better if she did not so that she wouldn't be tempted to lapse into that language instead of teaching Phillipe English. This seems a bit peculiar to Linda but as she badly wants this job she presents herself as wholly English with no knowledge of the French language.

She loves her charge and they get along together very well. She also loves the chateau Valmy. It belongs to the child and is being taken care of by his uncle Leon. We are told early on that Leon expected to inherit from his now deceased brother. However, the brother married unexpectedly and had a son, Phillipe, and Leon is infuriated.

Linda remembers years ago her father saying about Leon, who is now in a wheelchair after a polo accident, " . . . I can't help thinking it's a pity he didn't break his neck. He'd be no loss. . . . I detest him." When Linda meets the man she is nearly mesmerized by his sinister charm.

But it's when Leon's son, Raoul, arrives that things begin to heat up.

A wonderful book in the 1950s style, heavy on plot and characterization. Why did I wait so long to read it? And which Mary Stewart will I read next?

Top Ten Character Names I Love

 

Character Names I Love

Angel Clare from Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Eustacia Vye from Return of the Native

Guppy from Bleak House

Plantagenet Palliser from the Anthony Trollope political novels

Ford Prefect from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Bertie Wooster from the P G Wodehouse books

Isabel Archer from Portrait of a Lady

Cecil Vyse from A Room with a View

Huckleberry Finn from the book of that name

Queequeg from Moby Dick

 

Correction: It's Angel Clare. I spelled it wrong yesterday.

The Vicar's Wife by Katharine Swartz

The Vicar's Wife came along at just the right time for me. I had finished The Pilgrim's Progress, which was a struggle and I had been doing some other heavy reading, including American Psychosis, which is about the problems with America's mental health treatment system, and believe me there are many. I've also been secretly reading Tony Judt's gut-wrenching Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945. (By secretly I mean I haven't reported it to Goodreads yet.)

In any case, I needed a book that is not lightweight but not too challenging. The Vicar's Wife is just that. It's the story of Jane Hatton, a New Yorker who has moved to Cumbria with her English husband after 16 years of married life in New York City. Jane doesn't want to leave her demanding and fulfilling job or her challenging but deeply rewarding city. Andrew, who teaches engineering at Columbia, has always wanted to go back to England and Jane doesn't feel like she can say no to him now, although neither she nor their three children are eager to bury themselves in the far northwest of England in a cold, dark, wet, windy town.

Jane tries to adapt to life in the old vicarage in Goswell, but she longs to return to her bustling city that never sleeps. She finds it hard to get to know other women in town and she suspects her children, especially Nadia, a sulky teenager, are having trouble at school. Andrew, a man with a sunny disposition, seems oblivious to her unhappiness.

But Jane is not the vicar's wife of the title. That's Alice James, who in 1930 married the vicar of Goswell and moved to the house where Jane's family is now trying to settle down. When Jane finds a scrap of paper behind a slate shelf in the "cold" pantry (where food would have been kept in the 30s) she becomes curious about the woman who wrote the list and what her life was like.

As she begins poking around, asking questions, Jane feels a kind of empathy with Alice. She suspects that her predecessor was not happy in this house either and slowly learns her story. Talking with a woman who was the housekeeper after Alice's time and an old man who was resident there as a boy and knew Alice, Jane discovers the joys and sorrows of Alice's life in Goswell.

Meanwhile she makes a trip back to New York City and finds that her children don't really want to go back even for a visit. Does she know her children at all? And what about her own feelings about the city and her old job? She still longs for the rewards that her old life brought her, including a flavored Starbuck's coffee every morning. A small thing and seemingly superficial, but it represents so many things Jane has lost.

The narrative of this book uses a technique I particularly like. It switches back and forth from Jane to Alice with each alternating chapter and we slowly learn Alice's story as we watch Jane struggle to adapt to this new life. This is not a traditional love story -- boy meets girl, boy loses girl, etc. The story is not the marriage plot. It's the story of two women coming to recognize who they are, how to adapt to difficulty and change, and what is important in their lives. The very thing for a rainy fall day.

A review copy of this book was provided by the publisher.

The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan

Rest easy. Christian makes it to the Celestial City. He struggles to get out of the Slough of Despond and he risks death as he passes through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, but he does not succumb to the blandishments of the various characters he meets along the way (Obstinate, Pliable, Hypocracy, Talkative, Ignorance).

He is accompanied early in the story by his friend, Faithful, who uses the Get Out of Hell Free card and heads straight to Heaven from Vanity Fair. But Christian continues to slog on, meeting up with another companion, Hopeful, who provides him with someone to lecture about the dangers of the journey they are on.

The full title of the book is The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come; Delivered under the Similitude of a Dream. It was written, they think, while the author was in jail for unlicensed preaching. It was first published in 1678 and a second part plus numerous revisions were published during Bunyan's life.

The Pilgrim's Progress has never been out of print since it first appeared over 300 years ago and it has had a tremendous influence on English literature. There was a time when every literate household in England had a copy along with the Bible and Shakespeare. This does not mean it is easy to read or to understand, even for those of us who are Christians and believe in many of the things Bunyan allegorizes in this book.

Top Ten Books I Was Forced to Read

Top Four Books I Was Forced to Read

This list must begin with Moby Dick. Melville's book is without doubt a great novel. But it's very long and it's full of detailed instructions on how to do things like render whale blubber. This is not a good book to force on high school juniors. Even if they are at New Bedford High School and live in Acushnet (the whaling ship Melville sailed on) on Leonard Street (the Leonards made most of the whale boats in whaling's glory days.) I have just started re-reading it, inspired by Bluestalking's blog.

The Pilgrim's Progress. It's not easy to read most things published in the 17th century and John Bunyan's excessive seriousness and piety don't make it easier. They tried to make me read this in high school, college, and graduate school and I didn't finish it any of those times. Then my online Trollope group read it and I dropped out. I've tried to read it on my own a couple of times to no avail. This really is one of the most important books in the history of English literature. I spent most of yesterday reading it and have proceeded farther than ever before. I've escaped Vanity Fair with my life and my wits still about me. I think I'm finally about to succeed with this book.

The Catcher in the Rye. I read this wimpy J D Salinger novel back when it was newish (it was published in 1951.) Now the 22nd Avenue Book Club has chosen it as our November book. And I have gritted my teeth and read it. It hasn't improved any in the past 60 years.

Clarissa. This very early English novel by Samuel Richardson was assigned in one of my undergraduate classes about the 18th century novel. I really didn't want to read it. Too long. Much abused by authors like Mark Twain. But I'm glad they pushed me to slog through it because it's excellent and you really don't understand the English novel without having read it.

True Treasures from the Library

Today's haul from the library is filled with gems. From the bottom up:

The Parade's Gone By is a 1968 history of the early days of the movies by Kevin Brownlow. It ends with the coming of the talking picture and the photos are all in black and white, as is appropriate. The book is dedicated to Abel Gance, whom you will remember did the very lengthy film Napoleon, which I saw years ago at the American Film Institute, when it was still in the Kennedy Center. I've wanted to read this book for some time but it is not in the Spokane Library and it's certainly not in my book budget, not if I want to buy any other books for the next year. I am SO looking forward to reading this.

The Watchmen is a graphic novel that made its way onto Time Magazine's 100 Best Novels. It is written by Alan Moore, illustrated and lettered by Dave Gibbons, and colored by John Higgins. It was originally serialized in 1986-87 but this edition was published in 2010. This is emphatically not my genre, but I am always trying to keep an open mind. (That's very hard as you know if you hold strong political opinions; most people seem not even to try.) So I'm going to give this book a try. I think I'm at a disadvantage because my mother wouldn't let a comic book in the house when I was a girl and the only chance I had to read such a thing was in the dentist's waiting room. So for me graphic novels have about them the whine of the drill and the twinge in the tooth.

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (1972) is by Judith Viorst and is illustrated by Ray Cruz. I don't know why I haven't read this before now. When my sister has a rough day she calls it a terrible, horrible, no good, etc. Time to see why Sandy likes this book so much.

How the Light Gets In, by Louise Penny, is the just-published latest Armand Gamache mystery. I put my name on the reserve list long ago and have been waiting patiently for the book to come round to me. I've heard it's the best so far and that is truly saying something as this is one of the finest mystery series I know. (I am, by the way, distressed that Nathaniel Parker has been chosen to play Gamache in the TV adaptation. He is totally wrong for the part. On the other hand I can't even suggest who might be right for it.)

Longbourn by Jo Baker, is also new. The reviews by my British friends have been very enthusiastic and of course I'm always up for a Jane Austen pastiche, so I'm looking forward to beginning to read this today. (Goodbye, Christian, you may have to progress on your pilgrimage without me from here on.)

Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan has been getting rave reviews since it was published last year. It's time for me to find out what the fuss is all about. (I am a little anxious about this book as the last highly-touted novel I tried to read, The Book Thief, was a bomb. I hated it. Or rather I hated the first 50 pages of it, which is all that I could handle.)

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle won the 1963 Newbery Medal so I must have read it as I was working part-time in the juvenile room at the New Bedford Free Public Library and such things were very important to us there. But I can't remember the story and if you don't know what you read can you really be said to have read it?

Carried Away: A Selection of Stories by Alice Munro. I read stories by Munro in the New Yorker over the years. But I am not a fan of the short story. I need a full novel, preferably one of about 400 pages, to really sink into a plot and grasp what I'm reading. However, what I have read of her work has remained with me and since she just won the Nobel Prize I figure it's time to read another dozen or so of her stories.

People Who Eat Darkness by Richard Lloyd Parry

True crime is a genre that can be extraordinarily well done (think In Cold Blood, Helter Skelter, The Stranger Beside Me) or sleazy (too numerous to mention.) So much depends on the skill of the author and the information that can be sussed out about the crime, the victim, and the other people involved in the crime and its solution.

Richard Lloyd Parry is skilled beyond the ordinary and having lived in Japan for many years has a command of the language that makes it possible for him to interview or just chat with people who have something to contribute to the engrossing story of the kidnapping and murder of Lucie Blackman told in People Who Eat Darkness. Parry spent 10 years researching this book. He has written about a crime that reflects the life of non-Japanese youth who live and work in the Tokyo district called Roppongi.

The year is 2000 and Lucie and her friend Louise are hostesses at a club, Casablanca, that specializes in employing European hostesses, especially women like Lucie, who are tall, slender, blonde, and outgoing. The hostesses are required to keep their customers entertained for more than an hour, because it is only if they stay that long that the club makes money.

Parry takes his time setting the scene and explaining the world of Rappongi hostesses. They are not prostitutes. Their work is in the tradition of the geishas, women who entertain men, pour their drinks, light their cigarettes, make them laugh, help them practice their English. Lucie apparently liked this work but there are suggestions in her letters to friends and family that she has become tired of staying up so late at night and drinking so much.

Meanwhile, she has a date with a handsome, youngish man whom she met at night in Casablanca and whom she has agreed to meet during the day. He is wealthy and has offered to give her a cell phone and talks of high end champagne. She tells Louise about her plans to meet him. She's excited. But she has to work that night. "I'll be back by 8 PM."

She never returns. Louise, recognizing that Lucie is the sort of person who is always where she says she will be exactly on time, goes immediately to the district police. They are polite, listen to her story, and suggest that it is early to begin looking for an adult who is a few hours late. But Louise knows there is something seriously wrong.

Parry tells us about the complex world of the "water trade" in Japan and he introduces us to Lucie's family and friends in England. Her family were unusually open and frank about their private life (there is a particularly bitter divorce involved) and we learn about Lucie and her life in great detail, both the good and bad. She is portrayed -- as I'm sure she was -- as a delightful woman who was struggling to find her place in the world.

The Japanese police are criminally culpable in this and other cases of young women who have been kidnapped and raped and have disappeared from the clubs of Rappongi. A few frank police detectives talked with Parry and he was able to piece together the picture of uninvestigated crimes over the years before Lucie was taken.

I had not heard of this book, published in 2011, until very recently. I don't recall where I discovered it. (If yours was the blog in which I read about please tell me. I am grateful to you.) It has gone immediately onto my top 10 True Crime list.

The View from Penthouse B by Elinor Lipman

Gwen-Laura is a widow. Her sister, Margot, is a divorcee (formerly married to a fertility doctor who had an unorthodox method of helping his patients get pregnant), and her other sister is smugly married and prosperous. Gwen is still mourning her husband, a public school art teacher, and Margot is spitting mad, both at her ex-husband, who is currently in prison, and at Bernard Madoff, who is also currently in prison. Neither sister has much money, certainly not enough to live well in Manhattan, so they move in together and take a border, Anthony.

A more delightful trio is hardly to be found in current fiction. The sisters disagree, but gently, in ladylike fashion, and always with a dash of wit. When times get rough, Anthony, whose cupcakes are the best anyone has ever had, smooths things out for everyone.

Gwen has an idea for a no-sex dating service, Chaste Dates, which she advertises on Craigslist. Dinner and conversation. That's it. But she finds she must explain clearly and concisely to her first client that there are to be no activities in any bedroom at which point he relaxes and loosens his tie:

"Are you really a golf instructor at Chelsea Piers?" I asked.

"Off the record?"

"Of course."

"I am not a golf instructor at Chelsea Piers."

"Are you in a line of work where you wear handcuffs?"

"Wear? I'd say no."

"I meant are they on your person?"

He said, after staring for a good long time, "Yes."

"Are you a policeman?"

... After another longish stare, he said, "Vice."

Back to the drawing board with the business plan.

But it's when Margot's ex is released from prison and rents an efficiency in the same building that things get interesting. And between the appearance of Charles son by one of his patients, Anthony's dating someone from Gwen's Grief Circle, and a little old lady writing to Gwen asking her to go out with Eli, her shy, 50-something son -- well, we end up with a classic Lipman ending. Everyone is satisfied, including the reader.